John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  Things like that. When you tithed your ten percent the Church gave part of that to the causes the Church knew were worthy.

  And when there was some great new need, the Church would ask for a second tithe. Sometimes it was very hard to find the money, but it was the way you confirmed your membership in the special group, your brotherhood and sisterhood with Believers all over the country and all over the world. As a Church member you had to live up to certain codes of dress and behavior. You did not seek medical help because it was a proven fact that faith kept the members healthier than all those people who had not found the true religion. The Church did not want you to join clubs or let your children join clubs. The Church was the only club anyone ever needed. You could not curse or drink hard liquor or register to vote or run for public office. You prayed for fifteen minutes every morning and another fifteen either during the day or at night when you went to bed. Sometimes during all the years she and Hub had been members, it had been difficult to live up to the rules of the Church. Sometimes you could not understand why certain rules were imposed on you. But in the end you realized every rule was there for a good reason.

  You were not supposed to socialize with non-members of the Church because they represented the evil and decay of the outside world, and all of them had opinions and ideas which could contaminate a member if he or she was exposed over a long period of time.

  You could not question the rule of segregation because it came down from the old Reverend Matthews and his son and his daughter the only true representatives of God on this earth. You gave everything you were asked to give. It was as easy as that. In return God gave back to you health, a certainty of faith, a sense of belonging and an everlasting place in heaven. There was no personal problem here on earth that could not be eased by giving of your substance to the Church.

  Giving was prayer, the most effective kind.

  God knew the sacrifices involved. Her very own blood brother and his wife and their three children were outsiders.

  They jeered at the Eternal Church. And so they had to remain outside her life forever, just as if they had died. If they ever did see the light and join the Church, then she could open her arms and take them all back into her family. For years she had hoped they would change. She had kept up their subscription to Pathways and she sent them the special messages that came down from the Meadows Center from time to time. Sometimes in the middle of the night she would cry very quietly so as not to wake Hub. They never even remembered her birthday anymore.

  Doreen was living proof that the rules of the Church were right. She had mingled with outsiders and had been corrupted by them. Annalee had knelt in the cold on the hard floor, night after night, hour after hour, praying for Doreen to be released from the evil influences and return home to her family and her Church. When the accidental death and the miscarriage had happened, Annalee had wondered if this could have been a violent answer to her prayers. In the Old Testament sinners were often dealt with most savagely.

  The doctor who had treated Doreen had recommended that she be given psychiatric care some professional counseling at the very least. But Annalee and Hub had explained to the doctor that the rules of their Church forbade that sort of treatment. When Doreen, still frozen into a strange silence, had been well enough to travel, they had driven her up to the Meadows Center in the pickup truck to keep the appointment they had made with Mary Margaret Meadows.

  She had thought they were saving Doreen's life and that she had been made whole again. And now this.

  That night, after Hub began the soft and rhythmic snoring so familiar to her over the years, she lay staring up into darkness, thinking about Doreen. Doreen had been so quick, so lively. She could catch Davey even though he had been a year older and he could not catch her. It used to make him so furious. Annalee could see her daughter come running across the side field, running and grinning, her skinny brown knees pumping high, running right to Annalee and thudding into her, laughing and hugging. She remembered how perfect a baby Doreen had been, that little body so wondrously textured and shaped, so smooth and so delicate. Davey had been a rough, red, squalling baby. In the baby eyes of Doreen, Annalee had thought she could see all the secrets of a woman grown, smiling out at her.

  Suppose it was true, that dreadful word in that note on yellow paper? If it was true, then everything was turned upside down. If something like that could exist within the structure of the Church, then was there anything left in the world which could be trusted?

  Maybe this Deets was Satan in another form, invading the holy Church, tempting the weak. Hub had just turned forty, and he was younger than this so-called Reverend Deets, younger than the man who was reported to be bedding his daughter.

  She could not tell Hub. He would just go up there and kill the man, minister or no. She finally knew what she would have to do. It was a simple plan and that meant it had more chance of working. She would say that she had been talking to Doreen during the day when the two men were at work. Several times.

  Girl talk, she would say, with a reassuring but mysterious smile. And she would tell them that it would probably be best if she went up there and spent a day or two with her. They could certainly take care of the garden and feed the chickens. Hub could drive her into Waycross and leave her at the bus station.

  The important thing was to find out if the note was a lie, and the best way to do that would be to hand it right to Mary Margaret Meadows and watch her face as she read it. It was an awful thing to do, to make that wonderful woman read that terrible word in front of somebody, even when she was only reading it to herself, not out loud. If it was not a lie, there would be time to try to think of what to do next, and wonder if there was anything at all anyone could do.

  On Thursday morning, August eleventh, by quarter to eight the temperature was nearing ninety degrees. One of the large white ECB limousines was parked in the shade of the hangar, the motor running to keep the air conditioner going. When Charley Winchester spotted the Gulfstream coming in over the low hills, coming down from the north, he and John Tinker Meadows got out of the cool limousine and strolled over to where the plane would stop, in front of the hangar.

  There were just four passengers being brought in this time, two United States Senators and their administrative assistants.

  Charley knew all four men and he had briefed John Tinker.

  The senior of the two Senators was Marshall Howlett, and his aide was Jim Ricardi, who had been a Washington journalist.

  Lewis Train was bringing Robby Nathan, who had taught government at Yale.

  They're all strong people," Charley had said.

  "So we walk light and easy."

  "Who needs who most?" John had asked.

  "That's always a good question, isn't it?"

  The four men came down the unfolded steps, Train in the lead, a jowly man with a big torso, cropped dark hair, a low forehead, a thin black line of mustache. The engines sighed into silence as the tractor came out to hook on and tow the aircraft into the relative cool of the hangar. As they were unable to adjust their schedules to stay over, the two aides carried dispatch cases, and the Senators were empty-handed.

  Marshall Howlett was a delicate, scrubbed, burnished little bit of a man who looked twice as big on the television screens.

  He wore a pale suit of western cut and elevator boots. There was a gold buckle on the snakeskin band around his snowy Stetson.

  Charley greeted them warmly and made the introductions.

  They got into the cool air of the white limousine, Charley beside the driver, the Senators in the back on either side of John Tinker, and the aides on the jump seats.

  As none of the four had ever been to the Meadows Center before, Charley had the driver go slowly and take a roundabout route so that John Tinker could point out the various places of interest. The driver took them out Henrietta Boulevard past the Mall and then came back to the primary security area, through the vehicle gate and directly to the Manse.


  "I had no idea there was so much of it!" Robby Nathan said.

  "And still growing," Charley said, smiling back at him.

  The conference table in the old man's large office on the fourth floor of the Manse had been set up for breakfast for six.

  It was a familiar routine. All the pictures, plaques, testimonials the artifacts of a long and busy public life tended to make guests more aware of the Church as a continuing entity, given special attention in the past by public men more celebrated than they had yet become.

  The linen was white, the coffee steaming, the biscuits hot, bacon crisp, orange juice icy, melons superb, eggs to order, waffles golden, and the service swift and inconspicuous.

  Conversation was general during breakfast, with comment about the Gross National Product, the continuing trend of corporate mergers and takeovers, the Mexican debt problem, the pitching in the National League, highway and bridge repair, the flood tide of summer reruns.

  John Tinker Meadows was at the head of the table, his back to the bright windows, and Charley was at the other end. The two Senators had been seated where they could look over at the giant desk of the founder of the Church, at his high-backed black leather swivel chair, and at the glass cases full of the souvenirs of all the years of the old man's confident assumption of power and influence.

  "What's the latest report on your father?" the dapper little cowboy Senator asked.

  "No improvement," John Tinker said, shaking his head.

  "We were hoping he could stop by here and say hello to old friends, but this isn't one of his good days. He tires easily and he gets confused."

  "I met him years ago in El Paso," Senator Howlett said.

  "An absolutely fascinating man. There were a lot of us at a big party, milling around, and even though he didn't say a word at first, suddenly everybody knew he was in the room. You could feel his presence. Must make it pretty hard to fill that big leather chair over there behind the desk."

  John Tinker smiled and shrugged.

  "I don't try to." He could sense their uneasiness. Most laymen meeting a particular man of God for the first time in a social context never know just how to react to him.

  "My father had that fabulous magnetism that was so necessary when he began to build the Eternal Church of the Believer. I suppose in one sense the Church is not fully mature yet, in that it hasn't reached the growth we all anticipate. We're at the point where we have to use enhancements of personal magnetism. As you gentlemen surely know, we're at the point where colorless men, with enough technical support, can be elected to high office. Hair stylists. Voice coaches. Good speech writers. Skilled cameramen and producers. And all the lessons in gestures, proper pauses, variations in tone and emphasis. My father never needed a single bit of that.

  Gentlemen, I need it alll And I use it all." He smiled at them.

  "Sometimes I wonder if I am deceiving the faithful. And then I use that same rationalization men running for office probably use: it's all for the good of the people."

  It was a joke which had always worked before, and it worked now with these men. Also it cued Charley into his first specific approach.

  "Speaking of running for office, Marsh," Charley said, 'and you too, Lewis. I want you both to know that regardless of any differences we may have had in the past, or any we might have between now and when you run again, you will have our support generous support, through legal PAC channels, of course."

  "Delighted to hear that," Lewis Train said, 'and I am sure Marsh is too. No strings, Charley? No strings at all?"

  "Just the usual invisible strings. I think you know what I mean. You gentlemen share the same beliefs and hopes and dreams that we have here, and share the vision of the future of the country that we all want. We know from your records that you will always vote our way on the fundamentals, on basic decency, abortion, school prayer, the American home, crime control, drug control, streamlining the criminal justice system, administering the entitlements systems in a fair and equitable way to eliminate cheaters."

  Charley had passed it back to John Tinker, who said, "We're particularly interested in the criminal justice system. At last count by a reliable source, there were four hundred and seventy-two thousand lawyers practicing in this country. Is that too many? Or just enough? How big is the population of Japan? Forty million, fifty million? I heard recently there are more lawyers in the city of Philadelphia than in all of Japan.

  Maybe that's why they can build good cars and stereo sets cheaper than we can. If we have just enough lawyers in this land, then won't the law schools make sure that in future years we have too many? Would you say, Senators, that a country with too many lawyers might have too much litigation?"

  Hewlett said, "I have to admit a little bit of prejudice, being one myself. And so is Senator Train here. And the great majority of the legislative bodies in this country are jam packed with lawyers. I'll buy that concept, Reverend. When a decent man who has been wronged in some civil matter has to wait seven or eight years to be heard, something is wrong.

  When major corporations with a good cash flow go into voluntary bankruptcy to protect the shareholders' assets from thousands of claims of damage allegedly done to the plaintiffs in past years, we all know that something is dreadfully wrong."

  Lewis Train said to the little cowboy, "Marsh, I do believe we're going to hear about some kind of legal harassment from the government."

  "Which is why we're here?" Marsh asked.

  "Not at all," John Tinker said quickly. The Eternal Church of the Believer is being constantly examined by tax collectors with help from legal specialists on the government payroll. But it's nothing we can't continue to handle just as we have in the past. The Winchester brothers and their cadre of smart young lawyers have always taken good care of the Church and there's no reason to assume they won't be able to continue to do so in the future."

  Charley sighed heavily. Thanks for the vote of confidence, John. But sometimes it do get a tad wearisome. The Reagan election made the fundamentalist churches sound too important in secular affairs, and so the tax people started coming down on us like a load of bricks, calling us political action groups and trying to pry away our legitimate tax exemption.

  Then along comes the mid-term election and it proved we didn't have the clout people thought we had. But the machinizo cry to cut us down to size is still in place, and functioning."

  "In all honesty," John Tinker said, right on cue, 'the lines are a little bit blurred. Suppose a country preacher, which is how my daddy started out, gets up in the pulpit and thunders that little kids should have the right to pray in school. And in his county there are two men running for office. Jones is for prayer in schools and Smith is against it. Is the preacher urging his flock to vote for Jones? And does not this whole controversy cut across a lot of social lines? Abortion, busing, welfare, protective tariffs. It is my feeling that if people look to this Church for guidance, then the Church must express its opinion on many secular matters."

  Jim Ricardi, Marshall Howlett's aide, said, "When Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple, was that a religious act or a political act?"

  "It was a social act," John Tinker said.

  "It was a religious leader acting for the social good, because Jesus knew that Christianity could never thrive in a corrupt society."

  Robby Nathan, the other aide, a chubby balding young man with a very deep voice, said, "Let me, as the devil's advocate for a moment, speak of fairness. This came up in my classes at Yale. Suppose Mr. Jones, who advocates no-fault divorce, is up against Mr. Smith, who is agin it. The churches use their donated funds to fight no-fault divorce, calling it a social evil.

  Several other organizations, which have no tax exemption, fight for it and try to get Jones elected. The people who are fighting Jones get a portion of their war fund picked up by Uncle Sam, as a charitable deduction. The people who are trying to get Jones elected have to use money that is all their own, that in fact is what they have left
after paying taxes, so for the man in a fifty percent bracket, it costs him fifty dollars to give twenty-five to the cause. Unfair?"

  "Good question. It so happens we do have a political action arm. It is called the Henrietta Fund, after my paternal grandmother, and it is made perfectly clear to all that any donation to it is not tax-exempt in any way, shape or manner. Through that fund we try to get men elected who are friendly to the causes in which we believe. We campaign for specific legislation. It is a healthy and sizable fund. We have a specialist here who has done wonders with all the Church funds and investments."

  Charley stepped in and said, "On our commercial operations, and you saw some of them as we drove here from the airport, we pay tax on the same basis as any other business.

  ECB Enterprises, Lakemore Construction, Meadows Development and a slew of smaller things all pay what's due and are all subject to periodic IRS audit. Our executives tithe to the Church. Ten percent. In auditing their returns, the IRS has made the arbitrary judgment that the tithes in total are a kickback to the Church which works to keep our business profits low and our business taxes low. They are trying to use that as a lever to open up our donation records from the entire membership. We have to fight that all the way down the line.