He talks about it during Sunday school, too, which is why I welcome the summer reprieve. He talks about how America is going to pot, how young people aren’t worth a darn, how folks don’t pull together anymore, and how everyone is lazy. His answer to moral depravity is a bullhorn.
Bob Miles Sr. founded the Live Free or Die Sunday school class in 1960. Concerned about the impending Communist threat and how President Kennedy was put into office by the pope, he began the class as a watchdog group to guard against foreign infiltration at Harmony Friends Meeting. In 1960, when Nikita Khrushchev visited a pig farm in Iowa, Bob Sr. drove ten hours to hold up a sign that read LIVE FREE OR DIE. There was a picture in Time magazine of Nikita Krushchev lifting up a pig, and right behind him, Bob Sr. with his sign. Then Bob came home and the very next Sunday began the Live Free or Die class.
It is not the kind of class that attracts the current generation, who, while valuing freedom, are more interested in parenting classes and classes on biblical financial management. Bob Sr.’s class is fading, which he laments at least once a month during open worship. We sit in silence waiting for the Lord to speak, and Bob Sr. rises to his feet to warn against Communism. He writes letters to the Herald every week, which his son, Bob Jr., who does not share his father’s political philosophy, refuses to print.
But Bob Sr. is persistent. If the Herald won’t print his opinion, he’ll offer it during church, when no one can stop him, though not for lack of trying.
This past May, during the elders’ meeting, Miriam Hodge suggested naming Bob Sr. as our Official Prayer Warrior.
I thought it unwise. I thought it ill-advised to give Bob Sr. a platform. I imagined him rising to his feet during worship and ordering us to pray for a return to the gold standard.
But Miriam was one step ahead of me. “We’ll make him our Official Prayer Warrior,” she said, “but we’ll have him pray according to Scripture.”
She opened her Bible to the Gospel of Matthew and read from chapter 6, “When you pray, go into your closet and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Miriam said, “The only closet in the meetinghouse is down in the basement, next to the furnace. We can put him down there on Sunday mornings. He’ll be out of our hair.”
Bob Miles Sr., banished to the utility closet. A glorious thought.
That Sunday we asked him to be our Official Prayer Warrior. We could see he was intrigued with the idea of being named a warrior.
Then Miriam said, “Of course, if you’re our Official Prayer Warrior, you’ll have to pray according to Scripture.”
“What do you mean?” Bob asked. She quoted from Matthew and told him he’d have to pray in the closet down in the basement.
I could see Bob begin to waver.
“Of course,” I told him, “we’ll need to put in the bulletin that you’re the Official Prayer Warrior.”
It was then Bob Sr. felt called to the ministry of prayer.
The next Sunday he went downstairs to the utility closet, closed the door behind him, and sat on a folding chair next to the furnace. We sang our hymns, I preached my sermon without fear of rebuttal, and then we settled into silence so the Lord could speak. People were relaxed. This was wonderful. We didn’t have to worry about Bob rising to his feet and wading in. Oh, such quiet joy. One minute passed, then two.
Peace, perfect peace.
It was then we heard Bob’s voice rising up through the heating vents.
“OH, LORD, THESE ARE A STIFF-NECKED PEOPLE WHO SCORN TRUTH. STRIKE THEM DOWN IN THEIR INSOLENCE. BREAK THEIR HAUGHTY SPIRITS.”
He went on and on. We could hear each word. The heating ducts were serving as a kind of bullhorn.
Bob prayed for fifteen minutes. He beseeched the Lord to chasten us. He railed against the Communist threat. He prophesied against the New World Order and Democrats and bar codes.
Jessie Peacock, who sat over the furnace, pounded the floor with her foot. Bob prayed even louder.
“BRING THEM TO THEIR KNEES, LORD,” and “WOE TO YOU, HYPOCRITES!”
It was John the Baptist come to life.
Finally, he stopped. I prayed a closing prayer—loud, so Bob Sr. would know church was over.
Bob came upstairs. Miriam Hodge and I met him at the front door.
Miriam said, “Bob, we had in mind you’d sort of whisper your prayers.”
Bob Sr. drew himself up and stared at Miriam and said, “Warriors don’t whisper.” And he walked out the door.
The next week was the Sunday before Memorial Day. We held our Sunday school picnic. The kids sang “Jesus Loves Me.” The Mary and Martha class read a poem. Then Bob Sr. climbed up on a picnic table, cleared his throat, and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. As it wound to a close, he made us repeat it.
“This time,” he ordered, “say it like you mean it.”
Then he said that, as the Official Prayer Warrior, he had something to say. He spoke of the sacrifice of the veterans, and how we Quakers tarnished their memories by being pacifists.
“This pacifism stuff,” he declared, “makes us look like Communists. What would happen if everyone was a pacifist?”
Asa Peacock didn’t realize it was a rhetorical question. “Peace,” he ventured.
Bob Sr. went on. Ranting against evolution and the United Nations and various Hollywood liberals.
After five minutes, I interrupted Bob to say the meal grace.
We filled our plates, then stood in line as Fern Hampton and the women of the Friendly Women’s Circle poured weak lemonade into Styrofoam cups. I took my food and my family and sat with Miriam and Ellis Hodge.
We talked about Bob Sr.
“I’ve created a monster,” Miriam said. “I never should have made him the Official Prayer Warrior.”
Ellis patted her hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, honey,” he told her. “Bob was a jerk long before that.”
The attendance was down the next Sunday. People were tired of Bob Sr. Tired of sitting in the silence and listening to his prayers rise up through the heat vents. I couldn’t blame them. Life is hard enough without being prayed against. I knew the time had come to speak with him. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I hated conflict. I liked peace and quiet; that’s why I was a Quaker. But it had to be done.
I went to Bob’s house the next evening after supper. I rang his doorbell. It played the first two lines of the national anthem.
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s
last gleaming?
I could hear Bob Sr. singing the words inside the house. He swung open the door.
I greeted him, walked inside, and sat on the couch.
There was a picture of George Washington in his living room, over the television. George Washington giving his painful smile, like he’d stubbed his toe and was trying hard not to cuss.
All the way over, I had wondered how best to approach Bob. I decided to go with straightforward. I dreaded it, but this was no time for subtlety.
I said, “Bob Miles, your behavior has been rude, and we’re tired of it. You disrupt our worship with your prayers against us. You’re acting like a spoiled child who hasn’t gotten his way. If you don’t straighten up, you can’t be the Official Prayer Warrior.”
He rocked back in his chair and stared. He’d never been talked to this way.
He got ready to say something, but I didn’t let him. I went on. “You want everyone to do things your way, and when they don’t, you throw a fit. You talk about how this is the land of the free, but you really don’t want anyone to be free. You want everything your way. And that makes you a tyrant.”
I didn’t stay to hear his response. I was too afraid. I stood and walked out the door, went home, and went to bed. I lay there feeling guilty, wondering if I’d been too hard. I shouldn’t have called him a tyrant. Just because something is true doesn’t mean it has t
o be said. I didn’t sleep much.
When I got to my office the next morning, Bob was waiting for me. He was mad, I could tell. He said he wouldn’t be coming back to church. My first thought was to talk him out of it, to tell him he was welcome to stay. Then I came to my senses and recognized Bob’s departure for what it was—a gift from the Lord. So I kept quiet except to say, “Well, Bob, that is up to you. You are free to do that.”
I phoned Miriam Hodge to tell her.
“He’ll be back,” she said. “We won’t get off that easy.”
But he didn’t come that Sunday and hasn’t been back since.
I felt bad about it at first, though ours is a sweeter fellowship without him. You try to win people over with love and patience, but some people don’t want to be won over. All they want is to get their way.
I saw Bob Sr. several times over the summer at the Coffee Cup Restaurant. I’d smile and hold out my hand, but he wouldn’t take it. I invited him back to church. No thank you, he’d say. Then I got a phone call from the Baptist minister. He was telling me Bob wanted to transfer his membership to their church. He asked what Bob was like.
“Interesting,” I told him.
I wish it hadn’t come to this. I wish we could have softened him. We tried for eighty years, but failed. Now we’re giving the Baptists a crack at him. May God bless and guide them.
He might come back. Miriam Hodge said it’s happened once before. “It was during Vietnam,” she said. “He read a story about Quakers protesting the war and it set him off, but he came back. Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”
I told her I wasn’t worried.
But I am worried. I fear for his soul. I worry how God can tame such a hard and bitter pride. This callous pride, which shuts first the ear and then the heart.
With Bob Sr. gone, the Live Free or Die class is looking for someone to lead the pledge at the Sunday school picnic next year. They asked me if I could do it.
“Do I have to stand on the picnic table?” I asked.
“Sam,” they said, “stand where you feel led.”
In the end, that is what we all must do. Stand where we feel led. Stand straight, stand tall, and try hard to remember that other folks might be led to stand elsewhere.
Eleven
The Aluminum Years
On the third page of the Harmony Herald, opposite the editorial page, is the “Years Past” column. Every week, Bob Miles Jr. sorts through the boxes of old issues of the Herald and reprints articles from ten, twenty-five, and fifty years ago.
Because I prefer what has been to what will be, the “Years Past” column is the first thing I read when the Herald lands on my doorstep. The past is my sitting at Grandma’s table eating rhubarb pie, with Grandma hovering over me, spooning another piece on my plate. The future is the bank repossessing my house and my having to take my family to live with my spinster aunt in the next town over. So I love opening the Herald and backing up twenty-five years.
The first week of August I was reading the “Twenty-five Years Ago This Week” section about when I was a child and the Harmony Little League All-Stars won the state championship. It all came back—how that September the All-Stars had paraded down Main Street, riding on a float in the Corn and Sausage Days Parade, just behind the Sausage Queen, with Bob Miles Sr. snapping their picture, which he ran on the front page of the Herald.
Twenty-five years later, Bob Miles Jr. reprinted the picture. Skinny boys with big ears and buzz haircuts. The boys were my age—I knew them all—and though I had played Little League, I hadn’t made the All-Star team. I was extremely farsighted. My mother wouldn’t let me wear my glasses for fear they would break. I would stand in the outfield and squint toward home plate, praying for God to direct the ball away from me.
The other players on our team would crouch and yell, “Hey batter, hey batter, hey batter…” They sounded like crickets. I never yelled because I didn’t want the attention. I didn’t want the batter to sense my presence and hit the ball my way. I would watch the pitcher wind up and hurl the ball. I could see the ball leave the bat. I could see it sail through the air in a high arc. I could hear Coach Kennedy yelling at me to catch it, but as the ball came closer I’d lose sight of it. I would stab my hand in the air, and more often than not, the ball would strike me in the head. After a while, I learned to drop to the ground and cover my head whenever the coach called my name. This saved my head but wrecked my chance to play on the All-Star team.
Now, twenty-five Augusts later, it is a slow news month. We sit on our porches and drink iced tea and don’t generate much news. The only thing for Bob Jr. to write about is the heat, which we already know about. So Bob ran an extended version of the “Years Past” column. I read it in reverse, starting with fifty years ago, then twenty-five, then ten. I got to the “Ten Years Ago This Week” section. There was my name: “Samuel Addison Gardner and Barbara Ann Griffith were joined in holy matrimony this past Saturday…”
I stopped reading. I counted back on my fingers. A panic gripped me. My tenth anniversary was the next day and I had forgotten it.
I heard the phone ring, heard my wife yell that she would answer it. I could hear her talking, faintly. “Yes, it’s ten years tomorrow, but I think Sam’s forgotten. I’m not saying anything. I’m just going to wait and see what happens.”
I had not done well with anniversaries. On our fifth anniversary, which was the “wood” anniversary, I went to the lumberyard and bought two wooden posts and built Barbara a clothesline and gift-wrapped some wooden clothespins, which I thought was a creative gift. I thought everyone liked clotheslines and falling to sleep on line-dried sheets. I was wrong.
On our sixth anniversary I gave her a personalized license plate with her initials, which spelled out the word BAG, which did not occur to me until I took her by the hand and walked her outside with her eyes closed. I positioned her in front of the car and said, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”
Barbara opened her eyes and looked at the license plate, then at me, then back at the license plate. I could see her lips move. “Bag,” she was saying. Then she turned to me and said, “I didn’t think you could do worse than the clothesline. I was wrong.”
Now our tenth anniversary was one day away and I had nothing planned. I called a gift shop in the city to find out what to buy for tenth anniversaries. I couldn’t call the local store. They knew my voice. They’d say, “Is that you, Sam Gardner? Why are you just now asking?” and it would get back to my wife. There is no privacy in this town. Your stupidity is laid bare for all to see.
Since my fifth anniversary, gift giving had grown more complicated. The saleslady told me I could choose between giving a traditional gift or buying a modern gift. The traditional gift for tenth anniversaries was aluminum. Aluminum was within my budget. I liked that. The modern gift, the lady told me, was diamond jewelry. I didn’t care for that at all. I wondered who changed it.
I’m a traditionalist. I don’t do something just because it’s a fad. I went with aluminum. I bought Barbara ten cans of diet soda in aluminum cans. One can for each year. I gift wrapped each one. She’d like that, unwrapping ten separate gifts. She’d think it was creative.
That night as we lay in bed, she asked, “Should I make plans for tomorrow, or did you maybe have a little something in mind?”
“Nothing special,” I told her. “Just another day. Got to go to the office, then do some visitation. But I’ll be home for supper. Could you maybe make some of that good meat loaf you make? We haven’t had that in a while.”
It was dark in our bedroom. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her let out a sigh, then a snort. It was resignation working its way toward anger. I couldn’t wait for the next day. Wouldn’t she be surprised! Ten cans of diet soda. What a fun surprise!
When I woke up the next morning, Barbara was gone. There was a note on the table saying she’d gone for a walk. A long walk. She had underlined the word long and had pressed down hard with the pen
cil. I could see where the lead had broken.
I waited for her to get home. I heard her in the kitchen. She was standing at the sink. She turned to face me, and I held out a wrapped can. She smiled a big, pretty smile, then hugged me and said, “You remembered.”
“Of course I remembered,” I told her. “I’d never forget our anniversary.”
She unwrapped it, then looked at me.
I smiled. “Aluminum,” I told her. “The tenth year is the aluminum year. Isn’t that great? I got you ten of them. Get it? Ten cans of soda for ten years of marriage. Isn’t that great?”
She didn’t say anything. She unwrapped the other cans. She was working her way from resignation toward anger. She got to the last can. That was the can I’d taped the diamond ring to. When we’d married, I didn’t have enough money for a diamond ring. When she agreed to marry me, I promised her that someday I’d buy her one.
She’d told me, “You don’t have to. It wouldn’t make us any more married. I’m not marrying you for a ring.” Which made me want to buy it for her all the more.
A couple years after we married, my grandmother died and left me two thousand dollars. I put it in the bank. It was our emergency money. It was money for desperate times. With our tenth anniversary only one day away, I was desperate. I took the money and drove to the city and bought the ring.
Barbara unwrapped the last can. The ring was taped to the top, bright and shiny.
She began to weep. This beautiful woman who had worked to put me through school, who had borne our children, who had told me she liked the license plate after all and had taken it off the car when we’d sold it and bolted it to our new car.
“Times have changed,” I told her. “The traditional tenth anniversary gift was aluminum. But the modern gift is diamond jewelry. You know me, I like to keep up with the times.”
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