by Al Riske
I PUT OFF the decision as long as I could, but the next time Mr. Brandt cornered me I agreed to try teaching the class for a couple of Sundays—provided I didn’t land a job in the meantime—to see how it went.
I guess I knew as soon as he asked me that I would give in. Chalk it up to an overdeveloped sense of responsibility or a pronounced inability to say no. It amounts to the same thing. But that doesn’t mean it was an easy decision.
On the whole, I thought the teachings of Jesus made sense, but in recent years I had come to think that many of the doctrines and interpretations of the Bible I had been taught were quite ridiculous. Certain passages of the Bible just couldn’t be explained to my satisfaction. Not by Sunday school teachers or even college professors.
IT WAS TEN-THIRTY and already hot when I stepped out of the library with a long list of newspapers and their addresses. Small-town weeklies and big-city dailies in every part of California. Someone, somewhere had to need a general assignment reporter with no experience.
Near the door there was a ladder and someone wearing painter pants and a white cap. It was Paul. He called me a no-good layabout and asked me what I had to say for myself. It threw me. He had never teased me before. I considered coming back with the same sort of accusation, but thought better of it. As he came down the ladder, I told him I was teaching Sunday school, which also struck me as a poor topic, but by then I was already saying it.
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
“How so?” he asked.
“I mean, because you’re—”
“Not preaching anymore?”
I nodded.
“I don’t think I was ever meant to be a minister.”
“You were good.”
“Thank you, Keith. I guess I did alright. But I was never really comfortable with it—manipulating people’s emotions.”
I noticed Shana approaching. She had a body that was tight, compact, squirrelly. Nice little curves. But I certainly didn’t want to get caught looking again, so I concentrated on her eyes.
“Hey, Shana,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, ‘Hey!’ You know, ‘How are you?’ Making conversation.”
I smiled lamely.
“Fine,” she said.
“No, really. How’s it going?”
She shook her head in disbelief and walked away, leaving a sack lunch for her father. This time, though, I caught myself looking and quickly turned to Pastor Kimball. (Suddenly, he wasn’t “Paul” anymore.)
“I’m sorry. Where were we?”
“It’s alright, Keith.”
Still flustered and probably blushing, I said, “I don’t want her to feel like a pariah or something.”
He waited until I looked in his eyes.
“It’s alright,” he said.
“HOW DID IT go?” Mr. Brandt wanted to know.
“Not bad,” I said.
“Not bad? That’s good then.”
“Well, better than I expected.”
“So you’ll take the class, yes? For the summer.”
“I don’t know—”
Two girls from the class were nearby. They were Shana’s age, I think. Not unattractive, but I preferred older women. At least I always had.
“Say yes,” Cari said.
“You have to, Keith. You’re the best teacher we’ve ever had,” added her friend Andrea.
“You see,” said Mr. Brandt. “I knew you would do an excellent job.”
I DON’T THINK Shana was impressed. Her mind had clearly been a million miles from that church. So why was she there? She didn’t have to be. Her parents weren’t.
I wasn’t even sure if I still wanted to be there.
Maybe she came just to see what would happen. I noticed one or two shocked faces and heard plenty of whispering, but, to their credit, several people in the congregation went out of their way to welcome her. They would have welcomed her parents, too—even some of those who didn’t think her father should be pastor any longer. Forgiveness being one of the primary Christian virtues, even bad-boy Brad Page was not turned away, though I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t there by choice.
Girls tended to avoid him. Even Shana. Not that she cared what anyone thought. He was just too disgusting to her now—a mistake she wouldn’t repeat, even for the chance to tweak the noses of the self-righteous nitwits all around her.
That was my impression anyway.
WHEN I SAW Shana in town the next day, I decided to ask her what she thought of the class.
“Don’t quit your day job,” she said.
“I haven’t got one.”
“Well, keep looking.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Look, what do you want from me?”
“I just want to know what you think.”
“Is that all?”
We were on the sidewalk in front of TrueValue hardware. The temperature was starting to drop, but it was still hot.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll buy you a Coke.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What?”
“Do you know how corny you sound?”
I turned up my palms and shrugged my shoulders.
“Hey, I’m thirsty,” I said. “Tell me you’re not thirsty.”
Her father came out of the store carrying two gallons of latex.
She got in my car.
“We’re just going to get a Coke,” I explained.
It was twilight as we neared the Dairy Queen. There was a line at the window, and most of the outdoor tables were already taken. I happened to look over at Shana then and saw her face change.
“What is it?”
“Drive on, drive on,” she said in a panic.
“What’s the matter?”
She was doubled over as if she were in pain.
“I don’t want them to see me with you,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I have my reputation to consider.”
THE ONLY THING that came in the mail for me was a postcard from my best friend, Doug, who I had not seen at all that summer. His internship with a Sunnyvale software company had turned into a permanent position before he’d even received his degree. Clearly I was in the wrong field. “Hang in there,” he wrote.
THE WALLS OF the classroom were sunshine yellow, and identical blue sofas faced each other from opposite sides. In between, on a bare hardwood floor, were about fifteen folding chairs in uneven rows. An old vinyl armchair was reserved for the teacher, but I sank too low in it and used one of the folding chairs instead, even though it creaked whenever I moved. Somehow we got to talking about divine inspiration.
“Take the Psalms,” I said. “Were they written by God, or to God?”
No one had an answer.
Then Shana, speaking for the first time, said, “Why would God write songs—or poems or whatever they are—to himself?”
Though unsure of herself, Cari couldn’t let that go unchallenged.
“But they were inspired by God, right?”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Is that what we mean by divinely inspired?”
I was starting to sound like one of my old professors. Defining terms. Challenging the students.
“Doesn’t it mean more than that?” someone else wanted to know.
“What does it mean to you?” I asked.
I really had no idea where I wanted to go with this. I had probably gone too far already.
“I don’t know. You’re the teacher.”
Shana seemed to sense my discomfort and delighted in making it worse.
“So you’re saying the Bible is not the so-called Word of God,” she said flatly.
“I’m saying you have to study it carefully and decide for yourself.”
“But what do you think?”
I thought it was too soon for them to undergo the same loss of certainty, if not quite loss of faith, I had first experienced in the college classroom.
“I think it would be a
mistake,” I said, “to rely on the opinion of any one person. You all need to think for yourselves.”
WHEN SHANA GOT tired of watching people squirm, she stopped coming to church and I didn’t see her again until a few weeks later at the lake. I was just coming out of the woods near the shore when I saw her pull her T-shirt up over her head. Unzipping her khaki shorts, she stopped and looked up. I’m sure she thought I was spying on her.
She let her shorts drop to the ground.
“Well?”
“Hi,” I said stupidly.
“So, what do you think?” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant until she turned and struck a pose to show off her swimsuit, a pink-and-black two-piece that barely covered even her slight frame.
“Nice,” I said.
“No, it’s not.”
The sun was high and sweat was dripping in my eyes.
“It’s not nice at all,” she said, stepping closer.
I wiped my eyes and moved back a bit.
“What’s the matter, Keith? Is it hard being so close to me?”
“Don’t Shana.”
Her hands were on my chest, her lips inches from my neck. The next thing I knew we were falling in the tall grass.
“Your lips say no, but your dick says something else.”
“Very funny,” I said, digging a stick out from under my back.
“You want it; I know you do.”
She had my T-shirt up to my armpits.
“Not like this,” I said.
“Oh, I see, you want to be in charge. Alright, then. Come on.”
She rolled over on her back and waited. The look on her face was hard, sexy, false.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and went back through the woods.
THERE WAS A Help Wanted sign in the window of the local bookstore, and I thought, the way things were going, I might have to settle for something like that. For a while. The pay would be minimal, but it would give me something to do with myself. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop and all that. I actually went in several times and twice bought books, but I never applied.
SOPHOMORE GIRLS MADE up an unusually high percentage of the Sunday school class. They gave me their full attention—a blessing and a curse.
“How far do you think a Christian should go on a date?” one of them asked me.
“Try to stay within a fifteen mile radius,” I said.
We were all in the back of a flatbed truck, returning from an old-fashioned hayride, and it was so dark I could hardly tell where we were or who was talking.
“That’s not what I meant,” the girl persisted.
“I know,” I said. “It depends, really.”
“On what?”
“Look, I’m probably not the best person to ask.”
“Are you a virgin?” someone else asked.
“Yes, but not for lack of trying.”
“That’s funny,” a male voice said, “I thought I saw you with Shana the other night.”
It was Brad Page.
I HAD AN interview with a newspaper in Yreka and hoped to God I would get the job, but three weeks passed and then I heard they were hiring someone else.
SHORTLY AFTER THAT I found myself down by the lake about midnight, sitting in the tall grass where I had found Shana stripping down to her bikini. I was waiting for her now, though I didn’t really think she would come. The meeting was my idea, but she had chosen the time and the place—to mock me, I suspected.
It was a nice night, though. Moonlight on the lake and all that. I was content to sit with my arms around my knees and stare at the distant shore. Well, maybe not content, but resigned.
Then Shana appeared. She seemed surprised to see me, which I found encouraging actually.
“So,” she said, “here we are.”
I stood up.
“Here we are.”
I still didn’t understand the mystery of her allure. Aside from being far too young, she was not really my type. I had never cared for blondes, especially bleach blondes with dark roots, but the old rules no longer applied. Lust was certainly a factor. In my worst moments I suspected it was the only factor. At any rate, I thought about her constantly. Which worked out well because there were a lot of other things I didn’t want to think about.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah, um … ”
“Well?”
“You really don’t like me, do you?” I said.
“No.”
“I just wanted to explain.”
“What’s to explain?”
The thing was I had no idea what I wanted to say and nothing was coming to me.
“Lost your tongue?” she asked.
“No,” I said, and pulled her to me.
For one second we just stood there, chest to chest. Then she kissed me hard, as if kissing were a way of fighting back. Neither one of us was wearing much, so it wasn’t long before we were naked.
“What about protection?” she said. “Did you bring something—or did you figure I’d take care of that?”
I didn’t know which would be worse, not having a condom or having one at the ready.
“You brought one, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Where did you get it? Wilson’s drug store, or did you go out of town so no one would know?”
I didn’t answer.
She grabbed her shorts and her tank top and was gone.
SHORTLY AFTER THAT, we had the first really cloudy day all summer—dark clouds, but no rain. I was called before a committee at the church and asked a lot of questions about what I had been teaching in my Sunday school class. As it turned out, a lot of my views were in conflict with church doctrine—things I had professed to believe when I joined and did believe at the time.
Maynard was on the committee, of course, but I could tell he wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt. Under the guise of trying to be sure he understood what I was saying, he even paraphrased some of my responses (in more acceptable terms). I wasn’t much help to him, I’m afraid.
The long and the short of it was they had found someone else to take the class. I asked to have my name removed from the membership roll, which seemed to be fine with them.
I COULDN’T BRING myself to tell my parents the whole story, just the part about not teaching anymore. (“It was only a temporary position, and now they have somebody permanent.”) They would find out sooner or later and be very concerned; I just didn’t feel like dealing with it before I absolutely had to.
I went to church with them as usual the next Sunday and it was like nothing had happened. Nobody acted differently, except maybe Mr. Brandt, who seemed to feel responsible somehow. For what, I’m not sure.
THE ONLY PERSON I wanted to talk to was Shana, but I failed to run into her, despite walking by her house at various times of various days.
THE THING I was just figuring out about small towns—I’m a slow learner—is that sooner or later everyone knows why you quit your church and who you’ve been seeing. My parents were among the last to know these things. When they finally confronted me, my mother couldn’t speak; she just kept dabbing her eyes with a small tissue.
My father said, “Son, you’d better find a job as soon as possible.”
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, on my way out of town, I spotted a hitchhiker on the roadside up ahead and immediately began to slow down. Hiking shorts, backpack, blond hair. It was Shana alright. I pulled over on the gravel shoulder, but she didn’t want to get in.
“You can’t take me far enough,” she said.
“How far do you want to go? I’m headed for Los Angeles.”
Her face betrayed interest.
“Come on,” I said.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Yeah, you’re always looking out for my best interests, aren’t you?”
“Hey, I try.”
“What is it with you? You have some sort of
Messianic Complex or something?”
“Good God, no. If anybody plays savior it will have to be you,” I said.
It was starting to rain. She got in the car.
X’s
THERE WERE SO many things Charlie didn’t know before he left Linda. He never suspected, for instance, that his wife of seventeen years would do whatever she could to hurt him. More surprising was that his own father, his best friend, and many of the people at church had never really liked her and in many cases could hardly stand her. This despite her cherished role as the assistant pastor.
He had not realized at the time that his leaving would prevent her from being fully ordained, a status she had been working toward for many years, though she could never quite find the time to complete her dissertation. Apparently there was only one way you could be divorced and ordained in their church. The cause of the divorce had to be adultery—on the other person’s part, of course.
So it should not have surprised Charlie when Linda accused him of that very sin, from the pulpit, no less. Her star witness was their own son, who said he had seen Charlie making out with another woman while parked outside the Great Northern Brewing Company, down by the railroad station. Forget that his Impala was in the shop at the time. Forget, too, that Charlie was an adult with an apartment of his own by then and could entertain women there if he so desired. Linda would believe what she wanted to believe—what she needed everyone to believe.
What Charlie didn’t understand was why Sam would make up a story like that. But then he couldn’t understand any of the lies his fifteen-year-old son so frequently told.
Charlie had always planned to stick it out until both of his sons, Sam and Rory, graduated from high school. That singular goal had been on his mind for the past seven years, in fact, but he couldn’t quite make it. He was afraid that if he tried to tough it out for three more years he would lose himself entirely.
TO LINDA’S WAY of thinking, there had to be another woman. Why else would he leave her? She searched her soul and found no other reason that made sense. She was a good wife, a good mother, a pillar of wisdom and strength for a confused congregation—not the largest flock in Whitefish, Montana, but one that needed constant tending, and would need her all the more when the head pastor retired at the end of the year.