Heavens to Betsy (10 page)

The head custodian.

“The dang fool thing is leaking something fierce,” Jed Linker drawls as he sags against the door frame of my office and shoots me a challenging gaze, as if he’s Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral. Jed is the longtime custodian of Church of the Shepherd, rising through the ranks to become the building manager and supervisor of three other custodial workers. In fact, he predates every other employee and most of the members. If you want to know the truth about anything around Church of the Shepherd, Jed’s your man. And if you want to be history yourself, then you only have to get in his way.

I know Jed’s none too happy with having a woman for a boss, especially since he and Edna Tompkins have been thick as thieves since the Nixon administration. It briefly occurs to me that he might have sabotaged the baptistery himself, just to test me.

“Can’t you patch it?” I ask in the vain, foolish way of a woman who has little actual knowledge of plumbing.

“So what do we do?” I know what he’s going to say, but I want him to be the one to say it. A new baptistery. The size of a couple of hot tubs stacked on top of each other. For a brief moment I wish that when it came to baptism, we were “sprinklers” instead of “dunkers.” It’d be far more cost-effective if we just needed a pitcher and a bowl instead of a tank that holds several hundred gallons.

“New one’s gonna run in the thousands,” Jeb says without inflection, but we both know the church budget is stretched as tight as Mrs. Kenton’s new face-lift.

I straighten my spine, not willing to let Jed see me wilt in the face of a challenge. “Do we have any baptisms on the calendar?” Since the normal age for baptism by immersion is eleven or twelve, we haven’t had much call to fire up the baptistery of late. In fact, I’m not sure it’s been used in the six months I’ve been here.

“Nothing on the calendar.”

Then a question occurs to me. “If we haven’t done any baptisms, how do we know it’s leaking?”

“Oh,
we
haven’t done any baptisms.” Jed looks at me as if this is my personal failing. “It was some folks from that new church in Williamson County,” Jed says, referring to the affluent southern suburb of Nashville. “They’re meeting in a school, and it’s too cold to use somebody’s swimming pool this time of year. Dr. Black told them they could have the service here.”

And there’s the sad truth slapping me in the face. The farther away prospective church members move, the grimmer the future for Church of the Shepherd. People would rather worship in a school
cafeteria than drive the thirty minutes to downtown to enjoy the Gothic arches of our sanctuary. And I can’t really blame them.

“I’ll have to call Gus and get the property division working on it,” I tell Jed, hoping this is the right answer. There goes the new sanctuary carpet we’d all been dreaming of since a deacon fell down the chancel steps while carrying a tray of communion cups brimming with Welch’s Grape Juice.

“If you think that’s best,” Jed drawls around his toothpick. He knows I’m passing the buck, and he doesn’t approve.

“On second thought, I guess I’d better take a look for myself,” I say and stand up to follow Jed from my office to the sanctuary.

I’ve learned in the past few years that I missed a few necessary courses in divinity school. Plumbing 101. Introduction to Catering. Basic Accounting. I thought that all I was going to need was a working knowledge of the Bible and systematic theology. Turns out there’s a lot more call for the ability to make meatloaf for a hundred or to replace PVC pipe.

Jed leads me through the baptismal dressing-room area and then down behind the baptistery. It’s a large tiled tank at the back of the chancel with steps leading down into it from both sides. If you were sitting in the pews, you wouldn’t necessarily know it’s there. Behind the baptistery is a small passageway that allows the ministers and the organist to move from one side of the chancel to the other without being seen. A small door in the passage wall leads to the baptistery’s innards, so to speak.

Jed opens the door, hands me a flashlight, and motions for me to crawl inside. “You can see for yourself.”

I’m sorry now I took his bait. At least he has the good grace not
to smile. With a grimace, I survey my clothes. I made something of an effort to keep up the makeover this morning—black pants, high heels, even a blazer. I run the flashlight around the crawlspace and shudder at the dust-and-cobwebs interior decor.

“Um, I bet I could just take your word for it.”

“No, no,” Jed says with false politeness. “I wouldn’t want you to doubt me.”

So I’m caught. With a sigh, I sink to my knees and crawl inside. Quick as I can, I run my flashlight around the plumbing, and that’s when I see the problem, big as day. Everything around the drainpipe is crumbling. Jed’s right. There’s no way to patch something to nothing.

With a resigned sigh, I switch off the flashlight and attempt to inch my way out of the crawlspace. Only I keep getting stuck. First my blazer gets hung up on a pipe. Then my hair gets caught in some wire mesh. By the time I finally extricate myself, I know I look as if I’ve been dragged backward through a hedge.

Jed doesn’t so much as crack a smile around the ever-present toothpick.

I brush my palms together to try to rid them of the dust and dirt. “You’re right, Jed. It’s hopeless.”

A twinkle appears in his eye. “No, Reverend. Not hopeless. Just in need of some male know-how.”

And I know he’s not talking about the baptistery. He means Church of the Shepherd.

Well, my first encounter with Jed as interim senior minister didn’t go exactly as planned, but I’m definitely the wiser for it. I’m also the filthier.
I figure I’ll pop into the restroom and freshen up, but to get there I have to cross the waiting room in the office area. And when I do, I find some folks waiting for me. The personnel committee, to be exact. Ed. Edna. The Judge. Even Marjorie, who’s the only one smiling.

“Miss Blessing, there you are.” The Judge frowns, his jowls hanging down in parentheses around his displeased expression.

“Good morning, Judge. Everyone.”

I fight the urge to reach up and smooth my hair.

“Is that dirt on your face?” Edna asks, aghast.

“Well, um, yes. Just a bit of a problem with the baptistery—”

Ed frowns. “I’m afraid we have bigger problems than the baptistery, Betsy.”

Great. And here I thought the day couldn’t get any worse.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

Edna’s eyes flash with disapproval. “We have all seen it.”

Ed shifts from one foot to the other. “The television piece. This morning.”

My makeover misery. I’d forgotten it was going to air today.

‘“Holy to Hottie’ indeed,” Edna sniffs. “I’ve never been so embarrassed for this church in my life.”

The flush starts on my cheeks, drops to my neck, and eventually suffuses my whole being. “I didn’t think—”

“Apparently not,” The Judge booms, and I suddenly feel like I’m twelve and my father’s caught me sneaking off to school wearing eye shadow and lipstick.

Ed won’t meet my gaze. “It just puts the church in a bad light, Betsy. Not the image we want to project.”

“You looked like a harlot,” Edna snaps.

God bless Marjorie.

I swallow past the lump of anxiety in my throat and muster up a response. “I’m very sorry if I embarrassed the church, but I don’t think it’s that big a deal. I doubt many people saw it.”

“You doubt many people saw it?” Edna snaps. “I’ve been fielding phone calls from members of the Women’s Club all morning. We’re the laughingstock of Nashville.”

The Judge eyes the current state of my hair and clothing. “Well, apparently it was a one-time thing. I feel sure it won’t happen again.”

And that comment lights a flame of anger in my belly. “That what won’t happen again?”

He scowls. “We’d better not see any more getups like that one on television, Miss Blessing. At Church of the Shepherd, we know how to behave, and so do our ministers.”

There it is. The threat that always emerges when the minister upsets the status quo.

“Are you saying you’ll fire me if you don’t like the way I dress?”

“We’re saying,” Edna interposes, “that we won’t stand for you making a spectacle of this church.”

Ed looks at least a little embarrassed by what’s being said. “We just need you to be careful, Betsy. To not do any damage until we can get a real minister in.”

And there’s the truth, once again slapped right across my face. They may have given me the responsibilities, but in no way are they going to grant me the authority to be the senior pastor of this church.

I’m nothing but filler.

In other words, if I do anything that upsets them, they’re going to fire me. And I need a paycheck until August when law school starts. If I were stretched any further over the proverbial barrel, I’d be seven feet tall.

“I’m very sorry if I embarrassed anyone,” I say, but I don’t sound convincing, even to my own ears. “It won’t happen again.”

But it will. It has to. Because ministers are human and because what kind of minister would I be if all I ever did was rubber-stamp whatever the congregation wanted? That’s not a pastor. That’s a whipping boy. Or, in this case, whipping girl.

“That’s settled then,” Edna purrs, triumphant. She looks at Ed and The Judge and ignores Marjorie. “I told you a firm hand was needed.”

And since Edna’s the biggest contributor in the church, we don’t have any choice but to let her hand be as firm as she wants it to be.

I’m delighted when they turn and leave. And I’ll be twice as delighted when it’s my turn to leave. Feeling older than Ed and Edna combined, I return to my office, pull a calendar out of my middle desk drawer, and cross through another day with my red pen. Only 189 more to go.

“How do you do it, Ronnie?” I lasted all often minutes after the confrontation in the reception area before picking up the phone and calling her.

“Be a woman and a minister at the same time.”

She chuckles. “I guess some of your parishioners were watching Tricia’s show this morning, huh?”

“Apparently everyone in Nashville was.”

“Good. Then your phone should start ringing off the hook.”

“Yeah, with irate parishioners. Not with eligible men calling to ask me out.”

“O ye of little faith.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Wonder why?”

LaRonda laughs. “Actually, I
am
helping. You just don’t care for the way I’m doing it.”

“Conflict is the last thing I need right now.”

“Conflict is exactly what you need right now. You’re afraid of it after your last church. But conflict isn’t always bad, Betz. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes it helps you grow.”

“I don’t want to grow! I just want to get through—” I stop myself just in time, because I’ve yet to tell LaRonda about the law-school acceptance letter that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my purse.