I hadn’t seen Grace since she had fallen on me. My neck was still sore from the encounter. I actually wanted to thank Grace for putting the play out of its misery. The way I saw it, we were lucky the stage caught fire before the crowd lit it themselves.
President Clasp had not made it to the play and, consequently, had missed out on all the fun. When I called him to tell him what happened, he told me quite clearly that he would be to Thelma’s Way in a few weeks to deliver the transfer news. It looked as if my days in Thelma’s Way were numbered at last. I couldn’t believe it. I only wished I wasn’t deserting these people at such a painful time.
I tried to push the feelings aside. I tried to act as if it was really none of my business. I tried in vain.
37
A Burning in the Bosom
Month Twenty-Two
A few weeks later, right before sacrament meeting, Elder Staples received a transfer out of Thelma’s Way. He was out, I was still in. I was going to be serving the twenty-second month of my mission in the same place. President Clasp had come to town to speak at our ward and deliver the transfer news. He met with Elder Staples and me before church.
“But President,” I had questioned after getting the news.
“You’re not finished here,” he smiled, his crooked teeth straightening as he tilted his head.
President Clasp had brought my new companion with him. Actual transfers were not for a couple of days, but my new companion, Elder Herney, had caused a few problems in his last area, and they had to get him out of there fast. He was an emergency transfer. Mission rumor was that he had been sneaking out to watch Star Trek movies at the midnight theater by himself. President Clasp thought Thelma’s Way would be the perfect place for him to straighten out.
Elder Herney was not exactly a people person. In fact, he was one troubled individual. His parents had pushed him onto his mission hoping he would come back looking like some of the clean-cut elders they had seen in Church videos. It seemed to me he was moving in the opposite direction. He talked as if all wind entered and exited his nostrils. He had dark eyes that looked ringed, and thin skin that appeared blue under natural light. He was about six inches shorter than I and liked to pinch his lips as he spoke endlessly about science fiction movies and how they correlated with gospel principles. We had talked maybe fifteen minutes so far, and the entire conversation had been about the gospel accuracy of the Star Wars saga.
“The force is actually the priesthood,” he explained. “And Yoda is the prophet.”
I sat down glumly next to Elder Herney in the chapel. Elder Staples was still here, all smiles to be leaving. President Clasp sat up in front by the podium. Usually I blessed or passed the sacrament due to so few priesthood holders being in attendance. But today Toby Carver was blessing with Digby Heck, and Leo Tip was passing. I sat in my pew and sulked silently. I was hoping that to the naked eye sulking would look like reverence.
I didn’t know what it was with me. Why was I still in Thelma’s Way? I liked to pretend that there was some great cosmic reason for my being kept in one place. But the truth was probably something closer to the idea that President Clasp simply had it out for me. His smiling presence was just a funny front for a rather conniving nature. I had learned a lot in Thelma’s Way. I really felt as if I had grown from my experiences, but I also felt I could use some rounding out. Couldn’t I? I loved these people, but didn’t a real mission require broadening? Shouldn’t I be shifted around?
It had been a few weeks since the pageant, and things were still in confusion. Paul was claiming the failure of the pageant as proof that we all had been living in sin. He was currently promising people thicker hair, more energy, and three years longer life if they joined up with the People of Paul. So far Frank Porter was the only one to take him up on the offer. Frank figured if he had been desperate enough to smear Sister Lando’s spotted frog larvae on his bald head in an attempt to overcome his baldness, then what could it hurt to take up a new religion as a potential cure? It seemed so much cleaner.
Paul wanted people to know that his being accused of stealing the Book of Mormon, and then being banned from the disastrous play, was the pattern God used to pull prophets out from among the rank and file. For the last two days, he had been over at the boardinghouse giving free workshops on how to recognize truth.
It was funny to think that a man who once claimed he had invented chicken cordon bleu and helped work out the bugs on the paper clip, could go into great depths about the importance of honesty. Paul wasn’t keeping himself in check any longer. He had been falsely accused, we knew it, and we were going to pay.
The table next to the podium sat empty as usual. The Book of Mormon still had not been found. I focused on the empty table while listening to Elder Herney whistle through his nose as he breathed. I was tempted to reach over and pinch the thing closed. Sister Watson took a seat right in front of us. Patty Heck was sitting with Narlette across the aisle. By the time the meeting started we had about twenty-five members there. All told, our attendance was up by about fifteen people since the time I had arrived almost two years ago. Two years. Fifteen people. It was not an impressive record. I would read and reread the scriptures about the worth of one soul, and the importance of bringing just one person unto Him. But these were Thelma’s Way souls we were talking about. It probably took about five of them to equal one ordinary spirit, right?
Possibly it was the other way around.
And where was Grace in all of this? Ever since the pageant, I had been overly hopeful that she would start coming back to church again. Not yet. I had ordered myself to stop thinking about her so many times that I was now having to tell myself to stop thinking about not thinking about her. She weighed more on my mind than my brain had strength to heft. I had told President Clasp after he decided to not transfer me that I was thinking way too much of her. He didn’t fall for it. He simply told me I would be done with my mission in a couple of months and that I was welcome to come back and visit her then.
Some advice.
Sacrament meeting moved along slowly. And halfway through President Clasp’s talk, I began to feel ill. It wasn’t the normal queasy feeling that I sometimes got at church. It was something different altogether. I tried to brush it off.
I squirmed in my seat. I could feel beads of sweat running down my face. I loosened my tie just a bit and fanned myself with the hymnbook. The back of Sister Watson’s head began to sway and contract. I needed some fresh air.
I looked over at Elder Herney.
“You don’t look right,” he droned.
I needed to get to the bathroom. I stood up to go, and Elder Herney and Elder Staples followed. It looked like I was taking half the congregation with me as I left. I went into the tiny church bathroom and splashed water on my face.
“I don’t feel well,” I said.
“You look awful,” Elder Herney assisted.
I leaned against the wall and held my stomach.
“You were fine before you found out you were staying,” Elder Staples accused. Then he threw a couple of pretend punches at me, wounding the air immediately in front of my stomach.
There was no way I could go back into the chapel. The wood walls of the building seemed to puff up, and the windows sort of slid down to the floor. I desperately pulled at my tie. I could feel my wrists turn slippery.
“I was fine just a . . .” I suddenly didn’t know if I could stand for much longer. I stumbled.
“What do we do?” Elder Herney breathed at Elder Staples.
“He’s your companion,” Elder Staples said, no longer willing to take responsibility for me.
“I’ll give you five bucks if you carry him home,” Elder Herney bartered.
Elder Staples picked up my six-foot-two frame as my knees buckled and tossed me over his shoulder. My head knocked the door frame as he stepped outside.
“Owww!” I moaned.
“Easy, Sport,” Elder Staples said.
He car
ried me back to our place and put me in bed. It would be quite some time before I got out again.
38
Angel of Heresy
Month Twenty-Three
There are varying degrees of sickness. Forget them all. I had gone well beyond any known mark of discomfort. I lay in bed for weeks doing nothing but moan—slipping in and out of a vegetative state. At first folks thought I was faking it for attention. But after watching me struggle to keep my food down, they began to realize there were better ways to get noticed.
Toby Carver had attempted to heal me with his Ace bandage, but somehow a mere spandex wrap wasn’t enough to lower my body temperature or calm my nausea. A real doctor (although we couldn’t call him that to Toby’s face) was called in from Virgil’s Find to look me over. He diagnosed me with a rare strain of flu called Wilbur’s Affliction.
Wilbur had been a woodsman who resided below Hallow Falls about a hundred years ago. He had lived out his days in obscurity until someone named an epidemic after him. He was a simple man who raised chickens and sold eggs. Every spring, in an effort to boost sales, he would take a bunch of his eggs and make a homemade spicy spread like a mayonnaise but with more kick. He bottled it and sold it to his neighbors from out of his wood shack.
One year the economy of the area went sour and in an effort to single-handedly restore regional prosperity, Wilbur whipped up an extra big batch of his concoction. But hard times equaled low sales, and he only sold half the goods.
Ever the savvy businessman, he packed away the excess supply in his warm attic and sold it at fire sale prices the following spring. The town never recovered.
Apparently, my doctor’s great grandfather had almost died of the dreaded affliction. That’s how come he knew so much. Now anytime anyone came down with complications of mayonnaise, the diagnosis could only be Wilbur’s Affliction (not to be confused, he said, with Briant’s Curse, which was a whole different story.)
The doctor handed me some medicine for the pain and prescribed three weeks without eggs. The pills helped a little, but I spent my days in relative misery, tossing between the sheets. The one time I actually felt a little better, Elder Herney and I tried to go visit Judy Bickerstaff. I got twenty steps out the door before I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I crawled back to my bed feeling worse than ever.
Thanks to the kindness of the townspeople, I always had visitors. Leo and CleeDee came by almost every day to show me neat-looking sticks or leaves they had found. Wad had been over a few times to sit by me and read me some of his old magazines. Teddy Yetch and Sister Lando brought food that I couldn’t even look at, and Sister Watson came over twice to scrub our place sterile with her homemade bar soap. Even Paul came by to say he had foreseen my doom and wondered when I was planning to die.
Elder Herney had just about had enough of my being sick. He had not spent a single day with me outside the cabin. Occasionally he went on splits with Digby while President Heck stayed with me. He attended church thanks to Pete Kennedy sitting in. But when we were together, all we did was fight. We tried to have companionship studies, and we prayed a lot that we would get along, but it didn’t seem to help. Both of us were at our wits’ end.
It was Thursday afternoon, I think. I was feeling stronger physically, but mentally I was still fogged under. I was so stir crazy I thought I would rather die than stay inside. But the doctor had told me to stay in bed for at least a few more days before attempting to go anywhere. I was wearing a long red nightshirt that my mother had just sent. She had made it for me in homemaking. It was about three sizes too big and had a rather silly-looking neck ruffle, but considering the trouble she had gone to, I felt duty-bound to wear it at least once.
“You look stupid,” Elder Herney commented.
“My mother made this,” I argued as I shuffled across the room to get some water.
I had taken some cold medicine a few minutes earlier, and it was beginning to play on my brain. I had downed a double dose in the hopes of knocking myself out for the night.
“This isn’t a mission,” Elder Herney whined, “this is a baby-sitting job.”
“Hey, I’m s-s-sorry I’m sick,” I slurred, getting back into bed.
“This—”
Elder Herney was interrupted by a knock on the door. He jumped up, happy to have something to do. He answered the door, and President Heck came in.
“Could I borrow your companion?” President Heck asked me as I lay in bed. “I just need to talk to him outside.” He was nervous about something.
“Sure,” I said, beginning to really feel the effects of the medication.
“We’ll just be out here,” President Heck said, walking out the door with Elder Herney.
They left the door open so that I could see outside, but they had moved towards the cemetery and out of my view. I stared at the open door for a while, watching birds make tracers across the late afternoon sky. Wow. I began to hallucinate. From out of thin air, my mind conjured up Grace. I had seen a lot of weird things while I had been sick. My eyes had played so many tricks on me that I was beginning to doubt everything I saw. This vision of Grace slipped in the door and stood against the wall.
I sort of bobbed my head, squinting at the illusion.
The mirage smiled back.
“Nice pajamas,” it said.
I patted my red nightgown. “Thanks,” I replied, my voice echoing in the empty room.
“I just wanted to say good-bye,” she fluttered, “before you go home and I . . . we never see you again.”
“Grace?” I said, fathoming for the first time that it was really her.
She was still against the far wall.
“I’d better go,” she said. “My father can only cover me for so long.”
“Don’t go,” I begged, sluggishly.
She turned and paused.
“Do you remember last Halloween?” she asked with some hesitation.
In my present condition I couldn’t accurately remember ten minutes ago. Last Halloween seemed like another life. I sort of nodded, toppled, and shook my head. I felt like a wino with bad rhythm.
“I heard what you said as you and your companion sat on the porch,” Grace whispered, her soft voice barely carrying across the room. “Was it true?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. In my medicated state it sounded like a riddle. What had I said last Halloween? And was she happy or sad about it?
I just stared at her. She was beautiful then. Her red hair against the wood wall was poetic, moving.
“I’ve got to go,” Grace said again nervously.
“What about . . .” I tried to ask.
But she was already gone. She slipped away like soap on glass. My heart peeled like an immodest orange, and for some reason my eyes were wet. Grace had come to say good-bye.
“Lutumt,” I mumbled, my tongue feeling thick in my mouth.
Elder Herney came back inside complaining.
“I still don’t know what President Heck needed to talk to me for. He just went on and on about how he thinks missionaries are good. There’s a news flash for you—this just in, missionaries are good.”
I looked up. The room was spinning.
“Why are you crying?” he snapped. “You’re not that sick. Get a grip, Elder. My football coach used to always say, ‘feeble of mind, feeble of body.’”
“Feeble,” I giggled, the word sounding funny. “Feeble Weeble.”
“President Clasp has got to get me out of here,” Elder Herney continued. “I can’t take being cooped up in this hole with you any longer. I feel like a lame horse.”
The horse remark did it. It was like a revelation, except, of course, that it was drug-induced.
Feeble Weeble . . . lame horse . . . It all came back to me. That Halloween night, on the porch, Elder Weeble had called Grace a horse, and I had let it slide, not wanting to be confrontational. That’s what Grace had been asking about. She probably thought I was a real idiot. She must have the completely
wrong impression of me. I didn’t think she was a horse. What I thought was that I might be in love with Grace Heck.
I had to talk to her—that couldn’t be the end. My head pounded as sweat pushed up through my skin. My illness was toying with me again. I could feel the red nightgown my mother had made me sticking to my skin.
I watched Elder Herney pace back and forth across the floor, complaining about everything. I saw the walls move in, and felt the pressure of being cooped up come to a boil. The ceiling began to jiggle. I couldn’t take it any longer.
I don’t know what happened next, or what pushed me over the edge, but I jumped up and ran out. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t take lying in that bed for one more minute. And since I was running, I decided that I might as well be running for Grace. I couldn’t let those words she had whispered be our last good-bye. I had to find her and tell her that I remembered the porch conversation, and that I was sorry for not standing up for her. I had thought that Elder Herney would have the sense to run along after me as I took off. Nope.
I ran across the field, my red nightgown blowing in the wind. The sun was low in the cloudy sky as I scanned the horizon for Grace. But there was no one in the meadow, no one to witness the sick missionary who was running foolishly by himself. My head thumped as the exhilaration of being alone and out of our cabin made my heart swell. My sick limbs flew through the air, pulling my body behind. I knew that I had to catch up with Grace before she got too deep into the forest. My medicated mind and my poor sense of direction could be a deadly combination.
I reached the edge of the meadow and pushed on into the trees. The hill became steep as I scrambled through the foliage. The medicine in my blood kept signaling my brain to lock up. I had no idea where I was going. I just kept running, counting on fate to turn me in the right direction. My lungs filled with cool air as my legs found the strength to keep me going.
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