Life Goes On (16 page)

I don't know when she came to bed. I promptly fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, ate my breakfast, and puttered around the garage a few hours, studiously avoiding my wife and the subject of employment. I went to the office after lunch. As I pulled into the church parking lot, Dale was leaving, scrunched down in his car, looking sneaky. My office door was locked. My books were stacked on the floor of Frank's office.

“He changed the locks,” Frank said. “He told me not to help you. Said you weren't the pastor anymore, that you'd quit.”

“I did no such thing. How can I do my job if I don't have an office?”

“You could ask me for a key.”

“He gave you a key?”

“Not exactly,” Frank said. “I kind of slipped the extra one out of the package when he wasn't looking.”

“That wasn't right, Frank.”

“Don't be such a patsy, Sam. It's time you lived in the real world. Stick with me, kid, and I'll show you a few tricks.”

For the first time in several days, I felt a rush of optimism, that I wasn't alone, that others would stand with me.

I reached down and picked up a stack of books. “If Dale or Fern call,” I said, “tell them I'm working. In my office.”

T
wo weeks had passed since I had unintentionally quit. It was now the first week of March, and Fern, Dale, and Opal were laboring to rally people to their cause, while Frank and Miriam were advising me to hold fast. I'd no sooner returned my books to their shelves, than Dale had snuck in the next night and removed them again. I put them back a second time, after which Frank changed the office lock, thwarting Dale's effort to oust me from my office.

Meanwhile, the troublesome trio made an elaborate show of placing plugs in their ears whenever I rose to preach. Bea Majors was off the organ, and Paul Iverson had taken her place with his guitar, which he'd learned to play in his hippie days. The downside was that he only knew hippie songs, so we tended to sing the same songs each Sunday—Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie songs, with an occasional Peter, Paul, and Mary tune thrown in for good measure. Easter was a scant month away and I was encouraging him to expand his repertoire.

The superintendent's nephew had shown up the previous Sunday despite Frank's best efforts. He'd phoned the week before, asking
directions to Harmony. There are a handful of towns named Harmony in the United States and Frank had sent him to one two states away.

He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” Frank said. “He showed up at a church, preached, then sat in the office for two days before realizing they were Methodists.”

Now he was at our church, circling like a vulture, ready to pick my carcass clean. He was staying with Dale, sleeping on their fold-out sofa. He'd been stopping by the meetinghouse each morning to see if I'd vacated the office. I was practically living at the place to keep him at bay.

“My uncle told me I'm the pastor,” he complained each morning. “You need to leave.”

“Your uncle's not in charge,” I pointed out. “He just thinks he is.”

And so went our verbal sparring, back and forth each morning. I would meet his thrusts with a parry, then send him on his way.

Dale went to the bank and tried to close the church accounts so I couldn't be paid, but Vernley Stout, the bank president, told him it required two signatures, neither of which was his. Even when Dale stood in the lobby and prayed aloud for a cloud of locusts to descend upon the Harmony Savings and Loan, Vernley was unruffled and suggested Dale go annoy someone else. Dale retaliated by closing out their anniversary cruise account, confident this would spell the bank's ruination, though it appeared to absorb the three-dollar loss quite nicely and go forward without a hitch.

Discouraged by my continued refusal to make their lives easier and die, Dale, Fern, and Opal formed a secret committee to oust me.
But the secret was so well kept no one learned of the committee except for them, which hampered its effectiveness. I would never have learned about it, but they held it in the church basement one evening and Frank caught them.

“What have we here?” Frank asked. “A man and two women alone in the church with the lights turned low. I'm not one to think the worst of people, but this doesn't look too good. I hope no one asks me what I saw. I'd hate for this to get out.”

That kept them quiet a few days.

This couldn't happen at a worse time. We are well into Lent, and though Quakers don't go for Lent in a big way, we have assumed some of its attendant burdens, like the annual Easter play the youth and children of the meeting present. Miriam Hodge was going to direct it, but then told me she couldn't save my job and direct the play at the same time, that she didn't have time to do both, so the play fell to me. I promptly handed it off to my wife, after promising to take her away for a long weekend after Easter.

It is the same play the youth perform every year, written by the late Juanita Harmon in 1959 as a tribute to her mother, whose crowning achievement was winning second place at the state fair four years in a row with her marigolds. The play is less about Easter and more about the beauty of God's creation. It would help if Jesus were mentioned in the play, but Juanita Harmon was an early New Ager and preferred to see God in flowers and trees and butterflies. When I was growing up, I always played the part of the daffodil. Of all the plays I was forced to perform in as a child, I liked that one the most, as none of the flowers had speaking parts. We simply had to smile and look radiant.

Dale has been opposed to the play since it first debuted. Each year he suggests one of the flowers give an altar call, but time confers a certain sacredness, even to church plays, and we've kept it unchanged.

I would take their effort to fire me more personally if it were something new, but Dale, Fern, and Opal have conspired to get rid of every pastor since 1962, when Dale first arrived on our shores. There is, I'm beginning to learn, a certain aspect of fundamentalism that requires the fires of division to be regularly stoked. Fundamentalists must be against something, usually a person who typifies everything they resent. There must always be an enemy, a convenient target upon which the wrath of God must fall. This year, the bull's-eye is pinned to my chest.

Pastor Taylor, my predecessor, survived by smiling a lot and agreeing with everyone. Though I remember he ate Tums by the truckload. An ever-present chalky smear ringed his mouth. If he had any doubts about the Virgin Birth, he never said so. In fact, he studiously avoided theology, which isn't easy when you're a minister, though he succeeded. Instead, he would talk about ten steps to a healthy marriage or six signs of a growing church. But he would readily concede there might be more steps or signs he hadn't considered. What ultimately prevented his termination was that he had the good sense to die before Dale could get him fired.

On the third Sunday in March, three weeks before Easter, I asked Dale, Fern, and Opal to meet with me after worship. By the close of worship, they were fit to be tied. Despite my encouragement to expand his play list, Paul Iverson had played Led Zeppelin's “Stairway to Heaven” for the third Sunday in a row.

I thanked him for playing a song with the word
heaven
in it, but suggested he might occasionally play a Fanny Crosby song, maybe “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” or “Near the Cross.”

“Fanny Crosby…Fanny Crosby…,” Paul mused aloud. “Didn't she sing backup for Joan Baez?”

“How about ‘Kumbaya'? Do you know ‘Kumbaya'?” I asked, pausing a moment to chew on a Tums.

“That was the Rolling Stones, right?”

I helped myself to another Tums.

My meeting with Dale, Fern, and Opal wasn't much better. They presented me with a list of thirty-five people whom the Lord had spoken to, saying it was time I left.

“Who's Althea Searcy?” I asked, scanning the list.

“That's my son Raymond's mother-in-law.”

“But she doesn't even attend this church. Isn't she a Baptist?”

“What have you got against Baptists?”

“Nothing. I have friends who are Baptists. But this doesn't concern them.”

“That's a fine how-do-you-do,” Fern said. “You're all the time telling us to reach out to our Christian brothers and sisters and the first time we do, you slap us down.”

“How long are we gonna have to listen to that rock music during church?” Opal asked.

“He's doing his best, Opal. Besides, now that Bea's not playing the organ, he's all we have.”

She turned to the others. “I knew he'd end up blaming Bea for all of this.”

I continued to scan the list of my detractors. “Albert Finchum's name is on here.”

“You bet.”

“But he's been dead six months.”

“Well, it's a good thing, because your theology probably would have killed him,” Fern said.

“I don't think Albert cared one way or the other about theology,” I said.

Opal shook her head in disgust. “Now he's attacking the dead.”

“What's Edith Barker's name doing on here?” I asked.

“She wants to see you go,” Dale said.

“But she has Alzheimer's,” I protested. “She doesn't know what she wants.”

“Now he's attacking the sick and shut-ins,” Opal moaned.

“Who in the world is Paul Davis?” I asked, returning to the list.

“He's my cousin from Alabama,” Dale said. “I've told him all about you and he thinks you oughta leave too.”

Frank stuck his head in the door. “Sorry for interrupting, Sam, but Uly Grant's grandma has been taken to the hospital in Cartersburg, and they want to know if you could hurry over there.”

He turned to face the trio. “Don't you all have something better to do than keep Sam from his ministry?”

After they'd shuffled from the room, I turned to Frank. “Uly's grandparents have been dead ten years. What's going on?”

“Nothing. I just thought you wanted to be rid of them.”

“Remind me to work on that raise for you.”

“Jessie Peacock's here, and she'd like to talk.”

I glanced at my watch. My Sunday dinner was getting cold. A pastor's lot in life—congealed gravy over cold mashed potatoes. “Okay, have her come in.”

“Sorry to bother you, Sam,” Jessie said, settling in the chair across from my desk. “But I've been hearing things about you and thought I ought to ask you myself.”

“Sure, Jessie. What's on your mind?”

“Fern has been telling people you aren't a Christian.”

“Yes, I'm aware of that.”

“Do you know why she's saying that?”

“She thinks I don't believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus,” I explained.

“Do you?”

“I'll tell you what I told her. I don't know what to make of it.”

Jessie sat quietly, thinking. “I'm not sure what to make of it either.”

“I do know one thing,” I said.

“What's that, Sam?”

“It's easier to believe things about Jesus than it is to do what he said. Maybe that's why Fern, Dale, and Opal talk so much about him, but don't seem all that eager to follow his teachings.”

Jessie chuckled. “That would explain it, wouldn't it. So what do you think's gonna happen, Sam?”

“I think they're going to keep trying to get me fired,” I speculated. “Did you hear about the petition they're asking people to sign?”

“Yes, Fern brought it by the house the other day and asked us to sign it. That's when she told us you weren't Christian. Asa told her she wouldn't know a Christian from a Cadillac.”

I laughed. “How'd she take that?”

“Oh, she got all mad. Told him he wasn't a Christian either, then stormed out. Typical Fern.”

Jessie rose to leave.

“Thanks for stopping by, Jessie.”

“You hang in there, Sam. There are many of us here who appreciate your ministry.”

“Thank you, friend.”

She stopped halfway to the door. “By the way, who's that young man who's been coming to meeting the last couple of weeks? He's sitting with Dale and Dolores.”

“That's the superintendent's nephew. He's been trying to get me fired. He wants to be the new minister here.”

“Well, we'll just see about that,” Jessie said, rather ominously.

The rest of the day was fairly quiet. I spent the next day with my mother, sorting through the last of my grandparents' possessions. It had taken only twelve years to cast off their belongings, which might be a record in this town of pack rats and savers.

I returned to the office on Tuesday and found Frank waiting for me. “I was just getting ready to call you. Did you hear what happened?”

“No.”

“The superintendent's nephew is gone. Seems Dale found a bunch of empty beer cans in his car and sent him packing.”

“Well, I'll be. Isn't that interesting?”

Frank chuckled. “Yeah, the funny thing is, I was over at Cartersburg yesterday and I saw Jessie Peacock coming out of the liquor
store carrying a six-pack of Budweiser. I didn't know Jessie drank beer.”

“She doesn't.”

“Well, then, it must have been my imagination,” Frank said.

“Sounds like it,” I agreed.

“Then I probably shouldn't mention it to anyone.”

“Probably not.”

Dale stopped by a few hours later, demanding to see me. Frank ushered him into my office, but left the door open so he could eavesdrop.

“Hi, Dale. What brings you by here?”

“Matthew, chapter five, verses twenty-three and twenty-four.”

I strained to remember that particular passage.

“Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” I asked.

“Is there somethin' you wanna say?” Dale prodded.

“Um, not that I know of. Did you have something specific in mind, Dale?”

“I just thought maybe you wanted to ask my forgiveness for the way you treated me.”

“The way I treated you! I've not done anything to you, except cook your breakfast, wash your underwear, and save your marriage.”

“But you're supposed to do those things. It's your job.”

“No, Dale, it isn't. It's my job to equip the members of this church for the work of ministry. And I would love to do that, except I have to spend my time doing a bunch of other crap just to keep certain people in this church happy so I won't get fired.”

“Ministers shouldn't cuss,” Dale said.

“Church members shouldn't make their pastors so mad they lose their temper.”

He began to say something, then thought better of it. He studied the carpet, tracing a design with the toe of his shoe. “Things are better between me and the missus.”

“That's good, Dale. I'm glad to hear that.”