A Parable of Rain

Fiction by Jeff Harrell

William Henry Judson gave thanks to the Lord every day, whether he had something to be thankful for or not.

Of course, if you’d asked him, Willy Judson would have said that every day brought something to be thankful for. He was thankful for the beautiful sunrise that greeted him every morning. He was thankful for Cora, his wife of these forty-seven years. He was thankful for the toil of his hands and the sweat of his brow and the feel of the rich, black soil between his fingers.

But some days he prayed for just a little more.

“And lead us not into temptation, O Lord,” he prayed. Prayer for Willy Judson was a casual, everyday thing. There was none of this kneeling and bowing business for Willy. He simply spoke to the Lord as he might to a houseguest who was in the other room, just out of earshot.

The boards of the porch creaked under his chair as he rocked.

“But deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, amen. What a fine day you made us, Lord. And I thanks you for it. I surely do.”

He looked out over the fields, towards the road off in the distance. In seasons past those fields had been overflowing with potatoes, and beans, and collards, and hard winter wheat, and row after row of proud stalks of sweet corn. He always planted the small vegetables, the carrots and the onions and the cabbages, right up next to the house, so Cora could sneak a few onto their dinner plates every week. Nothing ever tasted so good as something he’d planted with his own hands, nurtured up from a seedling, doted over as he would a newborn child, loved with all his heart.

But now, with the mild winter a distant memory and summer coming on, the fields were dry as old bones. Every gust of wind raised a dun-colored cloud of dust that drifted across the Judson farm and off over the horizon, as if the very earth itself were trying to get away from this place.

When Willy had turned sixteen he’d inherited the farm from his daddy, Henry Vincent Judson, who had come north to Nebraska after the War. Back in the fall of 1882, when too many of the farmers in the valley had decided to plant sorghum in the same year and the market price had fallen to three cents a bushel, Willy’s daddy had spent many a sleepless night ciphering by the light of the kerosene lamp. Little Willy, the second youngest of Henry Vincent and Mabel Carlton Judson’s thirteen kids, had watched from the top of the stairs as his father had gone over the same pages in his ledger again and again in desperation, scouring the pages for lost pennies. It wasn’t until five years later, when Beulah kicked Willy’s daddy in the stomach and put him in his bed for a week and then in the ground forever after, that Willy took down the ledger and read it for himself, and learned just what a near thing it had been. A bushel of carrots or peas either way and the bank would have foreclosed on the farm.

Things had never been that bad since. The fields were verdant, and Willy kept them with an expertise learned not from books but from the passed-down wisdom of more than a hundred years. The diaries that lined the shelves of the bedroom of the little farmhouse held more good, practical farming knowledge than could be found in a dozen of the new agricultural schools that were springing up in those days, and Willy Judson had read them all.

And yet, for all that knowledge and wisdom and accumulated horse sense, Willy Judson still couldn’t make it rain. Every day another half-inch of topsoil dried up and blew away, and there wasn’t a thing Willy could do about it but pray.

So he prayed. Every day, from the moment his feet touched the floor until his head hit the pillow.

He sucked on the stem of his pipe. The can in the kitchen held just a few more bowls worth of tobacco, and he savored it with the knowledge that there might not be any more when it was gone. As he let the smoke stream out of his mouth and drift away with the breeze, his eyes scanned the lightening sky. Not a cloud, not even a wisp of cloud. Just the same unbroken expanse of clear blue he’d seen every day since the last snowfall way back in January.

“Send the rain, Lord,” he said. “Have mercy upon your children.” He sat and rocked and smoked a minute longer. “Don’t misunderstand me, Lord. If it’s your will that these fields should be dry and cracked and that my topsoil should all blow away, then praise be, Lord, praise be. But if you should see fit to send just a little shower, Lord, just a little drop, then that would be jes fine. Jes fine.”

From inside the house, he heard Cora moving around. He heard the clang as one of her skillets hit the top of the old cast-iron stove.

Willy sucked the last of the smoke from his pipe and got up from his chair. He tapped the bowl of the pipe against the porch rail and kicked the cold ashes off onto the ground. Just as he was about to turn to go inside, he saw a plume of dust on the horizon.

“Best be puttin on a bit extra, Cora,” he called inside. “We goan have company for breakfast this morning.”

A deep, throaty growl issued from the Cadillac as it pulled up next to the house. Eighteen feet long it was, with a glossy black body and a red fabric top. There wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere, not even on the whitewalls. Wisps of steam rose from around the hood and blew away in the wind.

As Willy watched from the porch, the door swung open silently and from out of the pitch-black interior emerged a man. Neither young nor old, he had a sort of timeless quality that Willy couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was dressed in a charcoal grey suit with vest, and his hair was black and slicked down with something oily that carried the faintly sweet odor of burning kerosene. He seemed to be neither black nor white; his skin was the pale grey color of granite. He wore a smile that showed every tooth in his head.

“Well, howdy, howdy, howdy,” he said in a booming voice. “How y’all doin?” Without waiting for an answer he reached into the back seat of the car and pulled out an umbrella. In stark contrast to the rest of the stranger’s ensemble, it looked entirely ordinary, even a little shoddy. He held it in front of his face like a sword and saluted grandly.

“Ain’t this a hell of a thing?” he said. He held his arms outstretched. “Not a cloud in the sky, not a drop of rain anywhere, and me with this damned thing.” He rushed forward then, his hand outstretched. He vaulted the porch steps and clasped Willy’s hand. “Oh, I’m sorry, where are my manners. Belial’s my name, Andrew Belial, and you must be Mister William Henry Judson, very pleased to make your acquaintence.”

Belial’s hand was warm and dry and soft to the touch, not leathery and callused like Willy’s hand. It was the hand of a man who was unaccustomed to honest work. The feel of it put Willy off. “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked shortly.

“The question is what can I do for you, Mr. Judson, and it’s the answer to that question that brings me here today. But since you asked, may I say that I’ve been on the road for days and days, and I am plum famished. Now, unless I am mistaken, and I am rarely mistaken, I smell hot corn fritters and sweet buttermilk and coffee on the boil and I declare that I would be unspeakably grateful to you if you were to allow me to impose upon your hospitality for a few minutes this fine morning.”

At that moment the last thing Willy Judson wanted to do was invite this man into his home. He couldn’t have said why, but he was fighting off an almost irresistable impulse to run into the house and lock the door and hide in the upstairs water closet until the stranger went away. The feeling of it shamed him.

Without a word, Willy opened the door and held it while they entered. The kitchen was dark and cool compared to the brilliant morning sun outside, and they stood in silence for a moment, dazzled.

“Cora,” Willy said, “this here’s Mr. Belial.”

“Andrew, please, no need to be formal here, we’re all soon to be the best of friends.”

She sized him up with her one good eye—she’d been blinded in her left way back in ought six; her right eye was still sharp as a tack, but her left was milky and had a tendency to wander. She sounded out his name slowly, a syllable at a time. “Bee-lee-uhl. What kind of name is that?” she asked.

Belial stepped forward and took her hand gently in both of his. “French, my dear woman, French. Our family is descended from Pierre Claude Belial, first mate and lifelong friend to the privateer Jean Lafitte who fought so heroically in the War of 1812. After the war my grand-grand-père settled in New Orleans and married a beautiful mulatto woman named Delilah Goshawk and made my grand-père, who made my père, who made yours truly. And the rest, as the man say, is history. So very pleased to meet you, madame.” Before she knew what was happening, he raised her hands to his lips. The kiss was quick, just a brushing of lips against skin, but it felt to Cora as if her hand had been touched by a burning hot iron. She snatched it away with a gasp and rubbed it, almost believing that she felt the blister starting to grow. Belial’s smile never faltered.

“Well, ain’t that a hell of a spread,” he said, looking over the breakfast table. A tall plate of fried corn fritters sat in the center of the table beside a bowl of hominy grits and a crock of fresh butter and a jug of buttermilk so cool there were drops of dew running down the side. Without waiting for an invitation, Belial pulled back a chair and dropped himself into it. By the time Willy and Cora took their seats, Belial had his napkin tucked into his collar and was reaching for the fritters.

Twenty minutes later, Belial pulled the napkin from his collar, pushed his chair back, and let out a satisfied belch. “Miz Judson, I do believe that was the finest breakfast of which I have ever had the distinct pleasure of partaking. Why, do you know that your corn fritters are the finest in the state? Unless I am mistaken, and I am rarely mistaken, you’d have to drive all the way to Mississippi to find a finer one, and that’s God’s own truth.”

Without a word, Cora gathered up the dishes and loaded them into the basin. She turned her back on the men as she began to scrub the plates.

Belial reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and produced a solid silver cigarette case. It glittered in the early morning sunlight, sending a thousand sparkles around the room. From another pocket he produced a box of matches, one of which he struck, filling the room briefly with the rotten-egg smell of sulfur. He took a deep drag and blew a cloud of blue smoke which floated over the table.

“Did you know,” he began, “that about a hundred years ago safety matches were called ‘lucifers?’”

“Mr. Belial—”

Belial held up his hand. “Please, Willy. Call me Andrew. I do so hate all this formality.”

Willy spoke through clenched teeth. This man was putting him on edge, and he didn’t know why. “Andrew,” he said, “what brings you out this way?”

“Right down to business, that’s your style, isn’t it, Willy? Well, all right, you’ve indulged me so I suppose it’s only fair that I should indulge you. What brings me here today is nothing more or less than… this!” With that, he reached under his chair and drew out his umbrella. He held it in both hands, almost reverently. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take it.”

Willy took the umbrella. There wasn’t a thing about it that was the least bit special. In fact, the leather handle was worn and scuffed in spots, the canvas was beginning to unravel at the edges.

“Ain’t it a hell of a thing?” Belial was saying. “Finest construction. Shaft made out of birchwood. Handle’s covered with genuine cow leather. The fabric is waterproof, to keep you dry in the most torrential downpour. Why, not even God Himself could get you wet if you were under one of these fine creations.”

“It’s an umbrella,” Willy said.

“Well, of course it’s an umbrella! Umbrella from umbra, the Latin word for shade or shadow. Keeps you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Protects you from sun and rain and sleet and snow. Just like carrying the safety and security of your home along with you in a convenient little package.” Belial leaned forward then, conspiratorially. “And it can be yours for a price so very reasonable that—well, I hesitate to even tell you.”

“It’s jus’ an umbrella,” said Willy.

Belial pulled back as if he’d been struck. “Just an umbrella! Just an umbrella? Oh, Willy, don’t be fooled. What you hold in your hands is the product of over a thousand hours of painstaking labor by the finest craftsmen our great nation has to offer. The techniques used in making this umbrella have been passed down from father to son since the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Tell me, do you know how to make canvas waterproof?”

“Well, no—”

“Neither do I! Nobody does, except the people at the New Canaan Umbrella Company of New Canaan, Connecticut. Sure, other umbrellas will keep you dry for a few minutes, maybe half an hour at most, but once the fabric soaks through all hope is lost. This umbrella can sit under a torrent forever and never let a single drop of rain slip through. Guaranteed!”

“Mr. Belial—”

“Andrew!”

Willy sighed. “Andrew, I’m real sorry to have wasted your time, but we don’t need no umbrellas round here.”

“Of course you don’t, Willy. No one needs an umbrella. After all, it’s just water, isn’t it? No one ever died from being rained on, did they? Well, unless they caught their death from being wet, of course, but that’s no concern to anyone who has the sense God gave a mule, is it? If it starts to rain, you just come inside until it stops. Right?”

“Well, sure.”

“Sure!” That smile was back, and Willy couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with it, something not quite right. “How much land you got here on the farm, Willy?”

“Two hundred and eighty acres.”

“Two hundred and eighty acres! Well, ain’t that a hell of a thing. Must take you a while to get across all that, don’t it?”

“Oh, I suppose.”

“How long’s it take?”

“How long’s what take?”

“To walk across your land. Say, from here to the road.”

“‘Bout ten minutes, I suppose. Ten or twelve.”

“Ten minutes. Willy, just ten short minutes in the rain will soak you to the bone! Don’t you ever get caught out in the rain?”

“Oh, once in a while.”

“Amazing.”

“What?”

“That you’ve never caught your death.”

“Oh, no, sir, I’m healthy as a horse.”

Belial let out a booming laugh that made Cora jump. “Healthy as a horse! Well, sure you are! I can see that much just by looking at you. Ain’t nothing goan put you in your bed, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Willy, tell me, how old are your children?”

Willy glanced at Cora, who stood stiff-backed at the sink.

“Oh, dear,” said Belial. “Have I touched on a sore subject?”

Willy shook his head as if he were trying to shoo a fly. “No, no. It’s jes’… Cora and me, we ain’t been blessed in that particular way.”

“Oh, dear,” Belial repeated. “I am sorry. Well, no sense in giving up hope, you’re still both young.”

Cora dropped a plate. It rattled in the bottom of the sink.

“I see,” said Belial. “So the Lord has withheld from you the gift of children, has He? You never can tell with Him. Sometimes He giveth, and sometimes He taketh away, and damned be any of us if we know His reasons why.”

Willy was still holding the umbrella. He set it on the now-empty table and pushed it toward Belial.

“Well,” said Belial, “no matter. I suppose you can’t blame a fellow for asking, though, can you? No, you never can blame a fellow for that. But…” He trailed off.

“But what?” Willy asked.

Belial glanced at Cora. She was scrubbing furiously at something unseen. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s just that I’m a bit concerned about… you know.” He angled his head toward the sink.

“Cora?”

Belial nodded. “Pardon me for saying so, but with no little ones around, if you should fall ill, there’d be no one left to care for her.”

“Cora’s a fine woman,” Willy whispered insistently. “She don’t need nobody to look out for her.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” said Belial, leaning back in his chair. “Forget I said anything. You said it yourself. You’re healthy as a horse. Not a care in the world. If you’re out on the south forty when the bottom falls out and you have to walk home wet, well, that’s nothing to worry about, is it? A trifle, a minor inconvenience.”

Belial was doing something strange with his hands. He held them out in front of him, his fingers curled but for the index and thumb, which he held in such a way to sketch the corners of a square. As he was speaking, Willy’s head began to swim suddenly, and the smoke that hovered over the table began to thicken between them. In a split second, he saw pictures in the smoke: himself out in the field with Hannah Jane hitched to the plow. Dark clouds overhead. Himself walking back to the house through muddy fields, his clothes soaked through. Himself in front of the open stove, wrapped in a blanket. Himself in bed, shivering and pale. Cora standing all alone beside a freshly dug grave.

As soon as it had begun, the vision was over. Belial waved a hand and the smoke over the table cleared. Willy immediately began to forget that he’d seen anything at all. He sat without speaking for a moment as Belial smoked and grinned.

“How much you want for it?”

Cora whirled around, her hands still holding a soapy plate. “William Henry Judson!”

“Cora,” he said sternly, “you mind your own business there.” She turned, disgusted, back to the sink.

“How much?” Willy asked.

“Be assured, Willy, the price is entirely fair and reasonable. After all, what’s your health worth to you? What’s your peace of mind worth? Unless I’m mistaken, and I’m rarely mistaken, it’s a lot more than the New Canaan Umbrella Company is asking.”

“How much?” Willy repeated.

Belial told him. It was much more than he expected.

“Well—”

Cora spun around again. “Willy, don’t you know we ain’t had not a drop of rain goin on six months now?”

She was right, of course. How could he have forgotten that? Willy shook his head, which was feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.

“Of course,” said Belial, “of course. The drought. Why, that’s all anyone’s talking about from here to Kansas City. This whole part of the country’s dry as a bone. I was in Des Moines last Tuesday, and all the topsoil there just plum dried up and blew away. What was left was like chalk, all white and dead. Folks losing farms right and left up there, and it’s just goan get worse before it gets better.”

Belial let fly with that belly laugh of his. Cora cringed. “Ain’t this a hell of a thing. Me trying to sell umbrellas in the middle of a drought. Why, there’s folks out there who say it’s God wrath on a sinful world. Church up in Logan County’s preachin that the Lord did it with a flood last time, so He’s doin it with a drought this time. Idea’s kinda poetic, if you ask me.”

For the first time since they’d sat down, Belial rose from his chair. He went to the window and gazed out over the southern fields. A dust devil whirled in the distance. “Say,” he began, “you plant those fields this past spring?”

“Yuh,” Willy grunted.

“What you plant?”

“Oh, little bit of everything. Taters. Sorghum. Soybeans.”

“Not a sprout in sight,” said Belial. “Nothin as far as the eye can see. Ground’s too dry. Nothin grows.”

“Yuh.”

“Willy, have you ever heard the expression, ‘Heaven helps them what help themselves?’”

“Course I have.”

“You believe it?”

“I suppose.”

Belial’s voice took on an odd, drifting quality, as if he no longer realized he was speaking aloud. “I seen some strange things in my day,” he said. “I seen a two-headed goat bein born in a barn in El Paso. I seen me a lame steer get up and walk once. But some of the strangest things I’ve seen have been what you’d call acts of faith. During the Great War I knew a young woman. Her husband joined up and shipped off to France. She didn’t hear from him for nigh on four years, not one letter, not one word. She knew as well as anybody that he had to be dead, but still she set a place for him at dinner every single night. She never sat down without puttin him out a plate and sayin grace over it. And what do you know, but four years to the day after she got her last letter from him, there he comes walkin up the front walk, alive and well and good as new.”

Belial turned from the window and came back to the table. “Willy, sometimes you just got to have faith. You got to believe for to have the Lord answer your prayers. If you don’t believe, you can go on prayin and prayin and He won’t do nothin about it. If you want your man to come home, you got to keep puttin his plate out. And if your prayin for rain, you got to buy an umbrella.”

Neither Willy nor Cora spoke for a long minute. A breeze picked up and rattled the shutters briefly, then died down.

“Cora,” said Willy.

“You know if you do this, we won’t have the money for the mortgage,” she said.

“And if we don’t, we won’t have the money next month. What difference does it make?”

“I know.”

“Get me the jar.”

“We must be nuts, Willy.”

“I know. Get me the jar.”

She came back from the pantry carrying a quart jar filled with bills and coins. She poured it out on the table and they counted it out while Belial leaned against the door frame and smoked another cigarette. Just as he mashed it out, he heard Willy say, “Here it is.”

He turned to see Willy holding an inch-thick stack of bills, mostly tattered ones and twos. It looked to be about half the contents of their savings jar. “You can count it,” Willy said.

Belial stepped forward and took the money in both hands. “Now, you and I both know that won’t be necessary,” he said with a smile. “Unless I am mistaken,” he said, “and I am rarely mistaken, you’re a good and honest man, Mr. Judson.”

He slipped the money into the pocket of his coat and took the umbrella in his hands. He held it out to both of them. “I think you’ll be very happy with your purchase,” he said. “Very happy indeed.”

And with that, he was gone.

Shortly before sunset, the clouds began to gather. They roiled ominously in the eastern sky, sweeping toward the sunset at an incredible speed. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the bottoms of the clouds were lit by flashes of lightning.

The first drops fell just after sunset. They were fat, heavy drops that struck the roof of the farmhouse like stones. They left tiny craters in the soil wherever they landed. In less than a minute, the first drops had given way to a flood. And it did not stop.

The rain fell well into the night. Willy slept restlessly, plagued by dreams that alternated between burning and drowning. He awoke before dawn covered in sweat with the smell of brimstone in his nose. The house was silent. The rain had stopped.

He dozed until just before sunrise, then descended the stairs quietly so as not to wake Cora. He opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch.

As far as he could see, the fields were covered in an unbroken sheet of standing water. The rain had saturated the thirsty earth and kept on coming, filling puddles that merged into ponds than finally overflowed their banks and flooded the land. The bottom step was under the water, and the second step rose only partway out of it.

Two hundred dollars worth of seed. A month’s work to till the earth and plant it. All gone, washed away. He’d prayed for rain to turn the dusty ground into rich, fertile earth. Instead, it had drowned his land and turned the earth to sterile mud.

Stunned, Willy stumbled down the steps and into what had the previous day been their front drive. His shoe disappeared into the water, and rather than striking solid ground is sank into sticky mud. Off balance, Willy fell backward onto the steps. His foot came right out of his shoe with an obscene sucking sound. As he sat up, he saw Cora standing in the doorway with tears streaming silently down her cheeks.

They stayed there, he sitting on the steps and she standing in the doorway, and watched the sun rise.

Neither of them had much of an appetite that morning, but Cora made breakfast as usual anyway. There was comfort in the ritual of it, the smell of the frying corn fritters and the boiling coffee. They sat at the table and stared at the food without touching it until it had all gone ice cold.

“I think he was the devil,” Cora said. It was the first time either of them had spoken since the previous night.

“Oh, Cora, don’t give me none of that.”

“I’m serious, Willy. I think he was the devil, come here to tempt us into sinning.”

“What sin, woman? How did we sin?”

“We put our faith in an idol instead of in God.”

“Cora, we bought an umbrella.”

“We bought an umbrella cause we thought it would make it rain. And God punished us for it.”

“Don’t you be puttin words in the Lord’s mouth, woman. He don’t need you to speak for Him. He does that fine on His own.”

“I know,” she said. “I just don’t know if you’re listening to Him.”

After breakfast, Willy found himself uncertain as to what to do next. He sat on the porch for a while, but the sight of all that water and mud sent him into a hopeless depression. There was no way they’d be able to keep the farm, much less scrape up enough money to replant. If the didn’t have the mortgage, they might be able to wait a few weeks for most of the water to run off, then plant at least a few fields with what little they had left and have something to reap come the fall. But with the bank note due in less than two weeks, there was just no way.

At ten in the morning, Willy was sitting at his writing desk. He was staring at a blank page in his diary. He’d loaded his pen with ink and held it in the air for so long that it had dried completely out, and when he finally went to write, the nib just scratched the paper. He was just about to clean it off and start over when there came a knock at the door.

It was Josiah Cane, Willy’s neighbor from two miles down the road. The Cane family had always been good neighbors to the Judsons, even back in Willy’s grandfather’s time. Willy and Josiah had known each other since they were old enough to walk. When Josiah’s youngest died of the influenza in the winter of twenty-one, Willy had helped him dig the grave.

Josiah’s dungarees were covered in mud up to his knees.

“Mornin, Josiah,” Willy said. “I’d invite you in, but—” He gestured at the other man’s boots.

“Oh, don’t bother with that, Willy,” said Josiah. “This ain’t a social call.”

“What can I do for you?”

Josiah raised an eyebrow. “Don’t try to be coy, Willy. It don’t suit you.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Willy, don’t make me beg. I need your help!”

Without meaning to, Willy flew into a rage. “Look around you, Josiah! There ain’t nothin left! We ain’t even goan make the bank payment this month! We ain’t goan be helpin nobody, not even you.”

He stopped when he realized that the other man was laughing at him. His face was as red as a beet, and he was holding his muddy knees. When he got his breath, he said, “Willy, you damn fool. You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Nobody else in the valley got any rain!”

From behind Willy, Cora exclaimed, “Praise be!”

“Hush, woman. What are you talkin about, Josiah? And go slow, cause my brain ain’t what it used to be.”

Josiah’s eyes sparkled. “Go a mile down the road, in either direction. Ground’s as dry as ever was, and gettin worse all the time. And right smack in the middle of it, here you are, sittin in the middle of a lake. And you don’t even know it. Willy, you’re sittin on top of a gold mine.”

Willy just stared, slack-jawed.

“Now, I know we been neighbors since our daddies was kids,” Josiah was saying, “but I don’t expect no special treatment. I’ll pay you a fair price to let me dig a ditch through the south fence.”

“What price?” Willy asked.

Josiah named a figure. Willy named another. Josiah came up a little bit, and they shook on it.

As Josiah turned to go, Willy stepped out onto the porch. In the distance, he saw Josiah’s Model T sitting up to its axles in mud five hundred yards away from the house. He must have gotten stuck and walked the rest of the way. Out beyond Josiah’s car, maybe a mile in the distance, there were two other Model T’s and what looked like a Model A. Their drivers had abandoned their cars and were slogging through ankle-deep mud toward the farmhouse.

Cora stood on the porch next to her husband as they watched the golden sparkles dance as the sun reflect off the standing water.

“Praise be,” she said for the second time that day.

“Amen,” said Willy. He turned to her. “You still think he was the devil?”

“I surely do,” she said, without hesitation.

“How do you explain all this?”

She thought about it for a few seconds before speaking. “The way I see it,” she said, “the Lord’s a mite more clever than old Mr. Belial done give him credit for.”

As they stood there, a fifth car turned the corner and started down their road.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Willy said.

“He surely do,” said Cora.

Copyright © 2003 by Jeff Harrell. All rights reserved.