Then Came Heaven Read online

  THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

  LAVYRLE SPENCER

  First time in paperback

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve been officially retired since completing this book in the spring of 1997. It’s been a fabulous year. My husband, Dan, and I have traveled, spent lots of time with our grandchildren, and really enjoyed our own backyard. Retirement is what I’d hoped it would be, filled with time entertaining friends, poking around in the gardens, touring other people’s gardens, and enjoying life to the fullest.

  Many of you have written to express your sadness about my retiring, and your feelings about my books. I thank you all for your warm praise, and for sharing stories of how my books have changed your life. I’m grateful, also, that so many of you have said you hope I’ll write again, but I’m having so much fun I simply don’t see that happening.

  Thank you for all your years of support, but especially for your letters during the past year.

  My heart is full. My life is happy. My health is top-notch.

  I hope each of you can say the same.

  Sincerely,

  LaVyrle Spencer

  “One of her best... she is at the top of her form.”—Omaha Sunday World-Herald

  Can love survive a shattering loss?

  Browerville, Minnesota, 1950: Life is just about perfect for Eddie Olczak. A man of unshakable faith, he derives intense pleasure from the life he’s built. He cherishes his wife, Krystyna, their daughters, Anne and Lucy, and his job as handyman for St. Joseph’s, the Catholic church that is the cornerstone of Browerville life. But when a tragic accident cuts Krystyna’s life short, Eddie is sure his heart is broken forever. The love she lavished on her family, the way she combed the girls’ hair, the way she greeted Eddie at the end of the day—all the precious gifts she gave are gone.

  The town rallies to provide support, but there is one member of the community who is unable to express what Krystyna’s loss has meant to her. Sister Regina, the girls’ teacher at St. Joseph’s, has always felt a special affinity for the Olczaks. But her vows prevent her from becoming too close—even in their time of need.

  Sister Regina has always tried to reaffirm her commitment when the strict rules of the sisterhood chafe at her. But with time, as she and Eddie grow to know each other better—and find a connection that goes beyond their shared love of Krystyna and the girls—she faces a difficult challenge. And both of them must summon the courage to look within their own hearts and make their own choices ...

  “By the middle of the book, you are running out of tissues... There are so many wonderful characters... I couldn’t read this book fast enough.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “The down-home feel of a Midwestern farm community and accurate period detail add to the appeal of Spencer’s romance.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Like Spencer’s other novels,' Then Came Heaven focuses on real people—flawed, but blessed with a basic goodness that shines through in their everyday lives.”—San Antonio Express News

  Also by LaVyrle Spencer

  SMALL TOWN GIRL

  THAT CAMDEN SUMMER

  HOME SONG

  FAMILY BLESSINGS

  NOVEMBER OF THE HEART

  BYGONES

  FORGIVING

  BITTER SWEET

  SPRING FANCY

  MORNING GLORY

  THE HELLION

  VOWS

  THE GAMBLE

  A HEART SPEAKS

  YEARS

  SEPARATE BEDS

  TWICE LOVED

  SWEET MEMORIES

  HUMMINGBIRD

  THE ENDEARMENT

  THE FULFILLMENT

  THEN CAME HEAVEN

  LaVyrle Spencer

  JOVE BOOKS, NEW YORK

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  THEN CAME HEAVEN

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition / December 1997 Published simultaneously in Canada Jove edition / April 1999

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1997 by LaVyrle Spencer.

  Cover design and illustration copyright © 1997 by Wendell Minor. Photo of the author copyright © 1995 by John Earle.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-515-12462-1

  A JOVE BOOK®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 987654321

  Thank you to all the people who helped me during the writing of this book:

  Virginia & Bill McDonald

  Sister Marl Gapinski, my third- / fourth-grade teacher

  Al Case, retired Northern Pacific engineer

  Mary Gaida Brown, family friend and keeper of memoirs

  Joan Gaida Schmitz, family friend

  Jim Lucas, son of St. Joseph’s janitor, Eli Lucas

  Jean Poplinski, my dear aunt who passed away before this book could be published

  Fred Poplinski, my cousin who remembered so much

  Mike Poplinski, my cousin who didn 't remember much but got me stood in the corner one time for running in the halls

  Sister Ruth at St. Benedict’s Archives

  Sister Mary Kraft at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet Archives

  In loving memory of my mother and father, Jennie & Louie Kulick

  THEN CAME

  HEAVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Thursday, September 7, 1950

  Cyril Case was making the daily run from St. Cloud to Cass Lake, sitting up high on his box seat in engine number two-eighty-two. Beside him, his fireman, Merle Ficker, rode with one arm out the window, his striped denim cap pushed clean back so the bill pointed skyward. It was a beautiful morning, sunny, the heavens deep blue, farmers out in their fields taking in the last of their crops, most harvesting with tractors, though down around Sauk Center they’d seen one working with a team. They’d passed a country school a couple miles back where the kids, out for recess, waved from the playground, and their teacher—a slim young thing in a yellow dress—had stopped gathering wildflowers, shaded her eyes with an arm and fanned her handful of black-eyed Susans over her head as she watched them pass. It was days like this that made driving a train the best job in the world—green woods, gold fields and the smell of fresh-cut alfalfa blowing straight through the cab. And beneath the men the shuug-a-shuug-a of the steam engine hauling smooth down the tracks.

  Cy and Merle were having another one of their friendly disagreements about politics.

  “Well, sure,” Merle was saying, “I voted for Truman, but I didn’t think he’d send our boys to Korea!”

  “What else you gonna do?” Cy replied. “Those Communists go in and start bombing Seoul. Can’t let ’em get by with that, can we?”

  “Well, maybe not, but you ain’t got a nineteen-year-old son and I do! Now Truman goes and extends the draft till next year. Hell, I don’t want Rodney to get called up. I just don’t like how things are going.” Merle pointed. “Whistlepost up ahead.” />
  “I see it. And don’t worry, MacArthur’ll probably clean ’em up before Rodney gets any draft notice.”

  Up ahead on the right, the arm of the white marker shone clear against the pure blue sky. Cy reached up and pulled the rope above his left shoulder. The steam whistle battered their ears in a long wail: two longs, a short and a long—the warning for a public crossing.

  The whistlepost flashed past and the long wail ended, leaving them in comparative quiet.

  “So,” Cy continued, “I suppose your boy’s gonna go to work for the railroad if he doesn’t get...” He stiffened and stared up the track. “Sweet Jesus, he ain’t gonna make it!” A car had turned off of Highway 71 and came shooting from the left, trailing a dust cloud, trying to beat the train to the crossing.

  For one heartbeat the men stared, then Cy shouted, “Car on the crossing! Plug it!”

  Merle jumped and hit the air brakes.

  Cy grabbed the Johnson bar and squeezed for dear life. With his other hand he hauled on the steam whistle. Machinery ground into reverse and the brakes grabbed. From the engine through the entire train line, everything locked in a deafening screech. Steam hissed as if the door of hell had opened. The smell of hot, oily metal wafted forth like Satan’s own perfume. The couplers, in progression, drummed like heavy artillery from the engine clear back to the caboose while the two old rails, with fifty-three years’ experience between them, felt it in the seat of their pants: forward propulsion combined with a hundred tons of drag, something a railroad man hopes he’ll never feel.

  “Hold on, Merle, we’re gonna hit ’em!” Cy bellowed above the din.

  “Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” Merle chanted under his breath as the train skated and shrieked, and the puny car raced toward its destiny.

  At thirty yards they knew for sure.

  At twenty they braced.

  At ten they saw the driver.

  Dear God, it’s a woman, Cy said. Or thought. Or prayed.

  Then they collided.

  Sound exploded and glass flew. Metal crunched as the gray forty-nine Ford wrapped around the cowcatcher. Together they cannonballed down the tracks, the ruptured car folded over the metal grid, chunks of it dragging along halfsevered, tearing up earth, bruising railroad ties, strewing wreckage for hundreds of yards. Pieces of the car eventually broke free and bounced along the flinty ballast of the rail bed with a sound like a brass band before tumbling to rest in the weeds. Throughout it all some compressed piece of the automobile played the tracks in an unending shriek—metal on metal—like a hundred violins out of tune. Dust! They’d never seen so much dust. It billowed up on impact, a brown, stinky cloud of it, momentarily blinding Cy and Merle as they rode along haplessly above the discordant serenade. The smell of petroleum oozed up, and sparks sizzled off the steel tracks, setting small fires in gasoline drips that flared briefly, then blew out as the train passed over them.

  Slower... slower... slower... two terrified railroad men rode it out, one maintaining a death grip on the Johnson bar that had long since thrown the gears into reverse, the other still hauling on the air brakes that had locked up the wheels more than a quarter-mile back.

  Slower... slower... all those tons of steel took forever to decelerate while the two big-eyed men listened to the fading squeal that dissolved into a whine...

  Then a whimper...

  Then silence...

  Cy and Merle sat rigid as a pair of connecting rods, exchanging a shocked, silent stare. Their faces were as white and round and readable as the pressure gauges on the boilerhead. Number two-eighty-two had carried the Ford a good half a mile down the railroad tracks and sat now calmly chuffing, like a big old contented whale coming up for air.

  Outside, something small fell—glass maybe, with a soft tinkle.

  Merle finally found his voice. It came out as tight and hissing as the air brakes. “No way that woman’s gonna be alive.”

  “Let’s go!” Cy barked.

  They scrambled from the cab, bellies to the ladder, free-sliding down the grab rails. From the caboose, twenty cars back, the conductor and a brakeman came running—two bouncing dots in the distance—shouting, “What happened?” A second brakeman stayed behind, already igniting a fusee that started spewing red smoke into the gentle September morning, mixing the stink of sulphur with the sweetness of the fresh-cut alfalfa.

  Running along beside the locomotive, Cy yelled, “Look there, the engine’s hardly damaged.” The lifting lever on the drawbar was a little scraped up, and a couple of grab bars were marred, but when the two men rounded the snout of the engine, they halted dead in their tracks.

  It was a sickening sight, that car riding thin on the pilot as if it had been flattened for a junkyard. The coupler at the front of the cowcatcher had actually pierced the metal of the automobile and protruded like a shining silver eye. Some broken glass remained in the driver’s-side window, jagged as lightning.

  Cy moved close and peered in.

  She was brown-haired. Young. Pretty. Or had been. Wearing a nice little blue flowered housedress. Surrounded by broken fruit jars. He closed his mind to the rest and reached in to see if she was still alive.

  After nearly a minute, he withdrew his hand and stood on a crosstie facing Merle.

  “I think she’s dead.”

  “You sure?”

  “No pulse that I can feel.”

  Merle remained as colorless as whey. His lips moved silently, but not a sound came out. Cy could see he’d have to take charge here.

  “We’re gonna need a jack to get her out of there,” he told Merle. “You better run to the highway and flag down a car. Tell ’em to run to Browerville and get help...” Merle was already hustling off at an ungainly trot. “... and have ’em call the sheriff in Long Prairie!”

  At that moment the conductor and brakeman reached Cy, panting.

  “He dead?” one of them asked.

  “She. It’s a woman.”

  “Oh my God.” The conductor had a huge florid face that hung in soft folds from his cheekbones. He glanced at the wreck, then back at Cy. “She dead?”

  “I think so. Couldn’t feel any pulse.”

  They stood motionless, absorbing the shock while Cy, the engineer whose job it was to take command in emergencies, took control of the situation.

  “Better get that other fusee out,” he told the brakeman.

  “Yeah, sure thing.” The brakeman headed up the track to the north, waving a red flag as he went, to set out the warning for any southbound trains. A mile he would go before igniting the flare, while the other brakeman walked a mile off the rear of the train and did the same thing.

  Left alone with Cy, the conductor said, “There’s fruit jars all along the tracks. What do you suppose she was doing with all those fruit jars?”

  The two men gazed back along the tracks at the shimmers of sunlight glancing off the pieces of broken glass.

  “Probably some farmer’s wife with a big garden,” Cy replied.

  Reaction to the tragedy only now began setting in, delayed like the sting that follows a slap. Cy felt it deep in his vitals, a terrible trembling that traveled to his extremities and brought a faint nausea as he stood at the head of the train with a dead woman caught in the twisted wreckage of her gray automobile.

  “Her license plate is gone. The back one anyway. I’ll see if the front one is there.” The conductor walked farther around the train, but came back long-faced. “Gone too. Want me to walk back along the tracks and see if I can find it?”

  “She’s got a purse,” Cy said, dully. “I saw it under one of her...” He quit talking and swallowed hard.

  “Want me to get it, Cy?”

  “No, that’s... that’s all right. I will.”

  Cy steeled himself and returned to the wreckage while a herd of lethargic holsteins, chewing their cuds, watched from inside a nearby fence. The soft morning wind, not yet tainted by the red sulphur from the faraway fusee, carried the faint scent of manure, not wholly un
pleasant when mixed with the continuing aroma of cut alfalfa. In the distance, a silo pointed toward heaven, where the woman had probably gone. Nearer, over a copse of shiny green oaks, a flock of chattering starlings lifted and milled. One of the cows mooed, and the engine, its steam kept up according to railroad regulations, gave out an intermittent quiet chuff. All around, the bucolic countryside presented a picture of life as it should be while Cy retrieved the purse of the dead woman and wiped it off on the leg of his blue-and-white striped overalls.

  Merle returned from the highway, short of breath, and reported, “Fellow from Eagle Bend, going that way, said he’d get word to the constable and sheriff soon as he hits Browerville. That her purse?”

  They all looked down at it in Cy’s oversized hands. It was a little wedge-shaped white plastic affair with hard sides. Its handle had been broken in the accident, and its jaws skewed so the metal clasp no longer worked.

  Cy opened it and looked inside. He picked things out very gingerly, then set them back in with the greatest care: a clean white handkerchief, a rosary with blue glass beads, a pack of Sen-Sen. And a small black prayer book, which he examined more slowly. Stuck in its pages was a recipe for “Washday Pickles,” written on the back of an envelope, with the word Mother in the upper right-hand comer. A name was written on the front of the envelope with its canceled three-cent stamp and its simple address of Browerville, Minn. The same name was written on the inside cover of the prayer book, and on a social-security card they found in a small pocketbook that also held some school pictures of two little girls, and a dollar bill plus eighteen cents in change.

  Her name was Krystyna Olczak.

  ________

  Everybody in Browerville knew Eddie Olczak. Everybody in Browerville liked him. He was about the eighth or ninth kid of Hedwig and Casimir Olczak, Polish immigrants from out east of town. Eighth or ninth they said because Hedy and Cass had fourteen, and when there are that many in one family the order can get a little jumbled. Eddie lived half a block off Main Street, on the west side of the alley behind the Lee State Bank and the Quality Inn Cafe, in the oldest house in town. He had fixed it up real nice when he married that cute little Krystyna Pribil, whose folks farmed just off the Clarissa Highway out north of town. Richard and Mary Pribil had seven kids of their own, but everybody remembered Krystyna best because she had been the Todd County Dairy Princess the summer before she married Eddie.