Boomtown (7 page)

“Really?”

“Sure thing. But when the logs started to run out, the mill shut down and Walt was out of a job. That's when he decided to open up the butcher shop.”

The other fellow piped in. “You forgot about the bear.”

“I didn't
forget
about the bear. I was about to say some-thing about the bear until you stuck your big fat nose in.

Who's telling this story, anyway?”

“You are. Just not very well.”

The mailman shook his head and continued. “After he lost his job, Walt went way up into the hills to try and figure out what to do next, when all of a sudden a bear as big as a house fell down out of a tree right in front of him. Walt looked at the bear. The bear looked at Walt. They were the same size and had almost the same amount of hair. They circled each other—round and round—until all of a sudden the bear charged old Walt, and they got each other in a bear hug! Can you imagine?”

“What happened?” Jonny asked, perched on the edge of his seat.

“It was pretty much an even match, that bear and Walt being similar in size and strength and generally of the same peevish disposition. They wrestled day and night until finally that old bear up and died from sheer disappointment. Soon as it was dead, Walt took his hunting knife and had the bear-skin off in five minutes flat! Chopped him up and had enough bear steaks to feed half of Boomtown. He figured it was a sign from heaven, so the next day he opened up a butcher shop right here in this very spot.”

The mailman leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, proud of the effect his story was having on Jonny.

Jonny's brow furrowed with a next question. “So when the trees started running out, Walt worked in the mill. And when the logs ran out, he opened the butcher shop. I get all of that. But where did the barbershop come from?”

Ed smiled. “You are quite the clever boy—you noticed, huh? Let me tell you what happened next. After Walt had his butcher shop for a while, a new supermarket opened over in Stickville. Up until then we got all our groceries here in town, including our meat from Walt's Butcher Shop. But when they put up the supermarket only ten miles away, some of the folks here in Boomtown started shopping over there. It wasn't a problem at first, but after a while, enough folks stopped coming into Walt's. That didn't make him a bit happy, no sir.

“After losing two careers already, Walt was madder'n that old bear. He ran the whole ten miles over to Stickville and busted into the supermarket. He was still wearing his red-stained apron and he had two butcher knives—one in each hand. He charged up and down the aisles until he found the owner of the store and cornered him back by the milk and eggs. By the time Walt got done yellin', all the hair on that poor young feller's head had fallen out.

“Walt figured it was another sign from heaven. He closed up the butcher shop and put in a barber chair. He's been cutting hair ever since.”

“Wow! Isn't that something?” Jonny exclaimed.

I had listened quietly to the tall tale, not believing most of it. But I was concerned about Walt's temper. “That's a very interesting story—rather hard to believe, if you ask me—but here's what
I'm
wondering about.”

“What's that, preacher?”

“Walt's
temper
. The man's a hothead; he might even be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?
Walt? Nah, he'd never hurt a fly.”

“He killed a bear!”

“Not on purpose. It was mostly the bear's fault.”

“But what about all of you?
You
haven't done anything wrong. Why do you all put up with him? I don't understand.”

The three men stared at me like I had two heads. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, why keep getting haircuts from a man who's so hard to deal with? Why not go someplace else?”

The mailman answered, “We can't turn our backs on Walter.
He's one of us!
He's part of the town—like the fire-works factory. You think we should get rid of the fireworks? Just because they're loud and every now and then some-thing burns down? Is that what you think—get
rid
of any-thing that's difficult? We can't live without fireworks! Why would we want to live without Walt?”

Before I could answer, we suddenly had something more urgent to deal with. We overheard the man in the barber chair make some sort of offhanded comment about the haircut he was getting.

“Oh no!” hissed the mailman.

Everyone in the room stopped breathing. Walt's face turned white and then bright red. His beady eyes swelled up as big as two silver dollars and change. His hands began to shake. The tiger tattooed on his arm started pacing back and forth. The top button of Walt's shirt popped off and put a hole in the wall. His body began to shake like a train coming into the station. I could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

Ed jumped up and shouted, “It's quittin' time! Everybody out! Right now!
Walt's about to blow!
”

We all made a mad dash for the door. The man from the barber chair pushed past us and ran down the street with the cape flapping from his neck like a flag in a storm. Jonny and I dashed across the street and watched the rest of the men scatter left and right and duck behind telephone poles and mailboxes. Everyone else who was outside realized what was happening. They ran inside and slammed the doors and pulled down the shades. It only took another few seconds before we heard the explosion.

An earth-shattering scream split the air, followed by the unique sound of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound barber chair flying through the roof of the butcher shop. It sailed up and up and up—at least forty feet in the air—high enough to clear the entire street. Not something you see every day, a barber chair passing over the sun like an eclipse, the chrome handles of the arm rests glinting in the afternoon light, the soft brown leather seat and headrest casting a shadow onto the ground. I couldn't seem to take my eyes off the flying chair as it reached its peak and headed back down. I could hear someone yelling something—it was hard to say who it was. My ears were still ringing from Walter's scream.

“Dad! Dad!
Look out!
”

At the very last second, Jonny pushed me to the side and then jumped out of the way. The chair buried itself two feet deep in the sidewalk—exactly in front of the entrance to the Red Bird General Store. It landed in the precise spot where I had been standing only a second before. If it weren't for Jonny, I wouldn't have needed a haircut. I would have needed an ambulance.

The Sunday edition of three different newspapers in neighboring towns reported hearing Walt's yell as far away as Stickville. Lazy Gunderson claimed that his prize cow was so upset that it stopped giving milk. All the dogs stopped barking for a week, and some people noticed that there weren't as many birds in Boomtown as before, but that may have just been a coincidence.

Myself, I lay there on the sidewalk with a bruised back-side and a splitting headache, finally remembering what Gramma Edna had tried to warn me about.

“Whatever you do,” she had said, “
don't upset Walter!
”

Chapter 4

The Spirit Has Whiskers

I
t was my first Sunday to preach at Boomtown Church, and I was more anxious than usual. I didn't connect the dots until much later, but in retrospect that morning happened to be the same morning our lawn mower mysteriously dis-appeared from the front lawn. It was the first of what would become dozens of unexplained robberies that began to hap-pen all over town.

Of course, I didn't notice it was missing because I was too busy trying to get everyone showered and brushed and break-fasted and out the door on time. It didn't help that one of the buttons from my suit jacket popped off and I had to sew it back on. Janice was busy getting herself ready while fixing Ruth's hair and helping Sarah change her dress for the second time after spilling milk on the first one and getting jelly on the second, while Jonny dawdled in the bathroom.

I refused to preach that morning with a missing button, and besides, it was my favorite brown suit, with the matching brown vest and the brown pants and my brown tie and freshly pressed white cotton shirt and the brown shoes I had so care-fully polished the night before. This was my
uniform
; I felt safe and confident whenever I put it on. Can you imagine the Reverend Button standing in front of his new flock with only two buttons? People would notice. They would talk. They would gossip about their new pastor, the one who was one button short of a full set. I was
not
going to leave the house until it was fixed!

My obsession about the missing button was the last thing I should have been worried about. I wanted to make the perfect first impression on my congregation. But years later, when people told the story about my first Sunday morning at Boomtown Church, no one ever mentioned what I was wearing.

We walked down the street on a beautiful late summer morning to arrive at the church about twenty minutes early. (After all my fussing, we were still on time!) The building was situated on a two-acre plot, north of the center of town and across from the park. Trees and bushes lined the sidewalks, and flowers ringed the small parking lot. The main building on the property was a picturesque white chapel where worship services had been held for more than seventy-five years. Ever since its foundation, the church had been lovingly preserved, including its lofty bell tower and the large, cast-iron bell that still rung every Sunday morning promptly at 9:05 a.m. It had beautiful stained-glass windows along each side, wooden pews with soft cushions, an old pipe organ and a loft up above, where most of the kids sat during the worship services. It was charming and pleasant and smelled of oiled wood and tradition.

The first person we met as we walked through the main double doors was the “hall monitor,” Gertrude Feeny, the owner of Gertrude's Beauty Parlor. She was fifty-four years old and built like a drill instructor—broad shoulders, short, muscled legs, gnarled fingers, and a stern, puckered face that looked like she was sucking a lemon. Even though she had met Janice and the girls the previous day, she acted like she'd never seen them before. She barked at us the instant we walked through the door.

“Good morning! Here's a bulletin. Are you visiting? Put this visitor's ribbon on your lapel. Have you signed the guest book yet?”

Before we could answer, she was pinning a bright, silk ribbon on each of us with the word
Visitor
printed in large, black letters. She pushed bulletins and flyers into our hands. She shoved a pen at me, grabbed my arm, pulled me over to the guest book, and hovered over me like a hungry vulture. I didn't have the courage to tell her I was the new minister. I signed the book and let each one in the family do the same.

When we were finished, she checked our entries for spelling and penmanship and waved permission for us to move along.

Another woman standing nearby saw the whole thing. “Don't mind Gertrude,” she said. “She's really quite harm-less. She lost her husband a few years ago when he tried to dig their new sewer using dynamite. Should have used a shovel, I suppose. After that . . . oh well, just do what she says and you'll be okay.”