A Rhinestone Button

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  “It was a woman from Edmonton,” said Ruth. “He met her through ‘Loveline.’ The radio show.”

  “We’re talking about Debbie?” said Will.

  “ ‘Loveline’?” said Annie. “Really? Are you going to see her again?”

  “No,” said Job.

  “So, this girl wasn’t your type?” asked Mrs. Schultz.

  “More like I wasn’t her type,” said Job. He glanced at Jerry.

  Will wrapped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed. “Ah, well,” he said.

  Job jerked away as Penny joined them. Pretty in a lace-collared blouse, red pleated skirt. Hair pulled back with red barrettes. Annie and Mrs. Schultz withdrew as Penny took Job’s arm, and went back to refilling plates, fussing with arrangements.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Will.

  “Nothing,” said Job.

  “He’s pissed with me,” said Jerry. The hair on his scalp was flattened from his cowboy hat. He lifted his cup as if proposing a toast. “Job, the, ah, Lord laid what happened with Debbie upon my heart.”

  Job cast a sorrowful look to the floor, but was pleased. Jerry felt guilty.

  “I never should have gone off with Debbie like that.”

  Penny pulled Job close. “You ran off with Job’s date?” she said.

  Job leaned into Penny. The warmth of her arm. The smell of baby powder. “It was a pretty crappy thing to do,” he said.

  Jerry lifted his chin, drank his coffee. “She was cuter than her picture. Anyway, she said we were soulmates.”

  “So you’re going out with her?” said Will.

  “She’s staying out at my cabin.”

  Job lowered his voice. “You’re living with her? You’re backsliding?”

  “It’s just a little holiday, that’s all.”

  Job felt a hand on his shoulder. Jacob. “Got somebody for you to meet.”

  Jacob led him over to a large man dressed in a dark blue, wide-shouldered suit and striped tie. A wave of grey-streaked hair swept from his right temple over the top of his head to his left, and was held in place with hairspray. Men in Godsfinger accepted their hair loss as a right of passage—“Grass don’t grow on a busy street,” his father had said of his own baldness—and if they felt it necessary to hide it, they wore the baseball caps the salesmen had left them.

  Jacob put a hand on the man’s arm. “Jack, this is my brother, Job. Job, this is Pastor Divine.”

  Pastor Divine shook Job’s hand. His wedding band and the gold rings he wore on both pinkies were large and square. Nails buffed to a shine. “Jack. Call me Jack.” A million-dollar smile like a crop-insurance salesman paying a visit to the farm. A practised voice, oily and smooth.

  “Jack may have a solution to our problem at the farm,” said Jacob. He patted Job’s arm. “Excuse me, Jack. I’ll let you and Job talk. I’ve got to get things set up at the podium.”

  “Sure, sure.” He turned to Job. “Jacob’s done nothing but talk about you since I got here. What a skilled farmer you are, how well you’d fit into my ministry.”

  “Me?”

  “I’ve been running this ongoing campaign from my church. Workshops on how to evangelize with the Holy Spirit. The men and women I train go out and evangelize on the streets. The problem is, our campaign has been too successful. We’ve got all these new converts coming to my church, but they drift away after a few weeks because there’s nothing for them. We had fourteen converts in the last campaign. Rod here is the only one still with the church.” He pointed at a young man in a Hawaiian shirt, eating from his paper plate hand over fist. “I’ve got him sleeping on a cot in my basement. We need a place where we can isolate men like him from temptation.”

  Rod turned and caught Job looking at him. He winked.

  “Jacob says you’ve got something of a situation on your farm,” said Pastor Divine. “That you might have to sell the family farm.”

  “You want to buy my farm?”

  “No, no. Jacob and I were thinking of a different kind of arrangement. I’m overloaded with work as it is. I can’t take my campaign to the next level. I need someone like Jacob to do that. I’ve offered him a job. To head up the project.”

  “What project?”

  “To build a halfway house. A place for our converts to get to know the Lord, get back on their feet. A kind of church camp for adults. That is, if you’re willing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We want to put the halfway house on your farm.”

  Job took a step back. “Oh, I don’t know.” He had never given handouts to the homeless men and women he’d passed on Edmonton streets. He was afraid of being taken advantage of, or laughed at. They seemed world-wise in a way that he wasn’t. Like the ragged man in his forties with a beard and a golden retriever carrying a backpack. The man muttered as Job passed, “Wolf got my dog pregnant.”

  “What?” said Job.

  “Spare some change?”

  Pastor Divine waved a hand. His rings flashing. “We’d start small at first. Put up just one building that would serve as a bunkhouse, kitchen, meeting place. Later, as we put more buildings up, that first building could serve as a mess hall and meeting place. We can finance it with donations and use volunteer labour. Have work bees on the weekend. Make it fun. Get members of my church and maybe some of your locals involved. Make them feel a part of things. Once things are up and running, those converts who come to stay will be working on the farm, as part of their rehabilitation.”

  “Jacob’s agreed to all this?”

  “He’s taken the job as project manager. But of course everything, even his job, hinges on you agreeing to the plan. But don’t feel you have to commit to anything right away. All I’m asking is that you give it some thought. But consider this: if you agree to participate in the project, you won’t have to sell the family farm or buy out Jacob, and you’ll be getting free labour. Free labour! It’s a farmer’s dream.” He reached into a pocket, slapped a promotional pamphlet for his workshops into Job’s hand. “Just think it over. In the meantime, I run a workshop every couple of months on how to evangelize with the Holy Spirit. Why not come to the next one?”

  “I’m right in the middle of field work.”

  “Well, at least come to one of my services. Check us out. See what we’re about.”

  Penny took Job’s arm. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “This is Penny Blust. Pastor Divine.”

  “Penny, is it?” He pulled a pamphlet from his jacket. “I’m running some workshops you might be interested in.”

  Jacob wandered over to Job as Divine walked off with Penny. “Well, what do you think?” said Jacob. “Isn’t he great? A real character.”

  “Why’d you tell him we were interested in that halfway house idea? I don’t want a bunch of strangers on my farm.”

  “Our farm. Anyway it’s just something to think about. I’ve got to find some way to make an income. Speaking of which, you got any cash on you?”

  “Just a fifty.”

  “Great.”

  “It’s all I’ve got on me.”

  “You know I’ll get it back to you.”

  But he hadn’t paid back Job for the station wagon, or the two hundred he’d borrowed nearly five years earlier.

  “What’s it for?”

  “Tonight’s offering.”

  “You don’t need that much, do you?”

  “It’s important that I appear to be behind Pastor Divine one hundred per cent.”

  Job opened his wallet and handed over the fifty as he pointed a chin at the drummer, guitarist and keyboardist testing out their equipment onstage. “Where’d the band come from?”

  “When Jack heard this wasn’t a charismatic church, he volunteered to bring a worship team down with him, to get things rolling. There’s the band, and then them.” He pointed at several women and men scattered around the room in pairs. A few of the men wore dress scarves around their necks and carried leather briefcases. They w
ouldn’t have stood out more if they had worn jesters’ caps.

  “Why aren’t they sitting together?”

  “So they just look like people interested in the revival. And it’s easier to get the crowd to respond if the worship team is dispersed throughout the church. It creates an atmosphere conducive to healing.”

  “Conducive to healing?

  Jacob nodded to the front of the church where Will sat with Penny and Barbara. “Will’s waving you over.”

  “Yeah, I see him.”

  “Aren’t you going to sit with him?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Guess I better get onstage. Showtime.”

  Job took a seat in the last pew, where the late people sat, and kept his eyes focused on the pamphlet Pastor Divine had given him. He felt a rustle and bump as someone sat down beside him. Dithy Spitzer, the front of her fluorescent vest spotted with bits of almond square. Job stared straight ahead, at Jacob and Jack Divine sitting on the platform behind the pulpit. The two men guffawed at some joke between them, knowing they were watched by everyone in the room and making a show of it, confidence like a rash on their faces. Pastor Henschell sat in a chair beside them, hugging his King James, smiling as if he had heard the joke.

  “Did I tell you I haven’t drank a cup of coffee in fifteen years?” said Dithy. “You drink coffee? Bad for the nerves. You’re nervous, aren’t you?” When he didn’t reply, she said, “God told me, ‘Talk to that young Job. Tell him he’s got to get out more.’ When was the last time you went anywhere?”

  Job had in fact left Alberta only once, for a cattle show in Denver, on invitation from Hanke Bullick, a barrel-chested, red-faced silverback who owned the feedlot that sat directly behind Main Street. He had thumped his chest in the Sunstrum kitchen with Job’s father over the issue of gun control, and come fall he liked nothing better than to take a case of beer and his rifle out to neighbouring farms to pick off deer. He was heading down to Denver without the wife and saw in Job a gift for keeping his mouth shut. He took Job to a hockey game the second night in Denver and handed him a beer, then another, then a third.

  Job accepted the beer as it seemed best not to refuse Hanke anything. To say no was to ask for confrontation. Besides, even Abe had encouraged Job to at least try a beer. Seeing an unhealthy tendency to extremism in his son, Abe had quoted Ecclesiastes to him. “Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise—why destroy yourself?”

  With each drink the colours he heard just kept getting brighter and brighter. The slashing sticks, the hissing skates and the crowd’s roar created a pool of sound showered with rings of golds and blues, reds and yellows that he sank into, rose from and sank into again, losing his sense of self to them. It felt good at first, much like standing with the Sunday congregation, listening to a hymn. The alcohol took away the edge of anxiety that usually overwhelmed him in crowded places, in the city.

  The Americans played a dull game and offered an intermission show of twenty naked women—wearing nothing but skin-coloured skates and feather headdresses—skating in line. Job was horrified, couldn’t believe the spectacle, ran off to find an empty stall in the bathroom, where he kneeled and, leaning on the toilet, prayed for forgiveness at having seen this debauchery.

  Spying the back of Job’s shoes under the stall door, Bullick thought he was sick and drove him back to the hotel before intermission was over. “Got to teach you to drink,” he said, then left him to scrub the sin from his body in the shower.

  Job dreamed that night of naked women with feathers in their hair, dancing on the frozen waters of Hay Lake. They ran tiptoe on their skates across bright snow, giggled up the bank of the coulee as he chased them. He singled one out from the rest, as if culling a cow from the herd, and she became a horse, black flank shining in the sun as she ran up the snowy bank in front of him. Job scrambled through the snow and caragana of the coulee, struggling to keep up. He wanted her skin in his mouth. Once at the top, the mare stopped, offered her dark flanks to him. He jumped her, climbed her back, bit the base of her neck, pushed his penis into her and thrust and thrust.

  He woke abruptly, with the first spasm of orgasm. Grabbed the head of his penis at the sensitive line of his circumcision, pressing it against his body to stop himself from coming further, wincing as pain travelled up and down his penis. He could not stop the dreams, the confusing spasms that haunted his sleep, but he could stop the pleasure and inflict on himself this pain instead.

  Penny turned in her place next to Will, scanned the room, smiled when she found Job. She waved for him to come sit with them and then her smile fell. Job saw Liv making her way down the pew, her bracelets jangling on her wrists. Her broomstick skirt was transparent. He could see the yellow shorts she wore underneath, her sturdy legs. On her feet a pair of East Indian leather sandals. He shifted for her, bumping a hip up to Dithy Spitzer. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Oh, well. I thought I’d check things out, for a laugh.”

  “Where’s Jason? I thought he wanted to come.”

  “Darren had a run to Vancouver, so I asked him to drop Jason off at his grandma’s in the Shuswap. He’ll be staying there a couple of days. I needed a little time to sort things out.”

  She scrutinized the church, the white crossed windows, the unadorned wood panelling on the walls. “Kind of drab in here, isn’t it? Where’re the stained-glass windows?”

  Job looked around him, saw that Liv was right. Usually for him it was filled with the colours and shapes of voices, music, but other than the rough wooden cross made from two-by-fours that hung behind the pulpit, there was little in the room to demonstrate that this was a church. There was no altar to speak of; that would be too Catholic. The only spot of colour belonged to the orange of the pew seats. Stinky Steinke had weathered a shower of complaints from members over the hardness of the pews, but there wasn’t any money in the treasury for upholstery. So he stapled to the benches remnants of the orange shag carpet he’d pulled from his living-room floor.

  Liv took Job’s hand, held it on her lap. “I wanted to apologize about Jason’s behaviour, and I’m sorry I got grossed out about the mouse. I just didn’t grow up farming, that’s all. I’m not into killing things. I had a good time out in the field.”

  Job pulled his hand away, glanced at Penny. Will turned to see what Penny looked at and caught Job’s eye.

  Liv crossed her arms. “What?”

  “It’s just, not here,” he whispered.

  “Ah. I’m not acceptable?”

  Job glanced across the aisle. Elsie Hosegood was watching. “It’s just that you’re married.”

  “You want me to leave? You did invite me.”

  “No. Stay. Please stay. I just can’t be … affectionate here.” He looked to see if Penny was still watching. She was. So was Jacob. He scowled at Job, shook his head. Dithy patted Job’s knee, chewed and grinned, winked.

  “I’ll be good,” said Liv. She sat straight like a child in a junior-church chair.

  “I had a good time too,” Job whispered. “In the field.”

  “You’re not going to blow your nose like that again?”

  “Not here.” He pulled a red cloth hanky from his pants pocket and tucked it back in.

  Jacob rose, and without making an introduction, slipped a sheet into the overhead projector, and got them standing and singing a series of unfamiliar songs.

  Liv sang along, keeping an alto harmony. Rings the purple of heliotrope. Though faded, transparent, like the voices of the others. Job cocked his head in case his ear still held water from his shower, dampening his hearing. At the end of the first song he whispered, “I didn’t know you could sing.”

  Liv grinned. “It comes back to you. Church choir.”

  “Church?” said Job, surprised.

  “United.”

  “Ah,” said Job. This explained everything.

  The worship team worked themselves up in the process of trying to work up the crowd. Hands in the air, try
ing to touch the Almighty. A few bobbing from the waist, as if greeting an important Japanese businessman, chattering a steady stream of gobbledygook punctuated intermittently with “Yes Jesus, thank you Jesus.”

  Liv leaned against Job, smelling of orange, her hot breath thrilling his neck as she whispered, “You think deaf people ever speak in tongues?” Nearly an hour of singing later, she asked, “Do you always sing this much?”

  “No. I think Jacob’s trying to create an atmosphere conducive to healing.”

  “Conducive to healing? He’ll have us hallucinating from exhaustion if this goes on much longer. Half the congregation has sat down.”

  The more elderly members of the church had taken their seats, including the usually enthusiastic Harry Kuss, Jerry’s dad. Born again when he was ten and cleansed in the blood of the living Christ for nearly sixty years, Harry still found it necessary to rededicate himself to Christ each time a preacher made an altar call. Job’s father and others visiting in the Sunstrum kitchen had often speculated that Harry was carrying a monkey on his back, that he was hagridden by a sin that had haunted him ever since his wife had gone off the deep end and had to be institutionalized at Ponoka. He embarrassed everyone by holding up a hand when he sang, and held one up now, even as he sat.

  Job shifted his weight to his left foot to relieve a cramp. Dithy Spitzer, finally tiring, sat heavily in the pew beside him. Liv plopped herself down. Men and women visiting from Bountiful Harvest, Divine’s church, came and went to get coffee from the foyer and returned with their cups but without embarrassment, while members of Godsfinger Church shifted in the pews in agony, praying for the service to come to an end so they could use the washroom.

  But the singing went on. Job found himself swaying and fought the urge to hold a hand up in praise. He did hold a hand up, just above waist level, to better see the faded rings of colour, the singing, projected against the skin of his hand. Until he saw Annie Carlson watching him from across the aisle. She shook her head slightly, undoubtedly thinking Job was getting too caught up in the music, holding his hand up like a charismatic, about to embarrass himself. He put his hand down and held it there, and put up with faded colours projected against the grey suits of the men in the pews in front of him, their bald heads.