Boo Who (30 page)

Reverend Peck felt like he had made a terrible mistake. The peace he held in his heart dripped away with every thought he had concerning Sunday. How could he have turned over his entire church service to a total stranger? He’d lost his mind! Regret seeped through the wall of ambition he’d built so high, and now he realized what a grave mistake he’d made. Sure, his numbers had increased. But when were people going to grow bored with expensive coffee, scarce parking, and missing
pews? Every week he would have to reinvent himself and that was no easy task.

Finally a break in the weather had brought in mild temperatures, so the reverend left the house with only a light jacket and a scarf his wife had knitted for him years ago. The chill of the day returned when the wind picked up. The reverend’s eyes teared up a bit, whether from cold or concern he didn’t know.

The dust of the sidewalks seemed to part as he walked, the breeze gently blowing it from side to side. His hands burrowed deep into his jacket pockets. In his heart, despair dug itself equally deep. Perhaps it was time to stop ministering to this town. There seemed to be nothing he could offer, no way of helping them out of mediocre spirituality. Of the few who even came, most wanted to come on Sundays and then be done with it for the rest of the week. There were exceptions to that rule, but exceptions certainly weren’t enough to build a church on.

Reverend Peck looked up just in time to see a familiar face. It was Dr. Hass, heading up the porch steps of a large house.

“Dr. Hass!” he called.

The man turned, saw the reverend, and waved his greeting. “Hello!”

The reverend approached and looked at the house. “This is where you live?”

“And work. My office is in here.” Dr. Hass shook the hand the reverend offered. “Sir, you look troubled.”

“Do I?” The reverend sighed and nodded. “I suppose I am.”

“Sit here with me on the porch,” the doctor said. “It’s a nice enough day to enjoy outside, don’t you think? Especially with some hot tea and good company.” Dr. Hass smiled warmly at the reverend, offered him a seat in one of the two rockers on the porch, then went inside for the tea.

Reverend Peck gazed out at the town. From the porch view, he could see the tops of the buildings on Main Street, the steeple on his church, the top of Wolfe’s house, and the trees at the park. Not a bad view. Nobody had ever thought too much of prime real estate in this town. If you weren’t four blocks from the store, you were eight. Of course, he’d
lived in the old parsonage since his ministry began, though he’d always imagined a horse ranch with twenty acres might fit him nicely.

“Here you are.” Dr. Hass offered him cream and sugar for his tea, then fixed himself a cup. He sat down.

“Thank you.” A single sip warmed his chilled body.

“I wanted to tell you,” Dr. Hass said, “that I really enjoyed preaching for you Sunday. I don’t often get a chance to stand up in front of people and speak. It was quite exhilarating, if I do say so myself! I suppose you’re used to it.”

“Well, thank you for filling in on such short notice. I don’t suppose that’s what you had in mind when you came to my house that morning.”

Dr. Hass chuckled. “Well, it did revive me.”

The reverend sipped his tea and said, “The truth of the matter is that I don’t have any business counseling anybody’s spirit. I’m a dried-up old has-been.”

“What?”

“It’s true. I seem to have nothing more to say. Or maybe nobody wants to listen anymore.” A heavy sigh filled the pause. “My whole life I thought I was supposed to be a pastor. It never occurred to me to be something else. But I have to admit that either I’ve lost the anointing or there’s no hope for this town.”

“An identity crisis.”

The reverend glanced at Dr. Hass. “I guess so. Who’s having the identity crisis might be up for debate.”

“It might be time to reexamine your cheese.”

“Excuse me?”

“I read this book called
Who Moved My Cheese?
It’s all about dealing with change in our lives. There are some who work their whole lives resisting it. There are others who take unexpected change and use it for their advantage.”

The reverend held the teacup close to his face, allowing the steam to warm his skin. “Whatever could I do except preach about God’s love? I don’t have any other skill.”

“That’s what everyone says … in the beginning. But in the end, we’re
all able to find things we’re good at. Adapt. Become chameleons to our environment. I, in fact, have had my cheese moved all the way from California to a small town called Skary, Indiana.”

“What in the world brought you to Skary if it wasn’t our famous resident, Wolfe Boone, who is becoming less and less famous now that he has retired?”

Dr. Hass refilled his teacup. “I like cats.”

“Hmmm. Well, we’ve got plenty.”

“Cats are great companions, and they have actually been proven to release stress in humans who take care of them.”

“Maybe I should get a cat,” the reverend said. “But then I’d end up having to adopt its eight hundred siblings.” The reverend chuckled. “Used to be legendary, a real mystery that added to the allure of a town called Skary. But ended up being the sheriff’s promiscuous cat, Thief. The problem is fixed now.”

For a moment, they were silent. The reverend studied his transparent face in the puddle of tea at the bottom of his cup.

“I’ve heard we can change who we are,” the doctor said. “For the better, I mean.” He patted the reverend’s shoulder. “And you, sir, seem to bring out that side of me. You’re a good man. I can see that. I want to be a good man too.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to be a good man after years of being, well, not-so-good.”

The reverend set his cup down and looked at Dr. Hass. “You need a clean slate.”

“Skary, Indiana.” Dr. Hass smiled.

“Yes, but you’ve followed yourself here. I’m talking about a clean spiritual slate. You came to my house the other day. What for?”

Staring at the wood beneath his feet, he said, “I suppose I have noticed the old me is hard to shake. He’s like a shadow. And the brighter the light gets, the bigger he seems to grow.”

The reverend nodded. “The light does seem to expose things the darkness likes to hide. Eventually, though, he won’t be able to hide anymore.”

Dr. Hass’s fingers began fidgeting with every part of his teacup. The
reverend patted him on the arm. The man looked like he was not used to being touched, but he accepted the gesture with a small smile. “There is one who can walk inside of you, who can fill you with good that you cannot find within yourself. A Houseguest, I suppose you could call Him, who can put things in order.”

Dr. Hass bit his lip. “My house is old, Reverend. Full of dust. And rotting wood is stealing its sturdiness.”

The reverend said, “I’m not talking about this house.”

“Neither am I.” Dr. Hass stood. “The house that cages me is not fit for a King.”

The reverend squeezed the man’s arm. “But He became a lowly servant.”

The reverend continued, “Doctor, come Sunday. Come to church.” He grinned. “And you won’t even have to preach the sermon!”

Dr. Hass’s eyes lingered on the reverend’s. Then he went inside.

Missy Peeple imagined it was sometime in the afternoon. She’d never kept a clock in her bedroom, as she always woke up at precisely the same time every morning. But now it was late afternoon. Soft light shone across the room, and she watched the hazy, dusty air swim through the beams of light, weightless and carefree.

Her long gray hair lay across her shoulder, exactly the way it had all night. She slept on her back, always had, right in the center of her bed. There were times at night, as she drifted off to sleep, when she imagined the mayor as her bed companion, though she wondered how he would fit on the slice of bed to her left. Or how he would take to the rock-hard mattress she insisted upon.

Lazily, her eyes opened and closed, and she wondered how she would eat today. Her strength these days seemed to flee like the night moon as the sun tipped itself over the horizon. And all day today, she’d floated between sleep and wakefulness, with hardly even the energy to stare at the ceiling.

Her mind was alive, as it always had been. And though her body would not obey a single command, her thoughts ordered themselves to come to attention. Yet what good were they, captive inside her head?

She could call out, but nobody would hear her. Scarcely a soul ever came to her home. Was this her moment to die? Alone? Starving to death over several days?

She gasped at the thought, her eyes popping open as if shaking off deaths impending approach. She had hardly thought of dying all her life. And even old age had not hinted at taking her life.

The gasp she had taken in flowed out in the form of tears, trickling down her temples and dropping onto her pillow. “Not like this,” she mumbled. “I can’t die like this.”

Clutching the edge of her sheet and blanket, she pulled them toward her chest with all the effort she had in her. The soft cotton tickled her chin, and it reminded her of what she might’ve felt like wrapped up in the soft blankets her mother had held her in.

She hadn’t thought of her mother in years. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself a swaddled baby, tight in her mother’s arm. Yes, she was close to completing the circle of life. Death had cracked the door open, wondering if she would come quickly or kick and scream on the way out.

Miss Missy Peeple whispered to the silent walls, “I don’t want to die like this. Give me a chance, and I will make things right.”

The rest of her words garbled themselves into dreams only a deep sleep can spawn.

Wolfe sat in the back room of the bookstore, a box of books next to his chair. Thumbing through the pages of
Petals of Destiny,
he was not sure his life could sink any further. He’d been fired from selling cars, which was fine with him, but now found himself in charge of reading and selecting romance novels for the bookstore. He’d moved a notch lower on the totem pole of dream job descriptions.

Yet he saw how passionate Oliver was about selling cars. He wondered if the passion came out of desperation to love an unlovable job, or if Oliver truly
loved
selling cars. He certainly was good at it. He’d stayed in business for years.

Should he try to find a passion for whatever he was doing and love it? Or find what he loved and the passion would follow? Glancing at the top of the page, his heart sank. He was only on page thirty-four and had been reading for two hours! Reading his own thoughts…

Trying to refocus, he began reading
Petals of Destiny
again:

Several times he found himself laughing out loud. Did women really read this stuff? But it wasn’t long before the laughter faded, and Wolfe found himself staring at his own reflection in the small window across the room. His fingers thumbed the one-pack that was supposedly called his abs. He flipped the book over and looked at the stunning machine of a man on the front cover, tanned, sculpted, with perfectly aligned ears. Wolfe touched his left ear, sharply aware of the half-inch lower it was than his right. He stared at his face, fingering the pages of the book, wondering if he should start working out.

“Wolfe?”

Wolfe turned in his chair. Mr. Bishop stood at the doorway. “Can you come out and help on the floor? We’ve got a few customers, and I need to send Dustin on an errand.”

Wolfe hopped up and walked swiftly to the door, happy to be able to close the book. He laughed. With a few slight changes, these books could easily become horror novels. They were plenty scary as it was. Surely women didn’t really buy in to that junk?