A Sounding Brass (6 page)

“Why would I do that?” she asked at last. “No one has ever remarked on how I look.”

“Maybe not, but since this Phinehas person went to trial over in Pitchford, surely you’ve noticed the slide in our new accounts.”

Claire’s eyes widened as she connected the dots. “I would think that had less to do with my clothes and hair than with the
branch’s ability to market to the new residents.”

“It’s the black, you see.” Margot unclasped her hands and laid them flat on the blotter, as if to suppress what she’d just
said. “Folks have been reading about your group’s customs in the papers, and you’re being associated with this man Phinehas
by the way that you dress. He’s clearly a criminal. Not only that, there was a child abuse case in the papers awhile ago,
and this is bringing that up again. It’s bad for the bank.”

“But I have nothing to do with Phinehas or the other case!” she protested. “I just told you, I think he deceived everyone.”

“Yes, but prospective investors with our bank don’t know that. In the last few weeks I’ve had four prospective clients tell
me they’d rather bank ten miles away in Plum Valley because they don’t want to bank where the employees belong to a group
that harbors criminals. One corporate account has pulled out and another is threatening to go to Pitchford. I know it’s harsh,
but I need to ask you to modify your appearance. To keep people from making the connection they’re making.”

“Margot, I don’t think you can ask me to do that. It’s not legal. If I were from India, you couldn’t ask me not to wear a
sari. The principle is the same.”

“Yes, but if you were wearing a sari it wouldn’t associate you with a rapist and a group that is clearly supporting him in
large numbers.” Margot’s voice had lost its usual smooth calm. “I don’t want to do this, Claire, but the success of this branch
is on my shoulders. The law clearly states that if an employee is creating an undue hardship on the business, that employee
can be terminated.”

“Terminated?” Her own voice was a terrified squeak.

“Please. Tell me you’ll go shopping and get some new things, and you’ll do something different with your hair. I won’t insist
on makeup or jewelry. Just those two things that will break the connection. What do you say?”

What on earth could she say? Suddenly Claire knew what the Christians must have felt like when the Romans demanded they recant
or be fed to the lions. How many sermons had she sat through where the Shepherds had urged the congregation to turn the other
cheek, to take rejection for the gospel’s sake, even as Jesus did? Well, here was her opportunity, but somehow the feeling
of being uplifted in righteousness was missing. She just felt flattened and scared and misunderstood.

“Can I have some time to think about it?” she asked.

“Why would you need time? A simple yes or no is all I need.”

She needed counsel. She could talk to Owen or Rebecca. She couldn’t just make a decision like this on her own. It was a matter
of her example, and that meant her salvation.

Maybe she could talk to Luke Fisher. He would know all about being between a rock and a hard place, and he would certainly
know how Owen and the other Elders felt about—

“Claire, I need an answer,” Margot said sharply. “My regional manager is breathing down my neck on this one.”

“Let me finish out today,” she said desperately. “I need to talk it over with—with our leadership. I’ll let you know in the
morning.”

Margot gazed at her through narrowed eyes. “You have to talk your clothes over with your church’s leadership? I have to say,
I’m a little surprised. I had you pegged for moving into an assistant manager position sometime in the next year, but that
calls for initiative and decision-making skills that I’m not seeing here.”

First her job was at stake, and now her future? The first flutterings of panic began to beat around Claire’s heart. “Please,
Margot, it’s just twenty-four hours.”

“And then what happens? Either you can, in which case you would probably know that right now, or you can’t, in which case
I’m going to have to start termination proceedings. Work with me, here, Claire. Give me a yes.”

“I can’t,” she said miserably. You couldn’t just throw your entire example out the window for your job. What was a job compared
to your eternal salvation? And did she really want to work for someone who would put her salvation at risk like this? First
clothes, then hair, then what? Next thing you knew, she’d be going to a casino for a team-building event, or taking an overnight
trip with a male colleague.

No, an Elect woman’s example was directly related to her salvation, and that was that. No chipping away at it, no slippery
slope of giving in.

“I’m sorry, Margot, but I can’t change the way I look for the bank. It’s a principle I can’t give up.”

A muscle in her manager’s jaw flexed. “I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am about this, Claire. And you do realize that
under state law, you have no grounds for a lawsuit over your termination.”

Claire took a long breath. As if she would ever stoop to such a thing. “I understand.”

“We need to act quickly on this to stop the client trickle. Give me your keys to the cage and your access badge, and pack
up any personal items as discreetly as you can. I’ll give you the two weeks of vacation you have coming, as well as two weeks’
pay in lieu of notice. Okay?”

“That would be fine.” She couldn’t wait to get out of here. She could hardly look Margot in the face.

Her manager stood and held out her hand. Claire took it in an automatic reflex, but there was no enthusiasm in the handshake.
“Good luck, Claire. I really am sorry.”

“I am, too,” she said, and walked out of the office, acutely aware of Margot’s gaze on her back. She avoided the puzzled and
annoyed glances of the two tellers when she made no move to give them the help they needed on the early lunch rush. Instead,
she kept her gaze resolutely on her desk. Not many personal things there. A family picture, a neon-purple stapler an account
rep had given her, a framed “employee of the month” certificate.

She didn’t even need a box.

* * *

CLAIRE HADN’T DRIVEN
much more than a block when her hands began to shake so much she couldn’t manage the gear shift. She pulled over and rolled
down the windows, then tipped her head back against the headrest and tried to breathe long, calming breaths. On the sidewalk,
people strolled past the movie theater or lined up outside the ice-cream shop, and down the street the coffee bar was doing
a roaring trade in iced lattes.

Kids were back in school, the town was basking in an Indian summer, and she was unemployed.

She’d never been in such a position. She’d earned her two-year degree in accounting and had gone straight to work, first for
a landscaping company and then for the bank. And to be fired—well, she couldn’t very well say that when people started asking.
She’d have to say she’d left on her own, which was true in a way. She’d stood up for her principles and chosen to leave rather
than cave in and stay.

The executives used the phrase
spin doctor
, and she’d always wondered what it meant. Now she knew. She was doing it herself—putting the least embarrassing spin on what
had happened. But the rent still had to be paid and you couldn’t eat off your principles, so since she couldn’t leave town,
she was going to have to find another job.

She’d been stupid to take the bank for granted. Instead of being practical and buying bonds or something, she’d spent her
money on great clothes and designer shoes, although every item that she purchased was black. Even if no one else in Hamilton
Falls could tell an Ann Taylor from a Raggedy Ann, she knew. She supposed it sprang from the fact that her mom slopped around
at home in T-shirts and jeans, clothes an Elect woman wasn’t supposed to wear. Her mom gave way to earthly desires in private,
but Claire upheld the Elect standard in public with style, feeling somehow that she needed to even up the accounts.

What if you can’t get work here?

Of course she could. There was always Quill and Quinn, where there was still an open position, but that was a step backward
career-wise. The only other options were to join the flood of people interviewing for jobs at the discount store, or get married.

Since most of her dreams since graduating from high school had involved getting out of Hamilton Falls and starting a real
life, Phinehas’s decree that she had to stay had nearly crushed her spirit. But a person just didn’t tell a Shepherd to mind
his own business and then call a moving van. No, an Elect woman took “bend and blend” seriously. She bent her will to those
in authority over her, and did it with a smile full of grace.

Even if in private she pulled a pillow over her head and cried long into the night.

She comforted herself with the thought that if she left town, she’d be even more alone than she was already, without the security
blanket of familiar streets that held friends and acquaintances on every block. If she moved to Spokane or Seattle she’d find
Elect, but it would take months to get to know people and in the meantime, there she’d be in an empty apartment with a phone
that didn’t ring.

At least here people cared enough to call. And since she was going to stay, even if the frustrated longing inside her was
practically eating her alive, she’d simply have to find a different job.

Soon. Right after she’d had an iced latte.

She climbed out of the car and walked back down the block to the coffee bar, where she got the latte and shook chocolate sprinkles
on the top—strictly for medicinal purposes. Out on the sidewalk, she took a long sip of the creamy liquid and let it fill
up her senses as the sun warmed her face.

Roll up the scrolls of time

Eternity is mine.

I’m gonna do just fine

Safe with the Lord.

Five Wise sang their hearts out in a cross between swing and pop—two genres of music Claire was becoming more familiar with
the more she listened to KGHM.

Say what you want to me,

I know where I’m gonna be.

You don’t control me.

I’m with the Lord.

If only she could say that herself. With a sigh and another sip of coffee, Claire leaned against the warm bricks of the building
and realized the music was being piped over speakers onto the street.

Of course. The radio station was next door to the coffee bar.

“That was Five Wise, a quintet of talented ladies singing ‘Safe with the Lord.’” Luke Fisher’s beautiful baritone washed over
Claire’s ruffled emotions the way the coffee had over her tongue, soothing and sweet. “They’ll be coming to the county fair,”
he went on, “so if you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to check them out. Who knows—we at KGHM might even be there ourselves.
Our listeners have been so generous that we could have our mobile station by then and could catch the girls for a live performance
and an interview. What do you think about that?”

From somewhere among the tables on the sidewalk outside the coffee bar, someone said, “Yeah!”

Sipping her latte, Claire considered the storefronts along Main Street. Clothing stores. A hobby shop. The bookshop, the ice-cream
shop, and the coffee bar. The lawyer’s office. Hmm. Lawyers billed by the hour, didn’t they? Maybe she could ask Derrick if
they needed someone. There was the hospital’s accounting department, too. Only as a last resort would she consider retail
or being a checker at the supermarket—no employer of the kind she wanted would look at her if that appeared on her résumé.

With a sigh, she turned away and caught sight of the bulletin board near the door of the coffee bar. She knew what was on
it—business cards, ads for tree trimmers and massage therapists. Part-time jobs, such as delivering flyers. No real employer
would post—

WANTED: Full-time bookkeeper. Must know spreadsheet software, be detail-oriented, meticulous. Two to three years’ experience
and two-year degree. Sense of humor mandatory. Send qualifications and résumé to 98.5 KGHM, 254 Main Street, Hamilton Falls,
WA. Attention: John Willetts.

Claire stood as if rooted to the sidewalk, her latte cooling her hand. The card was a little yellowed, as if it had been pinned
there in the sun for at least a week.

Yellowed or not, it was a sign.

She leaned over and dropped her cup into the nearest trash can, adjusted her purse on her shoulder, straightened her skirt
and her spine, and marched into the station.

* * *

THE ROOM WHERE
Luke Fisher played the music faced Main Street and had a large picture window so passersby could see him behind his console.
Inside, there was another large window between the entry hall where Claire stood and what looked like a library, where the
walls were covered in bookshelves holding records and CDs. Most of the records looked as though they hadn’t been moved since
they’d been shelved sometime in the sixties.

She looked through the window a little uncertainly. This wasn’t her world at all. She had gone from listening to the radio
to walking into the station, all in a couple of weeks or less. A year ago, even a few months ago, she’d never have believed
she would do such a thing.

Luke waved at her, and it was too late to back out.

“Use the door.” His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear his voice—maybe his studio was soundproof. She pushed open the door
next to the window and walked into the library. At the same time, he came out of the studio, shutting that door carefully
behind him.

“Hi.” He offered his hand, and she shook it. “I’m Luke Fisher, and you’re clearly one of my sisters in God. I remember you
from Gathering. What can I do for you?”

You can stop thinking of me as a sister.
“My name is Claire Montoya. I—I was reading the bulletin board next door and saw the ad about the station needing a bookkeeper.”
She wished her voice wouldn’t wobble when she needed to appear professional and competent. But it was hard to be professional
when Luke Fisher was standing directly in front of her, still holding her hand, wearing his Dockers as well as any L.L. Bean
model and smelling of some yummy cologne.