The Happy Hour Choir

by Sally Kilpatrick

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bill waddled over so quickly he lost his breath.

  “Think you might be able to get liquor in here? I’ve heard it’s quicker.”

  Bill’s eyes opened the widest I’d ever seen them. When he recovered, he shook his head ruefully. “My permit only allows beer and wine.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake, you need to get some wine. That would make more sense for the Happy Hour Choir anyway. Wasn’t Jesus’s first miracle turning water into wine?”

  Bill took off his Co-op cap and started opening and closing the plastic adjustable band at the back. “What kind of wine would you like, Miss Ginger?”

  “I don’t know, Bill. I used to drink the hard stuff, personally. But that was only until Beulah came along. All I know is there has to be a wine out there somewhere that would taste better than this beer.”

  “Maybe you need to try another brand,” Bill said. He brought her a Bud Light, a Coors, a Miller Light, and finally a Corona.

  “I guess this’ll have to do,” Ginger said after the swig of Corona, not realizing she was too buzzed to tell the difference among the beers by that point. “But next week you need to have some wine for me to try.” She wagged her finger at him, and he took a step back.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I desperately needed to regain order. “All right, y’all, now we’re running behind schedule. Open your hymnals to ‘Yield Not to Temptation.’ ”

  “Do we have to sing this again?” Tiffany’s objection surprised me.

  “What?”

  “We’ve already sung this song three times this month, Beulah. What’s the deal?”

  Apparently, I was trying to remind myself not to ever yield to temptation again. That and I obviously had some “dark passions” to subdue. “Okay, okay. Let me think for a minute.”

  I closed my eyes, but all I could think of was Luke. At the thought of him, all I could think of was temptation. And the need to not yield.

  “How about ‘What a Friend’?” Ginger belched but remembered to excuse herself that time.

  “Thank Go—thank goodness.” Pete Gates looked relieved, too. Apparently, no one liked “Yield Not to Temptation”— probably because we were all bona fide experts at yielding and not so good at the not.

  We played through Ginger’s suggestion then we practiced a couple of other numbers. We still needed an invitation, though, and Sinners to Saints was set to start in five minutes.

  “Okay, now all we need is an invitation. Let me think. Let me think . . .”

  “ ‘Pass Me Not’?” I looked up to see Luke in the doorway with his Bible tucked under his arm. I sucked in a breath. I could have asked him the same.

  Everyone turned to look at Luke. He hadn’t made a song suggestion in months. My heart did a little dip. Not only did Luke not want to have anything to do with me, but he had also proven he didn’t need me. He’d just picked the perfect invitation.

  “You heard the man.” I cleared my throat and choked back tears I was determined not to let fall. “A quick run-through and y’all can get to Bible study.”

  And a quick run-through was all they needed. The Happy Hour Choir kept getting better and better. I had taught all of them the basics of reading music by then, and I caught myself thinking about what equipment it would take to make a CD. I shook those thoughts off. I didn’t know where to begin with such things.

  Sometimes I would catch Tiffany sitting at the piano with the Gates brothers as they picked through their parts. Sam usually watched from the sidelines. I liked to think he was gathering his courage to take a turn at the piano beside her, but sometimes he would still gaze at me. Increasingly, that gaze grew puzzled instead of interested. After all, Miss Georgette and Miss Lottie had made sure everyone knew about my and Luke’s “torrid love affair.” Fortunately for Luke, such gossip had led to a new record attendance at County Line, not the opposite.

  When I quit playing piano, my choir members shifted from singing to talking. They laughed at jokes and teased each other raucously. From the risers I had that awful outside-looking-in feeling again, especially as others wandered in. Goat Cheese had become a regular, and Bill’s wife, Marsha, sometimes came to knit while she listened.

  “Going to stay tonight?” Luke asked without looking up from where he had laid his Bible. I glanced up in surprise. He looked thinner, gaunter. Or was it just my imagination hoping he was pining for me?

  “Yeah, Ginger and Tiffany need a ride.” I immediately regretted the words because my tone suggested I was mad at him when I was really still mad at myself.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d come back.”

  His eyes met mine. I felt a little flutter of hope but didn’t dare let it free.

  “Beulah, come sit down here with me and help me drink some of these extra beers. No sense in letting them go to waste.”

  At that moment, for one split second, Ginger Belmont was not my favorite person, but the sensation passed. I picked up the Bud Light and made a note to pay for our beer as well as put a generous tip in the jar on Bill’s counter.

  When I sat down, she leaned in close. “Have you noticed how that Sam fellow makes goo-goo eyes at Tiffany?”

  “No.” That would’ve required me to think about something other than Luke. I looked up, and sure enough, Sam was contemplating Tiffany with what could only be described as a soul-searching gaze. Or, by its scientific name, goo-goo eyes.

  “Wake up and smell the coffee, Beulah.” Ginger snorted, her eyes watching as Sam joined Tiffany by the bar. “I think she might need a date with him.”

  “Ginger, she’s pregnant.”

  “And?” There went the eyebrow, this time delicately penciled in.

  I sighed. “So now you want me to play Cupid?”

  She grinned. “Now you’re getting the idea. What do you think it’s going to take to get the two of them to go on a date?”

  “One of them—probably him—asking the other—probably her—to go to the movies. If it’s meant to be, I’m sure they’ll figure it out.” I chugged half my Bud and eyed her other discarded beer because I didn’t want to be having this conversation. Well, that and waste not, want not.

  “But what if they need a little nudge in the right direction?” Ginger stared at the two of them, not a trace of a smile on her face. An invisible fist clutched my heart. She didn’t think she had time for romance to take its natural course, and she wanted to make sure Tiffany was taken care of.

  “Fine. I’ll see what I can do, but I thought you only had one last request of me?”

  Ginger patted my cheek. “I only had one last formal request of you. I may start making requests from the great beyond someday.”

  Her hand trembled, and I leaned into it. Her face was so pale and wrinkled, her eyes so bleary. And I loved her so much. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  “Now you need to pay attention to Luke, dear.”

  But if I look at him I might not look away.

  He stood front and center in his jeans and cowboy boots with his black T-shirt. He hadn’t needed my input to fit in; in some ways he was starting to fit in better than I ever had.

  “Tonight, I’m afraid we have to have a serious discussion.”

  Pete Gates and Mac booed. My last session aside, serious discussions were apparently not the norm for the Sinners to Saints.

  “My superintendent has requested I stop leading this group.”

  “What? Why?” Tiffany’s face crumpled. She grabbed her stomach as the baby gave a seemingly indignant kick. I agreed with the baby. The superintendent had seemed so pleased that night.

  Luke must have been upset and possibly disappointed that night, too. But he hadn’t drunk too much or made a pass at me. I looked down at my shoes. I really was a lost cause and had no business obsessing over a preacher.

  He leaned against the risers and crossed his arms. “The Methodist Church has always supported abstinence from—”

  “You can’t have sex if you’re a M
ethodist? I’m outta here.” Greg Gates was already on his feet.

  “No, no. Abstinence from alcohol,” Luke said. “It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but sobriety is preferred.”

  “But I was finally learning something,” Mac interrupted.

  And he had. He had been shaving, showering, and dressing better. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually seen Mac drunk at The Fountain. And, thank goodness, I hadn’t seen or heard of him waiting around the side of the building to flash anyone.

  “I thought you said the Bible only said we shouldn’t drink to excess, that too much of anything was bad.” Pete Gates stood beside his brother. After several weeks of keeping their fists under control, the Gates brothers were itching for a fight—and this time not with each other.

  “Look, you’re all right.” Luke held out a steady hand. “We’re right.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Sam’s deep voice echoed off the walls.

  “The superintendent made it very clear. It’s either this or the church.”

  And I’m sure the church’s rise in attendance had nothing to do with having a minister who was willing to lead a Bible study in a bar.

  “So, now we’re chopped liver,” Greg Gates muttered.

  “No, not at all,” Luke said. “But I made a promise when I took the church, and I have to honor it.”

  Bill stepped forward. “Well, now what do we do?”

  “I was hoping someone else would like to lead the group and keep it going because I believe we’ve done good work here. And I think we could do more good work, but that’s going to be up to you guys. Sometimes I think I’m preaching to the converted.”

  Indeed, he was. Each member of the Happy Hour Choir now went to church every Sunday because they were expected to sing. They also formed the core group of the Sinners to Saints Bible study, although every week a new person or two dropped in to check things out.

  Luke stood with his hands on his hips. “Is there anyone who would like to lead?”

  Silence reigned. No one wanted to step into Luke’s cowboy boots. Knowing the powers that be had condemned the group, or at the very least weren’t supportive of it, made everyone nervous. I felt somewhat condemned myself. What had ever possessed me to think I could take a group of tavern-goers and make a choir out of them?

  “Luke, dear,” Ginger said. “Maybe it’s too much to ask someone to lead the group permanently. Why don’t you pass around a sheet and everyone can take turns? And I’m sure there’s a book, isn’t there? Something to guide us?”

  Luke’s wide grin caused my heart to skip a beat.

  “You’re right as always, Miss Ginger,” he said. “Taking turns is a wonderful idea, and I can always recommend a course of study.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Ginger said. “Now, you can write me down for next week and people can sign up after that.”

  Tiffany opened her notebook and wrote Ginger’s name then hers in painstaking cursive at the top of a page. She tore out the sheet and handed it to Luke.

  Bill took the sheet and wrote his name, then Mac grabbed the sheet. Then the Gates brothers and Sam got into a mock fight. One corner of the paper was ripped, but it was all in good-natured fun. Marsha stopped knitting long enough to consider the sheet, but she passed it on to Goat Cheese, who passed it to Tiffany with a wink.

  “I’m so glad you decided to continue,” Luke said. “I wanted to read you one more verse before I go: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. ’ Such simple words, so difficult to follow.”

  We all stared.

  “That’s it,” he said softly. “I would say I’m going to miss you all, but I’m across the parking lot if you need me. Thank you for letting me speak with you about God’s word.” He closed his Bible gently, and he stood.

  Mac rose and started clapping, the sound reverberating off the cinder-block walls. Bill stood and joined him, then Pete Gates, then Greg. Sam stood, and Tiffany pushed herself to her feet with some effort. Even Goat Cheese and Marsha stood. Finally, Ginger leaned heavily on her cane, and that left me.

  Luke’s eyes now bored through me, his lips not even twitching up into a smile. Not until I stood and clapped as loudly as I could because I had seen change in others I could only hope to find for myself. I clapped because he wasn’t the stick-in-the-mud I had first thought him to be and because he had been willing to bend the rules—well, some of the rules, anyway.

  And when I clapped, he finally gave me the gift of those dimples.

  He gave a curt, old-fashioned bow and ducked out the door. The applause faded, but the dull buzz of people talking over one another became a raucous roar.

  Ginger put her two fingers to her mouth and gave a sharp whistle, something she had never been able to teach me. “I don’t think we can top that, do you?”

  Tiffany and all the guys around her murmured a lot of no’s and shook their heads.

  “Then I say we head home early, and I’ll find something for next week.” Ginger tried to take a step with her cane, but she knocked over her half-full bottle of Heineken and her third-full bottle of Corona. Then she tried to bend to pick them up, but only succeeded in bending a quarter of the way down and panting a lot.

  “For heaven’s sake, let us get that, Miss Ginger,” Tiffany said as she moved her chair and bent to get the bottles. She lightly bounced bellies with Bill, and they laughed.

  “I’m due any day now,” Bill said as he rubbed a towel across the rough-hewn wooden floor. “How about you?”

  “Not until the end of December, I’m afraid,” Tiffany said with a grin as she picked up the two bottles and stood with a grunt.

  Ginger shook her head at the two of them. “Thank you. I hate not doing for myself.”

  Tiffany looked her straight in the eye and said something I wish I’d said: “Ginger Belmont, I’ve been living with you for three months now, and I’ve seen you do for everyone but yourself. Now, let us do something for you for a change.”

  Ginger nodded, too choked up to say anything as Bill and Tiffany giggled all the way to the trash can and the big utility sink behind the bar.

  Almost no one knew she was dying.

  I kept thinking people were stupid if they couldn’t see it, but most folks are really good at seeing only what they want to see.

  Chapter 23

  Ginger made me promise to talk to Luke on Sunday about a possible “double date” to help Sam and Tiffany get together. I had spent the previous three days making every argument I could think of against meddling. Ginger wasn’t going for any of them, and when I asked her why she was so gung ho to see the two of them together, she said, “Because I’m a crotchety old battle-ax, that’s why!”

  And what could I say about how pregnant women shouldn’t date? I’d jumped a minister’s bones just because he’d been talking about Bathsheba. I could see the twisted logic that had caused my drunken mind to draw important parallels with my life, but I wasn’t sure anyone else would.

  No, Ginger was having none of it. She had even decided to take Tiffany to lunch somewhere else so Luke and I would have an excuse to sit together and discuss our impending date. I could almost see Ginger riding along as chaperone. Instead of holding people apart with her cane, she would use the curved end to pull them together.

  Just the thought of it made me smile, and I almost added a verse to the doxology.

  I stood to hear the reading of the word and marveled at how it felt as though I spent more time in church than at The Fountain. Rationally, I knew I racked up more time at The Fountain, but I spent more time thinking at church. It didn’t hurt that Sundays were the only days I got to spend with Luke. Sure, he was in the pulpit, and I was above him in the loft—an irony not lost on me—but we were close on Sundays, in proximity if not in spirit.

  Luke read from Hebrews that morning. “Now faith is the assurance of all things hoped for, th
e conviction of things not seen....”

  Luke kept reading about the merits of faith, his steady baritone guiding his lambs, a record-breaking eighty-two of them in the fold that day. I was still stuck on that part about “all things hoped for.”

  I had wanted.

  I had hoped.

  I had not received.

  And before then I had received what I didn’t want. Then, just as I wanted what I had received, it was taken away. I rubbed my temples as my mind worked through hope, want, and receipt. Had I given up faith because I’d lost Hunter, or had I lost my faith because I’d stopped wanting and hoping?

  And did I dare hope for something, or someone, else?

  I’d never been happier to play the final chords of the postlude.

  Because there were only two of us, Luke and I had to share a cozy booth at Las Palmas.

  “I’m so glad you invited me to lunch, Beulah.” Luke dipped a chip into his salsa. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Worried about me?” My heart thudded against my rib cage. I had to sit on my hands to keep them from pulling me to the end of the booth so I could run away. It’d been so long since it was just him and me. My mind played a never-ending loop of each one of our kisses.

  “Yeah, Miss Ginger doesn’t have much longer, does she?”

  Hope did another nose-dive. He wasn’t worried about me. “No, I don’t think so. Well, I don’t know. The oncologist has no idea for sure.”

  Tears stung my eyes. Commiserating with Luke might help me feel better, but it also felt as though I was violating Ginger’s sacred trust.

  He considered me as he ate. His eyes took on a world-weary sadness. “I’ve seen a lot of sick people, Beulah. I’ve seen a lot of people die. I’ve also seen a lot of people worry themselves sick trying to take care of those people, especially fielding outlandish requests.”

  My chip froze in midair. Did he know about Ginger’s plan?

  “That’s not a criticism,” he added. “Just be sure you don’t forget how to take care of yourself.”