Sarah's Promise (20 page)

“Then move.” I struggled in the deep snow to go around him again, and this time he let me by. But he followed me toward the café door.

“Sarah—I’ve liked you a lot since tenth grade. I figured you’d give up on Frank eventually, but . . .”

He hesitated and I kept on walking.

“Orville said if I was ever gonna have a chance, it was now or never to get your attention. I care about you, okay? I don’t want you to be hurt or drug off someplace by somebody that don’t know what he’s doin’ half the time. I got a good job, Sarah. I’m gonna buy my Aunt Mabel’s place right here in town.”

Just like the dream. With my heart pounding fiercely, I rushed to open the café door.
Shut up!
I wanted to shout at him.
Leave me alone!

I hurried inside, but he followed me. There was a woman with graying hair behind the counter, and I got her attention immediately. “Two roast beef sandwiches to go, please. And may I use your telephone to call the Marathon station?”

She looked at me oddly. “That’s only two doors down.”

“I know. But I need to call anyway. Right away.”

She glanced at Donald but gave me a nod. “Aren’t you Sarah Wortham?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The telephone’s in the back to the right.”

“Thank you.”

I hurried to call my father, and while I was back there I heard the waitress talking to Donald, but I couldn’t tell what she said. When I came back to the front room, he was gone.

“He left you a note,” she told me.

My heart was still pounding. Had she been conspiring with him? Why? “I don’t want it.”

“He said you wouldn’t. He said he didn’t mean to scare you. He just wanted you to know how he felt.”

I plopped into a chair and felt like crying. “Why would you relay his message? I just want him to leave me alone.”

“He’s a good kid,” she said then. “A bit misguided sometimes. But he means well.”

“How do you know what he means?” I felt like I was shaking inside.

“I’m a good friend of his mama. We talk sometimes.”

I was horrified to think it might be talked around town that Donald Mueller had a crush on me. What if it got back to Frank? Oh, for gracious sakes! Rorey and Eugene surely knew already. And they’d make the most of it if they could.

Dad got there before the cook had the sandwiches ready. He took me in his arms and held me for a minute. “He seems to be gone, pumpkin.”

“Was it stupid to ask you to walk me the rest of the way?”

He shook his head. “You did the right thing.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the tears from welling up and overflowing then. This was just too much today. I wanted to go home, curl up, and cry.

“He didn’t mean you no harm,” the waitress said as Dad paid her for the sandwiches. “He just wanted the opportunity to talk.”

I hadn’t seen such a fierce face on my father for a long time. “You can tell him I’ll be calling the law if he comes near my daughter again. And I’ll be after him myself if I see so much as one more letter.”

I didn’t have the appetite for that sandwich. I would never have expected Donald to push things so far. He’d asked me out on dates plenty of times when we were in school, but I’d always turned him down and thought that was the end of it. Now he was a grown man, twenty-three like Frank, and he hadn’t let it go.

Dad was worried for me, I could tell. I told him everything Donald did and said, and though he wasn’t really threatening, I’d been scared just the same. And Dad was mad. That waitress had probably told Donald he’d better clear out before my father got there, and she’d been right. Who knew what might have happened?

We talked some more about Frank’s decision and my answer to it. Dad was sure I was right to be supportive, but he knew it was hard too. Especially when I’d been expecting Frank home. After a while, Dad tried to get back to work on an old engine while we waited. I pulled out the poetry book and tried to read, but I just couldn’t concentrate.

I dreaded riding home with Orville now, even if Donald wasn’t with him. And Dad must have thought that through. He wiped his hands on an old grease rag and tried calling Charlie Hunter’s home telephone. He wasn’t there, but Dad told his wife that we needed a ride if he was able to give us one.

I sat and prayed. Forcing Donald from my thinking, I ran through the conversation with Frank again in my mind. And then a thousand jumbled memories rushed through me. Of Frank the day his leg got broken, being brave despite the pain. Of his brothers and other boys tormenting him endlessly, calling him retarded and scatterbrained and crazy. Of sitting under the apple tree with him while he calculated sums he couldn’t do on paper. And then listening with wonder while he told about the cherubim described in the book of Ezekiel and about molecules and elements, and how that excited him when he thought of the Lord God forming Adam from the dust of the ground.

It was stupid for Donald to try to get my attention. Frank and I had shared so much for so long. Heartache and loss. Good times and bad. I couldn’t feel for anybody else what I felt for Frank. Not ever.

I still remembered the day we’d talked in the timber when the war was young, when he’d asked me to always be his friend. It’d been easy to promise that I would, even though the things we were going through and about to go through weren’t easy at all. I knew I’d loved Frank even then, before either of us had known to admit it, because he was honest enough to bare his heart and humble enough to admit his own fears.

Lord, help me not to doubt, not to fear, despite the squeezing press of nerves I feel inside. Frank trusts you. He believes you’re leading him. Help me to have peace in that, no matter what comes. Help me to fulfill my promise and really, really trust you, not just go through empty motions or empty words.

Dad kept busy, going from engine work to cleaning up in the service garage. I tried reading another poem, got halfway through, and had to stop again because my thoughts just wouldn’t leave me alone.

That waitress had called Donald a kid. He was acting like a foolish kid, no question about that. But what about me? I’d never really wanted to grow up. So the step Frank was trying to take was as much for my benefit as it was for his. If we stayed here as I’d wanted, maybe we’d never grow into whatever purpose God had in mind for us. I might have been content with that, but Frank could never be.

Despite the wisdom of that reasoning, I began to sense the stirring of the same seed of doubt. Donald’s words echoed in my heart even as I tried to chase them away.
Do you really want to leave everything you know? And follow willy-nilly who knows where?

Here it was again. The temptation. A way out. Not just in my head anymore, but blatantly offered face-to-face. I could have a life here in Dearing if I turned away from Frank and his dreams.

There should never have been a struggle in my mind over that. I loved Frank. What might the Lord have in store for us? Why would the tempter be trying so hard? Perhaps I’d never know the answer, but I did know that I’d made a promise. And going back on it now would be turning not only from Frank but from God.

I will trust you
, I affirmed again in my mind.
I will trust Frank. No matter where it leads me.

Somewhere I’d heard a Scripture that says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. I didn’t know why that should apply to me, and yet that day I felt like I was wrestling indeed.

20

Frank

At the bank, Mr. Willings pointed out the man I needed to talk to. I had papers Mr. Bellor had given me, telling details about the property and what he wanted for it. He was ready to sell as long as I could get the help I needed from the bank to pay him.

Lord, work your will.
I took a deep breath and knocked at the man’s office door though it was standing open. He was a young man, younger than I would have expected to find in his job. He looked up and motioned me inside without saying anything. I waited while he shuffled papers, put some away, and then finally asked what he could do for me.

“I need to talk to you about a loan,” I said. “I want to move my business here to Camp Point.”

“What kind of business?”

I handed him a WH card, took another deep breath, and did my best to describe to him the kind of work I’d done and hoped to continue doing.

He looked over the papers about the Bellor property and started asking me questions about my previous income and assets. I told him how much I’d been bringing in, how much I’d saved back, and how much I thought I could put into a down payment, even what I thought I could handle for a monthly payment and how long I figured it’d take me to pay it off.

He smiled and turned to an adding machine sitting on his desk. “I’ve been used to doing the figuring myself for most folks.”

“Seemed reasonable to have an idea in advance,” I explained. “So I’d know if it was worth your time for me to even come in here.”

“What interest rate are you allowing yourself?”

I told him the last figure I’d heard and admitted it might not be accurate because I’d gotten it in Mcleansboro two months ago.

“Mcleansboro? So why do you want to move up here?”

“I’m startin’ a new life. Gettin’ married. And what I’ve seen of this town leads me to believe I could make a go of it here.”

“Why is that?” he questioned on, and I felt sunk a little. Seemed like he was going to be hard to convince. I wasn’t sure he was even taking me at my word.

But I told him why the shop was just what I needed and that Camp Point didn’t have another one like it, nor Clayton either, which was close enough to draw at least a portion of my customer base from. I told him about the historic homes I’d seen and that I knew how to restore features should anyone in the area need that done. And I’d found a church here I liked and had done work locally already.

When he told me my income wasn’t as high as he’d like to see from a loan applicant, I explained that I hadn’t counted the farm income and that up here my work time wouldn’t be divided putting hours in for a joint venture with my brothers.

“They can handle the farm without me now, and I’ll be able to put full time into the business. I understand Quincy’s the biggest town around here. Haven’t had time yet, but I’m planning to drive over there and see if I might interest some of the shops in consigning some of my work. That’ll generate more sales, once I get it going.”

“You’re a confident young man,” he said without looking up from his adding machine.

“It don’t pay to be otherwise.”

“Why not move into Quincy if you anticipate sales there?”

“I’m a farm boy. Smaller town suits me fine. Big yard and a wide corner lot is almost like havin’ a field. There’ll be room for plenty a’ garden.”

He looked up at me with another smile, this one a little different than the others. “Your figures are reasonable. And it’d be nice to see somebody make a go of that property again. I’d like you and Mr. Bellor to meet with me tomorrow, and we can start drawing up the papers.”

That simple. I almost couldn’t answer. But there was something else I had to tell him, and I prayed it didn’t mess the whole thing up. “About the papers. When it comes time for all that, I’d appreciate it if you had a secretary that could read ’em out for me. I’d pay her for the trouble. I understand better picturin’ things in my mind than I do tryin’ to hold it in front of me, and I wanna make sure I have a full grasp of the details.”

He looked at me a long time. “That’s the prettiest way I’ve ever heard of admitting that you can’t read.”

Even though I felt like I’d been kicked, I made myself answer him steady. “I can read, sir. Just not well enough yet, and I know better than to allow that to be any hindrance to my understanding a’ terms. I want things done right.”

He nodded. “You’re brave as well as confident. I’ve worked with a number of men who don’t read, and most are not so ready to admit it.”

I bowed my head. “It’d be foolhardy to pretend, sir, or to sign anything I wasn’t clear on.”

I thought he might start asking how in the world I thought I was gonna manage a business then. I could imagine getting his ridicule and a rebuke before he just shook his head and dismissed me. But it didn’t happen that way. He told me his bank’s current interest rate and how that would alter the monthly payment amount I’d figured. And then he asked me how I’d learned to calculate such things.

“I looked at properties close to home some. Didn’t find the place I wanted down there, but I paid attention to what the fellow from the bank said about how payments is figured up.”

He didn’t answer me anything about that. “I’ll talk to Mr. Bellor. Can you come back tomorrow at two o’clock?”

“Yes, sir.”

That was it. I was on my way to buying that piece of property, and it felt like a gift from heaven. How could it have been so easy? Of course, we weren’t half started, but he didn’t seem to have no problem with me asking to hire a secretary to read for me. I wondered for a minute if that would really be so different from having Sam here to help me, or Sarah. But it would. I knew it would. If I had to bring kin along, it’d be like saying I couldn’t do it without ’em. But paying the secretary would just be business. The banker even seemed to understand that.