Prayers for Sale (35 page)

“At your age?” Monalisa asked, shocked.

“You think she should wait till she’s older?” Zepha asked.

“I think it’s wonderful!” Carla said quickly.

“I bet Charlie Peace finally made you say yes!” Bonnie exclaimed.

“Not Charlie. I’ll wager it’s Noah Justis,” Carla interrupted, and the other women frowned, because Noah Justis was an old batch, and most people thought his head was not done.

“You’re both wrong,” Nit jumped in, too excited to let Hennie give out the name. “It’s Tom Earley. Tell them, Mrs. . . . that is, Hennie?” Nit still found it awkward calling Hennie by her first name. “Tell them.”

“It is,” Hennie told them. “Tom and I are getting married.”

“That’s a wonderful thing. I only wish the Reverend Shadd wasn’t too sick to officiate. He’s nearly crossed over,” Bonnie said.

“They’re going to be married in Chicago. Mr. Earley went back yesterday to get the house ready for her,” Nit explained. “If she’s married there, we won’t fight over who gets to stand up with her.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Edna said, and the others nodded. “Tom Earley. Imagine.”

The women crowded around Hennie then and told her what a lucky man Tom was. They asked about the wedding, whether it would be in a church or Tom’s house, which, after all, was a mansion as big as a cathedral. Edna said she had a piece of lace that Hennie might like to have as a veil, and not to be outdone, Monalisa told the old woman that she could have the borrow of her own wedding dress if she could remember who she’d loaned it to last. Hennie thought it unlikely that Monalisa ever had a wedding dress, since Monalisa and Roy Pinto had never had the words said over them, but it was a thoughtful gesture anyway. She shook her head. “Thanks to you, but I’m going to stop at Daniels and Fisher in Denver and buy me a whole new wardrobe. I never got married in a new dress before.”

“If you ask me, you ought to buy you a silk nightgown with lace on it, lots of lace,” Bonnie said.

“Bonnie!” Monalisa frowned. “At Hennie’s age!”

“Well, I do,” Bonnie insisted.

“I intend to,” Hennie said, looking Monalisa in the eye and not blushing.

Nit scurried around, fixing coffee and cutting a cake that one of the women had brought, because, as Edna Gum had told the girl, “You’re the woman of the house, now.”

Nit had nodded at that. “I’ve got it pretty good here,” she’d replied, as proud as if she owned the place. She took down Hennie’s fine china, and the women chattered about Hennie’s good fortune as they ate the cake.

As soon as they were finished, Bonnie and Carla got up,
because they had the duty of looking after the Reverend Shadd. They explained that they’d left him in bed with a terrible hurting in his head and had promised not to be gone long.

“He does not expect to get better,” Bonnie said. “He’s living in the end of time.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. He’s older than Abraham,” Zepha remarked.

“I’m making him some beef tea. That’ll keep his strength up,” Carla said.

“If he wants it up,” Bonnie replied. “If he’s ready to die, I don’t know that the Lord allows us to interfere with His will. It might be blasphemy.”

“It might be starvation if you don’t,” Monalisa told her.

“He’s been asking for you, Hennie,” Bonnie said. “I don’t know why. Maybe he still wants to save your soul. The man surely is at heaven’s gate.”

“We didn’t tell you before, because we thought you wouldn’t want to see him,” her sister added. “But now that you know he’s ready to cross over, you ought to go. He wants to see you bad.”

“Well, I don’t want to see him,” Hennie told them.

“Quit that. You’re not a hard-minded woman. I don’t understand you,” Bonnie said harshly, then calmed down as the other women stared at her display of rudeness. “You with all the good luck you have now, you ought not to begrudge him a moment of your time.”

Hennie didn’t reply but stared out the window, rousing herself only to say good-bye as the Tenmilers filed out of the
house, leaving Nit and Zepha and Hennie. Zepha went upstairs to rock the twins in their cradle, saying she couldn’t get enough of Dickie and Collie, but Hennie wondered if Zepha had a presentiment that the old woman wanted to be alone with Nit.

Hennie sat down in Jake’s chair then, her hands clasped between her knees, her head bowed, feeling the prickers that lurked inside clutch at her heart again, while Nit sat on a pillow on the floor beside her. “Is there a story you’d like to tell me?” Nit asked, for it was clear that the old woman was troubled. Hennie didn’t reply and sat there so long that Nit got up and folded the Friendship quilt and started to clear the plates and cups.

At last, Hennie sighed and said, “I’ve got something that needs doing. The Lord’s answered all my prayers, and I believe He expects me to do my part, although I’d rather take a whipping than do what it is He wants.” She sighed deeply and went to the hook beside the door and took down her coat. “I believe He’s told me what He wants me to do, and it’s a hard task.”

“It’s the Reverend Shadd, isn’t it?” Nit asked. “Do you want me to go with you?”

Hennie shook her head, then stopped and pondered a moment before she decided that she did want the girl with her. Without someone to accompany her, the old woman might turn around before she reached the minister’s cabin. “I’d like that. Yes, I believe I would.”

“I’ll get the makings for a horseradish poultice for his head,” Nit said, going to her medicine chest and taking out
some dried bits, folding a piece of newspaper around them. She called upstairs to ask Zepha to stay awhile longer, then put on her own coat, and the two walked out into the cold.

The sky was the color of lead, and the wind swept down off the Tenmile, bringing the dampness that heralded snow. They walked with their heads down, facing into the wind, which was so strong that it seemed for every three steps they took forward, they were blown back one.

The Reverend’s shack was far across town from Hennie’s house, and the two women were near frozen by the time they reached it. Still, Hennie wished the man lived even farther away, for she had turned over in her mind what she would say to him and had come up only with confusion. Hennie paused as they reached the cabin, not sure whether she could go ahead, but Nit knocked boldly at the door, which Bonnie opened.

“Why, here’s Hennie Comfort come to see you, Reverend,” Bonnie said with gladness in her voice. “Remember, you asked for her.” She smiled as she moved to a side wall to make room for the two women to enter. The place was that small.

Hennie didn’t return the smile. “What I’ve got to say is of a personal nature. I’d like you to leave us,” she told Bonnie. “Please.”

Bonnie glanced over at the bed, but there was no reaction. “All right. You take your time, Hennie. I’ll be back,” she said. Bonnie slipped on her coat and tied her scarf under her chin and went out into the cold, closing the door behind her.

Alone in the cabin now with just Nit and the reverend, Hennie glanced around the room, unwilling yet to look at the man in the bed. The place was sparse. A fireplace instead of a
cookstove provided the heat, and a spider and a heavy iron Dutch oven sat on the hearth. Besides the iron bed, which was so bent that it must have come from the dump, the only furniture was an old bureau, a table, and two wooden chairs that didn’t match. A Bible lay open on the dresser next to a shaving glass and a tin basin. A crude wooden cross aged the color of burnt toast, its bottom broken off, hung on the wall; it might have been salvaged from a graveyard.

Hennie let her eyes go as far as the bed quilt, and after a moment, for the quilt was so washed and worn that it was hard to see the design, she recognized the Seven Sisters pattern, and she put her hand on the wall to steady herself. The wall was made of peeled logs, the wood as smooth as glass.

Nit followed the old woman’s gaze and said, “There’s an awful lot of living in that quilt.”

“And an awful lot of suffering, I expect,” Hennie added. She still had not looked at the man who lay under the quilt, and he seemed not to want to speak until she did.

After a minute or two, Hennie went to the door and opened it wide. The sickroom was close, but that was not the reason that Hennie fussed with the door. She couldn’t find words to say to the man and wanted a reason to delay the moment of facing him. She stared out at the yard, where stinging bits of snow were starting to come down. Smoke scattered as soon as it left the chimneys, and the wind blew an old bushel basket down the street and into a bare aspen tree, where it lodged. Hennie pushed the door almost shut, until only a crack of light showed through the opening. Then she turned and walked purposefully to the bed, standing where the man could see her, and looked into his face,
which was worn and wrinkled from too many years of living close to the sun. “Well, I’m here,” she said at last, for the man still had not spoken to her. “I brought Mrs. Spindle with me.”

The reverend did not turn his head to look at Nit but kept his eyes riveted on Hennie’s face. He swallowed twice before he said, “I need to buy a prayer of you, Ila Mae.”

Nit started to say something, perhaps to note that the reverend had gotten Hennie mixed up with someone else. And then she stopped, and Hennie wondered if the girl remembered the story Hennie had told her the first time she’d called at the Spindle cabin. She’d explained that her name long ago was not Hennie but Ila Mae.

Hennie herself could barely breathe as her old name hit her. She took a moment to calm herself before she replied, “I don’t sell prayers. It’s just a sign nailed to the fence. I give them away to those that need them—rightly need them, Abram.” Hennie stumbled over the name, for she had never expected to say it to him again, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“I thought a thousand times of stopping by your house and paying you whatever you would take for a prayer, but I didn’t, because I knew you wouldn’t sell me one.”

“She doesn’t sell them to anybody,” Nit put in. The girl picked up a chair and set it beside the bed for Hennie, then seated herself on the far side of the room. Hennie eased herself onto the chair, her eyes still on the minister’s face.

“Since I first saw that sign, I’ve woken up every morning wishing I could buy your prayers. But I knew nothing I offered would be enough. I believe I’d sell my soul for your forgiveness.”
He paused, and when Hennie failed to reply, he added, “I’ve lived my life trying to do good, to make it up to you.”

The man’s words brought such a hurting to Hennie that she began to shake, and tears fell silently. She felt as if there were a hole in her heart and that the winter wind was blowing through it. The minister did not speak again, waiting for Hennie to reply. “Is that why you came to Middle Swan?” she asked at last, not wiping the tears but letting them streak her face.

“No. There’s a story to it, not one as good as the stories they say you tell and maybe not one you care enough to hear, but I’ll tell it anyway.” The voice was stronger than the man’s frail body, and Hennie knew that he had saved his strength in hopes she’d come. She didn’t say anything, and the minister continued.

“Many long years I lived a life of dissipation, for I couldn’t face what I’d done. I said it was your fault for choosing Billy. And I blamed the men with me that day at your place, because it was in me not to want them to think me soft toward you. I had it in mind to come back to unloose your bonds, and I did, but I was too late. I never intended for your baby to get hurt.”

“To die.” Hennie squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears, but they fell anyway.

“Yes, to die.” The minister’s words were interrupted by a fit of coughing. When he finished with it, he breathed deeply, let the air out of his lungs, and continued, “One morning, I woke up with the stench of drinking and whoring on me, and I believe the Lord took pity on me. He told me He
loved even the vilest sinner and that my life would be restored to me if I gave myself over to good works. So that day, I forsook my evil ways. I changed my name, for Abram Fletcher was a name of wickedness. I studied on the Bible and became a preacher.”

Abram stopped and swallowed down another cough. “I knew you’d gone to Colorado, so I came here, too, although I didn’t expect we’d ever meet. I worked with sinners in the gold camps, and finally, I came to Middle Swan, where I stayed.”

“And you found me,” Hennie said, twisting her hands in her lap. Her quilt square might have calmed them, but this was not a time for stitching.

“Not at first. So many years had passed, and you didn’t call yourself Ila Mae anymore. You wouldn’t go to church after I arrived, and whenever we passed on the street, you turned away. It was when I heard your voice.”

“I knew you the minute I walked into church the first day you preached. Caroline Pinto was playing “God Moves in Mysterious Ways” on the pump organ—I remember that—and then you lifted your head. You were older, and your hair was white, but your face was the same. I couldn’t ever forget your face. It was etched with acid in my heart. After that, I couldn’t step foot inside the church again. But then, maybe I was expecting you. I always knew we’d meet,” Hennie said.

“You gave no sign you’d recognized me, but after a while, I came to think you had.”

“Why did you stay?”

The old man thought that over. “To see you every day and be reminded of my sin. It was my purgatory.”

And mine
, Hennie thought, for the blue devils seemed to visit her the most after she’d seen the minister.

Nit rose from her chair, closed the door, and added a log to the fire, for the shack was old and poorly built, and the cold came in through the cracks in the boards as well as the doorway. Abram looked over at her, and Nit said, “I brought you horseradish for a poultice, but I think you don’t need it.” Then she added, “I don’t pass along other folks’ business.”

“She knows the story. I told it to her,” Hennie said. “But I never told her you were Abram.”

“It’s not my story to keep,” Abram replied.

When the log caught, Nit added another, and the flames in the old stone fireplace leaped up, spreading warmth through the small room. “You want you some water?” Nit asked, and without waiting for the man to answer, she took him a dipperful of water from the bucket on the table. The sick man drank it down, and the girl returned to her chair, her hands between her knees.