Tides of Truth [02] Higher Hope (13 page)

Zach asked after they were out of the room.

“I’ll check on the livestock in the feedlot,” Kyle said quickly.

“And I’ll go with him,” Bobby added.

The boys exited through the back door.

9

MY HEART STARTED POUNDING. MAMA WIPED HER HANDS ON A dish towel. Daddy fidgeted in the doorway and waited. Zach pulled his ponytail.

“Would anyone like a glass of ice water?” Mama asked.

“I would,” I said quickly.

No one else spoke. Mama poured a glass of ice water for me. It was something she rarely did except when I was sick in bed. A healthy adult member of our family could get his or her own glass of water.

“Ready?” Daddy asked.

“Yes,” Zach said.

Daddy led the way, followed by Zach, Mama, then me, in a somber parade. I commanded my heart to slow down, but it refused. Zach should have talked to me first. My mind raced through a half dozen scenarios. I hoped he wasn’t going to try to force Mama and Daddy to make a decision about us courting before they had time to pray and discuss it in private. That would be a recipe for disaster. Pressure from him would be a sure sign to them that we needed to wait.

We reached the front room. I offered up a silent plea for help. Daddy and Mama sat on the sofa. Zach and I chose the same chairs we’d occupied the previous night, but I didn’t want a repeat performance. No one spoke for a few seconds. I could barely stand the tension.

“Nobody asked my opinion about barbecue,” I said tentatively.

“You always eat what’s on your plate,” Daddy replied with a nervous laugh. “I mean, not that you eat too much. But I’ve never considered it one of your favorite—”

“We can discuss barbecue later,” Mama cut in. “Zach, we are listening.”

Zach cleared his throat. “Thank you. I don’t always think before I speak, and sometimes I can be blunt when I should be diplomatic, but you’ve been kind enough to overlook my blunders, and I appreciate the hospitality you’ve shown me.” He turned to Mama. “Mrs.

Taylor, you’re an awesome teacher. What you’ve done with the twins is amazing. Being around the girls is an education in itself, and I look forward to telling my mom about them. It’ll be neat to see what the twins are doing ten or fifteen years from now.”

Mama had taught me, too, but it seemed Zach was more impressed by the twins. He turned to Daddy.

“And Mr. Taylor, you have the ability to bring out the best in each member of your family. I enjoyed working on the fence with you this morning and would like to get to know you better. Your wise words about hearing God’s voice helped me gain perspective on several challenges I’m facing even now.”

Zach hadn’t shared his challenges with me. I wondered what they were.

“You’re at peace with the path you’ve chosen for your family, and I don’t want to do anything to disrupt that. So, to avoid any embarrassment or stress, I don’t think I should go to church with you tomorrow morning. If I show up it will put pressure on you to justify why some-one who looks like me is interested in your daughter. It’s one thing for Tami and me to walk together on a sidewalk in Savannah; it’s another for us to sit next to each other in a pew at your church. I don’t want to put you or the family in an awkward situation.”

Mama and Daddy looked at each other.

“We talked about that last night before going to sleep,” Daddy said slowly. “If you visit the church, it will cause people who haven’t met you to talk. Some of them are quick to judge.”

Mama cleared her throat. “But that’s not the most important consideration. Regardless of the opinions of others, the protection of biblical standards is important. You have different beliefs, which influence your conduct and appearance.”

I bit my lower lip.

“If the narrow-minded people at the church could have seen what Zach did today at—”

“Tammy Lynn!” Mama said. “Watch your tongue!”

“But people should be judged by the fruit of their lives.”

“And out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks,” Mama answered. “The way our society has blurred the differences between men and women is the cause of a lot of problems. A consistent biblical stance on this issue in clothes and relationship between the sexes is important for more reasons than I can go into right now.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with appearance,” I said.

Zach held up his hand.

“I’m as sure about this”—he hesitated for a second—“as your mother is about the impropriety of a man having a ponytail. I don’t want to upset your family any more than I already have.”

I blinked back a hot tear. Nobody noticed.

“Zach, I think it’s the right decision,” Daddy said.

“And I have a peace about it,” he answered. “Explain to the others as you think best.”

“I’m not at peace,” I said.

“You know what I’m saying is the truth,” Zach replied evenly.

“But I have questions.” I turned to Daddy. “May Zach and I talk in private? We could sit on the porch.”

Daddy looked away for a few seconds before meeting my eyes.

“No, Tammy Lynn. This isn’t the time for that conversation.”

“Then we may as well go back to Savannah tonight,” I shot back.

Mama came over to me. “Try to calm down, dear. You can’t think straight when you’re upset. This is best for both—”

Pulling away from Mama, I stormed out of the house, letting the screen door slam behind me. Tears ran down my cheeks. I angrily brushed them away. I didn’t slow down until I reached the poplar tree that stood as a sentinel in our front yard. Rubbing my eyes, I looked back at the house. The lights were on in the front room. Zach, Mama, and Daddy were talking. Let them say what they wanted.

They could dissect me like one of the frogs from Putnam’s Pond. I didn’t care.

When I was eight years old, I’d run away from home. Mama, pregnant with Bobby and busy chasing Kyle all over the house, didn’t have time to give me the attention I wanted. Feeling abandoned, I decided to leave and start a new life. I covertly fixed four sandwiches and threw a few apples in a bag. If Johnny Appleseed could journey across the continent with nothing more than a sackful of apples to his name, I should be able to do the same. After I’d walked a mile down the road, Mrs. Jackie Poole, a middle-aged woman from the church, stopped her car and invited me to her house for fresh lemonade. Without anything to drink, I had a burning thirst. Mrs. Poole lived in a well-kept cottage at the edge of a meadow filled with wild-flowers. After I drank a tall glass of lemonade, she offered to take me home. I was too embarrassed to tell her what she, of course, already knew. Years later, we’d both laughed about it.

Now, perhaps the option to run away was real. Hadn’t Mama said it was time for me to leave? I had a summer job and was on the verge of a self-sufficient career. Independence lay within my grasp. It was time to change the way I related to my parents, to end their dominance. I walked over to the poplar tree and glanced up. The branches of the ancient tree stretched upward in a leafy plea toward the darkening sky. I bowed my head and prayed, but no answer came. My heart felt numb. The threesome inside the house was still silhouetted in the window. I pulled off a piece of bark and broke it in two. Hope for happiness of any kind in my future appeared dim. Running away prob-ably had as much chance of success now as it did when I was eight.

The front door opened, and Zach came outside. The lights went out in the front room. Zach walked over and put his hand on the tree near mine. I dropped my hand to my side.

“When you left the house you proved my point,” he said.

“Don’t lecture me.”

“Are you afraid of the truth?”

I turned toward him, my face set. “Is that the way you talk to someone who’s hurting?”

“I thought you wanted me to be honest.”

“Look, I don’t have the energy for another fight right now. Not with you”—I gestured toward the house—“and not with them. I’ve spent my entire life defending myself and my family. I’ve tried to see it as an opportunity to let my light shine, but often it’s been a burden. I need a break from the stress. And I’m not interested in trading pres-sure from my parents for pressure from you. I need everyone to leave me alone, to let me be who I am.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“But isn’t that where you’re heading? That was the whole point of the conversation in the house. You’re separating yourself from me and my family.”

“Don’t blow it up bigger than it is. I don’t think I should go to your church in the morning because I don’t want to embarrass your family.”

“But it’s not just about tomorrow. Be realistic. I could try to break away from this place, but even if I want to it’s not going to happen. And as long as I’m connected to the people living in that house, you can’t get close to me without getting close to them. Church, home, beliefs: they’re all wrapped up together. Even when we’re in Savannah, the way I’ve been raised is the greatest influence in my life.” I pulled another piece of bark from the tree.

Zach stepped closer. “I felt the energy between us when I held your hand during the prayer.”

I was about to break another piece of bark in two but stopped.

“You did?”

“I’m not dense. It sure felt a lot better than when Neptune Poseidon speared my hand.”

Zach reached out and put his hand underneath my chin. I drew back. His hand stayed with me.

“Please,” he said. “This is all I’m going to do. I want to help hold your chin up when it starts to droop. I want to encourage you, not drag you down. I can’t do that unless we’re together.”

The breath left my body at his last words. I wanted desperately to see his eyes more clearly. But in the dark, everything was shapes and shadows.

“And I’m sure not going to church in the morning is the right decision,” he said. “Don’t make it bigger than it is.”

I wasn’t convinced. Looking toward the house, I saw a fuzzy out-line of the twins’ faces in the window of the second-story hallway.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. “Old houses have curious eyes.”

MAMA AND DADDY had gone to their bedroom and shut the door.

A closed door meant they were not to be disturbed. I said good night to Zach and trudged up the stairs. Ellie and Emma, wearing their pajamas, were sitting cross-legged on the rug in the center of our bedroom. I kicked off my shoes.

“Did you squeeze his hand at the end of the blessing?” Ellie asked.

“She couldn’t,” Emma interrupted. “That’s the hand he hurt at the pond.”

“I’m not thinking about his hand right now.”

“It’s so different from Daddy’s hand or Roscoe Vick’s hand,” Ellie continued.

The twins had a knack for redirecting my focus. Distancing myself from them was hard to imagine.

“When have you been holding Roscoe Vick’s hand?” I asked.

“Mrs. Kilgore puts the prayer requests in the center of the table, and we hold hands while she prays,” Ellie said. “Roscoe always finds a way to stand next to me. His hand is kind of slippery, like he didn’t get all the soap off before coming to church.”

“Emma, does he ever hold your hand?”

“I wouldn’t let him.” She sniffed.

“Can he tell you apart?”

“I always move to the other side of the room when it’s prayer time,” Emma said.

I slid my legs straight out in front of me.

“Ellie, I don’t want you holding Zach’s hand anymore.”

“Why?”

“I don’t need the competition.”

Both girls laughed.

“And were you spying on us when we were in the front yard?”

“Not spying,” Ellie said. “Just making sure you were okay.”

Emma lowered her voice. “Tammy Lynn, I thought Zach was about to kiss you. When he put his hand on your face, I thought I would faint. What was he saying? Have you decided to let a boy kiss you before your wedding?”

“It was a private conversation, and he wasn’t trying to kiss me. He just wanted to encourage me.”

“He could encourage me anytime he wants,” Ellie sighed. “I wanted to pull his ponytail so bad at the supper table that I had trouble keeping my mind on my food.”

“People are going to be talking about his hair at church tomorrow,” Emma said. “It’s going to be a problem.”

“If anyone says anything to me, I’m going to show them a picture of Jesus in my Bible,” Ellie said. “His hair was a lot longer than Zach’s.”

“He’s not going.”

“What?” both girls exclaimed.

I explained in simple terms, without my previous emotion, the conversation in the front room. I carefully avoided any criticism of Mama and Daddy.

“How did you feel?” Ellie asked when I finished. “If I heard that it would make me think he didn’t like me.”

My little sister’s insight startled me. More than Emma, her personality mirrored mine.

“That’s why Zach came outside to talk to me. I didn’t try to change his mind, and Mama and Daddy agreed with him. Things like this have to go forward slowly. Remember, they haven’t agreed to let me court him.”

“But you want to, don’t you?” Ellie asked.

I hesitated. “Yes, if for no other reason than to keep him away from you.” I pushed her onto her back.

After brushing our teeth, we returned to the rug and played Scrabble. Emma won when she used a
q
and a
z
to spell
quartz
in a row that included a triple-score block. After a while, I realized I’d relaxed.

When the game was over, we lay on the rug with our pillows under our heads and played a game we’d invented called “Imagination.”

One of us would describe a place she’d been or read about in a book. Another would inhabit the place with a few interesting people, usually including a few from Powell Station who had as little business living in our imaginary world as Dorothy in Oz. The third person began a story with everyone taking turns to add twists and turns.

I set the scene as Oscar Callahan’s farm and described it in great detail. Emma included the lawyer, Zach, and me in the opening scene. Ellie began the story and dropped in Roscoe Vick, now grown-up and working as an attorney for Mr. Callahan. Ellie’s plot was a conflict between Zach and Roscoe for my affection. Romantic comedy was a new genre for us. Within a few minutes the three of us were laughing so hard my side hurt, and my heart felt better.