Life Goes On

by Philip Gulley

It’s been a quiet month. Attendance is down at the churches and several of the businesses have closed while their owners are on vacation. Ned Kivett has taken his annual fishing trip to Minnesota, leaving his cashier, Nora Nagle, to run the Five and Dime. Kyle Weathers locked the barbershop and posted a sign on the door announcing he would return in two weeks. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going, fueling speculation he was up to no good.

  I was at the Coffee Cup on a Tuesday morning, where the conversation turned to Kyle and what sin he was likely pursuing and with whom. The consensus of the Coffee Cup crowd is that he has driven to Florida to visit a woman he met on the Internet. Kyle is one of those men who are defeated by proximity. Distance is his ally. Women who’ve never met him, except over the Internet, find him witty and urbane. If he were to leave it at that, he would have no shortage of female admirers. Unfortunately, they eventually meet in person, causing Kyle to suffer the pain of rejection time and again.

  He had been spending his mornings at the Five and Dime admiring Nora Nagle, hoping to strike up a romance with her. Though she would enjoy the companionship of a man, she is not so desperate that Kyle would be seen as a viable choice. He has a great wing of hair on the left side of his head, which he combs over to cover his balding crown. That she could overlook, were it not for the profusion of hair growing in thick tufts from his nose and ears.

  Doctor Neely has also left town for his first vacation in twenty years. He and his wife, Marcella, have taken a two-week trip to France. It was a gift from their daughters, who knew their parents would never leave town unless forced to do so. People were not at all pleased with this abdication of responsibility, and several of them considered getting sick and dying just to teach him a lesson.

  Fern Hampton has had a mole on her left knee for over fifty years, but about five years ago it began changing shapes. It used to look like Rhode Island, but was now the shape of Ohio and starting to resemble Texas. She was convinced it was cancerous and had been meaning to consult Dr. Neely for the past several years. When she read in the Herald that he had flitted off to Europe, she phoned his answering service, demanding he catch the next plane home.

  Instead, she was informed Dr. Neely’s patients would be attended by a Dr. Daniel Pierce, who would be happy to look at Fern’s knee. This upset her even further. What made them think she’d be willing to bare her naked knee to a total stranger? She fumed about it to anyone who’d listen, warning the Friendly Women’s Circle that a pervert with a knee fetish had come to town, jeopardizing their chastity. This tripled his business, as unattached ladies all over town made appointments, hoping to become the object of his passion.

  Deena Morrison went to visit him on a Wednesday afternoon, during the slow hours at the Legal Grounds. Her upper legs had been itching for several weeks. She’d put off going to the doctor, he being male and she being modest. But finally she couldn’t bear it and phoned on Wednesday morning for an appointment that afternoon.

  She sat in the waiting room for close to an hour, watching a parade of women file into his office and walk out ten minutes later, starry-eyed.

  Hester Gladden was seated beside her. “Have you met Dr. Pierce yet?” she asked Deena.

  “No. This is my first visit. I have a rash on my legs.”

  “This is my fourth time to see him,” Hester confided.

  “Oh, have you been sick?”

  “Never felt better,” Hester said. She sighed. “Sure wish I was thirty years younger, though.”

  Finally, the nurse called Deena’s name and escorted her to an examination room, where she was measured (five feet, four inches), weighed (a hundred and eighteen pounds), asked to remove her clothes, and handed a paper gown. Now she was remembering why she seldom visited the doctor.

  She kept her clothes on and began studying the room. Diplomas hung on the wall, a glass jar with Q-tips sat next to the sink, an eye chart was fixed to the back of the door. A skeleton Dr. Neely had purchased at a medical auction years before and loaned to the Rotary Club each Halloween for its haunted house stood in the corner, ogling her, its teeth fixed in a permanent leer. She draped the paper gown over it, then sat on the stool and began thumbing through a pamphlet on diseases of the liver.

  She heard the doctor before she saw him. “Haroldeena Morrison,” he said, apparently reading from her chart. “That poor woman, they really hung it on her.”

  Although she had never cared for her full name and preferred Deena, it rankled her that a total stranger would comment on it.

  The door swung open, and in stepped Dr. Pierce.

  “I’ve had that name twenty-nine years and it’s worked just fine,” Deena snapped, rather uncharacteristically. “I’ll thank you to keep your opinion to yourself.” And without even a glance in his direction, she stalked from the room and out the front door.

  By Friday afternoon, her skin was raw from scratching. The rash had spread to both legs and up onto her stomach. She decided to close early and go home for an oatmeal bath. She was putting away the coffee pots when the bell over the door tinkled. She looked up as a handsome young man with blond hair, blue eyes, and a cleft in his chin walked into the Legal Grounds.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m looking for a Miss Deena Morrison.”

  This was just the way she’d always dreamed it would happen—a ruggedly handsome man would walk into her coffee shop, seeking her out.

  “I’m Deena.”

  “I’m Dr. Pierce,” he said. “And I’ve come to apologize for my rudeness the other day. I don’t know what I was thinking. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  She looked at the slight cleft in his chin and his strong jawbone and suddenly felt quite charitable. “Apology accepted.” She extended her hand and he shook it. As hands go, his was a nice one, with neatly clipped nails, his handshake firm but sensitive.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “And you?”

  “I’m doing well, thank you. I didn’t get to examine you Wednesday. Are you feeling better today?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I have a rash and it’s spreading.”

  “Where is it exactly?”

  “Umm, well, it started on my upper legs and now it’s moved to my stomach.”

  “Would you like me to look at it as long as I’m here?”

  She glanced out the front windows. “It’s not very private here. Maybe I should just call your office and reschedule.”

  “I’m leaving town for the weekend,” Dr. Pierce said. “I couldn’t see you until next Tuesday. I’d feel better if I could just look at it now. Do you have a back room?”

  “Well, there’s the supply room,” Deena said.

  “I can examine you there,” he offered. “Really, it’s the least I can do.”

  “Yes, I suppose that would be fine.”

  She led him to the supply room, flipped on the light, and pulled up her shirt a half inch to expose her midriff.

  “When did this start?” he asked.

  “A couple of weeks ago”

  “And you say it started in your groin region.”

  She blushed. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Could you ease your shirt up a notch higher. I can’t quite make this out.”

  She turned her head away and lifted her shirt another inch.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Very interesting.”

  I wonder now why they didn’t hear the bell over the door tinkle when I entered the Legal Grounds looking for my wife, who occasionally helped at the coffee shop. I heard voices in the storage room, so I walked behind the counter and looked in, just in time to see Dr. Pierce, whom I’d met earlier that day at the Rexall drugstore, studying Deena’s midsection with great interest.

  I barely had time to apologize for intruding on their private moment, before Deena pulled down her shirt and ran past me and out the door, her face beet red.

  “Ringworm,” Doctor Pierce said, straightening up. “Most unpleasant, but curable.”
/>   “It sounds gross,” I said. “Worms, yuck.”

  “Actually, they’re not worms. It’s a fungus.” He looked around the storage room. “Where’d she go?”

  “Out.”

  “Does she have a history of bolting from rooms?” he asked.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “She strikes me as an impetuous woman.”

  “She’s really quite nice,” I said.

  “Well, now she has ringworm. She’ll need medicine. I have some samples back at the office. Could you tell me where she lives?”

  Since both his office and Deena’s house were on my way home, I volunteered to take the medicine to her. I had to knock five times before she would come to the door.

  I handed her the medicine, told her she had ringworm, and repeated what Dr. Pierce told me. “Apply it three times a day, wipe down your shower with bleach, and don’t share a towel with anyone. It’s highly contagious.”

  “What did he say about me?” she asked.

  “I think he finds you interesting.”

  “Thank you for the medicine, Sam.”

  “That’s okay. I’m sorry if I startled you. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “That’s all right. I shouldn’t be so jumpy.”

  “Is everything all right, Deena?”

  She sighed. “I’m twenty-nine years old, don’t have a prospect in the world, and the most handsome man in town thinks I’m crazy. And I’ve just been told I have worms. Other than that, everything’s fine.”

  “Actually, it’s just a fungus.”

  “Oh, that’s much better. I’m sure he thinks I’m the picture of feminine charm. Fungi are much more attractive than worms.”

  She thanked me for bringing the medicine. I left for home, but then remembered I hadn’t finished my sermon, so I headed back to my office instead. Frank was there, putting the final touches on Sunday’s bulletin. I phoned my wife to tell her I would be home a little late, and mentioned Deena’s ringworm to her.

  The next day we worked in the yard, mowing, trimming, and pulling weeds. It was a beautiful Saturday, and the clouds were puffy and white as sheets. That evening, we went to the fire-department fish fry, then came home and sat on the porch while the boys caught fireflies, pinching their lights off to make rings.

  I arrived at church the next morning an hour early and set out the bulletins on the table near the door, surveying the list of persons in need of prayer. It had grown to fifty-three names, many of whom were now fully recovered but enjoyed being prayed for and insisted their names remain. At the bottom of the list was Deena Morrison’s name, followed by the word ringworm.

  Frank came in the door as I was reading the bulletin.

  “Morning, Frank. I see Deena called to be put on the prayer list.”

  “Nope. I heard you tell your wife she had ringworm and thought I’d add her name.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” I said. “I think Deena wanted it kept a secret.”

  “Then why’d you tell your wife?” Frank asked.

  “I tell my wife a lot of things that are meant to be private.”

  “So you admit to being a gossip, then.”

  I gathered up the offending bulletins. “Maybe we’ll just do without a bulletin today.”

  “Can’t do that. The words to the last hymn are on the back cover. Why don’t I just go through and black out Deena’s name with a pen?”

  “Do you mind?”

  “No, I suppose not.” He let out a heavy, inconvenienced sigh.

  Halfway through the opening minute of meditation, it occurred to me we’d have been better off throwing the bulletins away and picking a new closing hymn. Half the congregation were holding their bulletins up to the lights trying to make out what Frank had crossed out.

  “The first letter’s a D,” Ellis Hodge whispered to Miriam. “It’s probably Dale.”

  “It can’t be,” Hester Gladden piped up behind them. “The second name starts with an M.”

  Ellis glanced around the meeting room, eyeing each person, looking for a fit to the initials DM. His glance settled on Deena Morrison. Slowly, others in the meeting room stole glances at her, trying to discern her medical condition.

  “I can’t be sure,” Dale Hinshaw called out, “but I think it says ringworm.”

  Hester Gladden turned toward Deena. “I thought you went to the doctor.”

  “Who went to the doctor?” Opal Majors asked, while reaching into her ear to adjust her hearing aid.

  “Deena Morrison,” Fern Hampton said.

  “What’s wrong with Deena?” Opal asked.

  “Dale said she has the worms,” Hester said.

  With that, Deena stood, mustering all the dignity she could, and strode from the meetinghouse.

  The next day she hung a Closed for Vacation sign on the door of the Legal Grounds and hasn’t been seen for a week. The rumor circulating in the booths at the Coffee Cup is that she has run off to Florida to elope with Kyle Weathers, though I know for a fact it isn’t true. If I were a gossip, I could set the rumor straight, but since I don’t indulge in such practices, I can’t mention how I saw her in Cartersburg in the company of a handsome young man with a cleft in his chin, looking positively radiant, albeit a tad itchy.

  Ten

  It Takes a Thief

  The thunderstorm that hit in mid-August was all boom and very little rain, and by the last week of August the ground was parched, six inches of rain below normal. The farmers have been gathering each morning at the Coffee Cup to lament their predicament and hinting that if I had any pull with the Lord, I would deliver a good, steady rain on their behalf.

  Farmers, I have discovered, are a generally gloomy lot, and when not worrying about the weather are direly predicting equipment failures or falling crop prices. If my prayers did produce rain, they would grumble that it didn’t come in quarter-inch increments, equally disbursed over the growing season. My role in this is abundantly clear—I am to curry the favor of the rain god, lest their livelihoods be ruined and my suitability for ministry questioned.

  By the last week of August, the drought was so bad, Harvey Muldock and the other men of the town council imposed a ban on lawn and garden watering. In an article in the Herald, Harvey was quoted as saying the town’s water department would be monitoring each home’s water use and prosecuting scofflaws. The men at the American Legion detected a whiff of fascism and issued a proclamation declaring their opposition to the council’s latest tyranny.

  The town-council elections are in November, and it was Harvey’s hope, when he proposed the watering ban, that it would make someone mad enough to run against him and he could retire from the town council altogether. He’s served for sixteen years. He ran for the office to prove to his wife he could win, after he’d mentioned in passing that he’d been thinking of running and she’d laughed and told him to stop being ridiculous. So just to prove he could, he ran and won. Now she won’t let him quit. The council meets every Monday night, which gets him out of the house so she can have her euchre club over. The last thing she wants is Harvey hanging around trying to be witty and charming, making a pest of himself.

  It took several years for Harvey to realize he’d been duped into running. Now his only hope is to irritate enough people to be voted out of office. He is tired of the grind, weary of people phoning his home at all hours to complain about things over which he has no control. The last straw was when Hester Gladden phoned his house during his favorite TV program to complain that a groundhog was tearing up her garden and wanting to know what he was going to do about it.

  The next evening, after dark, he took his .22 rifle down from the closet shelf and walked over to Hester’s house to dispatch the groundhog, though it occurred to him it would be infinitely more satisfying to take out Hester. He was hiding behind her tulip tree when he noticed Hester sneak out of her house and drag her garden hose over to Bea Majors’s water spigot next door. He watched as Hester hooked up her hose to Be
a’s spigot and adjusted the sprinkler to water her grass.

  He tiptoed to Bea’s door and rang her doorbell until lights flickered on throughout the house as she awakened. He didn’t stick around to watch the clash, but noticed the next morning at church that Bea and Hester weren’t speaking to one another.

  Hester has been the Friendly Women Circle’s treasurer nearly twenty years. At their next meeting, without revealing the sordid details of the water heist, Bea suggested it might be wise to audit their books. “There are things you don’t know that I’m not at liberty to discuss,” she said. “But it might behoove us to examine our books and appoint a new treasurer.”

  Miriam Hodge pointed out there had never been more than a hundred dollars in the Friendly Women Circle’s checking account, and that checks required two signatures.

  “She’s been putting her trash in my garbage can for years,” Bea sputtered angrily. “Now she’s stealing my water.” Bea turned to Hester. “You didn’t think I’d noticed, did you? And to think I invited you to join this honorable body. What was I thinking?”

  The women gasped, and shifted away from Hester. To have one of their own exposed as a common thief was more than they could bear. If word ever got out, their stock would plummet; they’d be ruined.

  “As much as it hurts me to say this,” Fern Hampton said to Hester, “I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to resign.”

  It actually didn’t hurt a bit. Fern hasn’t liked Hester Gladden since 1989, when Hester had the temerity to run against her for the Circle’s presidency. According to Fern, Hester’s defeat was one more indication of the Lord’s protective hedge around the Circle.

  “Aren’t we moving awfully fast?” Miriam Hodge asked. “We haven’t even heard Hester’s side of it. And even if it’s true, aren’t we supposed to forgive?”

  Although the Friendly Women’s Circle is strong on noodles and fairly adept at organization, forgiveness has never been their strong suit. Three minutes later, Hester was ousted as treasurer and Jessie Peacock was being sworn in, her left hand resting on a 1935 first-edition copy of the Friendly Women’s cookbook, her right hand upraised, as she pledged to defend the Friendly Women’s Circle from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Then they brought the meeting to a quick close, so they could go home and begin circulating word of Hester’s fall from grace.