Pages of Promise, page 22
She had never been alone like this in her life, and there was no way out until Simms came back for her.
She went back inside the cabin. She smiled at the rustic simplicity: a bunk bed with a cotton-tick mattress over link springs, a table and three mismatched chairs, a roughly built cabinet, a bookshelf full of tattered, mostly western, novels. Nails served instead of a closet. She had been instructed on how to use the gas lantern, and there was a coal oil lamp with two gallons of coal oil “just in case.” An ancient cook stove with a pile of wood in a box beside it challenged her. She had never built a fire in her life, and she set about it at once. It was quite a chore, until she learned to use very small sticks as kindling to build it up. She unpacked her supplies and, since she had not eaten since breakfast, found a frying pan and cooked her first meal: bacon and eggs and black coffee.
She sat down at the table and started to eat, then halted. She bowed her head, saying, “I came here to find you, God, so I’ll do everything I know. Thank you for this food and this place. Amen.”
At first Mona thought she would lose her mind. The silence pressed in upon her. The sky was too large. She knew there were bears and wolves and coyotes in the vicinity. More than once she wanted to walk the five miles to the neighbor to call Simms.
She was not a solitary person. The hum of human voices, the motions of human bodies, the activities of the world had been her element, as water is element for a fish. During that first day and the next, she kept expecting to hear a voice and was anxious to see something besides the trees and the inside of the little cabin. She walked by the stream and into the woods, never going too far, for she feared getting lost more than anything. Evenings, she cooked her meal and sat on one of the chairs outside the cabin until the sky turned velvet black and stars began to spangle it. Then she went inside and opened the only book she’d brought—a Bible. Lenora had given her a few guides, and she read the Gospels through once, then started again. She went to sleep aware of the sounds outside the little cabin that gradually became her citadel.
After three days, she’d learned to sit and to be silent. She walked in the woods, at the same time seeking God, and she read the Gospels again and again.
On the fifth day, the sun had disappeared over the mountains, and she could barely see to read. She prayed and felt nothing. She read eagerly at first and then plodded on deliberately, stopping to ask God to help her.
Just before total darkness fell she sat outside with the open Bible on her lap. She prayed the same prayer that she had prayed, it seemed, a thousand times since she’d arrived.
“Oh, God, I need you so much! Please help me!”
She expected nothing, but—she felt tears suddenly rise in her eyes, and all of the Gospel events that she’d read began to come to her. She remembered how Jesus touched lepers and gave sight to the blind, how he loved the unlovely, and how women had been drawn to him. She sat for hours thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ, and something in her melted. It was as if a river of ice had thawed. The thick, solid ice broke into smaller chunks, and they were swept down the river, and then the river was free.
Mona knew that God was around her and was in her, and she began to pray this time with faith. “Oh, Lord Jesus, I have sinned against you and against my parents and my family and others. I do repent as you have commanded, and I invite you to come into my being. I will obey you the best I know how, but please save me, Lord Jesus.”
Lenora Stuart picked up the phone and said in her businesslike manner, “Colonel Stuart here!”
“Aunt Lenora!”
“Mona, it’s you!”
“Yes, it’s me, and I’ve got something to tell you.”
Something in Mona’s voice, a new element that had been missing, caused Lenora to cry out. “What is it, Mona?”
Mona was holding the telephone in the general store in Jasper. She was unaware that the clerk and several customers were staring at her, listening to every word she said.
“Get my trumpet ready, Aunt Lenora. If God wants me to toot, then I’ll toot!”
20
WEDDING BELLS
After Jake and Stephanie’s wedding and honeymoon in Morocco, Jake returned to his duties at the Examiner. In late July, Stephanie was sent to Cairo after Egypt’s President Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Tension was high as Great Britain and France prepared for possible military action. Stephanie began developing special news gathering skills because of the prejudice against women in the Arab world.
Jake and Stephanie decided not to decide on anything for a while. He did begin pursuing possibilities for work with International News Service, but there were no guarantees or even the likelihood that he and Stephanie could be assigned as a team. So for the present, he concentrated on working rather than worrying about her safety or about their future. He wrote to her parents:
I’m sure this seems like the oddest arrangement in the world to you. But you should see her light up when she talks about the work she’s doing. She loves it. Our agreement was that I would bring no pressure to bear on her to quit. And when I see how excited and involved she is—and how good at the work—how could I? Yes, I miss her. But she is in my heart in a different way now—with joy, not with pain. And I suppose with all the time apart, we’ll remain newlyweds a long time. And we write lots of passionate love letters to pass on to our grandchildren.
Tom met Mona at the airport in Fort Smith. She was wearing a black-and-gray-striped cotton blouse with three-quarter length sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, a matching black and gray striped skirt that flared out slightly from the waist and fell to midcalf, and a pair of ballerina black patent leather shoes. She smiled only briefly, although she put out her hand and took his with a strange, nervous intensity. He pulled her close, scooped her up, and kissed her. Then she relaxed and smiled at him. “I didn’t realize you’re so strong. Put me down,” she said.
“There are still lots of secrets you don’t know about me, Mona.”
They had no difficulty finding topics of conversation during the long drive. She sat close to him in the truck, resting her head on his shoulder some of the time. Before they arrived at Logan’s, Tom asked if she felt too tired to change and come over to the Vine.
“I’m not too tired,” she said, “but let me see if Logan has anything planned.”
Logan was sitting on the porch whittling. He got up stiffly when they pulled in. “Well, howdy, y’all,” he said. “Glad to see you, Tom. How do, Mona. Why, you look just beautiful!”
Mona went to him and gave him a hug and a kiss. “Here I am again, Uncle Logan, just like a bad penny.”
“Logan,” Tom said, while he was getting Mona’s luggage, “why don’t you and Mona come for supper at the Vine tonight?” He turned and winked at Mona.
“Why, Tom, that’s mighty hospitable of you. Sure you young folks want a old codger like me hangin’ around?”
Tom put the suitcases down and took the old man’s hand. “Logan, you’ve been a mighty good friend. Please come to supper.”
“All right, all right, we will—if that’s what Mona wants to do, that is.” He grinned, for he knew very well that Mona wanted to go.
Tom carried Mona’s luggage upstairs, then kissed her, saying, “Come about six.”
After supper, Logan sat with Granny and the others swapping stories. Mona said, “I’ve got to talk to you, Tom.”
“All right. Let’s walk down and see the new pigs. They keep secrets pretty well.”
They walked slowly down the path, holding hands, to where the new porkers were rooting at their massive mother. They watched the pigs, then turned and walked away toward a field where several goats grazed. In the twilight, she turned to him and said, “Something’s happened to me, Tom, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“What is it?”
“I feel rather foolish saying this, but I don’t know any other way to put it.” Mona bit her full lower lip for a moment and then noted the half smile on Henderson’s face.
Tom felt the turbulence of her spirit as someone might feel strange currents cut across the wind as it blows. For him she had become a white core of light in darkness, a personality of fragrance and will, a stubborn spirit set against the world. She had wanted many things and had been betrayed by her wants. But her spirit seemed to glow in her like live coals, and she was a beautiful and robust woman with a woman’s soft depth and a woman’s spirit and a woman’s fire.
“I found God,” Mona said, half laughing, but then she reached out and touched his chest with a gesture that was both pleading and intimate. She began to tell him how she had fallen into such despair and despondency that it had driven her to seek her Aunt Lenora. Her eyes glowed as she spoke, and once her lips trembled as she related how she had called upon God out in the wilderness and how he had answered so completely.
She shook her head, the last sunlight of the day caught the gleam of her hair, and the shadows revealed the strong bone structure and the fine texture of her skin. “So that’s one thing I’ve come to tell you, Tom.”
Henderson put his arms around her. His eyes were bright, and he said fervently, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that, Mona. It’s the best news you could’ve brought. I’m glad for you.”
“There’s something else,” she said, taking a step away from him.
“What’s that?” Henderson watched her face and was amazed at how mobile it was and how he seemed to be able, almost, to see into her thoughts. She was excited, yet with a tremulous quality that might bespeak either fear or eagerness. When she hesitated, he smiled and said, “Go ahead. Let me have it. I can take it.”
“All right.” Mona could hardly breathe, and she tried to smile. “I’ve come to tell you that I’m in love with you.”
Henderson knew his own feelings, but in the evening tranquillity he could not find a response. He heard one of the goats bleating in the hoarse manner of such animals, and behind him faintly came the squeal of the new piglets. He watched as the air blew Mona’s hair around her face. She was watching him intently. Then he knew what to do. It was one of those times that comes to a man infrequently, when he casts aside all of his doubts and uncertainties, and his will seems to coalesce into a determination, with the certainty that it is right. “In that case you’ll have to marry me.”
Mona smiled, satisfied.
He went to her and folded her in his arms and kissed her.
When he lifted his head, she reached up, brushed his hair back and whispered, “Oh, Tom, I’m so happy!”
His eyes were glistening, and he couldn’t speak. He nodded.
They walked along the path in the growing darkness, heedless of the time, and for perhaps the only time in his life, Tom couldn’t stop smiling. He held her hand and she felt, as she looked at him, a sense of longing and a knowledge that she had found her way with God and in other ways as well. “It’s strange, isn’t it,” she said, “how different people find God in different ways. Richard came here and found his way through being with other people. I had to go off alone.”
It was late when they returned to the house, and Logan had gone home. Tom at once broke the news to everyone there. Granny threw her hands up and cackled, “Well, I swan! I coulda told you this a long time ago, but you young folks never have time to listen to people with sense.” The entire group gathered around Tom and Mona, laughing, slapping Tom on the back, and the women embraced Mona.
Mona’s heart was high, but she caught one glimpse of Car-men, standing just inside the kitchen door. The woman’s face was still, and her back was stiff with anger and grief and jealousy. Mona resisted the impulse to go to her, knowing it would be useless. Oh, Carmen, she thought, if only I could tell you how much I know how you feel, how I’ve longed for the very things you long for.
Tom said, “Come on. Let’s go tell Logan. He’ll probably break out a bottle of his freshly squeezed apple cider for us.”
It was supposed to be a small wedding, but with a family the size of the Stuart clan, there was little hope of that. It was held in the same little church where Amos’s funeral had been held a year and a half before. Mona’s uncle Owen was performing the ceremony for them. The wedding was overdone, as weddings usually are. Tom had watched Mona practice, talk with her bridesmaids, and excitedly go through buying the trousseau. Her wedding dress was whispered over and discussed most of all. It was a fine white silk with a thin white chiffon covering the skirt and bodice. The chiffon made up the long narrow sleeves, which ended in a V on the back of her hand, where small pearls and crystal beadwork created a serpentine design. The bodice was fitted, with a low, scooped neckline, and pearls and crystal beadwork covered it front and back. The skirt was long and full with a short train, and the bottom of the dress was decorated with the same pearl and crystal beadwork. Her veil would be attached to a small wreath of flowers on the top of her head, and the sheer netting would trail down to the middle of her back. She planned to wear a choker of three strands of pearls, and her shoes were white satin.
At the rehearsal, Tom said to his future father-in-law, “I think a bridegroom’s nothing but an impediment to these things. The women ought to get together, do all of this buying and primping and dressmaking, and the men ought to go off on a fishing trip or a hunting trip or something. Then the bridegroom ought to be brought in ten minutes before the ceremony, stuck into place, and made to say his piece. Otherwise he just gets in the way.”
Pete grinned at him. “I felt the same way myself, but when I saw Leslie walk down the aisle—Tom, you’ll think she’s worth it.”
After what seemed an interminable time, Tom was standing at the front of the church next to Richard, his best man. The bridesmaids and Maris, the matron of honor, made their procession. Then, he looked up the aisle and saw Mona on Pete’s arm. Suddenly everything was different. This is the woman I love, he thought, and I’m a lucky dog to get her! As she came toward him, he studied her, having heard much about the dress. The pearl and crystal beadwork caused it to shimmer in the lights as she walked down the aisle.
But it was not the dress as much as the happiness in Mona’s face that gave him the most pleasure. When she was being given away, Tom had an absurd and irrational impulse to simply step forward, lift her veil, and kiss her hard right on the mouth. Somehow Mona sensed this. Her eyes sparkled, and her lips turned up in a sly smile. She shook her head slightly, and when he came to stand beside her, she squeezed his hand.
When Owen finally said, “You may kiss the bride,” Tom lifted the veil, pulled her forward, and held her tightly, kissing her with evident ardor. He was aware of the applause and the laughter going up. When he released her, she said, “Thank you for going through this for me. It was worth it to me just to see you wear something besides jeans and a T-shirt!” Then they were moving up the aisle.
Filming of Bride of Quietness began in September. Adam had been careful to keep Tom involved at every step, including converting the book to a screen play. An experienced screenwriter assisted him, but it was clear that Tom was in control. Henderson was introduced to the curious as just another screenwriter. Adam refused to give out any information about how he’d gotten permission from William Starr to make the film.
The mystery heightened expectations for the movie’s release.
21
ROCK BOTTOM
The city of Little Rock, Arkansas, about 150 miles east of the Stuart farm in the Ozarks, was the center of world attention in 1958 in the struggle to end racial discrimination in the United States. The attendance of nine black students at Little Rock Central High School set off one of the first great tests of power between the federal and a state government in the twentieth century. Through the 1957–58 school year, students attended Central High with troops of the U.S. army and the Arkansas national guard, ordered into federal service, maintaining order. In February 1958, the school board petitioned the federal district court in Little Rock for a postponement of its desegregation plan because of the violence and public hostility.
The case ended up in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Earl Warren called the justices to return to Washington in August to make a determination before the new school year began. Lawyers said that the school board was powerless to deal with the forces in Arkansas opposed to desegregation. Attorney Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP argued for the nine students, and others presented strong arguments against delaying desegregation. On September 12, the court ordered the Little Rock plan for desegregation to proceed immediately. Its opinion was announced as the joint product of all nine justices—an unprecedented way to emphasize the court’s unanimity on the racial issue. The court put the blame on Arkansas governor Orval E . Faubus and the state legislature and said that maintaining law and order was not more important than the black students’ constitutional rights. The justices also stated that the decision could not be nullified by evasive schemes, foreseeing the next phase of the struggle—Governor Faubus closed Central and the other high schools of Little Rock before they opened. He tried to privatize them, thus making them exempt from the court’s order, by getting the school board to lease the schools to a private corporation established by segregationists. The court enjoined the “private” schools from using public school buildings or teachers. President Eisenhower repeatedly called for compliance with what he called the moral command of the Supreme Court.
Stephen Stuart had kept up with news of the ongoing racial turmoil. But it was not in his thoughts as he left the prison carrying a small, shoddily made suitcase he had purchased for three dollars from one of the incoming inmates. He paused and let his eyes run over the expanse of the blue skies and breathed the air deeply. He had been outside in the yard during his imprisonment, but that was different. A sense of relief came over him that made him weak. Many times he had despaired, doubting if he would ever breathe a free breath again. Now he was out, and it frightened him that it was so strange. His knees even felt weak, but he began to walk toward the prison bus that ferried visitors back and forth to the city. He felt reluctant to get on, but, as he took a last look around at the flat-topped buff buildings, a resolution formed in him, and he said under his breath, “I’ll never see this place again, so help me!”
