by Billie Letts
“That’s going to get expensive.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what it costs. I guess it sounds crazy, but I feel like she’s lost. The way I’d feel sometimes when she was little and I couldn’t see her playing in the backyard, or when we’d be at the store and I’d turn around and she was gone.
“I’m just crazy, I guess. But sometimes people do crazy things when someone they love is lost.”
MollyO, her eyes red and face puffy from crying, had insisted on waiting in the car.
“I’m not going in there looking like this,” she said. “ ’Cause you can’t go in Wal-Mart without running into someone you know.”
Vena would discover, too late, that she was right.
She picked up the skein of blue yarn MollyO had asked for, then, from a table of Christmas leftovers—a mishmash of ornaments and decorations—she found something to give her as a surprise.
After she got herself a box of tampons, she headed for the checkout stand, but before she got there, a hand reached out and caught her by the arm.
“Hey, pretty woman,” Sam Kellam said as he spun her around to face him. “Did I get lucky and catch you on your day off?” He tapped the box and grinned. “Picking up some supplies for Caney?”
“Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Why? You think the Honk’ll shut down if you’re not there?”
“MollyO’s waiting in the car.”
“She knows how to drive. Let her go on.”
Vena tried to turn away, but Sam tightened his grip on her arm and held her in place.
“I’ll take you back,” he said.
“No, you won’t.”
“Why not? You afraid of me?”
“Judging from what happened the last time you were in the Honk, I don’t think I have much to be afraid of.”
Sam’s face flushed, but he managed a thin, tightlipped smile. “You mean because I didn’t beat the shit out of your boyfriend? Now what kind of man would take advantage of a cripple?”
“You’re a slimy son of a bitch.”
“What’s wrong, Vena? You don’t like me calling your hump a cripple?”
Vena noticed that a woman pushing her shopping cart up the aisle gave her and Sam a wary look as she dashed past them.
“Or could I be wrong? You fucking the gook?”
When Vena wrenched herself free and spun away, the box of tampons slipped from her fingers and sailed across the floor. But she didn’t care about that now.
Sam made no move to follow, but yelled after her, “Or are you taking on both of them at the same time? What one can’t do for you, the other one can. That it?”
Everyone at the front of the store was staring as Vena rushed to the checkout and shoved her purchases onto the counter.
“Guess it’s hard for a woman like you to find one man who can do it all,” Sam shouted.
“Hurry, please,” Vena said to the checker, a middle-aged woman who looked like she wanted to run.
When her bill was totaled, she tossed down five dollars, grabbed her plastic sack and hurried away.
“Ma’am? You forgot your change,” but by then Vena was already out the door.
When she slid into the car, she was working hard not to let her anger show. She figured MollyO had enough on her mind just then without worrying about Sam Kellam.
“Here’s your yarn.”
MollyO opened the bag and looked inside as Vena fumbled the key into the ignition.
“Good, it’s exactly the color I wanted.” Then she reached to the bottom of the sack where she found a small ceramic figure—a tiny baby Jesus from Taiwan.
“Oh, Vena.”
“Well, since you have the rest of the manger…”
“Yes,” MollyO said softly. “Not much point to a manger without you have the baby.”
Chapter Nineteen
BY THE TIME the AME congregation learned that Bui was sleeping in the basement of their church, they didn’t care. By then they would have let him sleep on the altar if he’d wanted to.
At first, they hardly noticed evidence of his handiwork but focused instead on their service to the Lord.
When five women gathered in the church kitchen early Monday morning, their minds were on Sister Zibeon, friend and faithful member for over sixty years. They had come together to prepare a meal they would serve following her burial at the Rest Haven Cemetery that afternoon.
Not until one of them started rinsing vegetables at the sink did she notice the drain was once again running freely. And when another started outside to empty trash, she was surprised to find that the back door no longer caught on the door frame but could be closed and locked securely again.
On Monday afternoon, when three members of the Hope Missionary Society met in the Reverend’s study to plan their annual banquet, they concentrated on preparing their program—not on the ceiling fan. They didn’t notice it had been cleaned and oiled, blades tightened, brass trim polished, burned-out bulbs replaced and the globe, emptied of dead insects, scrubbed with soap and water. Even Sister Nadine, whose hearing was still good, failed to realize the fan no longer hummed and whined, a sound that had always set her nerves on edge.
Tuesday morning when the Ladies’ Auxiliary met in one of the small Sunday school classrooms, Sister Eunice, the first to arrive, was surprised to find the sliding wooden door, jammed for months, had been rehung, fitted snugly back into the metal track it rolled on. Sister Cordelia, the last to show up, commented on what a bright clear day it was, never realizing that the windows facing Sticker Creek had been scraped clean of pigeon droppings and scoured with a stiff-bristled brush.
At Wednesday evening service, no one in the sanctuary, fourteen including Reverend Thomas, noticed that the frayed carpet at the door had been concealed by a new strip of aluminum tacked neatly in place. Nor were they aware that the half-inch crack snaking up the west wall had been plastered and sanded smooth. And because they were huddled together on the front row, they couldn’t see that the hymnal racks which had come loose from the backs of the pews had all been screwed back into place.
Thursday’s choir practice was sparsely attended because one of the altos was suffering from gout and their only soprano was at the bedside of her brother, who’d just had a stroke. But not one of the seven who did assemble noticed that the vestry had been mopped and waxed or that a three-foot strip of loose baseboard had been retacked to the wall.
The Friday Singles Club had not met in the recreation room for nearly three months, not since the only male, Brother Samuel, had remarried on the day he turned seventy-one. But if they had come together, they would surely have been pleased to see that the piano stool missing a leg was now standing firmly on all four and the door to the cabinet where they kept their checkers and dominoes was adorned with handles once again.
On Sunday, though, they finally started paying attention when twenty-two of them straggled into the sanctuary and found the pews waxed and gleaming, and the chandelier suspended from the arched ceiling, shimmering with light, each glass prism washed and polished by a careful hand.
By whose hand, they could not guess.
The following week they had bad weather—rain, then sleet and snow. The temperature stayed below freezing until Friday, prompting cancellation of choir practice, the Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting, and the Hope Missionary Annual Banquet. Even the Wednesday night service was called off, the first time since a flu epidemic the previous winter had put nearly half the congregation in their sickbeds and scared the others into staying home.
But by Sunday the weather had warmed and the slush on the streets had mostly disappeared, conditions which prompted thirty-two members and one guest to come to church.
As they made their way to the front steps, keeping their eyes on the sidewalk to avoid loose stones and deep cracks in the concrete, they didn’t notice the patch of new shingles on the roof, damaged last spring by the broken limb of a sycamore tree. And as they entered the small vestibu
le, they paid no attention to the framed painting of the Last Supper which had been straightened and wiped free of cobwebs.
But when they entered the sanctuary, they did not move far beyond the door before they stopped and stared in silent wonder.
The plywood covering the broken windows was gone, and where there had been cracked and shattered glass, windows were whole again, their new panes glistening in shafts of sunlight. The sagging ceiling tiles had been removed and in their place, new ones fitted neatly into the metal supports. And the walls, only last week stained and discolored, had been freshly painted a pristine white.
At first they were hushed as, turning, their eyes swept the room. Then, as they moved down the aisles, they spoke in whispered conversations, their hands fluttering, pointing out to their neighbors the marvels they might have missed. By the time they were settled in their pews, their voices were quavering with excitement.
Even as Reverend Thomas took the pulpit, they were still buzzing with questions, leaning forward, then back, as one, then another, offered some explanation as to how such a miracle had been performed.
“Brothers and sisters,” the Reverend intoned, “we cannot question this morning that the Lord has blessed us.”
“Amen.”
“And we know today, as we have always known, that God does hear our prayers.”
“Hallelujah.”
“Amen.”
“A benevolent God who has sent one of you among us to restore His house.”
“Praise the Lord.”
“And now, whoever you are, we would like to recognize you for your most unselfish contribution… for putting your hand to the repair of this holy place of worship.”
Thirty-two heads turned to see who would stand.
“We would surely like to offer you our thanks.”
Long moments of silence passed.
“Then we must suppose that whoever you are, you have beautified God’s house for His glory and not your own. As Proverbs twenty-nine, verse two tells us, ‘Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth.’ So we honor your silence and lift our thankful voices to God.
“Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father…”
As Reverend Thomas led them in prayer, and as they stood with bowed heads and closed eyes, they could not see the smile that graced Galilee Jackson’s face. But even if they had, they would most certainly have attributed it to the joy in her heart for God’s blessing.
“Oh, Mr. Boo, you should’ve seen their faces,” Galilee said as she placed Bui’s cocoa on the coffee table. “I just wish you’d been there.
“Now, at first, they guessed Reverend Thomas was the one did all that work. Sister Maybelle says to me, ‘It had to be the Reverend. No one else here’s able to lift a hammer, let alone climb a ladder.’
“So I reminded her that the Reverend works six days a week over at the plastics plant. See, Mr. Boo, he has to work another job, given the little dab the church can afford to pay him.
“And at night, well, ever’ night ’cept Wednesday and Sunday, he baby-sits his grandbaby ’cause his daughter works the late shift at the nursing home and no way she can pay a sitter on her salary.
“Your cocoa too hot, Mr. Boo?”
Bui took a sip to show her it wasn’t, then swished the scalding liquid in his mouth until it cooled enough to swallow.
“So then Sister Maybelle considers what I said and she says I’m right, so she starts to squelch the notion that the preacher did it, and that runs through the crowd and pretty soon they’re all nodding their heads, saying, ‘No, ’course the Reverend didn’t do it,’ like they’d realized that all along.
“Well, that sets them off again, all of them guessing who it might’ve been. Then somebody said it could’ve been Jennings Washington on account of him being so handy with tools and the like. But we all know Jennings ain’t been in a church but one time in his whole life and that was the day he married Grace Abbott. ’Course, they kept their voices down to a whisper so Sister Grace wouldn’t hear, ’cause she was sitting right there in the third pew.
“Well, they guessed and guessed, but they couldn’t come up with a name. By then they were squirming in their seats, anxious for Reverend Thomas to take the pulpit, figuring he’d solve the mystery for them.
“But when the Reverend got up and told them he didn’t know, they were stunned. Just stunned. And when he asked for whoever done it to stand up, you should’ve seen them. Twisting their necks like a bunch of chickens. And I did the same, ’cause I figured if I didn’t, they might guess I knew a thing or two about it.
“Oh, I came this close to telling them, Mr. Boo. Just this close.”
Galilee held her thumb and index finger close together to illustrate for Bui, who studied the gesture with curiosity.
“But you know why I didn’t?”
Bui shook his head, still puzzling over the strange sign Galilee had made with her hand.
“ ’Cause they got enough misery in their lives to think about. Brother Junior, his wife in the nursing home, doesn’t even know who he is, but he goes to see her ever’ day, bless his heart. Brother Arnold? Got sugar diabetes so bad, he’ll end up getting his feet cut off, just like his daddy did.
“Sister Martha, whose granddaughter is… well, there’s just no nice way to say it.”
Galilee leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She’s a lady of the night, if you get what I’m saying.”
When Bui realized some response was required of him, he leaned forward, too, and nodded.
“And Sister Hannah, God love her, her home burned down last spring, and oh, she had such lovely things. Now, she’s living with her son and daughter-in-law and their six kids in a two-bedroom trailer.
“So many bearing so much sadness.”
Galilee shook her head, then reached for her cocoa. “So I said to myself, ‘Galilee, no reason you have to pop up and tell them about Mr. Boo right now. Give it some time, let them wonder. Let them get their minds off their troubles and think about something good, something fine, even if it’s just for a little while.’
“Now you know why I didn’t speak up, don’t you, Mr. Boo?”
Bui nodded as if he had taken in every word.
“Well, we’ve spent enough time jawing. Wish we could just sit here all morning talking, but we can’t. No sirree. We’ve got work to do.”
Bui followed Galilee to the dining room and sat down at the table while she got out the tablet in which he practiced his ABCs and the books she was using to teach him to read—the same books she’d learned to read from when she was a child.
“Okay, let’s take up where we left off Saturday morning,” she said as she handed a small, thin book to Bui.
“Look, MollyO, you want to take some time off, go out there and look for her yourself?”
“Where would I look, Caney? I already called every place I could think of.”
“Maybe you ought to call her boyfriend again,” Vena said.
“I did.”
“And?”
“He’s gone, too. Got fired at that club a few days ago.”
“Well, maybe he and Brenda got back together and went on to Denver. Didn’t you say that they had a gig there when they finished in Las Vegas?”
“That’s what she said.”
“How about I make some calls to Denver. See what I can find out.”
“I don’t know, Caney. I just don’t know.”
MollyO had her purse in one hand, the other on the doorknob, but she looked like she’d forgotten where she was going… or just didn’t care.
“Go on and get your hair done,” Caney said. “Might make you feel better.”
“Well, whether it does or not, I’ll be back by ten.”
As she walked out, Bui drove across the lot, his trunk door open, slapping air. He waved at MollyO, then pulled around the building to park in back.
Vena refilled coffee for Bilbo and Peg at the front table, then took an order for a waffle and a breakfast speci
al to the pass-through and handed the ticket to Caney, who had wheeled into the kitchen.
When they heard a banging noise coming from out back, Caney said, “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but Bui’s out there, I think.”
Vena hurried to the door and yanked it open as Bui struggled to remove something from his trunk. When he finally managed to lift it, they saw him grappling with a large object covered with a stained tarpaulin.
Staggering with the weight, he carried it, chest high, to a grassy spot beneath the pecan tree in the back. When he finally lowered it to the ground, he leaned against it, waiting for his breathing to slow.
“What’ve you got there, Bui?” Caney asked.
Bui turned and smiled, then, like an artist unveiling a creation, he jerked the tarp off with a flourish.
“A doghouse!” Vena squeezed past Caney and went outside. “Bui, did you make it?”
“Yes,” he said proudly.
Made from scrap lumber in the basement of the church, the doghouse resembled a barn—almost. Bui had painted it red and covered the pitched roof with sheets of tin, but he’d turned the corners up in the style of a Buddhist temple.
“I make for dog a home.”
Vena squeezed Bui’s hand. “She needed a home.”
“Everyone need home.” He looked away then, staring off across the Oklahoma countryside, but seeing a place halfway around the world.
“It’s perfect.” Vena knelt and peered inside. “Just the right size.”
“You like dog home?”
“Oh yes, Bui, I do.”
As Bui hunkered down beside her, he said, “Miss Vena, dog got name?”
“What?”
“Name for dog?”
“Just dog, I guess.”
“No, dog not name.”
“Well, I suppose we could call her—”
“I got name. I got name for dog.”
“Okay, Bui. You built her a house, you get to name her. What do you have in mind?”
“Spot.”
“Spot?”
“Dog name Spot.”
“Hell, Bui,” Caney said from the doorway. “She doesn’t have a spot on her.”