All Is Swell

by Robert Farrell Smith

  Trust Williams Trilogy: Book One: All is Swell

  Trust in Thelma's Way

  Robert Farrell Smith

  © 1999 Robert F. Smith.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company (permissions@deseretbook.com), P.O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book. Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

  Deseret Book is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, Robert F., 1970–

  All is swell : Trust in Thelma’s Way / Robert Farrell Smith.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-57345-466-4

  I. Title. II. Series: Smith, Robert Farrell Smith, 1970– Trust

  Williams trilogy ; bk. 1.

  PS3569.M53794A45 1999

  813’.54—dc21 99-11472

  CIP

  Printed in the United States of America

  10987654321 72082 - 6434

  To the woman of my wildest dreams.

  Past, present, and future.

  Krista.

  Table of Contents

  Order Up

  Fared Well

  Big Things, Small Packages

  Lucy

  Thelma’s Way, Tennessee

  Green Eyes

  It Starts

  It’s a Small Ward after Paul

  Drifting

  One Up, One Down

  Close Enough to Touch

  Half Empty, Half Full

  A Little off the Top

  A-Lot-o-Lance

  The Road to Don’t-Ask-Us

  Geronimo

  The Introduction of Grace

  Seek and Seek

  Half an Inch Deep

  Fork in the Road

  Lost and Found

  Lather, Rinse, Repeat

  Wet Your Appetite

  Door Number Two

  Boo

  Open Mouth, Insert Future

  Painfully Marred

  Sleigh Bells Ring. I Ain't Listening

  Spring Runoff

  Food Flight

  Half Baked

  Practice Makes . . . If At First You Don’t Succeed

  Live and Let Act

  Take a Seat

  Lights, Camera, Traction

  Smeared

  A Burning in the Bosom

  Angel of Heresy

  Pulled and Prodded

  Knocks-Ville

  Justification

  Restoration

  About the Author

  1

  Order Up

  It was here. I stuck my hand in the mailbox and pulled out the letter. Then, with a patience nurtured by TV and the flash of everyday life, I tore it open. My stomach exploded with butterflies.

  I couldn’t believe this!

  I shook the paper, as if jostling it about might rearrange its contents.

  The words remained the same. Forget the fact that I had prayed for it every night for the last year. Forget the fact that I had taken language courses in school. God had not seen fit to send me someplace prestigious and foreign. My blue eyes simmered as I stared at the paper. This was not the mission call I had envisioned receiving. The population of Knoxville, Tennessee, was about to increase by one clean-cut, dark-suited, two-year missionary.

  God was keeping me stateside.

  2

  Fared Well

  The chapel was packed. People pushed up against each other like putty, making room for more. The place was filled to capacity. I couldn’t believe it. Even some of my nonmember friends from work and school had come to say good-bye.

  Wendy, our neighbor, was sitting in the front row, obviously unaware that we Mormons discouraged eating in church. She had a bag of chips and a Coke resting on the end of the pew. I guess she thought Church was like a trip to the movies. She was probably hoping for a few good laughs. She’d probably get them.

  Showtime.

  The chapel organ began to bellow the first notes of the opening song as I reached up to feel my newly shorn brown hair. I stared at the odd-looking wing tips on my feet. I brushed the leg of my dark suit.

  Heaven help itself, I was turning into a missionary.

  I looked at my hands as I sat there on the stand listening to Bishop Leen say nice things about me. My fingers seemed . . . longer? Or shorter? Different.

  For a moment, I wanted to jump out of who I was becoming and run home barefooted. I wanted to climb one of the big trees out in front of my house and spend the afternoon throwing seed pods down at passing cars. I wanted to work on math homework with my mom, torment my brother, Abel, and sit in wonder over Lucy, my first and only love.

  I looked at my family sitting out in the crowd. None of them had wanted to speak today. Dad was a pillar in the community but no more than a flimsy support beam to the Church. He had more money than faith and sort of liked it that way. Mom was the believing one, but despite her Noah-like faith, she still couldn’t be talked into taking the stand in front of all those people. My twelve-year-old sister, Margaret, was not about to give a talk, and my eight-year-old brother, Abel, had wanted to speak but had been banned from coming to the microphone ever since the “incident” in fast and testimony meeting last summer. Yes, I would be the only Williams on the program today.

  Trust Andrew Williams. I had a name like a political sound bite.

  My parents had named me Trust out of fear. I was their firstborn, and I had come out boy when they had specifically asked the heavens for something frilly and pink. It wasn’t that they hated boys, it was just that they had heard so many bad things about tiny males from our neighbor Wendy. So they named me Trust, hoping it would help the budding hellion in me surface slowly if at all.

  I had grown up all right.

  Sure, if pressed, my parents could produce a list of trespasses and transgressions, but I had managed for the most part to keep my life on track. Now here I was, about to embark on a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scared. Nervous. But embarking. Mom was thrilled, and Dad, despite his own inactivity, was happy too. He saw the whole mission thing as a big training camp for my future career in business—sort of a divine Book of Mormon salesman internship.

  I gazed at the tip of my tie as I sat there on the stand, my childhood suddenly seeming too short. I felt my heart tighten. My nerves were buzzing just below my skin. I wasn’t ready for this, was I? I didn’t know how to feel.

  The call to Tennessee had been a surprise, but I was determined to make the best of it. After all, if I believed anything about this gospel that I was going to be preaching, it was that the Lord was at the head. And while I had sort of imagined myself looking sharp in France or stunning in Greece, I guess He sort of saw me in Tennessee. I’m not saying that didn’t concern me, but I would do this favor for God. There had to be something worth seeing in Tennessee.

  The heavens were consoling me, sending down a calming silence to my troubled soul. I sat in relative peace and quiet—actually a little too quiet.

  There was no one at the podium, and everyone was staring at me. I realized it was my turn to speak.

  I had daydreamed my way through two talks and an intermediate hymn sung by our home teacher’s sixteen-year-old daughter. I picked up my scriptures and rose to my feet.

  I spotted Lucy Fall in the crowd three rows back and to the left. Her blonde hair was shining under the bright fluo
rescent lights. She acknowledged me with her blue eyes. I was going to miss Lucy. She nodded at me as if to say, Go on. Her lips parted a tad, giving the world a rare glimpse of her perfect white teeth. She sat there looking better than everyone else and knowing it. Some people thought Lucy was stuck-up. True or not, I was too stuck on her to care. All I knew then was that I was going to miss her.

  I stood at the pulpit and cleared my throat. There were so many faces looking up at me. I tried to smile. I made a lame attempt at a joke. The crowd laughed mercifully.

  I was going to miss the Thicktwig First Ward. I didn’t want it to change while I was gone. I wanted to come back in two years and see each family sitting just where they were in front of me: the Johnsons three pews back and to the right; the Lewises strategically sitting on the back row next to the door—to make it easier for Sister Lewis to haul out the twins if necessary; the Falls in the middle section, boxed in by Sister Cravitz and Bishop Leen’s wife and family; Brother Vastly in his designated spot, the last padded bench to the right, in front of the overflow chair sitters.

  If there was any rift in our ward, it was between the bench sitters and the chair sitters. The chair sitters were always complaining about the awful treatment they received sitting in the back: cold metal chairs, poor sound, an uneven ratio of noisy kids to listening Saints, and there were never enough hymnbooks. Week after week the chair sitters were forced to hum.

  The bench sitters had little compassion for the overflow Saints. They figured that if the chair sitters wanted to badly enough, they could show up on time and claim one of the soft benches for themselves. Most of the bench sitters also piously considered themselves worthy of sitting so close to the podium because of their clear consciences, claiming that the chair sitters parked their behinds on the fringes due to some sort of subconscious unworthiness.

  There was a true division.

  One time when Brother Treat stepped out of the chair section and tried to retrieve a hymnbook for his wife from the back of one of the benches, Sister Cravitz almost drew blood by jabbing him with a small easel she was planning to use later in her Relief Society lesson to prop up a picture of Christ. Three days later Brother Treat accidentally spilled two gallons of bleach across Sister Cravitz’s prize-winning azaleas and front lawn. The bishop had to step in to smooth things out. He used part of the Young Women’s budget to buy more hymnbooks for the chair sitters.

  Of course, Sister Luke, the Young Women’s president, was not at all happy about the cut in her budget, and the Young Women were not compassionately giddy over their money providing hymnal text to the subconsciously guilty chair sitters. They were even less thrilled about it later that year at girls’ camp when, due to their depleted budget, they went without warm meals and mattress pads.

  But things had smoothed out for the time being. The chair sitters sang, and the bench sitters continued to sit, somewhat self-righteously, on their pampered behinds, always looking forward.

  But none of that seemed to matter now. I was speaking at my farewell.

  I talked a little about my desire to serve a mission. I was hoping the words I was using would help trick my soul into feeling comfortable with the whole idea. I told a story about myself as a child. I bore my testimony. I closed, clutched at my scriptures, and sat down.

  At meeting’s end, everyone came up to me and wished me well. Every handshake and hug made me more and more frightened to leave it all behind. Sister Johnson kissed me on the cheek. Brother Vastly shook my hand without lecturing me. Lucy was kind enough to hug me. Then she just stood there looking gorgeous. We had grown up together. We had dated a couple of times, but more than that, we had just always been. She liked me like a brother, and I liked her like a love-crazed, emotionally wavering, wishful-thinking third cousin.

  “Good luck,” Lucy said, her hands clasped together in front of her. She was impeccably dressed, as usual, her cutting-edge fashion sense clashing with the rest of the congregation’s outdated wardrobe.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  Lucy wriggled her nose and bit her top lip, as if on cue.

  “I’ll write,” I offered.

  “I can’t believe we’re this old,” she replied, showing a sliver of the soft under-self she usually kept locked up behind her perfect exterior.

  “I’m going to—” I started to say, “really miss you,” but Lucy sensed my borderline blubbering and interrupted.

  “I’ll be here when you return,” she said almost coldly.

  I wanted to fall on my knees, to beg her not to make me go. But I figured that wouldn’t really leave a favorable last impression. I would do this. I would turn my fledgling testimony into a true conviction. I would take two years to better the kingdom. I would even try not to be bitter about the whole Tennessee thing. I would do anything if the heavens would only promise me that on my return I would be good enough for Lucy Fall.

  Before I could say anything else, Sister Cravitz slipped between me and Lucy and hugged me tightly. She sort of stroked the back of my hair and whispered something about being so very proud. I watched Lucy slip off the stage and out of my life for two years.

  Sister Cravitz squeezed me tighter. The big brooch she was wearing on her lapel dug into my chest.

  “So, so, very, very proud,” she said again.

  3

  Big Things, Small Packages

  Week Three

  I spent a couple weeks at the MTC and two nights in the mission home in Knoxville with President and Sister Clasp before my mission really began.

  President Clasp was big, loud, and funny—three attributes I would never have envisioned my mission president having. He was also stern, a trait I had expected. He had very little hair, but he insisted he wasn’t bald. It was just that he had an extra wide part. The enormous part topped off big eyes and crooked teeth. Before being called as mission president, he had been a safety inspector at a toy company in Wisconsin. Sister Clasp, who was also big, loud, and funny, dispensed hugs like an overzealous mother bear. She always wore a billowy blouse tucked into an elastic-banded skirt.

  President Clasp taught us quite a bit in those first three days. At the conclusion he interviewed me and went on and on about how he used to have a dog named Trust. I felt like part of the family.

  After those few days in the mission home, I was driven in a big gray van to a small town called Collin’s Blight. I had tried to take in the scenery and figure out which direction we were going, but it sped by so fast that my eyes couldn’t properly digest it. My poor sense of direction asserted itself.

  From Collin’s Blight I was transported in a tiny green car to the mid-sized town of Virgil’s Find. At Virgil’s Find—which, by the way, was no great find—I was met by my companion, Elder Boone, who then escorted me on foot to our destination: Thelma’s Way, Tennessee.

  To get there, we had to hike along a well-worn footpath that cut through the mountains like a poorly sewn seam. Next to the trail ran a line of weathered utility poles that were heavy with wire. On every other pole was posted an orange piece of paper that read:

  COME ONE, COME ALL

  Pre-planning meeting

  this Saturday at 6:00 a.m. for the Thelma’s Way

  Sesquicentennial Pageant

  Together the posted poles and tiny path provided a lifeline to my new home. After following the trail for about four miles, through thick trees and steep hills, we came to the meadow where Thelma’s Way lay. With one glance I could take in everything the town had to offer. The mountains all around it sloped their soft shoulders down to a clearing where a few shacks and dwellings sat huddled together. There were maybe eight poorly built buildings in all, laid out as if they had been thrown down during a spoiled fit. Bushy trees surrounded the meadow, and a smoky gray sky gave the place a closed-in feeling and charged the air with uneasiness. A thick river ran swiftly along the far side of the clearing.

  “This is it?” I asked as we stood up on a hill looking down.

  “This is it,�
�� Elder Boone replied.

  “There’s nothing here!”

  “There’s more people hidden in the hills.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was attempting to warn me or comfort me.

  What was I doing here? Thelma’s Way was a weed patch, a city so hidden that even upon discovery it was nothing. It was a few shacks and a large meadow. It was a bad neighborhood smack-dab in the middle of Mother Nature’s lower back. It was remote, regressive, repulsive, and really making me homesick. The moist air gummed up my brain. I swallowed hard, willing myself to do my best regardless of where I was, and blinked a few times, hoping the rapid eye movement would make this green town in front of me appear more like home.

  Elder Boone saw my expression and sensed the need to explain a few things. We sat down on a soft patch of grass. Big grasshopper-like bugs the size of Twinkies jumped about, chirping. Elder Boone swatted a black-winged thing away from his face and proceeded.

  Thelma’s Way was the most remote spot in the entire mission. Remote and difficult. According to Elder Boone, the missionaries in the town of Virgil’s Find had it easy compared to us. They had running water and electricity.

  “Luckily, the big Girth River runs right next to our place,” he consoled.

  What luck, I thought.

  Thelma’s Way had just been opened up in the mission. There had been no missionaries since the early days of the Church, when Parley P. Pratt stopped off and got sick from eating some bad ham. It was a small place with a small number of active members and inactives aplenty.