46

Sam took Monday off, visiting Charley Riggle at the hardware store to discuss pocketknives and why things weren’t made in America. They chewed on politicians and CEOs for a while, which left them feeling invigorated. Then he stopped past Drooger’s Food Center for milk and bread. Since Barbara had taken a full-time job, the grocery shopping had fallen to him. With the boys gone, their grocery bill had dropped in half. Sam was eating more fresh vegetables and fewer Cocoa Puffs. He felt better, but was still suspicious of vegetables and cheerfully pointed out to Barbara newspaper articles about people dying of E. coli poisoning from bad spinach. So far as he knew, Cocoa Puffs had never killed anyone. He spent a half hour in the Food Center reading the magazines, boning up on various celebrities, should their names arise in polite conversation.

He arrived home in time to clean the house and start supper, then went on Facebook to spy on his sons. Seeing pictures of his sons with strangers never failed to alarm him. He wondered about the strangers, where they were from, what their parents were like. The people in the Facebook pictures never looked like Quakers. They looked like people who no longer attended church and didn’t seem to miss it. He recognized Levi’s apartment in one of the pictures. There were beer bottles in the background. Empty. A distant relation of Sam’s had been a drunkard, so he thought about that for a brief while, got himself worked up, then sent Levi a text message telling him to straighten up.

He’d been nervous as a cat since Miriam had phoned asking him to speak at Harmony Friends. While it would be nice to see certain people, he dreaded the thought of crossing paths with Dale Hinshaw and Fern Hampton again. He turned his mind toward his sermon, fiddling with the opening, thinking of an appropriate Scripture reading, considering various passages about returning sons, and thought of the Prodigal Son. But that son had left of his own volition and had gone to the city to sin, while Sam had been tossed out on his keister for no good reason. Then he recalled Jesus’s advice to his disciples—If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. That had a certain appeal to it. A rousing shaking-the-dust-off-his-feet sermon would let them know where he stood on matters. He read that Scripture aloud, but couldn’t do it without yelling. As tempted as he was to use it, he decided instead to try the wise-as-a-fox-but-gentle-as-a-dove approach, a less volatile bit of Scripture also recommended by Jesus.

It took three days for Sam to write his sermon, nudging it into shape, getting in a few digs, but on the whole being charitable. He took Friday off and drove to Purdue to visit Levi and remind him of his Christian heritage. On Friday evening he went with Barbara to the movies. He was feeling magnanimous and let her pick the movie. It was about a woman dying of cancer whose husband and children had been unappreciative until she died, then had realized how wonderful she had been and felt bad for the rest of the movie. Barbara had sobbed through the entire movie and had become upset with Sam for falling asleep; she accused him of insensitivity.

“It’s a movie. It’s make-believe. How can I be insensitive about something that didn’t happen?” he asked.

But it was the principle of the thing, Sam’s indifference to a dying woman who had married an insensitive clod. They stopped at a Baskin-Robbins for ice cream, which mollified her somewhat, and by the time they reached home, she had settled down altogether and admitted the woman in the movie had been overly dramatic and even a bit of a whiner.

“To be honest,” Barbara said, “I was kind of relieved when she died. She was starting to annoy me.”

They left for Harmony Saturday morning, arriving at Sam’s parents in time for lunch. Chili with grilled cheese sandwiches and milk, Sam’s favorite meal after Cocoa Puffs. Sam and his father took naps afterward, his father stretched out in a recliner, Sam sprawled on the couch. Sam’s mother and Barbara walked to the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop for nonfat mocha lattes and pumpkin muffins. They went to bed early, Sam and Barbara in his old bedroom, on a mattress of unclear origins, passed down from a long-deceased relative. It had been Sam’s mattress as a child and had formed an even deeper trough in the middle than their mattress at home, causing Sam and Barbara to roll into one another, which led to something else, which led to squeaking, which led to his mother tapping on their door and asking if anything was the matter.

The sun rose in a clear blue sky the next morning, a glorious fall day, so they walked to the meetinghouse, arriving fifteen minutes before worship. The parking lot was full, and the streets around the meetinghouse were choked with cars.

“It looks like Christmas or Easter,” his mother said. “Look at all these cars.”

“Maybe I should stay out here and direct traffic,” his father said, always looking for an excuse to get out of church. He was a pacer, not a sitter. A man of action. “Yes, I believe that’s what I’ll do. Wouldn’t want any fights or road rage. You never know with traffic like this.”

They heard the crowd while still outside, the throb of laughter and excited chatter inside the meetinghouse.

“That looks like Ruby Hopper’s car,” Barbara said.

“Can’t be,” Sam said. “She’s leading worship at Hope this morning.”

As they climbed the meetinghouse steps, Matt the Unitarian pastor fell into step beside them.

“Look who came slinking back into town,” Matt said. “Good to see you, Sam.”

“What are you doing here?” Sam asked, shaking Matt’s hand.

“Heard you were going to preach, so I took the Sunday off, and here we are.”

“If it weren’t for you Unitarians, I’d still be working here,” Sam said.

“Yeah, you know us, we’re just troublemakers. But look at the opportunity we gave you to be prophetic. You’ll go down in history as the first Quaker minister to perform a same-gender marriage. A hundred years from now, everyone will think you were a saint. You should thank us.”

They entered the meetinghouse together and people began thronging around Sam and Barbara, welcoming them. The Iverson twins presented Barbara with a bouquet of flowers. The scent of chicken and noodles rose up through the floor grates. It was like a dream. Sam felt woozy.

“What in the world is going on?” he asked Miriam Hodge, who had materialized beside him.

“We’ve come to thank you for being our pastor,” Miriam said. “And to wish you God’s blessings in your new ministry at Hope.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Ruby Hopper said, appearing at Miriam’s side.

And indeed they were, all of Hope Friends Meeting, even the Finks, who at the moment were supposed to have been hearing a lecture on architecture, but instead were clustered around Sam and Barbara in the Harmony Friends meetinghouse.

“The Unitarians are here, too,” Matt said. “We closed down our church today and told everyone to come here. We wanted to thank you for sharing your ministry with us.”

Chris and Kelly were there, the lesbians with gender-neutral names, who had been the calm and gracious center of this hurricane. They stepped forward and embraced Sam and thanked him for his compassion on their special day.

“Now this is your special day and we wanted to be with you,” Chris said.

“We very much appreciate what you did for us,” Kelly added. “Sometimes it takes real bravery to be kind. We are grateful for your courage.”

“I was happy to do it,” Sam said. “It was an honor.”

“Let’s worship,” Miriam said, taking Sam and Barbara by the arms and guiding them down front to the facing bench. “Sit up here in your old place. Barbara, you sit with him. We want to honor you, too.”

Everyone took their seats, sliding over and making room. It was tight, but everyone fit. They entered into silence, their heads bowed. Sam peered around the room. Almost everyone he knew and loved was there. Looking at them, he felt something release inside him, a stone of resentment lodged in his spirit, breaking free.

One by one, out of the silence, people stood to speak, thanking Sam for all he had done for them. Ralph Hodge, recalling his long struggle with alcohol and how Sam had stood by him, driving him to AA all those years ago. Jessie Peacock reminding the congregation how Sam had rushed to the hospital when Asa had had his heart attack. She didn’t mention it had taken three days for Sam to get there. No need to bring that up. Harvey Muldock rose to his feet and thanked Sam for his ministry to their family when they discovered their son was gay.

“We appreciate that you didn’t judge him,” Harvey said. “It meant a lot to us.”

After Harvey spoke, Hank Withers gave a brief lecture on the Akron church design. Others stood, recalling their history with Sam and Barbara. It was like leafing through a picture album. Reminiscing and laughing and treasuring. It went on and on. When it came time to preach, Sam dispensed with his notes and thanked all present, even Dale and Fern, who admitted they had gone a little overboard and that if Sam wanted to come back and be their pastor, they wouldn’t mind.

Then Miriam Hodge invited the members of Hope Friends Meeting to come forward and asked Sam and Barbara to stand before the congregation. She took Sam and Barbara by the hand and thanked God for their lives, then passed them along to Ruby Hopper and the people of Hope, who thanked God for bringing Sam and Barbara to them, then everyone said amen and Sam began to bawl and only stopped when Miriam said it was time to go downstairs and eat. She asked Sam to offer a meal blessing, which he did, with great enthusiasm.

He thanked God for chicken and noodles and the hands that prepared them, that rolled out the dough, that cut the noodles, that boned out the chicken, that laid out the noodles to dry. He thanked God for Chris and Kelly and wished them a happy future, and asked God to bless all the marriages of everyone, then thanked God for various people who had died, but were looking down on them from heaven at that very moment and were no doubt pleased by their reconciliation. Then, unsure how to wind up the prayer, he thanked God that they lived in a free country where people could worship as they wanted, or not worship, whichever the case may be. Then Barbara squeezed his hand, he stopped blabbering, and looked up just as Bob Miles took their picture for the Harmony Herald. They went downstairs and ate chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, green beans, and yeast rolls, with pies for dessert, freshly baked by Ellen Hadley and the Hope Friends Meeting pie committee.

It was the best day Sam had ever had, even better than his wedding day, when he’d been so nervous he’d vomited on his grandmother in the receiving line. The day felt like a movie, like the final scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, when the townspeople came to George Bailey’s house and gave him money to save his bank, and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

They stayed afterward to help wash dishes and clean up, pausing now and again to hug people and wish them well. Finally, it was down to them and Ellis and Miriam Hodge, who walked all the Gardners home, where Sam and Barbara climbed in their car, waved good-bye, and headed toward Hope.