by Amy Sorrells
The trouble with being a pastor these days was that he was human, and quite possibly a worse human being than many who sat in the pews in front of him. To be sure, Jesus guaranteed they’d have trouble in this world, but James didn’t have to like it.
At least he would not have to worry about being publicly ambivalent about these things once the church closed. But in the meantime, James felt like he had a terminal disease, that everything involving the church was a countdown until it was the last time he’d do it: last lunch in the park; last prayer time in the sanctuary; last time he’d hear the clock behind his desk chime; last time he’d say, “Mornin’, Bonnie,” as she came and brought him coffee and the morning paper from Indianapolis. And then the last time he’d shut and lock the door of Sycamore Community Church.
What now, Lord?
He strained to hear a whisper of hope or peace or for something to fall from the sky and land on his head to tell him what direction to go. Verses that usually clogged his mind were absent. Not a thought, not even the thump of his heart—which he felt, along with a slight bit of nausea, each time he envisioned turning off the lights, putting his key in the old latch for the last time, then dropping it off at the bank for George Kernodle. He pulled out a package of antacids he’d been keeping regularly now in his pocket and winced at the chalky taste. He stretched, hoping to alleviate the ache in his gut and wondered if the ache wasn’t a Molly-size hole in his heart he’d never ventured near enough to fill, except with busyness and the needs of his congregants, however few.
He pulled a golden apple from the bottom of his lunch bag and took a bite. Across the park, Susan Roberts, dressed in a pencil skirt and a lightweight blouse that hugged her shape in the breeze, walked into Fleurish. He and Susan dated briefly about a year ago. He was several years her senior. She was widowed, her husband a Marine who’d died in Afghanistan. They’d gotten along fine enough. Susan had made him and Shelby dinner after church on Sundays. He took her into Lafayette on a couple of Fridays for the latest movie. She’d been more than patient with him, until the night they’d gone all the way to Indianapolis for the symphony. Afterward, he’d pulled up to the curb in front of her home to drop her off.
“Well?” she’d said, leaning against the inside of the car door with apparently no inclination to open it.
“Well, what?” He’d honestly had no idea at the time.
“Are you gonna kiss me, or what? It’s not a sin to kiss a woman who’s a widow, you know. Might do you a bit of good.”
He’d looked at her, dumbfounded, feeling like a middle schooler on a bike with no brakes—a feeling he knew, in fact, because his mama’d bought him one at a garage sale not knowing it was broken until he’d taken it to the fishing hole and landed in the lake after it had careened down the hill and he’d been unable to stop. Six stitches to his head and a cast on his arm for the rest of the summer. He rubbed the place on his forehead where the skin was forever puckered from the scar.
“James, did you hear what I said? We’ve been keeping company for months now, and I understand you are a gentleman with a reputation to maintain. But I am not without passion, and I don’t believe you are either.”
“No . . .”
“Then what are we doin’?”
He looked at Susan then, perhaps the most intently he had in the few months they’d been seeing each other. At least he thought that’s what they’d been doing, seeing each other. She was beautiful, in her early thirties with a great figure she maintained by running five miles every morning out to the old covered bridge and back. She’d tried to get him to join her, but he was well aware of his physical limitations and had refused. Her hair was the color of honey and near drove him crazy when she wore it up in a messy bun, and she had legs that could, as Jack McGee had said, launch a thousand ships. Now that he thought about it, he really didn’t know why he hadn’t kissed her yet. He and Molly had kissed all the time, and the sex—well, they’d had that every chance they could and then some. So he knew he was not necessarily a celibate sort of man. But he also realized, as he watched Susan’s breath steam up the inside of the front window that evening, that he’d buried that part of himself out on Mill Run Road in the cemetery on the hill along with Molly, that somewhere in his subconscious he’d determined that because he’d failed to keep her as Molly’s father predicted he would, he would never again deserve to keep anyone else, whether physically or matrimonially. It was as if he’d finished that volume of his life and shut it tight.
He’d put both hands on the steering wheel and watched the bugs fly into the fluorescent light of the lamp at the corner of Susan’s street. “I guess I don’t really know.”
Susan had let out a long sigh before pulling open her door and getting out. She shut it gently and walked around to his side of the car. He rolled down his window, and she leaned over and rested her elbows on the door. “You can’t let yourself die along with her, James. Shelby deserves more. Heck, you deserve more. Try listening to some of your own sermons for a change. There’s a time and season for everything.”
He turned toward her, intending to tell her he was sorry, to try to explain, but he didn’t have a chance. She grabbed his face and pulled him toward her and kissed him firmly. When she pulled back, she wiped the lipstick off his lips the way a mother would wipe jelly off her son’s face. “I’ll see you around, James.”
She turned and he watched her walk up the steps to her house, and as he did, he regretted not touching her, mostly because he knew now he’d never have the chance again.
James tossed his paper lunch bag into the rusty metal can and avoided the cracks in the sidewalk as he walked back to the church. As he approached the old brick building, he regarded it closer than he had in a long time.
When James and Molly moved there to take the position of the popular Pastor Tilly, the congregation had numbered in the three hundreds, which made for really nice potlucks and holiday celebrations and made things like a children’s ministry—rather than just a babysitting hour—possible. The building had in fact a half-dozen Sunday school rooms, and one side of the basement had a special teen room painted purple and electric blue with a red-and-white checkerboard tiled floor reminiscent of a set from Saved by the Bell. Now only one room was used for infants and fussy children, or more often, for Myrtle Worley to pat her upper lip and dry her armpits while she waited for James to finish his sermon, after which she would play her closing hymn.
James knew of this habit of Myrtle’s because Shelby had stumbled in on her one time when she’d come in to retrieve a diaper for someone with a newborn. They’d both been more than startled, because Myrtle was standing in front of the window air conditioner, her dress unzipped and hanging on her wide hips, her arms extended like Christ himself. She’d nearly had a fit of apoplexy trying to pull the dress back up when she heard Shelby come in, and for weeks neither had been able to look the other in the eye.
A mourning dove sat on the edge of the bell tower, which hadn’t worked since well before he’d arrived there. He mimicked the dove’s cry and grinned as it sang back to him again, “Who-WHOOOO-who-who-who-who.”
“Who, indeed,” James said aloud. Who was he, and who was he to become?
“Hey there, Rev.”
The voice came from the park as he was about to cross the street to the church. He turned and saw Dr. Tom Lawson coming toward him. He recognized then that Tom’s youngest son and a friend were playing in the park.
James extended his hand. “Good to see you, Tom. Nice day to spend here.”
“It is.”
Instead of letting go of his hand, Tom kept hold of it and grabbed James’s arm. “Haven’t had a chance to talk to you about the closing. Angie and I are real sorry. Is there anything we can do?”
He considered how Tom and Angie, though they hadn’t been around the church much recently, had donated so much—money, yes, but beyond that, too. Angie had led so many Sunday school programs, and both of them had been key parents for the
youth. And of course they’d supported him and Shelby after Molly’s accident. “You’ve done so much already, Tom. Heck, if it weren’t for your generosity, we’d have closed a long time ago.”
Tom watched the boys play catch in the grassy part of the park. “I’m sorry we stopped coming to services.”
“It’s alright.”
“Let me explain. The walls, they felt like they were closing in on us. Angie, especially. She needed space, someplace away from the church where she felt constantly guilty about Sara Beth.”
James’s eyes widened, then narrowed with concern. He knew that Tom’s oldest daughter, Sara Beth, had been the talk of the town a year ago when she’d given birth to a baby girl and no father had been identified. She was nearly the same age as Shelby; they’d been in many classes together over the years. Teenage pregnancy in Sycamore was not an anomaly—on the contrary, many girls brought their children to their graduation ceremonies. But it was an anomaly for one of the Lawson children. Tom was a successful cardiologist and one of the doctors who had invested the most in a new hospital in Lafayette, so he had more to spend than most, if not all, the residents of the town. Angie was a stay-at-home mom. Their house was a restored nineteenth-century beauty, a three-story Georgian brick building with original architectural detailing in crisp white, with black shutters and a wraparound porch they’d added. For generations it had been the first house anyone saw coming into Sycamore, the last house folks saw when they left, and the one house everyone envied. Tom and Angie were envied too, walking up the sidewalk to church with their six children like stairsteps following them into the sanctuary. The children sat still, unusually still compared to most of the other children in attendance.
“Did someone say something to you? To her?”
Tom turned to face James, looking hard into his eyes. “No, no, it was nothing like that. Nothing that hadn’t been happening around town already. There were—still are—the disapproving stares, rumors, the usual. But as far as church goes, we haven’t felt able to go anywhere since she had the baby.”
“You haven’t gone to church anywhere?” He thought for sure they’d been going to Higher Ground.
“Angie can’t bring herself to go. She thinks everyone knows about Sara and that everyone thinks we failed.”
“But that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Think about it, James. Where and in what church is it really okay to be broken anymore? Especially around here? We could go to Higher Ground and try to be anonymous, but that wouldn’t last long before people start asking questions. And then once they know, well . . . the staring starts all over again.”
James rubbed his temples and searched for something to say. An image of Professor Wilcox flashed through his mind, referring over and over again as he had throughout James’s training to Ezekiel 34. Pastors are supposed to go after the lost sheep of their flock, to find the ones who wandered. He’d been so wrapped up in grieving Molly, in trying in vain to pick up the pieces of his and Shelby’s lives, that he’d left his flock to fend for themselves. He was supposed to strengthen the weak and bind up the injured. He was supposed to search for the ones who were scattered. “I’m so sorry I never came looking for you all.”
“You could have come, and sure, there were times I did wonder why you didn’t at least call. But, James, you lost your wife. And besides that, no one in their right mind can blame only you for the hundreds of reasons—valid or crazy—that people have left this church over the years. Anyway, if you’d tried to convince me and Ang to come back, we wouldn’t have listened. I’m not saying we’ll never go back to church, but right now we need to shelter ourselves and get through this the best we can.”
James straightened and looked hard into Tom’s eyes. “This church might be dying and part of me along with it. But I’m still enough of a pastor to tell you that you are not supposed to go through what y’all are going through alone. Not you, not Angie, and especially not Sara Beth.”
Tom looked out at the two boys playing baseball and sighed.
Smack went the ball into one glove.
Thwack went the ball into the other.
“If only it were that simple.” Tom seemed to be measuring his words for a moment, the red-and-yellow merry-go-round spinning in front of them. “I imagine the two of us aren’t much different, really, feeling like we let down the people we love most.”
“Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start doing better.” James just wished he knew how.
17
Noble flipped Cass Dinsmore’s business card between his fingers, still red from the usual scrubbing he gave the barns and machines after milking. He pictured Dinsmore at the Onion the night they met: expensive clothes with pressed, tailored pants; hair styled with “product,” as Mama would’ve said; and those shoes. When you’ve never had fancy shoes—or any without mud and manure on them—shoes are the first thing that make an outsider stick out. He’d bet money on Dinsmore living in a suburb. The guy probably lived in one of those mansions with cool clean tile under his feet after a shower, a giant flat-screen TV hanging above a fancy trimmed-out fireplace, a three- or maybe even four-car garage. He imagined a swimming pool with manicured grass and edged sidewalks instead of his own gravel drive, which bled into a yard full of clover and dandelions.
Why shouldn’t Noble want at least a taste of that sort of lifestyle? Too many friends he’d grown up with were stuck like him: third-, fourth-, even fifth-generation farmers, destined to produce more children who grew up to be farmers, if they weren’t bought out by the big corporations or bankrupt because they couldn’t compete with the farms that used GMO seeds and got GMO yields. Others lived in town, or tried to, on minimum-wage jobs at the Walmart or the TA or the big hardware store out by the interstate. Many of them seemed happy enough, but they probably had no idea what they were missing. Didn’t know how to dream. Didn’t even consider they might have a choice.
Now here was his chance, about as likely as winning the lottery, but real just the same. To make a living playing music, he knew that’d mean selling the farm. There was no way Mama and Eustace could run it for long without him, no matter how strong Eustace was and no matter how well trained the cows were. But what would be so bad about that? Surely they’d get over it and eventually Eustace would forget about the cows; his mama would be grateful for intact countertops and clean, new carpet and easy access to the grocery. He already felt so bone tired. Not yet twenty years old, and his hips ached when he finally lay down at night. His knees cracked in the morning when he woke. How was he supposed to till the fields, bale the hay, raise cows up and put ’em down, watch over a brother who was supposed to be watching over him if nature had worked the way it was supposed to, and do all the other work their father abandoned him to, for the rest of his life? Why didn’t God birth him into a family that was more predictable, in one of those suburbs where folks got up every day and went to work and got paid time off and sick days, with a small perennial garden to tend, where the worst problems folks had were aphids on their container tomatoes and a tick on the butt of their house dog?
He caught himself imagining more and more often walking the neon-lit streets and playing the smoky bars of Nashville he’d seen on the Internet. When his fingers touched the guitar strings, when his wrist moved to the rhythm of a song, something happened within him, like the notes spelled freedom and he ached to sing out that word until his lungs burst—something milking cows day in and day out never came close to. It’s not that he was naive enough to believe music wouldn’t be work, too, that the recording life would never become repetitive and the people he’d meet there would be perfect. He’d spent his whole life working, so he wasn’t about to pretend any career would come without sweat and the digging in of a shoulder to the wheel of it. But at least there’d be music in Nashville. And more than that, it’d be his choice.
He sat on the front porch steps and kicked some of the manure off the bottoms of his boots. In front of him was a field of co
rn taller than his shoulders. The breeze blew the tassels so they looked like the waves and swells of an ocean, and he imagined casting a boat out across it as he dialed the Nashville phone number. His stomach clenched as he waited for Cass Dinsmore to pick up.
“Cass Dinsmore’s office. This is Michelle. How can I help you?” The woman on the other end of the line sounded kind, put-together, successful.
Noble cleared his throat. “Uh, hi. My name’s Noble Burden and—”
“Mr. Burden, of course. Mr. Dinsmore’s been hoping you’d call. Can I put you on hold for a moment?”
“Sure.” A couple of swallows chirped and chased each other up and through the branches of the walnut tree that stood between the house and the road. In the pasture behind him, he heard the cows lowing.
“Mr. Burden!” The man’s voice boomed on the other end of the line.
“Mr. Dinsmore?”
“Hey, I’ve been looking forward to your call. Say, what would you think about coming down to Nashville and playing for a few folks? I have a couple of bands looking for a guitarist. A couple of record labels, too.”
Noble’s stomach clenched, and he tried not to sound too excited, too desperate. “When would you want me to come?”
“How’s next week sound? Say, Thursday morning? We’ll pay for a flight from Indianapolis and for your hotel accommodations, of course, so you can fly in on Wednesday. My assistant will e-mail you about those arrangements.”
“Next Thursday?” A week and a half. He considered whether that’d give him time to settle Whitmore’s herd and find someone to help Mama and Eustace milk. That would cut it close. But who was he to argue? “That’s great. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Dinsmore. Thank you so much.”