The Calling Dream

Chapter 2-3

After we finished eating, Teddy and I just sat there looking at empty plates not saying a word. Finally, Daddy said, “After you feed the stock, you boys go get the mule hooked up to the plow. I think we need to be prepping the south side of the truck patch for some winter crops today.”

We didn’t say anything but “Okay.” Then we got up and headed for the barn. We didn’t feed hay this time of year, but we would put some grain mix out for the milk cows to get them into the barn for milking. I would be doing that while Teddy mixed some table scraps with wheat shorts to slop the hogs. Catching the mule was sometimes a problem because he always seemed to know when we were thinking about hooking him to the plow, and he didn’t like to work. I don’t know how he knew, but he always knew. It was like he could read minds or something. Any other time when we weren’t thinking about putting him to the plow, any one of us could walk right up and pet him, but he always knew the difference. I always held off on the mule’s feed till last, trying not to give him any ideas, and I waited long enough for Teddy to get the hogs slopped so he could come help me.

I would lead the mule into the corral with a feed bucket. Teddy would try to get the gate closed behind him before the mule figured out what was going on and took a run for it. As likely as not, we would end up having to get Daddy to help us because the mule would push through the gate and run off. Then we would both be in trouble, and Daddy would be telling us that we were stupid, and we couldn’t do anything right.

On that day, we lucked out though. We got the mule locked in the corral all right and got him fed, but when we started trying to hitch him up, he started slinging his head and kicking. Then, we ended up chasing him all over the corral. It took Daddy coming over to get him settled down. Teddy and I were chasing the mule around, yelling at him to stop, when we heard Daddy from behind. “Yelling at him ain’t gonna get him to take that harness!” he shouted.

We turned to see him come strolling up from the gate. I wished Daddy would think that yelling at us wasn’t going to help. He didn’t yell at the livestock, but he seemed to think yelling at us would do the trick. Apparently, it did, because I always did what Daddy said. Teddy misbehaved some, especially as he got older, but I always did what Daddy said. Daddy helped us get the mule into a chute, and then we got him cinched up and led him to the plow. After all the excitement was over and we were getting ready to go to the truck patch, I finally got my courage up to talk to Daddy.

“Daddy,” I said hesitantly. “Can I tell you about another dream I had, a different dream?”

“What is all this interest in dreams you suddenly have?” he questioned as he stared like he was angry at me, between glances up to the mule reins.

“Well, don’t the Bible say there were interpreters of dreams?” I went on. “I was thinking maybe my dreams had to have some meaning.”

Teddy led the mule out in front of us and occupied himself with pulling the seed heads off stalks of grass that came within reach of his opposite hand. He pretended not to hear.

“Well, those were prophets, some, and priests of Pharaoh that interpreted dreams,” Daddy said. “I don’t know nothing about interpreting dreams, but I do know the kind of dreams a man of God should not be having.”

“Well, this dream is a little different. Can I tell you and maybe you might get some idea?” I questioned. “People are always wanting to tell their dreams. There has to be a reason why people want to tell their dreams.”

“All right then,” he reluctantly agreed. “Tell me your other dream.” “Well, Daddy,” I began nervously. “It was back down in the barn lot again. Those little Roman soldiers were still standing around the pond, and the pond still glimmered silver, but I looked up, and there was Jesus being crucified on the side of our barn. It was awful. He had nails in his hands and feet, and he was nailed up to the side of the barn with old rusty nails, and blood was running down the side of the barn. That redheaded woman from the first dream was at his feet, and she was crying. She said, ‘My Lord, My Lord. Why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus told her to be patient, then he looked up and saw me standing there watching. When he saw me, he shouted in this loud voice that echoed across the whole farm. He looked at me straight and said in a big echoing voice, ‘You are my word!’ Then I woke up.”

My Lord, My Lord. Why have you forsaken me?‘You are my word!’ Daddy said nothing. He just kept walking. I waited patiently for him to say something but he never did. Finally, I said, “Daddy? Are you thinking about it? What do you think it means?”

He said, “I think it means you better quit snacking before bedtime.”

Teddy snickered.

I shouted, “Shut up, Teddy!”

To this, Daddy popped me on the back of my head and said, “You boys behave and get on down the path.”

I knew enough not to say anything else. I could read Daddy’s moods as easy as the Sunday paper, and I knew when it was best to just shut up and drop things. We got the south side of the truck patch plowed by noon and then went back to the house for a bit of dinner while the old mule stood under a shade tree.

That afternoon we took the disk to it to break up the clods, and Daddy had us out there sowing turnips and other things that would come into make in early October. Food was what the farm was about. We were always working on how to feed ourselves. That might be milking the cows or cutting a crop of hay to feed the cows over winter. It might be growing vegetables for Momma to can for the winter or selling some animal or crop so we could buy other things we needed. The farm was always turning over and over, bringing a living up out of the soil. We didn’t think much about “consider the lilies of the field” because we were too busy plowing them up to plant something else in their place.

Supper time came with a little fried meat, potatoes, and some leftover beans, and cornbread. After supper Daddy sat down in a corner of the living room under a couple of kerosene lanterns to read the Bible and prepare his sermon for the next Sunday. I had watched him do this my whole life, but I began to see it with a new fascination after I thought I had been called to preach. He would scribble little notes onto pieces of paper and tuck them in various spots of the Bible as bookmarks. Sometimes he would go to the indexes and scan for the verses that supported something he wanted to talk about. Then he would flip over to those verses and read them, sometimes aloud, sometimes not. Other times, he would sit staring at his reflection in the dark glass of the window by his chair and tap his pencil on the back of the Good Book.

That evening, when he got to one of those stopping places where he was staring at his reflection and tapping his pencil, I asked him, “Daddy, can I ask you something?” He half startled when I broke the silence. He turned to me with a foreboding look. “What?” he said irritably, “No more of that crazy stuff about your dreams!”

“No, Daddy,” I said shyly.

“What?” He continued to sound irritated, and I hesitated.

After a hesitant pause, I asked, “How do you do it? How do you know what you are going to preach about and then pull it all together into a sermon?”

He sighed deeply. “Sometimes, it just comes to me, and it all falls together like God meant it to be that way. Sometimes, I see something that is going on in the congregation or hear about something that somebody has done wrong, and I know I need to preach about it. Sometimes, it just don’t seem to come at all, and I struggle all week thinking about what I’m going to preach on Sunday morning. Other times, I just rewrap an old sermon with new ribbon and present it in a different package.”

“Will you teach me?” I pleaded. “Will you teach me how to write a good sermon?”

The Bible had sat open on his lap. He placed his pencil in the fold of the book, closed it, and then set it on the table beside his chair. “I think it’s time you kids were in bed,” he said firmly.

Momma had already put Sissy to sleep in her little cot an hour or two back. She sat on a chair, opposite Daddy, working on mending one of Teddy’s shirts. Teddy sat on the floor by Momma fiddling with a pocketknife and a stick of hickory. He was whittling the shavings into an empty dish pan so he wouldn’t make a mess. We didn’t have a sofa or a radio in those days or electric light. Daddy had refused the first time the county came through offering to hook us up to electric. He said it cost too much money. I thought Daddy was kind of stingy, but I didn’t know what it was like for him to survive the Great Depression. Momma set Teddy’s shirt down into her lap and said, “You boys go get ready for bed.”

Teddy and I both got up and went out to the dry sink to wash up a bit. We brought one wet wash rag back to wash the dirt off our feet before we got between the sheets. We stripped down to our underwear in our room, and then I got in bed first. I sat half in and half out till I could wash the bottom of my feet with the old wash rag. Then I snuggled up next to the wall, and it was Teddy’s turn.

The room wasn’t big enough for the bed to sit out from the wall, and we had no solid doors in the house except for those leading from the front and back to the outside. Momma had hung homemade curtains on nails over the doorways to the bedrooms so we might be lying there in bed, and they might think we were asleep, but we could hear everything that went on in the house.

After we were in bed for a while, I overheard Momma say Daddy’s name. “Paul,” she said, “don’t you think you could at least humor Ronnie a little bit? The boy has a good heart, and he’s just curious.”

“The boy is too young to preach,” Daddy retorted.

“Well, I know he is,” Momma replied gently, “but at least he wants to be like his daddy, and it’s better he learns it from you, don’t you think?”

“If he is genuine about it and this ain’t some passing whim, he has got plenty of time to learn when he gets a little older,” Daddy commanded.

Momma didn’t say anything else, but I drifted off to sleep comforted that Daddy was going to teach me how to write and preach a sermon when I got older. He didn’t rule it out or say “No way.” He said I had plenty of time to learn when I got older.

I didn’t recall a dream that night or for several nights to come. Life went on the way it was supposed to, I guess, and I waited for another dream, or for Daddy to tell me it was time for me to start learning how to preach. In the meantime, he was too busy teaching me how to be a farmer, and that wasn’t an easy thing to do in the 1940s. You earned your muscle from the back side of a plow, and you burned every calorie you ate. You begged the sun for mercy in the summertime, and the snow and ice for mercy in the winter. If you were good at it, you would eat well. If you weren’t good at it, or if nature was unforgiving that year, you relied on your neighbors to get you through. It was a hard life the way I grew up, but it was the only life I knew, so maybe it didn’t seem so hard at the time. I learned the value of hard work and the value of good friends and neighbors. I learned that the seed doesn’t come up overnight, and the plant does not bear fruit for months to come. I learned, if nothing else, to be patient.