Signs and Wonders

by Philip Gulley

  “I’m faint with heat already,” Barbara said.

  He woke up early the next morning, ate breakfast, and arrived at the meetinghouse an hour before Sunday school. Downstairs, in the bowels of the church, the furnace was laboring away, straining to beat the cold. With the thermostat right above the heat register in Sam’s office, the furnace was running constantly.

  He ran through his sermon, started the coffee, and walked through the meetinghouse turning on the lights. At nine-fifteen, Miriam arrived with the doughnuts; then others began rolling in for Sunday school. They helped themselves to coffee and doughnuts, then went their separate ways—the children downstairs to the kitchen, the men to the Live Free or Die class in the meeting room up near the pulpit, the ladies to Bea Major’s Sword of the Lord class around the folding tables in the basement, and the young adults to Sam’s class on Christian discipleship in the coatroom by the door.

  At ten twenty-five, Dale rang the bell signaling the end to Sunday school. They gathered in the meeting room with the Sunday school dodgers, those people who failed to see the benefit of Christian education and came just for worship. Deena was seated with the Hodges. Dale and the missus were frowning in her direction.

  Bea Majors took her seat at the organ and began playing “Softly and Tenderly.” She hummed along with the first two verses, then began to sing in a high, quavering voice on the third verse, “O for the wonderful love he has promised, promised for you and for me; though we have sinned he has mercy and pardon, pardon for you and for me.” She glanced at Deena before launching into the chorus. “Come home, come home, ye who are weary, come home. Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling—calling, ‘O sinner, come home.’”

  Deena looked down, studying the patterns in the carpet. Sam slumped in his chair behind the pulpit, wondering for the hundredth time what it would cost to hire a new organist.

  When it appeared Bea was summoning her strength for another round, Sam rose to his feet and began praying the opening prayer even before he’d reached the pulpit. He skipped the joys and concerns part of worship. He didn’t want anyone standing and saying what a joy it was to see Deena back in church, putting her on the spot. He had them sing an extra song instead. Then he began his sermon.

  He spoke about the temptation to reject persons who bring news we don’t want to hear but need to hear. People didn’t seem to understand he was talking about Deena. They were yawning and glancing at their watches. He thought of mentioning Deena by name. That would get their attention. But decided against it for fear of embarrassing her.

  He finished his sermon, then settled into silence. Five minutes passed. Sam heard a slight pinging noise. He looked up and glanced around. There was more pinging, then a screeching noise of metal against metal. Smoke began to pour out the heat registers.

  There were a few cries of alarm. The men of the Furnace Committee glanced at one another. Fortunately, they had prepared for just such an emergency. Ellis, Asa, Harvey, and Dale began evacuating the meetinghouse, women and children first. Sam was the last to leave, the captain of the ship taking the last lifeboat to safety.

  They stood clutched in a knot out on the sidewalk in the bitter cold. Off in the distance, they could hear the wail of the fire alarm, summoning the volunteer firefighters to the station.

  Suddenly, a scream pierced the air. “Our autograph quilt!” Fern Hampton shrieked. “It’s still in the basement! I’m going in!” She lumbered toward the meetinghouse door.

  “No, Fern,” Deena said. “You stay here. I’ll get it.” And before anyone could stop her, she rushed into the meetinghouse. She opened the front door and smoke billowed out. She dropped to her knees and crawled inside.

  “Oh, Lord, she’s going to be burnt to a turn,” Jessie Peacock moaned.

  Minutes ticked by like hours.

  “I’m going after her,” Asa Peacock said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to cover his mouth.

  “I never should have said anything,” Fern wailed. “She’s dead in there. I just know it.”

  Deena came out just as Asa neared the front door. The quilt was gathered in her arms. She was bent over coughing as Asa guided her down the steps.

  “Oh, thank you, Lord. She’s safe,” Fern said, weeping. She drew Deena to her and began pounding her back, causing Deena to expel puffs of smoke.

  The wail of a siren split the air as the fire truck careened around the corner and pulled up in front of the meetinghouse. “Everybody get back,” Darrell Furbay, the fire chief, yelled. “Get in your cars, so’s you don’t freeze.”

  The firemen began unrolling their hoses, while Darrell pulled on his oxygen mask and ambled into the meetinghouse. He emerged several minutes later and ordered the men to roll up the hoses. “Furnace motor,” he said. “You get a furnace motor burning out and it looks a lot worse than it is, on account of the smoke goes through the heat registers. Don’t look like it’s that old of a furnace to me. Probably still under warranty. I’d call the fella that put it in if I were you. Looks awful small for the size of the church. I think the motor overheated trying to heat all this space. Whoever put it in shoulda put a bigger one in. Anyway, I got it shut off for now, but you’ll want to get it replaced quick so your water pipes don’t freeze and bust.”

  Dale called an emergency meeting of the Furnace Committee at his house. They phoned his son, Robert Dale, who was singularly unhelpful. There wasn’t a warranty, he explained. He’d purchased the furnace from a friend’s cousin in the city who’d bought it at an auction.

  It was all Asa, Harvey, and Ellis could do to hold their tongues. They had suspected all along that hiring Robert Dale to install the furnace would result in this.

  Dale said, “Well, looks like we’re going to need a new furnace. I think we oughta hire Robert Dale to put it in.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Harvey said. “We wouldn’t even have been in this mess if he knew what he was doing in the first place.”

  “Well, he knows better now, and I think we oughta forgive and forget, just like the Word teaches.”

  They haggled back and forth before agreeing to give Robert Dale the chance to redeem himself. “But no more threatening to kick us off the committee,” Ellis said to Dale. “And from now on, you don’t have any more say than we do.”

  “It’s a deal,” Dale said grudgingly, clearly unhappy.

  As for the ladies of the Circle, Deena offered the use of the Legal Grounds so they could finish their quilt. “We don’t deserve your kindness,” Fern said. “We’ve not been very nice to you.”

  “Don’t think a thing of it,” Deena said. “I’m grateful for the company. I’ve been kind of lonely lately.”

  “We’re gonna find you a man if it takes the rest of our lives,” Bea vowed.

  They set up the quilting frame in the Legal Grounds that afternoon and draped the quilt across it to air out. It reeked of smoke. When Deena opened the next morning the odor had permeated the shop. This won’t do, she thought. She gathered up the quilt and carried it to the washing machine in the back room. She turned the knob to “gentle” and set it for an extra rinse cycle. After the washer stopped, she lifted it out and moved it to the dryer. Forty-five minutes later the buzzer sounded. She pulled the quilt out, rolled it onto the frame, and was horrified to see twelve empty squares, devoid of signatures, staring back.

  She studied the quilt closely, trying to make out the signatures. Not a trace remained. She felt sick to her stomach, on the verge of nausea. Why hadn’t they used permanent markers? she wondered. How would she ever tell the Friendly Women what she had done? They were coming that morning to finish the quilt. Maybe they won’t notice, she thought. No, there was no chance of that. It was too obvious. And just when she was getting back in their good graces.

  The Friendly Women arrived within the hour. Deena was still trying to figure out how to tell them when Dolores Hinshaw noticed the autographs were gone.

  “I knew this would happen,” she wailed. “The Lord sent an
angel to erase the names. When he couldn’t destroy the quilt in a fire, he found another way. I knew this would happen. I was against this quilt from the start. Didn’t he tell us in the book of James to make no distinction between the rich and the poor? And here we are making a celebrity quilt. We’re lucky he didn’t smite the whole lot of us.”

  Fern bent down and sniffed the quilt. “This quilt has been washed. I can smell the detergent. Someone washed this.”

  They stared at one another.

  “It was me,” Deena confessed, on the edge of tears. “It reeked of smoke, so I washed it. I thought the names were in permanent marker.”

  The women stared at her, dismayed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll pay you whatever you think it’s worth.”

  The women studied the quilt. A few began to weep. “Maybe Dolores was right,” Bea said, after a few minutes. “Maybe this was the Lord’s way of sending us a message.”

  “I never was for this quilt,” said Fern. “I just went along with it because I thought everyone else wanted it. I think you’ll recall that I suggested we make a Scripture quilt.”

  “It’s not too late,” Miriam pointed out. “We could stitch twelve Bible verses on it in no time.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” Jessie said.

  “Just so long as there’s nothing from the Song of Solomon,” Bea added. “We’ve had enough talk about sex lately.”

  It took them several meetings to pick out twelve verses they could agree on. The women wanted the verses to be upbeat, but Dolores Hinshaw insisted on a passage from Revelation about the lake of fire.

  It took them the rest of February to stitch the Bible verses. By then, the meetinghouse furnace was replaced, but the Circle elected to remain in the Legal Grounds after Deena offered a 10 percent discount on coffee and sandwiches. Even with the discount, she was back in the black in two weeks’ time.

  Sam stopped past every morning on his way to the meetinghouse, visiting with the ladies as they finished the quilt. They were pleased with his interest, though curious about why he now smelled like mayonnaise.

  As for Sam, he was glad the autograph quilt had gone by the wayside. It had troubled his egalitarian spirit, though he hadn’t said anything for fear of offending the Circle. It warmed his heart to see Deena and the Friendly Women reconciled, stitching a Scripture quilt to the glory of God.

  It was a radiant quilt, the colors tastefully coordinated, the lettering attractive and precise. Dolores’s verse on the lake of fire was tucked in the corner, scarcely visible, where all bad theology belongs. Romans 8:28 occupied the center patch—We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

  It was as fine a way to enter Lent as a church could hope for. Deena Morrison in the good graces of the Circle, Dale unseated from his throne on the Furnace Committee, a glorious Scripture quilt to hang behind the pulpit on Easter Sunday, and a brand-new furnace to boot.

  It was, Sam Gardner thought, enough to make the most callous soul believe in a benevolent God. And though he worried about Dale and prayed for him to soften, he resolved to be patient.

  “In your time, in your way,” he prayed to the Lord. “But please forgive me if I should plead with you to hurry it up.”

  About the Author

  PHILIP GULLEY is a Quaker minister, writer, husband, and father. He is the bestselling author of Front Porch Tales and the acclaimed Harmony series, as well as If Grace Is True and If God Is Love, coauthored with James Mulholland. He and his wife, Joan, live in Indiana with their sons, Spencer and Sam. You can visit his website at www.philipgulleybooks.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Glorious praise for

  PHILIP GULLEY’s

  beloved HARMONY novels

  “The tales Philip Gulley unveils are tender and humorous…filled with sudden, unexpected, lump-in-the-throat poignancy.”

  Paul Harvey Jr.

  “Gulley writes with wit, and he has a real flair for creating offbeat situations that are sure to make readers smile…Even in the wackiest moments, there’s always a message, a moral to be learned…Simple and familiar lessons, yes.

  But they’re good ones. And Gulley has found clever and unique ways to remind readers of them.”

  Greensboro News & Record

  “In a league with Jan Karon’s Mitford series…Gulley’s work is comparable to Gail Godwin’s fiction, Garrison Keillor’s storytelling, and Christopher Guest’s filmmaking.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Reading Philip Gulley is a joyful experience…Gulley reveals through his masterful storytelling that simple pleasures really aren’t things of the past.”

  Topeka Capital-Journal

  BY PHILIP GULLEY

  Harmony Novels

  Home to Harmony

  Just Shy of Harmony

  Christmas in Harmony

  Signs and Wonders

  Life Goes On

  A Change of Heart

  A Christmas Scrapbook

  Nonfiction

  Front Porch Tales

  Hometown Tales

  For Everything a Season

  If Grace Is True (with James Mulholland)

  If God Is Love (with James Mulholland)

  Copyright

  Images unavailable for electronic edition.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIGNS AND WONDERS. Copyright © 2003 by Philip Gulley. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ePub edition December 2007 ISBN 9780061751851

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900

  Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com