19
Landon felt awful for having contemplated a relationship with Nettie before getting Shar out of his system. He wasn’t the sort of man to lead women on, and certainly not women in his congregation. If word started getting around that he was this love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of preacher who broke the hearts of the young women in his church, he’d never live it down. And any good he did for the community would always be tainted by his undisciplined personal life.
But Landon also wasn’t blind to the fact that he needed Nettie. She was on his team, and he was so grateful to have someone by his side who believed in the mission God gave him. However, he refused to pretend that he felt something that he didn’t. As far as Landon was concerned, doing something like that would be cruel. And he never wanted to be cruel to someone as sweet and loyal as Nettie.
So there he was wearing out the flooring in his office as he paced back and forth, trying to figure out how to tell Nettie that their date was a mistake and he wanted to step back. Landon hadn’t had a whole lot of practice with women, since he’d been spending most of his time on his ministry and waiting in vain for Shar to return home. He wouldn’t do that to Nettie. He wouldn’t be able to look himself in the face if he allowed Nettie to wait around, hoping that his feelings would change.
A knock sounded at his door. Landon stopped pacing, turned toward the door, and took a deep breath. “Come in.”
The door opened, and a smiling Nettie walked in carrying a healthy slice of crumb cake in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “My mother was at it again. She knows how much you love her crumb cake, so she wouldn’t let me leave the house this morning without bringing you a slice.”
“Your mama is a blessed angel,” he said as he took the cake and coffee from Nettie. Landon sat down behind his desk, took a sip of his coffee, and bit into his cake. “Mmm, if this isn’t the best crumb cake I’ve ever tasted, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
“Oh, and before I forget, my mother sends her thanks for you getting me home at a decent hour last week.” Nettie winked at him. “But she also said that if we wanted to stay out a little longer next time that she wouldn’t be bothered by that at all.”
“Nettie, we need to talk.” He pointed toward the chair in front of his desk, then got up and came around his desk.
Sitting down, Nettie asked, “Is something wrong, Landon?”
Leaning against his desk, he hesitated, trying to think of the best way to break this to her. His mind was still fresh with the memory of the tears Nettie had shed in his office, the day she told him that she was in love with him. But as much as he didn’t want a replay of Nettie’s tears, he also didn’t want Nettie wasting her love on a man who, at best, liked her a lot. “I think I may have been a little too hasty in my response to you a couple of weeks ago.” Ringing his hands, not looking her in the eye, he continued, “You see, Nettie, I have so much respect for you. And your loyalty to our cause brings my heart great joy. But . . . ”
She put her hand over his. “Whatever is troubling you, just spit it out. You can tell me anything.”
Beads of sweat danced around his forehead as he looked into Nettie’s adoring eyes. He had to push on. He couldn’t allow Nettie to grow anymore infatuated with him than she already was. His heart was still aching from the devastating way Shar had discarded him. Landon wouldn’t string Nettie along . . . he wouldn’t let her hope for a future that would never be. “Here’s the thing, Nettie.” He used his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “I admire you a great deal, but I’m not in love with you. And I don’t think my feelings are going to change anytime soon.”
“B-but, I thought we had a lovely time at dinner.”
“We did,” he agreed. But then his mind drifted to Nettie singing that song, and all he could think of was how much his heart still longed for Shar. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the pain. When he opened them again, he confessed, “I’m not ready to date just yet. I enjoy your company, but I don’t want to lead you to believe that anything more will ever happen between us. You’re a lovely woman, and I want you to keep your eyes open for that special man who wants to steal your heart away. Okay?”
She stood up, smoothed out the creases in her skirt. “Landon, you don’t have to tell me how wonderful I am while you’re brushing me off.” She threw her hands up in the air and then said, “I get it. You don’t want me. Well fine, but you need to know that there ain’t no other woman who’ll love you like I do.”
“I don’t want to upset you, Nettie. I do so enjoy our friendship. I just don’t want to lead you on, that’s all.”
Calming down a bit, Nettie said, “I didn’t mean to get so upset, Landon. I just don’t think you’re giving me a fair chance. I know that we could be good together if you’d just let loose with me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s going to work.” He held out a hand to her. “Can we just work on being friends?”
She looked at his hand without responding and then asked, “Do you go out to lunch or dinner with your friends from time to time?”
Nettie was a good dinner companion. As long as she understood that they were just friends, he didn’t see any harm in enjoying a meal or two together from time to time. “That sounds lovely.”
With that said, Nettie shook his hand and then walked out of his office.
“Shar, oh my God, we were all so worried about you.”
Trying to bring her eyes into focus, Shar looked around the room. Her head was pounding, and she was disoriented and dizzy. She heard Sallie talking to her, but her voice seemed as if it was a mile away. She tried to lift her head, but an explosion went off inside of it, and she fell back onto a soft cushiony pillow. “Where am I?”
“Oh, Shar, girl, I’m so glad that you’re alive. I swear I didn’t know if you was gon’ make it.” Sallie leaned down and hugged her.
Still trying to focus, Shar asked, “What happened to me? Where am I?”
“What? Shar, are you trying to say something?”
Shar grabbed hold of her throat as it was hurting when she spoke. “Can’t you hear me? I want to know where I’m at.”
Sallie stepped back a bit and gave Shar a funny look. She then said, “Poor chile, your voice is so hoarse I can barely hear you. But don’t you worry none. After lying on the ground in the rain, anybody would be straining to talk.”
“Somebody hit me?” Shar said the words as if she were asking, not telling.
Sallie strained to hear her. “Did you ask if someone hit you?”
Shar nodded.
“You have a big bruise on your head, so I’d say you got hit with something.”
“How’d you find me?”
Sallie sat down next to Shar’s bed. “That ol’ scallywag brought you back. Claims he found you lying in the street after you left him at some singing gig.”
“I don’t remember seeing Nicoli.”
“You were in and out of consciousness for a little while, but we kept nursing you back to health, and thank God you opened your eyes again today.”
Shar’s mind began to turn as memories came flooding in. It had been raining, and a man was running up on her from behind. She remembered struggling with him over her handbag and then a lightning-quick pain in her head. Tears rolled down Shar’s face as she tried to make sense of why anyone would beat her over the head and then leave her to die on the street. “Why, why?” Shar cried as she struggled with the hoarseness of her voice. She could do no more than whisper, a far cry from the way she used to belt out her vocals.
Shar’s eyes widened in terror as the implication of losing her voice dawned on her. How could she sing if she couldn’t even talk? Suddenly, she began grabbing at her throat, clawing and scratching as she screamed. Trying to hear the sound of her voice, but it didn’t change anything.
“Shar, chile, calm down. Your voice will come back. You just have to give it time to heal.” Sallie grabbed Shar’s hands and moved them from her throat.
Grandma Gracey’s voice had been beaten out of her, and it never returned. What if Shar’s voice did the same to her. She remembered telling Mahalia that she didn’t know what good singing did for anyone. But to have her voice taken away from her as if someone had stolen it, just like her handbag, was far more than Shar could bear.
“What’s going on in here,” Mammi, the mulatto woman who ran the boardinghouse they were staying in, asked as she stomped into the room.
“She’s upset about her voice,” Sallie said to the woman. “She can hardly speak.”
Mammi tried to get Shar to calm down. But Shar was too far gone in her hysterics. She ran out of the room and came back with a pill bottle. “Take this. It will calm you down.” Shar took the medicine and within a few minutes drifted back to sleep.
She slept comfortably the rest of the day. During the night as the sedative wore off, Shar began seeing shadows and hearing things. She screamed when the shadows came too close and the night noise set her on edge. Mammi came into her room and gave her another sedative; Shar took it again because she just wanted to get some sleep so she could rest her mind. As she drifted off, she was no longer seeing shadows, but a face appeared to her in her dreams that caused her heart to ache.
Waking in the morning, she stretched and yawned, turned on her side, and opened her eyes. Sallie was there again, sitting in a chair next to her bed. “How long have I been lying in this bed?” Shar asked as Sallie looked at her.
“This morning makes day three.”
“Three days? Good Lord,” Shar said, her voice was still hoarse, but it wasn’t hurting her to talk anymore.
Sallie smiled. “You’re pulling through pretty good, though. And I just can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re still among the living.”
“Thank you,” Shar whispered. Then she asked, “Has Landon been here?”
“Landon who? Are you talking about that preacher you left back home?”
Shar shook her head. “I saw his face in my dream last night. It seemed so real, I thought he had been here to see about me.”
“Ain’t nobody been here but that good-for-nothing, Nicoli James. And I was only too glad to see the back of him, when he left.”
“Why, what did he say?”
Sallie put her hand to her forehead, rubbed it, blew out a long-suffering breath and then said, “I don’t want to upset you, but Nicoli told me he was leaving town.”
“What do you mean? How could he leave town without saying good-bye to me?”
Rolling her eyes, Sallie blurted, “From what I heard, he ran out of town with some nightclub floozy while dodging bullets from a gangster that he owed gambling money.”
Shar figured the gangster was Mr. Marson and that Nicoli probably still owed him, since he kept on gambling. Shar knew that with the irresponsible way Nicoli would gamble away money and drink like a fish, she was better off without him. But her heart still ached for the man who had won her heart simply by smiling at her. Now he was gone, and she would be forced to get through these days without her voice and her man. “I’ve got nothing and nobody, and I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore,” Shar whispered, trying not to strain her voice.
“What do you mean, what are you supposed to do?” Sallie stood up and boldly strutted over to Shar’s bed. “You are going to do what we women been doing since the beginning of time—get up from this sick bed, dust yourself off, and keep on moving.”
Turning onto her side and pulling the covers up over her shoulder, Shar said, “How can I keep moving, Sallie? You hear how my voice sounds. If I can’t sing, what on earth am I supposed to do?”
Sallie leaned closer to Shar as she said, “Now, gal, I done told you that we don’t do no pity parties around here. That beautiful voice of yours ain’t gone nowhere. Let it rest, and God will bring it back.”
Shar wished she could believe that, but Sallie didn’t know what she had been doing with the voice God gave her just before she got herself knocked over the head. And Shar was too embarrassed to tell how she’d laid her morals down and stood on a stage dressed like a lady of the night and sang to a bunch of liquor-filled men.
God must be punishing me, Shar thought as she brought her hands to her face and poured out tears of regret . . . tears of sorrow . . . tears that wished she had never laid eyes on Nicoli James and all his big dreams and sinful ways.
Sallie put her hand on Shar’s arm and lightly rubbed her arm. “Hush, chile, it will be all right.”
She kept crying, even as she wiped the tears from her face, trying to dry her eyes and turn a stiff upper lip to her troubles. She wished she could just take Sallie at her word. But so much had gone wrong in her life that Shar didn’t know what to believe anymore. “How, Sallie? How can anything ever be right again?”
Still rubbing Shar’s arm, Sallie had this faraway look in her eyes as she said, “Life has a way of beating up on us so bad that we ain’t never gon’ find a way around them invisible fists. But if you trust God, I know you’ll find a way.”
Sallie sounded as if she knew exactly how Shar was feeling, as if she’d had her dreams and her heart ripped out a time or two and was still there to tell about it. But the problem Shar had was that she just didn’t know if she truly trusted God anymore.
But she was grateful for Sallie, so she wiped her face again, gave a weak smile and said, “Thanks for being here for me, Sallie. I’m so glad I have you in my life. My mama’s not here with me, but you have filled her shoes. I’ll never forget your kindness to me.”
Removing her hand from Shar’s arm and getting tough again, Sallie wagged a finger at Shar. “Girl, can’t nobody replace your mama. That’s why I’m taking you home.”
Did she hear right? Could it possibly be true? Was this nightmare truly coming to an end for her? “How can I go home? Don’t we have a few more cities to go to?”
Sallie shook her head. “I already talked to the choir members. They are packing their belongings now. We’re just waiting on you to get well enough for the journey.”
When Shar first started working with Sallie, she had been terrified of the woman, thinking that she was just mean and surly. Although Sallie had some rough outer edges, she was plenty soft on the inside. Shar smiled for the first time in days. “I’m going home.”