The Welcome Committee of Butternut Creek (5 page)

Miss Birdie glowered at her friend, then turned to study Adam’s face. He had no idea what opinion she reached about his sincerity. He attempted to look exceptionally earnest.

“Do you ladies mind if we pray together?” he asked. Without waiting for a response, Adam began, “Loving God, we gather here in Your name, to listen and do Your will. Open us to work together to Your glory, we ask in the name of Your son. Amen.”

“
Open us to work together
?” Miss Birdie asked. “Pastor, after sixty-plus years of church attendance, I’ve learned to interpret ministerial prayers, to translate the words preachers use.” She scrutinized Adam. “Sometimes I’m a little wary. What do you want to say with those words?”

“Bird, why do you always question?” Mercedes said. “
All of us together
sounds nice. We should all work together in the church.”

Not one to be deterred by a prayer, Miss Birdie repeated. “About those hymns, Pastor Adam.”

His lips quivered. He found her determination amusing. If he didn’t, she’d probably drive him nuts. Unfortunately, she caught that quick expression before he was able to wipe it away.

“It’s not funny, Preacher.” She kept her eyes on him as if daring his wayward expression to return. “I brought a list of songs we like to sing.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “And the page numbers.”

“Very thorough.” He glanced at the paper and recognized many of the old hymns popular in the Kentucky churches. “Thank you.”

“And you’ll use them? During the service?” She continued to study his expression.

Adam could only hope she had a little trouble deciphering it because, as young and inexperienced as he was, he had no idea how to react to her demands. No, to her
suggestions
.

“I promise you at least one a Sunday, and I’ll work with the choir on the new hymns.”

“Oh, Pastor, you surely noticed our choir isn’t very big. Just three sopranos and Ralph, who can’t really sing anymore,” Mercedes explained. “Good view of the congregation from up there. Ralph likes to sit in the choir so he can see what everyone in the sanctuary is doing during the service.”

“But still, they can lead you in learning some new hymns,” Adam suggested.

“We like the old ones,” Birdie said clearly. “None of us wants to change.”

“How are you going to learn new hymns?”

“We don’t want to.” She bit the words off slowly and precisely. “We are happy with the ones we know.”

“Oh, don’t be so old-fashioned.” Mercedes smiled at Birdie, then at Adam. “I liked some of them. We sing several of the spirit songs at the women’s retreats but never have here.”

Traitor
, Miss Birdie’s frown said.

“I’m surprised you’re working today,” Mercedes observed.

Adam had noticed that Mercedes always attempted to change the subject when Miss Birdie scowled.

“Most of our ministers take Mondays off,” the librarian said.

“I don’t know what day I’ll take off, but I just got here and there’s so much to do to get settled. I do have a question for you ladies.”

“Pastor Adam, I’ve learned a smiling minister often means he’s fixin’ to make an unwanted suggestion,” Miss Birdie stated.

“Oh, not at all. This isn’t difficult. Wonder if you ladies could tell me about the Widows.”

“Oh, that’s us.” Mercedes grinned and pointed at Miss Birdie then at herself. “We’re the Widows. We put together the sympathy dinners and take food to the sick and watch over the fellowship dinners, whatever service is needed here at the church and in town.”

“You sound like real treasures.” Adam considered carefully how to ask the next question. “I wonder if you know anything about the furniture that Rodolfo from Hilton’s delivered to the parsonage.”

They glanced at each other. “Pastor, this is a small town,” Mercedes said. “In a small town, we look after each other. Don’t you worry. It’s taken care of.”

“Would you please thank the group for this gift? I appreciate the generosity.”

“You just did.” Mercedes pointed at Miss Birdie and herself. “We’re the only two Widows left. We ordered the furniture, but lots of people donated. We’ll pass that on.”

Miss Birdie nodded but obviously didn’t want to talk about this subject anymore. He guessed discussing her good deeds made her uncomfortable.

“One more thing, Pastor Adam,” Mercedes said. “There’s a young vet, an amputee in town. Sam Peterson. His great-aunt Effie died and left her house to him. He’s here for rehabilitation at the hospital.”

Adam jotted the name on a note card. “I should visit him.”

“Yes, you should.” Miss Birdie nodded vigorously. “We’ve tried several times but he won’t open the door. He lives in a little green house on Pine Street.”

“You’ll recognize it because it looks empty and has a dozen old newspapers on the lawn.”

Adam nodded and stood, feeling the visit was over. The Widows didn’t move, which meant, obviously, it wasn’t. He guessed that decision was up to them. He sat back down.

“Tell us a little about yourself, Pastor Adam,” Mercedes said. “We know you’re from Kentucky.” She edged forward in her chair. “How old are you?”

He sat back down. “Twenty-five.”

“You don’t look twenty-five,” Miss Birdie said. “You don’t even look eighteen. How can we trust someone as young as you… ,” the pillar said through pursed lips.

Mercedes shushed her friend, quickly changing the subject. Adam admired how well she could redirect the pillar. “Tell us about your call to become a minister,” she said. “I always like to know.”

“Grew up in Kentucky where my father had a business. As a kid, I always went to church. After I graduated from the University of Louisville, I taught high school for a year.”

“And the call to ministry?” Mercedes prompted.

“I heard the call one day while I was standing in front of a class of thirty-five ninth-grade English students who had no desire to read
Julius Caesar
.” That sounded shallow. The reason went much deeper, but that had always been his story because it was short and because the actual Damascus road experience really had taken place right there, in class. It came not only in the voice of God but also in the sullen silence of the students.

With a sweet smile and ignoring a glare from Miss Birdie, who obviously still had a few more bones to pick with him, Mercedes said, “I hear you’re single. Have you heard that Birdie and I are matchmakers?”

He felt sure that a look of pure terror washed over his face, because he could feel panic rising inside. Adam pulled himself together and said, “Do a lot of single women live in town?”

Mercedes sighed. “Not as many as we’d like. Most of our young people go off to college and stay in the big cities, so matchmaking’s an enormous challenge nowadays.”

“But working with what we have, we’ve been very successful,” Miss Birdie added. “We’re resourceful and motivated.”

Both Widows nodded. The gesture chilled him.

“Yes, we’ve been very successful.” Mercedes tilted her head. “Would you like us to try for you? We’ve noticed you aren’t keeping company with anyone here in Butternut Creek.”

“I’ve only been here a week.”

“Perhaps you have a young lady back in Kentucky?”

Adam held up his hand and considered what to say to let them know—politely but firmly—he didn’t require their services. “No thank you. I’m a hardened case, ladies. No woman wants to put up with a man married to his vocation.” Adam shook his head and added, “I’m not good with women. I’d be too much of a challenge.”

He knew immediately he’d made a big mistake. Miss Birdie shared a quick, amused glance with Mercedes.

“We enjoy nothing as much as a challenge,” Miss Birdie said.

All hope died within him. As he’d begun to suspect and was borne out over the next years, the Widows loved a dare, rejoiced in achieving the impossible.

Only a few minutes after the Widows left, Adam wondered about Miss Birdie. Mercedes presented herself as she was: friendly and easy to get along with.

But he hadn’t met anyone like Miss Birdie before. Oh, every church had a kitchen lady, the woman in charge of nearly everything including meal preparation and service and keeping the congregation in line. Miss Birdie was different, though, stronger than most but also caring and concerned about the flock. How did a person combine her judgmental personality with a heart that had organized the furniture purchase and sent her minister to call on an amputee?

He wished he understood her better.
How can I minister to her if I don’t know her?
he reflected.

Of course it could be she didn’t care if he ministered to her or not, as long as he did what she expected.

The church administration professor at the seminary had told the class there were members of a congregation, often a clan, who wanted to own the minister, who hoped to be the only family he ate Christmas dinner with, who expected the minister to attend every family gathering including the birth of a nephew or grandchild. Adam didn’t think Miss Birdie fell into that category.

The professor had explained there was a second group who wanted to be the only ones the minister listened to, to control the church by controlling the pastor. He’d said ministers should do everything possible to avoid that situation.

The professor had never met Miss Birdie.

R
ockets exploded around Sam Peterson. Amid the screams of the wounded, officers barked directions as mortar shells screamed toward them. Over the rocky landscape hung the acrid smell of ammo and war and the coppery stench of blood. Gunfire rained down on them from the surrounding hills.

He wished the Taliban didn’t love hanging out in obscure caves.

“Incoming,” Gunny shouted.

“Gunny, we need suppressive fire.” Sam pointed west. “Where the hell is the second squad?”

Reacting with the instinct of long training and months in Afghanistan, Sam lifted his M4 to answer the barrage. As the suppressive fire began, he shouted to his radio operator, “We need close air support now and—”

Before he could finish the sentence, a second mortar impacted, driving Sam’s face into the dirt. A blast of pain punched him, burning through flesh and bones and nerves.

He reached for his leg. It wasn’t there.

His leg had been blown off and he lay alone and bleeding out on the hard surface made slick with his blood. He shouted to his best friend Morty for help, but Morty stretched out next to him, motionless, blood pooling around his head and his eyes staring into the darkness as the battle continued to rage.

“Medic!” Sam yelled, but no one came. Despite pain that nearly knocked him out, he reached for his first-aid kit and grabbed a tourniquet. Fighting against the throbbing and a darkness that threatened to envelop him, he wrapped the nylon strip around his thigh and tightened it with clumsy fingers slick with blood, turning the plastic grip until the flow stopped.

That finished, he clenched his fists and forced himself to breathe, to pull air in and out of gasping lungs. He lay alone in the dark and the throbbing anguish, waiting for death in a foreign country. With the last bit of strength he possessed, he reached out and put his hand on Morty’s shoulder.

When the din grew louder, his eyes flew open. For a moment, he floated, caught between the pandemonium of war and the pounding noise of wherever he’d awakened. Above him, Sam saw not a black sky pierced with the flashes and trails of rockets and mortar fire but a ceiling covered with that ugly white popcorn stuff. He took a deep breath. Fresh, clean air. He’d had that nightmare again and hoped Morty didn’t die at the end. He always did. It destroyed Sam every time.

He wasn’t in Afghanistan. He’d been airlifted out six or seven months earlier. Now he lay in his aunt Effie’s bed in Butternut Creek, Texas, in the house he’d inherited from her when she died. Even here, he was alone and in pain and isolated.

Butternut Creek. A stupid place for a marine. He should be in battle at the head of his division, leading his platoons instead of lying in a pale pink room in a cottage. What kind of marine ended up in a place called Butternut Creek?

This one, obviously.

Finally awake, he shook his head to clear it. A mistake. The motion made his head throb.

He shouldn’t drink so much. But it had felt so good at the time.

After nearly a minute, he realized the uproar that awakened him came not from a battle in Afghanistan but from the backyard. Sounded like a couple of platoons fighting off insurgents out there. Either that or a bunch of very loud kids. He assumed the latter only because he couldn’t figure out how that many marines could fit in his yard or why they’d be there.

He didn’t need the noise, not when he’d drunk a fifth of whiskey last night in an attempt to overcome pain and insomnia and memories. He glanced at the clock. Nine thirty on Wednesday, no Tuesday, morning. Maybe Monday.

Who cared? For a moment, Sam considered the pros of getting up. Deciding to try for a few more hours of sleep, he put a pillow over his head. At the same time, a loud crack came from inside the house. As much as he’d like to ignore what sounded like a broken window, he couldn’t. Someone could be robbing Aunt Effie’s house.

No, it was his house now, his responsibility.

After a few seconds of silence, he heard a knock on the slider. Very polite burglars.

With a struggle, he sat up and slipped on the bottom of a sweat suit but didn’t bother to cover the T-shirt he slept in. Then he turned in the bed, put his left foot on the floor and into a slipper, grabbed the crutches, and shoved them under his arms.

The knock came again.

Once the crutches were in position, he struggled to swing what remained of his right leg around, then stood and steadied himself before he hobbled across the thick shag carpet. If he decided to stay in the house for longer than a few more months, the fiend of a rug that grabbed his crutches with every step would be the first thing to go.

Then came still another knock on the slider. “Hold your pants on,” he shouted, then cursed. He’d hoped they’d left by now and he could go back to bed.

He avoided the pile of trash on the floor, bottles and old newspapers and boxes from microwave dinners. He should pick those up someday. Noxious fumes made up of the odor of trash and spilled booze, mixed with the smell of an old house left shut up for all the months after his aunt died, filled the room.

When he reached the slider in the dining room, he pulled the lacy curtains back to see a large hole in the middle of the right panel. He tried to open the door, but with the broken glass, it stopped after only a few inches. Two boys stood in front of him with expressions of fear and remorse on their freckled faces.

“We’re sorry, sir,” said the taller kid. Then he gulped.

Two pairs of round, green, guileless eyes stared at him. He’d heard someone, probably them, fooling around in the backyard for several days, but this was the first time he’d seen the perpetrators. Amazing only two boys made so much racket.

But he didn’t fall for those eyes. He knew how easy innocence was to assume, although the apology had sounded fairly sincere. In his youth, he’d had to apologize plenty of times and knew exactly how to seem earnest and repentant. He’d fooled everyone but his father the general.

“Don’t know how that happened, sir.” The younger boy pointed toward the broken slider. “One moment it was fine and the next, it wasn’t.”

The older kid scowled at him.

They were cute kids with spiked red hair and burnt orange University of Texas T-shirts worn with jeans and athletic shoes. They had to be brothers. But at that moment, Sam didn’t care if they were good guys or gangbangers. His missing foot had started to throb again, something the VA medical staff called phantom limb pain but felt excruciatingly genuine to him. The raw agony made him want to scream, except he was a marine. Marines didn’t scream.

On top of everything, he was here and his troops were…​how many thousands of miles away? The fact he wasn’t with them tore at him so badly he hurt inside almost as much as in the missing limb.

And Morty was dead. He died every night.

Gritting his teeth, Sam turned, balanced himself on the right crutch, and leaned over to pick up a fist-size rock. Shards of glass covered the floor and stuck to the curtain. By the time he’d struggled to stand back up, he saw the boys squeezing through the narrow opening and inside.

“Don’t suppose this”—he tossed the rock into the air several times and looked through the broken pane—“had anything to do with the broken window.”

The eyes of the shorter boy grew even rounder. “No, sir,” he said.

The older brother shushed him and said, “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

The kid was either very polite or he knew Sam was military. Probably because of his camo sleeveless T-shirt.

“Names.”

“I’m Leo.” The older boy straightened his thin shoulders and stood at attention. “He’s Nick. Thomas. Our last name is Thomas.”

If anything could, the sight of Leo’s posture would have made Sam laugh. “How old are you?”

“I’m ten.” Leo pointed at himself. “My brother’s eight.”

“When does school start?” The pain began to move up from the missing foot through his absent shin and settled in his shattered knee. He didn’t feel like chatting but couldn’t figure out how to get the two to leave. He could shout at them, curse at them, but even he had his limits. He couldn’t do that to kids.

“In August,” Leo said.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She works, sir.” Leo pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them straight and flat against his side.

“At the hospital, sir.” Nick squared his shoulders, mimicking his brother.

Aha. If he didn’t hurt so much, he’d have figured out much earlier that these two redheads must belong to the luscious PT he’d met at the hospital. He grinned, inside.

“And your father?” Might as well collect all the information he could.

He hadn’t thought the boys’ eyes could look any sadder, but they did.

Leo lowered his gaze. “Back in Chicago.”

“With his stupid new wife Tiffany,” the younger kid muttered.

Leo gave Nick an elbow to his ribs.

“When my folks split up, we came back here.” Leo grimaced. “Is Butternut Creek the stupidest name you’ve ever heard of for a town, sir? All my friends back home—” He swallowed hard. “All the guys laughed at me when I told them we were moving to Butternut Creek, Texas.” His voice dripped with disgust.

“Yeah, mine, too,” Nick added.

“Shut up,” Leo said. “Your friends didn’t even—”

“Yeah, they did. And I have as many friends as you.”

“Do not.” Leo turned toward his younger brother and glared at him.

“Stop.” The sound of squabbling made Sam’s head pound harder, in time with the throbbing of his leg. “Let’s get back to basics. One of you broke my window, but you both were playing in my yard where you shouldn’t be. Stop arguing and man up.”

“Wow. He said
man up
.” Nick’s voice filled with wonder.

“Okay, man up, squirt,” Leo said to his brother, then turned to Sam. “Nick broke the window.”

“Did not.”

“He was pretending to toss a grenade into the guardhouse to save me. He didn’t mean to hit the glass, but he did throw the rock.”

“It was an accident,” Nick whispered. “It sort of slipped out of my hand.”

Sam glared at the boys for a few seconds and wondered what he was getting into by talking to them, by allowing them to enter the silence he surrounded himself with. Nothing good. Nothing he wanted to get involved in. “What are you going to do about it?” he demanded because he couldn’t think of any other way to respond and he guessed it would kill their self-esteem if he mocked them or sent them away. Not that he had reason to care about their self-esteem.

Why was he acting like such a nice guy when he did not care about people and pain throbbed through his missing leg? The brothers looked at him then at each other. They shrugged.

“Don’t know,” Leo said.

The tendrils of the headache had started to move down Sam’s neck. He had to get the boys outside so he could close the drapes, settle on the sofa, and do his exercises. He needed darkness, not sunshine. For a moment, he tried to gather his thoughts and consider how he could get them out of there. He turned away from the slider and leaned against the table.

“Look,” the younger one whispered. “He’s got tattoos.”

“Tats, idiot,” the older brother said. “He’s got barbed wire on his right arm.”

“And something marine-y on the other,” the younger one said. “Look at those muscles.” A note of awe filled the whispered comment. Sam would have laughed but that would hurt his head. Instead he glared at them and said, “Have your mom call me.”

“Oh, no, sir. Please don’t make us tell her.” Leo’s voice quivered. He cleared his throat. “We’ll do anything if you won’t tell my mother.”

“She gets sad and
really
disappointed in us.” Nick’s lips trembled.

“Have her call me,” Sam said in his command voice. “Seven-one-four-four.” In Butternut Creek, everyone shared the same prefix so he didn’t bother with it.

“Seven-one-four-four,” they repeated simultaneously.

“If you don’t tell her, I’ll call her. You won’t like what happens after that.” With those words, he pointed toward the slider. “Now. Go!” As they dashed out, Sam slid the door shut as far as he could and closed the curtain. Then he steadied himself on the crutches as he stumbled toward the sofa in the living room with glass crunching beneath his shoe. Once there, he fell on the cushions and took a bottle of pills from the end table. He popped three in his mouth and swallowed them dry, in too much pain to stand and get water.

He leaned his head against the back of the sofa, closed his eyes to relax, and began to imagine himself going down in an elevator while he read the floors. “Ten,” he said. “Nine, eight…” The pain lessened with each number.

As the muscles of his neck loosened, the phone rang. The jangle made his shoulders tense up and increased the pounding of his headache. Hadn’t thought it could hurt more.

Probably the general or a wrong number. No one else knew where he was. He’d let it ring, because he didn’t want to talk to the general. Actually, he didn’t want to talk to anyone but most of all, not to the general.

As much as he liked the solitude, Sam hadn’t planned to be alone here. The general had meant to be here when Sam arrived in town, but he’d had a mild heart attack. At the time, Sam had felt relief not to have the general close. Not that he could imagine the old warhorse fussing as he took care of his only and deeply disappointing son, but he hadn’t wanted him there at all. Ever. His presence would have intruded on Sam’s privacy.

The general had improved greatly, but the cardiologist refused to release him from his care for another month. Good old Dad always followed rules and commands, usually at the expense of his family.

Sam knew he should have outgrown that bitterness years ago.

He closed his eyes and started counting down again. “Ten… nine…”

When he felt better, he’d call the insurance agent about replacing the glass in the slider. The number should be somewhere, maybe in the box of stuff his aunt’s lawyer had left.

Then he’d call the liquor store and arrange for another delivery.