The Visitation (3 page)

“Oh yeah.” He paused. “So Dee’s copycatting?”

“No, with Dee you get it back with interest. Sally saw an angel. Dee’s seeing Jesus.”

But Kyle shook his head, still unsettled. “They’re excited, Travis. And not just Dee and Adrian and Blanche, but the Whites, the Foresters—”

“Excited about what? Jesus in the sky with a rooster on his head?”

“Pammie thought it was a rooster.”

“Hey, you asked me.” I set my coffee cup down on the table like a judge closing a case with a gavel.

“So what about Arnold Kowalski?”

I made a conscious effort not to roll my eyes. “Didn’t a statue of Elvis start crying once?” I looked in my empty coffee cup and then at the coffee maker. There were still at least two cups in there. “You need a refill?”

“No thanks.”

I got up and poured another cup for myself. “Maybe Arnold Kowalski is the Catholic version of Dee Baylor.”

I could tell from Kyle’s tone that he was getting impatient with me. “No, now come on, Travis. Kowalski went to Dr. Trenner down in Davenport, and he took x-rays and the whole thing. He says the arthritis is gone.”

I sat down, my hand still on the handle of my coffee cup, and just looked at him. “What do you want me to say, Kyle?”

He sighed. “Just say what you think.”

“I’ve already said what I think.”

He stared at his empty coffee cup, dragging it by the handle in little zigzags around the table. “But you don’t suppose God could surprise us once in a while? You know, do something we weren’t expecting?”

I leaned forward. “Kyle, what these people experienced, they expected. Trust me.” I leaned back, sipped my coffee, and tried to come up with some closing comment. “If you want my advice, I’d say don’t sweat it. This kind of thing comes and goes and the wrinkles wash out eventually.”

“I just need to take a position on all this.”

The very thought of someone else having to take a position gave me a dark little pleasure. “Yeah, you’re the one who has to remain stable, aren’t you? Well, it won’t hurt to let the jury stay out a while.”

“I think Dee and Adrian are watching the clouds again today—”

There was a knock at the front door.

“It’s Rene,” I said, then hollered, “Come in!”

She came in. “Hi, Trav.”

Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing her old green sweats, same as she did every time she came over.

I introduced my big sister to the new pastor, and I took pleasure in another thought: Rene lived in Spokane, so she didn’t have to worry about Kyle calling on her.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” she said, turning toward the bedroom. “We were just finishing up.”

“Uh—” Kyle fished around for his lost thought but apparently found another one. “Anyway, the ministerial’s going to meet tomorrow morning to talk about all this. I think Nancy Barrons is going to be there.”

“Great,” I said. “Newspaper coverage. That’ll put the fire out.”

Kyle raised an eyebrow at me. “Hey, Travis, the whole town’s buzzing about this. There’s a lot going on out there and you’re missing it.”

I smiled. That made three pleasurable thoughts in a row.

Rene came out of the bedroom with my laundry basket. She was giving me a look, most likely a comment on how full that basket should have been but was not after a week.

Kyle was still talking. “Anyway, why don’t you come with me? I haven’t gotten to know all the ministers yet. You can introduce me, sit in and listen, have some input.”

It was a ploy, pure and simple, and not the first time Kyle had tried to get me moving in the old church circles again. I gave a little disarming chuckle and wagged my head.

“It’ll be at the Catholic church. We’ll all get a chance to look at that weeping crucifix.”

I made a face. I couldn’t help it. “Get real!”

Kyle just raised his hands in surrender to logic. “Hey, you can bicker about hearsay or you can go straight to the source and see it for yourself.”

“And sit down with all those ministers again? Not this year, thank you.”

Rene walked behind me to the refrigerator and checked my supply of frozen meals and leftovers.

Kyle looked at me for a moment, and I knew I wouldn’t like his next question. “Do they have something to do with it?”

“To do with what?”

“Yes,” Rene answered.

I shot her a glance over my shoulder and she shot me one back.

Kyle had no fear of thin ice. “With you resigning your pulpit, sitting here in this little house all by yourself—”

“Never changing your clothes,” Rene cut in, “not shaving, not cleaning up—”

“I change my clothes!” I said.

She looked at the laundry basket on the floor. “There’s only one shirt in there. Have you worn that same shirt all week?”

I looked down at the shirt I was wearing. I couldn’t remember how long I’d worn it. “I like this shirt.” I turned back to Kyle. “And you’re living in the parsonage now, with my blessing. You’re welcome to it.”

Kyle raised his hands to show a truce. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“Trav, we’re not trying to pick a fight.”

No, they weren’t picking a fight. It was just the same old dilemma: friends whose loving concern keeps stumbling into your raw nerves, with every irritating stab well meant. I stared at my coffee cup because I couldn’t look at them.

“It’s your life, I know that,” Kyle said gently. “We just care about you, that’s all.”

Then you might come up with a solution I haven’t heard already,
I thought.

But I didn’t say it out loud. We had already had that conversation and it got us nowhere. Instead, I just looked at him, managed a smile, and reminded myself that I really did love this kid—sorry, this man. This fresh new pastor, this up-and-coming man of God with the young, pretty, piano-playing wife and the two energetic kids. I reminded myself that twenty years ago I was sitting in his place. I was thinking the same things, offering the same solutions, excited for the same reasons.
Man,
did that feel like a long time ago!

“Thanks for the invitation,” I said finally. “Not this time.

Maybe later, when I’ve got something better to say for myself.”

He returned my smile. “Okay.” And to his credit, he dropped the subject. “I gotta get going. Give me a call if you change your mind.” With that he rose, patted me on the back, and headed for the front door.

“Oh, I will,” I promised almost jokingly.

After Kyle closed the front door behind him, I looked up at Rene, still standing by the refrigerator. She was in her late forties and looking great, though giving me a somewhat scolding look the way big sisters do. It had always been her role to run interference for me while reaching back to swat me when she thought I needed it.

“We’re, uh, we’re doing better, Kyle and me,” I said. “We got along pretty well today, all things considered.”

She shrugged. “One of these days you’re going to give him a lot of credit just for coming back.”

“I do already.”

“You gonna let me cut your hair today?”

“Maybe next time.”

“You’re getting pretty shaggy.”

“Next time.”

She came around and sat in Kyle’s chair, facing me directly. “I don’t know when that will be.”

I figured it would be a week, just like always, but I could read in her eyes how wrong I was. “You and Danny going on vacation or something?”

She sat back in the chair and sighed deeply. “Travis Jordan, I owe you an apology. I’ve been wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

She drew a breath and sighed it out. “Wrong about letting you just sit on your rear.” This was Rene’s characteristic bluntness, her tough love. “Trav, it’s been ten months. You know Marian would be upset to see you like this.
I’m
upset. Danny and I have been talking about it, and he’s right: I thought I was helping you by doing your laundry and planning out your grocery list and cooking most of your meals. But . . .” She looked away and drummed her fingers on the table while she built up to it. “I can’t be your mother anymore. School’s starting in the fall, and by that time you’re going to have to be a clean, resourceful, responsible adult again. You’re going to have to be an example.”

“In other words,
get a life.”

“No, you
have
a life. I’m telling you to get on with it. I mean . . . ” She looked around the house. It was a small place. She could see the dining room, living room, and bedroom from where she was sitting. “When we were kids, Mom would never let us get away with a mess like this. We had to clean our own rooms, remember? Now here I am, cleaning
yours
. What’s wrong with this picture?”

I looked around. This was a mess? I’d come to regard it as simply having everything I owned in plain sight and within easy reach at all times.

“I shouldn’t even have done this, but I talked to Don Anderson yesterday, and he has a washing machine in stock that was damaged in shipping. It works fine, it just has a dent in it. He said he’ll let it go for a hundred dollars. Travis, buy it. Hook it up and use it. Get yourself some rope and make a clothesline out back. The weather’s warming up. You can dry everything back there. And did you try that meat loaf recipe I gave you?”

That
meat loaf. “Uh, yeah. I think I cooked it too long.”

“You used to cook when you and Marian were in California. I know; she told me. And you still have the makings for meat loaf in the freezer. Try it again. Try all the recipes again, and keep trying, ’cause after today, I’m out of here.” She hurried around me and picked up the laundry basket. “I’ll do this load, and then . . . you’d better buy that washing machine.” She bent and kissed me on the cheek. “We’re gonna talk someday. We have to.”

“Sounds like we just did,” I said.

“We will. I promise. Bye.”

She smiled at me, turned, and went out the front door.

I heard her Bronco start up and drive off, and then the remarkable quiet of a small eastern Washington wheat town set in. Such towns have no ambient rumble of traffic. The only airport is a small strip for crop dusters several miles west of town. I could hear the electric whir of the clock on the wall and the intermittent drip from the kitchen sink. Somewhere in the neighborhood a dog barked. A breeze caused a dry leaf to skitter along the concrete just outside the patio door.

I sat motionless and intensely alone, ignoring the coffee growing cold in my cup and trying to get through my head what had just happened. It could have been the proverbial two-by-four against the side of the head. It sure felt like it.

I finally got up and stood in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, numbly scanning the disheveled state of the one-bedroom bungalow. The coffee table had disappeared under books and magazines I’d planned to read or been reading, most of them open to wherever I’d begun or left off. I had to assume that I had flung my coat and hat over the chair near the door, but I sure couldn’t remember doing it. I could probably blame the post office for the newspapers and catalogs that were spreading like kudzu over every level surface including the floor. The cluttered kitchen counters were filled with dirty dishes and cereal boxes still stood around after a week of breakfasts. It suddenly occurred to me how embarrassing it would be if my landlord were to drop by.

I made my way to the bathroom and found something equally messy in the bathroom mirror: a graying, weathered, whiskered, forty-five-year-old former . . .
what?
Anything I had ever been, I wasn’t anymore. I knew that much. A question from my ordination application came back to me:
Are you always neat and clean?
I stifled a laugh. Not today.

But Rene’s point was well taken: Someone else was going to have to look at this face when September rolled around—a whole classroom full of sixth graders. I’d managed to regain a teaching position I held years ago, when Antioch Mission was a fledgling congregation—any small-town, small-church pastor can tell you the value of a secondary source of income. Because the job didn’t start until September, it had always remained an abstraction to me. I’d shaved perhaps twice since the job interview, and never viewed the upcoming responsibility in light of the fact that I was a wreck.

Things will have to change
, I told myself.
Pretty soon. Tomorrow, maybe.

Enough of the face. I left the bathroom and looked out the bedroom window expecting to see the same winter-browned hill that rose just west of my place, with a tight grove of wind-battered cottonwoods at its crest.

There was somebody out there.

I stopped. I’d never seen anyone on that hill before. I wasn’t even sure who owned that land.

But there was a man standing by the cottonwoods, resting an arm against one of the old trunks. He was facing my direction, and didn’t appear to have anyplace else he needed to be.

Was he looking at me? I went closer to the window and shifted my head back and forth, squinting a bit. He was looking at me. He wasn’t just looking west or looking toward the house. He was looking at me. I could feel my brow furrowing, and he responded with a slight smile and a nod.

There was something about those eyes that held me. From here, I guessed they were deep brown. But that gaze you didn’t see every day. It seemed to say, without words,
I know you.

Who was this guy?

His hair was long and black, parted down the middle, curling down to his shoulders.

He had a beard.

I looked away, catching myself, corralling my runaway thoughts.
Uh-uh, no Travis, don’t think that.

He was wearing a white robe, wasn’t he? I looked again, and yes, he was. A white robe tied in the middle, open at the neck, with long sleeves that hung loosely from the arms. I couldn’t see his feet because of the tall grass, but it was a reflex, a natural step to imagine sandals. I’d been to Sunday school all my life. I’d seen the pictures.

He was still looking at me, and seemed to be enjoying how awkward I felt staring back.

I finally shook my head and said, “No. No way.”

He laughed, nodding his head yes.

I casually moved away from the window.

Then I ran to the patio door and bolted outside. Whoever this guy really was, I was going to know it within the thirty seconds or so it would take me to reach the crown of the hill. It was a gag, right? Somebody sent him to shake up the weird old former minister.