The Queen of Sleepy Eye (18 page)

In the weeks I'd attended the Spruce Street Church, I had become a trophy of sorts for the congregation. “Cordial would be much better off if all newcomers were like you,” a gray-haired pew hen would coo. “You wear such pretty dresses, and your face glows with health.” Translation:
You're just like us. You wear old-fashioned
clothes, and you take a bath every day. Welcome!

I took little pride in their approval. I winced at their snide references to the rigid Lutherans and the idolatrous Catholics, but I never so much as
tsk-tsk
ed their self-righteous judgments. Confronting the biddies was up to Pastor Ted, but I'd never seen a more patient man. He faithfully presented the Word of God like a gentleman offering a hand to a lady:
Will you receive the Father's love today?

This Sunday was different. Feathers—pardon the pun—would fly.

I carried my guitar case in one hand and led Feather with the other. She scooted behind me toward the church, wearing my flip-flops since she had shown up barefooted. For the hundredth time,
she tripped. Undaunted, Feather wiggled the elastic waistband of her skirt to her armpits, and still her feet remained hidden. Dust coated her feet, so hidden feet were preferred. Butter had tucked red clover in Feather's braids. From the neck up, Feather was ready for church. Good enough for me. As we walked into the sanctuary, the murmur of voices inquiring about visiting grandchildren and the latest doctor's visit fell silent, but only until we sat down. Their whispers and the disapproval that fueled them reached us loud and clear.

“A hippie girl?”

“We'll never get the smell out.”

“Did you see that skirt she was wearing?”

“Is nothing sacred?”

Feather pulled on my shoulder. Her breath warmed my ear. “You're hurting my hand.”

I released it. “Sorry.”

She slipped her hand back in mine.

“We can leave if you want to,” I said.

“Don't worry. I've heard it all before. I just ignore them.” She squeezed my hand. “I want to hear you sing.”

Feather jumped when the organist pounded on the first chord of “Give of Your Best to the Master.” We stood to sing along. Feather took in the baptistery, the stained-glass windows, and the wide, arched ceilings. At the end of the hymn, Pastor Ted climbed the steps of the chancel and raised his arms to pray for the congregation.

Feather found his attire amusing. “He's wearing a dress,” she said loud enough for everyone to hear. I shushed her, saying I'd explain his vestments later.

“I like his tie,” she said.

“That's his stole. Now shush.”

Pastor Ted welcomed Feather with a smile.

Besides Feather saying “Oh brother” every time we stood up just to sit down again, she seemed genuinely taken with the ceremony of worship. I wanted Feather to fall in love with Jesus from listening to one of Pastor Ted's sermons. Unfortunately, it was stewardship Sunday, which in Gilbertsville always happened in the fall, and the pastor always started the sermon with an apology to visitors. “Close your ears,” he said. “This message is for members only.” To my surprise, Pastor Ted riveted us with a story from the prophet Malachi about the forgetful and stingy children of Israel. They had robbed God by withholding their tithes and offerings. The way Pastor Ted told the story, we managed God's money to benefit the kingdom. My face warmed when I thought about the money stashed away in
Emma
. At least twenty of those dollars belonged to the Lord. A collective sigh sounded once Pastor Ted told us the tithe was no longer twenty percent.

He read from Malachi, “‘Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.'”

Feather blurted, “Why's he talking so funny?”

The congregation hummed like a swarm of bees. I pressed a finger to my lips in hopes of silencing her. Pastor Ted sucked in his lips to stifle a laugh. “In other words,” he said to Feather, “the Lord gives us permission to test him. Happily return to him the first fruits of your wages, and he'll bless your socks off.”

“But I sell eggs,” she said.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift—and that includes eggs— is from above.” He closed the black notebook and his Bible. “And now, Elder Ryland Burns from the stewardship committee will say a few words.”

Feather, I learned that day, didn't know how to whisper. “When are you going to sing?” she asked as Elder Burns shuffled his lecture notes.

I pointed to my name in the bulletin. “I'm next.”

Elder Burns gripped the lectern and cast a wary eye at Feather. His broad, smooth forehead reflected a spot of light. As far as I could tell, he had no lips. “We're family here at Spruce Street Church, and a family needs a place to come together to worship like we're used to.” His voice dropped an octave. “Unless we see a significant increase in giving, we may lose that privilege.”

Over my shoulder the congregation sat less than astonished. Something told me they'd heard this speech, or something like it, many times before. Their indifference only fueled the elder's vigor. He pounded the lectern.

“We got us some urgent needs in this facility. The boiler was installed before the Second World War. Don Jacobson, and he's a straight up Christian man, from Triple-A Heating and Plumbing says the boiler is so full of silt that we're burning four times the coal we should just to keep the pipes from freezing. That's why you ladies have to bring your lap robes in the winter. It might be hard to remember how cold the sanctuary gets while sitting here on a hot Sunday in July, but this here's the Lord's house, and it's our job to take care of it. And that ain't all.”

The women of the church huffed at the elder's use of
ain't.

“The benevolent fund is stone dry. I look around here, and I see lots of you who have benefited when a crop's failed or an illness meant a big doctor bill. That's what the fund is for. But I can also look around the room, and as the elder over the stewardship committee, I know what you're giving toward the Lord's work, and it—”

The congregation gasped in anticipation of his
ain't.

“And it
isn't
ten percent.” He scanned the congregation, making eye contact with the congregants. “Will the ushers come forward, please? It's time for us to make a promise we'll keep. And one more
thing: Some of you can give more than ten percent and you wouldn't even notice the money missing from your checking account.”

Pastor Ted sat with his head in his hands, either praying for a mighty wind to open wallets or for a lightning bolt to strike Elder Burns. My money was on the lightning. Just after the offertory, we stood to sing the doxology. Feather flipped through the hymnal and pulled on my shoulder yet again. “Where's the words?”

“Never mind. The song will be over soon.”

The
amen
was a sigh of relief for the congregation.

Pastor Ted set a microphone in the middle of the chancel. He stooped to test it with a tap and to introduce me. “We have a special treat today. I heard Amy sing at a funeral service last week, and it was a true blessing. I asked her to sing the same song for us today. Prepare to be blessed. Amy?”

Heads nearly touched as I strapped on my guitar and plucked each string to be sure it was still tuned. I adjusted the E string. I heard words like
inappropriate
,
heathen
, and
hippie
. My eyes burned with tears and my throat tightened. I closed my eyes.
This is for you, Jesus.

Halfway through the second verse, I felt a tug at my dress. Feather motioned with her head toward the back of the church where a pew hen had risen and was walking out. As if she were the Pied Piper of Hamelin, others got up and followed her, shaking their heads. I looked to Pastor Ted. He smiled and mouthed,
Keep going.
I scanned the congregation for receptive faces. There was H, beaming like a birthday cake, and Leoti nodding encouragingly. And there were others, too,
more than I'd expected, including the Gartleys and Myron from the post office with a lady who covered her mouth when she smiled.
That
must be Sheila.
Mrs. Clancy's face sagged with disapproval. I looked back to Leoti, smiled, and closed my eyes to finish the song.

Feather and I waited our turn to shake hands with Pastor Ted in the narthex. While kicking off the flip-flops and pulling off her skirt to reveal grungy pink shorts, she told Pastor Ted how nice he looked in his dress. The congregants gasped behind us. “I liked the story you told too.”

Pastor Ted's large hands covered hers. “I hope you come again, Feather.”

“You put on one crazy show, that's for sure.”

I pulled Feather down the steps.

“That was weird,” she said, hugging the wadded skirt to her chest. “Butter told me different, but I had this idea about church people, that they got themselves fixed somehow, and that they were as nice as could be once they walked inside those doors. So much for that. Why, they smelled like roses, all right, but their manners stunk like chicken poop.”

I didn't know what to say. Sure, inviting Feather to church had been risky, but she came. She had stepped inside the double doors to dip her toes into the believer's world. I wanted her to be welcomed at Spruce Street Church as if she'd walked into Jesus' very own dining room. He would have pulled out a chair for Feather and offered her a plate of brownies with walnuts, and then he would have asked
her questions about her family and her chickens and what she liked best about the world he'd made for her. She would have fallen in love with him for all the attention he paid her and how earnest he was about getting to know her. Every question she thought of, from how many stars are in the galaxy to which came first—the chicken or the egg?—he would answer. And because suffering fills him with compassion, he'd brush the hair from her forehead and she would never have another seizure.

I guess I'd experienced plenty of disappointment in my life with my daddy dying before he sang me a Portuguese lullaby. And instead of being pretty, I was smart. And not one boy had even considered inviting me to the senior prom. There was Watergate. Dippity-Do only made my hair sticky. Sea Monkeys. X-ray glasses. And becoming a woman meant monthly cramps that made me turn green. But Feather's visit to the Spruce Street Church topped them all.

“You don't have to feel bad,” she said, taking my hand. “It all happened the way Butter said it would, but I'm glad I got to hear you sing.”

Arrgh!

The day after Feather had attended church with me, I paced from the chapel window to the kitchen door, rehearsing my speech for Pastor Ted. Through a narrow slit of the drapes, I watched him mow his lawn, pull weeds along the driveway, and claw at the earth around the roses. I hated to interrupt a man doing his yard work, mostly because I knew church staff never felt bad about asking anyone for help. But I pitied the poor man. He was about to be assaulted with the righteous indignation of a teenager—and on his day off too.

When he wheeled his lawn mower into the garage, I jogged across the street to meet him. He stood in the doorway, shielding his eyes from the sun. His shirt was translucent with sweat, and grass stains covered his tennis shoes, just like a regular person. The strain of physical labor deepened the furrows of his brow and the slump of his shoulders. I couldn't let his vulnerability sway me. His congregants had walked out on my song because it wasn't a hymn. Sure, their exits had hurt and angered me, but that wasn't
enough to confront Pastor Ted. The pew hens' world was changing. I got that. What I didn't, couldn't, accept was their treatment of Feather. Hadn't the congregants of Spruce Street Church read their Bibles? Jesus preferred the company of sinners to the religious hypocrites. Now I knew why. Butter did her best to keep her family clean. She pumped water from the well for each load of laundry and heated it in a cauldron on the wood burning stove. I bet those sinners Jesus dined with didn't smell like roses either, and maybe Jesus didn't smell so good after a long day of walking and teaching and healing those lepers who wore mantels of rotting flesh. Would the pew hens welcome Jesus into their stupid church?

Pastor Ted squinted when he stepped into the sunlight. “Amy, how nice to see you.”

I stood there like a nitwit.

“Is something wrong?”

“I … I guess I wanted to talk to you.”

“How about a cool drink? Do you like iced tea?”

It only seemed fair to warn him. “This isn't a pleasure visit.”

“Oh, I see.” He beckoned me toward the shade of the patio and a small table with two chairs. “I'm still thirsty, and the offer still stands.”

He wasn't going to make this easy. “Sure. Okay. I guess that would be good.”

We sat under the aluminum awning. He drank his first glass of tea straight down and poured himself another. I waited for him to ask me what the problem was. He talked about his garden instead.

“I didn't know if the new lawn would make it through the winter, but it greened up real nice. I put my back out twice installing the sprinkler system. My father was the very first groundskeeper at the Wilshire Country Club in 1920. I think I was ten years old when he
started. That's where I developed a fondness for green lawns, I guess. Every morning, I climbed onto a mower just as the sky was lightening in the east. Mom cooked a farmer's breakfast. I could smell bacon frying from the sixteenth fairway. Dad joined us for breakfast, but he returned to the links until all the greens and tee boxes were perfectly trimmed.

“He supervised over twenty men. Most of them came from Mexico. When I got older, I worked with them leveling out the greens and repairing the tee boxes. They shared their tamales with me at lunchtime. I developed an appetite for fresh tortillas those years that has yet to be quenched.

“Keeping a pretty lawn is a tribute to my dad. And then I moved to Cordial. I'd never seen a place so taken to weeds or congested with rocks.” Pastor Ted paused to admire the emerald green of his lawn. “Some members of the church happened by when I was installing the new sprinkler system to ask where I'd gotten the money and to ask who had given me permission to dig up the lawn. They told me that every pastor before me had been satisfied to pull a hose and sprinkler around the yard.”

If what he'd told me were examples of the challenges he'd faced as pastor of the Spruce Street Church, I was no better than the folks who had “happened” by to question the way he took care of his lawn. On the other hand, maybe the story had been a way to ease us into a weighty conversation. Adults were maddening that way. Before he started reminiscing about his first week of junior high, I blurted, “The congregation was horrible to Feather.”

Pastor Ted sighed and nodded. “Yes, they were.”

“Aren't you going to do something, say something to them?”

“You're a smart and passionate young lady. I admire that in you. Those qualities endeared me to the pastoral search committee upon
my graduation from seminary. Still, I troubled over my first sermon. I wrote and rewrote my twenty-minute epic until I just plain ran out of time. Otherwise, I would still be working on it.” He snickered. “I added observations in the margins while the choir sang. I'll never forget the text. It came from the second chapter of Philippians. I considered the passage foundational to the fresh start God had given the church and me. As his people we were to imitate the humility of Christ in our dealings with one another, the community, and the world.

“Monday morning I went to my tiny office convinced I'd hit a home run with that sermon. There had been generous back slapping and hearty handshakes from the congregants afterward. I wasn't a bit surprised to see a dozen or so envelopes lying on my desk the next morning. I expected notes of congratulations. I slit the first note open and read. The contents will be forever engraved on my memory. There was no salutation. It read: ‘Too much talk of Jesus, not enough funny stories. I have a book of stories you can borrow until you find one for your library.' The next note questioned my credentials. One woman included twenty-five cents for a haircut. And dear Mrs. Grossman, she hoped I would take control of the choir. She felt they sang far too many hymns of lamentation. I understood her complaint after several Sundays.” Pastor Ted raised his face to the breeze that rustled the leaves of an old poplar.

I asked, “Why didn't those people stay home if they didn't want to hear about Jesus?”

“I wondered that myself, so I wrote a seminary professor who had mentored me through a mighty tough hermeneutics class, asking what I should do with a congregation who didn't want to hear about Jesus. I'm not too proud to tell you that I'd hoped he would tell me to knock the dust off my shoes and pack my bags. Months passed before I heard
from him. All he wrote was the Scripture reference for the parable of the tares. I wadded the paper up and tossed it into the waste basket.”

“You did?”

“Amy, it will take your whole life to learn and relearn what you think you know about the Scriptures. The Christ will be both an enigma and a friend. The older I get the more wondrous and mysterious he becomes, and the more needful I am of his mercy.” Pastor Ted wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Jesus teaches his disciples that the kingdom of heaven is like a man who planted good seeds in his field. His enemy comes under the cover of night to sow weeds called tares, a very insidious plant. Are you much of a gardener?”

I watered houseplants and mowed the lawn in Gilbertsville. “Not really.”

“Weeds compete with crops for nutrients in the soil and can rob the plants of the sunshine and water they need to mature—not a healthy situation for a garden.”

“That's why people pick weeds.”

“That's right, but tares look just like wheat until harvest time. How would the field hands know which to pull and which to leave? The master of the field in Jesus' story feared the wheat would be pulled out with the tares. So, Amy, even before the first group of believers thought to meet together, Jesus the vinedresser knew tares would take shelter in his church.”

“That's nuts. Why do they bother coming? If I didn't want to hear about Jesus, I'd sleep in on Sunday mornings, read the funny papers in my pajamas, and make pancakes and fry bacon. I wouldn't bother going to church. It's … it's early.”

Pastor Ted tipped his chair back. “People come for many reasons, most out of a sense of tradition and continuity. Perhaps they're crazy about potlucks, or they carry a horrible burden of guilt they hope to
assuage by attending services or more potlucks. Honestly, I don't know why some people come, but in the time I've been shepherding flocks much like this one, I've seen some of those tares become what they are not. They become wheat. That's redemption, a real miracle.”

“So we can't rip the tares out of the fields?”

“The Father's perfect love is very patient.”

“But in the meantime, their behavior repels people from God.”

Pastor Ted rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and sighed. “Yes, I'm afraid that is so.”

* * *

THE DELIVERY VAN stopped in front of the funeral home. Glen, the driver, shorter than me by a head with muscled legs and a basketball belly, delivered caskets to Mrs. Clancy regularly. The caskets came C.O.D., and Mrs. Clancy had already gone home for the day. I met Glen at the back of his truck. “Mrs. Clancy isn't here to accept a delivery. She wasn't expecting you until tomorrow.”

“This package is for you. It's pretty heavy.” He snapped his suspenders against his chest. “I think I should carry it inside.”

Glen hefted a long cylinder wrapped in brown paper that bent where he carried it on his shoulder. That pretty much ruled out a transmission, so I figured the package must be from Lauren. I led Glen to the kitchen door, considered having him leave the package in the living room but thought better of it. “Would you mind carrying the package to my room?”

With the hefty package on my bedroom floor, I walked Glen to the kitchen door. I asked him if he delivered car parts to Tommy's.

“All the time,” he said, snapping his suspenders again.

“Anything as big as a transmission?”

“I've delivered whole engines.”

“Anything lately? He's waiting for a transmission for our Pontiac.”

“Let's see.” He ran his thumbs under his suspenders. “A couple weeks ago, I delivered something to Tommy. That sucker was heavy.” Glen scratched the day's growth on his chin. “Tommy seemed mighty glad to see that part. He may have said something about a transmission, but … maybe you'd better ask him.”

I agonized between opening Lauren's package and running straight to Tommy's to ask about the Pontiac. Lauren's package won.

Clancy and Sons was at the end of Glen's delivery route. He liked to gossip about the valley with Mrs. Clancy until she tired of his stories and told him she needed to make a bank deposit. Since I had no such excuse, Glen blathered on about the nervous flatlanders driving the winding roads, how you couldn't go anywhere in Clearwater County without smelling a hippy, and how some people didn't know anything about the delivery business but were always willing to offer advice. I shifted from one foot to the other, muttered “uh-huh” with scant enthusiasm, and still he asked for a drink of water. Some people can't take a hint.

After he'd finally driven off, I opened one end of Lauren's package and slid a rug onto the floor. The beauty of the rug caught my breath, but the size of it made me groan. “Lauren, what have you done?” This was no ordinary rug. On a field of the ripest apricot imaginable, royal-blue flourishes and red poppies splashed about, all contained within a sky-blue border. I bent to trace a green vine with my finger. The pile buried my fingernail. I sat in the middle of the rug Indian-style to read her letter.

I rolled up the rug and wrestled it back into the paper wrapping before cramming it under the bed. I tore Lauren's letter up into tiny pieces and buried them in the funeral home's dumpster. Then I threw up.

That night, Mom babbled all through dinner. She and Bonnie were going shopping in Orchard City on Saturday.

“Do you want to go?” she asked. “Bruce says they have a used bookstore there.”

When I said no, she seemed relieved. I welcomed the time alone. My head buzzed with questions for Lauren. Calling her on a party line was definitely out of the question. But what would I say to her? She'd forgotten all about reciting John 3:16 if a boy got fresh. From the date on the postmark, it had been over a week. By now she definitely knew if she was pregnant or not. Without trying, I pictured her and Andy together.
Eew.
How could she possibly—?
Don't think
about it!