A Gathering in Hope, page 11
part #11 of Harmony Series
“Of course,” Ruby said.
“Approved,” the elders rumbled.
“I still wish we could have pie,” Wilson said.
Ruby sighed. She couldn’t wait until Gloria Gardner took her place.
40
Sam worked the phones all day Saturday, calling people to let them know worship would be held at Bruno’s. By then, word had gotten out about the bats, and people had questions and some even voiced their suspicion, most of them centering on Charles Gardner.
He didn’t have a phone number for Chris and Kelly, so he phoned Janet Woodrum, the librarian in Harmony, who asked her boyfriend, Pastor Matt of the church where Chris and Kelly used to attend. A few minutes later, Janet called back with a number, which Sam dialed. Chris picked up on the second ring.
Sam told her about the bats and the meetinghouse being closed, then informed her they’d be meeting at Bruno’s at nine thirty. “Feel free to invite a friend,” Sam added.
“Do you need me to help with the phone calls?” Chris offered.
“I only have a few more to make,” Sam said. “But if you want to call Dan and Libby Woodrum, that would be helpful.” He gave Chris their phone number.
“We know Dan and Libby from Harmony,” Chris said. “They came to our church when they would visit their daughter.”
“Wonderful people,” said Sam.
“Yes, we’ve really enjoyed getting to know them.”
Sam thanked Chris for her help, then called Wanda and Leonard Fink, albeit reluctantly. What if they moved from place to place each Sunday, never telling the Finks? He smiled thinking about it, then remembered he was their pastor and it was his responsibility to be gracious, so he called them. Wanda answered the phone, Sam explained the situation, and told her they’d be meeting at Bruno’s.
“He sells wine, you know,” Wanda said. “I’m not sure that’s a place Leonard and I would feel comfortable in. We might not be there.”
That prospect gladdened Sam’s heart as nothing else had in the past week.
“I understand,” Sam said. “We’ll miss you, but I wouldn’t dream of asking you to violate your conscience.”
Wanda ranted for a minute or two about wine, then brought up the subject of Chris and Kelly attending the meeting, wanting to know what Sam was going to do about it. “I’ve already told them how I feel about it. Hate the sin and love the sinner, that’s what I told them.”
“I bet they felt very loved when you told them that,” Sam said.
“Who’s that on the phone?” Leonard yelled from the background.
“It’s Sam. He’s calling to tell us that we’re meeting at Bruno’s to worship this Sunday.”
“Not me,” Leonard said. “They serve alcohol there.”
“We won’t be there,” Wanda said.
“Well, okay. We’ll let you know if we meet somewhere else,” Sam said, trying his best not to sound delighted.
Sam had never been one of those pastors who saw the hand of God in every little thing. Some things, good and bad, just happened. Like bats in the attic. They just happened. A random act of nature. But now that Wanda and Leonard weren’t joining them at Bruno’s, he began to see the hand of God at work. Maybe those bats were a gift from God, after all.
41
Sam decided that rather than calling Herb and Stacey Maxwell, he would walk over to see them. They were home, it being a Saturday. Stacey met him at the door, her hand wrapped in a bandage as big as a softball. In the chaos of the past few days, Sam had forgotten all about Stacey being bitten by their dog.
“I’ve come to pay a pastoral visit,” Sam said. “I wanted to give you a few days for things to settle down before I dropped in.”
She invited him inside. “I’m glad you stopped by,” she said. “Hey, Herb, Sam from the church is here.”
Herb appeared down the hallway from a bedroom, carrying both babies. “Got them changed,” he said, handing one off to Stacey. He turned to Sam and shook his hand. “I think Stacey got bit by the dog to get out of changing diapers.”
Sam wondered if Herb had washed his hands after changing the dirty diapers. He hadn’t heard the water run. Doctors were notorious for not washing their hands, spreading germs from one patient to another. He made a mental note not to touch his hands to his face until he got home and could wash them.
“Have a seat,” Herb said, gesturing toward a rocking chair.
“So tell me all about your dog bite,” Sam said, settling in the chair.
“Well, it’s quite an interesting story,” Stacey said. “That somewhat involves you.”
“Oh?” Sam shifted in the chair, uneasy.
“Our dog got out and by the time I found him, he was at the end of the meetinghouse lane, tearing into a trash bag. In the process of pulling him away, he bit my hand.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I always put my trash bags in trash cans, but it sounds like one of them got knocked over.”
“No, this bag was just sitting on the ground,” Stacey said. “There weren’t any trash cans there. The bag was full of dead bats.”
“Bats?” Sam was starting to hate that word.
“Yes, bunches of bats, all of them dead. Our dog had one in his mouth and when I tried to take it away from him, he bit me.”
“Dogs will do that,” Sam said, hoping to steer the conversation toward dogs and away from bats. “What kind of dog do you have? You told me once, but I forgot.”
“A poodle. We don’t have it anymore. We gave it to Stacey’s mom and dad.”
“I wonder what a bag of bats was doing at the end of the meetinghouse drive,” Stacey mused aloud, digging for information.
“They were up in the meetinghouse attic, but someone killed them and left them at the end of the driveway. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. The DNR has closed down our meetinghouse so they can investigate, and until they’re done, we’ll be meeting at Bruno’s.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done such a thing? I mean, that’s pretty sick,” Stacey said. “Whoever would do that needs therapy.”
“No idea,” Sam said. “But we have people working on it, and when we find out who it was, they’ll be dealt with in an appropriate manner.” He was trying to sound professional, as if he himself were heading up a multistate investigation and wouldn’t sleep until the perpetrator was deep in the bowels of a prison, undergoing electroshock therapy. Even if it was his dad.
“Here’s the deal,” said Herb, cutting to the chase. “Seeing those dead bats weirded us out. At first, we thought maybe you or Barbara had something to do with it and we weren’t going to attend any longer. But after things settled down, and we thought about it further, we decided it didn’t seem like something you’d do—”
“Oh, no, we’d never do something like that,” Sam said.
“So we’re going to keep coming,” Herb continued. “We’re making a three-month commitment, then will assess whether or not to make Hope Friends our church home.”
“We like that you’re not a screamer,” Stacey said. “The church we previously attended had a pastor who screamed a lot.”
“And we like that you seem open to gays and lesbians,” Herb said. “We noticed the two women who seem to be a couple, and people seem to treat them very kindly. That matters a lot to us. We don’t want to raise our children in a church that excludes gay people.”
“That’s Chris and Kelly,” Sam said. “I married them, back before it was legal. Got fired for it. That’s how I ended up in Hope.” He smiled modestly, as if marrying Chris and Kelly had been his idea all along, and not an accident.
Three months. He had three months to rope Herb and Stacey into staying. The bat thing wouldn’t help. Who wanted to attend church with a bat-killing psycho? They needed to find out who did it, turn him over to the police, apologize to the DNR, make a donation to the Sierra Club, and move on.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” Sam said. That was a pastor’s life, having to apologize for things he hadn’t done. “If there’s anything we can do to help, please call.” He gave them his cell phone number, then fussed over the babies, getting them to smile. He wished his sons would get on the ball, get married, and give him grandchildren to love on.
He was beginning to like Herb and Stacey. He hoped they stayed. The thing was, every other facet of their lives seemed so perfect, so professional. They were accustomed to excellence. Hope Meeting had something to offer, but it wasn’t perfection. It wasn’t like the churches on TV that had screens that rolled down from the ceiling and cushioned chairs and coffee bars, where the pastor ran things like a CEO and hired people to help him, instead of having to rely on volunteers he couldn’t fire when they made mistakes, which they invariably did, because they were human. Somewhere in Herb and Stacey’s heads lurked an image of the perfect church, and Sam was afraid Hope Meeting wasn’t it.
He thought about it, walking home. It had been like this the entire thirty years he’d been a pastor. You worked hard, did your best to model Jesus, cultivate relationships, did all you could to make the church a warm, hospitable place, and all it took was one nimrod to spoil it for everyone. Why could pastors be fired, but members couldn’t? Sam dreamed often of summoning certain members to his office, offering them a chair, folding his hands on the desk, looking across the desk at them and saying, “I’m sorry, but it appears we’re not a good fit. We’re going to have to let you go.” And then they would actually have to go. They couldn’t stick around just to spite him. They couldn’t whine to the elders and demand he be fired. They couldn’t sabotage every new program the church undertook. They just had to get their cushion from the pew, clear out their stuff from their mail slot in the hallway, turn in their name tag, and never come back.
The thought delighted him, and by the time he got home he was positively giddy with joy.
42
But why do they think I had anything to do with it?” Charles Gardner griped to his wife. “I didn’t touch those bats.”
“All I know is that when you and Sam and Barbara were at the hospital and you found out about the bats in the meetinghouse, you said something to the effect that you would have gone up in the attic and killed the bats without a second thought.”
“So how did the DNR find out about that?” Charles asked.
“I guess Barbara mentioned it to Sam and a woman from the DNR heard her say it and here we are,” Gloria said. “But I’m certain Barbara wasn’t trying to get you in trouble. They were just trying to think of everyone who knew anything about the bats. That’s all. They just want to eliminate suspects.”
“My own daughter-in-law threw me under the bus,” Charles grumbled.
“You don’t exactly have a good record when it comes to this sort of thing. Remember the snakes you killed, and all those mice that one time?”
“That’s different, and you know it.”
“Well, did you say you would have killed the bats?” Gloria asked.
“Sure I said it, but I didn’t mean it.”
“Then you shouldn’t have said it,” Gloria said. “I’ve been telling you for years that you don’t have to say every thought that pops into your head. And now you’re in trouble.”
“I oughta be able to tell my own family I’m going to kill something without them telling the police. There’s no loyalty these days.”
He sat silently, brooding.
“You don’t suppose they’ll arrest me, do you?” he asked.
“Who knows. We’re all the time reading in the paper about these people who get sent to jail for twenty years, then they find out they didn’t do it.”
Charles groaned. “Twenty years in jail. I’ll be nearly a hundred years old.”
“On the upside, you’ll get free medical care,” Gloria pointed out.
“We never should have moved here. This never would’ve happened if we’d stayed put in Harmony.”
“You’re the one who wanted to move,” Gloria said. “I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay home where our friends were. But no, you had to move. Now here we are, you’re headed to jail, and I’ll have to take care of this big old heap all by myself.”
They spent the rest of the day hissing at one another, before finally deciding it was Sam’s fault for not keeping a tighter rein on the members of the meeting.
“He’s too easy on them,” Charles said. “If he put the fear of God in them now and then, they wouldn’t pull stunts like this.”
“I’ve got half a mind not to go there anymore,” Gloria said. “Church in a restaurant. You can’t have church in a restaurant. What are they thinking?”
“And we’re going to go there, and the whole time everyone’s going to be looking at me thinking I’m a bat killer,” Charles said. “I’ll show them. I just won’t go.”
With their minds made up, they ate supper, then settled in to see a rerun of The Lawrence Welk Show and watched as the six Semonski Sisters—Diane, Donna, Joanne, Valerie, Audrey, and Michelle—sang “Cuanto La Gusta.”
“We’re old enough to be their parents,” Charles said. “Why didn’t we have daughters?”
They sat in their recliners, contemplating life as the parents of the famous Semonski Sisters, living in Palm Beach or Rancho del Mirage or wherever it was the parents of famous singers lived.
“Kids like that, I bet they bought their parents a brand-new house,” Charles said.
“I wonder what happened to the Semonskis?” Gloria wondered aloud. “You don’t hear much about them anymore.”
“Yeah, it’s funny how you can go from being stars on The Lawrence Welk Show, then just fall off the face of the earth.”
They pondered the fleeting nature of fame, then watched a rerun of Gunsmoke.
“I wonder why Matt and Kitty never got married?” Charles said.
“Maybe he was gay,” Gloria mused.
“Don’t be silly. People weren’t gay back then.”
“Sure they were,” Gloria said. “They just didn’t talk about it.”
“Well, Marshal Dillon wasn’t one of them,” Charles said. “Maybe Doc was, but not Matt.”
They squabbled a bit longer, then brushed their teeth and went to bed, setting their alarm clock out of pure habit, so as to wake up in time for church, even though they weren’t going.
43
In all his years of pastoring, Sam had never preached in a restaurant, so he and Barbara woke up on Sunday morning earlier than usual, ate breakfast, showered, and were out the door two hours before worship began. Sam hung a sign on the meetinghouse door informing anyone who showed up that they were worshipping at Bruno’s.
“You realize, don’t you,” Barbara pointed out, “that if any visitors show up here, it’s because they don’t know we’ve changed locations. And if they don’t know we’ve changed locations, they probably don’t know we’re starting an hour earlier. So by the time they get here, read the sign, and get over to Bruno’s, worship will be over.”
“Don’t hand me another problem,” Sam said. “I have enough on my mind as it is.”
They walked to Bruno’s, let themselves in the front door, pushed the tables to the side, and arranged the chairs into rows. That didn’t look right. Besides, when they ate dessert, they’d need the tables, so they pulled the tables back into place and grouped the chairs around them. There were candles on the tables, which looked too Catholic for Sam’s taste, so they gathered them up and sat them on the counter next to the cash register.
Hank and Norma Withers arrived with the keyboard and plugged it in next to the salad bar. Norma sat down and began playing. Since her Alzheimer’s, her repertoire had shrunk. She knew “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Amazing Grace,” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” which she’d heard Frank Sinatra sing in 1974 when she had accompanied Hank to an architects’ convention in Chicago. She thought it might make a nice song for the offering.
Bruno arrived a half hour before worship and began clattering the pots and pans in the kitchen. Before long, the smell of food permeated the restaurant. People began rolling in—most of the regulars except for the Finks, plus Herb and Stacey carrying Ezra and Emma, several new attenders, and Chris and Kelly with two of their friends. Sam wondered if their friends were gay. He wished there were a way to tell. Gay people were tricky that way, most of them looked regular, like everyone else. He hugged Chris and Kelly. Barbara had once expressed concerns about his hugging attractive young women, but had told him he could hug all the lesbians he wished. He shook hands with Herb and Stacey, fussed over Ezra and Emma, then looked around the room for his parents, who apparently hadn’t arrived. That was odd. He wondered if they were all right.
Maybe the DNR had raided his parents’ home in the night and were waterboarding his father in some dingy basement. That would be ironic, his father having often stated that waterboarding was no big deal and he didn’t see what the fuss was all about and if people didn’t want to be waterboarded, then they should have kept better company and not lived in Afghanistan.
But where was his mother, and if his father was being waterboarded, why hadn’t his mother phoned to tell him? Maybe they had her locked up, too. Maybe they didn’t want any witnesses and had thrown her in a cell in solitary confinement and let her out only a half hour each day to exercise and she couldn’t get word to Sam of their whereabouts, and by the time he found them, they were dead and buried in a pauper’s grave on the prison grounds, deprived of a Christian burial. The DNR played hardball, that was for sure.
Then he heard someone say, “Hi, Sam,” and it was his parents, who had woken up determined not to attend church, had eaten breakfast and gotten dressed, all the while declaring they would not attend meeting for worship, had gotten in their car and driven to Bruno’s vowing never to darken the door of Hope Friends Meeting again, and had every intention of attending meeting one last time just to tell them so, then had entered Bruno’s and there was Dan Woodrum greeting them and Ruby Hopper handing Gloria a baby twin, Gloria wasn’t sure which one, and before they knew it, they had forgotten to be upset and were swept up in the general excitement. Quaker meeting for worship in an Italian restaurant! What would they think of next?
