The Calling of Emily Evans (9 page)
She opened the protesting door and entered the small closed-in porch. It was dusty, reeked with mustiness, and was full of spider webs. Emily ducked the webs and proceeded to the next room.
It too was small, with stained walls and a dirty floor. It held an old-fashioned wood stove and a small painted cupboard, with a wooden table and two chairs standing beneath the room’s single window. In a corner a rough shelf supported a few discarded items. Two overstuffed chairs, ugly and defiant, sat right where they had been left.
“It sure isn’t anything fancy,” Emily breathed to herself, and then felt guilty about her evaluation.
“It’s not that I expected it to be a palace, Lord,” she apologized.“I just want neighborhood folks to feel welcome here.”
Emily spotted a small door leading off the main room. The room behind it was not much bigger than a large-sized closet. A cot almost filled it. There were several nails sticking out of the wall boards, and Emily assumed they were meant for hanging garments on. No cupboard. No dresser of any kind. The bare window looked out into a weed-covered lot, and beyond was a weathered board fence.
Emily looked around her for a door to the part of the building that would function as the meeting room for church. There seemed to be none. She concluded that the only entry was from the outside and went around to take a look.
She knew the building had been used for a billiard room and assumed that it would be spacious.
The door was a little reluctant to open, but at length Emily was able to push it far enough to crowd her slight body inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust—and then she shuddered.
The room was truly a mess. The walls were dark and stained, the windowpanes shattered across the floor, broken chairs strewn here and there, and it looked as if the sparrows were in residence.
The floor was the worst. It was almost completely covered with litter, and where the wood did show through, it was stained and blotchy. Emily imagined that it had been used freely as a spittoon for as long as the building existed. With another shudder she fled outside. It was too much to deal with at the moment.
She closed the door tightly and hurried back to her little lodging. The two small rooms and the shed looked good in comparison to what was to be her church.
“Well,” decided Emily, lifting her shoulders, “if I am to be settled by tonight, I’d best get busy.” She went back to the street and began to laboriously unload her buggy.
Emily thought about conscripting some of the older children who gathered to watch her to help. After all, their backs were stronger than hers, she was sure. But she held herself in check and kept right on working in the afternoon sun while her little audience continued to grow.
Across the street, five or six youths lounged against the door of the blacksmith shop watching the goings-on with good humor.“Yeah, I heard rumors’bout someone comin’ to start a mission church,” Emily overheard one of them say, “but I’d no idea that it’d be a
woman
—and she’d be nothing’ more’n a young girl!” They jostled and teased and winked at one another, while Emily sweated under the weight of her loads.
Emily carried in all the boxes and bags of supplies and belongings, then the suitcase, and turned in dismay to the remaining trunk. How in the world would she get it off the buggy alone? Her father had had help from a neighbor to load it. She would just have to unload it item by item and leave the trunk itself on the buggy, or else she would have to drive the buggy away with the trunk and its contents still on board, with hopes of getting it unloaded later.
Deciding on the latter, Emily was turning from the buggy when a voice spoke from behind her.
“Need some help?” There was a hint of amusement in the tone.
Emily turned to see two young fellows standing near, their faces slightly red, their eyes twinkling.
The question caught Emily quite off guard, but a youngster who had been watching the proceedings with interest responded quickly, “She’s got thet there big trunk. She can’t lift it.”
“Want it in the house?” one fellow asked.
“Oh, if you could, please,” Emily replied.“I would be so grateful.”
One of the young men sprang easily up into the buggy and slid the trunk to the end where the other could reach one of the handles. With a bit of showing off, they hoisted the trunk and carried it down the broken walk to Emily’s door.
“Where ya want it?” the talkative one asked, and Emily motioned to a corner of the room. The trunk was duly placed where she had indicated and the two were off, nudging and poking each other as they left with big, self-conscious grins on their boyish faces.
“Thank you! Thank you so much,” Emily called after them and heard another nervous guffaw.
With the buggy finally empty, Emily took a deep breath and went back outside. She managed a smile in spite of her aching back and arms, her flushed face and disarrayed hair, and spoke as kindly as she knew how to the little group that still stood watching, “I’m Miss Emily Evans. I have been sent here to start a church. I do hope all of you will be able to be here on Sunday morning for Sunday school.”
Some of the older boys, whom Emily judged to be ten to twelve, turned away quickly in seeming embarrassment. She had invited them to Sunday school—right along with the little kids.
Others looked at her blankly or nodded with shy smiles. Emily wondered how many of them had no idea what Sunday school was.
“We’ll have singing and stories, and we’ll learn about Jesus,” Emily explained.
As the small group began to disperse, Emily untied the horses, picked up the reins and crawled wearily back into the buggy. Through the district superintendent, her father had arranged for the horses to be boarded at a small farm on the edge of town. Referring to her map again, Emily drove there now. It was not far to the farmstead, but Emily would have to walk back and she was anxious to begin her cleaning, so she urged the horses to a trot.
When she reached the farm, she noted that it really wasn’t in much better condition than the one at which she had spent the night. A young lad met her when she turned her horses in at the gate. Emily was surprised to see that it was one of the fellows who had stood by and watched her unload.
“Hello,” she greeted him.“I understand that my father has made arrangements for me to keep my horses here.”
He nodded but made no comment.
“Would you like to show me where?” she asked him.
“Jest put the buggy over there,” he said, with a motion of his head.“The horses can go to pasture.”
Emily drove the buggy to the indicated place by the fence and climbed stiffly down. The kinks of the night before had still not left her body.
The boy stood and watched as she unhitched the team.
“What about the harness?” she asked him.
“Guess you can hang it in the barn,” he answered casually.
Emily was about to move the team closer to the barn when a shrill voice came from the small house to her left.“Claude! Shame on you for making the lady do the work. You take those horses to the barn and unharness them. Then turn them to pasture. We’re not paid for doing nothing, you know.”
Emily turned to see a little bit of a woman standing on the porch. Over her small frame she wore an apron, startlingly white against the bleakness of the house. Her hair was pulled back into a severe knot at the back of her head, and from where Emily stood, the lady’s face looked so tired that it seemed drained of emotions.
“Come on in,” she nodded to Emily, “I’m Annie Travis. I’ll fix some tea.”
At the mention of tea, Emily’s stomach reminded her painfully, sharply that she’d had nothing to eat since last night and it was well into the afternoon.
She wanted to decline the invitation and get back to cleaning, but her insides protested and so did her back. A cup of tea would be a good pickup. She managed a smile and moved forward.
“Tea would be nice,” she admitted.
The contrast from outside to inside the little house surprised Emily. In spite of its simplicity, everything was spotless. Emily couldn’t help but notice the small bouquet of summer flowers that graced the table and the clean shine of the cracked windows.
“Have a chair,” Mrs. Travis invited and Emily accepted, worrying about her dusty dress on the clean wooden seat.
The woman bustled about her kitchen, pouring boiling water into a flowered teapot. Emily noticed a crack where the spout joined the pot.
“Sorry I don’t have a cake or something,” the woman apologized, then went on.“I do have some fresh bread—just out of the oven. You care for a piece or two of that with some strawberry jam?”
“It sounds wonderful,” Emily responded and then checked her enthusiasm. She didn’t want to sound as if she were starving. She blushed.“I—I always enjoy fresh bread,” she added.
Mrs. Travis turned to cut the bread and get the jam from her cupboard. As she opened the door, Emily could see that the cupboard shelves were not crowded with provisions.
“So you’re the new preacher?” Mrs. Travis said as she brought china cups from the cupboard and poured the tea. The cup that she handed Emily was without blemish, but the one she kept for herself had a large chip. She seated herself at the table and poured the tea.
“Well, I—I guess I don’t really think of myself as a—a preacher,” Emily fumbled.“More of a—a—teacher.”
Mrs. Travis nodded.“Well, whatever you call it,” she said, “we’ve sure been needing someone.”
Emily’s heart responded with a joyous flutter.
Here is someone
with a welcome.
“I was raised in church myself,” explained the woman, “but my babies—haven’t had a bit of church—any one of them.” Her eyes darkened.“Sometimes I fear that it’s too late for some of them. They’ve already been shaped to be what they’re gonna be.”
Emily was surprised to see tears form in Mrs. Travis’s eyes, and she wondered if the mother was thinking of young Claude when she spoke.
“It’s never too late for God,” Emily said softly, and the woman’s head came up, tears spilling slightly before she turned away.
A little girl entered the room and Mrs. Travis scooped her up onto her lap and broke a piece of bread for her. Then she brushed back the child’s damp, curly hair and spoke softly, in a voice meant just for Emily.
“We don’t have much. Used to be much better off, but my husband—he’s—he’s not been well—for some time now. Doesn’t get things done like he used to. Things are getting—” But she did not go on. A haunted look flitted across her face as if she might already have said too much, and she abruptly broke off and lifted the cracked teapot.
“Care for another cup?” she asked and did not wait for Emily’s answer before she began to pour.
Emily enjoyed a second helping of bread and would have eaten a third and perhaps a fourth had not her good manners kept her in check. It would not do for her to be eating food that should be for the occupants of this needy home. So after her second slice of bread and her second cup of tea, she thanked her hostess, explained that she was most anxious to get her home scrubbed, invited the family to church, and excused herself.
At the gate she met another young boy—he, too, was a member of the little band that had watched her unpack. She smiled at him as she said “Hello,” and he smiled shyly back. She noticed the thin, patched clothing, but she also saw a clean face and carefully combed hair. She decided that this boy also belonged in the simple farmhouse.
As Emily hurried back down the dusty road toward her own little dwelling, the picture of the small woman stayed in her mind. Here was someone in deep need. With very little means, she was endeavoring to care for a family—keeping the house clean, the clothing patched, the place a home, and doing it in spite of the fact that she had an ill husband. By the time Emily trudged down the crude main street, the warm summer sun beating down on her new black bonnet, her mind was already thinking of ways in which she could mobilize the community to aid the Travis family.
It’s a shame,
she thought
, just a shame that something hasn’t been
done.
And then Emily felt a deep sense of joy. Annie Travis had wanted a church. A church for her growing family. Well, God had sent Emily in answer to that need. Emily vowed to do her best in ministering to this woman and her children.
Pail in hand, Emily made her way to the backyard pump. It took a good deal of working the handle before a small stream of discolored water dribbled out of the pipe. She feared that her water supply might be unusable, but gradually the flow began to clear and soon clean-looking water filled Emily’s bucket.
After returning to the house with the water, she carried in some wood for a fire. The thought of a stove burning in the little kitchen on such a warm day was not a welcome one, but Emily knew of no other way to get hot water for scrubbing. She was thankful for the good supply of wood that was stacked against the backyard fence.
After the fire was heating the tub of water Emily had placed on the stove, she turned to her suitcase for an older garment in which to do her cleaning.
“This dress is wrinkled and dirty,” she said to herself, “but I don’t want to ruin it entirely. I do need to change into something else. But where?”
Emily looked about her. The small windows of the kitchen-living room had no coverings. She looked into the bedroom. There was no curtain or shade on that window either.
“One of the first things I need are some kind of shades or curtains,” Emily murmured, and then picked up her clothes and left the house for the small building out back.
The outhouse too was full of dust and spider webs. Emily cringed as she entered. Dried leaves and grasses rustled beneath her feet.
“I do hope there are no living creatures in here,” Emily muttered as she closed the door, then slipped her dress over her head and stripped off her good stockings.
Emily pulled on her old housekeeping dress as quickly as she could. She breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped back out into the sunlight.
By the time she had swept the two small rooms, she judged the water hot enough to begin her cleaning.