All for a Song Read Online Free PDF

shoes, socks, and garters and rolled the cuffs of his pants up for good measure.
    Dorothy Lynn sat next to him. “Nice feet, but I don’t think they’d hold up for the walk home.”
    “I don’t mind telling you that my own mother would have been mortified at the thought that I was about to eat lunch barefoot.”
    “Why, Reverend Logan,” she said, feigning shock, “do you intend to eat with your feet?”
    “Well, I’m hungry enough.”
    With that, they dug in, each with a cup of Ma’s ham and beans—no less flavorful for having cooled—and biscuits. There was a jar of cold tea, which they passed back and forth between them in an intimate gesture.
    She grew drowsy and comfortable and warm with her belly full of Ma’s familiar cooking and her ears full of Brent’s deep voice. After a time, his words slowed, then stopped altogether. She propped herself up on one elbow and watched him—from a respectable foot away—lying flat on his back, arms beneath his head. His chest, so broad it seemed set to bust his buttons, rose and fell with sleep, and his face was a mask of contentment as the first faint snore passed through parted lips.
    This was not a man to covet anything—right at home and content wherever his lot. Her parlor, her kitchen, her church, her lot, her life.
    Slowly, she rose to her feet and moved to where she’d set her guitar on one of the tall, smooth rocks. Just as she’d done a hundred times before, she settled the curved body against her thigh and bent low over the neck. Eyes closed, something like a prayer came through, but nothing in words she’d ever recall. Her fingers found the strings and danced across them, aimlessly at first, until they found the tune that had been whispering and waiting all morning. It ran from beginning to end, finding life and breath where she strummed and pressed, and when Dorothy Lynn reached the point where she knew it had defined itself, she added her own voice. Then she opened her eyes, and though she looked out at the solid screen of blue-green needles, she saw the folded bit of paper on which she’d managed to scratch a few words. And she sang.
There is a clearing in the forest
Fine as any palace parlor.
Walls papered with the pine trees,
Lush green grass carpets the floor.
Here is my portion, here’s my cup.
Here the good Lord fills me up
To overflowin’. . . .
    She strummed some more, both to see if those words had found a home and to wait for the next phrasing to form itself.
    “Beautiful.” Brent’s voice cut through the music, but she did not stop. She did, however, look up to see him still reclining, hands behind his head and a huge smile on his face.
    “It’s not finished. Sometimes words won’t come.”
    “Did you mean what you said?”
    Still she played. “About what?”
    “About here being where the Lord fills you up.”
    She stopped and held the strings silent against the wood. “This place. It’s like I can’t think anywhere but here. And the Lord speaks to me so clearly, makes me want to speak right back to him.”
    “Like King David.”
    She smiled and softly strummed again. “Is this my lyre?”
    “I reckon,” he said, mimicking her accent again.
    “I don’t think nobody will be singing my songs a thousand years from now.”
    “Why not?”
    “’Cause so far only one other soul has ever even heard one. Or part of one. Pa always said it ain’t fittin’.”
    He sat up, drew his knees to him, and locked his arms around them. “I could listen to you sing every day.”
    “No, you can’t.” She played a flourishing chord, silenced it, and made a teasing face. “Because this here is my fairy ring, and you can only come here when I invite you.”
    “I don’t mean here.” Something in his voice drew her close, though the guitar kept her anchored to her rock. “I mean in our—” He stopped himself. “I mean in the home I’ll build with you. And in our church, when you’re my wife and it’s truly for me to