A Place Called Hope: A Novel by Philip Gulley

Author:Philip Gulley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Humorous, Fiction / Family Life, Fiction / Christian / General
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2014-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

27

Christmas came and went. No longer in charge of the annual progressive nativity scene, Sam was able to relax and enjoy the season. Uly Grant had hired him to help out at the hardware store for the Christmas rush, and had kept him on. Ruby Hopper phoned each week to report the progress of the search committee. They were nearing a decision, and were down to working out the details—salary, vacation, health-care benefits, and the like. With the economy back on track, Wilson Roberts had sold off his interest in his plumbing fixtures business and donated a chunk of money to the meeting, causing Sam to be deeply grateful for toilets and sinks.

“I’ll never say another bad thing about toilets as long as I live,” he told Barbara.

There was an ice storm in March, knocking out power to the town for three days. With no Internet or television, families were forced to talk with one another. On the second day, cell phones lost their charge; people who had canceled their landlines were in a disconnected daze. Paul Fletcher preached a sermon on the end times, believing the loss of electricity was a portent of Christ’s return, possibly within the next week or so. But the Son of Man didn’t get the memo, so peace and quiet descended instead, and people began to wonder why they wanted television, Internet, and cell phones in the first place.

The last week of March, Addison Gardner departed from his customary gentleness long enough to punch Evan Farlow squarely on the nose, which earned him a three-day suspension. Sam took three days off from the hardware store and he and Addison drove to Gettysburg and stood on Little Round Top, where in 1863, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and the men of the 20th Maine held fast against the rebels. In his mind’s eye, Sam saw young men scattered dead upon the hills and began to leak tears, thinking of Addison leaving in a few short months to join the army. He had signed up the month before, had been sworn in, and would be leaving home at the end of June for basic training. Sam had always believed in letting his sons choose their own paths, but the thought of his younger boy being in harm’s way was sometimes more than he could bear.

Levi was well along in his second semester of college. Barbara’s folks, bless their hearts, had dug deep and helped, and Levi had gotten a job waiting tables on the weekends. He had switched his major from engineering to sociology, an interesting field of study, but no more lucrative than theology. Inmates making license plates earned more money than sociology majors. Sam figured his son would be financially better off in prison—three squares a day, free clothes, a cot to sleep on, and a little walking-around money. He tried not to think how much it was costing to subject his son to a lifetime of poverty. Sam had taken to playing the lottery, sneaking over to Cartersburg once a week and buying two dollars’ worth of tickets, all for naught.

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