Her first order of business was to order a new curriculum, which caused a stir among the teachers, who had used the current material for twenty years and could teach it in their sleep. Judy didn’t even order the new curriculum from the Bible bookstore in Cartersburg. She imported it from the Unitarians in Boston. It had lessons on caring for the earth and learning to live as one with all the human family and respecting diversity and seeing God’s presence in rocks and trees.
I knew there would be trouble the moment I saw it.
I thumbed through it at my desk, while Judy sat across from me.
“Very nice,” I said. “It appears to be well written, thoughtful, and progressive. I’m sure the children will enjoy it. But aren’t you concerned that it doesn’t mention Jesus?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Should I be?”
Judy grew up in California and met her husband at college while earning a degree in peace studies, which enabled her to find employment in the fast-food industry.
They had moved to Harmony to escape the city and live closer to nature. Her husband, Paul, was the sixth-grade teacher. Judy tried raising goats and spinning their wool to knit sweaters. The goats died, so she tried selling herbs. When that went bust, she decided to volunteer. She serves on the Library Board with Miss Rudy, works at the church, and hauls the twins to the Montessori school in Cartersburg three days a week.
The April meeting of the Christian Education Committee was held on a Tuesday morning in the meetinghouse basement. I arrived early to make coffee, hoping it would distract people from the new curriculum.
Judy asked if she could begin our meeting with a guided meditation. She asked us to close our eyes and envision a mountain meadow. “Feel the peace running through your body. It’s starting at your fingertips and working it’s way into your inner being.”
I heard Frank, my secretary, snicker.
“Yes, that’s good,” Judy said. “Don’t contain your joy. Now gather all your destructive ideas about God and release them to the wind.”
I opened my eyes slightly and peeked across the table at Dolores Hinshaw, who sat with her arms folded across her chest, glowering, clearly not happy at the prospect of releasing all her destructive ideas about God, lest she not have any ideas left.
I heard a sound, like wind blowing through trees. Judy’s lips were pursed, and she was blowing outward. “Can you feel them leaving your body?” she asked.
Dolores rolled her eyes.
Then Judy opened her eyes, smiled, turned to Dolores, seated at her left, and said, “I’d like for each of us to share what we envision when we hear the words ‘Christian education.’ Why don’t you begin, Dolores.”
“Well, it means we got to get our high-school and college graduates a Bible for Graduation Sunday, which is the end of this month. Who’s graduating this year, anyway?”
Didn’t I read in the Herald that Miriam Hodge’s nephew is graduating?” Opal Majors asked.
“Yes, but they go to the Methodist church.”
“That may very well be, but he’s a Whicker, and they’re members here.”
“Why’d they leave?” Frank asked.
“It was back when Pastor Taylor was here,” Opal explained. “Howard Whicker wanted to be an usher, but the church voted in Asa Peacock instead.”
“I wasn’t aware we voted for ushers,” I said.
“We don’t anymore,” Dolores explained. “Howard was our biggest giver. We took a real hit when he left.”
“Maybe if we gave his son a graduation Bible, he’d come back,” Opal said. “We sure could use the money.”
This wasn’t turning into the meaningful conversation Judy Iverson had hoped for. “How about you, Opal?” she asked. “What do you think of when you hear the words ‘Christian education’?”
“It makes me think of Donut Sunday.”
Ever since God was a child, the Christian Education Committee has served donuts and coffee before Sunday school on the last Sunday of each month.
Judy smiled pleasantly. “I see. So you think of fellowship and communing with one another.”
“No, I was thinking that the Kroger is having a donut sale, so maybe we oughta buy a year’s supply and store ’em in the freezer.”
Judy Iverson closed her eyes, envisioned a mountain meadow, then breathed out, releasing all her destructive ideas about Opal.
She tried a different tack. “Perhaps we could look at the new curriculum I had in mind.” She began distributing it around the table.
“What’s wrong with the old curriculum?” Dolores asked.
Judy smiled. “I thought it would be nice to change things a little bit.”
Opal Majors looked at Judy as if she’d suggested they shave their heads, pierce their tongues, and convert to Buddhism.
Dolores Hinshaw read the table of contents, scowling. “I hope you don’t expect the church to pay for this nonsense?”
“I thought we could take it out of our committee budget,” Judy explained.
“Then we won’t be able to afford donuts,” Opal Majors complained.
Judy volunteered to make coffee cake for Donut Sundays.
“Then we couldn’t very well call it Donut Sunday if we served coffee cake, now could we?” Opal said.
It went like that for the rest of the meeting—Judy pitched ideas, and Dolores and Opal took turns swatting them down. “No!” to the new curriculum, “No!” to coffee cake, “No!” to replacing Alice Stout, and “Most certainly not!” to Judy teaching a class on world religions.
I decided to do an end run around the Christian Education Committee. If they wouldn’t ask Alice Stout to resign, perhaps I could talk her into stepping aside. So the next day I drove to the nursing home in Cartersburg. When I arrived, Alice was having one of her more lucid moments, which meant she was aware of her surroundings and not happy about it. “Who stuck me in this dump? It smells like an outhouse. Take me home.”
Then her train derailed, and she squinted her eyes, inspecting me. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sam Gardner, your pastor.”
“Where do I go to church?”
“Harmony Friends. Remember?”
“Never heard of it.”
She picked at her lap robe.
I asked if I could pray for her. She bowed her head instinctively. I thanked God for her life, and her ministry at Harmony Friends Meeting. I prayed she would know God’s peace, then said “Amen.” I looked up to find her staring out the window as if she were looking for yesterday, but couldn’t find it.
I patted her hand good-bye, then drove to Judy Iverson’s house and told her if she taught my young adult class, I’d teach the elementary class with Alice Stout, which Judy agreed to do.
That Sunday, I arrived at church earlier than usual, turned on the lights, started the coffee, and set out the bulletins on the table at the front door. Then I carried the big pulpit chair downstairs to the elementary classroom. It was actually a bishop’s chair. We’d purchased it in 1892 from the Episcopalians after they’d folded their tents and left town. I’d never cared for it and had always sat in the smaller chair next to it.
When Alice tottered into the room on her walker, I helped her to the bishop’s chair and eased her down in it. She bounced up and down slightly, testing the softness.
“You’ve been promoted,” I told her. “You are the Sunday School Queen.”
She seemed intrigued with the notion. “I always wanted to be a queen,” she said.
“Well, now you are.”
My sons came in, Levi and Addison, and the Grant boys, and Dale and Dolores Hinshaw’s two granddaughters, who were visiting for the weekend.
I took the roll, passed the basket for Brother Norman’s shoe ministry to the Choctaw Indians, and then asked Alice Stout to lead us in prayer. You can never be sure what year Alice might be living in. This Sunday it was 1961, and she prayed for President Kennedy to stand strong in the face of Communist aggression.
The lesson w
as about Jonah, which is not an easy story to teach impressionable children, and Alice wasn’t much help.
“Did Jonah really get swallowed by a fish?” my son Addison asked.
“You bet your bippee, he did,” Alice said. “You can’t run from God. He’ll hunt you down and nail your hide to the wall, if He’s a mind to.”
“He’s kinda like Superman, except He has a beard and He’s a lot older,” Billy Grant explained to Addison.
“Not exactly,” I said. “But that’s not the important part of the story anyway. The important thing is that God loved the Ninevites and sent Jonah to help them.”
“Who were the Ninevites?” Addison asked.
“A bunch of perverts, if you ask me,” Alice said. “The Lord sent two angels to warn them, and the men of the city went mad with lust.”
“I believe you’re thinking of Sodom and Gomorrah,” I pointed out to Alice.
“Ninevites, Sodomites, Gomorites. What’s the difference?” she said. “They all needed killing, if you ask me.”
And people wonder why pastors burn out at an alarming rate.
I tried to wrap up the lesson. “Let’s just remember that God taught Jonah an important lesson about loving your enemies.”
“The thing about Ninevites, you lop off one or two of their heads, and the rest of ’em fall in line pretty quick,” Alice declared.
Being crowned Sunday School Queen appeared to bring out the worst in her.
Hoping to redeem the lesson, I asked the children if they had any enemies they could love.
“How about the Russians?” Billy Grant asked.
I explained that the Russians weren’t our enemies anymore.
“Bullfeathers,” Alice said, turning toward Billy. “Don’t ever trust a Commie, son. They’d sooner slit your throat than look at you.”
The sad thing was, Alice Stout with her mind gone was not much different than who she was when she’d been in full possession of it.
Sometimes I wish I were the kind of pastor who challenged unkind behavior. Mostly I just complain about it to my wife. The upside of my timidity is job security. The downside is that my church’s idea of suffering for the sake of righteousness is eating coffee cake instead of donuts.
On a more positive note, we were probably the only church in America that had a Sunday School Queen.
Three
The Drill
The Dairy Queen opened late this year, fueling speculation about the owners, Oscar and Livinia Purdy, and the reason for the delay. Kyle Weathers, over at the barbershop, had heard Oscar was near death in a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, where they winter.
“Near as I can tell, it’s the West Nile virus,” Kyle told Bob Miles, who had been casting about for a headline for that week’s edition of the Harmony Herald. The traditional headline for the first week of May was the opening of the Dairy Queen, with free sprinkles on every cone. But with the opening delayed, Bob was desperate for hard news.
West Nile Virus Strikes Local Citizen! he wrote in that week’s Herald. This hearsay could have been laid to rest if the Purdys’ son, Myron, had been in town, but he had left the day before on a week-long fishing trip after his mother had phoned to tell him their car was in the shop and that they wouldn’t be home until the next week. With no one in town to squelch the rumor, it became hard news by Friday morning, and by Friday afternoon Oscar was pronounced dead. The Coffee Cup was abuzz with the news on Saturday morning.
“What more do you know?” Asa Peacock asked Bob Miles.
Bob didn’t know much, but felt free to fill in the blank spots with some theories of his own.
“Mostly, what we know is that he was near death in the hospital with the West Nile virus. And now they’re saying he’s not there. No one’s heard from them. What else could it be? He’s dead, I tell you. Now Myron’s gone and so is his truck. We think he’s on his way to Florida to be with his mother,” Bob conjectured.
There is a vigorous funeral industry in Harmony, which kicked into gear with the news of Oscar’s passing. Though Oscar and Livinia are not churchgoers, it was recalled that Oscar’s mother had belonged to Harmony Friends Meeting, so it fell to me to preach Oscar’s funeral. My phone had been ringing off the hook with people wanting details. I explained to the callers that I didn’t know much; I hadn’t actually spoken with the widow, but if they wanted to help, I knew Livinia could use their prayers and that donations of food for the Purdy family could be left at our meetinghouse.
Down at the funeral home, floral arrangements began arriving for Oscar’s funeral. Johnny Mackey wasn’t even aware he’d died, but, as he told his wife, he was often the last to know these things. He stored the flowers in his cooler and began notifying all concerned about Oscar’s tragic demise.
Oscar had grown up in Cartersburg, the county seat. Johnny phoned the paper there with details for the obituary and set the funeral for next Wednesday, after Bob Miles explained to him that Myron had gone to Florida to bring his father’s body home.
As for Oscar and Livinia, their car was now fixed, and they were enjoying a leisurely drive home on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which they’d been wanting to do for several years. The interstates made them nervous, with the trucks hurtling past, squeezing them off the road. Though it took longer to get home, driving on the parkway was more agreeable.
They phoned Myron on Sunday evening to tell him they wouldn’t be home until the middle of the week, but there was no answer.
“Maybe he’s on a date,” Livinia said hopefully.
“I bet that’s it,” Oscar said, though he thought it unlikely. Myron’s dating opportunities had never been numerous.
They tried once again, around eleven o’clock. They let it ring a dozen times before hanging up.
“Must have been some date,” said Oscar.
The next day found them in North Carolina. The mountain laurels were in bloom. They stopped at scenic overlooks to take pictures.
“We shoulda done this a long time ago,” Oscar said. “This is somethin’ else.”
“We always had to get back to the Dairy Queen,” Livinia pointed out.
Back at the Dairy Queen, bouquets of flowers were piled along the west wall, where Oscar had sat in his lawn chair on summer afternoons, watching the traffic go past on Highway 36.
Down the street at the meetinghouse, I was seated at my desk, writing the eulogy for Oscar’s funeral. I normally liked to meet with the family prior to writing the eulogy, but with Livinia and Myron out of town it wasn’t possible. I tried not to think how grief-stricken they must be.
I had known Oscar all my life, so thinking up something to say about him wasn’t difficult. He had been my coach in Little League. After the games he would drive us to the Dairy Queen in the back of his pickup truck and give us Dilly Bars. On summer afternoons when I was a child, I’d ride my bike up to the Dairy Queen and visit with Oscar. If I stopped by at closing time, he would let me have the leftover ice cream from the ice-cream freezers before he took them apart to clean them. In my fourteenth summer, I gained twenty-five pounds.
I’d invited Oscar and Livinia to church several times, but they’d never come. Dale Hinshaw liked to use Oscar as an example in his men’s Sunday school class. “Now take Oscar Purdy, for instance. He’s one of the nicest guys in this town, but when the Day of Judgment comes, do you think that’s gonna matter one bit to the Lord. Not a bit. He’s gonna look at Oscar and see pure sin and send him to hell just as quick as He would Hitler. So if you think you can get to heaven just cause you’re a nice guy, then you better think again, mister.”
I was glad Dale wasn’t preaching Oscar’s eulogy. To Dale a funeral wasn’t a funeral unless the pastor hauled an unsaved sinner by the scruff of his neck down front to the casket to give him a glimpse of his fate. I’m not sure what made Dale this way. His wife once hinted that Dale’s father was a hard and cruel man. It’s been said people’s notion of God has much to do with how their parents treated them, which might explain
why Dale’s God is prone to whapping people upside the head.
The fact that Oscar didn’t belong to our church didn’t keep the Friendly Women’s Circle from gathering in the meetinghouse kitchen on Tuesday morning to make meat loaf for the funeral dinner. Fern Hampton was stirring oatmeal, ketchup, and onions into the ground beef, while lamenting the consequences of Oscar’s passing. “He used to donate Dilly Bar sticks for Sunday school crafts. Now we’re gonna have to buy them.”
The other women weren’t sure whether it was the onions or the prospect of having to spend five dollars for Dilly Bar sticks that was causing Fern to tear up.
“It’s always the little things you miss about a person when they’re gone,” Bea Majors observed, her voice catching.
“I’m just thinking of poor Livinia,” Jessie Peacock said. “Can you imagine how dreadful it would be to have your husband die and you’re all alone a thousand miles from home?”
“I saw a movie about that once,” Opal Majors said. “This woman’s car broke down on a deserted highway in the middle of the night and she got abducted by a motorcycle gang, and then they…well, I’d rather not say what they did. But you know those motorcycle people.”
“Clevis Nagle has a motorcycle, and he’s an usher in the church,” Miriam Hodge pointed out.
“I never did like that man,” Fern Hampton said. “And that chippy little daughter of his, runnin’ off to Hollywood and dancin’ in that underwear commercial. She oughta be ashamed of herself.”
“She brought a green-bean casserole for the funeral dinner,” Jessie Peacock said. “She must not be all that bad.”
“One green-bean casserole doesn’t make up for a life of perversion,” Fern declared.
That afternoon at the funeral home, Johnny Mackey and I were going over Oscar’s funeral plans. “He made prearrangements just last fall before they left for Florida. Said he didn’t want Livinia to have to worry about these things. It’s as if he knew he wasn‘t gonna make it back.”
I shook my head at the mystery of it.
Johnny studied the card he’d filled out on Oscar. “Hmm, that’s interesting. Says here he wants to be cremated and have his ashes scattered on the Little League diamond.”
Life Goes On Page 2
