Shades of Mercy Read online

  Praise for Shades of Mercy

  “Shades of Mercy transports you back to a simpler time, idyllic Maine backdrops, and all the complications of racial tension and forbidden love. You’ll cheer for the heroine and fall in love with the hero—a perfect recipe for a sweet, enduring read.”

  —MARY DEMUTH, speaker and author of The Muir House

  “A glorious coming-of-age tale that captures the scenic beauty of Maine as well as the ugly underbelly of racism. I felt transported but saw a mirror of our current day. You will adore this tenderly told love story—a love story expressed on many different levels.”

  —CHRIS FABRY, bestselling author and radio personality

  “The human dynamics in a small town American community with a racially diverse population can be challenging. Some people walk with blinders on; others turn a cheek to the problem of social injustice.… Racism is often not easily identifiable or understood. Shades of Mercy highlights problems of the past that in some cases still exist but also presents hope for a better future of understanding.”

  —BRIAN REYNOLDS, Tribal Administrator, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians

  “Through the vivid lens of two lives set in small-town America, Anita and Caryn capture the heart of one of our biggest pieces of unfinished business: our relationship with First peoples. Anita and Caryn create with pitch-perfect detail the struggles and triumphs of the Maliseet people caught in a world of bigotry, suspicion, and ignorance—and just enough nobility to keep hope alive. A book that both instructs and entertains, but above all inspires.”

  —MARK BUCHANAN, author of Your Church Is Too Safe

  “Shades of Mercy is a re-creation of small town America complete with its warmth and innocence and a frothy brew of secrets. Tough moral and spiritual questions are faced head-on in this sweet tale of love and friendship.”

  —DONNA VANLIERE, NY Times bestselling author of The Good Dream

  “With an intimate, engaging voice, a budding young woman named Mercy extends compassion for the vestiges of the once proud Maine Maliseet, a Native American tribe short on resources yet long on wisdom and appreciation for beauty. A heartwarming tale—of the real meaning of grace—that stays with you. We need more stories about the intersection of Christianity and Native Americans, and this one is dignified and wonderful.”

  —LINDA S. CLARE, author of The Fence My Father Built and A Sky without Stars

  © 2013 by

  ANITA LUSTREA and CARYN RIVADENEIRA

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.

  “Grief” in chapter 18 is taken from Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems (New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1990), 25.

  Published in association with ChristopherFerebee.com. Attorney and Literary Agent.

  Edited by Pam Pugh

  Interior design: Ragont Design

  Cover design: Gilbert & Carlson Design LLC dba Studio Gearbox

  Cover images: Veer images /AYP2903225; PHP2400038

  Author photos: Anita Lustrea-Amy Paulson Photography

  Caryn Rivadeneira-Connie Tameling

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lustrea, Anita.

  Shades of mercy / Anita Lustrea, Caryn Rivadeneira.

  p. cm.

  Summary: The world has changed from how it was in that special summer of 1954. Mercy tells her granddaughter what it was like for her to have fallen in love with a childhood playmate when that special young man is a Maliseet in small-town Maine. Illumined with the colors of fields of beautiful potato blossoms, enriched by well-rounded characters, and punctuated with the seasons of harvest and festivals, Shades of Mercy is a story that tells how a young couple challenged the prejudices of their day—provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-8024-0968-3

  1. Interracial dating—Fiction. 2. Malecite Indians—Fiction. 3. Maine—Fiction.

  I. Rivadeneira, Caryn Dahlstrand. II. Title.

  PS3612.U795S53 2013

  813’.6—dc23

  2013014295

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  We hope you enjoy this book from River North Fiction by Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

  River North Fiction

  Imprint of Moody Publishers

  820 N. LaSalle Boulevard

  Chicago, IL 60610

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the United States of America

  ANITA’S DEDICATION:

  To my family and friends from Maine. You have brought my life so much joy and entertainment (especially my favorite cousin) and I am forever indebted.

  CARYN’S DEDICATION:

  To my mom. Thanks for being a reader and modeling a love of books and for every single time you told me I could do anything.

  Contents

  Remembering

  Part 1: “When you’ve been given much, much is expected.”

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part 2: “But what doth the Lord require of thee?”

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part 3: “I am with you.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  The Maliseet Today

  Acknowledgments

  Remembering

  The letter shook a bit in my hand. For a moment, I worried it was me, finally giving in to the “old age shakes,” as Ellery used to call his tremors. But it wasn’t me. It was only the breeze that had picked up, from somewhere. I looked up from my hand—and the letter it held—past the wrought-iron tables and plastic chairs of the coffee shop in which I sat and took in the stir of early morning Manhattan.

  How good it would be to have Laurel joining me here. Tomorrow, already!

  Though she had visited me in New York many times in the years since they moved to Los Angeles, this time would be different. Laurel was no longer content to take in Manhattan as a tourist. Laurel had no interest in Bergdorf’s or the Frick. Nor did she care much about the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Certainly she’s stopped caring about tossing bread to the ducks in Central Park. It almost hurt to think she was too grown to care about that.

  No, Laurel had written—a real letter! on real paper!—to say she’d like to spend her time learning the New York her grandfather and I first lived in all those years ago, when her grandfather’s graduate work brought us to Columbia University and the start of our lives together.

  My fifteen-year-old granddaughter misses her grandfather. (So do I.) And she believes that being in New York and seeing the places where his ideas gai
ned steam and his marvelous career took shape will reconnect her to him. And it will, I suppose.

  But what I really want to tell Laurel, is that if she wants to understand her family and what makes our people great, we shouldn’t be staying in the city. I should be picking her up at La Guardia, and we should be driving up the I-95, stopping at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, circling the Portsmouth roundabout in New Hampshire, even taking in some of the beautiful sites on the coast of the fair state of Maine. Pemaquid Point, Rockland, Camden, picture postcard worthy, all of them. Yes, we should be going to Maine. To Watsonville, Maine. That’s where Laurel’s grandfather became the amazing man he was; that’s where her great-grandfather wove justice into the DNA of this family; and that’s where I lived the summer that would change the course of my life.

  But Laurel arrives tomorrow. There’s no time for a change of plans now.

  Instead, as she and I walk past 606 West 114th St., the first apartment her grandfather and I lived in, as we pass the newsstands where her grandfather bought his morning paper, as we stop in at the hospital where her father was born, I’ll tell her the story of that summer in Watsonville, all those years ago, when I was her age.

  PART ONE

  “When you’ve been given much, much is expected.”

  Chapter One

  EARLY JUNE 1954

  I  shoved The Catcher in the Rye between the mattress and box spring when I heard Mother yell up the stairs, although I probably needn’t have. When I asked Mother for money to buy the book, she made it clear that it wasn’t one Mr. Pop would condone. But she gave me the money anyway.

  I figured a book tucked below the mattress, hidden by a stack of quilts and under a layer of ruffles, was one Mr. Pop would not find. And, therefore, could not disapprove of my reading.

  “Mercy,” Mother called again more insistently, this time from the landing, halfway up our staircase.

  I cracked the door open—enough to poke my head out and let the cat in—never letting go of the glass knob. “Be right down.”

  “Please hurry. You need to get something in you. Your father wants you to go get Ansley and Mick.”

  I couldn’t hide my smile.

  My mother smiled back, shook her head, and waved her dishrag in the air. I watched her walk back down the stairs. Watched her graceful hand, still lovely after all that hard work, as it glided along the polished oak banister.

  I closed the door and leaned for a moment against its dark panels. My smile spread wider across my face. Plenty of fifteen-year-olds would’ve balked at the idea of a drive into town, to where Ansley and Mick and all the Maliseet lived in the Flats, built over trash in our town dump. But not me. I’d go anywhere, do anything to be with Mick.

  Though, of course, Mr. Pop didn’t know this. He couldn’t know this.

  To him, sending me—“You’re as good as any son, Mercy”—was simply prudent. I was a good driver, able to navigate the long road into town in any weather. And I was fearless. Unafraid of pounding on the plywood doors of the Flats, unafraid of pushing them open, stepping over and between bodies that huddled together or crisscrossed on the cold floors. Unafraid of clapping my hands, of announcing myself, even of shaking Ansley, Francis, Newell, and Clarence awake if I had to.

  I suppose I should’ve been afraid, should’ve been more aware of the dangers that a teenaged girl stepping into a shack full of passed-out men might have presented. But these men wanted work, needed work. My presence was their manna. My knowledge of that kept me safe. Well, that and knowing Mick made these rounds with me.

  I slid my nightgown off my shoulders and grabbed my shirt and blue jeans from the back of my desk chair. My flannel sleeve slid across the top of my desk and Lickers leapt toward it. She pinned the sleeve like she had a mouse’s tail. Her claws dug into the slick-stained wood and dragged back.

  “Lickers! No!” I swept my arm across the desk. Lickers leapt with a meow. No.

  I ran my finger over the scratch and shook my head, tried not to cry as I thought back to what it took to get this. All last harvest, I’d worked for this desk. And even before with all the rock picking, clearing the fields of rock so the plows could ready the ground. Then I’d spent so many hours, days, weeks bent and sore picking potatoes out of the hard, dry earth. Filling the basket, emptying it into the barrel, filling the basket, emptying it into the barrel. On and on. The repetition might have made me lose my mind were it not for our farmhands Bud Drake and Ellery Burt and their encouraging banter.

  But besides the long, hard hours, I got tired of being alone. Even though I was with a crew, no one else filled my barrels. When encouraging words failed to do the job, Bud’s comments turned harsher toward us: “You’re too far behind.” “Your barrel isn’t full enough.” “Don’t forget to put a ticket on your barrel when it’s full.”

  You’d think we’d never done this before the way he nagged. Then again, Bud was only trying to please Mr. Pop. As was I.

  Plus, I was focused on a goal: my new desk. So I put up with nagging and hard work and then the waiting—through the end of last October and first half of November—for the Sears truck to deliver this next piece of furniture to the farm. The one I’d longed for more than even the dresser or the bed, which I’d worked for the previous harvest.

  The desk represented so much of what I’d wanted. A space to keep my pens, my journals, my books, and my sketch pads. And the mirror above it—the place I could sit and not only feel like me—the real me—but also see me: the young (was I also smart? Maybe even pretty?) woman looking back at me in that mirror. Instead of the sturdy farmhand Mr. Pop apparently saw.

  So once again, I looked in that mirror and took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to cry about a silly scratch. Not with Mother waiting to fill me with biscuits and eggs and fresh milk. Not with Mr. Pop waiting for me to bring back his workers. Not with Mick waiting just for me.

  I put arms through sleeves and legs through pants. Pulled my hair back into a ponytail and gave Lickers a final glare. She licked her leg. She never noticed me.

  “Morning, Mercy,” Bud said, scraping his fork against the plate. “Truck’s all gassed up and ready for you.”

  “Thanks. And morning to you both.” I latched my hand around the porch post and swung a bit as I balanced on the top step, like I did every morning when I stopped to talk to Bud and Ellery, farmhands so trusted they were like family. Family that ate on the porch, that is.

  I turned and raised an eyebrow at Ellery, wondering if his standard reply to Bud’s greeting, usually some silly adage passed down through five generations of solid Maine stock, would make sense this morning.

  “When all is said and done, Miss Mercy, don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.”

  Ellery shoved another biscuit into his mouth, and I laughed. This old chestnut even got a snicker out of Mr. Pop.

  “So, Ellery, Mother put the last of last night’s cheddar in those eggs this morning. What’d you think of it?”

  Publicly, he’d eat anything. But privately, this man with the joke had quite the sophisticated palate. Sure, he’d eat anything. But knew what he liked.

  “Wicked good,” he said. “Butcha know, that creamy Kraft cheese melts smoother than the cheddar. Wonder if she might try that sometime.”

  I shrugged. Ellery slurped his milk and continued: “Hey, watcha think of them wax cartons they’re puttin’ the milk in these days? I want the glass bottles back. This’ll be a fad, you just wait.”

  “I’ll mention it to her next time she places her order with Mr. Callahan,” I said. “You should’ve been a chef, Ellery. Could’ve been the new chef at Nelson’s. I hear they’re hiring.”

  “Nah,” said Ellery, “I’d’ve missed all this.”

  I followed his arm as he waved it out across the farm. This place was beautiful. Not just the house and the porch that Mother had made so lovely and welcoming, with tidy and warm places for anyone and everyone to sit and feel at home. But the land. It wa
sn’t an easy land to farm, with its hard-packed rocky soil and short growing season, but Mr. Pop always reminded us that it was the best. It was the very hardness of this place that made it so amazing, he said. The blessings of this place came right out of its trials.

  Mother pushed open the screen door. “Mercy, honestly. Have you still not gone? Stop bothering Bud and Ellery and get on your way.”

  “She’s no bother, ma’am,” Ellery said and winked at me. “We’re just talking about your delicious eggs.”

  Mother smiled, lowered her eyes, and stepped back inside. She let the screen door slap closed behind her.

  “I’ll see you in a bit then,” I said and hopped down the stairs, landing hard on my sneakers. “Wait. Mr. Pop said to ask you where you’ll be when I get back with the Maliseet workers.”

  “Oh, I suppose the three-acre field would be best to drop them off. If you manage more than five of them this morning, bring half down back and the others to the three acres, off the back road.”

  “All right. See you when I get back. Want me to feed the chickens and let the pigs out into their pen after that?”

  “No, I’ll send Bud out to tend to the animals this morning.”

  Mr. Pop loved his animals. He might act annoyed with Lickers, but he loved seeing her pounce on mice in the shed or in the barn. And the pigs, well, we only had four, but he had them named before they’d been in the pen ten minutes. There was Gracie, after the beautiful and elegant movie star Grace Kelly, then Dorothy, named after Uncle Roger’s wife, Dot. I’m not sure how I’d feel having a pig named after me. Aunt Dot just laughed. I guess Mr. Pop knew she’d respond that way. Then there was Gertrude. Mr. Pop never said, but I always believed she was named after the most annoying woman on our party line, Mrs. Garritson. If you ever needed to place a call, you were almost guaranteed to be thwarted by Mrs. Garritson yapping on the phone. George rounded out the pigs, and no one knows where that name came from. Mr. Pop just pointed out that “He looks like a George!”