a tonic for the moods. But now, especially in the ever-advancing evening darkness as the late autumn wind swept through the mud chinks between the cabin logs, the moods seemed to come more frequently and last longer.
One chilly afternoon after school, rather than endure her prolonged silence, Speed walked over to the parsonage, took up the axe, and began to split wood. After a few minutes Pastor Spencer came through the back door, pushed his glasses to his forehead, and called out, “Good for you, Speed. Good for you. Your efforts shall not go unrewarded. Come in the kitchen when you are done. Rebecca will have coffee.” Speed smiled at the man and continued to split the wood “thunk—thunk—crack—thunk—crack––thunk—crack.” The initial double thunk split the log section the first time, then each subsequent division usually required only two strokes. As the late afternoon was darkening, he stacked the split wood and took an armload into Rebecca’s kitchen.
“Evening Rebecca. Where’s this wood go?”
As she pointed to a wood box in the corner she asked, “You that boy come with your mammy back in October?”
“Yes,” he said before he clattered the wood in the box.
“Parson Spencer say give you coffee. Brush your shirt off and wash your hands. I tell him you here.”
“Thank you,” Speed said as he stepped back out the kitchen door to brush the woodchips from his shirt and pants and rinse his hands in the nearly freezing basin of water next to the door. When he sat down at the kitchen table, the Negro woman set a cream-colored crockery mug in front of him. Speed could not resist his curiosity about the relationship of the parson and the woman.
“Rebecca,” Speed asked, “Does Reverend Spencer own you?”
The woman inhaled, making her considerable presence even more imposing. Her voice was full of fervor as she replied, “I as free as you, free since Parson Spencer paid my bond.” She reached in her bosom and pulled out an envelope worn thin in places. “This here paper proves it.” She held the envelope up to Speed’s face, “but I don’t show it to just anybody. It’s too precious.” She replaced the paper from where it had come. The boy was taken aback by the woman’s overbearing response. As he swirled the coffee around in his mug, he wondered why she was so worked up. He thought of the harsh words Sid had said about Negroes, how they recognized they were little better than monkeys and meant to work. Then there was his mother’s insistence that he was better than Lucie. So why had Parson Spencer gone to all the expense to buy Rebecca’s freedom? Now if he got pinched for funds he couldn’t sell her.
Speed’s thoughts on slavery were interrupted by the preacher. “Advent, Speed, we await the coming of the Lord, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Now what should I say in my sermon Sunday?” Speed wondered if the Parson really expected him to answer and fumbled for a response.
“My Aunt Ruth said the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the lion will eat straw and we’ll all have knowledge of the Lord, so I guess you could preach on that.” Speed was doing his best to impress the parson with his scrap of scripture.
“My boy, my boy, perspicacious, absolutely perspicacious. Isaiah 11. That will be our Old Testament reading for Sunday. Well done, Master Speed. Well done. And I think I shall choose Second Corinthians for the Epistle. Not a usual Advent text, but quite sufficient.”
Speed had only a dim understanding of the relevance of Aunt Ruth’s text for the parson’s sermon, but he anticipated his mother would make him endure worship on the upcoming Sunday. He finished his coffee with several gulps, set his mug on the table and then, with no further word for Rebecca, stood to go. The parson appeared to be considering a matter carefully, then pushed his glasses down on his nose so he could look earnestly into Speed’s face. He pulled a penny from a well-worn pocket purse, seized Speed’s hand, placed the penny in his palm, then closed his fingers over it. “I’ll pay a penny an hour, Speed. A penny an hour for chopping wood. Come by any afternoon. There’s plenty of chopping to be done.”
“Thank you Parson, but I just did it to keep warm. I wasn’t looking for money. You already done plenty for my Ma and me.” Speed’s response was politic but not wholly sincere. He resented the parson’s mandate that cost him the pittance he earned from Muench at the livery stable and the companionship of Floyd Little.
“A penny an hour, and that is all there is to that. See you next time,” said the diminutive gentleman as he turned to leave the kitchen.
“Thank you for the coffee, Miss Rebecca,” said Speed as an afterthought. He considered he was being extra polite add the “Miss,” because she was a free woman.
“Humpf,” said Rebecca, as Speed stepped toward the kitchen door.
Speed got the penny for his efforts on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, Speed found his mother coughing in her room when he returned from school. On Thursday morning, she seemed stronger when he went to school, but again was coughing in her bed when he returned, so he excused himself to the exercise of the parson’s chopping block. On Friday, his mother was not able to rise from her bed at all, and he suggested that she change to his bed because she would be closer to the stove. Saturday was cold and damp, and when Sunday morning came Joycie’s cough had returned with a vengeance. She urged Speed to go to church by himself, saying she would stoke the stove until it glowed red to “sweat this thing out once and for all.” Speed felt there was something more he should be doing, but his mother was asking for nothing more so he opened the damper holes in the stove door, stacked several seasoned oak logs inside the door, and for the first time ever went by himself to adult worship. He assumed a serious face to reflect what he hoped was an air of responsibility appropriate for the senior male of the family.
Reverend Spencer did indeed choose the Old Testament reading from Isaiah, and he even gave Speed credit for suggesting the reading, causing Speed to blush as eyes in the congregation turned toward him. The reading from the Epistles was from 1 Corinthians 13 which ended “And now abideth, faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” The preacher opened his sermon with the statement that clearly Isaiah foretold the birth of Christ, and the Apostle Paul demanded that we be a people of charity, a people of love, as Christ had loved us. Yet sinful man denied the message at every turn for over eighteen hundred years, thereby condemning themselves to the fires of hell. At that point the stove at the back of the sanctuary had warmed the congregation sufficiently so that heads began to nod, Speed’s included. He awoke when Reverend Spencer began to punctuate his exhortations by slamming the pulpit. “Isaiah,” he proclaimed, “was the prophet of love to bring peace (slam!) and harmony (slam!) on earth! Christ was the full manifestation (slam!) of that love. Now every Christian must bring that love on earth (slam!), to his town (slam!) and to his farm, (slam!) immediately, day by day. If you fail, you bring on yourself eternal (slam!) dam…(slam!) nation (slam!).” The little man peered indignantly over the pulpit, pushed his glasses up on his forehead for emphasis, and took a seat by the choir.
When Speed stood to sing the closing hymn, he wondered if God had already condemned him for failing to love. As he walked back to the trapper’s shanty where his mother lay, he wondered how he could bring love to any town or farm, let alone get a cougar to eat straw. What did Aunt Ruth mean that night when she had him read that passage? As he thought more about the passage, he realized the Bible didn’t say that the baby wouldn’t be bitten by the asp. It just said he would play there. Since the asp had bitten him but he hadn’t died, what did that mean? Maybe it just meant that it wouldn’t be easy to have God’s kingdom, but it would still come. And then the Apostle Paul said the most important thing was love. Had God kept him alive for some special purpose? He was having a hard time loving anyone in Missouri, sometimes even his mother. His thoughts shifted back to Whitley County. Would life have been
