Aloysius shook his head. “That’s my Cora.”
Geraldine leaned over the baby. “She’s a pretty one, has my family nose.”
Cora laughed. “Oh, she does not have your family nose, she hardly has any nose.”
“Well, she will have my family nose when she grows one.”
Emilia Mae couldn’t believe Cora talking back to her mother that way, but her mother just laughed and made a swatting motion toward Cora.
Cora stroked the baby’s cheek. “She really is a beauty, isn’t she? What will you name her?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I’d call her Aloysius, but her life is going to be hard enough without that. So, Alice, I’m going to call her Alice.”
Cora looked at Aloysius. “Well, God bless little Alice,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
“Amen,” said Cora, as she stroked Aloysius’s arm.
“Amen,” said Xena.
“Amen,” said Emilia Mae.
Later, Geraldine would tell Earle that she felt as if she’d walked into a revival meeting. “Aloysius was crying and the rest of them were practically hallelujahing all over the place. I won’t have any grandchild of mine raised by holy rollers, I’ll tell you that right now.”
Maybe it was true or maybe it wasn’t, but that was the reason Geraldine gave for telling Sam Bostwick that Emilia Mae would not be returning to the inn, because she and the baby were moving back into the house with her and Earle.
Chapter 9
Reverend Klepper had always been the subject of speculation among parishioners at the First Baptist Church. Although he was friendly with many of them and often shared meals in their homes, no one ever had the nerve to solicit information from him, and clearly he was not comfortable putting any forth. What they knew was what they saw. A large man. A strong man. A kind man. Cora’s husband. A childless man. At one point or another, most of the congregation had burdened him with their secrets; it was hard to imagine that he had room in his heart for any of his own. Of course, it’s wrong to underestimate what the heart can hold. Reverend Klepper had a past filled with burrs and secrets as painful as those of his parishioners.
His parents ran a small farm in Kingston, New York. Because he was the oldest and largest of two brothers and a sister, most of the hard labor had fallen to him. He’d split wood; cut, raked, and baled hay; gathered and hauled away manure; in addition to milking the cows, cleaning the chicken coops, and feeding the livestock. This life, built around sustaining the lives of his family and the creatures they raised, had brought him immense satisfaction and peace. His relationship with God evolved naturally. He saw Him in the young animals he helped to birth and heard Him in the songs of birds and the cries of summer crickets. The reliable strength of his own body was, he felt, a gift from God.
His father’s people were Baptists from Valdosta, Georgia, and religion was a fixture in the Klepper household. They all had the inflection of the church in their speech. Every Sunday, they’d gone to the small Baptist church in town. During the week, his mother would bring food and sometimes clothing to the less fortunate parishioners. Although his parents hoped that their brawny son would continue to run the farm when they were gone, Aloysius always knew that he would be part of a ministry and tend to the living, as he’d been raised to do. The pastor at their church had studied at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and promised Aloysius that whenever he was ready, he would try to help him get a scholarship there.
At seventeen, with a full scholarship, thirty dollars in his pocket, and a secondhand suitcase loosely filled with one pair of slacks, one pair of shoes, three shirts, and various underwear and toiletries, Aloysius had set off on a bus to a strange city eight hundred miles away, having never spent a night apart from his family.
His living quarters at Southern Baptist were modest: a cot, a desk, and a chair. Raised in the outdoors, Aloysius found the drab cinderblock room confining. Whenever he could, he took long walks, which inevitably led him to the Parklands of Floyds Fork, where he would watch the birds, pet the dogs, feed the ducks, and long for the life he’d had back home. Sometimes, he lingered so long that he’d forget the time and have to jump on a bus in order not to miss his next class. On one of those bus trips, he noticed a woman carrying an armful of groceries. She was tall, nearly six feet, with a long, pale neck that flushed when he offered her his seat. For a moment, they stood eye to eye. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s so nice to see a man my size.”
It was a provocative thing to say, for sure, but Aloysius understood what she meant. In those days, a woman that tall was a rarity, and she probably towered over most men. When the seat next to her became available, Aloysius took it.
“You from around here?” she asked.
Aloysius explained about Kingston and why he was in Louisville.
“Are you one of those holy rollers then?”
Aloysius laughed. “No, ma’am, just a farm boy hoping to get an education and help people out.”
“I guess I’m sort of hoping to do the same thing,” she said. “I want to be a nurse. Right now, I work as a secretary in a law firm, but when I save enough money, I plan to go to nursing school in a big city up north.”
She held her groceries on her lap and talked with her hands; lovely hands, slender and graceful. Her name was Marguerite. She was Canadian, with a beautiful French accent, and eyes the color of a blue jay. It had been months since Aloysius had talked to anyone, particularly a female, with the ease that he found while talking to Marguerite. When she stood up to get off at her stop, he stood with her. “Mind if I walk you home?” he asked.
She laughed and said, “It won’t be a long walk; I live across the street.”
That afternoon, Aloysius missed his class on the Old Testament.
The two fell in love, quickly and completely, and gave no thought to how hastily they’d jumped into a relationship. When Marguerite became pregnant, six months after their meeting, Aloysius took an evening job as a busboy at the Oakroom Restaurant in the Seelbach Hotel. They rented a two-room cottage near the seminary and spent the next seven months fixing it up and preparing for the baby. Marriage would come later. They joked about the very tall and strong child they would have and decided that if it was a boy, they’d call him Lionel, and a girl, Linden, after the tall and graceful linden tree that stood in front of the Kleppers’ farmhouse.
Aloysius splurged on a yellow cashmere baby blanket with the letter L monogrammed onto it. The two of them would hoist that blanket over their shoulders and carry it around the house pretending it was their newborn. When her time came, Marguerite gave birth to a beautiful girl, who would have her mother’s blue jay eyes and long neck. The nurse who delivered her said she’d never seen a newborn with such big hands and feet. The first time Aloysius held her he was afraid she would wriggle out of his arms. The nurse showed him how to rest the baby’s head and neck in one hand and her back and rear in the other. The baby grabbed Aloysius’s finger, and for the next half hour, neither of them moved. She was a big girl with a firm grip, and the name Linden seemed just right.
Linden was an easy child with an even disposition who only cried when hungry or wet. At night, Aloysius would sing lullabies to her: Brahms, “Frère Jacques,” “Hush Little Baby.” Although he had only an octave range, his resonant voice must have soothed her, because she’d go to sleep without a fuss. Aloysius recalled her infanthood as the happiest time in his life. Often, in his sermons, he would use the phrase “someone touched fire,” meaning how someone burned with joy. With Marguerite and Linden, he had touched fire. He and Marguerite made plans to move back to Kingston when he finished at Southern Baptist. It wasn’t the big city that Marguerite had fantasized about, but his parents would take care of the baby while Marguerite went to nursing school, and he’d find a job with a small congregation.