Good Heavens (3 page)

I put the letter away and plugged in the vacuum cleaner. If there is anything I'm allergic to, it's a vacuum cleaner, but I was in no mood to sit around chewing the cud about the Priscilla Home offer. I would get the house all cleaned up, and then maybe I could relax and pray.

Far into the night I was working like there was no tomorrow, finding more things to do than the law allows, but that question the Lord was asking was worse than a fishbone stuck in my craw. I couldn't get rid of it. I tried to tell myself that it was just a coincidence that the Bible fell open at that chapter, but it didn't do any good.

After I'd done everything I could think to do, the ironing, the mopping, and cleaning out the utility room, I climbed up on a chair and washed off the top of the refrigerator. That was always the last thing that ever got done at my house, since the top of the fridge is the last thing anybody will ever see, unless it's Clara when she stretches her neck. Like I always say, housekeeping is something you do that nobody notices unless you don't do it.

I put all the cleaning rags in the washer and turned it on, heard the clock strike 2:00 a.m., and stood there thinking. With that question “Whom shall I send?” hammering away in my head, I decided that this thing was not going away until I got something settled once and for all. I plopped down in the recliner.

Of course, I was wore to a frazzle, so I just told the Lord I would appreciate if he would make it perfectly plain to me what he had in mind for me, and I'd do it.
“I'm here if you want to send me,” I told him, but I can't say my heart was in it. I would have to be absolutely sure before I made a move, so I asked for a sign. “By chance you want me to take that job,” I said, “for starters, what say you tell me what to do with this house?”

What I am about to tell you is hard to believe; it knocked me out of my tree! The very next day, about noon, Pastor Osborne drove up in the driveway. When he opened the door and pulled the seat forward so the two little boys could pile out the backseat, I went around to the passenger side and lifted Angelica out. I shook my head; that little car was not fit for a family. All three of the kids made a beeline to the backyard to see Elijah, who was working in my garden. They loved that man to death.

The pastor sat on the glider while I went inside to fix him a glass of tea. It made me mad the way the deacons were dillydallying about giving Pastor Osborne a raise. Now that he had taken on three children, the church was not paying him enough to keep body and soul together, much less buy a decent car.

I brought the tea on a tray with one of my fried apple pies and set it down. “Pastor Osborne, when my ship comes in, I'm going to buy you a four-door. You need a four-door.”

“Well,” he said, “we could sure use one, but Betty and I are content with what we have. In fact, we've never been happier, Esmeralda. All those years we waited and thought we'd never have children, and then the Lord
gives us three. It's one of those answers that's ‘exceedingly abundantly above' all we asked for or imagined.”

We talked about the mission trip the young people were going on and about Boris Krantz, who seemed to be working out good as youth director. He told me Boris was helping Horace, the sheriff's son, who wanted to be baptized. If my guess was right, Lucy Mangrum, the Spanish teacher, had her cap set for Boris. Well, she was a fine girl, and he'd be lucky to get her.

We could hear the children squealing, having a good time.

“I reckon Betty has her hands full now,” I said.

“Loves every minute of it. She's had to throw away a lot and stuff every nook and cranny in the house to make room for the children and us, but she loved every minute of it.”

“How's it working out?”

“Fine. The boys and Angelica have bunk beds in the other bedroom. It's a small room so it's crowded in there. As the children get bigger, it won't be long before we'll have to do something. We thought when the time comes, we would ask our landlord if he would build another room onto the house. I talked to Elmer down at the hardware store about how much an addition like that would cost, and he said if the landlord laid out that kind of money he'd go up on the rent. Elmer said we'd be better off to look for a three-bedroom house if we can afford it. Maybe we will, sometime.”

My mouth dropped open. “A three-bedroom house?” He nodded. “That is, when the time comes. Betty and I are already praying about it.”

Without giving it another thought, I knew what I had to do. I asked him, “How'd you like to have my house?” He laughed. “Yeah, right!”

He thought I was joking.

Before I left town, it was all settled. I put my furniture in storage, and the Osbornes planned on moving into my house the following week. They would pay me the same rent they'd been paying for that little cracker box house, and I had their first month's rent in my pocketbook. The Willing Workers agreed to look after Mrs. Purdy, and Horace said he'd see to it Elijah didn't lack for anything. Of course, Horace had caught that HIV virus from Maria, so the chances were he wouldn't outlive Elijah. But I figured we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. The good news was that Horace had made a turnaround and was living for the Lord.

Well, I couldn't believe I was actually on my way to North Carolina in my old Chevy loaded with all of my stuff, as well as clothes, sheets, towels, pillows—anything the Willing Workers thought we could use at Priscilla Home. I felt about as happy as I did the day Bud and me got married. Of course, that day, we thought we had a future, that we'd have children and grow old together. When he stepped on that mine in Vietnam and come home so wounded he was not his self, our dreams was over and done with.

I didn't cotton to the idea of leaving Bud back there
in the cemetery, but before I left, I went up there and told him good-bye and that I'd be back. I knew he'd want me to go.

If I'd had good sense, I would've been scared about what lay ahead, but right then I was making good time around the curves and up the hills, singing God's praises at the top of my lungs.

2

It wasn't easy finding Priscilla Home. The last ten miles were on a dirt road, the Old Turnpike, which twisted and turned, worming its way up the mountain. It was about as wide as a narrow-gauge railroad track, one you wouldn't want to meet a car on, much less a pickup truck with a hillbilly behind the wheel. The mountain laurel was budding on both sides of the road, and the overhanging limbs formed a green leafy arch decorated with a dusting of snow. For April, the weather was cold, with a sky holding on to winter.

When I finally saw the sign T
HE
P
RISCILLA
H
OME
, I heaved a sigh of relief and turned in at the drive. Set among a forest of giant trees was a big white house with a lawn set off with a rock wall all around. On the porch were a dozen or so women sitting in the rockers or on the steps, bundled up against the cold, most of them smoking. I tooted the horn, but no one waved. The drive went around to the back of the house, and seeing the door to the first floor, I pulled up there and stopped. By
the time I got out of the car, a young woman was coming out.
Must be the director
, I thought. Looked to be around thirty. Not much to look at, although she wasn't making the most of what she did have. I'm no fashion plate myself, but I try to look decent. She had on jeans and a Carolina sweatshirt, which was okay, but her hair was a mess and she needed some makeup.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “You must be the new resident manager.”

“That's right.”

“I'm Ursula Sloan,” she said. “Director of Priscilla Home.”

By then the women had come through the house and were spilling out the back door. Most of them were young, and I knew they must have been curious about me, but their faces didn't show it. They all had the same hangdog look about them.

“The ladies will bring in your accoutrements.”

I didn't have a clue about
accoutrements
, but the women were ready to help me unload the car. “Most of this stuff is for the home,” I told them and proceeded to separate boxes and bags from my stuff.

Many hands made short work of unloading the Chevy. The director told the women to take my things upstairs to the second floor and put the rest on the third floor. “You can put your car in the garage next to mine,” she told me. I looked at a long van parked next the dumpster. “We don't have room for the van in there,” she explained. “That's my apartment above the garage.”

Ursula waited while I parked the Chevy, and then I followed her inside. We entered a first floor room full of
chairs and tables with a fireplace and mantel. “This is the day room,” she told me, “and adjoining this room is the craft room, laundry room, and a downstairs bedroom with bath for visitors. Your quarters are on the second floor.”

This Ursula talked fast like a Yankee, so I knew she wasn't from North Carolina. I followed her up the steps, and at the head of the stairs on the left was the kitchen, where a couple of women were cooking something in a big pot. We turned right onto a short hall beside the staircase leading to the third floor. One box of my stuff was at the end of the hall before one door, and Ursula was fumbling with keys to open another door labeled “office.” The hall led into a parlor, and while she was trying to unlock the office, I stepped into the parlor to take a look-see.