Shouts and Whispers

Carrie leaned over to Lucy and nodded toward the church organist, “You have to love someone who has something on the inside that makes them so beautiful that your eyes see right into the heart. Of course, I think almost everyone is beautiful on the inside. Most folks just don’t know it.”

“Shhh.” Lucy said with quiet consternation.

Carrie rolled her eyes and breathed, “You ought to be listening to me and not to the Preacher giving you the road map to Hell.”

Lucy looked at her watch and shifted in her seat. She knew she was going to be sitting in this one place for at least another 30 minutes, and that thought did nothing for the loud whirring in her head.

“Satan is the driver!” the Preacher said loud enough to get Carrie and Lucy’s attention. “And we are simply the passengers. He will drive you to forsake your Lord. He will drive you to forsake your church. He will drive you to forsake the life that has been created for you.”

Lucy cut her eyes at the Preacher. “You have no idea what kind of life has been created for me,” she thought, and she let herself float back to the day her Mother introduced her to “Uncle” Billy. “Uncle Billy knew exactly what kind of life he was creating for me.”

“Lucy, come meet your Uncle Billy,” her mother called.

“I have to go,” Lucy said to her best friend, Carrie.

Carrie frowned.

Lucy hopped up from under the porch where she and Carrie had been watching this new Uncle get out of his car, walk up the steps and kiss her Mother. Lucy quietly eased out from under the house and ran around to the back door and to the front living room so as not to give away her hiding place. Carrie waited until they were all inside before she darted out from under the porch and back to her house.

“Pleased to meet you Uncle Billy.” Lucy said in her best-mannered way.

“And I’m very pleased to meet you Miss Lucy,” he answered. He held out a bunch of post cards to her and said, “Here, I was in a store, and I thought you might like these.” “Your mother told me how much you like pictures of mountains, and these have a different mountain picture on each card.”

Carrie bumped the Hymnal next to Lucy and elbowed her, “Wake up. We are singing.”

Lucy was brought back to the church by the strained voices around her trying to manage “How Great Thou Art” without the beautiful flourish normally provided by the pianist, Lucy’s piano teacher, Mrs. Keith.

Mrs. Keith had passed just six days ago. And, she would have been running up and down the keys with every chord of this song right now. Lucy closed her eyes and imagined Mrs. Keith right there playing her best for her favorite hymn as she sang along.

Lucy took piano lessons from the time she was six until she was 15. That was 25 years ago. Lucy and Mrs. Keith had remained dear friends up until last week when Mrs. Keith died in her sleep with her treasured Bible. The Bible she gave to Lucy.

Lucy reached over and patted the Bible in her oversized blue embroidered purse. She felt like she was patting Mrs. Keith’s soft as kitten’s paws fragile hand, as she had done so many times in the last month or so as life waned from her 90-year-old body.

Even though Lucy and Mrs. Keith had such a dear friendship, Lucy never told her about the “Uncles” she endured in her childhood. She never spoke of the middle of the night visits to her bedroom by Uncle Billy, who spent a year “teaching” her how to be a “good woman” when she was just eight. She could still hear his mumbles of love and threat as he slid his hands under her gown. She would close her eyes and imagine she was high up on a mountain in the snow with no one near and only the sound of snow falling on snow. She had to visit that snow-covered mountain several times a month that year.

The Preacher pounded the pulpit with his fist, “You must rebuke Satan in all of his forms! You must feel the power of God within you, and let it lead you to your own salvation!”

Lucy shifted on the hard pew, and Carrie leaned over again with a slight grin, “Did you find anything interesting in that Bible?”

Lucy smiled and exhaled, “Inspiration.”

Lucy held the hymnal for them as they belted out, “Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help. Love lifted me.”

As the hymn ended, Lucy remembered the last words that Mrs. Keith whispered to her, “You deserve all the love in the world. Never forget that and look to my favorite verses in the Gospels for hope.” And Mrs. Keith passed her worn Bible to Lucy as she closed her eyes for the last time and drifted away.

Lucy looked up to see her ex-husband glaring at her from his Usher’s stance at the main door to the church. He stood there every Sunday to shake the hands of the churchgoers as they moved from the Sanctuary into the Fellowship Hall.

Her arm was still throbbing from his meaty-handed grab as he hissed his threat this morning when he trapped her in the church library, “If I can’t have you. I’ll make sure no one can.” It was a constant threat he would scream at her as he shook her and slapped her and battered her crotch with his fists.

She looked away from his hate-filled gaze.

“I sure am glad you left that sorry excuse for a man,” Carrie said while putting her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “He was at best unkind and at worst a devil.”

Lucy nodded as the Preacher began the call to “Join me at the pulpit today to give your life over to God and get off Satan’s one-way bus to eternal damnation.” And the organist began playing “Blessed Assurance.”

Lucy was counting on at least two people joining the Preacher at the front to be forgiven of their sins, and she was elated to see four people walking down the aisle to the front.

“Are you ready?” Carrie grabbed Lucy’s hand.

Lucy took a deep breath and said, “I am.”

The Preacher concluded the service and invited everyone to welcome the four new members and join them all in the Fellowship Hall for refreshments.

And, on cue, everyone in the church, all 200 of them, stood up and crowded to the front to welcome the new members.

Carrie held Lucy’s hand tight and said, “Let’s go.”

And she led her out of the side door, hidden by the crowd, and down the steps to the side exit of the church.

Lucy was ahead of the entire congregation to her car, which she had parked down the side street from the church, where she had parked it many times before, and she and Carrie jumped in, and Lucy drove quickly to the bus station where the 12:15, 12:30 and 12:45 buses were waiting.

They left her car in the Bus Station parking lot and walked behind the station and around the corner to a crowded lot where Mrs. Keith’s old Buick, that she called Peggy, was waiting for them. Carrie, Lucy, and Peggy rode in silence to the train station. Then, Carrie helped Lucy navigate the signs for driving Peggy into the train car transport loading area and through the terminal to the train.

Once on the train, and safely behind the closed curtains and doors of the sleeping car, Carrie and Lucy let out a giant deep breath, and Lucy said, “It will be at least an hour before he realizes that I am not home. And another hour before he goes to look for the car. And likely another hour after that before he finds it at the bus station. He’ll spend weeks tracking those buses before he gives up.”

Carrie smiled, “By then, we’ll be far away.”

The train pulled away from the station as the whirring in Lucy’s head slowed.

Carrie put her arm around Lucy and whispered, “I’m so proud of you.”

Lucy reached in her bag and pulled out the Bible. She opened it to the passage in the Gospel of Luke that was labeled number one, Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

Written beside that passage was a note, “I know you have been hurt so very many times, and I am now able to help you if you will accept it.”

She turned to number two, Matthew 16:19, “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

The word “keys” was underlined.

Then, to number three, Matthew 6:28, “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.”

Just the word lilies was highlighted.

Then, number four, Mark 16:1, “And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.”

The words sweet spices were highlighted and underlined.

And, number five, John 16:13, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.”

In the margin beside that was written, “I remember when I just knew where to look for the elderly woman who wandered off from the nursing home.”

Lucy reached back into her bag and pulled out the small sugar and cinnamon spice tin with the key in it to marvel at it. She found it under the large pot near Mrs. Keith’s front porch where her favorite lilies always grew.

Then, she pulled out the locked money pouch that she found under the pallet and plastic on the back right-hand side of Mrs. Keith’s storage shed where she discovered an elderly lady who was sheltering there from the cold after wandering off from the nursing home down the street from Mrs. Keith’s house.

Lucy used the key to open the lock on the pouch and pulled out the title for Peggy, a picture of a snow-covered mountain in Vermont, that she had given Mrs. Keith when she was 15, $20,000 in cash and a little black book.

On the back of the picture, Lucy had written, “A picture of my favorite place for my favorite person.”

She opened the little black book and read the words again, “My husband and children have all gone before me, and I have no one other than my dearest friend to leave my few possessions to. Lucy, I hope you remember all the things I taught you about beauty, life, and love, and I hope you follow your heart to a new place full of hope and mountains and snow. This little book is for you to fill with your dreams. I am so very proud of you. With much love, Carrie Keith.”

Lucy put everything back in her bag, wiped the tears from her cheeks, stretched out on the bed and let the rocking of the train, and the words of her piano teacher, lull her into a deep and undisturbed sleep.