Miss Julia Meets Her Match (33 page)

“My word, Sam,” I said, “this place is pitiful looking. Curtis Maxwell hasn’t been as generous with his contributions as we’ve been led to believe. No wonder they’re having us all out here.”

When we got to the tent with its rows of chairs borrowed from both funeral homes, I noted with some relief that the ground had a heavier layer of gravel than the path and the parking area. Yet mud still oozed where shoes and boots had trampled as people made their way to seats. The light breeze that blew through the open sides of the tent was damp and chilly. The heavy canvas sagging overhead was held up by a series of slender metal poles on the edges and interspersed at various crucial spots in the interior. I pulled my sweater closer and began to worry that the children didn’t have enough clothes on.

The place was almost full and, to my dismay, the only vacant seats were down toward the front. I would’ve much preferred to be near the back where it would be easier to leave if I took a mind to, but no, we had to sit only a few rows from the improvised stage, which was a couple of feet higher than the auditorium. A lectern, equipped with a microphone, stood empty and waiting in front of a semicircle of folding chairs for visiting dignitaries.

As we got ourselves settled, I looked around, saw LuAnne, and waved to her. Taking note of those present, I saw any number of my fellow Presbyterians, a large contingent of Baptists and Methodists, a sprinkling of Lutherans, and more than I could count of people who never darkened the door of any church. What they were doing there, I couldn’t imagine, unless it was to see the show or perhaps to find something that was unavailable in a mainstream church. For which I was firmly grateful.

Leaning close to Sam, I whispered, “I don’t want Hazel Marie to know he’s here, but have you seen Mr. Pickens?”

“No, and I’ve been looking. Maybe I ought to wander around, see if I can find him.”

“Don’t leave me now,” I said, linking my arm in his. “But let’s keep looking. I want him to know where we are.” And to that end, I craned my head to scan the audience to see if I could spot him.

Then I leaned across Little Lloyd and said, “Hazel Marie, the Allens are here, even Horace who looks none too happy to be seen with his new daughter. Look over to your left.”

She craned around, then quickly turned back to me. “My word, Miss Julia. That’s Calvin with them! No wonder Mr. Horace looks so put out.”

I couldn’t believe it, but there Calvin was, sitting beside Tonya, as if he belonged there. He was as well, or better, turned-out as any man there. I confess that I wondered if Mildred had been responsible for his pin-striped suit and regimental tie. But perhaps he had his own good taste.

“There’re the Strouds and the Broughtons,” Hazel Marie said, drawing my attention away from the Allens. “Looks like just about everybody’s here, except Binkie and Coleman. I don’t see them.”

“It’s too damp for the baby,” I said. “Or maybe they couldn’t get a sitter.” Whatever the reason, Coleman and Binkie seemed to be the only ones with good sense, and I wished I’d had no cause to be out, either. I leaned over to Hazel Marie again. “Do you see Emma Sue?”

“She’s right over there in the front row.” And so she was, studying her program and looking neither to the left nor the right, getting herself into a frame of mind suitable for a preacher’s wife at a religious service.

I followed her lead and looked at my program, only that wasn’t what it was. Instead, it was a list of supporters of the Walk Where Jesus Walked Theme Park. Mayor Beebee headed the list, followed by several businesses advertising themselves as American-owned, then there were two columns naming the churches and their pastors that had signed on.

“Look at this, Sam,” I said, leaning toward him. “Take note of the churches that aren’t on here as sponsors. The Catholic church, for one, and none of the Episcopal ones. And I don’t see the downtown Methodist church, either. Nor the Lutheran. In fact,” I went on, gathering steam as I ran my finger down the list, “the only mainline churches on here are the First Baptist and the First Presbyterian.

“Does that tell you something?” I demanded, poking my finger at the offending sheet. “What is Pastor Ledbetter thinking of, aligning himself, and us, with something that all the dignified churches wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole? And look at this,” I said, outraged at the sight of blank lines at the bottom for name, address, and the amount of money one promised to give. “It’s a pledge card!”

Sam started to reply, but all of a sudden a band located on the side of the stage started playing. There was a piano, two trumpets, an electric guitar, and a set of drums, and the noise they put out grated on my nerves something awful. As a Presbyterian, I was accustomed to a pipe organ playing classical music I didn’t know, with the occasional piano joining in for congregational hymns or playing alone when the youth choir sang.

But this band had nothing if not rhythm, and before I realized it, people in the audience began to stand in scattered groups, and as others joined them, they began to clap in tune to the music. It was infectious, I give them that, but you won’t catch me getting into the swing of things with something like “Bringing in the Sheaves.”

Some people began to sing, and others gradually added their voices, as a number of men filed onto the makeshift stage. I recognized Dwayne Dooley right off in spite of his suit and tie and his, Lord help us, white socks. Several others crowded in behind him, including Pastor Ledbetter, who looked a little bewildered at being there; and Mayor Beebee, who waved to the crowd; and Curtis Maxwell, who brought up the rear.

By the time they’d all trooped in, each one standing, with his hands clasped in front as men are wont to do, by the chairs lined across the stage, most of the people in the audience were singing their hearts out, getting louder and happier by the stanza. Pastor Ledbetter was always complaining that Presbyterians didn’t sing like they should, but this should’ve shown him that if he’d select hymns that somebody knew, they’d get sung.

Nonetheless, the whole revival atmosphere affronted me, unaccustomed as I was to jarring music and joyful singing and hand-clapping and arm-waving and body-swaying in what claimed to be a religious setting. You could look around the audience and pick out the Presbyterians by their unbending discomfort in the midst of such enthusiasm.

As I stiffened in displeasure, Sam took my hand and rubbed his thumb across the back of it, somewhat easing my seething emotions in spite of my aversion to public displays of affection.

He put his mouth next to my ear, which was the only way he could be heard in all that racket, and whispered, “Let’s just see what happens.”

I nodded and squeezed his hand, thankful that somebody with a sense of decency and order was there with me.

The service pretty much followed your basic evangelistic tent meeting format—several more hymns, all with a driving beat that loosened inhibitions to the point of scandal to my way of thinking, prayers from first one preacher then another asking for generous hearts to see this beneficial project through to completion, thanks given at length by Dwayne Dooley for help already given and for help pledged in the future, and of course the passing of the collection plates—
twice,
to my utter outrage, in case anybody was moved to increase their contribution.

And if I’d heard the supremely smug and self-confident words, ‘the Lord will provide,’ one more time, I was going to send that collection plate winding. The Lord may, indeed, provide, but he does it through the pockets of everyday working people, and, in my opinion, it was past time for them to get a little appreciation.

I was once reprimanded and corrected by a preacher for my custom of referring to the receiving of money in a church service as the collection. It’s the offering, he’d said. Maybe so, I thought, but whatever was being offered was also being collected, so what it was called depended on which side of the plate you were standing, or sitting.

Then Mr. Dooley introduced Curtis Maxwell, who didn’t need an introduction since he’d already visited every church in the county, talking up the theme park and his washing powder. We had to listen to it all again, but finally Mr. Maxwell nodded at Mayor Beebee and with a wink at the audience, said, “I know you’re all going to vote right. And remember, the more you give to God, the more he’ll give to you.” Which just tore me up, knowing that whatever money was collected wasn’t going to God at all. Dwayne Dooley looked nothing like him.

As the service proceeded, I felt the legs of my folding chair sink unevenly into the muddy ground. I ended up sitting on a slant that threatened to slide me off completely. That was another reason I clung to Sam’s arm. Besides that physical uneasiness, I was becoming more and more concerned about Mr. Pickens. What if he didn’t show up? How would I get the check to the Mooney woman?

What if this motley crowd was growing something illegal in the back acres of the property, hidden by scrub pines and undergrowth? What if Mr. Pickens, with his nose for criminal activity, had discovered it and they had him locked up somewhere?

Lord, I wanted to jump up and call Deputy Coleman Bates and tell him to get one of those sharp-nosed dogs out here to sniff out the evidence.

Just as I started to tell Sam my suspicions, he nudged me and nodded his head toward the side of the stage. “There’s Pickens.”

I breathed out in relief, for there he was indeed, standing in the back row of a group of what looked to be local handymen, hired as he had been to help with the construction of the park. But from the looks of what they’d done, none of them had been any handier than Mr. Pickens when it came to town planning and carpentry work.

I glanced over at Hazel Marie, but she’d not seen Mr. Pickens and it suited me not to draw her attention to him. I was going to have a hard enough time explaining my silence as to his whereabouts, when she discovered he’d been working for me all along. No telling what kind of disruption she’d cause if she saw him now, although she might not’ve even recognized him. He blended in with the group he was with in his work clothes and muddy boots. He needed a haircut worse than the last time I’d seen him in the back seat of my car, and all I can say is that he was downright scruffy looking.

“As soon as this thing is over,” I whispered to Sam during another interminable prayer, “I’m going to meet with Mr. Pickens and tell him to pack up and get out of here.” And, though I didn’t say it, arrange for him to finalize the business matter with Monique Mooney. I clutched my pocketbook where the check lay in wait.

Sam nodded, and I bowed my head again, trying to remember enough of the Twenty-Third Psalm to recite to myself so I wouldn’t have to listen to more of what I’d been hearing for the past hour.

Then when I thought the thing was surely drawing to a close, Mr. Dooley introduced the mayor and we had to listen to a bunch of campaign promises that had nothing whatsoever to do with a mayoral race in a small town in North Carolina.

“You know my stand on homeland security,” he said, leaning on the lectern and frowning in a serious manner. As he continued on in like manner, I tuned him out and expressed my displeasure by conspicuously consulting my watch on several occasions.

By the time he finished, I thought my eyes would never come down out of my head. Of all the presumptuous tirades I’d ever heard, that one took the cake. All a mayor of Abbotsville ever did was moderate the council meetings, cut a few ribbons, and get his picture in the paper. If those piddling duties had anything to do with homeland security, prescription drugs, or the economy, I’d eat them.

Surely, after that, I thought we’d be dismissed, but no, Mr. Dooley claimed the lectern again and announced that, in all fairness, the good people of Abbot County deserved to know more about the staff of the theme park and the way they’d dedicated themselves to the Lord’s work.

“We’re not theologians,” he said, which hardly came as a surprise. “We’re not sent out and supported by any denomination. There’re no ordained preachers among us, nor any pseudo-intellectuals who think they have all the answers. We’re just plain folks, like you, who’ve lived hardscrabble lives and who have, by grace, come out on the other side.” He paused, bowed his head, and shook it, as if in sorrow, drawing out the moment like an actor. “I’m just a sinner saved by grace, lifted up out of the mirey ground, and set on a firm foundation.” One of my chair legs sank another inch in my own bit of mirey ground.

“I was a drunk!” Mr. Dooley suddenly shouted, startling me as I tried to adjust my seating. “They say it’s a disease, a sickness. But I tell you, it’s nothing but sin. I was a fallin’-down drunk. I lost my job, my family, and my good wife who couldn’t take it anymore. I lost everything to the evil of liquor and, I tell you good folks, Satan was in every swallow I took. And, believe me, I took me a lot of swallows. Satan had hold of me good, but listen to me because I been there and I know, there’s somebody stronger than he is. Look at me now, clean and free of that depraved craving. So whatever’s houndin’ you, whatever’s latched onto your back, grace can free you for good, just like it’s done for me.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his face.

The whole thing mortified me. I didn’t need to hear a tale of shame and misery, and I didn’t know why he felt compelled to demean himself in such a way. It seemed to me that his current manner of living should’ve been testimony enough without giving the unseemly details of his former fallen state.

“I’m ready to go,” I whispered to Sam. “I’ve had all of this I can take.”

But, Lord, I spoke too soon, for Mr. Dooley turned to the row of men behind him and introduced Pastor Larry Ledbetter, who looked surprised to be called upon. I thought I’d die of embarrassment for my pastor being identified as part of such an undignified service. But he gathered himself, went to the lectern, gave a short and sweet altar call, and an invitation to anybody who answered it to join our church. Then he sat down.