“I was. Mom was the librarian, so she would come home a little after I got home from school. We didn’t have much money but we had a lot of love. My parents taught me a lot.” She looked at Mount Tabor Presbyterian Church as they passed. “They taught me not to be a Presbyterian.”
“Harry!”
Harry laughed. “Mom and Dad were generally open-minded people, but they did have their share of religious prejudice. If there had been a Church of England here, that’s where they would have worshipped.”
“Reminds me. You have your building-and-grounds notes for the vestry meeting?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because if there’s ever an outlay of expenses, that’s where it is,” Susan said as she, too, eyed the lovely white Mount Tabor Church.
There was a bit of traffic on the narrow two-lane highway. People were driving home from work. In the morning and the evening, going could be slow.
“I never noticed that,” Susan said, her voice rising.
“What? Mount Tabor is Mount Tabor. Really pretty.”
“No. There’s a Halloween scene on the grounds nearest the road.”
Twisting to look back, sure enough, Harry saw pumpkins, tied-up cornstalks, baskets of harvest, and a jolly-looking witch on a broomstick over a sickle moon. Actually, the broomstick used the midpoint of the moon for stability.
“So?” Harry shrugged.
“Harry, pagan. Halloween is a pagan festival.”
“It might have started that way,” Harry said, “but then, Christmas is a co-opted pagan festival. So this became All Hallows’ Eve and the early church fathers could sleep soundly at night.”
Susan, who knew her history, maintained, “Pagan. When have you ever seen a church with a Halloween display?”
Harry shrugged. “I give Mount Tabor credit. It’s fun.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Here we are,” said Harry as Susan pulled the Audi into the Lutheran church’s parking lot. “No Halloween display at St. Luke’s. Leaves are raked. Grounds are sleek. Am I doing a good job or what?”
“Divine, darling.”
“Well, it is our church.”
The meeting took place in a twenty-by-thirty-foot room with a high ceiling. Built of native stone in the eighteenth century, St. Luke’s emitted a feeling of peace, of thoughtfulness. And being Lutheran, it excelled in good works.
The Very Reverend Herbert C. Jones, a Vietnam veteran, deeply believed anyone could talk about Christ. One had to comfort one’s fellow man. And he did, personally. His congregants did, too. St. Luke’s provided tutoring for children in need. Also, their small soup kitchen had recently grown with the depression.
The Reverend Jones used innovative techniques to draw in his flock. Every October 4th, on St. Francis’s Day, people brought their animals to the church for a blessing. This year’s service had proved especially unusual in that a young woman brought a jar of worms. She had started a worm farm and wanted the reverend’s blessing. The clergyman dutifully picked up the jar and blessed those worms as though they had been devoted dogs. We are all God’s creatures.
When reprimanded by a parishioner for keeping a saint’s day—“leave that to the Catholics”—Herb took no offense. He merely replied that the saints were as good a model for Lutherans as they were for Catholics. And who could be a better example for all than St. Francis of Assisi?
The St. Luke’s vestry board, six people, usually met the second Wednesday of each month.
Elocution, Cazenovia, and Lucy Fur, the Lutheran cats, invariably joined the proceedings.
These meetings generally ran smoothly until the group had to consider expenditures. Last year, the old church truck breathed its last. The unplanned expense of a new four-wheel-drive truck had sent the church treasurer, Neil Jordan, into a tailspin. Now in his second year on the board, Neil wanted to impress his fellow parishioners as a fiscal conservative. He was always seeking new ways to save money. But also, he was beginning to discover if it wasn’t one thing, it was another, and the bills piled up.
Neil read the treasurer’s report. He looked straight at Harry over his tortoiseshell glasses, expensive ones from Ben Silver in Charleston. “You’re the one I worry about.”
BoomBoom Craycroft, another childhood friend of Harry’s as well as Susan’s, laughed a little, as did the reverend.
“Neil, all the church’s equipment is in good order,” Harry assured him. “We can get one more year out of the leaf blower, and I fixed the zero-turn mower this summer. We’re in good shape except for one small necessity.”
Neil froze. “Yes?”
“There’s a small portion of the slate roof right on that northwest corner which gets hit the hardest,” said Harry. “Two of the shingles have dislodged, and with one more hard blow, I’m afraid we will lose a larger section than need be. I climbed up there.”
“Harry, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Reverend Jones admonished her.
“Rev, I’m in charge of buildings and grounds.”
The good pastor said, “Surely there’s a man who can do some of this.”
“Are we going to have the Sexism 101 talk?” BoomBoom laughed. “We are supposed to be long past that caveman talk, Rev.”
“No, but …” The Reverend Jones sighed heavily.
Looking at the beloved clergyman, Harry compromised. “How about next time I go up on the roof, I take someone with me, possibly someone male who is actually a roofer? I can do it but we need a professional up there.”
This truly alarmed Neil. “Roofing costs an arm and a leg!”
Keeping her tone level, Harry replied, “It does. However, if we don’t attend to this right now before the weather turns—and you know how bad the winds get in winter straight through March—we will most certainly lose more slate shingles. The water will run into the beams and travel from there. I doubt it will come through the ceiling, though, unless a huge hole is blown into the roof. We’d need a big tree limb to accomplish that—I think. But that sort of silent water damage will come back to haunt us, years from now when the building’s wood beams rot out. Pay now or pay later, big-time.”
The members of the vestry board were persuaded, as was the reverend.
Neil, defeated, asked, “Do you have a ballpark figure?”
“That’s why I would like to get a professional roofer up there. My personal guess is if we do this now, we can do it for about thirty-five hundred dollars.”
“Thirty-five hundred! For two shingles?” Neil’s voice cracked.
“No. I estimate we will need to replace about a two-foot square. True slate shingles are expensive, plus we have to try and match shingles that are over two hundred and forty years old. The labor is expensive, too, but once we have the materials, it’s not an all-day job. Oh, and I expect there will be a gas surcharge if the gas prices go up again.”
“That’s the truth. Everyone’s doing it.” BoomBoom, her beautiful mane of blonde hair catching the light, nodded. “There’s no way business, small business, can absorb those prices and still make a profit.”
“How about the post office?” asked Harry, the former postmistress. “I can’t even imagine what a one-cent increase in gasoline does to their budget. Delivery trucks, cars in every state in this nation—it has to be mind-boggling.”
Wesley Speer shook his head. Also new to the board, he owned a high-end realty firm. They’d felt the downturn but not nearly as badly as Realtors in Las Vegas or other large cities. Wesley believed once the foreclosure mess cleared up, maybe in another two years, the economy might pick up some momentum. He knew he’d never again see the craziness, the flipping of houses and farms, that he saw in, say, 2007, but he was confident sales would rebound. If people can get work, they want to own a home. He’d built a life’s career on that.
Susan joined the conversation. “Did you read in the paper where our area, Richmond in particular, has the worst postal service in the country?”
“Your husband’s in the
House of Delegates,” Neil teased her. “Make him fix it.”
“Virginia’s state government can’t fix the federal postal system, but you know Ned would if he could. I swear that man is a glutton for punishment. He actually loves being in the House of Delegates.” Susan threw her hands up in the air.
“He must be a glutton for punishment, he married you.” Harry smiled so sweetly.
“Well, I think this meeting is over, unless there’s more discussion concerning the roof,” the Reverend Jones said, enjoying the banter between the two old friends.
The committee members zoomed toward the kitchen, some heading straight for the bar. The vestry board enjoyed getting together after the meeting, catching up on one another’s news and listening to Reverend Jones, who had an appropriate Bible quote at the ready for just about any topic of conversation.
Lucy Fur wove between people’s legs. “Do drop something, will you?” the cat urged the thoughtless humans munching away on ham biscuits.
Elocution, the senior cat, curled up in Reverend Jones’s lap.
Cazenovia picked out Susan for her victim. Susan couldn’t take a step without Cazenovia sticking right next to her, meowing.
“Suffer the little kitties to come unto you,” the reverend joked.
Libations in hand, all sat in chairs around the coffee table, books pushed to the middle.
“Harry,” Wesley said, “you’ve known Buddy Janss longer than I have. Why won’t he sell the one hundred acres behind the old abandoned schoolhouses? Be very profitable for him.”
“More to the point,” BoomBoom interjected, “why doesn’t the county finally do something about those schoolhouses? Old well-built buildings can still be useful. Instead, the county blows millions on new construction. Everything has to be new.”
“Plans for repairs tend to languish in the county budget.” Reverend Jones’s deep voice rumbled. “But it’s much as you say, BoomBoom, everything has to be new and, to my way of thinking, antiseptic. Those three wooden buildings, with their big tall windows, beckon one to learn.” He smiled. “Can’t you imagine sitting at one of the old desks with the flip-top lid we all used, staring out the windows on an early spring day? If nothing else, might make you want to learn about the environment.”
The group laughed.
Harry answered Wesley’s question as best she could: “Buddy fears development, and for good reason. The school buildings and those acres are in a prime spot.”
Wesley tried not to sound too judgmental, even though he was. “He would make so much money. At least three point two million. These are hard times. That profit would allow him to buy or rent much more land farther west in the county or he could invest it in bonds or something.”
“Buddy isn’t averse to profit, but like I said, he fears development,” said Harry. “He thinks good soil, good farmland, should stay farmland. Wesley, he isn’t going to sell.”
“Mmm.” Wesley heard Harry’s words but he still hoped he could find a way to pry those one hundred acres from Buddy.
“Don’t forget, Wesley, the schoolhouses could create a problem for any development.” Susan Tucker kicked off her shoes. “Sorry, my feet hurt.”
“Yeah, you guys should be forced to wear heels just once in your life,” Harry said. “Torture,” she declared, grinning.
“Well, these are low heels but I’ve had enough.” Susan rubbed her right foot. “Okay, the problem: County land remains county land. And those school buildings might be considered historically significant. Now, the county can elect to sell its land. There must be a public hearing advertised in the newspaper each week for a month. These days the announcement has to go on the county website, too.”
Neil spoke up. “You think the fear is that if the one hundred acres go, whoever purchases same will have no use for the schoolhouses and demolish them. That’s jumping the gun, I’d say.”
Harry’s mouth fell open a little, then she said, “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I guess it could be a real concern.”
“Those schoolhouses would make welcome living quarters for the aged,” said BoomBoom, thinking out loud. “Nice setting, pretty grounds, easy access from the state road and not really far from Route 250.”
“Or condominiums, which would bring the county more revenue than what we used to call the poorhouse.” Reverend Jones drained his glass.
“What do you mean?” Harry, one of the younger people in the room, asked him.
The reverend clarified, “Honey, back when the earth was cooling, every county in this state had its own poorhouse, and it was usually a farm. Those down on their luck worked the farm. We don’t have that anymore, but a place for the aged is somewhat like that in that anyone dependent on government-subsidized living is usually poor. ’Course, at Random Row, they wouldn’t have to do farm work.”
“Random Row?” BoomBoom repeated. “I remember Mother saying that once or twice, but I figured she was just forgetting the actual name of the place.”
“It’s a great name,” Neil said, nodding to Reverend Jones. “Be a great name for condominiums.”
“ ’Tis, but I doubt they would be called that,” Reverend Jones quickly replied.
“All right, Rev, what’s the story?” Harry plied him.
“Well,” he said, “those schoolhouses were built for the African American children. When I was little, you didn’t use terms like ‘African American.’ The polite word was ‘colored’—polite among white folks, anyway. Really, back then no one said things like ‘Italian American’ either. Well, I’m getting off the track, but I do think about these things sometimes. Anyway, so many of the children at the schoolhouses had white fathers. Rarely did the men visit the school, because often they were married to white women, but many of those men did support their children, the random children, economically.”
A silence followed this, then Susan said, “Nothing is simple, is it?”
“Not when it comes to human beings.” Reverend Jones smiled. “What always strikes me is how most of us try to normalize an abnormal situation. I guess I learned this in Vietnam. We just struggled to keep things tied down. I mean, all I could think about apart from staying alive was, how were the Baltimore Orioles doing? We’d all try to get baseball scores and then football scores. If my team lost and one of my buddies gloated, fistfight. Here we were in a war in a different world, and we’d fight over a football score. But it felt safe in a way. Random Row was kind of the same thing, people normalizing a difficult situation.”
“The desegregation act was enforced in 1965,” Susan informed them. “That resolved it.”
“You weren’t born yet.” Reverend Jones smiled at her. “It resolved political issues; it did not nor could not resolve personal issues. If your father is white and doesn’t claim you, you may not be thinking about desegregation the same way.”
Neil looked at the reverend. “What’s the old saying, ‘The personal is political’?”
“Is and isn’t.” BoomBoom was firm about this. “But in 1965, what happened to these so-called random kids’ schools?”
“Abandoned,” said Reverend Jones. “It was a political victory but it came at an unintended price. At least, I think it did. Basically, the children from Random Row were crammed into the white schools with no support system. The assumption was and still is that white ways are better. I don’t exactly see this as black and white, I see it more in class terms, but the reality of the children at Random Row was most of them were African American or mixed race, and poor. They were thrown into schools with children from a higher socioeconomic group and with vastly different needs. Not a good thing, in my mind.”
“Well, it’s a done deal,” Wesley replied with no emotion.
“It is.” The reverend nodded. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it, and not repeat our mistakes. We have to think of people’s emotions.”
“What happened to the teachers at Random Row?” asked BoomBoom; at forty-one, she was the same age as Harry and Susa
n.
“I suspect they were bought off. You know, early retirement or something like that. I guess what really gets my blood up is the assumption those teachers weren’t as well educated. Howard? Grambling? The list of excellent black colleges can go on. The teachers may have gone to segregated colleges, but tell you what, I never met any graduate of those colleges who wasn’t well educated.”
“Racism is subtle and not so subtle.” Susan grabbed a cookie from the plate that Reverend Jones had placed on the table.
“So is sexism,” said BoomBoom.
“Yes, but you ladies have so many ways to even the score,” Neil teased her.
“Don’t forget that, Neil,” BoomBoom teased him right back.
“Not to ignore this fascinating history,” interjected Wesley, “but what I deduce from this is that the county, which could realize high profits on those buildings, won’t for political reasons?”
“Don’t you think it depends on the budget?” said Harry. “We’re in hard times. If the Board of County Commissioners wants to let those buildings and the land go, this would be the time.”
“If they’re willing to put up with the protest that our history is being demolished,” said Neil, in between bites of a chocolate chip cookie. “Here’s what I think. Use them or sell them. To keep the land idle, just sitting there, is stupid.”
“Do you think Buddy would sell his hundred acres to the county?” Wesley asked.
“They wouldn’t need it,” Harry replied.
“Probably not,” said Wesley. “I mean, if a housing development was part of the plan, yes. Otherwise, no. It does seem wasteful, though. The schoolhouses just abandoned and going to ruin.”
Susan simply said, “I say restore the buildings as a museum. It could be a good lesson for all and those rooms have cozy, lovely proportions. I’m like Reverend Jones, everything today is too antiseptic and big. I’m really tired of big.”
After an hour of lively talk, the group began to trickle out. Harry, Susan, and BoomBoom stayed longest, helping Herb clean up, washing dishes and glasses.
The Litter of the Law Page 6