by Robert Inman
“Didn’t you get lost?”
“Hell, I was lost when I started. I just kept the nose pointed west, and I stopped and asked for directions every so often. It took a bit longer, but I wasn’t in any hurry in the first place.” Trout could hear the pride in Joe Pike’s voice. Hey, Ma! Look what I did!
Joe Pike sat there for a moment, then shook his head, swung one leg over the motorcycle and sat sidesaddle looking at Trout.
“When is Mama coming home?” Trout asked.
He expected Joe Pike to duck this one, too. But instead, his eyes never left Trout. “Cicero and I stopped in Atlanta,” he said. “Your mama’s doctor didn’t think it was best that we see her. Said she was resting, getting along okay.”
“When, then?”
“The doctor was a little vague about that. He was a little vague about everything.”
Instead, it was Trout who ducked his head. He thought at first that there was something false about Joe Pike’s steady gaze. The appearance of dealing with things. But then he looked back up at Joe Pike and saw that that wasn’t the case at all. If anything, it was too much honesty.
“Trout…” he said.
“What?”
“I love you, son.”
“I love you too.”
“Bear with me. And Mama. Give it all some time. One thing about it…”
“What’s that?”
“It’ll either work out or it won’t.”
“That’s not much to go on,” Trout said.
“No, I suspect not. Not much reassurance. But that’s life, son.”
Trout felt a rush of anger. Damn Joe Pike for leaving, and damn him for leaving something of himself back there, coming back empty-handed. He could understand the leaving, at least a little. Irene gone to ground, Joe Pike’s faith – in himself and God – shaken, his ministry gone sour. Okay, so he had gone out to do battle, smote his demons hip and thigh, vanquish devilment, whatever. But somewhere out there on the road to Texas, out on those rural two-lanes with the wind in his ears and the sun in his eyes and the heat phantoms on the pavement ahead, he seemed to have lost heart. And now he had returned from the journey weary and subdued -- still vertical, as he said, but whacked off at the knees. And unsure of what was next. Trout, who needed desperately to be reassured about even some small thing, saw that Joe Pike seemed reassured about nothing. There appeared to be no solid ground under either of them. It will either work out or it won’t. That’s life. Oh? Is that what life is? Well if so, he thought, it truly sucks.
Trout wanted to yell something at Joe Pike, at least let some of his hurt and bafflement out, but then he realized that anger would serve no purpose here. It might even spook Joe Pike again. It was not a good sign that he was out here at six-thirty on a Sunday morning tinkering with the damned motorcycle. Better to watch and wait. He was getting quite good at it. So he gave Joe Pike a long look that he tried to shape into something like grudging forbearance “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
* * * * *
Aunt Alma seemed disappointed that Joe Pike wanted to preach. She had indeed planned a Sunday morning service without a sermon: two anthems from the choir, scripture readings and the like by various lay folk, Fleet Mathis giving a report on his and Myrtice’s recent trip to the Holy Land. Joe Pike could just take it easy, she said. But he insisted. He put on his robe and marched in behind the choir and sat patiently while everybody went on with the service Aunt Alma had planned.
Aunt Alma said it was the biggest crowd they had had in years, even bigger than Easter. But it truly wasn’t very big, nothing like the regular Sunday turnout in Ohatchee. There were a lot of empty seats here. And like the welcoming committee yesterday, it tended toward older people, some of them downright ancient. There was a scattering of middle-aged and younger couples, only a handful of children. Three other teenagers, a boy and two girls who sat together on a back pew and didn’t seem much interested in Trout.
It was a fairly small sanctuary, an arc of oak pews nestling close to the communion rail in front of the pulpit, all of the wood stained dark, the cross and twin candles on the communion table a burnished brass, deep burgundy carpeting on the floor, a sweep of stained glass along the walls where the twelve Disciples looked down, bathing everything with softly fractured color. They sang old hymns -- “Blessed Assurance” and “Rescue The Perishing” and “Take the Name of Jesus With You” -- and the singing had a rich mellowness to it, aging voices with the pipe organ flowing beneath like an underground stream.
It was almost noon when Joe Pike finally rose to speak. It was absolutely still and expectant. The congregation waited. So did the Twelve Disciples, looking down from the windows, their bearded faces impassive. Joe Pike stood for a moment, leaning across the pulpit, his gaze taking everything in, resting finally on Trout, who sat with Aunt Alma and Uncle Cicero on the third row, directly in front of the pulpit. Their eyes met for an instant. Pay attention. I’m gonna give it a shot.
Then Joe Pike’s gaze broke away and he raised up, stood tall behind the pulpit, towering over it. “I’ve been in a fight,” he said. Then he paused for a moment, cocked his head to the side, worked his jaw into a crooked grin. “I never knew but two folks who could whip me. That was Bear Bryant and the Holy Ghost. I ran into both of ’em in Texas.”
He paused for a moment and ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it back on his head. There was dead silence in the sanctuary. What’s going on here?
Joe Pike went on. “I like the phrase, ‘Holy Ghost.’ Now I realize that the church, in its wisdom and an effort to be modern, has changed it to ‘Holy Spirit.’ But I like the thought, outdated though it may be, of God’s ghost lurking about. Something we can’t see but sometimes feel. An apparition that oozes through walls and appears in places we’d rather He not be.” His eyes swept over the congregation again. “Have you ever been sitting alone in a room and all of a sudden felt there was somebody else there? And you looked up and there wasn’t?” He raised his eyebrows, waiting. Trout saw a few heads nod among the congregation. “Well, that’s the way I felt a few weeks ago. I was riding my motorcycle to Texas.” He said it off-handedly, as if he were describing a trip to the grocery store. “And the Holy Ghost got on in Flatwoods, Louisiana. I had stopped at a traffic light, and when the light turned green and I pulled away, I thought to myself, ‘There’s somebody on this motorcycle with me.’ Well, the Holy Ghost stayed on the back of that motorcycle all the way to Junction, Texas. I couldn’t get a good look at Him, but I could feel Him back there, hanging on. And when I realized who it was, I got to asking questions. I’m talking really deep theology here. Everything from immaculate conception to papal infallacy. But everytime I’d ask the Holy Ghost a question, He’d say, ‘Uh-uh. Not important.’ Now I don’t have to tell you, that gets mighty irritating after awhile. And by the time we got to Junction, I’d had about enough. So I jumped off the motorcycle and yelled, ‘Awright, dang it! Tell me what’s important!’” Joe Pike smote the air with a massive arm. “But the Holy Ghost didn’t say a word. So even though I couldn’t see Him, I could feel Him pretty good, and I grabbed Him in a head lock and threw Him down on the ground and we wrestled there for a good little while. And the Holy Ghost whipped me.”
Joe Pike stopped suddenly, took a half-step back from the pulpit and stood for a moment looking off above the congregation’s heads, lost in thought. Trout stole a glance at Aunt Alma. She was staring at Joe Pike, mouth open. Then she closed her mouth and gave a tiny shake of her head. Joe Pike cleared his throat and stepped up again. “Texas ain’t a good place to get whipped. It’s hot and dry and you can get a mouthful of dirt when you waller around on the ground. And I did. It felt just like it did when Bear Bryant got through with me. I knew I’d been whipped. But I’m a stubborn fellow. So I asked the Holy Ghost one last time, ‘What’s important?’ And this time, He asked back, ‘What do you believe?’ I thought about that for a good while and then I said, ‘I believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy G
host. And beyond that, I’m pretty much open.’ And the Holy Ghost said, ‘That’ll have to do for starters.’ And then He told me to rest up and then get on back to Moseley, Georgia and work on the rest of it. So here I am.”
It was astonishing, Trout thought. He had sat through years of Joe Pike’s preaching, and this was something entirely new. Joe Pike’s sermons had always been heavy on scripture and theology, spiced with anecdotes and snippets of humor -- a clever phrase here, a nugget of scriptural wisdom there -- all delivered in Joe Pike’s rich, rolling voice that cascaded down over the congregation. He was a master of gesture -- a quick jab of finger, a sweep of arm, a slow open-palmed beseeching. He was a huge, black-robed conductor, guiding the congregation through the symphony he had carefully crafted in the hours he spent behind the closed door of his study. When it was done, the supplicants might not be able to say in so many words exactly what the point was, but they spoke of Joe Pike’s sermons with some satisfaction as “deep.”
This, though -- his first sermon in sixteen years in Moseley Memorial Methodist Church -- was something altogether different. Piss and vinegar. Joe Pike looked out across the congregation as if to say, Any questions here? But nobody said a thing. Trout cut another quick glance at Aunt Alma. Her mouth was set in a thin, disapproving line. Everybody else looked simply perplexed. Joe Pike sat down.
* * * * *
Uncle Cicero had changed into his Police Chief uniform by the time they sat down to dinner in the dining room at Aunt Alma’s house. Cicero explained that as the chief of a two-man police force, he felt it incumbent upon him to share weekend duty. He would be “on patrol” through the early evening. Cicero was short and a little beefy, mostly bald on top. But his tan uniform with dark blue piping and epaulets fit him nicely and he wore it well. Little silver eagles were pinned to his collar points. His big leather belt with handcuffs, flashlight, billy club and holstered 44-magnum pistol was hanging on a coat rack out in the front hallway.
It was just the four of them, their voices a bit hollow in the high-ceilinged dining room with its massive mahogany furniture. The black woman named Rosetta who cooked for Alma and Cicero kept coming in from the kitchen with platters heaped with food, and Joe Pike kept taking portions while Rosetta beamed at him approvingly, and he and Cicero carried on a running discourse about the hardware business. Aunt Alma was unusually quiet. Perhaps, Trout thought, still taken aback by Joe Pike’s sermon. She seemed to have made an effort to soften herself today. Her dress was a fluffy summery thing and there was a string of pearls just below her throat. Something, Trout thought, of the girl she had once been. There was a prim set to her mouth and she ate with small, precise motions.
Uncle Cicero liked talking hardware and he liked the word “your.” As in, “You’ve got your sand mix and then you’ve got your mortar mix and then you’ve got your concrete mix.”
“So what do I need to pour a concrete floor in that storage shed behind the parsonage?”
“Your concrete mix. But before you do that, you’d want to put down your wire mesh.”
“You mean like re-bar?”
“No, you don’t need anything as heavy-duty as your re-bar, unless you’re gonna keep something real heavy in there.”
“Like an armored personnel carrier.”
“Or a whiskey still.” Uncle Cicero cackled. “Fellow come in my place back a few years ago, bought every sack of concrete mix I had and every inch of re-bar. The state boys caught him with a two-thousand-gallon whiskey still in a barn on his proppity. It had your heavy-duty floor underneath it.”
Aunt Alma roused herself then and let out a little forced laugh. “Goodness gracious, Cicero, couldn’t you find something more uplifting to talk about at the Sunday dinner table than whiskey stills?”
Uncle Cicero smiled and nodded agreeably. “I could. I reckon.”
Alma looked across the table at Joe Pike. “If you want a floor in the storage shed, just say so and I’ll have the mill superintendent take care of it.”
Joe Pike looked right back. “I’ll take it up with the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee.”
“There isn’t one.”
“Oh? And who takes care of pastor-parish relations?”
“I do.”
“I see.”
That was when Joe Pike took his third helping of roast beef, after Rosetta glided in from the kitchen and held the platter at his elbow. He took a couple of good-sized slabs and gave Rosetta a big smile. Everybody else passed and Rosetta disappeared again into the kitchen. Joe Pike cut off a hunk of roast beef, shoved it into his mouth, chewed slowly and swallowed. Trout picked at his plate, stealing glances at Joe Pike and Alma, waiting.
Finally, Joe Pike said, “I didn’t come here to be a kept preacher, Alma.”
Alma lifted her napkin from her lap, dabbed at her lips, then folded the napkin carefully and tucked it under the edge of her plate. Took a good deal of time doing it. Then she looked up at Joe Pike. “What did you come here for?”
“The Bishop sent me,” he said simply.
“The Bishop’s trying to save your ministry.”
“It’s a noble purpose, I suppose.”
She shook her head. “Excuse me for saying so, Joe Pike, but you sound a little cavalier about it.”
“I don’t mean to, Alma. I think we could all use a little noble purpose in our lives.”
Trout could hear something gently mocking in Joe Pike’s voice, something faintly defensive in Alma’s. Some ancient pattern of feint and jab between brother and sister, a ritual of sorts. It was a history Trout knew nothing about. Times past when he had sat at this table, there had always been a crowd -- his mother, his cousin Eugene. Until her death ten years previous, Trout’s grandmother, Lucretia Moseley. And family friends and retainers. It was a well-mannered crowd, the conversation genteel and polite. Feint and jab were not something you did at the Moseley dinner table.
“Well, I don’t know what noble purpose you think you were serving with that business this morning,” Alma said.
“You mean my sermon.”
“I thought the thing about the Holy Ghost was right interesting,” Uncle Cicero chimed in. “You reckon you could tell the Rotary Club about that?”
“Good Lord, Cicero,” Alma laughed, and now it sounded even more forced. “The Rotary Club?”
“Well, it’s hard to get good programs,” Cicero said. “Last week, Roscoe Withers got up and told about his trip to Augusta to the chiropractor.”
Alma shook her head at Cicero. “Well, the Rotary Club is better off hearing about Roscoe’s trip to Augusta than about some,” a flip of her hand, “trip to Texas on a motorcycle.”
“Wandering in the wilderness,” Joe Pike said. “It’s an old Biblical tradition.” He put another piece of roast beef in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
Alma gave him a long, searching look. “I don’t know what gets into you, Joe Pike. You’ve been more or less in a state of rebellion since you were two years old.”
“You think maybe it’s time I grew up?”
Alma pondered that for a moment. “I think whatever’s ailing you, you need to handle it yourself. It has no place in the pulpit.”
“Preachers have no right to ask questions?”
Alma leaned across the table toward Joe Pike, hands clasped as if in prayer. “People come to church on Sunday wanting to be told. They want answers. They want something they can depend on. They want somebody they can depend on. Especially in your case.”
Joe Pike looked a trifle amused. “Why especially in my case?”
“Because of who you are.”
He gave a great sigh. “Ah, yes. There’s always that.”
“Moseley United Methodist. It wouldn’t exist without this family.”
A long silence, and then Joe Pike said, “Maybe it ought not to.”
Alma flushed. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe the family has done too much. A church that doesn’t have any initiative isn’t much o
f a church.”
“Initiative? Who’s talking about initiative? I’m talking about money. I’m talking about half the budget. Half!”
“They don’t have a pot to pee in,” Uncle Cicero piped up.
“Cicero!” Alma warned.
“Don’t look at me,” Cicero said. “I’m Baptist.”
“Well, you attend the Methodist Church.”
“You Methodists are a lot more interesting,” Cicero grinned, “running preachers in and out like it was a football game…”
“Then join!” she said. “Join, if you think it’s so interesting.”
“I’m Baptist,” Cicero insisted. “What do you think, Joe Pike?”
“A fellow has to do what he has to do, Cicero. Yea, verily.”
Alma gave a shake of her head, dismissing Cicero the Baptist. Then she reached across the table and took Joe Pike’s hand. “I don’t want to fuss, Joe Pike. Especially over the church. I’m glad you’ve come. I want you to be happy here, you and Trout. I want us to work together.”
“Laboring in the fields of the Lord,” Joe Pike said with a thin smile.
“Yes. Of course.” She released his hand, then looked over at Trout. “I took Trout by the mill yesterday,” she said. “I wanted him to see it. I told him it’ll belong to him and Eugene one of these days.”
There was something sadly desperate in her voice, Trout thought. If he knew more about her, he might know why. Watch and listen.
“That depends on Trout,” Joe Pike said mildly.
“Actually,” Trout said, “I’ve thought about being a tennis pro.”
Alma laughed again, and this time it seemed genuine.. Silly boy. Trout felt a flash of irritation, but he kept his mouth shut.
Aunt Alma took a sip of her iced tea, still smiling, shaking her head at Trout the Tennis Pro, then looked across the table at Joe Pike again. “Your old friend Wardell Dubarry is still at the mill, you know.”