The Soprano Wore Falsettos (16 page)

Lynn continued narrating. “Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them.”

“The rabble could have used a little rehearsal,” said Meg, under her breath.

“I notice that
you
didn’t yell ‘Crucify him,’” whispered Georgia.

“I’m sorry. I don’t yell in church,” said Meg, sweetly. “You didn’t yell either.”

“I had a tickle in my throat,” said Georgia.

“I think that Marjorie yelled,” said Bev, looking over to the tenor section. “At least once.”

“I think that’s because she fell out of her chair and woke up,” Meg said.

“Be quiet,” I whispered, “and stand up for the next hymn.”

• • •

“The gifts of God for the people of God,” said Father George. “Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

“This story’s pretty good, and by that I mean really bad,” said Rebecca as she stood up to go downstairs. “You might just win this year.” I smiled and nodded. This was high praise from a librarian.

“Are you going down for communion?” whispered Meg.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Tonight, I’ll just play. I’ll come back tomorrow when the electric shoe polishers are finished whirring.”

Our anthem during the offertory had gone very well, and Brenda had given the congregation instruction and their spiritual motivation for having their shoes polished. I looked down from the balcony before I began my variations on
Herzliebster Jesu
. There were two ushers standing like soldiers behind the electric shoe polishers in case anyone needed help, but Elaine had told me that the shoe polishers were automatic. You just put your foot under the black, fuzzy roller, triggered the switch, and the apparatus went into action. I could play a couple of stanzas before I had to pay attention to the score, so I kept shifting my gaze back and forth between the front of the church and the music that was in front of me. As was our custom, the whole choir had gone downstairs to receive communion first, before heading back to the choir loft to lead the post-communion hymn.

I immediately saw that there were a couple of major flaws in Brenda’s plan. Firstly, the electric shoe polishers were not silent. They sounded like two high-powered hair dryers. It was pointless for me to play anything with all that racket going on, and by the end of stanza two, I pushed the organ up to warp five.

Secondly, there was really no option for people
not
to have their shoes shined. They received communion, stood up, and were herded automatically into the shoe-shining line.

Thirdly (and this was unfortunate), there was no way for anyone to tell when his or her shoes were finished. The polisher kept going as long as there was a shoe underneath it, so, where as communion usually takes all of thirty seconds per person, shoe shining took a minute or more. Before long, the line wound all the way around the church, and I could now hear the shoe-ushers shouting and herding the customers over the noise. But I was just the reserve backup substitute organist, and I launched into another variation with gusto.

“Look at this!” hissed Meg, thrusting a shapely leg in my direction, as the sopranos made their way back into the loft. “Just look at this!”

I looked down at what had once been a pair of red high-heels. The toes of the shoes were now black.

“They’re ruined! Those idiots didn’t even get new buffers! They still have black polish all over them! And it was too dark to see.”

“Oh my,” I said, not daring to smile. I looked at the rest of the ladies coming back into the loft. Each and every one of them had black toes except for Georgia who, thanks to a stroke of luck, had worn black shoes to the service.

“What a tragic development,” I gulped, trying to keep the tears back. It was no use. I kept playing as I stuffed my handkerchief in my mouth, snorts of laughter, I’m pretty sure, coming out of my ears.

Renee Tatton glared at me with the eyes of a snake. “These shoes cost four hundred dollars,” she spat. “Who’s going to pay for these?’

I could only shrug my shoulders and shake with what I hoped was silent merriment.

“Okay, Hayden. This is not funny!” Bev said, holding up her pumps, one light-brown and one now two-toned. Mark cackled, and the rest of the men, who, by this time, had joined us in the loft, started laughing as well. The shoe polishers were still making enough noise to wake the real St. Barnabas, and I pulled another couple of stops on the organ and opened the swell box just to keep up.

Marjorie was the last one up. She walked up beside me and looked down at her feet. I followed her gaze and howled with laughter. Marjorie had one white sandal and one black foot. Now, even the women started to giggle, and in three beats everyone in the choir loft was snorting into their hymnals.

“I don’t know what’s so funny,” said Marjorie. “Next time, I’m not waking up.”

• • •

The shoe-polishing service had finally finished up, the altar had been stripped and we had all sung
Were You There
in semi-darkness. This was, traditionally, where the Maundy Thursday Service at St. Barnabas ended. The congregation usually left in silence to return again on Easter morning. Father George held a Good Friday service as well, but there was no organ playing involved. The organ fell silent after the second verse of
Were You There
— the third being sung unaccompanied — and wasn’t heard again until Sunday.

Tonight, however, we still had the “Nailing Service” to finish. Father George got up to make the announcement.

“It will be very meaningful,” he began, using a word that had become less and less “meaningful” as this service wore on, “if all of you will find the purple post-it-note in your bulletin and write down one sin that you have committed in the past week. Then we’re going to take them to the altar and nail them to the cross. When we come back on Easter, our sins will be removed and replaced by flowers. What a perfect metaphor for what Jesus has done for us.”

“Now, as the organ plays softly, please come forward and give your sins to Jesus Christ. After you’ve nailed your sin to the cross, please go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

That was my cue. I had flipped the hymnal open to the Holy Week section and began to play as the choir jotted their sins on their pieces of paper and, as they finished, made their way down the stairs.

I was halfway through the first hymn when the first sin was nailed up.

KA-THWAACK! went the nail-gun. KA-THWAACK! KA-THWAACK!

I glanced down to see the nail-gun being passed from one person to the next as they tacked their sins to the big wooden cross that St. Barnabas brought out once a year. At least, I thought, Brenda had the good sense not to use a nail-gun that needed an air compressor. This one was self-contained. I looked at the bright-orange contraption as closely as I could from up in the balcony. The Altar Guild had decorated it with some thorns interspersed with purple ribbon. There was also someone (I couldn’t see who) helping folks with the nailing. A carpenter, I hoped.

KA-THWAACK! went the nail-gun again. KA-THWAACK!

KA-THWAACK! KA-THWAACK!

I started into another hymn. This was going to take a while.

When I survey the wondrous cross,
KA-THWAACK!
On which the prince of Glory died;
KA-THWAACK!
My richest gain
KA-THWAACK
! I count but loss,
KA-THWAACK! KA-THWAACK!
And pour contempt on
KA-THWAACK!
all my
pride.

Chapter 16

“
Where are we going?” I asked Pedro, not really caring.

“
A new dive just opened up across from St. Gertrude’s. It sounds like our kind of place. Good looking beer-fräuleins in tight shirts, lots of German brews, and Baroque organ music from a three-manual Flentrop with a sixteen-foot heckelphone you can really hang your hat on.”

“
Sounds sweet,” I agreed, suddenly interested. “What’s this place called?”

“
Buxtehooters.”

• • •

“Buxtehooters! You’re going to get it for that one,” said Meg.

“It’s brilliant,” I said. “A new pinnacle in my writing career. I don’t know how I do it.”

“Neither do I,” said Meg. “But the more important question is,
why
you do it?”

I ignored the barb. “Hey!” I said, changing the subject as neatly as a Democrat in a tax debate. “Do you want to go to the grand opening of Noylene’s Beautifery?”

“Noylene’s what?”

“Noylene’s Beautifery. She’s opening her shop tomorrow.”

“I just have two questions. Do we have to get our hair styled and is ‘Beautifery’ actually a word?”

“The answer to both questions is ‘I don’t think so.’ We may get some coupons for haircuts at a later date. But Skeeter says there will be balloons and pie.”

“What kind of pie?” asked a suspicious Meg.

“Does it matter?”

• • •

I had decided to start exercising. My decision wasn’t based on the thought of a future in expando-pants, but rather a realization that I wasn’t getting any younger, and if I was going to keep some semblance of my current non-pear shape, while still eating copious amounts of pie and Belgian Waffles, I’d better do something about it. So, after much procrastination, I’d begun jogging a couple of miles every morning. At least I told myself it was a couple of miles. It was probably closer to a mile and a half. Friday morning, I had already finished my run, taken a shower, and was having my second cup of coffee when the phone rang.

“Hayden,” someone whispered. I realized it was Marilyn. “Hayden, you’d better get in here.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Just come in as quickly as you can.” The click on the other end was abrupt and final.

“Well, that was cryptic,” I said to Baxter, as I gave him a biscuit. He wagged his tail in appreciation and walked to the door to be let out for a full day of chasing squirrels, beavers or whatever else crossed his path.

“Didn’t you think that was cryptic?” I yelled after him, as he bounded away. “Well,
I
thought so,” I said to myself. I grabbed my coat, locked the door to the house and climbed into my truck. It was still cold out, but the snow had stopped, leaving a couple of inches of slush on the ground. I slipped my new recording of Monteverdi’s
1610 Vespers Service
into the CD player, turned it up, dropped the truck into four-wheel drive and headed toward St. Barnabas Church.

• • •

“Thank goodness you’re here,” whispered Marilyn. “Let’s go into the kitchen and get a cup of coffee.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I just…”

“Come…into…the…kitchen,” she repeated, this time accompanied by “the look” and a nod toward Father George’s closed office door. I’d seen “the look” enough times in my life to know when something was up.

“Right. The kitchen.” I followed her down the corridor, through the parish hall and into the kitchen where we found a couple of mugs and filled them with coffee. I took a sip and poured it into the sink.

“I see Father George is still buying the cheap stuff,” I said.

“You get used to it after a while,” said Marilyn. “Now pay attention. I came in this morning at eight o’clock.”

“Yeah?”

“And there was a manila folder sitting on my desk. I opened it up. It was full of post-it-notes.”

“From the service last night?”

“That’s what I thought. Extras. But they weren’t. They were the ones that were nailed to the cross.”

“Brenda must have taken them all off after the service,” I said. “We have a Good Friday liturgy at noon. Maybe she didn’t want to come in this morning and clean up, so she did it last night. It would be pretty unsightly to have all those notes nailed up for today’s service.”

“I thought so, too. But that’s not why I called you.”

“Then why?”

“I pulled the notes out of the envelope. I…umm…thought it would be good to straighten them up.”

“Marilyn!” I laughed. “You just wanted to read those people’s sins.”

“I did not! I just thought that I’d give them to Father George and…and…oh, fine,” she admitted. “Well, who wouldn’t? I admit it.”

“I’ll bet Brenda didn’t read them,” I said. “She’s a better person than that. More scruples.”

“She probably didn’t have time,” sniffed Marilyn.

“That could be the another reason,” I said. “Anything good in there?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. There was quite a lot of juicy stuff. All unsigned, of course.”

“Of course. But you recognized some handwriting? Had some unsubstantiated rumors confirmed?”

“Of course,” Marilyn said. “But that’s not why I called you. One of the notes that I happened to see while I was straightening them out…”