The Sacrifice

by Robert Whitlow

  “Ready for peanuts?” Kay asked.

  “And a drink. Chewing ice makes me thirsty.”

  “Two drinks and peanuts. Do you want to go with me?”

  “Sure.”

  Scott followed Kay down the steps. They passed Yvette Fisher who saw them together and quickly reported to her friends that Mrs. Wilson was getting a divorce and had a date with Mr. Ellis to the game.

  “Do you want another hamburger to replace the one I ate?” Kay asked.

  “No. Peanuts are fine.”

  There was a long line at the concession stand. When they returned to their seats, the second half was about to begin. Catawba had the ball on offense. Kay held the bag toward Scott who took out a few peanuts and cracked one open.

  “I stopped for a few minutes at Lake Norman on my way back from Charlotte today,” he said. “Do you remember the time we went skiing?”

  Kay nodded. “It was freezing. I had goose bumps the size of marbles.”

  “Was that your first time on water skis? I couldn’t remember.”

  “Second. But it was the first time under arctic conditions.”

  Kay broke open a shell and put a fat peanut in Scott’s right hand. “Here, this is a good one.” The peanut rolled into the indention created by a long scar that stretched across Scott’s palm from his thumb to his little finger. Kay stared hard for a full two seconds. “Scott, what in the world happened to your hand?”

  Scott glanced down and put the peanut in his mouth. “It happened in the army.” He pointed to the field. “Look, the quarterback is going to throw it to Dustin.”

  The Catawba receiver left his feet and stretched out prone in the air in an effort to reach a ball that sailed a few inches beyond his fingertips.

  “That was close,” Scott said.

  With less than a minute to play, the visiting team recovered a fumble on the Catawba twenty-five-yard line. The offense was unable to move the ball, and on fourth down with three seconds left, their coach decided to attempt the least likely to succeed play in high-school football—a field goal. The kicker, a defensive tackle, lumbered onto the field in a uniform covered with dirt from the trench warfare of the previous four quarters. He lined up straight behind the ball and kicked a low line drive that barely cleared the lower bar of the goalpost. The final score was 3-0.

  “Tough game,” Scott said, as they watched the other team celebrate along the sidelines. The Catawba fans were silent. “Let’s find Dustin.”

  They made their way through the departing crowd. Several of the battered Catawba players were gathering up their gear. Kay stopped to talk to a student in one of her classes. Scott saw Dustin near the Catamount bench beside an older man with the same blond hair streaked with gray.

  Dustin’s face was streaked with dirt, and he had a small cut on the bridge of his nose. He saw Scott and motioned for him to come over.

  “Dad, this is Mr. Ellis, the lawyer who is coaching the mock trial team.”

  Mr. Rawlings shook Scott’s hand. “Number 51, wasn’t it? Right side linebacker.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Scott replied with surprise. “That was a long time ago. How did you remember my number and position?”

  “I told you he knows everything about Catawba football,” Dustin said.

  “Not exactly,” Mr. Rawlings smiled. “Dustin mentioned you, and I looked you up in a file I have at home.”

  “He probably knew anyway,” Dustin added. “Ask him a question.”

  Scott thought a moment. “Okay. There was a defensive end who graduated with me. He still lives in Catawba. Do you know—”

  “Perry Dixon,” Mr. Rawlings answered. “He was a tough competitor. I remember a game in which he sacked the quarterback five or six times.”

  “That’s right. We gave him the game ball. He has it on a shelf at his gym.”

  Most of the Catawba players were moving across the field.

  “I’d better get to the locker room,” Dustin said. “Thanks for coming down to see me.”

  Scott watched him trudge toward the locker room. “I dreaded the locker room after we lost a game. It was bad enough losing, but we had a head coach that would yell and throw helmets through the air.”

  “I was on the booster club when he was fired,” Mr. Rawlings said. “Things are much better with Coach Butler. He knows how to motivate the boys without degrading them.”

  “That’s good. I promise not to yell or throw legal pads if we don’t win the mock trial competition.”

  Mr. Rawlings chuckled. “You’ve inspired Dustin by coming to this game. The best motivation is based on personal relationship.”

  Scott found Kay and they walked together toward the exit.

  “Is next week a home game?” he asked.

  “No. It’s at Lincolnton.”

  “Are you going?”

  Kay nodded. “Probably.”

  “Would you like to ride together?” he asked. “You still owe me a hamburger.”

  “Maybe.”

  12

  The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

  DEUTERONOMY 33:27 (RSV)

  Sunday morning Kay rolled over and turned off the alarm buzzing loudly beside her left ear. The alarm clock was the only thing on her nightstand. The picture of Jake and herself on their honeymoon in St. Thomas was now in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She’d put it under a purple sweater she never wore.

  The sun was shining outside the bedroom window of her apartment, and she prepared to force herself out of bed and get ready for school. Then, realizing she had a day of rest, she fell back against her pillow with a sigh of relief and didn’t open her eyes for another hour and a half.

  When she awoke the second time, she put on a T-shirt and shorts and walked downstairs to the workout room in the basement of her building. Exercising had been one of the bright spots in her marriage to Jake. They had spent many pleasant mornings jogging along the beaches of California and the wooded trails of Virginia, but in the end, Jake had not been willing to go the distance with her. After forty-five minutes going up and down simulated hills on a treadmill, she turned off the machine and sat on a stool in front of a small fan. She was hot and sweaty and lonely. The treadmill was the perfect machine for her. It reflected her marriage— running up and down without going anywhere, sweating without anything enduring to show for it.

  Upstairs in her apartment, she poured a glass of water. On her kitchen counter was a stack of papers she’d brought home from her school mailbox. Most of the sheets were administrative announcements and notices about faculty meetings that didn’t affect her. She tossed page after page into the trash. In the midst of the stack was a neon orange flyer:

  Catawba Community Church is meeting in the gym at the middle school on Sunday mornings at 10:30 A.M. All are welcome. Casual attire.

  There was something familiar about the name of the church. Laying the sheet aside, she put her right foot on a wooden stool and leaned forward until she could touch her toes. She didn’t want to tighten up. She looked at the notice again while she stretched her other leg. Then she remembered. Janie Collins had invited her to come to one of the meetings.

  Kay looked at the clock and made a decision. It wasn’t quite 9:45 A.M. She had time to take a shower and get dressed. The only other demands on her day were some papers in her brown satchel that needed to be graded by Monday. Kay made up her mind. She had to get out of the lonely apartment for a few hours. A church that met in a gym might be interesting.

  At 10:28 A.M. she pulled into a parking space in front of the old, redbrick gymnasium. The long, narrow structure was crowned with high, opaque-glass windows that slid open on levers and had served as the main source of ventilation before the introduction of air conditioning. There were about fifteen cars in the parking lot. Opening a heavy, gray metal door, Kay walked through the foyer that formerly housed the trophy case before it was moved to the new high school. Inside the gym a group of forty-five men, women,
and children sat in folding chairs set up at one end of the gym floor.

  A young man with a guitar stood in front of the congregation tuning his instrument. Janie Collins sat beside him sorting through a red plastic box containing transparencies. A portable screen was set up behind a black music stand. When Janie saw Kay, her face lit up, and she almost ran to the back of the room.

  “Mrs. Wilson! Thanks for coming. Do you want to sit with my mom and brothers?”

  “Sure.”

  After introducing Kay to her mother, Janie returned to her seat by the box of transparencies. Kay sat by the smaller of the two boys. He had a dimple in the same spot as his sister.

  A few people were talking, but everyone grew quiet when Janie turned on the overhead projector and displayed the words to a song on the white screen. Without any introduction or comment, the guitarist began to vigorously strum his instrument. Everyone stood and started clapping. Janie’s brother began clapping and looked questioningly at Kay until she joined in. After finishing his musical introduction, the leader started to sing and even though the gym was a large room, the group’s voices made a valiant effort to fill the void.

  One song led to another in a seamless flow. It reminded Kay of a camp for teenagers she attended one summer after moving to California. She closed her eyes and could almost smell the woods that surrounded the open-air pavilion where they held their twilight meetings. Most of the speakers at the camp shared from personal experience, and Kay had listened. She’d liked it better than the dry sermons she heard when her family occasionally went to church.

  The words to the last song faded, and Kay felt more refreshed than after her morning shower. A chubby, older man with a thin rim of white hair surrounding his bald head came forward from his seat in the front row. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, khaki pants, and brown cowboy boots.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Welcome to Catawba Community Church. I’m Ben Whitmire. If this is your first time, please raise your hand so that we can give you some information about the church.”

  Kay was the only newcomer, and the guitar player handed her a brochure. On the back was a picture of Reverend Whitmire and a brief bio. He was a retired minister who had served several churches in North Carolina for more than forty years. He’d grown up in west Texas and attended Howard Payne University in Brownwood. That explained the presence of the boots.

  Reverend Whitmire opened a big, black Bible that rested on the music stand and began speaking. The minister had an open-hearted style of speaking and self-deprecating sense of humor that surfaced in the sto- ries he told as illustrations to his sermon. By the end of the message, Kay felt as though she was beginning to know him as a person, not just watching him perform as a preacher.

  After the benediction, Janie introduced Kay to Linda Whitmire, a slender, white-haired lady with deep wrinkles around the kindest eyes Kay had ever seen. They were eyes you could talk to. Eyes you could trust. But eyes that saw beneath the surface.

  “Come meet Ben,” Mrs. Whitmire said.

  Kay followed her to the front.

  “Ben, this is Kay Wilson. She’s a teacher at the high school.”

  The minister turned and greeted her. “Thanks for coming.”

  “I enjoyed the service, especially the singing,” Kay said. Then suddenly realizing that she’d elevated the worship over the minister’s preaching, she added, “I mean, the sermon was good, too.”

  Ben laughed. “Don’t apologize. I like the worship better myself.”

  “Could you join us for lunch?” Linda asked. “We’re going to the Eagle.”

  Kay glanced over her shoulder. She’d thought about inviting Janie and her family out to eat, but they had already left the building.

  “Okay, that sounds great.”

  “Meet us there,” Ben said. “We’ll be finished here in a few minutes.”

  The biggest meal of the week at the Eagle was the Sunday buffet dinner. The congregations of the two large downtown churches converged on the restaurant immediately after the eleven o’clock church service. The Methodists arrived first. Their minister said the benediction precisely at 11:59 A.M., and everyone’s wristwatches chirped the top of the hour as they stood to leave the service and move down the street to the restaurant. The Methodists had time to make it once through the buffet line before the Baptists rolled in at 12:30 P.M. The Baptist service usually ran past noon either because the preacher waxed eloquent on point three of his sermon or gave an extra altar call. But there was no anxiety about a lack of food among the Baptist rank and file. Bea Dempsey planned for the flow of traffic as skillfully as a military mess sergeant.

  As soon as the Baptists started trickling through the door, Bea pushed back a flimsy brown sliding partition and opened up the overflow room. It was a good system and kept the peace between the two main branches of Christendom in town. After a couple of trips down the buffet line, the two groups met in sweet harmony around the dessert table.

  Kay and the Whitmires arrived after the main wave of Methodists but before the Baptists crested through the door.

  Bea bustled by to take care of the cash register. “Hello, Kay,” she called out. “Hope you all enjoy the buffet today.”

  “Do you eat here often?” Linda asked.

  “Only one time. I’m surprised she remembered my name.”

  “Bea’s great with names,” Ben said. “It’s good for business. Makes you feel like family.”

  “I don’t have the gift,” Kay said. “It took me weeks to learn my students’ names.”

  The buffet line was set up at the back of the main dining room so that the food could be brought out fresh and hot from the kitchen. Kay and the Whitmires zigzagged through the tables and each picked up a heavy, white china plate. Sunday dinner featured every vegetable grown in the local area by the small farmers who sold fresh produce to Bea from June to November. Corn on the cob, green beans, sliced tomatoes, fried okra, mashed potatoes, beets, boiled cabbage, turnip greens, lima beans, and peas with onions sat in stainless-steel serving pans. Everyone ate at least one piece of fried chicken, but for variety there was spiral sliced ham glazed with brown sugar. Rolls and corn bread rested on two large pans.

  “This looks especially good today,” Ben said three times as they made their way down the serving line.

  By the end, his plate was piled high, and he carefully crowned it with a thin slice of ham. A waitress put three glasses of tea on the table without asking what they wanted to drink and hurried back to the kitchen. The Baptists were beginning to come through the door and that meant more of everything.

  Ben prayed a blessing on the food and took a bite of fried chicken. “Preacher food,” he said. “In forty years of ministry I’ve eaten enough fried chicken to feed a small city.”

  “Enjoy yourself, but remember you’re not a one-man city,” Linda said. Turning to Kay, she asked, “What brought you to Catawba?”

  Kay told her story in between bites. Linda’s interest was genuine, and Kay was at ease. When Linda asked about her husband, Kay’s eyes watered before she could stop them. She needed a surrogate mother and white-haired Linda Whitmire filled the bill. It took three borrowed tissues, but she told the story of her relationship with Jake. Neither woman ate very much. Ben slowed down and listened.

  Kay sniffled and glanced around the room. “This is embarrassing.”

  “That’s okay,” Linda reached forward and squeezed Kay’s hand.

  “Unless something happens, the divorce will be final in a few weeks,” Kay continued. “For the past year I’ve been in limbo, bouncing back and forth between anger and sadness.”

  “What do you want?” Linda asked.

  “It depends on when you ask me. I meant what I said on my wedding day, and right now I would like to see a miracle. Tomorrow, I might feel differently. My world has been turned upside down, and I haven’t found a place where I feel safe and secure.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair. “The need for safety and secur
ity reminds me of a verse I memorized when I was a little boy in Vacation Bible School. ‘The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’”

  Kay dabbed her eye with a tissue. “That’s a beautiful image, but I don’t know where God lives on earth, and I can’t say that his arms are underneath me.”

  “I understand. Are you up for a true story to illustrate my point?”

  Ben asked.

  Kay nodded. “Yes.”

  Ben pushed away his empty plate. “Try to eat while I talk. Many years ago, Linda and I served a church in Hendersonville, North Carolina. One spring weekend we took a group of young people camping in the Smoky Mountains near the Virginia border. We arrived Friday evening and spent the night huddled in our tents because it rained and rained and rained. In the morning the clouds began to break up, and after breakfast, we took the kids for a walk through the woods above a waterfall. Linda and I had a new beagle puppy, and I was carrying the little fellow to keep him out of mischief. We came to a spot where a large log spanned the stream and decided to cross to the other side.

  “Because it had rained all night, the water was rushing along at a rapid clip, and I decided to make sure the log was stable before letting anyone else try to walk across. Holding the puppy, I stepped out on the log. It was broad, but after taking a few steps, I realized it was too slippery to be safe. When I turned around toward the bank, my right foot slipped off the log. Crazy as it sounds, my first thought was about the puppy, and I threw him toward Linda who was standing at the edge of the bank. He landed safely at her feet about the time I hit the water.

  “The water was freezing cold, and although it wasn’t over my head, the power of the current began pushing me downstream. I tried to stand up, but the rocks on the bottom were slick, and I couldn’t get my footing. I kept falling down. It was like a log flume, and I was a log rushing toward the sawmill.”

  Kay’s sniffles had stopped.

  “I remembered from previous trips to the area that there was a bend in the stream ahead of me, and I decided to position myself in the current so that the force of the water would push me toward the bank as the stream swept around to the right. Linda and the kids were running along the path yelling and asking me what they should do. It was all I could do to keep my head above water. I kept trying to stand up, but the water knocked me down and spun me around several times. When the bend came into view, I was able to turn myself in the water so that the force of the stream pushed me into the bank. I reached out and grabbed some limbs that extended over the water, but everything broke off in my hand. The current swept me around the bend, and I twisted sideways. My face hit a rock that was jutting out of the water, and I broke my nose.”