by Amy Sorrells
“Eustace?”
Noble stepped closer to the bed and confirmed his suspicion: Eustace wasn’t there.
He checked the bathroom.
Nope.
He checked his own room. Eustace often came and slept there if a storm scared him.
Nope.
He checked Mama’s floor, for the same reason.
Still no Eustace.
He cursed under his breath, a combination of annoyance and concern.
Mama stirred. “Noble? What is it? What time is it?”
“Eustace isn’t in his bed. I’m going to check the barn and pastures.”
“It’s three in the morning. Wait—I’ll come too.” The light from the barn outside illuminated Mama’s face, contorted with sleep and worry.
“It’s alright, Mama. I’ll find him.”
Noble grabbed the high-powered flashlight from over the washer on the back porch, pulled on his work boots, and headed to the barn. “Eustace? Eustace! Where are you?”
Bullfrogs groaned and crickets clicked from the low area of pasture near the barn, which was more swampy than usual with this year’s heavy rains. A random sparrow, apparently confused about the hour, chirped from the big cottonwood. The air was so still the tire swing hung motionless as if the stage were set for a movie.
Noble cursed again, knowing full well Eustace wouldn’t answer him even if he were able. As many times as Eustace had wandered off like this, Noble never got used to the panic he felt. In the last six months, Noble had discovered his bed empty like this at least a half-dozen times. They usually found him in the pasture with the cows, and Noble hoped he’d find him there again this time. But he couldn’t keep himself from thinking the worst as he trudged across the yard, nearly turning his ankle in a low spot hidden in the shadows of nighttime. Strange and frightening thoughts loomed and grew larger in Noble’s mind with every moment that passed: Eustace wandered onto the road and got hit by a car. Eustace wandered into the pond near the reverend’s place and drowned. (He never did learn how to swim too well.) Eustace climbed into the haymow to check on a new batch of kittens and broke his neck falling down the ladder. Noble felt a pang of guilt about his own increasing ache to do more with his music and leave Sycamore behind. The problem was, he not only felt responsible, but he was responsible.
“Lord, why’d you let Dad leave? Why’d you leave me alone with this family, this life? And where are you?” Noble lamented aloud. A gaggle of bullfrogs singing like crazy near the water troughs stopped their groaning.
As long as he resented God, he figured he still believed in him. But why did it seem like whenever he’d needed God the most, he couldn’t feel him at all? Seemed like God left the same day Dad did, a buxom stranger worth more to him than his wife, sons, and farm.
Who was Noble kidding, thinking he’d ever leave Sycamore? That he’d “get discovered” at the Purple Onion in little old Sycamore, Indiana? That he could go off and play his guitar somewhere that mattered, even if he was discovered? Not with an idiot brother like Eustace. That was the difference between him and his father—Noble didn’t have the option to up and leave.
He slid the barn door open and checked the calf stalls first, figuring Eustace went and bedded himself down next to Pecan, or that he’d gotten up early, not realized the time, and would be there feeding all the calves their formula, the chore he liked to do best. But as Noble checked the stalls, the calves didn’t stir.
“Eustace?”
He shone his light into each partitioned bed of straw but saw only sleepy calves, their bodies curled into little commas, except for one that struggled and wobbled to stand.
“Eustace?”
He climbed the ladder to the mow, but Eustace wasn’t up there either.
He let go and landed with a frustrated thud on the concrete floor of the barn. He scratched his head, which was beginning to throb from fretting and being up too early without coffee. Though he wished he didn’t, times like this Noble hated his brother for being born, hated him for making him assume the unwanted role of big brother, hated him for tying him down to this place. The resentment had been worse when he was in high school, when he was in the midst of discovering girls and kicking the butts of neighboring farm town teams when he played tight end under the bright field lights of Sycamore High, or pounding a ball against the hardwood trying to become the next small-town sectional basketball champions. Caring for “poor Eustace,” as so many folks referred to him, was not a calling Noble would ever have chosen. But he was stuck with it all the same.
He went back outside and slid the door shut. The night was still, placid, and cool, humidity having ebbed with the sun. He walked toward the pasture, the same direction as the Hortons’ pond. He wished Eustace was a little dumber so that he wouldn’t know better than to step over the electric fence, that he’d respect his boundaries like the cows.
“No luck, eh?” Mama, breathless, approached him as he stepped over the fence. The bottoms of her sweatpants were stuffed into her rubber work boots, and the oversize T-shirt she slept in hung down to her knees.
“We’re gonna have to get him an ankle bracelet or some kind of alarm. Think those dog collars would work on a human?”
“Noble, that’s awful.”
“No, really. This is becoming a regular occurrence. You want to keep doing this every couple weeks?”
“I don’t know—maybe.”
Noble glanced at her as she looked up at the stars, and for a moment he remembered what she’d looked like when she was younger, less hardened, her skin less ruddy from years of working on the farm. Mama was a stark contrast to Shelby Horton, pale and unaccustomed to hard work. But she was good and kind, and his heart felt heavy all of a sudden at the thought that his mama might not ever find someone to love her right. He wondered if that ever crossed her mind or if she told the truth when she proclaimed so often, “You and your brother are all I need.”
The two of them hastened over the uneven earth of the pasture toward a small gathering of trees on the slope where the cows moved like shadows. Several of them lying on the ground looked like giant boulders in the darkness. Noble imagined they were annoyed at being woken before milking, too.
“Eustace!” Noble called.
They were close enough to make out the definition of eyes on the shadowy heads of the cows. He noticed a couple of tails flipping back and forth, and one of them mooed in protest.
“Eustace, if you’re here, you come on out here now,” Laurie called.
“Aha . . . hahaha . . .”
“Over there.” Noble nodded toward the guttural cackle that only Eustace made and exchanged an exasperated eye roll with Mama.
They found him curled next to Dolly on the ground, his white ball cap pulled down over his eyes, clearly not caring a lick that he had scared them out of their minds yet again. Dolly turned her huge head toward Eustace, licked him with her thick, wet tongue, and nuzzled him. Eustace reached around and cradled her neck like an overgrown baby in his arms.
11
The shadows of Main Street’s lampposts were long, and the low, angled sun reflected harsh off storefront windows as James walked to the Purple Onion. He was meeting the elders—Mike Crawford, Rich Orwell, Greg Howard, Hank Thompson, and Jack McGee—for a late-afternoon Thursday dinner. Along the way, he saw Gertrude Johnson arranging a new display of potted geraniums and fresh sunflowers in the front window of her flower shop, Fleurish. Through the plate-glass window of the Laundromat, he saw Ella Cox, along with a couple of other women he recognized, transferring loads from washers to dryers.
Well before he reached the door of the Purple Onion, James smelled the cooking beef and fried onions. His stomach growled. He could never decline a good hamburger and onion rings, preferring that to their famous tenderloins. This sort of craving hadn’t been a problem for him when he was younger, but his middle-aged paunch reminded him not to partake of it as often anymore.
Silas Canady rolled past in his truck, purple
underbody lights gleaming. Irritation, fueled by what Bonnie had said about Cade and Shelby, pressed against James’s chest, as well as the disdain he and everyone else in town felt for the man. With the only auto repair shop in town, Silas did enough fair business with some that he got away with swindling the majority of others, who continued to patronize the shop since the next closest one was farther than their broken-down vehicles could take them.
James and Molly had learned the hard way when the truck needed new brake pads and Silas had charged them over five hundred dollars. They’d paid the bill, not knowing anything about cars or car parts. Hank found out about it and said the pads cost about forty dollars and only took about an hour to replace. James had seen evidence of Silas’s unfair practices again and again, as over the years folks had come to the church asking for help with their car-repair bills.
A man in a tattered military fatigue jacket limped toward him on the sidewalk.
“Hey there, Jack.”
“Rev. You look terrible.”
“Nice to see you too,” James laughed.
“Wouldn’t miss tenderloin night.” Jack paused to lean on his cane and spent half a minute coughing and choking. “If Rosie’s grease doesn’t kill me, the cigarettes will.”
Or the alcohol, James thought. A large poster announcing Noble Burden on guitar and Rosie’s tenderloin special hung in the front window. He held open the glass door covered in Lions Club stickers and advertisements and inhaled the smell of grease and beer. His old friend gimped past him.
Jack was a Vietnam veteran whose leg had been blown off by a land mine, as he told anyone who looked at him funny. And if he didn’t tell them what happened, he told them a joke about being able to get a pedicure for a discount. His favorite thing was to ask women at bars if they wanted to be his “sole mate.” Sometimes they laughed. Other times they excused themselves and tried not to look at his missing appendage. He spent most of his time in his trailer home, but James had made a point to call him and ask him to come today, and after Jack heard about Kernodle’s decision to close the church, he’d promised he would. Jack might not be reliable in many ways, but if he made a promise, he was sure to keep it.
“How can I help you, Reverend?” The teenage hostess, whom he recognized as one of Dr. Tom and Angie Lawson’s six children, picked up a couple of menus. She was a pretty girl, one who, like Shelby, would no doubt be someone the boys would clamor over, if they weren’t already.
“Bethany, how are you? How’s your family?” Over her shoulder, James saw Mike Crawford wave from a large, U-shaped booth across from the grill, and Jack hobbled toward them.
“They’re good . . . fine, thanks.” She hesitated, pulling the menus in closer to her chest.
James noticed a flush come to her cheeks, something that often occurred when he greeted people. It was the burden of a minister for normal, everyday interactions to be skewed by the common misperception that he could somehow read minds or sniff out their latest sin. “That’s great to hear. If you don’t mind, I’ll mosey over to where the rest of our group is sitting.” James nodded past her as Jack tumbled in next to Mike and Hank and the other elders sitting in the booth.
“Oh, alright, then. Have a nice dinner, Reverend Horton.”
“Will do. Tell your folks hi. I miss seeing you all around.” He looked into her eyes and squeezed her shoulder as he said this so she would know that he meant it, then walked past her toward the booth.
Hank stood and wrapped James in a bearish embrace. The other men extended their hands and scooted over to make room for him. He thought they all looked a bit nervous.
“So it’s official, gentlemen,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, even though he knew that was futile.
Mike wiped the sweat off his glass of iced tea with a napkin.
Rich rolled and unrolled and rerolled his silverware.
Greg leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table. “I’m sorry, James. I wish there was something more we coulda done.”
Mike and Rich nodded in agreement as the waitress approached.
“Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”
“I’ll have an iced tea. Thanks.” James had a nice view of the fry cook flipping steaks and burgers on the grill behind the bar. There was a rhythm to the way the young man slapped the beef on the hot surface and swiped his spatulas against each other to clean them, back and forth, flip the meat, swipe the metal, flip the meat, swipe the spatula.
So this was it. The end of his ministry. The end of his career. The end of another small-town church.
“You okay, Rev?” Hank asked.
He sat back and sighed, then ran his hands through his hair. “Good as I can be. I never thought it’d really happen.”
“You’re not alone,” Mike offered. “You know thousands of churches are closing all over every year.”
James surprised himself when he hit the table with his fist. “Yeah, but it shouldn’t have been ours.”
A hush fell over the restaurant, and the others looked at him, startled.
“I’m sorry.” He sheepishly straightened his silverware and bent his head, lowering his voice. “I keep thinking about the last twenty-some years, what I’ve done wrong, where I messed up, what I did and didn’t do that made this happen. I let the town down. I let the church down. I let everyone down. And then there’s God, who’s supposed to be somewhere in the midst of all this.” He laughed a bit maniacally.
“Just ’cause you can’t see him don’t mean he’s not workin’.” Jack hit his cane against the metal shaft of his prosthetic leg. “Loss don’t mean the end, necessarily.”
The waitress delivered James and the other men their drinks and took their food orders, giving him a chance to take a couple of deep breaths and try to settle down.
“Jack’s right,” Mike offered. “And like I said, you’re not alone in this.”
“The church belonged to all of us.” Rich had lined his utensils up in a neat row on top of his folded and refolded napkin. “It was our church. The people’s church. Sure, you were the leader, but a leader can only do as much as the people he’s given to lead are willing to help. You can’t make people stay—or leave for that matter. Every church has a cycle of sorts. Bigger ones handle the turnover better than small ones, and we happen to be a small one.”
“There’s churches who have less than we do who do stay together, though.” James squeezed a lemon wedge into his tea.
“But they don’t have George Kernodle and his fan club. Don’t forget that,” Hank said.
James considered this. Kernodle was the banker, the head of the town council, and he knew a group of townsfolk who wanted to see Sycamore become more of a tourist attraction, a town whose brick streets and ice cream stores and coffee shops beckoned traffic off the interstate and brought in more shops and money for taxes and schools. Churches weren’t exactly helping to line the coffers of the town fund. Rumor was Charlie Reynolds and Mark Madsden from the Methodist and Baptist churches, respectively, had had their own run-ins and financial pressures, if not with Kernodle, then with one of his colleagues from the bank or town council. Kernodle had always had his eye on Sycamore Community Church in particular because it sat right on the corner of town square. Prime retail space.
“They can go to Higher Ground,” Kernodle had the audacity to say during one of their recent conversations. “You know as well as I do the loans won’t last and you’ll be in the same position you are now in six months, probably less. Let what’s left of your flock go, and let them go to Higher Ground. It’s got more—” he raised his fleshy arms in the air—“pizzazz. More of what the younger folks are looking for and what the ones with families need these days. More color. More music. More technology.”
James turned to Jack and the rest of his friends. “Do you think that’s what our faith is coming to? A bunch of consumer Christians, people who leave when the music isn’t right, when the stained-glass windows are out of style, when it’s easier to go where you
can be a number instead of someplace where you can’t help but be known and accountable?”
“In some ways, I do.” Greg stirred another packet of sugar into his tea. “But we can’t change that. We can only go forward from here.”
“Forward where?” James blurted. “I’ve never considered anything beyond Sycamore. I thought you’d have to take me out back and shoot me before you’d get me out of the pulpit. Guess Kernodle and his friends did it for you.”
“Now look, James,” Rich said. “It might be the end of this one particular church, but Charlie and Mark have already offered to take everyone in with open arms, whoever wants to come.”
“But I’m a pastor. They’ve already got their pastors. What am I supposed to do with myself here in Sycamore?”
The waitress came and passed out the baskets of burgers, tenderloins, and fries.
“You ever thought about maybe takin’ a sabbatical?” Rich stuffed a couple of fries in his mouth. “Take a few months to gather yourself, sort those kinds of questions out? Get Shelby through her senior year?”
“I thought about it. Thought about how miserable I’d be, nothin’ to look forward to in my days besides sharing a meal with you hayseeds.”
The men chuckled.
“I’ll give you a job at my store, if you need one,” Hank said. “Doing something completely different for a while might not be as bad as you think. I remember near the end of Tilly’s tenure, he gave a sermon about the desert, how God works on us most in those times we feel like we’re circling the drain—or the sand, as it was in their case.”
Be still and know.
James fought the urge to roll his eyes at the familiar voice of the Spirit in his head. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Laurie Burden’s younger son, Noble, come into the bar with his guitar in one hand and a backpack slung over one shoulder, his older brother following close behind. Not only had Noble grown up in the church, he’d played guitar for the youth group and for Sunday services, and he and Shelby used to sing together regularly for the congregation. The last time Shelby ever sang was with Noble a week before the accident. They’d organized one of their special gospel music services, where they played all the old revival hymns. The congregation—what was left of it—had loved it.