“I am a self-contained ecosystem, but if I need to bend the rules to help out my new home teacher, than so be it.”
“Do you think you might bend the rules to come to church?”
Brother Vastly laughed. “You know, that sense of humor of yours might be just the thing to help you hold on to Grace.”
“My relationship with Grace is doing just fine.”
“Remember, a lie to yourself . . .”
“I know, I know.”
“Trust, this is awkward, I understand,” Leonard said, putting his left foot high up on a crate of no-name green beans and making it almost level with his belt. “It’s unnatural for a home teachee to teach the home teacher, but I’m going to give you a little advice. Put your personal safety first.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that,” I replied.
“Line upon line,” he saged. “Line upon line.”
“I’m pretty certain the Savior would want us to put others before ourselves.”
“I’m sure He would,” Leonard defended. “You’ve missed my point completely.”
“What’s your point?”
“I don’t want to get into specifics.” He shifted uncomfortably.
“I’d better get going,” I said, standing up.
“Listen,” he insisted. “Before you go, I want you to try something I made. It’s an all-natural dried fruit bar I call the ‘Lenny’ because it rhymes with ‘skinny.’ If you ate these all the time you’d be pretty skinny—cleans the body out completely. Not that you need it—you’ve actually got a nice shape considering you’ve only been back from your mission a few months.”
I wanted to list all the reasons why I didn’t want to try a “Lenny,” as well as point out that “Lenny” and “skinny” didn’t actually rhyme, but I felt it was my priesthood duty as his home teacher to indulge him in this wish.
Leonard rushed off down the hall and into the pool room. He went inside. I heard splashing, a door open, a door close, more splashing, and a fairly mild swearword. A few moments later, he emerged with a plate of unwrapped fruit bars, the bottom half of his pants wet. I didn’t dare ask. The fruit bars were brown and abrasive-looking.
“Take one, and shove another in your pocket for later if you’d like.”
“One’s fine.”
Brother Vastly picked up a second and pushed it into one of my pockets for me.
I bit into the bar in my hand reluctantly. It was worse than I had anticipated. It was like eating a piece of pulpy chalk.
“You know, a while back I heard this story,” Leonard said. “This woman made a cake at the start of every month and then would serve it to her home teachers when they came over. If they came at the beginning of the month, it was fresh. If they came near the end, it was stale.”
“I just got assigned to you yesterday,” I complained, wondering why I had to eat a twenty-seven-day-old date bar because of it.
“These aren’t a month old,” he said merrily. “I made these about four years ago. I haven’t had a home teacher since the boating incident. I’m sorry, I can’t see why a seven-year-old kid should get a life jacket before me.”
I just stared at him.
“My last home teacher owned a boat,” was all he said by way of explanation.
“Do I have to leave the same way I came in?”
“Excellent question, and yes. I’ll also need you not to tell the others that I let you into the Bio-Doom. I don’t want folks thinking I’m some sort of noncommitted freak.”
Heaven forbid.
“I’m here for the long haul,” he said. “Of course, if you showed up for your next visit with a couple cases of soap, I wouldn’t be sad.”
Brother Vastly picked up the linoleum-square trapdoor and waved me over. Then he waited for me to finish my fruit bar. I shoved the whole thing into my mouth and swallowed. He gave me the okay sign.
“Thanks for coming by, Trust. I’ll remember these kind acts when I’m enjoying my mansion on high.”
“Thank you,” I said, wanting only to get out, and maybe get a drink. I would have asked him for one, but I was afraid he’d retrieve it from the pool.
I crawled across the dirt, out the skirting, and through the plastic. It was nice to smell the open air again. I walked through the neighborhood and to the bus stop. There was no one else waiting at the moment, so I just stood there patiently by myself. When the bus arrived, the doors opened to reveal Brother Treat behind the wheel. Brother Treat had driven a bus ever since Brother Victor had found him the job. I had never actually ridden on his bus, but he had talked often of how hard he worked to keep this town running smoothly.
“Brother Treat,” I said, happy to see him.
“Trust,” he replied coldly.
I stepped up to get on and he drove forward a couple feet. My foot knocked into the side of the bus, the door no longer directly in front of me. I stepped over and looked at Brother Treat. He motioned as if to say, “oops.” I tried again, and once again the bus moved forward. I tried again, this time a little more quickly. He moved the bus up six feet. I ran to try to get on, and he moved it a good twenty feet. I walked slowly up to the bus, the people currently riding on it staring at me. I’m sure that they, like me, were wondering what was going on.
Right before I got to the door I hollered out, “What’s the matter?”
Brother Treat didn’t answer.
I stepped toward the open door, and once again it started to creep forward.
“Brother Treat!”
I didn’t know Brother Treat that well. He and his family were “overflow Saints,” meaning they sat in the folding chairs at the back of the chapel. Years back when there had been a fuss between the bench sitters and the chair sitters, it had been Brother Treat who had been wounded by Sister Cravitz, prompting him to pour bleach all over her prizewinning azaleas. Brother Treat had a nice face and bad hair. He was tall and unusually thin for a bus driver. Due to a bet involving a skateboard and stairs in his youth, he had false teeth—teeth that he would occasionally take out and publicly clean. Actually, he was a rather quiet man who, aside from the bleach episode, had never shown much gumption. Excluding, of course, the time he accidentally stepped on another Scout’s pinewood derby car—a car that was in competition with his son Leon’s.
Leon.
I had forgotten that Sister Barns had mentioned Leon’s supposed crush on Grace. Certainly this strange bus episode couldn’t be about that, could it?
“Brother Treat,” I hollered, the bus doors about eight feet away from me at the time. “This isn’t about Leon and Grace is it?”
I had barely gotten the words out before the bus doors slammed shut and Brother Treat took off for good, exhaust billowing into my face.
I couldn’t believe it. I waited around for another bus but none came. I began walking home, stopping only twice: once to get a drink and use the bathroom at a small business along the way, and once to see an early afternoon movie about a spy with a lisp.
What? I had nothing else to do.
When I arrived home, it was already beginning to get dark. I looked over at Wendy’s house and saw that Grace’s bedroom light was on. I thought about going directly over and visiting her, but I decided to wash up from the day’s activities first.
The second I walked through the front door of my house, my mother yelled at me to call Sister Cravitz. I did so, only to find that Brother Vastly had just radioed her to tell her that the date bars he had served me were actually small fire-starter bricks he had made, and that he was terribly, terribly sorry. I held my stomach and pulled the one he had pushed into my pocket out. I had thought they tasted rather woody. I flipped it over and over in my hand, contemplating the day I had just completed. Then I called Grace and invited her over for dinner.
We ate in the living room in front of a roaring fire, compliments of Brother Leonard Vastly.
22
Who Would Have Thawed It?
Thelma’s Way was driving Roger Will
iams mad. The town had turned into one happy batch of Mormons, partly because of him. Who would have thought that an uninterested member such as he could be so instrumental in bringing souls back into the fold? Folks had often told him about how hard Elder Williams had worked to beef up the branch. And yet, Trust’s efforts had yielded little fruit. Now here, with a few lies, Roger seemed to have brought most of the flock back home.
Roger wasn’t sure if this strengthened or weakened his newly rekindled testimony. He was also having a hard time not getting frustrated about the still-missing Book of Mormon. His efforts, despite reactivating the members, had produced nothing. Roger had done everything he could think of. He had even considered praying for help. It was a thought he pushed quickly away.
Roger sat himself upon one of the chairs on the boardinghouse porch. Paul Leeper emerged from around the corner and bid him good afternoon.
“Paul,” Roger greeted.
Paul Leeper was the once-famous once-apostate who had caused the town so much trouble. He was a skinny man with a thick helmet of hair and scrunched up facial features. Whereas Paul had once been a loudmouthed troublemaker, he was now just a loudmouthed local.
“Any luck finding the book?” Paul asked.
“Nope,” Roger stretched. “Not even a decent clue.”
“I just saw it over at . . . nope, that’s not true.” Paul caught himself.
Paul was working hard these days to stop his habit of perpetual lying. It wasn’t easy. This, after all, was a man who had once claimed to have invented grease. He had also bragged about being at the Council of Nicaea where he had helped pick out and edit the original books of the Bible.
“I think that old Book of Mormon might be lost for good,” Roger sighed.
“These are some big woods,” Paul added.
Lupert Carver came toward the boardinghouse from across the meadow. He appeared to be dragging something behind him on a leash. As he got closer, it became obvious that what Lupert was pulling was a stiff dead dog.
Paul leaned against the porch rail and looked out at him. Roger raised himself from his seat and gazed as well.
“Lupert Carver,” Paul hollered. “What are you up to?”
Lupert slid the dog up to the boardinghouse and stopped.
“You remember Bushy, here?” Lupert asked.
“I thought he died years ago,” Paul gaped, stepping off the porch and crouching down by the dog. Roger stepped down as well.
“He did,” Lupert shrugged. “I couldn’t stand to bury him so I stuck him in my mother’s deep freeze. Mom found him this morning while rummaging for some frozen sausage. She’s not real happy with me.”
“I suppose not,” Paul sympathized.
Roger lightly kicked the frozen dog with the toe of his shoe.
“My father saw a movie where they froze someone till they found a cure to fix ’im,” Lupert explained.
“Movies ain’t real life,” Paul lectured. “I guess you’ll need help burying him.”
“Maybe,” Lupert answered. “But I thought I might prop him up in the sun and see if he thaws out alive.”
“Now Lupert, boy,” Paul said sternly. “Once a dog is dead, no amount of sunning is going to bring him back to life.”
“That’s what my pa said,” Lupert lamented. “A course, he wasn’t positive about it. He went to Virgil’s Find to look up if it’s true.”
Roger Williams simultaneously shook his head and smiled. Lupert Carver was a great representation of what he was up against here in Thelma’s Way. It was as if these people remained in a constant state of slow, childlike innocence.
Roger watched as Lupert walked over to the middle of the meadow. The ground was snow-covered and dirty. Lupert propped Bushy up in the center of the clearing. The dog stood frozen stiff, staring at the boardinghouse as if it were a fat pheasant. After Lupert had stood the dog up, he turned and walked back toward Roger and Paul. The moment his eyes were off of Bushy, two of Leo Tip’s wild dogs tore out of the woods, ran up to the frozen dog, and quickly and almost silently dragged their once-friend out of the meadow and back into the trees—like a hand playing jacks, they had swooped down and taken what they wanted.
Roger and Paul stood there with open mouths. Lupert stepped up to them unaware.
“Maybe if he thaws just right,” Lupert said hopefully, turning around to gaze at his dog that was no longer there.
“Where’s Bushy!” Lupert yelled in a panic. “Where’d he go?”
Paul put his hand on Lupert’s arm and tried to think of something honest to say. Roger helped out.
“He’s gone to heaven.”
“No kidding?” Lupert smiled.
“No kidding,” Roger answered.
Lupert bowed his head in reverence. “They sure took him quick,” he observed.
“Heaven knows a good hound when they see one,” Paul comforted.
“I knew God was up there,” Lupert wowed. “I just knew it. I gotta tell Mother.” He beamed, turned, and ran off.
Paul put his hand on Roger’s shoulder.
“Our secret?” he asked.
Roger nodded. He would have said more, but for some reason his heart was doing flips and turns within his chest. It pumped wildly. He tried to rationalize what he was feeling. Thelma’s Way had tossed him around like a bin full of lottery balls. The tragic (or magic) of this place was overwhelming. To think that an accomplished man like himself could be touched by a thawing dog and the faith of an ignorant child was baffling.
True, he had witnessed one miracle after another while staying in Thelma’s Way. He had been there when Annie Holler had given birth to twins. He had watched Janet Bickerstaff get baptized in the freezing Girth River and witnessed Frank Porter regrow hair after applying a new salve that Sister Lando had concocted. Memories came crowding in on him both hard and soft.
Roger Williams sat down.
23
Conversations with the Competition
December 1st
Wednesday evening I left Grace at my home and drove my mother’s car to the church building. The Southdale chapel was rather spooky-looking at night. Actually, it was rather spooky looking during the day. It had been built before the Church started using molds. The east side of it was brick, while the west end was wood siding and stucco. As far as buildings go, it had the personality of a pudgy toddler. We loved it, we were happy to have it around, but we wished it would photograph better.
In front of the chapel there was a steeple which stood alone, circled by a rose garden and rising incredibly high above the ground. The steeple had been added to the chapel grounds about five years ago. Before that, we had been a steepleless people, relying only on the pitched roof to point us toward heaven.
The steeple was supposed to be half the height it actually was, but someone had messed up during the installation of it, ordering and installing one that towered high above all the other steeples in town. The Lutherans had complained, and the Baptists had written a letter to the local paper pointing out our poor taste in putting up such a blatantly offensive edifice. I think I agreed with the Baptists. The tall metal steeple looked like a radio tower sitting in front of our house of worship—a radio tower with hair. You see, the top of our tall steeple was flat and round, providing a perfect place for a single bird’s nest. Well, a not-so-single bird had built one years ago. That bird had lived there until it was struck by lightning. The bird itself caught fire and toppled out of the nest, its feet tangled up in the fibers of its own creation.
There the dead bird dangled. Many tried to knock it down, but nobody was successful. Marcus Leen, Bishop Leen’s youngest son, had even chosen the task of removing it for his Eagle Scout project. He had made elaborate plans to extricate it, building scaffolding around the tall steeple and crafting a very long stick to push it off with. He got close, but the winds at that altitude made it too dangerous to proceed. A few of the priests at the time had tried to knock the bird down by throwing rocks. That effort ended in tw
o broken windows and a stray cat that didn’t think too kindly of Mormons.
So the dangling bird had stayed until nature concocted its own remedy. One morning it was gone, the wind having dislodged it and carried it away. If you squinted, you could still see bits of nest up there, but no fowl had chosen to build since.
I walked into the building and straight to the cultural hall. Sister Barns was already there bossing a couple of the young women around.
“Trust,” she said as I walked in. “I’m so glad you came.”
“Thanks for asking me,” I replied, unable to think of anything else to say.
“Listen,” she squeaked. “I need this ramp to be solid. There’s going to be a number of single women walking on it and some of them, well, let’s just say that a few of these choice women, well, what I’m trying to get at . . . God doesn’t make everyone petite.”
“I’ll make it strong,” I smiled.
“Good. Now, I asked Noah Taylor to help you out. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
Sister Barns looked around and then leaned in toward me. “In my opinion you’ve got much nicer shoulders than he does,” she whispered, as if I needed some bolstering up.
“Thank you,” I whispered back.
Sister Barns blushed.
“Noah’s in the Relief Society room, picking out support beams,” she informed me and turned back to what she was fiddling with before I arrived.
I walked to the Relief Society room and found Noah leaning against one of the tables talking to a rather mature seventeen-year-old girl who looked in need of a strong lesson on modesty. He was making jokes and complimenting her on her nice smile. He was wearing another sweater.
I cleared my throat.
“Hello,” Noah said, startled. “I didn’t see you there. You could have given this old man a heart attack.”
“You’re not so old,” the young girl teased.
“Not according to Brother Williams here,” he smiled, referring to my Colonel Sanders remark.
“So is this the wood we’ll be using?” I pointed, wanting to get the project over with.
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