In Search of Eden, page 32
“I’m wanting to start the new roof next, and then I need to see about jacking up the foundation of the lodge and shoring up the floor joists,” he said as he approached.
“I can’t believe all you’ve accomplished,” Ruth said, her eyes tearing up. “This is more than I ever imagined.” She sat down on the porch steps and looked out over the lake, and she was seeing the crowds of children whose lives had been changed here. “This has been a holy place,” she murmured.
Johnny looked sober. “I can feel that as I work here,” he said.
Then Ruth knew as clearly as she’d ever known anything in her life that this was what God wanted. For this place to be restored. She had a picture in her mind of new crowds of children jostling and shouting in the lake, sitting in the chapel, and clattering in the dining hall. She knew it no matter what her son might say. And she had a clear feeling that Johnny Adair was to be an integral part of the plan.
“I want you to finish fixing this place up, Johnny,” she said, looking directly into his face.
He gave her an uncomfortable look. “Ruth, the work I’ve done so far I could do alone, and it’s been fairly inexpensive. To do more will involve other people and more money.”
“I want to do it,” she repeated. “I’ve got a lot of equity in my house and in this land. I’ll take out a line of credit to pay for it.”
He looked doubtful. “And then what?”
“You could stay here,” she said. “Between your construction skills and my experience, we could run it. And you and I would be in ministry again. Doing something of eternal value.”
She expected him to withdraw from her wild suggestion, but he did not. His face grew wistful and he looked out over the lake as if he, too, were seeing crowds of children and another kind of life for himself.
“That sounds sweet,” he said. “Like a sweet dream.”
“It doesn’t have to be a dream. It can be reality.”
He sighed, then turned to her with a glint in his eye. “Well, then, you’re going to need bigger work done than porches and windows. You’ll need wiring, plumbing, foundation work. I can get some of my friends to do it at cut rates, but I’ll need to be your designated contractor.”
“Fine,” she said.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” he said.
She thought of her money, sitting in the bank, buried instead of doing what it was intended to do. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.”
“I’ll arrange for the subcontractors, then,” he said, “and get the papers drawn up.”
She took out her checkbook. “How much have you spent here?”
“No,” he said. “I absolutely refuse.”
They quibbled back and forth for a while. She finally wrote him a check for five hundred dollars, which he said was too much.
“Use it to buy new materials for the new projects, then. Now, I’m hungry. Let’s get those ribs going.”
“They’re browning even as we speak,” he said.
“I brought some things to go along,” she said. “Some corn and a cake.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” He smiled.
They ate. They chatted. After the delicious supper, Johnny made a fire in the fire pit, and the children roasted marshmallows. He disappeared inside the camper and returned with a violin case.
“Oh, you’re going to play for us,” Ruth exclaimed, delighted. Even Grady and Eden stopped their antics long enough to listen.
He took out the violin and adjusted the strings, rosined the bow, then lifted it to his chin and played. He began with “Turkey in the Straw.” He was a magnificent violinist—“fiddle player,” he corrected her when she complimented him. He followed with the “Orange Blossom Special,” making all the train noises with the fiddle, to their delight. He quieted them with “Amazing Grace” and finished with “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” the last notes quivering with emotion.
Ruth was silent afterward. The children went to steal a few more minutes of play.
“You know Him, don’t you?” Ruth asked quietly.
Johnny gave a twisted smile. “We used to be on speaking terms. I’m not sure anymore.”
“He’ll never walk away from you,” Ruth said.
“I know that,” he said.
“May I pray for you?” she asked quietly.
Johnny looked surprised, then troubled.
“It’s all right if you’d rather not,” she said.
“No. I’d like to pray with you,” Johnny said.
Ruth closed her eyes and cleared her mind of the distractions of the day. “Thank you, Father,” she said softly, “for my brother Johnny. Thank you for his life. For his quiet faithfulness. Thank you for his loving heart and his desire to see your will accomplished for himself and his son and for the others that you will touch through him. I pray that your mighty hand would rest upon him.” She hesitated, waiting for more, but that was all. “Amen,” she said.
She looked up, but instead of the peaceful expression she’d expected to see on his face, she was surprised to find him looking even more troubled than before. It would seem her words had not comforted him at all.
chapter 44
*
By the middle of the next week Miranda had recovered somewhat from the trip to West Virginia. The emotional impact had been so great that she had needed a few days before she could begin to sort out the information the visit had garnered. There was really only one lead that might help her in her quest to know who her mother would have trusted with the baby. On Wednesday during her break she called Mrs. Tallert and asked for the name of the minister who had pastored the church at Thurmond where Noreen and Bobbie had gone.
“It was a Baptist church,” Mrs. Tallert said. “Pastor’s name was . . . let me think . . . yes, it was Webb.”
On her lunch hour she went to the library and found that there were hundreds of Webbs in West Virginia. She called the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists and got lucky when the woman she spoke to gave her the pastor’s full name and the location of his last church assignment. Harold Webb had last pastored Calvary Hill Baptist Church in Mingo County.
She had returned to work and could barely stand it until her afternoon break. She stood now on the sidewalk with her cell phone outside the Hasty Taste, the hot, humid summer enveloping her, and felt a chill as the secretary of that church said yes, she knew Pastor Webb and yes, she knew where he was.
“He’s living in the Baptist rest home in Bluefield,” she said. “He’s in poor health, but his mind is good.”
Miranda’s hands were shaking as she hung up the phone and went back inside the Hasty Taste to finish her shift.
“You look like you seen a ghost,” Venita said when she went inside.
“Not yet, but I’m getting close,” she answered cryptically and made plans to travel back to West Virginia as soon as her shift was through.
Miranda left for Bluefield at two o’clock. She didn’t bother to change clothes, just got into the car and left after hastily printing out MapQuest directions on the library computer. She felt vaguely guilty not inviting Joseph along or at least telling him where she was going, but he would be at work. Besides, this really was her quest. Joseph wouldn’t always be around to hold her hand. And this, she reminded herself, was the reason she had come. Not to meet Joseph. Not to play with Eden. Not to pretend that Ruth was her mother to or serve pancakes and eggs at the Hasty Taste. She had come to find her baby, and this was the next step.
The trip to Bluefield was uneventful and without the dark drama of the other two trips. The town was just on the West Virginia/Virginia border, not far and deep in the woods. She drove for an hour and a half, then followed the MapQuest directions to the rest home. It was a nice brick building, sprawled on a good-sized lot with well-manicured grounds. She parked the car and went in, signed the guest book, then asked for Reverend Webb. The receptionist gave her the room number, and she walked down the corridors as directed.
The floors were clean and polished, the doors decorated with flowered wreaths, but there was still a faint institutional air. It wasn’t a home, no matter how hard they tried to make it seem like one. Still, it was nicer than most. She stopped at the door to 1015, peeked inside, and tapped on the door.
An old white-haired man was dozing in a chair, the television on in front of him. It was a private room and obviously filled with quite a few of his own furnishings.
She went in and spoke softly. There was no answer from Reverend Webb but another deep breath.
An aide came in just then, a sweet-faced woman who looked at her merrily. “Honey, when he’s sleeping, a train whistle won’t wake him.” She took his arm and gave him a gentle shake. “Reverend Webb, there’s somebody here to see you.”
He roused and, after a minute of reorientation, his eyes fell on her.
“I’m Miranda DeSpain, Reverend Webb,” she said. She spoke at a normal volume and was pleased when he seemed to hear her well.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Are you from the business office?”
“No, sir,” she answered. “I don’t work here.”
He nodded but looked confused. She explained her visit. “Mrs. Ada Tallert gave me your name and said you might be able to help me with something.”
“My,” he said, looking surprised, “that’s a name I haven’t heard in years. Ada Tallert. Sit down,” he invited. “How is Ada?”
“I think she’s well,” Miranda answered, perching on the edge of his bed. “She was living with her granddaughter. I went by to see her last weekend.”
Reverend Webb gazed past her head, and she knew he was moving through scenes from the past.
“What’s your name again?” he asked.
“Miranda. Miranda DeSpain.”
“And what’s your connection with Ada Tallert?”
“I was looking for information about my mother,” Miranda said. “She lived in Thurmond, and I understand she attended your church.”
“That was a long time ago,” he said. “But I’ll try to help you if I can.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. “Her name was Noreen Gibson.”
The pastor brought his eyes from the distance and focused them on her. He nodded sadly. “One of Beck Maddux’s girls.”
“That’s right,” she said, and a shiver passed over her like a dark cloud.
“Now that you tell me, I can see it,” he said. “You’re the image of her except for the dark hair. She had blond hair. Not white like Beck’s but lighter than yours.”
Another fact she had never known. Her mother’s hair had been dyed red for as long as she could remember. Now that she knew more about Mama’s life, she wondered if her mother had dyed her hair so she would have no visible reminders of her father. She smiled at Reverend Webb. “I’ve been told that I favor her,” she said.
He rubbed his hand over his cheek. “You do.” He looked carefully at her face, then shook his head. “That was a sad business,” he said. “All around.”
She took in a deep breath and let it out. “Reverend Webb, about ten or eleven years ago, did my mother contact you or your wife?”
He frowned, and she waited, not breathing. He shook his head. “My wife died fifteen years ago, and I haven’t heard from or seen Noreen since the day she ran off with that young man.”
Miranda felt hope sink down then. Like a great slab of iron let go in her chest, it sank down to her stomach and settled on the bottom.
“My mother had an important decision to make about the time I mentioned,” she finally managed to get out. “All we know is that she turned to someone she said she trusted. If it wasn’t you, do you know who that person might have been?” she asked.
Reverend Webb’s head shook, whether from palsy or intention, she couldn’t tell. “I don’t believe there was anyone who cared two figs for those girls save Ada Tallert and the folks in the church. Certainly not their daddy, may God have mercy on his soul.”
“How many were in your church?” she asked. “Do you suppose I could find the membership records?”
He shook his head. “Church burned down, but everybody’s gone now, anyway. Moved away or died. I wouldn’t know how to find any of them. I don’t expect your mama would have been able to, either.”
“You can’t think of anyone she trusted besides Mrs. Tallert and your wife?”
He shook his head again. “They were forsaken by man, those girls. But loved by God.”
Miranda’s eyes filled with tears. For her mother and Aunt Bobbie. For her baby. For herself.
“Have I helped you?” he asked, the cloudiness returning to his eyes. “I want to if I can.”
“You’ve helped,” she said. “You told me the truth. Thank you.”
“Let me pray for you before you leave,” Reverend Webb said.
She bowed her head. He put his shaky hand on top of it and prayed over her in formal King James English. A jumble of words that her mind could barely take in, but she felt the warm pressure of his hand. “Amen,” he finally said, and she raised her head.
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and drove back to Abingdon in a fog, staring straight ahead but seeing the door to her hopes close slowly and finally. This, she knew, was the end of the trail. Every other avenue had fizzled out. This had been the last hope, and now it was gone. She would have to find a way to put this all behind her, but that would be very hard if she continued living here, knowing she was so close but not able to reach what she longed for. Perhaps the time had arrived, she thought. Perhaps it was time to start thinking about leaving.
Yet, she did not leave. She stayed, a sweet inertia taking hold of her like a deep dream from which she was loath to wake. Her summer rolled on like the gently folding fields and pastures around her, like a lazily flowing stream on which she floated, enjoying the scenery as it passed by. She worked at the Hasty Taste and learned all the regulars’ names. She cleaned the funeral home and met the families of the people they buried. She spoke words of comfort and received their hugs and patted their hands. She walked the Creeper Trail and learned to recognize the flowers. She made careful drawings of them and pasted them in her scrapbook—blue violets and wild columbine, fire pinks and foamflowers, stonecrop and winter cress.
She and Joseph walked together to Damascus and back on a sun-baked Saturday morning. She fished with him in his secret place on Glen Cove Stream and caught a good-sized trout with a lure from his tackle box. She wore his waders and nearly sank. They laughed like children.
Every Wednesday and Saturday she shopped at the farmers’ market. Ruth taught her how to make a pie crust. Each Saturday evening she joined Ruth and Eden and Joseph for music in the park. She helped Ruth weed and prepare her gardens for the annual garden tour. On the Fourth of July she played games and dunked Joseph by throwing a softball at a bull’s-eye, then sat beside him afterward and watched the fireworks change the dark sky into confetti.
She got a library card. She was invited to Venita’s daughter’s baby shower. She went to church. Joseph, looking a bit sheepish, testified for her at her traffic violation court date, and the case was dismissed. She had coffee with Pastor Hector three times, and the last time they talked about Jesus. She wrote in her journal about people she was getting to know and who was seeing whom and whose daughter was having a baby and recipes and quilt patterns, and she bought some watercolors and started painting again. These were real things of real life instead of pictures of foreign cities and people.
She sat among Joseph’s family in their pew on Sunday mornings and ate with them afterward, and after a while she forgot she was only pretending to belong here. But every now and then something would make her remember why she had come. Something would tap on her heart and warn her to pull the shutters tight and batten down the doors. A storm would eventually come, the inner voice said, and when it did, she would not be ready with every door flung open like this and her arms stretched out wide.
chapter 45
*
Henry looked at Joseph with incredulity. “Strike while the iron is hot,” he said. “The early bird catches the worm. Time and tide wait for no man. Do you know what all these expressions have in common?”
Joseph nodded wearily, but Henry didn’t give him a chance to answer. “They all mean get off your duff and make something happen!”
Joseph grinned. Henry shook his head. “It’s no laughing matter, son. This gal has been around nearly three months now. It’s already July. It’s obvious to everyone who sees you that you’re two peas in a pod, and you haven’t asked her out on a date yet?”
“We’ve done things together.”
“Son, do I need to draw you a picture? Fishing is one thing. Walking is another. But when you fix yourself up and take a woman out for an evening on the town, you’re stating your intentions. Isn’t it about time you did that? You shuffle and stutter around much longer, and she’s likely to up and leave or take up with somebody else while you’re still picking your moment.”
Joseph sighed. “All right. All right.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’d already decided to invite her to dinner this weekend.”
“Well, then. That’s more like it. Where are you taking her?”
“The Pepper Mill,” he began, but Henry was already shaking his head.
“No, son. You’ve got some lost time to make up for. I’m talking suit and tie and flowers and the nicest table at Caroline’s and reservations at the theater afterward. And a walk in the park after that. I’m talking wine and dine. We need to get this party started, as the young folks say.”
Joseph laughed. “Henry, I never knew you were such a romantic.”
