Prayers of Agnes Sparrow (12 page)

“She has two, Mr. Pruett.”

“Oh, may I come in anyway? It might provide some good shots. I only need a few … really.”

“Who's that?” called Agnes, “I don’t recognize the voice.”

“The artist. Filby Pruett.”

“Oh, dear me, Studebaker said he was gonna be sending him by, and I am not ready.”

“It's better that way.” Filby, a short man, reached his head around me. “I just need a few candid shots.”

Then he looked at me. “I won’t be long, Miss Sparrow, just a few. I can’t do the statue without them.”

“Let him come in,” said Agnes.

I stood to the side and let Filby pass. “Nice house. Fabulous house.” He had no trouble finding Agnes and like most folks seeing her for the first time, he stood stock-still a few seconds and caught his breath.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pruett,” said Agnes. She reached her hand out.

Filby took it for all of a second and then wiped his palm on his pants. “Call me Filby, and I just need a few shots. Need to determine the best pose.”

I was standing behind him, and he stepped on my foot when he backed away, no doubt assaulted by the smell. Most folks don’t expect it, but getting close to Agnes was sometimes a challenge.

“I’ll just go get your lunch,” I said.

Agnes smiled, and Filby took a shot.

I headed back to the kitchen to get her baked ziti from the oven. Arthur showed up with a bloody mole in his mouth.

“Now where did you find that?”

“The basement,” said Hezekiah. He had just entered the kitchen holding an old book—looked like one of my father's old texts. He placed it on the kitchen table. “I saw that artist fellow walking up the pavement and thought it best to hide out. I don’t cotton to his kind.”

“Kind?”

“You know, all artsy fartsy. Girlie.”

I shook my head. “Oh, I see. Well, you don’t know for sure that he's homosexual. Being an artist doesn’t make it so.”

“You ever look at him?” Hezekiah laughed and snorted air out his nose. “That silly hat and the way he sashayed all fancy up the walk.”

Hezekiah put his hand on his hip and wiggled around the room.

Arthur dropped the mole at my feet. “Thank you. Just what I wanted … another bloody carcass.” Only the mole was still alive. Arthur watched it wiggle and writhe, and then he batted it with a cupped paw across the kitchen. “You don’t have to be that cruel.”

Hezekiah grabbed the mole from the floor and tossed it and Arthur out the back door. “Murder is in his soul.”

“He's just following his instincts. I suppose if he came to me when he was still a kitten he’d be a different sort of cat.”

“Not always. Some cats are just born that way. God's design.”

Hezekiah touched the heavy, hardback book. “You want I should toss all these books? I don’t know who in their right mind would want to keep them.” He rubbed his nose. “I was flipping through them down there—grizzly stuff. I think if most folks knew what was gonna happen to their bodies after they died they’d never get born in the first place.”

“Not exactly easy reading.” I opened the cover and saw my father's signature scrawled across the flyleaf.
August T. Sparrow
. I barely touched the name with my fingertips, but in that tiny trace of time a flood of emotion wriggled through my body like an electric current from a wire and I saw my father standing at the kitchen sink plucking a pheasant.

I snapped the book closed. “Keep the books.”

“O
ne more Agnes.” I heard Filby's voice.

“No, that's enough, Mr. Pruett. How ’bout if I pray for you.” Agnes had enough of camera flashes going off in her face.

“I better get in there,” I told Hezekiah.

Hezekiah stood with his back against the sink. “I’ll stay here till he's gone.”

Fine with me.

“So, Filby. All finished?” I said.

“I suppose I got enough to get started. I may need some more. I mean there's just so much of her … to carve.”

Agnes laughed. “It's all right, Mr. Pruett. I know I’m fat.”

Filby feigned a smile and took one final snapshot. “I think I might just use the couch too. That might be nice: a statue of Agnes sitting on the couch. What do you think?”

Agnes sucked in air. “Whatever you like, Mr. Pruett. Now how can I pray?”

“You can pray that he crawls out of that den of sin he's been crouching in all these years. A den of sexual sin and immorality.” Hezekiah could no longer contain his true feelings.

“Well,” said Filby, “if that ain’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is. You coming to our town and weaseling your way into the affections of the people. What is on your agenda, Mr. Branch?”

“At least I’m a man—all man.”

The argument could have gone on, but Agnes put a quick end to it.

“Hezekiah, you got no right to judge people. And Mr. Pruett, I think it would be good if you left now.”

“I was trying to. Good day, ladies.”

Filby plopped his Panama on his head and left in a huff.

Hezekiah laughed in a way I had never heard him laugh before. It sent a chill down my back.

“I finished the south side of the basement,” he said after a moment. “Think I’ll get started in that little room near the furnace. It's black as coal in there, but I saw some boxes and maybe even a raccoon when I shined a light inside.”

“That room can just stay as is,” said Agnes. “Maybe you could start on the north side.”

I took a second and tried to remember what was in that little room. All I could see in my in my mind were boxes piled against a wall.

“Agnes has a good idea, Hezekiah,” I said. “I’d like to get the clothes out of there. Most of them belonged to my parents. The ladies who helped us after they died kept them thinking me and Agnes might use them but …”

“I understand, Griselda. I’ll start tomorrow. If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to knock off a little early today.”

“Of course, Hezekiah.” Agnes smiled.

Hezekiah wasted no more of his or our time and bolted out the front door like he was late for an appointment.

“Where do you suppose he's going in such a rush?” I asked.

“Can’t say, but Janeen Sturgis was here earlier, and she said she heard that Olivia Janicki and he have been seen together.”

I swallowed. “Really, but she's—”

“I know, I know,” Agnes said. “She's not so … wholesome.”

“Nice way to put it.”

S
tudebaker showed up ten minutes after Hezekiah left.

“Good news, Agnes,” he said. “Your sign is all finished and on its way from Scranton. Be here the day after tomorrow.”

Agnes continued chewing her ziti. She looked at me as if looking at Stu would open up floodgates that hadn’t been opened in years.

“I told you, Stu,” I said. “Agnes isn’t interested in the sign.”

She swallowed and adjusted herself. Her left leg was bent up toward her chest and her thigh was a thick lava bed of extra skin. Agnes peered out the window for more than a minute before she turned her head to Stu.

“It's all right, Studebaker. Whatever you all need to do is fine with me.”

Her words about knocked me off my feet.

“But, Agnes that's not—”

She put her hand up. “I’m not fighting the will of the people anymore, Griselda. In the end, what does it matter anyway? It's just a sign.”

I can’t say for sure what happened in that long minute that Agnes looked out the window, but something changed her mind.

Studebaker lit up like a Christmas tree. “Agnes, thank you! Thank you. This means a lot to the people, especially Cora right now. She's been skipping around town like a teenager.”

“God bless her,” said Agnes. She turned to me. “I’m only here to pray.”

Stu pulled the rocking chair close to Agnes. “I was just at the diner, and me and Boris got to talking about the unveiling.”

“Unveiling?” Agnes looked at me when she said it.

“Of the sign,” Stu said. “We got it all planned for next month's town meeting. “It might be too big to get into the building, but we figure folks won’t mind standing outside for it. Boris is lining up the Dixieland band to come out and maybe even the VFW will do something.”

It made my toes curl up. I wanted to run, but it was like watching a car accident. I couldn’t turn away.

“Did you hear that, Griselda?” Agnes said. “They’re gonna get a Dixieland band.”

“And maybe a barbershop quartet,” Stu said.

If I didn’t smile, I would have cried.

“The only thing missing will be you, Agnes.” Stu bent down and kissed her cheek. “But we’ll have Dabs Lemon take lots of shots. He's gonna write it up for the paper, Agnes. Front page news, I’m sure.”

T
he sign arrived that Thursday on the back of a long flatbed truck with the name Scranton Sign Company in gold letters on the side of the cab. Stu and Boris went on out to the turnpike and escorted the driver into town with their horn blasting and flashers flashing all the way. Stu borrowed Mildred's cop light and stuck it on the top of his station wagon. I was surprised the Dixieland band wasn’t there or at least a barbershop quartet to sing
When the Saints Go Marching In
.

I was standing in the viewing room waiting for Agnes to finish her asthma treatment when I saw the truck carrying the sign moving ever so slowly down the street.

Folks popped out of their houses. Small kids lined the street and waved. The driver tooted his horn once and Agnes flipped the nebulizer mask off her face.

“What in tarnation—”

“A truck horn, Agnes. A big truck horn. Looks like your sign made it up the mountain.”

“Let me see.”

“Too late, it's down the hill now.”

I replaced the mask on Agnes and patted her arm. “About lunchtime. I’ll bring you some pot roast.”

A
gnes and I finished out the day sorting through our parents’ clothes, a task we had avoided for years. Hezekiah brought them up from the basement and piled them on the red velvet couch. It wasn’t so tough handling their things, especially when we made the decision to keep none of it. I did catch a whiff of my father's Aqua Velva every so often and had to swipe a few tears. Agnes never flinched, although I sensed she might have been looking for something in particular the way she rifled through the piles I placed on her bed.

All I kept was one of my father's striped ties. I put it with his fishing rod and tackle box. And I found a string of pearls tucked into the pocket of my mother's Sunday coat.

“They’re the real McCoy,” said Agnes. “I remember when Daddy gave them to her—their tenth anniversary.”

I didn’t remember the occasion. I left the pearls on Agnes's bedside table, thinking she deserved something pretty even though the strand would never fit around her neck.

Hezekiah helped me bag them up the next day and used my truck to haul the sacks to the Salvation Army—the very one in Shoops he used to frequent.

“Seems a good thing to do after all the soup I ate there,” he said when I handed him the key.

T
he welcome sign sat under a plastic tarp on a trailer out in front of the town hall until the unveiling. Seeing as how it got dark at six o’clock and the meetings didn’t start until after seven usually, lights were brought in for the occasion. Boris asked some of the men to park their cars and shine their headlights on it.

I was at the library the day of the unveiling when I heard the Dixieland band marching down the street playing
Stars and Stripes Forever
. It was around three o’clock; I suppose they had to practice and get in proper formation.

Vidalia was checking out a book.

“What is that?” she asked.

“The band for the meeting tonight. Stu and Boris are unveiling the welcome sign.”

“And they hired a band for that?”

“And a barbershop quartet or at least the VFW might be there to … I don’t know, to salute it or something.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all.”

I
made it home around four and found Agnes praying with Hezekiah again. As far as anyone knew, he still hadn’t received his miracle. And, as far as I knew, no one had any idea what his request was all about anyway. Usually, I stayed in the foyer until I heard the “Amen,” but that day I didn’t. I ignored them both and went straight upstairs.

March blew into town on the back of a fierce lion that year. The wind whipped around outside, and I thought it was a pretty terrible day to unveil anything. Arthur mewled on the windowsill. He was watching the crows high in the tree-tops. It always amazed me how they clung to the tippiest top branches as they swayed. I scratched his ears.

“What a day this has turned out to be, huh, Artie.”

Most early March days in the mountains were windy and cold, but that day was especially raw and blustery. Tears filled my eyes as I watched outside. A small tempest of leaves swirled over the lawn like the small tempest of worries swirling in my brain. I hated the sign, and I hated that I was going to the unveiling, but how could I not go?

Vidalia would have said to stay home if I wanted, but my thoughts turned to Agnes. She would want me there, if for no other reason than to bring the attention back to God. But that day I didn’t see how God could have anything to do with that sign or Bright's Pond.

T
he front door slammed shut as it was prone to do in a high wind. Hezekiah must have left for the day, although I was certain he would be at the unveiling. Hezekiah had become as devoted a follower of Agnes as anyone who had lived in Bright's Pond their whole lives.

I changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, pulled my hair in a ponytail, and slipped into sneakers—a favorite pair that had remained mole and mouse-free.

“Thank you, Arthur, for not leaving me a prize today.”

I plucked him from the sill in time to see a pheasant explode out of the woods in a whirlwind of rust and gold and purple and leaves.

A
gnes and I ate a quiet supper together. I expected her to say a few things—at least about the sign—but she didn’t.

“Guess you better go,” she said in-between mouthfuls of spaghetti. “They’ll be expecting you.”