A Place Called Hope: A Novel

by Philip Gulley

  “It’s very kind of you,” Libby Woodrum said. “We appreciate it.”

  “I’ll come back tomorrow, spread some mulch, and you’ll be in fine shape,” he said. “I might even put up a couple of bird feeders, so the kids can watch the birds.”

  “You are absolute saints,” Libby Woodrum said, hugging them.

  She walked the four blocks thinking well of Quakers. A bit odd, perhaps, talking about quilts during worship, but civic-minded. She wondered if Hank or Norma had a teacher’s certificate. That would be interesting. Bring in a senior citizen to whip the place into shape. Hmm.

  Sam was the first to discover the telephone message from Libby Woodrum.

  “I wonder what she wants,” he said to Barbara. “Maybe she’s calling to talk about my sermon.”

  Sam had long harbored the fantasy that people meditated upon his sermons for days after he’d given them.

  “I’m sure that’s it,” Barbara said. “What else could she want?”

  Sam dialed the Woodrums’ number. Libby answered the phone and they exchanged greetings.

  “It was certainly nice having you with us this past Sunday,” Sam said, deftly sliding into the topic of church.

  “Yes, well, we had a very nice time,” she said. “We’ve been having a difficult time in our church lately, so it was nice to go to church and just enjoy it.”

  They were on delicate ground. Sam wanted to appear sympathetic, but not overeager.

  “For all its blessings, community can be difficult at times,” he said. “And while change is often helpful, it’s never easy.”

  Smooth. Sometimes he amazed himself.

  “Is Barbara home this evening?”

  Sam handed the phone to Barbara, then hovered nearby as she greeted Libby. He couldn’t make out the conversation, but his wife seemed pleased.

  “Oh, I’d be happy to come talk with you about that. What time would you like to meet? Ten o’clock tomorrow. That’s perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  She hung up.

  “Talk about what?” Sam asked. “Talk about the church? What’s she want to know? Did they like it?”

  “No, she doesn’t want to talk about the church. She wants to talk about a librarian job at her school.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh? I get a possible job offer and that’s all you can say? No ‘Congratulations’? No ‘Wow, that’s great’? No ‘I’m happy for you’?”

  “Of course I’m happy for you. You know that.”

  “If she had phoned to compliment you on your sermon, you’d be dancing a jig,” Barbara said. “But I get good news and you just say, ‘Oh.’ Sam Gardner, sometimes I could just shake the snot out of you.”

  “Absolutely uncalled for,” Sam said. “I’m terribly sorry. Why don’t I take you out for dinner to make up for it? Let’s go to that Italian place next to the hardware store. What’s it called? Bruno’s, is that it?”

  “I’ve heard the food is bad,” Barbara said, slightly panicked. She had heard of jilted Italians losing their temper and killing people. Though Sam annoyed her, she had no wish to see him dead.

  “Really? Wilson Roberts said it was delicious. So did Ruby Hopper. Come on, let’s give it a try.”

  Sam’s presence had no apparent effect on Bruno. He greeted Barbara with a kiss on both cheeks, held her hand all the way to their table, told her she was lovely, and said if she ever ditched Sam, he would be happy to marry her.

  Barbara laughed. “Oh, I’ll probably keep him.”

  “Well, you know, accidents happen,” he said, smiling at Sam. He had pointy teeth, like a vampire. “Maybe if something happens to him, you might think of me.”

  He returned to the kitchen.

  “Did he just threaten to kill me?” Sam asked.

  “Of course not. Stop being paranoid. He’s a harmless old man.”

  The food was delicious, though Sam only nibbled at his, unable to simultaneously enjoy his dinner and keep a watch out for Bruno.

  “I am very happy for you,” Sam told Barbara over dessert. “I hope you get the job.”

  “I need to find out more about it, but it sounds perfect. Summers off. Two weeks at Christmas. Maybe the meeting could give you some extra time off in the summer and we could travel a bit.”

  They discussed other possibilities, then paid their bill. Sam left Bruno a generous tip, hoping to pacify him.

  The sun was setting as they left the restaurant, and the day was cooling off, so they looped through the neighborhood. It felt a bit like Harmony, with old houses, shade trees, and people out puttering in their yards.

  “Wilson Roberts said this was a little town and the city grew out to it,” Sam observed.

  “Yes, that’s what Janet told me as well. The Woodrums go way back here.”

  “It’s kind of neat,” Sam said. “Feels like a small town, but we’re twenty minutes from the center of the city.”

  “I think we’re going to be happy here,” Barbara said.

  “I think so, too.”

  And as Sam said that, he meant it. He thought he would pine for his hometown, but so far he hadn’t. He missed some of the people, Uly Grant and Miriam Hodge, but the lure of nostalgia had faded. He had been ready for something new, something different. Hope Meeting was certainly those things.

  They turned down the meetinghouse lane, lined with pine trees on one side and apple trees on the other. The apple trees sagged with ripening fruit.

  “I love everything about this place,” Barbara said.

  “Yeah, I don’t understand why more people don’t come here. Something happened, but no one wants to talk about it.”

  “Oh, you’ll find out in time. But for now, just get to know the folks, and let them get to know you.”

  It was good advice, which Sam decided to follow, at least until his curiosity got the best of him.

  41

  The next morning found Sam at the hardware store, purchasing lightbulbs he could have bought two dollars cheaper at Home Depot. But Charley Riggle didn’t work at Home Depot, and Sam was hoping to snag Charley for the church.

  “Thank you for the business,” Charley said, as he placed the lightbulbs in a paper sack.

  “Always happy to support my local hardware store,” Sam said, then paused. “I don’t know if you have a church home, but if you’re interested, we would be honored if you visited our Quaker meeting.”

  “You don’t know about me, do you?” Charley Riggle asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was a member of the meeting up until three years ago, when they gave me the heave-ho.”

  “Gave you the heave-ho?” Sam asked, puzzled. “Why did they do that?”

  Charley laughed. “Probably because I hadn’t attended in years. Lost interest. I don’t blame them for taking me off the membership rolls.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know.”

  “No need to apologize. The meeting has a right to have standards of membership.”

  “You’re still welcome anytime,” Sam said.

  “I know. And I might come by some Sunday. I like the folks there. It’s just that Sunday is my only day off and I like sleeping in, truth be told.”

  “I understand,” Sam said.

  “Hope you’ll still do business with me now that you know I’m a heathen,” Charley said, chuckling.

  Sam reached across the counter and shook Charley’s hand. “Some of my best friends are heathens.”

  Well, that certainly explained it, Sam thought, as he walked home. That’s how you went from one hundred and fifty members down to twelve attenders. Boot ’em out. He wondered whose bright idea that had been. It sounded like something Dale Hinshaw would have done. Culling the weeds. Separating the sheep and the goats. Casting the sinners into utter darkness.

  When Sam reached the meetinghouse, Hank Withers was there with his saxophone.

  “Morning, Hank. Got a minute?” Sam asked.

  “Sure.”

  T
hey entered Sam’s office and sat on the new couch.

  “I’ve been reading the old membership directories and noticed we used to have a lot more members. Then something happened and now we don’t. No one wants to talk about it. But I was just at Charley Riggle’s hardware store and he told me the church threw him out. Would you mind telling me what happened?”

  “Oh boy, here we go again,” Hank said. “I’d rather not revisit this issue, Sam. Things are finally settling down.”

  “I’m not going to stir things up. I just want to know what happened. It’s like not telling your doctor about the time you had cancer. If I’m going to be your pastor, I need to know the meeting’s history.”

  Hank thought for a moment, then sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Three years ago, we fired a hundred and thirty-two members.”

  “Fired? How can you fire a church member?”

  “Well, it wasn’t easy, but we did it. These were folks who no longer darkened our doorstep, who never did any kind of ministry with us, never showed any interest, and never helped. We hadn’t heard from most of them in over ten years. But every year, we had to send the yearly meeting office over twenty thousand dollars because they were on our rolls. Four years ago, we didn’t have the money, so didn’t send it in. We can’t send what we don’t have. The superintendent came and read us the riot act. He hadn’t been here in years, but when we stopped paying our full assessments he was here the next week.

  “So,” Hank continued, “we decided to update our membership rolls. We sent notices to folks explaining the problem, inviting them back, but no one came back. Only a few bothered to get in touch with us. If someone was too old or worked on Sunday, we urged them to be active in other ways. If they agreed to, we kept them on; if they didn’t, we let them go. We’re down to twenty members now. Twelve of us are active, and eight are too old or sick to participate any longer, but they’re part of our prayer life and we visit with them regularly.”

  “So what happened then?” Sam asked.

  “It caused the biggest mess you ever saw. We got the nastiest letters. We’d see some of them out in public and they’d tear into us. Poor Ruby Hopper, she was our clerk then, and her phone rang off the hook. She can hardly talk about it today without crying.”

  “Is that why the superintendent has been ignoring you?”

  “Yes, he says we owe the yearly meeting twenty thousand dollars, and that until we pay we’re not in good standing.”

  “You lost your pastor right around then, didn’t you?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, he said he wouldn’t work at a meeting that didn’t pay its assessments. But right after that, the superintendent got him a bigger meeting, then told us he wouldn’t help us find a new pastor.”

  “Well, that explains some things,” Sam said. “Like why it took the meeting three years to find a new pastor.”

  “Yeah, no one wanted to interview with us without the superintendent’s blessing. We had to go around him to get you, and even then he told us not to hire you.”

  When Sam had first become a pastor, he’d believed in hell. Then he’d pretty well decided it didn’t exist. But whenever he thought of the superintendent he was inclined to believe in it and suspected the superintendent would one day run it.

  “Well, that’s the church at its worst,” Sam said. “I hear things like that and it makes me want to find a new line of work.”

  “It was awfully discouraging,” Hank said.

  They sat quietly in the office, thinking.

  “You know,” Sam said, “there may only be twelve people in this meeting, now fourteen counting Barbara and me, but I think we have a lot going for us.”

  “I just don’t understand why we haven’t grown,” Hank said. “We invite people and they’ll come for a Sunday or two, but don’t come back.”

  “It’s kind of tricky,” Sam said. “When there are so few people in a congregation, new people can’t help but feel they’re not part of the group. It’s kind of like being invited to a family dinner when you’re the only guest. Everyone else seems to belong except for you.”

  “That’s a good analogy,” Hank said. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “So we just have to figure out a way to help people feel part of our family right off the bat.”

  They contemplated that for a moment.

  “If you don’t mind, I am going to return to my saxophone,” Hank said. “It helps me think.”

  “You do that, and I’ll tend to my work.”

  Sam had been hoping for more drama. He’d spent the past several weeks wondering what calamitous event could have spurred such an exodus from the meeting—a doctrinal disagreement, a grab for power, a dispute over carpet color. But no, they’d dumped 132 church members to save money. Just once he’d like to see a church lose members over something worthwhile, maybe have a good fight over a significant matter, such as a minister performing a same-gender marriage, for instance.

  He wondered, not for the first time, if he had left Harmony Meeting too soon. He’d told Miriam Hodge he’d wanted to avoid a congregational fight, but there were worse things. Silence in the midst of injustice being one. Maybe he should have stayed and gone head-to-head with Dale Hinshaw, and let the congregation decide which direction to go, rather than let Dale lead them around by the nose. But no, he quit to avoid a fight, when a fight might have been the best thing. He wondered if it was too late to get his old job back.

  42

  The school was an old one, built in 1929, according to the date carved in stone over the front entrance. Barbara thought it looked like a temple to education, a church of enlightenment. Though it was only five blocks from their home, she and Sam hadn’t yet noticed it in their evening walks. Libby Woodrum was seated on a bench underneath a tree awaiting her arrival.

  “What a beautiful building,” Barbara said, by way of greeting.

  “One of the oldest elementary schools in continuous use in the state,” Libby said. “Big and drafty, but abounding with good spirits, including one ghost, or so our janitor claims.”

  “Ooh, a ghost! I hope it’s a nice one.”

  “A bit less intense than when she was alive. It’s Mrs. Helton. She taught here nearly fifty years. She approached education like war, a one-woman campaign against sloth and ignorance. When she retired, we said this place wouldn’t be the same without her. So when she died, she apparently decided to return. Our janitor sees her at night, in the teachers’ lounge, grading papers.”

  “Well, at least she’s keeping busy,” Barbara said. “Nothing worse than a ghost with time on its hands.”

  “Yes, they stir up all kinds of trouble, don’t they!”

  They made their way inside to Libby’s office.

  “I would like you to be our new librarian,” Libby Woodrum said. “It won’t be easy. Our former librarian did not distinguish herself, so now I have five hundred children who are scared to death of books.”

  “I would love to be your new librarian, but shouldn’t you interview me first?”

  “I did better than that. I asked my daughter Janet about you. She thinks you’d make a fantastic school librarian. Her endorsement is good enough for me.”

  “When did you want me to start?”

  Libby glanced at her watch. “How about in five minutes?”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’ll get the paperwork going, but right now I’ll give you a tour of the school and introduce you to the teachers. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Barbara. The library has long been a concern of mine, and I think with you in there, we can turn it around.”

  “Thank you for your confidence in me,” Barbara said. “I will do my absolute best.”

  She excused herself to phone Sam and tell him the good news, then walked with Libby through the school, meeting the teachers and staff, who were delighted to meet her, which made her think the previous librarian had been a terror.

  The library was stately, high-ceilinged, but had not
been well tended. Books were stacked haphazardly on the shelves, dust had accumulated in the corners, and a musty odor permeated the place. Judging by the stale air, the windows hadn’t been opened in years.

  It took her a half hour to wrestle the windows open. She lubricated the sashes with a bar of soap she carried in her purse, being the mother of two sons, and within a short time had the windows gliding smoothly up and down. Fresh air did wonders for the place. She made her way to the basement for a can of Pledge and a box of dust rags, which the custodian seemed reluctant to hand over until she pointed out that he was free to dust the library if he wished.

  “And I’ll need a clean mop and a bucket of hot water with Murphy’s Oil Soap,” she said. “And a dust mop. Don’t forget a dust mop.”

  The children would be arriving in two weeks, and she was going to be ready for them, come hell or high water.

  She worked through the day, then left for home, where she found Sam lying on the couch, a heating pad on his forehead, brooding.

  “I think I made a mistake,” he said. “I called Miriam Hodge this afternoon and they’re going to let Paul Fletcher go. They want me back. Even Bea and Opal Majors said they might have acted too hastily. I was wrong to leave. I wanted to avoid a church fight over homosexuality, but now I think we should have faced the topic head-on. They’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later. I was wrong to leave. I should go back.”

  “When did you decide all this?” Barbara asked. “Because when you left this morning, you were headed to a hardware store in a wonderful mood, glad to be here.”

  “I found out why they lost all those members,” Sam said. “Hank Withers told me.”

  “Why?”

  “They wanted to save money so they kicked out their inactive members so they wouldn’t have to pay an assessment on them.”

  “Well, that makes sense. They’re a small church; they don’t have the money to pay for a bunch of deadbeats cluttering up the church rolls. At least they did something. Heck, Harmony wouldn’t take people off the church rolls even after they’d died. Don’t you remember that? We kept Fern Hampton’s mother on the rolls for five years because Fern threw a fit when we pointed out her mother could no longer be a member since she was dead. Now you have a church with the guts to toss out the loafers and you get melancholy and want to go home.”