Reluctant Warriors by Jon Stafford Read Free Book Online Page A

Even when his health deteriorated
and his heart had become paper thin, he waited on her, despite anything she or I
or the children could say. There was simply no stopping him. On July 29, 1980, he
went to the kitchen to get her a soft drink and didn’t come back. She found him on
the floor dead of a heart attack. The look on his face was one of peace. He had been
doing what he wanted to do.
    Over the years people began to change their minds around my Margaret Ann. She projected
an aura of goodness and kindness with which she could transform a room when she entered.
She had had a great gift, a fairy tale love, which validated her and made her into
a better person than she might have been. She glowed with a sense of happiness that
was lovely indeed. People said, “She has light in her eyes.”
    Theirs was a sweet love story which went on for nearly fifty years. The two became
a couple when they were still in grade school. She had almost no choice in the matter
at all. She told the story all of her life that one day on the playground in third
grade she noticed a boy watching her. A day or so later one of her little friends
noticed the boy and asked about him.
    “Oh,” Margaret Ann said, “he’s always there at recess. I don’t know his name.”
    The next day, the friend reported back.
    “His name is Jimmy. He’s in fourth grade.”
    Soon, he began to come to our house after school. I was won over the first time I
ever saw him. He would knock on the door, and when I opened it there he was, an innocent
look upon his face. His question was the same every time.
    “Is Mara here?”
    My lips just have to tremble over this more than half a century later. He was the
cutest little boy! I could have just picked him up and hugged him. You know, he was
the only person who ever called her Mara, but no one had the heart to tell him not
to. Why he called her that I never learned. In the Bible in the book of Ruth , Naomi
tells her daughters-in-law to call her “Mara” which means “bitter” because her life
had been so hard. So we didn’t want that, but that’s the way it was. Happily, I think
they never had a bitter day in their married life. He never lost that innocence,
even in the war. That’s why it hurt him so badly. My eyes just have to moisten thinking
about that.
    Hermes, who had no middle name or initial, was not so quickly impressed. Once, in
the beginning, he called Jimmy “that little ragamuffin,” and his family “little better
than beggars.” It went on for a while until one day, after church, I had to say something.
Margaret Ann had cleared the dishes and gone to spend the afternoon with a neighbor
girl. We were at the sink finishing up and I turned to my dear husband.
    “I don’t want you to talk against Jimmy anymore.”
    He was a thin, already graying man then, and I know I caught him off-guard.
    He said, “What are you talking about?”
    “You know very well what I’m talking about. It’s true his folks don’t have much,
and that his clothes and things are plain, but he’s clean when he comes here. He’s
a nice little boy.”
    “He’s just not of our standing in this community is all I mean,” he said.
    I’m sure he was wondering why we were having such a conversation.
    “When we have him sit down to supper you know he’s had nice manners, saying ‘Yes,
Ma’am’ and ‘No, Sir.’”
    “Yes, well,” he said, still not clear in his mind what I was saying.
    “Then give the boy a chance as father gave you and me a chance. Principal Gilford’s
wife, Lorna, says that Bob says that Jimmy’s the smartest child in that school, as
smart as that Jackson boy who went to Princeton. It will probably come to nothing
between the two. But let Margaret Ann have someone who pays her attention, like you
did me. He really does help her with her school work.”
    “Well, I sure can’t help her. It’s over my head.”
    Thus little Jimmy was allowed to continue to come and was welcomed by all three