by Rachel Lee
She nodded. “Maybe I have, too. It gets easy to let work and responsibilities substitute for life.”
He’d never heard it put that way before, and he turned it over in his mind. “Yeah. Less painful.”
“Exactly.” She sighed quietly and nibbled on her strip of bacon. Sam was making huge inroads into the mound of food she’d put in front of him. “It makes it easier not to think.”
“It sure does.” He was tempted to ask her what she didn’t want to think about but decided he didn’t know her well enough. If she wanted to, she could volunteer. “Used to be I loved to sit out on dark nights and just look up at the stars. I used to feel this, um, connection to something bigger.” He was almost embarrassed to say that. It was a part of himself he hadn’t exposed to anyone in a long time.
But to his surprise, Mary simply nodded. “I know what you mean. I feel that way sometimes, when I’m walking alone in the woods and the breeze is whispering in the treetops. It’s like being in a cathedral.” Then her expression turned haunted. “It also gives me too much time to think.”
He could identify with that. He gathered they were both running from a bit of depression. Well, hell, most of the world was, one way or the other. He didn’t pretend his problems were any worse than anyone else’s. He just didn’t plan to set himself up for another round.
But as he left Mary’s house and headed home, he realized he’d found a kindred spirit in her. And that really disturbed him.
7
“Brother Elijah,” Mrs. Beemis said, smiling too avidly, “you wouldn’t happen to be any relation to Sam Canfield, would you?”
He’d only been at the church a few days, but already Elijah had pegged Mrs. Beemis as a gossip and potential troublemaker. She looked like a dear old lady, with gray hair, a surprisingly smooth and rosy face, and blue eyes that peered out from behind the requisite eyeglasses with rhinestones at the outer edges. Everybody’s grandmother.
She was also entirely too eager to tell him about her fellow congregants. Properly handled, a minister would find a woman like her useful. But she had to be handled like nitroglycerin. Every church he’d ever pastored had had at least one Mrs. Beemis.
It was Wednesday evening, after prayer service, and about fifty people were milling about in the tiny parish hall, sipping grape juice and soft drinks and eating cookies. Too many of them, thought Elijah, were able-bodied men who ought to be helping with the fire fighting. On the other hand, it was his official welcoming party, and many of them may have felt it necessary to be there.
Mrs. Beemis was still waiting for an answer. The longer he delayed, the more likely she was to think he was hiding something. And Elijah had nothing to hide. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Yes, he’s my son, Mrs. Beemis.”
“Oh, my, how delightful! He’ll be joining our congregation, then?”
It was not a harmless question. Elijah took a second to consider. “We all have to follow our own paths to the Lord.”
“Yes, of course we do.” Her eyes indicated that her curiosity hadn’t been quenched. It was entirely likely that in a half hour she would be phoning everyone she knew to suggest that a preacher who couldn’t raise his own son in the faith was one who ought to be watched.
But he would be watched anyway. It was part of his job. Everything he said or did would be examined in minute detail by those with nothing better to do with their time. It was an unhappy fact of his life that he served at the pleasure of his congregation, which meant they pretty much dictated the way their religion was served to them.
And he was getting just a little bit cynical, he realized, feeling as if he were preaching the Gospel according to his current vestry. For a long time he’d overlooked that subtle nuance, but for some reason, over the past few years, he’d been noticing it more and more. Hellfire and damnation preached from the pulpit were great things—unless they struck too close to home.
Maybe it was something about the modern world, but “too close to home” seemed to be happening with greater frequency.
“Well,” said Mrs. Beemis, “preachers’ kids do have a tendency to go a little wild.”
For all his problems with Sam, Elijah took exception to that. “He’s not wild, Mrs. Beemis. He’s just following his own path.” Wrong path, but not wild.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “He is a policeman, after all.” With that, she finally drifted away. Apparently she felt she had enough to keep her phone line busy until midnight.
No point in worrying about that now. When he grew fed up with her and her ilk, he would look for another position. It was ever the same: some people weren’t happy until they managed to convince themselves they were better than everyone else, even the preacher. So be it.
It had been easier to endure when Belle was still alive, though. He hadn’t felt so alone.
Too bad, he told himself. Too bad. Sam had been an embarrassment to him for years. He should have known better than to come to this town.
But he’d come anyway, and that disturbed him. Maybe that was something he needed to pray about. Or maybe God had drawn him here for some reason. Well, of course he had. Elijah Canfield believed his entire life was guided by God. Even coming to Whisper Creek and seeing his son before he’d seen another soul in town.
That didn’t mean he knew what this was about. It felt like wearing a hair shirt. But maybe he was here to call Sam back to the true path.
Yes, that must be it. The boy had wandered too far, and the Lord wanted him back in the fold. It was about time.
Before he had much time to think about how he might accomplish that impossible task, another one of his flock bearded him about what he was going to do about all “them gays in town.”
“What gays?” Elijah asked.
“Those two artists.” Silence Tippit, one of the vestry members, started the conversation in what Elijah had already come to realize was his usual abrupt way. Silence, a man of about sixty, was short and round, with enough white hair that he reminded Elijah of a polar bear. He was also one of the powers-to-be-reckoned-with.
“There’s more than them two artists,” said another man, whose name utterly escaped Elijah. The guy was about as nondescript as a man could be. “You got those women living together over on Eighth Street.”
Silence shook his head. “Bill, it’s just two women living together. Roommates. There’s never been any sign of anything else.”
“Well, that one has short hair and them funny round glasses.”
Elijah felt compelled to say something. “One mustn’t judge simply by appearances, Bill. Have they done anything?”
Bill scowled. “It’s the way they look. And living together. Why don’t they have husbands?”
Silence apparently didn’t want to argue it any further. “We do have a problem with those artists, though,” he said, turning to Elijah. “They set a bad example for the youth. When they come to town, they hold hands.”
“Hmm.” Elijah didn’t like that. In fact his stomach turned over at the mere thought. “Well, I’ll certainly preach against sins of that kind. It’s an abomination.”
Silence nodded. “Truly, truly an abomination.”
Bill spoke again. “We don’t need that kind in town. We need to get rid of them.”
There had been a time when Elijah would have agreed. But the years had taught him how such words could be interpreted and the kind of sin they could lead to. “Bill,” he said in his firmest I-am-the-pastor voice, “we mustn’t get rid of anyone. Do you understand me?”
“We can’t tolerate abomination! That’s a sin.”
Elijah nodded. “I’m not asking you to tolerate, Bill. But remember, we can hate the sin, but we’re required to love the sinner.”
Bill scowled. “I ain’t loving neither of them.”
Silence looked at Elijah, something indefinable in his steady gaze. For an instant Elijah thought his time in Whisper Creek had just come to a close. But Silence surprised him by nodding. “Br
other Elijah’s right, Bill. We can’t allow someone else’s sin to lead us into sin.”
“Exactly,” Elijah said, feeling he had just passed a major watershed safely. “We must be good Christians ourselves. I’ll preach against abomination, Brother Bill. I may even speak to these young men about their conduct and try to persuade them to live a godly life. I’ll certainly tell our youth they mustn’t even consider such things, because they’re vile. But we must not lift a hand against another.”
Bill went away looking unhappy, but Silence clapped Elijah on the shoulder. “We need to live in this town, Brother Elijah,” Silence said pointedly. “Some people, like Brother Bill, don’t seem to exactly understand that. I’m glad you do.”
Elijah felt pretty good. Until he started thinking about Sam again. Until the mental hair shirt started itching like mad.
The fire was getting worse. A pall of smoke now hung over Whisper Creek all the time, dulling the sun, irritating the eyes. Efforts to put it out had mostly become efforts to control it. And for the first time all summer, thunderclouds were beginning to build.
“Rain,” said George Griffin. “We need rain, not lightning.”
“Picky picky,” Sam answered. He’d spent all day working on firebreaks down below and was getting a breather as the next shift of miners coming off work was beginning to show up to help. Five days, and about all they’d managed to do was keep the fires boxed in. Every time they thought they were getting ahead of the game, flames would spring up somewhere else. Sometimes they managed to put them out before they spread too much, sometimes not. It was like fighting that many-headed Hydra he’d learned about when he’d studied mythology in high school. Chop it off here, and another one came at you from somewhere else.
And fire was a big beast, bigger than men, bigger than all their resources.
George turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sam, go home and get some rest. You’ve been working harder at this fire than anyone except the smoke jumpers. It’ll still be here tomorrow.”
Sam was about to argue, but he stopped before the words came out of his mouth. George was right. He was getting a constant cough from the smoke, his eyes never stopped burning, and his body was aching all the time. Toward the end of his shift below, he’d found he was losing his coordination.
“Yeah, I guess I will,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
“We’ll be here.”
The words were grim, and so was Sam’s mood as he climbed into his truck and headed home. Bath, bed, about twelve hours of sleep, and he would be ready to pitch in again, he promised himself. It had gone well past the point of being a liaison. They needed every hand they could get to contain the beast.
For some reason, as he was driving through the twilight down the mountain, he found himself thinking of Mary. He hadn’t seen her but a minute or two since the morning she made him breakfast. He knew she was still bringing food and drink up the mountain, along with a bunch of other women, but their encounters hadn’t been more than a nod and a smile in all that time. He wondered if her car was out of the shop, and if not, how she was getting her groceries. After all, he’d promised her that he would take her to the store.
Okay, so bath, then a call on Mary to see if she needed anything. Then bed. He would survive.
His house smelled musty from lack of use. He’d done little enough there over the past week that it smelled unoccupied, except for the faint odor of smoke and ash rising from the hamper where he’d tossed his clothes. Stripping, he threw everything into the washer, including the stuff in the hamper, but he didn’t turn it on. Then he stepped into a hot shower, turning his face up to the spray, and forgot all about time as the heat pounded the ache from his muscles and the water cleansed the stench from his pores.
Only when the spray turned chilly did he climb out. After he toweled off, he padded, still naked, to the laundry room and turned on the washer. Cold water wash. He didn’t care.
Food was his next priority, but a check of his fridge told him some of that stuff had been sitting there too long. With a sigh, he threw it out and settled for a family-size can of clam chowder.
While it heated, he climbed into some sweatpants and a T-shirt. His mood was sinking, he realized, but he didn’t realize how badly until he was sitting at the kitchen table with his bowl of chowder.
Because all of a sudden he was thinking about his late wife. Emptiness filled his gut, a hollowness that wanted to suck him down into its depths. He’d learned how to fight it, how to withstand it, but it never hurt any less.
He missed looking at her across the table. And while he still would have come home to do his own laundry and make his own soup, at least he wouldn’t have been sitting alone at this damn table. She would have wanted to hear his stories about fire fighting, and she would have shared the stories of her day, and the silence wouldn’t have threatened to eat him alive.
Shit. He was just tired. His defenses were down. He closed his eyes for a minute, forcing himself to concentrate on the aroma of the clam chowder. The reality of it was something he could focus on to the exclusion of other things.
But then Elijah popped into his head. Damn Elijah.
Anger superseded sorrow. Why the hell had that man had to come to town now? Even as he asked the question of himself, it sounded stupid. Now, later, whenever—what difference did it make? It wouldn’t have been any easier in five weeks or five years, or ten.
He thought he’d built a wall between himself and his father, a wall of disinterest. Or of ice. He’d honestly believed he’d left the pain and anger in the past, where they belonged. He ought to be able to look at Elijah now and feel sorry for him, a man who had lost his wife and driven his son away.
Instead he felt…angry.
Hell.
Finishing the soup in a hurry, he decided to go check on Mary. She was the one thing around here right now that didn’t carry bad memories of some kind. One person he could talk to who wasn’t associated with his late wife.
With his late life.
Mary was up to her eyeballs making sandwiches for the next day. Each day, when they finished their tour on the mountain-top, she and Meg stopped at the grocery to pick up what they would need for the next day. Other women did the same, portioning out the chores and types of food.
Today Mary was making dozens of sandwiches. Her kitchen table looked like an assembly line of white bread, rye bread and whole wheat bread slices. Some were slathered with mayonnaise, others with butter or mustard. Pounds and pounds of cold cuts, contributed by the local market, sat in stacks on one corner of the counter.
They had to be thick sandwiches, because the crews were working so hard, but Mary found herself cringing a little as she heaped a quarter pound of meat on each one. For herself, she would have used only one or two thin slices.
But on went the thick layers of pastrami or ham, bologna or turkey. It was a good thing the market was donating the meat; otherwise someone would have gone broke trying to do this.
But it made her feel good to be doing something useful. Some of the local women were also fighting the fire, but Mary would have been the first to admit she was terrified of fire, pathologically so. She wouldn’t even light a charcoal grill.
She had no idea where the fear came from. It was a phobia of some kind, one she’d never had to test. It was the reason, however, that she’d gotten rid of the gas range that had come with the house and installed an electric one. Open flames bothered her. Even on candles, although she would occasionally light one. When she wasn’t alone.
Sighing, she shook her head over the silliness of human nature. How could fears like this grow so powerful, and all from nothing?
Then a thought occurred to her. Suddenly her head snapped up. In her hand were slices of pastrami. She started to turn toward her kitchen door, then realized she was still holding the meat. Putting it down on a slab of rye bread, she wiped her hands on her apron and headed across the street.
Reverend Elijah Canfield
answered on her second knock.
“Yes?” he said.
“Can you tell me something, Reverend?”
He smiled and nodded. “Certainly, if I know the answer.”
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. But how come the women in your church aren’t helping feed the firefighters?”
For a few seconds he didn’t answer.
“You see,” Mary plunged on, “there are a half-dozen of us who’ve volunteered to make food for the firefighters. I’m over there making a couple hundred sandwiches right now. And it suddenly occurred to me that more people ought to be helping. So…don’t bother to answer me. But it sure would be nice if somebody would make potato salad or macaroni salad, or even some dessert!”
Finished, she marched back across the street and into her kitchen, where she went back to work. She didn’t care what the man thought of her, but it was really bothering her how few people in town were helping. Oh, a lot of men went to fight the fire, but not nearly as many as could. And right now six women were trying to make enough food for an army.
Apparently the town didn’t feel all that threatened at the moment. Well, she ought to know, from her years of teaching, how few people stepped forward to help out unless they had a personal interest. It never failed that one or two mothers in her classrooms would do everything. Or that only fifty parents, in a school with five hundred students, ever showed up for the PTA meetings. The same fifty, every time.
She was putting the top slices on the first batch of sandwiches when her kitchen screen door, which opened onto her driveway, swung open. Startled, she looked up and saw Elijah Canfield.
“You’re right,” he said simply. “Let me help with those sandwiches.”
She was hardly going to tell him to get lost after making a stink about it. So she smiled, waved to the cold cuts and suggested he start at the other end of the counter.
For a few minutes they worked in a silence that was not quite comfortable. Mary didn’t usually have a problem with quiet, but it was different somehow with Elijah, as if a million unspoken things were swirling in the air around them, few of them pleasant.