A Place Called Hope: A Novel

by Philip Gulley

  Sam had already forgotten their first names, so he was relieved when Ruby Hopper approached them and greeted them by their first names—Dan and Libby. Ruby Hopper, it turned out, volunteered in the school library once a week, reading to the children.

  “Ruby, I forgot this is your church,” Libby Woodrum said. “What a pleasure to see you.” She turned toward her husband. “Dan, this is Ruby Hopper. Ruby, this is my husband Dan.”

  “I’ve heard a great deal about you,” Ruby said, shaking his hand. “All good. It’s an honor to have you both at meeting today.”

  “The honor is ours,” Dan Woodrum said. “My wife has spoken of you many times over the years. I’m glad we’ve finally met.”

  He glanced around the meetinghouse. “What a lovely building. Of course, Janet and Libby came here for scouting, but I never had the pleasure. This is how a church ought to feel. Why, it feels like it grew out of the ground, as if God planted it here. Such peace and beauty.”

  Sam was delirious with joy. At Harmony Friends, visitors were accosted by Dale Hinshaw and harangued about their faith, which Dale generally found lacking. If Dale didn’t reach the visitor first, Fern Hampton did, planting herself in the meetinghouse doorway, scowling, with arms crossed, not unlike a bouncer in a bar. But Ruby Hopper was a natural—welcoming without being overbearing and a whiz at names.

  Since Dan Woodrum was a retired physician, Sam began telling him about the hernia operation he had undergone several years before, and how he had nearly died.

  “I’m sure Dr. Woodrum doesn’t want to hear about your hernia,” Barbara said, taking Sam by the arm and guiding him to his spot on the facing bench. “Besides, it’s time for meeting to start.”

  She whispered in his ear, “Don’t blow it. I like it here.”

  The conversations died down as people took their places. Barbara sat with the Woodrums, next to Janet, delighted her friend had come to visit. A few moments of silence passed, Sam rose to his feet, welcomed everyone, and expressed his joy at serving as their new pastor. They sang a hymn, one unfamiliar to Sam, about the interconnectedness of trees and whales and Native Americans. It was from a new Quaker hymnal Sam had heard about, but had never seen, on account of Dale Hinshaw declaring it liberal gobbledy-gook, the proceeds of which went to arm communist revolutionaries.

  Norma Withers played the piano, quite well in fact, then Sam delivered what he believed to be his finest sermon ever. Thus he was surprised when no one stood to applaud at its conclusion. They sat silently, Sam wanting to give them ample opportunity to express their appreciation for his message, but apparently they were too deeply moved for words. So after a few moments Doreen Newby made her way forward to the pulpit, quilts in hand.

  In the excitement of the morning Sam had forgotten that Doreen Newby was pumped and primed to gab about quilts for thirty minutes. Sam closed his eyes and bowed his head, as if in prayer, wondering how he might redeem the worship service so the Woodrums wouldn’t think they were kooks with a quilt fetish. He begged God to strike Doreen with a sudden case of laryngitis, but God seemed in no hurry to answer his prayer and Doreen droned on, showing one quilt and then another. Sam was never going to build a church this way.

  Eventually, after what seemed like days, Doreen finished. They sang another song, this one about God being a mother. Sam offered a closing prayer, then people turned to the person next to them and shook hands.

  Dan Woodrum was the first to reach him.

  “That was the most profound message I’ve ever heard in a church. Simple, touching, insightful.”

  “Thank you,” Sam said, trying his best to appear modest.

  “I’ll admit,” Dan went on, “when I saw her come forward with her quilts, I had misgivings, but when she began talking about her grandmother making them during the Depression from scraps of cloth to keep the children warm, I remember my grandmother doing the same. What a timely reminder of human compassion.”

  A tear leaked from his eyes.

  “Forgive me, I haven’t been moved like this in years. Then we sang that song about the feminine qualities of God. It all fit together so beautifully.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

  “It’s a little program we began sometime ago. We ask someone each week to speak on a topic dear to their heart,” Sam said.

  “Well, it’s brilliant. I must admit, and please don’t take offense, but I have grown weary of pastors going on and on every Sunday. God can speak through others, as we clearly saw this morning.”

  “That was my thinking, too,” said Sam, now taking full credit for a practice he’d spent much of the previous week trying to eliminate.

  But Dan Woodrum didn’t hear him. He was thanking Doreen Newby, and hugging her. Hugging her! As if she were his long-lost sister.

  The men began setting up tables while the women hurried to the kitchen to bring out food.

  Sam made his way to Janet and Libby Woodrum.

  “I hope you’ll join us for lunch,” Sam said. “We have more than enough food.”

  “Barbara has already invited us, and we’re planning on staying,” Janet said. “Thank you for your message, Sam. It was nice.”

  Nice. Sam had learned long ago that when someone told him his sermon was nice, they hadn’t been paying attention. Hitler could come back from the dead, stand in a church, announce the invasion of France, and every third person would pat him on the back and thank him for his nice message.

  The food made up for it. Pies everywhere. And bless Doreen Newby’s wacky heart, fried chicken, her grandmother’s recipe. Sam sat beside Wilson Roberts, who regaled him with stories of Hope in the old days, before the city grew out to it.

  “Yeah, when I was a kid, this was considered the country. The meetinghouse property was a cow pasture. Of course, the hardware store’s right where it’s always been. Have you been there yet?”

  “Not yet. Hope to very soon, though.”

  “Man who runs that is named Charley Riggle. His family’s been here ever since anyone can remember. Salt of the earth. Has a really nice plumbing section for such a small store.”

  “Just a bit past the hardware store is our grocery,” Wilson continued. “The Droogers own it. They moved down here from Minnesota a few years ago. Good folks, but they talk kinda funny. You can tell they’re not from around here. Maybe you and Barbara could shop there. We’ve been trying to get them to join the meeting. They’ve come once or twice.”

  Wilson Roberts was wound tighter than a tick. Sam was desperate to escape his clutches and woo the Woodrums, maybe wring out of them a promise to return. Visitors had to be finessed. The bait had to be dangled in front of them, the hook set, the line reeled in slowly. Next thing you knew, you had them landed in the boat, joining the church, and teaching a Sunday school class. There was an art to it.

  He wondered if the Woodrums were tithers. Janet had once mentioned they belonged to a church. Sam wondered which one. He hoped it wasn’t a liberal one. He liked liberals, but they were lousy givers. He preferred recovering conservatives with an expanding view of God but still afraid not to tithe. It was a fine line. You had to keep folks just a little afraid, or they wouldn’t give a dime. Once they started talking about their brother the wolf and the Great Spirit, they were pretty well useless as far as tithing was concerned.

  He caught up with the Woodrums as they were leaving. He thanked them for visiting, and invited them to return. They had stayed to clean up, which was a good sign. He was a bit too eager, following them out the door, when Barbara took his hand and squeezed it, hard. He watched as they walked to their car and drove away.

  “Geez, Sam, I thought you were going to run out there and wash their car or something. Give them a little space,” Barbara said.

  “I just wanted them to feel welcome.”

  “Welcome is one thing, stalking is another. Try and relax. The world won’t end if they don’t come back.”

  Sam panicked. “Did they say they
wouldn’t come back?”

  “No, now settle down. They said they enjoyed themselves and would be back.”

  “Those were their exact words?” Sam asked. “They said they’d be back?”

  “Yes, those were their exact words. Now go back inside and be with the others.”

  While Barbara stood outside on the meetinghouse porch, Sam went inside and helped put away the tables, still wondering what in the world a Quaker meeting could have done to take upwards of a hundred and fifty members down to twelve.

  39

  Maybe they killed them and buried them underneath the meetinghouse,” Barbara said that night to Sam, while they were lying in bed.

  “It’s built on a slab,” Sam pointed out. “That would have been next to impossible. Besides, I don’t think Ruby Hopper is the killin’ type.”

  “She is sweet, isn’t she? Did I tell you she sent a pie home with me? Chocolate cream.”

  “I love that woman,” Sam said.

  “For a group that likes to eat so much, I’m surprised they don’t have a bigger kitchen with a fellowship hall.”

  “I talked to Hank Withers about that. He said he designed the meetinghouse with those things in it, but the meeting didn’t have enough money when they built, so they made the kitchen smaller and left off the fellowship hall altogether.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could add those someday?” Barbara said.

  “It’ll take a lot more than twelve members to pull that one off,” Sam said.

  “I hope the Woodrums come back,” she said.

  “I thought you told me they said they were going to.”

  “They said they would, but everyone says that.”

  “They seemed to enjoy themselves,” Sam said. “They really liked Doreen’s quilt talk.”

  “Who’s talking next Sunday?”

  “Wayne is talking about his model train collection,” Sam said. “That ought to pack ’em in.”

  With Levi back in college, Sam had been anticipating an evening of romance, but now he was preoccupied, worrying how the Woodrums felt about model trains. Maybe Dan Woodrum had a train set as a child and would break down in tears remembering it and write the meeting a check for ten thousand dollars.

  Then Sam began wondering, while lying in bed, when he had started stewing about the church’s finances. It was a side of him he didn’t like, his calculating side, his side that worried, causing him to defer to the wealthier people in his congregation, hoping to stay in their good graces. At Harmony, he’d never given money much thought, probably because the Peacocks had won the lottery and once a month threw in a check big enough to choke a horse. He sensed money was an issue at Hope Meeting, notwithstanding the wealth of Wilson Roberts’s toilet empire. Sam wanted to value everyone, whether they gave much or little. He thought about this at such length that when he turned toward Barbara she was sound asleep, caring not one whit for his manly needs.

  They had hoped to sleep in the next morning, their day off, but at six thirty they awoke to the sound of a saxophone.

  “I thought he only played on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays,” Barbara said.

  “That’s what he told me last week.”

  Sam climbed out of bed, closed their bedroom windows, and went back to bed.

  “I can still hear him,” Barbara said.

  “You know, he’s not that bad. I’ve always liked that song. What’s it called?”

  “ ‘Moon River.’ ”

  “Ah, yes. Now I remember. We had it played at our wedding, didn’t we?”

  “We sure did,” Barbara said, scooting closer to him, nuzzling his neck.

  Sam loved a good neck nuzzle as much as the next man.

  What happened next caused him to wish Hank Withers came over every morning to play his saxophone.

  Afterward, they went for breakfast at a coffee shop in their neighborhood. Past the hardware store, past the Italian restaurant where Bruno had tried to seduce Barbara, past the library and Drooger’s Food Center, then around the corner to the coffee shop for bagels and coffee grown at a Lutheran commune in Argentina by the descendants of Nazis who had fled there after World War II.

  “It says here that ten percent of the money they make goes to Jewish charities,” Barbara said, reading her cup.

  “Boy, everyone’s selling coffee these days. Now the Nazis are in on it.”

  “They’re not Nazis. Their parents and grandparents were. They’re trying to make up for it. I think it’s nice.”

  Sam, who had never been much of a coffee drinker, said he would stick with hot chocolate, whose beans were picked by humble Christians in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

  They bickered for a while about the relative merits of coffee and chocolate, then went to the hardware store, where they purchased a mop and bucket.

  “Gonna do some cleaning, eh?” the owner asked.

  “I am,” Barbara said. “He probably won’t help much.”

  “You new to the area? Haven’t seen you before.”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “I’m the new pastor of Hope Friends Meeting. Name’s Sam Gardner. This is my wife, Barbara.”

  “Pleased to meet both of you. I’m Charley Riggle. Call me Charley.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know Uly Grant, would you?” Sam asked.

  Sam was under the impression all hardware store owners knew one another.

  “No, can’t say as I do. Should I?”

  “He owns the hardware store in Harmony. That’s where we’re from. You’re sure you don’t know him? About six feet tall. A hundred and seventy-five pounds. Brown hair, mustache, beard. I bet you’d know him if you saw him.”

  “Maybe I’ll have the pleasure one day,” Charley Riggle said. “I’ve always found hardware store owners to be fascinating people.”

  They discussed sandpaper for a brief time, then Sam invited Charley to visit Hope Friends.

  “You’d probably know quite a few people there,” Sam said.

  “Oh, I know just about everyone who goes there.”

  “Well, you’re always welcome to join us.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  They shook hands good-bye, then Barbara returned to the parsonage to continue organizing, while Sam headed to his office. He’d made his way halfway through the directory memorizing names. He was up to the P’s, of which there were several. No Q’s. That didn’t surprise him. Q’s were hard to come by. He’d had a Q in his first church, a Quinett, but never one since.

  He began studying the R’s. There were three Rawlses. He hadn’t met them yet. He looked up their address on Google Maps. They lived less than a mile from the meetinghouse. He wondered why they no longer attended.

  His eyes skipped down the list to Riggle. Riggle. Hmm, where had he heard that name? He wished he was better at remembering names. He closed his eyes in thought, and was soon asleep, waking just in time for lunch.

  40

  Libby Woodrum was having a dreadful day. Two teachers had phoned to announce their retirement, giving her less than a week to find replacements, then the school librarian had quit in a huff. Days like this made Libby wonder why she had ever wanted to be a school principal. The flower beds lining the front sidewalk were choked with weeds; she had asked the head custodian a week ago to hoe them, but nothing had been done. She had found him the day before napping in his workshop. It would take an act of Congress to fire him. Some things were just easier to do herself.

  She picked up her phone and dialed her daughter, Janet, in Harmony, who answered on the third ring.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey. Sorry to bother you at work, but I need some help. I’ve lost my librarian and was wondering if you knew anyone who graduated with you who might still be looking for work.”

  “Don’t you have to post the job opening within the school system first?” Janet asked.

  “Ideally, yes. But I checked with personnel and only two people have degrees in library science and they don’t want t
o transfer. So I can go outside the corporation, and I was hoping you might know someone who would do a good job.”

  “To be honest, I haven’t been keeping up with everyone else. Would you like me to e-mail the university’s placement department to see if anyone is looking for a job?”

  “That would be wonderful,” said Libby Woodrum. “Give them my contact information, if you don’t mind.”

  “Will do, Mom.”

  “You’re a wonderful daughter.”

  “Yes, I am, aren’t I.”

  Just as Libby was hanging up, Janet said. “Hold on, Mom. You know, Barbara Gardner has a degree in library science. And she’s a whiz with kids. You ought to see if she might be interested.”

  “Well now, there’s a thought. She seemed sharp.”

  “She is. No drama, either. You won’t have to hold her hand.”

  “My kind of gal. You wouldn’t happen to have her phone number, would you?”

  Janet passed along Barbara’s number and they talked a bit longer. Libby began to pry, asking whether Janet and Matt the Unitarian minister were serious, and whether there might be a wedding down the road and possibly grandchildren they could spoil.

  No, no, and no. In fact, Janet told her, she thought she might be a lesbian and would likely never marry or have children, which wasn’t true, but it silenced her mother.

  Libby phoned the parsonage, but no one answered, so she left her name and number. She spent the rest of the day looking for teachers, most all of whom had already found jobs teaching elsewhere, except for one recent college graduate who said like and you know five times a sentence. She crossed his name off the list.

  When she left for the day, she found Hank and Norma Withers weeding the flower beds by the school entrance.

  “Bless your hearts,” she said. “But you don’t have to do this.”

  “Probably wouldn’t do it if we had to,” Hank said. “When we brought our grandson here the other day to get registered, we noticed the flower beds needed a little attention. I imagine the janitors are busy getting the inside ready.”