The Godsend of River Grove

by Rob Summers

Chapter 5 The Bullet

  Hila found the top of Pastor Steve’s desk looking just as it had the day before. With a good half hour available before Steve’s usual eight-thirty arrival, she again took the bulging miscellaneous folder from under the stack of books and began to search through it carefully. Soon she found what she was looking for and this time stepped back out of his office and copied the three pages without reading them. Then she returned both the original pages and the minutes she had taken the day before to their places in the folder, put the folder back under the books, and went back to her desk. She told herself that she had not taken anything, for the papers were put back and all she had in her purse was a neatly folded copy—to be read when her shift was over at noon.

  Pastor Steve arrived late and passed into his office with hardly a word. When she brought him the mail she found him seated behind his desk with his chin on his hands. She gathered from his sulky manner that he wanted to be asked what the trouble was; and though she did not care to do so, remembering that she was playing a part, she asked him casually if he was feeling well.

  “I’m fine,” he said without smiling, and waited for more interest on her part.

  She fussed with straightening a few things on the desk, including the pile of books atop the miscellaneous folder. “Well, ‘rejoice in the Lord always’!” she said sarcastically. Then she stood waiting. She usually won these little tussles with self-pitiers. Though she expressed no sympathy, he would tell his story.

  “I had a phone call this morning,” he said, after a moment.

  She folded her arms and gave him a look that clearly expressed the idea: pick up the tempo, I have things to do.

  “It was, uh, Al Fontaine,” he said, speaking more quickly. “He says members of the board want to go back to the old way of taking up the collection. They say people are dissatisfied with the box.”

  “Do we still have the collection plates?” Hila asked practically.

  Steve’s head jerked up and he looked at her searchingly; assessing, Hila guessed, whether she had any personal loyalty to him. “Yes, they’re in the cabinet in the lounge,” he said, waving a hand in that general direction. “But I wonder—” he sighed exasperatedly “—oh, I just wonder if this church can ever move forward. I mean, if we can’t even make a small modernization like that.”

  She was surprised that he seemed to have no concept of his true situation. Move forward? She wanted to abruptly remind him that Ollie Fulborne was soon to return to the board, and that he would re-paralyze the church in his own 1950’s modes of thought and organization. Could the man sitting in front of her fail to grasp that all ‘modernization’ was about to end? But though she felt a flash of contempt for him, a thought of Elly Montcrieff, the girl who had not made a spiritual recommitment at VBS, flickered through her mind, and she softened. Pastor Steve had been kind and understanding with Elly.

  “Perhaps you think it’s an unimportant issue?” Steve asked mildly, but he still was watching her assessingly.

  “Less important issues can lead to more important ones,” she answered, choosing her words carefully.

  He relaxed a bit. “Then you understand. There are a lot more innovative ministry strategies this church could try out. Home cell groups, a coffeehouse, fresh music. And if the first thing I try to change gets shelved, then….” He picked up a paper from his desk and examined it. “Of course, Ollie Fulborne is behind this. If he gets on the board, he and I are going to clash.”

  No, he’ll boot you out of here before you have a chance to clash, Hila thought to herself. But she said only that she hoped not and then excused herself to continue her morning’s work.

  The second minutes from October 25, 1998, did not list those in attendance. In gray pencil, Al Fontaine’s now familiar handwriting provided only the date before hastening to the following.

  Pastor Wurz called this meeting to continue discussion of criticisms of O. Fulborne leveled by Cora Pelham during the evening service.

  In her bedroom at Cora’s house, Hila mentally crossed out ‘criticisms of’ and substituted ‘quotations by,’ for she knew from Cora that her cousin had done nothing but stand up in church at the end of the service and accurately quote Fulborne’s own words from the copied diary page. Fulborne had written, among other things, “I can do what for other men would be called sin, and yet for me it is not sin. I can break every commandment but the first and still be innocent. I have nothing to repent of. This is the mystery of the Higher Life. How I wish I could teach it.”

  O. Fulborne places it before the board whether C. Pelham should be censured for her behavior.

  Actually, Fulborne had put it rather differently, saying that Cora should be thrown out of the church and calling her a Delilah. But Al Fontaine had the secretary’s knack of smoothing the language while communicating the gist of the matter.

  Much discussion followed.

  Hila smiled grimly. Much discussion and fruitless! Because Steven Wurz had chosen to make no statement about the diary in the course of the evening service, the board had felt unable to reprimand Cora. For everyone in the congregation was soon to know that diary page copies had been distributed to the board members earlier that day, therefore any public move against Cora would have prompted the question: what right had the board to keep the matter to itself? Why had Steve not spoken about it?

  In retrospect the board must have wished that, early in the service, Steve had made an announcement about the situation, describing the diary’s contents as being no real scandal and at the same time warning against anyone quoting from it. But even that would not have stopped Cora from doing what she did. Hila was pleased to ponder that neither diplomat nor dictator can bottle up that sort of thing.

  Cora Pelham was granted permission to speak to the board.

  In plainer English, Hila knew, Cora had pushed her way into the meeting room and had simply started talking. Her cousin was not the kind to ask permission. She was furious that the elders had not expelled Ollie from the board.

  She stated that she had just phoned the Star and informed them about the diary quotation. She expressed her expectation that the newspaper would carry the story.

  “On page one!” Cora had shouted. “Can you see the banner headline: Local Church Elder Claims He is Free to Sin!” This of course was nonsense, for the editor had no interest in such stories. But the egos of church leaders do not allow them to remember that most church news is small news, and then also, they had just come through a great exception: the papers had of course fully covered the story of Mark Lambert’s death. So Cora had frightened them.

  Discussion followed as to whether the words in the diary referred to the doctrine of God’s grace.

  This had supposedly been settled in the earlier meeting, that is, they had agreed that the words referred only to God’s grace. But possible newspaper publicity had caused the elders to reexamine the wording more closely. How would outsiders view this? Would the words, “I can break every commandment but the first and still be innocent,” look as excusable and even orthodox in tomorrow’s newspaper as they did now to the board of River Grove Community Church? And if all was orthodox, then why had Ollie written that he did not feel free to teach these ideas?

  Cora had listened to this desperate hair splitting for as long as she could take it and then had snatched from the conference table one of the copies of Fulborne’s diary page and had stalked out. Fulborne had shouted, “Someone stop that woman!” but no one had made an effort to do so. None of this was reported in the minutes.

  Tanya and Jerry Oker also asked permission to speak to the board.

  Now Hila began to be intensely interested. These were the parents of a girl who had claimed that Fulborne had sexually harassed her. Hila knew only by rumor of Jerry and Tanya’s visit to the board that night.

  Jerry Oker renewed his accusations that O. Fulborne sexually harassed the Oker’s daughter Pamela early
this year. He demanded Fulborne be removed from the board. B. Hoplinger said that the matter had already been discussed at an earlier meeting and that there was no proof. Mr. Oker said the diary was proof and that his daughter Pam never lies.

  Yes, to Jerry that diary entry, “I can do what for other men would be called sin,” was as good as a confession. The board, of course, could not see it that way.

  J. Oker threatened to go the newspaper and/or the police. A. Fontaine asked to know why Jerry had been quiet for months after saying that the matter had been settled. Jerry said the matter was never settled. He said that Pamela would never get over it. O. Fulborne said that he hoped Jerry would come to see that the accusations were false. Jerry threatened O. Fulborne with physical violence and was asked by the entire board to leave the room. After the Okers left, we discussed the matter thoroughly. Pastor Wurz suggested that the church was in a position to be slandered due to the accusations. Cal Torey suggested that Ollie voluntarily withdraw from the board until his reputation was cleared. Ollie refused. B. Hoplinger moved that Fulborne be “excused from the board,” and discussion followed as to what was meant by this.

  Hila winced. Even then they had been afraid of Fulborne! Even when he had been crippled by heresy and accusations of sexual harassment, they had not been able to say plainly that they wished to kick him out. What a power the man had!

  C. Torey moved that O. Fulborne be asked to leave the board.

  She laughed miserably. The coward! He would not be the one to put himself in the direct firing line of Ollie’s hatred. Rather than ask Ollie himself, Cal had sought refuge in numbers. The board would vote on whether to ask him to leave.

  B. Hoplinger seconded the motion and asked that the vote be secret ballot. He also proposed that the board pray before the vote. After prayer, the vote was conducted by secret ballot and the proposal that O. Fulborne be asked to leave the board was carried by a vote of 2 for, 1 against, and 4 abstaining.

  Hila almost fell off the bed. It had barely passed, and with a majority unwilling to vote. She trembled with contempt for these men. Certainly, the sexual harassment was unproven, but had not heresy been enough? What more had they wanted?

  O. Fulborne stated that he accepted the board’s invitation to step down from eldership.

  Although she had expected this, Hila stiffened. Fulborne was saying that, having been asked, he would voluntarily leave. No one had drop-kicked him!

  Pastor Steve said the news of Ollie’s having been voted out would be reported to the congregation at the Wednesday night prayer service. The congregational vote to be next Sunday morning, November 1st, 1998.

  That was what had been originally written, but in blue ink Al had crossed out ‘voted out’ and written above it ‘voluntarily retired.’ Hila cursed and knocked over the bed lamp.

  On Thursday afternoon Crystal Beikreider sailed in the back door of the Pelham home without knocking and, passing from kitchen to dining room with unshortened stride, yelled cheerily, “Is anyone home?”

  “I’m here, Crystal,” Hila answered.

  Crystal darted through the living room and, turning, entered Cora Pelham’s little study—a former bedroom with one large, north-facing window. Hila had placed a cardboard box full of battered file folders on the floor by the window and was seated on the carpet going through them.

  “Looking for something?” Crystal asked.

  Hila did not look up. “No, I have a compulsion to finger file folders. When I’m done here, can I come to your house and do yours?”

  “Ha-ha. That’s so funny, Hila. Is Eddie here? I want him to come with me to the church tonight because the teen choir is practicing for Sunday and there aren’t many of us, you know, and I sing, like, in the key of awful, and if Eddie sings louder, it’ll be loud enough for both of us and people won’t notice me. What’s that on the stereo?”

  “It’s Scheherazade. I can’t sing very well either.”

  “It’s pretty. So where’s Eddie?”

  “He’s mowing the Edward’s lawn. He’ll be with my parents tonight because I’m going to Indianapolis for the evening. So he can’t go with you to the choir. Mom and Dad say they don’t see him enough. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Crystal plopped down on the floor beside her. “So what are you doing? Eddie told me you’d be gone tonight but I forgot. Can I tell you something?”

  “Sure.” Hila placed a file folder sideways to mark her place in the box and turned toward the girl.

  “Well, would you be shocked if I told you I kissed Eddie?” Crystal suddenly looked older, and her dark, pretty eyes searched Hila’s face.

  “No, not shocked,” Hila said. “But are you sure it was you that kissed him and not the other way around?”

  “Oh, it was definitely me. I don’t think he even, like, saw it coming. But I’m not in love with him. I just wanted to do it.”

  “I understand. So now you’re not sure how this affects your friendship.”

  “Yes, exactly! That’s just what I’m wondering. Because—Eddie and I have been friends off and on since we were ten, and I don’t want to ruin that, and is it some kind of, like, permanent seal on a relationship when you kiss somebody, and you can’t go back again? I don’t know how this works.”

  “You’re safe,” Hila said. “No permanent seal. But I wouldn’t kiss anymore if I were you.” Crystal nodded trustingly. “At your age it just confuses you both and spoils things.”

  “OK. Thanks. You won’t tell Eddie that I told you? And what if he wants to kiss me all the time now?”

  “I won’t tell anyone. But you tell him you made a mistake and that you’re not going to kiss anyone until you’re old enough for it. How’s that?”

  She nodded again. “Yeah. He’ll go along with that.”

  “Yes, he will.”

  For a little while neither said anything. Hila returned to the file folders, and Crystal began to pull books out of a nearby bookcase, idly examining them one at a time and then returning them to their places.

  “You haven’t had any problems with Ollie Fulborne lately, have you?” Hila asked presently.

  ‘Huh-uh. I haven’t seen him to talk to. Say, uh, have you ever—had sex with a guy?” Crystal quickly added, “You don’t have to answer that, sorry.”

  “I haven’t. That’s for marriage.”

  Crystal’s mouth puckered and twisted and her brow furrowed. “Well, sure, everyone says it’s for marriage” (meaning, Hila knew, the ‘everyone’ of River Grove Church) “but not many wait. My cousin Julie didn’t wait till the wedding with Eric. They moved in together first. Even Mom and Dad didn’t wait.”

  Hila stopped looking through the files. “Land sakes, child, how do you know that?”

  “I can count. There were only seven months between the wedding and my birth date, and I wasn’t born premature. Are you shocked?”

  “Not very shocked.”

  “Well I’m going to wait till I’m married,” Crystal said decisively. She jumped up. “Do you think if I help him Eddie will give me some of the lawn mowing money?”

  “I think so.”

  “OK. Bye.” Crystal ran out as quickly as she had entered. The screen door slammed and rattled behind her.

  The girl had pulled one last book from the bookcase and had left it on the floor. Hila reached to put it away but paused to read the cover: Selected Works of St. John of the Cross. An odd title, she thought, for Cora to own, considering that her cousin was protestant to the bone. She laid it aside to look at later and kept on searching the files.

  Perhaps twenty minutes later she found a folder with nothing written on the tab, containing some newspaper clippings and a church bulletin that included the announcement of Fulborne’s leaving the board, circled in pen. Next to the bulletin was what she had been looking for, a copy of Ollie’s diary page, no doubt the one that Cora had snatched from the boar
d room table.

  Reassured that her main goal had been achieved, she examined the newspaper clippings, only one of which, and a very short one, had to do with Ollie resigning, for the Star had thought that story hardly worth printing. Rather, there were stories about the death of Mark Lambert.

  Fulborne’s position as king-pin had already been a little weakened that year by the accusations concerning Pam Oker, and his connection to Lambert’s death had weakened him more. Sending big, hot-tempered Kyle Dottison to retrieve the diary had hardly been a prudent decision. But that was of no use to Hila now, she thought to herself as she put the clippings away. She was intensely practical about this. Nothing proven against Oliver Fulborne was of any interest to her unless she could somehow use it to keep him from returning to the board. Her goal was to keep him from spreading his false gospel of works, and she was self-disciplined enough to concentrate solely on that goal.

  You do not stand by and criticize a ravening wolf, you shoot him. The resurrected minutes, with this diary page as an attachment, would be her bullet. She would mail them out next day to the congregation, and then she would await the effect. Something told her that it was not enough, that the diary page had already been quoted aloud to them without effect, and that the minutes were nothing really new and presented Fulborne in a more favorable light than he deserved. And then there were those ridiculous words ‘voluntarily retired.’

  But if these reminders, for perhaps they were no more than that, were to sway the minds of only fifteen or twenty church members, that might be enough to swing the vote when it came. Besides, she could not tell herself that her ‘insider’ plan had so far been totally wasted effort. Her position as church secretary had to be useful, and Fulborne simply could not be invincible.

  He could not.

  But the two hours before Eddie would be packed off to Len and Anna Ellen, and she would depart for Indianapolis, did not promise to be easy on her mind. What did she actually have to nail Fulborne? She mulled it over unhappily while sitting in a wicker chair and staring at a Boston fern that drooped in its pot by the stair rail.

  There once was an elder named Ollie

  Who’s behavior was creepy and crawly.

  The words formed themselves in her mind with little effort. She was really thinking of other things.

  She had the exact words from his diary, that was what; words that most of the congregation had not read but had only heard when Cora had recited them two years ago. Now everyone at River Grove would be able to see those words in Ollie’s own boxy handwriting. That was something. But Hila felt uncomfortable when she considered that she would have had that without carrying on her deception as church secretary. Had she been a spy to no purpose? As for the minutes, they did not make it clear what had finally and specifically brought the board to rebel against Ollie. Pastor Steve had only referred in a general way to “the accusations.” So the minutes might be no good at all.

  While he wallowed in sin

  The church voted him in,

  She grew red in the face thinking about it, her ridiculous position. The congregation should have risen as one and thrown Ollie out on his ear decades ago; and not, back then, because of some diary or any sexual harassment. He should have been evicted at once for denying Christ’s gospel of grace and teaching instead a false gospel by which people try to work their way to heaven. It was for this reason, mainly, that Hila was maneuvering to stop him. And yet, absurdly, she could not fight on that ground, because no one cared about that. She had to sort through the other matters—his diary heresies, his perversion, perhaps his sending of Dottison to the retreat grounds—and try to build a case from them. She seemed to recall that John Dillinger had finally been arrested, not for murder or racketeering, but for tax evasion. Yes, it was like that. Oliver Fulborne would never be seriously criticized for spitting on God’s grace; but let him do something else—what? —let us say, propose that River Grove merge with some other congregation, and his popularity would come to a quick end.

  Hila wondered why she bothered with any of them, the River Grove people, when apparently not one of them could read the New Testament with understanding. But that was an exaggeration, it had to be. She plucked a dead frond from the plant.

  But he gave them small thanks for their folly.

  She was feeling sweaty and scowly, and remembered suddenly that she had to look pretty that evening for a fellow she was going to Indianapolis to visit. She went to the bathroom to wash her face.

  When she came out, still trying to calm herself, she walked about the house praying silently, listening, asking for something, she did not know what. In his heyday, Ollie had each week given away a prize—usually sports equipment such as a baseball—to the driver with the fullest church bus (for the church had bussed in children in those days). During the church’s building fund drive of some ten years previously he had called a big contributor to the front of the church and had proudly announced the amount the man had given. ‘In a case like this, do let your right hand know what your left hand is doing,’ Ollie had said, beaming. No one had raised a word of objection. And Ollie’s favorite sermon, which he had preached thrice in Hila’s hearing, was entitled ‘Do You Deserve to Be a Christian?’ and consisted of ten (ten!) points, eight of which had to do with how much work his listeners were doing in the way of church programs, or rather with how much work Ollie had said they were not doing.

  What, Hila asked God, was the point of having a church if such a man could rise to the top and be honored? Why not just meet in little groups of five or six and avoid the big organization and building that seem to attract such vultures?

  She was in the kitchen. Cora and Eddie’s dog Clobber came waddling to her, begging for a snack. She stroked the short brown hairs on his head while continuing to pray, this time out loud, “God, I’ll do anything, anything it takes to stop Ollie. I don’t care. Use me.”

  Friday afternoon she went to a copying store and had made a hundred and forty copies of Oliver Fulborne’s diary page and a matching number of copies of the minutes, which she had typed because the penciled words of the original would not copy well. She had hesitated long as to whether to type ‘voted out’ or ‘voluntarily retired’ and in the end had typed the latter. There was no getting around it; that was how secretary Al Fontaine had meant it to stand.

  Then she had sworn Eddie to secrecy—even from Crystal—and had enlisted his help to stuff the envelopes. She might have waited until the day of the vote was very close before mailing them but decided to send them out at once. After one week of spy work, she was already sick of the deception involved. She calculated that, if the thing were once done, she need do nothing more. She would simply wait for the congregation’s reaction. If she remained undiscovered as the one who sent the mailings, she could then join in and encourage what she hoped would be a reaction against Ollie. She could not help but realize that the person having mailed the minutes and diary page would come under attack. It would be seen as underhanded. But she hoped that the feeling would soon spend itself, especially since the people would be angry at someone unknown, but that the reaction against Ollie would remain. That was another reason to hurry the mailings: so that by the time of the eldership vote on November fifth their source would no longer be a matter of much indignation or controversy.

  Monday would be Labor Day and no mail delivered then. Hila put the envelopes in a mailbox that Friday afternoon so that most, if not all, would receive them Saturday. A few might not get theirs till Tuesday. She expected that the church’s annual Labor Day picnic would be abuzz with discussion of Ollie’s diary. She would not work that day but would attend the picnic and lawn games, listening to what the people would say.

  Finally, long before this she had decided what she would do if suspicion should turn her way. She would immediately admit what she had done and resign. Let the River Grovers vilify her if they wished; the damage to Ollie, she hoped, wou
ld be just the same. She would go back to Indianapolis and they would forget her. The diary and minutes they would not forget.

  Driving back from the mailbox, Hila allowed herself to smile. The bullet was fired! True, it might miss the target, but at least she had done all she reasonably could do. Squirm as they might, the River Grove Community Church folk would have to look in the mirror she had held up to them.