Shiloh and Other Stories (18 page)

“Those attachments to a place are so provincial,” he says.

“People live all their lives in one place,” I argue frantically. “What’s wrong with that?”

“You’ve got to be flexible,” he says breezily. “That kind of romantic emotion is just like flag-waving. It leads to nationalism, fascism—you name it; the very worst kinds of instincts. Listen, Mary, you’ve got to be more open to the way things are.”

Stephen is processing words. He makes me think of liquidity, investment postures. I see him floppy as a Raggedy Andy, loose as a goose. I see what I am shredding in my hand as I listen. It is Monopoly money.

After I hang up, I rush outside. Larry is discreetly staying behind. Standing in the porch light, I listen to katydids announce the harvest. It is the kind of night, mellow and languid, when you can hear corn growing. I see a cat’s flaming eyes coming up the lane to the house. One eye is green and one is red, like a traffic light. It is Brenda, my odd-eyed cat. Her blue eye shines red and her yellow eye shines green. In a moment I realize that I am waiting for the light to change.

Georgeann has put off packing for the annual church retreat. “There’s plenty of time,” she tells Shelby when he bugs her about it. “I can’t do things that far ahead.”

“Don’t you want to go?” he asks her one evening. “You used to love to go.”

“I wish they’d do something different just once. Something besides pray and yak at each other.” Georgeann is basting facings on a child’s choir robe, and she looks at him testily as she bites off a thread.

Shelby says, “You’ve been looking peaked lately. I believe you’ve got low blood.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I think you better get a checkup before we go. Call Dr. Armstrong in the morning.”

When Georgeann married Shelby Pickett, her mother warned her about the disadvantages of marrying a preacher. Reformed juvenile delinquents are always the worst kind of preachers, her mother said—just like former drug addicts in their zealousness. Shelby was never that bad, though. In high school, when Georgeann first knew him, he was on probation for stealing four
cases of Sun-Drop Cola and a ham from Kroger’s. There was something charismatic about him even then, although he frightened her at first with his gloomy countenance—a sort of James Dean brooding—and his tendency to contradict whatever the teachers said. But she admired the way he argued so smoothly and professionally in debate class. He always had a smart answer that left his opponent speechless. He was the type of person who could get away with anything. Georgeann thought he seemed a little dangerous—he was always staring people down, as though he held a deep grudge—but when she started going out with him, at the end of her senior year, she was surprised to discover how serious he was. He had spent a month studying the life of Winston Churchill. It wasn’t even a class assignment. No one she knew would have thought of doing that. When the date of the senior prom approached, Shelby said he couldn’t take her because he didn’t believe in dancing. Georgeann suspected that he was just embarrassed and shy. On a Friday night, when her parents were away at the movies, she put on a Kinks album and tried to get him to loosen up, to get in shape for the prom. It was then that he told her of his ambition to be a preacher. Georgeann was so moved by his sense of atonement and his commitment to the calling—he had received the call while hauling hay for an uncle—that she knew she would marry him. On the night of the prom, they went instead to the Burger King, and he showed her the literature on the seminary while she ate a Double Whopper and french fries.

The ministry is not a full-time calling, Georgeann discovered. The pay is too low. While Shelby attended seminary, he also went to night school to learn a trade, and Georgeann supported him by working at Kroger’s—the same one her husband had robbed. Georgeann had wanted to go to college, but they were never able to afford for her to go.

Now they have two children, Tamara and Jason. During the week, Shelby is an electrician, working out of his van. In ten years of marriage, they have served in three different churches. Shelby dislikes the rotation system and longs for a church he can call his own. He says he wants to grow with a church, so that he
knows the people and doesn’t have to preach only the funerals of strangers. He wants to perform the marriages of people he knew as children. Shelby lives by many little rules, some of which come out of nowhere. For instance, for years he has rubbed baking soda onto his gums after brushing his teeth, but he cannot remember who taught him to do this, or exactly why. Shelby comes from a broken home, so he wants things to last. But the small country churches in western Kentucky are dying, as people move to town or simply lose interest in the church. The membership at the Grace United Methodist Church is seventy-five, but attendance varies between thirty and seventy. The day it snowed this past winter, only three people came. Shelby was so depressed afterward that he couldn’t eat Sunday dinner. He was particularly upset because he had prepared a special sermon aimed at Hoyt Jenkins, who somebody said had begun drinking, but Hoyt did not appear. Shelby had to deliver the sermon anyway, on the evils of alcohol, to old Mr. and Mrs. Elbert Flood and Miss Addie Stone, the president of the WCTU chapter.

“Even the best people need a little reinforcement,” Shelby said halfheartedly to Georgeann.

She said, “Why didn’t you just save that sermon? You work yourself half to death. With only three people there, you could have just talked to them, like a conversation. You didn’t have to waste a big sermon like that.”

“The church isn’t for just a conversation,” said Shelby.

The music was interesting that snowy day. Georgeann plays the piano at church. As she played, she listened to the voices singing—Shelby booming out like Bert Parks; the weak, shaky voices of the Floods; and Miss Stone, with a surprisingly clear and pretty little voice. She sounded like a folk singer. Georgeann wanted to hear more, so she abruptly switched hymns and played “Joy to the World,” which she knew the Floods would have trouble with. Miss Stone sang out, high above Shelby’s voice. Later, Shelby was annoyed that Georgeann changed the program because he liked the church bulletins that she typed and mimeographed each week for the Sunday service to be an accurate record of what went on that day. Georgeann made corrections in the bulletin and filed it away in Shelby’s study. She
penciled in a note: “Three people showed up.” She even listed their names. Writing this, Georgeann felt peculiar, as though a gear had shifted inside her.

Even then, back in the winter, Shelby had been looking forward to the retreat, talking about it like a little boy anticipating summer camp.

—

Georgeann has been feeling disoriented. She can’t think about the packing for the retreat. She’s not finished with the choir robes for Jason and Tamara, who sing in the youth choir. On the Sunday before the retreat, Georgeann realizes that it is communion Sunday and she has forgotten to buy grape juice. She has to race into town at the last minute. It is overpriced at the Kwik-Pik, but that is the only place open on Sunday. Waiting in line, she discovers that she still has hair clips in her hair. As she stands there, she watches two teenage boys—in their everyday jeans and poplin jackets—playing an electronic video game. One boy is pressing buttons, his fingers working rapidly and a look of rapture on his face. The other boy is watching and murmuring “Gah!” Georgeann holds her hand out automatically for the change when the salesgirl rings up the grape juice. She stands by the door a few minutes, watching the boys. The machine makes tom-tom sounds, and blips fly across the TV screen. When she gets to the church, she is so nervous that she sloshes the grape juice while pouring it into the tray of tiny communion glasses. Two of the glasses are missing because she broke them last month while washing them after communion service. She has forgotten to order replacements. Shelby will notice, but she will say that it doesn’t matter, because there won’t be that many people at church anyway.

“You spilled some,” says Tamara.

“You forgot to let us have some,” Jason says, taking one of the tiny glasses and holding it out. Tamara takes one of the glasses too. This is something they do every communion Sunday.

“I’m in a hurry,” says Georgeann. “This isn’t a tea party.”

They are still holding the glasses out for her.

“Do you want one too?” Jason asks.

“No. I don’t have time.”

Both children look disappointed, but they drink the sip of grape juice, and Tamara takes the glasses to wash them.

“Hurry,” says Georgeann.

Shelby doesn’t mention the missing glasses. But over Sunday dinner, they quarrel about her going to a funeral he has to preach that afternoon. Georgeann insists that she is not going.

“Who is he?” Tamara wants to know.

Shelby says, “No one you know. Hush.”

Jason says, “I’ll go with you. I like to go to funerals.”

“I’m not going,” says Georgeann. “They give me nightmares, and I didn’t even know the guy.”

Shelby glares at her icily for talking like this in front of the children. He agrees to go alone and promises Jason he can go to the next one. Today the children are going to Georgeann’s sister’s to play with their cousins. “You don’t want to disappoint Jeff and Lisa, do you?” Shelby asks Jason.

As he is getting ready to leave, Shelby asks Georgeann, “Is there something about the way I preach funerals that bothers you?”

“No. Your preaching’s fine. I like the weddings. And the piano and everything. But just count me out when it comes to funerals.” Georgeann suddenly bangs a skillet in the sink. “Why do I have to tell you that ten times a year?”

They quarrel infrequently, but after they do, Georgeann always does something spiteful. Today, while Shelby and the kids are away, she cleans out the henhouse. It gives her pleasure to put on her jeans and shovel manure in a cart. She wheels it to the garden, not caring who sees. People drive by and she waves. There’s the preacher’s wife cleaning out her henhouse on Sunday, they are probably saying. Georgeann puts down new straw in the henhouse and gathers the eggs. She sees a hen looking droopy in a corner. “Perk up,” she says. “You look like you’ve got low blood.” After she finishes with the chore, she sits down to read the Sunday papers, feeling relieved that she is alone and can relax. She gets very sleepy, but in a few minutes she has to get up and change clothes. She is getting itchy under the waistband, probably from chicken mites.

She turns the radio on and finds a country music station.

When Shelby comes in, with the children, she is asleep on the couch. They tiptoe around her and she pretends to sleep on. “Sunday is a day of rest,” Shelby is saying to the children. “For everybody but preachers, that is.” Shelby turns off the radio.

“Not for me,” says Jason. “That’s my day to play catch with Jeff.”

When Georgeann gets up, Shelby gives her a hug, one of his proper Sunday embraces. She apologizes for not going with him. “How was the funeral?”

“The usual. You don’t really want to know, do you?”

“No.”

—

Georgeann plans for the retreat. She makes a doctor’s appointment for Wednesday. She takes Shelby’s suits to the cleaners. She visits some shut-ins she neglected to see on Sunday. She arranges with her mother to keep Tamara and Jason. Although her mother still believes Georgeann married unwisely, she now promotes the sanctity of the union. “Marriage is forever, but a preacher’s marriage is longer than that,” she says.

Today, Georgeann’s mother sounds as though she is making excuses for Shelby. She knows very well that Georgeann is unhappy, but she says, “I never gave him much credit at first, but Lord knows he’s ambitious. I’ll say that for him. And practical. He knew he had to learn a trade so he could support himself in his dedication to the church.”

“You make him sound like a junkie supporting a habit.”

Georgeann’s mother laughs uproariously. “It’s the same thing! The same thing.” She is a stout, good-looking woman who loves to drink at parties. She and Shelby have never had much to say to each other, and Georgeann gets very sad whenever she realizes how her mother treats her marriage like a joke. It isn’t fair.

—

When Georgeann feeds the chickens, she notices the sick hen is unable to get up on its feet. Its comb is turning black. She picks it up and sets it in the henhouse. She puts some mash in a Crisco can and sets it in front of the chicken. It pecks indifferently at the mash. Georgeann goes to the house and finds a margarine tub and fills it with water. There is nothing to do for a sick
chicken, except to let it die. Or kill it to keep disease from spreading to the others. She won’t tell Shelby the chicken is sick, because Shelby will get the ax and chop its head off. Shelby isn’t being cruel. He believes in the necessities of things.

Shelby will have a substitute in church next Sunday, while he is at the retreat, but he has his sermon ready for the following Sunday. On Tuesday evening, Georgeann types it for him. He writes in longhand on yellow legal pads, the way Nixon wrote his memoirs, and after ten years Georgeann has finally mastered his corkscrew handwriting. The sermon is on sex education in the schools. When Georgeann comes to a word she doesn’t know, she goes downstairs.

“There’s no such word as ‘pucelage,’ ” she says to Shelby, who is at the kitchen table, trying to fix a gun-shaped hair dryer. Parts are scattered all over the table.

“Sure there is,” he says. “Pucelage means virginity.”

“Why didn’t you say so! Nobody will know what it means.”

“But it’s just the word I want.”

“And what about this word in the next paragraph? ‘Matures-cent’? Are you kidding?”

“Now don’t start in on how I’m making fun of you because you haven’t been to college,” Shelby says.

Georgeann doesn’t answer. She goes back to the study and continues typing. Something pinches her on the stomach. She raises her blouse and scratches a bite. She sees a tiny brown speck scurrying across her flesh. Fascinated, she catches it by moistening a fingertip. It drowns in her saliva. She puts it on a scrap of yellow legal paper and folds it up. Something to show the doctor. Maybe the doctor will let her look at it under a microscope.