The Godsend of River Grove

by Rob Summers

Chapter 4 The Singles Group

  Hila unlocked the church filing cabinet and opened the third drawer. It supposedly held only minutes of committee and board meetings but actually contained, in addition to those, everything from children’s crayon drawings to a jar of coffee creamer. She located the file marked ‘Board 98’ and flipped through it until she found the minutes for Monday, October 12, the same that she had already located on disk. As had been the case with the disk files, these minutes were followed by those of November 2. She exhaled with frustration. Her previous evening’s experience at the church youth meeting had hardly lessened her motivation to do something to stop Fulborne.

  She removed the well-crumpled November minutes, three sheets stapled together, and concentrated on a handwritten note across the top. ‘25th w/Steve’ was written in Mary Kirtle’s handwriting. She knew there had been a meeting that Sunday. Had Steve taken away the minutes? Perhaps into his office?

  Pastor Wurz left his office at lunch, and Hila, waiting until he was gone, slipped in and began going through his desk drawers. Sermon notes. Magazines. Office supplies. The coffee maker behind her hummed and a wall clock ticked. In fifteen minutes she had finished searching everything within the desk’s drawers and went to work, hopelessly, on its cluttered top. From under a pile of books she extracted a bulging manila folder the tab of which was hand lettered ‘MISC.’ The topmost paper within was months old. She flipped to the back and found that the last sheet, a letter from the board to Pastor Steve, was actually dated to about the time he had begun at the church—more than two years ago!

  Only now did she feel how immensely important this was to her, so much so that she hesitated to search the folder farther, for fear of a crushing disappointment. By an impulse she looked around the room, as if to remember, permanently, the angle of the light coming in the window, the color of the carpet, the one book on the bookshelf that was thrust in binding down. She said an inward prayer and flipped toward the front of the folder, page by page. In less than a minute she came to a handwritten sheet torn from a spiral bound notebook. It began ‘Oct. 25, 98 board minutes.’ Putting the sheet aside, she replaced the folder and restacked the books on it. She returned to her office, took up her purse, and put the notebook sheet inside it. Then she went to lunch.

  Hila Grant was not timid. She had always had a self-confidence so complete that she scarcely understood the normal fears and worries of others. Her answer to a problem, any problem, was either to ignore it or to make some bold move to solve it. Friends were often struck by her callousness towards those who questioned or opposed her. She seemed not only to have no sympathy for their feelings but not even to fear any retaliation. She was a self-sufficient person, feline in her inner satisfaction and repose; and this was tempered only by her devotion to her Lord.

  Now she drove to a local Subway shop and, seated in a booth, first opened her sandwich wrapper and took a bite, and then took out the minutes and, smoothing the sheet out on the table top, began to read. She was seated where anyone might have walked up to her and looked over her shoulder. Someone observing her face would have seen a slight smile succeeded by complete concentration.

  She did not recognize the handwriting but took it to be that of one of the board members. The date was followed by a list of those present: Pastor Steven Wurz, O. Fulborne, A. Fontaine, N. Klaas, B. Hoplinger, T. Bissell, C. Torey, G. Thorne.

  Special meeting, [it went on] to discuss allegations concerning elder Oliver Fulborne. Pastor Wurz distributed copies of a page from O. Fulborne’s diary, dated April 14th of this year. Attention was called to the words “I can do what for other men would be called sin and yet for me it is not sin.” Etc.

  Hila bit off a trailing edge of lettuce and thought curses upon that ‘Etc.’ Why not write it all out? Two years previously her cousin Cora had communicated to Hila the full quotation, which Hila had memorized; but she wanted everyone in the world to have it memorized.

  Pastor Wurz emphasized that he was distributing copies only because the diary had already been out of O. Fulborne’s hands and may have been seen by several people, including Cora Pelham, before being returned to O. Fulborne by the police. Also, someone copied one or more pages before the diary was returned. Asked if board wanted response to be announced at pulpit tonight.

  Board members asked for O. Fulborne to address himself to. O. said he would seek legal action against Cora P. and that the board should not discuss. B. Hoplinger said he agreed with Pastor that church gossip should be addressed. Also that the words could be read as ref. to God’s grace, Christian freedom, etc. O said that was right. Some discussion of the wording of handout followed. A. Fontaine said O had never preached/taught anything out of line and board agreed. Pastor W. said he was prepared to stand by O and take the flak. Wanted suggestions on what he should say to the congregation. T. Bissell & G. Thorne said not to say anything. By Hoplinger said be pre-emptive and

  Hila turned the sheet over and tensed. There were not enough words left to cover the meeting that had taken place after the service.

  say O had sufficiently explained what he meant to prove the wording was innocent. Came down hard on thief or thieves of diary. Steve said time almost up before service. Apologies all around to O. Fulborne. Meeting adjourned 6:55 pm

  Respectfully, Al Fontaine

  Hila slowly put the paper away in her purse. This was not what she wanted, and her disappointment was sharp. She knew now that she should have searched the whole ‘MISC’ folder in order to find the minutes of the resumed meeting. She determined to do so as soon as possible. However, she would not return to the office for her short workday was over. She would try again in the morning.

  Bill came over in the late afternoon and, with the somewhat puzzled aid of Eddie and Crystal, they continued the story of Amelia’s rescue of Sir Miff her knight. By this time, Sir Bullson, Sir Alfonzo, and Lord Scarvell had joined the lady, and all were gathered at twilight just outside the moat of Gothloam, Gorbnal’s dark castle. And from out of the high and narrow windows of the colossal wall facing them crawled the hoar-dragons of Gothloam, winged, white, and cruel.

  As Hila tried to draw one of the dragons, it gradually was made clear to the kids that many more drawings of Bafilia and the Bafilians already existed, some being Bill and Hila’s earliest childhood attempts. Bill promised to bring other pictures next time.

  The phone rang as the group was breaking up, and Hila answered.

  “Hila, this is Jane Burson. I’m calling around to remind people of the church singles meeting tonight at seven. You could become a regular now that you’re staying at home. It’ll be fun, why don’t you come?”

  “What are they doing tonight?” Hila asked in a businesslike voice.

  “I—I don’t know. Usually we have pizza and talk and maybe watch a video. Last month we all went to Turkey Run for a Sunday afternoon.”

  Hila remembered that she wanted to appear to fit in, and also that Evan Marklestan might be there.

  “OK, where is it?”

  “Where?”

  “Yes, I mean at the church?”

  “No, it’s not at the church,” Jane said somewhat sharply, as if Hila had made some sort of mistake. “It’s at Evan Marklestan’s house.”

  Hila smiled. “He seems to do quite a lot.”

  Jane, who did far more than Evan, had no response to that. “I’ll see you there, then?”

  “Yes, but Jane, where is Evan’s house?”

  “You’ve never been there?”

  “Now you know I’ve been in Indianapolis.”

  “Of course, but I thought maybe you’d been to his place sometime. Would you rather I’d pick you up and we’d go together?”

  “I’d prefer that to knocking on doors at random,” Hila said. “Yes, please.”

  “OK, I’ll be by at six forty-five. Bye.”

  Every inch of Evan’s shabby little house was open to his guests,
and his backyard was being used for outdoor grilling of hamburgers and hotdogs. Only his bedroom was air-conditioned, with a small window unit, and so most of the house was ventilated by screen windows and two squeaking fans. The furniture was of the rough-and-ready sort typical of poor bachelor’s residences, including bookshelves made of stacked concrete blocks with boards laid horizontally between. A few cats were on the premises, and in the backyard a boombox was playing too loudly.

  Jane Burson entered the house with the casualness of someone well-accustomed to the premises and trotted right through to the backyard with the announced intention of helping with the cooking. Hila remained in the nearly unfurnished living room, talking politely with a young woman who had met them at the door; and when this person had drifted away, moving over to read the bindings of Evan’s books. They were mostly theological, she found, with the occasional novel or cartoon collection. She noted a heavy hardback entitled The Church Militant and written by an Arnold L. Thompson—almost certainly the book that Evan had once shown to her brother—and removing it from the shelf, looked into it. Just then three others drifted into the room from the back of the house, but Hila paid them no attention.

  Copyright 1979. Dedicated to his wife. A long introduction by the author, numbered with lower case Roman numerals. Someone had underlined the words, “revived appreciation of the Church’s place, not as mediator between God and man, but as the milieu in which they meet,” and farther down the same page, “for it is as a body that the Church functions, lives and grows; and ‘every part’ implies the mature divisions of ministry, and indeed of that earthly hierarchy established so early in our era.” She frowned, not with puzzlement but with discouragement and disagreement.

  “Hi there, Hila. Looks like deep stuff—huh!”

  She looked up. It was a man a few years older than herself, a blushing, wide-grinned, nervous man dressed, in the August heat, in creased slacks and a long-sleeved dress shirt with the top button buttoned. It was Richard Ozark, whom her mother wanted her to marry.

  “Long time no see,” he said.

  “Hello, Richard.” He was the sort of man that no one ever called Rich, always Richard. She closed the book and put it away.

  “If you like, I’ll make up a hamburger for you,” he offered. “I mean, I think they’re about done now with cooking them, I mean grilling them. Of course it’s grilling. Or would you like a hotdog better? Whatever you want—huh!”

  The huh at the end of the sentence was a habit with Richard and either represented emphasis or a truncated nervous laugh; Hila had never been able to tell which.

  “Make it a hamburger with lettuce and mayonnaise,” she said. “How’s life at the art supply store?”

  He grinned even wider and tried to find something to do with his hands. “Oh, same old, same old! We reorganized all the brushes and nibs today. It was quite a big job, took all day. Did you know I’m day manager now? They made me day manager last fall. Say, and I saw you with your parents in church but didn’t have a chance to talk to you. I wanted to welcome you back to the community—huh!”

  Hila looked back at him expressionlessly.

  “So anyway, I’m glad to see you’re back, and I hope you’ll stop in and see me at the store. We have, uh, a sale this week. Of course we always have something on sale. You wouldn’t believe how many sales we have to put up and take down. So if you need any art supplies just come in and ask for me. But you don’t need any, do you?”

  “I might,” she said truthfully, thinking of drawings of beings from Bafilia. “But Richard?”

  “Yes?”

  “My hamburger? Lettuce and mayonnaise, thank you.”

  Richard nodded and hastened to the backyard. She turned to the other two people who had entered the room, a man and woman. They had ignored Hila and Richard for they were carrying on a quiet argument. The woman, Hila saw with amusement, was dressed in stretch pants and a tight, flowered summer top designed to show off the bustline. She wore heavy mascara and had a rose tattooed on her shoulder. Her purse was in her hand, and she was edging toward the door.

  “You didn’t tell me it was no church group.”

  “Joanne….” He was a tall, handsome young man in denim, with a well trimmed beard and a fifty dollar smile.

  “Sorry, I’m really sorry. You shoulda told me. I can’t relax at a party where I gotta watch every word I say and not smoke except outside. And I don’t know nothin’ about the Bible.” She put on sunglasses with yellow and black striped rims. “I don’t know what to say in a Bible study.”

  Hila drifted out of the room but paused beyond the open doorway, smiling to herself.

  “They wouldn’t ask you nothin’,” said the man. “These Bible studies are just— just to make it all legitimate, you know, ’cause they have to ’cause it’s a church group. It ain’t anything. When they ask me anything, I just B.S. ’em. Like somebody asked once what’s the proper attitude to have about Jesus coming back, and I just said, ‘The same as He said in the gospels,’ and somebody else picked up on that and pretty soon they was all quotin’ and discussin’ like hell, and they all thought I must really know my Bible. It’s easy.”

  “For you.”

  “Come on, Joanne.”

  “I’ll meet you at Wojak’s later.”

  “And how am I supposed to get there?”

  “You want me to come back and pick you up?”

  “And you half sloshed by then? That’s a friggin’ stupid question.”

  “Well, I guess I’m just stupid. What do you want me to do?” Car keys jingled.

  “Go on, I’ll get a ride,” he said angrily.

  “Suit yourself.” The screen door slammed.

  Hila glided through a TV room, the kitchen, and out onto a small back porch. Most of the singles were in the fenced yard, which contained a gas grill, a picnic table crammed with food and soft drinks, and a score of folding lawn chairs. The boombox was balanced on the porch rail and blaring a song comparing Christ’s love to water in the desert.

  The men and women, in their twenties and thirties, well-groomed and white, were in intense, happy conversations. Some carried Bibles and some of these were contained in zippered covers with cross or fish symbols on the outside. Since Jane had not mentioned Bible study as a part of the evening, Hila had brought no Bible.

  She spotted Jane, who was helping Evan at the grill, or at any rate looking ready to help with a spray bottle of water. Richard Ozark too was hovering nearby, watching the grilling as if to speed it up. Exchanging greetings with others, she crossed the lawn to near these three.

  She playfully punched Jane in the arm. “Woman, you didn’t tell me there’s a Bible study.”

  “Ouch! Didn’t I? I thought I did.”

  “I’m sorry, Hila,” Richard said. “They’re not ready yet.”

  “I see that. It’s all right. I’ll get my own when they’re done.”

  “I did get a chair for you.”

  “I’ll find my own chair, thank you.”

  Richard wilted slightly.

  “Plate,” Evan said.

  Jane scooped up a platter from the grill’s side shelf and held it near as Evan popped a cooked burger onto it, and then another. This brought them close together, and for one moment Hila saw Jane glance up at the side of Evan’s head with wide eyes and parted lips. It was a look that transformed Hila’s assessment of the situation, a look, she felt sure, of devotion. She instantly calculated that any attention she might pay to Evan Marklestan would arouse Jane’s bitter and undying hatred. Hila had been through this sort of thing before.

  A few minutes later, sitting on one of the lawn chairs and with a paper plate on her lap, she was still considering this, even while chatting with the other singles, most of whom she knew passingly. Jane, she observed, stuck by Evan till everyone had been served, and when he finally sat down with a plate, settled herself beside him. Before long the tal
l man whose girlfriend had left the house crossed the yard and, moving a lawn chair near Hila, sat down. He introduced himself as Todd Mankewisz.

  Todd decided to settle in at the party. In his own mind he called it a party despite the lack of beer. He filled his paper plate and, by his usual custom, took a seat by the best looking woman. The Grants’ blond-haired daughter had been on his mind since she had been introduced in church two days earlier. He had hoped she would be at this singles meeting even though he had come with someone else. But now with Joanne on her way to the bar, things were working out perfectly. He started a conversation.

  “You’re Jeff Mankewisz’s brother?” she asked presently. “So that makes you related in a way to the Fulborne family.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said, “because Jeff’s wife Ann is Ollie and Betty’s daughter. I’m over at their place all the time.”

  “You visit Ollie and Betty?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Todd wondered if this blonde was hinting that his background was not exactly Christian. That was certainly true, but he was trying to patch it up. He wanted to smooth over her doubts but found it unexpectedly difficult to express himself. Those beautiful gray eyes disconcerted him. “Yeah, I’m actually a deacon at the church, I don’t know if you knew. I got right with the Lord a while back, you know, back on the old straight and narrow. Ollie helped me a lot with that. I got a real strong will to do what’s right when somebody points me in the right direction. I’m back studyin’ the Bible, goin’ to church every week.” This all seemed a little lame, he thought, but he kept smiling.

  “And how about the woman you came with tonight?” she asked. “How’s she doing?”

  Todd wondered how much of his conversation with Joanne she had overheard. Probably not much. He allowed his face to cloud. “Joanne’s an old friend of mine who hasn’t seen the light yet. That’s a prayer request. I’m trying to talk to her about Jesus.”

  The blonde munched her hamburger and looked only faintly interested. “I’ll get her over to see Ollie one of these days,” he continued. “You know, I didn’t used to like him, but when I come here to Viola early this year after my wife done divorced me, I didn’t have a dollar; and he helped me like I was his son. I never felt such love from a human being. He helped me get my job at the refinery and talked the church into makin’ me a deacon.” She was looking right through him, as if he were not speaking English. “But the main thing was what he taught me about God. Ollie laid it all out for me like I never heard it before. He’s got wisdom, that’s for sure.”

  “You must be very grateful,” she said evenly.

  “You bet I am!” Todd turned up the smile. “Not just for the job but for my soul. I’m a new creation, and it never felt so good.”

  “So Ollie has connections at the refinery?”

  “Yeah, some cousin of his, and he got ’em to take me on for a sort of probation. I just got—”

  “Why a probation?” she asked.

  “Well, you know, I’m still payin’ for the way I used to live. I got three more weeks and then they’ll make my job permanent.”

  This answer, if not acceptable to her, at least drew forth no more questions. Todd felt ready to get to the point. “From now on I gotta be careful of the company I keep. So what I need is more Christians as friends instead of my old pals who I used to go to bars with and all that sort of thing. But it’s not easy, ya know. People are naturally distrustful. But you just ask my brother how I’ve changed, or ask Annie.”

  “Excuse me,” someone said.

  They both looked up to find Richard Ozark hovering over them. “I, uh, wondered if I could get you anything, Hila? Maybe a cupcake?”

  “Yes, I’ll have one, thank you.”

  “I’ll be right back then—huh!”

  He moved off, and Todd, who had mentally held his place, said, “Just ask them. They seen me go forward to the altar in June and rededicate myself to the Lord. Praise God, the whole church seen me.”

  Still no reaction to speak of. Todd decided to take this as shyness. He had encountered that before: girls who had spoken in monosyllables but who had offered no resistance when asked on a date, not even when the date was to be just the two of them at his house.

  “But let’s talk about you,” he said. “Everyone knows you just come back from Indianapolis, so you left your friends behind. We’re in the same boat in a way. Kinda lonely. You with your parents most evenings?” She looked at him as if he were a half-crushed fly on a tablecloth. “Because there’s a movie they’re gonna show at church Thursday night and—”

  “I’m going to Indy Thursday night,” she broke in.

  “Oh, really? You have a boyfriend then?”

  “I have a date,” she said.

  Richard had appeared with the cupcake and now asked if she needed anything else. She dismissed him and began to peel back the cupcake paper. Todd knew that this was going badly but did not feel up to his usual charming performance. She unnerved him. God, even her hands were beautiful!

  “I hope he appreciates you,” he said, referring to her Indianapolis boyfriend. This came out in a changed voice that was simply his genuine manner.

  “He does.”

  “He have a job there? Make good money?”

  “I don’t discuss him.”

  Todd absorbed this and decided to leave the field. He shifted in his chair in a way that announced his intention of getting up. “You’re going to pray for me, aren’t you?” She stared at him without a trace of a nod. “Hmm?”

  “Ask me again in three weeks,” she said and returned to her cupcake.

  Todd’s smile froze. She had seen right through him. Still he could not let those around him know that. He rose. “Nice talking to you. I think I’ll just get me some more to eat before the Bible study.” He strode off on legs a little less steady than they had been ten minutes previously.

  “Let’s open to Mark, third chapter,” Evan said, and book leaves fluttered around the circle of singles in his living room. Two of them had occupied the only chairs in the room, and the rest lounged on the threadbare carpet. The singing, accompanied by acoustic guitar, was over, and so were the prayer requests and prayers. As usual, Evan had not been at ease with the prayer time, which had consisted of twenty minutes of ‘sharing’ of requests followed by less than five of prayer. Somehow it seemed to him that those numbers should be reversed, but everyone except himself seemed to like talking about what they wished prayed for more than they liked praying. The singing had been fun as usual, but he had noticed that newcomer Hila Grant had not joined in, or at least not loudly enough to be heard. He hoped she was enjoying herself, although some of the guys had been hitting on her. He wanted her to come back. Evan wanted every visitor to come back, but he particularly wanted Hila. He did not at that moment fully think through the proposition that he wanted her to come back so as to get to know her, find love, and marry her. All he said to himself was ‘get to know her.’ Nevertheless, the full formula was latent. One did not meet a Hila Grant every day. And though he had so far found her personality a little chilly, he knew so little about her that he was easily able to explain this away and supply her with a fantasy disposition of much sweetness and holiness. Now it was simply up to her to match his daydreams. Evan smiled at himself and carried on, explaining to the group about the man with the withered hand in the synagogue. He tried not to look toward Hila for fear of looking that way too much. Then he wondered if anyone had noticed that he was avoiding looking at her. He smiled at himself again.

  “Why do you suppose Jesus brought the man with the withered hand up front before he healed him?” he asked.

  Jane Burson, who had been answering almost all the questions, hurried to get in first on this one as well. “So everyone could see the healing,” she said.

  “Well, yes, but I mean why did He want everyone to see?”

  “To
glorify God,” Jane said.

  Evan could not argue with this, but it was not the direction he wanted to steer the discussion. “Yes, I’m sure that’s so. But perhaps there was more than one reason. What else might it have been?” He looked around the circle to indicate that he expected a response from someone besides Jane.

  “To show the Pharisees,” Jane put in quickly.

  Evan pretended not to hear this. “Carl, what do you think the Pharisees expected Jesus to do, I mean instead of marching the man up front?”

  Carl said he did not know. Neither did Richard Ozark.

  “Hila?”

  “If I had been in Jesus’ place,” Hila said, “I would have asked the man with the withered hand to follow me around to some back alley where no one was watching. Then I could have both healed him and stayed out of trouble with the Pharisees.”

  Todd Mankewisz, who had seated himself beside Hila and was sharing his Bible with her, now laughed. “Yeah, that’s right. Keep the old nose clean.”

  “So what are you saying, Hila?”

  “I mean that Jesus was not going to run away from anyone’s bad opinion. If the Pharisees thought it was illegal to heal on the Sabbath, then they were just wrong, and Jesus was ready to look them in the eye and defy them.”

  “Good observation,” Evan said. “Jesus was not going to sneak around in any circumstances.”

  As soon as he had said this, he noticed first that Jane Burson was looking glum but also that Hila looked a bit pained as well. Jane, he knew, had simply wanted to look good to him and was unhappy that her answers had been second best to Hila’s. But what was Hila’s problem?

  “That is what you meant?” he asked Hila.

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly, “we do find roundabout ways to serve God, don’t we? But Jesus didn’t.”

  The study went on, and Hila brightened presently, putting in a word from time to time. Toward the end, Evan decided to try to bring Todd Mankewisz into the discussion.

  “Todd, Jesus called the disciples his mothers and brothers. What do you think he meant by that?”

  Todd smiled. “Oh, he must’ve meant the same as what He said in some other scriptures. He was always saying that. Isn’t that right, Jane?”

  Jane concentrated for a moment. “He said in John 15 that the disciples were his brothers, or maybe He said friends.”

  Someone looked this up and found that Jesus had called the disciples his friends.

  “The point is,” someone said helpfully, “that the people closest to Jesus were the ones who had spiritual ties to Him.”

  “Right, that’s just what I meant,” Todd said happily.

  Evan felt that Todd had meant nothing of the kind and in fact had allowed others to answer; but he let it pass.

  The group closed the study in prayer, socialized for a half hour or so afterward, and slowly began to disperse. Since Jane was her ride, Hila had little choice but to stay and help clean up when Jane announced that she was going to do so. By the time they had finished with the backyard, the house was nearly emptied of singles. Todd Mankewisz was still there however, and Hila remembered that he needed a ride to Wojak’s Tavern and his Joanne. Apparently, he had been talking to Evan about this, or some expurgated version of it.

  “Jane,” Evan said, “could you take Todd over to where a friend of his lives before you go home? I would, but the old Volvo is having problems again with the starter.”

  Jane was happy enough to do anything Evan asked. Before long the three of them were on Main Street in Jane’s Mazda, and Todd kept the conversation going with plenty of comments about himself.

  After a few blocks, Hila spoke up brightly, addressing Todd, who was alone in the back seat. “You’ve gone pretty heavy on the Bible study lately, you told me. I just wondered if you could clear something up for me?” Todd was silent. “What it is, is this: what should be our attitude about Jesus coming back? Hum? No, Jane, let Todd answer. I want to hear what he has to tell us.”

  After a long silence, Todd mumbled, “That we should do what He said in the gospels.”

  “What did He say? Hang on, Jane, just a minute. What did Jesus say, Todd?”

  After a moment, even in the moving car they could hear Todd’s breathing. “Turn right on Eighteenth street,” he said, “and let me off after two blocks.”

  They rode in silence, turning right at Eighteenth where Wojak’s tavern stood. Then Todd directed Jane to a darkened house. “My friend won’t be home for a while, but I’ve got a key,” he said getting out. “Just drive on, I’m fine.”

  Jane drove on down the block. “What did you ask him that for?” she said. “He didn’t like it that you asked him that.”

  “I was just teasing him,” Hila said.

  “Well, I don’t know why. I noticed he kept sitting by you tonight. He likes you.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  Jane raised her eyebrows. “Why not? Don’t you know he rededicated himself to the Lord? He has a good job now too.” Hila understood that the reference to his job meant that he could support a wife. “Is it that he’s been divorced? But she’s in Wisconsin.”

  “It’s that he goes to bars.”

  “He does not! Not anymore.”

  “No, really? Try going around the block and pass Wojak’s and tell me what you see.” This was irresistible to Jane, who circled back to Main Street and, where she would ordinarily have turned left, turned right. “Take it slow and watch,” Hila said. “No, there he is! Speed up before he gets in the door.”

  Under the streetlights Todd had just reached for the door handle at Wojak’s. On impulse, Hila reached across Jane and honked the horn, and Todd turned and saw them go by. He even waved feebly. Hila waved back.

  Bill Grant heard a faint knock at his door and turned from the computer screen where he had been reading fresh posts on the Freethinkers’ bulletin board. It was after eleven and his parents were asleep.

  “Come in, Hila,” he said. She slouched in, looking, he thought, more like the pouty sister than the sophisticated lady, and sat down on the side of the bed.

  “How was the singles group?” he asked.

  “Tolerable. I have a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  She held up her hand with thumb and forefinger about a quarter inch apart. “I’m this close, maybe, to finding the minutes of the board meeting when they booted Ollie. If I find them, I intend to take whatever information will hurt him the most and mail it out to the church members.”

  Bill thought about that. “What church members?”

  “All of them.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, I’ll just use the mail merge from the office with all their names. I could bring it here on disk and print out the envelopes on your printer, if you’ll let me.” He nodded. “Then I’ll buy a bunch of stamps, and send them off.”

  “With your name on them?”

  Hila was quiet a moment. “No, I don’t think so. They need the information, it doesn’t matter who sent it.”

  Bill laughed. “Old Fulborne will really hate it. He’ll hit the ceiling.”

  “I would sign it, you know,” Hila said meeting his gaze, “but I’d be fired immediately and lose my insider position. I want to be poised to take further steps if necessary. You never know but that I’ll find more in the files if I stay on, or I might hear something.”

  “You having a little twinge of conscience?” Bill said cheerfully.

  Hila took a slow breath. “Yes, that’s the problem. Somebody said in the Bible study tonight that Christians shouldn’t sneak around doing anything. I feel that I’m on the wrong track here somehow. But if I find those minutes tomorrow, I’ll have a weapon in my hands and possibly the only weapon I’ll ever have against Fulborne. I don’t think I could possibly not use it.”

  Bill leaned back in his padded desk chair and smirked. “What would Juda
s do?” he mused.

  “Oh, cut it out.”

  “No, really. Ollie is one of your leaders appointed by God, or soon will be, and you’re going to give him the old shiv in the back. For shame, Hila. Touch not God’s anointed!”

  “I hope that’s my atheist’s moral lecture for the day.”

  “What do you expect me to do,” he said mildly, “when you come in here and try to make me your Father Confessor? I don’t understand why you’re so hard on Ollie or what you think you’ll accomplish. You’re just going to stir up sympathy in his favor.”

  “Wait and see,” Hila said grimly. “We haven’t seen those minutes yet.”

  “True.”

  “So may I use your computer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bill hesitantly moved on to another subject. “About us going into Bafilia. If we write ourselves in, it won’t do to disturb our main characters right now, not in the middle of the rescue.”

  “No, imagine us popping up just now with Lady Amelia backed against a wall by one of the white dragons. She’d say, ‘No time to chat.’”

  “And then we’d all three be fried,” Bill said. “How are we going to get her out of that, by the way?”

  “I think Lord Scarvell is going to strike the dragon from behind with his magic sword Armadrel.”

  “Oh, OK. Well then, I thought you and I could pop into Sir Miff’s house over in Hydrangea. We know the place well, and there would be servants around—the garden Mole and old Ratson—that we could talk to. They’re both calm, gentle types.”

  Long ago Bill and Hila had designed Sir Miff’s house, the Whiskers, right down to its last forest-green shutter. Bill had even drawn floor plans and cut-away views. It was his favorite place in Bafilia.

  “Honestly, Bill, I still don’t see the point. Why disturb them?”

  Bill had trouble explaining the point even to himself. He might have said that, once he had such an intriguing idea in his head, it was hard to drop it—which was true—but he knew there was more to it. To really expose all his thoughts would mean discussing aspects of Bafilia that he and his sister seldom hinted at. The fact was, they thought of their joint creation as actually existing in some way; that is, not pre-existent but having come into existence as they had invented it. Bill felt as if the writing of themselves into Bafilia would, then, be to actually go somewhere. Though that was nonsense, it was a sort of nonsense that Hila shared with him, or so he had often guessed when they had talked about it. Only just now she had said that she did not want to disturb them, as if the Bafilians were real creatures who deserved polite consideration.

  What he hesitated to say was that he wanted the folk they had peopled Bafilia with to know that they were his and Hila’s creations. Why should they be allowed to go on in their ignorance? Was it really right that they should, however happily, think of their lives and world as sealed? In short, he wanted to ‘wake them up.’

  The consideration that no such thing could actually happen, because Bafilia was unreal, would of course obtrude from time to time. But he was not thinking so now, and in fact seldom did think so. After all, what was the use of having a private world if one constantly remembered that it was fantasy?

  “Disturb them?” he said. “Not much. That’s why I’m looking at visiting the Whiskers. Old Ratson could use a little excitement with no Sir Miff at home to look after. We could just pop in, gather a few of the locals, and explain who we are. It would be interesting to get their reaction.”

  Hila shook her head, smiling. “Don’t you remember they have a hospital in Hydrangea? Over in Trimclaw by the prison. Sir Miff has certainly recovered from wounds there more than once.”

  Bill did not understand. “Sure I know that, but what about it? No one will hurt us.”

  “No, no. I mean they’ll think we’re insane and lock us up in the loony ward.”

  Bill waved this aside. “Why? We won’t be raving and violent.”

  Hila sighed. “It’s not an easy thing to persuade people of anything new.”

  “We could bring them some sort of proof,” Bill persisted.

  “And what would that be? Anyway, they wouldn’t ask for proof. They’d just tie us up and take us to the hospital, if not the prison.” She stood up. “I’m off to Cora’s where I’ll read some George MacDonald and then lights out.”

  Bill stood too, looking to her appealingly. “You won’t come with me, then, to Bafilia?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said as she left the room. “Good night.”

  Bill sat down and posted a note or two to the Freethinkers bulletin board. Then he turned off the computer and sat looking at the map of Bafilia. How, he wondered, could he prove to the Bafilians that he was who he said he was?