A Rhinestone Button

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  Sherry piped up, “Yes I can!”

  “Shush!” said Carol.

  “But I can change. I just decide to and then I do it.”

  Pastor Henschell chuckled. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he said. “But we know better, don’t we? Well, don’t we?”

  Harry shouted out, “Yes!”

  Carol grabbed her daughter by the shoulder, pulled her close and whispered in her ear. Then she withdrew her arm and sat up straight. Sherry slumped in her seat and kicked the underside of the pew ahead of her until Mrs. Schultz turned, and the girl’s mother slapped Sherry’s leg.

  “We’re not good enough,” said Pastor Henschell. “We’ll never be good enough. We’re sinners. You can’t help but sin. If there’s any message I can get through to you this morning, it’s that you aren’t worth anything without the Lord. Let’s pray.”

  The congregation, all but Job and the little girl, bowed their heads as Mrs. Henschell softly played “Why Do You Wait?” and Pastor Henschell prayed. “I’m a sinner, Lord. I can’t make it on my own. Here are my sins. Take my sins, Lord, and wash them clean.” He wrapped up the prayer with an invitation to those who wished to rededicate their lives to God to come forward, while the congregation kept their heads bowed and eyes closed.

  Harry tottered forward as usual and lowered himself gingerly down onto the steps in front of the pulpit. Once kneeling, he placed both hands on his cane, bowed his head and wept. For several long minutes he was the only one who came forward.

  Finally, just as Pastor Henschell wound down the prayer of rededication, Carol leapt to her feet and scurried down the aisle. She fell to her knees on the steps and stayed there. It was what Pastor Henschell had been waiting for. He stepped back and let her take her time. She clasped her hands together and, swaying slightly, prayed silently with her eyes open, looking upwards. Mrs. Henschell went on playing as the congregation waited on the Lord to move the woman back to her seat. Finally Carol trotted back down the aisle with her head down. A perplexed, embarrassed grin on her face.

  Sherry stared at her feet and hissed, “That was so embarrassing.”

  “Amen,” said Pastor Henschell. “The Spirit has moved in this room today. May he move in all our hearts as we go out into the world.”

  Job jostled out of the sanctuary with the rest of the congregation and found himself in the coffee line out of habit. He returned a few smiles.

  Then a hand on his shoulder. Pastor Henschell. “Job, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Come into my office, will you?”

  Job followed him in and sat. So, Ruth had phoned Pastor Henschell as well. He wished for a cup of coffee to occupy his hands.

  “I, ah, kept meaning to stop by the farm,” said Pastor Henschell. “Sorry I didn’t get around to it sooner. Jacob and Ruth have both told me you’ve been depressed.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Jacob says you’ve been eating meals out in the hired hand’s cabin, rather than in the kitchen with them. He says you wouldn’t eat at all if Lilith didn’t fix you up plates, take them out to you.”

  A lie, or a half lie. Lilith had brought Job out a plate once. No, twice. Job bought a few groceries in Leduc and made peanut-butter sandwiches on dry bread. He ate oranges and made coffee but couldn’t summon the energy required to cook on the wood stove. “I feel like I’m intruding on their family time,” he said.

  “I understand from Ruth that you’ve been drinking. Beer.”

  “I thought it might help—” he said, but stopped short.

  “Alcohol never helps anything,” said Pastor Henschell. “Then there’s the matter of the vacuum cleaner.”

  Job looked off to the side, at a poster of a sheepdog, hair covering its eyes, a passage from 2 Corinthians 5:7 written beneath it: We live by faith, not by sight. “I like to keep things tidy, that’s all,” he said.

  “Lilith tells me she goes into the cabin to get the vacuum and finds you sitting there, listening to it.”

  “I keep hoping—” What was he going to say? I keep hoping the vacuum cleaner will put a glass egg in my hand? “I find it soothing,” he said. “You know, like when mothers leave the vacuum cleaner running to help babies sleep.”

  Pastor Henschell appeared relieved at this, an excuse he could choose to believe. “Jacob was right,” he said. “You’re clearly depressed. The question is, Why? How’s your walk with God? Are you praying daily?”

  “No.”

  “Reading your Bible?”

  “No.”

  “I know you haven’t been going to church.” Pastor Henschell rubbed the oily patch at the side of his nose. “Ruth said you were asking some disturbing questions. I understand you’ve been having some doubts.”

  Job said nothing and looked past the pastor’s head to the window.

  “A Christian’s walk with God can be completely sidelined by unconfessed sins. Have you got any outstanding sins you haven’t taken to God?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you masturbating?”

  Job nodded.

  Pastor Henschell grinned. “Well, there you go! There’s the problem. That sin is standing in the way between you and God. Take it to God and you’ll be back on track.”

  “I don’t think masturbation is the problem.”

  “Sure it is. I guarantee it. You feel guilty about it, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Anything else I can help you with?” said Pastor Henschell.

  Job shook his head.

  “Well, I’m just glad I could help.”

  Job fled the office and headed for the front door. But Steinke stopped him. Dithy Spitzer was at his side, one hand through his arm. “Job! Glad to have you back. How about giving Dithy a ride home?” He patted Dithy’s hand. “I would, but I’m going over to the grandkids’ for lunch. What say?”

  “I’d like to, but I didn’t get chores done this morning.”

  “Come on, Job. It’s on your way home.”

  Caught. Job nodded and held out his arm for Dithy, though for what reason he wasn’t sure. Her stride was as steady as his. He deposited her on the passenger side, praying that the truck wouldn’t start, so he could foist her off onto someone else. But it turned over.

  Job drove into Dithy’s driveway, past the whirligigs pounded into the tops of fence posts that were cast higgledy-piggledy across the snow-covered lawn: ducks with wings that twirled, oil wells that pumped, men who sawed logs with crosscuts when the wind came up and, Herb’s pièce de résistance, a model of Leonardo da Vinci’s helicopter, made from a stack of tongue depressors mounted on a Lazy Susan.

  Dithy insisted he come into the house. Cats slept on the kitchen table, on the counters and huddled in groups on the chairs. One jumped on Job’s shoulder.

  “Molly,” said Dithy. “Go off and play. Leave us grownups alone.” She shooed another cat off a kitchen chair before offering it to Job. “You don’t drink coffee, do you? A nice boy like you wouldn’t drink coffee. Have I told you I haven’t had a cup of coffee in fifteen years?” She poured them both a cold cup of tea from a pot left on the table. When there was only enough to fill half her cup, she took the lid off the teapot, fished around for the tea bags and squeezed them into her cup. “Got to savour every last drop of goodness,” she said.

  Job took the cup and dabbed a cat hair off the cold surface before setting it down.

  Dithy took a sip and made a face. “This is cold. Why am I drinking cold tea? Doctor’s right. I really am losing it.”

  “Doctor?”

  “In Ponoka. Psychiatrist. Got me on some pills. Says they should help. Said I should have been on them a long time ago.” She filled a kettle and plugged it in. She tapped her temple. “Screw loose. I didn’t feel crazy. Just a little unsettled, on account of God talking to me. I figure that would make anyone edgy.”

  She shooed a cat off the table and picked up the teapot to rinse it out. “You like that Liv, don’t you? You don’t have to answer. Anyone can see
you like her.”

  “I haven’t seen her for quite a while.”

  “Maybe she’s working today. You know the co-op’s open Sundays now? Sacrilege. Why not stop in at the café, get yourself a decent cup of coffee, maybe ask her out on a date? This stuff I make tastes like shit.”

  “Liv’s married. I couldn’t ask her out.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I heard Darren’s truck’s been parked over at Rhonda Cooper’s again.” She lifted a cat off a plate on the counter, blew cat hairs off the plate and emptied a package of cookies onto it. “I bet you didn’t know I dated your father. Before either of us were married, of course. I broke things off. Abe always had to be right. You couldn’t tell him otherwise. It was almost like he figured he couldn’t be wrong.”

  “You got him pegged there.”

  She set the plate of cookies on the table in front of him. “I remember when he first gave up sheep and went into raising beef. God knows why, but he figured if he was raising beef he needed to look like a cowboy. Too many westerns, I guess. He got himself a cowboy hat and boots, and a western tie. Looked like a damn fool. Moseyed into the co-op café all dressed up like that. We all laughed. Called him a drugstore cowboy. He took it, didn’t say a word. Next time I saw him he was dressed in a flannel shirt, work boots and cap like the rest of the beef farmers.”

  Those cowboy boots and the hat were packed away in the attic. Job had once caught sight of his father standing in front of the mirror on his bedroom dresser wearing that cowboy hat, striking a pose. Job had quickly stepped away, and sat at the kitchen table as if he hadn’t seen. His father had come out, clean-shaven and smelling of Irish Spring, but without the cowboy hat. “He told me once that when he was a kid he wanted to go on the rodeo circuit, be a bronco star.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s one of us here doing what we really want. When I was a girl I wanted to be a ballerina. Even bought myself shoes.” She ate a cookie and pulled a cat hair from her mouth. The kettle whistled.

  “I’ve got to go,” said Job. “Thanks for the tea.”

  “Wait. Got something for you.”

  She unplugged the kettle. Then disappeared down the hallway and came back carrying one of Herb’s whirligigs, a whale with a toothy grin that carried Jonah, a mast and sail on top. It was fitted with a foot-long spike jutting from the whale’s belly, for mounting. A propeller on its nose cranked Jonah into waving his arms over his head.

  “Herb was working on this the afternoon he died. Left it and his paints on the kitchen table. I planned on giving him hell for it. Then the police car drove up. You can see where he didn’t get around to finishing the swim trunks.” Jonah’s behind was bare wood. “It’s yours.” She pushed the whale into his hands, then followed Job as he carried it to his truck. “Don’t know why I hung on to that thing. I hate it. I hate all of them. Couldn’t understand why he took this up as a hobby.” She flung an arm at the whirligigs whirring and clicking in the breeze around them. “Look at it! I’ve let this whole place go to hell.” She held up the stained skirt of her dress as if for inspection. “Why did I let this happen?”

  Job parked in the yard in front of the cabin and eyed the poppy Abe had pinned to the visor so he wouldn’t have to buy another the next Remembrance Day. Job had been driving the truck all that time and hadn’t noticed the poppy. He guessed that was how it was with much of his life; he knew it so well he didn’t see it. But was looking now.

  He glanced down at Herb Spitzer’s whale, grinning at him from the seat of the truck. Jonah’s arms were raised and waving, as Job opened the door and the cold air caught the propeller on the whale’s nose and fluttered the sail on the whale’s tiny mast. The cheesy smile of the whale, the pathetic little man. Job lifted the whale and hurled it onto the snow in front of the cabin. He expected the whale to break apart, and Jonah and the mast to splinter off. But the whirligig landed whole and rocked to one side, the propeller on the whale’s nose whirring, Jonah waving. He gave the whale a kick and marched off across the road, past the house and across the snowy fields. His anger dissipated as he reached the top of the coulee.

  He dropped to the snow and hugged his knees as he looked down into the valley to the frozen lake below. The bawls of the cows behind Job echoed against the far coulee wall. Below, in the valley, a herd of mule deer. He counted ten, led by a large buck, as one by one they ran down the steep hill, across the ravine and up into the bush of the bank just below him, where they gathered for a moment before running back across the coulee again. The sound of them snorting, their hooves against frozen earth and snow. They were playing, enjoying the warmth of the winter sun. It was instinctive; they ran in response to their hearts quickening their blood. They didn’t ask God if they could do it, or who they could do it with; they didn’t think of God at all.

  The little girl named Sherry at church that morning was right. He didn’t need God in order to change. Or live. He’d spent his life trying to fulfill the wishes of others, to cater to Abe and Jacob’s needs. But why couldn’t he think of himself for a change? He could decide what he wanted, and do it. The thought was a revelation, a thrill running through him. But where to start? What did he want?

  He ran back to the yard, excitement carrying him, a feeling as though he could hover over the prairies as he sometimes did in dreams, just by choosing to. He stopped short at the whale he’d tossed to the ground and picked it up, then carried it to a fence post along the driveway and, after hunting down a hammer, knocked the whale on its spike into the top of the fence post. Then he set the propeller spinning. The wide-eyed, bare-assed Jonah flung his arms in panic, hoping to be seen and rescued.

  Sixteen

  When Job knocked, the door flew open, Liv was dressed all in grey: grey sweatpants and sweatshirt with an oversized man’s sweater over top. She wore glasses, and didn’t look herself. She’d been crying. “Job,” she said. “Thought you were Darren, forgetting his key again.” She turned her back to him and blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper. “He didn’t come home last night.”

  A hummingbird made of stained glass hung by fishing line in the window, scattering sunlight on the hardwood floor. Job kept his eyes on the light on the floor, wondering if it had really been wise to stop in on Liv. Crystal had told him Liv was at home alone when he came into the café for breakfast, and had urged him to go over to see her. But now that he was here he was afraid of some embarrassing domestic scene. What if Darren suddenly came home and caught him here at this early hour. It wasn’t nine o’clock.

  “Come into the kitchen,” said Liv. “I just made tea.”

  A good-sized kitchen. A high ceiling. Walls painted periwinkle blue. Pots hung from the rack above the stove. Open shelves were stocked with gallon pickle jars filled with chickpeas, dried kidney beans, rice, flour and oats. Jars of spices labelled neatly in Liv’s hand. The smell of cinnamon. A wooden table big enough to hold eight comfortably. “Steinke had that sitting in his barn,” she said, rapping her knuckles on it. “I offered him fifty bucks for it and he took it.” She took down blue teacups and saucers to match from a cupboard.

  Job lifted a mayonnaise jar of brightly coloured buttons from the shelf. “My mother kept a jar of buttons in the kitchen,” he said. “She did her sewing on the kitchen table.” He put the jar back on the shelf as Liv handed him his tea.

  “I just like the look of them,” she said. She unwound a fresh wad of toilet paper from the roll on the table and wiped her nose with it. “They make me happy.”

  Job remembered a jar of buttons from his childhood, in his grade one class. One button covered in rhinestone, shining within a jar of others made from horn, bone, jet and coloured plastic. He dumped the buttons on the floor to get at it, then played with it in the sunlight that came in from the window, sending shards of light across the ceiling, distracting the class. He wouldn’t stop or hand over the button when the teacher told him to, and pulled his hand into a fist to protect it. As punishment, he stood outside in the sun,
on the steps of the school, sending slivers of light over the wall. He had known what he wanted then, and had dumped the jar of buttons to get it. Made a fist to keep it. “There’s something about a jar of buttons,” he said, as he sat at the table with Liv.

  “It’s the abundance,” said Liv. “The choice.”

  “Mom put buttons of one kind on a safety pin, to keep them together. Jacob and I played with those safety pins full of buttons, making like they were electric razors. Dad would lift me onto the sink and Jacob would stand on the toilet, and all three of us would look into the mirror and shave. The buttons just rolled over my cheeks. I thought I was shaving. Being a man.”

  They sat in silence for a while, sipping tea. Liv put her cup back in its saucer. “So, you come for anything in particular?”

  “Just a visit. Ruth said you came to church. Crystal said you’d been asking after me.”

  “I thought at least you’d turn up at church, if not the café.”

  She had been looking for him. There was a crack from the ceiling, then another and another, as if someone were walking overhead. “That Jason?” said Job.

  “No. He stayed overnight with one of his friends. That’s likely the ghost.”

  “You really think it is a ghost?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I go into a room and feel like I’ve just scared something off. When the furnace is on, I think I hear a voice. I’ve even called out a couple of times, thinking Darren or Jason had come home without me knowing, but no one was in the house with me.” She picked up the teapot and refilled both their cups. “You ever see a ghost?”

  “No.”

  “But you believe in a spirit, or a soul, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Though, increasingly, he wasn’t so sure.

  Liv poured milk into her tea. “I remember this one time I woke up outside myself. I was awake, but I was floating just above my chest. It only lasted a moment, but while it lasted, I had this sensation of expansion, as if I were air escaping a balloon. I would have been happy to stay like that and never go back to my body.”