“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get me all drugged up and have me declared incompetent, then take all the money.”
“Money?” she’d asked. “What money? Where’s all this money you’re talking about?”
“Are you saying I haven’t taken good care of you? Is that what you’re saying?”
They didn’t speak to each other for several hours before making up. Arguments for them are a slow-release aphrodisiac. They start their day bickering, then by afternoon are steaming up the windows.
Charlie drove to Cartersburg that afternoon and bought a television set small enough to sit on their kitchen countertop. Gloria watched him unload it from the car and carry it into the garage. When he walked in the door, she asked, “What was that you were carrying in?”
“You shouldn’t be so nosy around our anniversary.”
“I thought my anniversary gift was already out there. Isn’t that what you told Sam this morning?”
“You think that’s all I got you?” Charlie asked. “For crying out loud, can’t a guy get his wife two presents?”
It was turning out to be an expensive anniversary.
Under the guise of visiting Dr. Neely to have his heart checked, Charlie drove to Kivett’s Five and Dime and bought Gloria a parakeet. They’d had a dog, Zipper, for years, but she had died the month before, which had not been soon enough. In her last year the dog had taken to rolling in road-kill, then barging indoors to snooze behind the couch, where she couldn’t be dislodged.
On the upside, having Zipper provided an excuse not to visit certain relatives on his wife’s side of the family. When she had suggested visiting her sister in Minnesota, he’d said, “Who’s going to take care of Zipper? Were you just going to leave her here and let her starve to death? Is that what you want? You never did like our dog, did you?”
But with the dog dead, Charlie was without an excuse for staying home, so he bought his wife a parakeet so that he could continue avoiding people who annoyed him.
He used to worry they would divorce, but now the momentum of years is on their side. Charlie attributes their longevity to arguments. He believes couples who talk out their problems are eventually exhausted by dialogue and find it easier to part company, while arguing permits a couple to settle disagreements with a quick, loud efficiency. At least this is his theory, and so far he’s been right.
As for not going to bed mad, if they did that, they’d never sleep. Fortunately, Charlie and Gloria are blessed with short memories and wake up in love. The very passion that drives them to argue is the same passion that gets Charlie pumped and primed when he catches a glimpse of his wife’s naked collarbone. Then they’re off to the races. Ardor, they have learned in their almost fifty years, is a welder’s heat, cleaving them one day, joining them together the next.
Six
The Chief Evangelist
In the one month since Dale Hinshaw had proclaimed himself the Chief Evangelist of Harmony Friends Meeting, he’d managed to alienate half the congregation. Attendance at worship had declined precipitously, owing to Dale’s weekly rants about people not coming to church. Why he scolded the people who did show up was a mystery to everyone.
Attendance always declined in the summer, due to vacations and family reunions. But every year it was the same; Sam panicked through July, until Barbara reminded him folks would return in the fall, refreshed and rarin’ to go, just when Sam was pooped and in need of time off.
Dale Hinshaw, who kept careful records of who was attending and who wasn’t, didn’t help matters. “The Muldocks were gone today,” he announced to Sam at the front door after worship one Sunday. “Asa told me they were going to the Methodist church now. Ellis and Miriam weren’t here last Sunday or today. Plus, the Iversons haven’t been here for a month.”
“The Muldocks are at the Methodist church today because Harvey’s niece is having her baby baptized. Ellis and Miriam are on vacation in Michigan, and the Iversons went back east to visit their parents,” Sam explained.
Even though he had perfectly plausible explanations, Sam felt a rumble of anxiety deep in his bowels.
“I saw the Iversons yesterday at the Dairy Queen,” Dale said. “They’re back in town. I wonder why they weren’t here?”
“Maybe they just wanted to spend a quiet morning at home. Maybe they went to the state park for the day to have a picnic. Maybe they got tired of certain people badgering them about why they hadn’t been to church.”
Subtlety is lost on Dale. So too, for that matter, is the obvious. “I think I’ll give them a call,” he said, then paused. “No, I think we ought to go see them in person. When can you go?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam said firmly.
“I think you’ve forgotten our Lord’s counsel that two should go to confront a brother who’s lost in sin.”
“Who said the Iversons are lost in sin? They’ve been visiting with family. They go every summer when Paul gets out of school. Wanting to see your aging parents is not a sin.”
“Let the dead bury the dead, that’s what I say,” Dale intoned piously. Then he pulled a computer printout from the inside pocket of his plaid sport coat. “I did a graph on our attendance. As you can see, we’re down 28 percent in the past month. It appears the Lord has turned His back on us.”
Dale had purchased a computer that spring and had pestered Sam ever since, presenting him with pie charts and bar graphs chronicling their church’s decline. “The way I got it figured, we’ll have to close the doors next February if we don’t do something right now.”
Tossing Dale out of the church would reverse the decline, but Sam was too charitable to say so.
Of course, Dale has been predicting their church’s demise ever since he began attending decades ago. The computer has only allowed him to do it more dramatically. He bombards people with e-mails, calling down the wrath of God on those who won’t forward his missives along. Apparently too cheap to buy virus protection, he has infected half the computers in town, causing them to crash and their owners to long for his slow and torturous death.
“I could always e-mail the Iversons,” Dale said. “I got this story I’ve been wanting to send them anyway.”
Dale’s e-mail stories invariably concerned themselves with tales of people who’d slighted the Lord, causing all manner of misfortune to befall them.
“Let’s give them another week,” Sam suggested.
“Well, just so you know their souls are in your hands, not mine. I tried to get ’em right with the Lord. It won’t be my fault if they die this week and go to hell.”
“I’ll assume all responsibility,” Sam assured Dale.
Talking with Dale reminded Sam what he dreaded about his job—facing Dale Hinshaw after worship. It never failed. When Sam uttered the final amen, Dale could be depended upon to make a beeline for him, generally to critique his sermon. Over the years, Sam had become adept at smiling while Dale prattled on, pretending to listen while thinking of his afternoon nap.
Indeed, that was what he was doing that very moment, when Dale’s question brought him back to the present.
“…and so that’s what I was gonna do. What do you think, Sam?”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea, Dale.”
Sam had no idea what wacky scheme he’d just endorsed, but was too tired to care.
“So you don’t mind, then?”
“Not at all. Best of luck to you,” Sam said, then turned to greet Bea Majors. “What a Sunday morning! Bea, I don’t know how you make that organ sound the way you do.”
Bea made the organ sound like a catfight, so Sam was purposely vague with his comments, which allowed him to retain his integrity, while Bea, like most people who have an inflated regard for their talent, thought him sincere.
He shook hands and visited with his flock for another ten minutes, before gathering his Bible and sermon notes from the pulpit, turning off the lights, and locking the doors.
Locking the doors is some
thing new for Sam. The doors of the meetinghouse have been unlocked since 1949, when Harry Darnell, who headed the trustees, bolted to the Methodist church in a huff and took the key to the church with him.
No one noticed it missing until 1972, when a vanload of hippies driving through town stopped for the night and slept on the pews. When Pastor Taylor discovered them the next morning, they were seated cross-legged around the pulpit in the midst of transcendental meditation. He phoned the police, who came and arrested them, even though the door was unlocked and a sign on the door said, “All are welcome.” The transcendental meditation was the hippies’ undoing. If they’d been saying the Lord’s Prayer, Pastor Taylor would have fallen to his knees and joined them.
It led to the first church fight Sam remembers. The next Sunday, Ellis Hodge had casually suggested they put a new lock on the church door, which had caused Dale Hinshaw to achieve orbit. “Yes, and just as soon as we do that, somebody might want to come inside and get saved and he’ll be locked out. Do you want that on your conscience? I sure don’t!”
“Why can’t folks get themselves saved on the front steps?” Ellis had asked.
A perfectly reasonable question, it triggered a half-hour harangue from Dale Hinshaw on the importance of accepting the Lord at altars. “I think you’ve clearly forgotten Scripture’s reminder that the Lord is in His holy temple. It doesn’t say the Lord is on the front steps of the temple. It says He’s in the temple.”
“Isn’t that in the Old Testament?” Ellis had asked. “What’s that got to do with us?”
“Are you saying the Lord’s a liar?” Dale had screeched. “If He said it then, He means it now. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
This had led to an hour-long argument on whether or not Christians were obligated to follow the Old Testament.
The battle wounds cut so deep it had taken decades to get a lock put on. Even then, someone had to sneak and do it, and that person had not confessed. Dale Hinshaw has been looking for the culprit ever since. The month before, Sam had come to meeting and there it was, a brand-new lock on the church door with three keys taped to it. He’s been locking it ever since, except when he forgets, which happens more often than he’d like to admit.
Dale suspects Ellis Hodge is the guilty party and has tried to wring a confession from him, but Ellis won’t budge, so Dale has been looking to bring him up on other charges, with little success.
Sam doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on these matters for fear it will cause him to leave the ministry. Sometimes his father will recall a particularly grisly episode in the church’s history, and Sam will have to leave the room so as not to become too discouraged at the prospect of pastoring such malcontents as Dale Hinshaw.
In his first five years at Harmony, Sam had made every effort to steer Dale in the right direction. He tried reasoning with Dale, directing Dale’s vast energies down more reasonable paths. It never worked. Now Sam was trying a different approach, one that involved the total abdication of pastoral responsibility—letting Dale do whatever he pleased, which was what Dale generally did anyway.
As they walked home from meeting, Barbara said, “I saw you talking with Dale. What’s he want to do now?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
“I’m sure whatever Dale does, it’ll work out fine,” Sam said.
Barbara studied him for a moment. “Are you feeling all right? Have you hit your head and didn’t tell me? Because what you just said suggests you might be suffering from a brain defect.” She touched his forehead. “You don’t feel fevered.”
“I’ve just decided I’ve spent too much time worrying about Dale Hinshaw. At some point I’m going to have to relax and trust the Lord.”
“Trusting the Lord sounds nice in theory,” Barbara said. “It’s what all the martyrs said just before they were killed.”
Sam elected not to respond.
Their sons had run on ahead, so it was just the two of them. They rounded the corner by the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop, walked past the Harmony Herald office, then paused to look in the window of Grant’s Hardware. A sign was taped to the glass. For Rent. Apartment Above Hardware Store. No pets, smoking, alcohol, rock music, or loud parties allowed.
“I guess Uly fixed up Kenny Hutchens’s old room,” Sam said.
“Who’s Kenny Hutchens?”
“He mowed lawns and hauled trash when I was a kid. Uly’s dad rented him the room upstairs, but no one’s lived there since Kenny died. That was years ago. Back in the 1970s, at least. I wonder what it looks like up there now?”
Barbara shuddered. “I’d hate to think.”
“Maybe I should rent it,” Sam mused. For the past several years, since his sons had begun bickering as if it were an Olympic sport, Sam had dreamed of having a quiet retreat. Initially, he’d thought of buying a cabin in the woods outside of town. But desperation had made him less picky, and the room over Grant’s Hardware seemed more than sufficient.
“You keep wanting to get away from us,” Barbara said. “What’s wrong with our house?”
“Nothing at all. I just thought it’d be nice to have a little place I could slip away to and read. Someplace without a phone, where I could have a little peace and quiet.”
“Peace and quiet? Why do men always need peace and quiet? Boy, it’s a good thing we women didn’t always need to go away for a little peace and quiet or nothing would get done.”
Sam chuckled and draped his arm across his wife’s shoulders. “Women are the stronger sex. No doubt about it. But if you must know, I wanted the peace and quiet to write a book.”
“A book? You hate writing,” Barbara pointed out. “When you have to write your article for the church newsletter, you complain about it for days on end.”
“That’s different. I have to write that. If I wrote a book, I could write what I wanted.”
“I’m the one who should write a book,” Barbara said. “I’ve got things I’ve been wanting to get off my chest for years.”
Sam was feeling frisky—like his father, squabbling excited him—and he thought dreamily of his wife’s chest. He took her hand. “I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we rent Uly’s apartment and not tell the boys where we’ve moved. Then we’ll both have peace and quiet!”
They walked another block without speaking. Sam was thinking of peace and quiet and how dear it has become to him. He used to have a high tolerance for chaos and clatter. When the boys were younger and would quarrel, he would reason with them, trying to understand how their fight had begun. Now he doesn’t care who started it; all he wants is for their sons to hit one another quietly.
Sam feels the same way about church. He has given up illusions of pastoring a megachurch. Now he just wishes people would get along. Being a pastor is like negotiating a minefield—one wrong step and your world explodes, so you tread carefully. Like the month before when Frank had suggested they ask the trustees to put a new lock on the front door of the meetinghouse. Sam had advised against it. “You don’t want to go there,” he’d told his secretary. “Because Dale Hinshaw will want to rehash everything. It’s better just to leave it alone.”
When Sam had come to work the next morning, the new lock was on the door and Frank was putting away his tools.
“I know nothing,” Sam said. “I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I have no idea where that new lock came from.”
“What new lock?” Frank asked.
There are some things it’s best not to know—which of your children started the fight, why it took fifty years to replace a lock, or what grand scheme Dale Hinshaw might be cooking up. Knowledge is a good thing, but ignorance is not to be discounted.
Seven
Krista’s Big Plan
In her fifteenth year of teaching, on the last day of school—a fine, spring day when all the world was shiny green and new life was breaking out wherever one looked, a perfectly splendid day, as last d
ays of school tend to be—Krista Riley quit her job. She sat at her desk, wrote a letter of resignation, piled the detritus of fifteen years of teaching in a box that she carried out to her car, and marched into Principal Dutmire’s office before she changed her mind.
Mr. Dutmire, a veteran administrator who tried never to appear surprised, was stunned. “Quitting? You can’t quit. What will you do? All you’ve ever done is teach. Is it the money? If you coached the girls’ volleyball team, I could get you an extra thousand dollars a year. How about it?”
“What I know about volleyball could be put in a thimble,” Krista said. “Thanks just the same, but I want to go to seminary and be a minister.”
“But you’re a woman,” he said.
“So everyone keeps reminding me,” she replied. Then because Mr. Dutmire was a generally kind man and only occasionally officious, Krista smiled and said, “I believe God has called me to ministry not in spite of my being a woman, but because of it.”
“I thought you were Catholic,” he persisted. “They don’t even allow women to be priests.”
“Who says I have to stay in the Catholic church? I could be Methodist or Presbyterian, or Quaker for that matter. I might even become one of those snake-handling Pentecostals. They allow women to be ministers.”
“You’d change churches?” asked Mr. Dutmire, a man who so resisted change he’d once boasted of eating the same brand of breakfast cereal for thirty-two years.
“People do it every day, most of them for the silliest reasons. I don’t see why I can’t change to honor my calling.”
Principal Dutmire removed his glasses, spritzed them with cleaner he kept in his desk, wiped them clean with his handkerchief, then positioned them carefully behind his ears, the bridge resting just above the notch on his nose, so that he stared over the tops of them at Krista. “Very well. I’ll get the paperwork started today.”
Then like the fledgling whose first foray from the nest is both frightening and exhilarating, Krista thanked him for understanding, though it was clear he didn’t, and walked from the school, her life a delicious swirl of possibility and promise.
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