by Dave Balcom
“Ask away. If it’s what I think it is, I can’t wait to help...” And the cackle erupted again. “You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I’ve lived here since 1968 when Ernie and I came to start the church. This old place was falling down when we bought it for a song that year.
“Ernie had been rated 4-F because of his hearing, but with his aids in place he heard as well as anyone, and he had that voice that was made for the pulpit or the radio, and he chose to use both.
“He started down by Detroit on a small station as a kid feeding tape and cleaning up for WPLA. By the time he was a senior in high school he was anchoring a Saturday morning show playing Top 40 hits; and a Sunday evening show featuring gospel music.
“He went to work full time in 1963, and started attending college nights; earned his BA and then took two years off to attend seminary in Memphis. We’d just married, and my family was having a fit about it, but he had a dream and I had him, so off we went.
“When he finished seminary, he applied for the job in Traverse City, and when they heard his tape they hired him in a minute.
“We lived in Traverse that first winter, but in the spring we came over here hunting mushrooms, saw this house for sale, and bought it with the owner holding the paper.
“That summer he started his church, and that summer the Lord brought a tourist who had dropped in on a whim, but answered a call to the rail in response to Ernie’s words. He helped that man be saved through Jesus Christ.
“It was the single finest moment in Ernie’s life, no doubt.
“That man was a big shot in a business in Chicago, and a year later he died, and he left a quarter million dollars to Ernie Ricky and his Church on the River in Stoney, Michigan.”
She had her arms open as if to say, “And all this...”
“The Lord took care of Ernie’s church and Ernie’s young wife, but we had no children, and then He sent us the twins. I was crushed when I heard the news. I had been so happy for Melanie when Duane and Sue were born. Melanie was four years older than me, and she and her husband made a great couple – lovely to look at, smart and faithful to each other and the Lord.
“I was a little envious, too. I admit it. Try after try failed for Ernie and me, and those two dears were growing and learning, bringing life and light to their parents...” She shook her head sadly.
“Then one night, the children were invited at the last minute to spend the night at a neighbor’s house – there was to be a bonfire, and ‘camping’ in the backyard. It was just down the street...” Her eyes misted with the far away look of folks recalling the pain and sorrow of an event long ago.
“What happened?” Jan asked.
“Nobody knows, really. The bang of an explosion woke children two blocks away, broke windows in houses all around. The home was fully engulfed in flames by the time the first neighbor saw it. It was burned to the cellar by the time the firemen arrived three minutes later.
“There was debris scattered all over the neighborhood... some of it was pretty grisly, too.
“Those two children were terrified by any loud bang for years after that.”
“I remember,” Jan said. “There was a demonstration when we were in the seventh grade. A scientist brought a series of rockets to the school, and after the assembly everyone went out to the playground and he launched them. Then, as part of his show, one of the rockets was really a firework. It went high in the sky and exploded with a bang you could feel and a shower of bright glitter.
“Everyone was oohing and aahing, but I saw Sue and Duane were both hugging each other and crying.”
“Fourth of July was not a big deal in this house; we kept it pretty quiet ’round here.”
Jan continued, “I also remember that they always came to school dressed in identical outfits. Lots of the boys teased Duane about it. I know that Sue hated it.”
“They were such wonders; I was so grateful to have them in my life, so proud of them. I dressed them like that out of my own vanity. I had no idea how it felt to them, but they were so grateful to have a home, they never said a word until they went to the high school.
“Duane went to Ernie; Sue came to me. They’d collaborated in writing a speech, and they had rehearsed it over and over and then, they took us to different places in the house and spoke to us.
“I was so ashamed; Ernie was floored that it had taken all those years before they were able to confront us. He, of course, turned it into a life lesson for them – ‘you see something that isn’t right, you don’t wait, you think it through, make sure you have a positive alternative, and then tell the people responsible how you feel. It’s that simple, and, as you’re going to see this day, that’s all it takes to make something wrong into something right.’
“I can hear it as plain in my mind as it was that day. He pulled us all together, gave his little 20-second sermon, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Mother?’ I pulled both of those children into a hug and said, ‘We’ll be going to Traverse City clothes shopping tomorrow.’
“My Ernie was like that, and those kids loved him – and me, I came to know – no less than they loved their parents. They were God’s gift to us.”
Jan, I could see, was dealing with some emotion, but I decided to leave myself out of this conversation.
“Are you still close with them?” Jan asked.
“Oh, dear yes. As close as geography and my lame legs allow. Duane is a missionary in East Africa. He studied geology in college and met a wonderful woman there. After college they went on a Peace Corps mission, and loved the work. After four years of that, they came home, and life here seemed so empty, they applied for and took a position with Life Work Missions. She is a teacher and a nurse; Duane is helping build water purification plants. They have three children, the oldest is studying in Britain; the other two are in high school in Africa. They come to visit me every other year. They’ll be here next summer for a month.”
She was beaming. “Jim, there’s a family portrait of them on the side board to your left.” I found the photo of the five of them, and walked it over to Jan.
They studied it together. “What about Sue?”
“She’s a doctor in Alabama. Married a surgeon down there, but that didn’t last. I go down there at Christmas every year and stay until the weather is too warm for me, and then I come home.”
“She never had children?”
“No. She has a special friend in her life. I’ve met him. He’s divorced too. I don’t know if they’ll ever marry. They live separately, but sleep together often, even when I’m there. They’re as Christian in their daily lives as any people I know, and more so than many who would defame them for their lifestyle.” She delivered that with a shrug.
Jan let that settle for a few minutes, and then asked, “Do you remember Marci Evers?”
The change in Bernice Ricky was palatable, and I swear the temperature in that room dropped several degrees.
CHAPTER 16
“That’s not a name I discuss in mixed company, that one,” Bernice said with a mock shudder.
“I’ll excuse myself,” I said.
“No, I’m sorry,” Bernice said quickly. “That’s just an expression that came into my head the way some folks use the Lord’s name when they’re shocked, angry, or mean...”
Jan stayed with the thread as a good interviewer does, “That response surprises me a bit. I remember Marci as a quiet, earnest girl. Pretty, sensible...?”
“In all respects but that Dave Boyington nonsense.”
“Nonsense?”
“That boy loved her with a passion that made my heart stand still. I know around this town everyone thought he was just like his worthless old man, and they thought David’s only interest was in Marci’s knickers...” She shook her head in disgust.
“You knew Dave Boyington well?”
“I came to know him after he started coming to church and Sunday school.”
“His parents brought him?”
“Heaven
s, no! The sheriff brought him; that’s who brought him.”
Jan waited, again using her silence in a long-practiced interview manner.
“Well, David had finally gotten into some trouble that caught Sheriff Bromwell’s attention. It wasn’t anything too bad. David and couple of other youngsters, they were fourteen, anyway they were soaping windows on homes around town on Halloween, and finally they paid a visit to the Evers house over on Green Street...”
“I remember,” Jan nodded. “It was a nice house, and a big yard.”
“Well they naturally woke the place up with their giggling and whatnot, and Mr. Evers called the Sheriff. He and a deputy came sneaking up in separate cars. The other two boys just dropped their soap and their sacks of candy, but that David, he lit out for that trailer his folks had out on River Road, you remember that place?
“With all the junk vehicles and appliances scattered around?”
“That’s the one. David ran like the wind, and finally about two a.m. he thought he was safe and walked right into Bromwell’s arms as he came around the end of the trailer.
“Bromwell took David over to Bellaire.” She pronounced the county seat as if it rhymed with “blare.” “Locked him up for the rest of the night, too; you know, just to make a point?
“Next morning, over breakfast there in his office, they came to an understanding that if David didn’t want to spend any more nights in the hoosegow, he was going to have to change his outlook.
“Bromwell told him he’d let him off with a warning if he and his friends cleaned every window they’d soaped and if he, David, took himself to a church, any church, starting Sunday and not missing a Sunday for the rest of the year.
“David came to our Church because it was just down the road from his folks’ place, and he didn’t miss a Sunday right up ’til he left for the Army in ’80.”
“So why do you think so badly of Marci?”
“She used David to tweak her father’s nose, but when school days were finally over, she told David that there was no future for them, ever.”
“Clean breaks heal fastest...” Jan said.
“There’s that, but she hurt him so bad; then she went off and found another man to tease, only that time she went so far as to marry... She found her desserts, though; the Lord doesn’t always wait ’til the Day of days to pass judgment.”
“What do you mean?”
“David came home a hero and a man of the world. He devoted himself to our church and his earthly pursuits were pure and, then, lo and behold, doesn’t Marci Evers, sporting her maiden name, come walkin’ right back into his life.” And that cackle made another appearance, but not as loud and with much less mirth.
“I had heard they might have rediscovered each other...” Jan began.
“I know some think that, and I’m not sure there isn’t some truth to that, but I do know that she walked away from David again – just left, no good-bye, nothing.”
“Pretty much the way Dave left, from what I hear.”
The old lady hesitated. “Could I interest either of you in a cup of coffee?”
“Of course,” Jan said immediately. “Want me to make it?”
“You can help,” she said. Then to me, “You make yourself comfortable out here, Jim. We’ll bring you a cup.”
She wheeled herself out with Jan following. At the door, Jan looked back at me, and then pulled the door closed. I could see them talking as Jan put the coffee together under Bernice’s direction. I sat in a comfortable wing chair and watched a robin hop around under a cherry tree that had lost its leaves. “You better be headin’ on,” I thought to the bird.
The women came back onto the porch with Jan carrying a tray holding cups, creamer, sugar, and a bowl of what were clearly chocolate chip cookies.
“There, that wasn’t so long a wait, was it?” Bernice said in front of her cackle. “Thought you might need some sustenance after all this woman talk.”
Jan caught my eye and smiled, but didn’t say anything.
“Bernice,” I said as I helped myself to a cookie, “You read me like a book, and I thank you.”
“You were raised in Michigan, weren’t you, Jim?”
“I was,” I said around a bite of cookie.
“Ever spend much time in this part of the state?”
“My dad built a cabin out past the airport in Kalkaska when I was a teenager; we were up here a lot after that.”
“Did you fish and hunt up this way?”
“I did.”
“Jim hunted birds the other day in a place his father and he hunted all those years ago over by the North Branch of the Manistee,” Jan said.
“Ernie was never much of a fisherman, but he loved to hunt – birds, deer, morel mushrooms – he always called it “catching” mushrooms.” She stopped cold as Jan burst into a laugh that almost resulted in coffee and cookie spraying around the room.
“He did,” Bernice insisted. “But it’s not that funny when you think of it.”
Jan was holding her hand up like a traffic cop while with the other hand she was mopping a napkin around her mouth. “It’s not that,” she finally squeaked, pointing at me, “that’s what he calls it!”
That brought a familiar smile to Bernice’s face, a smile so familiar that I could see all the wrinkles and seams of her face fall into the contours of that smile. “Ahh, I sense a lot of my Ernie in this man, Jan.” She was nodding as if confirming to herself, “They’re a lot alike in many ways; and he has a good heart, does he?”
Again I was left as if not present.
“One of the best,” Jan confirmed.
“Well, treasure each other, that’s what this life comes down to; that’s what I told David when he told me he was sure that he was losing Marci again, and he didn’t know what to do... I told him that...” She was nodding again, and I saw Jan give me the exit look.
“Bernice,” I said standing up. “Thank you for the coffee and especially the cookies, but we really need to go.”
“Come any time,” she said with a smile. “It’s always fun when the alums come home for reunion. We’re going to miss that in the future, but change is the only thing that we can count on in this life, isn’t it?”
We made our good-byes and left. I walked Jan to the Suburban, and held the door for her, but she turned and draped her arms around my neck and stepped into a full-body hug. “What’s this for?” I whispered into her ear.
“I’m taking that wonderful old woman’s advice, that’s all; I’m treasurin’ you, Mr. Stanton.”
CHAPTER 17
“Where to?”
“The bank.”
We pulled into the lot between the bank and the museum. I shut off the motor, but Jan sat still. We were parked in the shade, and I could see her staring off into the distance. I kept my peace and waited.
Finally she started talking, and I couldn’t determine if she was telling me a story or asking me a question. “It’s all about history; that’s what it is, I’m sure of it.
“There’s something in the history of this place that, if we only knew what that ‘something’ was, we’d know it all, we’d have the thread, you know that thread you pick and when you pull it, the whole seam comes out?
“There’s probably only one person who knows the whole history, and it’s not anyone who’d share it with us, but there are more than a few people who know pieces and those people will share what they know...”
She mused on in silence for what seemed like minutes. Finally, I leaned into the steering wheel to look at her eyes, wondering if she’d gone to sleep.
She looked at me and smiled, “Worried?”
“Not too much, just want to know when you’re going to tell me what went on over coffee and cookies in the kitchen that wasn’t for mixed company.”
“Oh, sure. Well, what I took for anger towards Marci was hurt and disappointment on Bernice’s part. She knew that those two people had found each other after all those years, and this time Marci was g
enuinely in love – that’s what she told me; she really believed it.
“Then, out of the blue, the pair just bolted without a word. It crushed Bernice; she really loves Dave like a son, and his wordless departure went straight to her heart.”
“But he leaves anyway?”
“And she doesn’t believe that. She said she has a ‘feeling in her bones’ that those two were taken away; she said she prays daily that they’re together in peace; hoping they’ve been ‘saved by holy grace.”’
“She thinks they’re dead?”
Jan nodded; I could see a tear forming in her left eye, building to the moment when it might run down her cheek, but just before that happened, she wiped it away with a curt gesture.
She opened the door and looked back at me, “Mind waiting here?”
“Nope. I’ll be right here.”
She flashed me a smile and strode off to the bank.
She was back in under fifteen minutes, dangling the key to the museum in her hand. As she walked past the truck I poked my head out, “Am I still waiting?”
“Come on; you’re needed in the reading room.”
We went back to the stacks of bound volumes of the Truth.
“I’m going to start in ’80, and work my way backwards...” she thumbed the spines of the volumes facing her until she pulled her year. “You start with ’81 and go forward.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I have no idea, but certainly any mention of the names from my class,” she handed me the list again, “should be noted; also anything about their family members.”
I had brought her “occasional bag” from the Suburban, and she pulled out a legal pad for me. “Bring a pen, Stanton?”
“Retired, remember?”
“Catch!”
I pulled the 1981 volume and we headed to separate corners. I couldn’t resist a bit of whine, “Sure,” I started in my best Brooklynese, “let’s go to the reunion; it’ll be beautiful, and there’ll be woodcock for Judy to meet and greet. It’ll be full of fresh air and sunshine, oh, except for the endless hours you’ll spend doing research on the lives and times of Stoney, Michigan.”