I hadn’t planned on the church taking up so much of my time. I seemed to only blink twice, and suddenly it was more important than school. It was almost a bigger part of me than even my house and my family, which was causing some big waves—or maybe snowdrifts—at home.
In the month that I had been taking part in the Sky Rangers program, I had developed and coloured a few more photographs and improved at handling the controls of the Lynx Trainer. I also met some very nice people. Unfortunately, none of them lived near me, except Harold, who was too old to chum around with, so I didn’t yet consider any of the people I’d met my real friends.
After two weeks in the Rangers, Cathie had invited me to attend Youth Group on Thursday nights, too. “Most of the young people are teenagers, but they don’t make you feel out of place,” she said.
“Is there Bible study?” I asked. I was okay with learning what was in the Bible. I had figured out the Old and New Testament business, about all the different books and the guys who wrote them. I just wasn’t too keen on memorizing more verses.
“Yes,” said Cathie, “during the time that we gather, we do study the Bible for a half-hour, but there’s nothing to memorize, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
That was all I needed to know. So, for a couple of Thursdays I discovered another, different group of kids who made me feel at home in the church.
The Youth Group also met in the church basement, this time with both men and women leaders—moms and dads. Not the same ones from Sky Rangers. It was actually Pastor Baxter and his wife, along with another couple, who led the group.
I especially liked the times we moved upstairs, where Mrs. Baxter played the organ and her husband sang. They played and sang really well, and taught us hymns and what they called “spirituals.” Spirituals were old folk songs sung by slaves in the Southern United States—and, I learned, in the Canadian Maritimes. What the slaves sang together in the cotton fields eventually became what was called “gospel music.” The hymns and gospel songs praised God. I liked spirituals the best.
There were a couple of tunes about Ezekiel. The Valley of Dry Bones had given the Negroes the idea to write Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones. Another of my favourites was called Ezekiel Saw A Wheel:
Ezekiel saw a wheel
Way up in the middle of the air
A wheel within a wheel
Way in the middle of the air
The little wheel turned by faith
And the big wheel turned by the grace of God
Ezekiel saw a wheel
Way up in the middle of the air
I also really liked a short song about Joshua:
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho
Jericho, Jericho
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho
And the walls came tumbling down
We learned some beautiful hymns during our sing-songs, as well. In addition to my favourite, Amazing Grace, we sang along to Rock of Ages, Shall We Gather At The River, and What A Friend We Have In Jesus.
All in all, I came to like Youth Group even better than Sky Rangers. Soon after that, I found myself attending Sunday school at ten in the morning, and staying later for the regular Sunday morning church service with the entire congregation.
One Sunday morning I asked Nan for yet another dime from my savings jar to put in the collection plate, and she got really “testy” with me. I needed the dime because Cathie had asked me to attend the Sunday evening service, which I had agreed to go to without asking permission from Mom or Nan first.
Nan said, “Buddy, your mother and I have gone along with your church-going because we know how hard it’s been for you to adjust to losing your granddad. We understand that you’re trying to make sense out of the loss. And it hasn’t been made any easier with the falling out you’ve had with Riel and Mokey. Frankly, I don’t know why you boys can’t get over whatever put you out of sorts, but that’s your business.”
“It’s Riel, Nan,” I came back. “He’s got it in his head that I tried to steal his girlfriend. Even though he had broken up with Dorothy way before I…,” I stopped short of telling my grandmother about my first kiss, but continued with, “…before I took her skating.”
“Well, that’s nonsense,” she offered. “The two of you should be able to get past that. Besides, you’re too young to be thinking about girls.”
“I’ve tried, Nan, and so has Mokey, but Riel’s a stubborn cuss and—”
She cut me off. “That’s not what I want to talk with you about. What I wanted to say was your granddad always told me to ‘Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.’ He could only take church-goers with a grain of salt, and never wanted to get too chummy with them.”
“But they’re nice people,” I cut in. “And I’m having a lot of fun at Sky Rangers and Youth Group.”
“I realize that,” she agreed. “But you’re gone Tuesday and Thursday nights, and for most of the day on Sunday. Now you want to be away from the house on Sunday evenings as well?”
Then, as if she needed to pack as much stuff as possible into her argument, she threw in, “When did you last go to see Gramma Davis and play cards with her?”
“Well, okay,” I said, leaving Gramma Davis out of it. “I won’t go on Sunday night. I’ll stay home.”
“It’s not just all the time you’re spending at church,” she said. “Your mother and I have talked about it, and there are a few things that have bothered us.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, the cost for one thing,” she started. “I know you paid for your Rangers’ uniform out of your allowance and your snow-clearing earnings—”
“I did,” I cut in.
If we stayed with Sky Rangers for more than two weeks, we had to buy the grey Sky Rangers’ shirt. Aunt Bud had sewn the patches on it for me as I completed each level of Bible study and when I passed the first test in the Lynx Trainer. Sky Rangers was kind of like the Boy Scouts in that way.
“The shirt is the only uniform we have to wear—and buy,” I went on.
“But the patches cost fifty cents each,” Nan added.
“And I paid for those, too!” I was getting a little worked up.
“I realize that, Buddy,” she agreed. “But then it costs you ten cents every time you go to a different function. You’re giving the church almost a half-a-dollar every week. Soon you’ll be tapping into the savings you’ve set aside to buy your Gramp’s shotgun. Or you’ll be asking me and your mom for money, which we can’t afford to squander on unnecessary things.” Her voice had a mix of anger and sadness in it.
I knew that money was a problem for my family, and Nan just wanted to make sure we weren’t wasting any. I thought she felt badly for having to be so stingy.
“Nan, I haven’t taken any allowance from Mom since Gramp died.” I was proud of being responsible in that way.
“Buddy, I’m aware that you’re trying to help out,” she said. “And you should feel really good about that.” She sighed and put her hands on her hips. “But I haven’t seen you reading a single new comic book in over a month. You’ve had your nose stuck in the Bible all the time. You wander around mumbling verses to yourself.”
I could see she felt like she was coming down on me too hard. She seemed to try and let up. “We are glad that you’re keeping up with writing in your diary. All in all, though, this church business has frankly got your mom and I a bit worried.”
There was no way I could admit to Nan about getting caught stealing comics. It was bad enough that she had to worry about my shoplifting from the Met. I didn’t quite know what to say, so I answered, “Well, at least Aunt Bud was able to borrow a Bible for me from the hospital. That didn’t cost anybody anything.”
“Buddy, I’m not proud to share this with you, and you are not to tell Bud that I’ve told you this… Your aunt stole that Bible from the hospital—granted there are a lot of them just lying around. But that shows you just how careful we are being about how we spend money.” I knew she was embarrassed at what she had just told me, because she couldn’t look me in the eye any longer.
I had seen the stamp “Property of Saskatchewan Mental Hospital” on the inside cover of the Bible, but I had thought Aunt Bud had only borrowed it, maybe until someone gave me one of my own for my birthday.
“Nan, if we’re that poor, I’ll get a job somewhere,” I offered, with a lot of conviction, a new word I had learned at church about the need to be sincere.
“No need for that, Buddy.” She was now looking hard into my eyes again. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. We are not that poor!”
She added more ammunition to her argument. “It’s just that a bunch of things have come together at once, all to do with you getting involved with the church. It’s not only the cost. You’re away from home so much you have to change into your good clothes three times a week.”
“Only twice a week, Nan.” I corrected her. “I wear my good pants to Sky Rangers, but not one of my dress shirts. And besides, I’ll probably grow out of those clothes before I wear them out.”
“That’s true, but we still have to launder your things more often,” she said. “And with your mom, your aunt and I all working now, that takes up precious time that’s hard to find.”
“I’ll wash and iron my own stuff, then,” I suggested, silently hoping she wouldn’t take me up on my offer.
“There’s even another frustration I have to share,” Nan said.
“What?” I asked.
“We’re not the most God-fearing family, and maybe we could be better about that, but when you ask a person my age—as well as your mother’s and your aunt’s—to change habits that we’ve been used to all our lives, it makes things very uncomfortable,” she said, saying this with real conviction.
“I don’t know what you mean, Nan,” I said
“It was one thing for you to ask us to say a blessing before dinner on Sunday. That only seemed like we were making our Sunday meal more special. But last night, a Saturday night, you asked if you could say a prayer then, too. It feels like you’re going a bit overboard, Grandson.”
Her calling me “Grandson” was not usual. She saved it for those times when she really wanted to make a point.
I held out kind of a verbal peace pipe. “Nan, I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable because I’m enjoying a special relationship with the Lord. If it will make everyone happy, I’ll say my blessing before I come to the table at mealtime. Okay?”
“Aw, Buddy, it just seems that too many little things are adding up to a bigger one,” she said.
“What bigger one?” I asked.
Finally, she shared the concern I figured she probably had on her mind the whole time but didn’t want to tell me. “I want you to promise me you will not tell your mother I told you what I’m about to say. And you are not to mention it to anyone at the church, especially the minister’s daughter or son.”
“Pastor,” I corrected her, adding, “I promise.” I needed to hear what was bothering her.
“Okay, pastor,” she accepted. “Well, the pastor’s wife showed up at your mom’s store the other day, and to make a long story short, she invited the whole family to join you at church services.”
“Why is that a bad thing?” I asked.
“For two reasons: the first being that putting your mother on the spot like that while she was working—even though the woman was probably well-meaning—is just not right. I have to soften that by admitting that your mother did say Mrs. Baxter bought something.” She continued, “Secondly, it was the way she offered. She kind of suggested—at least your mom took it this way—that our family needed spiritual guidance, not having a man to look after us anymore. Your mom doesn’t agree with her point of view at all, and she told the pastor’s wife so.”
“Maybe Mrs. Baxter was right,” I said.
“Careful, Buddy!” Nan pointed her finger at me. “That’s what I’m saying—and your granddad would agree with me. The wolves might be sniffing around, trying to figure out where they can find their next meal.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Never mind,” Nan replied. “We’ve talked about this enough. I’ve probably said more than I should. Just be careful about what you accept as the ‘gospel truth,’ to use a church term. So that I’m clear, you are not going to services on Sunday evenings, and that’s final. You’ll spend that time with your family.”
The very next day at school, Cathie excitedly invited me to join her family on what she called a “mission” that coming Sunday afternoon. Following morning services, the pastor, his wife and the two older kids planned to “spread the Word” to an Indian family who lived in the country. Cathie said that I could easily squeeze into the back seat of their car. Her enthusiasm convinced me it would be fun, so despite the talk I had had with Nan, I promised to go. After all, it wouldn’t be on Sunday evening.
Both Cathie and Harold were at Youth Group on Thursday night, and both had the sniffles. Cathie’s cold was much worse at school the next day. When neither her nor her brother showed up for Sunday school or the morning service because they were too sick, I thought I was off the hook as far as going on a mission was concerned. Nan and Mom had been none too pleased when I told them at breakfast what I would be doing for the afternoon, so I figured they would be happy if I showed up at home by lunch. But Pastor Baxter and Mrs. Baxter were determined to carry out God’s work.
In the early Sunday afternoon, after the rest of the congregation had all gone home, the three of us and another lady from the church set out in Pastor Baxter’s car. We left right after the church lunch social, which followed the morning service. Cathie, Harold and their little brother, I learned, would be staying home with a church lady babysitting them.
There was a bit of a breeze when we headed down the road. Diamonds glinted from the tips of drifts in the ditches. The snow, the breeze, the blue sky and the brilliant sunlight joined together in wild gusts, lifting snow crystals and scattering their diamond dust across the prairie.
The road we were on was the one we took to our cottage at Pelican Lake, a drive that I knew well and enjoyed very much. Emotions tugged at my heart when I realized that I would never be sharing this drive with Gramp ever again.
The pastor said, “I think you’re going to find this experience most worthwhile, Buddy.” He raised his voice to speak above the noise of driving, while also glimpsing at me through the rear view mirror at the same time. “It’s very important that we make these native people aware of what God can do for their souls.”
Pastor Baxter’s car didn’t smell like the one owned by Del, our family friend who lugged everybody to or from the cottage at both ends of every summer. There was no suffocating smell of smoke from cigarettes. It had a cleaner smell, like perfume and shaving lotion mixed together. The lady who sat beside me smelled like roses. I was glad I’d had a bath before I went to church that morning.
When we continued on the road north, I knew we would be passing the general store that my friend Helga and her husband operated at the lake. But they would still be somewhere in the southern States enjoying the warmth. Her twin sister, Helene, might be around, though, and I wished I could say hi to her. Mostly, I wished we could stop and visit the cottage, but I didn’t ask Pastor Baxter because I knew that wasn’t part of our mission.
Not far beyond Makwa Beach, when we turned left off the highway toward the lake, I started feeling strange. We had passed the big hill that was always so much a part of my summer. That was when I began wondering if we might be headed somewhere I‘d been before.
We were.
A mile or so along a narrow, snow-covered road that we could barely follow, the pastor felt he might get stuck, so he chose to stop and make us walk. I was glad Mom had insisted I wear my long underwear and my trusty moccasins—even though my moccasins were under my cords instead of over my pants like usual.
It was tough slogging, trudging through the deep snow to the one-room log cabin. We had to tromp for a few hundred yards, and I wasn’t sure the ladies were up to the challenge. The snow was leaking into their boots. They were wearing dresses, not-very-warm coats and light, rubber overshoes over their church-going ones. They had to be freezing, yet they were unwavering in their determination. I was lugging a pretty big sack of blankets and clothes, and the effort was keeping me warm. The pastor must have been warm, too, from carrying a basket that was loaded down with pickled preserves and staples, such as salt and flour.
I saw a plume of white smoke rising into the blue sky from deep in the forest as we followed a path into the trees. There were no tracks on the trail that we hiked on, but the wonderful smell of woodsmoke sifted through the poplars. The smoke told me someone was home, but I wondered if he would be there. Did his family know the cavalry was coming?
When I had visited this cabin on the reservation for the first time the previous summer, I thought it was tucked away in a small clearing in the forest. Now it was snuggled into the trees with snow up to the bottom of the windows, and the roof was hidden by a blanket of white. A huge stack of firewood was piled up under the front window and along the whole front of the cabin. No one would have to walk far to get wood for the barrel stove I knew was inside. They did have to walk through the snowdrifts to get to their outhouse, however, and the trail to and from it was well travelled. So, too, was the trail that headed down the hill in the direction of the lake.
The pastor let out a booming, “Hello in the cabin! Your visitors are here!”
The family seemed happy to meet us. A cute little girl with a big smile and a runny nose opened the wood slat door. An older Native man appeared behind to help the little girl. The leather straps that held the door to its jamb squeaked as it was opened wider.
Once inside, between the four of us “missionaries” and the family who lived there, we could hardly stand without bumping into each other. That didn’t stop us from sharing greetings, as we crowded into one end of the tiny, one-room cabin, which wasn’t much more than a dozen feet across and maybe twice that deep.
“Hello,” said the man to Pastor Baxter. He smiled over the pastor’s shoulder and nodded to the rest of us.
“Thank you for welcoming us,” offered the pastor.
Then an uncomfortable silence seemed to join us in the cabin.
The sweet smell of smoke I recalled from the past summer seemed even heavier. The barrel stove, which had been split down the middle and had one half laid with a metal plate as its top, belched out enough heat to keep even the Devil happy.
A young boy and, I guessed, his older sister sat on log rounds beside a small, handmade table. The littlest girl who had opened the door for us settled on her sister’s lap. The older man and a Native lady, who must have been his wife, managed to squash themselves between the table and a chest of drawers. It was easy to tell these people were all part of the same family. They all had long, shiny black hair, big black eyes, and brown skin that must have faded some since summer. Their teeth were as white as the snow outside. They were very handsome.
We visitors were scrunched just inside the door. My back was right against it, the sack I had been carrying now tucked into my belly and getting heavier by the minute. I felt sweat running down my face and armpits. The light coming through the windows couldn’t manage to cut through the darkness to the back of the cabin.
I stood on my tiptoes to catch a glimpse of what I remembered was in the rear half of the room. Fairly wide, homemade bunk beds ran along the right side of the sleeping area. Another bed, barely big enough for two, sat opposite the bunks. All the beds had bear rugs draped over them.
The pastor cleared his throat to break the silence. But, before he got to speak, a voice came from the shadows.
“Buddy.” It wasn’t a question. There was no surprise in it. It didn’t sound like I was being greeted. It was just a word. A word that happened to be my name.
I squirmed to see over and around those in front of me. It was obvious now that he had been standing against the far wall between the beds the whole time we’d been there. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I could make out Gramp’s old shotgun hanging on the wall above him.
“Joe?” I couldn’t hold back the happiness in my own voice.
Joe Starblanket, the teenage friend I’d made the last summer while fishing, approached us from out of the shadows. The last time I had bumped into him was during my never-to-be-forgotten hunting trip with Gramp.
Pastor Baxter managed to say, “You know this young man, Buddy?”
“This is my friend, Joe Starblanket,” I answered with pride in my voice.
Joe said to his parents, “Momma, Dad, it is Buddy, whose grandfather gave me the shotgun.”
Joe’s parents ignored the others and made their way towards me. It was as if the pastor and the ladies I had come with were no longer in the room. Mr. Starblanket took the sack I was holding and passed it to Joe, who leaned over to lay it on his parents’ bed. Then the older man took my hand, still inside my mitt, and held it between his, squeezing it softly. There was something very personal in the way he did it. The handshake was so different than if he had pumped it up and down the way most people shook hands.
Joe’s mom then reached past her husband and put her hand on my cheek. It felt so warm and comforting that I almost cried. She didn’t speak.
Mr. Starblanket did. He said, “We were sorry to hear of your Grampa’s passing. We’ve been thinking of you.”
The pastor and his missionaries were stunned, as though their words had dried up.
Joe filled the silence. “It’s too crowded. Buddy and me are going to get some water. I’ll check the line.”
He grabbed a knit hat off a peg behind the door, as well as a heavy, button-up sweater, and a beautifully-beaded leather coat. He maneuvered across the room and removed something from the chest of drawers, sliding it into his pants pocket. Scooping a pail off the top of another chest, he led the two of us out the door. No one said anything as we left.
We had walked only a few steps from the cabin when I sputtered. “Joe! Wow! I sure didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
Joe had dropped the pail into the snow, and was pulling on his sweater, coat and hat. He tugged some mitts out of the pocket of the coat and slipped them on. Grabbing a thin, four-foot length of rope with a stick tied to one end that was hanging beside the door, he then picked up his metal pail. Last he pulled an axe free from a nearby chopping block.
“That’s probably the greatest looking coat I’ve ever seen,” I said.
It was the colour of honey, made from deer hide, and came down almost to Joe’s knees. It had fringes along the bottom, down the back of each sleeve, across the chest and around the back. Several of the fringes had been torn off, so I knew the coat had seen some wear. Colourful beadwork decorated each side of the buttons at the top. A Native design of amazing beadwork stretched across the back. It was beautiful to look at, but Joe still needed the bulky sweater under it for warmth.
It had been a long time since I had seen my friend. At that moment, still surprised, I was almost tongue-tied. I cared about his coat, but was working at finding something more important to say. Instead, I started sounding like Mokey. “Where did you get it? Did someone you know make it? Does the beadwork mean anything particular?”
Before he could answer those questions, I added some more. “Sure been a lot of snow this winter, eh? That blizzard a few weeks back? I got lost in it and thought I might freeze to death. It was really scary!”
The trail we were following led down to the lake but first came to a pond where there was a spring that gave the Starblankets their drinking water. Joe stood still, and peered back at me. He looked pretty powerful against the starkness of the snow and the white poplar forest that was behind him. It was a sight that deserved to be painted.
He spoke softly. “You chatter like a chipmunk, Buddy. What do you really want to tell me?” He knew well before I did that I had to talk to him about losing Gramp. It was all the coaxing I needed.
It took me only a few minutes to pour out all I had to say. Half I shared choking back tears. “I just feel so lost. I know I can’t get Gramp back, but I think of him every day. The pain feels even greater than when he first died. And to make it worse, Riel and Mokey don’t chum around with me anymore.” I blurted out the whole story about Dorothy and Riel. Feeling that I shouldn’t hold anything back, I even tossed in my escapades as a shoplifter.
Then I explained how I hoped getting involved in church would help me sort this stuff out. To be as honest as I could, I told him I hoped I would find God.
Through all of my blubbering, Joe never said a word. When I finally finished, my Indian friend reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder.
“I am sorry for your pain, Buddy. It’s something no one wants to have to carry,” he said. “But let’s get moving. I am cold.”
We talked very little for a long while.
When we did, he told me answers to many of my questions. His mother had made the coat as a gift for his dad. She had done all the beadwork, and Joe’s dad had passed the coat on to Joe for Christmas. I thought it strange for someone to give away a gift to someone else, especially after it had been worn for so long, but it looked like everyone else seemed okay with the idea, so it was fine with me.
Joe explained that he was running a trap line with his dad, but they weren’t catching a lot of animals. The heavy snowfall was making it tough. He told me that his brother and sisters were being a pain. It was easy to see why, with everyone living in such a cramped space. He seemed to feel better when I made out my kid sister and cousin to be even worse. Nevertheless, he sounded like he had a real fondness for Pearl when he asked about her, likely because of his help finding her the previous summer.
Neither of us was enjoying school and told each other why.
Our yakking went back and forth as we walked down toward the lake. We had stopped briefly by the spring in the pond and left the pail. Arriving at the lake, I remembered the summer when the forest floor back from the shore had been a carpet of tiger lilies with dragonflies buzzing about like tiny helicopters. Now the woods were white and silent, without a hint of movement or a breath of moving air.
All that changed when a gang of crows that were flocked together in a big poplar tree down the shoreline raised a ruckus about something. On cue, a coyote broke from cover, ran about twenty yards onto the lake ice, and trotted away from us, looking back over his shoulder. It reminded me of the adventure Riel and I had with our coyote, so I told Joe the story. I wondered if some day he and his dad might end up trapping the very coyote we saw disappearing down the shore into the distance.
I rattled on as we walked out onto the ice, following a crease in the snow which had probably been a trail before the last snowfall filled it in. It felt weird walking so far out onto the same lake that in summer I’d been swimming in. Only a boat could have coaxed me that far out in the water from the shore.
There was a stick poking out of the snow that served as a trail marker a hundred yards out onto the ice. The sun was bright, the sky a dazzling blue. Looking across the distance away from the shoreline made me feel queasy. The open space was as close to a desert as I had ever been. It was unsettling.
Joe dropped to his knees beside the marker and started clearing away the snow. I went to walk past him so I could help, but he reached out to block my way.
“Stay back,” he said. “This is our fishing hole. We have a line down. The ice is thin here.”
I backed away, thinking how numbing the cold would be if I were to fall through into the frigid water. Cold that would suck the air from my lungs. It would be a terrible death. I shivered just thinking about it.
Joe cleared a circle of snow a couple of feet around the stick. He picked up the axe he’d brought and leaned it against his thigh.
Then he looked at me and said, “The people you came with are good people. I do not know them as friends, but all who have come to visit us from the church have been kind.”
I thought I heard a “but” coming.
He went on, “They bring us things we can use. And all they want in return is for us to listen to their stories about their God and his son, Jesus.” He dropped his eyes and shook his head.
“But their God is not our God,” he said. “My family thinks that there is really only one God, yet every time we see Him, he appears in many different forms.”
What he was saying was interesting to me, so I just stood and listened.
“Look around,” he said, pointing for me to see what he saw. “The Creator has made all of this. He made the Sky and the Earth, and the things that live together here. We respect it and use this world in a way that lets every living creature share its wealth.”
Leaning close, Joe said, “I cannot make you an Indian. I would not try. You should be free to follow your own beliefs. But look deeper into yourself and ask if you need to find your new church friends’ God to be happy again.”
I replied with more the way I felt than how I thought. “You’re a smart guy, Joe. What you say makes sense. I wish you and Gramp and I could have spent more time together.” Then I added, “I think you’d better work harder at school, because you’re going to need that learning when you become Chief one day.”
He smiled and shook his head a bit. Then he took off a mitt and reached into his pants pocket, bringing out a beautiful pouch made from deer suede. It was a half-dozen inches long and almost as wide. A leather drawstring kept it closed at the top. The pouch was covered in amazing beadwork, like the kind on Joe’s coat.
He handed the pouch to me, and said, “For you.”
I was dumbstruck. “Oh, Joe. Thank you so much. It’s beautiful. But, I don’t feel right taking it. I don’t have anything to give you in return.”
“I made it for your Gramp, but I didn’t have the chance to give it to him. I want you to have it.”
He took hold of the axe, turned, and began chopping at the ice.
Within a half-an-hour, Joe had opened the fishing hole by smashing the ice that had thickened around its rim. He had also pulled up the thirty-yard fishing line and stretched it out across the surface of the lake. Without wearing his mitts, he took two nice-sized pike and a perch from hooks that were tied to the main line a couple of feet apart. He attached his catch to the stringer he had brought, and then lowered the line back into the hole in the ice.
As we walked back to Joe’s home in the woods, we picked up a bucket of water along the way, and talked about the shotgun Gramp had given him and how it had been good to him when he hunted later in the fall. My Indian friend and my granddad would have made great friends.
While studying the Bible, I learned some stuff about prophets and how they predicted things. I was starting to think that maybe Joe Starblanket was a prophet.
It turned out that Pastor Baxter wasn’t happy about me taking off with Joe and leaving the church people alone with the rest of Joe’s family. The pastor had especially wanted me to experience how “the Word was shared,” and felt that Joe was the member of the Starblanket family who needed most to hear it.
If the first strike the church threw past me was my mother telling Mrs. Baxter that she didn’t appreciate being preached to at work, then my taking off with Joe while on the mission was likely the second fast ball I couldn’t hit.
The third strike that knocked me out of the religion game came only a week after our visit to the Starblanket family. On the ride home the pastor had said that I could “redeem” myself by attending a baptism at the church service the following Sunday. Redeem was the pastor’s word, and I figured it meant to make up for a bad choice. Because of the invitation, it wasn’t hard to figure out that soon I would be asked to pick a date for my own baptism.
It didn’t come to that.
I had shown up for Sunday School, as usual, staying for the morning service. After a church social, where hot and cold drinks, dainty sandwiches and cookies were served, the announcement came to return to the church hall for the baptismal ceremony.
Everyone settled into the pews, Cathy beside her mom, Harold, the oldest brother, beside Cathy, and me next to Harold. Pastor Baxter called for the young girl to be baptized to join him by the pulpit. He took her by the hand, and with the Bible in his other hand, shared passages with the congregation.
Then the curtain was opened at the back of the main platform, letting all of us see the tank where the baptism was to take place. Pastor Baxter, his arm around the young girl’s shoulders, guided her up a few stairs and helped her over the rim of the tank. Dressed in a white smock, she stepped down into the water until she was standing up to her waist. Pastor Baxter followed her.
The water couldn’t have been cold, since neither one of them shivered.
Holding the young girl’s hands, and looking into her eyes, Pastor Baxter spoke about her being welcome in God’s world and His church. Following a prayer, the pastor turned the girl around, stepped to one side of her, and brought out a small white towel from his smock. After some more words about faith and hope, he took the back of the girl’s head in his one hand, while holding the small white towel with his other. In one motion, he placed the towel over the girl’s mouth and dipped her backwards into the water.
More words were spoken while he briefly held her under the water. Those words took just enough time for the water to seep through the towel and up the girl’s nose.
Before Pastor Baxter could lift the young girl out of the water, she attempted to escape on her own. Her arms started flapping and flailing, both hands grabbing at the towel, which was still held to her face by the pastor. His face had frozen into a mask of surprise. She floundered around so frantically that she lost her balance and slipped back beneath the water—again.
More thrashing followed as she struggled for something to grab onto. That is until she locked her fingers onto the front of Pastor Baxter’s smock and pulled up vigorously, succeeding only and unfortunately in dunking him under the water as she went down for a third time herself.
I had snorted aloud when the girl first panicked. But when she went under for the second time, a guffaw burst from me. By the time she had dunked herself and the pastor a final time, my belly laughs were out of control. In the back of my mind I worried briefly that the young girl might drown and take the pastor with her to the Pearly Gates. Wouldn’t God surely consider her drowning at her own baptism worthy of entry into Heaven? Then, when I realized that no one, especially a full-grown man, was likely to drown in a baptismal tank of water, I broke out in uncontrollable laughter.
Mrs. Baxter later told Nan on the phone that I had acted in that disgraceful way because of a lack of proper upbringing. I would have liked to tell her I laughed because what I saw was so darned funny. Nobody else in the church had broken up the way I had, though, so I couldn’t use that excuse.
At some point during my outbursts, Harold had started punching me in the arm, really hard. I looked at him through my fit of laughter and saw that his eyes were bugged out like a crazy person. Beside him, Cathy looked horrified.
Mrs. Baxter wasn’t horrified, she was mad—super dooper mad! Her brows were pinched. Darts were shooting out of her eyes. Her teeth were clenched, and her jaw muscles grinding. She managed to spit three words from her pursed lips: “You! Leave! Now!”
I bit my lower lip to keep from laughing yet again. As a blush blazed across my face, I popped from my seat, raced up the aisle and found freedom.