Homefires (15 page)

“Kwissie push me.”

“I did not.” I caught her in her scuttle from the
hump
-attack spot. I frowned disapproval as she settled into the far corner.

“Krissie, you know better.”

“Sorry, Mama,” she murmured.

“Tell
Toby
you’re sorry.”

“Sorry, Toby,” murmured Krissie with sagging conviction as her brother’s mien turned smug.

I turned back to face the front when Kirk prodded me, “What were you going to say, Janeece? You were saying ‘except – ’”

I’d lost my fizz to share. Only I’d opened a keg of grubs for Kirk to explore. “Oh...it’s just the way they
compare
you with Pastor Hanson.” I didn’t have to say the obvious
: in uncomplimentary ways.

He laughed. A hearty belly laugh.

I peered at him, a bit aggravated. “I don’t see anything funny about it.” Kirk could be so out-of-left-field when I least expected it. Exploding when I laughed at him but sliding into denial when the flock behaved poorly.

“Mam
aaa
!” Toby wailed in my ear again, swiveling my torso to about-face.

What is it this time
, Toby?” I fairly shrieked and my son recoiled in fear, making me feel like a witch with whiskers.

“Kwissie p-pinch me.” His lower lip jutted out below tearflooded eyes.

Krissie sat primly in her appointed corner, eyes downcast. “Krissie, did you pinch Toby?”

Silence lengthened. “Well,
did
you?”

The long lashes lifted to expose limpid, sky-blue lagoons of vulnerability. “He made a face at me, Mama,” she murmured in near-whisper.

“Did not,” countered Toby, his face mutinous.

“You
did
,” Krissie’s small voice raised a notch in desperation and her gaze darted back and forth from her brother to me, gauging his denial’s credibility-impact. “You know you did, Toby. You stuck your tongue out at me.”

Toby glared at her, vised to his perch with the aggression of a gladiator.

My stomach throbbed. “Krissie,” I said wearily, “you know to ignore facial expressions. That means a spanking.” I turned to face the front again, wondering if her sentence was just. After all, Krissie was only six years old herself. Ignore the deliberate insult of a
tongue
poking at her? Especially when it belonged to a little person who had – through birth order – dethroned her from her
hump
?

I wondered if I required too much of my good-natured little girl, who still couldn’t see well out the car window while en route. Her lack of guile rendered her defenseless, detectable, while Heather could maneuver a mock war in complete secrecy
.

I felt Toby tug slightly at my sleeve. “Yes, Toby?”

“You n-not gon’ pank Kwissie, are you?” Blue pools of compassion turned to peer at watery-eyed, downcast Krissie, huddled in her corner.

I sighed. As usual, Toby’s tender heart overrode any disagreement between him and his sibling. I tried to look stern. “Do you think Krissie deserves a spanking for pinching you?”

His towhead swung from side to side, bumping my shoulder. “I-it din’t hurt,” he insisted. “I-I don’ want Kwissie get a‘panking.”

“Are you sorry you pinched Toby, Krissie?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Krissie snuffled with sincere remorse, then a choked, “I’m sorry, Toby.”

“All right. I don’t feel you need a spanking since you’ve obviously learned your lesson.”

Kirk wheeled into our little parking space and the children spilled from the car to change into play clothes. Kirk reached out and gently seized my arm as I turned to emerge.

His gaze began soberly, “I know how you feel, honey,” he murmured, then, in the depths of Atlantic-green, a small pinpoint of light began to grow and grow until it filled his eyes with such warmth that I felt myself blush. “I know my Neecy like the back of my hand. But believe me, there’s no cause to be concerned about the folks at Possum Creek.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How can you say that when all they’ve done is eulogize the former pastor in your first two weeks of pastorship? Not, ‘what a wonderful sermon, Pastor Crenshaw,” but ‘Pastor Hanson was the best preacher ever was.’ I don’t appreciate their lack of-of
manners.”

“Listen, Sweetheart,” his tone was gentle, “don’t you know that if they loved that aging, ailing man with such devotion, they’ll eventually grow to love me – us – the same way?”

I doubted
that,
but I didn’t have the heart to squash Kirk’s faith.

“Pastor Hanson didn’t earn their love overnight.” He slid from the car seat and leaned his head back down to look me in the eye. “It took some time. Just as it will with me. But the capacity to love is there. Don’t ever forget that.”

The new Kirk, I realized in that moment, was a guy I really liked. It was a great feeling to have him encouraging
me
to be patient. Mymymy, how times were changing.

I hung onto that thought during the following months. Months during which Babs, my mama’s old pal, contacted and lost her battle with pneumonia – but not before Kirk rushed to her sickbed to pray the sinner’s prayer with her. Grandma Whitman died suddenly of heart failure, followed by an already ailing Grandpa Whitman by five months. Daddy was heartbroken and I did all I could to console him, sitting with him, holding his hand through the long nights of both Grandma’s and then Grandpa’s wakes. My father’s need stirred my heart. There was, in his loss, a desperation that smote and shifted me into a nurturing role toward Daddy that would forever after endure.

In those first weeks at Possum Creek, Mrs. McKonna missed few chances to exhort Pastor Hanson. Bewildered, I prayed and soul-searched to come to terms with something beyond my scope of experience.

No longer could I simply walk away from unpleasantness. So I commenced developing my
preacher’s-wife smile
, vintage Mona Lisa, that covered awkward situations and inappropriate responses and though it did not always disarm the perpetrator of effrontery, it masked my discomfort.

I wondered, at times, what they really were – my feelings. They were definitely changing. Slowly, I was beginning to look past issues and see faces, to
feel
the hard callused hands that gripped mine in greeting Sunday after Sunday. Nuances crept into uncultured salutations, flavoring them, altering my first impressions.

My stomach ailments eased up.

Brown paper pokes began to sprout in the vestibule after services, bearing anything from a scratch-made chocolate cake to fresh eggs, garden-picked vegetables in season, and later, in winter months, potatoes and yams, onions, canned succotash, home-made jellies and jams and even sides of cured ham.

Two months into Kirk’s pastorship, I learned a valuable lesson: looks can deceive. A disgruntled looking Mrs. McKonna paused on the church steps and looked past my husband to peer through small wire specks at me, taking long moments for her huffing breath to catch up to her stillness. I grew tense waiting for something to happen.

“Say,” she said, “I know it’s hard goin’ home to cook every Sunday after driving so far.”

“Well, I – ” The astute black eyes peered unblinking into my flustered, flushed face – made so by the fact that up until today, I’d been like a fly on the ceiling to her, ignored.

Unexpectedly, the old crinkled face softened. “Ah, I know how it is. You don’t have to tell me how it runs you ragged with young’uns this age. Had three o’my own, don’cha know?” The black eyes instantly disappeared into the folds of her smiling face.

I gaped for a long moment, astonished, then flashed my preacher’s wife smile.

“Anyway,” a veined plump hand reached out to gently touch my arm, “I’d be pleased to have you and your family over to lunch next Sunday after church. That is, if this preacher here don’t have any objections.” She peered sternly at him.

Kirk grinned, a Howdy-Doody version. “No, Ma’am. No objections a’tall.”

A deep chuckle shook the woman’s ample frame. “Good. I’ll be expectin’ you.”

I watched her waddle away and then looked up into the clear sky beyond the evergreen range.
Wonders never cease.

The Sabbath lunches became a weekly thing, saving our family three hours round-trip on the road since Ma McKonna insisted we lay over at her house for the evening service. Ma, as she mandated we call her, discovered she and Krissie shared an affinity for cats, gave Heather scores of books she’d had since her girlhood and doted on Toby, who would climb onto her lap in a blink and snuggle against her plump softness to doze on lazy Sunday afternoons.

I grew to love her old house – pure country rusticity that smelled quaintly of wood smoke, floor wax and baked goodies – whose arms embraced you at the front door with welcome and acceptance. On warm days, Ma McKonna would raise all the windows and we’d enjoy the potpourri of heather and honeysuckle in soft, cooling breezes.

After wonderfully filling, tasty meals, we’d wash dishes, a sweet conversational time during which I learned of her loneliness as a widow with an empty nest.

Sometimes, Kirk took the kids over to play at the church’s little playground – one he’d initiated, then rolled up his sleeves and built – while he studied and prayed there in one of the Sunday School rooms. He paced as he prayed and the solitary church setting helped free his mind of clutter.

During one intimate evening, Kirk divulged, “The reason I don’t go around my family is – it pulls me down.” We sat at our kitchen table drinking coffee after putting the kids to bed. “I know that sounds terrible but – it’s true.” He shrugged with a dismal helplessness dulling his sea mist eyes.

“And there I thought I was marrying into this big wonderful family and we’d live together happily ever after.” I hoped it would come off as teasing, knowing it never did. Not for me. Kirk took everything I said seriously, still does. Yet when he vents, he insists he’s teasing and when I don’t believe him, says, “you just don’t have a sense of humor, Neecy.”

I long ago realized I couldn’t beat Kirk in verbal sparring.

I couldn’t squash down the disappointment that Kirk chose to exile himself from his family because by doing so, he denied me access to them. Me, who bonds so easily and so completely, who wants to take every new friend home and take care of them. How much
more
I cared for his family right from the beginning. After we married, he always had excuses not to socialize, mainly ‘no time’ with work and schooling and now, the ministry.

Tonight, I got the truth. What I’d suspected for some time now. He held himself aloof because, pure and simple, he
wanted
to. Oh, there were reasons – the unhappy childhood memories – but the bottom line was he wanted to be free of them. In particular, from the bad memories they triggered. A part of me understood and sympathized. The other part warred against the fact of Kirk’s ability to isolate himself so decisively and succinctly.

It disturbed my calm waters.

Those two years at Possum Creek sped by, banking up sundry memories that jolt and ebb and flow till this day. Of Mr. Branson getting so confused with the
new-fangled
Daylight Savings Time that he arrived at church two hours early, hopping mad at the government for telling him what to do and with Kirk for messing him up good by going along with it.

Kirk handled him with sterling diplomacy, agreeing with him wholeheartedly before leading him into a perception that began to adjust him to the notion of progress. Of Toby, perceiving my love of pretty roses, presenting me with a bouquet he’d picked, during prayer, from the back of Mrs. Davis’s bowed Sunday-go-meeting hat. Of the time when Kirk, just before service, went to fill communion cups for the scheduled ritual, finding the grape juice bottle empty – depleted by Krissie
and Toby during one of their rainy-indoor playtimes. Of our first death, sweet Uncle Huey Dodge, a deaf man who’d relied on the kindness of a church family for home and hearth, who’d out-given everybody in love. Our first wedding – Jeannie Morgan and Clarence Jenkins doing vows in the packed out sanctuary and later, receiving guests in Ma McKonna’s cleared out sitting room, surrounded by folding tables straining with homemade reception goodies and centerpieced with vibrant blossom’s from Ma’s own little backyard garden.