Riverbend Reunion(55)

“How are you doing?” Oscar brought out a chair and sat down beside her. “Those girls of yours are very talented. They could be playing for the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.”

“Thank you for that, Oscar, but they just do it for fun. Have they done any singing yet?” Risa asked.

“Not yet,” Oscar answered. “How about this crew? Think they’ll give up and go home?”

“I’m not sure what they’ll do now. Mother has been whispering to the diehards that are still here behind her hand and glaring at me for the most part,” Risa said and then smiled up at Lulu Swenson, her mother’s neighbor, who had come over to the table. “Evenin’, Miz Swenson. Can I get you some cookies and a bottle of water?”

“I thought I got a whiff of chocolate a while ago,” Lulu said.

“You did, but you have to go around to the backyard for those,” Oscar told her and then lowered his voice. “I know for a fact that you go up to San Saba to the Rusty Spur at least once a month. I’ve seen you there lots of times, drinking whiskey sours and dancing the leather off your boots. Why are you throwing in with Stella on this?”

“Shhh . . .” Lulu put a finger over her lips. “She’s my neighbor, and she could cause a lot of problems for me if she thought for one minute that I wasn’t upset about turning a church into a bar. Truth is, I think it’s a good idea.”

“Then tell her so,” Oscar said.

“Not going to happen,” Lulu said as she picked up a cookie and a bottle of water. “And don’t you go tattling on me for going to the Rusty Spur, either.”

“My lips are sealed as long as you keep your name off that petition,” Oscar teased.

Lulu gave him a brief nod and went back over to stand with Stella, who now only had three other women with her.

“Can the twins sing as well as play?” Oscar asked.

Before she could answer, the girls’ voices seemed to surround the church as they started singing “Hush Hush.” Risa giggled at the lyrics, which seemed to fit the whole situation that evening.

“They’re really good. They sound a lot like the Pistol Annies.” Oscar kept time to the music with his foot and by patting his knees with his palms.

“Yep, and Lily can do a fairly good cover of Alison Krauss, too.” Risa was proud of her girls. “Their other grandmother would have a pure old Kentucky hissy fit if she knew they were singing a song like that, though. She insisted that they only sing hymns and gospel music when we had family gatherings. I let them play and sing whatever they wanted at home.”

Oscar pointed at the parking lot. “If you’ll look at Stella’s face, you’ll see that their Texas grandmother don’t like it any better than their Kentucky granny did. If her blood pressure gets any higher, we might have to tote her off to the hospital.”

“How can you tell her blood pressure is on the rise?” Risa asked.

“Her face is red, and she’s fairly well humming with anger. That would make a saint’s pressure go sky high,” Oscar told her. “Here she comes. Get ready for a sermon.”

Little puffs of dust boiled up at Stella’s feet as she stomped across the gravel parking lot. She picked up the wooden cross. “You haven’t won!” She grabbed the paper, wadded it up, and threw it at the building, then stopped a few feet from the porch. “I’ll keep praying, and God hears my prayers. The Good Book says to pray believing, and I do.”

“Good night, Mama.” Risa waved.

The girls had started singing “My Church” as the last of Stella’s friends left with her. When Lily sang the lyrics asking if she could get a hallelujah, the whole crowd behind the building answered with a loud “Hallelujah!”





Chapter Twelve


The name Back Home does kind of sound like an antique store.” Mary Nell yawned as she sipped her coffee and watched the sun rise. Not long ago she would have been frosting doughnuts at one of her three jobs, grabbing a sip of coffee when she could, not sitting on the porch and drinking it at her leisure.

“I keep telling all y’all that folks are going to call the bar the Old Church.” Oscar poured his second cup from the pot he’d brought out and set on a table in front of the porch swing.

The sun was just coming up, giving definition to the trees around the property. She’d been born in this house, lived in it until she was eighteen and went off to college, and now she was back in the same bedroom that had been hers all those years. She might have felt like a failure, going back in time, but she didn’t. She felt liberated and free at last. That tune to the old song by the Gaither Vocal Band that her mother had liked so well came to her mind: the lyrics to “Thank God I Am Free” talked about being like a bird out of prison, and that’s exactly how she felt.

“Doesn’t matter what they call it. The lawyer will be filing the final documents for the business license by closing time today, and he has to have the name of the bar on them. I like Danny’s Place, but I also like Preacher’s Bar and Grill.” She set the porch swing in motion with her bare foot. One of her first memories was of sitting on her father’s lap in the porch swing after supper. He would read a children’s book to her. More often than not it would be a Dr. Seuss book because she liked the singsong of the rhyming words. Later on, when she was a teenager and far too old to listen to her dad read books, she had gotten her first kiss from a boy on that swing. The night before she packed up what she wanted and left with Kevin, she and her dad had sat on the swing. He had begged her to reconsider and stay in college until she finished her degree. Now she was back on the swing, holding on to the chains and listening to them creak with each movement. They seemed to be singing “Thank God I Am Free.”