Authors: Philip Gulley
E
llis Hodge couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so mad. He waded through the mud to the rear of his combine, drew back his foot and let loose with a well-placed kick at a tire, only to slip and land on his backside in the mucky mess. A gush of vile curse words erupted from his mouth. Ordinarily reverent, he’d sworn more in one day than he had his entire life, with an artistry and intensity that would impress a sailor.
His anger had been building since May, when he’d first seen Ralph at the diner in the city. Ever since, he’d had the most pleasant dreams in which he’d killed his brother and buried his body on a remote corner of the farm. It got so he hated hearing the alarm clock ring.
“Dadnabbit! This fricka-fracka, ricka-racka piece of goll-darned spit is gonna be the death of me!” he yelled, heaving himself out of the mud and whacking the rear of the combine with a board.
What made it worse was that Miriam had warned him not to combine, that the ground was too muddy and he’d get stuck. Thankfully she was working today, substitute teaching at the high school. As long as he got the combine unstuck by four o’clock, she’d never know. She isn’t the type to say “I told you so” and rub it in, though she did have a self-satisfied smile that set him on edge.
Then his brother had stopped by. Of all the genetic possibilities his parents could have formed with their union, they’d produced a no-good, alcoholic child-deserter. With Miriam gone and not a soul in sight, Ellis had been sorely tempted to kill him then. Knock him on the head with a board and pitch him in the hole the combine had dug. The perfect crime.
He would have done it too. Except at the last moment, just before he’d grabbed the board, he’d noticed Ralph’s car and couldn’t think of how to hide it. He thought of driving it into the river, but the nearest one was thirty miles away and he’d have to walk home. There was never a river around when you needed one.
He worked all morning trying to dislodge the combine, to no avail. A little before two, he phoned Asa Peacock to see if he’d come with his new John Deere tractor, the one that had treads like a tank and could slog through anything. The phone rang six times before their answering machine picked up. It was Jessie’s voice: “Sorry we missed your call. We’re probably out in the fields. Leave your name, and we’ll call you back just as soon as we can.”
Ellis swore under his breath and banged the phone down. He stomped through the kitchen, flung the door open, and walked through the wet grass to his truck. Asa was probably in his barn. He’d have to drive over to the Peacocks’ and search him out. A ten-minute drive, a half hour for Asa to come with his tractor, and another half hour to pull the combine free. They could just make it before Miriam got home. That’s if his luck held, which would be a first.
It hadn’t been a stellar day for any of the Hodge men. Back in town, Ralph Hodge was seated in the Buckhorn bar, a beer in front of him. He was sniffing it, savoring the aroma, enjoying the sensation of the cold mug cupped in his hands. Two years and four months without a drink. He lifted the glass to his lips and tilted it. The beer hit the back of his throat. It felt like an ember, as if he’d ingested a live coal. He spit it back into the mug.
A scene from his past flooded his mind. Amanda was eight years old and cooking supper for them. His wife was passed out on the couch, and he sat in his recliner, mean-drunk, bellowing for Amanda to bring him another beer. She hadn’t moved quickly enough to suit him, and he’d cuffed her in the head.
When he’d begun attending church, he’d prayed for God to take that memory away, but God hadn’t seemed inclined to heed his prayer. Hardly a day passed that Ralph didn’t think of it. It dug at him, like a thorn in his flesh.
He pushed back from the bar.
“Aren’t ya gonna finish your beer?” Myron Farlow, the bartender, asked.
“No thanks. Don’t know what I was doing coming in here in the first place.”
He walked through the front door and into the sunlight. The rain had stopped, and the clouds had broken up. The sun shone down in bright shafts, blinding him momentarily. His foot caught on the door jamb, and he stumbled onto the sidewalk.
He looked up just as Ellis drove past, slowly, staring at him, a look of sheer disgust on his face.
Of all the people in the world.
He began jogging down the sidewalk alongside Ellis, waving for him to stop. Ellis turned his head away and drove straight ahead, picking up speed. Ralph slowed to a walk in front of Grant’s Hardware just as Uly walked out carrying an armload of rakes to arrange across the front of the store for his leaf-raking display.
“Hey, Ralph.”
Ralph didn’t answer. He sat down on the curb in front of the store, his head down, utterly dejected.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Just made the worst mistake of my life. The first time I go into a bar in over two years and my brother Ellis had to see me.” He sagged with misery.
“You went in the Buckhorn?” Uly asked. “You could have come to me. You know I’m here for you.”
“I only took a sip, and it tasted terrible. I spit it right out. Then I was so ashamed of myself, I left, and that’s when Ellis saw me. Would you talk to him for me, maybe explain what happened?”
Uly thought for a moment. “No, I won’t. You have to accept responsibility for yourself. Your drinking has caused the damage, and it’s up to you to repair it.”
“I know. I know.” He rose to his feet.
“Where are you going now?” Uly asked.
“Anywhere but the Buckhorn.”
“Attaboy, Ralph. I’ll see you Wednesday night. You call me if you need to talk.”
“Will do.” He shook Uly’s hand good-bye.
As for Ellis, he wasn’t a bit surprised. Miriam had been after him to ease up on his brother, consider that maybe he had changed. But Ellis had known better. Once a drunk always a drunk. He couldn’t wait to tell her.
He turned left at the school and made his way through the country to Asa’s farm. Asa was out in the barn, just as he’d figured. Ellis swore him to secrecy before telling him about getting his combine stuck in the mud.
“And that’s not the worst of it. I’m driving by the Buckhorn and who should stagger out but my supposedly sober brother. Probably in there drinking his lunch.”
“That can’t be,” Asa said. “I ate lunch with him myself. Ham and beans at the Coffee Cup.” His stomach gurgled in affirmation. Asa turned his head and let out a discreet belch. “Pardon me. Boy, those ham and beans tear me up. Like I was saying, Ralph was at the Coffee Cup not more than an hour ago, and he was sober.”
“That can’t be. I saw him stumbling out of the Buckhorn, drunker than a monkey.”
Asa looked at Ellis, then spoke quietly. “I’m not saying you’re lying, Ellis, but are you sure there isn’t a reasonable explanation?”
“I know what I saw.”
“Ellis, we’ve been friends a long time. And in all the time I’ve known you, you haven’t liked your brother. Now I know he’s had his problems, and Lord knows he’s made some terrible mistakes. But the Ralph Hodge I saw at the Coffee Cup seemed to be a different man.”
“People don’t change just like that. Now if you’re gonna help me, we have to get goin’.”
Asa shook his head in frustration, then climbed in his tractor and followed Ellis back to his farm. Ellis skirted around the edge of town, his blinkers on, avoiding the school so Miriam wouldn’t see them.
A half hour later, they had the combine pulled free of the mud and parked in the equipment shed. Ellis’s mood had vastly improved.
“Thank you, Asa. I owe you one.”
“Happy to help, Ellis. Hope you get things worked out with your brother.”
“Not sure that’s possible, as long as he keeps drinkin’.”
Asa bowed his head, drew a circle in the mud with the toe of his boot, then looked at Ellis. “Remember what Pastor Sam said last Sunday, that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that you’re starting to sound like Dale Hinshaw and you were never like that before. You need to give your brother a chance. And that’s all I’m gonna say. You take care now, Ellis.”
Asa climbed back on his tractor, fired it up, and headed east toward town. Ellis watched from his driveway, mystified how a smart man like Asa Peacock could be so easily taken in by a drunkard.
He turned and walked toward the house, then heard the crunch of gravel behind him as Miriam pulled in their driveway. Perfect timing, he thought. He stepped to the side as she drove past and parked near the barn next to the clothesline.
“Hey, honey. How was your day at school?”
“Fine. What’d you do today?”
“Oh, this and that. First one thing and then another.”
He put his arm around her and guided her into the house before she noticed the trench in the field and inquired about it.
“I saw Ralph,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, he was walking home from town, so I gave him a ride. He wanted me to tell you something. Said you’d know what he was talking about.”
“What’s that?”
“He wanted me to tell you that things aren’t always what they seem.”
Ellis snorted.
“What did he mean by that?” Miriam asked.
“I saw him stagger out of the Buckhorn not an hour ago.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting. He certainly wasn’t drunk when I spoke to him. Must have been your imagination. By the way, Amanda asked me this morning if they could come over for dinner this Friday, so I invited them. And I do not want you hiding out in the barn the whole time they’re here.”
The world had gone crazy.
He spent the rest of the day in the barn, seething. Then after supper he drove over to the tourist cabins, pulled up to number five, got out, and knocked on the door. Ralph answered on the second knock. He and Sandy were eating at a folding TV tray beside the bed. Ravioli from a can, cooked on a hot plate that sat atop a chest of drawers.
Ellis pulled his checkbook from his back pocket. “How much this time?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last time it cost me thirty thousand to make you leave. What’ll it cost this time?”
Sandy walked over and stood beside Ralph. “We don’t want your money. We came here to be near our family.”
“Well, your family doesn’t want you here, so why don’t you just go back to California and we’ll all be better off.”
“I don’t blame you for being mad at us,” Ralph said. “I would be too, if I were you. But our daughter’s here and we’re staying.”
Ellis scoffed. “Your daughter! Why didn’t you think about your daughter when you were gettin’ drunk every day and knockin’ her around?”
Ralph straightened up. “I don’t need you or anyone else to remind me how badly I’ve failed as a father. I think of that every day. Now I intend to do something about it, if Amanda will let me.”
Ellis poked his finger in Ralph’s chest. “Not here you won’t, and not now. You stay away from her or, so help me God, I’ll make your life miserable.”
Ralph swept his hand around the room. “We cook on a hot plate and sleep on a broken-down mattress in a bug infested room, so we can pay you back the money you gave us. You keep our daughter from us and won’t give us a second chance no matter how hard we try. Brother, how could you possibly make our life any more miserable than it already is?”
For a brief moment, Ellis was ashamed of himself. But the feeling passed quickly. “Don’t bother comin’ to dinner this Friday. You’re not welcome in our home.” Then he turned and left, spinning his truck wheels in the gravel in his haste to get away.
He didn’t go straight home. He turned at Kivett’s Five and Dime and drove past the meetinghouse, just as Sam was unlocking the door for a committee meeting. He thought of stopping and talking, then decided against it. Sam would urge him to forgive his brother. That was a pastor for you, always talking about love and forgiveness just when you wanted to punch someone in the nose.
He drove on, past Fern Hampton’s house. She was raking the first batch of leaves into the gutter in a race against the setting sun. He coasted to a stop and leaned his head out the window.
“Hey, Fern.”
“Ellis Hodge, I’m glad you stopped by. I have something to tell you.” She thumped her rake on the sidewalk several times for emphasis. “Your brother is with that drunkards’ group that meets in our church, and last Wednesday they didn’t clean the coffeemaker after they were done with it. You tell him for me that if they don’t start takin’ a little better care of the kitchen, they’ll have to find another place to meet.”
“You might want to leave him a note, Fern. I’m not sure I’ll be seeing him anytime soon.”
She thumped her rake two more times. “I’ll write him a letter, that’s what I’ll do. Send it registered mail. That way he can’t deny gettin’ it.” She paused for a breath and another thump of her rake. “People like that, you try to help them and they don’t appreciate it, they go back to their old ways. It’s just like the Bible says, a dog returns to its vomit and a fool to his folly.”
“It’s been nice seein’ you, Fern. You take care now.” What a hard woman, he muttered under his breath as he drove away.
It is a curious phenomenon how the faults of another are glaring, while personal failings escape notice. And that was true for Ellis Hodge, who continued his drive toward home, utterly convinced his brother was still the bum he’d always been.
O
ctober passed in a flurry of activity. The farmers worked their fields, the distant rumble of combines could be heard through the day, and at night the drone of grain dryers lay over the land like a blanket. Dale Hinshaw was confined to home, his heart weakened after a frenzied burst of evangelism during which he’d distributed his fake five-dollar bills in restaurants across the county. Four weeks later, with not one convert to show for his efforts and a host of angry waitresses in his wake, he’d taken to his bed, a shell of his former self.
At Harmony Friends Meeting, Sam was compiling a file for Dale’s funeral sermon, pleasant memories he could share with mourners in the event of Dale’s demise. It was a piteously slender file, and Sam was trying to plump it up with quotes he’d culled from
Reader’s Digest.
“Why don’t you just stand up there and tell the truth about him?” Frank the secretary suggested, standing in the doorway of Sam’s office. “Let it be a lesson to others.”
“That’s not what eulogies are for,” Sam pointed out. “Eulogies are for telling people how nice the deceased was even if you have to lie. Say, didn’t Dale once lend you fifty cents for coffee?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Good, I can mention that.” He wrote on a Post-it Note and tucked it in Dale’s file.
“But he charged me 25 percent interest each day,” Frank said. “Ended up having to pay him back a dollar fifty-three.”
Sam reached into his file and plucked out the note. “Probably I should leave the coffee story out,” he said, wadding the note up and tossing it in the wastebasket in the corner. “Can you be sure to let me know if you hear any nice stories about Dale?”
“In the off chance that happens, you’ll be the first to know,” Frank promised, sauntering back to his office.
It was Friday, and Sam was mostly done with his sermon. He needed a closing illustration about patience. He’d been preaching a series on the fruits of the Spirit from the fifth chapter of Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The problem with living in Harmony most of his life was that he hadn’t been exposed to many instances of patience. He had numerous stories about impatience, most of them involving his secretary.
“When are you gonna pick the hymns so I can do the bulletin for this Sunday?” Frank yelled from his office. “I want to get out of here sometime before midnight, for cryin’ out loud.”
“All Creatures of Our God and King,” “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” and “When We All Get to Heaven.”
“What about the Scripture reading?” Frank yelled.
“Galatians 5:22–23. The fruits of the Spirit. Same as last week.”
Sam could hear the clickety-clack of Frank’s manual typewriter as he pecked in the numbers.
“It would be a whole lot easier to use the computer,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t have to retype everything all over again each week. Just plug in the numbers and print it out, easy as pie.”
“Tell you what, Sam. If the hard drive in my Underwood ever crashes, I’ll use that fancy computer of yours. Until then, I’ll stick with this.”
Why, Sam wondered to himself, did people fight change so when it came to the church? The irony of it. Dale Hinshaw going around railing against any and all theological enlightenment, wanting to drag the church back to the seventeenth century. But when it came to his health, he was willing to forego leeches and bloodletting and have a heart transplant. What was it about religion that made people so stuck in the mud? It made him mad just thinking about it.
“You could at least clean the gunk out of the letter e. It’s starting to look like an o,” he yelled in to Frank.
“Boy, for someone who’s going to preach about patience, you sure are a grouch today,” Frank yelled back.
Being in no mood to write about patience, Sam switched off his computer. To heck with a closing illustration, he thought. I’ll just tell them to be patient if they know what’s good for them.
Dale’s deathwatch was wearing him down. For the past three days, convinced the angels were hovering about ready to carry him home, Dale had summoned Sam to his bedside. Sam flinched every time the phone rang. In his less charitable moments, he wished Dale would die and get it over with.
The next week was the boys’ fall break from school. Sam and his family had planned for some time to visit Barbara’s parents at their farm, two hours south. Given Dale’s affinity for putting people out, he would likely die the night before they left and ruin Sam’s one opportunity to get away.
For the past week, Dale had been propped up in a hospital bed in his living room next to his picture window, which he rapped on when anyone walked past. He would motion for them to come in, then apprise them of his suffering. Sam walked the long way home to avoid Dale’s litany of woe.
All in all, it had been a gruesome week in ministry. Ralph and Sandy Hodge had been attending Harmony Friends the past two Sundays. Ellis had visited the office and asked Sam to kick them out.
“I can’t do that,” Sam had explained. “They’ve done nothing wrong.”
“What do you mean they haven’t done anything wrong? They’re drunks and they abandoned their only child. That don’t seem like good Christian behavior to me.”
“Ellis, does Miriam know you’re here?”
Ellis had studied the tops of his boots. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I just wondered what she might think of your request to kick your brother out of church.”
“She’d take my side.”
“Well, Ellis, I’m sorry, but I can’t,” Sam had told him. “Jesus took in everyone and so must we.”
“You asked Bob Miles’s dad to leave that one time.”
The problem with some people, Sam thought, is that they have too long a memory.
“That’s because he was being abusive to other people. Ralph and Sandy have been perfectly cordial.” He had paused, debating what to say next. He dreaded having to challenge people, but felt the time had come for some frank talk. “Ellis, it’s no secret that you’ve been treating your brother shabbily. He came here wanting to make amends and heal relationships, and you’ve been most unkind to him. I’m asking you to make room in your heart for your brother. Not just for your brother’s sake, but for Amanda’s also. You’re asking her to choose against her parents, and no one should do that to a child.”
“Well, sometimes kids don’t know what’s best for them.”
“That’s true, but that isn’t the case here. Amanda is a very capable young lady, wiser than many adults I know. Besides, you can’t keep her away from her parents all her life.”
“Well, I can’t believe you’d take their side,” Ellis had said, then had turned and walked from Sam’s office.
Sam had phoned him the next day and left a message, but Ellis hadn’t returned his call.
First, it had been Dale Hinshaw driving him nuts, then Ellis Hodge, and now Frank, his secretary. What is it with old men? Sam wondered. Do they take lessons on how to be crotchety? Dear Lord, don’t let me get like that, he prayed.
He’d hoped a rousing sermon on patience would melt their hearts, though he wasn’t overly optimistic. The problem with preaching sermons people needed to hear was that the people who needed most to hear them thought they were intended for someone else.
Lacking a personal illustration, Sam decided to finish the sermon with the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15, though not without misgivings. When he’d preached on that text two years before, Asa Peacock had approached him after worship, wearing an uncharacteristic frown. “That shepherd shoulda quit while he was ahead. Sheep aren’t worth the trouble.”
Sam had tried to explain that the parable was actually about the patience of God and the worth of the individual, but Asa hadn’t been persuaded. “Sheep are dumber than dirt. You could smack one upside the head and if it could talk, it’d ask you to do it again.”
Biblical scholarship, Sam had decided long ago, didn’t have much of a following in Harmony.
The next day was Saturday. He took his younger, Addison, to football practice in the morning, then spent the afternoon raking leaves. The angry whine of leaf blowers could be heard all over town. The week before, Bob Miles had written an editorial about noise pollution, calling down a host of plagues upon the inventor of the leaf blower, who, if God was just, was deep in the bowels of hell, without earplugs, a leaf blower screaming in his ear, driving him insane.
Sam was of the same mind and therefore able to resist Uly Grant’s preachments about the superiority of the leaf blower. He bought four rakes instead, one for each member of the family. Saturday afternoon found him, Barbara, and their sons raking the leaves in a line across the yard and into the gutter for the street department to collect, saving back a pile for the boys to jump in and, when they wearied of raking, to burn in the driveway for the smell.
They worked four hours, then went in for supper—chili, peanut butter sandwiches, and iced tea. Sam’s parents stopped by while they were washing dishes to compare leaf-raking notes. Sam’s father is a purist. He prays over his rake, preparing for the task like a priest arranging the elements for Communion. He composts the leaves in a worm bed behind his barn, turning them once a week with a pitchfork, stirring coffee grounds into the mix each morning. Caffeine, he believes, energizes the worms, causing them to wiggle on the fishing hook, luring more fish.
He sells night crawlers each summer, on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, to fishermen passing by on their way to Raccoon Lake two counties west. He posts a sign on the telephone pole at the corner of Main and Mulberry—
Home Grown Night Crawlers
—with an arrow pointing toward his home. He’s been thinking of expanding into slugs and needs more leaves, so he asked Sam for his. They spread a painter’s tarp on the street, raked the leaves onto it, then lifted them into the back of his father’s pickup, and hauled them the four blocks to the Gardners’ house on Mulberry Street.
“Yep, worms and slugs this year, and if that goes well, I might expand into crickets,” Sam’s father said. “There’s big money in crickets.”
“The sky’s the limit,” Sam said. “Today, earthworms. Tomorrow, you’re the Rockefeller of the bait business.”
His father smiled at the thought of it.
“So what’s tomorrow’s sermon about?” he asked Sam, raking the leaves out of the truck and onto the compost pile. This was an old scheme of Sam’s father, who routinely asked him to divulge his sermon contents the day before church, so he wouldn’t have to attend the next morning.
“I’m going to preach about a rich man who built larger and larger barns and laid up a big supply of bait, then decided to sit back and relax, and he died the next day. Maybe you oughta come hear it.”
His father hitched up his pants, then studied him for a moment. “I thought you were preaching on the fruits of the Spirit.”
Sam chuckled. “You got me there, Dad. Actually, I’m going to talk about patience.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do.”
“Well, it never hurts to try.”
He raked another clump of leaves out of the truck. “Patience, huh? Well, your mother could certainly use that sermon. I’ll recommend she pay close attention.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Sam’s father eased himself down off the tailgate, walked into the barn, flipped on the floodlights, and returned with a broom to sweep out the last of the leaves. “It’ll be sweet romance all winter long and come spring, there’ll be young ’uns poppin’ out all over. Yessiree, money in the bank.”
His annual discourse on worm propagation was the closest he’d ever come to talking with Sam about reproduction. As a child, Sam thought babies came from compost piles.
They closed the tailgate with a resounding thunk, then climbed in the cab of the truck and drove back to Sam’s house. Piles of leaves lined the streets, like watchers of a parade. They drove this gauntlet of color, taking care not to drive too fast, lest leaves be scattered in their wake.
“Looks like winter’s on the way,” Sam’s father said, anticipating the cold with a shiver.
“Any day now,” Sam said, shifting from second gear to third in front of Bea Majors’s home. “Why don’t you take some of your worm money and go to Florida this year for a month or so?”
“What would your mother do?”
“I was thinking you’d take her with you,” Sam said.
“Kinda takes all the fun out of it.”
“You better not let her hear you say that, or you won’t be in any kind of shape to go to Florida.”
“Can’t go to Florida anyway. Gotta stay here and watch my worms.”
Uly Grant was standing in his driveway, burning leaves, the flames licking the edges of the piles, a glowing thread of light in the autumn dark. They turned the corner and drove past Dale Hinshaw’s home.
“You know, if you were any kind of pastor, you’d rake Dale’s leaves.”
“It’s my job to equip the church members for ministry,” Sam said. “Why don’t you rake them? That way we’ll both be doing what we should.”
“For a man of the cloth, you sure are sneaky.”
“Got to be to keep up with my parishioners,” Sam said.
They turned into his driveway and rolled to a stop in front of the garage, alongside the kitchen door. They sat in the truck, just the two of them, studying the yard, thinking their thoughts.
“Yep, gonna be some winter,” Sam’s father said after a bit. “If I didn’t have so much to do, I wouldn’t mind gettin’ down to Florida. Don’t see it happening, though.”
“You think you got it bad. If Dale Hinshaw dies, I have to think up twenty minutes of nice things to say about him.”
Sam’s father winced. “I don’t envy you that.”
“You know something nice I could say about him?”
He thought for the longest time. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“If something does, will you let me know?”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Sam’s father promised. “Yessiree bob, the first to know.”