Free The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher Page B

think about this, let’s see how we can make this work.’ Her advice was always so wise. You don’t find that often.”
    At the beginning of their friendship, Abby and Ruthie spent most of their time together at Ruthie’s house in Starhill. They sat in Ruthie’s kitchen for hours, drinking wine, with Ruthie cooking. The rest of her house was a mess, but Ruthie let it go. Her friend Abby was there, and Ruthie never put anything ahead of spending time with someone dear.
    They talked about God a lot. In the wake of her divorce at thirty, Abby was angry at Him. Other people got second chances at love; why not her? She wanted to have children; why wouldn’t He want that for her too?
    Theology was not Ruthie’s strong suit. She rarely if ever read spiritual books, did not attend adult Sunday school classes, and shunned systematic inquiry into the ways of the Lord. What she had to offer was a sympathetic ear and simple faith: Ruthie believed God existed, and loved us, and wanted the best life for us, though not necessarily the easiest life. That was all Ruthie knew about God, and all she wanted to know.
    “Abby,” Ruthie would say, “I pray for you every night, and I know God is going to help you find someone.”
    Abby got that a lot, and she usually hated it. It was the kind of thing women who already had husbands and children said. But Abby knew that those words were not cheap, feel-good clichés when they came from Ruthie. Abby could see how troubled Ruthie was by her sorrow and fear, how much Ruthie ached for her best friend’s sadness, how much she wanted Abby to be at peace.
    “Abby, I just trust,” she would tenderly say. “I just believe.”
    It wasn’t all merlot and misery for Abby and Ruthie, not by any stretch. It was hard to coax Ruthie out of the house—she preferred to be at home with Mike and the kids, maintaining her nest—but sometimes Ruthie could be talked into taking a night, or at least an afternoon, on the town.
    One Sunday after lunch Mike, Abby, and Ruthie took a drive across the Atchafalaya Swamp to hit Angelle’s Whiskey River Landing. Angelle’s is a Cajun dance hall on the riverbank that holds a big zydeco dance on Sunday afternoons. Abby and Ruthie ended up dancing atop the bar that afternoon.
    More often Abby and the girls from school would convince Ruthie to join them at Que Pasa, a Mexican cantina on the outskirts of St. Francisville, for Friday afternoon margaritas on the porch. Sometimes the teachers would go to Baton Rouge to cut loose. After her divorce, Abby met another man and became engaged, but the suitor lost his nerve. When her fiancé canceled their wedding at the last minute, Ruthie and the teacher crew took Abby to the city for a therapeutic night of beer, karaoke, and derring-do. These excursions usually ended up with everyone back in Ruthie’s Starhill kitchen, with Ruthie making breakfast for the gang.
    Ruthie, as always, had a knack for making friendships easily. Take the way she met Ashley Harvey. Ashley’s parents owned a pharmacy in St. Francisville, where she grew up, but Ashley lived and taught school in a town across the river from Baton Rouge. She was thinking about transferring to West Feliciana Middle School, but she wasn’t sure it was a good move. One day she ran into Ruthie at Rebekah’s day care.
    “Here she was, just running in to pick up her daughter, and she spent twenty minutes talking to me about how this was the best place in the world, this was such a great school, that we’d be working together, and how she would look forward to teaching with me,” Ashley recalls.“I thought, ‘Okay, it’s done, I’m going now.’ She’s the reason I live and teach here.”
    One year at homecoming Ashley rode with Ruthie from school to downtown St. Francisville for the parade. Ruthie had Mike’s truck that day. When they parked on a side street, Ashley struggled to change out of her work clothes into something more comfortable for parade watching.