Ordinary Grace (5 page)

y father had three charges which meant that he was responsible for the spiritual needs of the congregations of three churches and every Sunday he presided over three services.

At eight a.m. the worship for the church in Cadbury commenced. Cadbury was a small town fifteen miles southeast of New Bremen. They had a strong congregation that included a number of Protestants of different denominations who had no church of their own near enough to attend easily and preferred the more informal service of the Methodists to the religious rigor of the Lutherans, who were as ubiquitous in Minnesota as ragweed. My mother directed the choir of which she was quite proud. Every week she drew from the men and women of the Cadbury church choir a sound that was rich and melodious and a joy to the ear. In this enterprise she had help. One of the men possessed a beautiful baritone that under my mother’s tutelage he’d shaped into a fine instrument, and one of the women had a voice that was a strong alto complement to my mother’s lovely soprano. The music pieces that my mother put together for the choir and that relied on the strength of those three voices were reason enough to come to church. Ariel was icing on the cake. Her skillful fingers coaxed from the pipes of that modest little organ music that was like nothing the congregation of the tiny country church had ever heard before. Jake and I trudged along to every service and mostly did our best not to fidget. Because it was the first, the service in Cadbury was not so difficult. By the third Sunday service our butts were sore and our patience sorely tested. So the Cadbury service tended to be our favorite.

My father was well liked in the rural churches. The sermons he preached, which were marked less by evangelical fervor than by a calm exhortation of God’s unbounded grace, were well received by congregations composed primarily of sensible farm families who in most aspects of their public lives were as emotionally demonstrative as a mound of hay. He was also gifted in inspiring the church committees that were a part of every Methodist congregation. Most weekday evenings he was gone from the house attending some committee meeting in Cadbury or New Bremen or Fosburg, the site of his third charge. He was ceaseless in the execution of what he saw as his duty and if he was often absent as a father that was part of the price of his calling.

Cadbury lay in a hollow along Sioux Creek which was a tributary to the Minnesota River. As you crested the highway that dropped into town you were greeted by the sight of three church steeples rising above a thick green gathering of trees. Cadbury Methodist was the nearest of these steeples. From the front of the church you could look down the main street which was two blocks of businesses that in the boom of the post-World War Two Years had prospered. The church was shaded by several tall elms and on summer mornings when we arrived the sanctuary was cool and quiet. My father unlocked the building and went to the office and Ariel went to the organ and my mother went to the choir room. Jake and I were responsible for putting out the offering plates for the ushers and if the sanctuary was stuffy we opened the windows. Then we sat in the back row and waited as the congregation gathered and the choir assembled.

That morning shortly before the service was to begin my mother came out from the choir room and stood near the altar and scanned the sanctuary with a concerned look on her face.

She came to me and said, Have you seen Mrs. Klement? I told her no.
Go outside and watch for her. If you see her coming, let me know

I walked outside and Jake came with me and we stood looking both ways down the street. Mrs. Klement was the woman with the strong alto voice. She was my mother’s age and had a son named Peter who was twelve years old. Because his mother sang in the choir Peter was orphaned during the service and he usually sat with Jake and me. His father never came to church and I’d gathered through conversations I’d overheard that he was not much inclined toward religion but was a man of unfortunate excesses who could have benefited from a bit of good solid Methodist discipline.

While we watched for Mrs. Klement a number of the congregation passed us on their way into the church and greeted us with pleasant familiarity. A man named Thaddeus Porter who was the town banker and a widower and who walked with a regal gait strode up to us and stopped and clasped his hands behind his back and looked down on us as a general might during inspection of his troops.

I heard you boys found yourselves a dead body, he said. Yes, sir, I replied.
Quite a remarkable discovery.
Yes, sir, it was.
You seem well recovered.
The truth is, sir, it didn’t bother me much.
Ah, he said and nodded as if not being much bothered wasn’t a bad

Mrs. Klement never showed that Sunday morning nor did Peter. The anthem and the offertory hymn, my mother said afterward, suffered greatly due to her absence. After the service we stayed briefly for the social time in the church fellowship hall during which I was questioned a good deal about the dead man Jake and I had found. Each time I repeated the story I embellished it just a bit more and as a result suffered Jake’s disapproving scowl. So much so that by the last telling I’d made him little more than a footnote in the tale.

When my father had finished with the final service that day, which was held at noon in the church in Fosburg a dozen miles north of New Bremen, he drove us all home. As always it felt as if I’d just spent a long time in hell and had finally been granted a divine pardon. I raced to my bedroom and changed my clothes and got ready to enjoy the rest of the day. When I went downstairs I found my mother in the kitchen pulling food from the refrigerator. She’d put together a tuna casserole and Jell-O salad the night before which I figured would be our dinner. My father entered the kitchen after me and it was clear he thought so too. He said, Dinner?

Not for us, my mother replied. It’s for Amelia Klement. The ladies of the choir told me that she was quite ill and that was why she didn’t come to church today. She pushed my father aside and walked to the counter with the pan of tuna casserole in hand. She said, Amelia’s life is a prison cell presided over by Travis Klement, who, if he isn’t the worst husband in the world, is certainly in the running. She’s told me more times than I can count that choir practice on Wednesday and church on Sunday are the two things she looks forward to most in a week. If she couldn’t make it to church today, she must be very ill, and I intend to see that she doesn’t have to worry about feeding her family. I’m going to finish this casserole, and then I’m going to deliver it, and you’re coming with me.

What about our dinner? This slipped from my lips before I had a chance to think about the advisability of asking.
My mother gave me a scathing look. You won’t starve. I’ll put something together.
The truth was that it was fine with me. I wasn’t at all fond of tuna casserole. And I thought that if she and my father were driving out to Peter Klement’s house I might go along and tell Peter about the dead man. I was really warming to the effect this story seemed to have on those who heard it.
Ariel came into the kitchen dressed for work at the country club.
My mother asked, Would you like a sandwich before you go?
No, I’ll grab something when I get there. Ariel lingered and leaned against the counter and said, What if I didn’t go to Juilliard this fall?
My father who’d plucked a banana from the bunch on the top of the refrigerator and was peeling it said, We’d send you to work in the salt mines instead.
I mean, Ariel said, it would be cheaper if I went to Mankato State.
You’re on a scholarship, my father pointed out and stuffed a good third of the banana into his mouth.
I know, but you and Mom will still have to pay a lot.
Let us worry about that, my father said.
I could continue to study with Emil Brandt. He’s as good as anyone at Juilliard.
Emil Brandt had been Ariel’s teacher since we’d come to New Bremen five years before. He was in fact much of the reason we’d come. My mother wanted Ariel to study with the best composer and pianist in Minnesota and that was Brandt. He happened also to be my mother’s good friend since childhood.
I learned my mother’s history with Brandt gradually over the whole course of my life. Some things I knew in 1961, others were revealed to me as I grew older. In those days I understood that when she was hardly more than a girl my mother had been briefly engaged to Brandt who was several years her senior. I’d also gathered that by the standards of the staid German population in New Bremen, Emil Brandt was a wild one, both a prodigiously talented musician and one of the high and mighty Brandts who knew he was destined for greater things. Shortly after he’d proposed to my mother Brandt had left her flat, gone off to New York City to seek his fortune without so much as a by your leave. By the summer of 1961, however, all of that was ancient history and my mother counted Emil Brandt as one of her dearest friends. Partly this was due to the healing property of time but I believe it was also because when he finally came home to New Bremen, Brandt was a very damaged man and my mother felt a great deal of compassion for him.
Mother stopped what she was doing and turned a stern eye on her daughter. Is this about Karl? You don’t want to leave your boyfriend?
That’s not it at all, Mom.
Then what is it? Because it’s not about money. We settled that issue long ago. Your grandfather promised anything you need.
My father swallowed a mouthful of banana and said, She doesn’t need anything from him.
My mother ignored him and kept her eyes on Ariel.
Ariel tried again: I don’t know that I want to go so far away from my family.
That’s a feeble excuse, Ariel Louise, and you know it. What’s going on?
I just . . . Never mind, she said and rushed to the door and left the house.
My father stood looking after her. What do you suppose that was all about?
Karl, my mother said. I never liked the idea of those two going steady. I knew he would end up a distraction.
Everybody goes steady these days, Ruth.
They’re too serious, Nathan. They spend all their free time together.
She went out with other friends last night, my father said.
I thought about Ariel sneaking off after she’d returned from the drive-in theater and I wondered if it was Karl she’d gone to meet.
My mother snatched up a pack of cigarettes from the windowsill over the sink and angrily tapped out a cigarette and struck a match and from behind a swirl of smoke said, If Ariel’s thinking that she might marry instead of going to college, I’ll be happy to set that girl straight right now.
Ruth, my father said, we don’t know anything of the sort. But it would be a good idea to sit down with her and find out what’s going on. Discuss it calmly.
I’ll calmly tan her backside, my mother said.
My father smiled. You’ve never hit the children, Ruth.
She’s not a child.
All the more reason to talk to her like an adult. We’ll do it tonight after she’s home from work.
When they were ready to drive to the Klements’ house I asked if I could go along to see Peter which meant that Jake would have to come too. My father saw no reason for leaving us behind especially in light of the constraint Jake and I were under not to go out of the yard without his permission. Jake didn’t mind going. He brought along the most recent issues of
Aquaman
and
Green Lantern
to read in the car. We piled into the Packard and headed for Cadbury.

Mr. Klement operated a small engine repair business out of a shop that was a converted barn next to his house. His father had owned two hundred acres just outside town and on his death had passed it to his son who had neither the disposition nor the inclination to be a farmer. Travis Klement sold the arable acreage but kept the house and outbuildings and established his business there.

We arrived midafternoon and the heat lay oppressive on the land. We parked in the gravel drive in the shade of a big walnut tree. My mother took her casserole and my father took the bowl of Jell-O salad and they climbed the front steps and stood on the rickety porch and knocked at the screen door. Jake and I hung back. From the yard we could see the steeples of Cadbury just a quarter mile north. Between the Klements’ house and town Sioux Creek crossed the road. Under the narrow bridge, on those occasions when we were able to slip away from some dull church function, we’d hung out with Peter and caught crawdads and had once observed a family of foxes scurrying into a thicket along the creek bank.

Peter came to the door and stood behind the screen and my father said, Good afternoon, Peter. Is your mother home?
Just a minute, Peter said. He looked beyond my parents toward Jake and me in the yard and then he turned back and disappeared into the dark inside the house. A moment later his mother took his place. She was a woman plain of face but had long gold hair that she often wore in a braid and that hung like a silk rope down the middle of her back and that I always thought kept her from being in appearance completely unremarkable. She wore a simple sleeveless yellow dress which was something I’d heard my mother call a shift. She didn’t open the door or look directly at my parents but kept her face behind the dark of the screen and tilted downward as if fascinated by the unpainted porch boards and when she spoke it was in a voice so quiet that I could not hear what she said. This was odd behavior toward a minister and his family. People usually invited us in. I wandered onto the porch and stood near enough that I could hear the adults talking.
We so missed you this morning, Amelia, my mother was saying. The music isn’t at all the same without you.
Mrs. Klement said, I’m sorry, Ruth.
We made do of course. But, Amelia, I hope you recover and can be with us for practice on Wednesday.
I’m sure I will, Mrs. Klement said.
Well, anyway, we just wanted to bring over a little something for supper so that you wouldn’t have to worry about feeding your family and you could rest and recover. Nathan?
My father held out the bowl of Jell-O salad and my mother offered the tuna casserole. Mrs. Klement seemed uncertain about taking them. Finally she called for Peter and when he came she nudged the screen open only far enough for the dishes to be passed through. Then she stepped back quickly and let the screen door slap shut.
I’ve been thinking, my mother said, of a duet next Sunday. You and me, Amelia. I think it would be quite a lovely piece.
I edged back and descended the steps and let the adults continue talking. I walked around to the side of the old farmhouse. Most of the grass in the yard was already dead and had gone brittle and I crunched my way toward the open barn door with Jake close on my heels. We stood in the doorway peering inside at disemboweled lawn mowers and refrigerator condensers and motor parts that lay strewn about the dirt floor and that made the barn seem to me like a gladiatorial arena where the vanquished had been left dismembered. To the eyes of a boy it was fascinating but the disarray also signaled something vaguely unsettling to me.
I heard the crush of gravel at our backs and turned to find Peter approaching. He wore a baseball cap pulled low as if to shield his face from the brutal bake of the sun.
Better come away from there, he said. My dad might get mad.
I bent and peered into the shadow cast by the brim of his cap. Where’d you get that shiner?
He touched his eye and spun away. I gotta go, he said. So do you.
Which was true. I saw my parents walking to the car and signaling us to join them. Peter headed toward the back door of his house and went inside without another word and without looking back.
In the car on the way home we all were quiet. At the house my mother said, Why don’t you boys go out and play awhile? When you come back in I’ll have Kool-Aid ready and some sandwiches.
We had a tire swing that hung on a rope from a branch of a big elm in the side yard and that’s where we went. Jake loved that swing. He could swing in it for hours talking to himself the whole time. He climbed into the tire and said, Spin me. I took hold of his shoulders and turned him and turned him until the rope was tightly twisted and then I let him go and stepped back and he spun like a top.
Through the kitchen window at my back came snatches of my parents’ conversation.
They lied, Nathan. Every one of the ladies in choir told me Amelia was sick. I should have known.
And what did you expect her friends and neighbors to say? That her husband had hit her and she was embarrassed to show the bruises in public?
Not just her, Nathan. He hit Peter too.
Jake got out of the swing and began a wobbly walk, all dizzy from the spinning, and I lost track of the conversation in the kitchen for a moment. Jake fell down and I heard my mother’s voice again with a tautness near anger.
I don’t expect them to tell me the truth, Nathan. I’m sure in their minds it’s no one’s business but the Klements’. But they should tell you.
Because I’m their pastor?
Because you’re her pastor, too. And if she can’t turn to anyone else, she ought to be able to turn to you. People tell you their secrets, Nathan. I know they do. And not just because you’re their pastor.
Jake finally got up and went back to the tire. I would have spun him again but he waved me off and began to swing normally.
I heard water run in the kitchen sink and a glass fill and then my father said, He spent time in a North Korean POW camp. Did you know that, Ruth? He still has nightmares. He drinks because he thinks it helps him deal with the nightmares.
You have nightmares. You don’t drink.
Every man handles in a different way the damage war did to him.
Some men seem to have put their wars behind them easily enough. I’ve heard some men say being in the army was the best time of their lives.
Then they must have fought in different wars than I did and Travis Klement.
From the swing Jake called to me, Want to play catch?
I said sure and started for the house to get the ball and our baseball gloves. My father came out the side door from the kitchen and walked toward the church. I quickly fell in step beside him and asked where he was going.
To get Gus, he said.
Why?
I already suspected the answer. Gus was familiar with the drinking establishments in the valley of the Minnesota River and my father was not. If anyone would have an idea about where Mr. Klement was getting drunk it would be Gus.
I need his help, he replied.
Can I go?
No.
Please.
I said no. My father seldom spoke sharply but his voice made it clear that on this subject he would brook no argument. I stopped and he walked alone to the church.
Jake and I went inside the house where my mother had begun distractedly preparing lunch. Upstairs, my brother grabbed his ball glove from where it lay on the floor. I began digging through the closet in search of mine.
Jake sat on his bed and put the glove to his nose as if inhaling the good aroma of the old leather and said, He never talks about the war.
I was surprised because I thought he’d been so involved with his tire swing that he couldn’t have heard the kitchen conversation. Jake was always amazing me this way. I found my glove, an old Rawlings first baseman’s mitt, and put it on and slapped the soft palm with my hard fist.
Maybe he will someday, I said.
Yeah, maybe someday, Jake said but not necessarily because he believed it. Sometimes he just liked agreeing with me.