*Stacy*

A Short Story by H.J. Ted Gresham

Stacy giggled. She squirmed and wiggled in her pew. She clamped her left hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. Her small, round face was turned upwards, looking at the adult beside her. Her hand held his, a hand more than twice the size of her hand, and rough, worn, calloused. Dimples on her cheeks deepened as she grinned wider. 

Robert looked down at the little cherubic face. The little girl was barely able to look over the back of the pew. Her blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight that came through the stained-glass window of the old Methodist church. Her hair, long and golden, fell around her head and flowed over her shoulders in curls, covering her shoulders and hiding the white lace around the collar of her pink dress. “Shshsh….” 

“Um, hum,” she gaggled, scrunching her pretty features in an attempt to be quiet. 

Robert smiled at her, winked, and then looked towards the minister up front as innocently as he could. But he was not innocent. It was the faces he’d made that had Stacy biting her lower lip. He’d been mimicking the stern expression of Reverend Howell who was saying something about Hell and escaping it and was inviting the pianist to play and the congregants to pour down to the altar and repent. 

The strains of an old hymn rose into the rafters. A tinny-sounding piano led the congregation in the singing of the hymn and all but a few sang without the need of a hymnal. Robert, though, pursed his lips and pretended piety. His lower lip quivered, his eyes actually moistened, his face took on the look of a penitent monk. 

Stacy giggled. Again. Then she pulled her hand from Robert’s hand, poked him on the side with a closed fist, clutched the back of the pew and closed her eyes and bowed her head. But her inner struggle wasn’t over her soul and its destiny. It was a struggle to keep from exploding with laughter. Uncle Robert could be so funny. 

“Robert,” the minister said, shaking Robert Ludlow’s hand as Robert led Stacy and her mother out the back door of the church. The minister still held most of his stern expression. He was the toughest nut Robert had ever tried to crack. 

“Reverend Howell,” Robert bellowed, “fine sermon, scared the hell right out of me.” 

“A’hem,” the minister said as if clearing his throat.  He squared his shoulders and grew more cross-looking.  , “Thank you, Robert.” 

Behind Robert, Stacy snickered, swatted at him, then looked up at the minister with a dead-serious expression.

“Stacy,” the minister said, looking down at the ten-year-old’s almost-serious face. “How is your father?” 

Stacy’s face grew serious for real. “He is the same.” She released the minister’s hand and moved past, the laughter which had been held in her throat now gone. 

Behind Stacy, Alice moved up and took the minister’s hand. “So there’s no change?” The minister looked into Alice’s face. Alice looked back, stoic. 

“No, Reverend, still the same.” 

“I am sorry, Alice, you can rest assured Billy is in our prayers.” 

“Thank you,” Alice said, holding back the thought that followed: “what good have your prayers done so far?” She knew in her heart she was being unfair. But life was so unfair, terribly unfair, and she wanted to cry and to scream and to pound on who ever was nearest. Instead she smiled meekly at Reverend Howell and followed her daughter through the outer door and down the steps of the old church. 

Alice searched the grass-covered lot with her eyes. She saw Stacy in the distance, laughing again now, pointing a finger at her uncle. Robert was behind the opened passenger door of a sixty-two Chevy truck, squatting down and then popping up in the window and “poo-pie’ing” like he would do to a child much smaller than Stacy. But he was funny, anyway, and even Alice caught a laugh that rose up inside her. 

Truck doors clanged shut. Alice sat behind the wheel of her husband’s blue truck. Robert sat on the far left side, hanging his elbow out of the opened window. Stacy perched on the edge of the seat in the middle. She could barely see over the dash. 

“Almost dun it today.” 

“Almost done what, Robert?” Alice looked at her brother-in-law. She cranked the truck after pumping furiously on the foot feed. It sputtered and then roared to life. 

“Almost.” 

“Almost what?” 

“Yep, came damn, oops, darn close. Really, REALLY close.” 

“Robert,” Alice scolded. 

Stacy pounded on Robert’s knee, “Uncle Robert,” she squealed, “whut did you do?” 

“Almost do,” Robert corrected. “Yep, almost.” 

“What?” 

“Almost made the ‘big walk,’ that ‘eternal trek,’ the old ‘down the aisle waltz.’” 

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Well,” Robert grew sullen, serious, even pious. “I will tell you. I moved in the direction, even, you saw me Stacy, didn’t you?” 

“Awe, Uncle,” Stacy said. 

Alice pushed the clutch, pulled the truck into reverse, flung her right arm up and over Stacy, her fingers moving past Robert’s head and ruffling his hair.

She clutched the back of the truck seat, turned, backed the truck out from between a huge Buick and an ancient Ford. 

“Why, thank you, sis, for fixing my doo,” Robert said. He made a prissy face and tweaked at his hair. He winked at Stacy. 

“So,” Alice said, pulling at the wheel, shifting the truck into first, and moving through the church yard towards the driveway. “Why didn’t you?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Robert said, returning to the subject. “Well, I got to thinkin’.” 

“That’s dangerous,” Alice said, unable to resist. 

“You are so funny, Sweet sister, you do love me so.” 

“Of course.” Alice smiled. She wasn’t looking at Robert, though, she was looking up and down the two-lane road. The truck bounced through potholes in the driveway. 

“Lookee, don’t forget that one.  Get’em all!”  The truck bounced again.  “Well, anyway, I was tellin’ ya. I almost took the ‘eternal plunge.’” Robert shook his head. “Yep, was gonna get washed in the blood saved.” 

“You keep saying that. So why didn’t you?” 

“I will tell you.” 

“Well tell me.” 

Stacy wasn’t part of the conversation. She was bouncing up and down in the seat and laughing heartily at the antics that were accompanying Robert’s words. 

“Well, I’ll tell you.” Robert took a deep breath. “It’s like I didn’t have to. Nope. Had the change come right there in the pew, Halleluiah and Glory!” 

Alice shot a look at her brother before turning back to the road ahead. The sun was washing out the color of the old pickup, reflecting off the hood and causing Alice to squint. “One of these days God will strike you, Bobby Lee.” 

“That is Robert, kind sister,” Robert corrected. He hated that hick nickname he’d been stuck with. 

“Go on. Quit changing the subject.” 

“Oh, yeah, well, I was going to go down. Sure. But then I slipped to the edge of the pew, the very teensy-weeensy edge, right there, almost in the blessed aisle. And I opened my eyes. And I saw the most honorable Reverend Howell, standing there, right down there at the end, arms outstretched. Then it happened.” 

“What?” Alice and Stacy sang the word in chorus.

“I had a vision.” 

“Yeah, a vision.” 

“Yes, dear Jesus, a vision!” 

“And?” 

“I saw, I saw… there he was, Reverend Howell, arms outstretched, his hands, oh his hands….” 

“Spit it out.” 

“His hands,” Robert continued, his voice rising, “were around my throat and he was shaking me violently and demanding to know how I could be such a bad boy.” 

“That wasn’t a vision, that was a memory,” Alice said deadpan. 

“Was it?” Robert smiled at her crookedly. “Hmm, suppose it was.” 

“Sure it was, don’t kid me, brother-in-law. That was Reverend Howell when he caught you putting the double-sided tape in the church pews.” 

“Oh, yeah, it was. Yeah, well, so, you are screwing up my story for Stacy here.” 

“Yeah, Momma, I want to hear the rest.” 

“Oh, ok, ok, fine, go on with your vision.” Alice clucked her tongue in her mouth and drove on. 

“Fine, well, then, there was this vision, Reverend Howell, his hands around my neck, he was shaking me. Then there rose up this huge, huge angel, right behind him. Then the Reverend became the angel, and he spread his wings, and, and….” 

“AND WHAT?” 

“And he clutched me tighter and said, ‘I am pleased you have given your soul today, now let me take it right on up to the Holy One before you have a chance to take it back.’” 

Alice and Stacy were giving him their attention now. Stacy looked up at him grinning.  Alice kept shooting him glances as she drove through town. 

“Then it happened.” 

“What?” 

“I realized, I’ve been saved for a long time and didn’t even know it.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah, back when the Reverend shook me to my very soul when I was just fifteen, scared the hell right out of me. Did it all over again today. Yep, all the hell was gone. I have been a changed man since that day.” Robert scooted back in the seat, satisfied, “ain’t no hell in me now to get rid of.”

Stacy looked at him, then at her mother, who was now laughing. She didn’t get it. She couldn’t have known what was so funny because she hadn’t been there the day the Reverend Howell shook the wits out of Robert for pulling one too many pranks. Alice remembered what Robert had told the minister on the way out of the door this morning. She had an idea Robert had been wanting to tell the Reverend that for a long, long time. 

As the pickup bounced up a cement drive and into the hospital parking lot Alice thought about how Robert had not changed at all. He was older. His face was harder. His skin was more rough. His language was certainly more coarse. But he was the same Bobby Lee she’d always known. She was glad he was back. 

Alice pulled the hand brake, killed the truck, pulled it into reverse, and pushed open the creaking door of the pickup. Robert quickly hopped out of the passenger side and yanked at Stacy whom he thought was not exiting the truck quickly enough. The trio headed across the parking lot towards the hospital. 

“It is good to see you again, Bob, I mean, Robert.” 

“You too,” Robert said. He nodded towards the hospital building. “You think he’ll know me?” 

“I don’t know,” Alice said. “Maybe.” 

“He has missed you.” 

“Yeah, well, I missed him too.” 

“This horrible war,” Alice said, stepping onto a curb. 

“Yeah,” Robert said. He rubbed his left side with his right hand, the side where shrapnel had taken a nice chunk of flesh from it. It had been his ‘million dollar wound,’ got him a purple heart and a trip out of Vietnam. “It wasn’t the war, though.” 

“Why didn’t you ever come back?” 

“This place,” Robert said, looking around. “It just isn’t funny.” 

Alice understood him. She knew it was just the town, the quiet little town where people had a way of squashing the life out of someone different than themselves, even if that someone was born and raised here. And Robert was different. 

“I have a feeling you’ve wanted to drop that line on the Reverend for a long time,” she said. 

“Sure have, ever since that day.” 

“God is going to strike you down for poking fun at Him.” 

“Oh, I’m not poking fun at God.” Robert grasp at a hand rail, almost loosing his balance. “No, just at the Reverend. God and me, we get along ok. The VC ain’t good for much but they can lead you right to Jesus in a hurry.”

Alice smiled. She couldn’t help imagining a small, square-jawed Vietnamese soldier in black pajama’s prodding Robert down the aisle with the muzzle of a gun. “Is that thing hard to wear?” 

“Not so bad,” Robert said, tugging at the harness that held his artificial leg on. 

“They wouldn’t have treated you different, you know. I think they were even going to get up a parade or something for their war hero.” 

“I was no hero,” Robert said, slipping past Alice into the hospital lobby. “I was just a dumb schmuck sucked into a war he didn’t like and I did just what the Reverend said I would do.” 

“What was that?” 

“Well, that last day, you know, he shook me and looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Bobbie Lee, one of those days you are going to get into it. You are going to walk right into it!” Robert looked down at the foot that looked natural while he stood still but became a clumsy reminder of his loss when he moved. “The reverend was down right prophetic. I did. I walked right into it and boom.” He laughed. 

Alice never knew how to respond. She held her expression and nodded with her head. “He’s down here.” 

The three of them moved down a corridor. Stacy held Robert’s hand and her rm moved up and down with his waddling walk. Alice moved ahead and opened a door. 

“Hey, cowboy,” Robert said, walking up to the hospital bed where his brother lay. “God-danged idiot, had to try to match what your big brother did, did you? Escaped the VC and then went and let a damned tractor rip you apart.”

The words were jovial but the pain on Robert’s face was obvious. His eyes moistened. He looked down at his brother, mangled and torn from where he’d fallen from the tractor and been caught by the disks. “You should have been wearing your seat belt.” 

Billy Ludlow stirred. Alice moved to the side of the bed opposite to where Robert stood. Stacy stood at the foot. The injured man moved, his head turned, his eyes opened slightly and he appeared to say something. 

Alice’s heart leaped in her throat. Billy had not moved or spoken since the accident a week earlier. Another whisper, inaudible came from Billy’s lips.

Robert leaned down and placed his ear close to his brothers’ lips. Then he exploded in laughter. Alice looked shocked. 

“Yeah,” Robert laughed, “I’ll kiss your ass, what’s left of it.” He laughed some more and Alice joined him. Stacy giggled and then laughed. They all knew at that moment everything would be alright. Everything would be fine. 

Stacy never forgot that day when her Uncle Robert came home. In a few short hours he taught her more about what was important in life than she’d learned before or since. She was proud, then, to be standing where she stood today. Her tall, slender frame was all but hidden behind the podium that had been placed at the edge of the stage. In front of the stage sat a couple dozen of the town’s leading citizens. They were men and women of prominence, now, lawyers, bankers, businessmen. But she remembered them as who they really were, that one the football star, that one over there the prom queen. That woman down front the ugly duckling who had few friends in high school, but who bloomed in college and was now a lawyer and real estate developer.

All of them had known Uncle Robert, at least known who he was. But none of them ever knew him. Not really. They never gave him a chance. That’s why he left town, just shy of his sixteenth birth day. And that’s why he stayed away eleven years. And when he was back they still never quite understood the clumsy veteran who seemed to be in the thick of things all the time. But he always loved them. She smiled at the crowd. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is good of you to come. We are honored that you would participate in this great project, a needed addition to our hospital and our community.” 

The crowd quieted as Stacy’s strong voice boomed across the grassy lawn of the hospital and echoed from the walls of its latest edition. “I remember that day when Robert Ludlow, Uncle Robert, returned to this little town, when he stood unsteadily on that wooden leg, a legacy of a war now long past. He and I and my mother stood around the bed where my father lay, near death.  And I remember the joy in our hearts when my father spoke for the first time, and we knew he would be fine. Joy and laughter, that was the legacy of Robert and Billy Ludlow.” She smiled, remembering the first words her father had spoken so many years ago. “Joy, and laughter, and love.” 

“From that day, my father and his brother worked tirelessly for the less fortunate in our community. They moved past their disabilities and proved what men and women can do when they set their mind to it. It’s a great tragedy that neither of them ever had the benefit of a facility such as the one we are here to dedicate today. But they would be proud that it is here now.

Dad loved this town. Uncle Robert, well, he loved people. Dad would be a little embarrassed at the “William and Robert Memorial Ludlow Rehabilitation Center having his name on it. Uncle Robert, he’d just have a great laugh. But I know they would be pleased.  Thank you, again, for coming today. Please, help yourself to refreshments, look through the center, and have a wonderful day.” 

Stacy cut her speech short because she felt a lump in her throat she knew was about to make her speechless. She stepped down from the podium, greeted assorted friends and acquaintances, and walked towards the building. Inside, she walked down the hall and stepped through her office door.  A sign over the door read, “Hospital Administrator.”

Quietly she pulled the door closed. First, she walked to the large window that overlooked the pine-shaded lawn of the new facility. Then she turned as an older woman stepped into her office softly and eased the door closed behind her.

“Dad would be proud,” Stacy said. 

“He would, Stacy,” Alice said. “And Bobby Lee, he’d be laughing his head off.” 

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Stacy walked to a large picture on one wall, a photo of her father and uncle, arms around each other, grinning. It was the photo that had been set in bronze and placed at the entrance of the Center. “He never liked this town, did he?” 

“No, he didn’t.” Alice walked to the window. She was slightly stooped now, her hair gray, but she was strong, still. “He thought most of those people out there were jerks. And they are.” She smiled. “But he loved them anyway, in spite of them, maybe.” 

Stacy walked to another photo, on a shelf beside the window. It was smaller, hardly bigger than a snapshot, a moment in time caught forever. It was a happy moment, taken the day her father had come home from the hospital.

Stacy remembered that morning in church, her uncle’s antics and the worried expression on the Reverend’s face when he saw Uncle Robert for the first time in eleven years. She missed her uncle so, and her father. Her eyes grew moist. But as she thought about Uncle Robert on that morning so many years ago, she smiled, and then Stacy giggled, again. 

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