Cowboy Sing Me Home (14 page)

            Dusty shook her head.  “Warn me if you do,
though.  I think she has a bullet with my name on it.”

            “I see a few of her group, but not many. 
It looks like some are actually going to support her boycott.”

            “That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?  Just
because someone didn’t like her singing, the whole choir is boycotting?”

            “Some are boycotting because of Mavis. 
Some are upset over something Louise said.”

            “That’s right.  At least it’s not
all
because of me.”

            “Different reasons, but they all have
their…”

“Noses bent out of shape?”

            “I was going to say ‘panties in a wad,’
but same difference.  I’m surprised we’re having this good a turnout, actually.”

            He quietly pointed out different people in
the audience.  One family sat down, and began immediately to glare daggers at a
teenage girl and her mother across the aisle of folded chairs.  “Cheerleading
camp fiasco,” Luke whispered.  He nodded in the direction of two farmers who
stood side by side but looked straight ahead.  “Water rights.”   He nudged her
knee gently with his.  “See that woman over there?”

            Dusty looked in that direction and saw a
tall woman with the biggest Gibson Girl hairdo she’d ever seen, outside a
nostalgic sepia photo.  “How could I miss her?”

            “That’s Thelma Jean Braxton.  She’s the
school librarian, and president of the Aloma Rose Society.”

            “Okay.”

            “Now, see that woman over there?”  He
tilted his head to the opposite end of the lawn.

            “You mean the one who looks just like
her?”

            “That’s the one.  That’s Thelma Jean’s
twin sister, Tally Jean.  They haven’t spoken in six weeks, even though they
live in the same house.  From what I have been able to figure out, it’s over
the way Tally cans her pickles.”

            “Cans her pickles.”

            “That’s it.  Oh, there’s a lot of other
stuff mixed in there, too, mainly stemming from the vegetable garden, and then
things just went downhill from there.  Tally Jean always fixed Thelma Jean’s
hair, and since the feud Thelma’s taken to having Barbara Slocum doing it.  It
was a pretty scary sight at first, mainly because Barbara has such a heavy hand
with the mousse.  Everyone says Barbara’s just doing it to get back at Tally
for stealing her beau back in high school, that Thelma Jean asked Barb
specifically because she knew she’d never forgiven Tally for stealing him, and
Tally Jean had never forgiven Barbara for….”  He bowed his head and chewed his
lip.  “It all falls apart on me at this point.  I can’t keep it all straight.”

            “Why would you want to?”  Dusty rolled her
eyes.  It was exactly like she knew it would be: a bunch of bullheaded,
self-righteous busybodies.  What a bunch of hypocrites, showing up at a revival
just to glare at each other.

            “I don’t, really, except these people are
my friends.  So things that affect them concern me.”

            She raised one eyebrow and nodded.

            “See, I’ve only known you for five days,
but already I recognize that look.  You think I’m full of it, but you don’t
care enough to argue about it.”

            “You’re quite perceptive, Cowboy.”

            Dusty motioned to the back of the crowd. 
“Is that your parents?”

            He looked across the crowd to his mother
and gave a smile and a slight wave.  “Yeah, that’s them.” 

            “What are they fighting about?”

            “You mean today?”  He shook his head and
busied himself with tuning a guitar that was already tuned.  “Probably who was
supposed to let the cat out and didn’t, or who spent too much money last month,
or maybe Mom burned the oatmeal this morning.  Their feud goes back a lot
longer than this drought.  I think it’s about time to get started.” 
            Dusty’s stomach lurched a little, but she’d practiced the hymns
enough that she got over the nervous butterflies quickly.  She and Luke played
together as well as they sang, and when he started to sing, she enjoyed the
sound of his voice so much she stayed silent and let him go solo, ignoring the
eyebrow he raised in question when she didn’t join in. 

            They ended the song as Brother Mark came
to the front of the room and welcomed them all there.

            Luke leaned toward her. “Are you okay?”

            She nodded.  “Sorry.  Lost my place,” she
said because she didn’t want to admit she was simply immersed in the sound of
his voice.  She wouldn’t mind telling him he had a great voice.  But going the
rest of the way and admitting she felt carried away on the smooth flow of
it…that could give him a tool to use against her, if he wanted to.

            She tuned out the preacher and allowed
herself to daydream a little about the night ahead.  Despite what she’d
threatened him with this morning, she hadn’t changed her mind about being with
Luke after the dance.  She just didn’t want him presuming too much.  Confidence
was sexy.  Cockiness wasn’t.

            “I want to talk this evening about
something that many of you may not want to hear. I want to talk about…
forgiveness.”

            Dusty watched Brother Mark stroll casually
up and down the aisle between the chairs, looking the members of the community
in the eye, one by one.  He held his Bible in one hand, his finger marking the
scripture he’d just read.  He was relaxed, casual.  She’d expected more
grandstanding, she supposed, more of a fire-and-brimstone attitude.  But Mark
walked among the people like he was… well, like he was one of them. Which, she
supposed, he was.  Unlike herself.

            “Everybody knows what forgiveness is. 
We’ve all given it, and we’ve all taken it.  Because we’ve all needed it, at
some point.  No one here is perfect, obviously, so we’ve all done things we
shouldn’t have done, and said things we shouldn’t have said.  And we’ve been
sorry.  We’ve asked for forgiveness, and hopefully, it’s been granted.  But
forgiveness is one thing that is much, much easier to talk about, than to do. 
Because a big part of forgiving someone is letting go of the hurt they’ve done
you.  And sometimes we want to hold on to that hurt.”

            He moved slowly up the aisle, his lip
between his teeth, his head down in thought.  Dusty watched the audience as
Brother Mark explained about the healing power of forgiveness and how it could
turn the hard times Aloma was experiencing into a blessing.  From the looks she
was seeing, his message wasn’t getting very far.

            “Now, I know what you’re thinking.  I
know, because this is the way I think, when I’m nursing resentment.  You’re
thinking, ‘Sure, I’ll forgive my enemy.  As soon as he comes crawling back on
his hands and knees.  As soon as he begs for my forgiveness’.”  A few in the
audience laughed lightly.  “As soon as he
at least
apologizes.  I mean,
I can’t be expected to forgive someone who isn’t even
sorry
, can I?’” 

            Of course not, Dusty thought.  Then she
remembered that this church stuff didn’t interest her, so she studied her
cuticles.  She really needed a manicure, she decided.  She took a deep breath
and let it out with a sigh.  This was going to be one long week, she thought,
if she had to come up here and sit through this every night.

            She told herself she wasn’t going to pay
attention.  So she took no notice of the words Brother Mark spoke.  But she was
sitting so close she couldn’t help but hear.

            He was quoting some scripture, and since
she wouldn’t recognize a passage from the Bible if it came up and introduced
itself to her, she didn’t know if he was even making sense.  But basically he
was saying that they couldn’t move on and survive through this drought if they
didn't let go of their differences and forgive the events of the past several
months.

            She scanned the crowd as he talked.   A
few heads were bowed as if in contemplation, but for the most part Brother Mark
was facing an audience of crossed arms and stubborn chins.

            She glanced over at Luke.  He was one of
the contemplative bowed heads.   She wondered how all this applied to him.  He
didn’t seem the type to hold grudges.

            Brother Mark motioned for someone at the
back of the crowd, and they parted as a man wheeled a barbecue grill toward the
front.

            There were confused murmurs from the
crowd, a few scattered laughs.

            “What’s he going to do?” Luke murmured. 
“Threaten them with more of Stevie’s sauce if they don’t bury their respective
hatchets?”

            While the grill was being set up, Brother
Mark brought a box from the side of the stage.  “In this box are crucial tools
in our crusade for healing and forgiveness.”  He lifted out items.  “Pen, and
paper.  Tools to create words, because we’ve learned over the past several
months that words are powerful, powerful weapons.  Words can hurt.”  He tapped
the pen against the paper.  “And words can heal.”

            He explained his plan, that anyone who
felt a burden on his heart could come to the front of the room, and write that
down on paper.  “No one else is going to read it.  No one else’s eyes will ever
see it.  You could be writing down your to-do list for all anyone else is going
to know.  You write what’s on your heart.  You write what’s been bothering you,
what’s been eating at you.  And be honest.  Write down why it bothers you.  How
it makes you feel.  Why you’re mad or hurt about what happened, and what was
said.  Write it all down.”

            Then they were to say a short prayer over
the paper, write the words  ‘I forgive’ across it, and throw it on the fire in
the barbecue pit.

            Of all the corny things she’d seen since
she came to Aloma, Dusty thought, this had to be the corniest.  Did he honestly
think such a ridiculous exercise was going to change anything?  These people
needed rain.  They needed relief from their stress.  They didn’t need pointless
feel-good nonsense.

            She rolled her eyes, and saw her thoughts
mirrored in some of the faces she saw.  A few, of course, were falling for it. 
The suckers, Dusty thought.  The ones who thought happy-isms were actually
going to bring rain clouds.

            “Once you’ve thrown the wrong onto the
fire, it’s gone,” Brother Mark was saying.  “It no longer exists.  Whatever
atonement you were hoping for is yours, and whatever has been a barrier between
you and the people in your life is gone.  All you have to do is
live
that forgiveness.  Let the forgiveness into your heart, and let it into your
daily walk.”

            “This is so lame,” Dusty murmured.  She
looked over at Luke, expecting him to echo her sentiments.

            Instead, he just raised a brow and
shrugged.  “It can’t hurt.”

            “Yes, well, they’re not exactly stampeding
to the front to participate.”

            Brother Mark lit a fire in the grill.  He
turned back to the audience, his legs braced and his hands folded in front of
him.  “This fire is going to be here all week.  I realize that not everyone is
going to be ready to deal with this tonight.  Some of you are going to have to
think on it a while.  And some of you may not come up here.  Some of you may
not need to.  But for those of you with a burden on your heart, I invite you to
come forward and give the gift of forgiveness.  And receive the gift of peace.”

            Dusty resisted the urge to once again roll
her eyes.  This was going to be a dismal flop, she thought.  Did they have any
songs prepared to cover awkward silences?

            Luke leaned over and whispered, and they
started to strum a soft song, leaving out the vocals.  No one was going to come
up there in front of the entire county and do something so silly.  She wondered
how long they would have to play before Brother Mark signaled that the service
was over.

            To her amazement, a woman stood and moved
to the front of the audience, an embarrassed smile on her face.  She took a piece
of paper from Brother Mark and wrote something on it.  She lay the paper on the
fire and with a deep breath, watched it catch.  As it curled in on itself, she
closed her eyes and her lips moved in silent prayer.

            What surprised Dusty more than the fact
that someone had actually come forward was seeing the look of obvious relief
the woman felt as the paper was reduced to ashes.  She almost seemed to grow
taller, and her face eased into a peaceful smile.

            Dusty forgot she wasn’t paying attention. 
She watched as the woman made her way back to her chair, stopping momentarily
to clasp hands with another woman along the way.  She sat down and hugged her
daughter beside her, wiping tears from her eyes as she did.

            Unbelievable, Dusty thought as she shook
her head and returned her attention to the front. 

            Now there were three people up there. 
Dusty almost lost her place in the song.