Three Cans of Soup (8 page)

“That’s so stupid,” Robby had said. “All he’ll do is by liquor or drugs.”

“Well, that will be his problem,” his father said. “Our problem is whether we help a stranger or not.”

Robby remembered that his father and mother often would set aside twenty or so one-dollar bills to hand out to the homeless on the plaza or at other public areas. Once, after they had handed out all their money, another homeless person approached them.

His father had said: “Sorry, all we can give you is a blessing. We’ve given all of our money to others.”

The man had looked at them. “So you are the ones. I heard about you guys. Look, you don’t have to give me anything, but let me give you something.” The man looked at them and said, “Bless you all!” Robby remembered that at that moment he had felt more pride than at any other time.

Lisa remembered how proud she was to see her father standing at the pulpit preaching away. She had always loved his sermons. Unlike Robby, she still went to church. She had even thought about maybe, just maybe, going into ministry. However, those ideas were now on hold, because of Central and what they had done to her father.

Sharon talked and remembered the tender moments. For some reason it was the times that Bill stood up for others that made her so proud. In many ways she was proud that he had destroyed that damn wreath, but she would never tell anyone.

For the three of them, Thanksgiving was a time of remembering and of hoping that somehow, somewhere, Bill would find himself and would once again find God or at least a reason to be.

For Bill, Thanksgiving was the loneliest time he could remember. He vacillated between despair and anger and sadness. He was gruff with Jerry and then playful. As he sat in his underwear through the morning, he also thought long and hard. Maybe Sharon was right; maybe this was all for the best. He had to admit that over the last few years he had lost his sense of joy with the church. All the fighting, all the administration, all the competition, and all the hate seemed such a contradiction. Jesus had been about love, welcoming all people, forgiving all people, loving everyone. The church seemed to be about success, welcoming only some people, and definitely not loving everyone, especially, it seemed to Bill, the people who served the church.

Sometime around noon Bill decided that he had to do something. He got up, went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and took a long look at himself in the mirror. He quickly shed his underwear and stepped into the shower. The warm water felt refreshing. Emerging from the shower, he actually felt a lot better. Going to the closet, he again felt waves of anger as he looked at the closet, stuffed full of clothes, some in boxes. There had been plenty of room in their other house, he thought. No, he was going to change things, he thought again. He reached into the closet and pulled out a pair of jeans, a bright green shirt, and western leather belt. He pulled on his tennis shoes and in that moment came to another decision. He would clean out the closet in the hall and put up the decorations for Christmas!

Opening the door to the closet, he was for a moment taken aback by the mess. How could something so small have so much stuff in it? Jerry, sensing that his master was having mood changes, bounded around the room, excited.

“Well, Jerry,” Bill said, slowly lowering himself down, “we have one hell of a lot of work to do even finding the decorations!”

With that, Bill began to pull boxes out of the closet. They should have been more organized, he thought to himself. They had lights crammed in with keepsakes, ornaments with financial records, and, he wondered, where is the star? Jerry was in dog heaven as he poked his head into one box and then another. In one box he discovered one of his long lost toys that somehow had gotten packed and forgotten.

Bill worked for some two hours with the result being a bigger mess than before. Toward the end he was just dumping the contents out and sorting through them. Something in one of the boxes caught Jerry’s attention. While Bill was poring through the ornaments, looking for the one his mother had given them, Jerry spotted an old, yellowed envelope. Grabbing it, he bounded off with his prize. Bill caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Jerry, drop it!” Bill yelled. Jerry sensed a game and bounded off into the next room, gleefully placed a paw on the envelope and began to tear it open.

“Jerry, damn it, I don’t have time for this,” Bill said as he lunged after the bounding dog. Finally cornering Jerry, Bill grabbed the envelope from his jaws.

“Jerry, look at this, you tore it open. This might be something valuable like a lost lottery ticket or something.” Bill reached over and patted Jerry’s head, who suddenly realized he was not in serious trouble. He bounded off to search the growing pile of treasures on the living room floor.

For some reason, Bill did not just toss the envelope away or stuff it back into a box. He paused and looked at it. It was an ordinary legal-sized envelope. On the outside was a faded date, “Christmas, Murray”. Finishing what Jerry had started, Bill saw three old soup labels fall to the floor and a note. The labels were from cans of Campbell’s chicken and rice, chicken noodle, and vegetable beef soups. The note said: “The best Christmas gift ever—from Mary Pond.” Bill turned the labels over and over in his hand. Then he remembered.

It was almost three decades before. Bill was graduating from the University of Oregon. It was a time before iPods and MP3 players, before the Internet, and even before computers had become a household item. Mechanics sneered at the foreign cars that were making an appearance in the country. Bill had not always wanted to be a minister. In fact, he had started at the University of Oregon majoring in political science or “poly-sci”, as it was called. He hoped to be a community organizer and perhaps to do something to change the world, or at least his corner of the world. Bill looked the part. His long hair and beard and his well-worn jeans made his family suspect that he had indeed gone off the deep end.

Bill’s family had attended church off and on. So when he had what he said was a religious experience in his junior year of college, they were as surprised as he was. Bill had just broken up with a girl, and his sisters always believed that on the rebound, he found God.

So after his graduation from college, Bill enrolled in a seminary in Texas. In August he loaded up his old 1964 Dodge Dart and began the trek to Texas. The day he left for Texas, it was humid in Eugene, Oregon. His family had moved to Eugene when Bill was young, so it was natural for him to attend the University of Oregon. He could live at home and have more money for other things. Thus when Bill loaded up his Dodge for the trek to Texas it would be his first real time away from home.

That day, as the last box was placed into the back seat of the Dodge, Bill’s father Milt, his mother Joyce, and his sisters (Julie who had just graduated from high school and Nicole, ten years younger), looked on. His mother made no secret of her feelings. Tears were welling up in her eyes as she said goodbye to her firstborn. Bill’s sisters would also miss him, but now each of them would have their own room. When the older brother moves, they had said to each other, they could spread out. They had actually hoped it would happen after Bill graduated from high school but no, Bill had stayed at home through college.

It was his father that Bill would always remember. The two of them were both acting like it was no big deal but knew that it was.

“Here, let me give you a hand,” Milt said. His hands were rough from years of working under the hoods of cars. He was a mechanic for the Chevrolet dealership in Eugene. He grabbed the rope that was wound around the car-top carrier that was perched on top of the Dodge.

“I got it,” Bill said, but before he could react, Milt had a hold of the rope and pulled the knot tight.

“Now, you drive careful and be careful with this load! I checked everything out. The plugs are fine. The oil’s changed. Did you put in the box of tools?”

“Yes, Dad,” said Bill with a little impatience in his voice.

The car was ready, but for several moments they all stood looking at each other. It was Joyce who made the first move, grabbing Bill and hugging him so that his breath left. “Now you call us when you get there,” his mother said, tears flowing down her face. Bill had a stoic look. He was not going to get emotional, he kept telling himself.

His two sisters each gave him a hug, almost acting bored with the whole affair. He was only going off to graduate school and probably would move back into the house after that, they thought. Milt stood off behind Joyce. Then Bill and Milt looked at each other, trying to figure out what to do. Milt thrust out his hand. Bill took it. “Take care, son, and drive carefully,” Milt said.

With that, Bill climbed behind the wheel, shifted into “R” and slowly backed out the driveway. He slowly drove down the street, waving out the window, turned right, turned left, and caught the freeway for a new life.

As Eugene faded into the background and the Dodge purred north toward Salem and Portland, Bill did not think of much of anything. He had decided to get to Texas by first going to Montana and meeting a friend of his that had also decided to pursue ministry. Paul Sinclair had been Bill’s friend all through high school. It was Paul who had invited Bill to his youth group and gotten him started back to church. It was he and Paul who had had hours of discussion about God, religion, music, politics, and Miss Wilson their strict high school math teacher. Paul had gone off to college at the University of Washington and Bill to the University of Oregon. They had kept in touch all through college. In their junior year they had taken a trip to L.A. and barely escaped being arrested because of some of their antics. It was a further strange coincidence that they had both come to the conclusion to go into ministry and had chosen the same seminary. So Bill was traveling to Red Lodge, Montana where Paul and his wife now lived. Together they would make the trek to Texas.

The miles passed by. Bill turned east at Portland, crossed over the Columbia River and began the journey across the deserts of eastern Washington. Somewhere, Bill did not know where, he pulled over to the side of the road to have lunch. His mother had packed him a lunch of some of his favorite things. There was cold chicken, potato chips, and her famous potato salad. The latter was stored in a container filled with ice to keep it cold. Also in the container were several bottles of Coca-Cola, by now ice cold. Bill got out of his Dodge. It was a hot day and the desert made it seem even hotter. Eastern Oregon and Washington contain some of the most desolate land in the nation. Little rain made it over the Cascades to this parched area. To Bill it looked like the end of the earth.

He found a rock to sit on and decided that shade was a luxury he was not going to enjoy. He spread out a blanket, sat down and unpacked his lunch. It was then that it hit him. He was really leaving home. Oh, he had been pretty independent during college and his folks were great in that they treated him differently after high school. This was different. This was real. He knew his sisters were already moving the rest of his stuff out and redecorating his room. He was surprised that he cried and cried. He slowly rewrapped the chicken, gulped down the coke, and got back into the Dodge.

Noon gave way to afternoon. One mile gave way to another and the land looked as uninviting as ever. Bill had planned to pull off the road, throw out a blanket, and sleep by the roadside. As he looked around at the large expanse of nothing he told himself he would drive until he dropped before he would stop in this expanse of nothing.

Suddenly, Bill’s spirits quickened. Was that a pine tree he just passed? Was there another? And another? It was pine trees! The air flowing in the open windows seemed cooler. As Bill climbed toward Spokane his heart rate increased. This looked more like home, more like the lush beauty of the Willamette Valley. Bill drove on, his spirits higher, past Spokane and crossed the border into Idaho. It was then that he saw it! There stretching out before him was a beautiful lake, nestled between gorgeous mountains. The sun was rapidly slipping into the west, but this was the most beautiful sight Bill had ever seen. He did not know it at the time but he was entering Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. This is where he would spend the night!

Bill took an exit and realized that he was very, very hungry. He spotted a sign that read: “Ted’s Café, Home-cooked Food.” He slowed the Dodge and pulled into the gravel parking lot. Bill actually did not compute that he looked more or less like a hippie. He had trimmed his hair and cut off his beard, but he still retained a nice mustache. His jeans and sandals, striped shirt and vest, and necklace identified him to the patrons as one of those “damn hippies”. When Bill walked in he was aware that all eyes seemed to be looking in his direction. Maybe this was not a good idea, he thought to himself.

Bill sat down in a well-worn, red-leathered booth and opened the menu. He looked up as the waitress brought him some water. She was gorgeous. Tall with blonde hair, her name-tag read: “Sadie”.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Sadie asked with a definite accent. Bill would later learn that it was a Texas accent but at the moment it just sounded strange but nice.

“Water would be just fine,” Bill said, very aware that he was on a tight budget.

“Are y’all ready to order?” Sadie said cheerfully.

“Yeah; I‘ll have a hamburger, fries, well done on the hamburger, and, ahh, onions, no mustard, and a little mayo, if that’s okay?”

“Sure is,” Sadie said, quickly writing down the order. “Say, are you a pro-tes-tor, or sumthin like that?” she asked quietly.

“No, I’m on my way to seminary, in Texas,”

“Texas? That is where I’m from. I come from near Abilene but my folks moved out here when I was a teenager. What is a sem—in—ary?”

“Sorry,” said Bill. “I am going to be a minister and seminary is, well, it is where you learn about the Bible and how to be a minister.”

“You don’t say?” Sadie said with a big smile. She turned to a man behind the counter, dressed in an apron, who Bill assumed was Ted and said louder, “Hey, Ted we got us a preacher-man here. The young man is on his way to Texas to be a preacher!”