“The bit about the taxes was great,” Nate said. “How’d you come up with that?”
“Wasn’t original, I’m sorry to say. It’s how they got the famous gangster Al Capone.”
They passed by Evans Field and Grandmother Tillman slowed down. Her forehead wrinkled with concern.
“That’s odd,” she said.
Nate and Miss Edna looked over and saw Maddie Flanagan’s Bel-Air in the dark parking lot with the driver’s door open. If the dome light hadn’t been on, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
“What’s Maddie doing way out here?” Grandmother Tillman said.
She turned the Oldsmobile into the parking lot and drove up next to the Bel-Air. Skid marks and kicked-up rocks made it appear that the Bel-Air had been characteristically bridled to a stop. Maddie wasn’t in the car.
“Something’s not right,” Grandmother Tillman said.
The skid marks and the open door gave the scene an eerie sense of urgency or panic on the part of the nowhere-to-be-found Maddie. Everyone got out of the car and started to look around cautiously.
“Look there,” Miss Edna said.
“Oh my Lord,” Grandmother Tillman said.
They ran to the edge of the weeds by the parking lot, where they could see Maddie sprawled out, dead or unconscious, they couldn’t tell which from a distance. When they got to her, they could see that her forehead was sweaty and that she was breathing in short, choppy breaths.
“She’s alive, but I think she’s real sick,” Nate said. “Doctor Lightcap said she was sick that night at the tent meeting.”
Her being there had to be connected to the tent meeting somehow, Nate thought. He didn’t know why else she’d come to Evans Field all alone at night.
“You two stay here with Maddie. I’m going to call Doctor Lightcap and get an ambulance out here.” Grandmother Tillman looked intently at Nate and Miss Edna to see if they were squeamish.
Nate nodded that it would be okay.
Grandmother Tillman hurried off in the Oldsmobile, doing a pretty good impression of how Maddie would’ve pulled out. Nate went to the Bel-Air to see if he could find a blanket or something to make a pillow for Maddie. There was nothing in the front or back seat. He took the keys out of the ignition and opened the trunk. He expected her car to be all cluttered and trashy, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was as neat as could be, even the trunk. He felt a little ashamed of himself. Because she was poor and frumpy, he’d just assumed otherwise.
He found a neatly folded, cotton sheet in the trunk, and he rolled it up and put it under Maddie’s head. Not knowing what else to do, he just stood by so he could shoo away any birds or animals, if they happened to come by. Miss Edna just stood next to Nate and held onto his arm.
Grandmother Tillman returned and told them the ambulance was coming and that Doctor Lightcap would meet them at the hospital. She saw the sheet under Maddie’s head and the open trunk. She could tell Miss Edna was too distraught to have been that cool-headed, and she gave Nate a nod of approval. She looked around to see what else needed to be done or could be done. Finally, she knelt down next to Maddie and dried the sweat beads that sat on her forehead. She quietly murmured “there there,” but the incantation wouldn’t work. Something more than just a heart was broken in Maddie’s old body.
They heard the ambulance siren long before it arrived. When the medics arrived, they took over and trundled Maddie into the ambulance and sped away. Nate closed up Maddie’s car and Grandmother Tillman put the Bel-Air’s keys in her purse to give to the proper authorities later.
In the car ride over to the hospital, Nate told Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna what little he knew. He told them what Maddie had said that day at Hank Thompson’s when she almost ran over Washington, how Doctor Lightcap said she was old and probably wouldn’t get much older. He also told them about the tent meeting, and how Maddie had thrown away her plastic statue of Jesus. He then realized what she’d been doing at Evans Field, she’d come back for Plastic Jesus.
There wasn’t much to do at the hospital, as they mainly processed Maddie in and got her comfortable in a room. Jeremiah Lightcap came in and nodded at Grandmother Tillman. He checked some paper work at the desk, then came over to where Grandmother Tillman was sitting with the others in the Emergency Room waiting area.
“She’s in room three-one-seven,” he said. “There’s not much any of us are going to be able to do, but you can come up with me if you want.”
“You two children wait here,” Grandmother Tillman said. Nate thought it was funny how she kept referring to Miss Edna as a child.
When Jeremiah and Grandmother Tillman entered the room, Maddie looked much the same as when Grandmother Tillman had found her, but now she had an IV tube running into her arm and was lying in a clean bed. She started to regain consciousness after a few minutes.
“I threw him away,” she gasped weakly.
“Try to rest,” Jeremiah said.
“But I threw away my Plastic Jesus and now he’s gone. What am I going to do?” Maddie started to cry.
Jeremiah squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, Maddie, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not okay,” Maddie said frantically. “I lost my faith and now I’m going to die. I threw Plastic Jesus away and he’ll never come back.” She looked desperately into Jeremiah’s eyes.
He turned away and his jaw muscles twitched and tightened. After a long pause, he turned back to Maddie.
“He’ll come back if you ask him.”
Grandmother Tillman looked over at the doctor and her eyes widened. Jeremiah Lightcap was noted for two things: he was a cynical atheist, and he was a man who always told the truth, even if it would mean giving up his own life to do it. Grandmother Tillman knew this, and Maddie Flanagan did, too.
“What do you mean?” Maddie said.
“Think you’re the first person to throw away Jesus,” he asked. “You ask Jesus to forgive you and he’ll come back.”
“He can’t,” Maddie said weakly. “I threw him away and now he’s gone.”
“Peter threw him away and Jesus came back, didn’t he?” Jeremiah softly stroked Maddie’s gray hair back from her sweaty forehead. “Didn’t Peter deny Jesus that night in the soldiers’ courtyard?”
“Denied him three times,” Maddie said.
“And Jesus forgave Peter, didn’t he?”
Maddie thought for a minute and then she looked Jeremiah Lightcap intently in the eye. “He forgave him and he came back. If I ask Jesus to forgive me, will my little Plastic Jesus come back? I threw him away, and I tried to find him again, but I’m too sick to keep looking for him. How will I ever get him back?”
Jeremiah was quiet as he looked into Maddie’s pleading eyes. He didn’t see that Elaine Collins had come in and was standing at the door, listening intently. At last, he answered with absolute conviction in his voice.
“If you pray for Jesus to forgive you, you won’t have to look for Plastic Jesus. He’ll find you.”
Maddie eased back into her pillow. Her breathing was still shallow, but no longer the frantic, choppy breaths of before. Jeremiah made some notes and handed a paper to the attending nurse. He looked back at Maddie, but she was asleep with her head turned sideways on the pillow, and she was smiling.
He looked up and saw Elaine standing there. He blushed and motioned Grandmother Tillman and Elaine out of the room. The three of them went to the visitors lounge at the end of the hall, and Jeremiah lit a cigarette. He flung himself wearily into one of the chairs.
“That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen a human being do for another,” Elaine said. “I know what it meant for you to say those things.”
He sucked hard on the cigarette and held the smoke for a long time before letting it out. He turned to Grandmother Tillman. “I tried so hard to save him that day.” The pain and failure in his voice were amplified by the almost four decades it had taken to come out.
Grandmother Tillman bit her lip, not knowing what to say. Elaine stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders.
“I prayed that day like only a innocent young boy could. I knew if I had faith, that faith would be rewarded, and the two of us would come out of that hole alive, me pulling and Mr. Tillman hanging onto my legs, like I was some angel of the Lord lifting Daniel out of the lion’s den.” He stared at the floor and pushed his hand back through his hair.
“Even with the water pouring all around us and both of us pumped with adrenaline and faith, we couldn’t free him. Even so, I had faith and I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t quit believing. I would’ve died that day, believing we were both going to get out.”
Grandmother Tillman walked over and sat next to him. They were the young widow and the teenager as she put her arm around him and grieved with him. Elaine thought how this was the meeting they had never had, a meeting put off all this time because it hurt the two of them so much to have it.
Jeremiah said, “ The last thing your husband did on this earth was to shove me away from him. He knew what was inevitable and accepted it. He gave me my life.”
Grandmother Tillman and Jeremiah Lightcap held onto each other and wept softly for a death that had happened decades ago. Nevertheless, that death was somehow linked to one happening now just down the hall.
“I swore on that day never to put my faith in anything ever again. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to save lives with science because of the one I wanted to save with faith, but couldn’t. But you know, Ralph Johnson was right. He told me that medicine has never stopped anyone from dying. I’m not going to stop Maddie from dying, in fact, it’ll happen tonight or tomorrow most likely.” He sat up straight and looked directly at Grandmother Tillman. He held Elaine’s hand.
“And just like your husband gave me life that day, even though he couldn’t have it for himself, I decided to give Maddie back her faith, even though I know I can never have it for myself. And if that meant telling a lie, well, poor Maddie’ll never know it.”
Grandmother Tillman got up and kissed Jeremiah on his head. “God owes you something good, and I hope you get it.”
It was late when Grandmother Tillman got everybody home. On her way upstairs, she stopped by the mantle in the living room and looked at the picture of her husband that she kept there. She smoothed away any invisible dust that might be on the glass with her hand. Then she gently kissed the picture and went upstairs. She walked with a straightness to her back and a definite pride in her step, proud of her husband and his last act of bravery.
The phone rang the next morning and she got it. It was Elaine Collins calling to say that Maddie had passed away peacefully in the night. Wanamaker’s was arranging the funeral and it would be the next day. There wasn’t any family and Maddie couldn’t be said to have a lot of friends, so there wasn’t much reason to make an event out of it. There would be just a simple grave-side ceremony for anyone who wanted to attend.
The next day, Grandmother Tillman, Nate, and Miss Edna got to the cemetery, fully expecting to be the only ones there. They were surprised to see Hank Thompson there as well. Hank looked up and smiled sheepishly.
“I kind of grew used to the way she’d spit at me before she’d order her dollar’s worth of gas,” he said.
Jeremiah Lightcap’s car pulled up, and he and Elaine Collins joined them. They looked more like a couple than they ever had, as they held hands walking up to join the group.
“Not much of a turnout, quantity wise,” Jeremiah said, “But quality wise, I’ll be content to do as well when my time comes.”
Grandmother Tillman gave him a hug and Nate shook his hand. Hank Thompson slapped him on the back. Jeremiah said, “I usually avoid these things. Hard to face the family and all. But in this case, I should be pretty safe.”
Everyone stood around, telling stories about Maddie and waiting for the hearse to bring the body over from Wanamaker’s. Finally it pulled into the cemetery. It looked sad, no flower car, no limo for the family, just the lone hearse with Maddie. As it pulled up to the gravesite, everyone could see that it was Washington driving. A subtle color line in Davis Corners was being broken, almost unnoticed.
Grandmother Tillman nodded and said, “It’s an ill wind, indeed, that doesn’t blow someone something good.”
Nate and the three men helped wheel the coffin up to the graveside. Hank Thompson made a quick comment that the roads would be safer but lonelier with Maddie gone. Jeremiah deferred and Grandmother Tillman read some verses from her bible. She closed with an impromptu prayer.
“Take your daughter, Maddie, dear Lord, into your bosom, and grant her peace and peace to those who tended to her on this earth.”
Everyone walked away from the grave and Nate chatted with Washington along the way. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law had gotten drunk again. Since it was only Maddie Flanagan and nobody was expected to show up, Wanamaker had told Washington he could handle it. Jeremiah Lightcap had gotten a little ahead of the rest, and all of a sudden he stopped dead in his tracks. Elaine walked up to him to see if he was okay, and then they all saw it at the same time. There, on the dashboard of the hearse was Plastic Jesus.
Washington explained. “I picked it up that night Miss Flanagan threw it away. I figured it would bring me luck, and it did. See, I’m driving the hearse for the first time.”
Elaine put her arm around Jeremiah. “You told her Plastic Jesus would come back, and you were right. You didn’t lie to her, after all.”
Jeremiah nodded his head and smiled. He turned to Grandmother Tillman and said, “The other night you told me God owed me something good. He came back for one last ride with Maddie. I’ll consider us even on that one.
Maddie Flanagan was thus buried in a small ceremony attended by a few friends, a black chauffeur, and a plastic statuette of Jesus. A week later, an anonymously donated headstone appeared with the simple inscription:
Maddie Flanagan
d. 1963
A Woman of Faith
Chapter 22d. 1963
A Woman of Faith
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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