Homefires (14 page)

Trish looked at me, uncertain, wary. “It’s your call, Trish,” I said, though I’d miss her like crazy. I knew she missed being with baby Lynette, Dale and Cole. We’d gone over on weekends to visit. At first, Anne had disappeared to the bedroom. Gradually, however, she’d begun to linger with us, quiet as a morgue, but
there.
I’d persisted in treating her as usual and most of the awkwardness between us had diminished.

“Come on, Trish,” Daddy gently coaxed. “Let’s go home.”

Trish seemed to sorta wilt. Just for a heartbeat. Then she squared her shoulders and went to get her things. Within thirty minutes, she was gone. The girls watched her and Daddy leave, their noses pressed to the front screen door. Toby climbed on the sofa and peeked through the blinds. When all three seemed ready to burst into tears, I cried, “Hey! She only lives a couple of blocks away.”

That thought bolstered me as well. As did the fact that Anne seemed to be changing and the certainty that Trish had emerged from this entire situation a much stronger, more selfconfident person.

Realistically, I knew my sister and stepmother had much to work out between them. But this was a start.

It finally happened. Kirk donned the frock.

In his third year of Bible College, Kirk accepted an interim pastorate at a tiny church in upstate South Carolina, whose former pastor had resigned. And while the country setting offered us a down-home, folksy welcome, the old timers weren’t so ready for change.

“He’s a good man, Pastor Hanson. We shore hated to see ‘im go.” Mr. Branson pumped Kirk’s hand on the sun-washed steps following our second week of services at Possum Creek Methodist Church. “Course he didn’t have no choice, with his bad health and all. Good man.”

Kirk’s wheat hair inclined and a broad smile broke over his features. “I’m certain he is.” College had polished Kirk’s vocabulary and manner. Though fiercely loyal to his roots, Kirk was smart enough to use his new ammunition well. Diplomacy fit him nicely.

I stood at his side, face stiff from smiling. We’d risen at five a.m. to allow me time to feed, bathe and dress the children, then drive the hour and twenty minutes to the remote Oconee County spot on the map.

For once, I was glad Kirk liked my fresh-scrubbed look because primping time had melted to brief moments before we’d rushed out the door this morning, only to dash back in to retrieve Toby’s forgotten socks. Krissie, excited about gussying up in a new dress, had overlooked them when tying his shoes. She was always scurrying to help me during cramped times. Heather helped with bigger things, cleaning the table and fetching dishes to the sink. Even Toby dusted furniture, picked up clothes and deposited them in the laundry hamper.

Kirk silently meditated as he drove to church while I swiveled to remind Krissie it was Toby’s time and right to roost in the hump-center. We’d traded our red Volkswagen for a newer, more efficient navy blue model. She quietly complied but soon had Toby tattling, “Kwiss-ee touch me.” Few were the times Krissie resorted to such tactics of revenge and they remained mild and inoffensive. Still – my stomach knotted tighter.

“Krissie, please do not touch Toby.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied softly, her enormous blue kitten’s eyes wounded and frustrated. Relinquishing one’s territory to another is never easy.

Someday, I thought, I wanted something without a humped floor. I touched my stomach and pressed the tender spot beneath my ribs. I’d played down the stomach thing to Kirk, who spent most of his time settled back in the old beige naugahyde La-Z-Boy, socked feet raised half-mast, partially blocking sight of the moment’s required book spread across his lap. I deposited heaped plates of food on the table next to him and later, steaming cups of coffee to ward off drooping lids.

The kids and I improvised, so as not to disturb Kirk’s studies. We moved the television into the kitchen or bedroom and piled up on the bed to watch children’s specials or an old forties’ movie I loved so much. Many’s the night I scooped each slumbering child in turn and gently carried them to their own beds.

The rest of the nightly ritual remained fixed. I’d nudge Kirk awake and he’d daze a weaving trail to our bed, shedding clothes along the way, then collapse between clean sheets until dawn’s early light when the entire process began anew.

Sex? We simply shifted that into the wee hours, when Kirk usually awakened first and with those marvelous hands and lips, transcended me slowly from a languorous tingling to agonizing climatic pleasure.

“Kirk should help you on Sunday mornings,” Babs, my neighbor insisted.

“No, I can’t ask Kirk to help with the children. He’s bonetired from rising so early, meeting classes and the hours he puts in at the barber shop. Not counting the long evenings of study. No, I can’t ask that of him.”

“But, Janeece, he’s your husband. I mean – at least on Sunday mornings when you get so hassled, he should help you. You said yourself it takes you till mid-week to unwind after the Sabbath morning war of – ”

“I know.” I gazed at her, seeing the logic and simplicity of her rendering. “I know, Babs. It sounds good in theory.” I chuckled and shook my head. “But what about his time to meditate? He needs that time Sunday mornings to draw strength from God and study his sermon notes. Anyway, we have to leave early to get to Possum Creek for the ten o’clock service – he’s already deprived of that early solitude.”

Babs, wiry as a crane, peered at me from beneath her frizzed, oak-rust hair. She’d been my Mama’s best friend from
schooldays and that sentiment extended to me. Then she laughed a smoky, cigarette-coarse laugh. “You’re somethin’ else, Neecy. The Maker knew what He was doin’ when he called Kirk. Not many wives could handle it.”

I’d felt strangely embarrassed by her intended compliment.

“Aww, come on Neecy, you’re a
basket case
while Kirk sails along undaunted in his pursuit of his calling.”

“That’s not fair.” I didn’t fare well when others criticized Kirk.

“So when is life fair? Love goes two ways. There’s got to be a compromise somewhere in your great heroic epic.”

I marveled at Babs’ erudite use of the king’s language, a product of her compulsive reading, not only novels and biographies but anything she could get her nicotine-stained fingers on. We were, on that level, kindred-spirits. She wasn’t much on church going but I was convinced my daily prayers for her would soon accomplish a big turnaround.

I gazed into Babs’ unwavering resolve and forced my tired lips to smile. “There is no solution for the time being. Kirk has to finish school. At the same time, he has the pressure of the interim pastorship at Possum Creek. He’s got all he can handle.”

Today, I stood beside Kirk as he greeted the last of the departing parishioners.

“Good morning, Mrs. McKonna. You’re looking well.”

“Hmmph.” The pigeon-round chest swelled as the elderly woman’s cynical, bespeckled eyes raked Kirk. “Why shouldn’t I look well? I’m perfectly well and at peace with life. Except that I
do
miss Pastor Hanson. One of the most
mature
men I’ve ever known. Sure added a lot here at Possum Creek.” She sniffed soundly and with a curt nod of white, nape-bunned head, indicated the exchange over, then hobbled away without so much as a “howdy-do” to me.

I realized my teeth were clamped like a vise and turned in time to catch the amused expression on Kirk’s face, the
I know
one, before he turned to enter the church to exchange black robe for suit coat. He knew how rudeness chafed me, especially the rejection kind, and was always curious to see how I would handle it, wondering if my mercy-forgiveness index would persevere.

I think, subconsciously, he sort of hoped I’d lose my temper, just a little bit. That would justify his lapses. It was this very human aspect of Kirk that flavored him even more appealing to me, because had he been perfect in every way, he’d not have been attainable in 1959.

Actually, since Kirk’s calling, his biting criticism of folk or situations had ebbed with a daily, steady honing away of his former edge – even when I got on his nerves with mundane bothers.
Mundane
comprised anything outside his scope of work and studies. He already neatly catalogued his priorities: God, Ministry, family. I saw nothing wrong with that, after all God had called him and I needed to be resilient and willing to free him for whatever his role required.

“
Mama!”
Toby bounded around the corner of the old white sanctuary, shirttail flapping loose from his creased pants. At two, his little face was as excitedly transparent as Krissie’s. “Come look!” Black scuffed shoes pivoted and kicked huffs of dirt as he dashed back in the direction from whence he came.

I’d grown accustomed to Toby’s discoveries that ranged from caterpillars that squirted green stuff when accidentally stepped on to buffalo shapes in puffy white clouds. This time, he took me to a copse of trees, some twenty-five feet behind the old church. Heather and Krissie had their heads poked in the crude door of the makeshift structure.

“It stinks.” Krissie pinched her nostrils shut.

“Course it does, silly.” Heather looked down her freckled nose. “It’s a toilet.”

Toby gazed up at me, bustling with curiosity. “Wh-what i-id it, Mama?” His stammer surfaced in direct proportion to his emotions.

“An outhouse, Toby,” I carefully explained, “where you – use the bathroom.”

Krissie, head still inside the door, pealed, “Can I use the bathroom, Mama?”

“
May
I? Yes, you may.” I laughed. Good grief. An outdoor privy in this day and age? I’d noticed the absence of a bathroom in the ancient country parish last Sunday and we’d stopped en route home at a service station to use the restroom.

Heather’s smirk drew me to the door, where, inside, Krissie looked bewildered. “How do I use it, Mama?”

“Step back.” I ordered the other two outside, then joined Krissie inside the small chamber. A how-to was in order.

Krissie’s wonder faded by the moment as dark, fetid reality surrounded her.

“Pull your pants down and – hop up on this step, then up on the platform,” I instructed and helped my daughter accomplish the undignified squat. She giggled as her bladder emptied with nary a drop hitting the toilet seat’s round wooden border.

“This is
fun
.” Krissie’s blue eyes danced with merriment.

“
Hummmph.”
Heather’s disgust palpitated through the rough wooden door.

“I wanna do it!” screeched Toby, “I wanna do it, too!”

While assisting Toby as creatively as possible, I heard Heather outside muttering, “It’s just a dumb ol’
toilet,
Krissie.”

“If it’s so dumb,” Krissie giggled, “How come you gon’ use it?”

“You’re so
dumb
, Krissie. I’m gon’ use it cause I really
need
to go to the bathroom. Not like you and Toby – just cause you’re silly and never saw one.”

I shook my head while tucking Toby’s shirttail in his pants again as Krissie waged vainly for the last word. “Well – you never saw one, either.”

“I”ve seen
hunerds
of ‘em.”

A short silence, then a curious, “Where?”

I rolled my eyes and made my way from the shaded thicket. Kirk was locking the double front doors when I rounded the corner while Toby dashed off to gaze up into a tree at some mystical rustle of limbs and leaves. Soon, we were driving home. It was a tiring trek, the morning round-trip, then back for the evening service, which gave Kirk little time to rest up in the afternoon before yet another sermon.

Anne had taken it upon herself to have us over every Sabbath now, knowing our early departure didn’t allow me cooking time. So I did what I could on Saturdays, things I could refrigerate, and took them over for the Sunday meal. But I wasn’t thinking about the cheesecake, fresh sliced peaches marinating in syrup, nor the potato salad as we rode in silence, the children tired from early rising.

I reflected on the past two weeks of impressions. Words... phrases.
He was the best pastor this neck ‘o the woods ever saw. Such a
noble and sacrificing man...Never be another’n like’im. Oh, Lord, bless our young Pastor Crenshaw. He’s just a young man, after all, and inexperienced – he’s got a lot to learn. Help him, dear Lord.
I’d flinched on that one, but Kirk had laughed it all off.

“Penny for your thoughts.” He said, glancing at me.

“Oh,” I tried to smile, failed and gave up. “Just thinking about how insensitive church folk can be sometimes.”

He was silent for long moments. “I don’t think they mean to be.”

I shrugged, distinctly shamed. “I know. But they are, nevertheless.”

“How?”

“Well, they’re nice in most ways except – ”

“Mama-aaa!” Toby wailed in my ear.

I whirled about. “What
is
it, Toby?” My goodness, I sounded like a
shrew.