The St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club

by Randle, Ned;

  Tom agreed with Theo. He just wanted to have Crump shut up and play cards.

  He wasn’t aggravated by Crump’s poor grammar or hokey mannerisms or even his crass invocation of Christ’s name every time he won a poker hand, nor was it Crump’s theology, which Tom grudgingly acknowledged was not fundamentally different from his own, differing mostly in procedural matters and fine print, that offended him. Unlike himself and Theo, who believed formality best arranged man’s relationship with God, Crump was not anchored to any conventional dogma, and he could position himself to be the arbiter of the Bible on any subject, recognizing no learned intermediary or schooled interpreter, such as the Pope or even Martin Luther, necessary for an adequate understanding of the sacred texts. Tom saw Crump as a madding interpreter of his own truth, ungrounded and unprincipled, and he resented the preacher’s unconstrained freedom just to be. So it was for that, to an extent, Tom felt some jealousy when thinking about Crump’s freedom to navigate spiritual waters, but he also was certain the preacher’s position was like a rudderless ship, destined to be splintered against the rocks and shoals of hard times at the first rush of evil winds.

  When he searched his soul, Tom had to admit there was another, and related, rudiment of the evangelical’s personality which irked him: it was the man’s innate recklessness. He sensed a maverick streak of unpredictability when the man played his hand, rarely folding a bad one, raising and re-raising and calling the bet, while holding questionable cards with an aggravating cocksureness that remained even when he was shown to be wrong. Tom figured this audaciousness likely imbued all aspects of the man’s life, and sitting next to him at the card table was akin to sitting next to a ticking bomb, and it made the old-line priest a little nervous.

  At the moment, however, Tom didn’t feel additional antipathy toward Crump because he’d offended Brian Metzger. He’d become weary of the Methodist, and not because of what he was, but because of what he wasn’t: there was so little to him, yet he was large and moved ponderously, crossing and uncrossing his heavy legs, lifting his right hand with great effort when reaching for his cards, seeming to struggle to raise the heavy signet ring that looked to have grown into the flesh of his finger, a gold ring with Southern Methodist University, Dedman College circumscribing a Greek Revival relief on the face, the Greek letters ΠΚΛ on one shoulder and a pair of crossed golf clubs on the other shoulder. A country club chaplain, insouciant and bored. Tom heard other Texans describe a man like Metzger in their own unique idiom: he was all hat and no cattle.

  Tom admitted his assessment of both Crump and Metzger were unchristian, but over time he’d come to trust his instincts. And he could pray for forgiveness.

  Although he fancied himself a pretty good judge of character, he still was having trouble adjudging Theo’s. For reasons that were not yet clear to him, he’d not grown bored with or contemptuous of Pastor Swindberg or his oddities, and he felt compelled to study him more closely during a recent card game. He didn’t do so to discover another tell among the man’s fidgets and twitches and fingernail biting, but to discover what substance there was to the man who, unlike Metzger, likely had unsounded depth. During their card game, Tom studied Swindberg so closely he was distracted by his quirks to the point he himself played sloppy poker, made a misdeal, and absentmindedly threw at least one winning hand onto the discard pile.

  The Lutheran seemed to have character, but it was always hidden behind a doleful facade. So to Tom, Theo’s principal oddity was his state of perpetual gloom, and out of that gloom arose the twitches and fidgets and nail biting and lesser peculiarities. He seldom smiled and rarely made small talk, even about issues within his religious ambit. There were times, however, when they were playing cards and Theo was immersed in the game, Tom could see a glint in the man’s eye, but whether it was a fleeting spark of enjoyment or a lambent expression of momentary insight, Tom couldn’t tell. It was as if any brief light of joy retreated behind a meddlesome cloud that floated across Theo’s mood along with the next card dealt to him, blocking any revelatory light, leaving the man in gloomy resignation. At those moments, Tom wondered if Theo was in fact a Virgo who’d never had an entire day of fun in his life. Yet, Pastor Swindberg never missed a gathering of the club, played a pretty good hand of cards, drank a beer or two, and was always pleasant. He spoke when he was spoken to, and although he was glum even when winning, he was the only player who offered after each game to stay behind with Tom to clean up.

  Unbeknownst to Tom, Theo did have fun and did enjoy the card games and even more so enjoyed the time alone with Tom after the card game. And although Theo seldom offered a word, he listened attentively while the priest rattled on about one mundane subject or another as they straightened up the rathskeller. Theo had two self-assigned tasks. The first was to shake the crumbs and motes off the tablecloth. Tom took mischievous delight in watching Theo handle the tablecloth. He’d carefully remove it from the table, shake it, place it back on the table and methodically press out the wrinkles and folds with the palm of his hand. Tom considered telling Theo the origin of the cloth, but instead took a jokester’s delight in watching the venerable Lutheran pastor take painstaking care of the Catholic altar cloth. He would wait to tell him when the timing was right, he decided, and when he did it would be a great good joke.

  Once the altar cloth was rid of every little particle and neatly placed on the table, Theo, with broom and dustpan in hand, swept clean the floor around the table. The first time he took on the job Tom covertly watched as Theo deftly worked the broom around and under the table and chairs, showing himself to be a man unsurprisingly adept at keeping things tidy. And as he watched him working the broom to whisk the rough concrete floor, Tom couldn’t help thinking the skinny clergyman could have stood sideways and hid himself behind the broomstick to avoid being seen performing what another might consider a demeaning task. But Theo appeared uncharacteristically animated, almost gay, as he worked, as if cleaning the floor was a spiritual task which permitted him to dump the dark cloud that loomed over him in perpetuity into the trash can along with the dirt and crumbs he’d swept from the floor.

  As they tidied up after the card games, Tom made small talk while Theo politely listened and offered a diffident response or two while diligently sweeping. The priest enjoyed talking about baseball, of which Theo knew only a little. Not wishing to betray his ignorance of the subject, he didn’t join in the conversation, other than to offer a polite yes or no or a shrug of the shoulders, and he let Tom monopolize the conversations. Tom was a great fan of all baseball and particularly the local professional team, the St. Louis Cardinals. He watched as many games as he could on television and listened to games on the radio if he was driving or piddling in his rose garden. He had insight into the players and the plays, which he was always happy to share with Theo with an air of authority. He wasn’t rude or tiresome about it; it was just that Theo was a polite listener, which allowed Tom to babble on, unchallenged, as long as he cared to, making observations and pronouncements and predictions, citing statistics and numbers and other supporting trivia.

  Late at night after the most recent card game, after the cellar was tidied up and Theo had gone home, Father Tom sat at his big desk in the study in contemplation and prayer. Yet, despite his attempts at deep concentration, thoughts of Theo Swindberg intruded on his meditation. He conjured up the image of the man folding the altar cloth, but it didn’t seem as funny as it had before. He thought about him moving about nearly noiselessly with the broom, trying to get the last specks from a relentlessly filthy cellar floor, his eyes downcast, his shoulders slumped, but with a purposeful calm around him. Tom got up and poured himself a nightcap, a healthy glassful of cabernet, and gave himself over to the intruding thoughts. He would, once and for all, try to figure out what it was that had attracted his attention to the Lutheran pastor since the inception of his plan for the poker club.

  As he sat at his desk sipping wine,
looking at Theo from every conceivable angle, he eliminated objectionable traits such as vainglory and arrogance out of hand. Theo, although very bright, had neither of these characteristics. He considered that the man might simply be taciturn or shy. But even quiet or bashful men aren’t necessarily devoid of joy. With that thought, he homed in on Theo’s seeming lack of joy. After another glass of wine and considerable thought, he believed he’d isolated in the man’s character an essence of anxious sadness. Or perhaps it was unhappiness. Two sides of the same coin. With that, his pastoral spirit took over and he wondered if there was something he might do to lift the man’s gloom. Perhaps that was where the signs were pointing all along.

  But before he could be of help to Theo, he needed to know the genesis of the man’s melancholy. He figured there must be something causative in the man’s life. He must certainly be a Scorpio, Tom reasoned, and would tactfully ask him his birthdate at his first opportunity. He then wondered if Theo’s predilection for gloom was caused by his biochemistry or his upbringing, or if it was a product of his education, his training, or his theology. His physical makeup was beyond his ken; his background and private life were beyond his reach. He’d heard stories about the Lutherans’ dark theology, but he wasn’t convinced Theo’s temperamental traits were a result of his internalization of church doctrine. Still, he would have to start his inquiry where he had access, so he decided his first step was to find out if Theo’s disposition might be, at least in part, caused by a long-term exposure to an occupational hazard.

  The following Sunday, after hurrying through his homily and rushing through each of the Rites at 8:00 a.m. Mass, Father Tom excused himself from the queue of parishioners outside St. Michael and walked briskly to the rectory where he changed clothes. He got into his car and drove across town to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. He stepped through the church doors just in time to see Theo and a raft of altar boys (“servers,” the Lutherans called them, he learned from the church bulletin he was handed by an usher) walk up the center aisle.

  Father Tom had always thought St. Paul’s was a magnificent church structure, at least from the outside. He’d driven by it many times and admired its external design. It was constructed from gray stone and had an impressive spire topped with a large concrete cross. The entry was guarded by heavy wooden doors which granted entry to the narthex. Once inside the narthex, he found the interior of the church to be just as grand. The church had a spacious nave, which he entered quietly once Theo and the servers processed forward far enough up the aisle to divert attention from an obtruder. The nave was furnished with two rows of stout, hardwood pews separated by a parqueted center aisle. He slipped into a back pew just inside the nave and stood respectfully as Theo slowly completed his procession, and the congregation sang all five verses of “Open Now Thy Gates of Beauty,” accompanied by an impressive pipe organ that Tom could only hear, but not see, since the organ loft was somewhere over his head and out of his line of sight.

  Once the congregation sat down, Tom leaned into the aisle to get a better view of the front of the church. There was a communion rail separating the nave from the chancel, an altar centrally positioned in the chancel, an ornate baptismal font on the right side of the altar, as one observed the altar from the nave, and a complementary ambo on the left side. The altar, font, and ambo were all fashioned from matching wood. There was a massive crucifix, also constructed from matching wood, suspended at the rear of the chancel by thin cables which were, as Tom noticed, barely discernible in the low-level light, giving the impression the cross was levitating over the altar and the officiant.

  Theo was decked out in complete vestments, and Father Tom wondered if he followed the same vestment rubric that he followed. The Lutheran was wearing a white alb and a chasuble of the same shade of green as the one he had worn at 8:00 a.m. Mass. There was a cloth runner atop the altar cloth that matched the chasuble. Not only were the vestments similar to his, as the service proceeded, Tom found the order of the liturgy very close to the Catholic liturgy. However, he found the interposed Lutheran hymns ponderous and slow, dark and phlegmatic like Theo himself, and Tom, being a believer in the transformative power of music, made a mental note that perhaps Theo’s personality was shaped, in no little part, by his lifelong exposure to melancholy church music.

  Theo recited the same Gospel passage Tom had read at Mass. Although the minister was holding an impressive Bible, it was obvious he recited the Gospel from memory, without looking down at the text. Tom found that to be no mean feat since it was a long reading. As in his own liturgy, the sermon followed Theo’s recitation of the Gospel, and Tom listened intently for substance, even though he was distracted by Theo’s flat and passionless voice. Nevertheless, the sermon was well-delivered but heavy, liberally interlaced with the theme of death. More specifically, the sermon focused on the inevitability of death, the deservedness of death, and the tortuous result of death. As he sat in the pew listening to Theo drone on about each man’s inevitable extinction, Tom started to get a better feel for the man’s morose psyche. Theo attempted to leaven his dense message toward the end of the sermon by suggesting a sinner could avoid his just desserts by absolute faith in the redemptive death of Christ Jesus. Faith, Theo preached, and not good works, was the key that unlocked the door to Heaven. Tom listened for more uplifting substance, but when it was not forthcoming, he suspected Theo ascribed to the axiom that only a little leavening is needed to leaven the whole loaf.

  Tom had looked around the nave as Theo preached, and from the stoic faces of the congregants, he assumed they were inured to Theo’s bleak worldview. He concluded the pastor’s sermons must follow the same thematic outline, week in and week out, since no one appeared to react to his discomfiting words. He was amazed Theo could get butts in the pews with his message of sin, death, and punishment, all recited to a dismal soundtrack of hymns that resembled funeral dirges. But he admitted he was being uncharitable in his silent critique, and it wasn’t until much later that Tom learned Theo’s sermons employed the standard “law and gospel” whipsaw which Lutheran dogma required in every sermon, changing only in costume and cloth. In any event, by the time the liturgy reached the Lord’s Supper, Tom recognized the liturgy, as a whole, was based on conventional logia and saw little in the service to that point that could resolve the question as to whether Theo arrived at his ministry with a glum disposition or whether his ministry itself induced in him his glum disposition.

  Father Tom was impressed, however, by the orderliness of the Lutheran’s exercise of the Rite of Holy Communion. He appreciated how the usher released the communicants pew-by-pew, allowing a small group to approach the communion rail, bow in unison, kneel, take the bread and wine, rise, bow again, and walk solemnly back to their pew. He thought in some ways their ritual compared favorably to his own Eucharist in which parishioners pushed forward in a disorganized queue, took the Body and sometimes the Blood of Christ in a perfunctory or insincere manner, and, in many cases, slipped out the narthex or side entrance rather than go back to their pews for the remainder of Mass.

  When the service concluded, Theo and the servers processed down the main aisle as the congregation sang “Lord Dismiss Us with Your Blessing.” Pastor Swindberg didn’t see Father Tom as he passed the last pew; he was solemnly staring at his shoe tops as he processed out. The congregants were released by the ushers beginning with the front pews. As he watched the congregants in the front pews stand to walk out, Tom noticed a tall, blonde woman step into the aisle. He watched her walk down the aisle toward him with long, assured strides, an agreeable smile on her face, and a glint of cheerful good humor in her eyes. Although he knew his stare was unseemly, he couldn’t look away. He continued to watch her as she passed his pew, appreciating the natural sway of her hips, which cast the hem of her skirt against his knee. He felt a catch in his breath as he turned at the waist to watch her walk out the narthex.

  Father Tom’s was the last pew released, and
he stood impatiently in line with the congregants as they passed through the narthex in Pastor Swindberg’s receiving line. He checked his watch incessantly, calculating the length of time it would take to drive back to St. Michael for 10:30 a.m. Mass. When he finally moved out of the building and down the front steps, he found it a lovely morning, warm but not humid, a pleasant breeze rustling the leaves of the mammoth sweetgum trees in the churchyard. The fine weather was salutary, and he relaxed, figuring he had only a few paces to go to say hello to Theo and head back to his church.

  Father Tom was the last person in line, and when he approached Theo and reached out to shake his hand, he thought he saw a brief flash of panic in the pastor’s eyes. Yet, he couldn’t be certain of what he saw because he was nearly face-to-face with the lovely blonde woman he’d watched walk down the aisle. She was standing at Theo’s left elbow, and her complete lightness of aspect, which was antipodal to Theo’s overall darkness, nearly blinded him. He stood dumbly in front of Theo, blinking, until Theo finally said, “Naomi, this is a friend of mine, Tom Abernathy. Tom, this is my wife, Naomi.”

  When Father Tom offered Naomi his hand, she pressed it warmly, and he looked down at her long, pale fingers and felt an uncharacteristic self-consciousness at the sight of his knit shirt stretched tautly across his belly. He wanted to say something, a greeting of some sort, but his hampered breath wouldn’t let him speak. He just nodded politely and looked up and saw a good-humored twinkle in her eye that was consubstantial with the light of her being, and later, when he thought of little else other than her, he wondered if the little Lutheran pastor had ever experienced the full power of her beautiful light.

  As he walked away from the church, he turned to catch one more glimpse of the woman standing next to Theo. He was fascinated. She was not beautiful in the conventional sense; the totality of her being made her lovely beyond words. He could hear her chattering with the ladies who had walked ahead of him in the receiving line but who now were gathered in a giggling clutch around the pastor’s wife. He could hear her peals of laughter above theirs. He took an involuntary inventory of her features from afar to commit to memory, but it was unsatisfying because he already had stood within arm’s reach of her and saw up close how striking her features were. Nevertheless, he noted she was robust, at least as tall as her husband, with strawberry blonde hair brushed back from her forehead and tucked behind her ears. Her skin was fair and flawless and complementary to her hair color. She was shapely, with fine shoulders, womanly hips, and lean muscular legs. She stood erect, her chin elevated, not in haughtiness but with an air of easy self-assurance. He also committed her clothing to memory; she was wearing a common white blouse and a cotton skirt, mid-calf length, fashioned from mint green fabric with a yellow flower print. He didn’t readily recognize the flowers from a distance, but he knew they weren’t yellow roses. Perhaps they were Heliopsis.