by Amy Sorrells
“Maybe not. But sometimes when God takes away, you end up with more than you had to start with.”
“That’s not what’s happened with us.”
She bowed her head and rubbed her temples. “I know.”
He thought about Cass Dinsmore and Nashville and the faintest of hopes that maybe whatever he had to offer could get them all out of Sycamore. Maybe this was finally the plan, the future God had for him. There might be opportunities for all of them in Nashville—better support for Eustace, less hard work for Mama. He could bring in enough money to support them and pay the bills on time for once. “Don’t you ever wonder if God has more for you, Mama? More for us?”
She straightened and crossed her arms. “I stopped wondering that a long time ago. I got all I could ever want and all I care to handle right here in this house. And in the fields and the barn out there. Ain’t nothing more for me in this world besides what we can see in front of us.”
Noble took the jar with the small blue butterfly, flat and lifeless, and set it on the desk next to the rest of Eustace’s collection. He poked at the box of pins that would soon be used to dry and set and mount it next to the rest of the specimens.
There’s gotta be more than this, he thought to himself and headed back to his room, where he picked up his guitar and plopped down cross-legged on his bed. He sorted through and plucked out the chords for songs he thought he might play at the Onion, a couple more he thought he might play if he really went to Nashville, before pulling out a couple of familiar church songs to play on Sunday at the service.
From downstairs, he heard the door to Mama’s sewing room shut. The walls were thin. Her machine began to whir and pause, whir and pause. He pictured her as she turned and worked the fabric of whatever project she was working on and wondered if she had really been telling him the truth or if she was settling for the little she thought she was worth.
15
Noble and Eustace finished in the barn Sunday morning with just enough time before the service to clean up and stop at the Percolator for coffee and donuts and a Sunday version of the Indianapolis Star with all the coupons Mama liked to collect. As they drove toward town, the corn and bean fields alternated and gave way to ranch homes and then the high school, then Main Street and the square, lined by boxy buildings with chippy, forlorn architectural details that had once made them look distinguished in their day. Sunday mornings felt like a farm convention at the Percolator, one of the few times during the week the beef farmers mingled with crop farmers and swine farmers with chicken farmers and dairy farmers, the only noticeable difference between them the seed or tractor logo on their caps. Otherwise they all had the same dirt on their boots, halfway up their knees, drying and cracking and crumbling off onto the tile floor as they slapped their knees in laughter or shook them out of nervousness as they spoke about the latest market prices or crop developments or governmental subsidy battle raging at the state assembly.
Noble got a carryout order of donuts and coffee, and the three of them sat shoulder to shoulder across the front bench seat of the pickup as they drove down Main Street toward the church. Noble glanced at Eustace, poking at a video game on his smartphone. “Turn that thing on silent before we go in so at least no one will hear you playing with it, ’kay?”
Eustace didn’t take his eyes off the screen in his hand as he lolled out of the truck after Noble parked.
“Okay?” Noble asked again, a little louder.
“Turn it off, Eustace,” Mama said.
Noble couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Mama in a dress, and he admired the way the pretty floral cotton had transformed her from the disheveled, worn-looking woman who sat at her sewing machine or worked in the garden or barns most of the day to someone younger he hardly recognized. As she walked ahead of them, he smelled the scent of lavender shampoo in her blonde hair, which shone in the sun.
The three of them walked up the steps of the church. The wrought-iron railing wriggled in its crumbling concrete base, the steps craggy from another season of ice and thaw and salt sprinkled on them. The parking lot held a few more late-model cars than usual, no doubt because of the news of the closing, since plenty of folks were way more interested in local gossip than the gospel.
“Take your hat off, Eustace.” Noble elbowed him as they entered the gathering space.
Mama and Eustace picked their old spot in the back row of the church and Noble carried his guitar case to the front. The reverend had called him yesterday and explained the song set, which he’d be playing along with Mrs. Worley on the organ. “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” would be the call to worship. In the chancel, Bonnie Thompson straightened an arrangement of altar flowers: a spray of sunflowers, tiger lilies, and daisies. Myrtle Worley sat at the organ filing her nails. Adam Russell, who had taught him music and history in high school, straightened the Bibles, hymnals, and offering cards in the pews. Before folks began arriving, they had time to run through the songs three times, and Noble was careful to keep eye contact with Mrs. Worley and let her lead. Wasn’t anything worse for a guitarist than a passive-aggressive pianist—or in this case, organist—and he wasn’t about to give her reason to resent him or feel like he was intruding on her stage.
Noble recognized nearly everyone who came that morning. Old friends of his grandparents sat near the front, and behind them the Orwells, Crawfords, the Howards, Stuart Granger and his wife, the Baileys, and Sheriff Tate and his family. And Julie Shaw, editor of the paper.
Shelby sat in the front on the far side, pressed against the arm of the pew as she stared into her phone. As much as she drove him crazy, he wasn’t about to give up on her. Not yet. Not even with the small hope of Nashville now. He ached for the time they’d shared, for the way they could simply sit and look at each other and without saying a word know that all the world was right. When she did look up at him, he winked at her. She blushed and focused quick back on her phone.
“Welcome to Sycamore Community Church,” Reverend Horton said from behind the pulpit. “It’s a fine day to be together and worship the Lord. Let’s start by greeting whoever’s sitting around you.”
The congregants obeyed and shook hands and grinned and laughed amongst themselves.
“You may have seen the headline in the paper,” Reverend Horton began. All the coughing, throat clearing, and bulletin crinkling quieted, like a child about to be scolded, allowing the words to travel over the parishioners scattered sparsely in the pews. “After today, we’ll have two more services left before we’re forced to shut our doors.”
Many heads nodded.
Reverend Horton appeared to Noble to be on the verge of tears, something Noble imagined was unusual for him from the way the parishioners shifted uncomfortably in their pews.
“Since I’ve been here . . .” Horton fumbled for words and gripped the sides of the pulpit to steady himself. “I’ve been here twenty-some years now, and never before have I . . .”
From his spot, Noble could see tears running freely down Horton’s face, ruddy with emotion. He held the pulpit as if steadying himself, then hung his head. “I’m sorry . . .” The words seemed to Noble to be for a larger failure than breaking down in that moment. Mike Crawford, Rich Orwell, then Greg Howard got up from their seats and walked up beside Horton, who’d backed away from the pulpit.
Hank Thompson approached the microphone.
“Don’t let ’em close us down.” Lizzie Bailey’s voice quaked as she stood to deliver her plea from a few rows back. Her husband, Dan, tugged at her sleeve in a vain effort to get her to sit back down. As the town beautician, she was not a person whom anyone, and certainly not her husband, could keep quiet.
“Don’t let ’em, Rev.”
Noble couldn’t identify the man’s voice ringing out from a pew across the room.
George Kernodle sat with his arms crossed in the second row, his wife, Susan, sitting stoic, expressionless, next to him, and their two teenage daughters next to her, eyes focu
sed on their smartphones. Several more congregant pleas and offers of support rippled across the room before Hank rapped on the pulpit gently to regain everyone’s attention.
“It’s okay, everyone. Calm down a minute.” Hank looked back at Horton, who nodded approvingly and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. “What the reverend was trying to say is he—we all—have been feeling the strain of decreased attendance the last few years, this year in particular. The elders have long been meeting and praying to try to find the Lord’s leading in trying anything and everything to keep this church from dying.”
“Alright now,” someone hollered.
“Tell us more.”
James stepped up to the pulpit again, his face as red as ever. “I think the best thing to do would be to introduce George Kernodle. He knows the details of the state of the church and why ultimately this had to happen. George?”
Noble watched a look of horror flash across Kernodle’s face, followed by a flushing of his jowly cheeks. His features hardened as he hoisted his huge body up to the pulpit, and he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the back of his neck and forehead.
“Thank you, Reverend.” Kernodle paused and scanned the people in the pews before him. “I’m afraid it’s true. We’ve done everything we could to help the past few years, but it’s come down to closing. The bank was generous in its loans and low interest rates, but at the end of the day, the board . . . the bank . . .”
He crumpled into a fit of coughing, and Noble was sure the corpulent man was going to have a heart attack right in the chancel. Greg produced a bottle of water. Kernodle nodded with appreciation and appeared to gather himself.
“As I was saying,” Kernodle continued, his voice strained and belly heaving with each breath. “The bank has exhausted all its options. The building and property and contents go up for auction on Monday, September 5.”
The audience gasped and whispered amongst themselves as Kernodle waddled toward his seat but then, at the last second, turned and walked down the aisle and right on out of the church. Mrs. Kernodle, mouth open with what appeared to be horror, gathered her purse and Bible, grabbed their two daughters, and they followed hurriedly after him.
“What can we do?” Lizzie stood, voice trembling and mascara running down her face. “Surely we can do something, Rev.”
“Yes, tell us. Can we save it?”
Horton returned to the pulpit, with Hank and the other elders still at his side. “We’ve looked at everything and every which way. There’s nothing more we can do. But listen. I’ve been thinking. Just a few months ago, the fields around my house were bare. Not a sign of last season’s crops. But today when the sun came up, the rows of corn and beans stretched green and tall for as far as I could see. Sometimes what looks like the end becomes a new season. A new day.”
Noble shifted his guitar on his lap and wondered if Horton might break down again. The crowd seemed intent, focused on every word. In the back of the church he could see that Eustace had resumed playing a game on his phone. Noble felt out of sorts being there as an onlooker to such a seemingly major event, like a Peeping Tom in on a family meeting.
“In John 12:24 Jesus said that unless a grain of wheat is planted and dies, it remains only a single seed. Alone. But if it dies—”
His voice echoed across the room, through the rafters.
“If—it—dies—”
He paused.
“Its death will produce many new seeds. It will bear much fruit. It will produce large crops.”
This was the Reverend Horton Noble remembered. His presence filled the room as much as his voice, each syllable building pressure waiting to be released. Reminded Noble of storms blowing into town, the ones that sent you running through the house to open windows to even out the pressure.
“The doors of this building may close, but the doors of the Kingdom, no one, no bank, nothing can keep those gates from closing. So while this is not what any of us want, I have to trust—we have to trust—that the Lord has greater plans for those of us who are losing a building. That he has greater plans for this town. Because he is bigger than a building. He is more sure than bricks and mortar. He cannot be shaken, though the ground give way and the earth may tremble—though we may tremble. He is here, in the midst of this . . . of us.”
“Go on,” Lizzie Bailey said.
“Alright now,” Jersha Pittman said.
Noble watched as with each phrase Reverend Horton stood taller, appeared more confident.
“Isaiah 54:10 says, ‘“For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken,” says the Lord, who has mercy on you.’” Horton turned to Noble and Mrs. Worley. “‘Jesus My Lord’?”
They answered him with a nod, and Mrs. Worley mouthed, Key of C to Noble. He adjusted his guitar, and when she nodded, they began to play.
“Stand with me now, will you?” Horton said, lifting his arms.
Noble strummed the opening chords, and as he did, he wondered if God had bigger plans for his life, too, and if Cass Dinsmore was more than a chance meeting, but something God might finally have that was going to be good for him. He exhaled the words to the song, feeling them as he hadn’t in a long, long while:
“Have you seen Jesus my Lord?
He’s here in plain view.”
Noble watched Shelby fiddle with her phone screen as she and the rest of the parishioners stood, joining in slowly, until eventually their voices rose in unison. Surely she knew she belonged up here with him. She had to remember how good they’d been singing together. She had to.
“Take a look, open your eyes,
He’ll show it to you.”
Noble crooned into the microphone, and when he looked toward Shelby again, she glanced quick away, and he could see a flush color her cheeks. He grinned and sang on.
“Have you ever looked at the sunset
With the sky mellowing red,
And the clouds suspended like feathers?”
That morning, he had been taken with the way the sunrise had colored the sky above the farm in much the same way as this song described, the clouds suspended, the trees, the breeze, everything more hushed than usual. Even the cows had been more docile as they moseyed in from their spots on the quiet pasture.
“Then I say . . .
You’ve seen Jesus my Lord.”
Noble felt tears prick at his eyes and feelings he hadn’t realized were wound so tight inside him began to unravel. Memories of holding palm branches on Easter morning flashed through his mind, of coaching Eustace down the aisle next to him, of Christmas candlelight service, of Mrs. Bennington telling them about the Resurrection while beading key-chain crosses, of a whole week of vacation Bible school and filling a chart with gold stars for every verse he recited by heart, of the smell of hair gel Mama used to slick his and Eustace’s unruly hair to the side and how she’d rubbed the scuffs out of their school shoes with polish, and the feel of the hardcover Bible in his arms.
In the chaos of Dad’s rage and beatings, church had been a sanctuary, a home away from home, a place where kindness smoothed his unruly heart and rubbed the scuffs off his soul, if only for a morning. The rest of the week, if he thought about God, it was often an argument, and he wondered what his Sunday school teachers might think of the way he talked back to God, the way he shook his fist at him when Dad beat on Mama; the way he told God he better protect Eustace.
It was in these conversations that Noble felt God taking his punches and then embracing him like a boxing coach. It was in the wrestling and holding tight and trying to pin him down that Noble had come to know God as true, though he still had a hard time trusting him.
After the service, Mama and Eustace waited near the chancel while he put his music and guitar away. “Thanks for coming, Mama.”
Instinctively he placed his hand on Eustace’s upper arm as they walked down the center aisle of the church toward the door
s where Reverend Horton still stood shaking hands with folks as they left.
“Thanks for playing on such short notice, Noble.”
Noble took his outstretched hand. “Thanks for asking. Still want me next week?”
“If it’s no trouble, we sure would.”
“No trouble at all.”
“And, Laurie, so good to see you and Eustace here. I’ve missed you both in your spot in the back row.”
Noble thought Mama looked a little flustered but only for a second before she straightened, shook the reverend’s hand for a moment so brief it bordered on rude, and hurried down the steps.
Noble still had his hand on Eustace’s arm when Shelby brushed by him and began to whisper in her father’s ear. The sweet smell of her still-damp hair undid him until Eustace’s movement toward the steps distracted him.
“See you next week, Reverend.” Noble looked into Shelby’s eyes as he said this and would not, if he could help it, let her look away.
16
Monday, James took his lunch to the park across from the church as he often did when the weather was nice. From there he could see the courthouse, the Percolator, the Fleurish flower shop, and the gas station. He sat in the gazebo, which smelled of fresh paint, and he munched on a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, something Molly had introduced him to. He’d made fun of the concoction—even more so when she called it a “fluffernutter”—but now it felt like comfort food. Raleigh Cox filled his car with gas while Ella adjusted her makeup in the passenger-side mirror. A gaggle of kids in cutoffs and flip-flops—if he had to guess, he’d say they were in middle school—went into the station and emerged several minutes later with Slim Jims tucked in their back pockets and cups full of slushies.
Truth be told, James wasn’t sure he believed a word anymore of what he’d said during his sermon the day before. Maybe God couldn’t be shaken, but he sure could. He preached what his head knew to be true, even as his heart struggled very much to reconcile the Jesus who saved with the Jesus who let Molly and then his congregation die, and the Jesus who let Silas and Cade Canady flash their fancy cars through town with the Jesus who let lonely, hardworking Frank Whitmore’s power go out.
