One Shenandoah Winter (18 page)

“You look tired,” he said, and motioned for them to walk further away from the ditch digger and the men. “Are you sleeping?”

“I lie in bed a lot. I close my eyes. I suppose there must be some sleep in there somewhere.” She huffed a sigh, wanting to do away with such talk. “How are Sadie and the baby?”

“Both are doing just fine.” He had aged well, the pastor, despite his own hard times. His face retained its boyish soft angles and gentle look, his eyes remained clear and alert. “I've been worried about you.”

“You shouldn't be. I'll get by.”

“Life isn't about just getting by, Connie.” When she did not respond, he went on, “You're the hardest kind of person to reach. You come to church, you study, you pray, you go through all the right motions. But when a crisis strikes, you don't want to admit you need more help than what is available.”

“You and your fancy speech.” But her scoffing lacked conviction. “I don't have a crisis, Brian. I have a sick uncle.”

“Connie,” he started, but sighed himself to a halt. “Call me if you need me, all right?”

Connie stared after him as he turned and walked back to the car. She had never gotten off so lightly with the pastor before. It left her more uneasy than an argument.

That night, the inner voices and the worries and the sense of life unraveling filled the dark corners of Connie's room. They did not so much permit her to sleep as push her into confused slumber and draw her back again, almost against her will.

She awoke to a sense of having heard something, yet the house and the night were utterly still. More than quiet. The air seemed close, like the gathering pressure that came before a summer storm. And yet, as she rose from her bed and slipped on a robe, she did not find it uncomfortable. Just odd.

The gathering stillness accompanied her down the hall to the back bedroom. Quietly she pushed open the door and stood there listening for a moment.

A voice from the bed rasped, “That you, daughter?”

“Are you all right?”

“Couldn't sleep.”

She reached behind her and snapped on the hall light. A faint yellow glow revealed Poppa Joe settled in his bed, his eyes awake and watching her. She asked, “Are you in pain?”

“It's been a hard night,” he admitted.

“I can give you an injection.” Connie opened the drawer to his bedside table. “Nathan showed me how. He said there might be a time—”

“That Nathan is a fine fellow.” Poppa Joe followed her with his eyes as she pulled out the little metal box with its implements. “Troubled, though. Man's had himself a hard row to hoe.”

Connie fitted the needle onto the syringe, and unscrewed the top from the vial. “Did he tell you that?”

“Didn't have to. I asked him if he wanted to share his burden. He wasn't ready.” His eyes were on her face now. “He's gonna need a hand to find his way, daughter. Got to learn how to open up and get that load off his heart.”

She filled the syringe to the point Nathan had indicated. She pulled the needle out of the rubber stopper. “I like him,” she confessed quietly.

“I'm glad you do, darling. He needs your strength.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked down at Poppa Joe. “He also makes me madder than a hornet on a hot August day.”

“That's natural enough. You're both too good at being alone.”

“And just exactly what do you mean by that?”

Poppa Joe stared at the ceiling. “I figure that Nathan is near 'bout the strongest man I ever met, in his own way. Problem is, he don't know it. All he can see is his burdens and his woes and his failures.” The old man was silent for a time, his breath rasping harshly in the night. Then he said, “Man's got two problems. He don't know he's strong, and he can't find his way.”

Connie set the syringe down carefully on the towel laid across the top of the bedside table. “I don't think I could help him find that out. I don't hardly know it for myself.”

“Oh, you know, child. You just forget sometimes. We all do, when times is hard and the Lord seems distant.” He kept his eyes on the ceiling, as he went on, “No, that man's got to let the Lord show him the way, plain and simple.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but something halted her. There was a sense of gathering. She had no other way to describe what she felt. A gathering of the night's silence, a sense of gentle power moving into the room. The hall light seemed to reach out further and further, until even the night itself was pushed from the room. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck, but she was not frightened. The presence was too gentle to be threatening.

“I feel like I've let God get too far from me.”

She had not even realized she had spoken until she recognized the voice as her own. It was as though the words had sprung from a place so far inside her that they came from beyond herself. She looked down at Poppa Joe, but he continued to stare at the ceiling, his gaze centered on something only he could see.

She heard him say, “Knowing a problem takes a body halfway to solving it.”

She inspected him, wondering if he felt it too. But his breathing remained unchanged, each breath drawn with an effort that registered on his wasted features. Yet his eyes shone with the same light she felt building in the room, pressing in on her heart.

“I asked Nathan if he'd help me with a problem. One that's been worrying me something awful.” Poppa Joe paused long enough to lick dry lips. Connie reached for the glass and fitted the straw into his mouth. His swallows sounded strangled. But when he had finished, he spoke with the same calmness as before. “I told him I've been wanting for something I could take with me. Something I could lay down before my Lord. Something that'd give my death meaning.”

She wanted to tell him to not speak of his dying. But the gentle power would not let her. Instead, she had the sense of her heart being pointed toward what Poppa Joe had just said, as though here were both a mystery and a key. And a challenge. She found herself shivering slightly as she sat there and listened as Poppa Joe's breathing gradually eased, and the eyes closed, and the old man drifted off into slumber. The presence in the room seemed to back away, out of the chamber and down the hall and away from the house, allowing the night to return. Still she sat there, feeling the words ring deep inside her. And she wondered how losing Poppa Joe could ever have more meaning that it already did.

Twenty

O
n Friday morning, the week before Christmas, Reverend Brian Blackstone stopped by the clinic. In the days and weeks to follow, the visit became fixed in his mind as the moment when he realized change was coming to Nathan Reynolds.

As soon as he entered the clinic, he could not help but notice the differences. For one thing, Hattie Campbell was smiling. Fresh flowers stood in a vase on her desk. A pile of new magazines replaced the dusty copies of
Family Circle.
The locals who sat there chatted quietly, their manner easy. Illnesses were compared, especially by those bringing children, and recipes exchanged.

“Hello, Brian, how are you?” Nathan Reynolds came through the doorway leading to the consulting rooms, his arms full of files. He set them down on Hattie's desk and walked over. His nod to the waiting room was relaxed. “Nothing's wrong with Sadie or the baby, I hope.”

“No, they're both fine.” Brian felt the eyes, knew all were listening carefully. “Actually, it's about one of my other parishioners.”

“Well, come on back.” The doctor's voice was different too. Not a smile, no. But no hostility either. The doctor looked tired and drawn, but what doctor didn't. He gave the room another brisk nod. “Won't keep you folks long.”

Brian waited until they were in Nathan's office and the door was closed before observing, “You're going through some changes of your own, Nathan.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.” He had the doctor's air of pressures on all sides, yet focused tightly upon the moment at hand. Like a dark-haired cat resting with weary vigilance behind his desk. “What can I do for you?”

Brian found himself picking his way delicately through unfamiliar territory. “As much time as you've been spending over at the Wilkes recently, have you noticed any changes in Connie?”

“She doesn't appear to be doing too badly, considering the fact that she's losing her uncle.”

“She's losing more than that. Poppa Joe is her last living relative, as far as anybody knows. And somewhere in the process, she also appears to have lost her snappish nature.”

Strong features stretched in a quick flash of humor. “I'm not sure I'd miss that so much.”

“You would if it meant the heart was going out of her.” Brian knew there was no way to express his worries. All he could do is plant the seeds of concern. “Connie has been a bedrock of this community, as much as Poppa Joe in her own way. She's the one who looks out for our interests when it comes to competing voices in the county and state governments. She's as fiercely protective of this little town as a mother hawk is over her brood. At least, she was.”

Nathan pondered the news. “I'm not sure I understand what you want me to do.”

“You're with her a great deal. So are Hattie and Dawn, of course, but they're too caught up in losing Poppa Joe to notice the noses on their own faces. I'd just be grateful if you'd keep an eye out for Connie. Make sure she gets some rest. Tell her to get out a little. And if you see anything alarming . . .”

“I understand.” Nathan seemed ready to rise and cut off the discussion, pulled by all the people waiting in his front room. Then he reconsidered and settled back. “The whole town is taking Poppa Joe's illness very hard.”

“This is going to be the most somber Christmas I've ever known,” Brian agreed, aching from the coming loss. “It's like the heart is being torn from the town's chest.”

“I don't have a single patient in here these days who doesn't mention something about the old man.”

“Poppa Joe is the essence of what we hold most dear.” Brian struggled to tell this newcomer what was so close to him he did not even think of it very often. “He's the last of a very special breed.”

“The morning we were up there together . . .” Clearly Nathan fought against the same inability to place the inexpressible into words. “I feel like it marks the beginning of a, well, maybe a new page in my life.”

Brian found himself feeling closer to the man at that moment than ever before. But all he said was, “I think I understand.”

Nathan glanced at his watch and rose to his feet. As Brian followed him to the door, he went on, “Last week Poppa Joe asked me something that's kept me up nights. He said he wanted to give his death meaning. Said he wanted something he could take up with him.”

“What do you think he meant?”

“I . . . ” Nathan walked him down the hall, then hesitated at the waiting room door. “I've been thinking a lot about your sermons.”

“There's only one greater compliment you could give a minister than to say his sermons have made you think.”

But Nathan was too caught up in his own thoughts to ask what that other compliment might be. “Sometimes I feel as though the answer is there in what you've been saying. If only I could work my way deeper, understand things better.”

Brian sensed he was bridging a chasm as he reached over and patted the doctor's arm. “Any time you feel like stopping in for a chat, feel free.”

“Let's do that next week,” Nathan said, opening the door and offering Brian his hand. “Thanks for coming by.”

Brian smiled his way through the waiting room and walked back into the morning.

Hattie followed him out the clinic's front door and stood there on the little porch beside him. “What's got you smiling so?”

He cocked his head to inspect the surrounding hills. There had been no snow so far that winter. Each time the clouds had moved in to blanket their valley the temperatures had warmed, so that even the high reaches had remained brown and bare. “I'm almost afraid to tell you, it's such a fragile thing.”

Hattie crossed her arms. “You can't say that and not say more. I'd burst from curiosity.”

Brian took a breath of crisp winter air, listened to the river whisper its constant melody, and felt as though his heart were growing wings. “Back in there, I had the strongest feeling that we've got ourselves a new doctor.”

Twenty-One

O
n Saturday Nathan completed his half-day clinic by lunchtime, wished Hattie and his final patients a good weekend, locked the front door, and returned to his office. Nine weeks in the place was enough to consider it his office, not the old doctor's. Some days he could even keep from growing furious over the state of the old place. At least for a while.

Nathan no longer needed to check his book for Connie's number. When her voice came on the phone, he asked, “How is Poppa Joe?”

“Resting comfortably.” She sounded more than weary, just as Brian had described the day before. Her words hung as limp as fresh wash on the line. “He managed a few steps this afternoon, and he had lunch with me in the kitchen. What little he ate, that is.”

“That's very good.” Nathan had come to know a lot about this strong woman during the past weeks. The resignation had been building, he knew it now. Only it had been easier for him to pretend not to notice. “Are you there alone?”

“Unfortunately.” The question seemed to threaten her with weary tears. “Hattie and Dawn are off looking at wedding dresses.”

The Campbells had been spending more and more time with Connie. Seldom did she spend the night alone with Poppa Joe. Nathan asked, “Someone is getting married?”

“Dawn. That's another mess I've gotten myself into. Hattie is my oldest and dearest friend, and Dawn is like a daughter to me.” But the statement only increased her misery. “Oh, I'm so alone.”