Flight Behavior (8 page)

Bobby wound up the prayer with a reminder to hold the sick and beleaguered in their hearts, and named off congregants who could use that kind of help. The list was impressive. He never used notes. She tried to put the near miss of the muffin out of her mind, but it loomed in the thought bubble over her head, attaining Goodyear-blimp size. Bobby’s plaid shirt was from Target; she’d considered that same one, shopping for Cub. No shiny suits for Pastor Ogle, he was not into things of this world. Just love. She caught his mention of upcoming Thanksgiving services before she zoned out again. Her mind was flipping through channels the way Cub did with the TV remote every evening, a form of persistent inattention that made her crazy, yet here she was. The blasted muffin would not leave her brain. They were supposed to go to Hester’s for Sunday dinner. She remembered a navy blouse she’d borrowed from Dovey for a funeral back in June. Seeing Eula Ratliff in the choir had caused her to think of that. It was Eula’s mother who died. That blouse could easily have hidden in Dellarobia’s cramped little closet until someone else died—not that it mattered, her closet and Dovey’s were more or less merged by now, they’d worn the same size since eighth grade. The
same
size, meaning they were the size of eighth-graders still. Dovey called that an achievement on Dellarobia’s part, after three pregnancies, but to her mind fitting into a size zero did not count for much as an accomplishment. It sounded like nonexistence. She sometimes wondered if subconsciously she’d gone for Cub just for the increase in marital volume.

A couple ducked in late, slid into the pew next to her, and promptly closed their eyes in prayer, leaving Dellarobia free to scrutinize them. The man wore sporty sunglasses pushed on top of his head as if he’d just hopped out of a convertible. But if that was the wife with him, there was no convertible in the story. She’d probably spent two hours getting her hair organized and congealed, the bangs individually shellacked into little spears, all pointing eyeward, which made Dellarobia cringe. She had a thing about eyes. Preston had a habit that killed her, of poking himself along the hairline with his pencil while pondering what to write. Every pointed jab went into her own flesh, her own eyes wincing reflexively. She was tempted to hide his pencils.

The assistant pastor read a Bible passage about the Lord shaking the wilderness and making the oak leaves whirl, presumably to remind everyone it was fall. The man with the sporty sunglasses now seemed to be checking her out on the sly. Dellarobia had gone through her phase of miniskirts in church, egged on by Dovey, who once gave her a creepy antique fox stole with intact head and tail, on a dare that she would wear it here. That was pre-kids. Now she was lucky just to get everything zipped and buttoned, shooting for decency and not for show, a green turtleneck sweater and denim skirt today. But those boots. She ought to throw them in a river.

The choir lit into a rock-and-roll version of “Take My Life and Let It Be,” with electric guitars, keyboard, and drums. The congregation was allowed to join in, but on the choir’s special numbers the sound system gave them the upper hand and they always sounded great, like hymns on the radio. The pompous Mr. Weaver notwithstanding, the choir looked like they were having a barrel of fun. All except one older fellow who was too earnest, holding his hand to his chest as if asking Jesus to marry him, fearing the wrong answer. The rest looked thrilled, raising their eyebrows and singing an exclamation point at the end of every line: “Take my feet and let them be! Swift and beautiful for thee!” She picked out those who’d been in her graduating class: Wilma Cox in the gigantic checkered top. Tammy Worsham, briefly Squier and now Banning, with her blue eyeshadow and a little more cleavage than necessary for the eyes of the Lord, it could be said. Quaneesha Williams, the sole African American choir member, who was jiggle-dancing to the music, plainly yearning to bust some bigger moves. Dellarobia was with her, everything here would go down better if you could dance. Some of life’s greatest calls were answered not by the head but by the body. Which is what got her into trouble, of course, most lately with the telephone man. Who was she to judge Tammy’s husband-collecting and cleavage? Her mood spiraled and crashed like a clipped kite.

Pastor Bobby launched his sermon with a quote from Corinthians: “Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Well, Dellarobia thought, read my mind, why don’t you. She had all but flayed her flesh for months to stop thinking wrongful thoughts, and in the end what it took was a burning bush that turned out to be butterflies. Now she tried often to guide her mind back to the vision of those fiery hills, especially at night, hoping to lie down feeling like a person of some worth.

“Jeremiah seventeen-nine tells us about disobedient thoughts,” Bobby said. “ ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.’ Now this is hard to admit, because it scares us, but it’s true. Every one of us here, and I’m speaking of myself too, we can look something straight in the eye and give it a different name that suits us better.” He had wide-set eyes and an entreating way of holding his hands palm-up. It was hard to imagine a lot of domestic drama at his house. But really, who didn’t lie to himself? “We might call it ambition,” Bobby said. “We might call it a great passion. When the true name of what we’re dealing with is greed, or lust. We all have the special talent of believing in a falsehood, and believing it devoutly, when we want it to be true.”

“Yes, brother,” someone said softly from the darkness.

“That is how our Creator made us. He knows we are thus inclined.”

Bobby again was answered with gentle assent. He looked out at his flock with the kindest gaze, like a father having an important talk with his young sons. “The Lord wants us to secure our hearts against things that lure us wrongly. When we’re struggling with jealousy, and guilt, and impatience, and hardness of heart, and lust, He wants us to use our rational minds and call these things by their true names. We all want to be in our minds, and not out of them. We need them to behave. How do we do that?”

Dellarobia wondered how many others in this room felt he was reading off their personal résumé. If Bobby had a suggestion, she was all ears.

“There is no use in focusing on a bad thought and trying to chase it away,” he said. “Really that just won’t work. You’ll see nothing in your mind’s eye except the one thing you want to shut out. The hunter sees naught but that which he pursues. Do you hear me? You do. There is a different way to go. Philippians counsels us to replace a wrong thought with a good one. ‘Brethren, fix your thoughts on what is true. Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.’ ”

Dellarobia was impressed with his construction of a persuasive paragraph and use of relevant references. She wondered if he’d taken Honors English in high school, rather than the Jock English they’d set up for football players, which basically required a pulse for a passing grade. She’d bet anything Bobby had taken Honors from Mrs. Lake, as she had, in which case he knew the difference between Homer’s Ulysses and the one by James Joyce, and how to get down to business with a metaphor. Principles she had tried and failed to apply in Blanchie’s Bible class. But here at least was a form of salvation Dellarobia could appreciate: a once-weekly respite from hearing grown-ups say “Lay down” and “Where at” and “Them things there.”

Except that Bobby used
covenant
as a verb, and that really irked her. She’d noticed it before, and he was doing it right now. “Do you see what the Savior is trying to help us do? Can you covenant with me now to appreciate the wisdom of His advice?”

For crying out loud, she thought, how hard was it to say, “Enter into a covenant?” But Mrs. Lake had passed away, maybe the last one to care. The crowd was working up a lather now, calling out, “Yes, Brother Bobby, we do!”

In the café you got to skip the audience participation. She shrank into her green turtleneck. But Pastor Ogle wouldn’t embarrass anyone, she knew. He worked the crowd’s enthusiasm, encouraging people to share the burden of the hateful things that occupied their minds. No one was going out on a limb. “I have skirmished with evil business,” was about as explicit as it went, and “I have trucked with falsehood.” She could well imagine the skirmishes under discussion, the porno tapes these men were trying to throw away, the nips of whisky the women wished they didn’t crave every afternoon, the minute they got the kids down for a nap. The whole crowd had don’t-think-about-it blimps above their heads, which Bobby sweetly ignored.

“You’ve spoken honestly of the things that have hold of your mind,” he said. “But what I want to ask you right now is, What do you love?” He nudged the question again and again, the way Roy and Charlie herded the sheep, gently prodding a wildly disjointed group toward a collective decision to move in a new direction. “What has the good Lord bestowed on your home and family that has brought grace to your life?”

Someone spilled out, “My little grandbaby Haylee!”

A long silence ensued, with many congratulating themselves, no doubt, on being less impulsive than the besotted grandmother. Some ruckus was also going on outside the doors, in the entry hall. Women shouting, barely audible, definitely not congenial.

Bobby covered the awkward moment, congratulating the gushing grandmother and putting her at ease. “Blessed are the little children,” he said, “and it’s a beautiful thing that you hold your little Haylee first in your heart. I want everyone here to covenant with Sister Rachel and proclaim her a beacon. I want you to tell it.”

They told it. “Blessed be, Sister Rachel.” The crowd was starting to warm. Dellarobia had rarely paid much attention to the shining of the beacons. But it was touching. An old man with a narrow chest in a big white shirt pulled himself to his feet. “Our daughter Jill has done got over the cancer and her hair grew back pretty. I praise the Lord for Jill’s pretty yellow hair.”

Dellarobia found herself joining in the blessing of Sister Jill’s hair, feeling a startled gratitude she actually feared might lead to tears. There was no knowing what people held dear, it was one surprise after another as they called out the beautiful things: a new porch deck on a trailer home with a view of the sunset. The wedding of a disabled cousin. A pure white calf. Suddenly Cub was on his feet beside her, speaking up. Dellarobia felt unsteadied by his loud voice, almost singing. A beautiful thing like a heavenly host had come on their mountain, he said, and it was butterflies. “You all just can’t imagine, it’s like a world all to itself. I wish you all would come and partake of it.”

“Brother Turnbow, I thank you for that invitation,” Bobby said. “Truly I have to say it sounds like a miracle, what you’re telling us.”

“Praise the Lord,” a few agreed, tepidly, in the same way people said, “Have a nice day,” when they didn’t care if you did. They seemed less convinced than Bobby that a miracle had transpired on the Turnbow property.

Cub went a little defensive. “You’d have to see it to understand,” he said. “My dad and mother can tell you. It’s like nothing you ever saw. And she foretold of it, is the thing. My wife here foretold of it.” He pulled Dellarobia to her feet, to her profound dismay. “My wife had like a vision or something. She said we all needed to open up our eyes and have a look before we started logging up there. She had this feeling something real major was going to happen on our property.”

Dellarobia wasn’t sure how public Bear wanted to go with the logging plan, and wondered if he was catching this now in Men’s Fellowship, or just reading
Field and Stream
. The outburst was so unexpected, she was losing her footing. Bobby stood perfectly still, studying the family with his wide-set eyes. His gaze settled on Hester. “Sister Turnbow, tell me it’s so,” he said gently. “That your family has been blessed.”

Dellarobia had never seen Hester so subdued. She would not want to disappoint Bobby. “It’s true,” she said in a soft growl, needing to clear her throat. “My daughter-in-law was the one that told us. I guess she foretold of it.”

Dellarobia felt queasy. Cub gripped her around the shoulders hard, as if she might otherwise slide to the floor, which wasn’t out of the question. His conviction floored her, and once again she wondered if he could be making a cruel joke to punish her. But these were guilty thoughts, the falsehoods of a poorly directed mind, as Bobby said, luring her from the truth. Cub was as trusting as a child, incapable of cruelty in church or anywhere else. And if that alone did not a marriage make, it still was worth something.

Escalating voices interrupted Cub’s moment. Crystal and Brenda, it had to be, having it out in the hallway outside the sanctuary. “Don’t you talk to my boys thataway!” one of them cried, and the other shrieked: “I’ll slap those kids walleyed if they get up in my face again.”

All eyes fixed on Cub, as if his earnest bulk might steady them against the storm outside the door. He stayed determinedly on track, his brow crumpled. “It’s got us to thinking where the Lord must be taking a hand in things up there,” he said. “We’re supposed to be logging that mountain, but we’re in a quandary now.”

Dellarobia felt the doubtful stares. She’d been sitting it out every week in the café, drinking coffee and making her grocery list, in no way deserving of a miracle. And yet a small shatter of applause broke out, like a handful of gravel on a tin shed. Someone very close to them shouted: “Heaven be praised, Sister Turnbow has seen the wonders!” It was the man who’d come in late, with the sporty sunglasses on his head. And here she thought he’d been checking her out. Grace comes, motion and light from nowhere on that mountain in her darkest hour. She felt the dizziness coming back. It didn’t help anything that she’d skipped breakfast. Cub slipped his arms under hers from behind, which may have looked like some unusual form of affection, but it was all that kept her vertical. The last thing she wanted this morning or ever was to be a display model on the floor of a church, but Cub walked her gently to the end of the pew and posted her in the center aisle, like a holy statue.