Kay's Story pt 22 - David's Change

“Oh don’t be silly!  This is no time for teasing.  Tiresome—my foot!”

            Elianna’s entire countenance seemed to smile.  There was a soft peacefulness in her features that made Jasna think that talk of David made her younger.  He was like some secret fountain of youth, gurgling up in her mind, smoothing the anxiety and time from her face.

            “Alright, if you insist.  The note was a little longer than the first.  But not much.  It said,

            ‘Dear Elianna,

                        I think you’re pretty swell for a girl.

            —David’

            “That was all.  About a week later I heard a rustling in the woods behind me while walking home.  It turned out he’d been following me.  I had a flash of boldness and yelled at him to quit hiding and come walk home with me.  He not only did, but also talked all the way home like a magpie that had been deprived of chattering.  It was all kinds of banter about the pets he had, how he was going to be when he grew up, how he despised geometry but loved reading adventure novels, and on and on.  Then he said goodbye without a smile and that was that. 

            “He started walking home with me fairly regularly—regularly—that’s a funny word to pronounce, don’t you think?  I still don’t know quite what came over me, but I told him very frankly that I aimed to tell him about God and Jesus, and that I would let him choose the day to hear it!  He said his mother had got religion and he thought it was nothing but poppycock—so said his pa as well.  I said I didn’t care what he or his pa thought, and that if he wouldn’t have it he could walk home alone and I’d start praying that he’d break both arms and never be able to shoot a gun.  He tried to disguise his shock but I knew better.  Then he pretended to be angry and I told him sternly I’d have none of his huffing and puffing.  He said me and my sissy religion could go hang, and what good were girls anyhow?

            “After two weeks of walking home by himself and giving me the silent treatment, I got another note.

            ‘Dear Lianna, I’m sorry.  How ‘bout Tuesday?’

            “I remember clutching that wrinkled, splotchy paper to my chest in my happiness and running beyond the Mayhurst fields to pray, to cry joyful tears of thanks.  You know, it’s strange: David brings out boldness and joy in me that I never believed possible, while I bring out a shyness and gentleness that no one imagined could be in him.  That’s what happens when we’re together. 

            “Anyhow, Tuesday came and he listened gravely to me as I tried to explain everything just as the preacher had.  When I had finished my little sermon he thought for a moment and then said, “Look at that heron!’ I fell for it, and when I turned my head he kissed me!  I was madder than blazes and he went off running with a smug look on his face.  So it was my turn to give him the silent treatment.  I was rather severe for a week, and when I found another note from him, I ripped it up in front of his face without even reading it.  Then I even filled his knapsack with rocks and dirt during recess.  My friends said it was mighty risky and that he would fight me if he found out, even though I’m a girl. 

            “All this rivalry finally came to an end when David fell out of a tree and broke more bones than he could count.  He was lucky he lived, and when I went to see him he said he knew it was because he had refused to take my religious talk seriously.  He thought God had made him fall to teach him a lesson.  It was a  long autumn that he had to spend in bed, and it made a man out of him—he learned a lot of patience, and he read scores of books.  He had me read to him too.  I read him the autobiography of John Paton because it’s practically an adventure book for boys.  By the end of the book he said he had the notion to be the next John Paton, and if a man as brave as that loved God all that much, then he would love Him too.

            When he was finally able to walk about again normally, he was a different boy, unrecognizable—in good ways.  I think God answered mine and Mrs. Ashmore’s prayers by making him fall.  I remember finding a verse in the psalms that said, ‘It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.’  I went and showed it to him and he agreed.  Then he showed me a verse he had found in Psalm 51: ‘Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou has broken may rejoice.’  He said that his bones that had been broken were now rejoicing in God, and it wouldn’t be so if it hadn’t been for me.”  Elianna looked up at Jasna.  Her breathing had become very heavy and her eyes were now closed.  Dawn would be there soon.  She crept quietly to the nearby empty bed and fell fast asleep, dreaming happy dreams of climbing trees with a young boy and eating apples.