Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand,
It flows along forever
With trees on either hand . . .
Some years later a particular book had brought my dream into focus. Not a great book, just a girl’s romance: Emily of New Moon. Emily, the heroine of the story, yearned to be a writer too. And her feelings and thoughts about this had flowed onto the pages of the book with such emotion that instinctively I knew: Emily’s creator, Lucy Mand Montgomery, had been writing about herself.
Sharing Emily’s thoughts and hopes had crystallized my own, spurred me into keeping my early-morning journal and trying to capture on paper events and impressions, sights and sounds. It was fun to hear a snatch of conversation in the grocery store and to wonder how the words would look on paper. All speech had certain cadences and rhythms.
But it had seemed a colossal step from my secret journal to breaking into print—until the move to Alderton. Through the Sentinel, I believed, a door was opening before me. Just a crack, but I intended to be ready. The article about the Hunting and Fishing Club was to be my entree. If I had a few such pieces written and, at just the right moment, slipped them to the Editor, maybe, just maybe . . .
I had also typed up two poems I had composed. Unsure of their merit, I had deliberately left off my name when I deposited them with a pile of other work on the Editor’s desk. To be doing something tangible—even anonymously—about my ambition had felt so good.
But now, in spite of all our effort, Emily Cruley’s loyalty and Mr. Fleming’s generosity, the Sentinel was still in trouble. Subscriptions dropped month after month.
One morning in early February my father did not get out of bed. “Another malaria attack,” Mother told us at breakfast. When I looked in on him, he tried to smile at me, but his eyes misted up. Filled with fear, I went to the Sentinel office that day instead of going to school. Between Miss Cruley, Dean Fleming, and myself, we somehow got the paper out that week. And the next. And somehow Mother found food to put on the table.
It tore my heart to see my father lying there day after day so weak and haggard. Hardest for me to take were the tears. They came at unexpected moments and over the smallest setbacks. The doctor gave him quinine pills, the standard medication for malaria, but the Editor’s illness seemed unaffected. When I mentioned this to Mother, she looked sharply at me for a moment, then stated that Dad had a combination of malaria and flu.
Each evening I went to Father’s bedroom with my notebook to write down instructions for the next day’s work at the Sentinel. I gathered data for articles through phone conversations or in short interviews after school. I typed up the items, read them to him (he rarely had changes) and presented them to Miss Cruley as from the Editor himself. She never questioned the procedure. For the whole month of February we ran The Sentinel this way.
More and more Dean Fleming would come by the house. He would limp upstairs and sit by my father’s bedside for hours. Neither Mother nor I could figure out what they found to talk about at such length.
On the third of March we had our first spring-like day. In the mail that morning was another cause for celebration: orders for two quarter-page ads, one from Wagner Lumber and another from Mason’s Hardware—both totally unexpected. When I called Dad, he sobbed over the phone. That night he dressed and took his place at the dinner table for the first time in almost four weeks.
Two more ads came in the following week: Rosemont Funeral Home and Gaither’s Clothing Store. I wondered—had the Sentinel under its new ownership passed through some kind of testing period and been found trustworthy? The slide in subscriptions had also stopped. Later that week the Editor returned to work.
Equally inexplicable was the fact that I seemed to be more acceptable to my high school peers. My seriousness about school work and a straight-A average had initially drawn such labels as bookworm and snob. After our fiasco of a date, Graham had ignored me for weeks, and this had somehow communicated a stay-away message to the other boys. My reticence and perhaps a bit of stubbornness kept me from attempting to correct this image.
Margo had tried to help me. “The kids just feel that you’re stuck up, Julie.”
“If only they could see inside and know how unsure I am about everything.”
“But you are very pretty, Julie, and you look so confident, and you know so much. There’s a lot of jealousy too.”
Now, one by one, my classmates were warming up to me. Was it sympathy for my father’s illness and the fact that I had to stay out of school a lot to help at the Sentinel? Did my new slimness make a difference? Twelve pounds had come off since last fall. The stringency of Mother’s food budget sure had helped.
Whatever the reason, Bryan McKeever asked me for a date a second time and I accepted. We went bowling, which I enjoyed; he drank two beers, but there was no wrestling match in his car. Dates with others followed, even a couple of decorous good-night kisses. I realized I should feel excited as well as flattered by all this, but in pouring out my feelings in the pages of my journal, I discovered to my surprise that nothing gave me as much of an emotional high now as listening to Spencer Meloy exhort his congregation each Sunday.
This amazed me. I hadn’t thought anyone could stir me the way Randolph Wilkinson had. I was continually learning things about myself. One Saturday morning, I made these observations in my journal:
What is there in me that makes me want to reach for the unreachable? Here are two older men who live in completely different worlds. What an enormous ego I must have to think I can get their attention. Is this a kind of haughtiness? Do I feel, deep down, that I’m better than other people?
I had other friends now, yet Margo was still the one closest to me. Sometimes when I finished early at the Sentinel, I’d walk over Railroad Bridge to the Stemwinder and help her set up tables while we chatted.
The Stemwinder was a sprawling two-story tavern-restaurant, painted barn red. Over the door was one of those colonial-looking taproom signs with Old English lettering, swinging from a wrought iron hanger. Sam Palmer, Proprietor was printed at the bottom.
The restaurant section was generally deserted in the late afternoon, giving Margo and me plenty of chance to talk and occasionally even to escape upstairs to her room in the living quarters on the second floor. The adjoining barroom, though, was jammed at this time of day, mostly with workmen in soot-blackened overalls coming off the day shift at Yoder. Margo’s father, a small dapper man with a neatly trimmed mustache and dark eyebrows, presided behind a long bar with rows of polished glasses and bottles of wine and liquor glittering in the big mirror behind him. He was very insistent that neither of us set foot in the bar area while what he called the regulars were there.
That was fine with me. My second time there, I’d caught a glimpse of a face in the bar mirror, clearly visible from the dining room, that almost made my heart stop beating. James, the watchman at Lake Kissawha. The one who had fired at Margo and me that day in October when we visited the Club. A solitary figure hunched over his drink at the far end of the bar, he appeared to be listening rather than taking part in the boisterous conversations around him. I slipped to the rear of the room, out of sight of the mirror, but when I whispered to Margo who was there, she only shrugged. He’d been coming to the Stemwinder for months, she said, and had never seemed to recognize her. “He was too drunk that day to remember,” she concluded.
During this same visit I met Cade and Neal Brinton, brothers who worked at Yoder. They stopped at the Stemwinder often after work and took their drinks in the dining room because, Margo admitted a bit self-consciously, “Neal likes to kid around with me.” Neal was craggy-faced, broad-shouldered, a giant of a man. Cade, the older, was shorter, bearded, argumentative.
While waiting in the vestibule to say good-bye to Margo, I overheard an explosive bit of dialogue between the two brothers.
“Can’t understand, Neal, why you listen to their garbage.”
“How do ya know i
t’s garbage?”
“Because anything Yoder Steel offers is garbage. I wouldn’t trust ’em as far as I can spit.”
“Cade, you haven’t even s-s-seen their plan.”
“No need to. I know McKeever.”
“S-s-so, what’s your plan?”
“Set up a real union. Make demands that mean somethin’ for a change. If the McKeevers don’t give, then strike. If every worker walks out, they’d hafta concede to us.”
“S-sounds good, Cade, except that if they shut the furnaces down, we’ll, have a lot of families s-starvin’ in Alderton.”
A string of obscenities poured from the one called Cade.
“Cade, workers are not going t’ get everything we want right off. Sure, conditions s-stink at Yoder. But if Tom McKeever is offering a plan that’ll give us more benefits, let’s look at it.” More epithets from Cade. “You make me sick to my stomach, Neal. And you my own blood brother. Don’t you understand yet? This rotten ERP’s no better’n a yellow dog contract.”
Margo appeared and I left the Stemwinder with Cade’s angry words about the Employee Relations Plan ringing in my ears. I didn’t like this man, but I sensed he was expressing the feelings of many Yoder steelworkers.
Then I arrived at the office late one afternoon in early April, a set of freshly pulled proofs was on my work table. The Editor, I was informed, was out calling on merchants.
The front door opened and closed, and a well-remembered voice began talking to Miss Cruley. My head shot up.
Randolph Wilkinson! He had returned from England.
Trying to stifle the fluttering in my stomach, I forced my eyes back to the proofs. But everything in me was straining to hear the conversation. The Englishman was asking for prices on the printing of menus, and Miss Cruley was very formal, saying, “You’ll need to get this information from Mr. Wallace.”
Why couldn’t the woman be more friendly?
If only Randolph would look up and see me! But he did not. He nodded politely to Miss Cruley, said “Cheerio,” and walked out.
I was crushed.
Later in the week, still smarting over Randolph Wilkinson’s indifference, I was standing at the make-ready table inserting correction slugs in ad copy when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see the smiling eyes of our pastor, the Reverend Spencer Meloy.
“Julie, do you have a few moments to talk?”
Quickly I looked at Miss Cruley. She was deep in conversation with one of the paper’s local correspondents.
“Would you like to sit down here at my work table or go into my father’s office?” I asked. “Dad’s gone home.”
Reverend Meloy nodded toward the office and insisted that I take the comfortable chair behind the desk. He was looking at me in such an open and friendly way that I was momentarily tongue-tied.
“I’m sorry we don’t have a more comfortable place to talk, Reverend Meloy,” I said lamely, annoyed that my face was getting warm.
“This will do fine, Julie. And please don’t call me Reverend. That’s for older and more learned pastors. As I get to know my people, I want them to use my first name.”
He paused, his restless eyes taking in everything about the small office before they settled back on me. “I have no purpose in coming here other than to get to know you,” he said calmly. “I’m especially interested in young people and I’m hoping that our church will soon be teeming with them.”
“I have a friend, Margo Palmer, who might come.” Then, after a short pause to reflect, “Her father runs the Stemwinder.”
“Please do invite her, Julie. Tell her we’re a church that cares about all the people in our community.”
“My father felt that way too about his church in Timmeton,” I said impulsively. “Very few people in his congregation went along with him.”
Meloy’s eyes searched mine. “I know a little about that, Julie, and I’m sorry. I wish it could have been different for him.”
“Is it different in Alderton, Mr. Meloy?” I asked. “I mean, are people here more accepting somehow of colored people, foreign people, poor people?”
Meloy did not answer immediately. “I don’t know for sure the answer to that question, Julie,” he said at last. “But I intend to find out.”
The last words were so charged that I looked at the pastor in astonishment and was struck again by his almost boyish manner. It was reflected in the casual sports jacket and slacks he wore, and the two-tone suede shoes. This pastor of one of the more affluent churches in Alderton was startlingly honest and, yes, uncertain about himself. More than that, he was reaching out to me for something. What was it? Acceptance? Support? Friendship? Possibly all three.
“Julie, just because your family had one bad experience, don’t write all churches off.”
“I’m sure we wouldn’t do that,” I said, too quickly. “I guess it’s hard for me to believe the McKeevers and Pileys and others like them are very eager to sit next to workers from the Lowlands.”
“Our church is open to everyone, Julie. You’ve heard me say that from the pulpit.” He paused. “Did you know that it was largely through the McKeevers that I was called to this church?”
“Yes—and that surprised me.”
“My father is a close friend of the McKeevers. But few people in the church really know me, including the McKeevers,” he went on. “I’m the son of a famous judge, acquainted with the right people . . . therefore my credentials seem faultless. The truth is, Julie, I’ve never gotten along too well with ‘the right people.’ I don’t think I even like them. I don’t believe what they believe; I don’t share their goals; in fact, I’m opposed to most of the things they stand for. That would put me in an awkward, yes, impossible spot—except for one thing. I believe God has me here for a purpose. So I intend to hang around until I find out what it is.” Getting such an inside look at this impulsive man numbed and confused me for a moment. Perhaps he sensed that. “Julie, I tell you these things because for some reason I felt we were kindred spirits the first time you came to our church. It was something I saw in your face when I was preaching. Being a pastor is a lonely life, especially when you’re a bachelor. I seek friends. Will you be one to me?”
I was so moved by his plea that I impulsively reached out my hand to touch his. “Of course I will.”
Quickly I tried to draw it away, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead he took it in his. “This handshake seals it.” He smiled. “And please, call me Spencer.”
As he walked out of the office, he turned around and smiled at me again. “I’ll expect to hear from you, Julie, if you have any ideas for helping people here in Alderton.”
The rain began that afternoon. Something foreboding about this downpour, I thought as I stood at our front window that evening, staring at the wet blur of the corner street light on Bank Place. Almost four hours of it: a steady tattoo on roofs and pavements, rain splattering off windowpanes, running in twin rivulets down the gutters of our street. With a violent thunderstorm the fury was soon spent, but this was different. There was something ominous in the settled-in, unremitting quality of this rain.
My thoughts turned back to Spencer Meloy and to his astonishing statements. He was so young to be preaching to people like the McKeevers. I wondered what would happen if the elders and trustees of the church knew of Meloy’s deepest convictions.
“Tim? Anne-Marie?” I spun around to see my father entering the study, quickly followed by my brother and sister. “I have a surprise for you two.” There was a twinkle in Dad’s brown eyes. “Several weeks ago, Dean Fleming’s collie, Queenie, had a litter of five whelps. He has one for you. That is, if you’d like it—”
“Oh, yes!” Anne-Marie exulted.
“Dad, what’s a whelp?” from Tim.
“That’s a puppy who’s still living on his mother’s milk. Mr. Fleming says that all the puppies are weaned now. I’ll drive you up there Friday afternoon, provided you have all the papers delivered and in the mail.”
By Friday we still had not seen the sun. Six to seven inches of rain had fallen and the muddy, swollen waters of both Brady Creek and the Sequanoto River were beginning to overflow their banks. In the trough amid the mountains where Alderton nestled, there had been intermittent letups in the soaking rain, but the radio verified that it was still coming down steadily in the higher mountains all around us.
With all the papers delivered and mailed by late afternoon on Friday, Dad got out the Willys for the drive to Yancyville, the first time we had used the car this year. I decided to go along because Dean Fleming had been a mystery man to me ever since he had first appeared at the Sentinel office. I was curious to see him in his home situation.
Mother had agreed to the puppy with one reservation—that he be regarded by all of us as a yard dog, not a house dog. That meant a dog house. With some suggestions and a little help from Dad, Tim and Anne-Marie had already started building a fearful and wonderful mansion for the puppy.
Yancyville was a hamlet of several hundred people, boasting one grocery store, one general store, a small community church and two gasoline pumps. Mr. Fleming’s farm was a quarter of a mile beyond the village.
As we drove into the yard, we saw a white frame house, three stories high, with dormer windows on the top floor. A wide front porch was overshadowed by towering oaks and maples, their bare limbs showing the first buds of spring green.
Mr. Fleming came limping from the porch through the rain with an umbrella to greet us, then guided us one at a time across the soggy grass toward a woman who was standing in the doorway.
“My sister, Hazel,” he introduced her.
As I took her groping hand, I remembered Mr. Fleming’s description of his sister’s blindness. Her visual world was one of muted light and dim shadows. She was a tall, spare woman, wearing a cotton calico dress with a full skirt almost to her ankles. Thin, graying hair was pulled straight back into a bun; thick glasses sat astride a rather large nose.