by River Jordan
Twila would have slicked down Nehemiah and Billy’s hair. Both of them would have been sitting there with wet heads. But their hair would dry before the end of the service and begin curling up on the ends just like their daddy’s had. Kate would be so caught up in surveying everyone’s hair that she would lose her singing place and have to find the verse and line in the hymnal again. Kate would have been thinking about how Twila hadn’t looked too good. A husband passing can take the wind out of you. She should know. Had known all these years. Now suddenly, there they both were manless as can be. With children. Well, the Good Lord would provide. Somehow. He always had.
But that was almost thirty years ago and right now, this minute, what Kate is trying to remember is what she needs to know most.
Did I leave that oven on 350 or turn it down to 250? If I left it turned up, that roast is going to be cooked to pieces and tough on top and not fittin’ to eat. She hates not to have the roast. But if it’s too tough, they’ll just have to make do with chicken and dumplings and baby limas and cornbread and blackberry cobbler.
Kate Ann looks over at Twila’s empty seat. It has stayed empty now for almost thirteen years. But that’s still her space as far as Kate is concerned. The family has sat in the same spot for, well, all of their lives. The church was built when Kate Ann was but a baby. When Kate comes to church with Trice, she makes certain nobody sits in Billy’s space or his momma’s. Or for that matter that renegade Nehemiah’s. And now, on this strange Sunday morning, here they are again. All buffed and shining. Nehemiah’s hair looks just right, Kate is surmising. He really is a fine-looking young man, she thinks. Then she looks at Billy. And Billy’s hair…Lord! Kate interrupts her busy mind with a prayer, Lord, send Billy a good wife because—well just look at him. She continues her survey with a critical eye. And now would you look at that? Trice looks unusually bloomy. That’s just the way she looks, bloomy. Her hair, even though it doesn’t look tame, looks just this side of wild and that’s an improvement. She’s wearing a dress that is just a little more, well there you go again, bloomy. Where’d she get that? I haven’t seen that on her.
And she is sitting very, very still. And that’s unusual.
The fact is, Trice is very bloomy, as Kate puts it. And very still. And, she is staring straight ahead and not singing very loud and that’s another sign of something but Kate isn’t sure what. Not yet anyway. But it’ll come to her. She knows it will. She looks over at Trice again, and down at her dress. Flowers, flowers everywhere. Just like a…and she pauses and leans over and looks hard at Trice, like a wedding!
It was in this church that Nehemiah’s mother had married his father. Here at a later date, that they had carried William Daniel forward in their arms and dedicated him before the congregation. And two and a half years later, they walked forward once again with a new baby in their arms. Nehemiah looks around at the old walls, the same ones he grew up in and hasn’t seen for years, and tries to picture this. Tries to capture this image of a Sunday morning family with four squares. But before he can squint hard enough to try to remember his father’s large hands, feel one of them vaguely on his shoulder, the hand is replaced by the gentleness of Twila’s or the surety of Kate’s. His memories latch onto the curves and rest there. In the curves. Not so bad a place to be.
There is general upswelling good mood inside the church. There is the feeling of something sliding into place. There are people leaning and whispering at seeing those heads up front in their assigned seats after all these years. There are a few “What-do you-know’s?” and some “I-told-you-so’s,” flying around.
Wheezer is in the back in his usual place, trying to huff and puff out the song. He stands with his knobbed-up knuckles grasping the back of the pew in front of him. Blister stays in back too. Keeps the angry side of his face turned towards the wall. Children have never been afraid of Blister, but he thinks they are. He thinks the scar alongside the left of his face, his pulled-down eye, and the skin puckered at his throat will frighten the pants off them. Because it does him. Over the years he has learned to approach people right side first, with his head turned slightly to the left.
Magnus is not in church this morning on account of the fact that she had her feelings hurt twenty-four months, seven days, six hours, three minutes, and counting, ago. She hasn’t been back since. She is rocking on the front porch, singing “When we gather at the river” at the top of her lungs and slamming her feet to the porch floor with every rock and pushing off again, hard. The cats have all run under the porch or up the trees, but there is no escaping the strength of her voice. It can carry for miles, and miles, and miles. Right now, she is hoping it will carry right through the doors of the church and up that aisle, straight up Kate Ann’s spine. It would serve her right for telling me that I cannot sit in Twila’s place. Twila has been dead for over twelve years and she sure doesn’t care if I sit on the pew next to Trice but Kate sure does. Kate wants Trice all to herself. Always has. But it just ain’t ever never gonna be that way. Magnus slams her feet hard and prays, God forgive Kate for being so pigheaded so she won’t go to hell forever and ever. Amen. Then she adds as an afterthought, ’ Course a short trip through might do her some good. Then she resumes her singing. Just when the cats thought they were getting a break.
Pastor Brown is finishing the last stanza of today’s opening hymn. He is seventy-two years old and looks every year of it. But he still looks it in a saintly way. In a white-haired, blue eyes, lanky-tall kind of way. He looks like he could live forever and not be the worse for it. And all the people that know him, wish this could be true. He adjusts his glasses and looks out across the pulpit at the faces of his congregation. He’s seen a hundred faces born and a hundred faces die, baptizing them in and burying them out. He is the caretaker of what is natural in Shibboleth. He is Shepherd to the flock. Watcher of the sheep. All faces should be equal to him, he thinks. But they’re not. Some are more precious to him. Some more dear. And now he is watching one of those faces. One that got away. The boy that slipped through his fingers. The one that he knew needed comfort when comfort wouldn’t come. When he couldn’t give what he didn’t have.
Lately, he has been questioning his destiny. Not as a pastor, he knows full well that he’s been called. But he has been questioning the decisions of destiny that he has made during the process of his journey. He is questioning his motives and his might-have-been’s. He is supposing that if he had been more honest, just a little more open, that potentially even the ultimate outcome of Twila’s illness.
Well, he thinks now, wondering won’t set the record straight or change a thing. He is thinking about how he let fear get in his way and let it have its day. He can almost see her sitting there, full of brown-eyed faith, and remember how when he’d make a joke he’d check to see if that dimple was waiting on her cheek. If he had won her smile—even from a distance. Twila Trust. A simple woman, a widowed woman. A faith-filled woman. If only he’d stepped up and confessed his feelings then maybe, but then, there he was wondering again. And all the maybe’s in the world wouldn’t bring her back. Or keep Nehemiah in his place.
All his maybe’s in the lonely evenings where he sits and reads his Bible, or simply holds it and doesn’t read at all. Where he doesn’t dare think the words love or loss, but he feels them in the marrow of his bones. He feels the empty echo of lost possibility. And he is ashamed that with all that he is (and he is a lot) that he was not man enough to express himself. Too afraid of what people might think, of what people might say. And the chance that he had to make a difference when a difference could be made—in at least four lives including his—had slipped away.
Twila used to tell him stories about Nehemiah. Stories about his gift, as she would call it. And years later, she was proved right when Nehemiah had walked out of that fire unscathed, carrying John Robert to safety. And she would look to him for guidance, for understanding, of the things that were different about Nehemiah. At church dinners and celebrations, she’d
look to him for company, and for conversation. Maybe more. But he would only smile and nod his head; he was so fearful of his mouth. So fearful of his heart.
Now with Nehemiah here, actually here in Shibboleth, actually here in church, he hopes he might rectify a portion of what he missed. He thinks that perhaps God and Twila both have ordered him a second chance. A method of making his amends. Of setting that boy, no, that man, he thinks, as he looks out across the congregation once again, a chance to set that man on his path again. And maybe that will stop what is eating them, all of them, from the inside out.
Suddenly Pastor Brown is very serious. His serious looks like this. Like a man who has been carrying a lonely weight. The pastor’s sermon today was going to be on the loving kindness of God. On the mercy of divine grace and of a love that is offered when no love is deserved. About how God loves people in spite of themselves. And about how human beings are to follow suit. To love without barriers. Without hoops for people to jump through. Without bells for them to ring. A wonderful message, but today calls for something different, something made to order. And the pastor looks up, and forgoes his prepared sermon. Instead he decides to preach from the Old Testament.
“There was once a man named Nehemiah. Now you know about him, don’t you? Sure you do.” A few people edge to the front of their pews and lean forward. They nod their heads and pretend their Nehemiah isn’t there sitting among them. That the pastor preaching from the Book of Nehemiah is just a coincidence. The pastor puts his hands in his pockets, steps down from the pulpit and walks the aisle, his voice rises as he walks forward, “He wasn’t much of anything, didn’t hold a grand position, certainly wasn’t a priest.” He turns and addresses Nehemiah from the front and center of the church. “He had a simple job, one of loyalty. He was cupbearer to the King,” and the pastor says, “interesting,” almost completely under his breath. “Just a cupbearer minding his own business, until his brother and a friend go to him and reveal that things weren’t very good at home. And do you know that with all those people in the city, not one of them made a difference until Nehemiah left the King and came home.”
Trice is listening but fighting the urge to pull her notes from her purse to study the curving, squiggling lines. She is certain that something crucial is hidden somewhere in the clue of its design. That surely, if she looks hard enough, she will find the “X” that marks the spot.
Nehemiah is listening to the message with one ear and thinking, he’s talking to me, but one ear is all he can afford. The rest of him is thinking about the dark cloud at the springs. And the knowledge that he knows down in his soul that the dark cloud is spreading, breaking beyond whatever boundaries held it there. He is thinking about the presence of evil and the power of good and wondering just where has Pastor Brown been in the middle of all this. Why hasn’t he done something? And why haven’t the people of Shibboleth even questioned how all the water could…how did Billy describe it…“The water just left town.” And why does Trice look so fine in that dress that he almost forgets she is Trice and thinks about her as a…woman. He glances over at the flowers and breathes in the smell of something tangibly sweet, and he doesn’t know if the smell is perfume or simply the essence of Trice. And he isn’t aware that his glance has turned into a stare until Trice turns and looks in his eyes and then neither one of them are listening to the sermon with even a smidgen of an ear.
“It wasn’t that Nehemiah’s destiny to be a cupbearer. It was his destiny to save his city and his people. To fight whatever opposition stood in his way.” The pastor walks back up into the pulpit. He pauses and looks into the eyes of the parishioners, “Whether that opposition was man,” and Pastor Brown leans over, and tries to lock his eyes on Nehemiah’s “or beast.” He takes a breath and steadies himself, hands on both sides of the pulpit’s edge, “You’re purpose may be to march into the unknown for heaven’s purpose, or perhaps,” and here the pastor looks at Kate, “only your neighbor’s yard to say ‘I’m sorry,’” He raises an eyebrow her way but Kate just nods and smiles, and looks around because she knows the pastor sure is preaching to a lot of people in here that need to hear this message. “But whatever it is, it’s not your purpose that matters. It’s God’s purpose for your life.” The pastor pauses, thinking of his own life, thinking of cause and effect and the unknown consequence of fear. “Be brave enough to cross that line, whatever it may be that separates you from your destiny.” The pastor wants to add more, he wants to tell his whole story and how his heart feels today. He wants to say everything he wishes he had said thirty odd years ago. But he only drops his head and says a closing prayer and adds a hushed, “Amen.”
And with that they will sing another song. And then Trice and Billy and Nehemiah will be at Kate’s table eating Sunday dinner like they used to do with an assortment of odd ends and pieces of people with no full table to go home to. Widows and widowers. Young people drawn to Kate’s tough embrace and forceful nature. Every loose Sunday soul with the exception of Magnus. When no one is looking, Kate will make her plates to go with an extra large helping of dessert (because she knows Magnus has a sweet tooth) and pack it off with Trice to take home to her. Kate Ann may have her standards but she is not without heart.
After the service, in the general sudden commotion of people being released from their seats, they try to make their way out. But people have come forward to shake Nehemiah’s hand, to slap his back, to give him a wink and say, “You’re finally home, boy, where you belong.” And he tries, ever so diplomatically, to smile, to be polite, as he works his way to the door. People joke with Billy about the fact that, “The roof didn’t cave in when you come in so I reckon you can come back next Sunday.” Billy doesn’t tell them that actually he likes coming to church (minus the suit). It’s the absence of Twila that keeps him away, the empty space in the pew that breaks his heart every time he looks down at it. Even after all these years.
Nehemiah is shaking hands with Pastor Brown when the pastor says, “I need to see you, Nehemiah.”
Nehemiah smiles, shakes his hand, has misunderstood him. Thinks he has said, “Good to see you.”
“I need to see you,” the pastor repeats, “Noon. Tomorrow. Here at the church.”
“Yes, sir,” is his simple answer.
Pastor Brown briefly glances over at Trice and Billy and before he releases Nehemiah’s hand, leans in and says, “I prefer you come alone.” Nehemiah gives him a quizzical look but simply nods, and the pastor releases him to reach out to the next person.
The three of them stand awkwardly in their Sunday best (although Nehemiah’s real Sunday best would have looked like his wedding day to Shibboleth), and Kate Ann is already at the Buick, the door wide open and her yelling, “Trice! You gonna ride with me?”
She looks to Nehemiah and asks, “Are you coming?”
“Yes,” he says, “but first I have to pay a visit.”
Trice nods and turns to go. Billy just says, “You go on, Nehemiah. I’ll wait here.” And Billy hangs back saying so-longs to the milieu of southern Sunday worshippers with all their Sunday-dressed children, little recreated carbons of the past. They are running through and around the legs of their mommas, daddies, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Little cousins and bigger cousins making a noisy mess and having such a good time they forget they are hungry, forget to ask, “When are we going to eat,” because they know that they will soon enough. And if they ask aloud, that will be the official answer, “Soon enough.” Right now, they are just happy to have cousins and to be free, out in the open, and the sunshine. Running off an hour and a half of sitting pinched between adults on hard wooden pews. (Except for Cassie Getty, who always brings her own seat cushion to church.)
Billy makes small talk while Nehemiah makes his way across the churchyard for a long overdue hello. He steps gingerly through the flowers, the flags, the tiny symbols of the past. Walks past names like Walker and Skipper and Getty until he reaches a spot in the back under a towering magnolia, one resting
now in the dappled light beneath the shadow of shade and the light filtering its way between the leaves.
“Hello, Momma,” he says, but that’s as far as he gets. Now, mind you, as I write, as I listen, as I follow, I must insert this to inform you: Nehemiah knows his mother’s spirit isn’t in this spot of earth. That truly she doesn’t rest eternally beside their father’s marker. But this is his touchable place. The tangible, concrete, earthly place where he can reach out his hand and touch her name, conjure up her face. Nehemiah doesn’t know what else to say except, “Hi, Momma” and “I miss you.” He thinks about all the times he has needed her advice, all the times he’s thought he’d just reach out and pick up the phone and call her, but then, how silly was that? How many times he’d wanted to call her from Washington and tell her something to make her proud. But she wasn’t there and so the proud had nowhere to go. And the thought of not seeing her face again, not until some faraway place like paradise, had choked him until he thought he would die. So he didn’t think about that anymore. Or, at least, tried not to.
Wrapped in the folds of today’s “I miss you” is the memory of a heartbroken eighteen-year-old boy. One kneeling by a grave in the rain of midnight, refusing to leave his mother’s side. Refusing to leave her alone in the dark. And, behind him, standing in the dark with his own broken heart was a brother refusing to leave Nehemiah alone. A brother who quietly felt the shift of responsibility settle on his shoulders and wondered, How am I gonna look out for Nehemiah’s gift with you gone, Momma. No one’s here to tell him how to be. And he’s not like me. I taught him to fish, and to hunt, and to fight, but I don’t know how to teach him to go on being who he is because you were the only one knowed that. And so they had spent the night with Billy weeping and Nehemiah wailing over a wet mound of fresh dirt that signified the end of a long, peaceful chapter in their lives. And the beginning of a different one.
