Life Goes On (5 page)

“Fair enough, sport.”

I lay in bed that night thinking how nothing ever changes. I'm forty-two years old and still having to do things I don't want to do. I suppose it's the price of loving people. My son thinks he'll somehow avoid these obligations, which is a common misperception among the young. In time, of course, he'll learn otherwise, that maturity isn't about doing what pleases us, but bearing with good humor that which annoys us to no end.

I forget this myself sometimes, so it's good to be reminded, lest in my arrogance I despise the Dales of the world for not marching to my tune. When I was a child, my father would advise me not to take myself so seriously. I wondered if I should wake my son to pass this truth along, then decided against it. There are some lessons we have to learn on our own, lessons whose truths aren't accepted until the soul is ready to hear them.

A
heat wave rolled into town the week after the Fourth and has hunkered down for a long stay. It's been the hottest July in forty-eight years, or so Bob Miles at the
Herald
noted in an editorial warning about global warming, which agitated the conservatives, causing them to fire off letters to the editor. They complain about the liberal slant of the
Herald
and how it's time true Americans stood up for their rights, which apparently includes the right to tell editors what they can and cannot publish in a newspaper. The irony of this seems to escape them, so Bob points it out in another editorial, which provokes them even further.

Civil liberties have never really caught on with some people in our town. Freedom of the press is fine, as long as the press agrees with them. These same people attend the school-board meetings demanding freedom of religion, that our children be made to pray whether they want to or not. But not just any prayer will do; it has to conform to certain theological assumptions and be led by the teacher. Unless the teacher objects, at which point the school board might reconsider why they hired that teacher in the first place.

Bob has declared July “Freedom Month” at the
Herald
in honor of America's birthday. The first week he wrote about freedom of the press. The second week he wrote that freedom of religion also included freedom from religion. This did not generate the controversy he'd hoped for, so in the third week he wrote about the freedom of association, that Americans ought to be free to associate with whomever they wished. It was one of those editorials that had the men at the Coffee Cup saying, “You got that right, mister,” all the way through, until they hit the last paragraph, in which Bob contended that if we really believed in free association, then gay people ought to be free to marry one another.

The
Herald
landed on our doorsteps on Thursday afternoon. When I arrived at the meetinghouse office on Friday morning, thirteen messages were on the answering machine wanting to know if Bob Miles was a member of our church and, if so, could we boot him out or censure him or possibly burn him at the stake.

Frank nailed me as soon as I came through the door. “The ministerial association is holding an emergency meeting at ten o'clock. They asked if you could be there.”

I'd been avoiding the ministerial association meetings for the past six months, ever since they'd elected Pastor Jimmy of the Harmony Worship Center as their president. I had better things to do than listen to him boast about the growth of his church. Truth be told, I think they were glad I was staying away. They'd been shunning me since the year before, when I'd suggested we hold a peace rally on the town square. The motion had failed, five to one. They had then forged boldly ahead with their plans to have a booth at the Corn and Sausage Days festival.

“Could you please call them, thank them for their invitation, but tell them I can't make it?” I asked Frank. “I need to work on my sermon.”

Within the hour, Dale Hinshaw and Fern Hampton were in my office. Although I'd given Frank firm instructions to keep Dale and Fern at bay, he was upset that I'd given the ferret to Billy Grant. He retaliated by ushering into my office Dale and Fern, who demanded to know what I was going to do about Bob Miles.

“What would you suggest I do?”

“Kick him out of the church,” Fern said.

I pointed out that he wasn't a member.

“So let's make him a member and then kick him out.”

“What did Bob do that was so awful?”

“He's promoting filth,” Dale said. “He's wreckin' the institution of marriage.”

“His editorial didn't hurt my marriage. Do you know anyone who's gotten divorced because of Bob's editorial?”

But Dale had worked himself to a lather and wasn't in the mood for reason. He predicted if Bob weren't silenced, all manner of tragedies would follow, up to and including the fall of Western civilization.

“Not to mention how it'll affect the Corn and Sausage Days festival,” Fern Hampton screeched. “You think God-fearing Christians will want to visit a town that's given itself over to perversion? And if that flops, so does our Chicken Noodle Dinner. And there go our chances of ever getting new kitchen cabinets. But I suppose you haven't thought about that.”

They ranted on for fifteen minutes before my telephone rang. I excused myself and answered it. It was my wife, reminding me to meet her for lunch. She hung up, but I stayed on the line, feigning a pastoral emergency so I could pry Fern and Dale from my office. I looked up apologetically. “I'm afraid I need some privacy,” I told them. “Thank you for stopping by.”

They harrumphed in unison, turned, and stalked from my office.

The day did not improve. My phone rang continually as a variety of enraged citizens and church members called to demand I lead the battle for righteousness against Bob Miles. My only break came at lunchtime, when I met my wife at the Legal Grounds for our weekly date. It is the town's one safe haven for progressive thinkers. Deena had posted the editorial page from the
Herald
on her bulletin board just inside the door, along with a letter of support for Bob Miles, which she invited us to sign.

“No, thank you,” I told Deena. “I think I'll remain above the fray.”

“Not me,” my wife said. “I'll sign it.” And with that, she took the pen from Deena and signed her name in big, bold letters, with a flourish.

By Sunday morning, the town was locked in the grip of a civil war, with the Bob bashers far outnumbering his defenders. Meeting for worship was a disaster, with Dale praying aloud that the Lord would smite Bob, lest his sin infect the town. By then, word had gotten out that my wife had signed the letter in support of Bob. So after Dale had prayed for Bob's destruction, he waded in on me, chastising me for not making my wife submit to me, in accordance with the Scriptures.

I didn't respond, electing to follow Jesus' example of remaining silent before his accusers.

Miriam Hodge stood and pled for tolerance, which was like standing in a tavern and arguing for sobriety. Bea Majors began playing the organ to drown her out.

It was a bitter hour.

I took Monday off and went with my family on a picnic at a state park sixty miles away, where no one ever read the
Herald.
I thought of taking the week off, but was short of vacation days. Instead, I had Frank, who had since forgiven me, guard my office door, weeding out the malcontents from those sincerely needing help.

On Thursday morning, Opal Majors arrived to start pasting together the church newsletter, as she has since 1967, when Juanita Harmon met her untimely demise while lighting the meetinghouse stove. Opal agreed to do it until we could find a replacement for Juanita, and she's been at it ever since. We can't pry it from her now, as much as we'd like to. The whole newsletter is one long editorial, with the church activities and Opal's opinion of them woven together into a four-page dissertation, all of it one paragraph and single-spaced.

“Are you coming to the march?” she asked me.

“What march?”

“The march on Bob. It's this Saturday. All the churches in town are participating. It's on the flier.”

“What flier?”

“From the ministerial association,” she said. “It had your name on it. Didn't you read it?”

“What do you mean it had my name on it?”

“At the bottom, along with all the other ministers.”

“Do you have a copy I can see?” I asked.

“Yeah, it's here somewhere,” Opal said, rifling through her purse. “I got to tell you, Sam, I was real proud to see your name on it. There for a while I thought you were turning liberal on us.”

She handed me the flier, and I read it. Just as I had feared, it was contemptible—a withering tirade against gays and the liberal media elite. It bore no resemblance to the gospel. And there was my name, heading the list of signatures.

“It's in today's
Herald
too,” Opal said, beaming. “On the editorial page. We're awful proud of you for taking a stand, Sam.”

It took an hour to find out who'd added my name to the flier—Pastor Jimmy at the Harmony Worship Center. It had been his last nefarious act before leaving town for a two-week vacation, which, in retrospect, was a blessing, as it prevented my hunting him down and taking his life.

As for Bob Miles, he was elated. Newspaper sales had never been better. He'd been back to press three times in the past week. Dale Hinshaw had purchased one hundred extra copies so he could burn them on the day of the march.

Bob had added four pages to the paper in order to print all the letters to the editor he'd received and was now selling the paper for a dollar a copy as a special edition. He'd also published his next editorial, in which he proposed the government add Bill Clinton's face to Mount Rushmore. Dale bought two hundred extra copies of that one.

By the day of the march, nearly everyone in town was against Bob. If he had written these editorials in the winter, no one would have minded. It would have provided a pleasant philosophical diversion, something to argue about good-naturedly down at the Coffee Cup. But he wrote them in the summer, when the heat has everyone on edge.

The big problem is that Dale Hinshaw doesn't have air-conditioning, which magnifies his irritability tenfold. He sits in his vinyl recliner wearing Bermuda shorts and a plaid cotton shirt, sweat coursing down his legs into his black dress socks and leather shoes. He reads the back issues of
The Mighty Men of God
newsletter and listens to talk radio. Cranky with heat and fueled with propaganda, he sets about enlisting the town in some great moral crusade.

The demonstration against Bob began at ten in the morning. Dale and his wife and Opal Majors were marching along with a noisy contingent from the Harmony Worship Center. A jet stream from the north had cooled things down. It was a comfortable eighty-two degrees with low humidity and a steady breeze. A perfect day for rabble-rousing. The marchers paraded back and forth in front of the
Herald
building carrying signs that read
Down with Bob!
and
Bob Must Go!

At ten-thirty, they began chanting for Bob to come out, confess his sin, and get right with the Lord, but he wasn't in the building. He was sitting in the Legal Grounds across the street, with me, watching from the picture window that looked out onto Main Street.

“That Dale sure is a piece of work,” Bob said.

“You oughta try being his pastor.”

Bob shook his head. “These people remind me of my father. It isn't enough for them to have their views. They have to impose them on everyone else. I really don't even care for Bill Clinton. I just put that in there to make them mad.”

“Looks like it worked.”

Across the street, Dale had rolled a burn barrel from the back of a truck and was burning copies of the
Herald
.

“Is this a great country or what,” Bob said. “I am free to print anything I want and Dale is free to burn it. Isn't that something!”

I agreed that it was marvelous.

“Though it is awful windy to be burning papers,” Bob observed.

He'd no sooner said that, than a gust of wind picked up a burning section of newspaper, lifted it in the air, and carried it down the street, where it came to a smoldering stop underneath Dale's car, which had lately been leaking puddles of oil.

Unfortunately, Dale had worked himself into such a sanctimonious frenzy, he didn't notice the glow of fire spreading underneath his car.

“Do you suppose we ought to help him?” Bob asked.

“Probably we should.”

Bob went behind the counter and lifted down a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall near the stove. He hurried through the front door and across the street to Dale's car, and began spraying the extinguisher in a futile effort to douse the flames, which had already reached the engine compartment and were accelerated by thirteen years of accumulated grease and oil. By the time the fire department arrived, Dale's car was engulfed. We stood watching as the tires exploded, one by one, and the gas tank ignited in a fiery ball.

Dale was cited for burning an open fire within town limits and holding a parade without a permit. The fire chief, Darrell Furbay, was thumbing through his code book, seeing whether he could charge Dale with any more infractions.

Bob Miles and I stood together, surveying the wreckage.

“I had no idea things would turn out like this,” Bob said.

Though I didn't say so, I wasn't surprised. It was Dale's custom to leave ruination in his wake. What was unusual about this, and sweetly poetic, was that only Dale had born the brunt of his lunacy. Generally, when he went down, he dragged someone else with him.

Dale looked like a madman. His eyebrows were singed from where he'd tried to rescue his
Rapture—The Only Way to Fly!
license plate from the front bumper of his car.

“This is all your fault,” he said to Bob Miles. “If you hadn't written those editorials, this'd never have happened. Don't think you can mock the Lord like this and get away with it.” And with that, Dale turned and stalked off toward home, his long-suffering wife in tow, laden with signs.

To paraphrase Emerson, some people wear religion like an ill-fitting suit. And though some are improved by it, there seem to be just as many people made worse by it, folks who tried grace on and didn't like the way it fit.

I walked home thinking of all the money our church has given over the years to alleviate human suffering, though now I believe the world would have been better off if we'd used the money to buy Dale an air conditioner.