This latter bout with nature led to a discourse on Providence and the goodness of the Creator, in which my grandmother insisted Mr. Chappels participate. His presence, that particular evening, rested solely on the basis of his love for my mother. But seeing he had stayed for dinner, there was no escaping her theological confrontation.
“Now don’t you find that convincing?” she began. “That the grandeur and opulence of nature, the very abundance and extravagance of creation, should reflect something of the grandeur and goodness of its Designer? Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” he moaned, not wishing to contest her.
“What is your own theory? You must have one. Please share it. We’re all family now, or soon will be,” she smiled. Then she folded her hands in that aristocratic style she must have acquired at the Martha Washington Seminary for Girls. She waited patiently for him to commence.
“Mama, the poor man and I have a ton of things to discuss and plan. Can’t we do this later?”
“Oh, Shaula! Later never comes, my dear. Occasions like this are gifts of the season. Tomorrow will sweep them all away and introduce an order of fresh new duties.”
“You do have a point, Miz. Edmonds. But I see it all as nature’s boundless way of hurling thousands of seeds and berries to the winds of chance, knowing that only a few will ever survive the harsh conditions of reality. She’s a profligate spender, if you ask me. Whether God exists or not, or guides the process or not, or foreordained its mechanics, I fear to say. Our beliefs should match the facts, and not the facts our beliefs. That’s what every successful banker knows, and God pity the ones who don’t.”
“Oh, so definitive! Do tell! We mustn’t misguide Tommy. Not a sparrow falls, but that our heavenly Father knows it. I might be old fashioned, and out of my league when it comes to banking, but I can never doubt His guiding hand.”
A silence ensued. Her brow lifted and sagged and her face grew taut. Her wrinkles swelled into grooves. Then she smiled. “We need you, Mr. Chappels. Yes, dear man! And God knows it. Don’t disdain an old woman’s belief in the mercy of Providence. I know it when I see it.”
“And coffee cups, too, Grandmother!” I piped up. “Remember, you saw him first in the coffee cup.”
Pearl and my mother hooted with laughter. Mr. Chappels blushed with mirth. My grandmother’s face turned ashen.
“Oh, goodness!” she feigned. Her cheeks burned red, even under her rouge.
“So much for dissembling, Mama,” my mother said.
“‘Opulence,’ ‘dissembling,’ ‘Providence’!” repeated Mr. Chappels. Does anybody ever explain these words for Tommy?”
“Or for me?” added Pearl.
“He’ll learn them in time,” said my grandmother. “That’s far better than paltering around the boy. Once Holman redeemed me from the Knobs, I vowed I’d never allow my speech to deteriorate again.”
“Nor have you!” confirmed my mother. “Marion, she knits with a dictionary at her elbow.”
“I believe it!” he smiled. “Well, Mama Edmonds, if I may call you that, I look forward to being part of the family. And being your stepfather, Master Thomas,” he grinned as he addressed me across the table. He enfolded my mother’s left hand in his and kissed her fingers. “And to you, Tommy,” he raised his voice. “May your childhood be filled with unending joy.”
I don’t remember if I smiled, or thanked him, or looked away. Numb is not the word. Puzzled would have been more like it. Or nonplused. I could still feel his presence beside the horse, when he slipped his hand about its reins and shot Olan Crawford in the chest. Whatever I thought about this man, or however I felt about him, I liked his quiet mannerisms and manly, genteel qualities.
June did not end happily. Late one misty evening, Earl showed up at the back screened-in door with a lantern. “Little Ouida’s missing. Ain’t nobody seen her a’fore supper. Please pray for her, Miz. Edmonds. Somethin’s happened to her, bad. I just know it.”
Ouida was Earl’s niece, his oldest brother, Jessie’s, baby girl. She couldn’t have been more than three.
“Won’t you come in?” my grandmother offered.
“No’m, thank ye. I was hoping you could spare Pearl. We’re mountin’ a search party for her right now. Leavin’ from the barn and up through the orchard, where her mama last seen her. She didn’t come in for supper.”
“Oh, Earl! Let me call the sheriff. Or Everett. He’s got tracking hounds. He could be here in less than an hour.”
“We done got some of our own, Miz. Ginny. Ask Pearl to bring a lantern and follow us up through the woods.”
By now, Pearl had come down from her room over the kitchen. “Wait, Pa, and I’ll go with you.”
Earl waited on the steps while Pearl tossed a shawl about her shoulders. She laced up her brogans and lit a kerosene lantern, which she had retrieved from a table in the pantry.
“Can I go?” I begged.
“Most definitely not!” my grandmother retorted. “One lost child is enough. Get on up to bed,” she remonstrated. “Earl, I’ll make some coffee and send it up by Shaula to the barn.”
“Thank you, ma’am, we’d be much obliged.”
As he and Pearl disappeared in the night, I ran to the front hall windows and peered out into the dark. The orchard lay just across the road in front of the house, and I could make out a dozen or so glowing lanterns in the mellow night, as searchers wove their way up the hill in the mist. They gathered briefly under some apple limbs, on the edge of the woods; then formed a single file of fading light that grew fainter and fainter until they were swallowed by darkness.
I pretended to mount the stairs, stomping my feet and muttering pouting sounds as I climbed. But instead I was standing by Quelle and staring up at the indomitable Capt. Edmonds, with his balderdash eyes and gigantic sword. With that, I tugged quietly on the front door and slipped out into the night. I all but stumbled off the porch, as my eyes adjusted to the dark. It had been drizzling but had stopped. A white fog enveloped the yard. I ran toward the barn and hid in one of the empty horse stalls. Soon enough, my mother arrived with a large, enameled-covered pot of coffee, a tray of cups, and a pitcher of cream.
I could hear voices on the road. It was more of Earl’s kin people and a moil of dogs. The big, chained hounds were whining and baying and pulling the men behind them. They were coon dogs.
“Miss Shaula, how kind!” The men helped themselves liberally to the coffee and trudged back onto the road.
“I’ll have biscuits for you in awhile, as soon as Mama bakes them,” she called. “You’ll need something nourishing before long.”
They waved to her and slipped out of sight in the mist. I watched as my mother retuned to the house. Once she disappeared around the corncrib, I hurried after the men.
They passed through the orchard, stopped where I had seen the others pause, and stared down at the ground.
“Damn!” one of the men groaned. “That’s blood.”
“That’s a track,” another said. “A cat’s track. Some panther’s done drug her off.”
My grandmother had often told stories of how panthers stalked the Knobs, but when she’d see how much that frightened me, she’d change her story to, “Oh, that was long ago, when I was a little girl, and Holman first came over the Knobs to visit us. They’d scream like wild women in the night. And they would drag off an occasional lamb or ewe.”
This time it was no ewe, but a lamb—a lamb