Prayers of Agnes Sparrow (7 page)

Hezekiah stood and rubbed his head. “I can’t thank you enough. And … and I suppose I’m willing to wait as long as I have to for God to grant me my miracle.”

A
gnes reached out her thick arm to the bedside table and picked up the phone. “I’ll call Vidalia right now and let her know you’ll be coming to see her tonight.”

Hezekiah stood at Agnes's side with his hands folded like a child's in prayer against his chest and his chin bent downward. When Agnes started talking he sneaked a peek at me. I smiled politely.

“Vidalia,” Agnes said into the phone. “I got a favor to ask.” Agnes spoke for only a couple of minutes, but I could tell from her tone that Vidalia agreed to give Hezekiah a room. He caught on also and practically beamed at her as she spoke. I stood back and watched, fighting my feelings of apprehension. Agnes placed the receiver on its cradle, winced, and tried to grab her knee.

“Cramp,” she said, “another cramp.”

She needed to adjust herself, and Hezekiah wasn’t shy about helping. He pulled the offending leg out as straight as it would go.

“Better?” he asked.

“Thank you, Hezekiah. Yes, much better. Sometimes I get myself into the oddest, tangled up predicaments.”

He patted her arm. “I’m glad I could help.”

“Well, you go on down to Vidalia's and get settled. She's expecting you. Griselda will point the way.”

Hezekiah shook Agnes's hand, and then he grabbed mine and pumped it up and down with vigor. “Thank you, thank you both. I knew the Almighty God led me here. I knew it.”

Agnes raised her hands and said, “Praise Jesus.”

I walked Hezekiah to the door and told him how to find Vidalia's house. “Just look for the wreath on the front door. Vidalia always has a welcome wreath.”

“I guess I’ll be seeing you in the morning,” he said with a sigh. “I’m excited to get to work for you and Agnes.”

“Not too early, Hezekiah. Make it around nine.”

Vidalia Whitaker was one of my favorite people in town, and I had no doubt that she would take generous care of him. Vidalia was a small lady with enormous grace and compassion. She rarely complained, never attended town meetings, went to church every Sunday, and, as far as I knew, only went to Agnes once for prayer. And then, it wasn’t for herself, but for a family member who lived on the other side of the country. I doubt if Studebaker even asked her to sign the petition for the Agnes Sparrow sign. I’m certain he knew she would have no part of the spectacle. I could have heard her reply, sweet, gentle, but to the point. “Now you know I am not going to sign that piece of paper,” she would have said. “Now get on back to the café or somewhere and stop this foolishness.”

Vidalia was one of my regulars at the library. I think she might have been the smartest woman I ever met. I always thought it a shame she never went to college. It was easy for me to picture her teaching history at a university.

But college wasn’t in the cards for Vidalia. “It was hard enough for a black woman to finish high school,” she told me once over tea and sugar cookies. “And colleges didn’t take many colored folk back then either.”

So, Vidalia self-educated herself, reading everything she could get her hands on that pertained to American history. The teachers at the high school even considered her an expert on the Civil War, and every year, when the subject was taught, students lined up, waiting to pick her brain for facts to include in their essays.

She spoke with a slight Southern accent, having been born in Georgia. She could tell stories about the War Between the States like an actress on a stage and breathe life into history that excited the children. I only asked her once about why she moved to Bright's Pond. She smiled at my question a moment, patted my hand, and said, “Griselda, there are some stones better left unturned.”

I never asked her again. It wasn’t important. What really mattered was the way Vidalia and her husband Drayton dovetailed into our community in the early sixties. While the rest of the world burned down cities and marched for racial equality, Bright's Pond had managed to put it into practice. Drayton passed on just a few years after they moved to town and left her to raise their daughter alone. She married and moved away. Although she offered, Vidalia said she would never leave Bright's Pond. She turned her home into a boarding house, often giving a room to visiting relatives and on rare occasions perfect strangers.

And so she did for Hezekiah. She gave him the room in the front—a large, sunny bedroom with flowered wallpaper and its own bathroom. She only charged him ten dollars a week, but always left a list of chores for him on Saturday morning.

By Groundhog Day Hezekiah had shoveled our walk ten times, patched the roof well enough to stop the occasional waterfall in one of the upstairs bedrooms, replaced the pipes under three sinks, and told Agnes that when spring came he would build us a new garage. I guessed he planned on putting down roots in Bright's Pond.

Every Groundhog Day folks gathered at the Full Moon to watch the early morning festivities at Gobbler's Knob in western Pennsylvania. Zeb brought in a small TV and sat it on the counter and we all gathered around waiting for the official groundhog decree to be read.

It was my father's favorite holiday, believe it or not. “Six more weeks to spring: just about halfway through,” he’d say whether good old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not. I only remember Phil not seeing his shadow maybe one or two times. But in the mountains you can rest assured that winter would have her icy claws dug deep for at least another six and probably eight weeks no matter what Phil predicted. The spring thaw was important to my father because some winters were so cold and the ground so hard, bodies had to be kept until spring before the cemetery could bury them. Some years they were stacked three or four high in a garage at the cemetery. Imagine that, having to wait weeks before you could bury your loved one, knowing he or she was stacked like cordwood in a garage all the while.

Hezekiah joined us that year at the café. At first he didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about. I was standing near the counter with Vidalia and Ruth Knickerbocker when Hezekiah pushed his way through the crowd to take a seat at the counter like he was some kind of dignitary invited for the occasion. Ruth was one of my best friends even though she was more than a decade older than me. We enjoyed each
other's company and she often made me smile when it was the last thing I wanted to do.

“What's the occasion?” Hezekiah asked.

“Groundhog Day,” Ruth said. “We always come out to watch Phil.”

“Phil?” Hezekiah twisted on the stool.

“Happy Groundhog Day, Hez,” Zeb said as he wiped the counter in front of him. “Coffee?”

“Sure thing. But what's the big deal? Why's everybody here?”

“You might say it's a tradition in town.” Zeb grabbed the pot and poured. “Spring is mighty important to these folks.”

I watched Hezekiah contain what I interpreted as a smirk.

Zeb had taken a liking to Hezekiah from the first day he met him. It was about three or four days after he started working for Agnes and me. He had just finished replacing a pipe under the kitchen sink, and Agnes said he looked like a man who could use a piece of pie.

“Why don’t you take him on down to the café,” she said, “and introduce him around?”

I did. I took Hezekiah on down to the Full Moon, and at first Zeb thought he recognized him—thought maybe they went to summer camp together, but that wasn’t the case. Hezekiah had one of those faces that reminded many people of a loved one far or near. The two men took a shine to one another.

“Oh, I remember about Phil now. I never knew folks took it so serious. It's just an old wives’ tale.” He looked around at the disgruntled faces of those who overheard. “But it's nice to get together now, ain’t it.”

“That reminds me,” said Ruth. She pulled my elbow and led me away from the counter and an offending waft of cigarette
smoke. “The church potluck is next Friday night,” she whispered. You might have thought she was telling a government secret.

“Oh, that's right. Well, I’ll make some scalloped potatoes and maybe a ham.”

Vidalia took my other elbow. “I’ll mix up a mess of something special.”

“No, that's not it,” Ruth said. “There's always plenty of food. I was wondering if anyone bothered to tell Hezekiah. He hasn’t come to church since he got here and—”

“Do you want me to invite him?” I asked.

“Well, you or Agnes. Don’t you think Agnes should do it? I say that because Hezekiah doesn’t seem the church-going type and all, and we’d hate to have him think we were twisting his arm, you know?”

Vidalia shot me a crooked smile. “I’ll leave you two to chat, but I’ll come by the library later.”

I winked at her. “I’ll be there around ten or so this morning.”

“Oh, that's fine. I got to get to the market and the post office. My grandbaby, Jackson, has a birthday coming up and I got a package to send. So I’ll see y’all later.”

“Aren’t you going to stay and wait for Phil?”

“No, I just came in for a cup of coffee this morning. Believe it or not, I ran out. That Hezekiah drinks coffee like it's water.”

Vidalia pulled a knit hat over her ears and went out into the overcast day. The weatherman called for more snow, and from the looks of the clouds I figured it would be arriving soon. Snow had a funny way of creeping over the mountains. It would start out with a slow moving rack of gray clouds, and just when you thought the clouds had passed over, the flakes would start.

“So how about if you ask Agnes to ask him,” Ruth said.

“Sure. I’ll tell her this morning. Hezekiah will be by, I’m sure, to do some work.”

“Oh, that will be just fine.” She turned around and looked in Hezekiah's direction. “I’d ask him myself, but, well, that wouldn’t be proper since we only just met.”

“I’ll take care of it, Ruth.”

“Fine. I’ll see you at the potluck then. Oh, and scalloped potatoes will do fine, just fine.”

The potlucks at Bright's Pond Chapel had a reputation for getting a bit … well, a bit rowdy—rowdy for a small Pocono Mountains town, and I guessed that was why Ruth thought it might make Hezekiah nervous. Pastor Speedwell would often stand up to say “just a few words” and before you knew it, he was off and running, spouting hellfire and damnation as we polished off the cherry cobbler. The Pastor Speedwell who attended church functions was different from the pastor we saw in the pulpit on Sunday. At church functions, Pastor had an easier time letting his hair down. He spoke more from his heart than his notes.

“You know,” Ruth said, “Hezekiah is such a quiet man and still a stranger. We wouldn’t want to give him the wrong impression.”

Before I could speak, Zeb turned up the TV as loud as it went. “Here comes Phil,” he said.

All ears turned toward the TV as the official groundhog handler, who wore a top hat and tails, pulled Phil from his stump. A few seconds later the president of the Groundhog Inner Circle read Phil's prediction. “Six more weeks of winter, there will be.”

A series of mock groans of disappointment rang out.

I took hold of Ruth's hand. “You know what? Just ask him yourself,” I said. “We don’t need Agnes to do everything.
There's nothing indecent about you asking him. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to come.”

Ruth seemed pleased and maybe a trifle too excited but she was entitled. It had been a long time since anyone new came to church. Ruth was the official membership coordinator, a duty she discharged with great seriousness. Getting Hezekiah to join the church would be quite a feather in her cap.

Studebaker moved toward me as the crowd started to thin out.

“Griselda, I’m glad you’re here. I have something to tell Agnes. Think I could stop by this morning, or does she have other visitations?”

“I’m not certain, Stu. I left without asking her if she had any appointments this morning.” The protective side of me emerged. “Is there a message I could give her? I’m heading back to the house for a little while. I could save you the bother.”

Studebaker's eyes widened. He moved close to me, and I could smell coffee on his breath—that nutty, leftover odor. “It's no bother, Griselda. I’ll just follow you back. That way you both can hear my news.”

“What news, Stu? Don’t tell me the sign is finished already.”

“Almost. But I want to talk to her about the statue.”

My stomach tightened. “You still going through with that cockamamie idea?”

“It's not cockamamie. I got Filby Pruett all signed up to get started. He’ll need to take some pictures—”

Hezekiah interrupted us. He had a way of appearing and disappearing. He looked good. His hair was growing back, he was clean-shaven, and I thought Vidalia's home cooking was responsible for the sparkle in his eyes. “Are you going back to the house?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Great. Mind if I grab a ride? It's really cold out there.”

I’m sure the temperature was still below freezing, but that wasn’t unusual for early February. “Sure, Hezekiah, I’ll give you a lift.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Stu said. “Agnes won’t mind me barging in on her.”

My old Ford pick-up complained, but she started and we were back at the house in a few minutes. Stu pulled up behind us in his baby blue Caddy.

“I’ll go on in and see what Agnes has planned for me today,” Hezekiah said.

He walked ahead of me while I waited for Stu to catch up. Hezekiah was inside the house before Stu and I even took three steps. Hezekiah told me he didn’t like the frosty mountain air.

“He's a nice guy, ain’t he,” Stu said.

“Hezekiah? Yeah, he's a good egg, I suppose.”

I opened the door and nearly fell over Hezekiah who was standing in the entryway.

“Shh,” he said. “I think she's praying.”

I took a few steps into the house and listened. Sure enough, Agnes was deep in prayer for someone. I heard a cough, and I could tell it wasn’t Agnes.

“She's in there with someone,” I whispered. “We should just wait until she's finished.”

The three of us stood like statues.

“You can come in now,” Agnes called after a minute or so.