Free Mercy Me by Margaret A. Graham

up every husband or boyfriend they had got. Let them find out for theirselves; I for one was not going to tell a single soul, not even Beatrice, who lived a hundred miles away.
    I did tell the Lord, though.
    Saturday night, I kept watch again. At about midnight, a white truck slowed down, went around the block, and came back. I knew business was picking up. Whoever it was stopped and looked like he was talking to her through the window. Then the door opened, she got in, and they went on down the street. The truck never came back.
    It made my heart heavy knowing that such was going on right under my nose, so it was a relief to get up Sunday morning and go to the house of the Lord. In class I had nothing to say to the W.W.s, and I could tell that made them curious, but I had too much on my mind to bother about them. I hardly heard a word Thelma was teaching.
    In the worship service, during the long prayer, Pastor Osborne prayed for rain—not just showers, but for real rain such as we needed, the slow, steady kind that lasts until the ground gets good and soaked. In my heart I said, Thank you, Jesus.
    Well, brother, if I had known what the fallout would be, I never would’ve asked Pastor Osborne to pray for rain! After church, people didn’t hightail it to the all-you-can-eat restaurant but stood around outside, not saying much. But what they did say, they said in a shifty kind of way.
    â€œWhat in the world is going on?” I asked, but nobody said nothing. Then some little kid piped up, “Preacher Bob prayed for rain.”
    â€œWell, what’s wrong with that? We shore need it!”
    Clara whispered in my ear but loud enough for others to hear, “Well, what if it don’t rain?”
    â€œSo what? When you’ve prayed, have you never had the Lord say no? Mercy me, I have!”
    She twisted those thin lips the way she does when she feels she’s way ahead. “It’s the children, Esmeralda. How do you explain to little children that the Lord don’t answer their preacher’s prayers? What are they going to think of the Lord, much less Preacher Bob?”
    â€œThe Lord can take care of himself,” I snapped. But I wasn’t so sure the pastor could, not with all those vultures perched to gobble him up alive.
    Mabel Elmwood whispered something in her husband’s ear, he nodded, and then she called for everyone’s attention. “Our senior elder has something to say.” Shelooked up at him like he was Moses come down from Mount Sinai.
    Roger Elmwood cleared his throat, and in that politician’s voice of his, he said, “Friends, it is the better part of wisdom to pray for rain only in the privacy of one’s own closet. That way we don’t run into questions when it don’t rain. We have a responsibility to those who are weak in the faith, for children and young people who are not yet mature Christians, to avoid creating a problem that could possibly turn them away from the Lord.”
    Every one of those fainthearted, pious members standing around either said amen or expressed their agreement by nodding their heads up and down.
    I, for one, came right back at him. “Well,” I said, “I think it is the better part of faith to pray for rain in public and bring your umbrella! Splurgeon says faith honors Christ and Christ honors faith.”
    Well, then Thelma just had to put her two cents in. “The weather report on Channel 9 says there won’t be rain until next month, if then.”
    â€œHave they not been wrong more times than they have been right?” I asked. “I tell you, no weatherman has got God in his pocket. The Lord will do what he wants to do without asking them!”
    I got a lot of looks that said “You poor thing” as the crowd took off for the restaurant.
    Every day I looked for rain, but it didn’t come. And every day the talk about it got bolder. The talk went on over the telephone, in