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  Two months previous President Clasp had felt impressed to open up Thelma’s Way to the good word of the gospel. There had been some big problems with apostasy in the area, and the Church felt that full-time missionaries would be able to help reactivate and reconstruct what Elder Boone referred to as the crumbling Thelma’s Way Ward.

  Elder Boone had opened this area with Elder Frates, whom I was replacing. Elder Frates had not done very well here in Thelma’s Way. He just didn’t have the patience to put up with these laid-back country folks, having come directly from a rather affluent “Seven-Habits” family in Orem, Utah. Elder Frates couldn’t handle everyone’s casualer-than-thou attitude toward life.

  During his second week in Thelma’s Way, Elder Frates had had his parents Fed-Ex fifty day planners for him to distribute among the locals. Fed-Ex brought them in by motorcycle, and Elder Frates distributed them to the desperately disorganized Saints.

  Well, the locals accepted the gift but didn’t exactly understand the application of pen and paper planning. A couple of the women in town propped their floral day planner binders up in the front windows of their homes for decoration, and some of the men found that they came in handy when a body needed something soft to sit on. A boy by the name of Digby Heck had collected a few of the unused ones and incorporated them in the construction of his small rock fort down by the Girth River.

  The infraction that got Frates’s goat, however, was when far-from-feminine Sybil Porter used her day planner as a place to store her fishing worms. Sybil had emptied the planner’s innards and had been storing worms and soil inside the zippered case.

  “Dark and moist,” she had reasoned.

  Elder Frates lost it. He started yelling and called her a heathen gentile. Sybil in turn picked Elder Frates up and threw him into a muddy hole full of stagnant water. Furious, he pulled himself up, got his bearings, and stormed off to Virgil’s Find, never to return. Elder Boone waited with the Virgil’s Find missionaries until the mission president was able to send me as a replacement.

  “The people here didn’t exactly like Frates,” Elder Boone said, exercising diplomatic restraint.

  “Great,” I said, pulling at the long grass we were sitting in.

  “Life’s a little slower in Thelma’s Way, and the work’s a little different here than in the rest of the mission.”

  “Any good things?” I asked hopefully.

  “Church is only two hours long,” he offered. “There aren’t enough active members right now to staff Sunday School.”

  This didn’t seem like a perk. The last thing we needed was more free time. I couldn’t see clearly how we would be able to fill our days here in Thelma’s Way as it was.

  “Anything else I should know?” I asked.

  “Everyone here mistrusts each other. The local apostate, Paul, has torn the ward apart, leaving everyone bitter and hurt.”

  And to think I had wanted to go foreign.

  “President Clasp didn’t say anything about all this,” I said, frustrated.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  I was surprised all right.

  “Listen,” Elder Boone said, “if you’re anything like me, after you got your mission call you probably rushed out to the local bookstore or library and read up on Tennessee.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, forget everything you think you learned,” he went on. “Thelma’s Way is not your typical Tennessee town. It’s a bunch of Mormons who got lost on their way to Utah over a hundred years ago. The rest of Tennessee likes to pretend Thelma’s Way doesn’t even exist. You see, Tennessee is the buckle of the Bible Belt, and this little community of inactive Mormons is an unsightly smudge. It’s an embarrassment to the rest of the state.”

  I was embarrassed for them.

  “But you’ll learn to like these people,” Elder Boone added. “On the surface they may seem like misfits, but they’ll grow on you. This is actually an exciting time for the town. This Saturday they’re holding their first pre-planning meeting for the big sesquicentennial celebration.”

  “I saw the signs,” I said. “So when is the actual celebration?”

  “Oh, it’s not for over a year and a half. They just want to get a real jump on it. They’ve been waiting a hundred and fifty years for this.”

  The anticipation was already killing me.

  We sat there for a moment shooing bugs in silence.

  “Ready?” Elder Boone finally asked.

  We stood up, dusted ourselves off, and shuffled slowly into the thriving metropolis of Thelma’s Way.

  4

  Lucy

  Lucy was pretty. Pretty spoiled, pretty demanding, and pretty stubborn. She liked herself as much as she enjoyed the company of those who felt likewise. Lucy spent her days thinking about what she should wear the next day, and her nights dreaming of how she would look when she did. Rumor had it that someplace beneath her expensive clothes and hardened exterior, Lucy did possess a soft spot. As it stood, however, no witnesses had yet stepped up to corroborate such an opinion.

  Lucy’s life was tight, with no give. She had no patience for the unexpected. Surprises to Lucy were like an embarrassing blemish on the glossy lips of life. Today was planned, tomorrow was scheduled, and she already had a pretty good idea of what the next two years of her life would entail.

  Piece by piece.

  Lucy admired her perfect cheekbones as she walked past the hall mirror and into her bedroom. She closed her door and took a few minutes to write down the day in her diary. Journal keeping was more than a commandment to Lucy, it was an accurate way to chronicle her remarkable existence. She knew she couldn’t possibly count on some future historian’s doing justice to her story.

  After one full page of writing, Lucy closed the diary and changed into her pajamas. She then sat on the edge of her bed and read the letter she had received from Trust. The letter was simple, with three spelling errors and tired penmanship. Trust would have to do better if he had any hopes of her waiting around for him.

  Lucy sighed. The moment seemed to call for it, and she liked her moments to be traditional and normal. She folded the letter up and stuck it into her stationery drawer.

  Lucy liked Trust. He had been gone for only three weeks, but already she was considering missing him. Trust was tall, blue-eyed, and handsome in a rustically un-oafish way. Trust was also the only Mormon her age that Lucy could even tolerate, and her life plans called for a Mormon. Southdale didn’t offer too many great options. Lucy would settle for Trust. Sure, he was a little rough around the edges, but she could mold him into someone truly worthy of her love.

  Lucy was confident that Trust liked her. For years he had existed with an eye single to her glory. She could make him blush like a modest Mormon in a nudist camp simply by calling his name slowly. Trust tripped over himself constantly in her presence, subtly announcing to the world that he was enamored of her. He had asked her out a thousand times, and she had replied no almost as many, issuing a yes on only a few occasions.

  Despite all the no’s, Lucy knew Trust would keep asking. In two years, when he returned home from his mission, she would size him up. If he had improved in the ways she thought he should, then maybe she would utter another yes and usher in the beginning of what could be a lasting relationship.

  Piece by piece.

  She brushed her blonde hair for ten minutes. Then she studied her blue eyes in the mirror next to her bed. She was beautiful.

  “Maybe Trust isn’t good enough,” she said to herself as she kneeled down to recite the same prayer with which she had vainly petitioned God for the last couple of years.

  After her prayer, she laid down and pulled her comforter up to her neck. It wasn’t terribly late, but she closed her eyes and beckoned sleep. She had two of her more important college classes tomorrow, and she wanted to make sure she got enough rest.

  Sleep smothered Lucy like a big warm cat.

  5

  Thelma’s Way,
Tennessee

  I tried to smile as Elder Boone and I shuffled into town along the small footpath. I squinted, as if doing so might mercifully pull hidden houses out from the surrounding hills and drag them into the clearing. We came to a stop at the center of town or, more appropriately, the pit. I sang the words to “Called to Serve” over and over in my mind, hoping it would help.

  We were standing in front of a small boardinghouse and store. There was a big poster tacked to the front of the store informing everyone about the distant sesquicentennial celebration. Two older men sat on the front porch staring at us. One was extremely heavy—heavy beard, heavy glance, and heavy stature. He sat upon that porch as if he had been destined to do so, his large, fuzzy face flushed simply from sitting. The other elderly man was as thin as the wooden chair he was pinched into. His puckered-up head bobbed and dipped with each rocking motion, and a smoking pipe hung from his sliver-like lips. His pitch-black pupils looked like magnets, each one attracted to the other and coming together at the top of his nose. The heavy gentleman fanned himself with a faded hat, seeking relief from the warm afternoon.

  “Hello,” I said like some great explorer presenting himself to the natives. Disappointed, I presume.

  Elder Boone introduced us. “This is Roswell Ford,” he said, pointing to the skinny man, “and this is Feeble, his brother,” he went on, indicating the heavy one. “They’re twins.”

  They both sniffed the air, as if my presence had presented a new scent.

  “Bet he’s the new elder,” Roswell said to Feeble. They then turned back to whatever it was they were talking about before. It had something to do with possum fur.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said to no one, thinking how very un-twinlike they looked.

  In front of the boardinghouse, the footpath widened to the size of a large dirt road, circling around the house and then running off in a couple of different directions. It made this place the center of town, the crossroads of the backwoods. To the east was our church building, a big, run-down wooden cabin with a new sign out front announcing the meeting times. It had a bell on top and a roof made of mismatched pieces of rough wood and sheet metal. Its wooden walls were dry and cracking, and weeds filled the flowerpots that were sitting out front. The entire thing had “service project” written all over it.

  To the west of the boardinghouse was a school. It was flat-roofed and leaned to one side. It had no front door, so I could easily see inside. Each desk was currently occupied by a wiggling child. A short woman with thick arms was standing in front of a chalkboard pronouncing the word “offspring.”

  I looked away from the school toward the sprawling meadow. It was full of wildflowers and weeds, and stitched with small paths where people had trampled down the growth to move across it. Two rusted and rotting pioneer-type wagons lay in the center of the meadow. Their metal bindings were bent and corroded, their wooden bodies splintered and dry.

  Elder Boone saw me gazing at the wagons and spoke. “That’s sort of the town park,” he said. “During lunch and recess the school kids play on those.”

  “Fun,” I commented dryly.

  Elder Boone pointed to a small, outhouse-looking shack off in the distance. “That’s Wad’s shop,” he informed me. “He’s the town barber.”

  “Wad?”

  “You’ll understand once you meet him.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to understand.

  “He cuts the missionaries’ hair for free,” Elder Boone added.

  What a perk, I thought.

  Way past Wad’s place was a bridge that spanned the mouth of the river, looking like an awkward set of braces. Though the bridge was far away from the boardinghouse, I could see that it was burnt and unusable. I didn’t have the courage to ask what the story behind it was.

  We picked up our feet and walked past the church and then past a small cemetery that lay between the church and what turned out to be our house. The cemetery ran back and over beyond our place, touching the river with its backside. Headstones and flowers dotted its layout like a poorly finished paint-by-number. In the middle of the cemetery was a big cement mausoleum with the name “Watson” carved into its top. The mausoleum was surrounded by trees and bushes, and in front of it stood a large statue of a woman. It looked to me like more people had died here in Thelma’s Way than had lived.

  Our place was wedged between the cemetery and the river. It was a small cabin with very little besides two beds and a hard dirt floor. There was a round table to eat on and a washbasin with a mirror above it. In the center of it all was a black iron stove for cooking and heating the place. A thick quilt was hanging on a wire, providing some privacy to whoever was standing behind it.

  “Primitive,” I observed.

  “Home sweet home,” Elder Boone clarified.

  “Where do we keep our food?” I asked, noticing that there was no refrigerator.

  “In the winter we can hang it out the windows, but for now we keep it over at the boardinghouse. Roswell and Feeble don’t mind.”

  I thought maybe I did.

  “We can shower at the boardinghouse and do our laundry over at Bishop Watson’s place,” Elder Boone continued. “It’s not perfect, but hey, President Clasp just opened this area back up.”

  In my humble opinion, the area should have remained closed. This was nowhere, nothing, and no way all wrapped into one. This was the edge of the earth, the end of civilization, the dropping-off point for all things backward and isolated. Dirt floors, wood walls, and bugs the size of those in any foreign mission flashed before my eyes as I tried to find the silver lining in this very dark cloud. I pretended I was in some exotic country, living out in the uncharted forest. It helped a little.

  “Toilet’s out back,” Elder Boone said. “And all mail gets delivered to the boardinghouse. President Clasp promised he would look into making improvements on this place, but I can’t imagine either of us being here long enough to see any of them.”

  Elder Boone was skinny—too skinny. He had green eyes and a posture that the elitely prim would have been complimentary toward. He stood straight, walked straight, and talked straight. At the moment, however, I wished that he would make up a few crooked lies to help disguise the unpleasant truth. The truth being that I was stuck in Thelma’s Way for at least a month.

  I took a few steps into the cabin and set my backpack down on the bed. I was just about to sit down myself when a horrible noise rang out from outside. It sounded as if someone had just sucker-punched a hyena. The noise grew louder and louder until it eventually ended up on our doorstep, taking the shape of a little blonde girl with long braids and big feet. She was wearing a small, baggy dress and ankle-high boots, and her big head rotated in circles as she hollered.

  “Elders, my dad is . . . ! He needs . . . !!”

  Elder Boone grabbed the girl by the arm. “Calm down, Narlette,” he ordered.

  Narlette? This town needed a sensible baby-name book.

  “But my,” she wailed, “my . . . it’s awful!”

  She had that right.

  “There’s water in that pitcher, and a cup!” Elder Boone instructed me loudly, pointing over his shoulder.

  I looked. Against the wall was a small shelf with a big bowl, a pitcher, and a glass on it. I grabbed the pitcher, quickly poured a glass of water, and ran back to my companion.

  “Give it to her,” he shouted.

  Had I taken a second to think about it, I would have administered it differently. But, caught up in the movement of the moment, I threw the water into her face.

  For a second she was silent. Then the calm was shattered as her young brain instructed her small vocal cords to stop holding back. She wailed, hollered, screamed, and yelped all in one incessant and steady shriek.

  “To drink!” Elder Boone snapped. “Give it to her to drink!”

  It was, of course, too late for that.

  Elder Boone picked the girl up and set her on his bed. “Narlette,” he said kindly, “I can�
��t help you unless you calm down.”

  She looked at me with dislike and took in air. “My father is hurt bad,” she finally managed to say.

  “Should we get a doctor?” I asked, wanting to help.

  “Not the bloody kind of hurt,” she cried, shaking water off her like a dog. “Satan’s got him again.”

  “Let’s go,” Elder Boone said authoritatively. He took Narlette’s hand and pulled her out the door. I considered just waiting around and resting while he went out, but then I remembered I was a missionary. I will go; I will do. For the next two years I would be tied to my companion.

  We stomped past the cemetery. We stomped past the church. We stomped past the un-identical twins Roswell and Feeble Ford. Feeble shifted his weight and yelled out, “Things okay, Narlette?”

  “Daddy’s in trouble again,” she yelled back, having regained her composure.

  “Tell him hello,” he offered.

  We crossed into the meadow and wove down one of the stamped-out trails. The long meadow stretched on for a few hundred feet along the river. Then came the trees, followed by the slope of the mountains. We hiked up through the forest, Narlette leading the way.

  We soon came to a big home with a nice new roof and a freshly painted porch. There was a picture of Christ taped up in one of the front windows, and a dog with only two legs lay on the ground. The dog was chewing on something that I couldn’t identify, although at first glance it sort of reminded me of my homesick stomach—mangled.

  Narlette led us back around her house and up to a good-sized chicken coop. Loud fowl and colorful language came from within. We stopped a few steps away and just stood there listening.

  “Brother Heck,” Elder Boone finally hollered.

  There was a brief pause, then an answering yell, “Who’s out there?”

  “It’s the missionaries. Your daughter brought us.”