Wrapped in Rain(33)
For fifty years, Moses Rain walked three blocks to work, stayed until the patients were all gone, and went home, often making five or six house calls on his way. Most poor babies, both black and white-not to mention a few horses-born within a fifty-mile radius, and some farther, were born under the close direction and protection of Dr. Moses Rain.
From the moment Mose met Rex, he didn't like him and he sure didn't trust him. I saw it on Mose's face. Rex, shorter by almost a foot and younger by a few years, huffed, looked down his nose, and not surprisingly, called him "boy." Mose, ever the gentleman, just smiled and never ceased to check on his horses.
Being Rex's vet as well as part-time physicianbecause no one else would take a look at him-kept Mose around the house a good bit. The fact that Mose met a need for Rex gave his sister some job security she otherwise might not have had. It also gave Mose a bird'seye view of his sister.
Many nights, I stood outside Miss Ella's window and listened to Mose try to talk her into calling the state to come pick us up and leaving Waverly altogether. She'd have none of it and waved him off with her palm. Finally, one night after it grew rather heated, she opened the front door and pointed him out. "Mose, I'm not leaving these boys. I've made my peace with that-no matter what he does to me. He may kill me and I may kill him, but I'm not leaving those two boys and I'm not turning them over to the state. Not today. Not ever." From then on, we saw Mose every other day. More often if Rex was in town. Mose would drive around back of the house, check all our faces and backs for bruises, drink a cup of coffee, and then idle back to work.
The day Miss Ella tried to take us to church, Mose had arrived, hovering in the shadows, watching over us. Looking back on it, I think he was there because he had a pretty good idea of what Rex would do when he found out Miss Ella intended to take us to church.
After Rex had left, Mose stood in the opening of the side door of the barn, staring out toward the driveway. He had my wooden Louisville Slugger in one hand and a small wood-splitting ax in the other. I could see the flexed muscles of his jaw and the flared nostrils of his nose. He didn't hear us coming, so when we got up to him, we heard him muttering to himself. We stood there a minute, and when he didn't notice us, I tugged on the pant leg of his clean Sunday suit.
"Dr. Mose, you chopping wood today for Mama Ella?"
"Huh?" Mose broke his trance on the driveway and tried to hide both hands behind his back. "What's that, Tuck?"
I pointed behind his back. "You want us to help you chop some wood for Miss Ella? We could stack it for you." Despite his tender touch with patients, Mose was powerful with an ax and rarely had to strike a piece twice to split it.
Mose smiled, held the bat out for us to see, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "No, boys, just picking up after you. Go on down and play. I'm going to"-he held the bat up and studied it "sand this handle down a little bit more, and then maybe we'll play some baseball later." He looked back toward the stables. "Right now, I need to tend to the horses. You two boys go on."
"Yes sir." Mose walked back in the barn, leaned my little bat in the corner, hung the ax on the wall, and then pulled his stethoscope out of his pocket and tried to look like he was listening to the horses' hearts.
Miss Ella never did take us to church-she kept her word even to Rex-but from the backseat of that car, we sat through ten thousand sermons. Every Sunday evening, and then once a week at a well-disguised and random outing, Miss Ella took us either to go grocery shopping or to get some ice cream at the Dairy Queen. For the record, we did both. Mutt and I were experts on the location of every item in a grocery store because Miss Ella gave us each a list and we'd fill it, and we could tell you to the penny the cost of one single scoop of plain vanilla and two large swirls with sprinkles. But that's not why we got in that car.
About the time we made it to the end of the driveway, Miss Ella would reach over and click the radio on. Up past the static, Pastor Danny Randall of Christ Church in Dothan was welcoming us back. If it was Sunday night, she'd tune that dial to the top end of the AM band and we'd listen to his live weekly broadcast. If it was a weeknight or even a weekday afternoon, Miss Ella would pull a cassette tape from her purse and insert it into the player. She was big on church and even bigger on preaching, but she didn't give two cents for most preachers other than Pastor Danny. "Child, I've studied the Word most my whole life, and I know what it says." She patted her purse. "It's misquoted more often than not, and the preachers that do aren't worth the powder it'd take to blow them up. Most pastors are heavy on the pepper and light on the steak. But not Pastor Danny. He gives you a bone with some meat on it."
Until I reached eighteen, I think Miss Ella bought every tape of every sermon that Pastor Danny ever made.
About once a month, during his announcement at the beginning of the program or his prayers at the end, he'd use our first names and we'd look at each other wide-eyed and amazed in the backseat of that hearse-looking Cadillac. I never could figure out how he knew so much about us, but then one Friday afternoon, I found Miss Ella stretching the phone cord into the pantry. I pressed my ear against the door and listened as she whispered her prayer requests to Pastor Danny's secretary.
Once we arrived at our location, be it the grocery store or the DQ parking lot, Miss Ella would unearth her Bible from inside her purse, open it to the correct chapter and verse, and we'd read along with Pastor Danny. By the time I reached high school, Miss Ella said that we'd read through the Bible five times.