“You think these nursing homes stink? They smell like roses compared to hell,” he said. “You might want to give that some thought.”
You can’t hand the microphone to someone like Pastor Jimmy if you haven’t built it into the schedule and aren’t prepared to carry the additional baggage. A Sausage Queen smiles, says a few words about world peace, cuts the ribbon, then hands the ceremonial scissors back to the emcee, who gets the show on the road. They know when to speak and when to be quiet, a talent that eludes certain ministers, Pastor Jimmy being one of them.
A petition began circulating, demanding the Odd Fellows reinstate Tiffany as the Sausage Queen before people revolted, the town descended into anarchy, and Western civilization was irreparably damaged. But the Odd Fellows held their ground, being the principled men they are, and demanded that Tiffany first disavow vegetarianism, which she refused to do. They were locked in a stalemate, with no end in sight.
Harvey Muldock asked me to intervene and mediate the dispute, over Kyle Weathers’s objections, who said I was a known Democrat and a closet vegetarian. He’d worked the polls last May, and when I’d declared my political affiliation, he’d tried for half an hour to sway me toward the Republicans, citing a long list of Democratic misdeeds dating back to Thomas Jefferson and his mistress.
I vote Democrat for religious reasons, as a form of self-flagellation. Some Christians beat themselves with whips during Lent to demonstrate their penance. I vote Democrat in a town of Republicans, enduring the contempt of my peers for the sake of our Lord, who, like most people of Jewish persuasion, was also a Democrat.
Besides Jesus and me, there are two other Democrats in our town—Mabel and Deena Morrison. It has been rumored for several years that Miriam Hodge leans toward liberalism after she’d donated a book about Jimmy Carter to the public library, but her political affiliation has yet to be verified, though not for lack of trying. Dale Hinshaw routinely insists that Miriam, as a church elder, disclose her political leanings, lest she have nefarious intentions of infiltrating the congregation with fellow travelers.
With the fall elections a scant month away, the ouster of Tiffany Nagle has become the eye of the storm. Mabel Morrison is running for town council on the Democratic ticket and has rallied to Tiffany’s side. She is running against Harvey Muldock, who would be more than happy to leave the council, but hates the thought of going down in history as the first man in town to lose his seat to a liberal, and a woman at that.
Mabel is garnering a fair share of support from the other women in town, who are tired of the men bungling things. The men, being men, have been spending money on a new town garage, even though the old garage was perfectly fine. It’s the school that needs repairing, but try telling that to the men on the council, who are of the opinion that if Abraham Lincoln learned to write in a log cabin using a slate slab and a hunk of charcoal, it’s good enough for our children.
The Tiffany Nagle scandal might be costing Clevis Nagle his marriage, which wasn’t a good marriage to start with, but now is worse. He and his wife, Viola, come to my office at least once a month, their union on the verge of fracture. It used to worry me, until Miriam Hodge pointed out they’d been bickering the entire forty-two years of their marriage.
“It’s Viola,” Miriam explained. “She’s one of these people who always need a crisis. If it isn’t her marriage, it’s something else. Don’t let her draw you in. Just smile and tell her you’re praying for her.”
Clevis is a member of the town council, and a rather timid one at that. His wife kept waiting for him to step in and defend their granddaughter, but he’s kept his finger in the air gauging the political wind. So Viola began campaigning for Mabel Morrison, going door to door and passing out brochures, which has incensed the Republicans. No one opens their door for Mabel, she being a Democrat and it being election time. When they see her on their doorstep, they pretend no one’s home. But when Viola knocks, they assume she’s campaigning for the Republicans and open the door. It is a variation on the Trojan horse strategy. Once the door is open, they’re busted. Viola doesn’t leave until they’ve promised to vote for Mabel.
As far back as I can remember, controversy has swirled around this town. I think it has to do with our size and isolation. Disagreement and bickering are the only entertainment options available to us. It would help if we had cable television, which will never happen because Uly Grant donates a hundred dollars to each town council member’s campaign with the understanding they won’t allow cable, which would cut into his antenna sales.
Grant’s Hardware is the closet thing Harmony has to a political-action committee. The members of the town board—Clevis Nagle, Harvey Muldock, and Owen Stout—gather there and eat donuts in Uly’s office.
I happened to be there buying a new showerhead for my basement shower and saw them troop past the nail bin toward Uly’s office to discuss the Mabel Morrison threat. I edged closer, pretending to be interested in the canning jars stacked next to the door.
“Why don’t you get your brother-in-law to arrest her?” I heard Clevis suggest to Harvey. “She rolls right through the stop sign in front of our house. Maybe a month in the pokey will take the wind out of her sails.”
“You can’t arrest someone for rolling through a stop sign,” Owen pointed out. “Now if she ran over somebody, that would be a different matter entirely.”
None of them being willing to get run over, they batted other ideas back and forth aimed at discrediting Mabel—putting empty whiskey bottles on the curb outside her home on trash-pickup day, writing a letter to the editor in support of same-gender marriage and signing her name to it, anonymously donating a sex manual to the public library in her honor.
I crept past the plumbing fixtures to the checkout and asked Uly if I could borrow his phone. It took three phone calls to track down Mabel at the Legal Grounds to tell her that canning supplies were on sale at Grant’s Hardware and she’d better hurry before everything was sold.
I was lurking behind the bolt bin when Mabel walked in five minutes later. She made her way to the canning supplies, but stopped short when she overheard her name.
“We could run a personals ad in the Herald,” Clevis Nagle was saying. “Widowed woman looking for a good time with no strings attached. Then we could put Mabel’s phone number in there. That’d sink her boat.”
Mabel frowned.
The men discussed other ideas to tarnish Mabel’s reputation, before moving on to discuss various matters of town business. I watched as Mabel reached into her purse and pulled out a disposable camera. She stepped into the office doorway and snapped a picture just as they were raising their hands to vote.
“My, isn’t this interesting,” Mabel said. “The town council appears to be having a meeting without first posting a notice in the newspaper, a direct violation of the state’s open-door law. Wait till people hear about this.”
And with that, she turned and walked out.
Clevis Nagle leaped to his feet. “Eavesdropper!” he cried out after her. “Snake in the grass!”
To the outsider, this behavior might seem extreme, though it is par for the course for our town at election time. Accusations and scandals swirl about like starlings in fall, agitating the populace. After the election, the dust settles, the issues are stored away until the next election, and a certain complacency falls upon the town like soft snow. But October is a bitter month, and this one was no different.
The next day, Mabel made copies of the picture and posted them all over town, demanding the town council be imprisoned. The battle spilled over into my Sunday school class. When I pulled that week’s question from the hat, it read, “Can Democrats be true Christians or must they repent first?”
It was Dale Hinshaw’s handwriting.
A pitched battle ensued, with Mabel and Deena Morrison surrounded on all sides. I didn’t take an official position. These people have long memories, and my annual review was a scant six months away. But I wasn’t the onl
y one holding back. Dr. Pierce was unusually quiet and clearly uncomfortable.
“We could use a little help, honey,” Deena said, smiling at Dr. Pierce, who smiled back, though rather weakly.
“Oh, Lord,” Mabel Morrison groaned. “He’s a Republican.”
“I knew there was something about him I liked,” Dale Hinshaw said. “I shoulda figured it out. He’s a doctor and all your doctors are Republicans.” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and smiled triumphantly.
“You never told me a you were a Republican,” Deena said.
“You never asked.”
“Oh, Lord, my granddaughter’s going to have a mixed marriage,” Mabel wailed.
“Isn’t that just like a Democrat?” Stanley Farlow said. “They’re all for diversity until it comes to Republicans marrying into the family.”
“Who said anything about getting married?” Deena asked. “I’m not getting married.”
Dr. Pierce turned toward Deena. “You don’t want to marry me?”
“You haven’t asked.”
“What would you say if I did?”
“I’m not sure,” Deena said. “Why don’t you ask me? Then we’ll both know.”
“I thought we were talkin’ about whether or not Democrats had to repent,” Dale said. “How come we never discuss my questions?”
“Pipe down,” Mabel snapped. “My granddaughter’s about to snag herself a husband.”
The room quieted and everyone turned to look at Dr. Pierce, who, to his credit, blushed. “It isn’t that I don’t want to ask you. I simply envisioned a different scenario, perhaps something a bit more private.”
“We don’t mind,” Mabel said.
“We can leave the room if you’d like,” Uly Grant offered.
“Yes, why don’t we,” I said, standing and herding everyone to the door, then closing it behind me.
We gathered outside, around the door. Asa Peacock bent and peered through the keyhole.
“What’s he doin’?” Dale asked.
“He’s down on one knee, and he’s saying something.”
Mabel pushed him aside and put her mouth to the keyhole. “Deena, honey, now’s your chance. Don’t blow it.” She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “I wish her grandfather had lived to see this.”
I suggested we give them a bit more privacy.
“Shhh,” Mabel hissed. “I can’t hear what he’s saying.”
The door swung open, and Mabel toppled to the floor.
“Does anyone here have a ring I could borrow?” Dr. Pierce asked.
We all had wedding rings, but finger fat had grown around them over the years, preventing their removal.
Mabel spied a large ring on Dale’s finger. “What’s that ring, Dale?”
“That’s my Mighty Men of God ring. I can’t give that away. It’s genuine gold-plated.”
“Oh, stop your whining and give it to him,” Mabel snapped. “You’ll get it back just as soon as he gets to the store to get her a real one.” She turned to Dr. Pierce. “You are going to buy her a real one, aren’t you?”
“Most assuredly,” he promised.
Dale eased the ring off his finger and looked at it longingly, then handed it to Dr. Pierce.
“I certainly appreciate this, Mr. Hinshaw,” he said. “I’ll be sure to return it. Sam, may I please borrow your pen?”
“Certainly,” I said, reaching into my shirt pocket to retrieve it.
Then he stepped back into the room, closing the door behind him.
Mabel crouched down and squinted through the keyhole, using first one eye and then the other. “Daggone him, anyway,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Dale asked.
“He put Sam’s pen in the keyhole. I can’t see a thing.”
She folded the weekly church bulletin into a tube and placed the broad end against the door, fitting the other end into her ear. “He’s asking her. Oh, sweet Jesus, I’m going to have great-grandchildren after all.”
She listened for a moment, then rapped the door sharply with her knuckles. “Speak up, Deena honey. I can’t hear you. What’d you say?”
She was greeted with silence. One minute passed, then two.
“Maybe he killed her,” Asa Peacock said. “I seen something like this in a movie once. This man asked a lady to marry him in a grocery store and she said no and he told her if he couldn’t have her, then no one would, and he choked her to death right then and there in the frozen foods.”
Mabel panicked. She seized the doorknob and gave it a violent twist. The door flew open with a bang. Dr. Pierce and Deena were standing in the middle of the room, locked in an embrace and joined at the lips.
“Don’t surprise me a bit,” Dale observed. “The Democrats show up and before you know it, there’s sex all over the place.”
This is life in our town. The Sausage Queen is caught in a scandal, chaos ensues, and when the dust settles, a marriage is born. From the seeds of tragedy, hope blossoms.
A June wedding, I thought to myself. Outside. Maybe next to the Hodge’s farm pond. Somewhere far away from electricity so Bea Majors couldn’t play the organ. Dancing late into the evening to a chorus of crickets. The Sausage Queen, her dalliance with vegetarianism forgiven and forgotten, wearing her sash, twirling in the twilight.
Fourteen
Desecration
We woke up the third Monday in October to a sunny, fall morning. It was my day off, a blank spot on the calendar with not one obligation.
“Do you want to do something today,” my wife asked at the breakfast table.
I have been married long enough to know that when my wife asks if I want to do something, she isn’t asking if I want to do something. She is letting me know she wants to do something.
But I was feeling feisty that morning and wanted to pester her a bit. “No, not really, but thanks for asking.”
She picked up her dishes, walked over to the sink, and set them down harder than necessary.
“You know,” she said after a while, “we don’t have to stay home all the time. There’s a great big world out there to see.”
I decided to push her a little further. “I thought maybe we’d stay home so you could get caught up on the housework.”
By now, the vein on her neck was standing out the way it does when she’s mad, but doesn’t speak for fear she’ll lose control and choke the life out of me.
“Or,” I said, “maybe we could see if my folks would watch the boys after school and you and I could drive over to McCormick’s Creek, eat lunch at the inn, and go for a hike.”
The vein in her neck began to throb less violently.
“Really?”
“Sure, why not. The laundry can wait until tonight.”
“You’re all heart, Sam.”
The boys were less pleased. When I’d phoned my parents, I’d volunteered them to help my father rake leaves after school.
My parents have twenty-six large trees on their property. If you don’t move quickly, it is entirely possible to be suffocated by falling leaves. My father has bought every leaf removal gadget known to humankind, without success. His life from mid-September to early November is one pitched battle after another. His yard resembles a battlefield, with the smoldering ruins of leaf piles and my father lying slumped against a tree, weary from combat. When not raking, he is peering frightfully out their parlor window, as a beaten general watches an approaching army, knowing his cause is lost but unwilling to surrender.
In contrast, I depend on the Lord for victory, letting my fallen leaves remain on the ground, trusting that God in his grace will send a wind that will blow them into my neighbor’s yard.
It took an hour to reach McCormick’s Creek. We went the back roads, striking out through the country in a northerly direction, through Greene County and up into Owen County, crossing the river at Freedom on the last ferry in Indiana, which runs in the spring and fall, saving the farmers from having to
drive their equipment twenty miles around to the bridge in Spencer.
My wife has never been fond of water and, while on the ferry, sat in the car with the seat belt cinched tightly across her lap, gripping the dashboard with whitened knuckles. The ferryman stood outside her window, pointing out half-submerged logs, undertows, and other natural dangers that could at any moment plunge us to a watery grave.
Despite the ferryman’s dire predictions, the crossing was uneventful. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the state park, paid our entrance fee, and drove to the inn for a fried-chicken dinner. We spent the rest of the day hiking, then at dusk made our way back to the car for the trip home.
We hadn’t gone five miles when an animal darted in front of us and was punished for its poor timing with a solid whack from my bumper.
“What was that?” my wife asked, startled from her slumber.
I eased over to the side of the road. “I’m not sure. I think it was a dog. I wonder if I killed it.”
Whatever it was was lying by the side of the road, motionless. I could barely make it out in the dark, but it appeared to be a dog. Barbara came up beside me with a blanket.
“What is it?”
“I think it’s a dog, but whatever it is, it has spots.”
“I hope it isn’t a Dalmatian.” My wife is inordinately fond of Dalmatians, having sat through several dozen showings of 101 Dalmatians with our sons.
“I’m not sure what it is. Let’s get it into the lights.” I wrapped the blanket around it and carried it to the front of the car so I could see it with the headlights. Barbara pulled back the blanket, gasped, and jumped back. “It’s a bobcat,” she said, thoroughly amazed. “I didn’t even know they were around here.”
“It was probably someone’s pet. It’s wearing a collar.”
She asked if it was dead.
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