The Shining Badge (35 page)

That’s so sweet,
Jenny thought.
Hannah never thought she’d have a husband, and now she’s got such a fine one. I’m so happy for her.
Aloud she said, “Would you want your child to be a boy or a girl, Clint?”

Mischief lit up Clint’s eyes, and he said with mock seriousness, “Why, it’d have to be, wouldn’t it?”

Everyone laughed but Jenny most of all. “You are crazy, Clint Longstreet! I mean which
one
would you like?”

“I reckon I’d like for it to be a boy. Females are cantankerous.” Clint shook his head solemnly but gave a sly wink to Lewis and Clay. “Always out to rob a man of his freedom. Why, you just look at me. Here I didn’t have a care in the world, and now this woman’s got me all tied down with a marriage license. And now she’s started the first of what’ll be a passel of young’uns. Why, I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“You look like you’re handling it pretty well to me,” Clay said, smiling. His ideas of marriage had changed greatly since he had come to know the Winslows. The marriage of Missouri and Lewis was so solid and real that it changed his mind about second marriages. He also had watched Hannah and Clint carefully. Clint, he knew, was a man somewhat like himself, tough and hard in a sense, but Clint Longstreet was obviously deeply in love with Hannah. His every gesture showed it, and he constantly brought small gifts to her. Not large things but just any kind of gift made Hannah’s eyes glow.

Kat suddenly piped up. “I’ve been thinking of a wife for Clay.”

Clay said quickly, “Now, Kat, that’s just foolishness. We were just playing a game.”

“Game, my foot!” Kat objected. Her lips tightened, and she stared at Clay. “Why, we already settled that!”

“Who are the candidates, Kat?” Lewis asked quickly, enjoying Clay’s discomfort. He listened as Kat named them off, then said, “Well, that’s a good start. Maybe the rest of us could help a bit. There’s Mrs. Freeman. She’s a widow with three children. The oldest just thirteen. That’d be a good deal for you, Clay. She’s a very pleasant woman, and you got a family all made without the trouble that goes with it.”

Missouri snorted. She was putting a huge dollop of mashed potatoes on Lewis’s plate and shook the spoon under his nose. “Lewis Winslow, don’t be foolish! Why, she wouldn’t be a fit wife for Clay.”

“Why not?” Lewis protested. “She’s got that nice farm all paid for. Clay would just have to move in.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have me,” Clay said, grinning. “Is she particular?”

“Particular! Why, she’s tried to get every man that came within a broomstick’s length of her,” Hannah snapped. “I wish you would leave Clay alone.”

“Well, I’m just tryin’ to help,” Kat said. She bit off an enormous bite of fried chicken and began mumbling something.

“Don’t try to talk with your mouth full.”

Kat swallowed the chicken and then pointed the bone at Jenny. “I always wanted Mr. Clay to marry Jenny, but she’s going to marry Luke.”

Jenny’s face grew red. “Kat, you close your mouth this instant! I am
not
engaged to Luke!”

“Well, you’re just as good as. He asked you to marry him, didn’t he? And you didn’t say no.”

“Now, that’s enough,” Missouri said quickly, seeing Jenny’s embarrassment. “There’ll be no more talk like this.”

A rather awkward silence fell about the table, and Jenny raised her head to look across at Clay and found him watching her. Ever since he had been shot and she had feared he might die, something stirred in her every time she looked at him. Even now as he held her gaze, she knew that soon she would have to either put him out of her mind or—quickly she shifted her thoughts, unwilling to finish them, and concentrated on the food. Throughout the rest of the meal, however, she felt Clay’s eyes on her, and though she tried to avoid them, found herself looking back at him. The bullet wound had been painful but not critical. Now Clay’s face had resumed its healthy coloring, and the masculine strength that glowed from him was as powerful as ever. She could not help thinking of how her heart had contracted and seemed to freeze when she had seen his face pale as old ivory and his chest bloody on the table in the hospital. Even now she knew that this man had entered her world and made an impression on her that she could not put aside.

Finally the meal was over, and Kat announced it was time to go to the pageant rehearsal.

“It’s too cold for me to go out,” Lewis said. “Clint, would you mind taking her?”

“Oh, I’ll do it,” Clay said quickly. “You’d like to see it, wouldn’t you, Jenny?”

Jenny hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, you’ll have to bundle
Jamie up, though. It’s cold, and the heater’s not working right in the car.”

“We’ll make out,” Clay said.

Missouri Ann Winslow watched the two. They seemed stiff and awkward around each other, but there was an insight in the woman that saw beneath the surface. She watched Clay as he helped Jenny on with her coat and noted that he half reached out to straighten her collar, then drew his hand back quickly when she turned her head. “You can stay as late as you please,” Missouri said. “We’ll wait up for you.”

****

The air was freezing, and more snow was falling. It was one of the coldest Decembers that Millington Wheeler could remember, and as he stood outside the church, he stamped his feet to get some feeling back into them. He was wearing his heaviest overcoat, but the icy breath of the wind had numbed his ears. His wife had brought their two grandchildren to pageant practice at Bethel Church, but Millington had refused to go in with them. He had not, as a matter of fact, attended church for two weeks now. He had not been able to explain this to his wife, for he could not explain it to himself.

Now standing outside the church and listening to the muted singing, he tried to put the thoughts of his wrongdoing out of his mind, but it was there imbedded in him like a hook. He had not slept well recently, and he dreaded waking up in the morning, for even as he put on a mask and went about his work during the day, his heart was somehow dismal, and over all of it was laid a fear he had never known before.

“I’ve
got
to get out of this mess!” he muttered. The snow bit at his face as the wind carried it in a gust that dusted the lightest flakes against the heavier crust. “I can’t go on with it anymore—but how can I do it? I’ll be bankrupt. I’ll lose the house and everything else—and I’m too old to start over again.”

The sounds of singing came to him, and he made out the
words, “O come, all ye faithful, joyous and triumphant . . .” The words seemed to pierce him, for he could not remember the last time he had been joyous. Looking back over his life as he stood in the numbing cold, he realized afresh that he was not a man who knew God. He had tried hard enough. He had prayed. He had joined the church. He had even become a deacon at the urging of the pastor. But all the years that had followed, he had felt somehow like an impostor. And even now the thought ran through him,
A man can learn how to play a part. He can even learn to say prayers out loud and to talk the talk, but there’s something in other people that’s not in me.
A cry seemed to rise up in him, and he was startled to find tears filling his eyes. He was not a man to weep, but this was not the first time in recent days that tears had overtaken him.

Finally the cold became unbearable, and Millington walked toward the church. He opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door silently behind him. Then he stepped across the foyer. The church was dark except for the lights now over the scene that had been created for the pageant. He had seen it before many times, the fake trees and the manger, the shepherds in the field. He saw the young boys, most of them wearing bathrobes with towels wrapped around their heads and carrying crooks that had been made by Tim Sullivan, the carpenter.
They don’t look much like Palestinian shepherds,
Millington thought, but then suddenly he heard a voice quoting from the Scripture. He had heard the Christmas story and read it so many times that it had become fixed in his memory, but somehow the words now seemed to pierce him:

At the instant the voice quoted the last verse, and the words “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” were spoken, Millington Wheeler experienced something he was never able to explain afterward. A terrible fear came upon him. He was not easily frightened, but suddenly he saw himself standing on the brink of an abyss about to be plunged down into infinite and eternal darkness. At that moment he believed the Scripture, and for the first time in his life, hell became absolutely real to him. “I’m lost—I’m lost!” he cried. Without another word he turned and blindly left the church. He hurried away, but the verse came to him again as clearly in his mind as if it were spoken aloud.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
Wheeler was walking rapidly away from the church through the snowy fields and suddenly he could bear it no longer. He fell on his knees in the snow and cried out aloud with a voice filled with agony, “Oh, I have no savior! God Almighty, I throw myself on your mercy—I ask you to save me! Change my heart, and let that savior who was born in that stable be
my
savior!”

The whistling wind carried the words of the agonized Wheeler only a few feet as he knelt there pouring out his heart in the darkness. He never knew afterward how long he had knelt there, but he always knew one thing: at that moment in that snowstorm as he knelt on the hard crust of snow, something changed for him forever. He heard no voice. He had no vision. But into his heart there came a peace he had never known in all his life. He continued to kneel with his head bowed for some time. Then finally, knees shaking, he got up. He expected the peace to leave, but it seemed to glow within him, and despite the cold night air, he felt a great warmth in his spirit. He looked up into the heavens, and the
snow bit at his face. Aloud he said, “Oh, God, I feel you’ve done something in my heart. You have saved me! And I will serve you and be obedient to you for the rest of my life!”

****

“Why, Millington, come in!” Judge Dwight Hightower stepped back and surprise washed over his face as Wheeler came inside. He closed the door, then said, “What brings you out on a night like this? Come on into my study.”

“No need for that. I’ll say what I have to say right here. It won’t take long.”

Hightower instantly narrowed his eyes and stared into Wheeler’s face. He saw that the man’s face was pale, but whether with cold or some other emotion he could not tell. “What’s the matter, Wheeler?”

“I’ve come by to tell you that I’m out.”

“What do you mean, you’re out?”

“I mean, I’ll have no more to do with Vito Canelli or with you, at least as far as this bootlegging thing is concerned.”

Alarm ran through Hightower, for he saw trouble ahead as a man in the prow of a ship sees an iceberg looming unexpectedly. “Come on. We’ve got to talk about this. It’s not that simple. You can’t just back away from those boys in Chicago.”

“You probably won’t understand this, Judge, but I might as well tell you now. Something happened to me tonight, and I know only one thing. I’m not going to do anything that would displease God if I can possibly help it. I know that may sound odd to you after what I’ve been, but I’m going to be a different man from now on. I’ll take no more money, and you can just cross my name off the list.”

Judge Dwight Hightower was usually good with words, but at this moment he found himself speechless as Wheeler continued to talk. “I’m going to be God’s man. I hope you will be someday too, Dwight. You’re going down the wrong road just like I was, and there’s but one end to it. I gave my heart to Jesus Christ tonight, and I urge you to do the same.”
Wheeler hesitated, then nodded with a “Good-night.” He put his hat on, opened the door, and shut it firmly behind him.

Hightower stood as if stunned, and then thoughts began to race through his mind. He made his way back to his study, shaken by the encounter, and began to pace the floor. “He
can’t
pull out! Canelli won’t let him. Once you’re in with those men the only way you leave is feet first.”

For half an hour Hightower tried to think of a way out, but finally he sat down and picked up the phone. He waited for the operator, then said, “I want to call Chicago, and I want to speak to Vito Canelli.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

There’s Always a Harvest

Helen Wheeler looked up as her husband entered the room. She was embroidering a piece, but at the sight of his face she put the embroidery aside and asked, “What is it, Mill?” She was the only one who called him by this shortened version of his name, and now as she watched him, she was puzzled. “You’ve been so different the last two days.”

“I guess I am different, Helen.” Wheeler stood there for a moment, then came over and sat down beside her. He turned to her and said, “I’ve got a confession to make that I know is going to hurt you.”

Helen Wheeler’s first thought was
He’s found somebody else!
She could not find words for a moment; then she said, “What is it? You’ve been so quiet the last two days. I know you’ve been thinking on something.”

Wheeler had waited for two days, not speaking to anyone about the experience he had had outside the church when he knelt in the snow. He had gone to the office only rarely but had sought out solitude and had read the Scripture and prayed more than he had in his entire life. His great fear had been that he would lose the peace that had come to him when he had called upon God. But it had not gone away. He felt a joy that could not have been of this world, and the peace was something he had only heard about. He had underlined the Scripture where Jesus had said,
My peace I give unto you.
Now, after two days, he was convinced that he indeed had found the Lord, but as he sat looking into his wife’s troubled
eyes, he knew that hard things lay ahead. The thought came to him,
A man can be forgiven, but some of the results of his acts are still there. There’s always a harvest.