A Rhinestone Button (14 page)

Job dreamed that night of naked women with feathers in their hair, dancing on the frozen waters of Hay Lake. They ran tiptoe on their skates across bright snow, giggled up the bank of the coulee as he chased them. He singled one out from the rest, as if culling a cow from the herd, and she became a horse, black flank shining in the sun as she ran up the snowy bank in front of him. Job scrambled through the snow and caragana of the coulee, struggling to keep up. He wanted her skin in his mouth. Once at the top, the mare stopped, offered her dark flanks to him. He jumped her, climbed her back, bit the base of her neck, pushed his penis into her and thrust and thrust.

He woke abruptly, with the first spasm of orgasm. Grabbed the head of his penis at the sensitive line of his
circumcision, pressing it against his body to stop himself from coming further, wincing as pain travelled up and down his penis. He could not stop the dreams, the confusing spasms that haunted his sleep, but he could stop the pleasure and inflict on himself this pain instead.

Penny turned in her place next to Will, scanned the room, smiled when she found Job. She waved for him to come sit with them and then her smile fell. Job saw Liv making her way down the pew, her bracelets jangling on her wrists. Her broomstick skirt was transparent. He could see the yellow shorts she wore underneath, her sturdy legs. On her feet a pair of East Indian leather sandals. He shifted for her, bumping a hip up to Dithy Spitzer. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Oh, well. I thought I’d check things out, for a laugh.”

“Where’s Jason? I thought he wanted to come.”

“Darren had a run to Vancouver, so I asked him to drop Jason off at his grandma’s in the Shuswap. He’ll be staying there a couple of days. I needed a little time to sort things out.”

She scrutinized the church, the white crossed windows, the unadorned wood panelling on the walls. “Kind of drab in here, isn’t it? Where’re the stained-glass windows?”

Job looked around him, saw that Liv was right. Usually for him it was filled with the colours and shapes of voices, music, but other than the rough wooden cross made from two-by-fours that hung behind the pulpit, there was little in the room to demonstrate that this was a church. There was no altar to speak of; that would be too Catholic. The only spot of colour belonged to the orange of the pew seats. Stinky Steinke had weathered a shower of complaints from
members over the hardness of the pews, but there wasn’t any money in the treasury for upholstery. So he stapled to the benches remnants of the orange shag carpet he’d pulled from his living-room floor.

Liv took Job’s hand, held it on her lap. “I wanted to apologize about Jason’s behaviour, and I’m sorry I got grossed out about the mouse. I just didn’t grow up farming, that’s all. I’m not into killing things. I had a good time out in the field.”

Job pulled his hand away, glanced at Penny. Will turned to see what Penny looked at and caught Job’s eye.

Liv crossed her arms. “What?”

“It’s just,
not here
,” he whispered.

“Ah. I’m not acceptable?”

Job glanced across the aisle. Elsie Hosegood was watching. “It’s just that you’re married.”

“You want me to leave? You did invite me.”

“No. Stay. Please stay. I just can’t be … affectionate here.” He looked to see if Penny was still watching. She was. So was Jacob. He scowled at Job, shook his head. Dithy patted Job’s knee, chewed and grinned, winked.

“I’ll be good,” said Liv. She sat straight like a child in a junior-church chair.

“I had a good time too,” Job whispered. “In the field.”

“You’re not going to blow your nose like that again?”

“Not here.” He pulled a red cloth hanky from his pants pocket and tucked it back in.

Jacob rose, and without making an introduction, slipped a sheet into the overhead projector, and got them standing and singing a series of unfamiliar songs.

Liv sang along, keeping an alto harmony. Rings the purple of heliotrope. Though faded, transparent, like the voices
of the others. Job cocked his head in case his ear still held water from his shower, dampening his hearing. At the end of the first song he whispered, “I didn’t know you could sing.”

Liv grinned. “It comes back to you. Church choir.”

“Church?” said Job, surprised.

“United.”

“Ah,” said Job. This explained everything.

The worship team worked themselves up in the process of trying to work up the crowd. Hands in the air, trying to touch the Almighty. A few bobbing from the waist, as if greeting an important Japanese businessman, chattering a steady stream of gobbledygook punctuated intermittently with “Yes Jesus, thank you Jesus.”

Liv leaned against Job, smelling of orange, her hot breath thrilling his neck as she whispered, “You think deaf people ever speak in tongues?” Nearly an hour of singing later, she asked, “Do you always sing this much?”

“No. I think Jacob’s trying to create an atmosphere conducive to healing.”

“Conducive to healing? He’ll have us hallucinating from exhaustion if this goes on much longer. Half the congregation has sat down.”

The more elderly members of the church had taken their seats, including the usually enthusiastic Harry Kuss, Jerry’s dad. Born again when he was ten and cleansed in the blood of the living Christ for nearly sixty years, Harry still found it necessary to rededicate himself to Christ each time a preacher made an altar call. Job’s father and others visiting in the Sunstrum kitchen had often speculated that Harry was carrying a monkey on his back, that he was hagridden by a sin that had haunted him ever since his wife had gone
off the deep end and had to be institutionalized at Ponoka. He embarrassed everyone by holding up a hand when he sang, and held one up now, even as he sat.

Job shifted his weight to his left foot to relieve a cramp. Dithy Spitzer, finally tiring, sat heavily in the pew beside him. Liv plopped herself down. Men and women visiting from Bountiful Harvest, Divine’s church, came and went to get coffee from the foyer and returned with their cups but without embarrassment, while members of Godsfinger Church shifted in the pews in agony, praying for the service to come to an end so they could use the washroom.

But the singing went on. Job found himself swaying and fought the urge to hold a hand up in praise. He did hold a hand up, just above waist level, to better see the faded rings of colour, the singing, projected against the skin of his hand. Until he saw Annie Carlson watching him from across the aisle. She shook her head slightly, undoubtedly thinking Job was getting too caught up in the music, holding his hand up like a charismatic, about to embarrass himself. He put his hand down and held it there, and put up with faded colours projected against the grey suits of the men in the pews in front of him, their bald heads.

Jacob had one hand up, Pastor Divine had them both up. Pastor Henschell kept his arms close to his sides, though he sang on, one foot tapping out the rhythm. Penny and Barbara held both hands up over the crowd, but they were the only ones, other than Harry Kuss, from the home congregation. Will didn’t join her. Several women from the worship team stepped into the aisle and
danced, hands in the air. The old floorboards thumped out their praise. They sang the chorus over and again, a song Job had never heard before but could not pry from his head for days after.

The song wound down. The dancing women went back to their seats. The bobbing men quieted. Pastor Divine stepped to the microphone. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. “We’ll sing some more praise songs later,” he said.

They all sat, Job taking his place between Liv and Dithy Spitzer. Dithy shook her head and muttered, “Praise songs.”

“Tonight we’re going to heal some bodies,” shouted Pastor Divine. “We’re going to heal some souls. Tonight you will see miracles in this church.” He thrust a finger at the audience. “Miracles! The Holy Spirit is going to bring miracles on this church tonight! Do I hear Hallelujah?”

Members of the worship team called out “Hallelujah!” A second later Harry Kuss echoed them.

“God
wants
you to be healthy. God
wants
you to be
wealthy
. Did you know that? God
wants
you to be healthy
and
wealthy. If you are ill, you’re going to leave this place healed. If you were hurting financially, you are going to leave this place rich. I guarantee it. Tonight I’m going to tell you about how faith can heal. About the anointment of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know I’m anointed by
feeling
. I don’t wake up with my hands on fire! Faith isn’t a feeling. How many of you are married?”

Hands went up, nearly the whole crowd.

“Do you wake up each morning thinking, Gosh I feel romantic? Men, do you hand your wife roses every day and serenade her all night long? Are you lovey-dovey every day?”

Laughter across the crowd, a warming.

“But you stay married, don’t you? You know love isn’t about those big rushes of emotion you might still get from time to time. Love isn’t always a feeling, it’s a commitment. Faith isn’t a feeling, it’s a commitment. It’s saying, God, I’ll believe in you when things are bad, and I’ll believe in you when things are good. If faith
were
an emotion, most of us would feel like God asked us out on a date and then stood us up. Am I right?”

Job sat up.
Yes
.

“But God is never unfaithful. He’ll never stand you up. And we can’t afford to stand him up. Faith is a decision. If all of us made that commitment, we’d never want for anything. There’d be no need for doctors. Doctors are for people who haven’t made that commitment, who don’t have enough faith.”

Liv choked out a laugh. Mrs. Schultz turned to look at her.

Dithy muttered, “Not enough faith,” and shifted in her seat.

The pastor pinched his nose and grinned. “Let me tell you a joke. A chicken and a bull were talking about what to offer their master for breakfast. The chicken said, ‘Let’s give him eggs and sausage.’ The bull says, ‘Well for you that’s an offering. For me that’s commitment.’ ”

Laughter across the crowd.

“Which are you? A chicken or a bull? Are you ready to die to yourself? If you’re not, you’re a chicken. You’re a disciple of convenience. There’s lots of so-called Christians out there willing to make an offering, but you won’t see them making a commitment. They’ll give that egg but won’t die to themselves. They follow God’s laws when it suits them. But if you’re ready to make a commitment to Jesus, then
you’re a bull. You’ll give up your needs and desires to Jesus. You’ll die to your own desires. You’ll
die to yourself
.”

“
Die to yourself
?” whispered Liv.

“Um, give up yourself in service to the Lord,” said Job.

“What do you mean ‘give up yourself’?”

“You know, give up your wishes, desires, give up your self interests,
give up your self
, become an empty vessel, so God can work through you.”

“You mean like take possession of you?”

“Sort of. Yeah, like that.”

“This is a good thing?”

Pastor Divine spread his arms wide. The gold on his fingers caught the overhead lights. “Being healthy, being wealthy is all about getting your faith, your money out there working for you. You seed, what? Two bushels to the acre when planting barley? And don’t you get seventy, a hundred bushels back? That’s God’s prosperity. That’s his abundance. It’s the economics of nature. You put a little into the farm, you get back tenfold.”

“Always worked the other way around on my farm,” Steinke called out. “I gave tenfold, got nothing back.”

Laughter, fluttering petals of pale yellow, rose over the heads of the crowd. On previous Sundays, the laughter had been a deep sunflower yellow. Job put his pinkie in his ear, worked it, and looked again at his pinkie to see if there was wax.

“You don’t have to take my word for it,” Divine called over the laughter. “You can try it out for yourself. Ask the Lord to tell you how much to put in that offering plate, then
name your seed
, and you’ll get it. The Lord will provide.”

“Name your seed?” whispered Liv.

Job shrugged. It was new to him.

“Rod here can tell you all about it.” Divine stepped away from the mike, waved up the young man in the Hawaiian shirt.

Liv leaned towards Job, whispered, “You know that guy?”

“He came down from Edmonton with Pastor Divine.”

“Hi. I’m Rod. I did like Pastor Divine said. I listened to what the Lord was telling me to put in the offering plate. And he told me to put more than I had in, more than I had in my bank account. But I wrote the cheque anyway, and put it in the offering envelope, and I named my seed. I wrote what I wanted on the back of the envelope. I was thinking my cheque would probably bounce, but because the Lord told me to do it, I figured I better have faith.”

“Does he really believe God spoke to him?” whispered Liv.

“Yes. No. It’s more like an expression. It sort of means he got an idea. But from God.”

“How does he tell it’s from God?”

“He just knows.”

“What if it’s from the devil, pretending to be God. Or what if it’s like you said, just an idea that popped into mind. Why credit God for an idea you had yourself? I mean, how would you know the difference?”

“If it’s a good idea it comes from God. If it’s a bad idea it comes from the devil.”

“So you don’t have any ideas of your own?”

Mrs. Schultz turned, shushed them. Job lowered his voice further, leaned closer to Liv. The smell of oranges. “If they’re bad they may be your own ideas. Or if you have doubts. The devil could plant those. Or they could be your own doubts. Either way, they didn’t come from God.”

“So you never have any good ideas of your own?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Rod jammed both hands in his front pockets. “Then this friend of mine turned up with the money he owed me, and it was the exact amount of the cheque I put in the offering plate. Then a few days later, another guy I knew was buying a new leather jacket and he asked me if I wanted his old one, because it was still in really good shape, and I couldn’t believe it, because that was what I asked for on the offering envelope, a leather jacket. I named my seed and I got it.”