A Rhinestone Button (13 page)

In the church foyer, the smell of coffee, canned milk. A few of the women hovered over the table, arranging plates and adding more cookies and squares. Something in Job, his prettiness, his eagerness to please, made them offer him hand-knitted socks and recipes they hid from other women. Job was aware of his effect and soaked in their affections, the delicate sheen of their voices so like his mother’s. He felt at home with them in a way he never felt with the men. Though tonight their voices held no sheen, showed no colour at all.

“I see Jacob’s got us a holy roller tonight,” said Annie Carlson. She wore her hair long and held back with a white plastic band; her face was hardened and lined by the sun.

“Pastor Divine,” said Job.

“He’s not going to make us speak in tongues, is he?” said Mrs. Schultz. “I went to one of those services in Edmonton with my daughter last winter. Her idea, not mine. All that
babbling and not one person there to interpret. Where’s the sense in that?” She had a fringe of white hair, black button eyes set in folds of skin. Face like an apple doll’s.

“And they get them falling into the arms of catchers,” said Annie. “If it really was the Holy Spirit making them fall over, what would they need catchers for? The Holy Spirit would make them fall light as a feather.”

Job said nothing. They all knew Job’s father had been given to charismatic outbursts in church: at times, moved by the Spirit, he stood up in the middle of the sermon, raised his hands and spouted gobbledegook. This in a prairie Baptist church that frowned on glossolalia as embarrassing theatrics, not God’s attempt to communicate. The congregation had expected that sort of thing from the likes of Job’s father, who was, after all, a reformed sheep man and Lutheran, not born to cattle farming, much less the life of a German Baptist. Or from Barbara Stubblefield, whose occasional convert stayed a month or two before disappearing, never to return. She’d married into the church, been raised a Pentecostal. Couldn’t be expected to act properly. Even so, Abe’s loud, emotional testimonials had been frowned on, just as evangelizing was not, in practice at least, encouraged; it seemed impolite, presumptuous, embarrassing at best. After several warnings, Abe had been asked to step down from the church board.

Ruth strolled over and wrapped an arm around Job, tucking him under her armpit. “So, Job, how’d that date go?”

Job bit into one of Annie’s sugar cookies.

“That good, eh?” said Ruth.

“What’s this about a date?” asked Annie.

“It wasn’t a date,” said Job. “We had coffee, that’s all.”

“Who with?” asked Mrs. Schultz, “Liv? From the café? I heard she and Darren split.”

“No. I mean, I’ve had coffee with her. But we’re just friends.”

Will wandered to the table along with Jerry and Wade. Will’s beard was newly trimmed, showing the square of his jaw. Wade was without his NAPA cap, his greasy hair patted down but not combed. All three men carried coffee cups in their hands and looked uncomfortable in their Sunday shirts and clean jeans. They wore no ties. The younger men of the church only wore ties and suit jackets for weddings and funerals.

“It was a woman from Edmonton,” said Ruth. “He met her through ‘Loveline.’ The radio show.”

“We’re talking about Debbie?” said Will.

“ ‘Loveline’?” said Annie. “Really? Are you going to see her again?”

“No,” said Job.

“So, this girl wasn’t your type?” asked Mrs. Schultz.

“More like I wasn’t her type,” said Job. He glanced at Jerry.

Will wrapped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed. “Ah, well,” he said.

Job jerked away as Penny joined them. Pretty in a lace-collared blouse, red pleated skirt. Hair pulled back with red barrettes. Annie and Mrs. Schultz withdrew as Penny took Job’s arm, and went back to refilling plates, fussing with arrangements.

“What’s wrong?” asked Will.

“Nothing,” said Job.

“He’s pissed with me,” said Jerry. The hair on his scalp was flattened from his cowboy hat. He lifted his cup as if
proposing a toast. “Job, the, ah, Lord laid what happened with Debbie upon my heart.”

Job cast a sorrowful look to the floor, but was pleased. Jerry felt guilty.

“I never should have gone off with Debbie like that.”

Penny pulled Job close. “You ran off with Job’s date?” she said.

Job leaned into Penny. The warmth of her arm. The smell of baby powder. “It
was
a pretty crappy thing to do,” he said.

Jerry lifted his chin, drank his coffee. “She was cuter than her picture. Anyway, she said we were soulmates.”

“So you’re going out with her?” said Will.

“She’s staying out at my cabin.”

Job lowered his voice. “You’re
living
with her? You’re
backsliding?
”

“It’s just a little holiday, that’s all.”

Job felt a hand on his shoulder. Jacob. “Got somebody for you to meet.”

Jacob led him over to a large man dressed in a dark blue, wide-shouldered suit and striped tie. A wave of grey-streaked hair swept from his right temple over the top of his head to his left, and was held in place with hairspray. Men in Godsfinger accepted their hair loss as a right of passage—“Grass don’t grow on a busy street,” his father had said of his own baldness—and if they felt it necessary to hide it, they wore the baseball caps the salesmen had left them.

Jacob put a hand on the man’s arm. “Jack, this is my brother, Job. Job, this is Pastor Divine.”

Pastor Divine shook Job’s hand. His wedding band and the gold rings he wore on both pinkies were large and square.
Nails buffed to a shine. “Jack. Call me Jack.” A million-dollar smile like a crop-insurance salesman paying a visit to the farm. A practised voice, oily and smooth.

“Jack may have a solution to our problem at the farm,” said Jacob. He patted Job’s arm. “Excuse me, Jack. I’ll let you and Job talk. I’ve got to get things set up at the podium.”

“Sure, sure.” He turned to Job. “Jacob’s done nothing but talk about you since I got here. What a skilled farmer you are, how well you’d fit into my ministry.”

“Me?”

“I’ve been running this ongoing campaign from my church. Workshops on how to evangelize with the Holy Spirit. The men and women I train go out and evangelize on the streets. The problem is, our campaign has been too successful. We’ve got all these new converts coming to my church, but they drift away after a few weeks because there’s nothing for them. We had fourteen converts in the last campaign. Rod here is the only one still with the church.” He pointed at a young man in a Hawaiian shirt, eating from his paper plate hand over fist. “I’ve got him sleeping on a cot in my basement. We need a place where we can isolate men like him from temptation.”

Rod turned and caught Job looking at him. He winked.

“Jacob says you’ve got something of a situation on your farm,” said Pastor Divine. “That you might have to sell the family farm.”

“You want to buy my farm?”

“No, no. Jacob and I were thinking of a different kind of arrangement. I’m overloaded with work as it is. I can’t take my campaign to the next level. I need someone like Jacob to do that. I’ve offered him a job. To head up the project.”

“What project?”

“To build a halfway house. A place for our converts to get to know the Lord, get back on their feet. A kind of church camp for adults. That is, if you’re willing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We want to put the halfway house on your farm.”

Job took a step back. “Oh, I don’t know.” He had never given handouts to the homeless men and women he’d passed on Edmonton streets. He was afraid of being taken advantage of, or laughed at. They seemed world-wise in a way that he wasn’t. Like the ragged man in his forties with a beard and a golden retriever carrying a backpack. The man muttered as Job passed, “Wolf got my dog pregnant.”

“What?” said Job.

“Spare some change?”

Pastor Divine waved a hand. His rings flashing. “We’d start small at first. Put up just one building that would serve as a bunkhouse, kitchen, meeting place. Later, as we put more buildings up, that first building could serve as a mess hall and meeting place. We can finance it with donations and use volunteer labour. Have work bees on the weekend. Make it fun. Get members of my church and maybe some of your locals involved. Make them feel a part of things. Once things are up and running, those converts who come to stay will be working on the farm, as part of their rehabilitation.”

“Jacob’s agreed to all this?”

“He’s taken the job as project manager. But of course everything, even his job, hinges on you agreeing to the plan. But don’t feel you have to commit to anything right away. All I’m asking is that you give it some thought. But consider this: if you agree to participate in the project, you won’t
have to sell the family farm or buy out Jacob, and you’ll be getting free labour. Free labour! It’s a farmer’s dream.” He reached into a pocket, slapped a promotional pamphlet for his workshops into Job’s hand. “Just think it over. In the meantime, I run a workshop every couple of months on how to evangelize with the Holy Spirit. Why not come to the next one?”

“I’m right in the middle of field work.”

“Well, at least come to one of my services. Check us out. See what we’re about.”

Penny took Job’s arm. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“This is Penny Blust. Pastor Divine.”

“Penny, is it?” He pulled a pamphlet from his jacket. “I’m running some workshops you might be interested in.”

Jacob wandered over to Job as Divine walked off with Penny. “Well, what do you think?” said Jacob. “Isn’t he great? A real character.”

“Why’d you tell him we were interested in that halfway house idea? I don’t want a bunch of strangers on my farm.”

“Our farm. Anyway it’s just something to think about. I’ve got to find some way to make an income. Speaking of which, you got any cash on you?”

“Just a fifty.”

“Great.”

“It’s all I’ve got on me.”

“You know I’ll get it back to you.”

But he hadn’t paid back Job for the station wagon, or the two hundred he’d borrowed nearly five years earlier.

“What’s it for?”

“Tonight’s offering.”

“You don’t need that much, do you?”

“It’s important that I appear to be behind Pastor Divine one hundred per cent.”

Job opened his wallet and handed over the fifty as he pointed a chin at the drummer, guitarist and keyboardist testing out their equipment onstage. “Where’d the band come from?”

“When Jack heard this wasn’t a charismatic church, he volunteered to bring a worship team down with him, to get things rolling. There’s the band, and then them.” He pointed at several women and men scattered around the room in pairs. A few of the men wore dress scarves around their necks and carried leather briefcases. They wouldn’t have stood out more if they had worn jesters’ caps.

“Why aren’t they sitting together?”

“So they just look like people interested in the revival. And it’s easier to get the crowd to respond if the worship team is dispersed throughout the church. It creates an atmosphere conducive to healing.”

“Conducive to healing?

Jacob nodded to the front of the church where Will sat with Penny and Barbara. “Will’s waving you over.”

“Yeah, I see him.”

“Aren’t you going to sit with him?”

“Not tonight.”

“Guess I better get onstage. Showtime.”

Job took a seat in the last pew, where the late people sat, and kept his eyes focused on the pamphlet Pastor Divine had given him. He felt a rustle and bump as someone sat down beside him. Dithy Spitzer, the front of her fluorescent vest spotted with bits of almond square. Job stared straight ahead, at Jacob and Jack Divine sitting on the platform
behind the pulpit. The two men guffawed at some joke between them, knowing they were watched by everyone in the room and making a show of it, confidence like a rash on their faces. Pastor Henschell sat in a chair beside them, hugging his King James, smiling as if he had heard the joke.

“Did I tell you I haven’t drank a cup of coffee in fifteen years?” said Dithy. “You drink coffee? Bad for the nerves. You’re nervous, aren’t you?” When he didn’t reply, she said, “God told me, ‘Talk to that young Job. Tell him he’s got to get out more.’ When was the last time you went anywhere?”

Job had in fact left Alberta only once, for a cattle show in Denver, on invitation from Hanke Bullick, a barrel-chested, red-faced silverback who owned the feedlot that sat directly behind Main Street. He had thumped his chest in the Sunstrum kitchen with Job’s father over the issue of gun control, and come fall he liked nothing better than to take a case of beer and his rifle out to neighbouring farms to pick off deer. He was heading down to Denver without the wife and saw in Job a gift for keeping his mouth shut. He took Job to a hockey game the second night in Denver and handed him a beer, then another, then a third.

Job accepted the beer as it seemed best not to refuse Hanke anything. To say no was to ask for confrontation. Besides, even Abe had encouraged Job to at least try a beer. Seeing an unhealthy tendency to extremism in his son, Abe had quoted Ecclesiastes to him. “Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise—why destroy yourself?”

With each drink the colours he heard just kept getting brighter and brighter. The slashing sticks, the hissing skates and the crowd’s roar created a pool of sound showered with rings of golds and blues, reds and yellows that he sank into,
rose from and sank into again, losing his sense of self to them. It felt good at first, much like standing with the Sunday congregation, listening to a hymn. The alcohol took away the edge of anxiety that usually overwhelmed him in crowded places, in the city.

The Americans played a dull game and offered an intermission show of twenty naked women—wearing nothing but skin-coloured skates and feather headdresses—skating in line. Job was horrified, couldn’t believe the spectacle, ran off to find an empty stall in the bathroom, where he kneeled and, leaning on the toilet, prayed for forgiveness at having seen this debauchery.

Spying the back of Job’s shoes under the stall door, Bullick thought he was sick and drove him back to the hotel before intermission was over. “Got to teach you to drink,” he said, then left him to scrub the sin from his body in the shower.