Bluegrass Courtship (10 page)

S
he knew something like this would happen. The minute she let her guard down, it would all go wrong. Janet stood outside the bus door with a stack of papers in her hands and a frown. She knocked loudly. Drew's face appeared, then disappeared for a second as he reached back behind him to pulled the lever that opened the doors. “You've got a problem,” she said matter-of-factly as she stomped up the stairs to dump the papers on the bus table. She was a big ball of “I told you so” right now and he was going to hear about it. “I thought you told me no cutting corners.”

He looked a bit taken aback, as well he should. “And we don't.”

“Yes, you did. Mike left the new roof specs with me. I should have suspected something when you switched some of the orders to HomeBase. You're not putting the right kind of roof in there, Drew.” She pointed to the pile of instructions and Internet search printouts she'd brought with her.

He sat down and motioned for her to do the same. Good. At least he looked like he was going to listen. “Look, I'm
sorry we couldn't fill that order with you, but there's nothing wrong with that roof. HomeBase made us an offer and we took it.”

“But now you're not using the recommended materials. You're using HomeBase's product instead of one of the recommended materials. And your gutters aren't the right size.
And
according to what I read,” she began, “the rainwater system still works best with the storage tank
underground.
”

“That's one of the options, yes. And those roofing materials are identical to the recommended ones. Only with faster installation.
Nothing's
been compromised in terms of quality.”

“
Your
opinion, maybe.” She'd known he was going to say that. It was a faster option, and less expensive, but she had a lot to say regarding whether it was the best.

“The opinion of everyone else on the team. We've used our assets to get you a great deal on great products.”

“Great products? Or ones that install faster and get you your pretty watering can for God?” She hadn't meant it to come out quite so sharply, but he was being so casual and roofs were so important.

“That's not fair.”

So maybe it wasn't. She'd gotten surprisingly worked up about this. “All right, that was a bit out of line. But Drew, I don't think this roof is going to do the job. It's not the ideal setup. We need
this.
” She pointed to a catalogue of roof tiles she thought were a better choice.

“I need the solution that
works,
Janet, not just the ideal setup.” He pointed to her choice. “These are top-notch, but their installation is more complicated, they're much more expensive, and face it—they take more time than we've got. A rushed installation with those isn't automatically a better
choice than a solid installation with what I've chosen. Both work.”

There it was: the crux she knew they'd reach no matter what kind of ideology he spouted. Confining the job to such a strict time frame forced choices that should never need to be made. Created deadlines that didn't have to exist. “This is exactly my point. The only reason we have a deadline is
because of you.
School's already in session and working out okay. Not great, but okay. We have the time to do this right.
You guys
opt for the quick fix because it fits into
your
television time frame.”

He glared at her. “You know, you wouldn't even be
getting
a whole new church roof if it weren't for the pull of our ‘television time frame.' Our ability to give this gutter and rainwater stuff television exposure
got you
the best roof available for your building. And it got you the grant. You wouldn't have been able to do that on your own—you told me that yourself. Don't you think that's a fair trade-off?”

She'd wondered when he'd play the “you should be grateful we're here” card. “What good is that roof if it leaks in two years? In two months? Even the water tank's wrong. There're three whole pages in there on the dangers of not putting that tank down low enough. But why should you care? You'll be gone.
Long gone.
” The words choked up in her throat.

 

Drew stood up, fuming. “I read everything,” he fired back. “Mike read it. Kevin read it. We spoke four times with the manufacturer.
Four times.
I don't call that rushing on a decision. That roof will not leak because we know what we're doing. And as for that little jab about God's watering can,” he went on, putting a sharp edge on the
phrase she'd used, close to the edge of his temper. “I'll tell you something you probably haven't even stopped to think about. That artistic casing is more than just making the thing look like ‘God's watering can'. It's insulation. A layer of protection against the elements that still gives you access to it in case you need to make repairs. It's the best of both worlds and the best option for the time we have to install it. We
are
here to do a good job. The best job we can. This roof is not a shortcut. It's a smart choice based on the limitations we've got to work with.”

She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Suddenly, instead of the intelligent woman he'd grown to respect, she was the obstinate
hostile
he'd met in the back of the paint aisle during his first hour in Middleburg. “I'm
trying
here,” he said. “What about you? You've been just waiting, just hunting for faults. Sitting back with an ‘I told you so' all loaded up the minute you found a target. And somehow, I knew it'd be me.”

When this had become so personal, Drew couldn't say. But it was. Highly. “You know, you almost had me,” he went on. “I thought maybe we'd finally convinced you that we're not part of the imagined hordes you've decided are out to get you.” He paced the bus, trying to get a check on his anger. He had to calm down, pull his tangled emotions out of this, and get her to understand. “We're all making adjustments here. And yes, I'm making compromises, but all compromises aren't bad. As long as we keep our eyes on what can't be compromised, we can understand what can be. Even I'm catching on to that. I'm getting on a plane tomorrow not because I want to, but because it needs to be done. It's a compromise that will get us a huge sponsorship and let us help three times as many people in the next three seasons. And people want our help. People
need
our help.
And, hard as it may be for you to admit it,
Middleburg
wants our help.” He flung one hand toward the church lawn, his temper getting the best of him again. “Your neighbors are happy to have us here. They see us as an answer to prayer. They pray with us. They pray
for
us. Can't you see that? You won't even come to the prayer meeting and hear people giving up all kinds of thanks to the Lord that He sent us here to help them.”

Her eyes turned sharp and cold. “Don't make this about church. Don't you
dare
go there again.”

And maybe that's what burned him most of all. You simply couldn't make this about anything but church. This
was
church. The body of Christ, reaching out and helping. He was trying to help in every way he could, and she was standing there, blocking his path in her pursuit of some concept of perfection.
She makes me so angry, Lord. Why won't she see Your hand in this?
He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “Okay, purely professionally speaking, every single construction project—everywhere on the planet—faces compromises based on time, materials and a gazillion other variables. It's why budgets have contingency lines. You of all people should understand that.”

“This is not a lumber shortage or a zoning snafu. Those are compromises. This is cutting corners, pure and simple.”

Drew groaned and thumped his hand on the table. “No. This is working with what we've got. This is already far and above what you could have achieved without us. This is such an amazing thing if you'd just take off those idealist blinders and
look around you.
” He leaned over the table toward her, willing her to pull that wall back down, furious that she looked at him with such a cutting suspicion. “Middleburg's little kids are going to have the coolest preschool around.
Your church is better off. Why can't you get that? Why do you have to be hunting for how I'm out to con you?” And it had become just that, hadn't it? It had all somehow boiled down to how he was out to trick her. It had become infuriatingly personal.

“Because you're leaving, and I'll be stuck here picking up the pieces.” It meant a million things the way she said it.

And it was true. It did mean a million things. The tone of her words cut through his anger to force the realization that he
was
leaving. He'd leave Middleburg when this was over, and he hadn't even realized how it was bothering him. Never before had Drew had so many reasons to rush ahead and so surprising a craving to stay put.

“You can do whatever you want, can't you?” she went on. “Just as long as we think it's wonderful, as long as we don't look too close. Because by the time we see the cracks in the plaster, you'll be gone.” She grabbed up her papers, and suddenly they both knew they weren't talking about the cistern or the roof anymore. “You and your shiny happy bus will be long gone into your huge new season and we'll…we'll still be here making the real life happen. The dull, daily stuff you don't have to worry about like how much higher the heating bill will be or how long the carpet stays tacked down. It's easy to leave, Drew. The real work is in staying.”

He grabbed her shoulder. “You have
no idea
how hard it is to leave here.” His voice tripped over the words even as his grip on her thundered through both of them. Let go, he told himself. Let go of her. He didn't.

She stared at him, her eyes a mixture of puzzlement and awareness, and Drew realized he was slipping down that slope he'd tried so hard to avoid.

She'd gotten to him. Gotten under his skin. He'd let her
resistance egg him on, just as he was always drawn to the hostiles. He let her go.

“What do you mean ‘hard to leave'?” She pulled away from him, but her voice lost all its edge. “You've got everything. You're a hero. A star, and soon to be a bigger one at that. I mean, just look at your home.” She waved her arms around the bus. “It's got all the bells and whistles. You get every new tool the moment it's made.”

“It's a bus,” he said blandly. “It's not a home.” At that moment, he thought about the little line of trinkets that stood on her kitchen window, the tiny accumulations of a lifetime in one place that she probably never even noticed anymore, and his heart ached. For here, for her, for this ordinary thing he thought could be replaced by all the lights and drama.

You can't have her. This is dangerous. Really, truly dangerous, his spirit yelled silently. “I'm leaving. And it's hard.” It explained everything and nothing.

A terrible silence hung in the air. Her eyes burned dark and wounded, and for a single moment he was ready to ditch every conviction and take her in his arms. She'd fit perfectly, too. He just knew it somehow, which made it all the worse.

“Don't make me regret you ever came.” She turned and left.

He started after her, then stopped himself. Right under the Home Green Home sign he'd made for the bus back during the first season.

With a growl, he pulled the sign off the nail and tossed it across the bus. It skidded on the carpeting and slid under the back bunk to slam against some boxes.
Lord, You could have ripped
Missionnovation
right out from underneath me and I don't think it would feel this bad.
Drew sank back against the bus wall and fisted his hands in his hair. Why is this falling apart now?

D
rew hardly slept. He bumbled around the bus at three-thirty in the morning, trying to remember if they had an iron somewhere. He didn't have to wear a suit, sure, but he felt like he at least ought to look like he put in an effort to look nice. If he'd been smart, he would have asked Annie where the iron was before she trundled herself off to the bed and breakfast. He didn't want to turn on the light for fear of waking Kevin, but if he hit his toe on one more corner it was going to be a very long day indeed. And he was already fighting to keep a good spirit. Taking a 5:30 a.m. flight to the coast was enough to fry any brain even without his earlier fight with Janet.

Coffeemakers are quiet. Start there. Drew groped his way toward the middle of the bus where the kitchenette and coffeemaker were.

And smiled.

There, hung on a cabinet handle with a Wear This sticky note above it, was a freshly laundered—and neatly pressed—green
Missionnovation
button-down shirt. Next to the coffeemaker, which was already filled with grounds
and water so all he had to do was hit the on switch, was a
Missionnovation
travel mug with a second sticky note that simply said “GWG.” On the
Missionnovation
bus, that was shorthand for “Go with God.” Drew could think of no finer send-off for the very unusual day he had before him. Annie truly was the glue that held
Missionnovation
together. Anyone who thought it was his doing was sorely mistaken. He found the notes he'd left on the counter for Kevin and Annie and wrote “GWG” across the top with a fat black marker.

When the plane landed in Los Angeles, Drew found himself missing Kentucky's gentle, misty sunrises. The sun crept into the day through the Bluegrass mountains, but here, it seemed to explode too loudly off the horizon. Charlie met him at the airport, sporting one of his sharp dark suits and looking every inch the television producer. “How are ya, Charlie?” he said, grabbing Charlie by the arm and feeling like it had been far too long since they'd seen each other. His first season of
Missionnovation—
back before the shirts and buses and coffee mugs—seemed like decades ago. “If our friends could see us now,” he joked, adjusting Charlie's tie even though it was perfect already.

“What's in the boxes?” Charlie pointed to the stack of bakery boxes Drew had brought with him on the plane.

“Oh, a few hometown goodies from the site. You haven't lived until you've tasted Muffinnovations.”

Charlie looked doubtful that this designer-organic-soy-latte crowd would handle anything called “Muffinnovations.”

“They're green,” Drew added, just because it made Charlie's eyes bulge a little wider. “Very green. And they're delicious.”

“Fine. I'll eat a muffinno-whatever on the way if it'll
make you feel better. But I'm going to start praying now. Hard.”

“My dad always said a soul prays better on a full stomach.”

 

Janet had a million other things to do today, but she wasn't taking one eye off this roof installation. Especially with Drew out of town. She'd spoken with the roofing men three or four times over the last day, and they had answered several of her concerns to her satisfaction. That made it better, but by no means was she ready to give her approval of the project. So, despite a whopping workload back at the store, Janet cleared her day to stay on site and make sure MCC got the roof it deserved.

The first part of the gutters went up with ease. Things fit where they were supposed to, and Janet grew optimistic. It'd be satisfying to have the thing in and done right by the time Drew returned from California. The second and third sections were trickier, needing to match angles with the first sections, but with a bit of tweaking everything worked. Everything was going according to the timetable Janet and Kevin had drawn up. Janet even caught herself feeling less stressed as she tightened the screws that held a downspout in place.

By two o'clock, Kevin was up on the highest point of the church, working with the roofers in Drew's place to get the flashings around the steeple in an adjustment she'd suggested.

She knew the time because she was checking her watch when she heard it.

Accidents seem to have a sound all their own. Things fall all the time, and the brain recognizes the ordinary nature of
the sound. The real crashes, the ones involving loved ones and precious things, register instantly in the brain. Janet knew, the second she heard the sound of splitting lumber, that something bad had happened. She'd caught the eye of the worker next to her—the bank teller here on his day off from work—and froze in alarm. But only for a second, before dropping her screwdriver and bolting around the corner to where the sounds continued in a lengthy, lethal-sounding series of crashes.

Kevin lay motionless on the grass, his body curled in an unnatural angle. His hard hat had rolled off his head, and one arm lay sprawled awkwardly behind him. For a split second Janet thought he was dead, until he made a horrible moaning noise and lurched to one side, followed by a flinch that told her he was in serious pain. The roofers were talking amongst themselves, trying to figure out how Kevin had fallen despite the safety equipment she knew they all used.

Most of the other
Missionnovation
staff were clear across the property working on the preschool. Janet found herself nearly alone among a handful of people who looked shocked and stumped as to what to do now.

“You,” she pointed to the tallest of them, “Call 9-1-1. The address we're at is 128 March Avenue, on the west side of the building.” Janet caught sight of her mother coming out of the church's front doors, followed by several other women who must have heard the accident from the inside. “Mom!” Janet shouted, “Go find Annie on the bus and tell her Kevin's been hurt. Tell her to get a hold of Drew in California right away.”

 

Drew stared at the sleek-looking HomeBase marketing executive in front of him, and wondered if the guy would know what to do with a hammer if handed one. Sure, he's
slick, but don't judge, Drew thought to himself, God can work with anybody He chooses. After all, he said HomeBase was interested in expanding the show without removing any of the spiritual content.

“We like what we're seeing,” the HomeBase rep said. “Good numbers, good exposure. There isn't a whole lot of family-oriented television we can get behind these days. We're glad to be behind
Missionnovation,
and we'd like to take it to the next level.”

“If you could just see the kinds of things we've been able to do,” Drew said. “Only about half of what we do makes it on the air. Visit a site one of these days, and you'll see just how far your current backing is taking us. Lives are being changed. Whole communities are changing how they feel about the church. About God. It's incredible.”

“I'm sure it is.” The way he said it, though, Drew was pretty sure the man would never take him up on his offer of a site visit. Charlie was right—these people were too busy to stand in a church basement and watch the new furnace fire up. Everybody's got a different part to play, Drew thought silently. God knows what He's doing and who He's doing it with.

And God was setting gears in motion, no doubt about it. The way Charlie was smiling, they'd have a deal sewn up by sundown, and Drew could get on the red-eye with the happy news that
Missionnovation
was up, running and expanded for three more years.

 

“We got him,” Charlie said after they finished the meeting. “The deal's just signatures away.”

Drew shot Charlie a look. “You sound way too much like them sometimes.”

Charlie slapped his hands together and closed his eyes. “Dear Lord, we think You've got him. Please, if it be Your will, let the deal be only signatures away.”

“Better,” Drew commented, “but only by the tiniest bit.” He could tease Charlie about praying over things because Charlie had, once he came to faith, become a fierce prayer warrior. Thanks to Charlie's focus, Drew had learned to cover
Missionnovation
in prayer from its earliest days. Drew had learned to balance prayer and action by watching how Charlie did it. Humbling as it was, Drew felt that Charlie was a stronger man of God than he was, even though Drew had been the first to find Christ. They were good for each other—sharpened by the partnership and honed by the friendship. It was what enabled them to have the high level of trust they did.

They were getting ready for lunch when Drew's cell phone rang. It startled him to see Annie's name on the screen—she knew better than to call with anything less than an emergency on a day like today. His throat tightened as he flipped open the phone.

“Annie?”

“Drew, there's been an accident.” Annie's voice had the wobbly tone of someone trying to stay calm. The sound of it sent a chill down through his shoes. “Kevin was up on the church roof making Janet's changes to the steeple flashings and he fell off.”

Drew shut his eyes and sent a wordless call for help heavenward.
No, Lord! Not while I'm off-site!
If anything happened to Kevin—or anybody, for that matter—Drew didn't know what he'd do.

The fact that Annie hadn't added “But he's okay” to her statement told Drew things were serious. “How is he? How
far did he fall?” he gulped into the phone, and the questions made Charlie's eyes shoot up from his paperwork.

“I'm in the ambulance now. He's conscious, but they won't know anything until the X rays.” Annie never cried, but she sounded on the verge of it now. Drew's heart twisted into a knot of regret. Kevin must be seriously hurt for her to be so shook up. How could he ever have convinced himself it was a good idea to leave the site?

“Kevin's tougher than he looks. He'll be okay.” The words rang hollow—he barely believed them himself.

“Okay.” There was a silence between them. They both knew Kevin might not be okay.

Drew heard Kevin moaning in the background. He heard the strained voice of what must be a paramedic telling Kevin to “Please try and lie still, Mr. Cooper.”

“Tell him I broke everything,” came Kevin's voice over Annie's phone, the words thick as if his lips were swollen. Drew pictured the worst; Kevin mangled and bruised on an ambulance gurney, bleeding over everything. Annie would be clutching her clipboard and her files of insurance cards and medical histories she always kept in a red folder in the bus office filing cabinet. He should be there.

“Annie.” He forced calm into his voice. “It'll be okay. You know Cooper,” he tried to joke. “He's always playing things for sympathy.” That was a dumb idea—this was no laughing matter. “Charlie will have people praying over Kevin in ten minutes, if not already. I know you can hold it together until I get there.”

“I got it covered.” Her voice was tense, but level. Even so, it struck him like a rock thrown into his stomach.

“Where's everyone else?” he said, just to keep her talking.

“Mike has the others staying on site. Janet's meeting us at the hospital with some other folks from the church.”

Keep her talking, he thought. Keep her listing things that are going the way they should. It's all you can do from here. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“No, just Kevin.”

“Ow! Could you stop that?” Kevin howled somewhere in the background. Kevin didn't even like bandages, so he could just imagine what horrors he found inside an ambulance.

“He looks banged up pretty bad.” Annie's voice wobbled a bit, but she held on to her composure. “His leg…”

“Let's not speculate, Miss Michaels,” came a professionally calm voice. “We're almost there, so you'll need to hang up now. Tell your boss we'll know more in an hour or so.”

“I…um…I have to go,” Annie said quietly into the phone.

“I hear. Okay, take care of Kevin, and I'm sure everything will work out. God's looked out for us before, He's not going to stop now. Stay steady.”

Drew snapped his phone shut and sank his head into his hands. A tidal wave of worry for his friend, of regret for a possible wrong choice, swept over him with a force that almost made him ill.

“He's seriously hurt. Why did I think it was okay to leave the site?” he said without looking up.

“You didn't cause this.” Charlie was choosing his words carefully. “Don't go there.”

“Kevin's been a loose cannon for years. He's never careful about safety stuff.”

“Which means it was bound to happen sometime, whether you were there or not.”

Drew shot him a look. “Don't placate me. Just get people praying and find me a flight out of here.”

Charlie gestured toward the open laptop on the table beside him. “I sent out a broadcast e-mail thirty seconds ago. And I've already started looking for flights. I can't get you back to Lexington before nine-thirty this evening. Even if I fly you into Louisville and you drive the rest of the way. Tell Kevin to fall closer to a major metropolitan airport next time.”