Lay It on My Heart (14 page)

Pastor Chick is stocky as a bulldog. He wears his old plaid shirt tucked into faded jeans like a lot of the county kids do, but his shoes are rich brown leather with heavy rubber soles. Expensive shoes. Daze says the Collinses, Pastor Chick's family in Tennessee, are “old money.” Daze's own family used to be old money, generations back. Custer Peake came from old money, too, before the honorable Peake ancestor took a stand against growing tobacco. Daze says money's not important, though. She says you couldn't pay her enough to drive around in a Cadillac like a dime-store millionaire. Pastor Chick drives a beat-up Ford pickup truck like it's all he can afford, which is just the way old money behaves, Daze says.

Now Pastor Chick stands humbly to the side of Conley, singing. “When I die, Hallelujah, by and by . . .” Near him, one of the missionary twins lifts her hands in worship. Conley quietly shifts into the “Hallelujah” song, where you sing that word over and over until you work yourself into a prayerful state. Even though I can't think the words of my own prayer and sing at the same time, I feel prayerful all the same.

“You are a mighty God,” Pastor Chick begins as the last Hallelujah fades. “You know everything we've ever done, all the ways we've hurt you by disobeying your word.” Pastor Chick pauses, and when I sneak a peek at him, he's frowning down at his shoes, palms spread flat to the space in front of him, like he's blind and expecting to run into a wall. I crane my head to peer into the darkened sanctuary below. Today is the second Sunday in a row that Phoebe and I have skipped services. This morning she slept until noon, which she never does, and I had to remind her about a ride to Youth Group.

“We hurt you when we hurt the people in our lives,” Pastor Chick is saying. “How many opportunities have we missed to share Christ's love? How many times this week have we said things that are unkind?” He gives us a moment to think, and what I think of is how unconvincing I sound saying “I love you” to Phoebe every night, wishing I didn't have to. I close my eyes again.

“How often have we laughed when someone takes their sexuality, that precious gift for marriage, and turns it into a dirty joke?” When he pauses this time, the silence in the room slithers into my ears and inflates there like two tiny balloons. “How many times have we been too cool to pick up our lunch tray and sit beside that lonely girl in the cafeteria? The one with the wrong kind of clothes. The one who looks like she hadn't washed her hair. Maybe we wondered what others would think if they saw us sitting with her.” He lets this sink in. “Maybe we were that cowardly.”

“We ask forgiveness for forgetting that you walk among us in the people we meet, that everything we do unto the least of these, we do also unto you. Amen.”

We all open our eyes and blink, dazed to find the room still there. The beanbag makes its quiet husking sounds as Mary-Kate, Karen, and I settle in more comfortably.

“Folks,” says Pastor Chick, “we've got a big night.” Conley does a drumroll on the guitar with his knuckles. “Many of you know that years back our town was home to one of the world's most exciting revivals. Any of you heard your parents talking about the Spirit of 'Seventy-three, when a Wednesday-night evening Bible study led by brother Custer Peake turned into a two-week celebration with hundreds coming to the Lord?”

Pride lodges somewhere between my ribs, with the special power only pride has to crack a person wide open. “When the word got out about the joy, people, the joy unspeakable and full of glory, well, folks just had to see it for themselves.” Pastor Chick sucks his lips against his teeth and nods, thoughtfully. “What if I told you . . . ,” he begins again, then waits so long we're all dying to hear what comes next. “What if I told you that right here, in this very room, could be the beginning of an underground revival in our school, our town, the whole great Commonwealth of Kentucky?”

He turns to the marker board and gropes around for an eraser that isn't there. Someone hands him a roll of paper towels from the windowsill, but before he begins wiping down the board, he steps back and checks out two idiotic messages: “Billy was here,” and then below it, “Seth was here.” Pastor Chick shakes his head, smiling as he wipes the board. “Seth and Billy,” he says, with his back to the room. Then he turns around and sweeps out a hand to where a chubby, red-faced boy with shaggy hair sits against the wall opposite me. Then he nods at Seth, and I wonder if he already knows who I am, too. As if he reads my mind, Pastor Chick says, “People, let's back up. Before we go any further, let's take a moment to meet our newbies. Seventh graders, stand up.”

Beside me, Mary-Kate and Karen spring to their feet, which sinks me deeper into the beanbag. By the time I'm standing, Pastor Chick has greeted the first few newcomers, studying each one in turn like he's memorizing their faces.

“Mary-Kate,” says Mary-Kate when he gets to her.

“Mary-Kate,” repeats Pastor Chick, savoring her name in a way that makes Mary-Kate's pale hair and even her slumping posture and new case of acne seem special.

“Karen,” says Karen, and my knees lock into place. I am next.

“Karen,” repeats Pastor Chick. “Sister of Brian, legendary eater of pancakes.” Whatever this means, it makes Karen smile so hard her lips catch on her braces.

Then Pastor Chick is looking at me, and I understand that he knows. Not only who I am and who my grandfather was and who my father is, but also where my father is, and everything that has led up to it. I open my mouth, and when my name won't come out right away, Pastor Chick scans the ceiling, pretending to have to recall it. “Gotta be Charmaine,” he says finally. “Scion of the holy Peakes.” Now Pastor Chick smiles, and it might be the kindest-looking smile I have ever seen. I have not cried even one time since the crazy laughing tears at Mrs. James's house, and as long as I don't blink, I won't be crying now. But when I try to smile back at Pastor Chick, I can see him seeing me, seeing right into how I feel, only what he sees stays private, like he's momentarily switched channels to a frequency only the two of us can pick up. Then he does the perfect, merciful thing by moving on to the next newcomer, and I drop back down into the beanbag away from the roomful of eyes.

“An illustrious start,” says Pastor Chick when he gets through everyone. He sounds like he's teasing and like he means it all at the same time. He pushes his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans and rocks forward, then backward on his expensive leather shoes. “Operation Outreach,” he begins, then takes another one of his long pauses. He nods seriously into each corner of the room. “How many are we in this room tonight? Fifty? Seventy?”

“Seventy-two,” calls out Seth after a moment.

“Seventy-three,” says Mary-Kate.

“Seventy-two, seventy-three,” says Pastor Chick. “I like the enthusiasm of our new seventh graders. Now in a moment, I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes again. I'm going to ask you to think of the people in your life. People at school or on your Pony League team. Members of your family, even. Ask yourself if the people in your life have the information they need to connect that something special about you to Jesus. To the light of our Lord shining through. I hope you get questioned about that light on a regular basis, people,” he says. “I do.”

Pastor Chick claps and does a little jump like he's waking himself up. “We'll call that the first thing.” He spins to the marker board and starts squeaking out letters. “Pray for the light of God. People ask your secret. That's one kind of opportunity.” He spins back to face the room. “Two. In a moment, when I ask you to be very, very still, we're each going to ask God to lay three people on our heart.” On the board he writes,
three people on your heart
. “You may find yourself thinking, suddenly, of a person you don't really like that much. Pay attention to that. We'll take them one at a time.” He raises his hands, says, “Dear Lord,” and I close my eyes and wait in the emptiness where Pastor Chick's voice used to be. The room is beginning to heat up.

I breathe in and then out. I pray my own prayer one time, two times, with my breathing, and then there is a face. Kelly-Lynn from English and activity, with her pearl earrings and ponytail. Behind my eyelids, I consider her with dread, because I know that when I witness to her she will lump me in disdainfully with the missionary twins. My father would be deeply ashamed of me for this thought. It is not the job of the prophet or any other servant of the Lord to care what others think of you.

“Now ask God for someone else,” says Pastor Chick, and Tracy Payne's face appears to me so fast it's like she's been lying in wait.

“Thank the Lord for the first two people,” says Pastor Chick.

Thank you
, I pray.
Inhabit me, O Lord God
.

“Seventy-five of us in this room, and already we've thought of a hundred and fifty more individuals. Think of it, people. Soon we'll be so many in number that we'll grow out of the Upper Room and spill over to the sanctuary down there. I love it. Now,” Pastor Chick pauses, and Conley starts up with some low guitar strumming. “Pray for the last one.”

I pray even though I already know who it is. I give God some extra time in case he wants to change his mind, but this person has been hovering at the edge of my thoughts ever since he first spoke to me. Hovering in my unconscious, Mrs. Teaderman would say. Cecil Goode. The golden-headed Child of God.

After the prayer, Pastor Chick records more instructions on the board.
First: Pray for your people. Second: Pray for an opening. Third: Witness to them or invite them to the Main Event
, which Pastor Chick explains will be a thrilling, town-wide scavenger hunt the Friday after next. After scavenging East Winder, we'll congregate at dusk, at the base of the water tower, in honor of my grandfather's revival. We'll have communion and an altar call—without the altar, of course—and then we'll all spend the night in the seminary rec center, a lock-in. Unless the revival spirit moves again. Then who knows how long we'll keep on worshiping.

We sing one more song and pray one more prayer before Pastor Chick sends us to the basement for refreshments.

“Who'd you get?” Mary-Kate asks me in the stairwell.

“I don't think you're supposed to say,” I say.

“I got my uncle and my two cousins. Only I can't invite them to the scavenger hunt because they live in Ohio.”

“I got the missionary twins,” says Karen. “And Hannah Boykin.”

“The twins are already in Youth Group, though,” I say. “They're thinking of their own three people to bring. They're already missionaries.”

“I didn't pick them,” says Karen. “God did.”

“What about someone from your bus?” I suggest. “Or activity?”

Mary-Kate shrugs. “We ride the bus with church kids, too. And we practice clarinet in the band room during activity.”

In the basement hallway, I tip back my head and regard the low ceiling, just to be looking somewhere else. Its speckled rectangular panels feel like they might be closing in. “What if the people you got don't like you?” I say to the ceiling. “What if they're not people other people make fun of, but they're the people who make fun of you?”

“Turn the other cheek,” says Karen easily. “Maybe tell them how fun the Main Event is going to be.”

“Or maybe don't invite them personally,” says Mary-Kate. “You could write them a note on the back of one of the flyers.”

I imagine writing Tracy a note and handing it to her on the bus, how confused we would both be. I think of how stupid my voice would sound when I tried to explain to Kelly-Lynn why going around town asking people for things is supposed to be fun.

In line at the refreshments counter, Seth pokes me in the back, which I ignore. The thin, blond seminary wife from the Christian Education class, the spirit-flag dancer, has laid out napkins in a perfect grid and is depositing one dark brownie on the center of each.

Seth's finger hits my backbone.

“What,” I say loudly, without turning around. The blond woman snaps her head up. “Sorry,” I say to her.

“I've missed you in class,” she says, offering me a brownie and pretending to pout.

“Guess who I got,” says Seth, close to my ear.

“I've been reading back issues of
The Good Word
,” says the blond woman. “I want you to know your father's columns really speak to me. I love what he had to say in that one piece about fasting.”

“Thank you,” I say as Seth pokes me again. While he grabs his brownie, I scoot away across the rec hall and lean up against a pillar, half-hidden.

Seth finds me anyway. “What are you doing back here?” he says. Even when he's just standing, his arms and legs spaz out in different directions, like each part of his body has its own idea about what to do next. I try to hold my brownie and cross my arms over my breasts at the same time, in case he wants to practice not lusting again. Then I remember that if he lusts, he has to pluck out his offending eye, and I uncross my arms. “You still don't know who God gave me,” he says.

I look around the room. There are Mary-Kate and Karen in a corner, looking shy. There are the missionary twins giggling with Conley, one of them reaching for the guitar he still wears on a strap around his neck. “Anyone I would guess would be someone you and I both know,” I say. “And anyone you and I both know is going to be saved already. Which doesn't count. You got someone who's already saved?”

“There's saved and there's saved,” says Seth. “My dad says your dad's misguided. And you quit Christian Education. You can't even join the church now.”

I stuff the rest of the brownie in my mouth and feel it give way comfortingly around my molars. The chewing fills up my ears too, which is good. If he has anything else to say, I don't want to hear it. But I hear it anyway.