ROY
The week after his St. Michael’s interview, Roy settled back into his routine of visiting the sick and jobless, setting up for the weekly Alpha program, studying the lectionary, and writing Sunday’s sermon. His mama and Candy Mills were in charge of the upcoming Vacation Bible School, and they kept Rose busy making decorations and learning songs and the accompanying motions. They chose the “Beach Party” theme by Lifeway, and Roy had come home at night to a performance of his mama and daughter singing, dancing, and hanging ten on pretend surfboards as they sang, “Beach party, surfing the Word . . . Beach party, surfing the Word . . . Beach party surfing the W-o-r-d of God.”
He had to chuckle watching Mama in her flip-flop heels and cut-off miniskirt as she squeezed her nose and did the twist all the way to the ground with Little Rose cheering, “Go Granny!”
Roy wouldn’t describe his mama as a devout believer, but she sure did get credit for simply rolling up her sleeves and going to work. He had her and his daddy (who’d died of a heart attack less than a year after Jean Lee) to thank for getting him to church in the first place.
Back when Roy was a kid, his folks didn’t have the purest of intentions when they decided to switch their membership from Robbins Neck Baptist to Church of the Good Shepherd. Truth was, his daddy had taken a liking to partaking of a cold Budweiser every now and then, after a buddy handed him an iced can at the Darlington Speedway one hot afternoon. And Roy Sr. decided he couldn’t reconcile his Saturday refreshment with his Sunday worship at the Baptist church, so his wife suggested Good Shepherd where the Junior League ladies she greatly admired attended. Then off the family went with great hopes of climbing the social ladder while Roy Sr. savored an occasional Bud on a steamy day without remorse.
No, their reason for switching denominations wasn’t all that pure, but God works all things for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. It turned out there weren’t many young folks at the Episcopal church, so Roy and Chick were called on to serve as acolytes nearly every Sunday. There was an older spinster lady, Miss Ruby Nuttall, who spent months preparing them for confirmation when they were in middle school. How often Roy recalled sitting in Miss Ruby’s parlor on Wednesday afternoons breaking down the Nicene Creed line by line. Miss Ruby always had a large dish of caramel cubes within reach, and he still remembered relishing them one by one during her theological discourses about the Trinity, the virgin birth, and most thrilling of all, the resurrection, as a kind of warm and ardent yearning began to form in Roy’s heart.
The following spring when Bishop Boatwright came and laid hands on his head during the confirmation ceremony, Roy felt the presence of God. There was no denying it. It was like a surging heat that was both forceful and tranquil. It started around the crown of his head and worked its way down to his fingertips and toes until his whole body felt like it had fallen asleep. It was all he could do to stop from laughing out loud when the heat concentrated itself in his gut, and he knew as soon as he felt the fire that he’d been called out of one world and into another.
He kept on being a regular boy during this sanctification process. He played football, delivered papers, listened to Garth Brooks, and got into the typical late-night trouble. But he also joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and became the president of the Clemson chapter by his junior year in college. And Jean Lee, whom he started dating the first day of high school—well, she went right along down this path with her hand in his as if there was no other plan for her life. She had gone to dental hygiene school in Anderson to be near Roy during college, and they married their senior year before he took a job as a youth minister in Winnsboro to get a feel for what it was like to work in a church day in and day out. After a few years, he was recommend for seminary, and they headed to Pittsburgh for a three-year program at Trinity. Jean Lee conceived during his third and final year in seminary, and a few months into the pregnancy she pulled aside the dentist she was working for to show him a funny white spot on her tongue that turned out to be cancerous. The doctors delivered Rosebud as early as they could and quickly began chemo, but Jean Lee was gone before their baby girl was three months old.
Roy didn’t understand why some things turned out the way they did. He hated what had happened to his wife and his daddy, too, but he knew God wasn’t out to punish him. It was just sin. Plain and simple. Roy traced its origins back to the garden where darkness and death first entered human lives—not by God’s choice, but by man’s. And Roy took heart in the fact that sin, whose end result is always death, was only half the story of this life. The narrative didn’t simply end there like so many people thought. There was a whole’nother half and it involved a way out of this predicament. Roy clung to Miss Ruby’s belief that a provision had been made, a sacrifice on behalf of all mankind, and that’s what buoyed him when his little girl climbed up in his lap and said, “Why did Mama die?”
It was just a week after Roy’s trip to Charleston that he received the call.
“Reverend here,” Roy announced into the receiver after Skeeter ran in and pointed to the flashing red light on line one.
“Hello, Roy, this is Heyward Rutledge from St. Michael’s.”
“Hi there, Heyward. Hope you’re well.”
“Well,” Heyward said. “I don’t want to beat around the bush, sir.” Roy thought he could hear a pen being tapped on something on the other end of the line. He sat back and then Heyward said, “I’ll be a whole lot better if you accept the call to be the rector of St. Michael’s.”
The words hit Roy like a blindside chop block. One might have thought with the dream about flying and the redheaded angel that this was the most obvious of conclusions, but Roy didn’t see it coming.
After he caught his breath, he closed his eyes tight and said, “I didn’t think it would be me.”
“Well, it is,” Heyward said. “It is you. The search committee, the vestry, the bishop—we’re all in agreement on this.”
How? he thought. How in the world could y’all think this was a good fit?
“I—” It was one of those rare moments when he didn’t know what to say next.
“Well, don’t sound so surprised, Roy. The timing is right—the bishop had us listen to a few of your sermons he had on tape, and I tell you, we believe you’re just the man we need to light a fire under us.”
Roy’s ears popped when he swallowed. He heard Candy’s husband, Milton Mills, cranking the lawn mower in the front yard of the church, and he could see Skeeter’s shadow in the hall outside of the door as she listened in.
“Heyward, I’ve got to be honest.” (He might have prayed right then and there, but he didn’t.) “I didn’t expect to be chosen, and I’m not sure it’s right for me or for you.”
There was a long pause and Roy imagined Heyward looking up at the search committee, who it suddenly occurred to him might be gathered around the phone at this moment.
“Well, I don’t know what would make you say that,” the man on the other line said. “You’re what we need. It was unanimous from our end. Why don’t you . . .” There was a pause. “Take a little time and call me back in a few days?”
“All right,” Roy said. “I appreciate you giving me some time. I’ll call you by the end of the week.”
“Okay, Roy,” Heyward said. He cleared his throat, and Roy imagined the search committee leaning in to hear more. “We’ll be looking forward to your call.”
That night Chick and his wife, Nikki, came over with a pound of barbecue, some slaw, and a nice-sized watermelon. Ms. B. had called Roy’s home, prematurely, to discuss the installation date and the reception to follow, and Mama was so excited about the idea of him moving to Charleston that she was just about to bust. She had looked up the church online and taken a gander at the three-story rectory on Meeting Street, and she and Rosebud were already picturing themselves there, sipping tea on an upper piazza.
“St. Michael’s Church.” Chick put a wad of tobacco behind his bottom lip and shook his head. They were on Roy’s front porch watching Chick’s twin boys, Buster and Jake, play monkey-in-the middle with Rose. The boys were only a year older, but they were nearly a foot taller than the little girl, and her effort to jump up and grab the football as they tossed it back and forth was all but hopeless.
“Supper’s ready!” Mama called from the kitchen window. Jake softly threw the ball at Rose so she could win a round, and then Buster tousled her hair and led her toward the back door with his hand on her little shoulder.
“Yeah,” Roy said after the kids slammed the screened door. “Isn’t this the strangest turn of events?”
Chick nodded and turned to Roy. “Whatcha goin’ do?”
“I want to say no,” Roy said. “Every fiber of my being is saying, ‘No, those folks are going to eat you alive, Bub.’ ”
“Yep,” Chick said. He spit a little tobacco juice off the front porch just behind the azalea bushes. “I can’t argue with you there, brother.”
The only person who dreaded Charleston more than Roy was Chick. He had taken that Neanderthal comment to heart back when they were kids, not to mention all the times Aunt Elfrieda told them that their grandpa (her brother) had married beneath himself and that the ill effects of that would go on for generations unless they wised up, gave up an interest in farming and football and speed racing, and started acting and talking like civilized gentlemen. In fact, Heyward’s old words and Aunt Elfrieda’s were almost like a decree over Chick, and he seemed almost determined to live into them. His efforts to become the consummate small-town Bubba were made with a kind of fervor and bitter surrender that Roy didn’t fully understand.
After a knee injury in college that gave Chick no prospects where pro football was concerned, he bought a patch of land off of Welsh Neck Road to farm and promptly let himself go. He gained a good forty pounds, stopped wearing shirts with sleeves, and had a profound disdain for anything that seemed remotely cultivated (and this somehow included church). When their mama offered to pay for voice lessons for Buster, who, according to the music teacher at school, seemed to have perfect pitch, Chick refused. “No. That’s not for a boy like him,” Roy remembered him saying one afternoon while his mama made a teary plea. “There’s only one place outside of school for my kids—that’s the speedway or the ball field.”
“Boys, come on in and eat,” their mama now called. She looked them both over and added: “And Chick, spit that tobacco out right now. You won’t be able to partake of that when we visit your brother in Charleston.”
Roy reached out and firmly patted her elbow. “Mama, please stop talking like this thing is a done deal.”
She looked away from him, toward the little two-lane highway that ran in front of his house. An eighteen-wheeler was barreling by. It had a large bumper sticker on the back that read, “God is good. All the time!”
“All right,” his mama murmured. She turned her back to him, the sparkles from her bright-green eye shadow catching the porch light. “But you and I need to talk.”
Their leisurely supper ended with Nikki’s homemade banana pudding and a history lesson about Charleston by Rose, whose granny had been pumping her with all sorts of romantic musings about horse-drawn carriages and hoop skirts and a row of houses as colorful as a rainbow. Chick and his brood headed home, and Roy tucked Rose in bed after a little more Heidi and the Lord’s Prayer. As he turned out the light, she sat up and said, “Daddy?”
“Yeah, sweet pea?”
“Don’t you want to move to a pretty city?”
He leaned his head against the door frame and crossed his arms. “You know, I’m not sure, Rose.”
Her little head was tilted and he could see her pointing upward with her index finger. “Well, you said that God would show you, and now they’ve called and said they want you.”
He nodded and the verse “You have hidden these things from the wise” blipped across his mind before he could fully tune it out.
“Maybe it’s that simple, but somehow I don’t think so. I need to feel like I’m supposed to go, sweet pea.” He came over and sat next to her in the dark. “It would be a big change for you and me both. The kind of change that would affect our lives for years to come, and if I don’t feel an absolute confirmation, I can’t go.”
She lay back down and he tucked the sheet and comforter around her side so that she looked like a burrito or a caterpillar in its cocoon.
“What’s a confirmation?”
“A yes.”
She nodded her head and lay back down. “Good night, Daddy.”
When he went back downstairs, Donny, Mama’s new husband, was watching the news in the den while Mama unloaded the dishwasher.
Roy poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. He took off his collar and noticed he’d gotten a smudge of banana pudding on the top edge.
Mama sat down next to him, picked up the collar, and said, “I’ll take this home and see if I can get that out with a little OxiClean.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks, Mama.”
She took a deep breath and reached over to grab his wrist. “You need to do something for me, all right?”
He nodded as the steam from his coffee rose between them.
“You need to be open to this call. I’m not saying this because Charleston is a nice place and the church is downright gorgeous, not to mention the rectory.” She squeezed his wrist, and he looked up into her dark brown eyes. “I’m saying this because sometimes we’re asked to go where we don’t want to go. And it’s not to torture us. It’s because there’s something there that only we can do. There’s a purpose and a plan, and if we don’t follow, we miss the blessing. And so does everybody else who we were supposed to love on.”
He sat back and looked at her. She looked wise beneath the caked-on makeup and the orange tanning parlor glow. In her eyes there was a light, and it wasn’t just the reflection of the overhead lamp.
“I underestimate you, Mama.”
She smiled and the crow’s-feet on the edge of her eyes that she worked so hard to conceal were more lovely than he could ever describe. She patted his hand, then took a sip of her own coffee. “We only get one go-around. Better make it count.”
She stood, flipped the switch on the coffeepot, grabbed her gold purse, and said, “Sometimes you don’t even need to pray or think on something. Sometimes you just know.” She grabbed her keys, gave him a nod, and said, “Let’s go, hon,” to Donny who turned off the TV, took her hand, and nodded to Roy as they walked out the door.
Early the next morning Roy heard little footsteps and then the sound of Rose plinking on the piano. The summer sun was already blazing through the blinds, leaving a pattern of slats across his bed. He sat up and felt the same heat in his gut as the day the bishop placed hands on his head when he was twelve.
He took several slow breaths as the heat surged through his body, and he knew the Spirit was upon him.
“Show me the way, Lord,” he whispered. “Show me, and I will follow.”
When the tingling subsided, he went on down the stairs where Rose was playing one of the VBS tunes on the piano.
“Listen, Daddy,” she said.
“All right.” He sat down at the bench beside her and put his arm around her. Then they slowly belted out the song together. “Beach party, surfing the Word . . . Beach party surfing the Word . . . Beach party surfing the W-o-r-d of God!”