Good Heavens (13 page)

7

The trail to the falls led us through rhododendron thickets with trees towering overhead. Shaded as we were and with a stiff breeze whipping about, I was chilly, but the girls led at such a pace I figured we'd warm up. I was bringing up the rear with that girl Brenda from Alabama. She's a hairdresser and offered to do my hair any time I liked.

Brenda told me her
real
husband, as she called him, had been a nice man until some bimbo at work wooed him away from her. “Tommy and I were getting along good, went to church, had a nice house almost paid for. The kids were grown. Then he met that bimbo at work, and she wouldn't leave him alone. Miss E., young girls go after older men because they have got more money than the lowlifes their own age.”

Here was this middle-aged woman telling me that after that man left her, she'd fallen apart and started drinking. If they had went to church all their married life like she said, how come they let this happen? Well, I can tell you.
Going to church can be an end in itself—just a habit—a place to see friends. And if it's not, it's like I've always said—going to church is not enough when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of facing the things life throws at you. A body needs to be close to the Lord—needs to be one-on-one with Jesus every day to be up to meeting whatever comes down the pike. Reading some little devotional and letting that pass for a quiet time just won't hack it. I tell you, I have learned the hard way. I slack up on studying my Bible and cut short my prayer time, and things go to pot. It happened right there at Priscilla Home.

Brenda smoked a lot, so she got out of breath. We stopped to rest, only she lit another cigarette. From what she told me, since her husband had left her, she'd gone from one man to another. “Miss E., I guess I keep thinking I'll find another Tommy, but I've given up. There are just not any more Tommys out there.” She sucked on that coffin nail and blew the smoke away from me. “I see Tommy every once in a while in the mall or some place with that woman's children. She had three and now they have one together.”

Seeing she still loved that man, I could tell she was sliding into a big-time pity party if I didn't put on the brakes.

Brenda ground out the cigarette. “My mother says I've disgraced the family and I'm not welcome in her house.” Her chin was trembling. “She never even invites me for holidays or anything. The children won't have anything to do with me. I don't ever hear from them, not even on my birthday or Mother's Day.”

I started applying the brakes by saying we'd better catch up with the others. We got up and hit the trail again.

It was not an easy walk but the kind you would expect on a mountain footpath, rocks and fallen logs, marshy places. When we reached the stream, the footpath turned into a very rugged trail following alongside the stream up to the falls. I did pretty well climbing over rocks and roots until it came to a nearly impassable place. Instead of climbing farther, I decided to stay right there on a flat rock that jutted out into the water. “Brenda, you go on ahead with the girls.”

Holding on to a branch, I stepped out on that slab of a rock and was welcomed by sunshine again. I got settled with my back to the sun warming my bones and thought I would pray for Brenda and the other women if I could. So far as I could tell, Priscilla Home wasn't helping her or any of the others very much. There were still a few girls I didn't know well—a stout woman named Wilma, a truck driver from eastern North Carolina, tough as nails. Emily, who came from Missouri and claimed to be a professional ice skater. Well, I didn't know about her. There was another girl from Virginia, Nancy. She was a nurse.

It was hard to find the time to really get to know these women, but Portia was the only one I found too weird for words. Ursula told me she'd hitchhiked all the way from Florida—walked the last miles on the Old Turnpike with a foot of snow on the ground and a gale blowing hard. Landed at the door at 3:00 in the morning with only the clothes on her back and cigarettes. Ursula couldn't turn her away, and after Portia's application was filled out
and her mother sent her medical deposit, Ursula had no excuse not to let her stay on.

From where I was sitting, I could see the avalanche of boulders above and wondered what catastrophe had caused all those rocks to tumble down the mountain like that.
Lester might know
, I thought, and remembering him, I wished I could get away to check on him.

High up on the boulders I could see one wide waterfall, and on the creek's way down there were smaller ones. A few yards above where I sat, there was one with that clear, cold water spilling over rocks, swirling and splashing white all around the slab I was sitting on.

God's glory was everywhere—the sun and the breeze playing on the trees and the stream, birds flitting here and there chirping. I felt like singing praises to the Lord, so I turned to see how far away the girls were; it wouldn't do for them to hear my foghorn of a voice. I could hardly hear them shouting to each other, so I figured they were far enough away that my singing wouldn't cause permanent damage to their eardrums. With all that beauty around me, I sang “How Great Thou Art” like I was on stage with only God listening.

Below my rock, there was a wide pool with the trees reflecting in the water, shimmering nervous-like. The water was so clear I could see trout facing upstream, waiting for an unsuspecting bug to come their way. It was the kind of pool children skip rocks on. Beatrice and I used to do that when we were little kids.
Poor Ursula
, I thought,
as a kid she probably never skipped rocks or did anything much except keep her nose in a book—probably read the dictionary all the way through
.

I sat there thinking about the things Ursula had told me; I was beginning to understand why Dr. Elsie had said I could help her. I didn't have book learning, but I did have experience.

Undoubtedly, Ursula had never in her life had to trust the Lord for money. When a body goes through life living on the allowance their daddy gives them, they don't have to depend on the Lord to provide. They miss a lot. In my book, they miss one of the best ways of getting to know God.
Wouldn't it be something if I could help her get her daddy off her back
.

I looked at the avalanche and could see Dora in the lead almost at the top. Wilma wasn't far behind. The rest of them were here and there, holding on to each other, scrambling to find a foothold or trying to decide if they could jump from one rock to the next. Evelyn looked like she was holding her own with the rest. I didn't see Lenora.

I turned to look back at the pool below. There was a fisherman down there making his way upstream, casting for trout. He was decked out in waders and all the paraphernalia city men buy to go fishing. There's no telling how much money they spend just to catch one or two fish that they could buy in the fish market for two or three dollars. Wading in that cold water over slippery rocks is not my idea of a good time.

I kept watching him casting, hoping he'd make a strike, and he did. Reeling in the fish, he seemed to be an expert at netting it. I watched him take out the hook, and as he dropped the fish in that wicker box strapped on his side, he looked up and saw me. He tipped his hat in a
friendly kind of way, and in a not-too-friendly way I acknowledged him with a nod. After all, you can't be too careful with people you don't know.

As he was making his way upstream toward me, he cast a couple times more and came close enough that I could see he was an older fellow, probably retired. For sure, old enough for Social Security. That hat was decorated with all kinds of hooks and flies, probably a fortune in lures. He wore glasses and had a neat, trimmed mustache. You don't see men smile the way that man was smiling. I guess it was catching the fish made him smile.

The boulders up behind me would make it impossible for him to fish any farther than my rock, and I wanted to see him catch at least one more before he had to stop. He handled that rod with a wrist motion that cast the line out over the pond, which was not an easy thing to do. I had to laugh; I caught myself praying he'd catch one! Well, sure enough, he angled that line just right for a trout swimming along looking for a bite. Once it took the bait and darted this way and that, the fellow started reeling him in. To see that rainbow trout splashing out of the water, flashing in the sun, fighting against the hook, was something right out of a wildlife magazine. Even after the man scooped it up in the net, that little bugger still fought, flipping and flopping.

The fisherman took his time removing the hook and getting the catch in his box. Then he set out again. The water was getting deeper, nearly up to his waist. Casting one more time, he didn't get a taker, so he reeled in his line and made his way toward the bank. I thought he would take the footpath back the way we came, but
instead he was making his way along the trail beside the creek, coming my way. Ducking under limbs and climbing over rocks, he finally came out at the place where I had come onto the rock.

“Good afternoon,” he said in a gentlemanly kind of way. “It's a fine day for fishing.”

“So I see,” I said without sounding too interested. “May I join you?” he asked.

“Well, I guess you can. This rock don't belong to me.” He smiled and, holding on to a limb, swung down from the bank to my rock.

Now, I wasn't in the habit of striking up conversations with strange men, but there was just something about this man that would tell anybody he was a gentleman. Of course, Jack the Ripper was probably a gentleman when he wasn't killing women.

The fisherman told me his name, Albert Ringstaff, which sounded German to me, and I have not got much use for Germans.

Once on the rock, he stood there with water from his waders trickling down in little rivulets. Gazing out over the pond, we saw a fish plop up. “Hmm, I should've waited for that one,” he remarked. “May I sit down?”

“Like I said, this rock don't belong to me.”

He smiled, laid his rod on the rock, and settled himself down a few feet from me. Then, out of the blue, he said, “I heard you singing.”

I thought I would die on the spot!

He turned around to look up the mountain. “Do you know those ladies climbing the rocks?”

I told him I did and that we were from Priscilla Home.
But I could hardly look his way I was so mortified he had heard me singing. He told me he lived up on the mountain and knew Dr. Elsie. Said he knew about Priscilla Home, although he had never been there. The way he talked, he had a slight accent, and that made me pretty sure he was German.

“Can you use some fish?” he asked.

“Well, maybe.” I didn't want to appear too anxious.

When he asked me how many ladies were in residence, I told him that with the director and me there were fourteen.

He lifted the lid of his fish box and looked inside. “I was very fortunate today. The wildlife service has just stocked the stream—put tons of fish in the water—so I caught a number of speckled and rainbow trout. If you can use them there might be enough to make you a meal.”

“Oh, you keep them for yourself.”

“No, I'm not much of a cook. I usually catch and release, but if I see I'm going to catch enough, I save them and give them to the neighbors.”

I wanted those fish in the worst way. “Well, if you insist,” I said. “Thank you. We'll clean them and have a fish fry tomorrow night.”

Seeing I didn't have a bucket or anything to put the fish in, he said, “I'll take them up to the house for you.”

We could hear someone thrashing through the bushes coming back down the trail. It was Lenora. She was muddy from slipping and sliding on the trail, and her face was scratched. Stopping to catch her breath, she held on to the limb above my rock and steadied herself. “I couldn't make it up those rocks,” she explained.

I didn't know whether or not to introduce her to Mr. Ringstaff, but since he was giving us the fish, I decided I should. “This is Miss Lenora Barrineau, one of our residents,” I told him.

The man's mouth fell open. He was so shocked he repeated her name. “Lenora Barrineau? Do you mean
the
Lenora Barrineau?” He stood up, holding out his hand to her.

What's this?
Lenora looked like a scared rabbit!

“Miss Barrineau, do you remember me?”

Embarrassed, Lenora turned her face the other way, and for a minute I thought she was going to break and run.

Mr. Ringstaff grabbed her hand. “You
are
Lenora Barrineau, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you remember me?”

“Of course, I do, Mr. Ringstaff,” she said, still hanging on to that limb, trapped with no way to escape.

Thunderstruck as he was, Ringstaff didn't let go of her and was so excited I was afraid he was going to fall off that rock and take her with him. “Miss Barrineau—I can't believe it's really you!”