Just Shy of Harmony (3 page)

S
omething had been wrong since Easter, almost two months ago. A cloudy desolation had swept over Sam Gardner, fast as a summer storm, raging in and pounding down.

He’d read an article in a Christian magazine about the ten warning signs of depression. He had seven of them. A note at the bottom of the article read:

But Sam was the pastor. It’s hopeless, he thought. Hopeless. That was another sign of depression—feelings of hopelessness. Now he had eight signs of depression.

Sam had thought about getting counseling. The mental-health agency rented a room in the upstairs of the Harmony Herald building. Bob Miles, the editor of the Herald, liked to sit at his desk and look out the window at the town square and write about what he saw in his column, “The Bobservation Post.” If you
visited the mental-health center, chances were good you’d be written about.

Sam could just imagine what Bob would write:

That’s why Sam couldn’t go to the mental-health center.

He was going to talk with Barbara, but didn’t want to worry her, so he talked with his father instead, on a Saturday morning in early June. He hadn’t planned to, but he’d been walking past his parents’ house on his way to the meetinghouse and saw his father in the garage, repairing their wooden screen door.

Sam walked up the driveway and into the garage. “Hey, Dad, what you doing?”

“What’s it look like?”

“Dad, I was hoping maybe we could talk.”

His father kept working. “Whatcha need, Sam?”

“Could you put down the hammer, please?”

Charlie set down the hammer and turned toward Sam, concerned. “What is it, son? Is anything wrong?”

“I’m not quite sure. It’s just that lately I haven’t been feeling well.”

“Have you been to see Doc Neely?”

“No, it’s not that kind of not feeling well. I’m feeling depressed.”

His father laughed. “Depressed? Is that all? For crying out loud, what have you got to be depressed about? You got it easy. Why, when I was your age, I didn’t have time to be depressed. I had too much work to do. Maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you don’t have enough to do.”

That wasn’t Sam’s problem. He had more than enough to do. It never let up. Sixty hours a week. His phone ringing off the hook. Plus, in the two months since Goal-Setting Sunday, Dale Hinshaw had been hounding him about the Scripture egg project.

“S
am,” Dale had said one Sunday after worship, “I think we oughta get together on Monday mornings to discuss what you need to do for the Scripture egg project.”

“Mondays aren’t good days. It’s my one day off. I like spending the day with my family.”

“Bring them along. Who knows, maybe they can help too.”

The next morning, at eight o’clock, Dale had knocked on their door.

“Hi, Dale, what brings you by here on my day off?” Sam asked.

“I stopped by the meetinghouse, but you weren’t
there. If you want to meet here, that’s fine with me.” Dale walked into the house. “Say, is that bacon I smell? Why don’t we eat a little breakfast first. It’s hard to think lofty thoughts on an empty stomach.”

Every Monday since, Dale had stopped by to discuss his Scripture egg project. He’d stay all morning, until Sam could edge him out the door. And every Monday Dale would ask Sam to preach about the Scripture egg project.

“I will if the Lord leads me,” Sam promised.

But lately the Lord hadn’t led Sam on much of anything. He usually wrote his sermons on Fridays. He would think about his sermon all week long, then on Fridays he’d arrive at the meetinghouse by eight in the morning. Frank, his secretary, was always waiting with coffee. They’d drink their coffee, sitting in Sam’s office. At eight-thirty Sam would say, “Well, it’s sermon day. I’d better get at it.”

But ever since Easter, Sam had been struggling with what to say. He was tired of writing sermons. One Friday in early June, he figured he had written over seven hundred sermons in his fourteen years of ministry.

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? he thought. I’m tired of words. Talk, talk, talk. That’s all we do in the church. I’ve already preached more sermons than Jesus did.

That was the week he decided he wasn’t going to preach.

S
am stood at the pulpit that Sunday and spoke to the congregation.

“Quakers believe God leads us to speak, and that unless God leads us to speak, we shouldn’t speak. God did not give me a message this week, so I will not speak. If God has led any of you to speak, we would welcome your message.”

Then he sat down.

People looked at one another, puzzled. Although it was true no one should preach without being led, it was also true that God had been in the habit of speaking to Sam every Friday in his office between the hours of eight-thirty and noon.

The congregation sat in a fidgety silence. Always before, the Quaker silence had been tolerated because they knew it wouldn’t last, that Sam would eventually rise to his feet and bring a message. But this was silence with no end in sight. This was uncomfortable, bordering on painful. What would happen? How long would they have to sit there?

All across the meeting room, people asked themselves, Lord, are you leading me to speak today?

They listened for God’s voice and were relieved not to hear it.

Then they began to pray for God to lead someone—anyone—to speak.

Dale Hinshaw cleared his throat and stood up from his pew.

Several dozen people told the Lord that Dale wasn’t who they’d had in mind.

It was Mr. and Mrs. Dale Hinshaw’s fortieth wedding anniversary. He told how they’d met as students at the Ozark School of the Scriptures. How they’d married right after college and gone to pastor a church, but
that it didn’t work out. His throat caught as he spoke. He hadn’t intended to reveal this much, but standing there, speaking, he could scarcely contain himself.

The congregation was amazed. Dale Hinshaw, a minister? They tried to imagine that.

Dale told how guilty he’d felt for leaving the ministry but that now, with his Scripture eggs, he believed God was giving him a second chance.

“I won’t be here next Sunday. I’ll be at the Unitarians up in the city passing out my Scripture eggs. I sure could use some help. If the Lord’s nudging you that way, come see me after church.”

Then he sat down, just as Fern Hampton stood up. Fern had never spoken during worship. They leaned forward, eager to hear her message from the Lord. She placed her hands on the back of the pew in front of her, steadying herself.

She paused. Every eye was on her. Her voice rose up from the sixth row.

“I’ve been thinking of the new bathroom vanity we’ll be buying for the ladies’ rest room. As long as we’re all here together, I’d like to take a quick vote. Men, this is for the ladies only. Ladies, if you’d like a white vanity, raise your hand.”

Bea Majors queried from her seat behind the organ, “Is it white-white or cream-white?”

“White-white.”

Twenty-one ladies raised their hands. Fern counted once, then counted again just to be sure.

“Okay, that’s twenty-one votes for a white vanity. Now the other option is an oak-grain vanity. Ladies, raise your hands if you want an oak-grain vanity.”

Fern scanned the meeting room, counting twenty-nine upraised hands.

“Oak-grained it is,” she announced, then sat back down, her sacred duty accomplished.

S
am sat in his chair behind the pulpit, his head in his hands. No wonder I’m discouraged, he thought. He stood up before anyone else could speak. “Let us pray.” They bowed their heads while Sam prayed for God to bless their meeting. And soon, he prayed silently.

“Amen,” he concluded.

“Amen,” mumbled the congregation.

Sam didn’t stay to talk. He slipped out the back door and walked home by himself, taking the long way home. He wasn’t ready to face his wife. Didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Mostly, he wanted to think.

When Sam had been in seminary, he’d dreamed of pastoring struggling churches and transforming them by the power of his words. Back then, Sam had loved words. He believed if he said the right words, his church would grow and lives would be changed.

But when Sam said the right words, people grew mad, and after a while it became easier to say the agreeable words. He discovered people weren’t interested in change, but in stability.

For seven hundred sermons he chased after the perfect, elusive words that would open hearts. But the words never came.

Now Sam was tired of words.

He went home and sat on the porch. Barbara came
out of the house. She sat down next to Sam on the porch swing. “What’s wrong, honey?” she asked.

“I can’t keep this up.”

“Can’t keep what up?”

“Being a pastor. I can’t keep it up. I’m absolutely empty.”

“Then quit.”

“I can’t quit. What will I do? Being a pastor is all I know to do.”

“Find something else to do.”

“Look, I’m thirty-nine years old. I’ve got a family to take care of and a mortgage to pay. It’s a little too late to find something else to do.”

They didn’t talk for the longest time. They just pushed back and forth in the swing. Somewhere down the block, a screen door banged.

“Maybe I should find another church,” Sam said.

“That would work for about a year. Then you’d be empty again. Why are you empty?”

Sam knew why, but he was afraid to say it out loud. He’d known since Easter why he was empty. He remembered the very moment. It had happened in Easter worship. He had been preaching about the power of God to overcome death, but as he preached he realized he no longer believed it. He’d wanted to sit down right then, but feared what people might think.

Instead, he finished his sermon and sat in his chair behind the pulpit, asking himself, If God can overcome death, why are so many of His churches dead?

It was a question he couldn’t answer.

And that’s when Sam Gardner had stopped believing.

In everything he’d once believed.

W
hen the elders of Harmony Friends Meeting put lottery tickets in the church bulletins to increase attendance, they never imagined Jessie Peacock would win five million dollars.

Most people would have been thrilled, but Jessie was miserable. She didn’t believe in the lottery. She thought it was a tax on idiocy, so when she won that money she believed God was giving her a platform. She went to the statehouse so the governor could present her the check, but when the TV man told her to smile and shake the governor’s hand, she tore the check in half and scolded the governor for duping the ignorant poor.

The state mailed her letters asking her to take the money. She tore the letters up and mailed them back. That was last year. Jessie had hoped God might reward her faithfulness and make life a little easier for her and her husband, Asa, but that had not happened.

Asa and Jessie Peacock farm south of town. Last summer the hog cholera came through and killed all
their pigs. Then it didn’t rain for two months, and their crops dried up. This past winter Asa took a job in the county seat, working nights on the kill line at the poultry plant. Worried, frantic chickens would hurl toward Asa on the conveyor belt. He would grab every fourth one and lop its head off. “Nothing personal,” he told them. “Just doing my job.”

But Asa was troubled. When he was a little boy he had a pet chicken, Mr. Peeps, who had followed him everywhere and slept in his bed. Asa was grateful Mr. Peeps wasn’t alive to see how far he had fallen.

Asa wasn’t averse to killing the occasional chicken for his own consumption. It was the wholesale slaughter that troubled him. The ruthless organization of it. He worried the chickens wouldn’t forgive him.

He began to have chicken nightmares. One night he dreamed he was riding on a conveyor belt, and a giant chicken grabbed him by the feet and lopped his head off.

He told Dale Hinshaw about his nightmares one morning at the Coffee Cup.

“Sounds like post-dramatic stress syndrome to me,” Dale said. “You see it mostly in war veterans and schoolteachers, but occasionally with poultry workers.”

The next Sunday during church Asa prayed for God to stop the dreams. But that night he dreamed he was back on the kill line and, just before he killed a chicken, the chicken looked deep into Asa’s eyes. He saw the chicken’s lips move and heard the chicken cry out, “It’s me, Asa. Mr. Peeps. Don’t you remember me?”

In the dream, the other chickens crowded around Asa’s feet, pecking his ankles.

Asa woke up sweating and lay awake for quite some time. He heard the downstairs clock chime two o’clock, then three. Then he fell asleep.

In the morning his ankles were sore. He pulled off his socks. His ankles were covered with little red marks. He went downstairs to the kitchen, showed Jessie his ankles, and told her about his dream. He asked her what she thought.

“I think you should quit.”

But he couldn’t. They needed the money. Instead, Asa gave up sleep. At night he worked at the poultry plant; then he’d come home and work the farm.

B
y June they were down to three hundred dollars in their savings account. Then Jessie got another letter from the lottery people asking if she’d changed her mind. This time, she didn’t tear it up. Instead, she stuck it on the front of the refrigerator. The letter said they had until the end of August to claim the money. She’d open the refrigerator to get out the milk, and her eyes would fall on that letter. Five million dollars. She’d think about Asa working two jobs and not sleeping.

She pondered if winning the lottery was God’s way of helping them and that maybe she’d been too hasty in refusing the check. She wished she hadn’t torn the check in half on television. She would have to eat a lot of crow if she cashed the lottery check now.

She wondered if this was God’s way of humbling her.

Then, one July morning during the haying season, their tractor broke down. Asa had to borrow a team of mules and a wagon from their Amish neighbor to fin
ish bringing the hay bales to the barn. There was a creek that ran between the house and the barn. Asa would guide the mules over the bridge toward the barn and up the earthen ramp into the barn.

His great-grandfather had built the barn. It had his name over the doorway—Abraham Peacock—and the year the barn was built—1898. Over the fireplace in their house was a picture of Abraham Peacock standing in front of his new barn, looking prosperous.

Over a hundred years later, the barn was still standing. Asa loved that barn. Loved the animal smell and the swirls of hay on the floor. When he was a boy, he and his brothers would make forts in the loft using hay bales. They’d tie off ropes from the beams and swing down from the loft. The old ropes still hung from the beams, rope icicles reaching to the ground.

Asa was urging the mules across the bridge toward the barn when the mules quit. He looped a rope around their necks and pulled, but they dug in. Jessie came out of the house and pushed the mules from behind, but they stood fast.

Asa said, “Well, if they’re going to take a break, we will too.” They went inside to eat lunch.

They ate lunch looking out the window at the mules.

“Stubborn creatures,” Asa muttered.

After lunch, he phoned Ellis Hodge, seeking counsel. Ellis Hodge was a fount of information.

Ellis said, “Seems to me I read something in last year’s almanac about how to move a stubborn mule.”

Asa loved the almanac. He had built a shelf in the living room to hold all his almanacs. While Jessie
washed the lunch dishes, Asa pulled last year’s almanac from the shelf and began to thumb through it.

“I’ll be,” he yelled to Jessie. “Did you know that if the north side of a beech tree is sweaty, it’s gonna rain?”

Jessie hadn’t known that.

Asa read on.

“Say, here’s a good idea. It says to save your old rubber gloves and cut them up for rubber bands. Do you do that?”

Jessie yelled back, “I don’t use rubber gloves.”

Asa turned the page. “Hey, this is interesting. What do you do with the empty toilet paper rolls?”

“I throw them away.”

“It says here you should use them as sachets in drawers and closets.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“Did you know that if a chicken stands on one leg, the weather will turn cold?”

“I had no idea.”

“Yep, and if there are lots of dogwood blossoms, it’ll be a good corn crop.”

“Imagine that.”

“Here it is!” Asa shouted. “To move a stubborn mule, light a small fire underneath the mule and it will move.”

He walked into the kitchen and asked Jessie where they kept the matches. She opened the cabinet over their stove and handed Asa an Ohio Blue Tip.

T
hey went outside. Jessie watched as Asa took an armload of hay from the wagon and piled it un
derneath the mules. He took the match from his pocket and scratched it on his zipper. He touched the match to the hay.

The mules stood fast while the first wisps of smoke began to curl around their bellies. As the fire grew, they began to rock back and forth.

“There they go!” Asa yelled.

The mules lunged toward the barn, but not far enough or fast enough. They stopped just as the wagon was over the fire. The dry floorboards of the wagon began to kindle.

Asa dashed to the barn for a bucket. He hurried to the creek to fill the bucket. The mules looked back, alarmed. They saw the flames and felt the heat, and their strength was renewed. They bolted for the barn, pulling the burning wagon behind them. The flames climbed up the ropes into the loft. Before long, the loft was ablaze.

Jessie and Asa unharnessed the mules from the wagon and drove them from the barn. Then Jessie ran inside to phone the fire department. A while later they could hear the fire whistle from town sound over the fields. By the time the volunteer fire department arrived, the whole barn was aflame.

When the pumper went dry, the firemen pumped water from the creek. It took them two hours to put out the fire. The only part of the barn left standing was the doorway. You could just make out the numbers—1898.

Asa and Jessie stood before the smoldering ruins, holding each other. That was the picture Bob Miles snapped to run in the Harmony Herald.

“How did she burn?” Bob inquired, his pen poised, ready to write.

Asa had seen what happened to people who did dumb things in Harmony. In 1913, his great-grandfather, Abraham Peacock, had driven a Model T through the Grant Hardware Emporium plate glass window while pulling back on the steering wheel and yelling “Whoa!” at the top of his lungs. He lived thirty more years and never lived it down.

“I’d rather not say,” he answered Bob.

Bob wrote on his pad of paper, The fire was of a suspicious origin.

T
he next day was Sunday. Jessie and Asa went to town to church. Everyone there had heard about their barn.

Dale Hinshaw, their insurance agent, reminded them to come by his office to put in a claim.

“Just exactly how did the fire start?” he asked Asa. “I need to know for when I fill out the forms.”

“I’d rather not say. Do the insurance people have to know?”

“Only if you want your money.”

“Can’t we just leave that part of the form blank?”

“Not if you want to be paid.”

“In that case, I don’t think we’ll be filing a claim.”

That night as Asa and Jessie lay in bed, Jessie began to weep. “First the pigs, then the crops. Now we’ve lost our barn.”

Asa held Jessie to him, stroking her head.

“What a mess we’re in,” she sniffed. “If I hadn’t gone on television and ripped up that check and talked against the lottery, I could cash that check and we’d be fine.”

“There, there, it’s not your fault. If I’d have told Dale how the barn burned, we’d at least have the insurance money.”

“Foolish pride. That’s our biggest problem. Foolish pride.” Then she sat straight up in bed. “I don’t care what people think, I’m going to take that lottery money. I’m tired of you having those horrible dreams and working two jobs.”

“Stop that talk. You were right not to take the money. We’ll be fine. The dogwood blossoms were heavy this spring. According to the almanac that means a good corn crop.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for not putting much faith in the almanac.”

They fell asleep. Jessie dreamed about cashing in her ticket and building Asa a new barn, having his picture taken in front of it, and hanging the picture over their fireplace. Asa dreamed about the mules lighting a fire underneath him while the chickens looked on, clucking their approval.

The next morning they sat at the table, eating their breakfast and gazing out the window. Every now and then, a small plume of smoke would rise up from the burned timbers of the barn.

Asa sighed.

Jessie said, “Well, at least there’s lots of dogwood blossoms.”

“Does that mean you won’t be cashing the check?”

“Oh, I probably won’t.”

They sat quiet. Jessie drinking her coffee, Asa reading the almanac.

Asa spoke out of the stillness, “You know, honey, it’s easy to have convictions when times are good. But what really counts is if you can keep your convictions when times are hard.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

They finished their breakfast, washed the dishes, then walked through their fields. The corn was up past their knees.

Asa said, “According to the almanac, corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July.”

“Seems I’ve heard that.”

They’re praying for a good crop. But that letter is still hanging on their refrigerator, just in case.