by David Rhodes
Business meetings were delicate matters. Drawing on traditions that dated back to high priests and kings of old, those possessing spiritual authority could sometimes be out of harmony with the authority of those who controlled the purse and made the laws under which spiritual power could be exercised. The tension between these two kinds of authority often surfaced in business meetings, in part because those with financial power often lacked subtlety in wielding it. They were awkward, blunt, and highly sensitive to criticism—particularly compared with Winnie, who had been practicing her form of social authority for more than fifteen years.
Winnie knew her place, and on this occasion she sat sideways in the pew, in order to be able to make eye contact with everyone in the room. Jacob and August sat together in the middle of the second pew. As usual, August was the only person under thirty in the room. And Jacob looked so stiff and uncomfortable in his white shirt and green tie that his usually ruddy face appeared ghostly white. They were here in support of Winnie, of course, but they did not sit next to her, in case something came up that demanded her full attention. On another level, this spatial separation also acknowledged that in church Winnie belonged as much to the rest of the congregation as she did to them.
The meeting had been stuck for several minutes on a single point of business. A steel floor jack had been used to temporarily support a section of the church while repairs were being made to the foundation. The jack had been borrowed by the Building and Grounds Committee from a relative of Abraham Johnson, a trustee, and it had disappeared sometime between last Thursday night and Saturday morning.
“What color was it?” Elizabeth Fitch asked from the second pew.
“It was red,” said Abe Johnson. “Tall and red, with a black ratchet arm, in perfect condition.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “No, I don’t remember seeing a red one.”
Violet Brasso laughed briefly, trying to free some of the nervousness in the room. Abe Johnson was very upset about his relative’s missing jack, and everyone knew he believed that Oskar Hamilton—or someone in his family, in any case—had taken it. The two men owned large farms on opposite sides of Words, and their mutual distrust sometimes spilled over into open hostility. Both contributed heavily to the church, and together they provided more than two-thirds of the annual thirty-thousand-dollar budget. Their wives also attended nearly every official church function, and were well known in the wider community.
“Did you see a floor jack of some other color?” Violet asked Elizabeth.
“No, I didn’t,” replied Elizabeth. “I just thought the color might jog something loose.”
“Well, someone took it,” said Abe Johnson. “Jacks don’t just walk away by themselves.”
“How much is a jack worth, anyway?” asked Rita Fry. She was knitting a red and green scarf for one of her grandchildren.
“It’s not just a matter of money,” said Abe Johnson. “It’s a matter of trust.”
“No one said anything about the jack being stolen,” said Oskar Hamilton.
“I did,” said Abe Johnson. “I said it and I’ll say it again—someone stole that jack.”
“Maybe a better word would be misplaced,” suggested Florence Fitch, not looking up from her folded hands.
“Not if it was stolen,” said Abe Johnson. “If it was stolen then the right word is stolen.”
Olivia Brasso stared at her lined tablet and wondered how much of this she should be writing down. Keeping minutes involved a great deal of diplomacy. Records were kept to be read in the future, when the people participating in the meetings often did not want to remember what they had actually said at the time. And so it was important to preserve the facts in a way that erased the uncomfortable details and favorably represented the church body as a whole to any outsider who might find reason to read them.
“Has the Building and Grounds Committee . . . conducted a formal search . . . for the jack?” asked Oskar Hamilton with halting solemnity.
“No, we have not,” said Ardith Stanley, that committee’s chairperson.
“I’ve conducted a search,” said Abe Johnson, his voice rising, “and it’s not there.”
Winnie felt awful when members of her congregation argued with each other. Discord of any kind reflected badly on her leadership. Personal animosities did not belong in church, and to keep them out pastors were brought in from outside the community. Unencumbered by family ties and longstanding feuds between members, incoming pastors were like houseguests. Simply dressing up wasn’t enough, though tonight Winnie wondered if some kind of dress code for business meetings might help. She had noticed over the years that when people dressed up, it had a pronounced influence on the way they acted; partly for that reason, Sunday mornings were always the best times for getting along.
The pastor was the glue that kept this little community together, and a great deal of Winnie’s time was spent gluing. This part of her job was so important, in fact, that she could never allow herself to become friends with anyone—not in a close, personal sense—because it could lead to perceptions of favoritism. In practical terms, this meant she hardly ever spent time with anyone she actually liked. She had support, but no friends in the group.
“There’s a floor jack in the shop,” said Jacob. “I’d be glad to bring it over.”
An uncomfortable hush settled over the meeting. As a general rule, Jacob’s suggestions were seldom acted upon. This had concerned Winnie for many years, until she finally understood that it had nothing to do with Jacob and everything to do with her. The spouses of male pastors didn’t have this difficulty; in fact, the “pastor’s wife” had become nearly a cliché of social utility within rural communities, her script written and rewritten over hundreds of years by earlier wives of ministers. But no similar tradition existed for the “pastor’s husband,” and so no one knew what to expect from him.
It wasn’t that the congregation did not approve of Jacob, it was that they didn’t know how to go about doing it. They’d deliberated long and hard before calling a woman “pastor,” weighed the drawbacks and benefits. Over the years since taking that step, they had ironed out most of the wrinkles, and successfully adjusted to the still-somewhat-unusual situation. But then Jacob came along, and for some reason this hurdle couldn’t be cleared, or at least it hadn’t been yet. The congregation could understand why a woman might want to aspire to a position that had formerly been reserved for men; what they couldn’t understand was why a man would want to marry such a woman, and how to fit that circumstance within the traditions of the church.
“That’s reasonable,” said Violet hopefully.
“What color is it?” asked Elizabeth.
“Gray,” said Jacob.
“With a green handle,” added August.
After thinking about it for as long as he could, Abe Johnson dismissed the notion that his anger could be appeased by agreeing to let Jacob bring in another jack from his shop. He initially wanted to say that the substitute jack would not be of comparable value to the one borrowed from his cousin. But because he didn’t know this for sure, he refrained. He deliberated about it for several seconds longer, and finally took a less compromising path.
“This isn’t about a jack,” he said, staring at Oskar Hamilton. “This is about a thief.”
Oskar Hamilton slowly folded his notes on the table, pushed them away from him, and began to get up.
At that point Winnie rose to her feet and walked between the table and the front pew. She climbed onto the elevated area in front, took a Bible from the pulpit, and opened it before coming down again and resuming her position between the table and front pew. She turned to Abe Johnson and looked at him for a long time. Eventually he was reminded of when his teenage daughter had not returned home from school one evening. Winnie had gone over and wept and prayed with him and his wife until three o’ clock in the morning, waiting for the police to call or drive into the farmyard with the dreaded news. When his daughter had finally come home, vom
iting from her first drinking binge, Winnie convinced Abe that beating her half to death might not be the most reasonable way of expressing his gratitude for her return. In fact, she conveyed, it might endanger his future relationship with her and her mother, who was still crying hysterically in the other room. Then Winnie walked with him around the farmyard for an hour as he calmed down.
With similar eye contact, Oskar Hamilton was reminded of the many times Winnie had come to the hospital during his open-heart surgery last winter, and also later, when the incision had become infected and visitors were required to don gowns, masks, and gloves before entering the isolation room. She had read to him from the Bible, smuggled in corn bread and other fatty foods in Tupperware containers in her purse, brought him updated reports on the farm, took back instructions for how to build the new feed bunk and where to plant the oats, and repeatedly assured him that his young wife was spending her few idle hours either at home in the farmhouse or with her sister in Luster.
These and other actions had increased Winnie’s moral capital to such an extent that she could sometimes spend some of it in a business meeting, where moral capital had to be used with great discretion because it didn’t go very far. Without the support of Oskar Hamilton and Abraham Johnson, Words Friends of Jesus Church would not exist. And just so everyone understood that too-easily-forgotten reality, from time to time the two men faced off against each other like rams on a hillside.
Winnie looked down into the opened Bible, closed it, pressed it against her like an infant, and sat down again.
“I propose that the Building and Grounds Committee hold a search for the missing jack,” said Abe Johnson with a giant sigh, “and report back to us next month.”
“Is that agreeable to you, Chairperson Stanley?” asked Oskar Hamilton.
“Call me Ardith,” she said.
“I’m following Robert’s Rules of Order,” said Oskar.
“This is a church, not a card game,” said Ardith. She had never played a game of cards in her life, but she had heard that such games were strictly governed by a rule book that sounded something like Robert’s. “I trust I can speak for the rest of the committee when I say that conducting a search is agreeable to the Building and Grounds Committee.”
The rest of the committee—Larry Fry and Florence Fitch—nodded.
“Thank you,” said Oskar. “Now, Clerk Brasso, would you please read the last minute to be sure we have reached closure on this issue.”
“Now?” asked Olivia.
“Yes, now.”
“‘The floor jack was discussed and the Building and Grounds Committee will report back next month on where it is.’”
“Shouldn’t it be mentioned that the jack belongs to my cousin?” asked Abe Johnson. “Just for the record, I mean.”
“The owner’s name was recorded in last month’s minutes, when it was noted that the Buildings and Grounds Committee would be borrowing it,” replied Olivia.
“Would you please read that minute, Clerk Brasso?” instructed Oskar Johnson.
“Certainly,” she said, turning back a page in her notebook, “‘Chairperson Ardith Stanley reported that the Building and Grounds Committee had located a floor jack suitable for the repair work on the basement foundation, and the committee moved to borrow it from Cecil Johnson, with Ardith Stanley motioning and Florence Fitch seconding.’”
“Thank you, Clerk Brasso,” said Oskar.
“I think it should be mentioned somewhere in there that the jack was red,” said Elizabeth Fitch.
“Last month’s minutes have already been approved by this committee,” said Oskar Hamilton. “You can’t change minutes after they’ve been approved.”
“Then I move that a new minute be added, making it clear that the jack was red,” said Elizabeth.
“Is red,” added Olivia.
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said was red.”
“But we only know for sure that the jack was red. We don’t know what color it is now. Someone could have painted it.”
“But we didn’t know what color it was before we borrowed it either,” said Olivia.
“Elizabeth makes a good point,” said Larry Fry. “I second the motion with was.”
“I’m sorry,” said Florence Fitch, looking away from her devotional literature, “I didn’t hear the first motion. Could you repeat it?”
After all the committees had finished giving their reports, Winnie presented the monthly pastor’s record. During the last month she had preached at four Sunday-morning worship services and four Sunday-evening worship services. She had preached at the Grange Nursing Home on a Tuesday morning, taught five Wednesday-night Bible studies, spoke briefly at Family Night, attended ten committee meetings and a prayer vigil for Horace Grover’s sick grandson, visited fifteen separate homes, two hospitals, and three nursing homes, met with the local Ministers Association, gone bowling with the two teenagers in the church, and delivered used clothing to Goodwill and canned goods to the food pantry in Red Plain. From the Pastor’s Mileage Fund she had withdrawn $35.46, which the treasurer and assistant treasurer both acknowledged, explaining that the Pastor’s Mileage Fund had to be replenished from the special fund donated by the family of Oskar Hamilton after the departure of Mildred Hamilton, who died in her home after a lengthy illness at the beginning of June.
Then Winnie found the courage to stand up a second time. She announced that she had decided to submit her resignation, which would become effective as soon as Words Friends had succeeded in finding another pastor to replace her. She and her family would continue to attend the church as regular members, but she firmly believed it was the Lord’s will for her to step down at this time and allow a new shepherd to minister to the flock.
A blanket of stunned silence fell over the room. Violet’s eyes filled with tears.
“What will you do?”
“The Lord hasn’t made that known to me yet,” said Winnie, “but I have faith a door will be opened in the future. In the meantime, I shall apply myself to prayer and gardening.”
“Gardening? Did you say gardening?” asked Florence Fitch.
“Yes, gardening.”
Winnie could tell that this made no sense to anyone. With few exceptions, to be sure, everyone in the room either had a garden or frequently worked in one. But gardening wasn’t something one did, it was simply something one had. Compared to preaching it amounted to, well . . . nothing.
“Did someone say something unkind to you, or do something to discourage your ministry among us?” asked Abe Johnson, staring in a threatening manner at Oskar Hamilton. “Lord knows you haven’t had the kind of support you deserve from some.”
“No, no, no, no,” said Winnie. “My years as your pastor have been the most precious gifts anyone can imagine. It’s just that the Lord has other plans for me, I guess.”
“I object,” said Olivia.
“To what?” asked Winnie.
“To your resignation. We won’t accept it, or at least I won’t. After the anointed are called out of the world to live as ministers to the Holy Word, they can’t ever quit. They’ve been set apart. My own father preached in this very church for over thirty years, despite untold hardships and with no regard for his health and personal welfare. And all that time he had a garden too.”
“Twenty-five years,” corrected Violet. “It was twenty-five years, and he never stepped foot in that garden.”
“Just the same, he didn’t leave the ministry until death was nearly upon him,” replied Olivia.
“Is it the money, Pastor Winifred?” asked Oskar. “Lord knows your salary is hardly enough to keep a rabbit alive, and yet I know someone in this room who was opposed to giving you a raise last year, in spite of the fact that the rest of us were in favor of it.”
“That’s a lie,” said Abe.
“I think we have a minute to that effect,” said Oskar, knotting his hands into fists. “Clerk Brasso, would you please find the minute f
rom last year, the one referring—”
“Please don’t, Olivia,” interrupted Winnie. “This has nothing to do with my salary. You all have been more than generous. I’m asking you to release me now.”
“This is terrible,” said Violet.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Florence.
“I told you. It’s the Lord’s will.”
“Yes, I know, but why are you really doing it?”
“I have to stop. The forms are going empty inside me.”
“I move not to accept Pastor Winifred’s resignation,” said Olivia.
Silence.
“And I second it,” she added.
“You can’t do that, Clerk Brasso,” said Oskar. “It’s against Robert’s Rules.”
“Then I move that we postpone this item of business until next month, when Pastor Winifred will have changed her mind.”
“Second,” said Violet.
“All in favor,” said Oskar.
The meeting ended in prayer, and a short time later, Winnie and Jacob’s cars were the only ones in the parking lot.
“August and I were thinking about driving into Grange for some ice cream before we go home,” said Jacob. “Why don’t you come with us?”
“You two go. I have some things to do here.”
“We can bring you back something,” said August. “The choices are practically unlimited.”
“I’m afraid it would melt before you get home.”
“No it won’t, Mom. Dad will drive fast.”
“Then bring me something with bananas in it.”
“Will do,” said Jacob. “Let’s go, August.”
Through the sanctuary windows along the west-facing wall, Winnie watched them walk across the parking lot. The sun lay low in the sky, and the colored light made the air look soft and embracing. August’s face glowed as he climbed into the old jeep next to his father. Her son was trying to explain something with the help of many hand gestures, and Jacob was nodding and smiling.