A Place Called Hope: A Novel

by Philip Gulley

  Ruby handed them several keys to the parsonage. “You can begin moving in whenever it’s convenient for you.”

  “I have a chandelier that came from my grandmother’s house,” Barbara said. “We have it over our kitchen table. Could we put it in the kitchen here?”

  “You just bring it right along. I’ll make sure it gets hung,” Hank said.

  Ruby Hopper walked to the door. “We’ll leave you alone to finish looking things over,” she said. “Just lock up when you leave.”

  They shook hands good-bye, then Sam and Barbara walked from room to room, planning and admiring, then exited the house, securing the door behind them.

  29

  The traffic was light. Within a few moments they were in the open country, moving quickly along.

  “I don’t know about you, but I could move tomorrow,” Sam said.

  “Let’s get Addison on his way first, then we can concentrate on moving.”

  “I’m sorry you have to give up your job,” Sam said. “I know you enjoyed it.”

  “Maybe I can find a new one when we get settled. I don’t want to just sit at home.”

  Sitting at home sounded highly desirable to Sam. He couldn’t imagine why anyone might object to that.

  They drove in silence a little while, then Sam began wondering aloud who at Hope had objected to his becoming the new pastor.

  “I don’t think it was Hank or Ruby,” he said. “They seem very glad we’re there. I wonder if it was that Wilson Roberts man?”

  “I suspect it was the Finks, but it really doesn’t matter,” Barbara answered. “Don’t dwell on it.”

  “I just wish I knew.”

  “I’m glad you don’t know, then you’d try to win them over, and it never works. Just be yourself, be kind to all, and do your job. And stop at Kroger’s. We need milk and bananas.”

  A half hour later they approached Harmony and turned into the Kroger parking lot.

  “Is that the Peacocks’ car?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “Let’s come back later. I don’t want to see Asa.”

  Barbara reached over and thwacked Sam on the ear, hard. “Listen up, mister, you need to forgive him and move on.”

  “Ouch, I hate it when you hit my ear.”

  “Then don’t be stupid and I won’t. Asa Peacock was nothing but kind to you for fourteen years. When he and Jessie won the lottery, you got that nice bonus. Who do you think made that possible? Then he does one thing you don’t like, he signs a petition, probably because he was hounded to death by Dale Hinshaw, and you won’t talk to him. Now you go in that store with me, and act like the Christian you claim to be.”

  Asa and Jessie Peacock were leaving the store just as Sam and Barbara were entering it. Both couples stopped, and stared at each other for a moment. Jessie spoke first.

  “Hi, Sam. Hello, Barbara. How are you, friends?”

  “Hi, Jessie,” Sam replied. “We’re fine.” He looked at Asa, then blurted, “Asa, I thought you were my friend. Why did you sign a petition to get me fired?”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Barbara said. “Is there not one ounce of tact in that thick head of yours?” She reached up to flick his ear again, but Sam was quicker and moved out of reach.

  “It’s okay, Barbara. I owe him an explanation,” Asa said. “Sam, the truth is I got mad at you for marrying those two women. I don’t have nothing against those people, but I don’t think they ought to be allowed to marry one another. It doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “I don’t agree with him,” Jessie said. “That’s why I didn’t sign the petition.” She turned toward her husband. “And will you please stop referring to them as ‘those people.’ They are humans just like us.”

  “Why didn’t you come and talk to me?” Sam asked Asa. “We could have discussed it. That’s what friends do.”

  “Because I didn’t want you talking me out of it, that’s why,” Asa said. “I’ve got my mind made up on that issue and I’m not changing it.”

  “You didn’t have to agree with me, Asa. I’ve told you that before. Just because I say or do something, doesn’t mean you have to agree with me. I respect your right to think differently from me. Remember that time you came to talk to me about the war, you knew I was against it, but we talked it through? We could have talked about this.”

  “You are talking as if this all rested on Asa,” Barbara said. “You just as easily could have gone to Asa and spoken with him.”

  “Two stubborn men,” Jessie said. “Walking around mad and depressed rather than swallowing a little pride and speaking to one another.”

  “I guess maybe I could have come talked to you,” Sam said.

  “Nope, that was my job to do,” Asa said. “I owed it to you to work it out with you and I didn’t. I’m sorry, Sam. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Of course I forgive you.”

  Asa reached out his hand, but Sam walked forward and embraced him.

  “We are a mess, the two of us,” Sam said.

  “I sure do miss you, Sam. I was telling Jessie just the other day that our new pastor is a kook. No one likes him. Not even Dale. And everyone is mad at Dale and Fern and Opal and Bea for getting you fired. There’s talk of removing them from the elders’ committee. Miriam and Ellis have left. I tell you the whole place is a mess.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Sam said, though not entirely sorry. Maybe one day he would be entirely sorry, but for the time being he thought they deserved to be a little miserable.

  They chatted a few more minutes, getting caught up on meeting gossip. Sam told them he would be pastoring Hope Friends Meeting, which made Jessie and Asa glum.

  “I guess this means if the meeting asked you back, you wouldn’t come,” Asa said.

  “No,” said Sam. “I’ve given them my word. We’ll be moving up there the tail end of July.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you never came back,” Jessie said. “You’re probably glad to be shed of us after the way you were treated.”

  “Oh, no. We’ll miss everyone. And with Mom and Dad still here, we’ll be back from time to time,” Sam explained. “In fact, when we come back, let’s all go out for dinner. Us, and you, and my folks.”

  Asa beamed. “That sounds fine. We’ll look forward to that.”

  They chatted a bit longer, then parted company. Sam bought a package of Oreos, which he and Addison ate that very night, down to the last broken piece at the back of the package.

  30

  Spring hurtled by. The days lengthened, the peonies lining the driveway bloomed, the trees glowed an effervescent, shiny green. The high school graduation was held the last Friday of May, and all the town turned out to witness it. Eighty-four graduates, their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors applauding them in the same sweltering gymnasium where Sam had graduated decades before. The strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” were wafting through the air, nearly overcome by the ancient stench of sweat, body odor, and athletic defeat. It was difficult to feel positive in a gymnasium that had been the site of so many humiliating losses, but they managed.

  Barbara’s parents were in town for the graduation, Levi was back from Purdue, and everyone gathered at the house for cake, ice cream, and presents. Sam gave Addison a Case pocketknife and Barbara, hoping to civilize her son, presented him with hardback copies of Thoreau’s Walden and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, for which he seemed grateful. The grandparents presented him with two crisp hundred-dollar bills and Sam’s dad told the story of how Sam had barely graduated from high school, ranking 77th out of 78 in the class of 1979, a story Sam had never told his children, and would have preferred to have kept from them, but there was no stopping his father.

  At eleven o’clock, they called it a day. Barbara’s parents were staying with Sam’s mother and father, the Super 8 at the interstate being full. Barbara worked the next day, as did Levi, who had been hired by Ellis Hodge to scrape and paint his outbuildi
ngs. They went upstairs to bed, while Sam and Addison retired to the porch swing, where Sam told him about Hope Friends Meeting, and Addison explained the workings of the M-16 rifle.

  “How do you know so much about the M-16 rifle?” Sam asked.

  “I looked it up on the Internet.”

  Sam sighed. “I wish Al Gore had never invented the Internet,” he said. “I almost didn’t vote for him because of that.”

  “I think I’m a Republican,” Addison said.

  “Oh, my Lord. Don’t tell your mother. She’ll faint dead away.”

  They swung back and forth in a gentle arc.

  “So when did you decide to join the army?” Sam asked.

  “When I was twelve.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “I didn’t want you to talk me out of it,” Addison said. “I know how you feel about war.”

  “You’re right,” Sam said. “I don’t like war, but I love you, which means I will give you the freedom to make your own adult choices. That said, I would be much happier if you went to college, became a doctor, and supported your loving parents in their old age.”

  “Do you think you’ll move back here once you retire?” Addison asked.

  “Haven’t thought that far ahead. I guess it depends on how much we like it up there, and where you boys settle. We’d like to be near the both of you. Especially if you do your family duty and produce grandchildren we can spoil rotten.”

  A police car drove by.

  “Is that the officer you attacked?” Addison asked. “You know, for someone who doesn’t like war, you can be pretty violent.”

  “I didn’t attack him. I was upset and called him something I shouldn’t have. But I apologized and bought him a cinnamon roll.”

  “Well, he couldn’t ask for more than that.”

  “I didn’t think so,” said Sam.

  It was late; the day had been full, and momentous.

  “I’m awfully proud of you, Son,” Sam said. “I’m going to miss you like crazy.”

  “Miss you too, Dad.”

  Sam stood, took Addison’s head in his hands, bent over, and kissed his son’s forehead.

  “You are a joy to me, Son.”

  They went upstairs, Addison to his room, and Sam to his, where his lovely wife lay, dreaming dreams.

  31

  They held their garage sale the middle weekend of June. Sam was a keeper, and Barbara was a thrower-away. They spent the week before the sale bickering and negotiating. Sam promised to dispose of his three-wheeled lawn mower if he could keep the wagon wheel passed down from his great-great-great-grandfather. It was said to be from the covered wagon the family came west in, in 1827, all the way from Cincinnati. Fifty miles of flat prairie ground, which they covered in three days, there being no major rivers to cross. They had been aiming for California, but got as far as Harmony, where they renounced their Lutheran faith and joined up with the Quakers. They had been there ever since, stagnating.

  Sam’s father came by the first morning of the sale.

  “You’re selling this?” he asked, incredulous, holding up a shovel with a cracked blade. “You can take this over to Ernie Matthews’s and have him weld that blade. You’d think you were made of money.”

  “Or you can buy it from me for twenty-five cents and take it to Ernie yourself,” Sam suggested.

  “You’d charge your own father a quarter for this?”

  “How about twenty cents?”

  Sam and his father bickered back and forth before agreeing on fifteen cents.

  “Can you believe Barbara wanted me to sell our wagon wheel?” Sam told his father.

  “You’re kidding me! The family wagon wheel?”

  “The very one,” Sam said. “She has no regard for history.”

  Barbara toyed with the idea of buying the shovel herself and smacking them both on the head.

  The sale was wildly successful, Harmony being a small town and people liking nothing more than snooping through one another’s belongings. Townspeople still talked about how Harvey Muldock’s brother, Howard, sold off his collection of girlie magazines in 1982. When his dalliance with smut became public knowledge, he was booted out of the church, and had to close his business and move to the city, where people were accustomed to decadence.

  But there were no such secrets in the Gardners’ sale, just some old tools and children’s videos, some of Sam’s old clothes that no longer fit, Tupperware permanently stained with microwaved tomato sauce, and a smattering of pictures and plaques with Scripture verses that Sam had been given over the years. Three this-is-the-day-the-Lord-hath-made, two for-God-so-loved-the-world, and one the-wages-of-sin-is-death Scripture plaque, which Dale Hinshaw had given him the year before, after Sam had preached a sermon series on forgiveness.

  The sale began at 8 a.m., and by 2:30 p.m. they were cleaned out. Harvey Muldock came past as they were folding the tables and putting them away, studied the wagon wheel, then offered Sam one hundred dollars, which Sam declined.

  “I’m saving it for my sons,” Sam said, and was promptly informed by his sons they wanted nothing to do with it, so Sam sold that, too, since Harvey was his third cousin, twice removed, and therefore practically family.

  In all they made $126, which didn’t seem worth the effort, but it gave them the excuse to get rid of things that would have otherwise cluttered their lives, so it was worthwhile. Sam divided the money between his sons, sixty-three dollars apiece.

  “That’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to an inheritance,” he told them. “Invest it wisely.”

  The next morning they left on their last family vacation. Camping, the only trip they could afford. They left their cell phones at home and drove four hours north to Lake Michigan, where they pitched their tent in a state park, perhaps the last remaining tent in the entire state. It was hot and humid and everyone else was camping in air-conditioned RVs, hooked up to cable television.

  “That isn’t camping,” Sam said. “They might as well have stayed home.”

  They cooked over a campfire, bacon and eggs and Dinty Moore beef stew, and drank tepid lemonade. At night they roasted marshmallows and slapped mosquitoes and reminisced about past vacations, then spread out their sleeping bags on the tent floor and fell to sleep, hot and dirty but indescribably happy.

  When the boys were younger, maybe even just a few years before, they would have whined the whole time, but now they were old enough to appreciate their last family vacation. One evening they drove to the nearest town and watched a movie at a drive-in theater, a thriller about terrorists seizing the White House and being thwarted by a minister from Iowa who had brought his family to Washington, D.C., to see the sights. The minister, it turns out, had once been a Navy SEAL, but had told no one, not even his wife, so everyone was surprised when he single-handedly rendered three dozen terrorists unconscious with a variety of jujitsu moves.

  Sam, having on several occasions imagined himself doing much the same thing, loved the movie.

  “That’s the thing about us ministers,” he told his family that night in their tent. “There are things we learned in our former lives that we can’t talk about. They lie just beneath the surface, ready to be used should we ever need them.”

  “You told us you had always been a pastor,” Addison said.

  “You were too young to know the truth,” Sam said. “Suffice it to say that I’ve done things I can’t talk about. Secrets from long ago, before I met your mother. Matters too painful to talk about, that were utterly necessary at the time. I suppose I became a pastor to make up in some small way for the things I once had to do for my nation.”

  “Oh, brother,” Barbara said.

  Levi and Addison wanted desperately to believe their father was more interesting than he appeared, so they believed him. For the most part. They believed he had once done things he preferred not to talk about. It might even have been something exciting. Something involving espionage. Probably not, but one ne
ver knew.

  They camped ten days, then returned so Addison could say good-bye to his friends before shipping out for basic training in Oklahoma. They drove him to the recruiter’s office in Cartersburg the last day of June. Addison had given his family strict instructions not to cry in front of the recruiter, so they bravely shook his hand good-bye, his mother hugged him, then they returned to their car, where Sam began to sob.

  “He’s never coming home,” Sam wailed. “We’ll never see him again.”

  “Don’t say that,” Barbara snapped. “You want to jinx him?”

  “Did Dad cry like this when I went away to college?” Levi asked from the backseat.

  “All the way home,” Barbara said. “He was distraught. We had to pull over several times.”

  Levi smiled, pleased his departure was the cause of parental sorrow.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “that with Addison gone for the next four years, I could maybe turn his bedroom into a game room.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the new owners,” Barbara said. “We’re moving next month. Remember?”

  “Besides, you’ll be back to college in a month’s time,” Sam pointed out, his voice catching. “Both our little boys, gone.”

  Sam could barely see to drive, so he pulled over to let Barbara take the wheel.

  They began to pack as soon as they reached home. Sam borrowed Uly Grant’s truck from the hardware store and began filling it with their belongings. They started in the attic, hauling boxes of Christmas decorations down two flights of stairs and out to the truck. After a few hours, Sam suggested they burn the house down and start all over, fresh.

  “We’d probably make a profit,” he pointed out. “That’s the nice thing about a fire. It destroys all the evidence. We could tell them we lost a Picasso and get an extra half a million.”

  “I’m sure our insurance company would believe we owned a Picasso,” Barbara said.

  It took them two days to work their way through the attic, with numerous runs to the dump and a trip to the Amvets in Cartersburg. They moved on to the basement, which had a tendency to fill with water so had been kept mostly empty. They boxed up Addison’s things, then hauled the first load up to the city to the parsonage. Hank and Norma Withers met them there and helped them unload the truck, then took them to eat supper at Arby’s.