Waking Up in Dixie

by Haywood Smith

  Anne stood. “I second.”

  Elaine stood, too. “I move we close the nominations.”

  Amazed, Elizabeth heard Christy, Julia’s daughter, utter a firm, “I second.”

  It was a coup!

  Augusta’s eyes narrowed, her refined nostrils flaring. She turned to her cronies with a pregnant, “Two motions have been made and seconded. Any discussion?”

  Emily remained silent as a chorus of protest rose from the old biddies flanking her, but only one spoke coherently. Ancient Joy Fisher twisted up the volume on her hearing aid and shouted, “What?”

  “They want to take the guild away from me and give it to Elizabeth,” Augusta said loudly, disdain dripping from Elizabeth’s name. “What do you have to say about that?”

  “Oh, well, all right then,” Joy said, oblivious as ever. “Whatever you want. Elizabeth it is.”

  “Joy!” Emily scolded. “That gives them a majority.”

  Augusta exhaled in exasperation. Her mouth set in a grim line as she rose, uttering a scornful, “Well!” She straightened the peplum of her jacket with a decisive tug. “If that’s the way things are, I am leaving.” She glared at Elizabeth as if the whole thing were her fault. “I refuse to stay where I am not wanted. I resign.”

  Tenderhearted Faith grasped her forearm in an effort to keep her from going. “Please don’t leave, Augusta. You are always welcome here.” Only Faith could say that without risking getting struck by lightning.

  Augusta removed Faith’s hand as if she were leprous. “Let’s see how well you fare without me.” With that, she sailed away.

  “What’s the matter with Augusta?” Joy demanded. “Is she sick?” Her droopy face drooped further. “I hope she’s not sick. We need her for bridge this afternoon.”

  “She’s not sick,” Julia said, handing Joy her cane. “She’s mad. Come on, Joy. I guess we’d better leave, too.”

  Glaring in accusation, Dorothy Prater joined them, but timid Sheila Cantrell murmured a furtive, “We’re not resigning, though,” on her way out.

  Emily granted them a tentative wave. “I have to stay and take the minutes,” she apologized.

  Which left Elizabeth with a solid quorum of seven.

  Holy cow! They could actually accomplish something new, at long last. Not that Elizabeth had any idea what to do first. Augusta had quelled so many good ideas over the years.

  Once the old biddies were out of earshot, Anne laughed with glee and clapped. The sense of triumph in the room almost overrode Elizabeth’s dread about how Augusta would retaliate. “Congratulations, Elizabeth,” Anne told her. “You are now the chairman. I can hear the grapevine hummin’ already.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “What have y’all gotten me into?”

  “Only what you should have been for a long time,” Elaine said with glee.

  “It’s gonna be great,” Anne assured her. “This church is dyin’ on the vine. We need some new ideas. New projects.”

  “A new minister,” Julia muttered from her notes.

  “But first, we have to get back to our elections,” Elaine said. “I nominate Faith for treasurer.”

  “Then I nominate you for secretary,” Faith retaliated.

  “Oh, thank God,” Emily muttered from her notes. “I hate this job.”

  While the others laughed, Elizabeth let out a long, hard breath, then assumed her new duties. “Okay. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it by the book. Elaine has nominated Faith as treasurer. Do I have a second?”

  “I second,” Emily said from her notes. She turned her thick glasses their way. “Jane will be thrilled to get out of it. She always has hated balancing checkbooks, but Augusta insisted—maybe because Jane always beats her at bridge.”

  Now that she was out from under Augusta’s thumb, Emily was a real chatterbox.

  “Well, I don’t mind balancing checkbooks a bit,” Faith said. “I’m good with accounts.”

  “All right then, we have a nomination for treasurer and a second,” Elizabeth said. “Any other nominations?” Nobody spoke up. “Okay, then. All in favor?” Everybody voted aye, including Faith. “Then it’s unanimous.”

  Before Elizabeth knew it, a new slate of officers was in place.

  She was about to bring up what they should do next when the door flew open and a flushed Hamp Myers motioned for her. “Elizabeth, I think you’d better come see about Howe.”

  Oh, Lord! She’d actually forgotten about him!

  She’d known he’d get into trouble.

  Everybody jumped up to follow as she made for the hallway, including Emily, who still had her notebook and pen in hand. “Don’t write this down,” Elizabeth told her as they headed for the sound of angry voices at the end of the long corridor.

  The last thing she needed was to have Howe’s latest escapade immortalized in the minutes.

  “But we’re not adjourned,” Emily said in dismay.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake!

  “I move we adjourn,” Faith said.

  “I second,” Anne confirmed before the motion was out of her mouth.

  “All in favor?” Elizabeth called as they neared the double doors.

  “Aye,” the women voted as Emily dutifully recorded.

  “Then we’re adjourned.” Elizabeth pointed to the notebook. “Put that away.”

  She pushed open the doors to find the vestry meeting in shambles, a furious Keith McDonald gripping Howe by his shirt over the narrow table, and Howe declaring with red-faced obstinacy, “Don’t argue with me! Take it up with God. Nowhere in the Bible does it condone the baptism of infants!”

  “It never bothered you before now!” Keith retorted.

  “I never read the Bible before,” Howe retorted.

  Meanwhile, the other ten vestry members either argued among themselves over the theological basis for infant baptism, or tried to calm Keith—who’d always been a hothead.

  “It’s a holy rite of the Episcopal Church!” Keith yelled into Howe’s face. “If you don’t like it, go somewhere else! Go be a . . . Baptist,” he said with scorn.

  “Keith!” Elizabeth shouted in alarm. “Howe! Stop this at once!”

  They both ignored her, too much testosterone over the dam already.

  “I don’t want to be a Baptist,” Howe declared. “I want to be a proper Episcopalian, and when I see my church doing something it shouldn’t, I have a right to speak out.”

  “Says you!” Keith snarled. “You may own everybody else in this town, but you don’t own me, and you don’t own this church!”

  Why didn’t the minister do something? Elizabeth scanned the fracas. Where was he, anyway?

  Sitting serenely at the far end of the table, looking for all the world as if he was enjoying the whole thing immensely.

  “Do something!” she called to him, shifting his attention from the impending fisticuffs to her.

  Still smiling, he shrugged. “I’m just ex officio. It’s their meeting.”

  She turned to Faith. “Don’t just stand there. Help me break this up.” She motioned the rest of the guild to the other arguments that had broken out around them. “Y’all help, too.” She headed around the table for Howe.

  “The Organ Fund is for an organ!” Andy Henderson hollered at Jesse Lindstrom as Elizabeth passed. “We have no authority to spend it on some harebrained scheme, no matter what Howe said!”

  “You call helping our members keep their houses a harebrained scheme?” Jesse argued right back, his neck scarlet.

  Andy pointed to Howe. “Mortgage money that goes to his bank.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jesse countered. “Would you rather they lost their houses? What good’s an organ if our own people are homeless? Anyway, the one we’ve got works plenty fine for that pitiful choir.”

  He had a point about the choir, but the vestry had no say about the Organ Fund.

  “The Altar Guild controls the Organ Fund,” Elizabeth told them, then grabbed Howe from behind and tried to drag him
from Keith’s clutches. But Keith continued to argue, holding tight to Howe’s shirt. Elizabeth raised her voice. “Charles Howell Whittington the second, get a grip on yourself and stop this, this minute!”

  He scowled, trying to wrest free of her. “Elizabeth, go back to the Altar Guild,” he said curtly, in a manner she recognized all too well from his former self. “You’re the president now, and I need you to swing this thing with the Organ Fund.”

  Elizabeth went numb, all the air sucked from her lungs as she realized Howe must have put her friends up to electing her so she could help with his agenda. She recoiled, letting go.

  All his talk about changing, about telling the truth, but he’d kept that from her. He’d used her, just the way he had for so many years.

  “We are in God’s house!” Faith scolded Keith as she and Elaine tried to loosen his grip on Howe’s shirt. “This is not how Christian men are supposed to act! Behave yourselves.”

  When that didn’t get through to him, she hollered, “What would Jesus do?”, which turned everybody’s attention her way.

  “Never mind Jesus,” Elaine said, “what would Mary Jane say?”, invoking his wife, a woman to be reckoned with.

  Keith clipped his mouth shut and tucked his chin.

  Elaine pried his hands from Howe’s shirt at last. “You are so gonna be in the doghouse, mister,” she threatened, “when Mary Jane hears about this.”

  Pointing at Howe, Keith turned to Father Jim. “Some priest you are! How dare you just sit there and let this . . . idiot question our Christianity and malign a sacred rite of this church? I’ll have your job for this!”

  “Now Keith,” Father Jim soothed, “I know you’re upset, but there’s no cause to—”

  “I didn’t question your Christianity,” Howe argued. “I just asked if you have a personal relationship with Jesus.”

  Oh, Lord. Elizabeth grabbed his arm, propelling him toward the door. “Howe, shut the hell up.” Her unprecedented use of profanity erupted in a lull, eliciting wide-eyed surprise in the others.

  “I wanted to talk about faith, not religion,” Howe justified, “but Keith was so threatened that—”

  Keith went almost purple. “I have been a member of this church since before you were born,” he hollered, heading for Howe, “and you have the nerve to insinuate that I’m not spiritual? I’ve been on the vestry since 1967!”

  The door and escape were within reach when Howe turned around to resume the argument. “I know,” he said, “and you’ve done good service, Keith. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a spiritual relationship with God.”

  Keith glared at the others. “Are you all just going to stand there and let him do this? Isn’t it enough that he owns everything and everybody in this town? Are you going to let him try to control what we believe, too? To hell with the mortgages he holds on our houses! He has no right!”

  “I never said a word about any mortgages,” Howe protested as Elizabeth tried to steer him back toward the exit. “I just wanted to help some of our members financially and discuss the spiritual life of this church, or more accurately, the lack of it!”

  “You want to quote the Bible?” Keith fired back, “I’ll quote the Bible: ‘Thou shalt not judge.’ How about that?” He headed for Howe. “And the Episcopal Church was not founded just because Henry the Eighth wanted to get a divorce and steal the Catholic Church’s holdings!”

  “Howe!” Elizabeth said. “Tell me you did not say such a thing.”

  He straightened, defensive. “Well, things had gotten pretty heated when I did. But it’s historical fact.”

  Elaine tried to stifle a chortle of laughter, but wasn’t successful.

  “The hell it is!” Keith shot back. “Haven’t you ever heard of a thing called ‘the Reformation’?”

  By that point, the observers looked like they were watching a tennis match at the club, with an occasional detour from Keith and Howe to Elizabeth.

  “That is enough!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, whipping her cell phone from her purse and holding it up. “One more argument from either of you, and I am calling the police and pressing charges against both of you for disturbing the peace!”

  Struck by one of his mercurial mood swings, Howe eyed her with open lust. “Whoo, Lizzie,” he growled out, “you are so hot when you’re hot like that.”

  In the brief pulse of shocked silence that followed, Elizabeth covered her face with her hands. Dear Lord. She had to get Howe out of there before he said anything else!

  Elaine and Anne broke out laughing, along with half the men, defusing the situation at last.

  “We are leaving,” Elizabeth clipped out. “Now.” She shoved him back toward the door with a force magnified by shame. “Before you embarrass us so much our children will never be able to show their faces in this town again.”

  “Okay, okay,” Howe relented, then called back to Ernest Foster as if everything were perfectly normal. “Could you take over the meeting for me, Ernie? Gotta run.”

  They didn’t wait to hear his answer.

  Chapter 16

  After five minutes of frozen silence from Elizabeth on their way home, Howe looked over at her and said, “I had no intention of causing so much trouble. Really.” He sighed. “A little trouble, yes. I mean, they needed shaking up a bit.”

  “A bit?” escaped her. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “And when were you planning to tell me about your plans for the Organ Fund?”

  “Oh. That.” He looked out the window. “Well, we had to get you elected, first.”

  “We? And who is we?”

  “Well, I came up with the idea, but I called Elaine before your Whine and Cheese, and she thought it was great. She took the ball and ran with it.”

  “You called Elaine and set it up, without asking me if that was what I wanted?”

  “Damn, Lizzie. You make it sound like some kind of evil plot. You’ve told me for decades that Mama wouldn’t let the guild accomplish anything. I realized it was time that changed. So sue me.”

  “You should have talked to me, first,” Elizabeth told him. “As it is, I feel used.”

  “Used?” He bristled. “I was only trying to protect you, so Mama wouldn’t blame you.”

  Howe might be a changed man, but he still didn’t get it. “Nice thought, Howe, but you know what they say about good intentions.” She turned left past the town square, toward home.

  “I am your wife, not your child. You say you want things to be better between us, then you pull a stunt like this. You should have talked to me, first.”

  “But I told you, Mama would—”

  “Forget Augusta,” Elizabeth said. “She’s always hated me and always will. I have a right to know when you’re thinking of doing something that affects me.” She turned onto their street. “If you want to fix our marriage, you can start by confiding in me. Trusting me with your plans. Taking my opinions into consideration. If you had, that disaster back there wouldn’t have happened.” She stabbed her pointer finger at him. “And don’t try to tell me God had anything to do with what you did at that vestry meeting. It was pure chaos.”

  Howe looked back out the window as they turned onto the driveway. “Maybe it needed to happen. People got plenty mad at Jesus when he tried to put the emphasis back on faith instead of religion.”

  Elizabeth braked to an abrupt halt. “You are not Jesus!” She gathered her purse in a huff. “And Keith was right: the state of other people’s souls is God’s business, not yours.” She threw open the door and tried to get out, only to be caught back by her seat belt. “Aaaagh!” She fumbled with the latch.

  Howe reached over and laid a staying hand on her arm. “Elizabeth, I’m sorry. Please don’t give up on me.”

  She shot him a skeptical glance and found the lines in his face deepened by doubt. “I did the wrong things for so long,” he told her quietly. “I don’t even remember how it started, but little by little, I put my soul to sleep. Stopped ca
ring about anything good. Stopped feeling anything. I was dead inside. And now I’m alive. God gave me a second chance.” His hand slid down her forearm to take hers. “I know it’s been hard for you. But I’m really trying. I can’t go back to stuffing everything into a black bag in the back of my brain. I feel things. I see things for what they are, and I have to tell the truth. I have to try, at least, to do the right thing.”

  Elizabeth looked at him. “What about us, Howe? Where do we fit into these grand notions of yours?” She was so tired from the past six months. So weary of trying to keep everything together. “You say you want to be a good husband to me. Well, good husbands don’t humiliate their families. They don’t go off half-cocked, alienating people. They don’t cook up schemes and manipulate situations—in church or anywhere else.”

  “Ouch.” He frowned.

  Elizabeth had to make him see, and deeply resented the necessity to do so. “Howe, do you ever think about me or the children when you’re planning these things? Did you think about how your mother would feel about losing the only real authority she has left anymore?” Lord. She couldn’t believe she was taking up for her mother-in-law. “Forget your reasons. Did it ever occur to you that what you did was selfish?”

  He looked stricken, staring out the windshield.

  Lord. Was she being just as selfish, wanting him to understand? The question gave her a headache. “I’m just asking you to talk to me when one of these ideas comes to you. Trust me.” She unlatched her seat belt. “I know it won’t be easy for you. We haven’t talked for so long. But if you want this marriage to have a chance, you have to trust me.”

  Even as she said the words, she flashed on P.J.’s face, and felt ashamed. Do as I say, not as I do.

  Howe nodded. “I’ve really screwed up, haven’t I?”

  That was something she never heard from the old Howe. “You meant well,” she excused out of habit.

  His brows drew together as he looked across their manicured lawn to the magnolias that flanked the yard. “Damn, I got it so wrong.” His fist clenched in front of his belly. “Gives me this huge knot.” He faced her. “I want so much to be the man I should be, but obviously I don’t know who that is.” He suddenly looked old, and defeated.