Whisper Town
Authors: Patricia Hickman
WHISPER TOWN
“Patricia Hickman’s WHISPER TOWN shows that love of neighbor, springing from a heart broken by Jesus, is ultimately the greatest
triumph...A compelling page-turner.”
—
ERIC WIGGIN
, author of
The Gift of Grandparenting
“Hickman’s prose rings with gritty authenticity and stark, lyrical description.”
—
LIZ CURTIS HIGGS
, author of
Thorn in My Heart
“Patricia Hickman’s characters in WHISPER TOWN are so realistic, so endearing, you come away believing you must have met them
somewhere, and if not, you wish you could. A most enjoyable read!”
—
SYLVIA BAMBOLA
, author of
Waters of Marah
and
Return to Appleton
“Yet a third marvelous visit to Nazareth, Arkansas...Ms. Hickman delights us with quaint humor and a cast of quirky characters,
even while shining a keen light upon racism in the thirties.”
—
LAWANA BLACKWELL
, author of
A Table by the Window
“Patricia Hickman has given us a wonderful book about the many facets of love—a man for a woman, a father for his children,
a pastor for his flock, and a caring individual for a needy one—without ignoring the cost of such love. Insightful, layered,
and faith-filled, WHISPER TOWN is, quite simply, tops.”
—
GAYLE ROPER
, author of
Winter Winds, Autumn Dreams
“Out of the Depression-era mystique of the Ozarks comes a parable for our time. Thank you, Patty Hickman, for daring us to
get on our knees—to not just pray, but to wash feet.”
—
NETA JACKSON
, author of The Yada Yada Prayer Group series
“The Millwood Hollow series keeps getting more compelling and more triumphant. Reading WHISPER TOWN is like returning for
a visit with old friends, only to discover they’ve become even more lovable and admirable in your absence.”
—
JANELLE CLARE SCHNEIDER
, author
“Shout it from the rooftops—WHISPER TOWN is fantastic! Hickman’s lyrical Southern style, with its snap of Depression reality,
makes WHISPER TOWN one of her best. Encore!”
—
LOIS RICHER,
author of
Shadowed Secrets
“Patricia Hickman’s style flows with smooth storytelling and gritty detail. WHISPER TOWN bristles with racial tension, succulent
Southern senses, and a pastor who takes what God gives him.”
—
JANET CHESTER BLY
, author of
Hope Lives Here
Copyright © 2005 by Patricia Hickman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
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First eBook Edition: June 2005
ISBN: 978-0-446-56148-8
To my nephews and nieces, Elizabeth, Tim, Michael,
and little Patricia, who are so much more than a mix
of black and white, having had placed within you
the lampstand of conflicting cultures,
a candelabra of beauty, lovely in God’s sight.
Contents
For we, being many, are one bread and one body;
for we are all partakers of that one bread.
1 CORINTHIANS 10:17
E
VERY SUNLIT COMMUNITY CAN CAST A DISCONCERTING
shadow. That is why a town celebrates its own virtues with harvest festivals and greased pig competitions, thereby casting
its citizens in the best light, all flaws dimished. Church in the Dell’s yearly apple social lured the happiest of saints
and the worst of sinners into its cinnamon and spice womb.
Jeb greeted people out on the lawn using his best minister’s handshake: thumbs up, skin to skin. Talk of an unusual nature
sifted through the ordinary chitchat, spoken three times in succession from the lips of three different church members before
he eventually latched onto the gist of the matter.
A commotion down in Apple Valley, where, on good authority, rumors had circulated not more than a summer ago of how the daughters
of the county commissioner had lost their virginity, now had tongues wagging with a new vigor; the whole operation of this
recent rumor mill affected the chatter even more vibrantly than the commissioner’s daughters’ scandal.
A hush settled over the church lawn and, what with Florence Bernard’s lighting of candles along the path, even the boys inclined
to rowdy exuberance took to whispering. The apple orchard hid secrets, awful stories, mothers said, that caused the schoolchildren
to walk around instead of going through Apple Valley. A shadow had slipped over Nazareth and no amount of conjuring could
lift its spell. The rumors shadowed the evening like the darkening horizon, the color of brine gone bad.
Florence Bernard and Josie Hipps acted as hostesses directing visitors to the tables. Hot spiced apples, crumb pies, cobblers,
apple dumplings, hot cider, and squash and apple soup enticed guests into the tent set up by the Church in the Dell elders,
where tables and chairs borrowed from first this one and then that one presented a plain yet inviting asylum for the church
social.
Mellie Fogarty made a point to tell every woman who came through the tent’s entry that her roses had come in good this year.
Every table displaying a Fogarty centerpiece proved her right.
Angel Welby, with her hair pulled back to emphasize her emergence as a fifteen-year-old woman, offered herself as a centerpiece
to a circle of boys from Stanton School. Jeb floundered more often than not in what he perceived as his awkward paternal offerings
to his less-than-receptive charge. It was in his estimable opinion that his duties as fledgling shepherd to the Church in
the Dell flock had a greater chance of fulfillment than his fatherly offerings to the Welbys, and that being evidenced with
the passing of days.
Angel’s hair had darkened and her eyes had blued in the spring of her adolescence. She had never been a girl who would divulge
her thoughts to anyone, let alone a preacher to whom circumstances had forced her to yield her life and siblings. So Jeb watched
her grow, wild as wood roses, and rendered helpless to tend her soul with any measure of goodness. Angel grew fast among the
weeds, her lot as a poor girl born to a momma whose mind had been swept away with the Depression.
Florence brought Jeb a bowl of soup with a slice of sopping bread. “Taste Josie’s soup, Reverend, and then tell her how good
it is before she drives me nuts with worry.”
Jeb sipped from the bowl and then raised his thumb to Josie, who waited nervous as a rabbit beside the cider pot. “Tell her
it’s the best squash and apple soup I’ve ever tasted,” he said to Florence, and then whispered, “except for yours, Florence.”
Florence thanked him. She let out a sigh and said, “I’ll be back shortly with something sweet. Anything in particular tickle
your fancy, Reverend?”
Jeb knew better than to play favorites, so he said, “Bring me what you like best, Florence.”
His answer satisfied the middle-aged divorcée. She went out in search of a new conquest: a farmer widowed two years who might
be easy pickings for the best apple pie chef in Nazareth.
Jeb milled among the men, who talked about the measly harvest and last month’s dust storm. Ivey Long told him, “Got the plow
horse hitched up to the hay wagon. I guess the children are anxious for a moonlight ride.”
“I haven’t been on a hay ride myself since I was yea high,” said Jeb. “The church appreciates you driving your wagon, Ivey.”
Jeb heard the pleasant sound of the handsome schoolteacher behind him. Fern Coulter brought the sweet scent of a woman into
the tent. He straightened his tie and smoothed his slicked-back hair around his ears. “Fern, you look fine in that dress.”
He offered her cider and she accepted it.
The rumors twisting like a cyclone through downtown the last few days had not dampened their feast of apples. Jeb would wait
and bring up the matter to Deputy Maynard, who would surely show up at the mere mention of free eats. If anyone could quell
the rumors of a slaying in the orchard, George Maynard would know the truth and help dispel the outlandish stories of blood
on the apple pickers’ path.
Jeb believed in the world he could not see, but he left the practice of dwelling on the unseen to lonely old women whose neck
hairs rose up during full moons. He did not listen to the wind when the children claimed to hear whispers at night. Least
of all, he did not pay heed to the bad dream that awakened him on the morning of the autumn’s first apple social.
He had no choice but to be a reasonable man. The church he shepherded down here in the hollow needed a rational minister,
one who treated each day like a new pearl collecting on the town’s long string of bad days. Too many villains had emerged
from hard times. Nazareth, Arkansas, held in its possession a short list of heroic souls.
In 1933, heroes had ebbed from the national canvas like the hacks on Wall Street, or else took to masquerading as tramps on
railroad cars, and oftentimes as politicians who peddled emotional causes for a little sway. A body had to look hard into
those places and imagine a hero existing beneath the subterfuge of a swindle. The long and short of it was this: a loaf of
bread bought votes. Myths arose primarily from the ink of pulp fiction, meaning that for a dime, heroism could be rolled up
and tucked inside a ten-year-old boy’s shirt. Ordinary men quit aspiring to valor what with its high cost and all. Empty stomachs
spawned nostalgia, but it was the kind that turned sensible people into monsters, and that led to unimaginable grief considering
the sad state of affairs for jobless heroes.
To inflame the bonfire of a national calamity, freedom had been bought and paid for on good, compatriots’ paper, but not all
Americans had redeemed their own personal bundle of liberty. Not enough of them, at least, and not soon enough. When the lean
years of the Great Depression swallowed up hope, the yearnings of the insignificant were relegated to the end of the bread
lines; this was a quagmire for Jeb whose reckless habit of trading in the tide of human sorrow got him into trouble with the
everyday people, those who, when in a tight spot, gave little thought to even the least imaginable yearnings.
Jeb had requested no particular elements of his encumbered life, not a tin whistle’s worth of the weight hanging over his
head. He had said more than once it was his turn to be at the receiving end of a lucky break. At the head of his want list:
a quiet Arkansas parish church to shepherd that could pay him a steady wage, a pond where he could wet his line, and a wife
to bed; more specifically, an uncommonly good lady named Fern Coulter, who had supplied his library with an abundance of classical
works. Each book he read had shown him his own lack, causing him to reach beyond his sharecropper’s state of mind.
Fern had come to him in the most gingerly fashion. Out of all the women he had known back in Texas, none had wooed as slowly
as Fern.
He laid blame at the door of their thorny beginnings and justly so.
In the first place, his most recent years consisted of a series of surplus hindrances kicking through the door, elements and
people whom he did not want, ask, or need. These were children he looked after but had not in the least manner sired—Angel
Welby, the biggest girl, who paid him the least amount of regard and respect for what little necessities he had provided,
and her two younger siblings, Willie and Ida May. The Welbys took to him like pond leeches.
Angel admittedly had taken better to him when he was a con man than when he had bowed his heart to God and become a legitimate
preacher. The oldest girl from the family of Welby—a clan whose elders never bothered to check up on their displaced progeny—favored
the idleness of a life pretended over the strenuous efforts of a life devoted.
