A Rhinestone Button

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  Abe had once derided that kind of public demonstration of faith as the rest of the Godsfinger Baptist congregation had. But then five months after Emma died, Abe had gone into town on a Saturday and hadn’t come home for supper. He came back after eleven with a shine to his face, a vascular glow. Job thought he’d been drinking, and said so, out of surprise. He thought he’d get the strap for it.

  “I am drunk!” said Abe, swinging an arm up and nearly losing his balance, as if to demonstrate. “I’m drunk on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit.” He laughed, the first laugh since Emma’s death, and fell into his easy chair, shaking his head at some thought.

  Jacob said, “You all right?”

  “Better than all right. Haven’t felt this good since—” He twirled a finger in the air to finish his sentence. “I saw the Pentecostals were having a revival in Leduc this week. They promised healing, emotional healing. I thought, What the hell? Can’t feel any worse than I do now. So I took myself out for supper and sat in the back pew. I thought there’d be all that chatter and wailing, the devil getting the better of them. But it wasn’t like that at all. They got us singing and singing and singing. And it was fun! And then the Holy Spirit came down on the crowd.” He stood, threw his hands into the air. “And I was healed!”

  “What do you mean, healed?” said Jacob.

  “I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and I was healed.” His eyes shone. “Don’t you see? I know I’m forgiven.”

  Jacob offered his father a hug and said, “That’s great, Dad.”

  Job backed into the kitchen counter and kept his distance, as if his father really were drunk. “You mean, like, you spoke in tongues?” he asked.

  “Yes! It was wonderful! I haven’t felt this way since your mother and I were dating and we did that mock-wedding skit at Steinke’s twenty-fifth anniversary. She was so beautiful in my suit and I looked so silly in her nightgown. Balloons here, you know.” He patted his chest. “I couldn’t stop laughing and I loved her so much.” Abe jumped, shouted “Woo-hoo!” and landed, sending a shudder through the old floorboards of the house.

  Job had been embarrassed by his father and brother, but jealous too. Jacob claimed that when he spoke in tongues, he felt a great warming of the blood, a sweep of emotion cresting over him as the Holy Spirit flowed in. He said he felt God’s presence, and that he knew he’d been forgiven, something Job was never certain of.

  Job tried again to loosen his tongue in faith. Mamamama, papapapa, booboobooboo. Nothing. He went on mumbling gibberish as he looked up to see Pastor Divine anoint the last in the row. A petite girl of eighteen threw herself back into Jacob’s arms. There was no hesitation in her fall, no suspicion that he might not catch her. Jacob lay the girl to the ground and looked up, catching Job’s eye. Job turned back to the stage and prayed for release, for the loss of self he saw all around him.

  Jacob limped up to him, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He touched Job’s arm. “Still nothing?”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay. Let’s pray.” Jacob put a hand on Job’s back and held it there as he prayed that Job might feel God’s presence and his Holy Spirit might descend upon him. And so on. When he finished his prayer he said, “Even if nothing happens here today, know that you’ve been loved on. Know that God loves you.”

  A thrill that this might be true. The suspicion that it was not.

  Jacob put on his pastorly smile. “The Holy Ghost is going to work miracles on you, Job. I’m sure of it. Loosen your tongue. Have faith. Keep at it. It’ll come. Just say whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense to you.” He patted Job’s arm, then took Ben by the elbow and hauled him up so he was sitting straight. As soon as Jacob moved on, Ben slouched back down in his seat and crossed his arms. He glanced at his mother sobbing on the floor before kicking the underside of the seat in front of him.

  Job looked down at Penny on the floor at his feet. Her eyes were closed. A smile flitted across her face from time to time and her arms jerked a little, much like a sleeping baby’s. What was she going to think of him if God didn’t allow the Holy Spirit to flow through him? He took a breath and began to mumble again, the nonsense syllables. The gibberish fell off his tongue easier this time, smoothed by Jacob’s reassurances.

  A memory flickered to mind. He was sitting as a boy in the pews, feeling trapped, desperate to move but compelled by his father’s threats not to. He felt the desire to run or kick the pew in front of him. Anything that would let the anxiety dissipate. But then he felt a sudden shift of thought. Though his body was trapped in the pew, his mind was not.

  It occurred to Job that he could let his mind soar again. He could think of the vacuum cleaner, the egg that the whirr had manufactured in his hands, the steady vibrations of the machine that ran through his body, soothing him. As his body relaxed into remembered sound, he realized he was no longer making up the gibberish that he spoke. The words poured out of him, still unintelligible, but with a rhythm, a flow, a sing-song cadence of their own. Was this what the others were feeling? It was as if he were submerged in a hot bath and had lost the sensation of boundaries between skin and water. For moments he rose to the surface, heard himself speaking and became aware of the room full of people, before sinking again, into a state of forgetful-ness, losing himself.

  Then he felt a shift, as if someone had turned up the volume of the noise surrounding him. He opened his eyes and saw swirls of velvet brown, splotches the deep maroon of a dried fig and streaks the colour of blood orange. Rich, deep hues that surpassed anything he’d seen at the Godsfinger church. He felt a nebulous shape in his hands that seemed to be generated by the hum of voices. Not a defined shape. Not the glass egg of the vacuum cleaner, but a shape nevertheless, a presence in his hands, a weight. Along with the shape and colours, he felt an absolute certainty sliding back into his bones. A knowing. It must be the Holy Spirit coming into his soul, he thought, and along with it a feeling that everything was all right, that he was okay, accepted.

  He felt as he did after he ran down the coulee and back up the steep slope, when his heart stopped banging in his chest and he was resting at the top of the bank; it was a feeling of relief and release. He remained in this bliss for some time and then rose from it, as Penny and the others, one by one, pulled themselves from the floor and stumbled from their altered states like drunks from a bar. And like a drunk, Job hugged everyone close by, and mumbled that he loved them. Love felt like a tangible thing in his hands, a glass egg he could give to others. He felt deeply grateful to them all, though he was hard-pressed to think what for.

  He understood now why his father had risen in Godsfinger Baptist, despite the disapproving and embarrassed stares, to wail and clack his tongue, and why Jacob had stood to do the same, not just to receive his father’s blessing. It was for this feeling, like the shaky peace that followed a good run or a good cry. But more than relief, he also felt forgiven. For all the failures his father had pointed out. And for his father’s death. For his clumsiness with words and his inability to say what he meant, or to act when wrapped in fear. For his anxiety with women who interested him. At that moment he felt there was nothing he couldn’t forgive. He pulled Jacob into a bear hug, pressing his chest into his. He told Penny he loved her, and held her hands. He forgave Will for his strange tendencies. Understood it all now.

  Thirteen

  Job ran down the coulee bank, chasing a doe, in a light, warm rain that wetted the skin on his back, his forehead. He wondered at the speed he was capable of, his ability to keep up to the deer and almost, but not quite, overtake her, even as the deer left the valley floor for the far wall of the coulee, running up the steep slope through poplar, caragana and lanky saskatoon bushes heavy in deep purple berries. Branches whipped Job’s face, pulled at his skin, but he kept running, his breath hot from his mouth.

  A lion slid into the chase in front of Job, racing up the slope, gaining on the deer. It will catch her, Job thought. The lio
n will kill the deer. Just as abruptly as the lion had appeared, Job became the lion. He scrambled to grab both sides of the deer’s rump with his claws and the doe came to an abrupt halt in front of him. He leapt onto her back and bit into the base of her neck with his powerful jaws. But instead of killing her, he mounted her and thrust his penis into her with quick, urgent lunges.

  Then a clanking in the chimney. Job’s consciousness leapt up startled from his dream. He reached down to stop himself from coming, then lay on the cot for a time, listening to his own rapid breath. Not three weeks after he spoke in tongues, forgiveness and love spewing from his trap like holy water, and he was back in league with the devil, as pulled by confusing lusts as he ever was.

  He slid on a pair of shorts over his underwear and pulled on a T-shirt, and opened the stove door. He found a duck there, a lesser scaup, soot-blackened and flapping its wings, working up a cloud of ash. Job closed the door, rummaged through the laundry basket for a towel and opened the stove again. The scaup blinked at him, and lunged at his hand. Job draped the towel over the bird and pulled it out. He tucked it under one arm to open the door and found Ben there, ready to knock. The skin around his right eye was bruised and turning yellow.

  “What’s that?” said Ben.

  “Duck.” Job didn’t try to explain. He opened the towel, held the duck aloft. Watched as it flew over the windrow of spruce and off towards the closest slough.

  “Dad wants you to come in for breakfast, so you can talk about the work that’s getting done today.” That morning Rod was driving volunteers down from Bountiful Harvest for a work bee, to prepare for and pour the floating slab—the foundation and floor for the halfway-house building. The site had already been excavated by Jerry’s brother, Alan Kuss. Job and Jacob had serviced it themselves, rolling out the plastic tubing for water, and running a power line from the farm’s transformer to the building site, into the trenches that Alan had dug with his backhoe.

  Job sank his feet into a pair of runners but didn’t bother with a jacket or jeans. Fall was his favourite time of year. The days were sunny and warm, but the first overnight frosts of September had killed off the clouds of mosquitoes that pestered him all summer long. “Where’d you get the shiner?” he asked Ben as they walked to the house.

  “Nowhere.”

  From the lake, the bang of a shotgun, followed by the whoosh of pellets exploding into the sky, like the pop and rush of fireworks blasting off. Then the quack and flurry of whistling feathers as a flock of mallards flew low overhead. Duck-hunting season had opened on Labour Day but was just getting underway at the lake; having grown fat in northern feeding grounds, the ducks were now returning to Godsfinger to feast on the grain swathed in the fields.

  “So, how you like school?” Job asked Ben. He’d had little chance to talk to his nephew alone these past few weeks. He’d done as Jacob had suggested and made himself scarce around the house, taking most of his meals in the cabin. But he was growing tired of peanut-butter sandwiches, and he missed his kitchen, the smell of roasted chicken or cinnamon buns from the oven.

  “It’s okay,” said Ben.

  “Make any new friends?”

  Ben shrugged. “A few.”

  “You see much of Jason?”

  “He’s in my class.”

  Job hadn’t seen Liv since the day in town when she drove off with Darren. He’d avoided going into Godsfinger, and instead shopped in Leduc or Wetaskiwin. Afraid of the talk.

  Lilith was at the stove flipping pancakes as they came in. Jacob sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He was dressed in some of Abe’s old work clothes, a plaid shirt and jeans that Job had stored in the attic. “You think we’ve got enough rebar?” he asked Job as he took a seat at the table.

  “If we don’t I can make a run up to Edmonton. How many people do you think will come out and help?”

  “I don’t know. Ten at least. Maybe fifteen. I asked the secretary at Bountiful Harvest to put a notice in the bulletin.”

  “Pastor Divine coming?”

  “He said he figured he’d better be here when the foundation was laid. To show his support.”

  Lilith put a plate of pancakes on the table and pointed her spatula out the window. “Who’s that?” she said.

  Job turned in his seat to see the figure walking down Correction Line Road. “It’s Liv,” he said, and watched as she turned into their driveway.

  “You didn’t ask her to come over, did you?” Lilith asked Jacob.

  “Why would you ask her over?” said Job.

  “Ben and Jason had an incident at school,” said Jacob.

  “Jason beat up Ben,” said Lilith.

  “No he didn’t,” said Ben. “He just hit me. Once.” He touched the side of his eye. “I was sitting on the bleachers behind Jason at a basketball game and I had to take a piss.”

  “Language,” said Lilith.

  “So I patted Jason on the shoulder, so he’d move over, so I could climb down. He wouldn’t get out of my way so I slapped him on the back of the head. Jason just kind of swung around and punched me.”

  “It was an unprovoked attack,” said Lilith.

  “He said he was sorry,” said Ben.

  “We had to take it to the principal,” said Lilith. “It was for the boy’s own good. You can’t let that kind of behaviour go unpunished. Mr. Pinchbeck was only going to give Jason a couple of detentions. But we pointed out that he has a record of acting out. So he gave him a three-day suspension.”

  “If he was my kid, I’d give him a good walloping,” said Jacob.

  “You know Liv’s not going to do a thing about it,” said Lilith. “And God knows when Darren’s going to be home from one of his hauls again to deal with it. It’s just not a stable home.” Lilith reached out a hand to Jacob. Job thought she might put her hand on her husband’s, but she laid it palm down on the table next to his. “Maybe we should invite her up to Bountiful Harvest, or see if Barbara can’t get her going to Godsfinger Baptist. She did go to the revival.”

  “She only went because Job was there.”

  “So, Job, you invite her.”

  Jacob shook his head. “It wouldn’t be appropriate. Liv is still married. Besides, the Lord’s got to break her more before she’d be interested in going to church.”

  The light tap of Liv’s sandals on the concrete steps as she approached the screen door. “Mind if I come in?”

  “I suppose not,” said Lilith. “Leave your shoes at the door. I just washed the floor.”

  “Of course.”

  “You want coffee?”

  “Sure.” Her face was shiny from the walk. She took off her jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, then folded her skirt beneath her as she sat. “Hello, Job,” she said.

  He nodded and helped himself to a couple of pancakes, then forked a sausage from the plate Lilith set on the table. Trying to look nonchalant. Trying to look like the room wasn’t veering away from him in all directions. He thought of Liv on the grass, and the cows all around.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” said Liv. “I thought I better get out here early, before you get to the fields.”

  “We have a work bee today,” said Lilith. “We’re putting up a building.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Some kind of halfway house, isn’t it? For street people?”

  “New Christians,” said Lilith. “Jacob is heading up Pastor Divine’s program to get people off the streets.”

  “Good thing to do, I suppose. What about you?” she said to Job. “What do you think about all this? It doesn’t strike me as the kind of thing you’d want to get involved with.”

  Job glanced up at Jacob and thought it better not to voice his opinion on the plan. For a couple of weeks after his baptism in the Holy Ghost, he’d been wrapped in a sort of glow, a feeling that he loved everyone, could forgive everyone, of anything. He’d smiled at the clerks and customers alike in the grocery store in Leduc. He’d even waved at Will when he saw hi
m working out in the fields, though, previously, he’d turned the truck around rather than pass Will’s when he’d seen him coming down Correction Line Road. During those two weeks, he’d agreed to go ahead with the halfway-house project, but now the whole idea made him panic. What did he know of ministering to alcoholics and drug addicts?

  “Well, anyway,” said Liv. “I came to talk about this situation with Jason and Ben.”

  Jacob shook his head. “There isn’t anything to discuss. Besides, we don’t really have the time. I’ve got a work crew turning up here any minute and we have a bunch of last-minute details to hammer out.”

  “I think we do have some things to discuss. It will only take a few minutes.”

  “I really don’t have the time for this today. Ben, go to your room and get changed for the work bee. Lilith, get me some more coffee, will you? And a couple of the cookies you got on the counter would go down nice.”

  Liv laughed. “Why don’t you get them yourself,” she said. “You got some kind of handicap?”

  Jacob’s face burned red, but he said nothing. He glanced at Lilith and she jumped up to refill his cup and bring him cookies. Job nursed his cold coffee. He didn’t dare ask for a fresh cup, though Lilith would look hurt if he got it himself, thinking he was judging her a poor hostess.

  “I talked to Barry Pinchbeck,” said Liv. “Explained our situation at home and that Jason is going through counselling to deal with his anger. He agreed to drop the suspension.”

  “He did what?” said Jacob.

  “He suggested Jason write a letter of apology, and I agreed. That’s why I’m here.” She held an envelope out to Jacob. When Jacob didn’t take it, she put it on the table in front of him.

  Jacob flicked the letter away. “This means nothing. Your boy is out of control. He needs to learn a lesson.”

  “He didn’t think about it, he just reacted. The anger flashed out of him. He already apologized to Ben. And he’s written this letter to you, explaining and apologizing for his actions.”