Late that afternoon I went up to the attic and looked through the boxes for the champagne glasses from our wedding day. It took two hours to find them. It was August-hot. I called my mother to tell her that she wanted to take her grandchildren for the night. I washed the champagne glasses and took a shower and put on my suit. Barbara was out at the clothesline. I called her into the house.
She walked in, wiping the sweat from her brow. I handed her a champagne glass of diet soda.
“It’s can number one,” I told her. “I’ve heard it’s a good year.” Then I kissed her. Then we did something else, on which I won’t elaborate because I’m a traditionalist.
Afterwards, we talked. She said, “You’re a piece of work, Sam Gardner. I had my doubts about you, especially after the clothesline and the license plate, but you’re doing better.”
I told her when you’ve been hit in the head with a baseball as many times as I have, it takes a while to get over it.
I love my wife. I can’t believe she chose me. When I was growing up, no one ever chose me for anything. We would pick teams for baseball, and the captains would argue over me.
“You take him.”
“No, you take him.”
I would stand, squinty eyed, staring at the ground, digging at the dirt with the toe of my shoe.
Then I went to college and met my wife. She sat next to me in the dining hall. I thought maybe she’d lost a bet and that sitting with me was the penalty. The next day she sat by me again, so I asked her name.
“Barbara,” she told me.
“That’s a pretty name,” I said.
“It means stranger,” she confided.
Sitting there, looking at her, I felt smooth and witty. I said, “Hello, stranger. Pleased to meet you. My name is Sam,” I told her. “It means one who listens.”
So we sat together and she talked and I listened.
I still can’t believe she married me. I look up from the pulpit and see her in the fifth row, just behind Miriam and Ellis Hodge. I watch her push her hair behind her ears, how it sweeps over her shoulders. Watch her eyes. She has one blue eye and one brown eye. People look at her and suspect something is a little different, but can’t quite put their finger on it. When she was a child, it made her self-conscious.
She isn’t perfection, but then I’ve never been drawn to perfection. When I was twelve years old and watched the All-Stars riding in the Corn and Sausage Days Parade, I saw how perfection went to their heads. It ruined them. Fifteen boys who, before perfection visited them, were easily tolerated—but in perfection became unbearable. Having tasted perfection so young, they assumed perfection would be their life’s pattern and have been disappointed ever since.
But since I was acquainted with failure from an early age, I made my peace with it and am pleasantly surprised when life goes well. Ten years in a wonderful marriage, with two healthy sons. It shocks me to think of it. So blessed.
It is easy, in these aluminum years, to believe in a loving God. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It isn’t skill and pluck and hard work that get us where we are. It’s grace, nothing else.
It’s God, pointing the divine finger our way, saying, “You there, with the squinty eyes, digging your toes in the dirt, it’s you I want.”
Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting at God’s table and I’ve just finished one piece of blessing, and God smiles and says, “Here, Sam, have another.”
That’s how it feels. That’s exactly how it feels.
Twelve
Brother Norman and the Bus
As far back as I can remember, Dale Hinshaw has been an elder at Harmony Friends Meeting, even though the rules say you can serve only six years. You serve six years, then are paroled, having done your time. But Dale keeps volunteering, and we keep letting him, even though some of our most half-witted decisions can be traced back to Dale Hinshaw—including the decision to buy a used bus from a rock band and use it as a church bus.
The group was named Venom. They wore leather pants and went without shirts and had rattlesnakes tattooed on their chests. They writhed on the stage and hissed at the audience. It was hard to make out the words to their songs, except for the cuss words, which they spoke loudly and clearly and often. No one mistook them for a gospel quartet.
Venom was driving through Harmony when their bus broke down. It was towed to Harvey Muldock’s garage. It took Harvey two weeks to get the parts, by which time the members of Venom were gone, to the great relief of our town. Harvey Muldock was telling about their bus during an elders’ meeting, which was when Dale Hinshaw suggested the church buy the bus for the cost of the repairs—three hundred dollars.
“We could take the money from our missions fund. It could be the start of our bus ministry,” he said. “We could drive to the nursing home and bring the people in. We can use it for mission trips. The devil has had that bus long enough. Let’s see what the Lord can do with it.”
So that’s what we did.
Dale painted it himself, with a paintbrush. Royal blue. On the sides of the bus he painted the church name, and on the back he painted Follow Me to Harmony Friends Meeting!
Now the paint is faded, and if you look closely you can make out the word Venom and the faint outline of a rattlesnake. The bus was used two Sundays before it broke down again. We now understand why the members of Venom never bothered to come back for it. This was five years ago, and the bus still sits in the meetinghouse parking lot, a monument to shallow thinking.
There is one window in my office. When Dale Hinshaw parked the bus five years ago, he parked it right in front of the window. The next Sunday the bus wouldn’t start, and it’s sat there ever since. Instead of looking out at sky, I look at the bus. It is a strong discouragement.
One Monday morning, late in August, I was sitting in the office reading the newsletter from the Quaker headquarters. The front page was the superintendent’s letter. He believes in the power of words, that we are one newsletter article away from vitality. He uses nouns as verbs and writes about impacting the world and visioning our objectives and imaging our destiny. He reveres numbers. There are newsletter articles about “Eight Ways to Impact Our World!!” and “Ten Steps to Visioning Our Objectives!!” He makes extensive use of the exclamation point and bold print.
On the next page were the prayer requests. I scanned the list. Prayers for our leaders. Prayers for various sick people. Then, there it was: “Prayers for Brother Norman as he ministers to the Choctaw Indians!! Needs transportation for youth programs!!!”
Brother Norman was a nice guy, but not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. When he’d graduated from seminary, no church would have him, so our superintendent talked with him about impacting the world as a missionary to the Choctaw Indians and sent him to Oklahoma, where Brother Norman began a building program.
Each month Brother Norman wrote the Quaker headquarters to report his prayer needs. Electricians one month, plumbers the next. Before long, the meetinghouse was built. Now he was praying for a bus to transport the Choctaw youth.
I raised my eyes from the newsletter and peered out my office window. The tires were dry-rotted and stuck to the pavement. The bus wouldn’t start, but Harvey Muldock could fix it.
The week before, I had suggested that the men of the church needed a ministry. Dale Hinshaw had proposed a baseball ministry. His idea was to repair the bus and drive to the ball games in the city and invite other men from the town to join us. Then on the way home to Harmony, we could witness to them.
He had come across this strategy in the Quaker newsletter. It was idea number four in the “Eight Ways to Impact Our World!!” article.
Dale said, “We’ll have them right there on the bus. They’ll have to listen. We’ll drive slow and wear ’em down.” Dale thought the gospel was not compelling in and of itself, that people needed to be coerced into believing it.
I suggested donating the bus to the fire department so they could burn it for practice. Or maybe towing
it to the county fair and charging people a dollar to hit it with a sledge hammer. Better yet, we could sell it to a rock band.
I said, “The Lord has put up with this bus long enough. Let’s give it back to the devil.”
Then, the very next Monday morning, I read the Quaker newsletter about Brother Norman and the Choctaw youth in need of transportation.
I called Brother Norman on the phone to tell him his prayers had been answered. Then I phoned Harvey Muldock, who towed the bus to his garage. It took a couple weeks, but he got it running. Dale sanded off the snake and Follow Me to Harmony Friends Meeting! and the word Venom. He painted the bus red, with a paintbrush.
I walked over to Dale’s house to see it.
“It needs a Scripture passage,” he said. “Something that might bring people to the Lord if they happen to glance at it. I’ve narrowed it down to two verses—John 10:14 about the good shepherd, or Revelation 13:16 about the mark of the beast.”
“I’ve always been partial to John 10:14,” I told him.
Dale frowned. “I was leaning toward Revelation,” he said.
“Let’s flip a coin,” I suggested. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
“Fair enough,” Dale said.
I flipped the coin. It was heads.
“You win,” Dale said.
“Then we’ll go with John 10:14,” I declared.
So that’s what he painted down the side of the bus: I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me.
A fine Scripture.
That Sunday I announced from the pulpit that Dale and Harvey and I would be driving the bus to Oklahoma. After church, the Friendly Women’s Circle surrounded the bus and prayed for our safe journey as we went forth onto the mission field. Then they counted out six hundred dollars into Dale’s hands, money they’d raised at their annual Chicken Noodle Dinner. Six hundred dollars! Cash!
“You be sure Brother Norman gets that money,” Fern Hampton warned him. “Don’t be spending it on wild living.”
I looked at Dale in his plaid shirt, seed-corn cap, and orthopedic shoes. He didn’t strike me as a candidate for wild living.
We left for Oklahoma the next day. By late afternoon we were crossing the Mississippi River into St. Louis. There was the Gateway Arch, rising up from the west bank of the river. We’d never seen it before except on television when the St. Louis Cardinals played.
Dale was driving. “Let’s stop,” he said. He veered the bus across four lanes of traffic and just made the exit.
We parked the bus, went into the Arch and rode the elevator all the way to the top. We crowded against the windows. We could see all of St. Louis, including the baseball stadium. It was beautiful, like an emerald. We felt like angels looking down from heaven. We could see the groundskeepers rolling the diamond. A trickle of ant people was moving into the seats.
Harvey said, “I think there’s a game today.”
A man standing next to us said, “That’s right. The Cardinals and the Cubbies. Mark McGwire’s going for the home-run record. Number sixty-two.”
We climbed back in the bus and drove past the stadium. There was a man out front scalping tickets. He held up three tickets and yelled, “Six hundred dollars!” which we took to be a sign from the Lord.
Harvey said, “You know, we could pay it back. The Friendly Women would never know. We could write Brother Norman a check. Wouldn’t that be something to see the record home-run hit? My father was there in 1961 when Roger Maris set his record, and he never forgot it. Whenever we’d watch a ball game, he’d say, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Roger Maris hit number sixty-one?’ Then he’d talk about that ball sailing over the fence. He never forgot it. He talked about it on his deathbed, about seeing that.”
Dale said, “We’d be a witness to history. We’d never forget it. Then we could drive through the night and be at Brother Norman’s in the morning.”
So that’s what we did. We bought the tickets and found our seats.
It was a hot evening. The late sun beat down, right on us. A vendor walked down our aisle.
“Cold beer,” he yelled. “Get your cold beer.”
It was unmercifully hot.
I looked at Dale and Harvey. “I drank a beer once. I was in college. It didn’t taste bad, either.”
Dale said, “I haven’t had a beer since I became a Christian.”
Harvey said, “You know, the apostle Paul once advised Timothy to refresh himself with an adult beverage.”
Dale declared, “I know that verse. The Epistle of 1 Timothy. Chapter 5. Verse 23.”
I could feel the sweat trickle down my back and into my underwear.
It was cruelly hot, and what was one beer? That was no big sin, was it? Harvey yelled at the vendor and held up three fingers and passed our money down the row. Back came three beers. We sat in our seats and watched the game and sipped our beers. It was such a thrill, getting away with something.
Then Mark McGwire came to bat and the crowd grew still. It was like church. Like the silence after the first hymn when we’re waiting for the Lord to inspire us. It was that kind of quiet. The pitcher glanced at first base, then at third base, then reared back and hurled the ball toward home plate. Mark McGwire brought the bat around in slow motion. We heard a crack! and that little white ball sailed over the fence and into the crowd.
Everyone in the country was watching their television sets—even the people in Harmony. So when the camera swept the roaring crowd and paused on us, standing and holding our beers, people from Harmony said, “I thought they were on a mission trip. What are they doing there? I thought they were in Oklahoma with Brother Norman and the Choctaw youth. And what is that they’re drinking? That doesn’t look like soda to me.”
Before long it was all over town. Everyone knew, including our wives. Some of the men in the church wondered why they hadn’t been invited on the mission trip, and weren’t too happy about being left out.
After the game, we climbed on the bus and drove through the night, talking of Mark McGwire’s home run and how we’d never forget it.
“I can’t wait till we get home,” Dale said. “Won’t it be fun telling people we were there?”
Harvey said, “Dale, don’t you dare say a word about being there. If those Friendly Women find out we were at the game, they’ll kill us.”
That smothered our elation. We’d seen history made and couldn’t brag. What a bitter disappointment.
Early the next morning we pulled up in the church parking lot and sounded the horn. Brother Norman was waiting with the Choctaw youth.
“We were expecting you last night,” Brother Norman said.
“We stopped to do some birdwatching,” Harvey told him. “Saw some lovely cardinals.”
Brother Norman smiled. “Isn’t it nice to enjoy God’s creation?”
“It’s wonderful,” Harvey agreed. “Simply wonderful.”
Brother Norman and the Choctaw youth walked around the bus, admiring it. Brother Norman read the Scripture verse Dale had painted: I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me.
“A fine Scripture,” he said.
“It wasn’t my first choice,” Dale allowed.
Brother Norman showed us the meetinghouse: the red carpet, the bathroom, his office, the folding wooden chairs with the Bible racks on back, the Choctaw youth room with a Ping-Pong table and beanbag chairs. So proud of his ministry.
Dale took pictures. “This’ll make a fine slide show,” he said. Dale felt called to the ministry of slide shows.
Harvey said, “Brother Norman, you’re doing a fine work here. We’ll be sure to tell the folks back in Harmony all about it. Oh, by the way, we wanted you to have this.” He pulled a check for six hundred dollars from his pocket and handed it to Brother Norman.
Brother Norman beamed. Then Harvey said it was time to leave, that we’d done what we came to do.
I remember that moment distinctly, how each of us thought the very same though
t at the very same time. It was the thought that while we had given careful attention to getting to Oklahoma, we had given no thought whatsoever to getting home.
Harvey said, “Maybe we can call one of our wives. Maybe one of them can come get us.”
We crowded into Brother Norman’s office to use the phone. Harvey dialed his house. His wife answered. Harvey didn’t do much talking. Mostly he listened, though every now and then we could hear him ask a question.
“Game?” he asked. “What game?” He was trying to sound indignant. “Cardinals and Cubs? Did they play?…You say you saw us there? Well, you know people look different on television. Television does that to people. Makes you look like someone else.” Then he said, “Well, after forty years of marriage, I’m just sorry you don’t trust me more.” He sniffed as he said it, sounding hurt.
That’s when Harvey’s wife said she was too busy to come get us, that maybe we could stay with Brother Norman for a few days and learn what it meant to be Christian.
Dale and I called our wives, who offered similar suggestions and, coincidentally, were also very busy.
That night we slept in the Choctaw youth room, on the beanbag chairs.
The next morning, Brother Norman offered to drive us home. We piled into his car and headed toward Harmony. Brother Norman drove. I sat behind him, staring at his thinning hair through Oklahoma and into Missouri. He talked about the Choctaws and how much he loved being where he was.
“I’m the most blessed man you’ll ever meet,” he told us.
We rolled into St. Louis. I looked to my left and saw the stadium where we’d been two days before.
I was struck with a happy thought.
“Now that people know we went to the game, we’ll be able to talk about seeing Mark McGwire hit his home run,” I said.
Dale and Harvey brightened.
We crossed the Mississippi River and started into Illinois. I contemplated Brother Norman’s neck. It looked like a road map. Thin, wrinkled roads running all directions. His shirt collar, frayed and worn. Years ago we’d sent him to the Choctaws, presuming he had nothing to offer us. But what he had to offer was what we needed most of all—simple faith. We didn’t know that, though, and sent him away.
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