Shepherds Abiding In Dry Creek, page 17
Sammy left the wagon where it was and ran to the Nativity set. She saw Les bend down to talk to him.
This was a picture Marla knew she would never forget.
And then she saw Sammy walk behind one of the shepherds, and the whole thing lit up with white Christmas lights. Someone had made a luminary in the shape of a shepherd. Or, rather, it was a hundred luminaries grouped together to make a shepherd.
The luminaries were as much a Hispanic tradition as the tamales were, even if these luminaries were made from aluminum cans instead of paper bags. There were Christmas lights in the cans in place of candles and the light reflected on the metal of the cans until the shepherd glowed more than the angel above him.
With luminaries and tamales, Marla felt as if she was having one of her childhood Christmases.
The light from the luminary shepherd also made it possible to see the other shepherds. One shepherd was made from what looked like an old scarecrow. The scarecrow’s hat had been replaced by a simple robe and the figure had a cane in its hand. Another shepherd was simple cardboard cut to the shape of a shepherd. And then the last shepherd was standing so still it took Marla a minute to realize who it was. Mr. Morales was standing there. He even had a real lamb in his arms.
Mrs. Hargrove walked over to stand beside Marla. “Do you like them?”
“They’re beautiful.”
The older woman nodded. “We wanted to make Sammy feel good.”
Marla looked over at her son. He was looking from the shepherds to Les and then back again. “I think you’ve done that.”
“Good.”
Someone with a microphone climbed the church steps and led everyone in singing “Silent Night.” Marla pulled the wagon to the table that had been set up for serving the cocoa. Linda helped her lift the box onto the table, then they both moved closer to the Nativity figures. Marla glanced over to where Les stood with her son. Les had to be the one who had made the tin-can shepherd. She’d seen all the cans he had in his recycle bin in the barn. Who else would have that many cans all the same size?
Les told himself that this was peace. For the first time he had to agree that the Nativity project was worth all the soup everyone had eaten for months. People gathered around the figures as though they were expecting them to spring to life right in front of them then and there. Maybe it was because Mr. Morales was standing with the plastic figures and he had let the lamb down so it could wander around. There was life mixed in with all of the lit-up plastic.
Sammy was standing beside him and Les let his hand rest on the boy’s shoulder. The two teenagers who’d been arrested the other night had confessed to the deputy in Miles City that they had been harassing Sammy. He had never been a full member of the 19th Street gang. Les was glad of that. Not because he wouldn’t stand beside Sammy if he had to pay the consequences for anything he had done in his young life. Les just didn’t want Sammy to have seen the hard things that those two teenagers had seen.
He figured the teenagers would do some time in a juvenile facility and then face some additional probation time.
There was always a price to be paid for mistakes, Les told himself. But there was a world of mercy, too. He had to remind himself of that when he looked over at Marla.
Marla had moved closer to the Nativity figures, along with Linda. Both women looked as if they were enjoying the singing, although Linda kept edging away from the Nativity as though she had something else to do.
Before long, Linda had made her way to Les’s side.
“I’ll look after Sammy and Mrs. Hargrove has Becky,” Linda said. “Here’s your chance.”
“Now?” Les had pictured a nice quiet conversation with Marla. Someplace where all his neighbors weren’t gathered.
“She’s planning to move after Christmas.”
“So soon?”
Linda nodded.
Well, Les hadn’t worked with animals in his life without learning that sometimes it was all about the timing of things. If now was the only time he had to take his chance, he meant to take it.
Marla was only vaguely aware of how the singing voices were changing around her. Linda’s soprano voice had faded and a deep bass voice was growing nearer. She wasn’t paying too much attention, though. The words of the Christmas carols were all she heard. They made her believe it was truly possible to have peace on earth and goodwill to men.
“Hi,” someone whispered near her ear.
Marla didn’t have to look to know it was Les. She frowned. The goodwill-to-men sentiment was becoming a little more difficult to maintain. Still, she hadn’t had a chance to thank Les. Or to give him back those gloves of his. She pulled the gloves off her hands.
“Here.” Marla gave them to him. “I’ve wanted to return these.”
Les frowned. “But you’ll need them. You don’t have any gloves.”
Marla curled her hands into balls and stuck them into her pockets. “They’re your gloves, and I’ll do just fine. Thank you.”
Les was still looking at her. “What’s the point of keeping your toes warm in those socks if you freeze your fingers off in the meantime?”
Marla became very still. Her hands weren’t the only part of her that was turning cold. “You know about the socks?”
“Of course.”
He said it as if it was such an easy thing and no betrayal at all, Marla thought. “Who else knows?”
“Well, I suppose Linda knows. Or at least, it was her idea. And if Linda knows, then…”
Marla spun around. Two of the people who she thought were closest to being her friends were the ones who had started the charity-box business. What did they do, anyway? Sit around and talk about all the things she and her children didn’t have? It was humiliating.
She was going home.
Marla took only one step before she remembered the children. This was Sammy’s moment. He was standing beside Linda looking at those shepherds as if they’d been made just for him. And they had. She turned in the other direction and saw Becky snuggled up beside Mrs. Hargrove. The older woman was wearing a long coat and Becky was standing inside the folds of it with just her face poking out.
She might be stomping off to go home, but her children had already found a home. Was her pride worth taking the children away from all that? Marla knew she had bad memories of charity boxes and things like that from her childhood. But, maybe, sometimes charity was just a community helping their own. Her mother had made receiving charity seem like such a shameful thing. Was it possible for her to accept charity and not make Sammy and Becky feel bad about it?
She looked around her. She had to stay in Dry Creek. This was their home. She might have to swallow her pride every day she lived here, but she would do it for her children.
Everyone was singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and Les was over talking to Linda and then they were both walking toward her. Great. This was just what she needed. Marla did a couple of quick blinks so neither one of them would see that her eyes had started to tear up. There would be enough time to cry when she got back to her home. It might be a humble home and they might not have all the things other people in Dry Creek had, but they were here to stay and—
“Here,” Les said as he pushed Linda forward. “She’ll tell you I mean what I say. That I’m an honest guy.”
Marla noticed that the singing had stopped and everyone had turned and looked at them. Of course, Les and Linda couldn’t see everyone watching, because they had their backs to them.
Linda looked a little startled, but she nodded. “Les is one hundred percent solid.”
“I work hard and I own my place free and clear. Tell her.”
“Les, Linda—there’s—” Marla tried to tell the two that everyone was listening, but they were intent on speaking.
Linda nodded again. “He takes his duties very seriously. There’s even some talk of him running for sheriff if—”
“I’ll never do that.” Les interrupted the other woman with a frown. “Don’t make promises I can’t keep. You’ve already messed up with the socks.”
“What socks?”
Linda stood there looking bewildered and Marla felt some of the tension ease within her.
“There’s people—” Marla tried again.
“What do you mean, what socks?” Les’s voice was rising. “That was your suggestion. Something she needed.”
“He got you socks?” Linda asked, turning to Marla. “That was his big romantic present to show you how he felt about you?”
Marla thought surely Linda would see everyone listening to them. Maybe she did. Les still hadn’t.
“Well, I didn’t think the roast was enough,” Les muttered, then let his voice get louder. “And you said I couldn’t go wrong if I got her something she needed.”
“But socks?” Linda shook her head.
Marla was starting to smile and she felt the warmth of it right down to her toes. “They were nice socks. Ten pair and some for each of the kids, too.”
“They needed socks,” Les repeated as he started smiling along with Marla.
“But where’s the romance in that?” Linda protested.
“He wants her to be warm?” suggested one of the people watching.
Linda shrugged. “Well, maybe that works.”
Les looked up at their audience, and the thought crossed his mind that his parents had never once had a public argument about socks.
“Very, very warm,” Les added as he put his arm around Marla and realized he didn’t even mind all the onlookers. He was beginning to think that if the only way two people could communicate was to yell everything out in a crowd as his parents had done, it was still best to communicate. Otherwise, a man ended up giving a woman socks when she really wanted—
“I still don’t know what you want for Christmas,” Les whispered.
“I haven’t got anything for you, either,” Marla whispered back.
Then someone in the crowd yelled out, “Have they kissed and made up yet? I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
Sometimes, Les thought, an audience could even have the right idea.
Marla saw the affection in Les’s eyes as he dipped his head and gave her a kiss. She wasn’t sure when someone started singing again, but she wondered if the song was something about stars. Or were the stars what she was seeing? All she could remember were the stars she’d seen that night when she snuggled up against Les’s back when they were riding the horse together.
“Merry Christmas,” Les lifted his head to whisper.
He didn’t even give her a chance to repeat the greeting to him before he kissed her again.
Epilogue
Everyone in Dry Creek, except Marla, knew Les was going to propose. Of course, he hadn’t told anyone he was going to ask Marla to marry him. The citizens of Dry Creek had known Les since he was a boy, however, and they had never seen him carry a dozen red roses down the street in Dry Creek before—and certainly not in the middle of a snow flurry. They had also never heard him stand by a woman’s front door and try to serenade her with an old love song from the forties. Fortunately, it hadn’t been snowing that time, but it was windy enough that shutters were slamming this way and that all over town and half the dogs were howling.
It was clear that Les hadn’t wanted to be seen or heard, and that only added to the gossip. There was so much talk about Les’s unusual behavior that the old men who sat around the woodstove in the hardware store started to make predictions on when Les would give up trying to impress Marla and just pop the age-old question.
Charley thought the younger man wouldn’t make it through January. Charley had been a farmer all his life and he knew Les had already started his calving season. A farmer didn’t get his full quota of sleep during calving season and his resistance would be down. An impatient man would just say what was on his mind and forget about dressing it up with frills.
On the other hand, Mr. Morales, who came to sit with the old men at times, said Les would most likely wait to propose on Valentine’s Day, because women liked the grand romance of that kind of timing.
Once Mr. Morales had spoken, they all agreed that it must be what Les was planning. It only made sense. Les had always been practical. He lived an orderly life and he would pay attention to things like the calendar. Besides, Les himself must know he wasn’t a romantic kind of a man. He could use the help of Valentine’s Day to back up his proposal. What man couldn’t?
The old men all nodded to each other and decided Valentine’s Day would be it. Pastor Matthew, who clerked part-time at the hardware store, even bought a couple of bottles of sparkling cider to keep in the small refrigerator behind the counter so that they could all celebrate when they heard the good news.
The men kept watch out the hardware-store window all day on Valentine’s Day, but they didn’t see anything unusual. Eventually Les did show up to take Marla to dinner at the café, but the two kids were with them when they left Marla’s house and none of the men thought Les would be so unromantic as to propose in front of the children.
When Valentine’s Day came and went without a proposal, the men were disappointed and more than a little concerned. Les might not be as flamboyant as other men when it came to courting a woman, but the men had all figured he would eventually gather enough courage to ask the big question. It was the sort of thing a man had to do if he expected to gain a wife.
There was some discussion about what they could do to help Les. Eventually, they decided it wouldn’t do Les’s confidence any good for him to know how worried they were. Still, they had to do something, so they went to see Mrs. Hargrove.
“He’s just giving her space,” Mrs. Hargrove said. She was standing beside her open door because the men had asked their question as they stood on her porch. “Young people are big on this space stuff.”
“If he gives her enough space, she’ll plumb leave town,” Charley grumbled.
“Women didn’t need space when we were young,” Elmer muttered.
“Well, times are different now,” Mrs. Hargrove said firmly. “Besides, Marla just became a Christian. Maybe Lester is being considerate and giving her time to adjust to the changes in her life.”
The men were all silent for a moment as they looked at their boots. They wondered if Les wasn’t being too considerate, but they didn’t have nerve enough to say that to Mrs. Hargrove.
“That cider the pastor bought isn’t going to keep forever,” Charley finally muttered, and they turned to leave.
The men decided there was nothing they could do, but they did, unconsciously or not, feel a little bit of sorrow every time they talked to Les. If their conversation happened to turn a time or two in the direction of how a man needed courage in his life, they meant well by their words.
If Les understood what they were trying to tell him, he never indicated it.
By the end of March, the men in the hardware store had run out of predictions. Les had not only missed Valentine’s Day, he’d also missed Lincoln’s Birthday and St. Patrick’s Day. The men reluctantly agreed that Les simply wasn’t going to ask Marla to marry him.
When they heard Les had finally given in to Mrs. Hargrove’s pleas and agreed to sing a solo in church on Palm Sunday, they decided he was turning his thoughts to other things besides romance. And they would be there to show their support. After all, not all men were called to be married. They decided they would give him some of that space Mrs. Hargrove talked about.
Les’s voice rang out clearly that Sunday morning as he sang about the palms that had been laid before Jesus as He made His triumphant entry into Jerusalem. If Les smiled a little more than usual, everyone just figured it was because he was imagining what it would have been like to see Christ on that first Palm Sunday.
It wasn’t until just before the closing prayer that Pastor Matthew announced that Les had an announcement to make.
Even when Les turned and held out his hand to Marla, it took a few seconds for the old men to realize what was happening.
The pleased, pink smile on Marla’s face told the whole story, though.
“I’ll be,” Elmer muttered. “He did it without us.”
“I guess she had enough of that space,” Charley whispered to Mrs. Hargrove.
Les didn’t even get all his words out before the congregation was clapping away.
“You could get married right now,” someone called out.
Les shook his head. “We’ve got it all planned.”
“It’ll be soon,” Marla added with a smile. “And you’re all invited.”
The wedding was in May. Several women from the church helped Marla prepare enough sweet pork tamales to feed everyone for the reception. Marla knew her Hispanic roots were completely accepted in this small town when everyone ate their tamales with such enjoyment. She wished her aunts and uncles from Mexico could be with her, but they had sent a beautiful veil made of Mexican lace for her to wear. And Mr. Morales had become as dear to her as her own uncles. The shepherd walked her down the aisle and was the first one to shout “Hallelujah” when Les kissed her for the first time after they became husband and wife.
STEEPLE HILL BOOKS
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0884-5
SHEPHERDS ABIDING IN DRY CREEK
Copyright © 2007 by Janet Tronstad
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Steeple Hill Books.
® and TM are trademarks of Steeple Hill Books, used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
This was a picture Marla knew she would never forget.
And then she saw Sammy walk behind one of the shepherds, and the whole thing lit up with white Christmas lights. Someone had made a luminary in the shape of a shepherd. Or, rather, it was a hundred luminaries grouped together to make a shepherd.
The luminaries were as much a Hispanic tradition as the tamales were, even if these luminaries were made from aluminum cans instead of paper bags. There were Christmas lights in the cans in place of candles and the light reflected on the metal of the cans until the shepherd glowed more than the angel above him.
With luminaries and tamales, Marla felt as if she was having one of her childhood Christmases.
The light from the luminary shepherd also made it possible to see the other shepherds. One shepherd was made from what looked like an old scarecrow. The scarecrow’s hat had been replaced by a simple robe and the figure had a cane in its hand. Another shepherd was simple cardboard cut to the shape of a shepherd. And then the last shepherd was standing so still it took Marla a minute to realize who it was. Mr. Morales was standing there. He even had a real lamb in his arms.
Mrs. Hargrove walked over to stand beside Marla. “Do you like them?”
“They’re beautiful.”
The older woman nodded. “We wanted to make Sammy feel good.”
Marla looked over at her son. He was looking from the shepherds to Les and then back again. “I think you’ve done that.”
“Good.”
Someone with a microphone climbed the church steps and led everyone in singing “Silent Night.” Marla pulled the wagon to the table that had been set up for serving the cocoa. Linda helped her lift the box onto the table, then they both moved closer to the Nativity figures. Marla glanced over to where Les stood with her son. Les had to be the one who had made the tin-can shepherd. She’d seen all the cans he had in his recycle bin in the barn. Who else would have that many cans all the same size?
Les told himself that this was peace. For the first time he had to agree that the Nativity project was worth all the soup everyone had eaten for months. People gathered around the figures as though they were expecting them to spring to life right in front of them then and there. Maybe it was because Mr. Morales was standing with the plastic figures and he had let the lamb down so it could wander around. There was life mixed in with all of the lit-up plastic.
Sammy was standing beside him and Les let his hand rest on the boy’s shoulder. The two teenagers who’d been arrested the other night had confessed to the deputy in Miles City that they had been harassing Sammy. He had never been a full member of the 19th Street gang. Les was glad of that. Not because he wouldn’t stand beside Sammy if he had to pay the consequences for anything he had done in his young life. Les just didn’t want Sammy to have seen the hard things that those two teenagers had seen.
He figured the teenagers would do some time in a juvenile facility and then face some additional probation time.
There was always a price to be paid for mistakes, Les told himself. But there was a world of mercy, too. He had to remind himself of that when he looked over at Marla.
Marla had moved closer to the Nativity figures, along with Linda. Both women looked as if they were enjoying the singing, although Linda kept edging away from the Nativity as though she had something else to do.
Before long, Linda had made her way to Les’s side.
“I’ll look after Sammy and Mrs. Hargrove has Becky,” Linda said. “Here’s your chance.”
“Now?” Les had pictured a nice quiet conversation with Marla. Someplace where all his neighbors weren’t gathered.
“She’s planning to move after Christmas.”
“So soon?”
Linda nodded.
Well, Les hadn’t worked with animals in his life without learning that sometimes it was all about the timing of things. If now was the only time he had to take his chance, he meant to take it.
Marla was only vaguely aware of how the singing voices were changing around her. Linda’s soprano voice had faded and a deep bass voice was growing nearer. She wasn’t paying too much attention, though. The words of the Christmas carols were all she heard. They made her believe it was truly possible to have peace on earth and goodwill to men.
“Hi,” someone whispered near her ear.
Marla didn’t have to look to know it was Les. She frowned. The goodwill-to-men sentiment was becoming a little more difficult to maintain. Still, she hadn’t had a chance to thank Les. Or to give him back those gloves of his. She pulled the gloves off her hands.
“Here.” Marla gave them to him. “I’ve wanted to return these.”
Les frowned. “But you’ll need them. You don’t have any gloves.”
Marla curled her hands into balls and stuck them into her pockets. “They’re your gloves, and I’ll do just fine. Thank you.”
Les was still looking at her. “What’s the point of keeping your toes warm in those socks if you freeze your fingers off in the meantime?”
Marla became very still. Her hands weren’t the only part of her that was turning cold. “You know about the socks?”
“Of course.”
He said it as if it was such an easy thing and no betrayal at all, Marla thought. “Who else knows?”
“Well, I suppose Linda knows. Or at least, it was her idea. And if Linda knows, then…”
Marla spun around. Two of the people who she thought were closest to being her friends were the ones who had started the charity-box business. What did they do, anyway? Sit around and talk about all the things she and her children didn’t have? It was humiliating.
She was going home.
Marla took only one step before she remembered the children. This was Sammy’s moment. He was standing beside Linda looking at those shepherds as if they’d been made just for him. And they had. She turned in the other direction and saw Becky snuggled up beside Mrs. Hargrove. The older woman was wearing a long coat and Becky was standing inside the folds of it with just her face poking out.
She might be stomping off to go home, but her children had already found a home. Was her pride worth taking the children away from all that? Marla knew she had bad memories of charity boxes and things like that from her childhood. But, maybe, sometimes charity was just a community helping their own. Her mother had made receiving charity seem like such a shameful thing. Was it possible for her to accept charity and not make Sammy and Becky feel bad about it?
She looked around her. She had to stay in Dry Creek. This was their home. She might have to swallow her pride every day she lived here, but she would do it for her children.
Everyone was singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and Les was over talking to Linda and then they were both walking toward her. Great. This was just what she needed. Marla did a couple of quick blinks so neither one of them would see that her eyes had started to tear up. There would be enough time to cry when she got back to her home. It might be a humble home and they might not have all the things other people in Dry Creek had, but they were here to stay and—
“Here,” Les said as he pushed Linda forward. “She’ll tell you I mean what I say. That I’m an honest guy.”
Marla noticed that the singing had stopped and everyone had turned and looked at them. Of course, Les and Linda couldn’t see everyone watching, because they had their backs to them.
Linda looked a little startled, but she nodded. “Les is one hundred percent solid.”
“I work hard and I own my place free and clear. Tell her.”
“Les, Linda—there’s—” Marla tried to tell the two that everyone was listening, but they were intent on speaking.
Linda nodded again. “He takes his duties very seriously. There’s even some talk of him running for sheriff if—”
“I’ll never do that.” Les interrupted the other woman with a frown. “Don’t make promises I can’t keep. You’ve already messed up with the socks.”
“What socks?”
Linda stood there looking bewildered and Marla felt some of the tension ease within her.
“There’s people—” Marla tried again.
“What do you mean, what socks?” Les’s voice was rising. “That was your suggestion. Something she needed.”
“He got you socks?” Linda asked, turning to Marla. “That was his big romantic present to show you how he felt about you?”
Marla thought surely Linda would see everyone listening to them. Maybe she did. Les still hadn’t.
“Well, I didn’t think the roast was enough,” Les muttered, then let his voice get louder. “And you said I couldn’t go wrong if I got her something she needed.”
“But socks?” Linda shook her head.
Marla was starting to smile and she felt the warmth of it right down to her toes. “They were nice socks. Ten pair and some for each of the kids, too.”
“They needed socks,” Les repeated as he started smiling along with Marla.
“But where’s the romance in that?” Linda protested.
“He wants her to be warm?” suggested one of the people watching.
Linda shrugged. “Well, maybe that works.”
Les looked up at their audience, and the thought crossed his mind that his parents had never once had a public argument about socks.
“Very, very warm,” Les added as he put his arm around Marla and realized he didn’t even mind all the onlookers. He was beginning to think that if the only way two people could communicate was to yell everything out in a crowd as his parents had done, it was still best to communicate. Otherwise, a man ended up giving a woman socks when she really wanted—
“I still don’t know what you want for Christmas,” Les whispered.
“I haven’t got anything for you, either,” Marla whispered back.
Then someone in the crowd yelled out, “Have they kissed and made up yet? I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
Sometimes, Les thought, an audience could even have the right idea.
Marla saw the affection in Les’s eyes as he dipped his head and gave her a kiss. She wasn’t sure when someone started singing again, but she wondered if the song was something about stars. Or were the stars what she was seeing? All she could remember were the stars she’d seen that night when she snuggled up against Les’s back when they were riding the horse together.
“Merry Christmas,” Les lifted his head to whisper.
He didn’t even give her a chance to repeat the greeting to him before he kissed her again.
Epilogue
Everyone in Dry Creek, except Marla, knew Les was going to propose. Of course, he hadn’t told anyone he was going to ask Marla to marry him. The citizens of Dry Creek had known Les since he was a boy, however, and they had never seen him carry a dozen red roses down the street in Dry Creek before—and certainly not in the middle of a snow flurry. They had also never heard him stand by a woman’s front door and try to serenade her with an old love song from the forties. Fortunately, it hadn’t been snowing that time, but it was windy enough that shutters were slamming this way and that all over town and half the dogs were howling.
It was clear that Les hadn’t wanted to be seen or heard, and that only added to the gossip. There was so much talk about Les’s unusual behavior that the old men who sat around the woodstove in the hardware store started to make predictions on when Les would give up trying to impress Marla and just pop the age-old question.
Charley thought the younger man wouldn’t make it through January. Charley had been a farmer all his life and he knew Les had already started his calving season. A farmer didn’t get his full quota of sleep during calving season and his resistance would be down. An impatient man would just say what was on his mind and forget about dressing it up with frills.
On the other hand, Mr. Morales, who came to sit with the old men at times, said Les would most likely wait to propose on Valentine’s Day, because women liked the grand romance of that kind of timing.
Once Mr. Morales had spoken, they all agreed that it must be what Les was planning. It only made sense. Les had always been practical. He lived an orderly life and he would pay attention to things like the calendar. Besides, Les himself must know he wasn’t a romantic kind of a man. He could use the help of Valentine’s Day to back up his proposal. What man couldn’t?
The old men all nodded to each other and decided Valentine’s Day would be it. Pastor Matthew, who clerked part-time at the hardware store, even bought a couple of bottles of sparkling cider to keep in the small refrigerator behind the counter so that they could all celebrate when they heard the good news.
The men kept watch out the hardware-store window all day on Valentine’s Day, but they didn’t see anything unusual. Eventually Les did show up to take Marla to dinner at the café, but the two kids were with them when they left Marla’s house and none of the men thought Les would be so unromantic as to propose in front of the children.
When Valentine’s Day came and went without a proposal, the men were disappointed and more than a little concerned. Les might not be as flamboyant as other men when it came to courting a woman, but the men had all figured he would eventually gather enough courage to ask the big question. It was the sort of thing a man had to do if he expected to gain a wife.
There was some discussion about what they could do to help Les. Eventually, they decided it wouldn’t do Les’s confidence any good for him to know how worried they were. Still, they had to do something, so they went to see Mrs. Hargrove.
“He’s just giving her space,” Mrs. Hargrove said. She was standing beside her open door because the men had asked their question as they stood on her porch. “Young people are big on this space stuff.”
“If he gives her enough space, she’ll plumb leave town,” Charley grumbled.
“Women didn’t need space when we were young,” Elmer muttered.
“Well, times are different now,” Mrs. Hargrove said firmly. “Besides, Marla just became a Christian. Maybe Lester is being considerate and giving her time to adjust to the changes in her life.”
The men were all silent for a moment as they looked at their boots. They wondered if Les wasn’t being too considerate, but they didn’t have nerve enough to say that to Mrs. Hargrove.
“That cider the pastor bought isn’t going to keep forever,” Charley finally muttered, and they turned to leave.
The men decided there was nothing they could do, but they did, unconsciously or not, feel a little bit of sorrow every time they talked to Les. If their conversation happened to turn a time or two in the direction of how a man needed courage in his life, they meant well by their words.
If Les understood what they were trying to tell him, he never indicated it.
By the end of March, the men in the hardware store had run out of predictions. Les had not only missed Valentine’s Day, he’d also missed Lincoln’s Birthday and St. Patrick’s Day. The men reluctantly agreed that Les simply wasn’t going to ask Marla to marry him.
When they heard Les had finally given in to Mrs. Hargrove’s pleas and agreed to sing a solo in church on Palm Sunday, they decided he was turning his thoughts to other things besides romance. And they would be there to show their support. After all, not all men were called to be married. They decided they would give him some of that space Mrs. Hargrove talked about.
Les’s voice rang out clearly that Sunday morning as he sang about the palms that had been laid before Jesus as He made His triumphant entry into Jerusalem. If Les smiled a little more than usual, everyone just figured it was because he was imagining what it would have been like to see Christ on that first Palm Sunday.
It wasn’t until just before the closing prayer that Pastor Matthew announced that Les had an announcement to make.
Even when Les turned and held out his hand to Marla, it took a few seconds for the old men to realize what was happening.
The pleased, pink smile on Marla’s face told the whole story, though.
“I’ll be,” Elmer muttered. “He did it without us.”
“I guess she had enough of that space,” Charley whispered to Mrs. Hargrove.
Les didn’t even get all his words out before the congregation was clapping away.
“You could get married right now,” someone called out.
Les shook his head. “We’ve got it all planned.”
“It’ll be soon,” Marla added with a smile. “And you’re all invited.”
The wedding was in May. Several women from the church helped Marla prepare enough sweet pork tamales to feed everyone for the reception. Marla knew her Hispanic roots were completely accepted in this small town when everyone ate their tamales with such enjoyment. She wished her aunts and uncles from Mexico could be with her, but they had sent a beautiful veil made of Mexican lace for her to wear. And Mr. Morales had become as dear to her as her own uncles. The shepherd walked her down the aisle and was the first one to shout “Hallelujah” when Les kissed her for the first time after they became husband and wife.
STEEPLE HILL BOOKS
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0884-5
SHEPHERDS ABIDING IN DRY CREEK
Copyright © 2007 by Janet Tronstad
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