The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  Noylene was not convinced. She didn't like the idea of her baby boy preaching to the masses. Pete and Cynthia had a bet on which parent would prevail. Cynthia's money was on Noylene. Pete said that he saw the look in Brother Hog's eye and that Noylene didn't stand a chance.

  "He's a helluva preacher," said Pete, "and he makes a good argument. Who is Noylene to stand in the way of the Gospel? If God and Pat Robertson have told Hog to take that baby on the road, I doubt that Noylene's got much say."

  "We'll see," Cynthia had replied.

  "Good morning, Chief," said Rosa Zumaya, coming into the room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Rosa was a plump woman and I'd never seen her without a smile on her face. If I had to guess, I would say that she was in her late forties. Her black hair was tied into a bun at the back of her head, and her face was as devoid of lines as a twenty year old.

  I sat down at our table near the back of the restaurant. It was generally conceded to be the St. Germaine Police Department table, but if Pete had actual paying customers we were ousted without ceremony. The red-and-white-checked vinyl table cloths were identical on all the tables. The chairs were wooden and upholstered with red Naugahyde. The four booths along the side wall were trimmed in the same fabric. Ditto for the upholstered chrome stools at the counter. The counter top was white but had a beat-up look to it. The floor was tiled in a checkerboard black-and-white linoleum. All the tables and the spots at the counter were topped with a ketchup bottle, mustard bottle, Tabasco sauce bottle, salt and pepper shakers, sugar shaker, and an aluminum napkin holder. The menu was on a board fixed to the wall behind the counter, but you could get anything you wanted at the Slab. That is, if Manuel had the ingredients, and he usually did. Manuel Zumaya was Pete's cook, and he'd been working at the Slab Café for a couple of years. Before Manuel arrived, cuisine had been marked by respectable diner fare — burgers, sandwiches, fries, a good breakfast, lunch specials, and the like. I could even get a Reuben sandwich if I felt the need. Since Manuel had taken over the kitchen, epicurean expectations among the breakfast and lunch crowd had risen dramatically. With his wife, Rosa, they had transformed the Slab into an eatery worthy of Pete's delusions. Rosa did most of the prep work in the kitchen, made coffee, waited tables — whatever was needed — but mostly, she invented recipes. And what recipes!

  "I'll have some pancakes," I said to Rosa, as she filled my coffee cup.

  "Apple cinnamon ricotta pancakes or cherry macadamia nut pancakes?" Rosa said. "We have both today."

  "Really? The first one, then."

  "I think you'll love them." Rosa smiled, then disappeared through the kitchen door. A moment later Pete came out, saw me, walked over to the table, and sat down. Hog took the adjacent table. Noylene had hauled Rahab into the kitchen to say hello to Manuel.

  "How you doing, Hog?" Pete said to him, giving him a nod.

  "Tolerable," answered Hog. "How 'bout some coffee?"

  "Hmm," said Pete, looking around for a waitress, even though he knew both of them were in the kitchen. "Yeah, sure." He got back up and found a coffee pot behind the counter on a burner, then made the rounds: Hog first, then the counter guy, then the Purvises and Gwen Jackson, then Billy's table.

  He dribbled the last half cup into a Kleinpeter brother's cup. "Gotta get another pot," he said.

  "Don't worry about me," said the boy. "I'm full up."

  Noylene came back into the dining room with Rosa right behind her. Rahab was hanging onto Rosa's neck with one hand and pushing a banana into his mouth with the other. Pete went back to the coffee station and replaced the pot. He picked up a full pot, looked around the room, then set it back on the burner and walked back over to my table.

  "Your hotcakes'll be up in a few," said Noylene. "You want whipped cream on those?"

  I shook my head. "Nope," I said, then turned to Pete, who had found his chair again. "What's the word on our pig?"

  "Should be here from France any time. I don't have a final delivery date yet. There's apparently a bunch of quarantine stuff she has to go through."

  "You're getting a pig?" said Billy. "A fancy French pig?"

  "Yep," I said. " A truffle pig."

  "Truffles, eh?" said Brother Hog. "You know, Little Rahab there drinks truffle-milk." He gestured at Rahab, who was stuffing the remaining stump of the banana into his cheeks like a chipmunk. He looked as though he'd be saving most of this banana for later.

  I watched as Len, Roweena, and Gwen perked up at the mention of a fancy French pig. Or maybe it was the comment that Rahab was partial to truffle-milk. Didn't matter. Like most eateries in small towns, conversation across tables was a given. Everyone's participation was invited.

  "I've never heard of truffle-milk," said Roweena.

  "It's my fault," said Noylene. "The boy wouldn't drink cow's milk. Oh, he'd drink goat's milk, sheep's milk, probably yak's milk if I could get it. So one day Manuel was messing around with truffle oil in the kitchen and gave a dab to Rahab on his finger. The boy went crazy. Sucked on that finger like it was the last full teat on the dog. He sobbed when Manuel finally had to pass him off and get back to cooking. Anyway, I tried a few drops in his bottle and he took to it like a rat to a raincoat. He's been drinking truffle-milk ever since."

  "Makes sense," said Gwen. "Truffles have a very distinctive flavor."

  "Cheaper than goat milk, I'll bet," added Len.

  "You ain't just whistlin' Dixie," said Hog. "Goat milk costs more'n beer." He paused. "Or, so I've heard."

  "Did y'all know that yak's milk is pink?" asked Billy. He was still contemplating the remains of his celery stick, swirling it in the gravy.

  "I did not know that," said Roweena, thoughtfully. "Good information, though. I expect it'll come in handy one day." Noylene nodded her agreement.

  "Hang on," said Pete, looking at Noylene. "A rat to a raincoat?"

  Chapter 5

  Easter was going to be late this year. When Easter fell in March, we might be fighting the snow to get to church. But when Easter was deep into April, we generally had beautiful weather to accompany it. On this Sunday morning, with Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and all forty days of Lent to look forward to, the weather didn't look too bad, and the groundhog had promised us a quick resolution to the frosty season. Although Punxsutawney Phil didn't give us a specific date, an early spring should be right around the corner.

  I was ready to head for church. Meg was not. "Five minutes," she said. I knew that meant fifteen. It was no problem. We had plenty of time before I needed to warm-up the choir.

  "What are you going to give up for Lent?" Meg called from the bedroom.

  "I don't know yet. I still have a couple of days to decide."

  "I'm giving up chocolate."

  "That sounds good," I called back. "I'll give up chocolate, too."

  She walked out of the bedroom, at the same time working to fasten a silver cross around her neck. "You should give up cigars."

  I thought for a moment. "Nah. How about asparagus?"

  "Cigars."

  "You can't make the decision," I said. "That's not the way it works. It has to be a personal commitment made through hours of prayer and long contemplation. Otherwise, it doesn't mean anything. How about if I give up crossword puzzles?"

  "Yes, I can tell that took a lot of contemplation," said Meg. "Here, help me with this necklace, will you? I can't get the clasp to catch."

  She handed me the cross, spun around, and lifted her hair off her shoulders. It took me a moment to figure out the clasp, but she waited patiently.

  "Done," I said.

  "Thank you very much. Now, about those cigars ..."

  * * *

  Transfiguration Sunday is celebrated at St. Barnabas on the last Sunday after Epiphany. It is the same in most of the liturgical Protestant denominations in the U.S. The actual Feast of the Transfiguration is on August 6th, coincidentally the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but we are happy to celebrate it in co
mmunion with the rest of our Episcopal brethren on the Sunday before Lent begins.

  It's a big Sunday. A major feast day. The Gospel lessons are revelations of the identity of Jesus as the Son of God to his disciples. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him and goes up to a mountain. Once on the mountain, Jesus "is transfigured before them; his face shining as the sun, and his garments became white as the light." The prophets Elijah and Moses appear and Jesus talks to them. Just as Elijah and Moses begin to depart from the scene, Peter begins to ask Jesus if the disciples should make three tabernacles for him and the two prophets. But before Peter can finish, a bright cloud appears, and a voice from the cloud states: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." The disciples fall to the ground in fear, but Jesus tells them not to be afraid. When they look up, Elijah and Moses have disappeared and Jesus instructs the disciples not to say anything to anyone until he has risen from the dead, which, of course, they don't.

  In Christian teachings, the Transfiguration is unique among the miracles of Jesus in that the miracle happens to Jesus himself. It is a pivotal moment in the narrative, and the setting on the mountain is presented as the point where human nature meets God: the meeting place for the temporal and the eternal, with Jesus himself as the connecting point, acting as the bridge between heaven and earth. It is the origin of our expression "mountaintop experience." With such symbolism and these wonderful texts in three of the four Gospel accounts, one might find it odd that the sermon for the day was listed in the bulletin as "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs."

  "That's a children's book from the '70s," said Georgia Wester. She sighed and slid her bulletin into the front of her choir folder. Georgia owned and ran Eden Books on the square. She was also on the altar guild.

  "I'm sure that Mother P will make it all clear," Meg said. "The title is probably very clever in context."

  "I'm sure it is," Marjorie said. "Hey! We should change the anthem to On Top of Spaghetti." Marjorie was a tenor and no fan of Mother P.

  "On top of spaghetti," sang Mark Wells, and the rest of the basses joined in immediately in the time-honored campfire classic: "All covered with cheese. I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed."

  "Kyrie, eleison," added Bev Greene. "Meatball, eleison."

  "We're doing the piece we've rehearsed," I announced. "I wrote it and we're singing it. It's the price you pay for having a genius as a choir director."

  "I like the anthem fine," said Rebecca Watts from the alto section, "but this story is off to a bad start." She waved her copy of The Treble Wore Trouble at me. I'd printed it on the back of the Psalm.

  "I know a girl named Carrie Oakey," said Varmit LeMieux, reading and talking at the same time, a talent he'd probably discovered only recently. We all knew he couldn't sing and read at the same time, a drawback that hampered his choir participation considerably. But he wasn't in the choir to sing. He was in the choir to keep an eye on his wife, Muffy.

  "You do not know any girl named Carrie Oakey," snapped Muffy.

  Muffy and Varmit had joined the choir soon after they moved to town. Actually, Muffy joined the choir. Varmit tagged along.

  "I think I do," said Varmit. "Doesn't she sing in a bar we used to go to? The name sounds pretty familiar."

  Muffy huffed out a great sigh of exasperation, then decided to ignore Varmit. She turned her attention to the rest of the choir. "Are all y'all planning to come to the play? We open a week from this coming Friday. Three performances — Friday, Saturday, and a Sunday matinée."

  The St. Germaine Little Theater had a long and distinguished history, dating back to 1934. It began as the St. Germaine Footlight Club (named for that grand old community theater in Massachusetts) and specialized in Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as some turn-of-the-century melodramas and contemporary plays. The Footlight Club was the first theater in North Carolina to present Our Town in the mid 1940s and had Walter Brennan come in to headline the production. Walter's sister, directing the show, prevailed on the Oscar-winning actor to take the role of the Stage Manager. Since then the name of the company has changed, and artistic visions have come and gone. We still have a board of directors, though, and the theater puts on two productions a year.

  "What's the show?" asked Marjorie.

  "It might behoove us to look at this music," I said hopefully.

  "Nah," Marjorie answered. "We don't need to go over this anthem again. We've got it cold." Being the only female tenor gave her a sense of propriety. That she kept a flask of something-or-other in the hymnal rack of her choir chair gave the rest of us pause. We did not ask, nor did we tell. Marjorie was in her late seventies at least.

  "You don't know? We're doing Welcome to Mitford, adapted by Robert Inman from the books by Jan Karon." Muffy gave Marjorie a deliberately puzzled look. "It's been in the paper about a dozen times. Didn't you see my picture on the front page on Friday?"

  Marjorie said, "I don't read the paper."

  "You should. Anyway, I'm playing Miss Cynthia Coopersmith. That's the lead. Christopher Lloyd is playing Father Tim Kavanagh and he's directing the production. He's very talented."

  "I'm sure you'll have tickets available for sale next week," I said.

  "Oh, sure!"

  Muffy LeMieux had married Varmit and moved to St. Germaine so they could help run Blueridge Furs, a fur farm that specialized in a registered, hybrid animal called a Minque®, a genetically engineered cross between a nutria and a South American pacarana. Muffy was a singularly beautiful redhead, a feature often overlooked by many women due to her mildly irritating personality. It was a feature not overlooked by many men, personality or not. She favored angora sweaters, short-sleeved in summer, long in winter, of the sort that might have been popular in Marilyn Monroe's heyday, stretch pants, high heels, and overly large "mall hair."

  "Muffy?" Nancy said the first time we met her. "What an interesting name. Is that spelled with a 'y'or with an 'i'?"

  "A 'y'," Muffy had answered. "Although I spelled it with an 'i-e' when I was in high school. You know how sometimes you can dot the 'i' with a little heart?"

  Nancy nodded.

  "But then I changed it back. It was too hard to remember."

  Muffy was a wannabe country singer and she had been told, on numerous occasions, that she sounded almost exactly like Loretta Lynn. I almost had the twang out of her choral sound. Almost.

  "Let's look at the Psalm first," I announced. "Then the anthem."

  * * *

  The service went off without much of a hitch. Dr. Mother Rosemary Pepperpot-Cohosh's sermon was about how the Transfiguration story sounded just about as crazy as the sky raining meatballs. In the end, she suggested that we might just as well embrace the mystery of it all and give up our "Cloud Control." I thought she missed the point, but during the sermon I decided what I'd give up for Lent. I'd give up snarkiness. No criticizing the sermon. No snide remarks about the liturgy or lack thereof. Forty days of "going along" with the church program, whatever that may be. Now that was a Lenten discipline. I'd tried it before and failed. This time I was determined.

  "Here's my plan," I told Meg, as I drove her to her mother's after church. "I shall give up liturgical snarkiness for Lent. I shall give Rosemary my full support in as far as I am able. I shall not criticize her preaching, nor her ministry."

  "No way," said Meg. "You can't do it."

  "I certainly can," I said. "If you can give up chocolate, I can give up snarkiness."

  "Want to bet?"

  "Oh, yes, I'll bet."

  "Okay," said Meg. "If I win, you have to go to a health week with me."

  "What's that?"

  "A week at a medical facility that specializes in fasting, cleansing, colonics, massages, aroma therapy, reflexology — that sort of thing."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "I am not kidding," said Meg. "It would be very good for you."

  "It would not be good for me. It would kill me."

  "It certai
nly wouldn't kill you. You'd feel better after."

  "What do I get if I win?" I asked.

  "What do you want?"

  "Hmm. If I win, you have to cook me hamburgers three times a week for seven weeks. All the way from Easter to Pentecost."

  "Sure," said Meg. "Why not? The burgers would probably finish you off, but I don't really have to worry, do I? There's no way that you're going to let Mother P have carte blanche with the worship services."

  "Watch me," I said with a grin.

  I dropped Meg off and drove home, cleansing my ecumenical palate by listening to some recordings of different choral settings of O Nata Lux de Lumine, the ancient hymn for the Feast of the Transfiguration — two by Renaissance composers, Thomas Tallis and Christopher Tye, and three by contemporary composers, Morten Lauridsen, Seth Garrepy, and Guy Forbes.

  O Light born of Light,

  Jesus, redeemer of the world,

  with loving-kindness deign to receive

  suppliant praise and prayer.

  Thou who once deigned to be clothed in flesh

  for the sake of the lost,

  grant us to be members

  of thy blessed body.

  When I drove up to the cabin, I was refreshed. Refreshed enough to make myself a sandwich and sit down at the typewriter, now to the music of Cole Porter. Raymond Chandler would have listened to this, I thought. I took a bite of the sandwich, then another, and reread my previous effort. It was good, I thought. Maybe not Raymond Chandler good, or even Dashiell Hammett good, but certainly Carroll John Daly good. I clicked the paper in behind the roller and continued.