Nazareth's Song (32 page)

Jeb’s head dropped forward and he hid his face, in case anyone from shore might think it strange to see a man in a drifting boat crying.

26

J
eb found the letter from the Pine Bluff family. He had looked for it for two days. He found it under his own bed. It had been shredded into a thousand pieces.

“Angel, you come here!” he yelled.

“It’s time to leave for school. Bye!”

Jeb heard the front door slam and the ensuing voices of Ida May and Willie as they ran in the cold to catch up with their sister. Jeb watched them disappear around the church with holes in their stockings. He took the handful of shredded letter and threw it into the kitchen waste can. Thanksgiving was two days away.

A movement from out front brought him onto the porch. He saw two men placing ladders against the side of the church. Next to them, Winona chattered.

Jeb slipped on his shoes and met them out in the churchyard. “Morning.”

Winona smiled, but Jeb knew it was only because he had not taken the bad news to her daddy yet about the Bluetooths. After his first cup of coffee, he would march into the bank and ruin what remained of their relationship.

“Morning, honey,” said Winona. She had not called him by any endearing names until now.

“Ladders and measuring tapes. Something I should know about?” Jeb asked her.

“It’s impossible to surprise you, Jeb, what with you being around so much. But up in Hot Springs a man—an artist, really—designs stained-glass windows for churches. And—here comes the surprise—we’re buying stained-glass windows for Church in the Dell.” Her cheeks reddened as her joy at having shared such good tidings bubbled over.

“We’re buying? Who is we?”

“Daddy, me. Momma’s helping me pick them out, but I want you to come along too.”

“We have a floor that’s half finished that we haven’t paid for yet. Church in the Dell can’t afford a Christmas ham, let alone stained-glass windows, Winona.”

“Church in the Dell won’t get a bill for these windows. I asked Daddy to have his investors pitch in, what with the work you’re doing for them.” She said quietly, “With the mood he’s in right now, you can imagine how hard this was for me to coax out of him.”

Jeb regretted that he had not already told Horace Mills he was turning down the delivery boy job once and for all. If he had to sell off household furniture to pay for the Bluetooths’ cash gift, he’d do that too. But the thought of Winona measuring for stained glass made him even more angry. “While stained glass is beautiful—” he began.

“Church in the Dell will be the envy of the county.”

“But I don’t want stained glass.”

“You need it. It’s tradition.”

“I can’t see through it, Winona. What’s the point of a window you can’t see through?”

“It’s not that you want to see through it. You just want to look at it, appreciate it for what it represents.”

“It represents money that could be used elsewhere.”

“The windows are a donation, silly. You don’t understand.”

“Like the church floor?”

“You’ll get your floor. You and Daddy are working things out.”

“You don’t understand, Winona. I don’t want stained glass.”

“He knows what he wants, Winona. He’s the pastor of Church in the Dell.”

Jeb spun around, shocked to see Fern eavesdropping while the two of them argued. She’d come from inside the church.

“Nobody asked your opinion, Fern,” said Winona.

“I want something I can see through. That’s all,” said Jeb.

“Perfectly understandable.” Fern smiled at the two men who stood holding the ladder.

“Fern, you are the worst person to discuss this with. You and your plain-Jane ways.” Winona turned her back to Fern. “Jeb, I’m sorry for surprising you. We can discuss this later.”

“Plain-Jane, as in I decorate my walls with bookcases? Winona, my decorating habits have nothing to do with the minister’s decisions. Reverend Nubey wants windows he can see through. It’s simple enough for me to understand.”

“Fern, you understand, don’t you?” asked Jeb.

“I finally do,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Jeb turned to Winona. “No stained glass for me. I’m done with all that.”

“It’s taken you long enough,” said Fern.

“I wish someone would explain it to me,” said the man at the bottom of the ladder.

“Jeb, that’s not the only reason I came by,” said Winona. “Since you’re turning things around for the church, I thought you’d like to know that family from Pine Bluff wants to meet the Welby children this weekend. Sunday, they said.”

Jeb could see several samples of stained glass leaning against Winona’s car. She had been the impetus all along, her daddy had said, for hooking Jeb into the Ace Timber deal. Now she was bullying her way into church decisions and decisions on his whole life. He looked at the workmen. “You fellers look worn out. Go inside for some coffee, and then kindly help Miss Mills gather up all of her belongings and take them away.”

“Angel told me you were shipping them off to Pine Bluff,” Fern said matter-of-factly.

“I’m not. That is, I was going to, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“She told me about Edward Bluetooth too,” said Fern. “I’m glad you didn’t have him thrown in the jailhouse.”

“Angel doesn’t know anything.”

“If you don’t want the stained glass, then I guess I’ll give back the money I worked so hard to raise,” said Winona.

“Or give it to the Hoppers,” said Fern. “If you can find them. I hear they’re in dire need.”

“You two come back here and take this ladder,” Winona said to the two hired hands. “Forget coffee. Jeb, I don’t know why you’re acting like this, but I don’t deserve any of it.” She turned away. Then her hand came to her forehead. She teetered right and, without warning, slumped against the church wall. Her forehead slammed against the side of the building and then she wilted right onto the cold brown grass.

“Is she kidding?” asked Fern.

“We’d better get her up,” said Jeb. “Looks like a genuine faint.”

Jeb and Fern waited outside on the porch of the doctor’s house. Horace and Amy Mills came driving up.

Fern sat next to Jeb on the porch swing. “Here comes Papa and Mama.”

The couple marched past Jeb and Fern without a word and bolted into the doctor’s house. After a few minutes, both of them could hear Horace ranting like he had lost all sense of reality. The front door slammed open. Horace ran out and lunged for Jeb. Amy followed, grabbed his arm, and begged him not to beat up the minister.

Jeb started to come off the swing, but Fern grabbed his arm. “Remember who you are,” she whispered.

“Horace, calm yourself!” Amy shouted.

“Mrs. Mills, what’s going on?” asked Jeb.

“It’s Winona.” Amy crumpled into a rocking chair. She sobbed into a handkerchief and then composed herself enough to say, “The doctor’s examined her. He says she’s pregnant.”

Fern looked at Jeb. She got up out of the swing and went to Amy to comfort her with a hug.

“I told Winona to stay away from you. You’re not a real preacher. I don’t know what you are, but now you’ve ruined our daughter’s life. You better tell me next you love her,” said Horace.

Jeb had never heard Horace Mills sound so vulnerable. He shook his head. “I don’t.”

“Jeb, maybe you should wait and discuss this with Winona,” said Fern. All the color had left her face. She could not look at him.

“He doesn’t love me, Daddy.” Winona listened to them from behind the screen door. She held a cold compress to her forehead. “It’s not his baby.”

Jeb looked at Fern. All of the life that had just washed out of her seemed to come flooding back as she breathed a sigh of relief. He said, “Winona, I think you need to have that talk with your momma and daddy now. It’s something you can all work out together.”

“Jeb, I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all of this mess. When I saw you, you just seemed the best daddy for my baby. I thought if you worked for my daddy and his investors that he would be more accepting of you for my sake. We’d all be the happy minister’s family.” Her words sounded like they’d been mixed into a salad of sarcasm.

“So all that talk about you wanting me to help Jeb, Winona, was your way of finding a solution to your little problem?” asked Horace.

“You always taught me to be a problem solver, Daddy.”

“You aren’t my daughter,” said Horace. “This isn’t how I raised you.”

“Sure it is,” said Winona. “I learned from the best.” She turned and disappeared from everyone’s sight.

Jeb took a breath. “Mr. Mills, I’m sorry to give you another piece of bad news, but I wouldn’t let Ethel Bluetooth sign away her land. But I did give her the money. If you want my truck to cover it, it’s yours. I told her that I’d ask the bank to give her more time. If you ask me, the Bluetooths are good for it.”

“You keep your truck, Reverend,” said Amy. “We’ll keep this all between us, if you know what I mean. Horace, we’ll send Winona away for a while so no one has to know.”

“She’d be better off with you, Mrs. Mills, her own momma.” Fern rubbed Amy’s shoulders and then returned to the swing to sit next to Jeb.

“This is Nazareth, Amy. You can’t keep anything a secret here. Winona will stay with us. We’ll see her through this. Reverend, thank you for bringing my daughter to the doctor. We’ll take over from here.” Horace collected his wife from the chair and without another word took her back in to face their daughter.

Jeb and Fern drove back to the parsonage together. Fern said little. Jeb said nothing at all. But somehow the quiet was good between them.

Jeb delivered the Ace Timber offer back to the bank. He handed it to Mona, glad to be rid of it. “Please count the money, Mona. I want to be sure we’re in agreement that it’s all there. All except what I gave to Mrs. Bluetooth.”

“You ought to take your payment out of it, Reverend. I think he’s expecting you to anyway,” she said.

“Best I don’t.” He waited while she counted out the crisp twenty-dollar bills.

“In case you’re looking for him, Mr. Mills won’t be coming in today.” Mona pushed away from her desk to take the envelope of cash behind closed doors.

“I gathered as much.”

Jeb left the bank. A weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And just this morning he had agreed to string a banjo for a man who had driven all the way from Hope to ask for Jeb’s services. Word was spreading and he, for once, was glad. He couldn’t let women like Florence Bernard guilt him into starvation, at least where the Welbys were concerned.

Before he could climb back into the truck, of all people, Florence Bernard came running up to him, red in the face and out of breath. “Reverend, it’s all over town what you did for the Bluetooths. That Angel of yours has quite a good little public-address way about her. I’m glad you’re letting the Welbys stay. They’re good kids, really.”

“I’m picking up my banjo again, Florence.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Is there anything I do that the whole town doesn’t know about?”

“Not really.”

“Pardon me, Sister Bernard, but I’ve got a man to meet about a banjo stringing.” Before Jeb could make his way around the front of the truck, Florence said with a smidgen of timidity, “I’ve been wanting to ask you about the whole banjo business, Reverend. Is it proper for you, a man of the cloth, to be playing the devil’s instrument?”

“Only when I want to chase away the devil,” said Jeb.

She watched him drive away. Thanksgiving was two days from now. It was time for the families to gather and give thanks again for how God had seen them through another year. Maybe “Depression” was a bad name for something that brought folks so close together.

27

C
hristmas in Millwood Hollow brought the smells of pine and smoking chimneys, bells chiming on the doorposts of every family, and finally the Church in the Dell Christmas social.

The ladies’ Christmas social committee had draped holly and garland over every window and windowsill. The schoolchildren had spent days pasting and gluing paper chains for the tree. Jeb and Fern had found the perfect pine one evening on a walk by the stream. The two of them went back together and cut it down the night before the social and nearly killed one another dragging it through the woods toward the church.

“You’re pretty strong, I guess, for a woman.”

“It’s a good thing you brought me along or you’d never get this thing back,” she groaned, yanking hard.

“This scrawny tree? I’m only letting you help so you’ll feel useful.”

“Letting me? Maybe I’ll let you take it back all by yourself.”

Before Fern could walk away, Jeb grabbed her around the waist and pulled her next to him. “Forget the tree. I’m not letting you get away with murder anymore, Fern. You have to answer for what you say to me.” He smiled down at her. “Tell me I’m the strongest man you know.”

“You’re not.” She laughed, biting her bottom lip.

“‘Jeb Nubey is the strongest man, the most intelligent, and good-looking to boot.’ Say it.”

She shook her head, no.

Jeb kissed her, at first just a soft brush against her lips to test the waters. Fern lifted her face to kiss him back.

He drew back his mouth. “Say it,” he whispered.

She let out a sigh with mock exasperation. “Jeb Nubey is the strongest man, the most intelligent, and most persistent—”

Jeb squeezed her close to him.

“All right, good-looking.”

Jeb kissed Fern while pine and the distant scent of snow perfumed the woods.

“Can you believe we’re here together?” she asked. She reached inside his coat and wrapped her arms around him.

“I’m dumb enough to believe it,” he said. They kissed until Ivey Long’s sleigh bells could be heard ringing down the road. “You owe me a wagon ride, Fern Coulter.”

“You’re on, Reverend!” They raced to the road, all the while dragging the tree behind them.

Willie climbed a ladder and stuck Ida May’s home-crafted star atop the tall evergreen. Jeb and Fern had situated it at the front of the church on the half-finished floor.

Angel carried a platter of fig cookies across the room and offered the first hot batch to Fern. “Miss Coulter, I heard you liked these. You take all you want.”