Letter #2
Homeward Bound
18 July 1949
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Dear Heavenly Father,
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How much am I in awe of ...The Ways...in which YOU surely work. So truly LORD GOD, Father, You do work in Your own wondrous manner to turn
to good what the enemy meant to bring harm to our souls! I stand here in the empty hallway between the rooms where
our sons, they grew up and I never thought that we could come back here to live at the Homestead! Not after James, he took
control of the family and moved Molly Bea, the children and me to town so as he could be near the new church he took over!
But here I stand in our very own house and it is ours again, even if there ain't enough furniture to clothe the place yet,
seeing as how James, he took most of Mother's beloved furniture with us to town. I may have to sleep in father Washburn's
cabin for the night, but that's a small price for having our home handed back to us.
I don't envy Harlan Crowley none of his pain, as a father, I understand it too well for myself , for a fact honest
Father. But after Mother died, it was like I was moving in a fog and I knew only that I didn't want to be alone in this big
ole house once'st James and Molly Bea, they took their babies and moved to the parish house at the new Church. But now, I'm
glad for a fact that I have these few hours with You and with Mother's memory. Though I know James, he will be madder than
a wet hen because of it.
Mother, she made good her
escape to the same city, though it were a generation apart, and I know Molly Bea will be a hankering to move back here, but
she's too good a wife and mother to go against the man she married to be her husband. Though to my mind, simply between You
and me Father, James, he ain't the whole and sane boy she loved so mightily before he went away to war. That there Pacific
Theater it sent us back a wounded stranger in the place of our James, and I don't I know it best standing here in the hall
where he grew up as the eldest. Sir?
Yet, I am still his father, though I
ain't The Father now, James, he is. The first born of Mother and my dreams, but all fired bent on proving himself different
from anything his Mother or me could have expected of him. He cain't farm this land, wouldn't if he had come home whole from
his second enlistment with Uncle Sam, and Sandy, Alexander, he's the only one with any real love for the land, he's only seventeen
and away in college. But Harlan, he give it back to us so final like, and even packed up his family furniture to take it to
his sister's house so young George, he cain't come back here from Canada and try to live as a constant reminder in front of
his father's shamed eyes because he would rather go live with his cousins in Canada than to accept the draft notice.
I feel how Harlan feels, as a father I feel it, for a fact honest. But I don't think he was fair none to his self or
his son, but he didn't ask me for my opinion, knowing as he does that I'm against war and I was even before I lost two sons
to it. But a mans got’ a do what a mans gotta do. I understand that.
Harlan Crowley, he was after us up to the day Mother died to sell him Woodrow Harkness' land as it was bequeathed to
her by her older brother's death, but after Mother passed he seemed content to lease the land and pretend it was his own.
Then seeing his own horror etched on his only son's face, how he turned to me and said,
" The land is yours Amos. I only wanted it for my son. Now I ain't got no son no more. Leastwise, I won't
have a coward for a son! "
Like
Young George and I ain't even standing there any more! As angry as I may get at our oldest, I wouldn't never have turned my
back on him like that. Then Harlan he stopped, his back so bowed from sorrow and years of labor on a hard land and he turns
only his head and he looks me so deep in the soul I know he blames me. Young George, him living and sleeping in the same room
where our next oldest, Tom he died, and walking the halls in which James, he is the flesh and blood reminder with two wooden
legs and an arm what don't move, as a constant reminder to a young and whole man of the secret perils of war.
HOW Harlan, he opened his mouth like he WAS going to say something, and for the first time in a long time I notice
how bad his teeth Was, growing up poorer than us even, without enough milk or good foods to eat. Then just shaking his head
till the tears fall and it is the sound of a battered ole Ford and a pick up truck which carried them out of our lives like
they weren't never there to begin with. it's a memory too recent for me to seem to be able to escape, You know what I mean,
LORD?
And just then my oldest, James, he drove up in the school bus with eight of his Church Teens Group just as the movers
is pulling away their big, dusty ole van and all that's left in the house is a few things from the attic we didn't think to
take with us when James, he moved Molly Bea, their children and me into the city two years ago. There ain't much of that,
not even a kitchen table, we had to find the saw horses and the wooden doors from out in the barn what we stored there for
years when it rained on March 19th and it was too wet to hold the family reunion down in the Meadow like usual.
Molly Bea, she come in smiling sweetly, putting me so much in the mind of you Sugar Babe and since them city kids didn't
have no idea what to expect on a "real farm", they weren't disappointed none by the table cloth out under the tree
what Woodrow Harkness planted on his first trip West, then using their sleeping bags inside the house instead of out in the
barn like they all had planned before Young George, he told his father he was running away to live in Canada rather than to
fight in "another war".
That there being peace these eight years
and the Draft being little more than a formality, he still weren't going to abide it. Like a young, unbroke colt what can
say yes or no to the farmer fitting him to learn the ways of pulling a plow while a brand new JOHN DEERE tractor is out in
the fields doing the actual work, You know what I mean, Father?
But why did James, did he have to jump me publicly? Leaving all of the children with wide eyes and mouths hung open
in shock and in shame, same as mine? Eight-year-old "Queenie” , she come tip-toeing
up to hold my hand in support even while "Pastor JIM", he's as big a hero in her eyes as The Babe ever was,
to her way of thinking. And James, he launches into me about "costing them the revenue from the farm",
like it was all my idea from the get-go! Till he sees little Esther's eyes and realizes them other children is seeing his
actions too. And what goes into their ears pours out in a natural flood to their parents who support him in building up a
Church Organization twice the size of its actual congregation.
Yet! Our home is given back to us!
As swift as sundown
on a winter day, with as little warning, though just as welcomed.
How could I have dared to think that this day what begun like the many others in the three years since
Mother died, would end with me standing here like this? With the praise of You just naturally rolling off
my tongue because I got too much joy locked up in this ole heart to do anything less? And yet it ain't enough.
I need to step outside Lord, will You come with me? I suddenly feel like I cain't breath.
Sugar Babe? I ache so much missing you these three years, but it was here that we were the happiest,
weren't we? It's like having you back with me. In my mind's eyes I can see ole Mule a ‘standing there in the shadows.
As I, at our own pole corral here on the Homestead, I give You Lord praise from a clear conscience and know that I won't betray
Mother's trust a second time! Not while there is breath left this here surgery scarred ole body!
Lord God, as I breath in the good scents of the land as it cools from the summer sun, smelling in the pungent reality
of mule and cows, the gentle thread of love what wraps around this weary heart with the gentle scent of Mother’s prize
roses pushing past the chickens and the beast smells to settle next to my mind, it the first time since she died in that there
house, I am not alone. And I give You the praise for that. I am home again, though no work of my own, though it is an answer
to prayer as deep and as silent as the sea where MY SON he was lost and this stranger was rescued and brought home for us
to love back to inside health. I see hope now, where I knew only hurt and despair before.
Thank You for that, Heavenly Father! I'll do the best as I am able, help me with that part
of myself what won't come willingly under my own command but Yours.
Your prized and comforted son,
Amos Jefferson Webb
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