The Winds of Autumn
The Winds
of
Autumn
S
EASONS OF THE
H
EART
#2
JANETTE
OKE
The Winds
of
Autumn
The Winds of Autumn
Copyright © 1987
Janette Oke
Cover design by Dan Pitts
Cover photography by Aimee Christenson
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oke, Janette, 1935–
The winds of autumn / Janette Oke.
p. cm. — (Seasons of the heart ; no. 2)
ISBN 978-0-7642-0801-0 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PR9199.3.O38W55 2010
813'.54—dc22
2010004150
With love
to my Uncle Ralph Steeves,
just because
he’s special.
JANETTE OKE was born in Champion, Alberta, to a Canadian prairie farmer and his wife, and she grew up in a large family full of laughter and love. She is a graduate of Mountain View Bible College in Alberta, where she met her husband, Edward, and they were married in May of 1957. After pastoring churches in Indiana and Canada, the Okes spent some years in Calgary, where Edward served in several positions on college faculties while Janette continued her writing. She has written forty-eight novels for adults and another sixteen for children, and her book sales total nearly thirty million.
The Okes have three sons and one daughter, all married, and are enjoying their fifteen grandchildren. Edward and Janette are active in their local church and make their home near Didsbury, Alberta.
C
ONTENTS
Chapter 13
Good Old-Fashioned School Days?
Chapter 15
Questions and Answers
Chapter 23
Picking Up the Pieces
C
HARACTERS
Joshua Chadwick Jones
—After Josh’s parents were killed in an accident while he was still a baby, he was raised by his grandfather and his great uncle Charlie on the family farm. Though Aunt Lou was not many years older than Josh, being a latecomer to the Jones family, she also took delight in caring for young Josh, and he saw her as a friend and a mother rather than an aunt.
Lou Jones Crawford
—Josh’s aunt whom he had fought to keep with the family unit in
Once Upon a Summer
. Pretty and vivacious, yet with deep concern for others, Lou is a fitting helpmate for the young minister she married.
Grandpa
—the grandfather of Joshua and father of Lou.
Uncle Charlie
—the quiet yet supportive brother of Grandpa. He never married but worked along with Grandpa on his farm.
Gramps
—Josh’s great-grandfather who came west to live with his two sons, his granddaughter Lou, and great-grandson Joshua after the death of his wife.
Nat Crawford
—the young pastor Lou married. Josh now spends his weeks in town with Lou and Nat in order to continue his education in the town school.
Pixie
—the answer to Josh’s dream for a dog of his own. She was given to Josh by Gramps, who went to great effort to find Josh a second puppy after his first pup was accidentally killed.
I
DON’T REMEMBER
a prettier fall than the one we had the year I was fifteen. The long Indian summer days stretched on into October with only enough sprinkles of rain to keep the flowers blooming in Aunt Lou’s flower beds and the lawn green enough to contrast with the yellows and golds of the autumn trees and bushes. Even the leaves seemed reluctant to “tuck in” for the winter and kept clinging to the branches week after week in all their fine, colorful array. The sun warmed up the air by noon each day, and the nights were just nippy enough to remind us that we’d best be spending our time getting ready for winter instead of loafing along beside the crik, pretending that this good weather would stay with us forever.
The farmers in the area took in all the crops, the women cleaned out their large farm gardens, we stayed loafing by the crik whenever we could, and still the good weather held. People started talking summer picnics and parties again, but I guess no one wanted to exert themselves enough to do the fixing, for the days went by and no one actually had a picnic—we all just sat around in the sun or took long, lazy walks through the colorful countryside.
As you probably have figured out by now, my favorite place was down by the crik. I took my fishing pole and headed there every chance I got. Most often Gramps, my great-grandfather, went along with me. He likes fishing—and loafing—most as much as I do. The only thing that got in the way of my fishing trips was school. Most all the area boys my age had given up on school and gone off to farm with their pa’s or to work in a store or something, but I still hung in there.
Part of it was due to my aunt Lou encouraging me a lot. She was sure I had a good head and kept telling me that it would be a waste, should I not use it. Her husband, my uncle Nat, chimed right in there with her. Since he was the parson in our little town church, I felt that if anyone knew the importance of education, my uncle Nat would be the man. He had gotten his the hard way, having to work his way through school and seminary on accounta he didn’t have a ma or pa to see him through, them having died when he was still quite young.
Me, I had it easy. I not only had Lou and Nat but I had Grandpa, a great-uncle Charlie and my Gramps, my greatgrandpa. All of them were right keen on me getting all the education I could.
It wasn’t a problem to me. In fact, I really liked book learning, even if our school wasn’t a very big one and most of the students were young kids or girls. Oh, a few of the boys still attended—like my best friend, Avery Garret. He didn’t care too much for school and didn’t know what he wanted to do with any schooling that he did get. I figured he just continued on because I was there—and, then, there was a certain amount of fun to be had at school. I mean, with all the girls still going and all.
Then there was Jack Berry. His pa was bound and determined that Jack would be a doctor. Jack wasn’t so sure. Truth was, he kinda had his heart set on being a sailor. Only there wasn’t any water handy-like, any big water that is. So he didn’t know just how he was going to manage to get on a boat—at least a boat any bigger than the rough-looking little two-oar one left down on the small pond near the town for anyone’s use who might want to do some rowing.
Willie Corbin was still going to school, too. I wanta tell you about that Willie. He was the biggest rascal in our community when he was younger. Used to get himself in all kinds of trouble. Folks thought that he never would amount to anything but most likely end up in some jail or something. Me, I knew that Willie wasn’t really bad; he just liked to have fun, that was all. But that all changed when Willie decided he’d rather spend his future in heaven than hell.
This happened way back after my uncle Nat preached his first sermon in our church. He had just been asked to be our new minister. Willie straightened himself right around and never did go back to his wild ways. I figured if God could make such a change in the likes of Willie Corbin, then He ought to be able to handle almost anyone. Anyway, Willie about had his mind made up that God wanted him to be a missionary. Willie found studying rather hard, but one had to admire him. He kept plugging away at it, determined to prepare himself for some kind of work with heathen people somewhere.
Those were the three fellows from my old country school who were still hanging in there. Then there were four older guys from town. We all hung around together, but I spent most of the time with my old buddies, mostly I guess because they were also from our small church. A couple of the town fellas were a little “wild,” according to Aunt Lou, and though she didn’t forbid me to see them or anything like that, still she did prefer me to make close friends with the church young folks.
I didn’t complain. I liked the church kids and we had us a lot of fun with our corn roasting, sleigh riding, skating on the pond and such.
It seemed hard to believe that me and Pixie, my little dog, had already been two years with Aunt Lou and Uncle Nat in town. We didn’t stay in town all the time. Whenever the weather was good—and as I said, it was good most of the time that fall— we went on out to the farm for the weekend to spend time with Grandpa, Uncle Charlie and Gramps, who batched together there.
I would have been hard put to try to say which place I liked best. While I was in town during the week I counted the days till the weekend when I could get back out on the farm again and chop some wood, or go to the pasture for Bossie, the milk cow I had milked so many times myself. I even enjoyed the squealing and grunting of the pigs as I sloshed the slop into their troughs. The chickens seemed to sort of sing their clucking when I poured out their water and grain.
Then as soon as Sunday night came around, I found myself hardly able to wait to get back to town and Aunt Lou and Uncle Nat again. I wondered what Aunt Lou had fixed for Sunday dinner and if she’d saved a piece of pie or an apple dumpling for me. I wondered if Uncle Nat had been called out on some sick call and I hadn’t been there to harness Dobbin for him. I thought of all kinds of things that I wanted to ask them or tell them when I got back. You’d think I’d been gone for days the way I chomped to get back again. The truth was, I had just seen both of them at the church service that very morning.
So that was the way I spent the fall, going back and forth, back and forth, and trying to grab the best of two worlds with both hands, so to speak. I would have tired myself plumb out if it hadn’t been such a long, lazy-feeling kind of fall. Even after every lick of work was done, we still had us lots of good weather for catching up on just loafing around.
Only one thing wrong with that kind of weather. It sure made it hard to concentrate on studying. I had to take myself in hand every other day, it seemed, and just make myself sit down and study. And then another strange thing happened. Miss Williams, a maiden lady who had been teaching in our school for almost forever, went and threw in a surprise that nearly rocked the whole community. She was getting married, she said, just like that!