Lead Me Home

by Amy Sorrells

  He caught the comforting scent of lilac and cold cream before he stepped around the corridor and saw her, cardigan sweater and straight, gray wool gabardine skirt even in August. “Mornin’, Bonnie,” he said.

  “Mornin’, Reverend.” She smiled, although her eyes carried a frown as she stood at her desk folding the fifty bulletins. They probably could’ve trimmed the number to twenty a long time ago and saved a few dollars, but they’d quit cutting the amount at fifty, more out of vain hope than any sort of optimism.

  In his office, he set his worn Bible on his desk, a yellow legal pad thickened with prose stuck somewhere between Psalms and Isaiah and stressing the spine. Above the computer on the wall was one of Shelby’s string art compositions, the word Shalom in a variegated rainbow yarn. Once his computer came to life, a stock photo of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck throwing a pass gleamed at him as he selected the morning’s sermon from the collection of files on the screen’s desktop. The printer hummed to life as it spat out the half-dozen pages. He stapled them before heading to the sanctuary, where Myrtle Worley was already warming up the organ.

  “Morning, Reverend.” Similar to Bonnie, Mrs. Worley could be counted on to wear the same thing in different color variations each week: a suit coat with a silk blouse beneath it which tied at her neck, a skirt with tight pleats that reminded James of accordion bellows, opaque hose, and thick-soled shoes. Molly never could get past the older ladies and their hose.

  “Morning, Mrs. Worley.”

  The organ had been a gift of a parishioner back in the 1970s when the church was flourishing under the leadership of Tilman “Tilly” Icenhour. Tilly had been one of those pastors who had become a pillar of strength, hope, and light not only to the church, but also to the community during his fifty-year tenure. His bald head, encircled by a halo of white hair, solidified his iconic reputation, as well as the fact that he wore his billowy black robes trimmed with velvet long after all the other preachers had given them up for jeans and sport coats.

  When James had interviewed for the position, Tilly had warned him of some of the joys and perils of ministry, the lure of becoming all things to all people at the expense of the less enticing road of patient obedience, the tension between caring for the flock and caring for family, the temptation of being the focus rather than being the angle of trajectory pointing people toward God, the balance of steadfast faith and truth in the midst of congregational demands for radical relevance. Each time they’d sat across from each other, James had felt like Frodo, wee and inadequate, under the tutelage of Gandalf carrying a Bible for a staff and that white ring of hair for a hat.

  The congregation had been booming then, and looking back, James wondered if he’d relied too heavily on the great wave of what Tilly had started. Should he have had the confidence to start his own programming sooner? Or should he have taken Tilly’s advice for what some said it was—outdated—and adopted some of the more mainline initiatives like vision casting and technology, a band and cozy chairs instead of hard pews? Over and over he’d prayed and sought advice from Molly, his friends back at Furman like Dr. Wilcox, and the elders about what could be causing Sycamore Community Church to flounder the last few years. But no answers ever came. It was as if he was walking in circles in a desert like the Israelites, only there was no Promised Land . . . just a valley of dry bones, and he was not the Ezekiel they needed.

  Tilly’s optimism and encouragement for James had been unwavering, even when Tilly and his wife, Ann, had moved to Florida a couple of years after James and Molly had arrived. They’d found a place near Fort Myers where they could bask in the sun and anonymity after five decades on display on the stage of ministry.

  “I didn’t want you to argue with me about coming here today,” Tilly had said to James, who’d been beside himself with surprise when Tilly appeared at Molly’s visitation. His back was bent, his frame thin and rickety, but the gleam in his eye indicated he was mentally sharp as ever, despite his ninety-some years of age.

  The next day, Tilly had delivered the eulogy, and James was further undone when Tilly’s stalwart faith wavered.

  “Christ overcame the grave, yes . . .” Tilly paused, gripping the sides of the podium as he tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a sob. “Pastors’ wives . . . aren’t supposed to be put in boxes, lowered into a hole, and covered with dross and dirt. . . . None of us are. And though we have the hope of resurrection, we do not have answers sufficient to account for this day.”

  James learned that death had an air of contagion about it, that those paying their respects nodded awkwardly, their mouths thin-lipped and grim, resembling the reaction of folks when they learned you had the flu. Others, the older ones who’d had more experience with funerals, squeezed James’s shoulder with shaky hands as they passed by, avoiding his eyes and preferring to gaze instead at the gaping hole over the side of the grave.

  Later, Tilly reminded him that pastors’ wives were, in fact, the buffer between the pulpit and the people, the soft middle where the grieving and needy found their place. And now James wondered if the vacuous space in his heart he had not been able to fill in the two years since Molly’s death, despite everyone’s best efforts to rouse him, was what brought them to this, the last month of not only his ministry, but of the generations-old brick-and-mortar church. In his widowhood, he’d felt that he’d become an untouchable, a leper in his own town. He’d dated, once. He admired other women from afar—Laurie Burden, for one. But circumstances and proximity that might have brought them together seemed to pull them apart. A broken parishioner was one thing. A broken pastor, quite another, and in the end, perhaps too much for a congregation to bear.

  James set his Bible and notes and freshly printed sermon on the oak pulpit, edges rubbed shiny from the generations of hands that had rested and rubbed against its surface. He glanced at Shelby, still focused on her phone, sitting in the front row next to an empty space on one side where Molly used to sit, and an empty space on the other where Bonnie and Hank would soon join her. The worn pages of his underscored and bookmarked Bible crinkled as he double-checked that the lime-green sticky notes marking the day’s Scripture references were in the correct places. A couple of early parishioners shuffled in, and the organ pipes reverberated with a peppy rendition of “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” Mrs. Worley’s fleshy backside hung off the back of the wooden bench and rocked to the tune as Jersha Pittman—the oldest living great-grandson of one of the charter members of the church—hung the hymn numbers, last week’s offering, $38, and attendance, 14, on the board.

  At 9:43 on the dot, James addressed the congregants, which numbered eleven exactly. “Good morning!”

  “Good morning.” The congregational reply was muffled, out of sync.

  “Join with me in this week’s call to worship, printed in your bulletin.” James was certain if he’d been closer to them, he’d have smelled the coffee struggling to take effect within them, along with freshly applied Brylcreem. He waited until the sound of shuffling papers subsided. “We come seeking Jesus, the Light of the World.”

  “We believe in the strength of God to illuminate dark places.” The congregants’ voices echoed against the bare wood of the pews, the rafters.

  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.”

  “Lord, in this hour of worship, kindle in us the light of your love.”

  “Let your light shine through us, now and forever. . . . You may be seated.” Though he’d been giving people permission to sit for hundreds of Sundays, the instruction felt strangely odd. Mrs. Worley began playing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and James only half moved his lips to the lyrics as his mind wandered to baptisms and eulogies, sermon series and holidays celebrated and memorialized by the faint must of the red carpet that needed replaced, the oil soap that shined the pews and pulpit, the creak of floorboards as people shifted in their seats. Even as he delivered his sermon, he felt as if he were hearing someone else�
��s voice. He looked out over the sanctuary as words about the faithful in Hebrews 11 fell from his lips. Except for one middle-aged couple he did not recognize, he knew without hesitation the name of every freshly coiffed, white-haired lady and thin-haired man nodding along—if not to sleep—before him. Another family sat near them, their young children clambering on and off the pew seat as the mother struggled to keep them occupied with coloring books and small toys.

  He thought of the faces of those who used to fill the empty spots, the way a person can think about such things when they’ve been giving weekly sermons for so long. People had a habit of sitting in the same spot every week, so even if folks tried to be inconspicuous when they stopped coming, he knew they were gone. They left a shadow of themselves, a smile only they smiled during a favorite hymn, a giggle only they let out to certain jokes he told. His friend Jack McGee was one, still an elder despite his lack of attendance, but he had never been good about coming regularly anyway.

  Raleigh Cox and his wife, Ella, had sat in the second row holding hands all the time except when James mentioned a Scripture and they let go to flip through the thin pages of their old, worn-out Bibles—bookmarks and bulletins floating to the floor every time—and he’d pause and wait until their scurrying to gather it all up subsided.

  Gertrude Johnson, her thinning hair dyed persimmon orange, was known for her creativity as the owner of the town flower shop, as well as for her philanthropy, the result of a large inheritance. When she wasn’t noticing cracks in the walls, she had sat in the first row directly in front of him and often scolded him afterward for what she felt were inconsistencies or inaccuracies in his sermons. Whenever they sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” she had dabbed at her eyes and blown hard into her handkerchief, often frightening Jersha Pittman awake.

  Dr. Tom Lawson and his wife, Angie, who had seemed perpetually pregnant for ten straight years as she carried and bore their six children, had sat in the back row. Tom was a good man, sensible, someone James could count on for a solid handshake after the service. Angie was a dedicated mom, highly respected for her work leading school and parenting prayer groups.

  Thelma Howard, an assistant professor at one of the nearby small colleges, had sat on the right in the fifth row back and had often brought a friend with her. Quiet and mousy, she would from time to time e-mail James during the week to ask for insight and clarification into the Scriptures, and he was impressed with her ability to cite—accurately, at that—the Hebrew and the Greek.

  Behind Thelma, Laurie Burden had sat, mostly without Dale, and tended to her two boys, now young men, Noble and Eustace.

  For the first few years of his ministry and then especially in the last five years of what he often referred to as the exodus of these and over a hundred other parishioners, he felt like he’d been punched in the gut each time a family left. A few of them told him in lengthy letters—occasionally with meal or gas cards enclosed—of God leading them to Higher Ground Church, needing to go where they were more fed, someplace more in sync with their postmodern problems and life stages, someplace where the music made them feel closer to heaven. Most of the time, though, they just left, the only indication that they’d done so being the empty spot in the pew, with the decision confirmed when he saw them at the supermarket and they avoided him, turning quick down the pet food aisle before he could have a chance to greet them or ask them gently, and with genuine concern, where they’d been.

  After a while, he couldn’t blame them. He couldn’t—and didn’t want to—compete with the mainstream movements in places like the enormous Higher Ground Church down the interstate. Rather than be constantly devastated by their departure, he decided to try to be glad for folks when they left. After all, didn’t Jesus send out his own disciples in Luke 10? Who was James to say that the Lord was not leading people elsewhere to do different work for him?

  Still, disappointment and self-doubt lingered as he remembered everything Tilly had warned him about: the Walmart effect of bringing in glossy graphics and program designers, praise bands with members wearing matching Buddy Holly glasses, fog machines, banners outside announcing the latest and greatest sermon series and building fund drive—everything Higher Ground had and then some. Higher Ground Church resembled the Taj Mahal rising above the cornfields where the interstate rounded a bend on the way to Indianapolis. The traffic getting in and out of the parking lots on the weekends prompted them to hire police, patrol cars with lights flashing as officers in uniform directed cars in and out before and after all three morning services and the Saturday evening service, too. There was no doubt that what the megachurches did worked. It was relevant; it was timely; it was, as those who’d left Sycamore Community Church had told him, fulfilling in more ways than a small, ragamuffin church that still used hymnals, recited the Apostles’ Creed, sang the doxology after the offering, and typed and printed their own bulletins. He didn’t doubt that they preached the same gospel. But he wondered why—and if he were honest, he resented the fact—so many were attracted to the loud and shiny places that made old places like Sycamore Community Church seem obsolete, even ignorant by comparison. On the days James felt most discouraged, all he wanted to know from God was: Wasn’t the gospel supposed to be enough? Wasn’t he enough?

  His eyes settled on the back right corner of the sanctuary at Laurie Burden’s empty spot. Her boys were grown now, and he rarely saw her since first her husband, Dale, left them and then Molly died, even though they were next-door neighbors. The acres between them and the loss of both their spouses had no doubt been part of what strained the relationship they’d had. He knew she probably had more reasons than most to leave the church, if not because of James’s pastoral failures, then because she’d given up on God. He’d see her sometimes inside the coin-operated Laundromat or at the Tractor Supply or the drugstore, and she always looked cold and sullen—not far off from the way he felt on the inside. He wondered if she had the same questions he had, about whether the church in general was still a place for widows and orphans.

  These thoughts lingered in James’s mind as he stood, his back holding the front door of the church open after the service. The fresh air, though humid, was a relief since at least there was a breeze outdoors. The church had no air-conditioning, and this was the time of year when they all questioned the lack thereof. If heat and humidity came early as they sometimes did in the unpredictable Indiana springs, many a June bride fainted in the midst of her vows, and August weddings were out of the question since multiple attendants and guests were sure to hit the floor. But as soon as they got quotes for installing central air, a hint of fall would creep into the air and they’d decide it wasn’t worth it to add to their loans.

  As they exited the narthex, folks extended their hands toward James. He asked them about their recent surgery or wayward child, or how their gout was or when they were plowing or planting, or their recent delivery of livestock to the markets. The older ones hobbled and lurched down the cracked steps to their cars, most of them parked along Main Street, which ran directly in front of the church. Some of them moseyed down to the Percolator, which served hotcakes and coffee and a blue plate Sunday special.

  “You alright this morning, Reverend?” Rich Orwell, one of the elders, grabbed James’s right hand with both of his. “Didn’t seem like you were quite yourself up there.”

  Most of the flock had left except Bonnie and Hank and Jersha, who, along with Shelby, cleaned up crumpled bulletins and stray hankies and other things parishioners left behind. James felt relieved to be able to let his guard down and talk to his longtime friend.

  “Attendance is booming, Rich. I’m not sure where we’ll put people anymore. Might have to invest in some folding chairs.”

  Rich seemed unfazed by James’s sarcasm.

  James ran his hand through his hair and focused on a passing collection of gray clouds. “Besides that, raising daughters is hard work.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  The two men chuck
led more out of mutual sympathy than humor. Rich had raised three daughters, now scattered in all corners of the country and with a gaggle of grandbabies to boot.

  “Anything Eileen and I can do? I’m sure she’d be glad for some girl time with Shelby, if you think that’d help.”

  “Nah,” James sighed. “Just prayers. For wisdom and for her protection. And a phone call to Sheriff Tate if you happen to see Shelby parked at the end of a dirt road or in a cornfield with Cade Canady.”

  Rich raised his eyebrows clear up to his hairline. “Silas Canady’s boy?”

  James nodded.

  “Shooo-eeey. I’ll do more than pray. I’ll beat the living daylights outta the kid if I need to.”

  10

  “Stop! Make him stop!”

  Noble felt his body jerk as the sound of his mother screaming in his dreams roused him awake. Rarely did a month go by that he didn’t have nightmares about the horror that had been life with their father. He squinted at the clock on his nightstand, hands pointing to 2:50, and slugged down lukewarm water in the glass from the night before. He hated when dreams woke him like this. He needed that extra hour or two of sleep before he could face the morning milking and yet another day of chores. He’d especially hoped for a decent sleep since that evening he’d be playing at the Purple Onion. The fact that it was tenderloin night would only add to the crowds, which had been steadily increasing over the past year or so to come see him. Besides that, the folks who’d be there had put in a hard day like him and deserved a good song to wash down their whiskey. He’d been rehearsing a new set heavy with Johnny Cash songs and was excited to see what the crowd would think.

  On his way back to bed, he checked on Eustace. Worry shot through him at the sight of his brother’s bed, flatter than it should be in the glow from the barn’s floodlights against the pitch black of the moonless night.