Part 2 (2/2)

We had to wait even longer for our strawberries to cool down so that we could pour them into the mason jars. Gloria Jean fixed us grilled cheese sandwiches. She said eating would make the time pa.s.s more quickly, but even a warm grilled cheese sandwich couldn't take my mind off that pot. Finally, Gloria Jean handed us both a ladle and said we could start filling the jars as long as we were careful to leave a good quarter inch of s.p.a.ce at the top of each one. I did most of the pouring, though, and then Martha Ann came behind me putting a metal lid on top of each jar. Then we went back and topped each one with a screw band that held the lid securely in place.

Gloria Jean said we did a real good job, but we weren't done yet. Then she put as many jars as she could at one time on a metal rack she had placed inside a large, stainless-steel pot. She filled the pot with water, making certain that the water covered all of the jars. Even when the water started boiling, Gloria Jean kept checking to make sure the jars were always covered with at least two inches of water. She said this was the most important step because we were killing all the germs that might otherwise make our customers sick. And that, she said, would not be good for business.

After about half an hour or so, we took the jars out of the water to cool once and for all. And there, sitting on the counter, was our first batch of jam. Gloria Jean said we were turning out to be real entrepreneurs just like our great-granddaddy, William Floyd, except that what we were doing was legal in all fifty states.

She pulled some paper out of a drawer and handed it to us. ”These here are labels that you girls can decorate and then glue to the jars, right here, you see,” she said, pointing to a smooth, rectangular s.p.a.ce on each jar. ”You're going to need to come up with a name for your jam.”

Martha Ann and I looked at each other. We'd been so busy picking berries that we never gave a minute's thought to a name for our jam.

”Well, start coloring those labels, something will come to you.”

We sat at Gloria Jean's kitchen table for an hour or more decorating labels and gluing them onto the jars. And she was right, the name just came to me. I called it Preacher's Strawberry Jam, in honor of our grandfather. I looked at Martha Ann, holding a jar of jam in my hands, and said, ”You know, getting grounded may have been the best thing that ever happened to me.”

”Honey, the Lord works in mysterious ways,” added Gloria Jean with a smile on her face as she stood at the kitchen sink was.h.i.+ng the big, black kettle.

By the end of the week, Mr. Tucker had sold every jar of jam we had given him, and he was asking for more. So Martha Ann and I happily spent the next month picking berries and making jam, and I think even Daddy realized that his punishment had turned into a lucrative opportunity. Ida Belle ordered a dozen jars to serve at church suppers. Lankford Bostleman said his aunt was wanting some for friends over in LaFayette. Even Mrs. Roberta Huckstep was seen picking up a jar or two. We had made almost two hundred jars when all was said and done. But our business came to an abrupt end one morning when I woke up with bright red blotches all over my body. I started screaming, thinking for sure I had scarlet fever. I had no idea what scarlet fever looked like, but since I was red, I figured I had to have it.

Daddy heard me crying and came rus.h.i.+ng into my room. He took one look at me and picked me up in his arms and carried me out to the car. He sped into town, almost driving poor Brother Fulmer off the road. He thought I had scarlet fever, too, I knew he did.

But Doctor Brother Bowden took one look at me and started laughing. He said he and his wife had been enjoying my strawberry jam on their biscuits every morning, and he had a feeling that I had been eating my fair share of berries this summer. ”I imagine quality control is an important part of the job,” he said.

”Yes, sir. Kind of.”

”Catherine Grace, I hate to tell you this but you have a severe case of strawberry rash, known to afflict ambitious young women who consume more strawberries than their growing bodies can handle. The cure is simple, no more strawberries, at least for a while.”

It didn't take Daddy long after that to decide that it was time for my going-out-of-business sale. He said I had surely made enough money for one summer and that I should enjoy what little bit of vacation was left before school started. He also decided that I could go back to the Dairy Queen, probably figuring that Dilly Bars and daydreaming were a heck of a lot safer than strawberries.

After tending to all my financial obligations, which included reimbursing Gloria Jean her initial investment and paying Martha Ann the twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents in wages I owed her, I ended up with almost one hundred and forty dollars in the s...o...b..x under my bed.

I agreed with my daddy. I didn't need to make any more jam this summer. I had learned my lesson, and I think he had learned one, too. Leaving this town was not going to be something I needed his permission to do. It was going to be my choice, and my journey had already begun.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Preparing the Lord's Table for the Preacher and His Girlfriend Sunday lunch was a sacred time at our house. It came with a certainty and sameness that was wonderfully comforting. Daddy would get up before daybreak and read over his sermon, spend a few quiet moments with the Lord, and then pull a chuck roast out of the refrigerator. He'd pat it with b.u.t.ter and brown it in a frying pan. The smell of the meat cooking was our wake-up call, an omen of sorts that this Sunday was going to be just like all the others that had come before it.

Any disruption to our Sunday routine, like when Buster Black finally died of old age and Daddy had to leave right after church to officiate at his burial behind Mr. Naylor's garage, always left me feeling kind of edgy, like something was seriously wrong with the world but n.o.body was going to dare tell me-the way I felt when Mama died.

But when things were as they should be, Daddy would lift the chuck roast out of the frying pan and put it in the Crock-Pot about ten minutes after seven. He bought that Crock-Pot at the Dollar General Store right after he and Mama got married. Mr. Tucker told Daddy that it was the newest concept in slow cooking and that every family needed one, and being a good husband, Daddy said he wasn't leaving the store without it. Ours was an awkward shade of green. Daddy called it avocado, which didn't mean much to me since I hadn't ever seen an avocado.

Daddy said the Crock-Pot must have been made by a churchgoing, Christian man because it was the only way a preacher could sermonize and cook all at the same time. Even when Mama was alive, Daddy always cooked Sunday lunch. He said the good Lord and a hardworking woman both needed a day off. He added four big potatoes, cut into chunks, one finely chopped onion, a bunch of baby carrots, and a bag of Green Giant frozen peas. Then he'd add a cup of water and one cube of beef bouillon, turn the Crock-Pot on high, and put on his Sunday suit. By the time we got home, the whole house smelled of perfectly prepared chuck roast. It was a warm, friendly smell, and I just wanted to wrap myself in it completely. I knew this was the same smell that my mama had come home to every Sunday after listening to her husband preach.

People were always begging us to come to their house for Sunday lunch. Apparently it was something of an honor to have the preacher share a meal at your table. But Daddy always respectfully declined their invitations, even Doctor Brother Bowden's. He said it was our special family time and that only praying over some poor soul about to depart this world and burying one that already had would cause him to miss it. Or at least until Miss Raines came to town.

One Sunday, after Daddy had delivered a particularly loud, fist-pounding sermon about loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself, he came up to me and Martha Ann, and almost in a whisper, asked if either one of us would mind if Miss Raines joined us for lunch. We both looked at him, not knowing how to tell him that we minded a whole heck of a lot, and then said nothing. He asked again, and I finally mumbled some sort of reply, which he must have taken to mean that it was okay with Martha Ann and me, because the next thing I knew I was putting an extra placemat on the kitchen table.

Our Sunday routine was suddenly changing, and I couldn't do anything about it. Our sacred family time was being sacrificed for an appetizing, young Sunday-school teacher who was unusually talented with a felt board.

Daddy always sat at the head of the table, which long ago had been determined to be the end by the refrigerator because his arms were long enough to open the door without rising out of his seat. Martha Ann and I sat on either side of him, just like we'd always done. But today, Miss Raines sat on the other end, across from Daddy, probably where Mama used to sit. She'd look up at him with gooey eyes and call him by his first name: ”Marshall, would you mind pa.s.sing me the salt? Marshall, would you mind pa.s.sing me the pepper?”

And Daddy would look at her and smile as if she had said something really profound. Sometimes I wondered if Daddy used to look at Mama the way he did Miss Raines. You could tell he thought she was real pretty, sitting there with her big, blue eyes and long blond hair.

I wanted to show her his crooked smile and the white hairs that were popping in around his ears. I wanted to tell her that he snored so loud at night sometimes I thought it was a train pa.s.sing through town. But preachers seem to have a powerful hold over some women, at least that's what Gloria Jean said.

I think she was right. Women, and men for that matter, would do anything and everything for my daddy, long before he could even ask. Mrs. Blankens.h.i.+p dropped off five pounds of fresh b.u.t.ter from her husband's dairy farm on the first Monday of each month. In the summer, Brother Fulmer brought us the juiciest, sweetest watermelons from his own garden. He said he saved the very best for the preacher. And Ida Belle could hardly let a day go by without delivering some kind of tuna-noodle ca.s.serole or cold, fried chicken.

One time Gloria Jean was pulled over for speeding down Graysville Road. She was driving me and Martha Ann to a Sat.u.r.day matinee over in Fort Oglethorpe. But when the sheriff walked up to the car and saw us two sitting in the backseat, he just told Gloria Jean to slow down. ”Sure wouldn't want anything to happen to Reverend Cline's little girls.”

It was as if a gift to my daddy was a gift to the Lord Himself, just as fine as any pot of frankincense or myrrh. Miss Raines was no better, except she seemed to know it was the preacher's daughters she needed to impress. She brought me and Martha Ann some kind of candy bar every single Sunday. I wanted to let her know right from the start that it was going to take a lot more than some chocolate and caramel to get me to change my mind about her dating my daddy, but, on the other hand, I hated to pa.s.s up a perfectly good Milky Way.

Miss Raines tried real hard to be our friend, even offering to play Monopoly with us on the living room floor. And once or twice, she stayed with me and Martha Ann when Gloria Jean was visiting Meeler down in Dalton and Daddy had to rush to the hospital to pray some poor soul back to health.

Personally, I never understood why Miss Raines was ever interested in an older man with two children and his own healthy crop of tomatoes. Surely she was going to want her own little babies and her own house and her own tomatoes growing right out her very own back door. Gloria Jean said pretty, young women always do.

But Miss Raines had Sunday lunch with us for the next five years. And sometimes Daddy took her to dinner or to a movie on a Friday night. One time I even saw him kiss her on the lips, with his mouth wide open. But he insisted she was just a good friend. That was kind of hard to believe since I never saw him kissing Brother Fulmer on the lips like that.

He said he had only one true love in his life and that was Lena Mae Cline and that n.o.body could replace her. But sometimes I thought Miss Raines sure was willing to give it a try. Everybody at church sure seemed to be hoping for a wedding. I saw all the blue-haired crones clucking among themselves whenever they spied Daddy and Miss Raines standing anywhere near each other.

”What could be more perfect,” Roberta Huckstep said to Ida Belle one Sunday morning when she hadn't noticed I was sitting right behind her, ”than our handsome preacher marrying our beautiful Sunday-school teacher? Besides, it's about time those girls got themselves a new mother and quit watching so much football and Guiding Light, if you know what I mean.”

I didn't want a new mother. I already had one, and I hated Roberta Huckstep and the other blue-haired ladies at Cedar Grove Baptist Church who had apparently forgotten about Lena Mae Cline. Gloria Jean kept telling me not to worry. She said my daddy would never be able to bring himself to propose to another woman.

”Everybody needs a little adult companions.h.i.+p, girls, a little human contact, just look at me and Meeler. I love spending time with him, but I ain't going to marry him. It's the same with your daddy,” Gloria Jean explained. ”But if you ask me, I think he needs to let that poor girl get on with her life. He's still in love with your mama. He always will be. It's one of those haunting loves. No cure for that.”

Maybe. But sometimes I just wanted to be certain. I just wanted Miss Raines to eat lunch at somebody else's house.

Then one Sunday morning, Miss Raines asked everybody in cla.s.s if they had a favorite Bible verse. Ruthie Morgan raised her hand before anybody else had a chance and said, ”Oh yes, Miss Raines, that would be John 3:16, *For G.o.d so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.'”

”Oh Ruthie, that's an excellent choice, isn't it cla.s.s?” Miss Raines responded, cooing like a dove sent from the heavens above. I just looked at Martha Ann and rolled my eyes. ”Doesn't that make you all feel extra special knowing that G.o.d gave His only Son just for you, and you, and you,” she continued, pointing to each and every one of us for added emphasis.

John 3:16 would be the obvious choice, especially for someone with a really brown nose and a perfectly pleated cotton skirt and matching blouse. But I had a better verse, one that I had been waiting for some time to share with Miss Raines, and now the ideal moment had finally arrived. I raised my hand, looking almost as eager and innocent as Ruthie Morgan, and said, ”Miss Raines, I know one. I have a special verse.”

”Yes, Catherine Grace Cline,” she said, clearly annunciating the Cline as if to remind everyone I was the preacher's daughter and surely I knew some extra-special scripture. ”Go right ahead.”

”Yes, ma'am. It's from First Corinthians, chapter seven, verse number eight,” I declared, standing in front of my chair so everyone could hear me. ”Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried.”

As soon as I heard myself say it, I regretted it, feeling oddly embarra.s.sed and relieved all at the same time. I sat down in my chair. Feeling my cheeks turn red, I stared at the floor. I didn't mean to hurt Miss Raines, well, not that much. But I had to stand up for my mama because it sure seemed like n.o.body else was going to, not even my own daddy.

I knew I had hurt her. I could see it in her pretty blue eyes, which all of the sudden looked teary and sad. She glanced at me and forced a small, pitiful smile, probably wondering why she had wasted so much money buying me those candy bars.

”Thank you, Catherine, thank you for sharing.”

After that, Miss Raines told us to quietly read from our Bibles until it was time to go hear the preacher. She sat at her desk, never once looking up to see if we were doing what we'd been told.

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