Erv, I need to talk to you.” Mark stood at the entry to his boss’s office. The space duplicated Mark’s work area—dark paneling, teetering shelves, musty odor—with about ten more square feet. Minus, of course, the enticing view of the Dumpster. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
Ervin looked up from his computer, where he was no doubt e-mailing Peggy. Since he’d gotten computer savvy in a church staff’s development seminar, he and his wife were known to send each other flirtatious zingers via electronics.
Once, Mark intercepted a love letter by accident. Hey there, hellcat, read the note. What say we chase each other round the room tonight? You let me catch you too quick last time, you little devil!
After that, he opened e-mails from Ervin with a finger ready on the delete key.
“So, you have time today?” Mark said.
“Sure, son.” Ervin rolled across the laminate floor, skidding cowboy boots to a halt in front of his desk. He flipped through a calendar. “Got a meeting in about five minutes. How’s this afternoon for you?”
“Fine. When?”
“Later. After lunch. Say, three?”
Mark didn’t ask what Ervin planned on doing for that long of a lunch break. He didn’t want to know. “I’ll be here.”
Returning to his office, Mark worked awhile, then opened his sack lunch. Less than exciting, but edible. Bread with lukewarm salami and a Coke from the machine. He’d run out of casseroles and had taken to packing his own meals. Better that than reinvoking the interference of the Ladies’ Guild.
At 2:55, he headed back to Ervin’s office. Empty. He asked Letty, “I’m supposed to have a meeting with Ervin?”
Heaving a sigh, she rewrapped waxed paper over her sandwich. Letty snacked on homemade takeout throughout the day. Pickled eggs. Blue cheese on toast. Sardines.
Mark smelled the tuna from his comfortable distance of about four feet. Not pleasant.
Letty handed him a yellow sticky note. “He said to meet you down the hall. Room 125.” She went back to her lunch, picking at it like a feline.
In front of 125, Mark stopped cold. The counseling room. Outside the shut door stood a metal-inscribed sign on a pedestal.
QUIET PLEASE. IN SESSION.
Good God, I’m in counseling. He rapped softly on the door, waiting for the punch line. Surely this was a joke. A mistake. Ervin ushered him in, shaking his hand like a long lost friend. A white-noise machine whirred in one corner and a box of tissues and a Bible rested on a table between two worn leather chairs. An amateur oil painting of a wooded lake dominated one wall. Lakeview.
Ervin sat down and gestured for Mark to do the same. “Thought we’d be more comfortable in here. No phones, no secretaries, no pesky congregants.” Ervin smiled. “It’s one of my favorite hiding places.”
“Good idea.” Tension released from Mark’s shoulders when he realized Ervin hadn’t planned a secret sabotage on his psyche.
“What did you want to talk about?” Ervin rested his palms on his knees, relaxed. Just two guys talking, his posture seemed to say. Not, I’m-about-to-fire-your-sorry-self-because-Dale-Ochs-told-me-to.
Still, looks could be deceiving. Mark knew that from looking in the mirror.
“You know about Mandy. That she’s gone. You’ve probably figured out it’s more than her father being sick. More than a vacation.”
Ervin nodded, quiet.
“I know the board wants me to leave. And maybe I should. But first I need to tell you why,” Mark said. “Why she left in the first place. Why we’ve been having trouble.” The catch in his voice surprised him. He coughed and rubbed his hand on his pants. “It’s not an excuse and I’m not here to beg. But the air needs clearing, like you said.”
“Go ahead.” Ervin leaned back in the chair. “You can trust me.”
Is that so? Mark didn’t voice the doubt aloud. At this point, he had no choice. He just started the telling. Pulled forth what he’d buried deep inside, had hidden away in the darkness in himself.
Maybe in doing so, he prepared his own coffin, paving the way for Dale to replace him. But if Mark was going out, he’d go out honest, with the truth etched on his grave. For the entire world to see.
He raised the chisel and started at the beginning. “We were together before we were married. Do you know what I mean by together? I know we should have waited, and I wanted to, but not enough, and it’s my fault….”
The scent of confession smelled sour and dead. Mark wrinkled his face against it. Each word hurting as he spoke, tugging the truth, bone by bone. “I didn’t leave Houston because of God’s calling at all. I was fired. My best friend looked me in the eye and said, You can’t stay here….”
He pressed on, digging deeper, bringing the darkest parts to light. Unearthing his need to hide, his desire to be perfect. To appear perfect, no matter the cost.
Copper pennies. Take backs.
Little sage, heartbeats floating over him. Gone, without ceremony. No name, unclaimed by a father. Sorrow painted the memory in shades of blue.
Shame forced Mark’s vision to his knees. “And she lost it, the baby. I found her and she was bleeding and she had to go to the hospital….”
He looked at Ervin, expecting condemnation. Some sort of a judgment at all Mark’s deception. The disappointment he’d seen from James Montclair.
Yet, Ervin’s face held the same open expression, like a blank page. Not childlike or gullible at all. Just accepting.
A countenance of grace.
It helped Mark finish what he’d started. To reveal the fault lines that had finally broken him down. “I kept trying to break through, to fix her somehow, but I couldn’t. We didn’t connect anymore, and she left in the van. I don’t think she’s coming back….”
Given air, the past breathed anew. Less scary and not so dark. What had seemed grievous secrets revealed to be… ordinary. The sins of an imperfect soul.
Now emptiness took the place of secrecy. Mark sat back, exhausted. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to say something? Fire me? Call me a hypocrite? Something?”
“Is that what you think you deserve?”
“I don’t know what I deserve. I just want to know what you think.”
“I think you’re an idiot.” Ervin’s eyes sparkled.
“Thanks.” Mark tugged a tissue from the box. For some reason, his nose wouldn’t quit running.
“What matters more than what I think is what you think,” Ervin said. “You’re thinking wrong.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Well, son, being lost is a good way to start getting found. You asked me to tell you something, I will. Ervin Plumley didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.”
“That’s beautiful, Erv. What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the two eyeballs the good Lord gave me sitting smack in the middle of my head. The ones resting in front of my mighty-working brain.”
“And…”
“I’ve been using them, Mark. Don’t you think I knew something was wrong when you two pulled into town? That a guy like you coming to a place like this had to have a history? Your pretty little wife with more pain in her face than anybody has a right to?”
“I didn’t realize.”
“I know. That’s the problem with the invisible elephant. Pretty soon, it’s all you can see. I’ve just been waiting for you to be ready. Willing to admit a giant Dumbo’s stomping around your life.”
“So”—Mark took a shaky breath—“it’s all been for nothing. I’m a fool.”
“Yes, but now you’re a broken fool. I’ll tell you another little secret, Mark.” Ervin leaned forward in a stage whisper. “We’re all fools.” The preacher sat back. “Everybody falls short. Lord says so himself.” He tipped his head toward the Bible on the table. “Likes working with us, I guess. ’Cause the only place to go is up.”
“I can take a leave. Put in my resignation. Maybe I-”
“Maybe now” Ervin interrupted, “you’re ready to be a minister.”
“But when the board finds out… Dale Ochs is ready to see me swing.”
“You let me take care of the board,” Ervin said. “God love ’em, but those goats got more skeletons than the Smithsonian. Yours looks downright puny in comparison.”
“There’s something else.” Mark might as well get it all out now. On the table. Away from his soul, where it tangled him, choking and dark. The last of it. “About Courtney Williams. And me.”
Ervin looked less excited. “Go on.”
“It’s nothing, really. Nothing happened. But it could have, I think. Maybe. More on my part than hers.”
“Be clear. Speak English, boy, and tell me what you’re saying.”
“That I came close to making a really stupid mistake with Courtney Williams. It was my fault. But I didn’t. We didn’t.” By the grace of God and a glass of cold Coke.
Ervin crossed his arms. His brows lowered. No more buffoonery, no trace of a simpleton. “You think it might happen again? The almost stupid mistake?”
Mark looked Ervin dead on and spoke the truth. He found its rhythms easier now. “No.”
“Then watch yourself. You know what they say, ’Take heed, lest you fall.’”
“I will. But there’s a problem. Dale Ochs knows.”
“Dale Ochs couldn’t find his butt with both hands.” Ervin snorted.
“What? I thought you and he-”
“Mark, have you ever thought that part of my job is keeping the peace around here? Making sure everyone has a place and feels valued?”
“Dale Ochs wants my job,” Mark stated the obvious.
“I know, and people in hell want ice water. Don’t get me wrong.” Ervin shook a finger. “Dale Ochs is a fine deacon and we’re glad to have him. But his… talents… are best suited to the board, and that’s it. You get me?”
“I get you.”
“Then that’s all we need to say about that. What’s been said between us, as far as I’m concerned, stays between us.”
“Fine with me.” He accepted Ervin’s handshake. The shadow of James Montclair fell away as new respect and trust dawned in Mark for this West Texas pastor. Not worship, but respect.
“Besides, it’s not about the past, Mark.” Ervin stood.
The head pastor of Lakeview Community Church, a full foot shorter than his associate, strode out of the counseling room with all the authority and vigor of Tom Landry. Leaving Mark no choice but to follow.
“Not what’s gone on before, but what lies ahead.” Ervin increased in volume as he quoted Scripture, walking down the church’s hallway. “We… you, me, the board, all us fools!” He bellowed, tossing a hand in the air to great effect.
Mark could see how the former high-school football coach had taken a Division 3A team to the play-offs eight years running. Precalling, as Ervin liked to say. Mark wondered how much
Ervin’s vocation had actually changed. Different uniforms, different playing field, but the work-encouraging the team to the goal line-stayed the same.
“Our job is to press on. It’s about the future.” Ervin punctuated this with a hearty punch to Mark’s upper arm.
“The future,” Mark echoed, slightly overwhelmed at the idea. Our job. He had a job. Still.
He hadn’t thought much past this point. The meeting, the getting through the truth part. What would face him on the other side? What, he wondered, lies ahead for me? For Mandy?
Ervin actually slapped Mark on the rear as he hustled him through the exterior doors into the church’s chilly parking lot. “Yes, son. The future.” Ervin grasped him on the shoulder.
Son. The nickname, though familiar, took on new meaning. An invisible mantle of approval slipped over his shoulders. An honor he thought lost forever, when the El Camino pulled away.
“Your future,” Ervin continued. “And I believe it’s high time you went out to get it.” The glass door clanged behind Ervin, leaving Mark alone underneath the overcast sky.
He couldn’t be sure. Had Ervin said to go out and get it?
Or her?