Nazareth's Song (5 page)

Evelene Whittington met Doris Jolly at the front door, where the new tweeds hanging in the window had seduced the church organist into a look inside. “I could see my Josie in this plaid,” said Doris. Evelene cooed her agreement.

The two women jabbered until their chatter turned to church matters. “What did the doctor tell the reverend?” asked Evelene.

Jeb checked the clock over the store counter and figured he had a good hour’s work left before he had to meet Fern. He bent to straighten a tangle of sewing needles and threads behind the counter.

“Reverend Gracie wouldn’t say, but I heard from my cousin who does business with this doctor that it’s a serious matter that cain’t be treated here.” Doris fiddled with several price tags, turning each over to ogle the cost and then drop it.

“Doris, you don’t think we’ll lose him, do you?”

“I don’t know nothing beyond what I told you, so if anyone tells you more, it didn’t come from me,” said Doris.

“Church in the Dell has never had such a cultured preacher in the pulpit. I can’t imagine anyone being able to fill that man’s shoes, not by any stretch of the imagination. That one family—what’s their name, Mars or Lars—they come all the way from near Hope to get in on Gracie’s preaching.” Evelene touched the marcelled rows on the back of her head, running her fingers over tresses that bowed like ribbon candy.

Doris saw her daughter Josie’s friend Florence across the street and waved her over. “Florence might know if Josie would like this knit dress. They’re the same age and about the same size, exceptin’ Josie’s waist is smaller.”

“Could be that Reverend Gracie knows more than he’s telling. I’ll bet I know who knows. We got Jeb Nubey working in the back of the store,” said Evelene.

“I wouldn’t involve that man at all. What the reverend’s done for him is kind and all, but that’s just the kind of preacher he is. We can’t expect too much out of a feller with Nubey’s kind of background.” Doris pulled the knit dress off the rack.

Too late, Evelene lifted two fingers to Doris Jolly’s mouth. Doris grew stiff and then turned to look behind her.

Jeb lifted from behind the counter. His eyes met with the organist’s. He dusted the knees of his trousers. Doris had done a good job of hiding her dislike of him until now. He decided to say nothing to the two women except to excuse himself and walk past them out onto the sidewalk. Once there, though, he turned right around and planted his feet in the doorway of the Woolworth’s.

“I’ll be preaching this Sunday, ladies. Hope to see you both in church.” He made for Beulah’s.

Jeb waited in a booth rather than at the counter where he had talked with Maynard. Beulah tried to take his order once, served him a soft drink, and then left him to stare through the café windows. He spent the time sounding out in his mind what he would say to Fern. But after a half hour of waiting for the schoolteacher to show, he realized he’d been stood up. With a sigh, he paid Beulah for the Coca-cola and headed back to his truck.

“I’m sorry for being so late.” Fern could say anything without sounding apologetic. She wore a beret as dark as wine and adjusted it to tumble across one brow. She kept walking as she spoke to him, as though she knew he would follow her back into Beulah’s on an invisible leash.

Jeb’s resentment of her hats was an anomaly to him. But the dislike was evident, bubbling up like gas from a well, every time she showed up wearing a new one. It was the thing that made her different from the rest of the poor girls in town, as though she served the town willingly but not because life had offered her no other options. It was another of those reasons he felt she had no need for him, however childish it seemed. He hated this beret and wanted to tell her so, but instead said, “You look smart today, Fern.”

She picked out a booth.

“Reverend Gracie and I have our meeting, but—”

“Understood. I don’t really have time, either.”

Fern would have left him standing alone, but Jeb finished, “I do have an hour if you could spare one for me.”

Nonchalantly, as though she didn’t know she’d kept him waiting for a good thirty minutes, Fern seated herself where Jeb had just gotten up. His booth seat on the other side was cold.

With her looking at him half expectantly, all the words he had put together in the languid stretch of night now escaped him. If he said too much about taking Gracie’s place, she might believe he was trying to prove he was legitimate. But even telling himself to keep a lid on matters did not quell the desire to spill his guts about taking over the Church in the Dell pulpit. Neither he nor Fern had ever discussed how the fact that one day he would be a certified minister might improve relations between them. Fern had never promised Jeb that his rise to a secure position would interest her in the least. She had always talked more about her self-confidence in her own job at the school and of her desire to raise up a prodigy or two from the impoverished lap of Nazareth—she had told him that at least twice during their few dates over the last year. Fern had left in the dust her identity as the daughter of Francis Coulter III from Ardmore, Oklahoma, and created a Fern that left her mark on Nazareth like a nun in an African village. It was no wonder that every man, woman, and child in Nazareth admired her. Jeb found that as annoying as her endless collection of hats.

He determined to try to chat things up with her without spilling out so much admiration for her, or at least to try to give off the same cool-as-a-cucumber qualities she displayed around him.

Beulah eyed Jeb from behind the counter, being as how it was his third visit to the café. He held up two fingers. “Coffees, Beulah. One pie for Fern.”

“I had to keep a boy after school today. That’s why I was late,” Fern said. “Poor boy doesn’t have good training at home. I hope I helped him. But they’ve laid off two more teachers, and with this extra load I’m afraid this student’s going to fall right through the cracks.” She looked past Jeb in a manner that said she was still in the classroom with the neglected child.

“Fern, things have gotten better—better than last year.” Jeb did not see a flicker of approval from her. “Now, things is changing again, and I just thought I should tell you. I wish that I could erase my mistakes . . .” He had mentally rehearsed what he planned to say, but somehow it sounded foolish with Fern blinking at him over her cup of coffee. He knew the use of the word
plan
or
vision
might set well with her. But by being too talkative, he felt more like he was digging himself a deeper hole from which to emerge.

Fern’s mouth parted slightly. The one brow not hidden by the beret lifted in a questioning little arc.

“Not that you’ve expected anything from me. You haven’t asked me for anything or to fill you in on things like this.” Jeb had spun a circle around himself and knew of no way out.

“And you’re wanting to tell me what?”

A voice from somewhere told him to change the subject. “No one knows but me. You have to keep it from everyone. Not even Angel or Willie knows anything yet.” He ignored the voice in his head that shouted for him to stop dead in his tracks.

“So this is about the children?”

“Not about the children, no.”

Fern removed the beret and let it drop beside her.

“Reverend Gracie may have to resign from Church in the Dell.”

Fern’s brow furrowed. “He’s the best thing that ever happened to Nazareth. Don’t tell me anything else. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s his health. Not that he plans on staying sick, on account of some doctor he wants to see up in Cincinnati.”

“Good news, then,” she said, relieved.

“Reverend Gracie has to leave, Fern. He has asked me to take his place.” Jeb wanted to turn back the minutes that had just passed. He felt like a fool for looking for her approval. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

Finally he’d said something that made sense.

Fern kept looking down at her hands or the table in front of her. “I’m glad you told me. Never have liked surprises.”

“I’ll be preaching this Sunday.”

“So you’re accepting his post, or whatever you call it?”

“In the coming months, Gracie plans to prepare me to take his place.” Jeb watched her pick up her hat and handbag. “Fern, I need to know how you feel about it. I want to be the preacher for Church in the Dell. That is, I’d rather have Gracie as minister over Church in the Dell myself. But he can’t now. I’m going to do it, Fern. Tell me how you feel about that.”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel, Jeb. You’re the one who has to take on the responsibility.” She looked at him more directly than she had in weeks. “It’s not like you haven’t done it ever.” Her legs slid around to the outside of the booth.

He knew she was referring to when he preached as a con. “But it’s different now. This time I’m the real McCoy. I love this place and the people here.”

“Since when do you need my approval?”

“I’m doing this for the Welby kids and for myself.”

“Then you should do it.” Fern came out of the booth and took a step away from him. “Beulah, cancel my pie, if you will. I’m not hungry after all.”

Jeb listened as her pumps tapped against the floor all the way to the café door before he climbed out of the booth and said, “Are we finished?”

He watched her leave without an answer. She vanished beyond the window. When he turned around, Beulah was looking too. “You can trust ol’ Beulah, Jeb. I won’t tell a living soul.”

4

J
eb found Gracie bent over the back steps of the church. Gracie spat red onto the ground and then wiped the sweat from his thinning brow.

Jeb clamped his hand over his mouth, pinching his lips together, shocked at finding Gracie in such a state. He tried not to look so shaken when Gracie straightened slightly and looked up at him. “Reverend, what I can do? Get you some water or something?”

“Jeb, for mercy’s sake! I hate like everything for you to find me in such a state!” Gracie righted himself. “Since you’re here, though, tell you what I need. I left Philip inside. Could you go and check on him? The girls had so much schoolwork tonight, I told them I’d bring Philip with me over here so they could get a thing or two done.” Gracie’s youngest had another year to go before starting school like his sisters, Emily and Agatha.

Jeb helped Gracie to the steps to sit and gain some strength. “Philip’s fine, I’m sure, but I’ll go inside and check on him.”

“And while you’re there, give a yank on the church bell, will you? I swore I saw something sifting down from the belfry when I rang the bell Sunday morning. Did I mention that on Sunday?”

Jeb shrugged. “Not that I recall.”

“Could be we have a loose bell. You’re better at knowing things like that.”

“I’ll check on it. I may just need to climb up into the belfry and give the bolts a turn or two.”

Jeb found Philip on the front row of the church. He had a toy soldier in his hand and was using it to aim invisible gunfire at the vase of flowers on the altar. “Philip, you watch that flower vase. Greta Patton donated those mums for Sunday, and she’d have all our hides if it turned up broken.” He reached for the bell rope and gave it a yank. It tolled and just as Gracie had said, fine particles floated down like sawdust or some such thing. He made a mental note to borrow a ladder that reached as high as the belfry.

“Daddy said you were coming, Jeb. Play soldiers with me.”

Jeb joined him and picked up another soldier. He let Philip spear his man a time or two. The entire time his thoughts were on the boy’s father. Finally, he felt he’d spent enough time with the boy. “You killed me two times now, Philip. I guess that’s all the life left in me.”

“Cincinnati is bigger than Nazareth,” said Philip, catching Jeb by surprise. He hadn’t really thought of how this situation would affect Gracie’s children.

“Every place is bigger than Nazareth, I expect.”

“Emily says that she never liked it here anyway.” Philip had picked up the slightest trace of a southerner’s accent. Emily and Agatha favored telling everyone they met that they were from up north. “But as long as I get to know people, it doesn’t matter to me where we live.”

“Philip, I sometimes think you are older than you look.”

Gracie’s rubber heels could be heard clomping up the church steps. He entered through the open door, color in his cheeks, robust, like he had sipped from the fountain of youth. “If we can finish before dinner, I’d like it very well. Philip and I are being treated to apple pie tonight.” Emily cooked as well as anybody’s wife in town. As Gracie’s oldest, she had taken on the homemaker role when her mother had passed away.

Philip gathered up his soldiers and dropped them one by one into a tin box,
plink, plink, plink
. “Sorry I had to kill you, Jeb.”

“We’ll have us another battle soon, General. You’ll see how mean my aim is.”

They all locked up the church and walked through the grass to the parsonage. Inside the house, Gracie had set up the record book on his desk with pens and extra paper. “Take my seat, Jeb, if you will.”

Apple pie slathered its scent throughout the parsonage. Emily and Agatha made kitchen noise along with an outburst now and then of teenage glee.

“Philip, go into the kitchen and ask your sisters to give you a slice of apple. They always have extra,” said Gracie.

Philip made mouth music all the way into the kitchen.

Jeb tallied up the offering from the week and compared it to the last. “Reverend, I’ve studied this matter of me taking your place. I could not tell you for certain that my time has come.”

“Offering was down this week.”

“Not that I don’t have the ability. I believe I do, but it could likely be that my past could cause a bit of a snag in the minds of a few,” said Jeb. “I thought that studying under you would give me the chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the families here. But instead, they look at me like your charity project.”

Gracie opened the satchel where he tucked the Sunday offering every week until he or Jeb could make it to the bank. “Bless this offering, oh Lord, we pray.”

“The way I figure it, first I ought to ease into the pulpit, like I am just standing in for you. Over time, they might grow used to the idea.” Jeb finished his sentence with a confident smile. “But if they don’t, maybe that would give you time to find a real minister to take your place or give you time to get well and come back. Maybe if everyone thought you might come back, that would be better, wouldn’t it?”