But how could I not care when it meant not only our family’s reputation but our very livelihood? There would be a board meeting after this incident. I hated the thought of all those accusing eyes measured at my husband. His heart was completely dedicated to each of the people who sat at that meeting table. His phone was always at his side, ready to pick up whenever any of them needed him. And yet, they could be so harsh.
“Why is it OK for them to pick on us, Lord, when we can’t say a word about them? It’s not fair.”
My death for your sins was not fair.
I wiped away some tears and nodded at the sky. He was right. He was always right.
I threw the remains of my hot dog in the garbage bin. Music streamed out of the church into the night air. It gave me a warm comfort the way all church music does. I knew that I was as much at home in a church as I was in my own skin. I had been dedicated to Jesus as an infant, grown up in Sunday school, been a youth group leader, a member of the choir, and had met my husband at a church. Our destinies were as clear as an Alaskan stream. We would serve the Lord with our lives as pastor and wife. It was all I’d ever dreamed of doing. Nothing else had even seemed possible.
People poured out of the little church. I watched as they shook hands with their pastor and hugged one another. There weren’t many of them, maybe fifteen or twenty, but they were going about the same Sunday evening ritual they had performed for generations.
Some of the church folks avoided me. I was a new curiosity in this little town and probably looked a little menacing in my biker gear. But most of the kids came over and talked to me about Heaven. The girls were especially excited to see a pink Harley.
“That a Harley?” A young man tried to sound cool.
“Yup.” I smiled. “Her name is Heaven.”
“Cool.” The girl with him eyed my freedom with envy.
We talked for a while about the paint and some of the chrome and even about going to heaven, but it was getting dark, and I didn’t like riding in the dark.
“Time for me to go. Lots of squishables like to come out and play in the road this time of night. Was nice meeting you. Stay in church.” I pointed to the young people and pulled on my helmet. I hoped I looked cool doing it. They laughed and waved as I took off, and I knew I had a crowd watching me as I drove away. I might not have looked cool, but I felt awesome.
If I was so perplexed about my own faith—why had I told that young man to stay in church? I smiled, realizing I told him because I knew where my hope came from. Not from church, but from Whom I worshipped when I was there.
On my way home, I decided to swing by Lily’s and Milo’s place. They lived about twenty miles back in the country on my way toward Eel Falls. I loved their house set way off a country road. There was a pond in front of the three-story brick Italianate house and a yard full of chickens, ducks, and geese. In the side pen were some goats and sheep, and I could smell the cow pies from the back lot.
“When did you get a llama?” I asked Lily as she greeted me at the door.
“It’s not a llama, it’s an alpaca. I got him a couple of weeks ago. Gonna give it a try. I got two more comin’ tomorrow.” Lily motioned me inside the front door and onto her screened-in porch.
“What are they for?” I took off my gloves and jacket and set them on the porch swing.
“Wool. They make great sweaters.”
We stepped inside the living room where Milo sat staring at the blank TV screen.
“Who’s that?” he snapped at Lily when he saw me.
“Milo, you remember Kirstie, Pastor Aaron’s wife.”
“Is that Jennifer?” Jennifer was Lily and Milo’s daughter. She’d been killed in a school bus accident riding home from a basketball game during the winter.
“Jennifer? Did you shut the door to the barn and make sure the light is still on for the chicks?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I said, looking at Lily and shrugging. “Everything’s fine. How are you feeling?”
“How do you think I’m feeling?” He dropped his head into his hand and rubbed his forehead. “It’s past your bedtime. What you doing up? Get to bed.”
“Yes, Daddy.” Lily and I tiptoed past him through the dining room and into the kitchen.
“I’m sorry about that, Kirstie.” Lily set about making tea.
“Don’t be silly, Lily. There’s nothing to be sorry about. He can’t help it.”
“Some days he’s fine and others…well, others are like this.” She sighed with such sad eyes I wanted to run away. “Would you like some tea?”
“Tea sounds wonderful,” I said.
We sat at Lily’s table and shared our troubles. Mine seemed small compared to hers, and hers seemed small compared to mine. It was good to have a friend to pray with. Especially since my mother was no longer around. I needed the wisdom of an older woman like Lily to keep me sane.
“Try not to let the little stuff get to you, Kirstie. Remember, it’s the little foxes that ruin the vine.” Lily went to the counter and opened her cookie jar.
I smiled. “Song of Solomon, chapter two.”
“Keep the main thing the main thing, and you’ll do fine.” Lily arranged a variety of cookies on a pretty antique plate.
“I just wish Bernice would stop being such a busybody. I’m having a hard time loving her. Sometimes the things she says and does seem unforgiveable.” I took a sip of tea and stared out the kitchen window.
“Just remember something. When people go around telling other people’s secrets, it means they have some secrets of their own.” Lily set the cookies on the table and sat down across from me again at the kitchen table.
“What do you mean?”
“Bernice and Norman have family secrets from way back. I think that’s why Bernice works so hard to spread malicious gossip. If everyone is gossiping about everyone else, then they’re too busy to gossip about her.”
“How do you know this?” I reached for a cookie.
“I grew up here, too, remember? Our families go back several generations. Her ancestors settled here about the same time as mine. I know things. I’m not going to share them, but I know things from tales I remember hearing as a child from my great-grandmother.” Lily took a bite out of a snicker doodle she had dipped into her tea.
I nodded. That made sense. “My grandmother always said hurting people hurt people.” I took my last bite of cookie and downed my tea.
After a few more minutes of girl talk, Lily walked me to the door, and we said our good-byes. I hated riding in the dark, but spending this time with Lily was worth the risk.
As I pulled out of her driveway, a little fox peeked at me from behind the goldenrod by the side of the road.
“Little foxes,” I whispered to myself. “Those crazy little foxes.”
32
“Look at all the fish we caught, Mom.” Patrick beamed and shoved a bucket of little bluegill under my nose. “Dad says we’re gonna fry ’em up and eat ’em. Man, am I hungry.”
“Oh, really?” I wrinkled my nose and pushed the bucket away. “Well you and Dad are cleaning them—I’m not.” I looked at Aaron and raised my eyebrows. We were going to eat those little bitty bluegill? There probably wasn’t enough meat on them to feed one person. But I hadn’t seen Patrick this excited since he was a little boy and caught his first toad.
Aaron walked in through the double doors leading to the patio and took off his hiking boots. He pointed to the bucket. “Them’s good eatin’.”
I giggled at his Indiana colloquialism and got out the fillet knife as he washed his hands at the sink.
Aaron wiped his hands on a towel and took the knife from me. “Patrick caught most of ’em himself.”
“Yup, I did.” Patrick looked into the bucket and grinned up at me.
I waved them out of the kitchen. “Well, clean them outside on the deck, not in here. I’ll get some oil heated and mix up some batter.”
Never underestimate how delicious a little bluegill can be when shared with a prodigal son and reconciled parents. For the three of us, our meager meal of fish created a wonderful feast.
After we finished cleaning up and Patrick was in the shower, Aaron wrapped his arms around me in the kitchen. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I looked up into his smiling brown eyes.
“For insisting I take the night off and spend time with Patrick. Kids grow up fast. I hadn’t noticed he was becoming a man. And if you hadn’t been mean to me and yelled at me earlier today, I might not have figured that out.”
“You’re welcome.” I smiled.
“How was your ride?” He kissed me on the nose. Even though he smelled of fish, I loved his playfulness.
“It was good. Kind of hot and muggy, but good. I stopped out at Lily’s, and we had a good talk.”
“And Milo?” he asked.
“The same. They have alpacas.”
Goliath wiggled between the two of us, wanting to play. “Woof!”
“Someone wants to go for a walk.” I glanced up at Aaron. He looked exhausted. Dealing with our prodigal son’s emotions, even while doing something as relaxing as fishing, had to make him weary. “It’s OK. I’ll go. C’mon, Goliath, let’s go burn off some calories.”
Fortunately for my shoulder joints, I’d taught Goliath to heel when he was a wee puppy. He learned fast, but still had a mind of his own when we came upon a squirrel or cat. It wasn’t that he wanted to eat them. He wanted to play with them.
The night was beautiful. The dark ebony sky was crystal clear and dotted with brilliant stars twinkling like diamonds under the lights at Zuckermann’s jewelry store. Bullfrogs bellowed louder than the crickets sang. The full moon allowed me to see the entire neighborhood easily. Mrs. Schmidt’s morning glories had gone to sleep, their petals closed until the sun kissed their faces again. Mr. Bech’s cat skulked through the grass beside the pond, stalking a ground squirrel. Across the field behind the church, I could see rabbits hopping in and out of cabbages in Mrs. Beedle’s vegetable garden. I chuckled. If Mrs. Beedle, who won the blue ribbon every year in the Wabash County Fair for her sauerkraut, knew what went on after dark in her garden, she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Goliath and I walked around the block and headed up the hill toward the church. As we drew nearer, Goliath hunched up his shoulders and grumbled.
“What’s wrong, boy?” I got a shiver. I looked around me and saw nothing. “Goliath, you better not be growling at something stupid. You’re scaring me.”
We continue walking, but as we neared the church, Goliath stopped walking and snarled again.
“What is it, Goliath?”
His growling unnerved me. He wasn’t a mean dog, but he was protective of me. Was someone lurking somewhere? Or had he seen a jogger and wasn’t sure what to make of it in the moonlight?
We took a few more steps toward the church, but he stopped a third time and barked. The hair on his spine stood on end. I looked in the direction he was lunging and noticed a light coming from the back of the church from the walkout basement door.
“C’mon, Goliath, it’s probably someone working on their Sunday school lesson. Stop it, you’re freaking me out.” I tugged on his leash and headed toward the back door of the church. Goliath moaned and reluctantly tiptoed behind me. To be safe, I decided to look in the back door window to see what was going on before going in.
“Shhh, Goliath. Sit. Stay.” I left him at the end of the concrete walk where he sat and whined and groused. “No bark,” I spoke sternly and made my way between the embankments on each side of the sidewalk leading to the basement door. Goliath’s attitude had me sneaking up to my own church as if I were a burglar. “This is ridiculous.”
I stood to the side of the window and peered into the church basement with one eye. The lights were on in the fellowship hall and kitchen, and the door to the storage closet was open. I could hear yelling, and I could barely see two figures standing in the closet with a flashlight or lamp.
“What could those two want in the storage closet?” I wondered. “And why are they using a flashlight instead of turning on the closet light?”
The closet was as big as my own bedroom. I wondered if they were changing the light bulb. Then, one of the figures stepped out of the darkness of the closet into the light of the fellowship hall. It was Bernice carrying her beloved pug, Mason.
Bernice? What is she up to now?
Right behind Bernice emerged Elder Watson Cobb carrying a shovel.
What was going on? Why were they in the storage closet alone? And why was Elder Cobb holding her in his arms just now? My brain tried to catch up with what I saw, but it couldn’t. I couldn’t think of one conceivable reason why Bernice and Elder Cobb should be in the church storage closet together, in the dark, with a shovel, and now in one another’s arms, unless it was something I didn’t even want to think about.
For one thing, I never took Bernice for the kind of woman who would be warm enough to accept the affections of someone else. And for another thing, well, she was Bernice. And people like Bernice didn’t have affairs—did they?
In a burst of anger, Bernice pushed Elder Cobb away from her and began gesturing wildly. She went to the closet and began yelling at it. I couldn’t make out what she was saying through the glass, but Goliath must have been able to because he paced at the end of the walk with his hackles up and moaned.
I felt guilty for spying on them, but I couldn’t figure out how to introduce myself. They obviously weren’t expecting someone to find them there. As I turned to leave, I saw Norman emerge from the closet, grimy, dusty and dirty, carrying a rifle. I gasped audibly and slapped my hand over my mouth. What was going on?
Bernice berated Norman in her usual way. Maybe they were trying to fix something. But I still couldn’t figure out the strange embrace I’d seen between Bernice and Elder Cobb. It didn’t fit with my image of the two of them. Was Norman aware of their close relationship?
“Woof!” Goliath couldn’t hold back anymore. Bernice looked toward the door, and I hunched low and to the side. I scratched my arm on the wooden embankment ties when I hid in the shadows in the corner. Goliath ran to the door and barked. Bernice’s little pug barked, too.
Bernice came to the door and looked out the window. “They’ve got that monster dog out running loose again. I swear those people are the most ill-mannered pastor’s family I’ve ever seen. Who needs a dog that big anyway? He’s probably going to eat a baby before it’s all over with, and the church will get sued. Norman, go out there and shoot that nuisance dog. We’ll be doing the whole town a favor.”