After I had admired the walls, and the pews, I moved forward, quietly and slowly taking in the rest of the furnishings. The table of flickering votives, each representing a prayer. The banners, the hymnals, the candlesticks. When I reached the front, I realized I was not alone. There was a man; the priest, it had to be, although he was dressed in grey slacks, and a white dress shirt. He was sitting in the front pew, on the far side of the altar, watching my progress toward him.
“It’s a beautiful church. Precise workmanship. Was it built by the members?” I asked quietly, as the heat rose in my face and neck. It was the only thing I could think to say after he had watched me fondle his church.
He smiled kindly from behind silver-rimmed glasses, and nodded a mostly-bald head. “Much of it was. Although the walls you were admiring were done by professionals.” He stood, and came to meet me on my side of the altar. His handshake was firm, but a bit clammy, as if he was also nervous to meet me.
“Father Felix?”
“Yes, Miss Taylor. It’s a very great pleasure to meet you. Forgive me. You are not quite what I was expecting.”
“I’m my father’s daughter, not one of his flock. I don’t blame you for being surprised.”
“Ah,” he said, before studying my face with unusual intensity. He seemed sad, and at once expectant. Which unsettled me. So I returned to the only subject I had on hand.
“In the round. You don’t see many churches built like this. Not at all what I was expecting to find in a small town in Kentucky.”
“It is unusual. The priest who oversaw the construction was a very devout and traditional man. There wasn’t really room on the lot for the more traditional cruciform configuration. So this is what they landed on.”
“I believe this priest did them a very great favor. The family, together, all focused on Christ. It’s a very beautiful lesson. Wonderful to be able to build it into a sanctuary.”
“Are you Catholic, Miss Taylor?” he asked with a certain light of hope in his eyes.
“Oh, please call me Keziah. I’m Lutheran now. Raised Unbridled Holiness, of course.”
“Synod?”
“Missouri.”
“I’m sure there is quite a story as to how that came about,” he said, his tone indicating that he wouldn’t mind if I shared the story. I blew past the implied question, sure it was simply the tone he had adopted over years of listening to people’s stories, whether he wanted to or not.
“It sounds as though you have quite a story to tell me, too. What happened here this morning? Do you have any idea why he would try and take over your service?”
Bottomless sadness seemed to fill his eyes. “Does the last name Felix mean anything to you, Keziah?”
“No, I’m sorry. Should it?”
He sighed. “Your father and I have been competitors for many years. His crusades always sweep through any town where I serve. Every summer — for years — he has dogged my tracks. I admit this year was an escalation, but not a wholly unexpected one. He has often threatened that he would stop my poison from spreading. I’m not that surprised he took direct action.”
“How many years has this been going on?”
His grey-green eyes seemed to search mine as if his words would have impact. “Just over twenty, now.”
This meant nothing to me. “Did he do any damage?”
“Some dinged communion vessels, some stained linen, one slightly dented candle stand. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’ll happily pay for the damages,” I said, opening the checkbook I had brought in with me from the car.
“Keziah, you don’t have to do that. It’s not your responsibility.”
“I do, and it is. You certainly won’t be seeing a penny in damages from him. Frankly, I think he’d rather serve jail time than replace a single shred of linen for you. After all, Holy Mother Church is clearly the enemy.”
He chuckled. “Not exactly news to me. But there was no serious damage done. I can’t have you paying us for damages you didn’t do. It wouldn’t be right. We are not in need of your money.”
“Dry cleaning for the linen. How badly is the candle stand damaged?” I asked, starting to do the mental math.
“Not at all really. It’s a small dent that I have turned toward a wall. No need to replace it.”
“And the communion vessels must cost something.”
“We have volunteers who are happy to fix these things.”
I quickly filled out the check where I stood. “Will fifty dollars cover it, or is it more like seventy or eighty?”
He sighed heavily. “Fifty dollars will more than settle any damages we were done.”
I wrote in the amount, tore the check out, and tried to hand it to him. He shook his head. “I really can’t take that from you. We wouldn’t have gone after him for damages. He’s not well, Keziah. We wouldn’t sue a sick man for something he couldn’t help. No one was hurt. Your money is not necessary.”
“It is necessary to me. I would think you, of all people, would understand about having a clear conscience. This is the only way he will let me help him, and he would forbid even this if he knew. He does not demand this of me, I demand it of myself. Take it as a donation if it makes you feel better, but you must take it. I’ll have someone slip it into the plate next week, or mail it in anonymously if you don’t take it now.”
Slowly, as if giving me plenty of time to draw it back, he took the check from my outstretched hand. Once he had the check he folded it neatly and stuck it in his breast pocket.
“Thank you for understanding,” I said.
“You are welcome, my dear.”
“I should go now. Thank you for your time.”
“It’s been lovely to meet you, Keziah.”
He shook my hand again, and then watched me go with sad, and oddly teary eyes. I did not wonder about it at the time. After all, he was a priest. And what did I know of priests?
Five
I did not arrive back at the jail before Porter finished speaking with my father.
“You should have waited for the Elder’s permission,” said Porter, by way of greeting, when I entered the station lobby.
“Did he grant it?”
“Of course not,” said Porter.
“Seems like it would have been an awful long wait, then,” I said. Behind his computer screen Officer Cortland snorted. Susan was studying the floor very hard. Apparently, she had been reprimanded for letting me leave, or possibly for bringing me here in the first place.
Porter gave me a hard look that I’m sure was intended to quash my spirit. It didn’t work. I smiled at Porter, and turned to Cortland. “Is there a good motel in town?”
That Sunday night I blew the dust off my credit card, and sprang for two rooms at the Dresden Inn. A decent-enough place on the outskirts of town, which cost me one hundred and five dollars, and thirty-two cents. Then we went out to eat at the nearest sit-down restaurant, a place called Parkers which officer Cortland recommended. It was pretty good for a greasy spoon. When the bill came, Porter looked at me steadily with his huge, soggy-blue eyes, and didn’t even offer to pay his part of the thirty-three dollars and sixteen cents. I tried to resent it, but who was I kidding? I knew, if they had any money on them at all, it belonged to the church. They surely were not going to spend it on the likes of me. Looked at the right way, I was feeding the poor, and sheltering the homeless. It was a very decent and Christian thing of me to do. Noble even. I was not, however, in the mood to look at it the right way.
One of the many hard lessons I had learned in my life was about money and saving. I never learned anything from my father about keeping or managing money. There never was any at our house to manage, so in many ways there was nothing there to learn. The house we lived in was one my parents had purchased outright when they moved. My father must have somehow scraped together the funds for taxes, electricity, and water. Heat was from an old wood-burning stove one of the members put in for us. Cooling in the summer was
opening some windows and praying for a breeze. Food bills were supplemented by donations from the congregation, and by our garden and chickens. Any money that came into the house — which didn’t amount to much — went right out again to pay for necessities. Anything left over went straight into the coffers of the church. We were going to heaven any day now, so there was no need to save money. In fact, it would have denoted a certain lack of faith to save money.
Out on my own, I did have a full-ride scholarship at college, but that still left important things to pay for, like clothing and food. That first year at college was a shock to me in many ways. That summer, back at the Brandt’s, I started asking questions of Linus. Patiently, Ivy’s father showed me everything he knew about saving, spending, and budgeting. I took his lessons, and began a methodical budgeting savings crusade. I had a dream. A neat little house, maybe white, maybe yellow, with roses out front; and a pet, maybe a cat. In my house the furnace would keep me warm in the winter, and the air conditioning would cool me in the summer. In my house the pantry would be full, and serving a guest wouldn’t mean going without myself. In my house, if the paint on the walls started to chip I would repaint. There would be money to buy furniture not get it third, or fourth hand, tossing it out when it broke. In my house there would be a big, comfortable chair, and a red teapot, and a pretty china cup. I would sit in that chair, and drink my tea, and know that if God didn’t take me home that night, tomorrow the heat would work, the air would work, the lights would come on, and there would still be food in the pantry.
Silly, maybe. I had almost reached the first part of that dream when Susan’s call came. I had almost saved enough money to have a down payment for a house. Five thousand dollars wasn’t going to entirely clean me out, but it was going to put my plans back at least a year, maybe two, and at a time when I was thinking about going back to school. It was, in its way, heartbreaking. But I couldn’t tell them that. They wouldn’t have understood.
Susan and I shared a room that night, while Porter took the room across the hall. I was looking forward to catching up with Susan, away from the watchful eye of Porter. It would be nice to hear about what had happened in my father’s ministry, and find out how her mother was doing. We never had the conversation. Susan took a shower, and then I did. When I came out she was sound asleep in her queen-sized bed. So I lay down in my own bed, and tried to sleep.
I should have slept pretty well. I’ve never been the sort of person bothered about not sleeping in my own bed. I had a horrible night. I did it to myself. I started thinking about how nice it would be to get back to the Brandt’s, and that — naturally — led me to thinking about the next day. What would my father say when we bailed him out? Would he be grateful? Would he be mad that I made him stay in jail overnight? Would he try and save my soul right there in the police station? Around and around my thoughts chased themselves, with each scenario — what I would say, what he would say — coming out worse than the last. Until, finally, I was so exhausted all I could do was sleep. But it wasn’t restful, or enough.
The next day Porter met Susan and I downstairs for the blessedly free breakfast bar. I had decided by then I didn’t like the look of Porter at all. There had been men in the congregation who never seemed the worse for having come under my father’s sway. Jack Kline for instance. Susan’s late father had been a kind man, who had loved his wife and daughter very much. In my opinion, he would have been very upset that Susan hadn’t gone to college. Saddened, even, to see her still stuck in Charity, and following my father through the south every summer on Crusade.
Porter did not seem to be a Jack Kline. He’d gone the other way, to my eyes. Almost as if whatever elements of Porter my father didn’t approve of had been erased by my father’s will. Again, I desperately hoped Susan wasn’t planning to marry Porter. I hadn’t had a chance to ask, and didn’t want to in front of him. I wasn’t sure how well I would take the news if the answer was that they were engaged. I was hopeful, though. They certainly didn’t act as if they were in love.
I suppose I could have been wrong about Porter, too. He hadn’t said anything to me since the police station. Susan had been unusually quiet, too, but not unfriendly. It made me wonder if they had been instructed not to speak with me, lest I lead them astray.
After breakfast I made the call I needed to make to the bank so they could transfer funds to my checking account. Then I called Mrs. Clack, the church secretary at St. Paul’s, and told her I wouldn’t be able to make it in that day to look over the paraments. We agreed that I would try and come in the next day. Although, in truth, I suppose I could have gone in anytime. By the time we got to the station it was ten o’clock. Officer Cortland was on duty again, working the desk. He seemed happy to see us.
“No trouble with the old man last night. He was downright peaceable, even,” he reported to me cheerfully, sparing no more than a glance for Porter and Susan.
Cortland directed us to the clerk’s office to pay the fine. Mercifully, I was able to hand over the money gracefully. No tears, no whining. Although I desperately wanted to cry and whine. I was almost thankful then for Porter’s damp presence. I wouldn’t let myself be brought low in front of him. In front of only Susan, I probably would have kicked up a fuss. All my hard work, and I was just going to have to start over.
When we came back to the front of the station to wait for my father, Officer Cortland sent a deputy back to the jail to get him for us. Behind us, the Station door swung open and what sounded like two people stepped in to the lobby. I didn’t turn and glance at them. All I wanted to do was get out of there. Officer Cortland smiled and made the one minute sign to whomever had just entered the lobby.
A moment later the door that led to the jail began to open and...
I often pause to ponder my innocence in that moment. I had no idea what was about to happen and what it would mean. Right at that moment I thought I was going to get out of Dresden, Kentucky, and then out my father’s line of fire, having only wasted two days, and five thousand three hundred fifty-one dollars, as well as whatever I’d spent on gas and food and whatnot. Little did I know that this trip was about to cost me so much more.
*
Walton Taylor always was a handsome man. While age had grayed his hair and deepened the lines around his eyes and mouth, it had enhanced, rather than detracted from his looks. Tall and rangy, with brown eyes, his gray hair flowed to his shoulders, as he rarely remembered to get it cut. He had long-since perfected his hundred yard stare. A stare he turned on me as he entered the station lobby. I returned the stare in kind.
The day before, Father Felix had said he wasn’t well. Father looked well enough to me. Thinner, grayer, but with good color, his shoulders held straight as he stepped firmly toward our little group.
“Keziah,” he said.
“Father.”
“You must change. You should not have presented yourself to me dressed this way. A woman dressing in man’s clothing is a sin. As you well know. Go with Susan now, and change your clothes. You should have accepted her generous offer in the first place,” he said.
Ah, he had been well-informed. I wondered if it was Susan, or if it was Porter, or perhaps both kept him updated.
“I won’t change. This is my clothing. It fits me. Susan’s would not have.”
“You cannot see the congregation dressed this way. It is impossible to do the Lord’s work when men are busy lusting after your body, instead of concentrating on the Word of God.”
“I have no intention of seeing the congregation. I have agreed to take you and Susan and Porter as far as Owenton. That is all. After I drop you off I will be headed back to my vacation.”
“Back to your life of dissipation among sinners.”
“Yes.”
“You are wanton and immodest, headstrong child. You will come to regret your sinful ways. Coming before me in men’s clothing, and bedecked in jewelry. Your vanity will be your undoing.”
The mention of jewelry sto
pped me for a moment. Then I remembered I was wearing a watch, and a small gold cross necklace Ivy had given me for Christmas the year before. How tarty of me. I could feel the anger rise, even though this was the reception I had more or less expected.
“So, my money is good enough to get you out of jail, but my person is offensive to you. How very greedy of you.”
Cold heat rose in his eyes. I had touched a nerve. Okay, I’d stomped up and down on it, as I knew right were it was.
“Your money has served to further the work of the Lord. It’s more than I can say for you.”
“Are you accepting the ride I’m offering you to Owenton or not? I hear it’s a lovely walk this time of year.”
He took a step back from me. As he stepped back from me, he caught sight of the people who had entered the lobby behind us.
“And what does a priest of Unholy Mother Church want here today?” my father asked.
Porter, Susan, and I spun around to find Father Felix standing behind us, with his arm around the shoulders of a much older woman. Father Felix did not flinch, or back away under my father’s gaze, but the woman shrank back.
“After your daughter came by to pay for the damage you caused the church, I realized she was such a charming young woman I couldn’t let her leave town without trying to introduce her to my mother. Keziah, if you will permit me, this is my mother, Ruth Ann Felix. Mother this is Keziah Taylor,” said Father Felix.
“No, Keziah. Do not,” snapped my father. I had already stepped forward and extended my hand to Ruth Ann, who shook it gently. She looked fragile, and a little scared.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Ruth Ann. You must be very proud of your son,” I said. It was a pleasantry. The sort of thing you say to a parent whose child has done well at school, or become president.
The Color of Ordinary Time Page 4
