15
Surely, Bishop Isaac Bender must have received David’s letter by now. He’d been coming to the store early for the last week, hoping there might be a phone call from Isaac. He assumed Isaac would be like most Amish farmers, who went to the phone shanty sometime each day to handle messages. He wanted to speak privately to Isaac, before the store opened and the old men arrived to play checkers, though few of them came now that his mother was reorganizing the store.
David had met Isaac Bender at last year’s ministers’ meeting. Isaac was in his midseventies, though he didn’t seem at all old. He stood over six feet, with thick, tousled hair, a chest-slapping beard, and outsized hands that you could easily imagine holding an ax to split firewood. He was calm and confident, a man used to fixing things.
Isaac had become a bishop when he was young, only twenty-seven years old. He had a reputation for meddling in church districts, in a good way, and was often consulted when problems couldn’t be solved. He believed it usually came down to problems with the leadership.
“Even a saint is tempted by an open door,” Isaac had told the men at last year’s meeting. “Ordained leaders are susceptible to all kinds of temptations. But when leaders succumb to sin, our churches tend to be almost entirely unequipped to do anything about them.”
Isaac had observed that some ordained leaders were often not recognized to be dangerous until far too much damage had been done. Even if problems were identified, the follow-through was frequently abysmal. He wanted to do something about this. He wasn’t shy about telling churches when they had let a problem fester too long. He didn’t agree with the typical Plain way: Don’t ask, don’t tell. He was willing to do what everyone else was extremely reluctant to do: To take to task a fellow minister. And he did it more thoroughly and dispassionately than others could.
David vividly remembered points Isaac had made last fall, never thinking he would be experiencing them: “Disasters do not simply occur. They evolve. A single failure rarely leads to harm. Just like in anything else, decisions compound themselves. No sooner have you taken one fork in the road than another and another and another comes upon you.”
Yes. Yes! That was just what had happened in Stoney Ridge. One decision made by Elmo set Freeman down a path that led to more of the same.
Isaac had tried to persuade the ministers to take warning signs seriously. “When you have suspicions about someone, you must pay attention. ‘He’s a fine minister,’ people will say, ‘but sometimes he has his moments.’”
What are those moments? Isaac pressed the group of men to consider that question, but no one volunteered anything. “There are certain kinds of behavior that should alert people that something may be seriously wrong with a person. Outbursts of anger, neglect of responsibilities, abusive behavior, overstepping boundaries. Too often, those behaviors are shrugged off. The facts are hard to stare in the face.”
And that’s where David was now. Staring such facts right in the face. Freeman Glick’s stone-cold face.
On this afternoon, after a morning of cold rain, it had turned into a beautiful, sunny day. David held the store’s door open for the UPS driver to maneuver the box-laden dolly inside, when he heard the phone ring in his storeroom. It rarely rang, especially late in the day. He scribbled his name on the UPS receipt and bolted to his desk, rushing to grab the phone. “Hello?”
“Isaac Bender here.” David instantly recognized his gravelly, no-nonsense voice. “I received your letter.”
“Hold on a minute.” David closed his storeroom door behind him, climbed over his desk to sit in his chair, and leaned back. “There. Thank you for calling, Isaac.”
“Tell me more,” Isaac said. “Tell me how this all started. From your perspective.”
“About a year and a half ago, I moved to Stoney Ridge from Ohio.”
“Why there?”
“Two reasons. First, I sensed . . . God’s call to come. And then, the bishop—who, at the time, was Elmo Beiler—wrote and asked if I would consider moving here. I’d met Elmo years ago, and we’d kept in touch.”
“So, you moved your family to Stoney Ridge.”
“Yes. I purchased the old Bent N’ Dent store from someone Elmo knew, and he welcomed me into ministry. I’d been a minister for six years in Ohio.”
“All was well under Elmo’s leadership?”
“It was. It seemed to be, anyway. For the first few months, everything seemed fine. And then I began to get a feeling that something might not be quite right.”
“Go on.”
“It had to do with the working relationship between Freeman Glick and myself. We were both ministers. Elmo and I had grown close, and it seemed as if Freeman resented our friendship. Freeman was Elmo’s nephew by his sister, so I found it hard to believe that he would have any reason to feel competitive with me. Anyway, that’s not important.”
“It might be, David. What made you feel as if he was competing with you?”
“Well, one example might be my sermons. Usually, after a sermon, the other ministers affirm what the minister says. After a few months, instead of affirming, Freeman would correct my sermons and point out what he felt were errors.”
“Was he correct?”
“Every minister should be open to correction.” David fiddled with the pencils sitting in a mug.
Isaac persisted. “Did he have valid points?”
“Elmo didn’t think so. He tried to put an end to it, but Freeman ignored him and continued, every Sunday, to publicly correct my sermons. It became apparent that Elmo didn’t have a way to control Freeman. Then . . . Elmo died last summer. And Freeman became bishop.”
“And what’s happened since then?”
“Freeman picked up where Elmo left off. Over the last year, the church had been losing families and it concerned Freeman, far more than it had bothered Elmo. Freeman began to cut corners to keep young people in the church. He became mildly dictatorial, and wouldn’t tolerate any differing opinions.”
A few months ago, Freeman had used church funds to purchase a tractor for the farmers to use, thinking it would bring benefit to them. Whether or not the use of a tractor would be allowed was one issue, but far more important was the fact that Freeman had used church funds without discussion. David suggested that Freeman confess to the church that he had used the funds, to admit he had done wrong, even if he meant it for the right reasons. Freeman vehemently disagreed. He warned David to never intimate that an ordained leader could be at fault, lest it end up tainting all of them. David had argued with him on that point, stressing that public confessions by the ordained leaders were the most important confessions of all. “We’re fallible human beings,” David had told Freeman. “Possibly, the most fallible of all the church members.”
“At most,” Freeman argued back, “you may say that you’re sorry things didn’t go as well as you had hoped.”
That conversation about confessions was the moment when David fully realized what Elmo had meant when he warned David that there was a “snake in the garden.”
Isaac cleared his throat, snapping David from the past to the present. “In your letter, you said that Freeman’s sister revealed that she had seen him switch the lots.”
“Yes. It was a practice started by Elmo, years ago. He switched the lots to include Freeman, then his wife’s cousin Abraham, then Freeman switched the lots to bring in his brother Levi as a minister. And finally, five or six months ago, he did it again, when it was time to choose a bishop to replace Elmo.”
“Freeman and I.”
David thought Isaac would be stunned speechless, but he didn’t seem at all shocked.
“You don’t seem surprised by this information.”
“Ministers are struggling human beings. Every minister has things he ought to know but has yet to learn, capacities of judgment that will fail, a strength of character that can break. We should expect to be in better company than this, but we shouldn’t be surprised when we encounter sin among us.”
No. That was true. David was well aware of his own sins and shortcomings.
“And since the practice has been revealed, has Freeman shown any repentance?”
“None that is apparent. The Sunday after the revealing, he arrived to preach like it was any other church morning.”
“Then he is trying to manage sin on his own. The only effective remedy for sin is the forgiveness of sin—and only God can forgive sin.”
Yes, David agreed with him. Confession is the way out. No excuses, no rationalizations, no denials.
“So,” David said. “What’s next?”
Isaac cleared his throat. “Saturday is a ministers’ meeting. We will need to bring this up for guidance and discussion.”
“Freeman will be there.”
“And so will I.” Isaac let out a deep sigh. “David, no matter what measures are taken, ministers will always falter, always fail. It isn’t reasonable to expect any of us to be blameless.”
True, David thought, but what is reasonable is that we never cease to aim for it.
Dane Glick’s barn was spotless. Even the tack room was in perfect order. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. Abigail was quite impressed.
Until they went to his cabin.
In front of it were the remnants of a female’s touch: randomly sprawling rosebushes that had managed on their own to survive, a faded whirligig, a pile of stones. Dane noticed what she was looking at. “Memory stones. My mother collected them.”
“Memory stones, as in, from the Old Testament?”
Dane beamed. “Yes. Each one represents an ‘Only God’ event my mother wanted to sear onto our memory.”
He had her hooked. Abigail would like to know more about those memory stones, each one, and about the woman who collected them.
The cabin had steps that led up to a covered porch. Inside, a combined kitchen and den made up the largest room. Along one wall sat a sagging sofa covered with a dark green slipcover. The room was alarmingly cluttered, dusty, and messy, revealing a priority of very poor housekeeping. Cobwebs draped the lines where wall met ceiling, and the wooden floors were as scratched and scarred as those in any one-room schoolhouse she’d ever been in.
And the kitchen. Ora Nisley would be breaking out in hives if he saw this. Dirty dishes piled in the sink, on the tabletop, even on the floor. When had Dane last washed up?
Far more distressing was the condition of Dane’s desk, if you could call it a desk. It was actually an old wooden door placed on top of cinder blocks. Bills were tossed everywhere, a ledger was opened but had only one entry in it, and she gasped when she saw a shoebox filled with uncashed checks. Checks! Made out to Dane Glick.
“But . . . this is your business, isn’t it? Your livelihood?”
“Yes,” he said, removing his hat. “I haven’t quite worked out the kinks in my accounting system.” He rubbed his nose with his knuckles, and his cheeks reddened, which she was starting to diagnose as evidence of embarrassment.
Abigail released a long-suffering sigh. Order was the greatest love in her life. Order and structure. It was unthinkable to her that others didn’t hold those values in similar esteem.
He lifted his eyes to the clock on the wall. “Do you mind if I leave you here for a moment? I need to tend to my animals.”
“Can I help you?”
“No. Those sheep of mine, they spook easily. A stranger might frighten them. Every afternoon, I like to check on each one of them, run a hand over them, make sure they haven’t gotten into anything or hurt themselves. Sheep—they’re not the brightest.” He thumped his hat on his head. “I won’t be too long,” he said as he went out the door, leaving Abigail alone in his cabin.
She was aware that it would be inappropriate to start reorganizing Dane’s muddled mess. She should leave it all alone. But all she could see before her was chaos.
She could hear her sister Laura’s voice in her head: “Do not touch anything. This is not your problem. Fixing his accounting system, without his permission, would be considered a major social blunder.” And Laura would be correct. Abigail suppressed the desire she had to bring order out of chaos.
She stepped up to the window. Her breath fogged the glass and she had to wipe it with her elbow. Dane was walking across the yard, a lightness to every step. She thought she had never known anyone who seemed so thoroughly content. Downright happy, rain or shine, all the time.
Dane hopped over the paddock fence with a bale of timothy hay on his shoulder and started to call his sheep, one by one. She studied him for a long while. Banded together in a tight clump, his sheep lifted their heads at the sound of his voice. She could see the moment it registered in their little sheep brains that they knew this voice, because all at once, they stumbled over each other trying to get to him. A Bible verse danced through her mind, something Uncle David had read aloud that very morning during devotion time: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
She had heard those words before, knew them by heart, but they jumped off the page and came to life as she watched the way Dane’s little flock of sheep recognized him. He knew each sheep, and each sheep knew him. She could hear her uncle’s deep voice: “This, this is the way Jesus loves us, you and me. He is the good shepherd, we are his sheep.”
That was the effect Dane Glick had on her. Things previously left on a page, closed away in a file or a box, kept springing to life. It made her . . . uncomfortable. As Dane scattered the hay around for the sheep to munch on, she turned from the window and felt another jolt as she surveyed the room.
Dane Glick was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how he did not care for his home the way he cared for his animals. She had not thought about this before now, but it was rather interesting to think that Dane might believe structure and organization and cleanliness just happened along. Perhaps there was always a woman in the background, a mother or a sister, who had ensured that these important things occurred for him.
For a few moments she paced nervously around the room, wondering what to do while she waited for Dane to return. She really should just keep pacing and leave the desk alone. Walk away, Abigail. Ignore it. This is not your problem.
She started with the unpaid bills.