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    Mail Order Romances: Big Book Of Eight Christian Stories
    Mail Order Romances: Big Book Of Eight Christian Stories
    Mail Order Romances: Big Book Of Eight Christian Stories
    Ebook325 pages5 hours

    Mail Order Romances: Big Book Of Eight Christian Stories

    By Helen Keating

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    About this ebook

    Mail Order Bride: Margaret's Jewish Cowboy, is a story about two damaged people finding love, thanks to the assistance of one small town religious leader. Jed went to prison for a while after the killed the man who had murdered his beautiful wife. He and the leader are the only two people in town of that faith and they are drawn together out of loneliness. The leader encourages crotchety Jed to advertise for a mail order bride and without warning, because of a mistake, one shows up on his doorstep.

    Mail Order Bride: Surviving The Wolves, is about a high society woman in NYC who gets sent off to Oregon to be the bride of a lonely outpost operator. He is as stunned by her beauty when she gets off the train, as she is by the wilderness surrounding his cabin and home. However, she doesn’t know how to make a fire or even sweep the floor and her many trunks of fine clothing fill up his small cabin.

    Mail Order Bride: Almost Missing The Boat, is about a woman living in London who is to be married off to a man of her mother’s choice; a baron she has no feelings for. She runs off to the docks hoping to escape the situation, but sees him by the ticket office, searching for her.

    Mail Order Bride: Salisa On The Stagecoach, is all about a young cowboy who passes by a stagecoach on its way into town and sees a group of ragamuffin kids, plus a young woman with a pair of the most startling blue eyes he’s ever seen. When he gets back into town he cannot find her anywhere, gives up, and decides to place an ad for a mail order bride.

    Mail Order Bride: Sally The Orphan Meets Her Parents, is about a devout Christian orphan girl living simply in New York City until a friend handed her a letter, which would change her life forever. Her parents had sent it and not only did she learn they were alive; but that they had a potential husband for her and he would be waiting on their estate.

    Mail Order Bride: Abby's Big Problem, is about a young, pregnant widow of a soldier killed during the civil war. While she doesn’t really need a job, she takes one as a housekeeper for a single man, and he and his three children hit it off, but not in a romantic way. While Abby is on maternity leave, he sends for a mail order bride and along with an attractive woman, he gets far more than he ever bargained for.

    Mail Order Bride: Leap of Faith is about a widower who was left with a traumatized daughter who cannot see, hear or speak. After watching her mother die from a random gunshot wound, the little girl withdrew into a world of her own, leaving her father unable to cope or understand how he can save her. He decides to advertise for a mail order bride -- not one to marry but a teacher to help his daughter get better. A life-changing and emotional event concludes the story.

    Mail Order Groom: Lee’s City Slicker, is about a newspaper editor dissatisfied with his life in the Big Apple. He decides to head to Nebraska, where a family he barely remembers has offered to provide him with the ranch life, plus a daughter whose name he doesn’t know, to perhaps become his mail order bride. There are two hearts to be healed in this western romance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSusan Hart
    Release dateMar 6, 2015
    ISBN9781311313034
    Mail Order Romances: Big Book Of Eight Christian Stories

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      Book preview

      Mail Order Romances - Helen Keating

      Mail Order Romances: Big Book Of Eight Christian Stories

      By

      Helen Keating

      Copyright 2015 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press

      Smashwords Edition

      Mail Order Bride: Margaret’s Jewish Cowboy

      Mail Order Bride: Surviving The Wolves

      Mail Order Bride: Almost Missing The Boat

      Mail Order Bride: Salisa On The Stagecoach

      Mail Order Bride: Sally The Orphan Meets Her Parents

      Mail Order Bride: Abby’s Big Problem

      Mail Order Bride: Leap Of Faith

      Mail Order Groom: Lee’s City Slicker

      Mail Order Bride: Margaret’s Jewish Cowboy

      Synopsis: Mail Order Bride: Margaret's Jewish Cowboy, is a story about two damaged people finding love, thanks to the assistance of one small town religious leader. Jed went to prison for a while after the killed the man who had murdered his beautiful wife. He and the leader are the only two people in town of that faith and they are drawn together out of loneliness. The leader encourages crotchety Jed to advertise for a mail order bride and without warning, because of a mistake, one shows up on his doorstep.

      The name that his folks had bestowed upon him on the day of his birth was Jedidiah, which was common among his people. He had been born into and raised up by a little Jewish community out in the Smokies. It was a closed off community of Eastern European immigrants who had somehow chosen to live rugged off the land way up in the mountains.

      They kept to themselves and if you weren’t one of them, you wouldn’t ever know they were there at all. They had their own ways and they didn’t want anything from anybody else. Their place was a lot different from all the mining towns that were springing up everywhere else there were mountains.

      By the time Jedidiah came out here to Helena Montana though, the community that raised him had been pushed out and moved on. Whatever became of them Jedidiah sure wouldn’t know. He’d long since been pushed out on his own, by his own people and he’d known from day one that there just wasn’t any going back.

      Round here, a name like Jedidiah struck folks as just a little peculiar. Everyone here just knew him as Tennessee Jed. It didn’t matter if that’s what they’d have called him to his face or not, cause old Jed didn’t talk to anybody anyway and nobody really talked to him.

      Almost everybody in our little mining town had some theory about Tennessee Jed. Most were of course oversimplified and some were puffed up and plain ridiculous. Almost every one of these folks claimed to have some sacred source of their bizarre information and of course, they swore it to be true.

      In reality, the only people in town who knew a thing about Tennessee Jed was Jed himself, a couple of the working girls at the saloon, and the sheriff. The sheriff and the working girls made it a kind of policy not to tell the things they knew about people and Jed wasn't exactly making friends all over town either. People said that Tennessee Jed was just a sour, mean, old cuss but if ‘we’d have known him, we’d have found that he was just as lovelorn as the rest of us’.

      The sheriff recognized Jed the first day he had come into town. Our old sheriff never forgot a face. Jed's face he recognized from a time some years back. Sheriff Jenkins had been extraditing a local infamous outlaw to a prison over in the Carolinas. He'd seen Jed busting rocks on the chain gang.

      Jed stood out to a man accustomed to taking in bad men. Something in his face just didn't sit right with the sheriff. He wasn’t a hard con like the rest of them rock busters. When the sheriff called out to him and asked what he was in for, Jed stood up straight and spat the dust out of his mouth at the ground.

      He stood for a moment, looking into the dirt sullenly and only said one word.

      Murder, Jed answered calmly without looking up. He stared down through the fog of memory for a long moment before he hefted up his hammer and brought it down hard on the spot he’d been staring into.

      That had shaken the Sheriff up and he never would forget it. Therefore, when Jed showed up in town and the Sheriff went to meet him, the two men just looked at each other in silence for a real long time. They both knew where they recognized the other. Sheriff knew this man had done his time though and done it hard. He didn’t say a thing about it to anyone. He just gave Jed a respectful nod and rode off the other way.

      He let it eat at him for about a week before he went inquiring about Jed with a friend of his that had worked round that old prison around that time. The Sheriff heard the tale of the killing that Jed had done and he understood him a little differently.

      That was about as kind and welcoming as either one of them got and just about as friendly as Jed could be. Any time most other folks tried to say hello to Jed or ask him any type of question, he'd just sneer back at them with a look of loathing that could lay you low.

      At most, he'd stare a hole in you and just spit in the dirt. He would come into the saloon from time to time. Luckily, he didn't ever come to drink, he was miserable enough company without it. Every now and then, he'd corner one of the working girls and proposition her with a cold transaction that seemed to be one hundred percent business.

      They would disappear upstairs for about thirty minutes and then he'd come out looking just as stoic and miserable as ever. He was very lonely and the working girls didn't mind him one bit. Each one of our local girls quickly found a soft spot for him that the rest of us could never understood.

      Most of us just figured that he was easy money and with his stone cold heart, the girls wouldn't have to shoo him off like a lot of the other love struck drunks around here that commonly mistook a girl's kindness for genuine affection.

      Even Tennessee Jed had loved once though. In fact, he hadn't always been the hard, broken, miserable mule that we came to know him as. His parents had come over before he was born. A fair-haired girl named Abigail, though, showed up in the little community when she was already ten years old.

      Jed, being a youngster still himself even though he’d already been tasked with a lot of man’s work, was two years her senior. Even so, he fell head over heels for her the moment that he saw her.

      Abigail’s parents being so fresh to the Americas had different ways about them. Not being too trusting of some of the modern styles and ways of getting things done, and being convinced of a great deal of corruption amongst the youth, they kept their daughter quite guarded.

      Young Jed’s heart ached at the very thought of her and as he matured, so had his infatuation. Still, he’d had to admire her strictly from afar. He did all he could though and by the time Abigail was fifteen, everyone knew that she’d be Jedidiah’s sweetheart.

      She’d wake up to tend to the animals at the crow of the rooster before her folks had gotten out and find that someone had already been there, leaving a bouquet of flowers tied up for her on the front step. She had to hide them from her ma and pa of course.

      Abigail’s girlfriends told her that she should go to her young admirer but she dared not defy her parents.

      In their little community, there were barn dances during the spring, occasionally a great, glorious wedding celebration, and all kinds of festivities to commemorate various rites of passage of young men and women within their culture. The entire community came together in joyous fellowship.

      With each of these opportunities, Jedidiah knew he would have his chance to steal a glance at young, beautiful Abigail. He hoped each time that he could ask her to dance and perhaps, at last hold her in his arms as he had dreamed of doing each day since he’d first laid eyes on her.

      She never strayed from her parent’s side though.

      Jed’s heart went on aching more each time.

      It was not until in his eighteenth year, when both of his parents had been killed in a tragic accident that Abigail would finally come to him. The entire community gathered to lay them to rest and to offer what condolences they could to a boy he would suddenly has to become a man.

      Jedidiah’s father had always worked him hard, instilling in him the values of one’s own labor. He had made sure that his son was prepared to take over the homestead, but the time came earlier than anyone had expected.

      He could not have prepared his son however for the loneliness that would come.

      Everyone had come and each of them took a turn one by one to offer some words to Jedidiah; everyone but Abigail that is, who was now seventeen years old and as beautiful as any woman to ever walk the Earth.

      She stood solemnly at her mother’s side just where she always had. She watched her admirer from afar. He took the words of each visitor bravely and he was as strong as he could be. Most of the others had already come and gone, but Abigail could not yet tear herself away.

      In a moment of weakness that Jed had mistaken as a private one, a lone tear rolled down his cheek. Abigail’s tender heart broke for him and she began to weep. Her old mother, as wrinkled and stoic and strange as she was, she was no fool.

      She did not even have to look upon her daughter’s face to understand the whole thing. She clutched her daughter’s hand and squeezed it once firmly. She spoke to her in the language of the old country the words that shocked Abigail.

      Go to him. She had said in a voice hardly louder than a whisper.

      Abigail did not have to be told twice. She took off at a sprint across the grass towards Jedidiah. When her father lurched forward to stop her, confused and flustered by her sudden action, Abigail’s ma fixed him in place with a look that might have melted him on the spot. Then he understood; when love is true, there’s no meddling in it.

      Jedidiah saw Abigail running towards him out of the corner of his eye and he thought he might have been seeing things. He turned her way just in time to catch her in his strong arms, where she wrapped him up in her own and squeezed him hard.

      That young boy’s heart burst open like a broke dam and he wept in the arms of his true love, with her kissing his cheeks and wiping back the torrent of tears with her tender little hands. He wept until there wasn’t an ounce of sadness left in him and then his heart was free to do what it had been meant to do all that time, to give his undying love to the girl he’d watched for so many years.

      They were married that spring and he’d even received the blessing of her old man, who upon getting to know Jed, had accepted him as a friend as well.

      Abigail and Jed made a hell of a pair and the homestead that Jed’s parents had left behind had flourished greatly.

      The two of them loved with a love that anyone else might envy and that’s exactly what happened.

      Every community has their deviant and their people who just don’t turn out right. Something just goes wrong somewhere and the part in their head that differentiates the right and the wrong of things just doesn’t quite work.

      In the little community where Jed had grown up, that person's name was Effraim. Effraim was older than Jedidiah by four or five years and they hadn’t really known each other. His ma had died giving birth to Effraim and even as a baby; his father placed the blame on him.

      He didn't hurt the child physically, after he took to drinking he hardly did much of anything really, but he did enough damage to him.

      Though this man had parted from the ways of his people, the community made sure there was food for him and the boy. They could only do so much to raise the boy up though. It was evident early on that the boy wasn't right.

      Destruction followed Effraim everywhere he went even as a child. Without anybody paying him much attention, he quickly found a sick delight in it. Folks first started to notice when he was very young; smashing up plates and pulling the tops off of flowers.

      It worried people and got them talking and that only made it worse. In a couple of years, they were finding barn cats and things that had all kinds of bad things done to them. Everybody knew that it was Effraim, but there wasn’t much that could be done, aside from praying for him.

      Then when Effraim was about seventeen years old, his daddy’s house caught fire one day while he was in there drunk and he burned up with it. People figured that it was Effraim, who finally sent his old pa to meet his maker, but they didn’t have their own sheriff in town and nobody had seen him do it, so there was hardly a thing they could do.

      With the house gone and no family left in town, Effraim just rather wandered off. The community was glad to be rid of him.

      Effraim started living in an abandoned old shack way back in the woods. He’d live off the land when he could and when he couldn’t hack it out on his own, he’d be spotted creeping around town late at night stealing chickens and things, like a damned weasel.

      After about a year of living like that, people stopped seeing him and soon stopped thinking about him. Anyone who still did assumed he had probably moved on or maybe gotten killed or thrown in jail trying to steal from the people in the next town over.

      He was watching them though and thinking about them all the time. Everything beautiful that those good people had, he wanted to see torn up and smashed to pieces like so many other things in his life.

      Jedidiah hadn’t ever thought of Effraim at all until that last time that he came out of the woods. Abigail was inside the house baking up a delicious pie for her and her lover to enjoy that evening. Jedidiah was outside making sure the horses were all taken care of.

      At first, he thought he heard some talking and stopped what he was doing to have a listen, but he didn’t hear it again so he went back about his work. A moment later, he heard Abigail scream from inside the house and he went running as fast as he could.

      When he got inside, he saw Abigail on the ground with Effraim on top of her in clothes all tore up and covered in grime. He had Abigail pinned beneath him and was trying to claw his way through her dress with one hand.

      In his other hand, he was clutching a heavy stone over Abigail’s face and both of Abigail’s hands were locked around that wrist trying to keep it from crashing down on her skull. The sound of Jed bursting in distracted Effraim enough for Abigail to scramble up to her feet but she still had her hands locked around that wrist, or he was going to hit her.

      Jed’s heart was pounding. He could see the terror in Abigail’s eyes and her cheeks were streaked with tears. There was still too much space between Jed and Effraim so Jedidiah called out to him.

      What have you come here for? Jed shouted.

      Effraim only growled and struggled against Abigail harder. His body was weak and bony, decimated by his meager life in the woods.

      Face me you coward! Leave her be! Jedidiah screamed, terrified at his own feeling of powerlessness.

      He took a lunging step towards Abigail and Effraim, trying to cover the distance in one bound but it was too far. Abigail’s grasp broke and Effraim’s hand came up fast. Jedidiah reached for that hand but he was just inches away, he saw the grimy wrist slip past his fingers as the man rose up on his toes, bringing all his weight down behind the rock.

      Abigail’s forearm glanced off Effraim’s elbow as she was pushed off balance with his other hand and she could not stave off what was coming. Just as Jed fell upon Effraim, the stone came down hard onto Abigail’s forehead with all the strength of the lunatic, splitting her alabaster skin with a sickening thud.

      She crumpled lifelessly to the floor as Jed wrapped Effraim up in bear hug from behind and lifted him off his feet. As Jed watched his bride fall, a horrible roar like nothing you’ve ever heard boiled up from some place deep inside him that he’d never known was there, echoing through the hills and raising a shiver up the spine of all the townsfolk within earshot of it.

      People came running.

      Effraim's feet came off the floor and he found himself suddenly watching the ceiling go by with his heels going right past it over his head. Jed bent and twisted as he lifted him through the air and brought him down on the other side of him on his head onto the hard wood of the floor.

      There was a loud crunch as some brittle bone someplace inside of Effraim smashed to bits.

      Lying on the ground, Effraim felt a warm sort of peace come washing over him. He tried to move his legs but he couldn't he could wiggle his fingers but he couldn't lift his arms. He felt nothing and somehow that felt good.

      He was struck with the realization that it was the first time in his life that he had ever felt good. A deranged kind of smile broke across his face exposing his few black teeth in the instant before Jedidiah's fists came raining down upon his face.

      By the time that the first people made it to the doorway and got a look inside, Effraim was dead. Jedidiah was hunched over him, and even though all his strength had been used up he still flailed his fists one by one against Effraim's mashed, bloody flesh.

      He sobbed wildly and had to be pulled off the body by two men.

      Later, when they asked about it, Jed couldn't bear to speak. It was easy enough for everybody to piece together what had happened. They couldn't blame Jedidiah for what he'd done but they soon found that he wasn't ever going to be more than a mere shadow of the man he'd been.

      He didn't speak at all. His very presence became an unsettling reminder of every imperfection within the community.

      A week later one of the town busy bodies while visiting her sister in the next town over couldn't quit talking about her disgust at the whole ordeal. Someone really ought to do something, she kept clucking and shaking her head.

      The sheriff in that town overheard this and got to ask this woman all kinds of questions. Soon, he started throwing the word ‘murder’ around and took it upon himself to go investigate. He got a look at Effraim's corpse which being now a week past appeared even more brutalized than it had originally.

      He came to call upon Jed who hadn't said a word since and couldn't bring himself to say a word then. The sheriff asked him a heap of questions but Jedidiah only stared right through him.

      Did you murder this man? the sheriff finally demanded of him.

      Jed simply nodded his head. Nobody came to his defense; they were too unsettled living near him so they turned their backs when the sheriff hauled Jed away. He wasn't hanged because of his dead wife and the sheriff's little investigation turned up enough to get Jed out of a lifelong sentence.

      He got fifteen years worth of rocks broken for the government though.

      On the day of his release he was taken to the train station, he was informed of the entire day's schedule. During that hour there were to be two trains; one that was headed towards Tennessee and another one going to Helena, Montana.

      It wasn't a difficult choice for him.

      Mining work is dark and miserable. Jed found it well suited for him right away and adapted to it well. Soon he was able to carve out a new life for himself. Living modestly and not spending his money on liquor like most other folks here might tend to do, Jed was able to save himself a little something and bought a little lot of his own pretty quickly.

      Of course, Jed kept mostly to himself. He wasn’t outwardly rude or mean spirited but still there were those who would rather see him run out of town on a rail just for having kind of a bad attitude and generally rubbing them the wrong way.

      This unwarranted extradition might have actually taken place sometime had the old Rabbi not arrived in town when he did.

      The rabbi rolled into town one afternoon on a horse drawn cart. Local folks didn’t quite know what to make of him. His voice and his accent were a little queer to most of them and his clothes were a little bit different. The rabbi held a faint aroma of the kosher wine about him and offered an easy smile so the people he met quickly found him likable enough.

      He inquired among the first few people he met, who were unfortunately not among the most intelligent of our townspeople as to the location of the temple. The roughshod men stared back at him blankly, scratching their heads.

      We sure didn’t have any kind of temple in town. We already had a regular preacher and a big old tent for church.

      You know, for the Jews? he asked.

      The onlookers scratched their heads again and looked at each other.

      Well, sir, one of the men said, The only Jew we got is Old Tennessee Jed.

      The rabbi was pointed off in Jed’s direction. He tipped his hat to the boys and got his horses moving and he headed off across town to find Jed. If he’d been expecting to find a kindred spirit, that rabbi must have been sorely disappointed.

      Jed wasn’t exactly welcoming to the old man, but he didn’t turn him away either.

      The rabbi only prodded Jed on the topic of religion one time. At the very beginning of their relationship, sensing the deep loneliness and misery within Jed, the rabbi had simply asked how long it had been since he had prayed.

      Jed stared off into the horizon for a long moment like he was in a trance and then he leaned over and spit into the dirt.

      You wanna know the last time I prayed? Jed began, Was when I come through the door of our beautiful little home and I saw my beautiful little wife, my one true love… His voice wavered as he remembered. I saw fear, just straight, stark fear in her eyes and that crazy son of a bitch bearing down on her with that rock in his hand.

      The rabbi looked on, nodding his head solemnly as Jed worked through it.

      "I’d prayed a lot back then, all the time. I did the work, I did everything I was supposed to do and I never asked for nothing before that day. I prayed, all right. I prayed for us to be seen through, I prayed for God to keep my wife safe, then I prayed for the quickness and strength to save her myself.

      I begged. Jed’s face was a cold mask of pain as he spoke softly. "I offered up everything. I tried to bargain with the Lord and I didn’t hear nothing back. When that rock split my baby open, I prayed that she’d be all right. When she felt to the floor I prayed that God would take me instead.

      Even as I lifted that bastard through the air and I came down on top of him and I balled up my fists, I told the Lord I was gonna give him one more chance to make it right, but my wife was dead Rabbi, and you know what I heard?"

      The rabbi didn’t look up. He knew where this story was going.

      I didn’t hear a damn thing, because there wasn’t nobody listening. Jed spit in the ground one more time, stood up and walked inside, leaving the rabbi sitting outside alone.

      He knew Jed wouldn’t be coming back out for a while and he didn’t blame him. The rabbi walked off and gave Jed a few days before going back. He didn’t really hassle him about his religion any more after that.

      The rabbi had one of those easygoing personalities. No matter how different a person was to him, he’d still rather have that person as a friend that use it as an excuse to divide himself away. He liked Jed. He had to be one of the only people that really did.

      He kept showing back up, sharing his coffee and his food and never asking for anything in return. He asked Jed honest questions about mining and tilling the land and respected his every insight.

      The rabbi was the only person to make Jed laugh in a really long time. It nearly shocked him into a heart attack.

      When are you going to meet a nice woman? The rabbi had asked.

      Jed had been caught off guard. Finally, cracking a smile though warmed his heart a little bit though and it even got Jed to thinking. He played it cool as he could and told the rabbi he was doing just fine and didn’t have any need for a woman.

      The rabbi pointed to a big yellow stain on the belly of Jed’s shirt and politely smiled his disagreement. Then he took a telling look around him at the awful mess that was Jed’s home.

      Are you afraid the working girls would have to find a new line of work? The rabbi asked in his funny accent. I think they will get along just fine without you, Jed.

      Jed smiled again. He simply hadn’t ever entertained the thought. He had long since considered himself broken. The seed had now been planted within his mind though and as the

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