Letter #39
The Interrupted Journey
03 December 1950
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Dear Heavenly Father,
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It was about this time James and Molly Bea’s first born son graced us those few, happy
months with his tiny presence. I know they won’t talk about it, or admit that he come earlier than he had any right
too. Maybe that’s why You took him home again. The Judge’s time to meet his Judge, Heavenly Father came in a quiet
way, I find myself reflecting on that as the coldness creeps up on me that ain’t got nothing to do with the weather,
Father. We don’t do much talking about that. The children pretend I’m going to go on forever
like this, just slipping away one day at a time. I don’t guess I want to dwell on it either, like the gravesites at
March 19th family reunions since we had his mother’s bones moved to the place by the meadow where the darkies,
they was buried for last hundred years. It’s a right fine tombstone, with both of their names on it. Beloved mother,
Sicily, Beloved Oldest Son, Vernon Emmett.
I don’t know as how You see a man, but I feel he was as honorable a man as I have ever met. I spend a lot of
time up there with Sandy and Cathy Baker at the Homestead, now that the newness has wore off,. Sandy he seems to like the
time we spend by the fire at night just talking crops and all those big words what he learned away at College.
Dr. Sharon, all she talks about is the
Clinic. She says she misses Molly Bea, but understands she wants to be with her dying father.
Ain’t nothing said of the public spectacle James, he’s making with the City Girl, following her around,
meeting her “by chance” in too many public places. Dr. Sharon, she gets the long letters from beau now, and she
shares with me from them from time to time, like Mother used to do, discretely leaving some of the pages unread, again like
Mother used to do. She is the only one who seems resigned to the happiness that heather Cox and I have found as we plan our
January marriage.
Heather
Cox, there is a new side come from her that I rightly admire. She has left the role of spinster to Dr. Sharon and when she
comes daily to sit with me and she seems as peaceful among these faces as if she had lived with them all her life.
James, he was really quiet at the dinner tonight in his oldest son’s honor. This angry man of the cloth with
no limbs and no soul…I’m sorry, Father. Sometimes I cain’t get a grip on my anger near as tight as ole
Ned, he does and he goes to pumping up and down on it so hard that I come to angry thoughts, and then to angry words with
the gentle boy who used to be my best loved son. The chickens is coming home to roost for that youthful arrogance, ain’t
they just, LORD?
Vernon Emmet, he got him a preacher man son same as me. He is one of the few who comes back to visit us since we stood
by his father until the very end. LeRoy, he comes up each morning he’s here, to help gather eggs, preaching at the cows
and singing such a sweet, high voice that I swear we have twice the milk and half-a-dozen more eggs than our hennies they
normally lay! Brother LeRoy, he be the lightest skinned of all the Judge’s family, though this seems to be a lacking
in his eyes. Though I don’t rightly see how, but each of us carries our own view of what we look like to the
world, and he’s got that slow easy smile I’ve come to look forward from the Judge on the days he feels us to it.
Queenie, she’s in seventh heaven. She knows she has a special place in their world and their laughter down in
the meadow but she don’t rightly know what or how. She says to me she feels like Shirley Temple, because every one fusses
so over her being so pretty and so talented. Being only a child she don’t see that it won’t last any longer than
one of those make believe “poor girl” stories when the lights go out and Miss Shirley Temple goes home in her
chauffeured limousine.
The story of Joseph and Patter ain’t much more real to Queenie than one of them movies. But I remember that far
away look the Judge would get in his eyes as he remembered times I know only from what words I have read in the book. He patted
the padded chair next to him for Queenie to join us, she talks about this still, when she and I are alone. Which is rare anymore.
He watch me with them sunken, all knowing eyes as I laid open the
leather bound volume he gave me all those months ago when he first come home to die and he had the strength to fight James
to do it. The bony body held together only by the glue and the grit of a lifetime of determination, like he was waiting for
something to happen so he could let go and go home. If it did or not, I don’t rightly know, but I ponder those hours
a lot when I pretend to sleep to escape the fussing Sandy and Cathy Baker, they put on me with her as big as a house with
them babies! T
he words
were hard to read but I said them out-loud until I see he has drifted to sleep, and I hear the echo of my own voice unwillingly.
Is there something left undone that I should do in the time that I have left? If so, what is it?. That was another world,
a young man’s hopes and dreams, but we know as he can’t, the poor end of it. Did the Judge recognize what I left
out? Had he read the book himself?
Why is it important that I know the bond they feel to Woodrow Harkness?Perhaps by the time I end the book I will
know.
Beau, his letters are full of excitement and tension. He thinks the world is headed back to finish what the bombing
of Hiroshima, it left unfinished as far as he is concerned. He is deeply offended that President Truman, “that man Truman”,
he called back General MacAuthur to make him look foolish. He says what is all that wartime generals and
people going to do if there ain’t no war for to go too? Keep him safe, Father! I can not! I don’t
even know the boys who come back from that war five years ago. But You ain’t changed, and that much I count on.
When it comes my time, Father? Will You read me back all the details You got written in that there
heavenly book of every man’s actions and deeds? I know some of them will make me wince, but as I look out this unfamiliar
window in the City Girl’s Old Folks Home while I wait for the Judge to wake and need me to read more from Joseph’s
leather bound book, I see the same mountain ridges I have looked at all my life. From down here. North only, South only, East
and West as far as the County Seat of the Crossroads is as far as I got except that trip to Philadelphia, so James, he is
right, I ain’t seen what he’s seen. But he should be here at this ole black man’s side asking the questions
the people in the Church, they are going to ask him someday when he ain’t got the answers or seen the changes from slave
to spaceships what Vernon Emmet, Sicily’s oldest boy child, You have honored him to see with his own eyes.
The book about him for his family, it’s near done. We are
writing the last chapter of it as he slips away. There is a coldness between neighbors that weren’t there when all we
had to depend on was one another, yet there are so many men and women in strange foreign places that we might now call our
friend.
Like our Beau,
he has friends whose names I can not pronounce because the United Nations, it’s called him to New
York City as an aide to one of the Generals posted there. My son, our son, Maudie. Rubbing shoulders with diplomats and statements
what once was bowed under the weight of a sack of calf manna. Who could have dreamed it?
Penny Acres,
she said to give you my regards when we “spoke” again, Mother. And I add that thought to my prayer to You too,
LORD, even if’fn I only say these in my head, they are as real as any of the spoken prayers in church, for a fact honest.
That last week-end, when he looked up at me, almost his ole fit self again and said:
“
It’s almost time to say goodbye, old friend. Remember me the next time you talk with the LORD, won’t you,
Mr. Webb? “
“
Same as you putting in a good word when you see Him face to face, Judge. “
His smile
and crooked like from the recent stroke, but his eyes, they filled with love and laughter as I have come to know him to be.
“ Read the book. Same as the dollar Master Harkness spent to save the
Brothers when the mob would have hung them to claim their land, there is yet a secret that you alone can know to tell the
child’s mother…or not. “
I could see right off that
number of words pushed him over the edge of his strength but that there tight lipped nurse, she wouldn’t give him nothing
extra for the pain. I try not to be angry at people, Father, but You’ll have to excuse me for this one!
But, Thank You Father. This stranger was so different from what Abe Fielder and that poor lost boy, they took.
Give this man what he’s earned Father, that more’n some of the saints in Cynthia Cromwell’s Church
will ever earn. And help me…I have the past to know when frankly I don’t want too! But I will.
I will.
Amos
