One Mountain Away. Emilie Richards

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ burley tobacco to Raleigh. Preaching is something he does on the side, for the sake of the Lord.

      The guest preacher farms tobacco, too, but his is as sorry as his sermons, so it isn’t likely he’ll need a truck or a trip any time in the near future. He’s as scrawny as a cornstalk in a drought, and he drools when he shouts, so now his chin glistens.

      I wriggle on the unpadded bench to get blood flowing to my backside. The service started with hymns, then the preacher demanded we stop singing so he could preach—which he’s been doing forever. I worry we’ll be here another hour or more.

      And while we listen to Preacher Pittman’s substitute fumble with words, what will Hearty Hale be doing?

      It’s as hot inside as it would be if we were standing full in the sunshine. All week the church is closed up, and it takes more than half an hour to suck out the heat before services. The building sits to the side of a country road, and there’s no electricity for fans, although we have a woodstove for winter. Windows dot the walls to let in what breeze can be had, but we have no screens. Wasps fly in and out and circle the freshly washed heads of worshipers.

      I have nothing to do except think about the words that brought me so fully awake. I can’t picture a God who not only knows when everybody on earth is going to die, but keeps track of the information, too. I wonder if He makes notes, or if He can just snap His fingers and call up whatever He needs in an instant.

      I imagine God pointing and shouting, “You over there, your day’ll be July 17, 1977, and not an hour later! And if I was you, I wouldn’t bother taking out pork chops when you get up that morning. You won’t be needing them.”

      When I giggle, Gran pokes me with her elbow. I look for something else to occupy my mind. I settle on a girl who’s two years ahead of me in school and two rows in front of me now. She has white-blond hair, wispy and fine, and she’s pulled it back from her face with a black velvet hair band that has a bow on the side, anchored with a cluster of rhinestones. Her name is Sally Klaver, and she lives not far away, in a brand-new house, brought in by truck and set right down on a slab of concrete. The house is the color of a creek bottom, with a porch in front, just big enough for a pot of flowers and a doormat with Welcome printed nice and proper on it.

      The old house, where Sally used to live, is still standing back behind some trees, but it’s boarded up now, and most likely full of mice and hornets’ nests. Sally’s daddy runs cattle and fattens more from his acres of corn. Mr. Klaver grows more tobacco than anybody else in the vicinity. I wonder what that would be like, having a house nobody else ever lived in, having enough cattle to eat beefsteak every night, having money to just walk into a store and buy a velvet headband whenever I felt like it.

      I’m not just tired of sitting, I’m tired of worrying, too. This morning our neighbors, Bill Johnston and his wife, picked up Gran and me as we walked down the road on our way to church. Gran squeezed into the cab, and I settled myself in the back of the truck, making a little nest on an old piece of canvas to keep my dress from getting dirty.

      I was glad to sit in the open. As we bumped over the dirt road I watched out for my father, but I never saw a sign of his truck or him. I’m not worried something’s happened to Hearty. I’m not even hoping it has, at least not while I’m sitting in church, because it’s possible God listens a little harder here, and wishing your father would keel over dead might get you in trouble.

      Right now I just want to know where Hearty Hale is this morning, and whether he’s going to make Gran or me that much more miserable later.

      The preacher finally wears down and stops, slamming his Bible one more time against the pulpit as he shouts “Amen.” The girl who’s playing the piano leaps to her feet and throws herself across the bench, as if she’s afraid he might change his mind.

      In a moment we’re all singing “On Jordan’s Banks,” and the preacher is exhorting sinners to come forward and make a commitment to Jesus. I figure everybody’s as hot and cranky as me, because today only a few straggle forward, as if afraid the preacher will keep shouting until supper time if they don’t.

      After the last chorus I shake down my skirt and admire the lace adorning the hem. My grandmother added the lace by hand to “prettify” my dress, something she made over from one my own mother wore as a girl.

      When I was younger I might have been thrilled at this connection to Thalia Hale, but now I’m not so sure. My mother died of pneumonia just one month after giving birth to me, her only child, and with ten years to consider it, I’ve decided it’s likely Thalia thought the best way to get away from Hearty and her squalling baby girl was to cross the river Jordan as swiftly as possible.

      I wish that weren’t true, but even Gran admits she indulged the sickly young Thalia shamelessly, and forever after Thalia did exactly what she pleased. Gran’s told me pretty stories of baby birds my mother rescued, poems she learned and songs she sang, but nobody else has ever said a good word about Thalia in my presence. And I’ve been paying close attention.

      Around me now people are moving into clusters, most pausing near windows or the door, catching up on the week’s gossip while they try to catch a breeze. Gran will linger. Despite the sorry state of the Sawyer farm—which is what everybody in Trust calls our home place—and the sorry state of her son-in-law, the local people respect Gran and wish her well. As far as they can, they do whatever they’re able to be neighborly, just as long as it doesn’t involve helping Hearty Hale.

      “Lottie Lou…” Sally Klaver of the velvet headband rounds the corner of her pew and heads straight for me. “Weren’t that just awful? Him going on and on like that? I wish we’d gone over to Marshall. They got air-conditioning at the church there, but my daddy says we have to come here sometimes, too, so people don’t forget who we are.”

      I figure nobody will ever forget Sally’s family, because the Klavers will always be sure to hang their good fortune right out where everybody can see it, like a bedsheet flapping in the wind.

      “That a new dress?” Sally asks, smiling a little as her gaze drops lower.

      Despite myself I stand straighter. “My gran made it for me.”

      “I guess she made it big, so you’d get lots of wear out of it.”

      I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

      “But green’s a good color with that red hair of your’n,” Sally continues. “Of course, you got to be careful what you wear with hair like that. I’m lucky anything goes with mine. That’s what I told Ma when she brought this brand-new dress home from Charlotte. ‘Get me anything, ’cause it’ll look good on me, I reckon.’” Sally holds out the short skirt of a black-and-yellow-striped dress that looks exactly like a man’s undershirt.

      I wish with all my heart that I had one, too.

      “It’s real pretty,” I say. “And I guess she bought it big ’cause one of these days you’ll fill it out real nice.”

      Sally has narrow eyes, a little too close together, and at that, they narrow even more. “How’s that daddy of your’n? Thought I saw that truck he drives down yonder by the creek.” She flips her hand carelessly over her shoulder. “He fishing while you get right with Jesus?”

      I wonder if there’s any truth in Sally’s claim. “Could be. Hearty doesn’t answer to me.”

      “You call your father Hearty?” Sally tries to look surprised.

      “Everybody СКАЧАТЬ