A Place Called Hope: A Novel

by Philip Gulley

  “Yep, I heard that, too,” said Johnny Mackey. “A discount liquor store selling booze by the gallon.”

  Johnny Mackey, the town’s mortician, had been mad at Myron Farlow ever since Myron’s mother had died and he’d had her cremated and her ashes distributed over the town from an airplane. Cremated, then tossed out an airplane! A loved one burnt to a turn and pitched out a window! It made Johnny nauseous just to think of it.

  As is often the case, the truth was more shocking than the rumors. The Presbyterian church had been sold to Unitarians, who painted the building inside and out, removed every symbol of the Christian faith, and within a month’s time were listening to sermons about world peace, organic food, and renewable energy. They brought in folksingers from Vermont and California, had a tai chi class on Monday nights, and badgered the school board about offering a vegetarian lunch alternative for the schoolchildren.

  Their pastor, a youngish man named Matt, had been a Southern Baptist minister who had read a book of liberal theology and converted to the Unitarians. He was a dazzling preacher, with a rugged jaw, a strong chin, and not an ounce of neck fat. Sam had already lost Deena Morrison and the Iverson family to the Unitarians. The Iverson twins were the only two children at Harmony Friends Meeting young enough to come down front for the children’s sermon. With them gone, Sam dropped the children’s sermon from the lineup, even though the elders had asked him not to.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not them standing up there looking like an idiot when no kids come up,” he’d complained to Barbara.

  Omitting the children’s sermon left him with a five-minute hole to plug. He tried adding more adjectives to his sermon, repeating key sentences, and sprinkling in a few dramatic pauses, but that added less than a minute. He had once seen a television preacher speak in tongues for several minutes and wondered if that might work. He had taken a French class in college and still remembered certain phrases. (Ou sont les toilettes les plus proches? Where is the closest restroom? Puis-je avoir du ketchup, s’il-vous-plaît? Could I have ketchup with that, please?) He was reasonably certain no one else in the congregation knew French. One Sunday, he filled the five minutes by inviting those present to stand and share their stories of spiritual renewal. Not one person spoke, not even Dale Hinshaw, who got saved once a month. It was a long, painful five minutes.

  “I’ve been their pastor all these years and I ask them to talk about spiritual renewal and they sit there like lumps on a log. How’s that supposed to make me feel?” Sam complained to his wife.

  “Maybe if you had given them notice the week before, they could have come prepared to talk,” she had said.

  Dale had stopped by the church office the next morning to express concern about Sam’s leadership. He spoke about his childhood minister, a Pastor Johnson, a great man of God. “I tell you one thing, when he got done preaching, you knew you were a sinner, that was for sure. You may have walked in thinking you were somebody, but by the time he got done with you, you knew where you stood with the Lord, and it wasn’t good. I sure do miss him.”

  Sam had finally decided to shorten the worship five minutes, which most folks seemed to appreciate.

  He was trying hard to like the Unitarian pastor, but with Matt poaching his church members right and left, it wasn’t easy. Miriam and Ellis Hodge had even attended there one Sunday when their niece Amanda, away at college to study medicine, had come home for a weekend and talked them into going. Matt had given a vigorous sermon about universal health care and not one person had stood afterward to accuse him of communism. In fact, they had applauded! Sam had given more than seven hundred sermons at Harmony Friends and had never been applauded. Harvey Muldock had once said Amen! at the end of a sermon, but Sam had the sneaking suspicion he’d said it because the sermon was finally over.

  Nevertheless, he invited Matt to a meeting of the ministerial association, even though Pastor Jimmy of the Harmony Worship Center had asked him not to, on account of the Unitarians not being Christian. But power has its privileges and Sam was serving as the association president that year, so had overruled him. At his first meeting, Matt had asked the other pastors for their help in organizing a parade in support of gay marriage. Right down Main Street on a Saturday morning, for all the world to see.

  “Once people know the facts, they’ll change their minds,” Matt said. “And we ministers need to take the lead. Our congregations will respect us for it.”

  The other pastors believed Matt was overly optimistic, if not outright delusional. Nevertheless, Sam was sympathetic to the cause, if only because Dale Hinshaw would be against it. A gay rights parade in Harmony, led by the ministers. He thought of attending, then decided against, suspecting it would be his last act as the minister of Harmony Friends Meeting, that not even Miriam Hodge could save his job.

  Sam had thanked Matt for his suggestion, then suggested they give it a little more thought, maybe another year or two, or even five. Sam was hoping to keep his job long enough to get his sons through college.

  Matt held the parade anyway, leading ten Unitarians up and down the sidewalk in front of the Harmony Herald office until Bob Miles came out and took their picture for that week’s paper. Dale Hinshaw was there, carrying a sign that read on one side, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and advertised the church’s chicken noodle dinner on the other. “Come enjoy homemade chicken and noodles, pies, and cakes!! All you can eat for $7.50, tea or lemonade included!”

  The Herald was swamped with letters to the editor, running three to one against the Unitarians. Predictions of their eternal damnation were made, along with several invitations to leave town. Pastor Jimmy at the Harmony Worship Center launched a ten-week sermon series on biblical marriage, culminating in a visit from an evangelist who had been gay before getting right with the Lord and becoming a heterosexual. Bob Miles was elated. It had been years since any single picture had generated such excitement, not since Nora Nagle had portrayed the Virgin Mary in the annual Christmas pageant wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

  Sam lay low, working on his church growth speech, avoiding his office so as not to get roped into conversation. But Barbara was tired of holding her tongue and wrote to the Herald, applauding the Unitarians and welcoming them to town. It infuriated Fern Hampton, who called for Barbara’s expulsion from the Friendly Women’s Circle. Sam’s mother, Gloria, was mortified. Her own daughter-in-law exiled, banished from the Circle. Providentially, Miriam Hodge called for a committee to be formed to examine the matter, thereby ensuring nothing would happen.

  Three women of the Circle left to join the Harmony Worship Center, and the Unitarian church gained five new members, Democrats from Cartersburg. Thankfully, it was autumn, the Corn and Sausage Days Festival was fast approaching, as was the Chicken Noodle Dinner, and passions cooled with the shortening days.

  4

  The weekend of the Corn and Sausage Days dawned storybook perfect, which is how almost every disastrous day begins. The heat of summer had broken, and Saturday morning was crisp and clear. By noon it was sixty degrees, a new Sausage Queen had been crowned, and the women of the Circle had served 532 dinners, a new record, with another fifty people in line, stretching out the meetinghouse doors and down the front steps. Shaken by the departure of Deena Morrison and the Iversons to the Unitarians, Sam was working the crowd, greeting people, inviting them to return the next day for worship and leftover noodles.

  By two thirty, everyone had been fed, and the kitchen cleanup was well under way. Sam was in his office putting the finishing touches on his sermon when the church telephone rang. It was Pastor Matt from the Unitarian church, waylaid by the flu, vomiting on the hour and half hour.

  “I have a wedding to do at three thirty, and I’m in no shape to do it. Can you cover for me, Sam? I’ll owe you one.”

  Sam glanced at his watch, and feeling charitable said, “Happy to help. Who’s the happy couple.”

  “Chris Marshall and Kelly Johnson. Nice folks. Yo
u’ll like ’em. First marriage for both of them.”

  “Hmm,” Sam said. “Don’t know them. Where are they from?”

  “Cartersburg,” Matt said. “They were one of our first couples here. They’ve been dating about four years, but living together for a year or so. Does that bother you?”

  “Well, the way I see it, if the church thinks it’s a sin for an unmarried couple to live together, why should I object when they want to get married,” Sam said. “Seems to me they’re trying to set matters right.” Sam paused. “The only thing is, I’ve never done a Unitarian wedding. Can I use the Quaker vows?”

  “Unitarians often write their own vows,” Matt said. “I’ve sat down with the couple and gone through the service. You just need to stand up front, listen to the vows, and say a prayer of blessing at the end.”

  “I can do that,” Sam said.

  “It’s pretty straightforward,” Matt added. “No attendants. The couple, Chris and Kelly, will come down the aisle together, there’ll be a few readings, then the couple will give their vows.”

  “Piece of cake,” Sam said.

  Matt thanked Sam profusely, then Sam hurried home, showered, changed into his suit, and was at the Unitarian church with five minutes to spare.

  The church was full, the pews crowded, a smattering of latecomers clustered in the back, searching for an empty seat. Deena Morrison and Judy Iverson were there, looking treasonous. Bob Miles from the Herald was standing in the doorway. He glanced up as Sam entered the narthex.

  “Fancy seeing you here,” Bob said.

  “Matt’s sick,” Sam explained. “He phoned to see if I could help out.”

  “Awful nice of you,” Bob said. “And brave, too. Not just any pastor would do this.”

  “Oh, most of us would. We pitch in and help each other out,” Sam said modestly. “We wouldn’t want to leave a couple in the lurch.”

  Sam wondered why performing a wedding required bravery. He’d never known a pastor to be injured at a wedding, after all.

  The pianist began, Sam slipped discreetly along the side of the sanctuary, taking his place at the front, facing the congregation.

  The couple appeared at the back of the church, stepping forward slowly to the tune of the wedding march.

  They stopped before Sam, smiling.

  A young man came forward and read from the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians about noisy gongs and clanging cymbals and the power of love. Then a man with a ponytail read from Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet, about there being spaces in your togetherness and moving seas between the shores of your souls and not eating from the same loaf of bread. Sam didn’t understand much of it, but he smiled anyway and nodded his head in all the right places.

  The man with the ponytail sat down, and Sam turned to face the couple, Chris and Kelly, taking them both in for the first time. Chris was finely featured, with shoulder-length blond hair, and was dressed in a simple, lovely gown. Kelly had short, spiky hair, neatly gelled, and was attired in black pants and a tailored jacket. Not a suit, actually, Sam thought, more like a pantsuit. And pearls. Which is when it occurred to Sam he was inadvertently performing his first same-gender wedding.

  He paused, wishing more parents gave their children names like Ralph, Betty, Elmer, and Hazel. Good, old-fashioned, straightforward names. Whatever happened to those names? Now people named their children Drew, Pat, Jordan, Riley, Shawn, and Morgan. What kind of names were those? Names that confused people and got ministers in trouble, Sam thought. Chris and Kelly? How was he to know which gender they were? For Pete’s sake!

  This was Sam’s ninety-second wedding, which meant he had mastered the pause. He stopped for a moment as if he were considering the solemnity of the occasion, desperately thinking how best to proceed. Chris and Kelly looked at him expectantly, then at one another, their faces radiating happiness. On top of his chest of drawers, there was a picture of him and Barbara on their wedding day, smiling. Sam called it his I-can’t-believe-you’ve-agreed-to-marry-me smile. It was that same exact smile.

  Bob Miles was making his way toward the front of the church, snapping pictures as he drew nearer to the couple. Sam could just imagine the headline. Quaker Pastor Sam Gardner Performs Town’s First Gay Marriage! He wished Matt would hurry up and get better so he could kill him.

  Sam leaned toward Chris and Kelly and said, “Can we go somewhere a bit more private? We need to talk.”

  He turned to the congregation. “We’ll be right back. Don’t leave.”

  He guided them to a small room, where they sat down. He said, “I wasn’t aware this was a same-gender wedding. They’re not legal in our state, you know.”

  “We know,” Chris said. “We went to the county clerk’s office to get a license, but she wouldn’t issue us one. We’ve decided not to wait for the state to validate our relationship.”

  “But I’m not supposed to do them,” Sam said. “The superintendent of our yearly meeting told me specifically, ‘Sam, don’t marry gay people.’ ”

  The year before, Sam had accidentally married a man secretly married to two other women. The newspaper in the city had learned of it and written an article on bigamy. They had scrounged up a copy of the marriage license with Sam’s signature on it and published it in the paper. The next day, the Quaker superintendent had talked with Sam about whom he could and couldn’t marry. He’d reminded him several times not to marry gay couples, people who were already married, or minors.

  “I thought Quakers believed in equality,” Kelly said. “Why won’t you marry gays and lesbians?”

  “The Quakers in these parts are more conservative,” Sam said. “I would get in a lot of trouble if I married you. My superintendent told me, very specifically, that I couldn’t marry gay people. I’d probably lose my job.”

  “Even if it weren’t a Quaker wedding?” Kelly asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re in a Unitarian church, in front of a Unitarian congregation,” Kelly explained. “We’ve written our own vows. And since we don’t have a marriage license, you don’t have to sign anything. All you’re doing is listening to us make our vows, then offering a prayer. Surely your superintendent can’t forbid you from praying.”

  Sam thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said.

  “Then what’s the harm?” Chris asked.

  “I guess when you look at it that way, there’d be no harm in my saying a prayer. I’m sure the Quakers won’t mind that.”

  Even though Sam was a seasoned pastor, his naïveté could be breathtaking.

  They returned to the sanctuary, where Sam thanked everyone for their patience. Chris and Kelly recited their vows from memory, while Sam looked on, then caught himself just in time before pronouncing them husband and wife. He launched into prayer, thanking God for letting them live in a free country and for the food that nourished their bodies. He had never been good at extemporaneous prayer and usually wound up thanking God for various things, none of them relevant to the event at hand.

  Everyone present applauded, Bob Miles snapped a few more pictures, Chris and Kelly walked down the aisle hand in hand, then everyone went down to the basement and snacked on peanuts and mints and drank punch made from ice cream and 7-Up.

  Sam was standing near the punch bowl when Bob Miles approached him. “Like I said, it sure was nice of you to do this. Not many pastors around here would conduct a lesbian marriage. They’d be afraid of getting fired.”

  “It’s not like I married them,” Sam pointed out. “I didn’t sign a license or anything. Just said a prayer. I don’t see how I can get in trouble for that.”

  Deena Morrison poured herself a glass of punch, then made her way over to Sam. She was in tears. “That’s the loveliest wedding I’ve ever seen. I’m so happy for them. And I’m proud of you, Sam. This will upset a lot of people, but you did it anyway.”

  “Oh, I don’t think people will be all that upset,” said Sam. “I really didn’t do
anything.”

  “Don’t diminish your bravery, Sam. What you did was beautiful and courageous and I’m proud of you,” Deena said. “It makes me want to come back to meeting.”

  “We sure have missed you,” Sam said. “It would be wonderful if you returned.”

  “The Unitarians are nice, but it just isn’t the same.”

  Sam was elated to learn of her unhappiness.

  He stayed another half hour, then walked home, pleased as punch. What a day it had been! A new Sausage Queen, record noodle sales, a lovely wedding skillfully conducted to keep him out of trouble, and Deena Morrison on the verge of returning to Harmony Friends Meeting. Climbing the steps to his front porch, he danced a little jig, confident things were finally turning his way.

  5

  Barbara Gardner was tired of Harmony, tired of certain people telling her what she could and couldn’t think, tired of picking up after her husband and sons, and tired most of all of being asked to do the worst jobs in the meeting just because she was married to the pastor. Truth be told, she was a bit tired of the pastor, too.

  The week before, she and Sam had had a big fight, their worst ever. She had locked him out of the bedroom and he’d slept on the couch. With Levi gone, and Addison pulling at the traces to leave, she had mentioned looking for a job.

  “I have a perfectly fine degree in library science I’ve never used,” she told Sam. “I’m tired of being short of money. The library is looking for an assistant librarian. I’m going to apply.”

  “Will you be gone evenings?” Sam asked.

  “I’m sure I’ll work some of them.”

  “Who’ll cook our supper?” Sam had asked.

  She was going to slug him, but stopped herself just in time and locked him out of the bedroom instead. He had stood outside their bedroom door for ten minutes, sniveling, then had gone down to the kitchen and had a bowl of Cocoa Puffs for supper.