Mercy Me Read online

  © 2003 by Margaret A. Graham

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3914-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  For Bunny Dagley

  who loves all God’s creatures, great and small,

  especially Paso Fino horses

  And God, who studies each commonplace soul,

  Out of commonplace things makes His beautiful whole.

  Sarah Chauncet Woolsey

  (Susan Coolidge, pen name)

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  1

  Dear Beatrice,

  You have not wrote in a long time. Are you all right? Let me know if you are sick.

  As for me, my aches and pains come from having too many birthdays. Only good thing about birthdays is getting old enough to get that Social Security check. But before I leave the planet, I got a few things to let you in on.

  For one thing, I’m here to tell you that there is not one word of truth in that old saying “There’s no fool like an old fool.” Make no mistake, there’s lots of competition out there, fools young and old with no more smarts than that state house crowd. I got a long way to go to be the fool them baby boomers is, right? To keep the playing field fair (Ha! Ha!) I am not taking any of them mind-enhancing herbs them women in the Willing Workers Sunday school class swear by.

  Beatrice, you might know the Willing Workers is at it again. This time they’re in a swivet to run off the new music director. As for me, I’m sitting tight. Mercy me, the fellow is not dry behind the ears.

  I got the garden plowed. Elijah’ll come grub it up so I can start planting come Good Friday.

  Your friend,

  Esmeralda

  It took me a while to get that letter mailed. You’d think that since Bud died I would’ve had plenty of time, but first one thing and another came up, and before I knew it, my day was gone. Went to the hardware store and bless Patty if the boy Elmer hired part-time didn’t try to sell me last year’s seed corn. I marched right back in the office and told Elmer to get that sack of corn off the floor before some unsuspecting customer bought it and it don’t half come up.

  Well, to get back to Beatrice, I worried about her up there in Mason County with nobody to look after her. Like me, she had no family to speak of, one cousin out West, maybe in Idaho. She is old as me by a few months, but she still had not got the sense God promised a billy goat. When the mill closed here in Live Oaks, the only place she could find a job was at a convenience store up on the interstate at Piney Woods Crossroads. I didn’t worry about the locals holding up the store—the moonshine business is still going strong in Mason County—but people coming off the interstate are from all over and be not above pulling a gun on somebody. I knew that if ever that place was robbed, nervous as she was, she’d like as not drop dead before they could get off a shot.

  Well, I finally got the letter mailed, and as soon as Beatrice got it, she called me up. She started in right away, telling me she was not sick.

  “My dreaded disease has not come back on me yet. I’ve got no more lumps, but that don’t mean I’ll live long enough to pay all these here medical bills.”

  “The Lord will provide,” I told her, but she wasn’t listening. She was talking fast and cramming her words together to get as much said as she could without running up a big phone bill. That’s the way she always starts out, rapid as machine-gun fire, but usually she winds down and yackety-yacks to her heart’s content.

  She was telling me, “The reason I haven’t wrote much lately is because I can’t think of nothing to write about. All I do is work all day, walk home of an evening, eat a TV supper, wash my underwear, and read my devotional. Then I make sure all the doors and winders is locked and check to make sure my will is safe under the mattress. Then I go to bed.”

  By then she had used up all she had to say, but her lonesome self wouldn’t allow her to say good-bye.

  “Esmeralda,” she said, “you’re right about them baby boomers. Yesterday one of them dropped a penny on the floor, and he made not a move to pick it up. That’s the way they are—give ’em pennies in change and they leave ’em on the counter. Ain’t it in the Bible about a penny saved is a penny earned? Well, like as not, they don’t read the Bible. I don’t call nobody a fool, but one of them comes in here and feeds quarters to the video machine till he has not got a quarter left.”

  I laughed a little to let her know I was still listening, but I didn’t say anything—didn’t want to encourage her to stay on the line. She hung on anyway, trying to think of something more to say. Her pauses are like when the washing machine stops between cycles then starts up again.

  “I sure miss Tom,” she whined. “I’d like to have me another companion, but I am sure not looking for one. Nobody can take Tom’s place.”

  I was about to say something, but she changed the subject. “What’s that music director’s name?” she asked. “I sure miss Apostolic Bible Church and the Willing Workers. I guess Clara is still head of the W.W.s because she has not died yet.”

  I finally decided that if Beatrice was going to talk all night, I might as well butt in and say a few things myself. “Before you pass judgment on that fool who feeds the video machine, there’s Willing Workers that buys all kinds of magazines they don’t read, hoping they’ll win the sweepstakes. They say it’s not gambling because they get something for their money. Besides, they say, if they win the sweepstakes, they’ll give some of the money to Apostolic Bible Church and a lot of it to missions. I’ll not say what I think, but Splurgeon says, ‘He who gambles picks his own pocket.’ That’s the truth if ever I heard it.”

  I didn’t give her a chance to ramble off again, because I needed to jerk a knot in her about eating TV dinners.

  “And what do you mean eating TV dinners?” I said. “You’re a good cook even if you are a rich cook. All that butter and cream is good tasting and a lot better for you than food froze for years that tastes like wallpaper paste.”

  “They ain’t so bad, Esmeralda. Why should I cook up a lot of stuff when there’s only me to eat it? I use to cook chicken for Tom.”

  “Well, Beatrice, that brings me to something else. I’ve been telling you for some time that you need to get out more and meet people. Tom was as good a friend as a four-legged critter can be, even though he took off now and then to go courting. But what you need is a two-legged, talking friend. Better yet, a man friend.”

  I thought she would go ballistic, b
ut to her, the idea of having a man friend was so out of the question that it didn’t bother her. “Oh, I’m too old for that,” she said. “Marriage ain’t for me.”

  “You don’t have to marry him! It’s just you need a friend to go out to eat with once in a while. As for marriage, you would’ve been married long ago if it wasn’t for that hang-up you’ve got. When you were young and ripe, you dumped every boy that showed you favor because they didn’t come up to your standards. Whatever you meant by that, I’ll never know. With men so scarce in Live Oaks, a girl had to take what she could get. Of course, I got the cream of the crop, but every fellow that asked you for a date you compared him to your sweet patootie, Percy Poteat. After the way he made fun of you all through school, I don’t see how you could have ever given him the time of day. Mercy me, he used to tell you you were ugly and that your mama dressed you funny! Of course, like me, you weren’t so favored in the looks department, and it was true your mama had only one pattern—one week a blue jumper and the next week a brown one. And them hair bows were way too big. But when your mama curled your hair, you looked like a store-bought doll.”

  “That was a long time ago, Esmeralda. And if beauty is a curse, I was mighty blessed.”

  She had said that so many times it wasn’t funny anymore. “Beatrice, there was one time when you were a real good looker. Do you remember? It was after we quit school to go to work in the variety store. The manager assigned you to the candy counter, and you really filled out then. That’s when all the boys tried to get you to go steady. That’s when those flat-chested, green-with-envy Neely girls started razzing you about your red hair. Jealous, that’s all. They were just plain jealous and stayed green with envy until you turned against Hershey kisses and slimmed down again. And as long as you eat them TV dinners, you will keep on being skinny as a rail.”

  I could hear her loud sigh over the phone. “I guess I am right bony in parts.”

  “You are not bony! You could just use a little more meat on you is all. Why, Clara Wolf would give her upper plate to have your figure. There ought to be some nice wifeless man at church or one that comes in the station you could go out with. I bet you don’t even cast an eye to see.”

  “I’m way too busy to notice anybody comes in that place.”

  Busy, my eye! All her life, Beatrice had been shy. At a party, you might as well have pasted her on the wall and called her “Miss Wallflower.” Beatrice was not at ease in her own skin, and there was no reason for that. Even at her age, she still had eye appeal, and if she would put her mind to it, I knew she could be a knockout. I racked my brain trying to think of something that would improve her appearance.

  “Beatrice, why don’t you color your hair? Get yourself a bottle of hair dye and get rid of that faded look you got now. You don’t need to worry about it being a sin to put the color back the way God made you in the first place.”

  “We better hang, Esmeralda, or I won’t be able to pay the bill. But wait, now—you were going to tell me the name of that music director.”

  “His name? It’s Boris Krantz, and that’s another thing them women at church can’t abide. Nobody around here has got a name like that, and you know if Clara can’t climb down your family tree to the bare roots, you don’t get no clean bill of health. He’s a right nice-looking boy, and if he gets to stay here long enough, chances are he’ll marry one of our girls. I say new blood is a good thing. All this inbreeding such as we have got here in Live Oaks is not good for the community. Now you hang up the phone and go cook yourself some red meat.”

  She hung up, and I went in the kitchen to fry some potatoes. I thought that for somebody with mile-high medical bills, she sure ought to hold down on long-distance calls. Long distance is many a woman’s fast track to the poorhouse.

  I told myself I’d try to remember to call her the next time. I wondered if she’d take me up on dyeing her hair.

  2

  I had a lot to do the following week. Elijah came and grubbed up the garden. I tell you, that old mule of his looked like she wouldn’t last long, but, of course, Maude had always looked thataway. Coming down the street, she would lean to one side and the wagon would lean to the other. They creaked along at a snail’s pace, and Elijah just sat there letting Maude take the lead. If truth be told, I thought Elijah might not outlast Maude. Sometimes he was so stove up he could hardly climb down from the wagon.

  I remember a time when he was working for Clara, when his slow pace provoked her so much she took the hoe out of his hands and showed him how to speed up. Elijah took off his cap, wiped his brow, and politely told her, “Miz Clara, you do’s it a minute or two; I do’s it from sunup to sundown.”

  That put the quietus on her, and she marched right back in the house. I laugh every time I think about that.

  Clara is one of those women who wants to run things. The week Elijah grubbed my garden, she got the notion that we needed to put down carpet in the Willing Workers classroom and asked every member to bring fifty cents a week until we got the money to pay for it. I couldn’t figure what she had against vinyl. I, for one, thought it was just fine, a lot cleaner than carpet. I thought what money we had ought to go to missions, but when I said that, you won’t believe what she said back. With her mouth twisted in a know-it-all knot, she told me, “You sound like Judas.”

  I thought I was going to come out of my chair, and I probably would have if Thelma had not grabbed my arm.

  With them tight lips, Clara proceeded to explain. “It’s told us in the gospel that when Mary poured perfume on Jesus, Judas asked, ‘Why wasn’t that ointment sold and the money given to the poor?’”

  Nobody in the room got the connection, so Thelma spoke up. “What’s that got to do with this carpet?”

  To give answer, Clara’s voice rose, and she let go the twist-lip mode. “It means that there is a time when we’re supposed to lavish our attention on the Lord by spending a little money to make his house beautiful. I am sure Solomon had a carpet on the floor of that temple he built for the Lord. We’re not supposed to be so practical when it comes to worshiping God.”

  I couldn’t help myself; it popped right in my head what Mr. Splurgeon said about temples. “It is easier to build temples than to be one,” I told them.

  Clara looked about to pop her cork. “That has nothing to do with this,” she spluttered.

  Thelma is just about the only one in the group who has the backbone to stand up to Clara. “Well, Clara,” she said, “all of this you’re saying about our floor and Solomon’s temple seems far-fetched. I don’t think we’re ready to plunk out a lot of money for a carpet, are we ladies?”

  They all agreed, except Mabel Elmwood, who always goes for keeping up appearances.

  Well, I give Clara this. She knows when to quit. “All right, then,” she said, “we’ll just lay the matter on the table.”

  Of course, that meant she wasn’t giving up, but for the time being she would change the subject. She cleared her pipes and put on a long face. “We have got to be praying about this situation in the music department,” she informed us, as if prayer were really what she had in mind. “All the teenagers are going hog wild over Boris Krantz, and we have got to put a stop to that. Why, I heard—Well, never mind,” she said, knowing every last one of us wanted to know what she’d heard. She shook her head and put on that gloom-and-doom look, as if it were too grave a matter to reveal in only a few minutes. That’s the way she is—likes to hold you in suspense while she makes up as much as she can to add to whatever it is she’s going to tell.

  “We’ll have the lesson now,” she said and turned the class over to Thelma.

  Thelma had lived in Chicago and years back went to a Bible institute. Said she started out to be a missionary but wound up at Live Oaks, where she felt she was most needed. If you ask me, she was still looking for a husband and this was the end of the line. After gleaning through the slim pickings here, she gave up and settled in instead of moving on.

  Thelma wa
s a fair to middlin’ teacher, but we all studied the quarterly and knew what she was going to say before she said it. I did listen to make sure she didn’t slip up and bring in some false doctrine. To her credit, though, she was always there and never late. That goes along with being a Yankee.

  The bell rang.

  Well, I was glad class was over. It was stuffy in there, and I wanted to get in line for the bathroom. My bladder does not get the good mileage it used to.

  Monday I got a letter from Beatrice, which reminded me that I had planned to call her.

  Dear Esmeralda,

  I hope this finds you in good health. I am fine.

  (That’s the way she starts every letter she has ever written in her entire life.)

  I keep praying they will find a cure for my dreaded disease before I die of old age. Do you think they will?

  Well, I took your advice a while back and died my hair. A older man with a pigtail come in the store the other day and he asked me if that was a wig I was wearing or what. I told him it were not a wig but I did not tell him it was died hair. Do you think I should have told him the whole truth?

  About Percy Poteat . . .

  (I should’ve known my mentioning Percy when we talked on the phone would get her ulcers in an uproar.)

  I know he teased me a lot but I like to think it was because he liked me. I got a crush on him in eighth grade the year we dropped out of school. He was very smart. He told me he had a photo mind.

  As for them jumpers I wore, Mama didn’t have no pattern. She made me a white one for Easter and she was hoping it would do for the next Easter. By the next year I had got a little long legged but she said it would do if I didn’t bend over. We had dinner on the grounds that Sunday and a Easter egg hunt. I ate standing up and much as I wanted to find the golden egg I excused myself from the hunt.

  Is that music director the one they fired from Cold Water Baptist in Springs County? That name Boris Krantz sort of rings a bell with me.