Jacob's Ladder (24 page)
The young man reached down and picked up his great-uncle's pet. “Look, Dad,” he said to his father, “it's Lucky.”
Ms. Lou Ellen and Rose watched as both men petted the one they had come to know as Lester Earl.
Mary walked over to the group. “This your dog?” she asked Daniel.
The young man nodded. “He was a family pet,” he said, “Lucky.”
“You take him with you?” Mary asked, surprising everyone with her question. The concern in her voice could not be masked.
The three-legged mutt jumped from the boy's arms and limped over to the women. Without a word, it was Mary who immediately scooped him up and gave him a big kiss. Ms. Lou Ellen and Rose watched in amazement.
“I guess Lucky is still lucky,” the young man's father responded.“He should stay here, since I expect he will be happier,” he added. “He has always fancied the arms of women.”
Mary smiled at the answer, while Ms. Lou Ellen, simply and elegantly, threw back her head and laughed out loud.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rose's decision to return to Rocky Mount had nothing to do with a feeling of obligation or duty and everything to do with the solving of a murder. She was guided by the dream from an old man's ladder.
She thought about it all night after her friends had gathered to eat every morsel cooked by Ms. Lou Ellen in loving preparation for Rose's funeral. She had stayed later than she had planned and then walked home, stuffed and satisfied and at peace with where she was and how things had turned out.
The Sunspeaker men, the nephew and great-nephew of the man who bore a burdensome dream, joined them for food and drink, speaking only sparingly as the group from Shady Grove prodded them with questions and too many stories of their own.
Rose had asked about the bracelet, about a funeral for the elder, and about their lives in the pueblo. The bracelet was to go to the great-nephew, a link in the chain of the male relatives. It told, as she had suspected, the story of the Natchez people, the story of Jacob's ladder. The elder Sunspeaker had made the piece of jewelry after he had received the first dream, when he first began to understand his quest.
The funeral was not discussed, as the subject of death was not for idle conversation among the family members of the deceased. As for their lives in New Mexico, John Sunspeaker simply acknowledged the vast openness of the desert landscape, saying that it was the only home he and his family knew. He extended an open invitation for Rose and the others to visit his pueblo at any time.
Philip Lujan had been the one to show the two men the exact location where their loved one had died. The three of them stayed by the river for more than an hour, and they returned only briefly for the meal and some conversation before leaving for their respective homes.
When it came time for Rose to depart from the gathering of friends, it was obvious to everyone that she had been affected in some unexplained way by the three men's silent strength and by their resolve to honor their familial ties. Although no one but Thomas understood the decision she was making, once the night was over, everyone saw that she had made up her mind about something.
She walked hand in hand with Thomas, noticing the trail to her right, the one that led up to the site where Mr. Jacob Sunspeaker had parked, the place where he had died. She stood looking for a moment, curious about what the younger men had done there, almost walking down to see, and then finally understanding the sacredness of their good-byes. She knew not to trespass upon it.
Instead, she turned to walk forward on her own journey. Without bearing right and moving toward her travel trailer, her home, she moved straight down to the banks of the muddy Mississippi, lifted her face in the air, breathing in the late-night river smells, and sat down.
Thomas joined her, his arm securely around her, and at the moment he pulled her closer to him, she announced what she was going to do. She faced the city opposite them, the land over east, as if it she were announcing it to the people there, as well.
Thomas said nothing when she explained. He only nodded his head in understanding. He offered to take her, said he'd ride next to her and stay with her for as long as she planned to be there.
She smiled at the offer, sat with the tenderness of it, let the proposal of such a thing flow across her mind. Then she turned to him with complete clarity.
“No,” she said. “This is mine to do alone.”
He did not reply. He understood that part of her decision, as well. Later, as they stood at her camper and said good night, they held each other a little longer than usual, knowing it would be more than a few days before they would see each other again.
She drove out of Shady Grove early the next morning. Old Man Willie waved at her from his front porch. He was the only one she saw as she left. The lights were still out at the cabin and the office, and she hesitated at first to leave without saying goodbye. She knew, however, that she would be coming back, so she just moved out slowly so as not to wake her friends.
Thomas would tell the others soon enough, she knew. And they would be waiting when she was ready to come home.
She took the turn out of the campground, watching from the rearview mirror, glad she had such a place to return to. She put on her seat belt just as she merged on the interstate and settled in for the long drive she had in front of her.
She sped through Memphis without radio or taped music, noticing that the town was only just starting to show signs of a morning commute. She drove onto Jackson and Nashville, enjoying the silence and the grand arrival of dawn, before she finally decided to stop and take a break.
She pulled off the interstate just as the sun was high and full, welcoming the beginning of a new day. She gassed up, got a sweet roll and a cup of coffee, and stood outside her car, watching the traffic pick up along I-40, heading both east and west.
It was, she realized, a beautiful spring morning, so full of possibility. She glanced in her backseat, remembering that she had packed a few things, not sure how long she would stay, not sure of what she would take as a sign that she could leave, that she had completed her task. She understood, however, as she contemplated the trip, that this was a journey not about days or hours or a need to be finished; it was a journey as important as one from world to world, life to death.
She stood in the early-morning sunshine, remembering the conversation she'd had with Thomas the night before, the way he'd slid his finger along the sides of her face, the way they'd leaned into each other, the way he'd promised to be in North Carolina in less than a day if she called him, if she needed him, if she just wanted to see him.
She smiled, the warmth of the season pressing down upon her, because she was relieved of the burden she had carried so long. She felt different than she ever had; she felt free.
Somehow in the hearing of the dead man's story, in watching the exchange of the ladder from John Sunspeaker to Philip Lujan, in realizing the price that the old man, Jacob, had paid to give passage to long-abandoned and lost souls, she felt chosen, called like he, to give a restless spirit a place to begin and end.
Jacob's ladder, Rose thought, recalling the story from the Old Testament, is just what Thomas said it is. It is the mercy that shows up like a dream in the fretful night while lost in the wilderness, a dream that comforts, a dream that promises that even though you are running for your life, unsettled, desperate, unforgiven, one day you will find true rest, one day you will find your way home.
Rose understood that her father would more than likely not even recognize her, might not even know that it was he who had called her back to North Carolina to grant the forgiveness that would be his ladder, his vehicle to start him on his way home. She knew that he would probably deny that it was his soul that spoke to her in dreams.
Rose walked away from where she had been standing, threw her trash in the garbage can at the side of the station, and returned to the driver's seat of her car.
“It doesn't matter,” Rose said to herself as she buckled the seat belt and pulled into the Tennessee traffic. “I'm not just going for him.”
She merged into the morning commute without being impatient about the traffic or about what she might not find when she stood at her father's bedside. She had learned a great lesson from Jacob and from his commitment to return the ladder to the Natchez tribe.
On the morning of her return trip to North Carolina, Rose recalled the quest of the old man from New Mexico and the way he had devoted himself completely to returning the ladder to the lost souls. She also remembered how she felt when his nephew handed the ladder to Agent Lujan.
Rose thought of that moment when they stood in the sudden breeze as she drove along in the slow progress of traffic, how it seemed so clearly to be the perfect and final release of a restless soul.
Rose understood that, just as it had been for Jacob Sun-speaker, the man who discovered purpose in a dream and wholeness in the fulfillment of a three-hundred-year-old promise, as we allow ourselves to become the vehicle of grace for another, we are merely securing the rungs of the ladder that guarantees our own sweet passage home.
She smiled and moved ahead.
ALSO IN THE SHADY GROVE MYSTERY SERIES
Down by the Riverside
ALSO BY JACKIE LYNN, WRITING AS LYNNE HINTON
FICTION
Friendship Cake
Hope Springs
Forever Friends
The Things I Know Best
The Last Odd Day
The Arms of God
Â
NONFICTION
Meditations for Walking
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
JACOB'S LADDER.
Copyright © 2007 by Jackie Lynn. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lynn, Jackie.
Jacob's ladder : a Shady Grove mystery / Jackie Lynn.â1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35231-8
ISBN-10: 0-312-35231-X
1. Camp sites, facilities, etc.âFiction. 2. NursesâFiction. 3. North CarolinaâFiction. I. Title.
PS3612.Y547J33 207
813'.6âdc22
2007009198
First Edition: June 2007
eISBN 9781466856899
First eBook edition: October 2013