Even Bash’s giant backpack seemed to quiver with excitement in Sunday school as he stowed it between his seat and the wall.
“What’s the Basher gonna do?” Jig Gobnotter whispered. Jig wore one of his Sunday baseball caps, a red one with “Jesus Saves” printed on it in yellow.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Wouldn’t tell you, either, huh?”
Miss Caldwell peeked into the room before tiptoeing inside. “You know, Sebastian, perhaps I rushed you into this assignment. It would be fine with me if you’d rather not . . .”
Preacher Bash leaped to his feet. “Nope, I’m ready.”
“It’s just that, well . . . are you sure?”
“Let’s go.” Preacher Basher dragged the backpack to the flannel board. He hunched over the bag. We heard the zipper. Bash rummaged around a bit. “Shh!” Seven seconds as a teacher and he’s shushing us already?
Preacher Bash straightened and faced us, clutching the folder of flannel board cutouts. “Today, brothers and sisters, we are going to learn about David and Goliath.”
Mary Jane shook her chocolate brown curls and scrunched up her nose. “If Sebastian Nicholas Hinglehobb was my brother . . .”
“We’re all brothers and sisters in the Lord when we believe!” Bash boomed in his best preacher voice. “But today, we need to talk about a farmer boy named David.”
Bash snatched a piece of yellowish flannel from the folder and rubbed it across the bottom of the blue felt board. Next, Bash smoothed purplish mountains into place, then added trees, tufts of grass and a big rock. Onto the rock, he placed a cutout of a sitting boy wearing brown sandals, a yellow bed sheet and holding a big stick. “This is David. He’s a sheep farmer.”
Sarah huffed. “It’s called ‘shepherd.’”
Bash positioned cutouts of sheep around David. “David watched all of his dad Jess’s sheep.”
Sarah the Corrector corrected: “Jess-SEE. The name is Jesse.”
Bash ignored her. “David was the little brother out of eight boys so he got stuck doing all the yucky jobs. Lesson number one—try not to be born last.”
“You can’t . . . Ooooohh!” Sarah’s knuckles turned white where she gripped the sides of her seat like she was trying to keep herself from exploding.
Bash swept David, the sheep and the trees off the flannel board, then placed tiny groups of tents and men in the background on either side of the board. In the middle, he plunked a warrior, much bigger than the David cutout. The warrior wore mostly armor. Armor lapped over his shins. Armor plates hung from his shoulders and covered his upper body. Black hair and a bushy beard gushed from beneath an armored helmet.
“This is Goliath, a warrior.”
We boys leaned forward. A shield covered most of one giant arm. With his other big hand, the giant clutched a long, thick sword.
Bash tapped the sword. “He carried the world’s biggest spear.” Sarah didn’t correct him.
“He also carried the world’s biggest javelin.” A smaller sword handle poked up behind Goliath where it strapped onto his back.
“Goliath the warrior towered nine feet, nine inches tall. He could dunk a basketball sitting down. Only he woulda popped the ball like a balloon ’cause he was strong and mean.”
Miss Caldwell started to say something but clamped her mouth shut. Bash kept preaching. “So while Farmer David got stuck staying home doing chores, his brothers got to go off to war and have fun.”
Sarah sighed. “Shepherd boy.”
“One day, David’s dad, Jess—Jess-SEE, I mean—sent him to take food to his brothers. And that’s when David saw big ol’ Goliath teasing the soldiers. Goliath yelled across the valley, ‘Na-na-na-na-naaa, you can’t beat me. Fraidy-cat sissies. C’mon, you bock-bock-bock chickens. Send out your best guy, and if he beats me, our army will surrender.’ It probably was a trick but it didn’t matter. The soldiers really were afraid.”
We boys booed the cowards and booed the showoff giant. Bash joined in. We booed so loudly that I thought I saw Bash’s green and yellow backpack tremble. Miss Caldwell jammed a finger to her lips. When we heard Mr. Hopkins’s cane whap against the wall, Preacher Bash raised his hands. We hushed to hear what came next.
“While the grown-ups shook in fear, Farmer Boy David knew what to do.”
We boys cheered. Jag Gobnotter snorted. Sarah Tisdale rolled her eyes.
“Farmer David knew that God’s bigger’n any giant.”
Bash stooped over his backpack a second then spun to face me. “Brother Beamer, this is the part where you get to help. Put this tin can on your head and stand over there by the wall like that.”
Bash dug into the backpack. “Shh,” he said, even though we weren’t talking much. He yanked out his Indiana Jones adventurer’s pouch and slung it over his shoulder.
“David ran out to meet Goliath. Instead of spears and javelins, David had his farmer’s kit—”
Sarah huffed. “Shepherd’s pouch.”
“—and a slingshot.” From the pouch, Bash pulled a slingshot built from rawhide bootlaces strung through the leather tongue of old work boots. He pulled a smooth creek stone from the pouch, loaded the slingshot, and started twirling the thing over his head.
Across the room, a bit of tomato soup dribbled down my hair. Maybe I should have cleaned the cans. Suddenly, I figured out what “helping” meant.
“Basher. Wait!”
Too late. Bash let go of one end of the bootlace. One shiny creek stone whipped across the room . . . and knocked over a stack of hymnals in the far corner.
Jig snickered.
Bash slapped the air. “Nuts. Hold on, Beamer, I can do this. I practiced in the woods. Besides, remember the lesson—when God guides the stone, it goes exactly where it needs to be.”
Mary Jane scrambled under her chair, her pointy-toed cowboy points sticking out. “Well, give God the slingshot, then. Your aim stinks!”
Another stone whizzed through the air and ricocheted off the block walls two or three times before landing in Jag’s flower-printed lap. Jag somersaulted into the air like she’d been shot and the stone flew from her lap and clunked Chet Rodgers in the back. “Ow. Watch it.”
Miss Caldwell swatted a third stone out of the air with her Bible. “Sebastian! Stop that this instant!”
Bash loaded a fourth stone. “It’s okay, Miss C. I’ve got it now.”
I froze. By now I knew the safest place to stand was wherever Bash aimed. The pebble plinked the wastebasket. Bash’s aim did stink.
I remembered from the song “Only a Boy Named David” that David took five stones from the babbling brook. Bash should just about be out of ammo.
A couple of the girls screamed and tried to huddle underneath the folding chairs with Mary Jane. Billy Loomis asked if he could try the slingshot next. Bash whipped his last shot. The water glass Miss Caldwell kept shattered, soaking a stack of Sunday school papers. “Oops.”
Bash stuffed the slingshot into his pouch. He rumbled out with his preacher voice again. “When King Saul asked David why he dared go after Goliath, David told him because he practiced as a farm boy. He killed both a lion and a bear when they attacked his sheep. God let him beat all the bad guys.”
Mary Jane crawled from beneath her chair. “That’s not how the story goes.”
“It is!” Preacher Bash thundered, waving his arms. “I’ll show you how it works.” He leaned over his backpack again. “I couldn’t capture any lions or bears in the woods to demonstrate this part, so . . .”
Bash pulled out a small cage. One of Bonkers’s mourning doves flapped and cooed. “Pretend this is our lion.”
I couldn’t tell whether the cooing lion was Bonkers’s dove Marge or his dove Hannah because once Basher opened the cage, she flapped around the room in a flurry.
“And these mice are our sheep.” Preacher Bash opened a box he pulled from the backpack.
A dozen or so brown and white mice streaked across the room. One ran right up Miss Caldwell’s leg and held on tight as Miss Caldwell hopped and screamed. She tried to dig footholds into the cement blocks of the wall. She finally let go and fell when Hannah—or possibly Marge—swooped into her hair for a rest.
That’s when a black face with a pointy nose poked out of the bag. Furry white head, black rounded ears and a streak of white running from its forehead to the tip of his blackish nose.
Skunk!
“And here’s our bear!” Preacher Bash shouted over the tumult.
Buster, Bonkers’s pet skunk, never wanted to miss out on the action. He swept one black foreleg out of the backpack, then the other, tipping over the bag as he shook it from his hind legs and waddled out. Pleased with himself, he flashed his bushy tail in the air and stretched, giving us a good view of where the white streak on his head and neck separated into two white stripes along either side of his broad back.
Miss Caldwell flung open the classroom door and hurtled out just as a bunch of the guys from the men’s Sunday school class across the hall rushed over. She slammed headfirst into Mr. Whitney’s stomach. Big ol’ Mr. Whitney looked more like a bear than Buster did. Miss Caldwell dropped him just like a little stone knocking down a giant.
Three other men sidestepped them. But just as they reached the doorway, Mr. Collins bellowed, “Wha . . . Skunk!”
“Aaarghh! A mouse! Another one!” Herbie Peterson from the teens’ class. He ran into the nursery and we heard what sounded like somebody jumping into one of the cribs.
Jag snorted. “Just like a boy.”
Another grown-up peeked into the classroom. “Skunk! Skunk!” He turned and vaulted over pews and a couple of the ladies.
“Somebody call the fire department!”
The few of us kids who didn’t run from the skunk roared with laughter. We’d never seen such a movement of the spirit in church.
“Hi, Buster.” Mary Jane cooed as she scooped the skunk into her arms. He fairly purred, if skunks could purr, as he nuzzled into Mary Jane’s chocolate curls, his white-striped tail swishing back and forth. Buster would cuddle with anyone, even Mary Jane.
Mary Jane held Buster out to Sarah. “It’s okay, Sarah. He’s de-scented. He’s one of Christopher Joseph Dennison’s pets. They’ve got a skunk license.”
Bash glowered at the panicking adults. “They’re fraidy-cats just like Israel’s army facing Goliath. Well, we better rescue the mice before they get stomped on. Beamer, take the tin can off your head and use it to carry them back to their box”
“There’s still some soup in here.”
“That’s okay. They probably need some to calm their nerves.” I picked up a brown mouse nibbling on soaked Sunday school papers. “So how come you didn’t bring sheep to be the sheep?”
“They wouldn’t fit in the bag.”
“Oh.”
---------
Our new Sunday school teacher, old Mr. Hopkins, promised to never let any of us teach a class again. He thumped his crooked cane on the floor if he thought we were breathing too loudly.
That afternoon, Bash and I sprawled in his room, wondering how many years we’d be grounded.
Bash tossed a basketball at the ceiling. “Did you get all of Bonkers’s mice scooped up?”
“All but two. Freckles and Junior decided to become church mice.”
Bash spun the ball in his hands, then tossed it again. “Did you tell anyone?”
“I thought it best not to mention it.”
Bash tucked the ball under his head. “Probably right. You know, Beamer, I don’t think God’s calling me into the ministry.”
“Well, duh!”
“I sure tried. I even had more lessons planned.”
I rolled onto my side and stared at him. “Like what?”
“Remember the story when Jesus let the demons infest the herd of pigs? That would be a great one for visual aids. I could train my riding pig Gulliver J. McFrederick the Third to lead the charge of all our hogs right down the center aisle and they could leap into the baptismal tub.”
I flopped onto my pillow and squeezed my eyes shut. It was hard to get rid of that picture.
Bash sat up. “And don’t forget the dancing bones in Ezekiel. I already collected my visual aids. I stored them under your bed. You were going to be my assistant preacher.”
“Um . . .” I wanted to know what visual aids lurked beneath my bed. Rotting raccoons? Molted lizard skins? That rabbit skull he found in the woods a few weeks back?
I didn’t ask. Instead, I pulled Bash’s slingshot closer to where I could snatch it up in a hurry. Just in case.
Could anything worse happen before this nightmare ended?
Stupid question.