Nazareth's Song Read Online Free Page B

angry rants.
    “Hopper has it in for Mills,” said Jeb as they watched the two leave.
    “I believe we’re next.” Gracie lifted his body from the wooden chair as though it took all the strength he had mustered from breakfast to do so. He sipped on a bottle of medicine like it was milk and then hid it away inside his coat.
    From the office Mills called an older woman, Mona, inside and then sent her right back out. “Reverend Gracie, Mr. Mills is ready to talk with you.”
    Jeb issued a sigh that emptied him all the way to his feet. “It might be best for you to tell him without me present. I’ll leave and come back later.”
    Gracie thanked Mona. Then he touched Jeb at the back of his arm and gave a gentle thrust forward, allowing Jeb to enter ahead of him. Jeb felt more illegitimate than when he had come into town posing as Gracie himself.
    “Reverend Gracie, glad to see you,” said Horace before eyeing Jeb.
    Jeb extended his hand, to which Horace responded with a politician’s squeeze. “I guess those Welby children are keeping you busy. That Angel is growing like a weed.”
    Horace could immediately put people at ease, even those he tended to dislike. Jeb relaxed.
    The banker’s office had a leather smell—not like well-worn saddle leather but like the shiny leather of a gambler’s study. Jeb wondered if the door behind Horace’s desk chair led to the man’s genuine working desk, cluttered with stacks of papers and loan applications. This room had not one speck of dust. His desk had atop it only one gold magnifying glass and a fountain pen that Horace tucked into a desk drawer.
    Jeb and Gracie sank down into the two soft leather chairs that faced the desk. Gracie had a way of swallowing up the silence in a meeting with a pensive, reflective look about him, as though he owned the quiet and was preparing to fill it with brilliant, perfectly selected words. Jeb sat forward, prepared to look equally astute, until he saw that the coat sleeve around his wrist had frayed, with threads protruding like an old woman’s whiskers. He dropped his hands.
    Horace sat forward, his dark worsted jacket scented by the faint suggestion of a cigar he had no doubt extinguished before the minister turned up. “Have you been to see the doctor, Reverend?”
    “A few times since we last met. How is Mrs. Mills?”
    “Bossy and loving it. Preparing for our daughter, Winona, to come home. She has a break coming up from her classes. Wants to take off a semester. For what reason, I couldn’t tell you, but who can figure out what goes on inside a girl’s head. Amy is her usual anxious self, rolling out pie dough and keeping her kitchen help busy.”
    Jeb shifted to one side. His right elbow sank into the leather, which deflated like a tire beneath him.
    “Horace, I’ll be brief. Doctors in these parts are big on honesty but low on know-how. I’m all my girls and Philip have in the world.”
    Mills’s gaze trickled over to Jeb and then back to Gracie.
    “My brother and his wife live in Cincinnati and they have the highest regard for a doctor they want me to see.”
    “A visit to Cincinnati would do you good,” Horace said.
    Gracie lifted as though the chair were swallowing him whole.
    “Not leaving for good, though.” Horace’s brows made a gray ledge beneath the age lines that mapped a near perfect tick-tack-toe in the center of his forehead.
    “Jeb is near ready for his ordination. He’s studied like the wind, like I did at his age.”
    Jeb saw how Horace examined him for any sign of a blemish. Before the banker could raise a complaint, he sat forward. “Mr. Mills, I know my past is shady. But Reverend Gracie has taught me well. I trust his teaching. I love Nazareth, and I want to serve Church in the Dell.”
    “Jeb’s passed every seminary course I’ve had mailed to him,” said Gracie. “He has agreed to preach this Sunday. It will be his first time since his apprenticeship with me began.”
    Jeb’s stomach did a