A Rhinestone Button (26 page)

The song ended and Barbara clutched her hands together across her chest, shaking them gently for emphasis, and, still staring upwards, murmured, “Thank you, Jesus.”

Pastor Henschell stepped up to the mike. His wide shoulders in a new blue suit. His hair neatly trimmed. “Today I’m going to talk to you about fence-breakers. We’re all fence-breakers. Each of us has looked into that other field, stuck our heads through the wire, worked the wire up and down a little. Even if we didn’t step right through the fence, we’ve all thought about it. Not one of us is without sin.”

Every beef farmer in that congregation had had a fence-breaker in their pasture at one time or another, a cow they’d had to yoke with two-by-fours nailed in a triangle around its neck, so it couldn’t possibly get through the wire.

“Just like a farmer puts a yoke around a fence-breaker, God puts a yoke around us. The yoke is our conscience. That sick feeling when we’ve thought or done something we know we shouldn’t have. That’s the yoke that should stop us from stepping through the fence. But it doesn’t always, does it? A little sin leads to bigger sin. We wiggle that wire a little more, a little more, and before we know it, we’re through the fence!”

His voice rose in volume. Annie Carlson, seated across the aisle from Job, rummaged through her purse and pulled out a package of yellow foam earplugs. She rolled them between her fingers, and made a point of holding her arms up as she put them in so Pastor Henschell would take note. He didn’t. “So God uses another kind of yoke! He uses the consequences of our actions to teach us not to break through the fence of his laws. If you break through the fence, if you break God’s laws, you will suffer the consequences! If you are an adulterer, you will get pregnant or suffer from venereal disease! Your marriage will suffer! Your spouse will leave you! Your sins will catch up with you.
Maybe not right away, but years from now, the truth will come out. God will put that yoke on you!”

That did it. Job felt the familiar stab of guilt in his gut. It was just like Pastor Divine said:
Make use of guilt. It’s the best tool in the evangelical toolbox. Everybody feels guilty about something. Make them feel the guilt in their bellies; fire it up! Promise them salvation, the final solution for guilt. Then you’ve got them
.

The man in the wheelchair cried “Ma!” in a strangled voice. He rolled his head towards Barbara and, as he couldn’t turn completely towards her, he let his head lull heavily on his left shoulder so he could get a good look at her. A bubble of saliva burst on his lips and for a moment Job thought he might spit at her.

They stood, sang “Almost Persuaded.” “Almost persuaded now to believe, Almost persuaded Christ to receive.” The man in the wheelchair cried out “Ma!” again and again, flinging his head from side to side, slapping the armrests weakly. A fledgling pigeon, with undeveloped wings flapping and mouth open. Barbara shushed him, dabbed the saliva from his mouth and pulled his hands down into his lap. “Quit it!” she hissed. “Behave!” When he only shook his head harder and grunted so loudly that he competed with Mrs. Henschell’s organ playing, Barbara said, “All right, all right, we’ll go!” She turned to the woman and girl sitting with her and said, “I’m sorry, Carol, Sherry,” as she pressed a foot to the brake on the chair. Red-faced, and without looking at anyone in the congregation, she marched the chair down the aisle and out through the sanctuary doors.

“You can’t hide sin from God!” Pastor Henschell called out.

Startled, Job looked around and realized the singing had come to an end and that he had sat with the rest of the congregation. Sherry pulled at the bow that held her hair back. Her mother slapped her hand down.

“He knows every single thing you’ve done! And he knows you’re helpless. Sinning is in your nature! That’s why you must confess and ask the Lord’s forgiveness, ask for the Lord’s help in changing. A leopard can’t change his spots, and under our own power we can’t change either.”

Sherry piped up, “Yes I can!”

“Shush!” said Carol.

“But I
can
change. I just decide to and then I do it.”

Pastor Henschell chuckled. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he said. “But we know better, don’t we? Well, don’t we?”

Harry shouted out, “Yes!”

Carol grabbed her daughter by the shoulder, pulled her close and whispered in her ear. Then she withdrew her arm and sat up straight. Sherry slumped in her seat and kicked the underside of the pew ahead of her until Mrs. Schultz turned, and the girl’s mother slapped Sherry’s leg.

“We’re not good enough,” said Pastor Henschell. “We’ll never be good enough. We’re sinners. You can’t help but sin. If there’s any message I can get through to you this morning, it’s that you aren’t worth anything without the Lord. Let’s pray.”

The congregation, all but Job and the little girl, bowed their heads as Mrs. Henschell softly played “Why Do You Wait?” and Pastor Henschell prayed. “I’m a sinner, Lord. I can’t make it on my own. Here are my sins. Take my sins, Lord, and wash them clean.” He wrapped up the prayer with an invitation to those who wished to rededicate their
lives to God to come forward, while the congregation kept their heads bowed and eyes closed.

Harry tottered forward as usual and lowered himself gingerly down onto the steps in front of the pulpit. Once kneeling, he placed both hands on his cane, bowed his head and wept. For several long minutes he was the only one who came forward.

Finally, just as Pastor Henschell wound down the prayer of rededication, Carol leapt to her feet and scurried down the aisle. She fell to her knees on the steps and stayed there. It was what Pastor Henschell had been waiting for. He stepped back and let her take her time. She clasped her hands together and, swaying slightly, prayed silently with her eyes open, looking upwards. Mrs. Henschell went on playing as the congregation waited on the Lord to move the woman back to her seat. Finally Carol trotted back down the aisle with her head down. A perplexed, embarrassed grin on her face.

Sherry stared at her feet and hissed, “That was
so
embarrassing.”

“Amen,” said Pastor Henschell. “The Spirit has moved in this room today. May he move in all our hearts as we go out into the world.”

Job jostled out of the sanctuary with the rest of the congregation and found himself in the coffee line out of habit. He returned a few smiles.

Then a hand on his shoulder. Pastor Henschell. “Job, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Come into my office, will you?”

Job followed him in and sat. So, Ruth had phoned Pastor Henschell as well. He wished for a cup of coffee to occupy his hands.

“I, ah, kept meaning to stop by the farm,” said Pastor Henschell. “Sorry I didn’t get around to it sooner. Jacob and Ruth have both told me you’ve been depressed.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Jacob says you’ve been eating meals out in the hired hand’s cabin, rather than in the kitchen with them. He says you wouldn’t eat at all if Lilith didn’t fix you up plates, take them out to you.”

A lie, or a half lie. Lilith had brought Job out a plate once. No, twice. Job bought a few groceries in Leduc and made peanut-butter sandwiches on dry bread. He ate oranges and made coffee but couldn’t summon the energy required to cook on the wood stove. “I feel like I’m intruding on their family time,” he said.

“I understand from Ruth that you’ve been drinking. Beer.”

“I thought it might help—” he said, but stopped short.

“Alcohol never helps anything,” said Pastor Henschell. “Then there’s the matter of the vacuum cleaner.”

Job looked off to the side, at a poster of a sheepdog, hair covering its eyes, a passage from 2 Corinthians 5:7 written beneath it:
We live by faith, not by sight
. “I like to keep things tidy, that’s all,” he said.

“Lilith tells me she goes into the cabin to get the vacuum and finds you sitting there, listening to it.”

“I keep hoping—” What was he going to say?
I keep hoping the vacuum cleaner will put a glass egg in my hand?
“I find it soothing,” he said. “You know, like when mothers leave the vacuum cleaner running to help babies sleep.”

Pastor Henschell appeared relieved at this, an excuse he could choose to believe. “Jacob was right,” he said. “You’re
clearly depressed. The question is, Why? How’s your walk with God? Are you praying daily?”

“No.”

“Reading your Bible?”

“No.”

“I know you haven’t been going to church.” Pastor Henschell rubbed the oily patch at the side of his nose. “Ruth said you were asking some disturbing questions. I understand you’ve been having some doubts.”

Job said nothing and looked past the pastor’s head to the window.

“A Christian’s walk with God can be completely sidelined by unconfessed sins. Have you got any outstanding sins you haven’t taken to God?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you masturbating?”

Job nodded.

Pastor Henschell grinned. “Well, there you go! There’s the problem. That sin is standing in the way between you and God. Take it to God and you’ll be back on track.”

“I don’t think masturbation is the problem.”

“Sure it is. I guarantee it. You feel guilty about it, right?”

“I guess.”

“Anything else I can help you with?” said Pastor Henschell.

Job shook his head.

“Well, I’m just glad I could help.”

Job fled the office and headed for the front door. But Steinke stopped him. Dithy Spitzer was at his side, one hand through his arm. “Job! Glad to have you back. How about giving Dithy a ride home?” He patted Dithy’s hand. “I would, but I’m going over to the grandkids’ for lunch. What say?”

“I’d like to, but I didn’t get chores done this morning.”

“Come on, Job. It’s on your way home.”

Caught. Job nodded and held out his arm for Dithy, though for what reason he wasn’t sure. Her stride was as steady as his. He deposited her on the passenger side, praying that the truck wouldn’t start, so he could foist her off onto someone else. But it turned over.

Job drove into Dithy’s driveway, past the whirligigs pounded into the tops of fence posts that were cast higgledy-piggledy across the snow-covered lawn: ducks with wings that twirled, oil wells that pumped, men who sawed logs with crosscuts when the wind came up and, Herb’s
pièce de résistance
, a model of Leonardo da Vinci’s helicopter, made from a stack of tongue depressors mounted on a Lazy Susan.

Dithy insisted he come into the house. Cats slept on the kitchen table, on the counters and huddled in groups on the chairs. One jumped on Job’s shoulder.

“Molly,” said Dithy. “Go off and play. Leave us grownups alone.” She shooed another cat off a kitchen chair before offering it to Job. “You don’t drink coffee, do you? A nice boy like you wouldn’t drink coffee. Have I told you I haven’t had a cup of coffee in fifteen years?” She poured them both a cold cup of tea from a pot left on the table. When there was only enough to fill half her cup, she took the lid off the teapot, fished around for the tea bags and squeezed them into her cup. “Got to savour every last drop of goodness,” she said.

Job took the cup and dabbed a cat hair off the cold surface before setting it down.

Dithy took a sip and made a face. “This is cold. Why am I drinking cold tea? Doctor’s right. I really am losing it.”

“Doctor?”

“In Ponoka. Psychiatrist. Got me on some pills. Says they should help. Said I should have been on them a long time ago.” She filled a kettle and plugged it in. She tapped her temple. “Screw loose. I didn’t feel crazy. Just a little unsettled, on account of God talking to me. I figure that would make anyone edgy.”

She shooed a cat off the table and picked up the teapot to rinse it out. “You like that Liv, don’t you? You don’t have to answer. Anyone can see you like her.”

“I haven’t seen her for quite a while.”

“Maybe she’s working today. You know the co-op’s open Sundays now? Sacrilege. Why not stop in at the café, get yourself a decent cup of coffee, maybe ask her out on a date? This stuff I make tastes like shit.”

“Liv’s married. I couldn’t ask her out.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I heard Darren’s truck’s been parked over at Rhonda Cooper’s again.” She lifted a cat off a plate on the counter, blew cat hairs off the plate and emptied a package of cookies onto it. “I bet you didn’t know I dated your father. Before either of us were married, of course. I broke things off. Abe always had to be right. You couldn’t tell him otherwise. It was almost like he figured he
couldn’t
be wrong.”

“You got him pegged there.”

She set the plate of cookies on the table in front of him. “I remember when he first gave up sheep and went into raising beef. God knows why, but he figured if he was raising beef he needed to look like a cowboy. Too many westerns, I guess. He got himself a cowboy hat and boots, and a western tie. Looked like a damn fool. Moseyed into the
co-op café all dressed up like that. We all laughed. Called him a drugstore cowboy. He took it, didn’t say a word. Next time I saw him he was dressed in a flannel shirt, work boots and cap like the rest of the beef farmers.”

Those cowboy boots and the hat were packed away in the attic. Job had once caught sight of his father standing in front of the mirror on his bedroom dresser wearing that cowboy hat, striking a pose. Job had quickly stepped away, and sat at the kitchen table as if he hadn’t seen. His father had come out, clean-shaven and smelling of Irish Spring, but without the cowboy hat. “He told me once that when he was a kid he wanted to go on the rodeo circuit, be a bronco star.”

“I don’t suppose there’s one of us here doing what we really want. When I was a girl I wanted to be a ballerina. Even bought myself shoes.” She ate a cookie and pulled a cat hair from her mouth. The kettle whistled.

“I’ve got to go,” said Job. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Wait. Got something for you.”

She unplugged the kettle. Then disappeared down the hallway and came back carrying one of Herb’s whirligigs, a whale with a toothy grin that carried Jonah, a mast and sail on top. It was fitted with a foot-long spike jutting from the whale’s belly, for mounting. A propeller on its nose cranked Jonah into waving his arms over his head.