by Robert Inman
Sitting there at a table under a red-and-yellow striped umbrella, sipping cokes, kids splashing about in the sun-dazzled pool below, the thwock-thwock of smartly-struck tennis balls echoing from the courts beyond, Moseley seemed worlds away. When he and Joe Pike climbed into the car for the drive back, Trout felt again like a pilgrim, going into a far, strange land.
* * * * *
On Sunday morning, he awoke early and went out to get the paper from the driveway. That was when he noticed the sign on the church marquee next door: TODAY’S SERMON -- THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ELVIS. He stood there and stared at it for a long time. Uh-oh.
Trout thought the crowd in the pews this Sunday seemed a smidgin larger than last week. There was a scattering of unfamiliar faces, sitting alongside the faithful who had been occupying the same places for years. Maybe the sign out front had something to do with it. Elvis. Dead for almost a year now, drawing people into a church, of all places.
Trout sat with Aunt Alma and Uncle Cicero in their accustomed place, front and center. Aunt Alma gave him a curt nod when she and Cicero walked in and sat down, then crossed her legs, smoothed her dress, folded her hands primly in her lap. She looked a bit grim. Cicero gave him a sly wink. Cicero the Baptist. What are you crazy Methodists up to today? Trout wondered if he ever attended the Baptist church on the opposite end of town. Probably not, he thought. Cicero seemed to do pretty much what Aunt Alma expected. Then just before the choir marched in to start the service, Trout glanced back and saw Uncle Phinizy slip into a back pew. Wake up Charlie. He ain’t never seen a real bad wreck before. Joe Pike ambled in behind the choir and took his seat behind the pulpit. Trout noted that Joe Pike was wearing plain black lace-up shoes. At least, no cowboy boots.
They sang a couple of hymns, mumbled through the responsive reading, took up the collection and sang the Doxology. Then Joe Pike got up and announced that he was starting a physical fitness group called Jumping for Jesus, in the spirit of keeping the Lord’s Holy Temple (the body) fit and pure, starting with his own. He made a little joke about Dairy Queen being a religious experience, and that drew a titter of laughter from the congregation. Aunt Alma’s expression never changed.
Joe Pike delivered a long, rambling Pastoral Prayer and they sang the Gloria Patri and one more hymn. Joe Pike stood tall and massive behind the pulpit, waiting for the congregation to settle in the pews, arranged his notes on the big leather Bible before him. He looked out over the crowd, his gaze moving slowly from one side of the church to the other.
Then Joe Pike made the little hissing sound through his teeth and said, “I’ve come to realize in the past few weeks that we may find interesting things in unsuspected places if we’re open to the possibility of doing that. The word for it, I think, is serendipity. It’s not in the Bible, but I think it may have a religious connotation in a universe of uniqueness and wonder. Serendipity. A small boy walks along the sidewalk, looks down and finds a dollar bill. Or maybe a toadfrog. They’re about the same to a small boy.” He smiled, and the congregation smiled with him. “Serendipity. Messages come in all sorts of bottles, washing up on the shore of whatever ocean we happen to be walking along at the time. And there are all sorts of things we might loosely define as scripture. So,” he took a deep breath, “today’s scripture comes from RCA Victor.” He gathered himself up, clasped his hands in front of him like a small boy considering a newly-found toadfrog, and sang:
“Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorreeee we drifted apaaaarrrt?”
Trout winced. It was awful. Joe Pike changed keys at least three times before he finished. At his side, Aunt Alma said softly, “Sweet Jesus.” Trout would have given a good deal of money to see the look on her face now, but he contented himself with cutting a glance at her lap, where her knuckles were turning white. Trout expected to hear bodies falling out of pews onto the floor…THUD… but it was stone quiet in the church. Sort of like standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, looking off into nothing, your heart in your throat. Like a first ride on a motorcycle.
“Dear old Elvis,” Joe Pike said. “Now, I don’t want to appear blasphemous or anything, but have you ever thought about the similarities between Elvis and Jesus?” His gaze swept the congregation. No, they hadn’t thought about that, Trout imagined. Not a single one of them had ever considered the possibility. Or suspected that anyone else would.
“Elvis and Jesus,” Joe Pike went on. “Both of them born to humble beginnings, both powerfully influenced by their mothers. At a fairly early age, each came to realize in his own way that he wasn’t ordinary. There was something special he was meant to do and be. Each became a messiah in his own way. Elvis, for his part, proclaimed a new American music. When he opened his mouth and sang, everything changed. A lot of disciples, a lot of false prophets came along later, but Elvis was the original.”
There was some audible shuffling about in the pews now. Trout couldn’t stand it any longer. He looked up at Aunt Alma. Her face was drained of color. There was trace of panic around her eyes. He thought that any minute she might jump up and call out to Joe Pike, “Wait! Don’t go there!” Trout looked back at Joe Pike, all alone up there behind the pulpit. All alone, way out on a limb, about to crank up the chain saw.
“I suppose the resemblance ends there. Elvis was a pretty good old boy from what you hear, had a decent raising and all. But fame got him. He couldn’t stay away from those pills. Died on a cross of chemistry, and climbed up on it all by himself. But just because Elvis came to a bad end doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from him. In fact, I think God dearly loves a sinner. If he can’t save him, he can use him as an example. We do the same thing: ‘Looky there, young’uns. Mess around with that rock and roll music, you’ll end up like Elvis. Or worse.’”
Joe Pike took a moment, shuffled his notes a bit, looked up again. “Now, what was it old Elvis was talking about when he sang, ‘Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart?’ Anybody want to hazard a guess?”
It was deathly quiet in the church. What is this, the Donahue Show? Class discussion? Preachers don’t carry on a dialogue with the congregation. Preachers preach. Congregations listen. Joe Pike waited. Trout remembered him standing before the Easter congregation in Ohatchee, sweating and miserable. Trout should have gone to him then. But instead, he had let Joe Pike ride off to Texas. Not again.
“A girl?” Trout blurted. Every head in the place turned to look at him. He could feel their eyes.
Joe Pike gave him a grateful smile. “Probably,” he said. “Probably a girl. But…” he raised a finger, held it in mid-air, “what if he was talking about God. Is that possible?”
“I reckon,” Trout said. Too late to stop now.
“Just for the sake of serendipity, let’s consider that. Let’s imagine that God is out there,” his arm swept toward the ceiling, “wherever it is we put Him. We say, ‘God’s in heaven.’ Okay, heaven. We all know heaven, right? Lots of clouds, choir music, angels loitering about, maybe some biscuits and red-eye gravy for breakfast, a trip to Dairy Queen every evening. Good things happen in heaven. It’s a good place to put God. Right?”
Joe Pike looked out across the congregation again and Trout, to his amazement, saw Tilda Hufstetler, in the next pew, nod vigorously. Good for you, Tilda.
“So God’s up there in this place called heaven, ’cause that’s where we put Him. And we can borrow him on Sunday morning, or when we think we need something. Meanwhile, all of us mere mortals are down here on earth. And we’re just sort of rocking along. Get up every morning, shave our faces, put on our makeup, bolt down a little breakfast, dash off to work or school. Work all day, stagger to the car and drive back home. Wore out. Frazzled. Get home, the toilet’s stopped up, the baby’s got the croup, a delinquent payment notice in the mail. Eat supper, watch ‘Laugh-In’ on T-V or maybe listen to a little Elvis on the stereo. Go to bed. Do it all over tomorrow. Most of the time
, we just do it. What else, huh? That’s life. That’s what people do. Right?”
Another pause. This time, Tilda Hufstetler and her husband Boolie both nodded. Trout thought about Tilda down there at the Koffee Kup Kafe all day, making those sweet potato pies, watching folks eat them, making some more. Just feeding their faces, over and over. Pies come and pies go. After you’ve been in Southern Living, what is there?
“We just rock along,” Joe Pike said. “But every once in awhile, we let our guard down and this feeling creeps up on us. Like there’s something missing. I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one. But every once in awhile, just before I drift off to sleep, I say to myself, ‘What’s wrong, Joe Pike?’ Actually, I’ve been saying that a good deal lately. What’s wrong? What’s missing? What is this odd feeling I keep getting? Upset stomach?”
Joe Pike rubbed his ample stomach, felt his forehead.
“Maybe if I take some Maalox, it’ll go away.” He opened an imaginary bottle, poured imaginary Maalox into an imaginary spoon, drank it down, smacked his lips, made a face. A titter of laughter from the congregation, quickly stifled. “Nope! Still there!” He screwed the cap back on the bottle, set it on the edge of the pulpit and stared at it for a moment. “Then I hear old Elvis sing:
Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
This time, he sang it softly, plaintively, and it didn’t sound quite so off-key. It sounded…what? Small. Scared. Lonesome.
“Lonesome,” Joe Pike said. “Maybe I’m just lonesome. But you say, ‘Wait a minute, Joe Pike! How could you be lonesome? You’ve got Trout and he’s a fine young man and carries on a good conversation. And you’ve got the rest of your fine family. And all these good people here in Moseley who helped raise you and who are pulling for you now to get your act together. A whole town full. How can you be lonesome, Joe Pike?’ Well, I don’t know. Why aren’t you,” he waved his arm across the congregation, “enough? Why do I, a minister of the Gospel, feel so disconnected from God? Why do those things you taught me in Sunday School when I was a kid, those things they taught me in seminary, not seem to work any more? Why do I feel lonesome?” He leaned across the pulpit, arms clasped, his gaze slowly sweeping the sanctuary. “And why do you?”
He waited a long time, let that sink in while he searched their faces. Trout looked up at Aunt Alma. Her mouth was slightly ajar, and the look of panic around her eyes had been replaced by something that was unmistakeably sadness. Trout stared, unable to help himself. It was something he hadn’t seen before, and he understood in that instant that there was something profoundly sad about Aunt Alma, something she usually kept so private you might never imagine. But here, in the midst of this gathering, it was naked in her face. Joe Pike had unmasked her, if only for an instant. Perhaps it was what he said. Perhaps it was because he was the one who said it. Trout could see that for some reason he couldn’t yet fathom, it was a terrible burden to be Alma Moseley, and that in her most unguarded moments, it made her sad. Just now, was she about to cry? No, he couldn’t imagine Aunt Alma crying. But now, and it startled him to know it, he could imagine her going completely to pieces under the right circumstances.
Then Alma looked down at Trout and saw that he saw. Her face flushed. The mask came down again. But Trout thought, She will always know that I know.
Up in the pulpit, Joe Pike did not see. He was immersed in his own agony. There was sweat on his upper lip and he was making the little hissing sound between his teeth. The little man inside the big body, trying to…what? Alma and Joe Pike: they are both two people.
Then Joe Pike gave a great sigh, like a man who has misplaced something and despairs, for the moment, of locating it. Enough of this muddling about for now, he seemed to say. Out loud, he said, “Let’s think about all that this week. I don’t want to speak for anybody else or put any false notions into anybody’s head. Let’s just think about it. Are we lonesome for God? With all our praying and hymn-singing and Bible-reading and church-going and hallelujah-shouting, do we sometimes in our darkest moments get the suspicion, ‘Uh-oh! He ain’t here. And He ain’t paying attention.’ And if He ain’t, why?”
Then Joe Pike gathered up his notes and sat down. There was a long, astonished silence. Then finally, Aunt Alma cleared her throat. Just that, nothing more. Up in the choir loft, Grace Vredemeyer took it as a signal. She got up and led the final hymn.
* * * * *
Aunt Alma didn’t come right to the point at Sunday dinner an hour later, the way Trout had thought she might. They ate -- she, Cicero, Joe Pike and Trout -- in surprising good humor.
Alma talked about going to New York to shop for clothes. And that surprised Trout, too. He couldn’t imagine Aunt Alma shopping for clothes. Everything she wore seemed so severe, plain-cut and solid-colored, unadorned. He tried to imagine her in a floral print with bangle earrings. No.
Uncle Cicero told a long, rambling story about the flim-flam artist from Atlanta who had tried to bilk Miz Estelle Collier out of some money the past week. For a thousand dollars, he said, he would spray her roof with a substance that would extend the life of the shingles for twenty years. Miz Estelle Collier had let him get up on the roof with his sprayer, then took his ladder down and called Cicero, who arrived to find the con man hollering from the rooftop. Big-city crime, trying to invade Moseley, thwarted by local savvy. The bumpkins win again. Cicero, as was his Sunday custom, was in uniform, prepared for afternoon patrol. His gun belt was hanging, as was the custom, on the hall rack.
Joe Pike listened to everything, made an appreciative grunt or gave a nod at appropriate times, and ate five pieces of fried chicken.
When they were finished with the main course, Alma had a surprise: dessert. In honor of Trout, she said. Trout started to ask why, but thought better of it. Did he look like he needed dessert? Probably. Even his layoff from tennis, even the daily trips to Dairy Queen, had failed to add a pound to his thin frame. He had his mother’s slightness. So, dessert -- albeit, a fruit concoction out of respect for Cicero’s cholesterol. They were well into it, Cicero holding forth at some length about the unsteady state of the local economy, when Alma broke in and said, “Jimmy’s becoming an embarassment.”
Joe Pike looked up at her. “Jimmy?”
“Carter,” she said.
“The President.”
“We went to the Inauguration, you know,” Alma said.
Cicero chimed in. “At the inaugural ball, they stuck us in the basement of the Smithsonian right next to the McCormick Reaper. With Guy Lombardo. Some drunk from Delaware spilled his drink down the front of Alma’s gown.”
“We had nice seats for the parade,” Alma said.
“About five blocks from the White House,” Cicero added.
Alma’s jaw tightened. “And when the parade was over, we went to a lovely reception at the White House.”
“With about ten thousand other people,” Cicero said. “Everybody that gave more than a hundred dollars.”
“It was,” she insisted, raising her voice a bit, “a very nice affair. Jimmy and Rosalyn were very gracious.”
“You know President Carter?” Trout asked.
“Of course,” she said, turning to him. “I’ve supported Jimmy ever since he ran for governor.”
Cicero grinned. “Alma’s the kind of supporter who’ll give you a hundred dollars and take an hour telling you how to spend it.”
“Cicero…”
“Yes, dear?”
“Have you ever run for political office or been involved in a political campaign?”
“No, hon. I do hold public office, I guess you could say.”
“Appointive. Not elective.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Then you are speaking from a lack of knowledge.”
Cicero smiled at her. “I’ve always left the politics to you, hon.” He looked at Trout and Joe Pike. “It’s an old tradition in the Moseley family, su
pporting worthy candidates. As long as they’re Democrats, of course. A hundred dollars and lots of advice. My people, now, they always worked it from the other end. Graft and corruption. Give a politician a thousand dollars and tell him to spend it any way he wants to. And then go back later and help divide up the spoils. Shoot, my people even had truck with Republicans, of all things.”
“Your people…” Alma said with an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
Cicero’s smile broadened. “We have mostly married above ourselves. With the notable exception of Cousin Flint. He took up with a hooker from Macon.”
“Cicero!” Alma cut a glance at Trout.
“I know what a hooker is,” Trout said.
“Well, we don’t talk about…” she waved her hand in the general direction of Macon, “…at the table.”
“It is, after all, Sunday,” Joe Pike said, then took another bite of dessert.
Alma stared at Joe Pike. “Not,” she said after a moment, “that you could tell it by everything that has transpired.”
Okay. Here it is.
“Let me venture a guess,” Joe Pike said. “You’re speaking of my sermon.”
“If you want to call it that.”
“You took offense, I fear.”
“It was an exhibition,” she said flatly.
Joe Pike put his spoon down, leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, waited on Alma. Uncle Cicero helped himself to some more dessert. Methodist trouble, no place for a good Baptist to be.
Trout heard the telephone ring up in the front hall. He hoped nobody would get up and answer it, because things seemed about ready to get interesting here. But nobody at the table seemed to hear it. It rang again and he heard Rosetta pick it up.
“The congregation has just about had enough,” Alma was saying.
“Enough what?” Joe Pike asked.