The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story (13 page)

They sat quietly again. And still the stars shone, still the wind blew.

After a bit, Frank said, “Can I tell you another story?”

Jack let out a slow sigh. “What could possibly stop you?”

“Not a blessed thing,” Frank said. He leaned forward in his chair toward Jack. “So here it is: A few years ago I went home to Jersey to visit my sister. One night I went for a walk, and I passed a reception hall, lit up as for a party. As I passed, a hundred people or more were filing in the front door. They were all dressed up, just come from a wedding it looked, and they were going to the reception, already in full swing.” He smiled at the memory.

“I could hear the music and laughter, Jack, the drinking and the dancing. And the looks on their faces! They were bursting
with impatience, so sure they would be welcomed, so sure of a beautiful evening.”

He stopped, spread his hands as if to say he was finished, looked at Jack meaningfully, inviting him to get it.

“What?” Jack said. All he was getting was irritated. The last thing he wanted to think about at the moment was weddings and receptions. He remembered the small wedding he and Tracy had, their reception on a budget, in the days before he became the people’s pastor.

Those had been good days, he realized now. They were poor—and happy.

And they used to laugh.

He shook his head. “I don’t—”

“That reception is the second half of your life,” Frank told him. “Like most of us, Jack, you are standing outside looking in, unwilling to believe that a banquet is waiting, doubting that something could ever be worth celebrating again. We’d all like to go in, but God help us! What if we’re wrong? What if there is no banquet? What if it’s just some sick joke?”

Jack nodded slowly. He wanted to believe. He wanted to know joy again. But where would it come from? “And you think somewhere in this”—he indicated himself, the porch, the town beyond—“is a second call?” He took a deep breath, let it out.

He couldn’t see it.

“Yes. A second call to faith. To hope. To service.” He appraised Jack. “I think parts of it are getting through. You’re doing little pieces of the dance.”

“I don’t think I’m even on the dance floor, Father Frank.” He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes.

“No. I see something happening. But something else is calling you. And it’s not what you did wrong the first time. That’s not what the second call is about.”

Jack snickered involuntarily. “Then I guess that lets me off preaching this Sunday.”

Father Frank looked at him sharply. “What?”

“Nothing. Saint Paul’s asked me to say a few words on Sunday.”

“You should,” Frank said. “You absolutely should.”

“Don’t be such a priest,” Jack said, opening his eyes and leaning toward him. “I’m not a preacher anymore. I don’t have anything to say. To them or to anybody else.”

“You absolutely should,” Father Frank repeated.

“You are not my priest,” Jack said, a flush rising up the back of his neck. “Or my father.”

“No,” Frank agreed, raising a placating hand. “I’m your friend, and only your friend.” Jack looked over at him. Frank nodded. “Today and tomorrow, boyo. I’ll be here.”

Jack sat back in his chair and looked out at the yard. “That’s—thanks. That’s nice. But, Frank, I still don’t have anything to say. Today or tomorrow or the next day.”

Father Frank thought for a moment. “It’s Epiphany this Sunday,” he said.

“So I’ve heard.”

“The wise men from the East, seeing the baby Jesus?”

“So? That doesn’t give me anything, Frank. Seeing the baby Jesus is not my current difficulty.”

Frank sighed. “Epiphany is about revelation, Jack. It’s about seeing what is right in front of you. I wrote my sermon this morning.”

“Seeing what is right in front of you,” Jack repeated.

Father Frank nodded. “Read the story again. Think about it. If you want, we could meet tomorrow night at Buddy’s and talk about it.”

“Bible study at the bar,” Jack said.

“Where better?” Frank said. “‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. I came to call not the upright, but sinners.’”

“Gospel of Mark,” Jack said. He smiled. “Hey! Maybe Brother Raymond will let out Wednesday services early and come join us.”

“When pigs fly,” Father Frank said. “He likes to meet at the donut shop, when he deigns to meet at all. You come alone.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. He stood up, leaving the chair rocking behind him. “You go on home now.”

Frank shook his head slowly. “I think I’ll check in on the media,” he said. “Give them the latest.”

“I believe all of this is covered in the privacy of the confessional,” Jack said. “Isn’t that doctrine?”

Frank got to his feet, looked one last time at the stars, took a deep breath.

“I will never sell you for thirty pieces of silver, Jack,” he said. Then he smiled. “But if someone offers a new organ—”

“Git,” Jack said, shooing him off the porch.

Frank walked out onto the sidewalk. Jack turned to go inside.

Was he really thinking about this?

Bible study at Buddy’s?

Taking the pulpit at Saint Paul’s not-quite-Lutheran Church?

A second call?

He smiled, shook his head, went up to bed.

T
he next morning at the store, he cleared off the oldest batteries to make shelf space for recyclables, which were on their way in the next delivery. That left him with more than a handful of ancient batteries, some of which he doubted would so much as momentarily power up a penlight.

“I hate to donate these,” Jack said. “They’re worthless.”

“Throw them away,” Tom said from behind a new old
Reader’s Digest.

“I can’t do that,” Jack said. “Chemicals in the landfill. Leaching into the aquifer. All that.”

“I’ll take them,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “I can use them for my smoke alarm.”

“But they don’t work,” Jack said.

“Neither does my smoke alarm,” she said.

They looked at each other.

“I’ll get you a bag,” he said.

“So, Jack,” Nora Calhoun said as he slid the batteries into a plastic bag for her. “I hear Brother Bill asked you to mount the pulpit for us.”

Tom looked up to see Jack’s reaction.

“Like you didn’t know,” Jack said to him. He looked across the counter at Mrs. Calhoun. “I believe I might come and say a few words this Sunday,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s Epiphany,” she said.

“Like I don’t know that.”

“Sorr-ee,” she said. “It’s just you were at one of those stompy, clappy sort of churches.”

“I know what Epiphany is,” Jack said. “I’ll try to say something fitting.”

“Thank you, Jack,” she said. She softened, and her smile became beatific. “My new roof is lovely. I look at it every morning.”

“I’m glad.” And he was. Her words gave him a glow of satisfaction.

The bell
ting-tinged
as she left. Tom raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t start,” Jack said.

“It’s just I don’t recall your mentioning—”

“Don’t start,” Jack said.

Somewhere back in the shelves, Manny was whistling an old song. “Besame Mucho,” Jack thought it was. Outside, three panel trucks were hoping to catch sight of Jack on the sidewalk, and three reporters were standing on the sidewalk ready to file live reports.

“Who is it today?” Jack asked.

“A San Antonio station, a Dallas station, and CNN,” Tom said. “And I’ve talked to five more on the phone.” He smiled. “I asked them politely not to tie up our business line.”

Jack turned to the front window. The female reporter on the other side, Cynthia Someone he recognized from CNN, waved at
him, beckoned him to come out. He raised his palm in a Texas wave, turned back around.

“Should I do something about them?” Jack asked.

“They should leave you alone,” Tom said, turning the page. “When something more interesting comes along, I reckon they will.”

The morning was slow. Mary came in at lunch with meat loaf and scalloped potatoes. Leftovers from New Year’s Day. She’d baked yeast rolls fresh that morning.

“No wonder Dennis is the size of a spaceship,” Jack said.

“You hush,” she said. “He was big before I started cooking for him, let me assure you.”

She listened to their report of the trip, brightening only when she heard that Alison might be coming soon. “Oh, I need to get her something.”

“You are already guaranteed to be her favorite aunt,” Jack said.

She beamed at that for a moment before remembering. “I’m her only aunt.”

“Exactly,” Jack said.

“No meat loaf for you,” she said. She yanked the food from in front of him, then set it back down. “I want to take her to the zoo,” she said. “In San Antonio.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Jack said. “First we have to get her here.”

The reporters crowded around Mary when she headed back to work. It appeared that she might be threatening them with physical violence. In any case, they retreated from her with some speed.

“Some things never change,” Jack said to his father, who was reading “Laughter Is the Best Medicine” in
Reader’s Digest
and occasionally chuckling.

“No, they don’t,” Tom said. He chuckled again, turned the page.

In late afternoon, the door jangled, a murmur of low voices followed, and then Tom called out into the shelves where Jack was stocking paint. “Jack. Front and center, please.”

“Just like an intercom,” Jack muttered as he emerged from the aisle where he was working. He stopped in his tracks.

Darla Scroggins Taylor and her son, Cameron, were standing in front of the counter. She was smiling; he was scowling. That averaged to no expression at all, which was what Jack was struggling to maintain as he stepped closer.

“Hey,” he said to Cameron. He nodded to Darla.

“I think Cameron has something to say to you, Jack,” she said.

Jack looked more closely, waited.

Cameron didn’t seem to have anything particular he wanted to say. He was examining the tiles on the floor. Yellowish, in serious need of replacement.

“Cam,” Darla said, and her voice took on an ominous hitch Jack remembered.

“Hey,” Cameron said, his words as halting as if speech had been granted to a Great Dane. He looked up at Jack. “I–I tried out what you said.”

Jack nodded.
Go on.

“I added like five yards to my max,” he said.

Jack nodded again.
Okay.

“I guess I just wanted to say thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Jack said. “I hear a lot of good things about you. I just want you to be your best. Mayfield needs a great quarterback.”

“Jack was a great quarterback,” Darla said softly.

“You were supposed to play for Texas,” Cameron said. He looked at his mom. “Right?”

Wow. It still stung to think about, even after all these years. Jack nodded, let out a slow breath. “I tore my ACL in the state finals,” Jack told him. “You saw what happened to Robert Griffin?”

Cameron looked simultaneously awestruck and repulsed. “Yeah. I saw that. It was awful.”

“That was me. Halfway through the second quarter. Didn’t even see him coming.”

He hadn’t been thinking about the rush. All he could think about was Darla standing over with the other cheerleaders, about why she had broken up with him. It was not a recipe for a focused performance, and at last it had caught up to him. He had felt his knee go sideways, bend in a direction knees are not supposed to, and then he was at the bottom of the pile writhing in pain so horrible he thought he would not survive. Somebody was shouting “Ball! Ball!” and his friend Bill Hall was bent over him trying to pull bodies off the pile and yelling, “Twelve! Are you all right?”

He was not all right.

Three surgeries later, he was still not all right. He never played football again. The University of Texas was generous. They honored their scholarship offer, and he actually went there for three years before feeling the call to ministry. But he never took another snap.

Another thing he lost.

“I knew it was bad when he didn’t get right up,” Darla was saying. “I never saw him get hit so hard he didn’t just bounce to his feet.”

“It was bad.” Jack sighed again, deeply this time. “I thought it was the end of the world.”

“But you got the offer,” Cameron said, talking to his oversized teenage feet again. “You were that good.” He looked up through a screen of bangs. “I wondered if maybe—maybe you could watch me throw. Maybe give me some more pointers.”

Cameron was asking him, but Jack looked at Darla, spoke directly to her. “That is a monumentally bad idea.” If James Taylor found out Jack was talking to his son behind his back, James would charge him, throw him in a headlock, try to beat him senseless.

Or throw him in jail for something.

Corruption of a minor. Drinking without a license.

Darla stood her ground though. He had always admired that about her. “Jack, he’s been to two quarterback camps now. James hired a coach to work with him on Sundays, and nothing much came out of it. Cameron said you watched him throw for all of thirty seconds—”

Jack shook his head. “Darla, all I saw was myself. I used to throw off my front foot. That’s all.”

“Well,” she said, looking up at him with those pleading eyes he could never resist. “I just thought maybe—”

“I want to go to Texas,” Cameron interjected. “That’s been my dream forever. And I know I’ve still got a lot to learn.”

“Don’t you want the Mayfield Wildcats to win?” Darla asked him innocently, in that voice that used to make him crazy.

Jack looked at Tom, who assiduously avoided meeting his gaze. He looked at Cameron, who was staring down at his shoes. He looked back at Darla, and she met his eyes with eyebrows
raised. He motioned her impatiently away from the others. She followed him into the nearest aisle.

“D, if I so much as walk onto a practice field and watch him throw, the entire town is going to know about it.”

She shrugged. “So what?”

“I don’t want to make trouble at your house,” Jack said, his voice low. “Please, Darla. I’ve got all the trouble I can possibly deal with now.” He looked out the window at the TV trucks.

“Jack,” she said. “Just watch him throw. Give him some pointers if you see something. It doesn’t have to be formal.”

“I’ll know,” Jack insisted. “You’ll know.” He sighed. “Cameron will know.”

“I won’t tell,” Cameron said from the front of the store.

“Great.” He led Darla back from the aisle to the front desk.

Jack stood in front of Cameron and shook his head. “No. Not unless your dad says it’s okay. A man doesn’t coach another man’s boy without telling him. It’d be like sleeping with his wife.” He flushed. “Or something.”

Darla shot him an amused glance, and he shook his head. “Sorry.”

Cameron bit his lip. He didn’t show a lot of emotion, but what he was showing looked an awful lot like disappointment.

Was Jack afraid of James? Or was he afraid to fail?

Why didn’t he want to do this?

“Listen,” Jack told him. “I’ll talk to your dad.” That should be pleasant. “You keep throwing off that back foot.”

Cameron looked up, nodded. “Okay. Yeah.”

The boy pushed the door open and walked out. Darla lingered for a moment.

“D,” Jack said. “What are you doing?”

“Not a thing, Jack Chisholm,” she said airily. “Just taking advantage of an old friendship.”

“More like taking advantage of an old friend,” he said with a smile.

“I’m glad you’re home,” she said. “I’ll try and get James to be reasonable.”

“Good luck with that,” he said.

When she left, the reporters on the sidewalk approached, retreated.

He turned to his father, who still avoided looking up. “That article you’re reading had better be about how to turn lead into gold,” Jack said.

Tom could not maintain his deadpan expression. “If you thought I was going to get in the middle of that,” he said, closing his magazine, “you are crazy.” He checked his watch. “It’s five. Want to go out and meet the press?”

“Oh yes,” Jack said. He did a quick check of the store while his dad paid Manny, counted down his drawer, and shrugged on his jacket.

“Jack!” came the shouts when they emerged onto the sidewalk. “Reverend Chisholm!”

Jack waved. He didn’t smile. While Tom locked the door, he turned to the proffered mics, to the cameras, and simply said, “Happy New Year.”

Then he and Tom walked to the car.

They shouted after him. He heard one of the reporters cursing, although whether she was angry at him or the universe was difficult to say.

In the car, he told his father that he was meeting Father Frank at seven. “We’re talking about my sermon,” Jack said.

“At Buddy’s?” his father said.

“Exactly,” Jack said. “No one will suspect.”

“You want me to come with?” Tom asked.

“How do you feel?”

Tom took a self-inventory. “Tired,” he said. “Trip took a lot out of me.” That much was true. Jack had to wake his father that morning, and fix a less than satisfactory pan of eggs while Tom dressed.

“You get some rest,” Jack said. “I’ll go over after dinner.”

“Have you called Bill back to tell him you’re going to preach?”

“Wow,” Jack said. “No. I guess I thought maybe you—or Mrs. Calhoun—”

“You should call him,” Tom said. “That’s only right.”

“Ugh,” Jack said. But once they got home he did, while his father heated up some of the casserole from Sunday.

The phone rang four times, then someone picked up. “Bill Hall.”

“Bill,” Jack said. “It’s Jack.”

Dead silence.

“Jack Chisholm.”

And more of it.

“I, uh, I was just calling to tell you I could say a few words Sunday. If that’s what you want.”

“It’s not what I want,” Bill said, finally entering the conversation.

“Okay,” Jack said.

“Just so we’re clear,” Bill said.

“Okay.”

“I was asked to call you. That’s the only reason I did.”

“Well,” Jack said. “I think you have made that abundantly clear.”

And—silence.

Was Bill thinking about all the times Jack had failed him? Was he remembering their deer hunts, their swimming hole? Was he remembering pulling people off of him as Jack rolled in agony in the state finals? “I’ll see you Sunday,” Jack said finally. He had already said “I’m sorry,” and there were too many other things to say to even know where to start.

The other line went dead, and Jack stood still, the phone keening in his ear.

“Everything okay?” Tom asked after a moment.

“Nah,” Jack said. “It’s not.” He set his phone down. “Maybe it won’t ever be.”

Tom shrugged. “And maybe it will. Come on. Dinner’s warm.”

At the table, Jack asked Tom if he could take some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to think about what he was going to say on Sunday. “I’ll make deliveries Saturday,” he said. “Talk Sunday.”

After church, he was already planning to work with Mr. Gonzalez and whoever else might be led to show up and build a wheelchair ramp for Mrs. Gutierrez. But before Sunday, he needed some time to pray, to reflect, to sit with the reading from Matthew—the wise men, old bad King Herod.

What on earth did he have to say to anyone, let alone about this particular thing?

As the week went on, he still wasn’t calling it preaching, was sticking with the “a few words” model that seemed to take the pressure off everyone. He wasn’t a preacher anymore. That had gone sour. He would say a few words. That’s all.