by Terri Kraus
Gene waited patiently until he was finished. “So you’re not mad if I have a beer when I get home?”
“Nope,” Barth replied. “Just make it one. Maybe two at the most.”
“Deal.”
No one spoke until Steve broke the long silence. “We want to confess.”
Barth answered, “You don’t have to confess to me, Steven. Like I said, you just have to confess to God.”
“Yeah, well, I heard that all right. But like Gene said, we’re not in the habit of goin’ to church. And seein’ as how we are in one now, and, like, you’re a pastor, we just figured it would be okay.”
Barth had decades of service to God under his belt. He had heard all sorts of strange requests and demands and opinions about God and the Bible, and the Pratt brothers fell into the “really innocent” category. He could see in their eyes, on their faces, their sincerity, their lack of guile, their absolute belief in the power of a pastor. Barth had been so long out of the pulpit that this belief came as a jolt to his system, a nearly tangible, palpable current that ran from his head to his heart, down through his fingers.
“Boys, I want you to know that I don’t need to hear anything.”
The youngest brother spoke up. “I bet Jesus is pretty busy. And I bet you can help get Him to listen to us. If He needs to listen to us, I guess. We don’t want to push ourselves on Him, ’cause I know He’s a busy guy, like I said. Bein’ a pastor and all, I think it would be a good thing, like bein’ our attorney or somethin’. You know?”
Barth decided not to offer any more argument or discussion. If these boys had something to confess, then land sakes, they should be allowed to confess it.
Barth noticed that the oldest, Henry, waited, almost at the other end of the room, where the platform had been. Oliver came upstairs, and Henry motioned him over, speaking to him in a whisper.
“You know I can’t give you forgiveness,” Barth said quietly. “Only Jesus can do that.”
The youngest Pratt nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, we get that part, mostly. I just want Him to listen. And I bet He’ll be more likely to listen to you than me.”
Barth looked at both men. “You have things you need to confess? To get off your shoulders?”
They both nodded.
“I don’t need to hear what they are, but God does.”
“I stole some jewelry,” Gene said softly. “And some money. It was a long time ago. In Ohio. That’s where we’re from. Ohio. West of here.”
Steve added, “And I had this car accident, and someone got killed. They said it was involuntary manslaughter—even though it was his fault and he was sort of askin’ for it—but I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“We both spent time in prison,” said Gene.
Neither spoke.
Then Steve said in a mouse-quiet voice, “We hated what we did. We wished it never happened. It made us feel like people that we really weren’t.”
Barth waited. “And you want to be forgiven for your past sins?”
“Yes,” the two said in unison.
“You want me to pray for you?”
They both answered quickly. “Yes.”
Barth put his hands on their shoulders. He would not offer high-church, fancy praying—that was often more about those listening to the prayer rather than a real prayer to God. Instead, he’d offer something much simpler, much more direct, much more childlike.
“Dear God, here are two of Your children. They have sinned. They both have said that they are sorry for what they did. And they want Your forgiveness, for You have said that if we confess our sins, You are faithful and just and will forgive us. That is what they ask today. They have both paid their debt to society and now they want to acknowledge their sin to You.”
Barth waited. He could feel the tension in the shoulders of each Pratt brother, as if they were straining under a large, awkward, and invisible load. “Hear our prayers, Lord.”
He waited more, then closed softly, simply, and with power. “Lord, we are grateful that You have forgiven these two brothers because they both have asked and have shown their faith like a child. You have taken their sins upon You. You have paid the debt for their sins. Thank You. Give them a brand-new start. And help them to find a church and to grow in their faith. And now let them go and sin no more.”
He breathed in. His heart was beating faster than it had in years. “Amen.”
When he watched the two brothers open their eyes, he saw forgiveness on their faces, a lightness that was not there before, a new joy, an innocent happiness.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Barth said. “If you agreed with all your heart to what I said, then God has forgiven you.”
None of them moved. Then Steve said, voice trembling, “This feels good. I haven’t felt this good since … since forever.”
Oliver guessed at what was transpiring—more or less—filling in the blanks with the hushed tones, the facial expressions, and the Pratt brothers’ repentant posture on the pews. Oliver knew Barth didn’t possess magic spiritual powers, or some hidden, private roadway to God and to forgiveness, but he knew, just as certainly, that ritual—especially biblical rituals, like the laying on of hands by elders, performed over and over through centuries of Christendom—did have power and made an impact on people.
After the Pratt brothers gathered their coolers, each stopped to shake Oliver’s hand on the way out, thanking him for letting them work on this project, thanking him for bringing a man of God onto the jobsite, and thanking him for being the sort of person he was—all undeserved praise, Oliver felt, with maybe the exception of being wise enough to hire good men and trusting enough to take a chance when others would not.
Barth waited, sitting silently on the pew until everyone else had departed. He stood up, Rascal waiting on the floor, unwilling to waste energy standing up until Barth got closer to the door.
“Oliver, thanks for having me here today.”
“My pleasure. I take it that the Pratt boys asked for some spiritual assistance?”
“They did. They’ve been carrying around a full sack of guilt for a long time. I just showed them where they could unload it. Simple, I guess, simple to people like you and me who understand. But to the person lost in that thicket of brambles, finding the way out is anything but simple.”
Oliver nodded. “Thanks, Barth. Thanks a lot.”
“No, thank you, Oliver. This is the first time in a long, long while that I’ve felt useful—and needed. It means a lot to me, son, to feel connected—even in this small way. Thanks again. And maybe …”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe I could stop by tomorrow? See how Gene and Steve are doing. I won’t get in the way.”
Rascal wheezed to a standing position and walked toward them, the creaky stiffness in his legs almost visible to the human eye.
“Stop by at any time. It would be my pleasure to have you here.”
For a second, Oliver wondered if Barth was going to cry. Instead, the older man turned to his dog and, clapping once, called out, “Come on, Rascal. We have to get home for supper. That sound good? Supper?”
The women sat at battered gray round folding tables, the sides nicked and scuffed from being rolled back and forth, in and out of the storage area at the rear of the multipurpose room in the church basement. Forty women, plus or minus a 10 percent standard deviation from week to week, gathered there, in the basement of the Christ Community Church, on the north side of Jeannette, drinking murky decaffeinated coffee from white foam cups, nibbling on the “variety pack” of cookies from a large round tin—the sort of tin one buys at discount or dollar stores—listening to the pastor’s wife, teaching weekly about the attributes of God and what makes one a proper Christian woman.
Paula held her book o
pen with her left hand and cupped her chin in her right hand, her elbow on the table, much like the posture she had favored all through high school. She tried to listen to Mrs. Mosco—“Barbara! You have to promise to call me Barbara!”—and tried to figure out how all this knowledge of the building of the tabernacle might actually apply to her life outside of this stuffy, with-a-hint-of-mildew room, but most often she felt plain stymied.
To her left sat Lisa Olsen, a woman her age, but who had attended Jeannette High School instead of Hempfield Area Senior High like Paula and Oliver and Taller. Lisa wore sweatpants and sweatshirts exclusively to these studies, apparently owning a cornucopia of various colors and styles. Her thick brown hair was tied back with a yellow band with the ponytail sticking out from her head at a pronounced right angle. She leaned close to Paula and whispered under her breath, “Does any of this make sense to you?”
Paula glanced at the speaker to see if she was looking in their direction. When she saw that she wasn’t, she whispered back, “No. I thought I was the only stupid one here.”
Lisa scrunched her face tight, like some manner of insect, and murmured back, a little louder than a whisper, “Not likely. I hardly ever understand it.”
At this point, Mrs. Mosco did look over and arched her right eyebrow, a gesture that accompanied every question from the floor. Paula bit her lip to keep from laughing, and Lisa looked at her like she was the one with the question.
When Mrs. Mosco heard nothing, she turned back to her notes and continued speaking.
Lisa turned slightly away from the front and pantomimed being relieved at escaping getting caught.
After the study ended, Lisa said to Paula, “Sorry for almost getting you detention.”
Snickering, Paula answered, “No problem. It’s just nice to know I’m not the only one confused.”
“Not by a long shot. I come here because my son likes the child-care people, and it gives me a two-hour break. Even though I get confused, it’s still a break. A single mom needs all the help she can get.”
“Me, too,” Paula agreed. “It’s nice having a break—regardless.”
Lisa slid her Bible into a quilted cloth cover and zipped it up.
“Maybe next week I could get my sister to watch the kids for a while and we could go out for a snack afterward.”
“Yeah, that would be fun,” Paula replied. “Call me. I’ll pitch in to pay a babysitter if she could watch Bridget as well.”
As Mrs. Mosco hurried toward them, Lisa slipped away, in a hurry as well, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll call you.”
Mrs. Mosco grabbed Paula’s free hand and held it tightly. “I’m so glad you’ve joined us,” she said with bright cheer. “Having young women is so important.”
“I like … coming here,” Paula replied, a little intimidated by speaking one on one with the pastor’s wife, a woman always immaculately made-up—not in a flashy way, but precisely, with her blonde hair set just so and a strand of pearls always around her neck, like an updated June Cleaver with a spiritual spin.
“I’ve been talking to Rose Barnett, and she goes on and on about you and her son Oliver. Says she’s so proud of you being a ‘born-again virgin.’”
Paula must have appeared badly confused, because Mrs. Mosco said, “You know, Paula, obviously, with a child, you can’t get that ‘pure’ status back again, but Rose says you’re staying faithful now. That’s such a noble thing for you and your child—and for any man you might marry.”
Paula tried to make her expression radiate enthusiasm.
“I know my husband has talked to Oliver too. About how you were wronged—being abandoned and all. How it would be okay for a good Christian man like Oliver and you … well, if you two got together. The church, or I should say, Pastor Mosco, would be perfectly fine with it. Some other churches may not be as gracious as we are. It’s just so nice that you’ve found Jesus. I’ve known Oliver forever … for at least as long as we’ve been here. That feels like forever. And Oliver is a good man. He seemed so pleased when Pastor Mosco passed on his blessing for you two dating … and, you know, whatever. Genuinely pleased. Like a burden was being lifted from him, the pastor said.”
In that instant, Paula wanted to poke the pastor’s wife hard with her finger—hard enough to push Mrs. Mosco backward for referring to her husband, the pastor, as if he were not her husband, but some well-known third party.
“Well, that’s nice, Mrs. Mosco. I’m happy that he and Oliver had a chance to talk. I know how busy he must be.”
“Never too busy to answer questions or to help out. Or to help two people get together,” she said.
There was an odd, self-congratulatory smile on Mrs. Mosco’s face, Paula thought. When Bridget came running down the hall, calling out happily for her mother, this time Paula was very happy for the interruption.
Oliver stood in the dark, quiet Blue Church. There appeared not to be a bad time to be inside the building. Mornings were filled with light and color, and in the afternoons, the sun gave the more muted colors of the west-side stained-glass windows voice, and the room became serene. And at the edge of evening, when the light inside became stronger than that outside, the windows seemed more sculptural than transparent. Yet when a car drove down the street opposite, the windows appeared as if they were moving, arms and legs and robes illuminated for a moment, then dark again.
Oliver liked every moment inside. He had come to love this building. Robert clambered up on a pew near the door and watched as Oliver walked the large room, stopping at an unfinished booth, examining the joinery, and counting the two-by-fours stacked against one wall. He ran a finger across the pebbly glass and thin lead fingers holding the windows together, then headed back to the bar, trying to imagine it filled with people and music, the aromas of food, laughter, and the clatter of glasses and silverware. Pools of light radiated from the miniature spotlights hidden in the ceiling, creating the drama of light against dark, making dining an intimate experience.
Even though he could see the transformation now and could tell that it would be wonderful, he still worried that something bad might happen because of his involvement. Sacred remains sacred, he knew. Yet at the same time, he still had the strong feeling that he was here for a purpose—that it was meant to be.
Robert hopped down off his perch and trotted over to Oliver.
“I know it’s foolish,” Oliver said, assuming Robert had been privy to his thoughts and was entering the conversation fully aware of what had preceded his spoken words. “But at the back of my mind there’s a little fear that something will happen because of what this place once was and what I’ve done to it. And I won’t like it. But there’s also a lot of hope that something good will come out of it instead. Foolish, right, Robert?”
Robert sat down and looked up expectantly.
“And then there’s Samantha.”
Robert swallowed.
“And Paula.”
Robert snorted, and then again, as if clearing his nose of an unpleasant smell.
Oliver sat down next to his dog and put his arm around the animal. Robert appeared neither happy nor unhappy—just distant, as if he didn’t want to discuss this particular subject with Oliver at this particular moment. Then Robert sighed once, resigned to the discussion, regardless of what he wanted, since he was, after all, only a dog.
“I like Paula a lot. She is very, very pretty. She’s easy to talk to. I mean, since she does most of the talking. That’s okay with me. She’s pleasant, most of the time. I would have said that she was too good for me—looks-wise—a few years ago. And then my mother—she really likes her now. That’s a real turnaround. I could do worse, I know that. I bet she would do her best to make me happy. And maybe that’s what it’s all about. At my age, anyhow. It would make my mother really happy. That’s a big part of it. My mother sacrificed so much to raise
me and Tolliver. Maybe she deserves for me to treat her well, now that she’s older. And is there anyone else on the horizon, Robert? I haven’t dated that many women. Virtually none in the past few years.
“And now Paula. Maybe that’s what God wants me to do. Pastor Mosco seems to think it’s a good thing. And my mother—she’s definitely for it. Maybe that’s what I should do, Robert. Maybe I should just go ahead and make the leap. That’s what they did in the old days. Found someone who was acceptable and went ahead and got married. I heard somewhere that a great percentage of arranged marriages work. You learn to be together. Like you and me, Robert. We learned how to be together. We didn’t know each other when I found you. I had no idea if you would be a good dog or not. And you didn’t know if I would be a good person for you. You just went with me. You go where I go—that’s from the Bible, isn’t it? Something about ‘Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.’ But it’s true. We both took a chance—and see how well it has worked? Maybe that’s what I should do. Maybe I should just go for it.”
He and Robert sat for a long time in the growing darkness, watching the car headlights play against the windows of the Blue Church, watching the God-eye over the platform come alive, Samson in front of the pillars of the temple, and Jesus in the garden, His face inclined toward heaven, praying for guidance for all those who believed and were willing to follow where God was leading them.
When Oliver’s phone squawked, he nearly jumped up in response, his quiet reverie suddenly snapped closed by the electronic chatter. He unholstered the phone.
“Hello, Oliver. Samantha. I’m not interrupting you, am I? I can call back or talk to you tomorrow.”
“No, it’s okay. Robert and I were just sitting here watching car headlights on the stained glass and thinking about taking a walk. It’s pretty nice out, and we haven’t gone on a walk in days.”
“Well, I’m here, just lying in bed. Thinking. Maybe you could throw pebbles at my window when you pass by. Do people still do that, or do they just text each other?”