It’s moving week for me, and I’ve spent it providing the backstory–first three chapters–to my novella The Dogtrot Christmas–which is part of The New York Times best-selling A Log Cabin Christmas Collection.
I wrote the original three chapters on a warm summer day three years ago. I haven’t looked at them since. Rereading these chapters has been surprising–the sad story line but, also, the power of my (?) writing. I wept as I read chapter three.
Weep if so moved, but mostly, I pray you would use this opportunity to think about what is important in life.
Tomorrow, I’ll provide the opening chapter to The Dogtrot Christmas so you can catch a glimpse of where and how Molly and Jamie–not to mention the baby–survived.
If you missed the first two chapters, you can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here.
Chapter Three
Years later in the brush camp meetings Pappy Hanks would describe hell as fire and brimstone, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
But when Molly thought of hell she remembered the months after Syntha died; when all life went to silence and cold, shot through with the terror of a baby who might starve and languish for lack of his ma.
Jamie sat with Syntha’s body growing cold and stiff in the long night of her death. Pappy Hanks read aloud from out of the book of Psalms with tears dripping down his rugged face.
Ma Hanks and Kizzie washed the body and combed out Syntha’s hair long and straight. When Molly entered the tent to pay her respects, Syntha looked waxen and motionless, all the vivid laughter vanished along with her rosy cheeks.
The tent felt empty even with the ones who loved her best gathered around.
Molly clutched the tiny baby wrapped in a blanket and sleeping with a stillness that nearly matched his dead ma’s. When he finally stirred deep in the night, she didn’t know what to do.
Kizzie took him. “We’ll thank God I still have milk,” and unbuttoned her breast to give the babe some feed.
He scarcely had the strength of a kitten, yet suckled to her like a trap snapping on.
They buried Syntha the next morning on a knoll not far from the camp site. Kizzie’s Willie marked it off and he and Jamie dug the hole down deep.
Everyone from the wagon train except the scouts and watchers, gathered around as they lowered Syntha in wrapped in a sheet strewn with Ma Hanks’ dried lavender. Pappy Hanks striped the thin gold wedding band from her finger and handed it to Jamie, whose face crumbled into grief like a tired leaf trampled underfoot.
Pappy Hanks quoted the passage from Isaiah 61 from memory; “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.”
Sobs broke from the crowd as he continued in his deep voice, “To comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”
Pappy Hanks only preached the Scriptures. He didn’t add one word. They stood around that gravesite until drizzle seeped through the trees.
Then Ma Hanks picked up a handful of damp dirt. She put it into Jamie’s hand and indicated the hole. He shook his head. “I can’t put dirt on my beauty’s face.”
“She’s not here, Jamie,” Ma Hanks spoke in her gentle way. “Her soul’s detached from this place and gone home. You’re in different places now, like two rooms of a dog-trot cabin. You will never forget her, but for now, there’s a porch that separates you for the spirit to move on through. Just like the kitchen is separate from the sleeping spot because it’s not safe for them to share, you need to separate yourself from her and let her go.”
He shuddered.
She gave him a push, real nice and soft, and he dropped the dirt onto the sheet. Ma Hanks nodded and her children, all boys save Kizzie now, reached for dirt to toss into that grave.
The babe in Molly’s arms stirred and cried out, and she fell to shaking. Willie Colwell took the baby. “You need to help your brother.”
Molly scraped up a handful of soil. She let it dribble through her fingers into the grave and felt an icy chill ripple through her soul. How many times had they heard these words and stood beside a grave? Molly counted them off on her dirt-encrusted fingers: Ma, Pa, Mary, John, James and Andrew.
“Where did the family go?” he whispered.
“Like Ma Hanks said.” Molly squeezed his arm so he could feel her presence. “They just stepped across the dog trot to heaven. We’ll see them again someday.”
“Not soon enough for me.”
He blew out his cheeks and opened his fingers. They watched the soil dot the sheet. Eli Parker and John Stewart picked up shovels.
Pappy Hanks stood at the head of the grave, his string tie flapping in the wind and the rain, the tears falling, with his big black Bible clutched to his chest as if to keep his heart in place.
As soon as the marker was affixed, Pappy Hanks stirred himself and called the wagon master. “Time to move out.”
Jamie didn’t want to leave.
Ma Hanks tugged him. “You ride in our wagon today. I’ll have my Joshua take yours. The baby will go with Kizzie.”
Kizzie beckoned to Molly. “With my four little ones, I can’t manage alone. You and I will have to keep this scrap of baby alive. I’m going to need you. Can you help me?”
Molly looked toward Jamie, but he scarcely heard. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do my best.”
Kizzie’s red eyes looked bleak as she gazed past Molly to Jamie. “He’s going to need you, too; him and the baby both. You’ve shown yourself strong Molly Faires. Can you do this hard thing?”
Molly wrinkled her nose and thought back to all the grief in the Tennessee woods. “I can do anything I put my heart and soul to, ma’am.”
Kizzie looked down at the baby in her arms and thrust him into Molly’s. “Good, because it’s only going to get harder.”
~~~~
Join me tomorrow for a sneak peak of what happened to Molly and Jamie!
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