Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)
Bette Lee Crosby
Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)
Bette Lee Crosby
To
JoAnne Bliven
Because it is she who sees.
A Note From The Author
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped
NIV Isaiah 35:5
Writing a novel is never easy; writing a novel that explores the good and bad in people offers an even greater challenge and I could not have done it alone. Every day I thank Our Heavenly Father for blessing me with the ability to tell stories and giving me the courage to tell them as they should be told. Cruelty, profanity, and bigotry are an ugly but very real part of this world we live in. It is only by seeing this bitter side of truth that we can appreciate the goodness, generosity and love that surround us.
My inspiration for this story came from many sources, not the least of which was my Southern heritage. I have seen a South not unlike the one portrayed in this book. At the time, neither white nor black considered these actions cruel; they simply were what they were. Separate but equal, they said. Yet the truth is that although it was separate, it was far from equal.
Poverty is colorblind. In the first half of the twentieth century there were many areas of the South where poverty-stricken whites lived alongside blacks. There were no race riots, no boycotts, no huge outcry; there was only poverty. Although both families struggled to put food on the table and children all too often went to bed hungry, the white man held his head just a little bit higher because he was white.
They say that Divine Providence often steers our footsteps, and I believe this is true. As I was working on this novel, I came across President Jimmy Carter’s memoir An Hour Before Daylight, and it provided a great source of inspiration. Reading this memoir reminded me of the tales my mother once told. Not tales of good or bad, simply tales of what was.
I hope you enjoy reading this story of a time gone by. Some will call it the “good old days,” and others will disagree. As for me, I simply hope you can see beyond the evils men do and find the goodness of God’s grace.
PASSING
through
PERFECT
Benjamin Church
1958
When the heart of a man gets pulled loose he starts dying. I started dying a year ago, and I’m still working on it. I ain’t going all at once; I’m going piece by piece. If you was to see me pushing the plow or chopping wood, you’d figure me a whole person—a heaving, hauling, hard of muscle and stinking of sweat man. But the truth is I ain’t been whole since this same day last year.
It ain’t my skin and bones what’s dying, it’s my soul. My body’s still walking around doing chores and taking orders from folks like Missus Mayfield, but my soul…that’s lying out on Cross Corner Road alongside Delia.
In the year gone by I suffered more misery than God ought to expect a man to bear. Now I come to where I can’t take no more. It ain’t easy leaving a place where you was born, but I got Isaac to think of and the boy deserves better. I ain’t gonna say if this is a good decision or not, but come tomorrow morning Isaac and me is leaving here and we ain’t never gonna look back at Alabama.
This is a place of shame and misery. The shame of a man called boy and the misery of losing what you love. ’Course to understand the size of my misery, you’d have to know how it was with me and Delia.
Grinder’s Corner, Alabama
1946
The war was over, and hundreds of thousands of young men headed home to pick up the pieces of their lives. Benjamin Church was one of them. Many came home missing an eye, an arm, or a leg, but not Benjamin. Although he’d joined up thinking he’d fight Germans, the truth was he’d done little more than unload trucks and work on the motors that kept them running.
In the years he’d been gone Benjamin had sent countless letters home. His mama had written back several times saying things at home were just fine. But after the fall of that third year, he’d received only one letter telling how his mama had gone to be with the Lord. The letter was penned in Reverend Beech’s neat, even script, but at the bottom in shaky block letters his daddy had written OTIS CHURCH. They were the only two words Otis could write.
Benjamin climbed down from the bus in Bakerstown, slung his duffle bag over his shoulder, and started walking. It was almost twenty-five miles out to the farm and most of it back road. On the far edge of Madison Street he veered toward Pineville Road and left the town behind.
On the long nights when he’d lain in his bunk thinking of home, Benjamin had remembered raucous rolls of laughter and the smell of pork roasting over a wood fire. He saw girls in flowery dresses and called to mind the sound of their high-pitched giggles. Of course, it had been four years so he expected to see some change: a few new houses maybe, a new store, a cement road. But there was nothing. It was exactly the same as when he left. In a strange way, the sight of sameness felt comfortable. It was the part of home he’d longed for.