One Shenandoah Winter (16 page)

“Yes,” Nathan sighed. He turned away from the naked fear in the old man's eyes, and watched as the first ray of sun made it over the pass and fell upon the river. The surface sparkled and steamed, throwing up mists and whispers and secrets he wished he could understand. “I've seen how she is.”

“I don't want to die in some city hospital, surrounded by all them smells and strangers.” When Nathan did not respond, a note of desperation crept into the voice. “I want to live out my days right here in Hillsboro, surrounded by all the things I know and love. Encircled by my friends.”

Poppa Joe's tone grated on his raw nerves. Such a strong, good man should never be brought to the point of needing to beg. “I'll talk to her.”

Poppa Joe leaned back in his chair, spent from the effort and the fear. “Thank you, son. I do truly thank you.”

Nathan remained seated there long after his coffee had grown cold, long after the frost had worked its way deep into his bones. He searched the morning and the river and the mist and the light, but the answers did not come.

Seventeen

H
e was finally driven upstairs by a need to prepare for the day's clinic. Nathan shaved and dressed with care. As he knotted his tie, he stood studying his appearance. The day called for something more than his customary haphazard attitude toward clothes. But nothing could be done about what stared back at him from the mirror. His face was creased by shadows, some visible and others only he could see.

He inspected his own eyes with a doctor's thoroughness and could not escape the diagnosis. Somehow Poppa Joe's words had robbed him of all his remaining rage. Not just for the morning. For all time.

Accepting the truth in Poppa Joe's plea had meant giving up the struggle—not just for this sick old man, but within himself as well. He was defeated. It was written all over his face. He had nowhere to turn now, not even into fury. All his weapons had vanished. The enemy could attack at will.

Abruptly a sound touched the edge of his hearing, one that startled him so he was drawn from the shadow-born fear. In that instant Nathan thought he heard himself laughing up at the lake. Which was truly bizarre, to stand there confronted with his own impotent sadness, and to remember the happiness of a dawn which seemed a thousand years ago. Nathan turned from the mirror and the memory. And he wondered if he were going insane. Again.

As he came down the stairs, a car pulled into the drive. When he pushed through the front door and saw who was driving, his tie felt as tight as a noose.

Connie climbed from the Olds carrying dark clothes on a hanger. Her eyes looked haunted. “How is . . .” She focused behind him, then forced out a tight smile. “Morning, Poppa Joe. I thought you might want a fresh change of clothes.”

“I thank you, daughter.” Poppa Joe accepted the hanger. “Sorry you had to go up the hill on my account.”

“It wasn't any bother.” She leaned forward and gave his cheek a quick peck, then stood watching as he turned and went back inside, the smile straining her eyes and her face.

Nathan tried to hold off her questions with one of his own. “Why does he call you daughter? I thought he was your—”

“Uncle,” she finished impatiently, wanting to return to the matter at hand. “After my folks died, Poppa Joe sort of claimed me as his own.”

“That's nice.”

“He said I was God's gift . . .” The smile almost cracked, but she tightened her face another notch and held to control. “God's gift to a lonely old man.”

“I'm sorry, Connie.” The shadows he had found in his mirror wrapped their way around the porch and the morning. “I'm so sorry.”

Connie let the facade slip away as she grappled for the back of the nearest chair. He moved swiftly, guiding her into one he was sure would hold her weight. She did not shy away from his touch. Once she was seated, he leaned against the porch railing and waited for her to say, “It's bad, isn't it?”

For the first time in his professional life, Nathan had nothing but the bare facts to offer. The words emerged like steam, scalding his own throat. “It couldn't be worse.”

“Oh dear sweet Lord.” She searched blindly in her purse for a hankie. After a time she managed to say, “You're absolutely certain?”

“The full results of the blood work won't be back until the middle of next week.” Even here he could not escape his own need to give her the painful gift of honesty. “But yes, yes, I am. He has what is called metastatic melanoma, as severe a case as I've ever seen. There are additional lesions, suggesting the malignant cells have already spread into the surrounding muscle tissue. There is also evidence he has secondary infections of his liver and lymph nodes.”

Nathan wanted to offer her the lie of hope. He wanted to return to the rhythm of tests and treatments. But Poppa Joe seemed to be out there on the porch with them, holding him back, pointing him on the course that seemed to have been chosen by another.

“I should have pushed him to see the doctor sooner. I should have—”

“It wouldn't have done any good. I know this particular enemy all too well, Connie. Believe me. In a man of his age, the outcome was never in doubt.”

Another pause, then, “How long?”

“Hard to tell. I don't know how long he's been ill, you see. This thing could be with us for another six months . . .” He hesitated then. But the gentle push was still within him, urging him on. “But I hope not. For all our sakes.”

To his utter relief, his words seemed to resound in her, somehow giving her the power to recover, stop the little gasping sobs, and breathe normally enough to say, “Poppa Joe would hate to go slowly. It would be such a humiliating end.”

“He's still so strong, my guess is this thing has come on him very fast. In that case, I'd say the end is going to come just as swiftly.”

Then she looked at him, and in the glistening eyes he found the same shadows he had discovered upstairs in the mirror. He wanted to say that he had given them to her, that it was his fault, he had brought these shadows to this little town and poisoned his acquaintances as he had poisoned his own life. But he knew it wasn't so. The same quiet voice, the one he had never heard before in all his days, spoke in that strange silent whisper, and said very clearly that he was there for a purpose. One far greater than anything he could imagine. And the strangeness of this new mystery robbed his heart of the ability to give in to the old dark shadows.

She asked then the question Poppa Joe had dreaded. “Should we take him back to the hospital?”

He squatted down before her, the movement natural, as though he had been doing it all his life. “It wouldn't do a bit of good. And it would do a lot of harm.”

Connie wiped the tears from her face, and said quietly, “Poppa Joe would hate it.”

“Yes, he would.”

“If you're sure it wouldn't help . . .”

“It might delay the inevitable by a month or so. But the stress and the pain, Connie.” Nathan stopped then, held by a fleeting series of images. Of families worn to the bone by the battle. “I know this path all too well. This time the battle is lost. I'm so sorry.”

She took a deep, shaky breath, wiped her face again, and said the last thing he would have expected to hear. “I visited with Margaret Simmons yesterday.”

The words did not strike him as he might have anticipated. They melted into everything else there between them. “Then you know.”

“I came back planning to apologize to you. I want to do that, even though . . .”

“Connie, I'm the one who needs to apologize. And not just to you.”

There was the sound of overloud footsteps scuffling across the front hall, and a hand fumbling on the knob, granting them time to rise and collect themselves and be ready to meet Poppa Joe with composure as he came through the doorway and said, “Y'all ready to greet the day?”

Eighteen

B
y the following Sunday, all of Hillsboro knew. At the clinic, in the town, everything continued at its normal pace, and yet everything was changed. Everyone knew about Poppa Joe. One person would ask, the entire town seemed to listen. It was that way. Hillsboro became a waiting room filled with bereaved relatives. Even the simplest word bore a shared concern.

That morning, as Nathan was relishing the late winter sunrise and his first cup of coffee, Connie called. “I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

“Not at all.” Which was not exactly true. The jangling phone had set his heart to racing. He had not received more than two dozen calls his entire time in Hillsboro, almost all of them emergencies. “What can I do for you?”

“Poppa Joe came down the mountain this morning. He's here with me now.”

“How is he?”

“Fine. He's . . . fine.”

“Connie, you need to be sure and tell me if he starts feeling pain.” No need to say it was an almost inevitable result of Poppa Joe's illness. No need at all. “I can help with that.”

“Yes, thank you, I will. But that's not . . . Actually, I'm calling for him.”

“Oh.” He finally understood. “Can he hear us?”

“Every blessed word.” She sounded stiffly formal. “He doesn't take to telephones. He's asked me to call and see if you wanted to join us for church.”

Nathan found himself comfortable with the idea. More than that. It felt
natural
. As though church were just another part of whatever was happening in him, and in his life. “Sure.”

Connie hesitated. “You mean it?”

“Be happy to.”

“Well, great.” She brightened perceptibly. “I'll be by to pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

Connie took the long way to church, such as it was. Nathan sat in the passenger seat and watched the little town roll by. The hardware store, the livery stable converted into Campbell's Grocery, the barber shop with the honest-to-goodness red-striped pole, the pharmacy with the soda fountain running alongside the window. The post office with the empty flagpole. The gun and fishing supply store. The farm supply store, its lot of tractors and agricultural equipment forming a triangle between Main Street and the county road. Connie turned back there, doing a second sweep down Main. Poppa Joe sat in the back seat, taking it all in with his customary silence, his eyes glued to the window.

From Main, Connie wound her way through the town's oldest neighborhood. Most of the homes were turn-of-the-century brick-and-stone, sheltered by ancient fruit trees and hardy dogwoods. Front porches were broad and welcoming, rockers and swings and hickory chairs settled in place and ready for company.

The steeple rose above the poplars and old oaks, high enough to catch the fleeting clouds. Connie parked in one of the reserved spots near the front entrance. Nathan climbed from the car in time to see Connie resist her urge to help Poppa Joe. The old man rose to full height, and joined the hills in their solid worth. He wore a shiny dark suit and the first string tie Nathan had ever seen outside the movies. On him it looked perfect.

There was a crowd gathered on the church's front lawn. All faces turned at their approach, imperfect mirrors reflecting varying degrees of what the old man carried with him so naturally. Their greetings were quiet and careful, the faces saying plainly that they had heard the news.

Hattie walked over and stopped their forward progress by giving Connie a long hug. Their faces looked like two sides of a coin, different and yet holding to the same strength and grim sadness and love. Hattie moved back and her place was taken by the lovely young blonde woman. Dawn did not clasp Connie for as long; it was all she could do to hold back the tears.

Neither of the women hugged the old man, but the looks they gave him were full of love. Poppa Joe responded with grave nods, the occasional how-do, and continued his solemn tread up the stairs and into church.

On into December, visits to Connie's home became how Nathan measured out his days. Poppa Joe had silently accepted Connie's insistence that he come and live with her. Now that he had won the right to finish his days there in the valley, the where and the how seemed to matter less and less.

Nathan's mornings began with a drive down sleepy silent streets, savoring the mist which descended on many nights to drift in lazy frozen curtains along the valley floor. Nathan loved these times alone with the town. During those drives he could almost imagine himself spending his entire life there, allowing the town and the valley and the mountains and the mystery to work its way deep inside his very soul.

Mysteries. They drifted with the fog on such a morning as this. The sermon he had heard that Sunday, and those from the two Sundays before, melted and flowed together. He thought often of the words. So often, in fact, that much of what he experienced and endured during those days was granted definition by the sermons. And comfort. Which was the strangest thing of all, because those Sabbath lessons contained a challenge which threatened to redefine his entire life.

That day, a frozen still Friday in the middle of December, Nathan found himself driving through the quiet streets paying more attention to the words in his head than the journey. The road had become comfortable by then, the town's quiet so familiar that it was hard to remember how he had ever been easy with anything else. The winter morning seemed illuminated by the words of the sermon which drifted through his mind. Nathan found himself able to hear the pastor and his lessons and his challenges more clearly here and now than when he had been seated inside the church.

“Sadly, we spend most of our lives feeling as though we are stuck in a hole,” Brian Blackstone had said the previous Sunday. “Life and circumstances are piling up, problems are pressing down, and all we can hope is simply to make it through this one day. Day after day, we are pinched and pressed and battered by the harshness of our lives. Faced by pressure points, unable to see how we are to deal with our problems. Or, even worse, how we are to deal with our fears.