He put his arm around her shoulders and they continued their walk.
“I do think,” he agreed. “And I’m grateful you’re a reasonable woman.”
They stopped in to say hello to their dear old neighbor, Hestelle Pierce, to see how the summer heat was treating her.
“Oh, y’all are back from your trip,” she said, opening her lace-curtained front door to them. “I’m so glad you’re home safe. The way traffic is nowadays, I don’t hardly dare get out and drive anywheres!”
“Well, we mostly drove on back roads,” the bishop told her. “Farm areas, most of the time, down in southwestern Georgia.”
“Sounds fine to me. Even Fairhaven’s getting a bit trafficky for my nerves.”
“Now, Miss Hestelle, anytime you want to go somewhere that you don’t feel like driving to, you call me,” Trish told her. “I’d be glad to drive you.”
“Y’all are so sweet,” she told them. “Come in. Sit down, and I’ll run make us a pitcher of punch. I’ve got cherry or grape.”
“Oh, we’re fine, Miz Hestelle,” the bishop said, holding his wife’s elbow and steering her into the house. “We just stopped in to see how you’re faring.”
Hestelle Pierce always took this question seriously. “Well,” she said, seating herself in her favorite chair, “to tell you the truth, I haven’t been quite as perky as I’d like to be. This heat just saps my strength, and seems like it takes me twice’t as long to get anything done as it used to. I suppose that’s my age, although I wonder if there might be something else coming on. I keep thinking I might be diabetic, but every time I ask doctor, he says my blood sugar’s normal. I’m not so sure, though. Doctors don’t know every little thing, do they? And then I get these funny little zingy feelings in my scalp, like some electric little bug is crawling in my hair, but when I go to touch it, there’s never anything there! Then you know, my sister has eczema real bad, and I b’lieve I’ve seen some little red, rough patches starting on my elbows, too. You can’t really cure that, you know. You can only control it.”
“Is that right?” murmured the bishop. “Well, you’re looking in the pink of health to me, Miz Hestelle, so I sure hope you can ward off any troubles that might come your way.”
She looked doubtful. “Well, land—I hope so too, but we just never know, do we? And how are you coming with your little addition, Mrs. Shepherd?”
Trish smiled. “So far, so good, thank you. We’re doing fine.”
“That’s a blessing. Now, I just want to ask y’all a question, see what you think. That girl of the Lowells, down on the corner—well, reckon she ain’t exactly a girl, still, is she? Anyway, do you figure she’s all right? All there, I mean?” She tapped her forehead significantly.
“We really don’t know her very well,” Trish explained. “We’ve barely met her a time or two, but her mother keeps her pretty close to home.”
“She brung her over here one time when she was out deliverin’ her little papers, which I must say I never read, after the first one that was so nasty about you folks, and not at all right according to what I’ve known about you over the years! They go right in the trash when she hands ’em to me, I can tell you! But of course I take one, to be polite and all. Anyway, the girl came with her, but she seemed scared to say boo!”
“Mrs. Lowell’s definitely in control,” the bishop said wryly. “I get the impression Marguerite would like to be friendly, but she’s not allowed.” He shrugged. “She may have some limitations, but I honestly don’t know if she was born with them, or if they’re a result of being brought up by her mother.”
“Um—Miss Hestelle,” Trish said. “I wonder if we might ask you a favor? Next time Mrs. Lowell gives you one of her circulars, would you mind setting it aside for us to look at? She doesn’t favor us with a copy, and we’re curious. I am, anyway,” she added, with a glance toward her husband, who looked perplexed.
“I’ll be glad to do that for y’all,” Hestelle agreed, fanning her wavy white hair with a folded newspaper. “I declare, the humidity comes right inside, don’t it? I hope we get us a little rain, soon, to break the heat.”
“There is a breeze coming up,” the bishop told her. “Maybe you’ll get your wish.”
* * *
“Dad, Mr. MacDonald called,” Tiffani told him as he and Trish let themselves in the kitchen door. “He’s coming over in a few minutes. I told him you were just out for a walk.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks, honey.” He sent an apologetic glance toward his wife. “Maybe he won’t stay long. Maybe we can still get to the census.”
She nodded and headed to the kitchen to put together their dessert. The bishop sat down at his desk to get a start on his chores while he could. He wrote a letter to Elder Pratt Birdwhistle, presently in the MTC at Provo, Utah, preparing for his mission to Peru. Just before he could sign the letter, the doorbell rang, and he went to welcome his boyhood friend, the Reverend Peter “Big Mac” MacDonald.
“Mac! Hey, buddy—how’s everything?”
“Things are mighty fine at our house, my friend, and peace to yours.”
“Thank you. Come sit down in the living room. I think Trish will have some dessert for us in a minute.”
“Oh, I had cake a while ago, and I don’t know that double dessert is something I should attempt, though the flesh is willing.” He chuckled, then sobered. “Jim, I stopped by to show you something that I find a little puzzling and disturbing. It came to the church office a few days ago, and I don’t know quite what to make of it.” He passed an envelope to the bishop, who removed the letter inside and leaned near a lamp to read it.
“Dear Brethren and Sisters of the Christian Faith,” he read.
“More and more these are perilous times for the true faith of our Lord and Savior, and for those who adhere to the teachings of the Holy Bible. There are those among us, masquerading as Christians, who would add to and pervert the right way of God. They send out their young men and women, nicely groomed and dressed, often educated and well-spoken, to lure the naive and innocent among us to their ruin—indeed, to consign their souls to everlasting torment and damnation! As you may have surmised, we refer to the Mormons, who seek to rob your Christian congregations of their fairest and best, to build up their unholy empire throughout the world. They even go so far as to say openly that believing Christians make the best Mormon converts! As you may know, they promulgate the spurious doctrine of continuing revelation from God in our modern day, and offer copies of the Book of Mormon to replace the Holy Bible in our study and worship.
“This devil-inspired and man-made cult is surely worthy of our scorn and ridicule, and just to show one example of their hideous twisting of the truth, they teach that Satan and Jesus are brothers! Well, friends, the Jesus I worship, and the Jesus you know and worship, is no brother to the devil! Perish the thought.
“In spite of the many books, articles, tapes, and films that have been produced to fight against this unholy organization, they continue to grow and gather converts. Now we are announcing a new program, coming soon to your area, which will effectively show the Mormons up for the wicked, deceitful, and deceived perverts that they are! A rally tour is being organized by the Tri-State Christian Fellowship in which a well-organized group of vocal believers in Christ will travel from state-to-state this summer, holding rallies aimed at exposing Mormonism’s ugly, white underbelly for what it is! Watch for further bulletins about when they will be coming to a spot near you, so that you can gather up your flock to go and hear the truth about this pandemic of poison that is spreading among us!
“Your brethren in truth,
“The Tri-State Christian Fellowship”
The bishop turned the envelope over to see if there was a dated postmark. He could make out June, and he thought it came from California.
“Well!” he said. “How about that?”
“It troubles me, Jim. You and I have known each other practically all our lives, and we’ve had many an honest debate about religion a
nd theology—and you know I don’t agree with everything you folks teach—but I know you to be a genuine Christian. I’d stake my life on it. And I know you’re sincere in your beliefs. I mean, I don’t agree with everything my Catholic friends believe, either, but I can’t label them non-Christian and condemn them to hell!”
“And ‘non-Christian’ is about the kindest thing they called us, here,” the bishop said, tapping the letter against his knee.
“What I really don’t understand is, why does your church attract such hatred?”
“Mac, from my point of view, the simplest and most basic answer that I can come up with is because the Church is true. Satan has to inspire people to fight against the truth, lest it roll forth like that stone mentioned in the Bible, made without hands, which goes on until it fills the whole earth—which it’ll do, anyway. That’s my honest belief. We teach truth, and that disturbs and annoys the powers of darkness, so that they have to fight against us. But . . .” He held up one hand, and smiled. “I realize that won’t sound good in your ears, since you don’t believe all we teach to be truth, so I’ll just say that in a large part, ignorance and prejudice can be used to turn people against us, and to make them feel righteous and vindicated in their rejection.”
“Well, I certainly don’t feel edified or inspired when I read that drivel,” Mac said, nodding toward the offensive document. “I detest that confrontational, in-your-face kind of approach to religious dialogue. In fact, they obviously don’t want dialogue of any kind. They want to out-shout the opposition. They have ‘vocal believers,’ isn’t that what it says? That means shouters, not singers, you can bet your boots on it.”
The bishop shrugged. “It might be a group similar to the folks who gather outside of Temple Square in Salt Lake twice a year, when we hold our conferences, and do their best to insult our members as they go and come. As if that would influence anybody to want to join them! But you know, Mac—or actually, probably you don’t know—we have prophecies that foretell greater persecution of our people in the latter days than even the pioneer Saints went through. So it’s not like we’re surprised by this sort of thing—though of course we sure don’t enjoy it.”
“Well, I will definitely counsel my congregation to refrain from attending or encouraging any such rallies that may be organized around here. It doesn’t at all seem to fit the criterion we so often ask ourselves, of ‘what would Jesus do?’”
“Oh, they’ll compare themselves to Jesus cleansing the temple of the moneychangers, and say they’re just experiencing righteous indignation,” the bishop said. “They claim they worship a different Jesus than the one we preach, and that ours is an interloper—a false Christ.”
“Right, I’ve heard that one. So what is the truth about this business of Jesus and Satan being brothers? I think I know, but set me square on it, okay?”
“Remember all the talks we used to have about the possibility of a premortal life—not just for Jesus and the angels, but for all of us? Well, this harks back to that belief. We believe that Jesus was the firstborn of all the spirit children of our Heavenly Father, and that Lucifer was not far down the line—a son of the morning, the Bible calls him. He was influential, and had great potential, but he chose to use it to defy and rebel against the Father, and to try to gain power and glory for himself, by pushing a plan of forced obedience for all of us, denying us our agency. Jesus, on the other hand, volunteered to implement the Father’s plan, and was chosen to be our Savior. Lucifer came out in open rebellion, and a third of our spirit brothers and sisters followed after him. They were disowned, you might say, and cast out of heaven.”
Mac nodded thoughtfully. “Like the third of the stars that fell with the dragon, mentioned in the book of Revelation,” he commented.
“Exactly. But you see why, unless people have a knowledge of our belief in a premortal state, they can’t understand the concept of Jesus and Satan ever having been brothers. Many of them say the same God who created Jesus couldn’t possibly create someone so inherently evil.”
“But according to your belief, Lucifer was a rebellious child, not a deliberately created entity of evil. He made himself Satan—right?”
“That’s how I see it.”
“It’s sad to think that God Himself would lose a third of His children to evil.”
The bishop nodded. “Our scriptures say the heavens wept over the loss.”
“So where are those third now? Cast out into the earth, doesn’t the Bible say?”
“Yep. Right here on earth, working diligently to tempt us all and lead us astray.”
“So—C. S. Lewis wasn’t so far off, after all,” Mac said with a chuckle.
“How’s that?” the bishop asked.
“Oh, a little book called The Screwtape Letters, which purports to be letters from a devil to his nephew, offering advice on how to tempt and distract mortals from the Christian path. It’s both amusing and sobering—and very pointed.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I’d like to read it sometime.”
“I have it. I’ll drop it by when I think of it. Well, Jim, I just thought you deserved to know what’s going on behind your back, so to speak, among these rabble-rousers who call themselves Christians. I personally don’t think they’re great examples of the faith, but there are those around here who would fall for their rhetoric.”
The bishop thought about his next-door neighbors. “I’m sure there are. Oh, hey, Trish, I just told Mac you had some dessert for us!”
“’Deed I do. Hi, Mac, how are you?” Trish greeted, as Mac stood and smiled at her.
“You’re blooming as ever, Trish,” he told her. “I told Jim I really shouldn’t have another dessert tonight, but that looks delicious . . .”
“This is light,” she promised him. “It’s just a strawberry parfait—mostly non-fat ingredients.”
He accepted a serving and, as Trish exited, sat down with a sigh. “I sure hate to be the bearer of ill tidings, Jim, but I thought you’d want to know what’s out there.”
“I do appreciate the heads-up,” the bishop said, and even as he spoke, he heard his words echo those of Ralph Jernigan. “So!” he muttered. “This must be what Ralph’s onto.”
“Excuse me?” said Mac, and the bishop gave him a brief rundown on the Jernigan story.
“Well, bless his heart,” Mac said feelingly. “What a noble soul, to carry on in spite of all his fears and sorrows. And it sounds like this time, he’s picked up on something real.”
“I’m afraid it does. So, I guess my next challenge will be preparing my ward for whatever comes.”
“And I’ll try to do the same with my congregation,” Mac promised.
“Thanks, Mac. You’re a good friend.”
Chapter Ten
* * *
“ . . . Our shelter from the stormy blast”
The bishop took the disturbing circular Peter MacDonald had brought and stuffed it into a pigeonhole on his roll-top desk in the corner of the dining room. He debated for a few minutes whether to show it to Trish, then put off that decision and tried to concentrate on his other letter, an answer to Elder Rivenbark’s mission president about how that missionary was faring. He was happy to be able to give a positive and straightforward report that the young man seemed well and happy and productive, that he had apparently adjusted to the at-first onerous medical requirement that he live at home for the remainder of his missionary service and that he take a rest period in the middle of each day. As the bishop had predicted, Elder Rivenbark’s companions had no complaints about meeting him at his parents’ house for their early-morning study periods, especially since Sister Rivenbark was an excellent cook and kept them nourished and cheered with her cinnamon rolls and buttermilk biscuits.
He turned his attention next to the needed changes in home teaching assignments proposed by Don Quaverly, the elders quorum president, but found his attention wandering back to the offensive notice. He had seen numerous “Anti-Mormon” tracts and bo
oks over the years, and occasionally some of the local members would be disturbed or dissuaded by them. Most of their arguments he could fairly easily refute, seeing the obvious errors in either understanding or interpretation that the authors had committed. Some, he felt, came from honest folks who simply disagreed with one or more facets of the Latter-day Saint faith, while others were so obviously and deliberately misleading and misrepresentative that the reader could feel the ill-will that oozed from between the lines.
The letter pigeonholed in his desk fell primarily into the latter category. That people of this ilk were planning an actual tour to attack the Church wherever they could get a crowd together was a disturbing thought. Most of the members of varied faiths in Fairhaven seemed content to live and let live, saving their most active competition for the Interfaith Summer Softball League. He would be sorry to see that kind of tolerance changed by outside interference. Was Stake President Walker aware of this situation? He would talk to him.
He stood suddenly, feeling the need to do something positive and useful and pleasant.
“Trish!” he called, “Come on, babe, man the computer! It’s time we came to our census.”
* * *
An hour and a half later, they rose triumphantly from the computer in their family room with three census-years’ worth of Rhys data—1910, 1900, and 1880.
“Man, I wish the 1890 census hadn’t been destroyed,” the bishop said, looking over the information they had obtained. “I purely hate knowing there once was useful information about these people that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like those marriage records with only a partial index left. It’s so frustrating!”
“I know,” soothed Trish. “But you’ve got tons of stuff now that we had no idea of, even a week ago.”
“That’s true. The glass is way more than half-full, isn’t it? I should be grateful. And I am.” He glanced at the clock. “Hey, gang—it’s time we all headed for bed and let Buddy get some sleep in here. He’s got to go to work in the morning!”
“Oh, I’m okay, Bishop,” Buddy said, his cheeks reddening. “I’m cool.”
The Thorny Path Page 11
