“Several times,” Barbara said.
“Well, then, I must have meant it. So let’s see what happens.”
“The next time you’re speaking with God, you might mention that Purdue wants their money by the fifteenth.”
“Why don’t you tell God?”
“Because I’m not the one who spoke on God’s behalf,” Barbara pointed out.
Sam had been job-free, a term he preferred over unemployed, for a little over a week, with not one prospect in sight. He had applied for unemployment benefits only to discover ministers weren’t eligible for assistance. Deena Morrison had given him a job at the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop, but on the first day he sneezed while carrying three grande mocha lattes, which he spilled on a group of red hat ladies, scalding them. Deena fired him as nicely as she could, gave him fifty dollars to ease him out the door, and suggested he contact Harvey Muldock about selling cars.
“I don’t want to sell cars,” he told Barbara that night. “I know I called Harvey before, but it seems like such a cliché, an unemployed minister selling cars. I was hoping for something a little more meaningful.”
“Until something meaningful comes along, could you maybe do a load of laundry, and pick up around here a bit? I could use a little help.” With Sam out of work, she was now working every day at the library.
He had taken to watching Dr. Oz on daytime television and thought of getting his own television show offering medical advice. While he had no formal medical training, his many years as a hypochondriac had left him well educated about various maladies. He’d made the mistake of mentioning his idea to Barbara.
“So I guess we’ve now left the realm of reality,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you have absolutely no credentials for giving anyone medical advice about anything. You have no training in that field.”
“I’d like to think that being a pastor has taught me something about illness. Think of all the hospital visits I’ve made over the years.”
“You’re right, I didn’t even think of that. Say, since you help count the offering each week, maybe you should apply to be the bank president. I hear Vernley Stout’s retiring.”
Sam thought for a moment, intrigued at the possibility. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “Not a bad idea at all.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sam, get another church. There has to be some church somewhere looking for a new pastor.”
“I’ve read the classifieds in Quaker Life for the past six issues. They’ve all found new pastors. Those that haven’t don’t want me. I’ve been blackballed.”
“Have you phoned any of the other Quaker pastors? Maybe one of them is planning to change churches and you could get a foot in the door somewhere.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Sam said.
He began phoning the pastors that very evening. Most of them were sympathetic, but none of them were especially helpful.
“I heard you did a same-gender wedding,” said Scott Wagoner, a pastor who had attended seminary with Sam.
“It was an accident,” Sam explained. “I didn’t realize the groom was a bride.”
“Did you explain that to the superintendent?”
“I tried, but he was in no mood to listen.”
“Yeah, well, listening is not his strong suit,” Scott said. “Boy, he sure has a bee in his bonnet over this. What did you do to him anyway? I’ve never seen him so worked up.”
“I guess I didn’t pay His Highness sufficient reverence.”
They groused a bit longer about egotistical leaders, then said good-bye. Sam went through the downstairs rooms turning off the lights, then climbed the stairs to bed. A headache was forming just behind his eyes. He would have to call Levi tomorrow and tell him they were out of money for college. The thought of it sickened him, his son leaving college to mop floors for minimum wage at the McDonald’s by the interstate. It was all he could do not to cry.
18
Sam and Barbara were awakened by the telephone a little after six the next morning. Sam reached the phone on the fourth ring and grumbled hello.
“Sorry to call so early,” Dale Hinshaw said. “But I didn’t know what time you left for work.”
“I have no work,” Sam said. “I was fired. Remember?”
“Something’s bound to turn up,” Dale said. “God never gives us more than we can bear.”
“Well now, if that were true, no one would ever commit suicide, would they, Dale?”
“It’s no wonder you haven’t found another job, with an attitude like that.”
“What do you want, Dale?”
“We want our church key back. Miriam was supposed to get it from you, but she forgot.”
“I’ll put it in the meetinghouse mailbox,” Sam said.
“Don’t bother. I’ll come by and get it in a few minutes.”
“No, Dale. I don’t want to see you. When I was your pastor, I had to see you. But now that I’m no longer your pastor, I prefer not to see you. Don’t come by.”
His piece said, Sam hung up the phone.
“Good for you,” Barbara said. “It’s about time you told that old goat off.”
Sam strutted around the bedroom, feeling manly for the first time in weeks. “That’ll teach him to mess with me!”
Barbara laughed. “That’s my guy!”
Sam looked at Barbara and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Is Addison still asleep?”
“I believe he is.”
Barbara was fifteen minutes late for work that morning.
Sam was at the bank as soon as it opened. Vernley Stout ushered him into his office.
“How can I help you, Sam?”
“I’m checking to see how much equity we have in our home,” Sam said.
“Well, I can’t give you an exact figure, since we haven’t had your home appraised. But I can tell you how much you still owe on your mortgage, and once you know what your house is worth, you’ll have some idea of your equity.”
Vernley began tapping on his computer.
“It says here you owe $123,278.62. That’s if you were to pay it off today. But don’t forget you took out that second mortgage to replace your roof. Come to think of it, we had the house appraised then. Let me see what it was worth then.”
He tapped a few more buttons.
“Well, Sam, according to this you’re in the hole about six thousand dollars. The recession really hit house values. You’re not thinking of selling, are you?”
“Don’t want to,” said Sam. “But if I can’t find a job here, I might have to.”
“Hope it doesn’t come to that,” Vernley said. “That’s a lovely old home you have there, Sam.”
“I don’t suppose I could borrow five thousand dollars for Levi’s college this semester.”
Vernley winced. “Not without a job, Sam. But you get a job and I’m sure we can do something to help you.”
“Thank you just the same, Vernley. Thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“No, never hurts to ask.” Vernley reached across the desk and shook Sam’s hand. “You let me know if you can’t make your mortgage payment. We can’t loan you any more money, but we can let things slide a little while on your mortgage. Sometimes it takes us three or four months to realize someone’s missed a mortgage payment.”
“Appreciate that. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”
He left the bank and walked down Main Street looking for NOW HIRING signs. Bob Miles at the Herald wanted a boy to deliver newspapers, and Kathy at the Kut-N-Kurl wished to employ someone to sweep up hair, but Sam was not yet that desperate.
He ate lunch at home to save money—bananas and peanut butter—then went online to read the classifieds. All the jobs were in the city, most of them in trades he knew nothing about. He cursed his theology degree again.
He spent a half hour after lunch talking to telemarketers. He’d never cared for telephone solicitation, but now that he had nothing to do, he appreciated the
conversation. Though it was startling how many times a day people called to sell them something.
His copy of The Christian Century arrived in the afternoon mail. He read an article about the rampant growth of atheism, yet another social trend working against him, then applied for the seven pastoral jobs listed in the back of the magazine. For an hour in the late afternoon he thought of becoming a writer and even wrote the first page of a novel about a small-town minister who went crazy, murdered the church elders, and hid their bodies in the freezer in the church basement, where they froze stiff as boards and weren’t discovered until the next September when the ladies of the church held their annual noodle dinner. Suspicion fell on the church secretary, who went to prison, while the pastor was given a raise for his exemplary service during the church’s difficulties. It was a great deal of action for a one-page novel, so Sam began adding adjectives to spread things out a bit, and then Barbara came home, so he stopped for the day.
Addison came in just behind her, emptied the refrigerator, answered their questions with monosyllabic grunts, then went upstairs to do homework.
“Want to go out to eat?” Sam asked.
“We can’t afford it. How about we make pancakes?”
“You cook, I’ll clean up.”
“Deal.”
They ate in the living room, while watching Jeopardy! It depressed Sam to be reminded how little he knew.
“How come they never ask any theological questions?”
“Probably because the average person isn’t smart enough to answer them,” Barbara said, tactfully. “It takes an exceptional mind to understand such lofty matters.”
Sam smiled, striving to remain modest.
“I applied for seven church jobs today,” he informed her. “None of them Quaker, and all of them out of state. Plus, Bob Miles is looking for a paperboy and the Kut-N-Kurl needs a hair sweeper. So how was your day?”
“Busy, but good. You’ll never guess who just returned the sex book.”
“Who?”
“Guess.”
“Fern Hampton and Dale Hinshaw. Together.”
“Ugh, gross,” Barbara said. “Nope.”
“Who?”
“Matt, the Unitarian pastor.”
“I didn’t think you could tell who was checking out what.”
“Not if you blab it all over town. So keep it to yourself.”
“I wonder why he’s reading a book about sex,” Sam mused.
“He said it was for a sermon series he’s writing.”
“If I were a Unitarian pastor, I’d still have a job,” Sam observed.
“If you were a Unitarian pastor, they would have given you a raise.”
Sam sighed.
After Jeopardy!, they cleaned up the kitchen, watched a Seinfeld rerun with Addison, then went to bed. Just as Sam and Barbara were drifting off to sleep, their telephone rang.
“Daggone it,” Sam said, leaping from bed. “I bet it’s a telephone solicitor. Or that knucklehead Dale. That man doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
He picked up the telephone. “It’s ten o’clock. What’s so important it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
An unfamiliar voice said, rather hesitantly, “My name is Wilson Roberts. I’m calling on behalf of—”
“No thanks, not interested,” Sam said, then hung up the phone and returned to bed.
“Who was that?” Barbara asked.
“Oh, somebody trying to sell us something.”
He lay awake for an hour, unable to sleep, thinking about the money he owed, the light of the moon casting ominous shadows across the room, like hands reaching out to throttle him.
19
Did you get the key back from Sam?” Bea Majors asked Dale Hinshaw at the elders’ meeting. They were meeting twice a week now, organizing the pastoral search.
“He said he’d leave it in the meeting mailbox, but he hasn’t,” Dale reported. “If we don’t get it by noon today, I’m calling the police.”
Miriam Hodge had been gone from the church less than two days and things were already a mess. Dale Hinshaw had staged a coup, disbanded every committee but his, and seized the church’s computer to review the giving records.
“Here’s a list of who gave what to the church,” he said, distributing a list of donors around the table. “Now we’ll find out who really loves the Lord.”
“The nerve of that Owen Stout,” Opal Majors sniffed. “Strutting around here like he owns the place and he didn’t give a hundred dollars last year.”
“I had no idea Miriam and Ellis gave that much money,” Bea Majors observed. “Look, Dale, they gave more than you did. Maybe we ought to try and get them back.”
“They’ve gone over to Satan,” Dale said. “Leave ’em be.”
“Actually, I heard they were at the Methodist church this past Sunday,” Opal said.
“Ellis’s grandmother was a Methodist. I always knew he wouldn’t stick with us,” Bea said.
“Dale, I thought you said you’d give more this year since we hired your granddaughter,” Opal asked.
“She was here less than a month and now she’s quit.”
“But you said when we hired her that you were going to put half her yearly salary in the plate that very week,” Opal said. “I don’t see it here. Do you see it, Bea?”
“That’s nobody’s business,” Dale said. “That’s between me and the Lord. Now let’s get down to business. The superintendent has given me some résumés of ministers looking for jobs. Let’s look them over.”
“I don’t want a woman preacher,” Opal said. “It just doesn’t seem right.”
“The Bible is clear on that,” Dale said. “First Corinthians, fourteenth chapter, thirty-fourth verse. Women are to be silent in church.”
“I agree,” said Bea Majors, who had never been silent in church or anywhere else.
“That leaves us three candidates. Two of them went to seminary. I don’t want them.”
“That’s the last thing we need, another know-it-all,” Opal said.
Dale scanned the remaining résumé. “Hey, this looks promising. This fella went to the Lester Hickam Bible College in Chattanooga. Paul Fletcher. Fifty-six years old. Good and seasoned. I bet he wouldn’t marry two women. Named for an apostle, too.”
“It says here he’s pastored fourteen churches in ten years,” Opal pointed out. “Should that worry us?”
“I bet he’s not an ear-tickler,” Dale said. “Probably preached the Word and people couldn’t take it. I like the cut of his jib. Let’s hire him.”
“Shouldn’t we interview him first?” Bea asked.
“Well, I suppose we can, but that would be relying on the wisdom of man instead of trusting the Holy Spirit,” Dale said. “Are you doubting the Holy Spirit, Bea?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then it’s settled. Let’s call him and see when he can start.”
“Doesn’t the rest of the church have to approve it?” Opal asked. “In the past, the whole church had to agree when we hired a new pastor.”
“Where in the Bible does it say that?” Dale asked.
“It says so in our Faith and Practice,” Opal said.
“Well, if you want to take man’s word over God’s word, that’s your choice,” Dale said. “But I know where I stand.”
“Well, I guess it’s all right, then,” Opal said.
“How much are we going to pay him?” Bea asked.
“We’ll ask him what he needs,” Dale said. “But if he’s the man of God I think he is, it won’t matter to him. Do you think Billy Graham ever made people pay him before he preached to them? Did Jesus ever ask for money? I don’t think so.”
“Remember last year when Sam asked for a raise?” Bea said. “That didn’t set well with me at all. It’s like he wasn’t trusting the Lord to provide.”
“We’re lucky to be shed of him,” Dale said. “I think he was the main reason this church wasn’t growing more.”
They chewed on Sam another hour, then phoned Paul Fletcher to tell him that after much prayer, the Lord had brought him to their attention.
Dale told him, “One minute we’d never heard of you, then the next minute it was like the Lord said, ‘This is my servant, with whom I am well pleased.’ ”
“Well, let me tell you what happened, Brother Dale. Not one hour ago, the Lord Himself laid a burden on my heart for the town of Harmony. And I told the Lord, I said, ‘Lord, if that’s where you want me to go, that’s where I’ll go.’ ”
“Praise the Lord,” Dale said.
They praised the Lord back and forth a few more minutes, agreed to pay Brother Paul ten thousand more dollars than Sam had ever made, then sent an e-mail to the meeting announcing the happy news.
20
He hung up on you?” Ruby Hopper asked Wilson Roberts.
“Yes, before I could even tell him why I was calling. I told him my name, he said he wasn’t interested, and he hung up the phone,” Wilson explained.
“That’s odd,” Ruby said. “That doesn’t sound like Sam. I’ve never actually met him, but the few times I’ve seen him at yearly meeting, he seemed cordial. Did you mention you were on a search committee?”
“I didn’t have the chance.”
Ruby Hopper and Wilson Roberts were seated at her kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of paperwork, eating gooseberry pie, drinking coffee, and trying to find a pastor.
“What do you think we should do?” Ruby asked. “Should we try phoning him again?”
“I don’t see that we have much choice. No one else is willing to be our pastor.”
“Have faith, Wilson. There’s a Quaker minister somewhere who feels called to pastor a small meeting. We just have to find him. Or her.”
The word small was a generous description. Hope Friends Meeting was down to a dozen people, all of them over sixty years old, most of whom had objected to the hiring of the current superintendent, and had consequently been ignored by him, which had troubled them at first, though they now believed it to be a blessing.
“What makes you think we can get this man to be our pastor?” Wilson asked.
A Place Called Hope: A Novel Page 7