The Quality of Mercy

The eastern sun reflected its rays on the newly fallen morning snow as Mercy Cummings exited the front door of her mobile home, green parka zipped snuggly over four different shirts of varying thickness. She still shivered as she trudged across the lawn to check on her neighbor, an aged but otherwise healthy centenarian. The power in her neighborhood had been out since around 3 AM and she knew that the old lady did not have firewood to keep her house warm in this unprecedented weather. Knocking on the door she called out, “Mrs. Dearborn?”

Silence. She knocked again, this time a little harder, calling out Mrs. Portia Dearborn’s name louder over the sound of children dodging snowballs across the street and yelling into the wind.

“Mrs. Dearborn? It’s me, Mercy. Are you okay? The power’s out in the neighborhood. Are you warm?” Still silence.

Mercy dug into her coat pocket for the key the old lady had given her months ago when she had watched Mrs. Dearborn’s house during a brief hospital stay. She unlocked the deadbolt on Mrs. Dearborn’s front door and struggled in vain to force it open. It wouldn’t budge. Going to a side window, she knocked on the panes of Portia’s bedroom window, calling out her name again as she did so. There was the hint of movement in the house, but Mercy couldn’t make out what it was. She opened the back gate and slowly navigated the foot of iced over snow to the back door. What she saw gripped her with panic.

The back door was wide open, the north wind fiercely blowing through the house and drifts of snow were piled just inside the entrance. Quickly, Mercy stepped inside, calling out Portia’s name again.

“Mrs. Dearborn? Portia?” she called out as she closed the back door.

She paused to listen to the faint sound of movement. It seemed to come from the kitchen, a small alcove at the front of the house. With trepidation she made her way toward the sound. Entering the room, she saw her. The old lady was struggling to pull a small, twin mattress across the floor toward a fire she had started in her oven. The fire, feasting on a table leg that had been its fuel, thankfully remained within the boundaries of the oven but didn’t seem to give off much heat.

“Portia? It’s me, Mercy. Are you okay?” Mercy said calmly as she approached the old lady who didn’t seem to notice her in the room. Her gaze was locked on the small fire.

“Portia, let me help you. A fire in your oven is dangerous. You could burn this whole place down. Let me build a fire in your fireplace and we can sit on the sofa. We can stay warm together. Let me help…”

The older woman finally seemed to recognize the voice nearby and slowly turned her face toward Mercy. With haste, Mercy darted over and extinguished the fire, causing smoke to fill the small room. She grabbed Portia and helped her to the living room. It appeared that Portia was confused by all the movement and she attempted to struggle against Mercy’s assistance, trying to go back toward where her stove fire had been. Mercy was stronger though and was able to pick up the five foot frame of brittle bones that were covered with flannel and nylon.

“Portia, I’m not sure you can understand me, but it’s very cold. Your back door was open and there is no heat. If you can sit right here, I’m going to cover you with this afghan and get a fire started. You’ll be warm before you know it, and I’ll sit with you.”

Mercy grabbed the thick afghan that covered a nearby chair and wrapped it around the front of Portia before grabbing the rest of the table legs the old lady had somehow disassembled. The table was useless with only three legs left, so Mercy used them as firewood. She knew it wouldn’t last long, but hoped it would warm the living room long enough for her to find something else to feed the flames. She went through the house closing all the other doors so that the warmth of the blaze had less area to heat.

“Do you feel that warm fire, Portia? Let it warm you. You are shivering. Let me help,” Mercy said gently as she sat next to the old lady and placed her left arm over Portia’s thin shoulders in an effort to share her body heat. The smoke from the kitchen had made its way into the living room and hovered as a gray cloud over their heads. Mercy used her right hand to dig into the inside pocket of her parka to retrieve her cell phone. Finally retrieving it, she pressed the emergency button that could call 911. Mercy had not been able to pay the bill, and the service didn’t work. She was thankful that emergency calls always went through.

She sat with Mrs. Dearborn while she used her eyes to search the room for something else to feed the fire; the thin table legs were already almost fully consumed. Seeing a wooden chest in the hallway, she got up to empty its contents. It would surely feed the flames long enough to warm the home while waiting for help to arrive. The aged woman seemed to be fading within a haze of confusion that caused her to tug at the afghan in an effort to remove it; Mercy had wrapped it around her in a way that almost swaddled her like an infant, and Portia’s efforts became more panicked as she helplessly fought to disentangle herself.

“Portia, don’t do that, honey. You’re shivering and you need to stay warm. Here, let me loosen it a little. Can I do that? Don’t worry. We won’t have to wait too long.”

At her words, the old lady looked up to stare at Mercy’s blurry figure whose words seemed to sound like a faint echo that held no meaning. Yet, slowly, the old lady stopped struggling and allowed Mercy to loosen the afghan.

“Ple…ple…please”, the old lady whispered.

“Yes, Miss Portia?” Mercy asked.

“The box…my…box”, Portia managed to say while pointing toward the wooden chest.

“I’d like to use that for firewood. Is that okay?”

Portia’s eyes looked back toward the waning fire and seemed to nod her approval.

Mercy opened the chest and found it almost empty. Inside, a tiny, black book sat on top of a tattered quilt that looked as old as the homeowner. Mercy dumped out the chest and started prying apart the wood. As she did so, she fed its pieces into the hungry fire.

“Mrs. Dearborn? Portia, can you understand me?...Can you hear me?”

Portia’s eyes didn’t look in her direction, but Mercy saw the old lady nod ever so slightly.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and Mercy went to let the authorities enter. Again, she wrestled with the front door before shouting to those outside that the door was stuck. Finally, one of them made their way to the back door and was able to enter the home, followed by two others. Seeing the old lady seated on the sofa, they immediately began warming her, covering her with a blanket made of shiny, silver material and speaking to her in soft, comforting tones.

“Are you okay” one of them asked Mercy as she looked on in alarm.

“Y-yes,” Mercy answered, “just help Miss Portia. Her back door was open when I arrived and she almost frozen solid.”

“Don’t worry. She’s lucky you arrived here when you did. I’m assuming you built that fire?

“Yes”, Mercy answered.

“She’s confused,” he continued, “but that’s normal given her age and these circumstances. We’ll take care of her.” He then paused before continuing, “Are you a relative?”

“No,” Mercy answered. “Just a neighbor. I don’t think she has any relatives. She had a husband, but he died a good while back.”

The old woman appeared to be trying to speak, and the worker bent closer to listen.

“Yes ma’am,” he answered her.

“What did she say? Can I do anything?” Mercy asked.

“Just a minute,” he answered as he helped his co-workers place Portia on a wheeled bed that one of them had brought into the house. “I’ll be right back to get you warmed up as well.”

“Me? I’m fine. I’m warm enough in front of this fire.”

After yelling something to his colleagues, the worker pointed toward a burn on Mercy’s hand. He began treating it as Mercy stared in disbelief. She vaguely remembered putting out the fire in the kitchen, but a small, remembered vision of the flames darting outward as she threw snow at it, suddenly appeared and caused her to tremble. Apparently, the fire had grazed her hand, and Mercy had been so busy helping Portia, that she had not noticed.

“You saved her, you know?” the EMT said as he did his work. “We’ll need to get you to the hospital, too. This burn can be treated better there, and I’m sure you’ll be right as rain in no time. A little scarring, maybe, but you’re a hero.”

Mercy stared and began following him out to the ambulance, glancing with dismay at the foreclosure sign in her own yard across the road.

“She wants you to grab the black book from the chest,” Mercy heard the man saying.

“Huh?” Mercy asked.

“She said she wants you to grab it. You know what she’s talking about?”

“I think so. It’s just a tiny little thing. Are you sure that’s what she said?”

The man shrugged his shoulders and Mercy ran back in to retrieve the book before returning to ride along in the ambulance.

Days later, as Mercy returned home, she entered and sat at her kitchen table amazed. Across from her, lying face up on a placemat, sat the little black book. Pulling out her phone, she called her friend.

“Hey Dallas,” she said to the voice on the other end, “I get to keep my home.”

After explaining the situation, she hung up and opened up the black book to see the check inside the cover; it had been made out to her. $20,000. Enough to keep her home, pay her past due bills, and satisfy her creditors. As they had the first time, Mercy’s eyes welled up with tears as she read the scribbled message on the first page of the book:

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed;

It blesses him that gives and him that takes.”

-W. Shakespeare, from The Merchant of Venice

While at the hospital, Mercy had learned that Portia had saved up the cash for years and had meant to bequeath it to Mercy in her will. When Portia had seen the foreclosed sign on the lawn across from her, she had made the decision to give the money to Mercy early. And, she had.

Mercy smiled through tears at the woman’s kindness as she waited patiently for Portia to return from the hospital. The EMT had said that Mercy had saved the old lady’s life, but Mercy felt at once that she was the lesser hero; Portia had planned her mercy in advance. And, it was beautiful.