Jewelweed (51 page)

Interruptions to these deliberations were common, as more than a few members whose attendance was critical to the final resolution of the more complicated matters involving finance and spiritual oversight—church officers, chairpersons, clerks, and other venerated individuals—required help in climbing up and down the steep concrete stairway leading to the only bathroom on the first floor. Some of the oldest members, including Violet Brasso, actually traveled the length of stairs sideways, in order to avoid pitching forward or backward on the steep incline. Violet often joked that her crablike walking style took a little longer, but provided a better view of the concrete walls, a bit of good humor suggestive not only of her generally cheerful nature, but also of the part she had played, as the head of the Spiritual Oversight Committee, in placing the sanctuary off-limits to business meetings. Some congregants thought that Violet had perhaps weighted her position with regard to restricting the sanctuary too heavily in the direction of a narrow interpretation of
holy
due to the sacrifices that were imposed upon her because of it. But no one except her sister, Olivia, ever said this out loud, and on each of the three different occasions when she had raised the point, she was told by Violet in no uncertain terms that it simply wasn't true.

The tables in the basement were also far from satisfactory. While providing a useful horizontal surface for those needing to confer with documents and write things down in hardbound administrative notebooks, the tables posed an insoluble dilemma for those who arrived with knitting, shopping lists needing a few additional items, sewing projects, birthday
and get-well cards to be addressed and filled out, brochures, and other light reading materials that were hard to attend to beneath the table, and too brazenly obvious when placed on top.

An additional problem with the tables—and with the basement in general—arose from the members' well-established interests in food, juice, desserts, and coffee with cream and sugar. After sitting for an hour in a location where they normally ate meals, it was hardly surprising that people got hungry, they wanted a cup of juice, coffee, or bite of cake with whipped frosting and found it difficult to concentrate on the business at hand or offer any reasonable suggestions for the peaceful resolution of difficult business matters.

Because of these and numerous other considerations, the Spiritual Oversight Committee finally agreed to reconsider the sanctity of the sanctuary. The committee prayerfully deliberated on this subject for several years, and then decided that business meetings could be held in the upstairs sanctuary, provided they were conducted in a reverent and worshipful manner. The committee's final reasoning rested on a solid foundation, they believed. Since the administration of the church was necessary to the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven and the ruling order of Jesus Christ, and with it the spread of the blessed gospel story and the hope of salvation into all lands, monthly meetings for business could be considered a vital part of the sacred mission of the Words Friends of Jesus Church. Food and beverages still were not allowed inside the sanctuary, of course, just as they had not been allowed in the inner court of the Jerusalem temple during the time of Jesus. And, the committee further resolved, all items of business must be carefully considered before they were presented in the presence of the living God, whose holy spirit was usually thought to be more present in the holy sanctuary than it was anywhere else.

And so it was that on this Wednesday evening, eighteen people gathered toward the front of the sanctuary, sitting in the first three pews to the left of the center aisle. Facing them—just before the elevated platform at the front, out of which the lectern rose like a wooden obelisk—were Oskar Hamilton, head of trustees; Violet Brasso, chair of the Spiritual Oversight Committee; and Violet's sister, Olivia, who had recently accepted, much to the surprise of nearly everyone, the position of church business clerk.
Olivia's responsibilities included taking brief yet accurate minutes of all business discussed and all decisions made, with particular attention to matters involving finance. The three wooden chairs these authorities were sitting on had been carried in from the nearest Sunday school room. Their papers and notebooks rested in front of them on a large oak desk with a single drawer and tapered wooden legs. Simple yet dignified, not quite in the Shaker tradition but drawing on the same stark simplicity, this piece of furniture had been donated by Oskar Hamilton's grandmother in 1934. And just before the meeting commenced, it had been carried in from the main entryway, where it normally sat dutifully, providing a base for the church guest book and the weekly stack of bulletins.

Pastor Winnie sat in the first pew next to the aisle, wearing a long green skirt and a white blouse. She was not expected to be up front and in charge of business meetings. Even the prayers at the beginning and end of the meeting were delivered by Oskar Hamilton, though on occasion he called on Violet to give them because she excelled in delivering prayers and never failed to remember every name and cause that needed mentioning. Her sister, Olivia, was actually better with the religious phraseology, but she lacked Violet's tone and sensitivity to the unspoken yearnings in the room, and often went on much longer than the occasion called for.

Business meetings were delicate matters. Drawing on traditions that dated back to high priests and kings of old, those possessing spiritual authority could sometimes be out of harmony with the authority of those who controlled the purse and made the laws under which spiritual power could be exercised. The tension between these two kinds of authority often surfaced in business meetings, in part because those with financial power often lacked subtlety in wielding it. They were awkward, blunt, and highly sensitive to criticism—particularly compared with Winnie, who had been practicing her form of social authority for more than fifteen years.

Winnie knew her place, and on this occasion she sat sideways in the pew, in order to be able to make eye contact with everyone in the room. Jacob and August sat together in the middle of the second pew. As usual, August was the only person under thirty in the room. And Jacob looked so stiff and uncomfortable in his white shirt and green tie that his usually ruddy face appeared ghostly white. They were here in support of Winnie,
of course, but they did not sit next to her, in case something came up that demanded her full attention. On another level, this spatial separation also acknowledged that in church Winnie belonged as much to the rest of the congregation as she did to them.

The meeting had been stuck for several minutes on a single point of business. A steel floor jack had been used to temporarily support a section of the church while repairs were being made to the foundation. The jack had been borrowed by the Building and Grounds Committee from a relative of Abraham Johnson, a trustee, and it had disappeared sometime between last Thursday night and Saturday morning.

“What color was it?” Elizabeth Fitch asked from the second pew.

“It was red,” said Abe Johnson. “Tall and red, with a black ratchet arm, in perfect condition.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “No, I don't remember seeing a red one.”

Violet Brasso laughed briefly, trying to free some of the nervousness in the room. Abe Johnson was very upset about his relative's missing jack, and everyone knew he believed that Oskar Hamilton—or someone in his family, in any case—had taken it. The two men owned large farms on opposite sides of Words, and their mutual distrust sometimes spilled over into open hostility. Both contributed heavily to the church, and together they provided more than two-thirds of the annual thirty-thousand-dollar budget. Their wives also attended nearly every official church function, and were well known in the wider community.

“Did you see a floor jack of some other color?” Violet asked Elizabeth.

“No, I didn't,” replied Elizabeth. “I just thought the color might jog something loose.”

“Well, someone took it,” said Abe Johnson. “Jacks don't just walk away by themselves.”

“How much is a jack worth, anyway?” asked Rita Fry. She was knitting a red and green scarf for one of her grandchildren.

“It's not just a matter of money,” said Abe Johnson. “It's a matter of trust.”

“No one said anything about the jack being stolen,” said Oskar Hamilton.

“I did,” said Abe Johnson. “I said it and I'll say it again—someone stole that jack.”

“Maybe a better word would be
misplaced
,” suggested Florence Fitch, not looking up from her folded hands.

“Not if it was stolen,” said Abe Johnson. “If it was stolen then the right word is
stolen
.”

Olivia Brasso stared at her lined tablet and wondered how much of this she should be writing down. Keeping minutes involved a great deal of diplomacy. Records were kept to be read in the future, when the people participating in the meetings often did not want to remember what they had actually said at the time. And so it was important to preserve the facts in a way that erased the uncomfortable details and favorably represented the church body as a whole to any outsider who might find reason to read them.

“Has the Building and Grounds Committee . . . conducted a formal search . . . for the jack?” asked Oskar Hamilton with halting solemnity.

“No, we have not,” said Ardith Stanley, that committee's chairperson.

“I've conducted a search,” said Abe Johnson, his voice rising, “and it's not there.”

Winnie felt awful when members of her congregation argued with each other. Discord of any kind reflected badly on her leadership. Personal animosities did not belong in church, and to keep them out pastors were brought in from outside the community. Unencumbered by family ties and longstanding feuds between members, incoming pastors were like houseguests. Simply dressing up wasn't enough, though tonight Winnie wondered if some kind of dress code for business meetings might help. She had noticed over the years that when people dressed up, it had a pronounced influence on the way they acted; partly for that reason, Sunday mornings were always the best times for getting along.

The pastor was the glue that kept this little community together, and a great deal of Winnie's time was spent gluing. This part of her job was so important, in fact, that she could never allow herself to become friends with anyone—not in a close, personal sense—because it could lead to perceptions of favoritism. In practical terms, this meant she hardly ever spent time with anyone she actually liked. She had support, but no friends in the group.

“There's a floor jack in the shop,” said Jacob. “I'd be glad to bring it over.”

An uncomfortable hush settled over the meeting. As a general rule,
Jacob's suggestions were seldom acted upon. This had concerned Winnie for many years, until she finally understood that it had nothing to do with Jacob and everything to do with her. The spouses of male pastors didn't have this difficulty; in fact, the “pastor's wife” had become nearly a cliché of social utility within rural communities, her script written and rewritten over hundreds of years by earlier wives of ministers. But no similar tradition existed for the “pastor's husband,” and so no one knew what to expect from him.

It wasn't that the congregation did not approve of Jacob, it was that they didn't know how to go about doing it. They'd deliberated long and hard before calling a woman “pastor,” weighed the drawbacks and benefits. Over the years since taking that step, they had ironed out most of the wrinkles, and successfully adjusted to the still-somewhat-unusual situation. But then Jacob came along, and for some reason this hurdle couldn't be cleared, or at least it hadn't been yet. The congregation could understand why a woman might want to aspire to a position that had formerly been reserved for men; what they couldn't understand was why a man would want to marry such a woman, and how to fit that circumstance within the traditions of the church.

“That's reasonable,” said Violet hopefully.

“What color is it?” asked Elizabeth.

“Gray,” said Jacob.

“With a green handle,” added August.

After thinking about it for as long as he could, Abe Johnson dismissed the notion that his anger could be appeased by agreeing to let Jacob bring in another jack from his shop. He initially wanted to say that the substitute jack would not be of comparable value to the one borrowed from his cousin. But because he didn't know this for sure, he refrained. He deliberated about it for several seconds longer, and finally took a less compromising path.

“This isn't about a jack,” he said, staring at Oskar Hamilton. “This is about a thief.”

Oskar Hamilton slowly folded his notes on the table, pushed them away from him, and began to get up.

At that point Winnie rose to her feet and walked between the table and the front pew. She climbed onto the elevated area in front, took a
Bible from the pulpit, and opened it before coming down again and resuming her position between the table and front pew. She turned to Abe Johnson and looked at him for a long time. Eventually he was reminded of when his teenage daughter had not returned home from school one evening. Winnie had gone over and wept and prayed with him and his wife until three o' clock in the morning, waiting for the police to call or drive into the farmyard with the dreaded news. When his daughter had finally come home, vomiting from her first drinking binge, Winnie convinced Abe that beating her half to death might not be the most reasonable way of expressing his gratitude for her return. In fact, she conveyed, it might endanger his future relationship with her and her mother, who was still crying hysterically in the other room. Then Winnie walked with him around the farmyard for an hour as he calmed down.