“Don’t have time.”
“Poor thing’s lawn is getting away from her.”
“Don’t have time.”
“Jacob, this is a good idea. She needs your help.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know how old she is. Ask her. She’s at the end of the first road after the bridge, right over there,” and he pointed behind him. “Her name’s on the mailbox: Gail. Tell her I sent you. If she isn’t
home, go back. Her schedule is hard to predict. Gail Shotwell, don’t forget.”
“Clarice can call her.”
“Don’t do that—she’ll say she doesn’t need any help.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t like talking to women I don’t know. I just don’t think—”
“That’s your whole problem, Jacob. Think less, do more, that’s my motto.”
PROTECTING PAPERS
G
AIL SHOTWELL WORKED THE NIGHT SHIFT AT THE PLASTIC FACTORY in Grange and drove home in gray light. She made a piece of toast with peanut butter, ate half of it, partly undressed, slept three hours on the sofa in the living room, woke up, and ate the rest of the toast. She played a CD and felt pretty good then in a sleepy kind of way. She thought about eating another piece of toast, but before she could get a slice of bread into the toaster a loud knocking arrived on the front door.
Gail had so few visitors that at first she did not recognize the explosive sound. Then she had no idea who it could be. There were only thirty or forty people living in Words at any one time, and she was on speaking terms with only a few of them. Lacking stores of general interest, the little village afforded few opportunities for strangers to get acquainted without going right up to each other, which no one would ever do. There was the Words Repair Shop, of course, with its heaps of old metal and claustrophobic room of crafts in back, but the owner was not someone she especially wanted to meet. Her nearest neighbors in the Victorian beyond the hedge, old Violet Brasso and her sister, Olivia, were fanatically religious by all reports, and Gail assumed they disapproved of her. They rarely left home for anything other than church.
She opened the front door and on the other side of it stood her brother, Grahm. Behind him his wife, Cora, had her arms wrapped around a cardboard box as big as an orange crate. Because of the direction of the sun, both looked carved in granite.
“We came last night,” said Grahm, “but you weren’t home.”
“We waited until after eleven,” said Cora.
“I worked last night. What’s in the box?” asked Gail.
“These are copies of something
very important,
” said Cora in her
usual manner of assuming everything in her life was very important. “We need you to keep them.” And she marched into the house, walked down the hall, and put the box on the kitchen table.
“Grahm thinks you’re our best hope,” she said, appraising the kitchen with a scowl. A mound of Styrofoam take-out containers, mismatched ceramic and paper plates, cups, glasses, and plastic wrappers rose out of the sink and spilled onto both sides of the counter.
“You guys want some coffee?” asked Gail as Grahm and Cora seated themselves at the table.
“Look these papers over when you have time,” said Grahm. “Keep them in a safe place.”
“They probably won’t mean anything to you and it’s not necessary they do,” added Cora. “We just need you to have them.”
Gail started coffee and set three cups on the table. “Either you tell me what this is all about—right now—or take your old box home.”
“You tell her,” said Grahm.
“These are shipping records and report forms that prove American Milk is stealing from farmers, defrauding the government, and selling tainted product.”
“Holy shit,” said Gail. “Where did you get them?”
“I took them.”
Cora talked for quite a while longer and Gail realized somewhere near the end of the narrative that she hadn’t been listening. The picture in her mind of her sister-in-law making off with papers from work had crowded out everything else. The coffeemaker groaned twice, grueling sounds of concentrated mechanical anguish ending in a gasp of caffeinated steam. As though in response, the CD player in the living room turned off.
“Coffee?”
“Sure,” said Cora.
“No thanks,” said Grahm. He was currently feeling guilty about bringing his sister into the same awful business that had been destroying his relationship with Cora for the past six months. Gail gave him some anyway, and he drank it after pouring in enough milk to bring the liquid up to the rim of the cup.
“You should get milk from us,” said Grahm. “This stuff from the store has been boiled to death.”
“Yes, but they take all the fat out and I perform for people on a stage.”
“Doesn’t seem to interfere with your drummer’s eating.”
“Men don’t have to look good, especially behind a set of drums. Everyone notices women.”
“Tell me about it,” said Cora, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Our society is shot through with double standards.”
Gail frowned at her but didn’t say anything. As far as she was concerned Cora had directly benefited from those double standards. She lived on a farm inherited in the final act of a long drama of double standards, mostly written, directed, and acted out by Gail’s mother, who expressed her preference for boys in general and Grahm in particular with every embittered fiber of her being. The leather strap she kept hanging beside the stove might as well have had “Gail” embossed on it, so seldom was it used on anyone else.
“What am I supposed to do with these papers?”
“You won’t understand what they mean,” said Cora, burning her tongue and spilling several teaspoons of coffee on her sweatshirt. “Just keep them in a safe place.”
“People get in trouble over these kinds of things,” said Gail. “You hear about it all the time.”
“Oh, calm down and stop being so dramatic,” said Cora, who privately admired her sister-in-law’s talent for walking around un-surrendered in her underwear. She had a figure, for sure, but who didn’t before having two children? And she probably exercised, what with all the free time she had. Still, there was something intrinsically unwholesome about just wearing underwear, even clean underwear. “As long as we have these papers we have nothing to worry about,” she said. “There are laws that protect us from lawbreakers.”
“By the way,” said Grahm in his getting-ready-to-leave voice, “what’s the matter with your lawn mower? It’s sitting out by the road.”
“It won’t start.”
“I’ll look at it on the way out.”
After they left, Gail put the cardboard box in the closet and found her bass. She was feeling lucky and ready to try to learn the Barbara Jean song again.
KEEPING A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE
W
INIFRED SMITH HAD BEEN IN FULL- TIME PASTORAL MINISTRY for six years. At thirty-three, she remained confident that God had a plan for her, a purpose, but she did not yet know what it entailed. And though she eagerly anticipated the joy that would accompany embarking on her life’s mission, she avoided imagining in any detail what her future might hold—for fear vain predilections might block the Way in which unseen forces were guiding her. Allowing things to develop all by themselves would open doors of experience.
In just this manner she had been led to the Words Friends of Jesus Church and into her current circumstances. The opportunity had come unexpectedly, while she was waiting for a barber to trim her hair in a tiny three-chair shop in Cincinnati.
As the steady snipping of long-handled stainless steel scissors performed thin, rapid, rhythmic, metallic insect music, she turned the pages of limp glossy outdoors magazines. Oily smells from colored bottles on the shelf along the mirror combined with the odor of men in vinyl chairs and pictures of trophy animal heads to create a not exactly pleasant atmosphere, and her discomfort—not with the room itself so much as her condemnation of it—was reflected in her face shrinking around her eyes.
“So you attend the Bible college,” said the barber nearest to her, resuming a conversation he had attempted to start earlier. Of the three men cutting hair, this one seemed the most dedicated to establishing personal connections, and Winnie thought he might be the owner. His arms, hands, and wrists moved with an effortless, rubbery fluidity. As the youngest person in the room and the only female, she assumed she was fair game for conversation. One of the social obligations of being younger, and female, entailed letting people talk to you.
“Yes, I’ll graduate soon.”
“Congratulations to you, Ma’am,” the barber said, gesturing with his rubbery limbs. “We need good preachers and I understand there’s a shortage of them in all denominations.”
“Whether I will be good remains an open question,” said Winnie. “I will try to be.” She put down the magazine and smiled in what she hoped was a professional manner.
“As far as I’m concerned,” spoke a man sitting next to her, waiting to have his hair and beard trimmed, “women make just as good pastors as men. The Man Upstairs made both men and women and I doubt there’s a whisker’s worth of difference between them in church work.” He smiled at her in a kind manner, though his mouth seemed somewhat crooked.
Winnie attempted to ignore the problems caused for women in the church when even those men in favor of gender equality thought in terms of men upstairs and measured the lack of difference between men and women in whiskers. She reminded herself to listen for the intention of what people say and ignore the words. And the intention seemed reasonably cheerful.
Besides, this was one of those rare opportunities for her to be available, open to others—when divine matters had been spoken of in public. As she knew, most people thought very little about God. Their busy lives consisted of eating, drinking, social climbing, fornicating, and all the attendant thoughts needed to secure perpetuity for those activities. They marched in an ultimately joyless parade of orifice functions finding expression in a complex society. Only on rare occasions did the human spirit break free from these fugacious concerns and seek a greater joy. And Winnie’s primary responsibility, as she understood it, was to nurture those moments while not intruding into other people’s privacy.
“I don’t imagine genitalia matter much,” she said, trying to look both amiable and sincere.
“You both are missing something,” said a middle-aged man with sideburns seated on the middle stool, staring at himself in the mirror. He spoke with authority, as though he was accustomed to having people listen to him. “The reason there aren’t enough preachers is
that fewer and fewer people believe such rank superstition. Religion is irrelevant to the modern world.”
Winnie gathered her long skirt carefully around her hiking boots, tilted her head back, and shook it. She then remained suspended in a moment of hesitation, as though standing at the end of a high diving board from which she felt the compulsion to jump.
“Actually,” she said, leaping forward, “there has been an increase in church attendance in the past twenty years. People flock to churches because modern life leaves them longing for something more. Especially the fundamentalist and Pentecostal faiths have experienced a sustained resurgence in membership. But I’m truly interested to know what you see as superstitious.”
The man with sideburns spoke again. “Fewer and fewer people attend church on Sunday. Television evangelists have completely soured the well of religion and people now see it as just another pocketbook scam.”
Winnie laughed. “I love that phrase, ‘soured the well.’ Thank you for using it. I wonder where it comes from. The images it brings to mind are so vivid. I’m afraid, however, we must be very careful to not take our personal experiences as representative of society as a whole. If you know fewer and fewer people attending church on Sunday, it is probably due to your associating more and more with like-minded fellows. Reliable statistical data confirm that more and more people are attending. As for television evangelism, which you are right to criticize for its sometimes shameless tactics in fund-raising, it is just one more example of how people thirst for the Word in these modern times. Even the most flawed messenger can find acceptance.”
“Look around you,” the man said, gesturing with his open hands. What do you see? Over here, a leader of a church stands behind a pulpit and condemns sexual immorality and the next day is found in bed with animals. Over here, Christians maim, torture, and kill Muslims, and Muslims maim, torture, and kill Christians because of their religion. And just yesterday, out in some backwater town not far from here, a man murdered his wife and children—shot them in the head—because God told him to get them to heaven as quickly as possible. Turn over any rock and you’ll find a politician pressing his
hands together in public prayer while he’s accepting bribes, cheating on his wife, and sending his neighbors’ jobs overseas. If there’s one critical imbalance in the world, it’s too much religion.”
Winnie continued to smile. “But all the examples you’ve given are of men violating religious principles, not acting in sympathy with them. You’ve cited exceptions to the general case, which is why they are put into headlines. The religions of the world offer hope in times of darkness and assurance that moral integrity is rewarded. The majority of people find courage in knowing that charity is divinely supported and goodness will eventually prevail. It helps them to be better people.”
“Then how do you explain the lack of preachers and priests?” He was now inspecting Winnie’s reflection in the mirror.
“The economy presently allows people to better provide for their families outside the ministry.”
“You mean they can make more money if they are not professional followers of Christ?”
“I suppose that would be fair to say, though your choice of words is a little harsh.”
“Then despite the growing number of people in churches, few of them let religion interfere with their material ambitions. I guess that would make them hypocrites—isn’t that the word for people who profess one thing but do another?” He smiled straight into the reflection of Winnie’s eyes in the mirror, as though to drive the final nail into her argument.