Leaving Fishers (6 page)

Dorry started to answer, to say she hadn’t complained. Not this time. Then she decided he was saying that for her mother’s benefit.

Her father dropped the curtain. “I’d better call work.” He brushed past Dorry to the phone in the kitchen.

Dorry looked inquisitively at her mother. “Why
are
you both home?”

“I wasn’t feeling too good so they sent me home early. When I got here and you weren’t home I called your dad. We were going to call the police if you weren’t back by ten-thirty.”

“The police!” Dorry was horrified.

“Yeah. I would have called them right away, but I figured they’d just think we were a couple
of hysterical hicks. Don’t worry us like this again, okay?”

“Okay.” Dorry sat down next to her mother on the couch. “Do you still feel sick?”

“I was so upset about you, I kind of forgot about it. But yeah, basically, I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck. Don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Dorry’s dad hung up the phone. “Well, I’ve still got a job, but they want me in for the 6 a.m. shift to make up for this. I’m going to bed.”

“You should go, too, Mom,” Dorry said. “Get some rest. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Hope so,” her mother said, heaving herself up from the couch.

When both of Dorry’s parents had disappeared into their bedroom and shut the door, she relaxed and leaned her head back against the couch. She felt like she’d stepped off a roller coaster. Her parents’ anger had been like an unexpected plunge at the end, when she’d thought the ride was over.

Dorry replayed everything in her mind, starting with the trip to Burger King with Lara. That seemed so long ago now. Dorry slid lower on the couch. She remembered laughing and talking with Brad and Angela, meeting Pastor Jim, hearing Angela say, “Everybody likes you. You know that, don’t you?” She frowned, thinking of the
fight she’d heard between Angela and Lara. Except it wasn’t really a fight if it was for Lara’s own good. So Lara was a kleptomaniac. What had she meant by “. . . she needs it”? Who would need a broken necklace? Angela hadn’t explained that part. Maybe she couldn’t. If Lara was a kleptomaniac, her reasoning wouldn’t make sense.

Dorry slid down sideways, stretching her legs out on the couch. She could be a little crazy, herself. Before Angela had explained about Lara’s problem, Dorry had almost suspected they were fighting about her.

Chapter

Six

DORRY GOT UP EARLY SUNDAY MORNING and pulled on her nicest outfit, a flowered jumper and matching shirt that looked like silk if you didn’t get too close. She tried to forget that the material of the dress pulled too tightly across her midsection. She put on lip gloss without glancing in the mirror. She knew it would only deliver bad news. Her skin had been breaking out something awful since they’d moved, and her hair had never been anything but uncontrollable. Back home, Marissa had gone through a phase where she’d wanted to become a beautician, and she’d taken on Dorry’s hair as her personal mission.

“It’s not a bad color—really brown’s okay, and it is thick. Maybe one of those new shags would help,” Marissa had said.

So Dorry had been crazy enough to follow her advice, and the haircut had looked awful from the beginning. Now she ran a comb through her hair as usual, without much hope that it would help.

By eight fifteen, Dorry was sitting by the window pulling on her shoes. Both of her parents
were sleeping late, and she wanted to make sure Angela didn’t wake them knocking at the door or ringing the bell. She looked out at the Northview parking lot and wondered what the Fishers service would be like. Probably boring like Bryden Methodist, she decided. She’d have to figure out how to get everyone to stay friends with her without having to go to church.

A rusty yellow car pulled in and parked at the far end. Dorry knew that wasn’t Angela. Then she remembered she didn’t know what Angela’s car looked like. Surely she wouldn’t have Brad’s again. Dorry’s stomach began doing flip-flops. She chewed a ragged hangnail on her right thumb. Since Friday she’d been trying to focus just on the good things about her new friends. But if Angela was driving a bright blue sports car, that would mean she’d been at Northview on Monday, and had avoided Dorry. Then Dorry would have to ask her about it, or always wonder. And how could they be friends then?

Angela showed up at eight twenty-six, in a dark blue Mercedes.

Relief washed over Dorry, then awe—
I have a friend who drives a Mercedes?
She grabbed her purse and rushed out the door.

Angela was getting out of the car, stepping
gingerly in her high heels on the cracked, weedy blacktop of the parking lot.

“I’m sorry,” Dorry said. “My family’s not really this poor. It’s just that my parents still have to pay taxes and stuff on our house back home, and—”

Angela held up her hand like a stop sign. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t choose my friends based on money. Think about it—Jesus Himself never even owned a house. Like all Fishers, I live by His example.” She circled the Mercedes and held open the passenger door. Dorry got in. Angela stood close, holding the door.

“So it’s not an issue, all right?” she said.

“All right,” Dorry replied.

“Good.” Angela shut the door.

The Mercedes rode smoothly and quietly. Dorry never felt the Northview speed bumps. She never heard the traffic or the hum of the electric station next door.

“The service actually isn’t until nine thirty, but the music starts at nine and it’s so inspiring, no one wants to miss that,” Angela was saying.

“Where is the church, anyway?” Dorry asked.

Angela shook her head. “We are the church. There’s no building. We follow Christ’s example in that—He never built a church. The last couple months we’ve just rented the Durstin Auditorium downtown.”

Even Dorry had heard of that. It was big. They had rock concerts there. “How many people are in Fishers?”

“Several hundred,” Angela said. “Maybe a thousand. I don’t know. Numbers aren’t important. It’s what’s in people’s hearts. It’s the spirit we generate together . . . You’ll see.”

When they got to the auditorium, Dorry could hear the music from the sidewalk. They pushed through giant doors to a huge room where row upon row of people—old, young, white, black, some in dresses or suits, others in jeans and T-shirts—were standing or swaying by their seats.

And everybody,
everybody
was singing.

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice,” some girls trilled, and then male voices picked up the refrain while the girls sang, “Rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice.” It was a round. Dorry remembered singing rounds in school. But she’d never been overwhelmed by the sound and the echo, as she was now. Caught in the swirl of music, one “rejoice” chasing the other, Dorry couldn’t help feeling joyous. The voices swelled. The room held hundreds of people, and all of them seemed to be singing with all their hearts.

Then a tall, thin man standing at the front lifted his arm and brought his fingers and thumb
together, and that cut off the first strand of the round. One by one, groups dropped out until at last just one girl sang alone, somewhere at the front with a microphone. Her voice was high and sweet and pure, and she lingered on the last line: “—again, I, say, re-joice.” Somehow she still sounded joyous, but sad, too, to have to stop singing.

“Thank you, Kate,” the man at the front said with a nod. “That was truly a gift of God.” His gaze seemed to take in everyone in the room. “Rejoice!” he proclaimed.

“We rejoice indeed!” the crowd agreed enthusiastically. Angela shouted with them.

The man nodded again, accepting the enthusiasm.

“I see seats down front,” Angela whispered to Dorry. Dorry followed Angela down the stairs and across a row. People smiled and whispered “Welcome” as they went by. Then the crowd launched into a second song about joy but faster and more raucous. Someone toward the back started clapping, and soon everyone was. Dorry wasn’t much into clapping, but she didn’t want to be the only one in the whole place with idle hands, so she joined in. She didn’t know the song either, but soon she was singing along with the chorus, “I take joy in the Lord, joy, joy, joy.”

There were five or six songs after that, each more rapturous than the last. Beside Dorry, Angela looked absolutely transported. The music buoyed Dorry’s spirits, too. She forgot Northview Apartments. She forgot her hair. She forgot Lara and Angela’s fight. She forgot the blue sports car. She forgot loneliness. She forgot Bryden. She forgot everything except joy.

Then the man at the front stopped them without leading into a new song. “My time is up,” he said. There was an audible groan from the crowd. He smiled. “But it’s only seven hours until music vigil tonight. I’d love to see you all there. And Pastor Jim has more wonderful things in store for you now.”

The crowd cheered.

He started walking away from the podium, then leaned back. “I almost forgot. For those of you just joining us,” he said, “I’m Brother Paul. I’m in charge of the music around here, so if you have any suggestions, any favorite songs the Spirit is calling you to sing tonight or next week, or any time, please let me know.”

“He’s great,” Angela whispered to Dorry. “So talented, but so humble.”

As Brother Paul went to his seat, someone else stood up two rows in front of Dorry. “The Lord is good to us!” he shouted without leaving his row.

“We rejoice in the Lord!” the crowd answered.

Across the room, another voice rang out. “All our blessings come from God!”

“We rejoice in the Lord!” the crowd repeated.

And then another voice: “Our Father gives us all we need.”

And again, the crowd responded, “We rejoice in the Lord.”

Dorry remembered something like this from church back in Bryden—what had Reverend Patton called it? Responsive reading? But that had been people mumbling, their tongues tripping over unfamiliar words written in the bulletin. This seemed utterly spontaneous and entirely sincere. There was no script. Everyone around Dorry was shouting and grinning. They seemed truly joyful.

Then Pastor Jim strode to a podium at the front of the room. The crowd was instantly silent, expectant. “‘And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good,’” he proclaimed. “Genesis 1:31.” He paused, giving the Biblical words time to resonate. “Brothers and sisters, isn’t this a morning made for rejoicing?”

“It is!” some in the crowd cried out.

“We modern Americans, we like to sit around and stew about everything that’s wrong with the world. ‘Oh, no, there’s pollution.’ ‘Oh, no, the
unemployment rate’s too high.’ ‘Oh, no, I’ve got a history paper due; it’s supposed to be twenty-five pages long and I’ll actually have to go to the library to do some research.’”

Several people tittered as Pastor Jim made a mock mournful face. “Oh, yes, you can laugh—but you students out there, you know you say things like that!”

More laughter. Pastor Jim thumped his hand against the podium. “I don’t want to imply that there aren’t real problems in this world—there are, and we as Fishers have an obligation to be concerned about them. But we also have an obligation to rejoice over all the good things God has given us. We have all the food we need, we have all the clothes we need—some of you girls out there have more clothes than you need, but we won’t get into that right now—” Pastor Jim chuckled, and the crowd laughed along with him. “You get the point. And those are just material things. We all know the greatest gift of all is Jesus, who died for our sins . . . .”

Dorry started to tune out Pastor Jim. This was the same old church stuff she’d gotten back in Bryden. She glanced over at Angela, who was listening raptly, her head tilted, in total concentration. Everyone else around her seemed just as fascinated. The crowd that had been so
raucous before was absolutely transfixed now.

Then the crowd laughed at something Pastor Jim said, and several people shouted out, “Amen, brother.” It reminded Dorry of TV church services—shows she bypassed quickly, flipping through the channels on dull Sunday mornings. She didn’t need much imagination to picture Pastor Jim as a TV preacher. Could all these people really have fallen for his act? Dorry looked around again, watching the smiling faces, the radiant expressions. Was something wrong with Dorry that she wasn’t transfixed, too?