by Rich Foster
The number of other shops on Main Street continues to dwindle. As those who remain, try to make ends meet supplying their neighbors with services or goods that it might not be worth driving to Red Lake or Beaumont to buy. The busiest establishment is the thrift store run by elderly Catholic women who volunteer from the local parish.
In this area, the Catholics are descendants of Italian masons who brought both their skills and faith with them in the big immigrations of the early 1900’s. They cut the stone to build the retaining walls of roads and bridges. Their chisels adorned the facades on the government and commercial buildings. They were held in suspicion as papists until John Kennedy came into office. After that, they were accepted as Americans.
By the end of the twentieth century the congregation grew old. Steady attrition and the death of the priest caused the diocese to act. The church was closed and the parish merged with the one in Red Lake.
The Baptists dominated the town. At one time, they were excessively rigid, being direct descendant of the areas puritanical past. They skipped participating in the sexual revolution, though still found increased license in the social revolution that was the sixties.
By the end of the century, many of the “Do’s and Don’ts” had fallen away. They are now more accepting and less judgmental of others than their parents were. As a group they stick together. The church is a club where friends get together for worship, fellowship, and food. Baptist boys and girls meet in church pews on Wednesday night and get to know each other in car seats on Friday night. Their faith is long on guilt, quick with grace, and short on demands as long as the offering plates are filled Sunday morning and no one brings shame on their families.
A smaller faction, in the Forks, believes in nothing. Or at least they give no indication of needing a church in their lives. If, as a group, they have a gathering place, it is Moses’ bar where they congregate on Saturday night, choosing to sleep in, as others go to church on Sunday morning.
Meandering Moses’ was named for his father who was not around for his birth and came and went regularly thereafter. Moses is in his late sixties. Running a bar has left its marks on him, he face appears older than his years, but not his body. At six foot-six, he runs the bar with his eye. It takes little else to convince problematic customers they should leave, when he tilts his head down and then raises his disapproving eyes at them. He used to make book on the side, but quit, afraid of losing his license when the state began to take such things seriously. He hates drugs. Anyone caught dealing around the bar gets a beating out back. Petty dealers know to do their business elsewhere.
Without intending to, he is also a matchmaker. By hiring local girls and putting them in short skirts under dim lights, he both helps to sell his whiskey and show the gals to their best advantage. Moses’ staff has a steady turnover as girl’s graduate high school, work for him, meet a man, get married and start a family, though not always in that order.
The last faction in the Forks was The New Life Redemption Church. After the tragedies, they changed their name.
Chapter Three
The New Life Redemption Church was a wood framed structure, with ship-lap siding, a steeply pitched roof, and a corner bell tower. In the basement was a large room they called, Fellowship Hall. It was a musty room where potlucks, Sunday school classes, and board meetings took place.
The New Lifers were smaller in number than the Baptists, but significant in their impact. They were friendly, outgoing, and ready to lend a hand. A few local folks held them in suspicion because the church members actively recruited and that meant they must be a cult. But they were not. They simply believed that growth was good. And, though many of the newly recruited did not stay, enough remained to cause the church to grow. Numerical numbers brought respectability.
When fundamentalists became politically active, the church became involved in local politics. They ran candidates for office during a period of local malaise and easily won; more by organizational energy than for their message. Thus they had two county commissioners in their congregation and several who held town offices. Though this did not give them absolute power, the church did have influence.
Doctrinally, the church preached fire and brimstone. Heaven awaited the godly man and hell surely awaited the wicked below. To their credit they welcomed the poor and offered them help, but they also encouraged those same poor to join and to give. Their singing was well known and hard to ignore when the meetings started. On hot summer nights the baritone voice of their minister would roll out the open windows, echoing up the street, inviting all to come and repent.
The Reverend Lester Leeds was the shepherd to this flock. He believed hell, fire, and damnation was a good way to bring people to heaven. Lacking a degree from a seminary, his sermons were not long on theology. His eschatology was short, “Jesus is coming and boy is he pissed off.” Not that he said it that way, but he secretly found pleasure that the wicked would get what they deserved. He believed in doing “good” to his fellow man, a group that was limited to those who thought as he.
Overall Lester tried to live what he considered to be a “righteous life”, but it was a life long on judgment and sadly lacking in mercy. He had no doubt the world was black and white, faithfully hating liberals, godless pagans, and those who would corrupt the youth. He was a moral throw back to the nineteen fifties where God and America were indistinguishable from one another. The fallen were welcomed, but he seemed curiously reluctant to let them become the forgiven. In numerous small ways his flock was forced to do penitence for their sins.
Reverend Leeds often preached on the subject, “Know God”, yet when it came to knowing himself he fell sadly short.
Leeds had run the church for thirty years. He inherited the congregation from his grandfather who founded it. When the old man passed away, Lester told the board that the Lord had called him to lead the flock; such was the late Rev. Cyrus Leeds’s domination of the church, that no member of the board questioned the young Lester’s qualifications.
His wife was acquired in much the same manner. He said, “Grace, the Lord told me you are to be my wife. I think we should get married now.”
She was ten years his junior. Somewhat awed by his presence, she acquiesced. Whether the blame for this decision was the Reverend’s or the Lord’s, it was Lester who came to regret his haste. She disappointed him as a wife. What he mistook for piety proved to be extreme shyness. This dissatisfaction was aggravated by their inability to be fruitful and multiply. Despite the doctor’s opinion otherwise, he silently blamed her. His irritation was given voice by frequently castigating those sinful women who bore children outside of wedlock.
His wife lived in his shadow. Where Lester was outgoing, Grace was retiring. Lester could make effervescent small talk, while his wife was like a soda that had gone flat. She sang reasonably well in the choir and socially did not offend. Easily overlooked, she would linger at the side of the church until her husband was ready to leave for home. Grace was dutiful and quiet. Any misgivings she had about her husband or her marriage, she kept to herself.
During services, her dreamy eyed penitence masked a mind that wandered far a field from Mason Forks. Lester’s voice would drone on, like an insect buzzing on the periphery of her thoughts, while she dreamed of being another person, in another place, in another life.
Behind the church, in a small patch of trees, lay an old single-wide trailer. Desmond Jones called it home. In lieu of rent he took care of the church. Desmond was below the curve on intelligence. His birth had been hard. Doc Stevens had done his best. Unfortunately, the boy suffered brain damage for lack of oxygen. When he was young he was called slow, as an adult he was called different. Some of the locals described him as, touched. Despite this disadvantage, Desmond kept a ready smile.
He found pleasure in his work. It went unappreciated by others. Saturdays, he would run his buffer across the linoleum tiles in the basement until they had a luminescent sheen. In the sanctuary he would polish
the altar candlesticks until they gleamed. And if one bothered to get a ladder and check, they would find the top of the large cross, mounted on the wall behind the altar, was dusted.
Desmond, like his work, passed through life largely unnoticed except by children. They liked him, innately sensing his lack of adult malice. He would give them treats or small gifts like a glow in the dark cross or “God Loves Me” stickers.
The grown-ups had little to say to a mentally slow janitor who was the only black man in town. Mason Forks didn’t practice racism; they practiced indifference. So they were content to leave him to mopping the floors, shoveling the snow, or cutting the grass. Left to himself, Desmond was content to either whistle as he worked, or more often, softly sing an old hymn.
Chapter Four
Jason Haskell was a happy man. Problems slid off him. Not that he was short of problems, between the economy, a wife, four kids, and a mortgage, there was plenty to make any man worry. But he always saw his glass as full. When it was not, he never seemed to notice. He worked as a carpenter and handyman. Sometimes he was turning jobs away, other times the family ate a lot of peanut butter, but nobody was the worse for it. They had four kids. He found indescribable joy in each of them and in his wife. After ten years of marriage, he still smiled whenever his wife walked into the room.
Calley was four years his junior. She had a vivacious temperament that matched her husband’s gregariousness. They were married in Red Lake and honeymooned in the Bahamas. Jason thought her eyes were the same shade of blue as the lagoon at their beach hotel. Her long blond hair rolled down her back toward hips that still turned heads when she wore a pair of jeans.
Jason and Calley grew up going to church. God and the church were always a part of their lives. Trust came easily to them. When they had problems they turned to prayer. But nothing truly evil had ever happened in their life.
Eight years prior they were attracted to Mason Forks by its cheaper real estate prices and to the church by its singing. They began attending their first Sunday in town after they bought an older wood plank house. It was desperately in needed of repair but desirable to them because of the large lot and the barn out back.
Jason converted the barn to a wood shop where he built wood lawn furniture that he sold in Red Lake. Adept with his hands, though short in specialized tools, he was also a good cabinetmaker.
They fixed-up the house whenever they had money. It was furnished with gems they found at garage sales or thrift stores. Piece by piece, and birth-by-birth they turned the house into a home that was filled with laughter.
Calley stopped working as an LVN when they moved to Mason Forks. Then, after Doctor Stevens retired to Florida, she became the local mid-wife. It started when she was called to help deliver a baby that was coming too quickly to make the sixteen-mile drive to St. Catherine’s Hospital. The mother was an over weight fifteen year old who hid her pregnancy by complaining about being fat and wearing baggy clothes. Birth contractions gave her away. Calley delivered the girl’s healthy baby boy. During the ensuing weeks, Calley’s cheerful demeanor and positive outlook helped the girl’s mother and father move from shocked parents to doting grandparents. “After all,” she would say, “you can’t un-cook an egg, and so you might as well enjoy the omelet.”
Between their two jobs they put food on the table and reared their children, two girls and two boys. Sarah was eight and the eldest. Then came Ruth, Jacob and baby Caleb. Calley adored all of her children but Ruthie was the apple of her eye. Perhaps, it might be different, as they got older, but for now she was a joy to her mother. Ruthie’s disposition was easy unlike Sarah’s who was finicky. She was helpful, whereas her brother Jacob was still underfoot and prone to creating disasters. Caleb, the youngest was in the terrible twos.
Four were enough. Calley was not a woman who longed to endlessly have a baby to nurse. She enjoyed seeing her children growing into people who could talk with her.
If there were an opposite of Jason, it was Robert Goodman. Goodman was a failure, at life, at marriage, and at living up to his surname. He was mean. Anger smoldered around him, like a hotbed of animosity that was easily stirred to flames. Brawling came readily to him. Wise men gave him a wide berth when he was drinking.
Despite a natural antipathy for religion he believed in the biblical admonition of, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” When his wife chided him by saying, “vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord”, Robert retorted that his way was surer and faster. He kept a mental list of accounts to be settled, while keeping one thumb on the scales of justice when considering his own shortcomings. He liked to drink, often spending money on whiskey, which should have been spent on his family.
He was a regular at Moses’. It was there he met his wife, Lisa. She believed herself capable of reforming him. After marrying in haste, she found ample time to repent of her actions at leisure. Robert was gone more often than not. When their first daughter was born he called her May. Lisa pushed for something else but he was adamant. It was not until two years later, when their second daughter was born and he named her June that Lisa realized Robert was simply using the months the girls were born in. She didn’t argue having learned it did not pay to argue with Robert. She could only be glad the girls were not born in the fall or winter.
By nature, Robert was not a family man. When he was at home, he was quick both with his demands and the backside of his hand. Lisa learned to fear both. When he used his fists on her, he blamed it on his temper or the drink. Lisa blamed herself.
Somehow, in between the domestic violence, they managed to have two children. He resented the fact they were both girls. Fortunately, his dissatisfaction led him to ignore them; if they were boys he would have tried to be a more active and thus more destructive parent.
Emptiness haunted Lisa’s life. Out of loneliness and desperation she began to attend the New Life Church. Having failed to find love at home, she found it at church. At first Robert abused her for it. He was jealous of her time. Once he realized it took his family out of the house on Sunday mornings he relented, relieved to sleep off Saturday night’s binge in peace.
Sunday mornings, Lisa and her daughters would walk from their house over to the highway, turning down the hill through town. At the bottom of town, where the highway turned, they would cross the road in front of the old mill, and walk up the side road leading to the church parking lot.
At the church, Lisa found a warm welcome. Gradually, she became friendly with other women in the church. This did not lead to deep confidences. Perhaps, it was her reticence to share her domestic problems. Lisa was ashamed of the bruises on her arms. And when she had a black eye that she could not cover up, she sensed the other women were eager to believe her claim that it had been an accident.
Reverend Leeds noticed. He made no comment on the bruises at church but one week he called at her home. His intent was to invite her husband to church, hoping to effect a change in the poor sinner’s soul. Robert came to the door drunk. When Leeds asked if Lisa were at home, much to his shock and horror, Robert accused him of indecent desires for his wife. Hearing the exchange from inside the house, Lisa was humiliated. The charge was completely untrue. It so rattled the Reverend that he beat a hasty retreat. Robert shouted malicious accusations and finished by throwing an empty beer bottle after the retreating figure. The bottle shattered in the street.
Leeds was not a brave man; he had little experience in confronting evil. Like the bottle, his good intentions were shattered. He found it easier to never go back. At church he unconsciously avoided Lisa. Her embarrassment caused her to do the same. Later, guilt at having done nothing would gnaw at his conscience.
Chapter Five
Two Sundays after the county auction, the New Life Redemption bus clattered along the road, taking members home following the morning service. A fresh coat of powder blue house paint covered-up the old safety yellow.
That morning for the first time, the bus worked the back roads aro
und Mason Forks gathering up folks. Some were old and unable to drive, some wanted to save on gas. Many were children whose parents hoped to sleep off the sins of the night before and welcomed the free babysitting that Sunday school provided.
Coming down the grade outside of town Jason Haskell down shifted hard, to save the brakes. They had been soft and the pedal drifted lazily down, almost touching the floor before the pressure built and the pads caught. He needed to top off the reservoir with fluid, he thought. Now, almost empty of passengers, the bus slowed to a halt, its brakes squealing. The last passenger got off outside a ramshackle spread four miles from town. Jason waved goodbye, backed the bus around and headed to the church. Calley would have Sunday dinner on the table by the time he drove home. As the bus rolled down the road in the midday sunshine Jason Haskell knew it was good to be alive.
The bus was his idea. He was in charge of organizing transportation to the church for those who needed a ride. They had relied on volunteer drivers using their own cars, but as gas prices rose, it was difficult to find volunteers. When he suggested to the church board that they might buy a bus, they agreed. Reverend Leeds appointed Jason to do it. Lacking money he thought of the county auction.
He did his best to fix it up. But, not being a mechanic, most of his efforts went into cosmetics, like painting the bus, patching the seats, and covering up graffiti. A friend came from Red Lake and helped Jason clean the injectors. In passing, he said, “Jason you should give this bus to the Catholics so it can receive the last rites.”
*
For five months Jason drove the bus. Everyone was happy. Attendance was up, and aside from a few breakdowns, the bus was more reliable than a dozen different drivers. The Board congratulated Jason on his vision.