The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories (59 page)

Rose was hurrying up the aisle and up the chancel steps. “Reverend Wall, you don’t need to run through your sermon right now.”

“What does it say to us,” he asked, “struggling to recover from a world
war?”

Dee nudged Sharon.

“Reverend
Wall,”
Rose said, reaching the pulpit. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to go through your whole sermon right now. We need to run through the pageant now.”

“Ah,” he said, and gathered up his papers.

“All right,” Rose said. “The choir sings ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, and Mary and Joseph, you come down the aisle.”

Mary and Joseph, wearing bathrobes and Birkenstocks,
assembled themselves at the back of the sanctuary, and started down the center aisle.

“No, no, Mary and Joseph, not that way,” Rose said. “The wise men from the East have to come down the center aisle, and you’re coming up from Nazareth. You two come down the side aisle.”

Mary and Joseph obliged, taking the aisle at a trot.

“No, no, slow
down,”
Rose said. “You’re tired. You’ve walked all the
way from Nazareth. Try it again.”

They raced each other to the back of the church and started again, slower at first and then picking up speed.

“The congregation won’t be able to see them,” Rose said, shaking her head. “What about lighting the side aisle? Can we do that, Reverend Farrison?”

“She’s not here,” Dee said. “She went to get something.”

“I’ll go get her,” Sharon said, and went down
the hall.

Miriam Hoskins was just going into the adult Sunday school room with a paper plate of frosted cookies. “Do you know where Reverend Farrison is?” Sharon asked her.

“She was in the office a minute ago,” Miriam said, pointing with the plate.

Sharon went down to the office. Reverend Farrison was standing at the desk, talking on the phone. “How soon can the van be here?” She motioned to
Sharon she’d be a minute. “Well, can you find out?”

Sharon
waited, looking at the desk. There was a glass dish of paper-wrapped cough drops next to the phone, and beside it a can of smoked oysters and three cans of water chestnuts. Probably for the ‘Least of These’ Project, she thought ruefully.

“Fifteen minutes? All right. Thank you,” Reverend Farrison said, and hung up. “Just a minute,” she
told Sharon, and went to the outside door. She opened it and leaned out. Sharon could feel the icy air as she stood there. She wondered if it had started snowing.

“The van will be here in a few minutes,” Reverend Farrison said to someone outside.

Sharon looked out the stained-glass panels on either side of the door, trying to see who was out there.

“It’ll take you to the shelter,” Reverend
Farrison said. “No, you’ll have to wait outside.” She shut the door. “Now,” she said, turning to Sharon, “what did you want, Mrs. Englert?”

Sharon said, still looking out the window, “They need you in the sanctuary.” It was starting to snow. The flakes looked blue through the glass.

“I’ll be right there,” Reverend Farrison said. “I was just taking care of some homeless. That’s the second couple
we’ve had tonight. We always get them at Christmas. What’s the problem? The palm trees?”

“What?” Sharon said, still looking at the snow.

Reverend Farrison followed her gaze. “The shelter van’s coming for them in a few minutes,” she said. “We can’t let them stay in here unsupervised. First Methodist’s had their collection stolen twice in the last month, and we’ve got all the donations for the
‘Least of These’ Project in there.” She gestured toward the Fellowship Hall.

I thought they were
for
the homeless, Sharon thought. “Couldn’t they just wait in the sanctuary or something?” she said.

Reverend Farrison sighed. “Letting them in isn’t doing them a kindness. They come here instead of the shelter because the shelter confiscates their liquor.” She started down the hall. “What did they
need me for?”

“Oh,” Sharon said, “the lights. They wanted to know if they could get lights over the side aisle for Mary and Joseph.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “The lights in this church are such a mess.” She stopped at the bank of switches next to the stairs that led down to the choir room and the Sunday school rooms. “Tell me what this turns on.”

She
flicked a switch. The hall light went off.
She switched it back on and tried another one.

“That’s the light in the office,” Sharon said, “and the downstairs hall, and that one’s the adult Sunday school room.”

“What’s this one?” Reverend Farrison said.

There was a yelp from the choir members. Kids screamed.

“The sanctuary,” Sharon said. “Okay, that’s the side aisle lights.” She called down to the sanctuary. “How’s that?”

“Fine,” Rose
called. “No, wait, the organ’s off.”

Reverend Farrison flicked another switch, and the organ came on with a groan.

“Now the side lights are off,” Sharon said, “and so’s the pulpit light.”

“I told you they were a mess,” Reverend Farrison said. She flicked another switch. “What did that do?”

“It turned the porch light off.”

“Good. We’ll leave it off. Maybe it will discourage any more homeless
from coming,” she said. “Reverend Wall let a homeless man wait inside last week, and he relieved himself on the carpet in the adult Sunday school room. We had to have it cleaned.” She looked reprovingly at Sharon. “With these people, you can’t let your compassion get the better of you.”

No, Sharon thought. Jesus did, and look what happened to him.

“The innkeeper could have turned them away,”
Reverend Wall intoned. “He was a busy man, and his inn was full of travelers. He could have shut the door on Mary and Joseph.”

Virginia leaned across Sharon to Dee. “Did whoever broke in take anything?”

“No,” Sharon said.

“Whoever it was urinated on the floor in the nursery,” Dee whispered, and Reverend Wall trailed off confusedly and looked over at the choir.

Dee began coughing loudly, trying
to smother it with her hand. He smiled vaguely at her and started again. “The innkeeper could have turned them away.”

Dee waited a minute, and then opened her hymnal to her bulletin and began writing on it. She passed it to Virginia, who read it and then passed it back to Sharon.

“Reverend
Farrison thinks some of the homeless got in,” it read. “They tore up the palm trees, too. Ripped the bases
right off. Can you imagine anybody doing something like that?”

“As the innkeeper found room for Mary and Joseph that Christmas Eve long ago,” Reverend Wall said, building to a finish “let us find room in our hearts for Christ. Amen.”

The organ began the intro to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and Mary and Joseph appeared at the back with Miriam Hoskins. She adjusted Mary’s white veil and whispered
something to them. Joseph pulled at his glued-on beard.

“What route did they finally decide on?” Virginia whispered. “In from the side or straight down the middle?”

“Side aisle,” Sharon whispered.

The choir stood up. “‘O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,’„ they sang. “Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.”

Mary and Joseph started up the side aisle,
taking the slow, measured steps Rose had coached them in, side by side. No, Sharon thought. That’s not right. They didn’t look like that. Joseph should be a little ahead of Mary, protecting her, and her hand should be on her stomach, protecting the baby.

They eventually decided to wait on the decision of how Mary and Joseph would come, and started through the pageant. Mary and Joseph knocked
on the door of the inn, and the innkeeper, grinning broadly, told them there wasn’t any room.

“Patrick, don’t look so happy,” Rose said. “You’re supposed to be in a bad mood. You’re busy and tired, and you don’t have any rooms left.”

Patrick attempted a scowl. “I have no rooms left,” he said, “but you can stay in the stable.” He led them over to the manger, and Mary knelt down behind it.

“Where’s
the baby Jesus?” Rose said.

“He’s not due till tomorrow night,” Virginia whispered.

“Does anybody have a baby doll they can bring?” Rose asked.

One of the angels raised her hand, and Rose said, “Fine. Mary, use the blanket for now, and choir, you sing the first verse of ‘Away in a Manger.’ Shepherds,” she
called to the back of the sanctuary, “as soon as ‘Away in a Manger’ is over, come up and
stand on this side.” She pointed.

The shepherds picked up an assortment of hockey sticks, broom handles, and canes taped to one-by-twos and adjusted their headcloths.

“All right, let’s run through it,” Rose said. “Organ?”

The organ played the opening chord, and the choir stood up.

“A-way,” Dee sang and started to cough, choking into her hand.

“Do—cough—drop?” she managed to gasp out between
spasms.

“I saw some in the office,” Sharon said, and ran down the chancel steps, down the aisle, and out into the hall.

It was dark, but she didn’t want to take the time to try to find the right switch. She could more or less see her way by the lights from the sanctuary, and she thought she knew right where the cough drops were.

The office lights were off, too, and the porch light Reverend
Farrison had turned off to discourage the homeless. She opened the office door, felt her way over to the desk and patted around till she found the glass dish. She grabbed a handful of cough drops and felt her way back out into the hall.

The choir was singing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” but after two measures they stopped, and in the sudden silence Sharon heard knocking.

She started for
the door and then hesitated, wondering if this was the same couple Reverend Farrison had turned away earlier, coming back to make trouble, but the knocking was soft, almost diffident, and through the stained-glass panels she could see it was snowing hard.

She switched the cough drops to her left hand, opened the door a little, and looked out. There were two people standing on the porch, one in
front of the other. It was too dark to do more than make out their outlines, and at first glance it looked like two women, but then the one in front said in a young man’s voice,
“Erkas.”

“I’m sorry,” Sharon said. “I don’t speak Spanish. Are you looking for a place to stay?” The snow was turning to sleet, and the wind was picking up.

“Kumrah,”
the young man said, making a sound like he was clearing
his throat, and then a whole string of words she didn’t recognize.

“Just a minute,” she said, and shut the door. She went back into the office, felt for the phone, and, squinting at the buttons in the near-darkness, punched in the shelter number.

It
was busy. She held down the receiver, waited a minute, and tried again. Still busy. She went back to the door, hoping they’d given up and gone away.

“Erkas,”
the man said as soon as she opened it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m trying to call the homeless shelter,” and he began talking rapidly, excitedly.

He stepped forward and put his hand on the door. He had a blanket draped over him, which was why she’d mistaken him for a woman.
“Erkas,”
he said, and he sounded upset, desperate, and yet somehow still diffident, timid.

“Bott lom,”
he said,
gesturing toward the woman who was standing back almost to the edge of the porch, but Sharon wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at their feet.

They were wearing sandals. At first she thought they were barefoot and she squinted through the darkness, horrified. Barefoot in the snow! Then she glimpsed the dark line of a strap, but they still might as well be. And it was snowing hard.

She couldn’t
leave them outside, but she didn’t dare bring them into the hall to wait for the van either, not with Reverend Farrison around.

The office was out—the phone might ring—and she couldn’t put them in the Fellowship Hall with all the stuff for the homeless in there.

“Just a minute,” she said, shutting the door, and went to see if Miriam was still in the adult Sunday school room. It was dark, so
she obviously wasn’t, but there was a lamp on the table by the door. She switched it on. No, this wouldn’t work either, not with the communion silver in a display case against the wall, and anyway, there was a stack of paper cups on the table, and the plates of Christmas cookies Miriam had been carrying, which meant there’d be refreshments in here after the pageant. She switched off the light, and
went out into the hall.

Not Reverend Wall’s office—it was locked anyway—and certainly not Reverend Farrison’s, and if she took them downstairs to one of the Sunday school rooms, she’d just have to sneak them back up again.

The furnace room? It was between the adult Sunday school room and the Fellowship Hall. She tried the doorknob. It opened, and she looked in. The furnace filled practically
the whole room, and what it didn’t was taken up by a stack of folding chairs. There wasn’t a light switch she could find, but the pilot light gave off enough light to maneuver by. And it was warmer than the porch.

She went
back to the door, looked down the hall to make sure nobody was coming, and let them in. “You can wait in here,” she said, even though it was obvious they couldn’t understand
her.

They followed her through the dark hall to the furnace room, and she opened out two of the folding chairs so they could sit down, and motioned them in.

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” ground to a halt, and Rose’s voice came drifting out of the sanctuary. “Shepherd’s crooks are not weapons. All right. Angel?”

“I’ll call the shelter,” Sharon said hastily and shut the door on them.

She crossed
to the office and tried the shelter again. “Please, please answer,” she said, and when they did, she was so surprised, she forgot to tell them the couple would be inside.

“It’ll be at least half an hour,” the man said. “Or forty-five minutes.”

“Forty-five minutes?”

“It’s like this whenever it gets below zero,” the man said. “We’ll try to make it sooner.”