A Rhinestone Button

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  “Why are you getting jealous now? You knew I was still seeing Penny. You were living with me, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I thought it was just a cover, so the folks in Godsfinger wouldn’t get suspicious. That was what I kept telling myself, anyway.”

  “I told you straight up I wasn’t ready to give up on my relationship with Penny. I told you that when you moved in.”

  “Then you offered me a ring.”

  “You gave this man a ring?” said Pastor Divine.

  Ed held out his sun-darkened mitt and pointed at a thick gold band studded with a ruby. He twisted it to straighten it. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Meant the world to me. Now I don’t know if it means anything.”

  Job felt a hot shot, and wondered how he could be jealous. Did that mean he was gay? Will had never given him anything except those few frozen chickens, not even for his birthday.

  Barbara rummaged in a drawer for a clean dishrag, lifted the ceramic-chicken cookie jar from on top of the fridge and dusted it.

  “All right,” said Jack Divine. “I think I’ve heard enough. Will, have you got any interest in getting rid of these homosexual feelings?”

  “I’ve prayed to God every day to have them lifted. I’ve prayed that since I was a kid.”

  “It’s not just a matter of prayer. If you’ve got a hope in hell of beating this thing, you’re going to have to put in some hard work of your own. None of this is going to come easy.”

  “It’s natural,” said Ed. He turned to Job. “For God’s sake, you’ve seen your own bulls go at it with other bulls.”

  Job nodded grudgingly. If he was in the market for a bull, looking for a good breeder, he’d watch to see how often a bull rode others in the bull pen.

  “But bulls don’t think, they just act,” said Pastor Divine. “They’ve got no control over their urges.” He tapped his chest. “We do. God gave us minds. Choice. We can choose to sin. Or we can choose God’s way. Besides, just because something happens in the natural world doesn’t mean it’s right, or that we should accept it. Two-headed calves are natural. Earthquakes are natural. Cancer is natural.”

  “So you’re calling what I am a disease.”

  “In many ways it’s like alcoholism, isn’t it?” said Jacob. “It might be there are some born with a tendency towards it. I don’t think so, but it may be the case. But you’d hardly call alcoholism natural, and I don’t think anyone would argue that we should just accept alcoholism as a lifestyle.”

  The chicken head slid off the cookie jar, fell to the floor, smashed to pieces. “Shit,” said Barbara. She put the headless chicken back on the fridge, retrieved the broom and dustpan, swept, dropped the pieces into the garbage can.

  Divine tucked a finger under a tag on his Bible, flipped it open. “Will, it’s as simple as this: you continue in your homosexual behaviour and you will not be saved. It says right here, in 1 Corinthians 6: 9–10, ‘Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’ You’ll be in hell, with the thieves and alcoholics. Do you want that?”

  “No.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “But I’ve prayed. I’ve tried. I’d go months where I didn’t head to Edmonton, not for that, in any case. I’d feel like I was back on my walk with the Lord and the shame was gone. Then the urge would sort of build up and I’d find myself back in the bars, or at the park, and there were these men—”

  Pastor Divine closed the Bible, nodded. “And the guilt and shame start all over again. And you make promises to God. I know. I’ve seen it all before.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “You’re not going to listen to this nut?” said Ed.

  “I think I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” said Divine. He stood, put a hand on Ed’s shoulder.

  “Will?” said Ed.

  Will stared at the mobile of chickens flying over the table.

  “You can’t be serious,” said Ed.

  Will glanced at him, and then at his hands.

  “Fine.” Ed pulled the ruby ring from his finger, banged it on the table. “I hope you’re very happy with that little girl of yours.” He slammed the door behind him as he left the house.

  As Ed’s truck roared out of the yard, Barbara said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have gotten you counselling. We could have handled this privately.”

  “You threatened to kill yourself if I turned out to be gay.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You came out of the post office carrying a Good Housekeeping magazine with a headline that said something like ‘What if your child is gay?’ on the cover. You threw the magazine on the seat and said, ‘If my son was gay I’d shoot myself.’ I was fifteen and I knew I had feelings for men and could never say anything about it to anyone.”

  Pastor Divine led Will to the table. “You seem repentant, Will. That’s an important first step. Now, are you ready to admit you need Christ? Are you ready to admit you can’t make any changes without him, that you’re powerless without him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must confess your sin. It’s just like the Bible says. James 5:16. ‘Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.’ ”

  “I have confessed.”

  “You need to confess to God, to Penny, to the church. There can be no more secrets or you don’t have a hope in hell of healing. Do you understand?”

  Will nodded, played with the lip of the cookie plate.

  “I’ll leave it to Pastor Henschell to arrange things so you have a chance to stand before the church and confess your sin of homosexuality publicly.”

  “Is that really necessary?” said Pastor Henschell. “It’s seems cruel, spilling this out in front of everyone.”

  “Confession frees the sinner. There’s nothing Satan loves better than a secret. Once it’s all out on the table, Will’s got nothing to fear. He won’t be worrying about who knows and who doesn’t and can get down to the business of healing. Besides, with the whole church knowing, there’ll be more people watching that Will doesn’t fall. He’s going to need watchdogs.”

  Pastor Divine gripped Will’s wrist. “You can make a change, with God’s help. You’re going to have to submit to the authority of a spiritual adviser. In this case I suggest Jacob. As he’s got the time.”

  Jacob, pleased, smiled and reached for a ginger snap.

  “You’ll abide by his decisions on what television to watch, what to read, who to spend time with, where you can go and when. You’ll need a time of isolation, of focusing on the Lord. Barbara will have to help with that task, watching you every minute. Do you understand why that’s necessary?”

  “I guess.” He watched the duck bob and sway back into the kitchen. “Not really.”

  “You’re going to be tempted. Even if the Holy Spirit lifts temptation from you—and he’s fully capable of doing just that—if you slip from your daily practice of prayer and monitoring your unclean thoughts, then you can stray. Satan will be looking for a foothold, and before you know it you’ll be back cruising the parks. That temptation isn’t just going to go away. Jacob’s right. It’s just like the struggle of the alcoholic or the smoker or the glutton.”

  Jacob slowed his chewing, eyed his cookie, but went on eating.

  “You can’t keep anything from Jacob. He’ll call you on it. Barbara, you’ll have to hold Will accountable, keep track of where he’s going. Who he spends time with. What television he watches. Books he reads. You’ll have to be on guard so that he doesn’t spend time with old friends who might lead him astray.”

  Barbara glanced down at Job and sniffed. Found a chicken salt shaker to wipe.

  “It’s important that no matter how embarrassed you feel, you must keep
attending church,” said Jack. “You’ll need that fellowship, now more than ever.”

  “A lot of folks aren’t going to know what to make of this,” said Pastor Henschell.

  “It’ll be your job to teach them,” said Divine. “Will’s going to need compassion from the congregation. If he doesn’t get that, he’ll end up leaving the church and slipping into his old ways. I’ve seen it happen over and over.”

  The duck tugged at Will’s pant leg. Divine waved a hand at it. “And for heaven’s sake, get rid of that duck.”

  Barbara swooped up the mallard, ripped off the diaper, opened the screen door and flung the duck out into the night. Job watched through the window as the duck fluttered through the yellow spill of the yard light, falling and labouring like a fledgling, a white sticky tab from the diaper stuck to its behind.

  Ten

  Two coyotes ate crabapples among the yellow leaves that littered the grass under the tree outside Job’s cabin. Job watched them for a moment before tapping on the window. The coyotes looked up at him before trotting off.

  Above them, crows darkened the sky. The crows were normally independent birds, sitting on fence posts or on roads in ones or twos. Job would see three or four gathered if there was a feast to be found: someone’s carelessly tossed container of McDonald’s fries, or the remains of a gopher hit by a truck and lying sadly by the side of the road. But this day the crows were flocking. They flew over the drying hay in the field to land in the cottonwoods surrounding the house, cawing to one another, disappearing into the leaves. When Job went outside to watch them, to listen to their coarse song, the metallic scrape of the screen door sent them into the air in the hundreds.

  Job headed towards the house for breakfast. But stopped when he saw the barn roof. Kids, he supposed, had been up to a little mischief in the night, painting with a can of white latex and four-foot brooms. This is cattle country. Eat beef. now read This is fag country. Eat me. The kids hadn’t bothered to scale the silos but wrote Pretty Boy along the base of one.

  He was Pretty Boy. The message on the barn was aimed at him. A pause and thud in his pulse. Another. Then a rambling beat. He walked a little to assure himself he wouldn’t drop, fall to a stilled heart.

  Jacob and Lilith were at the kitchen table drinking coffee when he went in. Job guessed they’d been fighting. Neither looked him in the eye. Lilith served him up a couple of pancakes, eggs and sausages from the grill on the stove, where they sat warming.

  “You see the barn? The silo?” said Jacob as Job sat down at the table.

  Job nodded and dunked sausage into egg yolk and wrapped it in a pancake. He chewed. “Where’s Ben?”

  “We asked him to take a little walk,” said Jacob.

  “A walk?”

  “We needed some time to talk. To you.”

  “What about?” Thinking that Jacob was about to put on the pressure over the halfway house.

  “Lilith wanted to talk to you right away,” said Jacob. “But I wanted to give it a while, to think it over.”

  “Think what over?”

  Jacob took a sip of his coffee. “Pastor Divine said a few things that made us think, about homosexuals, about womanly influence.”

  “We don’t want you spending time with Ben any more,” said Lilith. “Not alone, in any case. As parents, we just can’t afford to trust you, after all that time you spent with Will.”

  “What does she mean?”

  “We can’t be sure you weren’t infected,” said Lilith. “By Will’s ways. Will dated Penny for two years. But you—all those years without even one girlfriend. And how you went ape when I changed things around in the kitchen. No man cares that much about a kitchen.”

  “But it was my kitchen.”

  “You see?” said Lilith.

  “Jacob. Tell her I’m not gay.”

  “I don’t think you’re gay,” said Jacob. “It’s just that one thing that worries me. I remember that incident, when you and Will were boys, that night we all slept out in the field.”

  Job’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “You know. When you zippered your sleeping bags together, and you thought I was asleep. Do I have to spell it out?”

  “We were just kids.”

  “I’m sorry, but we just can’t take the chance,” said Lilith. “I’ve got to protect my son. I can’t tell you how frightening it was to wake up to that graffiti on the barn.”

  Job felt the muscles in his thigh and neck twitch. His left index finger tapped of its own accord. He felt as if his body was lying on the vibrating bed he’d slept on that trip to Denver. His heart skipped, rolled like a snare drum, and then, just when Job thought he might be having a heart attack, caught its rhythm. But he couldn’t catch his breath. Something was terribly wrong. He thought he may have contracted an awful flu, or that an internal organ had burst. He stood.

  “What’s wrong?” said Jacob. “Where you going?”

  “Town.”

  “We’re not finished here,” said Lilith.

  Job staggered from the house, Lilith calling after him, and got in his truck and sped off. He wondered what day of the week it was. Dr. Mary Taylor was only in her Godsfinger office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and only in the mornings. She was back in her Leduc office the rest of the week.

  Job parked his truck in front of the doctor’s office. As he got out of the truck he felt faint and had to hold on to the box to steady himself. Steinke walked by and, not looking him in the eye as he passed, muttered, “Zipper.” For a brief, horrifying moment, Job thought Steinke knew, everyone knew, about the time he and Will zippered their sleeping bags together. But then he saw that the zipper of his jeans was undone. When he zipped, he found his hands were shaking and there was a gloss of sweat on the palms. He felt his heart jerk against his throat and thought he might vomit as he faltered into the doctor’s office.

  “I need to see Dr. Taylor.” The receptionist was a plump woman in a crisp, pink medics tunic, the kind he saw in the Sears catalogue. He didn’t know her. Dr. Taylor brought her receptionists from Leduc. They seemed to change from visit to visit. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  “I’m sick.” He started for the doctor’s office door.

  “You can’t just barge in.”

  “Is she with someone?”

  “No. But that’s not how it’s done.”

  Job pushed on anyway, afraid that if he stopped he would collapse on the floor or vomit at any moment. Dr. Taylor stood when Job opened the door and waved off her receptionist, who closed the door behind her. The doctor was in her late fifties, petite, sun-lined and freckled.

  Job explained his symptoms through gasping breaths but could not seem to get her to understand the severity of his plight. The smile on her face. “I feel like I’m going to die,” Job said.

  “Sounds like anxiety to me.” She leaned on her desk, across from Job. “Classic symptoms. I know it feels scary. But it’ll pass. You been under some tension recently? Worrying about anything?”

  Job waved his hand in the air; he couldn’t think where to start. But felt the breathlessness, the racing heart calming, now that he had an explanation.

  “You know how many times you’ve been to see me over the last year?”

  “No.”

  “Eleven times. Headaches, backaches, stomach aches. Do you know what that says to me?”

  “I’m a hypochondriac?”

  “It says you need some fun, some relaxation. Take a vacation. Any place other than Godsfinger. You need to get out more. Or maybe, more to the point, you’ve got to find yourself a woman you really like. Get close, you know. A little intimacy goes a long way. A woman would do you a lot of good.”

  “I’ve never been, you know, intimate.”

  “Never?”

  “A little petting. Once.” Thinking of Liv in the long grass, the cows around them, her hand up his back. Then he remembered Amanda Krumm in his father’s truck. “Twice.”

 
The doctor patted the air. “Don’t worry about it. Once you get close to a woman, start smooching, biology takes over. Your body knows what to do. It’s hard-wired into you. Then after a while you’ll learn the subtleties. Like a baby learning to walk. We were meant to walk upright. It’s hardwired into us. It just takes a little time to get the hang of it. Maybe you’ll trip up. But in the meantime you’ll still have a little fun. Try it. Go find yourself a girl.”

  Penny was just leaving the co-op, heading for her parents’ Ford Taurus as Job left the doctor’s office. Job hadn’t seen her since the night of the revival. He didn’t know what to say to her, thought it best to start with an apology.

  “It would have come out sooner or later,” she said.

  “But if I had kept my mouth shut—”

  “Then Will would have been doing that, and I wouldn’t have known. Thinking about it makes me sick.” She threw her purse in the front seat. “All that wasted time. I feel so stupid.” Her voice took on a little girl’s squeak when she was angry, something Job had never heard before. Pink streaks, like a poorly washed window. He found himself wanting to keep her talking, to watch her voice. A vibrancy of colour here, in her anger, that he’d otherwise lost, even in the singing at church.

  “Will says it’s just a stage,” he said. “He says he wants to marry you.”

  “How could I marry him? He hardly ever wanted to touch me. And I thought that made him a gentleman.”

  “He said you knew about his tendencies.”

  “He told me he sometimes had fantasies about men. I had no idea he acted them out. I mean, he said he loved me.”

  “I think he did. Does.”

  “Then why didn’t he want me? If I was attractive enough he’d want me. Barbara says those urges can be changed. She says I should wait and he’ll come around.” Penny waved at the window of the Out-to-Lunch Café. “She just spent an hour trying to convince me. But it’s over. I don’t want anything more to do with him.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Job.

  Penny nodded down the street. Job turned to see Liv sitting in Darren’s truck in front of the co-op. She waved and smiled.

  “You two were pretty cozy at the revival,” said Penny. “I heard she was over at your place.”