“My Aunt Ruth said the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the lion will eat straw and we’ll all have knowledge of the Lord, so I guess you could preach on that.” Speed was doing his best to impress the parson with his scrap of scripture.
“My boy, my boy, perspicacious, absolutely perspicacious. Isaiah 11. That will be our Old Testament reading for Sunday. Well done, Master Speed. Well done. And I think I shall choose Second Corinthians for the Epistle. Not a usual Advent text, but quite sufficient.”
Speed had only a dim understanding of the relevance of Aunt Ruth’s text for the parson’s sermon, but he anticipated his mother would make him endure worship on the upcoming Sunday. He finished his coffee with several gulps, set his mug on the table and then, with no further word for Rebecca, stood to go. The parson appeared to be considering a matter carefully, then pushed his glasses down on his nose so he could look earnestly into Speed’s face. He pulled a penny from a well-worn pocket purse, seized Speed’s hand, placed the penny in his palm, then closed his fingers over it. “I’ll pay a penny an hour, Speed. A penny an hour for chopping wood. Come by any afternoon. There’s plenty of chopping to be done.”
“Thank you Parson, but I just did it to keep warm. I wasn’t looking for money. You already done plenty for my Ma and me.” Speed’s response was politic but not wholly sincere. He resented the parson’s mandate that cost him the pittance he earned from Muench at the livery stable and the companionship of Floyd Little.
“A penny an hour, and that is all there is to that. See you next time,” said the diminutive gentleman as he turned to leave the kitchen.
“Thank you for the coffee, Miss Rebecca,” said Speed as an afterthought. He considered he was being extra polite add the “Miss,” because she was a free woman.
“Humpf,” said Rebecca, as Speed stepped toward the kitchen door.
Speed got the penny for his efforts on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, Speed found his mother coughing in her room when he returned from school. On Thursday morning, she seemed stronger when he went to school, but again was coughing in her bed when he returned, so he excused himself to the exercise of the parson’s chopping block. On Friday, his mother was not able to rise from her bed at all, and he suggested that she change to his bed because she would be closer to the stove. Saturday was cold and damp, and when Sunday morning came Joycie’s cough had returned with a vengeance. She urged Speed to go to church by himself, saying she would stoke the stove until it glowed red to “sweat this thing out once and for all.” Speed felt there was something more he should be doing, but his mother was asking for nothing more so he opened the damper holes in the stove door, stacked several seasoned oak logs inside the door, and for the first time ever went by himself to adult worship. He assumed a serious face to reflect what he hoped was an air of responsibility appropriate for the senior male of the family.
Reverend Spencer did indeed choose the Old Testament reading from Isaiah, and he even gave Speed credit for suggesting the reading, causing Speed to blush as eyes in the congregation turned toward him. The reading from the Epistles was from 1 Corinthians 13 which ended “And now abideth, faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” The preacher opened his sermon with the statement that clearly Isaiah foretold the birth of Christ, and the Apostle Paul demanded that we be a people of charity, a people of love, as Christ had loved us. Yet sinful man denied the message at every turn for over eighteen hundred years, thereby condemning themselves to the fires of hell. At that point the stove at the back of the sanctuary had warmed the congregation sufficiently so that heads began to nod, Speed’s included. He awoke when Reverend Spencer began to punctuate his exhortations by slamming the pulpit. “Isaiah,” he proclaimed, “was the prophet of love to bring peace (slam!) and harmony (slam!) on earth! Christ was the full manifestation (slam!) of that love. Now every Christian must bring that love on earth (slam!), to his town (slam!) and to his farm, (slam!) immediately, day by day. If you fail, you bring on yourself eternal (slam!) dam…(slam!) nation (slam!).” The little man peered indignantly over the pulpit, pushed his glasses up on his forehead for emphasis, and took a seat by the choir.
When Speed stood to sing the closing hymn, he wondered if God had already condemned him for failing to love. As he walked back to the trapper’s shanty where his mother lay, he wondered how he could bring love to any town or farm, let alone get a cougar to eat straw. What did Aunt Ruth mean that night when she had him read that passage? As he thought more about the passage, he realized the Bible didn’t say that the baby wouldn’t be bitten by the asp. It just said he would play there. Since the asp had bitten him but he hadn’t died, what did that mean? Maybe it just meant that it wouldn’t be easy to have God’s kingdom, but it would still come. And then the Apostle Paul said the most important thing was love. Had God kept him alive for some special purpose? He was having a hard time loving anyone in Missouri, sometimes even his mother. His thoughts shifted back to Whitley County. Would life have been better if he and his mother had stayed back there? The snakebite pain stabbed in his leg, as it did for no reason from time to time. Maybe right now Aunt Ruth would be giving Joycie a tonic and taking charge around their little cabin.
When he opened the door to the shanty, he hesitated momentarily at the sight of his mother. Her eyes were closed, her hair was plastered across her sweating face, and her blankets kicked helter-skelter, showing the dirty canvas fabric covering the thin cornhusk mattress. There was a heavy sweat smell mixed with a sour smell like spoiled milk. When did she lose so much weight, he wondered. At the sound of the scraping door she pulled the bedclothes up in front of her chest and called, “What? Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Ma. You sent me to church.”
“Would you ask Lucie if I can have some warm milk, or maybe some coffee? My throat hurts, I don’t want nothing more.” She paused before she said, “Speed, I’m sorry I don’t feel good just now. You take care of things until I feel better.” Speed felt a jolt of fear at his mother’s injunction. Never at any time in their journey had she asked him to take complete responsibility. He threw another few sticks in the stove to restore the flame, then ran to the kitchen.
Madame Roundhouse was holding a beef roast on a large platter with a fork so that Lucie could stack boiled potatoes and carrots around it. “Speed, you and your mother will have to wait a while until this platter comes back to the kitchen. Can you do that?” asked Mrs. Roundhouse. Before Speed could say anything, she triumphantly bore her bounty through the dining room door.
Immediately Lucie asked, “Is your ma still sick? She didn’t come over this morning. She ain’t been right this whole week.”
“Ma’s feeling pretty poorly. She asked for some warm milk or coffee, Lucie. Can you help?”
“Now that woman’s out of the kitchen I can,” squeaked Lucie. “You take this coffee and I bring the milk soon as I can.”
Speed took the steaming coffee out to their shack to find that his mother had put the bed in better order and had combed her hair. She sipped once from the cup, set it beside the cot on the floor, and watched as Speed put another piece of oak in the stove. When Lucie came, she brought a saucer holding a soft fried egg.
“You get some food and drink in you,” piped the tiny woman. “You going to be just fine, Mrs. Joycie. You going to be just fine. I tell the mayor that you feeling poorly and maybe he should call the doctor.” Speed was surprised that the diminutive slave was willing to confront the mayor on his mother’s behalf. Who gave the little woman the imperative to act?
“Don’t trouble the doctor on Sunday, Lucie. Maybe if I don’t feel better tomorrow I will find him,” said Joycie. She took a tentative sip of the warm milk, then lay back on the cot, closing her eyes. The tiny cook motioned for Speed to follow her out of the door.
“Boy, you keep that cabin warm all night. You wake up and feed that fire. You feed