Bursting into a new storm of tears, Mertie dropped the phone and covered her face with both hands. Stella watched, as a female prison guard came up behind Mertie to touch her on the shoulder. Mertie jerked aside with a snarl, and darted for the door. To Stella’s dismay, she saw her wrestled to the ground, the prison guard placing one knee in her back to prompt her submission.
It nearly broke Stella’s heart, as Mertie cast one backward glance in her direction before being manhandled from the room.
“What did you say to her, ma’am?”
Stella Jo looked behind her and saw a guard.
“I forgive you,” she said simply.
“What did she do to you?” He asked.
“She kidnapped my son.”
“Well, she won’t be comin’ back, you know.”
“Oh,” she said, mirroring his frown. “What do I do now? I can’t talk to her more?”
He shook his head. “Not today, that’s it, lady, that’s all she wrote.”
Stella cast a regretful look through the glass, and gathered herself up to leave.
“Did you ever get your son back?” He asked.
“My son?” She was startled by the question and his sympathetic tone of voice. Duane had been a sweet little boy, if obstinate, at times, muleheaded, Leonard had been fond of saying. So other than the muleheaded part, she guessed the answer to the guard’s question was no--he was much more Mark John Davies, the son of the woman who’d run from talking with her, than he was her own.
Reluctantly, she shook her head in answer.
“Then that’s all she wrote,” the guard repeated himself.
Afterwards, she remembered almost nothing of her trip home. A vague recollection of catching a bus from the penitentiary to the train station, perhaps, but it might as easily have been a taxi, except she was not one to waste her money on taxis. What she really remembered of the trip had almost nothing to do with anything she or Mertie Davies had said, and everything to do with what the guard had said: “Then that’s all she wrote.” Curiously, though, Duane’s kidnap all those years earlier had not been the end; her giving up on his ever being returned to her had not been the end; his breaking into her house had not been the end; his trial had not been the end--none of it had been the end or all she wrote, no matter how much each had seemed exactly that at the time. No, she was finding out that when God was involved in things, what seemed like an end was often merely a milestone in a continuing, even seemingly unending story.
Kindly having driven Stella to the train station early that morning, Rev. Willimon also collected her at ten that evening and let her off at her front gate. Ioletta, who’d volunteered to look in on Angel, was just coming out of the house.
“Hey,” she called from the porch.
“Hey,” Stella called back.
“Did it go all right?”
Stella trudged up the steps before answering. “All right, yeah,” she said tiredly. “I can tell you one thing, it’s not all she wrote.”
“I don’t ’spect so,” Ioletta said.
Stella held open the screen door. “You coming in?”
“Sure. You want some iced tea? I made some up for Angel earlier on.”
“Sure, if you’re having some, too.”
They went inside, and before making their way to the kitchen, Stella went over to Angel’s couch to kiss him goodnight.
“You okay, Angel?” She asked.
He smiled sleepily at her, and she tousled his hair before drawing the sheet up around his shoulders. The night was too humid for that, and so he pulled the sheet back down and turned onto his side, with his face to the back of the couch.
“He’s okay, all right,” Ioletta said. “He ate jus’ fine.”
“You ready for a story?” Stella asked, as they headed down the hallway.
“You sit, I’ll take care of the tea,” Ioletta told her.
She slipped off her shoes and put her swollen feet up on a chair, as Ioletta pulled the gallon jug from the refrigerator and took out ice and glasses. She emptied a full glass of tea, Ioletta only sipping on her own, before she began to talk.
“It was the strangest thing, talking with her,” she said, which was enough to raise Ioletta’s eyebrows in anticipation. Naturally it was not where Stella began her story. That was only the teaser. Anybody who knows how to tell a story knows better than to just blurt out the most exciting parts without first leading up to them decently and in order. First she skimmed over the train ride, or tried to, except that Ioletta wanted to know what it was like to see the countryside from a shiny new observation car on the Gulf Southern. Then she told about the differences between the visiting rooms at the county jail and the Federal Correctional Institution at Owaloosa, primarily the glass barrier, in other words, and the phones visitors and inmates had to use. After that, she told about how surprised she had been at Mertie Davies.
“Really!” Ioletta said.
“She’s such a little bitty thing,” Stella explained. “You could still see how pretty she used to be, too.”
“And she couldn’t have her own babies without stealin’ one of yours?” Ioletta asked, cocking her head to one side.
“I don’t know, I didn’t find out any of the whys,” she answered. “Not the whys she would have been able to tell me.”
“Ummh,” Ioletta murmured. “I s’pose that’s where the strange part comes in.”
“We didn’t talk more than a minute or two, I don’t think. For a little bit I was wondering why I was there at all. That’s when it happened.”
“What?” Ioletta asked, her eyebrows lifting again.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, struggling to answer. “She told me how she had cancer and nobody cared, and out of the blue I heard somebody talking about how they forgave her.”
“They?” Ioletta’s face screwed up in confusion.
“It was me,” she said, reaching out and grasping Ioletta’s arm. “And then I felt the back of my neck prickle up. I could feel the presence of God so strongly in that room, it surprised me people didn’t start falling over, me included!”
“Whoo!” Ioletta exclaimed. “Then what happened?”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” she said. “The next thing I knew, she was cryin’ an’ all, and they wrestled her to the floor and took her out.”
“Then what?”
“The guard told me how ‘that’s all she wrote.’ Only I knew better, just knew better in my heart, that it was just the beginning of something. God means to do something in that girl’s heart, Ioletta!”
Ioletta drank from her glass of tea and stared over the rim, mulling what she had heard. For a moment goose pimples rose on the back of her neck, the same, she was sure, as Stella had felt at the prison.
“What about you, Stella Jo?” She asked. “Was that true, about you forgivin’ the girl?”
Stella nodded, her face solemn but luminous.
“But I thought you forgave her before,” Ioletta said.
“It’s different, when you’re saying it because you hope it’s true, because you want it to be true, than when God does it in your heart. I didn’t know it was going to happen. The words just came tumbling out of me, and I knew it was true. It was sort of like you take this glass of tea and pour it off. All the feelings I was havin’ drained away, leaving me calm and peaceful.”
“You didn’t hate her or nuthin’ anymore?”
“No.”
“Hmmh.” Ioletta’s eyebrows rose in thought. She set her glass on the table. “I s’pose I best take off.”
“Why?” Stella asked.
She sighed tiredly, and pushed her chair away from the table. “It’s late,” she said. “There’s things to do before I go to bed--I’ve a home of my own, you know.”
“Oh, all right. What do you think I should do about the girl?”
“What did you plan on doing?”
“I was thinking I coul
d write to her. I don’t think I can go up there on the train all the time.”
“Lord knows,” Ioletta muttered. “That train ride ain’t cheap.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Well, I’ll be praying for ya,” Ioletta said. She stood by her chair for an awkward moment. “Lord knows you need it.”
Stella slid her feet from the chair to the floor.
“Don’t bother yourself,” Ioletta said. “I can see myself to the door.”
“I hope so by now,” Stella said with a laugh. “I was just meaning to find some nice notepaper.”
“I’m gone, then.”
“All right. Thanks again for watching after Angel.”
“I’ll walk softly. The boy won’t even hear me.”
Stella stood at the door of her bedroom. Her eyes twinkled. “If you think you can.”
When she returned a few moments later with an ample supply of notepaper and her favorite ink pen, she found Ioletta standing with her back to the kitchen counter. Hands clasped over her stomach and head bowed, she appeared lost in thought.
Stella sat at the table and wrote Oct. 11th, 1969 across the top of the page. Her 10:30 p.m. came under that and then Dear Mertie, in her neatest hand. She looked up curiously.
“You still here?”
“Yup,” Ioletta sighed.
“Something you need prayer about?”
Ioletta tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling.
“Ioletta?”
“No,” she said, gathering herself up and heading for the hallway. “Some things are better left buried, Stella Jo, and that’s all there is to it.”
Regardless of Ioletta’s profession of quietness, from the kitchen table Stella could follow her friend’s progress to the front door and hear the closing of the door behind her. Sometimes there were things she just couldn’t argue with Ioletta. She had known the instant their conversation seemed to open a gulf between them and knew from the sense of finality in her voice that this was one of those moments. Following her and pestering her with questions would be fruitless.
Stella continued her letter, crossing out mistakes and making corrections as she wrote, determined to copy out the result on a clean sheet of paper. After three drafts she had written, other than the date and time:
Dear Mertie,
I am so glad I got to meet you today. I am just sorry our visit was cut short. I hope I didn’t say anything to offend you, but I didn’t have the chance to ask. Do you remember my saying how I forgave you? I don’t want you to think that was something I was just making up. I really meant it. Maybe this will sound bad to you, but until today I didn’t know I could forgive you. Do you want to know what I think? I think Jesus helped me do it, just as simple as that. He asks us in the Bible to forgive those who do us wrong, and I guess when it’s time to forgive, He supplies the grace to do so. But enough about me. What about you? Would you like to know how to be forgiven and to start your life anew? All you have to do is to get down on your knees by yourself sometime and tell God how you know you’ve done wrong and that you want His forgiveness. Then tell Him you’d like Jesus to come into your heart and to take over your life. That’s about as simple and straightforward as I can make it. ’Course, you probably have already heard about this and just never got around to it. Maybe you thought it was a lot harder than this, or someone made it complicated and too hard to understand? Anyhow, I hope you do it right away. God is waiting to hear from you, and so am I.
Your new friend,
Stella Jo McIlhenny
P.S. If there’s something I can do for you, please write and let me know.
Wondering if she had made everything as clear as she should, she read the letter once again before sealing it in an envelope. There was no reason to complicate the message when it was uncomplicated to begin with and this might be the only chance she had to share the Lord with her.
Feet once again propped up on a kitchen chair, Stella sat for another half hour, thanking God for the day, for Rev. Willimon’s help, for the train ride, for His presence as she spoke with Mertie Davies, for the work of forgiveness He had done in her own heart and for what she believed He had begun in Mertie Davies’ heart. For Ioletta looking after Angel, too. She couldn’t forget that.
There. Her thoughts and prayers had drifted back to Ioletta. The sight of Ioletta leaning against the kitchen counter, head tilted to stare at the ceiling for a moment as if concentrating on a speck of dust, was hard to put out of her mind. The look in her eyes and her strange farewell were plain enough signs. Their conversation had obviously triggered something in her friend’s heart. She just wished she knew what it had triggered.
****
Part Four
Chapter 19
The knock on the door came at 3:30 a.m. Rev. Champion swung the door wide and turned away without waiting to see who was on the doorstep of his house.
“Ceed, my brother, coulda been a boogler, you know. Maybe wasn’t me after all.”
“Boogler, yeah, night rider, axe murderer,” Cedric muttered, returning with two yellow, heavy Samsonite suitcases. “Come in and shut the door, Teddy, don’t just stand there.”
Teddy stood by the cases and rubbed his hands together for warmth. The weather was cool but thankfully without a hint of rain, a welcome relief from the typical February in Calneh. The nearly two-hour drive in Cedric’s black Cadillac to the Birmingham airport should be clear sailing.
“Theodora up, yet?” Teddy asked, as his brother-in-law disappeared in the direction of the bedroom.
“Up? Hope to shout,” Cedric answered. He reappeared with two more large suitcases and a beauty case lodged awkwardly under one arm. “We have to leave on outta here in T-minus 5 minutes.”
“Huh, practicin’ for when you see my nephew, I see.”
“Well, now, the boy does work for NASA. Necessary to know something of the lingo.”
“Travelin’ light, huh?”
The silvery-haired minister was breathing hard, as he went to fetch yet another case, this one a dress bag for his wife. He draped it over the other luggage, and when he straightened back up, rubbed his hands in imitation of his brother-in-law.
”That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it, to use a few of those muscles before they atrophy. Don’t want to see you dry up and blow away--you want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
They turned and walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Cedric glanced at his wristwatch. The five minutes were now four minutes. He took the last of the coffee from the stove and poured a cup for Teddy.
“Suppose I better use up the rest of your cream,” Teddy said, opening the refrigerator. He poured until his coffee was nearly white, the carton drained completely. No use in saving any, since Cedric and Theodora were to be out of town for two weeks.
“Sugar in that?”
“Nah, still dieting,” Teddy said with a wink. The Grambling Football sweatshirt he wore concealed neither his middle-age spread nor the breadth of his shoulders.
Cedric answered with a scornful chuckle, and asked, “You have our itinerary, right?”
Teddy gulped down the last of his coffee and nodded. Theodora appeared in the kitchen doorway at that moment, dressed as though for church, black wool coat over a white-collared purple dress that reached the mid-calf, to match the formality of her husband’s black suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie.
“Ohh,” she groaned, gently rubbing her eyes. “This is too early.”
Teddy grinned. “Good morning, princess.” He rinsed the coffee cup and set it in the sink beside two others.
“Baby brother,” she answered, the usual reminder that he was ten years younger than she. “You have our itinerary, right?”
“Well, I did have it,” he said. “Shouldn’t we be on our way?”
Cedric glanced at his watch. “It’s time.”
“What do you mean by did?” Theodora
asked her brother, as the two men squeezed past her in the archway.
“Sad story,” Teddy began. At the front door, he picked up the dress bag and two cases. “That darn dog, you know--doggone these are heavy. You always tote along bricks on your vacations, sis?”
“What about the dog?” She asked, beauty case in hand.
Cedric was through the door and on his way to the car. “Your purse, Theodora!”
“Oh, dear,” she said. It would surely be helpful to bring money along and to have tickets to present, once they reached the airport. By the time she returned with her purse and locked the deadbolt to the front door, the men had loaded the trunk.
Cedric held the door open to the back seat, and she slid in, handing him her beauty case. Teddy was at the wheel of the Cadillac, the heater turned on full blast. She heard and felt the trunk lid slammed down, and saw her husband come around and open the front passenger door.
“To the airport, James,” he said, buckling himself into his seat.
“It’s Theodore. Not even out of the driveway and you can’t remember my name,” Teddy groused. “Good thing I’m driving, because you probably couldn’t find the airport in the first place.”
“About that itinerary,” Theodora called from the back a few minutes later.
Teddy eyed the rearview mirror. “I thought you were asleep.”
“You mentioned your dog--that didn’t sound good. I hope you’re not saying that sad little Chihuahua of yours ate it.”
“Huh!” He exclaimed as if offended. “You have no idea how vicious they can be. Pound for pound, tooth for tooth the most--”
“The itinerary, Teddy,” she rudely interrupted him.
“I’m telling you he wrestled it away from me and swallowed it--swallowed it and then ate poor little Jonna’s homework for dessert.” He tapped his temple with a forefinger, and added, “Good thing I had it all up here. Rae Ann will have to write a note to the teacher for Jonna tomorrow, though.”
“Oh hush your mouth,” she muttered.
“I heard that,” Teddy said.
Several minutes later soft, ladylike snores emanated from the back seat.
“You think she’s gonna make it?” Teddy asked his brother-in-law.
“I don’t know if I’ll make it. Hard to remember what a vacation’s like, after more than a dozen years.”