A Change of Heart (15 page)

After Sam awoke they ate lunch, then took the phone off the hook and went back upstairs to do what husbands and wives sometimes do when their children aren’t home, especially when they’ve been reminded of the fragility of life—how vapor-like it is, here one moment and gone the next.

A
manda Hodge remained in the hospital a little over a month—thirty-two days, nineteen hours, and six minutes, to be precise—according to Ellis Hodge, who spent much of that time beside her bed with Miriam and Ralph and Sandy. Asa Peacock fed Ellis’s livestock, and Harmony Friends Meeting gave Miriam a vacation from serving as an elder, in hopes she wouldn’t quit that post altogether.

Sam drove to the hospital twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, to check on her progress. Although she’d sustained a serious head injury and no longer knew the words
polyribonucleotide
or
hermeneutics,
which she had once spelled to win the National Spelling Bee, she was still hands down smarter than anyone else in Harmony.

Her first week home, she slept on the couch, where Ellis and Miriam could keep a close eye on her. A steady stream of Harmonians stopped by to visit, including Bob Miles, who snapped her picture and ran it on the front page along with the story of her stunning recovery. Her classmates from high school gathered in the Hodges’ front yard bearing a large sign wishing her well, accompanied by the school’s show choir, who sang several songs to buoy her spirits and speed her recovery.

The Friendly Women’s Circle took turns bringing in meals—a variety of casseroles, roasts, and homemade pies. Ellis gained ten pounds the first week they were home, and Miriam bumped up a dress size.

With Dale Hinshaw on bed rest and Miriam sidelined, the elders skipped two of their monthly meetings, and Sam was blessedly free to do what needed to be done without six people second-guessing him. He got more work done in two months than he had the previous five years. He changed the bulletin cover, fine-tuned the order of worship, cut out the children’s sermon, and ordered new hymnals to replace the ones Moses had carried over from Egypt.

In late April, with Easter a scant two weeks away, he informed the congregation they wouldn’t be holding their annual Easter pageant, that if they wanted all the hullabaloo they could worship at Pastor Jimmy’s church that Sunday, where, in a reenactment of the Resurrection, Clevis Nagle would ascend to the heavens through the clever employment of pulleys and cables.

Not one person complained. They were tired too.

“Good call, Sam,” Fern Hampton said while shaking his hand after worship. “We’ve had enough resurrections around this place. They’re starting to wear me out.”

“We’re not doing anything special for Easter?” his wife asked on their walk home from church.

“Yes, of course, we’re doing something special. We’re going to gather with our friends and worship. You know, the old-time Quakers didn’t go in for all these bells and whistles, and I think they might have had a point. Simplify, that’s what I say.”

“But what about the boys? Didn’t you want to see them in the Easter pageant?”

Sam turned to his sons. “You boys want to dress up in flower costumes and be laughed at?”

“Not me,” said Addison.

“Me neither,” said Levi.

“That solves that,” Sam declared. “Besides, I don’t have time to head it up this year, which means it would have fallen to you.”

“Why don’t we simplify this year?” Barbara suggested.

“Sounds good.”

And though Easter at Harmony Friends that year was simple, it was also beautiful, as a still lake surrounded by pine trees exudes a certain charm. God, in His infinite mercy, caused the organ to malfunction the week before Easter. Judy Iverson hauled her harp to the meetinghouse and when she began to play, everyone in the meeting room closed their eyes and dreamed they were in heaven. It was that good.

Consistent with the theme of resurrection, Amanda Hodge made her first appearance at church since her accident. When she walked in the door, people stood and clapped. It took the Hodges ten minutes to reach their pew for everyone wanting a hug. Ralph and Sandy and Ellis and Miriam walked beside her, beaming all the while, then took their seats in the Hodge pew, fourth one from the front, right-hand side, where the Hodges had planted their cabooses for five generations. Ellis reached his arm around Ralph and squeezed his shoulder. Ralph patted him on the knee. Amanda looked on, glowing.

There are certain times in church when a sermon is pointless, when words don’t need to be spoken because the lesson has already been imparted. That Sunday was such a day. Sam opened his Bible, read the story of the Resurrection, and then had the good sense to sit down. The silence covered them like an old and comfortable blanket, draping in all the right places.

Dale Hinshaw stood and thanked everyone for their prayers. He was feeling much better, thank you. Then he sat down, just like that. No pontificating, no dire warnings that their souls were in jeopardy, no admonitions to straighten up and fly right.

Then Amanda stood and, reading from a list in her hand, expressed her gratitude for everyone who’d done anything for her—the ladies of the Circle for the food, Sam for visiting her in the hospital, Asa for feeding their livestock, Frank for organizing the chain of prayer, the Odd Fellows Lodge for their bouquet, her doctors and nurses at the hospital, and last, but certainly not least, God.

“Amen to that,” Dale said from the seventh row.

They settled back into silence. Several minutes passed with the only sound the hollow tick of the Frieda Hampton Memorial Clock. Then a shoe scraped across the floor and the pew creaked as Ellis Hodge hauled himself to his feet, where he stood quietly for a moment before speaking.

“Sometimes we make our minds up about people and think we have them all figured out, then they go and do something and it changes our minds toward them. But then other times folks change and we don’t believe it, and it causes a lot of hurt. And well, I guess what I want to say is that some people change, and we need to be grateful for that and reach out to them while we still can.”

Miriam looked up at him, dabbing her eyes. Ralph bowed his head. Ellis reached down and placed his hand on Ralph’s shoulder, then went on. “If any of you have anything against a family member or a friend, you need to forgive them or it’ll eat you up inside.”

His piece said, he sat down.

When they took the offering there were no bills less than a five in the plate. And when they stood to sing “Christ the Lord Has Risen Today,” they sang so loudly, Judy Iverson and her harp couldn’t be heard.

Just as Sam stepped up to the pulpit to give the closing prayer, Fern Hampton waddled out of her pew and made her way to the front of the meetinghouse. “Excuse me, Sam. I got an announcement to make.” She turned toward the congregation. “As you may or may not know, today is Sam’s fifth anniversary with us. Now I know there were some of you who didn’t think he’d last that long, but here we are, still together. Well, anyway, the elders got together last week and we decided to have coffee and donuts after church today to celebrate Sam bein’ with us. I hope you all can stay.”

If there had a been a feather in the meetinghouse, it could have knocked Sam over.

Though most of them had hams in the oven back home, they stayed anyway, drinking coffee and eating donuts and shaking Sam’s hand, thanking him for his service. They crowded around Dale, who told them of his narrow escape from liberalism. But the star of the day was Amanda, who received her admirers with such composure she reminded everyone of royalty.

“Isn’t she something?” Ellis said to Ralph, looking on from the edge of the throng.

“You did a fine job, brother.”

“I never did sell that mobile home,” Ellis said. “It’s still sitting in the field. Kept the electricity on to keep it heated, and we’d go over once a month or so to keep it dusted. Why don’t you and Sandy move back in. Amanda’s been talking about spending more time with you before she goes off to college. We can move her things over and you can be a family again.”

Ralph didn’t say anything. A tear leaked from his right eye, and he brushed it away. “A family,” he said finally.

The next morning, Ellis drove his stock truck into town and moved Ralph and Sandy’s belongings out to the farm. Then they hauled Amanda’s clothes and bedroom furniture across the field and arranged them neatly in the back bedroom of the mobile home.

Sandy and Miriam cooked lunch in Sandy’s new kitchen—an honest-to-goodness farm meal, not one thing from a can. Amanda looked on from the couch, dazed by her good fortune.

After lunch, Ellis sat beside her on the couch, smoothing her hair. “We love you like you’re our own,” he said. “You know that don’t you.”

“I love you too, Ellis.”

“Come see us on Saturday mornings for blueberry pancakes, now, you hear.”

“First thing in the morning,” she promised.

They stood in the living room in a circle, everyone trying hard not to cry.

“Thank you,” Sandy said very quietly. “Thank you for helping our family heal.”

“We didn’t do a thing,” Miriam said. “You and Ralph are the brave ones. We’re so proud of you.”

Then Miriam and Ellis hugged them good-bye, climbed in their truck, drove a quarter mile down the road, and turned into their driveway. Ellis went out to his workshop in the barn and didn’t come out the rest of the day, but when he emerged a little after six, his spirits were up. “What say we drive over to Cartersburg for supper tonight? My treat.”

Their car was still in the shop, so they took Ellis’ pickup. They drove through town, past the meetinghouse, and turned at the Dairy Queen to catch Cartersburg Road, passing the library and Miss Rudy’s house.

It was a warm spring evening. The daffodils and tulips were in bloom around Miss Rudy’s porch. That morning, Ernie Matthews had carried her porch furniture up from the basement, hung her swing in front of the window, and positioned her rocker alongside the small table where she set her iced tea glass of a summer evening.

Miss Rudy was sitting on the swing, with Frank the secretary seated beside her.

“Would you look at that,” Ellis observed.

Miriam smiled and took his hand. “That’s springtime for you,” she said. “Love is in the air.”

Ellis inhaled deeply and, even over the odor normally associated with a livestock truck, he could smell the pleasant aroma of sweet romance.

“It surely is,” he said, taking her hand. “It surely is.”