The Pastor's Wife Wears Biker Boots (30 page)

Beautiful Goliath, with his muscular shoulders, bolted fearlessly toward the church and disappeared into the smoke and flames.

Patrick cried.

“Aaron! Goliath went inside!” I yelled as loud as my lungs would allow.

But Aaron couldn’t hear me. Fire trucks and police cars arrived with sirens and horns blaring. A small crowd formed, people shouted, and police officers tried to push the crowd back. Two of the lawmen questioned Aaron.

I tried to comfort Patrick and send him home, but he wouldn’t leave without Goliath. I made him stay with me beside the van, but he wanted to go in after his beloved friend.

“Mom, I gotta find him. What if he’s hurt, and he can’t get out?”

Patrick tore from my grasp and ran into the smoke.

Aaron and a rescuer ran after him. The rescuer pushed Aaron back.

“Stay here.” It was Deacon Jeff, one of the volunteer firefighters.

“But my son just went in there!” Aaron yelled and fought against Jeff’s stronghold. Another rescuer ran into the smoke, and another came to help Jeff hold my husband back.

I stood in the street frozen, watching the entire scene, not knowing for sure what to do.

“Patrick!” Aaron yelled. “Patrick! I gotta go get him!”

“Listen to me, Pastor Aaron,” Jeff spoke in a stern voice I’d never heard before. “I let you do your job. Now let me do mine. If you go in there after your son, you might get hurt, and instead of rescuing one person, I’ll have to rescue two. I’m trained to do this. Let me do it.”

Aaron jerked away and walked back toward the street.

I reached for him, but he walked away to pace a little further down the road.

I realized how this must be affecting him. First Milo, then his church—now his son.

What seemed like hours later, but was probably only minutes, Deacon Jeff and a sobbing Patrick came out of the darkness. Aaron threw his arms around him.

I still stood frozen in the street. They walked toward me, and the paramedics insisted we go to the ambulance to give Patrick some oxygen.

“Mom, I’m scared. I don’t want Goliath to die. It’s so dark in there. You can’t see anything. There’s so much smoke. I crawled on the floor, but I couldn’t find him.” Patrick cried and tears fell onto his mask.

Why would that fool dog run into a fire? Wasn’t that the opposite of an animal’s instinct?

“Let’s pray for him right now, Patrick, OK?” I didn’t know what else to do or say.

Aaron seemed to be lost, too.

Patrick nodded, and I prayed. “God, protect Goliath. Please don’t let him get hurt. Let him come back to us safe. Amen.”

“Amen.” Patrick sniffed. “Do you think God will really take care of him?”

“Does God hear and answer our prayers?”

“Yeah. He made dogs, too, so he likes dogs, right?”

“Absolutely, Patrick. Absolutely.” I never realized until now how attached Patrick was to Goliath. He complained so much about walking and feeding him. I needed to remember that Patrick was a teenager and not easy to read anymore. The way he sat sniffling behind the oxygen mask reminded me of when he was a little boy.

I heard a bark.

Goliath emerged, walked a few paces, yelped, and went back into the smoke.

Patrick and I yelled his name at the same time.

The paramedic had to hold Patrick back.

Goliath wouldn’t come. And then he came trotting out, woofing gently, as if…as if he was guiding someone with his voice.

Two figures covered in black soot crawled on their hands and knees out of the smoke behind the dog. Goliath got behind them, nudging them forward with his giant head.

Rescue workers carrying portable oxygen tanks rushed to them.

“Is that who I think it is?” I asked Aaron, who hovered near us, watching our church burn.

“I think it’s who we think it is—what have those two done now?”

The two figures sat on the bumpers of two different rescue vehicles. If circumstances weren’t so tragic, and it hadn’t been such a horrible day already, I might have giggled at what I saw before me.

Bernice Maguire, usually coifed to perfection, sat covered head to toe in a film of black, her hair askew and nothing but the whites of her eyes showing. She looked at me sideways and pretended not to see me while she scrapped with the paramedic about something. Opposite her on the bumper of another ambulance sat her husband, Norman.

Aaron and I walked over to the two victims.

“Do you know these people?” an officer asked.

“Yes.” Aaron nodded. “I do.”

“Are they members of your church?”

“Yes, they are.”

Bernice began to scream.

Goliath had gotten away from Patrick and was licking the soot off her hands and legs.

“Get that dog away from me!”

“He’s not trying to hurt you. He’s trying to help you.” Aaron tried to calm her down, but she glared at him.

Norman lifted his oxygen mask and shouted, “Bernice, if it weren’t for that dog, we might be dead. He’s the one that dragged us out of the closet to the door.” He snapped the oxygen mask back on his face.

“Where’s Mason?” Bernice took her mask off and pushed the paramedic away.

Goliath ran back into the fire.

“Goliath! Come back!” Patrick lunged, but Aaron stopped him.

“My baby’s in there! My baby! My precious baby!” Bernice screamed in anguish.

“Your baby?” One of the rescuers came running. “How old is your baby, and where is it?” He got on his radio to inform the rescue team that a baby was in the building.

“It’s a dog,” I said to the fire chief who’d come running. “She’s talking about a little pug dog.”

Goliath barked. A few seconds later, we heard him again, baying his heart out.

A rescue worker ran into the darkness that was once our church and after a moment of anxious waiting, three creatures emerged from the smoke: the rescue worker and Goliath, carrying a limp pug dog by the collar.

Goliath ran to Bernice and dropped a confused, wheezing Mason on her lap.

The rescue team placed an oxygen mask on his little pug nose and took him from Bernice to treat him. They tried to treat Goliath, but he just slobbered all over them.

“Nothing wrong with this guy,” the rescuer said. “I tried to get him to give up that pug but he refused. I didn’t want to argue with him. If you ask me, he’s a hero.”

Mason looked pitiful lying on the ground with an oxygen mask over his face, but the rescuers assured us he was breathing easier.

Bernice wailed and was unable to answer any of the police officer’s questions. She was, however, able to yell at Norman.

“It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t stuck the blowtorch so close to the toilet paper, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Blowtorch?” Aaron and I spoke at the same time and looked at one another.

“Toilet paper?” Deacon Jeff tried not to laugh, I could tell. It wasn’t exactly the time or place, but his eyes twinkled with mirth.

The sheriff wasn’t amused. “Mr. and Mrs. Maguire, we’re going to need to ask you more questions, so don’t plan on going home any time soon,” he spoke with authority, which calmed Bernice down enough to glare at Norman.

I was dying to know what the investigators would find out, but turned my attention toward Aaron and the church.

“That building stood here for over a hundred years.” My husband shook his head and lowered it. His despair wasn’t lost on the fire chief.

“I’m sorry about this, Pastor. We’ll find out what happened in there, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Thanks,” Aaron said. “I sure do appreciate everything you and your squad are doing to put out the fire, rescuing my son, and for taking care of Norman and Bernice. I know most of you guys are volunteers.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” he said. “You have that big buffalo of a dog to thank, too. He deserves a steak tonight.”

“Well, tonight he’s getting Chinese,” I said. “Maybe I can spring for a steak tomorrow.”

By the time the fire was completely out and Aaron and I got to bed, it was 4:00 AM. After we showered off the smoke, we could still smell it in our hair. We couldn’t sleep, so we lay like spoons on the bed talking, wondering, venting, and debating.

What on earth had gone on inside that church building that warranted a blow torch? And wasn’t it amazing that God would use a dog who was hated by the very lives of those he saved?

“God’s ways are not our ways.” Aaron yawned.

I yawned, too. “You can say that again.”

“God’s ways are not our ways.”

42

The next morning, Sheriff Langston and Fire Chief Kensington rang the doorbell.

Timmy flapped, clapped, and squealed, ecstatic to see an officer in his house. He immediately started singing the theme to
Cops
. Daniel giggled and took Goliath outdoors.

Patrick ran up to his room embarrassed.

“I believe I can tell you with confidence how the church caught on fire,” Chief Kensington said.

Aaron motioned for them to sit at the kitchen table as I handed the officers steaming cups of coffee and offered them one of the banana nut muffins Lily dropped off early this morning. I took Timmy into the living room to watch
Cops
on the portable DVD player with headphones and returned to the kitchen.

“That was fast work, Chief,” Aaron said.

Kensington laughed. “It wasn’t too difficult with those two characters.”

“You mean Bernice and Norman?” I sat beside Aaron across from the officers.

Sheriff Langston nodded. “We took them into custody and basically got the whole story before we got to the station. That woman has quite a mouth on her.”

I stifled a laugh and watched Aaron clench his jaw in an effort not to chuckle.

“We ruled out arson.” The fire chief took a sip of coffee and buttered his muffin. “It appears to be an unfortunate accident. They didn’t mean to start the fire.”

“What happened exactly?”

The sheriff parked his elbows on the table and crossed his arms. “Apparently the blowtorch Norman used to dismantle those old metal shelves in the supply closet got a little too close to your stash of toilet paper. It caught on fire and caused the hot water heater to explode. If it weren’t for that dog they’d have been trapped and killed.” The sheriff pointed to Goliath.

“The dog deserves a steak now, I’m telling you.” Chief Kensington pointed at me with his butter knife.

The sheriff peeled the cupcake paper off his muffin. “Unfortunately, Pastor Donovan, there’s nothing I can charge them with. But we are going to be searching the church property for a murder victim.”

“Murder victim?” I choked on my muffin.

“Norman insists there’s a murder victim underneath the concrete in that storage closet. Naturally, we need to investigate.”

“Of course.” Aaron set his jaw in stoic resolve. “Did they say what made them think a body was there?”

“I’m not at liberty to say until we investigate.”

The officers left.

“I doubt Norman or Bernice would kill anyone,” Aaron said, his tone thoughtful.

“Maybe it’s one of those secrets they wanted to hide,” I said. “Family secrets.”

Making eye contact with my husband was a mistake. We both dissolved into fits of laughter, unable to get more than a few words out, as we wheezed out the vision of Bernice covered in soot, Norman chastising her, and poor little raggedy Mason…all three conspirators looking more like a comedy farce, than someone burying family secrets. It was gallows humor, but we simply couldn’t get it under control.

The boys ran downstairs to see what had sent us into such mirth, but we were too choked up to talk. They shook their heads and went back upstairs.

“Murder victim? Do you think they murdered someone?” I reached for another muffin, finally calm enough to speak.

“I don’t know. But this has got to be one for the record books. I’m going to Google the stats on how many people accidentally burn down their church with a blowtorch because they’re digging up a murder victim. My guess is we’re the first.”

Our humor was short-lived. There were the details of Milo’s funeral to attend to, and the need to find a place for the funeral dinner. I made a few calls and found the Methodist church more than willing to loan us their facility.

The small fellowship hall was crowded, but the funeral dinner comforted Milo’s friends and family as they shared memories of the man who touched so many lives. I was grateful to the ladies who pitched in to help with the food and clean up. Where would we be without the women of the church?

Afterward, I sat with The Lady Eels—Lily, Reba and Opal—and Atticus at the KenapocoMocha coffeehouse for a debriefing of the week’s events. I hadn’t had time to tell them all the details following the fire.

We gathered around a table in the corner of the shop, and Reba let out a long sigh. “It was a beautiful funeral, Lily. And Aaron did a wonderful job, Kirstie,” she spoke with more tenderness than usual. I could tell God was doing a work in her heart. Her rough edges were smoothing out.

“My husband always manages to pull through in a crisis. No matter how tired he is or what he’s dealing with.” I stared into my strawberry cappuccino thinking about how exhausted he must be, but he said he wanted to spend time alone with the boys and pushed me out the door to fellowship with the Lady Eels.

“It was nice of the Methodists to let us use their facilities for the dinner today. Everyone’s been so kind.” Lily wiped a tear from her eye.

“You reap what you sow, Lily.” I rubbed her back. “You’re one special gal. There probably isn’t one person in this town you haven’t helped nurse back to health at one time or another.”

“I think people were there because of Milo, not me. He always helped people, and he never knew a stranger.” She smiled and we all nodded.

It was true. Before he got Alzheimer’s, Milo always managed to find someone who needed help fixing something.

Reba broke the silence. “So, what did you find out about the church fire? I’ve been as patient as I can possibly be out of respect for Milo. But now I’ve just got to know.”

I looked at Opal with pleading eyes, too tired to explain the story to anyone.