Pages of Promise Read online

  Pages of

  Promise

  Also by Gilbert Morris

  THE AMERICAN CENTURY SERIES

  1. A Bright Tomorrow

  2. Hope Takes Flight

  3. One Shining Moment

  4. A Season of Dreams

  5. Winds of Change

  THE HOUSE OF WINSLOW SERIES

  1. The Honorable Imposter

  2. The Captive Bride

  3. The Indentured Heart

  4. The Gentle Rebel

  5. The Saintly Buccaneer

  6. The Holy Warrior

  7. The Reluctant Bridegroom

  8. The Last Confederate

  9. The Dixie Widow

  10. The Wounded Yankee

  11. The Union Belle

  12. The Final Adversary

  13. The Crossed Sabres

  14. The Valiant Gunman

  15. The Gallant Outlaw

  16. The Jeweled Spur

  17. The Yukon Queen

  18. The Rough Rider

  19. The Iron Lady

  20. The Silver Star

  21. The Shadow Portrait

  22. The White Hunter

  23. The Flying Cavalier

  24. The Glorious Prodigal

  25. The Amazon Quest

  26. The Golden Angel

  27. The Heavenly Fugitive

  28. The Fiery Ring

  29. The Pilgrim Song

  30. The Beloved Enemy

  31. The Shining Badge

  32. The Royal Handmaid

  33. The Silent Harp

  34. The Virtuous Woman

  35. The Gypsy Moon

  NUMBER SIX IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY SERIES

  Pages of

  Promise

  GILBERT

  MORRIS

  © 1998 by Gilbert Morris

  Published by Fleming H. Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  New paperback edition published 2007

  Previously published in 1998 under the title A Time To Build

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Morris, Gilbert.

  [Time to build]

  Pages of promise / Gilbert Morris.

  p. cm. —(American century series : bk. 6)

  Originally published: A time to build, c1998.

  ISBN 10: 0-8007-3220-0 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-8007-3220-2 (pbk.)

  I. United States—History—1945–1953—Fiction. 2. United States—History—1953–1961—Fiction. 3. Family—United States—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.O8742T55 2007

  813'.54—dc22 2007027719

  Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  To Jimmy Jordan, my favorite cousin

  I think often of the days when we were young

  and am very grateful for them, Jimmy.

  May the Lord bless you richly in these latter days.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE WARTIME

  Prologue

  1 Growing Up

  2 An Old Soldier Gets a Call

  3 Truman Was Right

  4 Stephanie Goes to a Ball Game

  5 Death at High Noon

  6 The Vine

  PART TWO GOOD TIMES

  7 A Trip to Town

  8 Country Matters

  9 Doing the Right Thing

  10 “Find a Cause Worth Living For!”

  11 No Man Is a Match for a Woman!

  12 Fall of a Man

  PART THREE CHANGING TIMES

  13 Ye Must Be Born Again

  14 “Will You Forgive Me?”

  15 A Fork in the Road

  16 The First Loss

  17 Prison Blues

  18 A Surprise for Mona

  PART FOUR QUIET TIMES

  19 Out of the Silence

  20 Wedding Bells

  21 Rock Bottom

  22 A Place for Stephen

  23 A Star to Steer By

  24 The Circle Is Unbroken

  Epilogue: The Legacy

  In the News

  THE STUART FAMILY

  Part 1

  WARTIME

  PROLOGUE

  Elvis Presley and Pat Boone and bobby-soxers and hula hoops are standard symbols of the 1950s in America. It was a postwar era, “peacetime,” generally. But turbulence on a smaller scale characterized the postwar world. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin strengthened its control over vast areas of Eastern Europe—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania. Stalin had promised civil liberties, free elections, and representative governments, but Soviet-trained political leaders, supported by military force, gained power. Anti-Communists were soon in jail, in exile—or dead.

  This aggressive demeanor in Europe prompted the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ) in 1949, a mutual-defense pact between Canada, the U.S., and most countries of Western Europe. Throughout the fifties, NATO increased in military strength and emphasized maintaining the “balance of power” in Europe between East and West. A “cold” war was under way that often seemed near the flashpoint, it was feared, of World War III—of all-out nuclear war. It was an era of competition, tension, and conflict between East and West, Communism and capitalism, national self-determination and totalitarianism.

  In many places in the world the Cold War did indeed flash into hot wars, not directly between the “superpowers” but between factions aligned with one side or the other—war by proxy, it was called.

  The stage had been set for Asia in 1945 at the Yalta conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. The Soviets fought no battles, but by the time Japan surrendered, the Soviet army had moved into northern Korea and much of Manchuria to accept the surrender of Japanese forces there. The Soviets sealed off the Korean border at the thirty-eighth parallel and set up a government run by Soviet-trained Communists. They refused to participate in free elections under UN supervision for one government for the nation, so South Korea elected a separate government. Soviet forces withdrew from North Korea in 1948, leaving behind an entrenched Communist regime and a well-trained and equipped army. Reunification of Korea by force was the goal of the war begun in 1950 by the North Koreans.

  In the United States the postwar years were boom years, an era of full employment and peak production, although occasional brief periods of recession and high unemployment occurred. Those who had lived through the privations of a depression and a war were immersed in a sea of newfound economic comfort. People were happily buying new cars, new homes, and television sets.

  But prosperity was marred by racial unrest and by fear of Communism at home and abroad. In 1949, eleven leaders of the Communist party were convicted of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force.

  Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s sweeping accusations against “Communist sympathizers” in the government were opposed as early as June 1950 by Senator Margaret Chase Smith and other members of McCarthy’s party, but it was 1954 before he was censured by the full senate.

  Prosperity shifted the focus in American family life. People who didn’t have to worry about subsistence placed children and family life at the top of their priority lists, according to polls. The postwar baby boom was under way, and parents felt their destiny was to mak
e the world better for their children. They were determined that their offspring would not suffer hard times as they had. Some sociologists define the fifties as a “filiarchy”—society was not ruled by the willful demands of the young but by indulgent, sacrificing parents. “Do it for the kids” was heard on every hand.

  But middle-class conformity and social stability were also challenged, by swaggering antiheroes such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, by the nonconforming beatniks, then, from 1956 on, by Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley and the beginnings of rock and roll music.

  In a world of prosperity and in turmoil, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Will and Marian Stuart looked for a peace that is complete and enduring.

  1

  GROWING UP

  A street-model hot rod screeched to a stop in front of the split-level suburban house, and the sound of loud, laughing voices broke the silence of the neighborhood. Across the street, Mr. Gunderson opened his window and stared out for a moment, then slammed it shut.

  A shadowy form separated itself from the automobile. There were raucous calls, and a female voice cried out, “Be good, Bobby! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  The car roared off with a screech and the smell of burning rubber. Two people in the house moved away from the window. The knob turned, and the door was opened slowly, as if to keep the sound down. Sixteen-year-old Bobby Stuart entered—then stopped stock-still when he saw his parents waiting for him. Shock ran across his face, but his devil-may-care air seldom deserted him. He stood in the open doorway and saluted his father, saying, “Private Bobby Stuart reporting for duty, Sir.” He squinted his eyes and grinned. “What are you two doing up so late? Don’t you have to fly tomorrow, Dad? Mom, you never stay up this late!”

  Bobby’s sister, Stephanie, a year older, had sneaked down to the landing. She could not restrain a grin—she was glad that her parents could not see it. There was something irresistible about Bobby, and even though he was constantly in and out of trouble, there was a cavalier air about him, a bubbling exuberance for life that made it hard for anyone to be angry with him for long.

  His father did not have that difficulty, however. “Young man, do you know what time it is?”

  Bobby peered at his watch, holding it close to his face. “I believe it’s twenty minutes till two—or to look at it in a little better light, Dad, it’s one forty. I’m a little bit late,” he said cheerfully. “But I just forgot the time.”

  Something about the way his son pronounced his words and the way he stood alerted Jerry. Bobby was speaking very carefully, pronouncing each syllable. That’s the way drunks do, Jerry thought grimly. He stepped forward and—sure enough—holding his face a foot away from Bobby’s he said, “No point holding your breath! I can smell that liquor on you! You smell like a distillery!”

  “Dad, I just had one or two drinks.” Bobby shrugged and grinned.

  That grin was his undoing. Jerry slammed the door shut and shoved his son backward against it. He had never been very physical in disciplining his children—had rarely ever spanked them—so his action caught Bobby completely by surprise. Bonnie, Bobby’s mother, gasped and stepped back from them.

  With his eyes barely two inches from his son’s as he held him against the door, Jerry spoke with careful emphasis through clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever again come in late and drunk. Never again! Is that clear?”

  Bobby’s grin was gone. So was the alcoholic blear from his eyes. For a moment he’d believed his father might hit him. “Yes, Dad,” he said. But in the second before Jerry released him something else showed in Bobby’s eyes—resentment and an anger of his own.

  Stephanie quietly slipped back upstairs. Richard, Bobby’s twin, was listening in the dark hall outside his room to the commotion downstairs. Stephanie paused outside her bedroom door and whispered, “He’s going to get it this time.”

  “No he won’t. Mom will talk Dad out of it. She always does.”

  “You couldn’t see from here. Dad nearly hit him! You wait and see, Richard, he’ll be grounded til the century’s over!”

  Bonnie had not interfered in the confrontation between father and son. But as she and Jerry lay in bed later, they talked about what had occurred.

  “I knew I should have stuck with keeping him grounded, but you said, ‘Oh, he’s only young once. Don’t make him miss out.’ I think he needs to miss out. Maybe it would get his attention,” grumbled Jerry, still angry.

  “How could you attack him like that? I was afraid you were about to punch him!”

  “I was afraid so, too.” Jerry seemed to finally regain his composure. “I’m sorry I frightened you. But, honey, I’ve had it with him and his carousing friends. He has a terrific musical ability, just like my granddad. But there’s more to life than music.”

  “You do realize, don’t you, that he’s just like you?” Bonnie’s voice sounded harsh in the darkness.

  “He’s not like me at all.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t remember your Cara Gilmore days, but I do.” She was angry—miffed at any rate—and turned away from him, emphatically ending the conversation.

  Bonnie had rarely thrown Jerry’s wild youth in his face. Her doing so told him how deeply distressed she was. He lay staring at the ceiling and drifted off with painful memories of the beautiful, the exciting Cara who had so captivated him.

  The next morning the household awakened to the sound of Jerry Stuart’s raised voice laying down the law to the now-sober Bobby. Jerry delivered a stern lecture not-so-privately, then announced at breakfast, “Bobby’s not driving the car until I give the okay.” Bonnie said little, but she looked upset and tired.

  The three siblings went to school in the ’36 Ford that the boys had resurrected and owned equal shares in. Richard and Robert were twins, but they didn’t look all that much alike. Bobby’s hair was auburn rather than black like the rest of his family, and no one in his family had eyes like his, either, a cornflower blue.

  The twins’ sister, Stephanie, was tall, a little over five feet nine inches, with the lean, athletic, California-girl look. She had the blackest possible hair, with enough curl so that she could try different styles. Her eyes were blue-green, or gray-green, or sometimes just blue or green, for they changed, like a chameleon, depending on what she put on. This pleased her, for in this respect she was unlike the girls that she grew up with.

  Richard was driving, and taking his eyes off the road, he glanced at Stephanie, then at his twin, who was whistling carefully and appeared not to have a care in the world. Richard said, “Well, you’re grounded, are you?”

  Bobby shrugged. “Aw, Mom and Dad are a little straitlaced, but it’ll blow over.” He then proceeded to tell them about the party. “We had a real good time. I played guitar, and Tim Roberts played the piano, and Hick Seastrum was on the drums. It was a real knockout!”

  As they pulled into the lot in front of the high school, a tall, brick structure, Stephanie stared at the building with distaste. “Only another month and I’ll be out of this place!” They got out of the car and made their way up the steps. Inside, they separated, going to their classes, and none of them believed that Bobby would be grounded for long.

  Stephanie’s much longed for graduation came and quickly was over. She’d attended the parties and events associated with it happily enough since they signaled the end of school. She hoped she’d like college better, but mostly she tried not to think about it. The family had its own celebration, in spite of the ongoing verbal conflicts between her father and her brother Bobby. Her grandparents, Amos and Rose Stuart, flew out from Chicago for a vacation to attend. They’d flown home a week ago.

  A wide spot in the creek that lay past the rough dunes a half mile from their house had always formed a swimming pool for the three young Stuarts. Today Richard and Stephanie came in the midafternoon, without Bobby, and plunged in, splashing gleefully. For half an hour they swam and splashed water at each other, and Richard pursued Stephanie, threate
ning to dunk her, but she was a better swimmer than he. The pool was thirty feet wide and at the deepest part over six or seven feet deep.

  Stephanie thought she saw a snake and squealed, scrambling out on the bank, but then Richard held up a piece of vine and laughed at her cheerfully, saying, “This is a bad old snake all right!”

  Finally the two came out and lay down on the blanket, drying off quickly in the late June sun. Stephanie put on her sunglasses and put her hands under her head. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit. She murmured, “What day is it, today? The date I mean.”

  “The twenty-fourth.”

  “Saturday, June 24. More than a month since graduation. I’m so glad it’s all over.”

  Richard was wearing a pair of faded tan cutoffs. He rolled over, rested his chin on his arm, and said, “You going to Chicago to work for Grandpa?”

  “Oh, he’ll never give me a job. He wants me to go to college. I’d rather work for him, though.”

  Richard flopped on his back, shaded his eyes with his hands, his fingers laced. The sun soaked into him, and he dozed off. He awakened sometime later when he heard Stephanie say something. “What did you say?” he muttered.

  Stephanie was sitting up combing her hair. “I said, are you going to go to college?”

  Richard sat up, rubbed his eyes, and blinked like an owl emerging from its tree. “Man, it’s hot today!” He thought about her question for a moment. “I don’t know, Steph.”

  She smiled at him affectionately. “Is this Streak Stuart I hear talking, sought after by half the colleges in the country?” She called him by the nickname his friends often used, for he had run the fastest hundred-yard dash in a California high school that year. He had received several offers of track scholarships for college, but all the time he had said very little.

  “Still a year away,” he muttered. He stood up, stretched, and said, “You know what I’d really like to do?”

  She looked up and admired the lean, muscular form of her brother. He was just an inch under six feet and looked like a sprinter, although taller than most. “What?” she asked, putting her comb into her bag and rising to face him.