Lead Me Home

by Amy Sorrells

  She sighed without attempting to hide her impatience. “It was the service time.”

  “The service time?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Yes,” she huffed. “Of course. Don’t pretend you don’t know what a problem the service time causes.” With obvious disdain, she looked over the top of her bifocals at him.

  James leaned forward, puzzled. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Johnson.”

  She let out an overly loud and long sigh. “It’s the Methodists.”

  “The Methodists?” He tried not to grin as he repeated the name of the church across the town square from them and which she’d nearly spat out at him. “You mentioned the service time—”

  “I know what I said,” she interrupted, rolling her eyes. “It’s the service time and the Methodists. They dismiss fifteen minutes earlier than we do.”

  She tossed a photocopy of a letter across the table at him, and when he read it, he vaguely recalled receiving it some time earlier. He and Bonnie had gotten a good chuckle about it at the time. He ran his hand through his hair. “Ah yes, I do remember this now.”

  “By the time we get to the Percolator, all the best tables—all the tables in general—they’re taken. Filled with Methodists. We either have to wait, which no one wants to do on a Sunday especially, or we have to go to the TA for brunch, which is no place for a lady or a family, and you know that.” She sat back, her puffy cheeks red beneath the smudges of pink rouge, her frown lines deeper than he’d noticed.

  “I am sorry for your inconvenience—”

  She interrupted him again. “Inconvenience! I’ll say. My gastroesophageal reflux syndrome burns like you can’t imagine if I’m late for a meal, and antacids won’t stave it off any longer. I couldn’t wait to eat, and the TA food, why that made it all worse, too. Not to mention Mike’s bowels.”

  James raised his eyebrows and pulled out a handkerchief so he could feign a cough to cover his amusement. “Mrs. Johnson—”

  “He has to move his bowels after lunch, after church. Same time every Sunday. If he doesn’t, we have to start in with the milk of magnesia, then—”

  “Mrs. Johnson. Please. I really am sorry you found the service time, which has been the same since long before I arrived, to be such a trouble for you and for Mike. What I’m most concerned about, though, is whether you’ve found another place, another church, for you and Mike to call home.”

  She sat up straighter in her chair and studied her manicured fingernails, which were painted bright red. “We have.”

  “Outstanding. Maybe the Lord used the service time problems to help you find a place that better suits you all around. He can work in all kinds of mysterious ways. Even lunchtimes.”

  James’s attempt at cheerfulness did not dampen Gertrude’s apparent resolve to make him feel as though he ought to repent of the longstanding error of his ways. He considered folks like the Bogans, the Deans, and the Lees and their complaints and reasons for leaving. Stephen Lee had gone so far as to refer to James and the rest of the parishioners who’d joined in singing the guitar music as pagans, and cited Matthew 6:7’s exhortation against “vain repetitions” in a letter announcing his family’s departure. James wasn’t sure where that left many of the great hymns, not to mention Paul and Silas, who sang on and on while imprisoned, and David, who danced half-naked around the campfire with plenty of instrumentalists standing around as witnesses.

  “He’s mysterious, alright,” Gertrude said, jolting James back to the conversation. “We’ve gone from evangelical to Baptist. Found a little church off of 52 near Colfax. There’s a place in town serves catfish and an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet on Sundays, and there’s never a crowd. It’ll do.”

  “The church or the restaurant?” The question slipped out before James could stop himself.

  Gertrude cocked her head slightly. “The restaurant. We’re home by one fifteen every Sunday now and back to feeling regular.”

  “That’s great to hear. Really great.” James stifled another laugh as he extended a hand toward Gertrude. “Is there anything else I can help you with, anything else you’d like to say about the church closing?”

  “If you should find a way to stay open or reopen, consider that start time for the services. Could you do that for me?”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to doubt, Reverend. The Lord works in mysterious ways, remember?”

  21

  Eustace was not in his bed when Noble woke up the next morning at 4:15 a.m. He pulled on his work boots and a dingy white T-shirt from the wash pile and headed toward the barn, where he hoped Eustace would be feeding Pecan and the other calves. The cows lay in the fields, shadowy and still in the darkness.

  He slid open the door to the barn and was grateful to see that Eustace was there with Dolly’s calf, Pecan, who was sucking on the oversize bottle as if it was the last one she’d get in her life. Pecan nosed frantically against the bottle nipple, legs knobby and hip bones jutting up from her tiny hindquarters, all angles and awkward. Thankfully, she’d avoided the scours and any other complications from the traumatic birth, and she had been gaining weight nicely.

  Relieved by Eustace’s whereabouts, Noble went out to the front loader and drove it down the gravel road to where the hay was stored to pick up the usual load for the morning milking. At the sound of the engine turning over, he knew the cows would start making their way in from the pasture, and sure enough, by the time he came back, nearly all of them were waiting for him at the trough, into which he shook the hay. Back inside, he turned on the radio, got the bucket of lime out, and began spreading it on the surfaces of the milking parlor. He slid open the door to Eustace’s homemade corral and the first eight cows loped into the room.

  “I’m countin’ on you to give me a break this morning, ladies.” He shoved Florence, who was balking, stubborn, into the first stall and shut the stanchions around her neck. “I’d like to be done before it’s time for your second milking.”

  Well, she seemed all right by dawn’s early light

  Though she looked a little worried and weak

  “A little Martina McBride for your listening pleasure.” He playfully slapped the hindquarters of the cow named Pearl as she moseyed into her stall.

  He closed the stanchions around the necks of Pearl and the other six cows, threw some clumps of alfalfa into the concrete trough in front of them, and turned on the pulsator.

  Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing

  The claws with teat cups hung above each stall, and Noble pulled them down, one by one, and attached the cows.

  Let the whole world know that today

  Is a day of reckoning

  Milk flowed and swirled through the claw on its way up and through the rest of the system to the milk tank in the next room.

  Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong

  Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay

  It’s Independence Day.

  He repeated the process eight times until all the cows had been milked, while in the next room Eustace continued feeding the babies. Weaning a calf from its mother was hard on all of them. They had to be separated soon after birth so that the calf wouldn’t get used to sucking on the mother’s teats and then wind up sucking the ears off other calves in her absence. The mother cow had to have a time to grieve the loss of her calf, too. Once, they’d driven the Gator to the back field where a calf had been born early the night before. After placing the calf in the back of the Gator and pulling away, the mother ran after them. Her instinct and determination to stay with her calf had moved even Noble to tears. There were times like that in the tediousness of the job that nature surprised and captivated him—the perfection of the life cycles, the seasons, the rainfall.

  Mama used to run after Eustace’s school bus, too, waving until they could no longer see the bus, while tears ran down her face. On the first day of sixth grade, Noble got to ride the
same bus as Eustace for the first time. Noble finally understood Mama’s tears.

  Since the junior high and high school shared the same campus, the middle schoolers rode the bus with the high schoolers. The upperclassmen looked enormous to Noble, football players in jerseys for game day, their shoulders so broad it seemed at the time they already wore their game pads. And since he and Eustace had been in separate schools for a few years, Noble wasn’t aware of the gauntlet of shame the ride was for his older brother.

  “Hain’t you learned to talk yet, Euuuuuuustace?”

  Noble, who sat on the aisle, could smell the scent of cigarettes on Ricky Richard’s breath as he leaned up from the seat behind them and drawled into Eustace’s ear. Eustace pressed his face against the cool glass window and kept still.

  “You know they can’t fix stuuuupid. So why do you even come to school, reeeee-tard?”

  A few of Ricky’s buddies nearby chuckled while girls in the seats around them shifted uncomfortably and looked away. Ricky flicked Eustace on the back of his head and Eustace still didn’t move.

  Noble felt the heat of shame and anger rise within him. He’d been too young, too naive, perhaps, before that, to feel ashamed of his brother’s differences or to realize others noticed them. Noble had looked up to Eustace, his stacks of books, the way he took time to play chess with him when Dad never did, all his butterfly collections and equipment. He’d been aware that Eustace was different, but he didn’t realize shame could be associated with that, that somehow those differences would make Noble feel like he needed to hide the fact they were related or avoid Eustace when his school friends came around. So on this day, Ricky set off a powerful instinct that kicked in an anger that made Noble forget the fact that he was half Ricky’s size.

  Noble turned around in his seat and stared at Ricky, the boy’s face pockmarked and splotchy from acne, and a glop of something—syrup, maybe—on his T-shirt. He could see the veins in Ricky’s muscular arms, the stubble of a mustache above his top, sneering lip, the mean in his gray eyes.

  “What are you looking at, punk?” Ricky gibed.

  A chorus of laughter erupted from Ricky’s friends.

  The girls around them stared, eyes wide with dread.

  “Not much, donkey breath,” Noble said.

  “What did you call me?” Fury filled Ricky’s face, making his acne look ten times worse.

  “Donkey. Breath. I could add pizza face, scumbag, jerk wad, and I could spell all those words out for you too if you need me to.”

  Ricky’s face turned rigid and a strange shade of purple and he was silent as his posse continued to laugh even harder, almost as if they were laughing at Ricky now instead of for him. Anger and feelings of protection over his brother overshadowed any fear Noble might’ve felt.

  Then it happened.

  Ricky leaned forward and Noble pounded his sixth-grade fist square into the center of the sophomore’s nose. Ricky crumpled into a ball and writhed with pain.

  “You broke my nose! You little punk! You broke it!” Ricky sat up, his hands full of blood, which continued to pour out his nose. Noble sat back on his haunches and stared as the bus pulled into the school lot. He heard the bus driver talking into the walkie-talkie, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a teacher and the principal coming toward the bus.

  Mama said nothing to him on the way home, just patted him on the leg and turned up Waylon Jennings on the radio. She didn’t tell their father. She didn’t cry anymore at the bus stop. Ricky never bothered Eustace again.

  And Noble had never punched anyone again.

  But that was about to change.

  22

  Lunchtime at the Tractor Supply was always busy. Many farmers, like Noble, finished their morning chores and came into town for lunch and market talk and whatever needed replaced or fixed. Noble was there because a belt on one of the tractors broke, and he wanted to get some more calf starter before they got too low. Besides that, he wanted to see Shelby, to find a reason to tell her about Nashville.

  Shelby was working the cash register, which was right in front of the entrance, so Noble couldn’t avoid her, and she couldn’t avoid him.

  “Tough to be stuck inside on a nice day like this, Shelby?” He tipped his Purdue cap at her as he and Eustace passed.

  “Hey, Noble. Eustace.” She smiled slightly.

  “Been waiting on some calf starter to come in. You know if it has yet?” He asked this knowing for sure she wouldn’t know since his buddy Brock was in charge of special orders and refilling stock when it ran out. But it gave him something to talk to her about, a reason to linger an extra moment.

  “No idea. Ask Brock. He’s back there.” She nodded toward the back of the store without looking up at them again.

  “Thanks.” He left Eustace in his favorite section in the front of the store with all the miniature trucks and plastic animals. Noble pushed a cart toward the back of the store, stopping to pick up a tractor belt and look at the display of porch swings. He ran his hand along the fresh, smooth pine and wished there was a way to bring one home for Mama. Hers was chipped and showed signs of rotting and would have to be taken down or replaced soon.

  The swing was Mama’s favorite spot. He recalled sipping Coke out of a bottle and sitting next to her as they waited for Eustace’s bus to come over the hill on spring and fall afternoons. Maybe he could get a couple extra gigs at the Onion or someone would hire him to play in Lebanon or West Lafayette, especially with students returning to Purdue and looking for hangout venues with live music. He could hope. And he could see what Cass Dinsmore had to say in Nashville.

  “How’s the music, Noble?” Brock asked when he found him in the stockroom. “Heard y’all raised the roof at the church last Sunday. Word is the Baptists are jealous.”

  He and Brock were the same age and had been friends since preschool. Brock hadn’t gone to college either, mostly because he hadn’t wanted to go into debt, but also because he had a wife already—his high school sweetheart, Tiffany—and both of them were content to stare into each other’s eyes in Sycamore the rest of their lives.

  “Whatever. It was a favor, on account of their closing. It was nice, though. I’d sorta forgot how it felt to be in church.”

  “Ain’t so bad, is it?”

  He knew Tiffany never let Brock miss a Sunday service at the Methodist church. Brock typed a few things into the computer, then led Noble outside to where a new shipment of calf starter sat on pallets still wrapped in plastic.

  “I’m going to Nashville next week.”

  “Brown County? I love that place.”

  “No, Nashville, Tennessee.”

  Brock stopped what he was doing and eyed Noble. “You called him? That guy you told me about?”

  “Yep.” Noble felt himself stand taller. “He wants me to play for some of his friends. Record-label friends.”

  “Yeeee-awww! You’re kiddin’ me!” Brock came around from behind the computer and high-fived and embraced Noble.

  “What’s goin’ on back here?” Shelby leaned against the doorframe of the stockroom.

  Noble had noticed the way Shelby was dressed—or not dressed, really—when they’d arrived, leggings and a tight T-shirt so short her abdomen showed, and in her navel, a little silver piercing with a crystal stud that glinted when she moved.

  “Noble’s goin’ to Nashville!” Brock blurted.

  Shelby crossed her arms and frowned. “Yeah? What’s in Nashville?”

  “Agents and record labels, evidently,” Brock said.

  “After you left the Onion with Cade the other night . . . turns out a scouter was there . . .” Noble felt himself flush and fumble for words as he watched a look of disapproval come over Shelby’s face. He knew Nashville had been a dream of hers at one time. Maybe it still was. “They’re paying for me to come down and play.”

  “Well, ain’t that just fine, Noble. Fine for you.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the front of the store, where Eustace was
fiddling with miniature backhoes and combines.

  “Nothin’s even happened yet. Probably nothin’ will,” Noble offered.

  “Not like you ever cared much about what happens around here in Sycamore. Not like anyone else ever leaves.”

  He coulda sworn he saw tears beginning to puddle in the bottoms of her eyes before she turned and left abruptly. Why did she care what he did? She’d made a point to make sure he knew she hadn’t cared for a while now. Besides that, she had Cade.

  “Still got it bad for Shelby, eh?”

  Noble whipped his head toward Brock.

  “What, man?” Brock said. “It’s not like it ain’t obvious or anything. Been obvious since she was in kindergarten.”

  “You know she’s hardly talked to me since her mama died.”

  “I know she’s hardly talked to anybody—least of all her old friends—since her mama died. Tiffany said she pushed all her old girlfriends away months ago. She’s hurtin’, Noble.”

  “We all got somethin’ to hurt over.” He handed Brock his bank card. “If I can do something to change my life, to get us all outta this town, don’t you think I should?”

  His normally vociferous friend frowned, appearing to measure his words. “I’m thrilled for you, for Nashville and all. Really. But sometimes . . . well, sometimes leaving ain’t the answer for our pain. Sometimes the dreams God has for us, the biggest difference we can make in the world is right where we are.”

  Noble threw the bags of calf starter and the tractor belt back in his cart. “Don’t see what kind of difference I can make turning the same dirt and shooing the same cows around for the next fifty years. And I don’t see why it matters to her.”

  Up front, Noble approached the register where Shelby stood. Her back was pressed against the dividing wall behind her as a man he didn’t immediately recognize leaned over the counter in a way that caused Noble to bristle.

  Whoever it was, was clearly ogling her, and he felt the urge to grab one of the John Deere fleece throws from the nearby display and wrap it around her.