Lake Wobegon Days (52 page)

The white Scripture van pulled into Val’s driveway on the Saturday evening before revival, Bob having preached Friday night in Fargo, and he and Verna were in church Sunday morning, in the second pew, far forward of the congregation, like outposts, Bob in a red plaid jacket that kept you apprised of his whereabouts. During the sermon, Bob often bent down in what appeared to be prayer. He also cleared his throat, “Hragh-
hmhhm!
” at various points. After church, there were rival hand-shakings, Bob at the front and Pastor Ingqvist at the back. And after Sunday dinner, there was a brief dispirited argument at the parsonage.

“Every year I dread this,” David said.

Judy said, “I dread it, too.”

“All week I feel like I’m eight years old. That Old Testament stare of his, those big black eyebrows. He’s got that talent for judgment that makes people freeze in their tracks. And it’s not such a great talent, you
know, making people feel guilty—just about anyone can do it if they put their mind to it.”

“My dear, if you feel so strongly about it, why don’t you tell him what you think of him?”

“Your uncle Bob isn’t someone a person can converse with.”

“He’s not my uncle. And you don’t have to converse with him—just tell him what you think.”

“He’d take it the wrong way.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

“So what. Tell him anyway.”

For the revival, Bob and Verna hung a thirty-foot-long canvas backdrop behind the pulpit, covering the altar and the painting of the Good Shepherd, which Bob considered a graven image, with a verse:
I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE
, in red letters like neon. He drove nails into the walls to hang it from, fresh nail holes every year—like notches on his gun, David thought, who cringed when he heard it,
bam! bam! bam!
—and Verna rounded up the Lutheran hymnals and put out tattered copies of their Singspiration songbooks. Verna played the organ. She played everything quivering with tremolo, as if it were a funeral for your entire family; even “Onward, Christian Soldiers” sounded dirgelike, the soldiers all dead.

Attendance, low on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, picked up for Thursday and Friday. Friday night, the church was almost full. All of Bob and Verna’s regulars, plus the Brethren, plus the Lutherans who don’t want to be seen
not
being there, plus some surprising people the regulars have dragged in. Mr. Berge and Elmer and Oscar, the old guys from the Sidetrack, and a couple of bachelor farmers, all in a row toward the back, looking slightly feverish in their winter suits, their only suits. Mr. Berge! In church! He hadn’t darkened a pew since God knew when.

In the first pew, Bob sat, bent low in prayer, and when Verna finished “I Love to Tell the Story,” he was in no hurry to get up. Often he remained in a prayerful attitude for five or six minutes, and of course a person’s mind wanders and you think about your car and whether
it’s up for a trip to the North Shore, you mentally balance your checkbook, you try to remember the name of the resort in Schroeder with the housekeeping cabins where you and your wife spent three days and made love six or seven times in a saggy bed in a dark room that smelled of mildew and previous couples and you recall one of the six or seven times, then suddenly you are gripped with remorse: My God! A man is pouring out his heart to the Lord, and here I am thinking about copulation! My God! And right then was when Bob stood up, climbed the stairs, put his Bible on the pulpit, and looked at you—at
you
, in a way that you knew he knew and you knew he knew that you knew he knew.

“Let us pray.” A pause. Then he thanked God for this, another chance to hear the Gospel, perhaps the last, as we all knew from prophecy that we were in the last days, the world was drawing to a close, the Lord would soon come, perhaps tonight during this meeting, perhaps now—this moment—before we draw another breath…. He prayed that the Spirit would be at work among us, seeking out the hardened heart and bringing it to a conviction of sin. “Lord, there is one soul here tonight who is without Thee, who is struggling in dark waters, without hope of salvation—Lord, we pray that the Spirit will speak to that soul—it may be a stranger, or it may be someone we know quite well, someone who attends church regularly and yet who can find no peace, no satisfaction—Lord, Thou knowest who it is—Speak to that boy, that girl, that man, that woman, so that they will not leave this place still in sin but will come forward and kneel at the altar of mercy and receive Thee tonight as their personal Saviour. Amen.
Let us sing.
…”

The thought of the struggling seaman makes a strange minor chord with your recollection of the motel in Schroeder, you feel ashamed for having heard this pun, as childish as “Gladly the Cross I’d Bear.” Oh, unregenerate heart …

This hymn was almost unbearable for Mr. Berge, for whom it brought a picture of his mother standing late in the evening at the kitchen table, kneading bread. The smell of yeast and Fels-Naphtha. Seven children and a worthless drunken husband, a worthless worn-out farm north of Parker’s Prairie, a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, and her ashamed to attend the Norwegian Baptist church because she had nothing to wear, singing hymns late into the night. She knew hundreds of them. Almost any hymn makes Mr. Berge ill with grief, so he can hardly get his breath.

Another long silence, then the reading of the text, usually from the Old Testament. Bob likes to start there, a long way off from the Gospel, with the Old Covenant and the great men God raised up to lead His wavering people, Moses, Joshua, Saul—his voice rises and falls in pulpit cadence, once again your mind drifts from the shore as your eyes settle on the back of Joyce Johnson’s neck, the part in her hair and two stout braids, which never interested you before but suddenly your mind slips into dark waters, you and she are by the creek, and she takes off her dress—
just like that!
Says, “Let’s go swimming,” and takes off her dress—no underwear, naturally, and you can’t help but look at her, this fine woman, a pillar of the youth program, now naked in bright sunlight, walking into the water and holding your hand, and now you turn and embrace—and right then, Bob snapped his Bible shut and descended from the pulpit.

“I was planning to speak on discipleship tonight,” he said, “but the Lord has laid another message on my heart. A hard message. One that many here this evening may not want to hear.” He stepped down the three steps like a man entering the water, and to the churchgoing, who were used to clergy staying in their place, penned up between the font and the altar, it was a thrilling moment. As he disappeared from the pulpit microphone, Bob’s voice rose, and when he reached the first pew, gripping it, his eyes sweeping the bowed heads, his voice was in
full cry and could be heard clearly by those who had sought refuge in the rear.

“You think you live in a Christian community. A town of good Christian people. Well, let me tell you the truth. You don’t.

“You go to church on Sunday, you give money, you’re active in the women’s circle or the men’s fellowship, you think that makes you a Christian? Well, it doesn’t. The body of Christ is not a club. You don’t join it. You are
called
to it!

“Let me tell you, my friend—right now, as I speak, Christ is calling some of you—calling to you from the cross of Calvary, calling on you to give up your so-called ‘Christian’ life and follow Him—and many of you are saying, ‘No, Lord, I can’t. It’s too hard, Lord. What will the neighbors say? What will my minister say? What will people
think
of me?’ My friend, I beg of you: think of the consequences when you reject the Saviour who died for you in favor of leading a ‘good Christian life’!”

—This quiet, churchgoing town, on the surface peaceful and hardworking and decent, is in fact a whited sepulcher, a Sodom and Gomorrah, a sinkhole of sin and corruption and degradation and debauchery, for God looks on the heart, and in our hearts we are guilty of every sin—even adultery and murder. Yes! Adultery and murder! Lust in our eyes, blood on our hands!
Compared to what’s in our hearts, Sing-Sing is a Sunday School!
‘For
all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God!’ There are no ‘little’ sins; sin is sin; a ‘little’ one is the same as lying face down in the gutter. It all leads to the same place. To hell. The Lake of Fire. Eternal damnation. An eternity of torture by fire. A Hiroshima that never ends. An
eternity!
And you, dear friend, are worried what the neighbors will think? Think about eternity: imagine a sparrow coming to Lake Wobegon once a year, sitting at the water’s edge, and taking a drink. When he has drunk the lake dry, eternity will have barely begun! But in the everlasting Lake of Fire, there will be no water. You will call out, you will weep, you will tear out the hairs of your head, begging God for
one drop
to soothe your parched mouth, but God will not hear your plea. God will say, “I never knew you. Depart from me, thou unfaithful servant.”
If people in this town would spend half the time
reading God’s Word as they spend watering their lawns, it would make the difference between heaven and hell.

Now every head is bowed and every mouth tastes of dust. The reference to sprinklers makes them cringe. All too clearly, they see the little arm spinning a tent of water onto the cool green grass as they themselves sit surrounded by fire, their tongues hot and blackened, pleading for water, pleading for death that will not come. Their flesh crackles and burns and melts but they do not die. This will go on forever.

Now Bob is walking up the center aisle, pausing at each pew, and at the back he will turn and say, “I hear many of you saying to yourselves, ‘Later. Not now. Not tonight. Later. I’m still young. I’ll think of spiritual things when I’m older. On my deathbed.’

“Friend, your deathbed may be the bed you lie down in tonight. Or you may never reach your deathbed.”

This is the part that rings in Mrs. Mueller’s ears. Brother Bob tells of the young man who attended a revival service (“a service much like the one you are attending tonight”) and who feared for his soul but decided to put off salvation until a later time. Leaving the church, he drove three blocks to the railroad crossing where a fast C & O freight ushered his soul instantly into eternity, there to stand before the Judgment Throne and face God.

Now every mind is tracing the route home, remembering to stop, look, and listen, but Bob cuts off escape—he tells of others he has known (“young people in the very prime of life”) whose lives were snuffed out like a birthday candle. A man of twenty-two, an athlete, young, vigorous, healthy: his heart simply stopped one day, and doctors couldn’t explain it. Fell over dead. A young woman, on the night
before her wedding, who choked to death on a stick of gum.
One stick.
Dead. A small plane, its engine stalled, fell silently through the darkness, crashing into a farmhouse, the family that had gone to bed hours before never saw the morning sun. Another family, sitting down to breakfast, joking, talking, when suddenly a thin figure leaps into the room waving a pistol and commands them to lie face down on the floor and there, one by one, he murders them in cold blood. The oatmeal was still warm when the sheriff arrived, too late. Dead.

Bob circles around the back where people sit for safety’s sake, but there is no sanctuary anywhere in the sanctuary; he carries the terrible news to every corner, and now stops on his way down the side aisle where Eric Tollerud, Daryl’s boy, has broken under the spell of death and his skinny shoulders shake, he sobs into his hands. His mother puts her hand on his knee; she, too, is close to tears. The other Tollerud children tremble. Every child in the room trembles. You yourself feel shaky, your eyes are hot and your throat is dry and sore. Your body aches. So stiff that when you lift your arm and put it on the back of the pew, you have to think about doing it. Sniffling begins two pews behind you and spreads. Your own head feels full, and now one tear runs boiling hot down your face, followed by another. You clear your throat, which feels like it’s bleeding. Your eyes fill with tears and the room swims underwater, everything drowning in sorrow.

You see your own death, your wife dying, the death of your parents, your brothers and sisters, your children one by one. Bob has opened the door of the church and let death in. Mrs. Mueller whispers over and over, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy.” The unspeakable sadness and misery of this life. The grave yawns before you, a bottomless hole. You are falling. Today, when you mowed the grass and listened to the ball game, was a little bubble in a sea of suffering and loneliness. There is no hope or sense in this dark world, all efforts are doomed to fail, and nobody loves us and we don’t love them because we are drenched with sin; a constant terrible mindless evil grips us all and drags us down, down, down, into dark depths we cannot imagine. How weak, foolish, pitiful is everything you have ever done, the little piles of trash you’ve accumulated with so much effort, the poor little story of such obvious lies that is your life. Your sin, your very great sin sits on your shoulders and digs its claws into your flesh. A smiling
man raises a gun and shoots you in the face. An airplane falls like a bomb. A train can be heard in the distance, coming faster and faster, the cone of light waving frantically, you press the accelerator and nothing happens, you sit on the tracks, your body frozen in place. Your children weep, you have failed them utterly. Your wife weeps, Joyce Johnson weeps, Val and Charlotte—and now Mr. Berge falls to his knees and cries, O Jesus, O Jesus.