HAZEL’S QUEST had been packed with two bags of red licorice, four average-sized suitcases, and three bottles of water she had left in her refrigerator.
None of the suitcases held cold-weather gear.
“If it gets cold, I’ll buy a coat,” she told herself, giving herself permission to travel light, or lighter than one would expect for someone going on the road for an indefinite period of time.
If I get tired of traveling, I’ll stay at one of those suite hotels for a week. Do laundry. Watch TV all day. Normal things. That’s if I get tired of traveling.
Her first objective, after leaving Portland, was to drive south along the Pacific Coast Highway, a road she had read about and seen pictures of but had never once visited. Once in California, she would head east, into Arizona and on to Phoenix.
The email about the 25th Division had come from a man in Phoenix who was the current head of the division’s reunion committee.
“I might have a lead on who this is,” the man wrote. “I have a couple of pictures here that might be him. Any chance you could travel to Phoenix? My traveling days, unfortunately, are over—and I don’t want to let any photos out of my possession.”
Hazel wondered why he just didn’t scan them and send them electronically, but if he was a Vietnam veteran, he could easily be close to seventy now, and Hazel also knew that some technological solutions might seem insurmountable to that sort of person. He would not have been a digital native.
Scanning might be beyond his pay grade, she thought, smiling.
The closing on her condo was taking place tomorrow, and while she could have skipped the signing and left it up to the attorney that Charlene had recommended, she thought her being there would be a definitive closing act to her life in Portland.
It meant that she had to stay at a hotel that last night.
Might as well get used to it.
She’d booked a room at the Embassy Suites. On her way there that afternoon, she’d stopped at St. James Lutheran Church. Inside her coat was a sealed envelope. Wondering if she should have called and made an appointment, she’d opened the massive wooden door and walked inside, the quiet enveloping her like a thick, dark shawl. The offices were off to one side and she’d walked slowly and as quietly as she could, not wanting to shatter the cloaking, intimate silence with the sound of footsteps.
I should have come more often, she thought to herself at the time.
She stopped and peered in at the sanctuary. The deep red carpet, the ornately carved wooden support beams of the ceiling, the gleam of the pipe organ even in the dim light, the glistering, fractured afternoon sun coming through the stained glass windows…
It is so peaceful. And so…reverential…if that’s a real word. Like God lives here, sort of. I mean, I know he doesn’t, but he could. It would suit him.
She stepped into the office and blinked, the bright fluorescent lights a sharp contrast to the sanctuary.
The woman at the first desk looked up, smiling.
“Yes?”
Hazel hesitated for a second. She had never spoken to one of the pastors, other than to offer a “Good morning” if she happened to get stuck in the aisle where he stood shaking hands at the end of a service. She usually tried to guess which section of the pews would be pastorless at the end of the service, but it still happened occasionally.
“Is the…the pastor here?”
The woman did not stop smiling.
“You mean Pastor Coggins?”
Is that his name? I thought it was something else. I should have checked. Or remembered.
“Uh…sure.”
The woman at the desk waited for just a beat.
“May I tell him who you are? And what this might be in reference to?”
I hadn’t considered that. They probably get all sorts of wacky people in here. I should have thought of something that doesn’t sound wacky. Or deranged.
Hazel looked as if she was attempting to decide just what to say. She took a deep breath.
“I’m Hazel Jamison. I come here…not often, but I like it. And I’m leaving the area. And I wanted to give the pastor something before I left. Like a donation. It will only take a minute.”
The woman’s smile did not change or slip away or shift into a questioning grimace.
“I’m sure he has more than a minute, Mrs. Jamison.”
“It’s sort of…Miss. I mean, I’m not married.”
The woman’s smile did shift, just a bit, and she nodded.
“I’m sorry. I mean, not that you’re a Miss or a Mrs. I guess we’re all guilty of making assumptions, aren’t we?”
“I guess we are,” Hazel agreed.
“Wait here. I’ll let Pastor Coggins know you’re here.”
I should have called. Or just mailed this. I knew it.
Wilson stared at the phone.
Thurman ambled into the vestibule of the house and took it upon himself to stare at it as well, but it was very apparent that he had no idea of just what he was looking at, or why. He sniffed loudly, his nose in the air, thinking that perhaps a mouse or a squirrel or some large morsel of food had become lodged behind the thing that Wilson talked into.
But nothing moved and Thurman did not detect a food scent. Yet Wilson continued to stare, so Thurman happily sat down next to him and kept him company as he did so.
He whisper-growled, Dogs do this.
Wilson did not pay attention to his remark.
He looked at a slip of paper in his left hand. A number was written on it. He took a deep breath, picked up the receiver, and slowly and carefully tapped the numbers on the keypad.
He did not want to make a dialing mistake, which would then entail trying to build up the courage to redial all over again. He took a deep breath and held it for a long moment, exhaling loudly as the phone made a connection.
Thurman must not have noticed Wilson ever doing that before, and tried to mimic him, but dogs are apparently not skilled at holding their breath unless they’re in the water, and Thurman, while a water sort of dog, was skilled at swimming and retrieving; holding his breath on dry land was a novel and untried behavior.
Instead of holding his breath, Thurman sort of gulped and coughed and shook his head, knowing that he had done it wrong, then looked up at Wilson to see if he might get more instructions on this. None were forthcoming. Wilson was not paying attention to him, at least not at this moment.
“Hello?”
Wilson shut his eyes tightly, for just a moment, and Thurman responded by trying to do the same thing.
“Hi, Emily?”
There was no pause on the other end.
“Yes. Is this Wilson?”
Wilson let out another long breath, one of relief, and hoped it was not audible over the phone.
“It is. I guess my mother has covered all her bases, hasn’t she?”
Emily did not laugh loudly, but the lilt of her voice told Wilson that she must have been smiling.
“She has. Your mother can be…”
“Tenacious?” Wilson suggested.
“Well, yes, but I was looking for a kinder word.”
Wilson was smiling, which he had not expected to do.
“Pleasantly persistent, perhaps.”
At this, Emily did offer a small laugh.
“Yes. That fits better. She means well, right?”
Wilson was nodding, then realized that Emily could not see a nod over the phone.
“Indeed,” he said. “Which is one of the refuges, or a moral high ground as it were, of an obstinate old woman who likes to meddle.”
“But…after all, she does mean well.”
Wilson offered a small laugh in reply.
“And we’ll leave it at that,” he said.
Then he took another deep breath, which Thurman tried to imitate as well, unsuccessfully, much to his consternation.
“Emily,” he said, trying not to sound as if he had rehearsed this, which he had, but did not want it to sound that way, “since my mother has put us both on notice, would it be okay with you if we actually met…and went out?”
“Like a date,” she replied, both restating his request and turning it, just a little, into a question.
“Like a date. I guess it would be a date. Not like a date.”
He sighed loudly.
“Semantics. It drives everyone other than rhetoric professors crazy.”
Emily paused.
“I thought you taught rhetoric.”
Wilson snorted.
“I did. For two semesters when I first started at the university. I hated it. Since then, just creative writing. And the occasional survey of American literature, old and new.”
Emily waited and Wilson waited.
Wilson thought the pause went on for a very long time, but time and the duration of this phone call had already been distorted by his high level of anxiety.
“Sure. That would be nice. The date thing, I mean. Not the rhetoric thing. And from what your mother tells me, and from what I know about myself, this will mark the end of a long period of ‘not dating’ for both of us.”
Wilson nodded again, then quickly agreed.
“Yes. It will.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause, then Emily added in a small voice, “I guess I should ask when and where.”
Wilson actually smacked his forehead with his palm.
Then he said, “That was me smacking my forehead with my palm. It has been a long time.”
Emily laughed.
“I understand. They do say all of this is like riding a bicycle.”
“I was never good at that either. I crashed a lot as a kid.”
He waited for her to laugh again, and she might have, quietly, but perhaps she was simply trying to be sensitive to the memory of an oddly coordinated child who was prone to running off curbs and into trees.
“I have tickets to a play at the university this Friday night. It’s a Shakespeare play. The Tempest. It is supposed to be good—for a student production, that is.”
“Wilson, that sounds wonderful.”
“I have your address already—thanks to my mother. The play starts at seven. I guess I will pick you up at six-fifteen or so. Parking can be a problem.”
“Six-fifteen on Friday. Got it. I’m looking forward to it.”
When Wilson put the phone down, his hands were trembling, he was sweating profusely, his heart was pounding, and his breath came in shorter and shorter gulps.
He looked over at Thurman, who had watched the entire conversation, and who looked a little alarmed, if Wilson was reading his expression correctly.
“If I die from a heart attack right here, tell my mother it was all her fault. Okay, Thurman?”
And Thurman grinned and bounced and growled-whispered, Okay. Okay. Okay.
“Ms. Jamison?”
Pastor Coggins appeared to be shorter, older, and kinder than he did when he was on the platform on Sunday mornings.
Even when Hazel had been forced to shake hands and say hello, she did so in a hurry, not wanting to bother him, not wanting to be yet another congregant with some deep-seated emotional problem that required solving in the thirty seconds spent together in the narthex of the church.
“I recognize you. When you stand up front week after week, you get good with faces. And you can tell who’s there and who isn’t—within a couple of faces. You don’t stick with one pew. You play pew roulette—avoiding handshakes at the end, right?”
Hazel hoped she wasn’t blushing at being caught, but she knew she probably was.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Jamison. A lot of people don’t like me standing back there either. A third of them think they need to say, ‘Nice sermon.’ Another third want to fight with me about some scriptural interpretation that I missed. And the other third don’t want to talk to me at all.”
Hazel tried not to laugh, but she did as she agreed. “You’re right.”
Pastor Coggins gestured for her to come into his office.
“No. That’s okay. I just wanted to say goodbye. I’m leaving the Portland area. And I wanted to drop something off with you. I don’t want to interrupt your busy schedule.”
He leaned a little closer to her. He smelled of Old Spice and coffee.
“Ms. Jamison, I’m stuck on point two of this week’s message. Your interruption is a godsend, actually.”
Hazel tried to think of something to say in reply, but nothing came to mind that wasn’t sort of silly or awkward.
“So, then,” he continued. “Where are you moving to?”
And again, Hazel was not sure of what to say. She had not formulated a concise answer to that question.
“Well, I’m going to be traveling for a while. And I’m not really sure where I’ll stop.”
Pastor Coggins’s face warmed and his eyes seemed to be alive with compassion and understanding. Hazel realized how corny that sounded in her head, but that was how he looked.
Maybe I should tell him a bit more than that.
“You see, my mother passed away a little while ago…”
Pastor Coggins reached out and took her hand.
“I am so sorry to hear that. Did she ever come here to church with you? Had I ever met her?”
Hazel glanced into his office and he read the subtle sign.
“Please, let’s sit for just a minute,” he said.
He did not sit behind his desk, with a stack of open books piled in several mounds, but instead took the other guest chair in front of the desk.
“She was not a churchgoer, Pastor,” Hazel began. “She never seemed to have any sympathy for it. I told her about it—faith and all that—but she sort of dismissed it. I mean, she listened to me. She said she understood. But when I’m being cynical, I think she was simply placating me. But maybe she did get it. Maybe.”
Hazel felt the hint of tears and pushed them aside.
“She was kind of an old hippie…Mother Earth and nuts and berries and all you need is love, you know?”
The pastor nodded.
“I have a brother much like that. A free spirit, he claims, but he is the least free of any person I know, because he keeps having to find freedom again and again. Nothing stays. He’s always searching.”
Hazel nodded.
“But that’s my story, not yours,” he said.
Hazel wiped at her cheek, preventing the one tear that escaped from streaking down her face. “Then you understand.”
The pastor did not say a word but waited for Hazel to speak, and then she did, and in a torrent she told him of her life and her mother’s death and finding the stock and quitting her job and finding the picture of her mother’s wedding when all these years she had been told that she had never married, and about Hazel’s quiet…no, boring life at the insurance agency, and now that she had money, she was going to travel like her mother always wanted to and maybe find out more about the man in the wedding photo, and if she could do that, then maybe she would come back, or maybe she would just settle down wherever that happened to be and start over.
The pastor listened, his eyes not condemning or judging, but just listening, the hint of an understanding smile on his face.
“So I sold my condo—it closes tomorrow—and then I’m driving down the Pacific Coast Highway. I can’t believe it is so close and I have never seen it.”
Then Pastor Coggins did smile.
“You’ll love the drive. It is beautiful.”
And Hazel reached into her jacket and pulled out the envelope.
“I want to give this to you. In memory of my mother, I guess. She wouldn’t have done it, but I want to do something for her. Maybe you could use it for those apartments you have for…is it…the homeless?”
“Low-income, actually.”
“Yes, those.”
He took the envelope and slipped his finger under the flap. Hazel hadn’t expected that, but he would have found out soon enough.
His eyes widened when he saw the amount.
“Fifty thousand dollars is a very, very generous gift, Ms. Jamison. I’m almost speechless. And you never hear those words from a pastor.”
“I want her money, some of it, to do some good. She loved this city. And she did have a heart for those who were down on their luck.”
Pastor Coggins put the envelope on his desk.
“You’re sure she wasn’t a believer?”
“I told her about church…and the Bible. She was kind and didn’t disagree, but I think she didn’t really want to hear. I don’t think she wanted to change.”
The pastor let silence fill the room. Hazel took a few deep breaths.
“I’ve taken up enough of your time, Pastor Coggins. I should go.”
He reached out and put his hand on her forearm, gently holding her back.
“You seem unsettled. If there is anything I’m good at, it’s spotting an unsettled soul. Probably because I recognize my past self in that condition.”
Hazel looked on the verge of being lost, a little lost—not completely, but a little.
“Maybe. I don’t know if leaving everything and being a gypsy is the…you know, the ‘Christian’ thing to do.”
“You want me to pray with you?” the pastor asked.
“Really? But I’m not a member here or anything.”
Pastor Coggins put his other hand on Hazel’s other arm, holding her.
“Do you know God? Do you know Jesus?”
It was obvious that Hazel was scared, scared of being asked that question, those questions.
“I do. I do. But maybe…maybe not as well as I should.”
Pastor Coggins waited and then spoke, carefully, softly, and slowly.
“While you search, continue to search for Jesus. He knows you’re looking. Keep searching. Keep praying. You’ll find the truth.”
“I will. I really will. Pray, I mean.”
And then Pastor Coggins began to pray, about safety, about traveling mercies, about blessings…and many other things, of that Hazel was certain, but by the time she reached the church door, she could not remember a single word.
Yet she felt totally light and free and clean and hopeful, for the first time in a long time, perhaps ever. Hopeful.
That is such a wonderful word. Hopeful.
And as she opened the massive front door of the church, the pastor handed her a Bible.
“My name and cell phone number are written in the front. Anytime, day or night, call me if you have a question. I mean that.”
Hazel turned and gave him a quick hug, then hurried down the steps to her Quest and then on to her two-room suite at the Embassy Suites, thinking about the hotel’s complimentary chocolate chip cookies.