The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) (3 page)

Read The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) Online

Authors: Mark Schweizer

"These days, some people use dogs," I said. "The dogs don't eat the truffles they find."

"Too slow," said Pete, dismissing the idea. "A pig is faster and has a better nose. She can smell truffles three feet under the ground. Don't worry. I can keep her from eating the merchandise."

"Why a her?" asked Cynthia. "Can't you use a boy pig?"

"Nope," said Pete. "Has to be a sow. I've done the research. A girl pig is attracted to the smell, because a truffle smells like a boar's sex hormones."

"Eeew," said Meg. She stopped eating and stared at her half-eaten piece of pizza with a look of dismay.

I took it from her hand. "Are you telling us all this for a reason?" I asked, before finishing the remains in a single bite.

"I want to know if you guys want to invest," said Pete.

"You're buying a pig?" asked Cynthia, surprised. I suspected that this was the first she was hearing of it.

"
We're
buying a pig, honey," said Pete.

"Don't you 'honey' me!" said Cynthia. "I don't want a pig."

"Too late," said Pete. "She's on the way."

"On the way from where?" asked Nancy.

"From France, of course," said Pete. "Gascony."

"How much does this imported pig cost?"demanded Cynthia.

"She's highly trained," explained Pete. "She has one of the highest truffle ratings in France."

"Truffle rating?" said Meg with a giggle.

Cynthia narrowed her eyes. "How much?" she repeated.

"Umm ..." said Pete. "Did I mention her pedigree? She is a full-blooded Mangalitsa, a breed originally from Hungary, but now ..."

"Pete ..." warned Cynthia.

"With the shipping, six thousand."

"Dollars!?"
screeched Cynthia.

"She'll pay for herself in no time," said Pete. "Really." He picked up the last slice of pizza and took a big bite.

"I'm in," I said.

Meg stared at me.

"What?" I said to her, splaying my hands. "I've always wanted to invest in a truffle-pig. It's been a lifelong dream of mine."

"Mine, too," said Nancy. "Count me in. If we don't find any truffles, at least we can have bacon."

Chapter 2

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church is a place where miracles occur, if not with regularity, at least every few decades or so. The church had been founded in either 1842 or 1846, depending on which faction you believed — the Winslow Coterie or the Entriken Cabal. Actual records don't exist any longer for reasons that will soon be made clear.

Two of the matriarchs of St. Barnabas are Wynette Winslow and Mattie Lou Entriken, both now in their seventies, and, although they have been fast friends since childhood, they have differing narratives as to the founding of St. B.. They are both lifelong members of the parish, as were their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before them. In matters of church history, their collective memories are relied on almost exclusively, and in almost all cases their chronicles tended to jibe remarkably well. Except when it concerns this one thing.

Wynette Winslow and her coterie have held that the church was founded by Father Alastair Crawly in 1842. She has made this assertion because she had in her possession a letter that had been passed down through her family, a letter written to her great-grandmother by the very same Alastair Crawly who, in 1862, had been captured by the Union forces in Virginia and sent to Alton Prison in Illinois. In this prison letter, explains Wynette, Alastair Crawly declares his longing to return to his beloved town and "take up the reins of that great work so eagerly begun those two decades past."

For Wynette, the math is simple. 1862 minus two decades puts the founding date at 1842. This, and the avowed attestation by her sainted forebears, is enough for Wynette.

There are three problems, according to the pundits, with Wynette's dating of the founding using the aforementioned correspondence. The first is that Alastair's "great work" written about in the letter didn't actually mention St. Barnabas Church. Therefore, the reference might be to his fledgling ministry, with the actual founding of the church to have occurred later. Secondly, "two decades," although specific in one sense (the meaning to be taken as exactly twenty years), is vague in another. "Two decades" could be easily be construed to mean "about twenty years, give or take a few on either side."

The final problem is that there is no letter. No letter she can produce anyway. Wynette lost it or misplaced it, but she is adamant about the contents.

Mattie Lou Entriken (as well as the rest of the Entriken Cabal) dismisses Wynette's great-grandmother as a floozy who was always trying to cause trouble. She can say this with certainty because Father Crawly was Mattie Lou's grandmother's uncle and Mattie Lou's Grandma Gertie had said that Wynette's distant relative, known to the Entriken clan as "Betty the Blue Ridge Bombshell," had no business writing letters to a married man whether he was in prison or not.

Mattie Lou's proof consists of a printed bulletin from 1896 that advertised, in the "announcement" section, a need for firewood, a plea for prayers concerning Arthur Ackerman's cow, and an announcement about the upcoming celebration of the Golden Jubilee. Mattie Lou's math is as exact as Wynette's, setting the founding date for the congregation as "St. Barnabas Day, 1846." Unfortunately, her proof has the same drawback as Wynette's. That is, it can no longer be found.

"It's here somewhere," said Mattie Lou. "When I'm dead, y'all can go through all this stuff and find it if you want."

Adding to the problem was the fact that Wynette's mother and the Winslow Coterie were in charge of planning the centennial celebration, and so the church commemorated the event in May, 1942. The sesquicentennial followed in 1992. This cemented the 1842 date.

All bickering aside, clearly the community of St. Barnabas formed just about the time that St. Germaine itself became a township. The old wooden church survived the Civil War, when many of the town's buildings did not, by serving as headquarters for Colonel George Washington Kirk. Kirk had been charged with holding the mountain passes of Deep Gap and Watauga Gap for General George Stoneman as he marched through North Carolina in March of 1865. Although Kirk's men were Union sympathizers from the area, both they and Stoneman's soldiers had little regard for the locals and engaged in stealing, general destruction of property, killing animals, burning buildings, and destroying all courthouse records. The church building was spared for another thirty-four years.

In January, 1899, the first of our legendary miracles occurred when the church caught fire. The miracle wasn't that the church didn't burn to the ground. It did. The miracle wasn't that no one was hurt, although no one was. The miracle (verified by a photograph!) was that when the congregation showed up on the lawn on that frigid Sunday morning after the Saturday night fire, their despair changed to wonder as they gathered around the altar of St. Barnabas — a six hundred pound oaken altar with a marble top that should have been destroyed in the flames, but was instead sitting outside in the snow, across the street in the park, the communion elements all in their place. The episode was credited to the work of angels.

It was this altar that became the centerpiece of the new church building this time made of stone and mortar instead of pine clapboard, and based on the familiar American design.

The church was in the shape of a cross. The main part of the church, or the nave, was filled with pews on either side of a center aisle. The transepts formed the arms of the cross and contained pews as well, these facing inward. The altar was in the front. Over the years it had moved from where it stood against the front wall in the days when the priests celebrated with their backs to the congregation, to a few yards beyond the chancel steps, as the church rethought its liturgy and the priests offered the Great Thanksgiving facing their flocks. The choir loft was in the back balcony, accessible by steps found in the narthex, known by other denominations (and motels) as "the foyer." Two hidden doors in the front paneling offered access to the sacristy — the room where the clergy put on their vestments and where communion was prepared. The pews could accommodate about two hundred fifty worshippers.

It was a lovely church.

It burned to the ground on Thanksgiving weekend four years ago.

The fire began during a Thanksgiving Pageant and again, a miracle occurred. Two miracles, actually. The first was thanks to the St. Germaine Volunteer Fire Department. This time it truly
was
a miracle that no one was hurt, since the church was packed with people. Against all odds, the volunteers made sure everyone was out of the building and contained the fire to the church building itself, even though there were many other structures in the immediate vicinity. Most of the congregation — in fact, the entire town — watched in horror and deep sadness as the building was consumed and fell inward in a conflagration of flames, sparks and smoke.

Rising out of this chaotic scene was the second miracle of the night, the one that the town still talks about and the one that made all the papers. On the morning after the fire it was discovered that while everyone was occupied with the bedlam that was the town square, the altar of St. Barnabas — the same holy table that had been part of the church since the beginning — had once again been moved from the burning building into the park across the street. When the congregation gathered the next morning, intent on having a service of thanksgiving, they found the altar amongst the fallen leaves, the communion bread and the wine right where they were expected to be.

The rebuilding of St. Barnabas took a little over a year and a half. The new building was a copy of the old, even down to the stone that had been ordered from the same quarry as the turn-of-the-century structure. The grounds were expanded to include a meditation garden in the back and, although some differences had been made in the office area, by and large, members of the church in 1950 would have recognized the St. Barnabas they knew without any trouble.

During the past twenty-two years that I've lived in St. Germaine, St. Barnabas Church has enjoyed the ministries of more than a few clergy and lay persons, including thirteen priests, full-time, part-time, and interim. I, myself, have not enjoyed them all. As in any working environment, I've had great friendships with several of them, a good working relationship with a few, an uneasy truce with two or three more, and a tooth-grinding tolerance of the rest. Over the years, though, I've learned to keep my head down and stay out of their way.

I've been the part-time organist and choir director since I moved to town. I found myself in St. Germaine thanks to my college friend and roommate, Pete Moss, who at the time was the mayor. The town was looking for a police chief, and my master's degree in criminal justice and administration was just the ticket. I also have a master's in musical composition from UNC Chapel Hill, and that, paired with certain organ performance skills, landed me the position at St. Barnabas almost immediately. I marry the two professions by keeping a J.S. Bach organ score in my office at the police station and a Glock 9 mm in the organ bench. I find it handy in keeping the tenors in tune.

As the organist and choir director, I'm invited to all the staff meetings. As the police chief, I've been in the habit of politely declining. When Gaylen Weatherall was the rector, I did manage to get to three meetings a month. When she left us to become the Bishop of the Diocese of Northern California, I scaled back my involvement in worship planning, leaving it to those full-time staff members and the Worship Committee. I still picked the hymns and chose the music for the service, but, as far as the other aspects of the service were concerned, well, I left that to the other parties.

When Gaylen had prevailed upon Meg to take the position of the Senior Warden, Meg had done so willingly and executed the office with aplomb and capability. She'd been reelected a couple of times, but when the Rt. Rev. Weatherall took her leave, Meg retired from the position and from the vestry. When Meg retired, so did my regular attendance at worship meetings.

Now, two interim priests and a year and a half later, the church had called a new priest to be the rector of St. Barnabas. I hadn't had anything to do with the process, and neither had Meg. We'd spoken to the candidate, of course, and I had a meeting with her when she came in to interview, but, really, I knew nothing about her other than what her curriculum vitae indicated.