A Rhinestone Button (19 page)

“You want a hand?” yelled Jacob.

Frightened by Jacob’s shout, the bull flailed, flinging Job backwards. For a long, panicked moment Job found himself underwater as he tried to right himself. He gulped mud. Spat and thrashed. One foot made contact with the soft belly of the bull. Then, seeking earth, his feet sank into mud. He found himself groping the wiry hair of the bull’s back. The bull snorted and twisted from his grasp and he fell backwards again. He felt another thrashing beside him, he thought for a moment that the bull had torn itself loose. But there was a hand at his neck, yanking his shirt collar, dragging him from mud.

Job caught air, struggled out of Jacob’s grip. “Leave me alone!”

“I was only trying to help.”

“If you hadn’t yelled, the bull wouldn’t have thrown me,” said Job.

Jacob dragged himself from the water, perched on a log and sulked.

Job slogged through slough grass after his brother, wet jeans heavy around his legs, then drove the tractor down to the water’s edge and rejoined the bull in the mud, fashioning the chain loosely around the animal’s neck. He attached the chain to the draw bar and drove the tractor forward, slowly, to gently lift the bull out of the muck neck-first. Freed from the mud, the bull fought its way back to shore, then, exhausted by the struggle, stood passively at the lake edge, snorting. Job unhooked the chain from the bull’s neck and replaced it with a halter. It would be an easy matter, now, to lead the exhausted animal back home.

Job slumped down at the edge of the lower field where alfalfa and brome met wild rose brambles. “I’m sorry for getting mad,” he said. “Thanks for pulling me out.”

Jacob waved a hand. “It’s all right.” After a time he laughed. “Remember when you got stuck in the mud out here and I tried to rescue you?”

“And got stuck yourself,” said Job.

“We called out for—what?—two hours before Dad came down to find us. Then he beats the crap out of me and doesn’t lay a hand on you. He says, ‘You should have known better.’ Like I’d instigated it. He wouldn’t believe me when I said I was trying to get you out.” He looked away, at the lake. “You given any thought to the halfway-house project?” he said.

“It’s not something I want.”

“Well, it’s not really a matter of what you want, is it?” said Jacob. His voice slid into a pastor’s lilt. “It’s about what God wants. You think I’m staying on this farm or thinking about running this halfway-house project because I want to? If I did what I felt like, I’d sell this place
right now, set up my own ministry someplace. But this was Granddad’s land, and Dad’s land, and you’re set on keeping the farm in the family. And Lilith doesn’t want to move any more. When Jack proposed this halfway-house project, I figured that’s what God wanted for me. That’s why everything happened to bring us here. So I’m staying.” He looked past Job’s shoulder, and Job watched his brother’s face sag in fatigue as the thought settled into him. Then the tense smile was back on Jacob’s face. He gave Job’s thigh a pat. “Anyway, take it to the Lord. Ask God if he wants you to involve yourself in this halfway-house project or not. Let God make the decision. That’s what he’s there for.” Jacob stood up. “I better get back to the house. You want me to take the bull up?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

Job watched Jacob start his slow climb up the bank of the coulee. Maybe it was as simple as Jacob said. He’d pray for confirmation, ask God if the halfway house was what He wanted for Job and the farm. Or not. But the trick was to figure out God’s answer. He gave it a try and said a prayer with his eyes open, in case God threw him a sign and he missed it.

A duck heaved itself onto the bank and waddled straight over to Job as if it were a city bird, hoping for a handout. A mallard, with a white shred of diaper stuck to its butt. Will’s bird. It gripped Job’s pant leg in its beak and tugged, then tugged again. Clamped hold of a bit of skin and yanked.

“All right,” Job yelled, kicking it off. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

“What was that?” Jacob called down from the hill.

“I said I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“I’ll check out Pastor Divine’s church. If I like what I see, we’ll go ahead with halfway house.”

The duck wheezed out a quack, like the laugh of a child’s pull-along toy, before waddling back to the water and disappearing into the bulrushes.

Job sat in a metal folding chair near the front of the church, watching as Pastor Divine worked his way down the line of those who came forward to be slain in the Spirit. Penny took Job’s hand, her moist palm a thrill in his. She wore a pink blouse with a ruffle at the neck, and her hair was piled on her head in an elaborate do she might have worn to the prom. “Isn’t this exciting?” she said.

Ben slouched in his seat beside Job, kicking the underside of the empty chair in front of him. He was dressed much as Job was, in a Sunday shirt and clean jeans. Next to him Lilith chewed the side of her ring finger, her eyes on Jacob as he walked down the line with Pastor Divine, as one of the catchers for the slain.

Bountiful Harvest Church was an old Safeway building, with an S-shaped roof, and all the windows covered over in a light grey stucco. At the entrance to its parking lot there was a sign with an arrow that read
Miracles This Way
.

Inside, high above the crowd, fans churned the air. On the stage hung two childishly constructed fabric hangings depicted flames of fire, of renewal, of the Holy Spirit. Between these flames hung an unpainted wooden cross.

Pastor Jack Divine had had the crowd stand and sing for nearly two hours before finally announcing it was time for the anointing. The air was stifling, filled with the stench of men’s aftershave and sweat. A number of the women held their hands cupped in front of their chests in supplication, as if holding a bowl and waiting their turn for the bowl to be filled. Some held their hands higher, in the way small children ask, “Up?” One man wore an ambulance driver’s outfit. A woman in her forties danced in the aisles, twirling a bright pink flag tied to a stick.

Penny looked so happy, so certain, the excitement of meeting God rosy in her cheeks. It took Job’s breath away. To feel that excitement, that certainty. To
know
. He felt instead as though he couldn’t swim, the rescue rope was slipping from his grasp, and the boat was pulling anchor, leaving him adrift in this strange ocean. Pastor Divine had said there was no faking this; if God wanted you slain in the Spirit, he’d take you. If he didn’t think you were ready, if there was something standing in the way, some secret sin, some flaw in your Christian character, then he wouldn’t let the Holy Spirit flow. “You can fake a conversion experience,” Pastor Divine had said, “but you can’t fake a baptism in the Holy Spirit.”

As Divine came nearer, Penny took her place in the aisle. Divine touched her lightly on the forehead. She fell into Jacob’s arms, and he laid her gently on the floor.

“Why aren’t you standing?” said Pastor Divine, stepping up to Job’s seat. “Don’t you feel the call to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?”

Job stood and shook his head, though now that he was standing before the pastor he did feel something. A gnarled
burl of anxiety in the pit of his stomach that Pastor Henschell called “conviction by the Holy Spirit,” and what others may have simply called guilt. Guilt over what he couldn’t say, though on reflection any given day produced an abundance of things to feel guilty about. “Yes,” he said.

“Well, which is it?”

“I want to be anointed.”

“It’s not what
you
want,” said Pastor Divine. “What
you
want means diddly-squat. What does God want? Do you feel God’s call?”

Job glanced at Jacob. His brother’s face was splotchy from the exertion of catching those slain in the Spirit. A bead of sweat ran down his cheek. He nodded at Job, as if to encourage him. “I feel it,” said Job. He thought he felt it.

“All right then.” Pastor Jack pressed a hand to Job’s forehead, and when Job took a step back but didn’t fall, Jacob took him by the arm to steady him. “Don’t you feel the Spirit?” said Pastor Divine.

“No.”

“
Try
to feel the Spirit. Sometimes you’ve got to give it a little help. Open the door.”

“I’ll try.”

“Why not try speaking in tongues?”

“I don’t know how. I mean, God would have to do that through me, wouldn’t he?”

“Loosen your tongue in faith.”

“How’s that?”

“Say some nonsense words; try out some syllables. You know, like
nanana papa
, that sort of thing. You’ll get over your inhibitions, and then God will help you out.”

“I’ll try.”

Pastor Divine moved down the row, and Job mumbled as he’d been instructed,
nanananana, papapa
, watching as the anointed fell one after the other, their inhibitions shaken loose and dropped like a pocket full of coins. Lilith fell to the floor sobbing. A woman lay next to her, laughing. A boy in the seat in front of Job held his hands up, murmuring to the Lord as if to a lover. Others, rocking back and forth, clicked their tongues against the roof of their mouths.

Ben stayed slouched in his seat with his arms crossed. He’d refused to stand when Divine came on him and wouldn’t look at his father. Job knew exactly what he was feeling, as Job himself, cringing in the pew beside his father, had gone through the same agonies of embarrassment each Sunday, and had endured cruel taunts about his father and brother at school. Jacob had joined in with Abe, standing in church when his father stood, waving a hand in the air, calling out, “Thank you, Jesus!” or tottering back and forth in what Job supposed was a trance, gibbering in choppy, meaningless sentences that sounded vaguely Italian.

Abe had once derided that kind of public demonstration of faith as the rest of the Godsfinger Baptist congregation had. But then five months after Emma died, Abe had gone into town on a Saturday and hadn’t come home for supper. He came back after eleven with a shine to his face, a vascular glow. Job thought he’d been drinking, and said so, out of surprise. He thought he’d get the strap for it.

“I am drunk!” said Abe, swinging an arm up and nearly losing his balance, as if to demonstrate. “I’m drunk on the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit
.” He laughed, the first laugh since Emma’s death, and fell into his easy chair, shaking his head at some thought.

Jacob said, “You all right?”

“Better than all right. Haven’t felt this good since—” He twirled a finger in the air to finish his sentence. “I saw the Pentecostals were having a revival in Leduc this week. They promised healing, emotional healing. I thought, What the hell? Can’t feel any worse than I do now. So I took myself out for supper and sat in the back pew. I thought there’d be all that chatter and wailing, the devil getting the better of them. But it wasn’t like that at all. They got us singing and singing and singing. And it was fun! And then the Holy Spirit came down on the crowd.” He stood, threw his hands into the air. “And I was healed!”

“What do you mean, healed?” said Jacob.

“I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and I was healed.” His eyes shone. “Don’t you see? I know I’m forgiven.”

Jacob offered his father a hug and said, “That’s great, Dad.”

Job backed into the kitchen counter and kept his distance, as if his father really were drunk. “You mean, like, you spoke in tongues?” he asked.

“Yes! It was wonderful! I haven’t felt this way since your mother and I were dating and we did that mock-wedding skit at Steinke’s twenty-fifth anniversary. She was so beautiful in my suit and I looked so silly in her nightgown. Balloons here, you know.” He patted his chest. “I couldn’t stop laughing and I loved her so much.” Abe jumped, shouted “Woo-hoo!” and landed, sending a shudder through the old floorboards of the house.

Job had been embarrassed by his father and brother, but jealous too. Jacob claimed that when he spoke in tongues, he felt a great warming of the blood, a sweep of emotion cresting over him as the Holy Spirit flowed in. He
said he felt God’s presence, and that he knew he’d been forgiven, something Job was never certain of.

Job tried again to loosen his tongue in faith.
Mamamama, papapapa, booboobooboo
. Nothing. He went on mumbling gibberish as he looked up to see Pastor Divine anoint the last in the row. A petite girl of eighteen threw herself back into Jacob’s arms. There was no hesitation in her fall, no suspicion that he might not catch her. Jacob lay the girl to the ground and looked up, catching Job’s eye. Job turned back to the stage and prayed for release, for the loss of self he saw all around him.

Jacob limped up to him, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He touched Job’s arm. “Still nothing?”

“No.”

“It’s okay. Let’s pray.” Jacob put a hand on Job’s back and held it there as he prayed that Job might feel God’s presence and his Holy Spirit might descend upon him. And so on. When he finished his prayer he said, “Even if nothing happens here today, know that you’ve been
loved on
. Know that God loves you.”

A thrill that this might be true. The suspicion that it was not.