A Gathering in Hope, page 4
part #11 of Harmony Series
Sam wondered if the Finks were going to be an everyday event.
He wished he could go back in time to warn the early church leaders to be careful that their efforts didn’t result in people like the Finks. Maybe build some correctives into the system, like un-baptisms. He thought of several people that needed un-baptizing. Line them up, rip the stripes from their sleeves like they did in old army movies, and give them the heave-ho. Though it was unlikely to happen, it was a pleasant thought nonetheless and put him in a good frame of mind for the day.
13
Herb and Stacey Maxwell had been discussing their morning at Hope Friends off and on for the past three days. They had been impressed by Ruby Hopper and Libby Woodrum, thought Hank Withers was a bit odd, and couldn’t make up their minds about Sam, whose sermon about the dangers of nudity had struck them as strange.
“I’ve never heard a sermon quite like it,” Stacey said. “It’s like he didn’t know where he was going with it.”
“It was different,” Herb agreed. “But he seems like a nice enough guy.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Let’s give it one month,” Herb suggested. “If we don’t like it after a month, we’ll try somewhere else.”
“Fair enough.”
“I might stay just for the pie,” Herb said. “It was delicious.”
“Does it bother you that there aren’t any kids in the church?” Stacey asked.
“Not too much. I don’t think it’s because they don’t like kids. They seemed happy to see ours. Maybe people just don’t like all that silence.”
“That’s the part I liked the most,” Stacey said. “It was so peaceful in there.”
“It was, wasn’t it. Our old church had so much noise. It’s kind of nice to be able to sit quietly and think.”
“Let’s give it three months,” Stacey said. “That way we’ll get the real flavor of the place.”
Herb nodded. “I can do three months.”
The Maxwells had seen Sam and Barbara the night before, out for a walk in the neighborhood. They’d been out working in their yard and heard someone call their names, and there were the Gardners, coming up their driveway. They had thanked the Maxwells for visiting the meeting the Sunday before, chatted about the neighborhood, fussed over the twins, then had taken their leave.
It was the perfect pastoral visit, not too long, not too short, no hounding the Maxwells about religion, no pressing them to return, no bad-mouthing other churches, no dropping hints that they were thinking of building and could use some extra money.
Sam had started to tell the Maxwells about his new sermon series, but Barbara cut him off and asked about the twins.
“People don’t want to hear about your next sermon series,” Barbara told Sam when they were clear of the Maxwells. “It’s not about you. Why do ministers think people are just sitting around wondering about upcoming sermons?”
Sam supposed she was right, and was discouraged by the thought. People gave plenty of thought to the next football game, they even talked about it on television. Just once, he’d like to hear a television commentator say, “This week at Hope Friends Meeting, Sam Gardner will be speaking about marriage equality. It promises to be an exciting morning. You’ll remember that Gardner was fired from his previous Quaker meeting for conducting a same-gender marriage. Have enough people changed their mind on this topic? That’s what Sam is betting on. We’ll see if he’s right. Join us at ten thirty this Sunday, then stay tuned afterward for a response from Franklin Graham.”
“That’s going to be an exciting morning, Chuck,” the television cohost would say. “A lot of people have been looking forward to this matchup for a long time.”
Then they would cut away to a video of Sam at his desk, deep in thought. People enjoying sermons as much as they did professional football, that would be something.
14
Something was happening at Hope Friends Meeting, something that made Sam both excited and anxious. He was seated on the facing bench looking at the congregation, studying the new people. Five new visitors this Sunday, many of them young. Herb and Stacey Maxwell were back with their twins; Chris and Kelly, the two women Sam had married, were present; and three others who had told Sam their names, which he had promptly forgot. One of the three, a young woman, had a ring through her right nostril. Sam had started to ask how she blew her nose, when Barbara, knowing exactly what he was about to do, introduced herself and steered the woman away from Sam so she could meet others.
After worship, they ate pie, then gathered for the monthly business meeting, something only the die-hard members attended. Ruby Hopper had no sooner prayed for God to be with them than Leonard Fink expressed his concern about certain people, he wouldn’t mention names, coming to church with various body piercings, which needed to stop right now.
“Who’s gonna tell her to take that ring out of her nose?” he demanded.
“Not me,” Hank Withers said. “I don’t care if she wears an arrow through her head. She’s under twenty-five, and if you look around, we’re not exactly overflowing with people that age.”
“We never had people like that until Sam got here,” Wanda Fink said.
“And who were those two women?” Leonard Fink asked. “Did you notice they were holding hands?”
Sam didn’t volunteer their names. If Leonard wanted to know, he could ask them.
Ruby Hopper frowned. “Friends, it hardly behooves us to speak ill of others. We’ve been praying for God to send us people, and now they’re coming and we should be grateful. Five new visitors just this morning. Not to mention the Maxwells and their beautiful babies. That’s nine new people in two weeks.”
“We need to get going on the new addition,” Hank Withers said, never one to miss an opportunity to push for the building. “We’re running out of room.”
Doreen Newby frowned. “I’m not so sure adding on is a good idea. How are we going to afford to heat and maintain more space? And don’t say the Lord will provide. I hate it when people say that.”
“Well, we are a church,” Wilson Roberts pointed out. “Aren’t we supposed to have faith that God will provide?”
“Not when it’s an excuse for bad planning,” Leonard Fink said.
The headache began at the base of Sam’s neck, where they always began, from tightening his shoulders. It arced across the top of his skull and settled between his eyes, piercing, throbbing. He got them once a month, at their business meetings. He marveled at Ruby Hopper, who could sit serenely hour after long hour, never raising her voice, never growing discouraged, never once plunging a knife into her eye to end the misery. Years before, Barbara had begun making Sam leave his pocketknife at home on the Sundays they had business meetings.
He sat squirming in his chair, wishing the meeting were over. If they did decide to build, an unbroken chain of meetings stretched before him. Meetings to pick the builder, meetings to pick the carpet, the paint, the windows, the doors, the trim. One meeting after another for the next several years. And he would be expected to attend every last one of them. If Quakers had the same retirement plan as the army, he could have retired ten years before, gotten a job at a hardware store, and never attended another meeting his entire life.
Wayne and Doreen Newby began squabbling about the building project. Wayne in favor, Doreen opposed, hissing at one another like snakes.
“I think we’ve discussed this matter enough for today,” Ruby Hopper said. “Does anyone else have any new business items to discuss?”
“I’ve asked it once, I’ll ask it again. Does Sam know those two women who were here today?” Leonard Fink said. “What can he tell us about them?”
Sam didn’t answer.
“I don’t think that’s an appropriate question,” Libby Woodrum said. “Whether Sam knows them or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re here and we need to welcome them.”
“I think they’re lesbians,” Wanda Fink said. “And if two show up, others will follow. You know how they are.”
Yes, something was happening at Hope Friends Meeting, something that made Sam both excited and anxious, but mostly anxious.
15
Charles Gardner sat in his recliner, brooding, exhausted from Quaker meeting, where he’d been cornered by Hank Withers and asked to serve on the building committee. The chief reason he and his wife had moved to Hope was to get off the committees at Harmony Friends Meeting. They had told their sons, Sam and Roger, they’d moved to Hope to be closer to them, which was a bald lie. They had attended Harmony Meeting over fifty years, were thoroughly entrenched in the meeting, with no way to escape except leave town. Now they were in danger of becoming similarly imprisoned at Hope Meeting. Their fatal error had been joining the meeting, which had made them eligible to serve on committees.
“I don’t want to serve on committees,” he said to Gloria. “Even if our son is the pastor.”
“Oh, it won’t be all that hard. Hank seems like a take-charge kind of guy. It’ll probably be built within a year and the committee will disband.”
“Have you ever known a church committee to disband? Back in Harmony, we’ve kept the furnace committee going fifteen years after we bought the new furnace.”
“This isn’t Harmony. And if the committee does continue, you can always resign from it.”
“I’ve got too much of my own work to do,” Charles said, looking around the room. “I’ve still got to sand these floors, we need to paint, repair that drywall in the kitchen, upgrade the wiring in the basement. I don’t have time to serve on a building committee. Why don’t you serve on the building committee?”
“They didn’t ask me,” Gloria Gardner said.
“You can volunteer. They ought to have a couple women on that committee anyway. Especially since the plans include a new kitchen. You ever think what a kitchen designed by a bunch of old men would be like?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Gloria said, troubled at the prospect. “What a mess that would be.”
“Then call Hank and volunteer to serve in my place,” Charles said.
Hank was delighted to have her serve on the committee. The pastor’s mother or father, he didn’t care which, he just wanted someone on the committee related to Sam who could apply some artful pressure, should it be necessary. Get the minister under the thumb of the building committee and keep him there.
That morning, Hank had been able to nudge the meeting another inch down the road. They had consented to letting him interview potential builders, which he had already been doing anyway. Meeting at night in parking lots, wearing a fake mustache in case someone from the meeting saw him. He’d been meeting with a builder who had worked with churches in the past, but after spending a few hours with Hank, he had declined the job. Hank was settling on a builder who’d never worked with churches before and thus was hopelessly naïve. The man had actually told Hank he thought it might be fun. Fun! Hank had wanted to hire the man on the spot.
With further prodding, and over the Finks’ strenuous objections, Hank had also gained approval to apply for a building permit, which he could use as a crowbar to pry the reluctant. Doreen Newby had pulled him aside after the meeting to ask whether building permits could be canceled if the church decided not to build.
“It pretty well commits us,” he’d told her, lying with such ease he almost felt guilty. “Oh, I’m sure if we went to court and spent a lot of money on lawyers, we might be able to get out of it, but once the government issues a building permit it has the force of law.”
“I had no idea.”
“Yes, I once heard about a church that reneged on its building permit and all the trustees were arrested and thrown in jail. It’s serious business.”
Doreen’s husband, Wayne, was a trustee, and while she’d had her issues with Wayne, she had no wish to see him imprisoned.
She’d had no idea the building process was so fraught with peril, and left the meetinghouse uneasy, wondering if the time had come for her to become a Methodist.
16
On the first warm day of spring, Gloria Gardner, thirty pounds overweight and determined to lose it, had walked to Riggle’s Hardware and purchased a bicycle. As a child, she’d enjoyed bicycling, but hadn’t been on a bicycle since teaching Sam to ride, almost fifty years before. But once you learn to ride a bicycle, you never forget, as the saying goes, and when Charley Riggle wheeled the bike to the parking lot, helped her mount it, then pushed her off, she found her bicycling legs and was nine years old again, pedaling down the sidewalk toward home.
She stopped at Sam’s house, where her son seemed somewhat startled by his mother’s decision to take up bicycling in her late seventies.
“You don’t even have a helmet,” he pointed out. “If you wreck, you’re a goner.”
“Did you wear a helmet when you rode your bicycle everywhere?”
“Mom, that’s not the point. They didn’t even have helmets then. You need to protect your head. That’s not all that could happen. What if you have a heart attack and die?”
“Sam, I’m almost eighty. My life is nearing its end. I’d rather die quickly on a bicycle than languish in a nursing home.”
Nothing Sam said could dissuade her, so he stopped arguing. It was her life, after all. And maybe the exercise would do her good. He’d read about an eighty-one-year-old man who had hiked the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, 2,168 miles. What were old people thinking these days? In comparison, he supposed pedaling her bicycle around Hope wouldn’t kill his mother.
“It is a pretty bike,” he conceded. “Has Dad seen it yet?”
“No, I didn’t even tell him I was buying one. You know how your father is. He would have told me not to waste the money. He would have gone to the landfill and found bike parts and cobbled one together for me.”
“Well, you’re right there,” Sam said.
“Besides, I’ve never had a brand-new bicycle. All the bikes I’ve had were hand-me-downs,” she said. “Take it for a spin, see what you think.”
Sam took several turns around the meetinghouse parking lot. It beat any bike he’d ever had, that was for sure.
“What you ought to do,” he said, coasting to a stop, “is buy some baskets for it so you can ride it to the grocery store.”
“Now you’re talking.”
They went inside and phoned Charley Riggle, who checked his catalog and determined that baskets could indeed be purchased and ordered a pair of them.
“Riding my bike to the store,” Sam’s mother said, clapping her hands. “Just like when I was a little girl.”
She stayed for lunch, then left for home, while Sam visited the sick and shut-ins. The meeting was mercifully short on shut-ins, but Dan Woodrum was having a heart catheterization the next day, so Sam went to wish him well and pray for him, which Dan seemed to appreciate.
“Are you worried?” Sam asked.
“Not too much. Pretty routine procedure for men my age.”
“I hope you don’t need a bypass.”
“Me, too.”
They talked for a while about people they’d known whose hearts had exploded, each one trying to top the other with a more gruesome story until Dan Woodrum was so thoroughly terrified he wished Sam hadn’t bothered to visit.
“I had this one guy in my first church,” Sam said, while taking his leave, “whose chest wall was literally ripped apart by a heart attack. Might as well have been hit by a Mack truck. But don’t you worry, you’re going to be fine.”
Then he hugged Dan and left, pleased to have been of help.
The talk of mortality made him uneasy. He hadn’t exercised in months. Maybe he could mow the yard. It was probably too early, except here and there were clumps of wild onions and high tufts of green grass. Maybe he could knock the top off, as his father said. He filled the mower with gas, checked the oil, cleaned the spark plug, then pushed the mower from the garage to the driveway. It started on the fifth pull, beginning with a barking sputter before catching hold.
He mowed back and forth in neat lines, enjoying the feeling of accomplishment. Lawn mowing provided immediate gratification, which he liked. Everything else he did took time to show results, if it ever did. His mind drifted to the building addition, wondering whether it would actually happen. Quakers were notoriously slow about such matters.
Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the nest of bunnies in a hump of grass, so didn’t stop the mower in time. Horrified, he shut off the mower, looking around to make sure no one had seen him annihilate an entire rabbit family. Thank God that Barbara was still at school. He couldn’t even tell how many he had killed. He thought of counting the legs and dividing by four, but couldn’t bring himself to look at them. He hurried inside and retrieved an old Tupperware container Barbara wouldn’t miss, then pulled on a pair of work gloves and began picking up the mangled carcasses as quickly as he could.
This was the worst thing he’d ever done. He’d go down in the annals of rabbitdom as a serial killer. The good feeling he’d had from ministering to Dan Woodrum was gone. He couldn’t throw the dead rabbits away. Barbara would find them. She had a nose for things like that. He decided to bury them and found a place in the backyard, where she seldom ventured, behind a redbud tree. The rabbits would like it there, he thought. He dug down two feet, placed the Tupperware container in the grave, said a brief prayer for the rabbits, thanking God for letting him know the rabbits, and now entrusting them back to His care. He hadn’t actually known the rabbits, and the rabbits were probably wishing their paths had never crossed, but it somehow seemed fitting to pray such a prayer at a rabbit funeral. He filled the hole with dirt, rounding it off in a neat little mound, then returned the shovel to the garage.
He was finishing the yard when Barbara pulled in the driveway. He had thought he might tell her about the rabbits, but decided against it. No woman wanted to be married to a man capable of such cruelty, even if the cruelty was a result of negligence. Some stories were better left untold. So he told her about Dan Woodrum instead, and how he had been such a comfort to him.
