The Promise of Jesse Woods (40 page)

I studied him carefully. “No, I think it’s something else.”

The longer my father waited, the more the congregation
murmured. Mrs. Talmage stood on the Blackwood side as if ready for an altar call. She was an emergency room nurse at St. Mary’s.

“Do you need help?” she said forcefully.

Another touch of his temple. “I think I just need to catch my breath,” he said, wiping his forehead. He found my mother and asked, “Please, could we sing the hymn we were going to sing after the ceremony?”

My mother rose quickly and went to the piano. The hymnal was open, everything prepared. She played the last line of “He Hideth My Soul,” as an introduction and my father said, “Excuse me” and went to his study.

People stood and pulled out hymnals and whispered. Jesse said something to Earl and he shrugged. Dutifully, the congregation followed my mother’s lead and sang the first verse as I took the long way around to the study.

Mrs. Talmage was inside, holding his wrist.

“I don’t like this one bit,” she said.

“Please, give me a moment,” my father said. “Let me speak with my son.”

She pointed a finger at him. “The sweating and the shortness of breath are classic signs of a heart attack.”

“I assure you, I don’t need a doctor.”

Mrs. Talmage retreated. As she opened the door, Gerald Grassley entered. He was as close to a right-hand man as my father ever had.

“Calvin, are you all right?”

My father nodded. “I just need a moment alone with Matt. Thank you.”

“What are you doing?” I said as Gerald closed the door again.

“Something I should have done long ago. Before today. Tell me it’s not too late to find my backbone.”

“It’s not too late to get yourself killed.”

“I asked you to do the hard thing. To sacrifice. You said you could ask me to do the same. And as I stood there today . . .”

The door opened and this time Basil Blackwood walked in with Earl close behind. “This better be good, Plumley,” Blackwood said. “If you’re sick, we can get somebody to step in.”

“I’m not sick,” my father said. “In fact, I feel surprisingly good considering what I’m about to say. And I do apologize. I take full responsibility. This is not fair to you, Earl, or to you, Basil, with all the trouble and expense you’ve gone to.”

Blackwood pushed closer, a look on his face I had seen when he spat at me as a kid. “I want you out there before they finish this song. Is that understood?”

“I understand, but I can’t marry Earl and Jesse today.”

“And why in blue blazes not?”

The door opened once more and I heard the words “He hideth my life in the depths of his love.” Jesse walked in, her veil still covering her face. Daisy pulled her train into the room and discreetly left. The small office was getting crowded.

“You all having a party without me?” Jesse said, deadpan.

I couldn’t help smiling.

“Jesse, I was just apologizing,” my father said. “I owe you one, too. I can’t finish the service.”

She took another step forward. “Are you sick?”

“No. It’s because I violated my own rule.”

“What rule is that?”

“Yeah, you never told us about no rules,” Earl said.

“I have two policies I never break. One: I will not marry a Christian and an unbeliever.” He held up a hand. “Now, I’m fully persuaded that both of you are sincere followers of Jesus. That’s not the problem.”

“This is crazy,” Blackwood muttered.

“What’s the other rule?” Earl said.

“Early on, I vowed I would never marry two people if I knew one of them loved someone else.” He glanced at me. “I believe that to be the case here.”

Blackwood charged my father. “You get out there and do what we paid you to do.”

“No,” my father said, shaking his head.

“Then you’ll never preach in this church again.”

“That may be true. Ever since I came here, you’ve reminded me how much control you have over every decision. I went along because I wanted the church to grow—I wanted to keep this position. Maybe I thought you’d change. That you’d listen to one of my sermons. But somewhere along the line I decided to just make you happy. And it’s become a full-time job. I’ve wondered what it would take to make me stand up. I guess this is it.”

Blackwood grabbed him by the shirt. “I’ll sue for every penny you got!”

My father smiled. “Pennies is exactly what you’d get. I don’t own anything, Basil, except the property my family handed down.”

“Pastor Plumley, I don’t get it,” Earl said. “Are you saying I don’t love Jesse?”

“No, I believe you do, Earl. That’s the hardest part of this. Jesse is ready to marry you. But I have a hunch she’s in love with someone else.”

Earl looked at her. “Is that true?”

Jesse had been watching the proceedings with the interest of a hungry cat waiting to pounce on a scurrying mouse. She lifted her veil and glanced at me. I shrugged as if saying,
I didn’t put him up to this.

The song ended in the sanctuary and I heard the
whomp
of the congregation being seated.

Jesse squinted at my father. “Hang on a minute, Pastor. I’ve had people decide stuff for me all my life. I been sacrificing. Scratching and clawing every day. And I won’t have you taking this away. I’ve dreamed of this since I was a little kid.”

Blackwood raised a fist. “You heard her. Get your sorry behind back out there and finish this.”

Before my father could answer, Earl spoke to Jesse, his shoulders slumped. “This is not about Pastor Plumley, though. I don’t want you saying, ‘I do’ if you don’t mean it.”

Jesse swallowed hard and glanced at my father. Before she could speak, he said, “Jesse, I’m releasing you from any promise you made the night your father died. What I asked wasn’t fair. Matt knows about it.”

“What in the sam hill are you two talking about?” Blackwood said.

“You knew?” Jesse said to me.

“I stumbled onto it.”

Jesse turned to my father and cocked her head. “So you got up there and were going to go through with this even though you thought I loved your son?”

I had never seen my father’s face so pained. “I felt trapped. And then I saw Matt sitting there.” He took off his glasses and raised a hand to his eyes. This was not an act, the emotion was real. “I asked him to sacrifice. To walk away. And I realized that wasn’t fair. I’m the only one who can make things right.”

Earl shook his head. “Well, you could have picked a better time, Pastor. I got our honeymoon tickets. I got the rings. There’s people out there who drove all the way from Point Pleasant. This ain’t right.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Jesse said, throwing down a fist. She turned from us, spinning something in her mind. “I promised my mama I would take care of my sister, and I done that. I’m proud of it. I made a promise to you, Pastor, and I kept it. I stayed away from your son. And I done sacrificed every dream I ever had to hang on to that land, though you’ve tried to rip it out from under me, Mr. Blackwood. And don’t say it’s not true because it is. So what I’m standing here wondering is, what do I get from all this promising? What happens to me and my dreams?” Her face was red.

Earl took her hand and gently held it in front of him. “Jesse, I love you. You’re going to have my child. I want to
raise that little one with you. And I don’t want nobody taking my place.”

My father and Blackwood looked stunned at the revelation. I also heard a stir from the congregation. Earl was standing close to my father and I realized his microphone was on. Why the man running sound hadn’t cut it was a mystery, but it was probably the best theater in town since
Oklahoma!
ran on network television.

I got my father’s attention and gave him the slicing neck sign. “I think they can hear us through your mic.”

My father turned off the transmitter and there was a huge click in the speaker on the other side of the wall. Someone out there said something—it sounded like Mr. Grassley. The piano began again, my mother playing the introduction to “And Can It Be?”

Earl held on to Jesse’s hand. “All right, tell me straight out. Tell me you don’t love me. I got to hear it from your lips.”

Jesse looked at me and I pictured her on that rooftop seeing her father on the ground and all the days and questions in between.

“Matt was my first love. It was sweet and innocent. And you was always saving somebody or something. So it makes sense you’d come back here to rescue me. But the way I figure it, you got to see that you can’t rescue everybody. There’s only one who can. And from what I can tell, you need to let somebody rescue you, PB.”

The words felt like daggers at first, and then I heard the truth in them spoken from a heart of love.

“As for you, Earl, I done accepted your ring because you’re the man I want to grow old with. I want to sit out on the front porch and drink sweet tea with you of a night and yell at the kids. You ain’t perfect, and your family certainly ain’t perfect, but neither am I. We’ve made mistakes already. But God has forgiven us and we’re going to walk this road together. I’m choosing you.” She looked at my father. “And if you don’t want to do the service, we can go to the justice of the peace. It don’t make no difference to me.”

My father bit his lip and glanced at me. I gave him a thumbs-up.

“All right, then,” Earl said. “Looks like we got us a wedding after all.”

Jesse stepped toward me and reached out a hand, then held it in front of her mouth like she was going to spit in it. Then she smiled at me and shook my hand and ran toward the office door.

My father was the last out. He turned back to me. “You staying?”

“I think I’ve seen enough. Got a lot to think about on the drive.”

“We both have a lot to think about.”

He gave me a hug and I told him I’d call after I returned home. I sat in his chair listening to the vows. My father’s voice sounded lighter, somehow, as if he weren’t speaking from a script or onionskin, but from the heart. When I heard Jesse say, “I do,” I took the stairs to the basement and exited the back door and left Dogwood.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1984

A week later I sat with Dantrelle in my kitchen as he wolfed down macaroni and cheese. We’d walked to Jewel for groceries and talked about the Chicago Bears and their season. He was excited to tell me about his new home and what he was learning in school. He commented on how different the view was from this side of the el tracks.

“Have you heard any more from your mom?”

He shook his head and grabbed a spoon to get the final bits of macaroni. “No. They say she’s going to be in jail for a while.”

I scraped the rest from the pan and he dug in with abandon.

“What I don’t understand is why I can’t live with you,” he said. “I like my foster parents, but school would be a lot closer if I walked from here rather than driving to it every day.”

“I wish I could offer that, Dantrelle. I can’t right now. And I don’t think it would be good for us. I think I need to keep being your mentor—your friend, rather than your parent.”

A bell rang and I pressed the buzzer to let a visitor in the front door downstairs.

“Is somebody coming over?” Dantrelle said.

“A friend of mine is bringing dessert.”

“You’ve got another friend besides me?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” I said, rumpling his hair.

I went to the door and opened it while Dantrelle watched from the table. The elevator stopped at the third floor and Kristin got off and walked into the apartment holding a plate of brownies.

“Miss Kristin!” Dantrelle said. He jumped up and hugged her, and I took the brownies and placed them on the table.

Dantrelle told her the same stories he’d been telling me all afternoon and she sat in rapt attention, listening and asking more questions. She leaned down to be on his level and got more information in ten minutes than I had in three hours.

We had dessert and Dantrelle said he wanted to swim again, but I told him his foster parents would arrive soon, so we took the elevator to the first floor and he ran around the atrium until they arrived.

He gave both of us a hug before he left, and I told him
I’d see him after school on Tuesday. He smiled and waved as he walked hand in hand with the two people who were trying to give him a fresh start.

“They seem nice,” Kristin said. “He deserves someone who cares about him.”

“He sure does.”

“So you’ve recuperated from your trip?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recuperate, but yes. It was one of those eye-opening life events for me.”

“Really?” she said. “That sounds ominous.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you about it someday.”

She smiled.

“Listen, Kristin, there’s something I want to say. About us. When you called it quits, I was upset. I didn’t understand. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I see you were right. We have a lot in common but we’re not really on the same page spiritually. I couldn’t see that. But the trip home opened my eyes.”

“What did you see?”

“It’s complicated. My dad was a pastor—
is
a pastor. So I picked up a lot of knowledge as a kid, but I think I confused being a Christian with being someone who rescues others. I’ve always felt that everything depends on me. It’s hard to break out of that. To believe that God cares in spite of what you see and is really in control.”