Mercies and Miracles Read online

  She regarded him for a long moment. “Huh,” she said, and bent her head so that her long hair fell forward to hide her face. He knew he was dismissed.

  * * *

  It was Tuesday night, the bishop’s customary night in his office at church for interviews and other business. His counselor Robert Patrenko was there, as well as ward clerk Joseph Perkins and executive secretary Dan McMillan. Sister Rhonda Castleberry had brought over a Crockpot full of chili and a pan of cornbread, and the four men took a break to enjoy it, using the counter in the clerk’s office for a dining table.

  “Brethren, how’re your families doing, with all that’s happening in the world?” the bishop asked, as he ladled a second serving of chili into his plastic bowl.

  “Kind of nervous,” Bob Patrenko replied. “My wife’s still glued to the TV. Seems like that’s how she deals with tragedies and wars and such has to keep facing it and learning all she can about what happened. I can’t take any more, after a while. It brings me down.”

  The bishop nodded. “I think Trish watches a good bit of the coverage during the day, but she doesn’t want the kids seeing those images over and over, so we’ve been doing other things in the evenings. Normal things. It helps that school has started, so Jamie and Tiff at least have homework to keep them occupied. I’m pretty sure Mal’s too young to know what’s going on. How about your family, Dan?”

  “We try to just watch the news, maybe once a day. It’s too intense to follow all the time, especially with Joanie expecting. Sure sad, though. Kinda puts a pall over everything, you know? Hard to get excited about sports, or much of anything.”

  “That’s pretty much how I’ve felt, too,” the bishop agreed. “It’s almost like that big gray cloud from the towers has found its way into all our lives and sort of sapped the color out. I reckon with time, we’ll feel better. I just keep thinking about all those folks whose lives are forever changed. My heart goes out to them.”

  “And mine,” agreed Joseph Perkins. “What we oughta do, maybe, is organize some kind of humanitarian aid project for the ward I mean, they say there isn’t a whole lot we can do, but if nothing else, it might make our folks feel a little better to try to do something.”

  The bishop nodded. “Ladies are way ahead of us on that,” he said. “They sent off a big packet of quilts for the Ground Zero workers to wrap up in while they’re on break. And our contributions to humanitarian aid through the Church have increased dramatically, haven’t they, Joseph?”

  “Yes sir, they sure have. Been amazing to me how much some folks have come up with. You know who I’m worried about, though, is the Jernigans. Have you seen them yet, Bishop?”

  The bishop shook his head. “I haven’t. They’re still in their high-security, lockdown mode. I’ve talked to Ralph a few times, but he doesn’t feel secure enough yet to venture out of his place. It’s hard to talk him out of his fears, because all this has done is reinforce his worst ones, bless his heart. He’s not at all sure there won’t be terror attacks here in Fairhaven or right out there on his own land, for that matter.”

  “Well, nobody’s real sure of anything yet, you know? I can see how people like Ralph could get really scared,” remarked Dan. “You think about it if terrorists can hijack a plane and fly it into the Pentagon, and two more into the Twin Towers, it does give you the feeling that just about anything could happen, just about anywhere, like the fourth plane that those good folks diverted into that field in Pennsylvania. Whole thing makes me nervous too, to tell you the truth.”

  “Sure it does. Makes us all uneasy,” the bishop agreed. “But you and I keep coming to church and going to work and doing things with our families, in spite of it all. Ralph isn’t near strong enough to do that, and I don’t know if Linda’s much better. I feel like we need to pray for them especially and anybody else in our ward who might be traumatized by what happened last month as well as for our president and the country in general. Of course, I’m sure we’ve all been praying along those lines ever since it happened, but let’s make it a part of our purpose for fasting next Sunday, all right? Bob, will you pass that along to Sam?”

  * * *

  Jamie was in the kitchen, making himself a piece of toast and a glass of chocolate milk, when his father came home that night.

  “Mmm, that looks good maybe a tall glass of that will quench the fire of Sister Castleberry’s chili,” the bishop remarked, reaching for a glass of his own. “How you doin’, Jamie, my man?”

  “Fine. Hey, Dad, some guy’s coming over to see you in a few minutes.”

  “Tonight?” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “Somebody from the ward?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’ ’hink so,” he mumbled around a mouthful of buttered toast, which he finally swallowed. “It sounded like that Big Mac guy your friend you went to school with.”

  “Oh, is that right? Wonder what he’s doing in Fairhaven.” The bishop stirred his milk and drained the cool beverage in one long series of swallows. He exhaled. The fire did seem to have abated. He carried his briefcase to the rolltop desk in one end of the dining room that served as his home office, then wandered back toward the kitchen. “What’re the girls doing?”

  “Mal’s in bed, I reckon, and maybe Tiff is, too. Mom was trying to help her cut out somethin’ to sew for her homemaking class, and Tiff kept pitchin’ fits about how hard it was.”

  The bishop smiled. “How’s your homework situation under control?”

  “Yeah, I reckon. I had to write a what d’you call it an essay. Yuck.”

  “What about?”

  “Well, see, that’s the thing! It’s s’posed to be about how nine-eleven affected me personally and I don’t reckon I really know. I mean, I don’t get exactly who those people are, and why they did what they did. How come they hate us? And how’m I s’posed to feel about it? It didn’t happen to me, but I feel like it did! It keeps bein’ on TV and in the paper, and when I try to go to sleep at night I keep seein’ the explosions and the people running like crazy. I’m plain sick of it.”

  The bishop went to his son and wrapped his arms around him, kissing the top of his light brown buzzed head. “I think you just expressed to me exactly how the things that happened on September eleventh affect you, Jamie. If you can say those things in your paper, about how you’re confused, and tired of it, and feel like it happened to you, then I reckon you’ll have written an honest and good essay.”

  “Yeah? Huh. Maybe I oughta change it some. Thanks, Dad.”

  “Thank you, son, for sharing with me. Remind me to try to explain more about it to you, sometime, okay?” He patted his son’s shoulder as the boy headed toward the stairs. “Not that I understand a whole lot more than you do,” he added softly.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  “our mutual friendship renew”

  Peter MacDonald didn’t ring the doorbell. He didn’t have to. The bishop saw him coming and went out on the front porch to greet him with a hearty handshake that turned into a hug.

  “Mac! What brings you to town, man?”

  “Finding us a house to rent. I’m moving the family home.”

  “Serious? Here, come inside, I’ll get you something to drink. Are you hungry?”

  “No, no, I’m stuffed. Had dinner with Aunt Mat, and she laid it on like Thanksgiving.”

  Mac, who topped his friend Jim Shepherd by three inches in height and a good sixty pounds in weight, followed him into the living room and sank gratefully into a comfortable chair. The bishop turned on a table lamp and took a matching chair just beyond its pool of light.

  “I remember Aunt Mat,” he said. “She probably thinks it is an early Thanksgiving, if you’re moving your family back here, within feeding distance.” Mac’s mother’s younger sister, Martha Slidell, known as Aunt Mat, was famous for her bounteous table and her love of cooking for people.

  Mac chuckled. “That’s about right. Well, you may recall, Jimbo, I threatened to do this several months ago
.”

  “I do recall. You were getting a little anxious about life in the big city and its impact on your family. So does September eleventh have anything to do with this?”

  “It just capped the decision. I don’t know, Jim I really like Atlanta. We’ve all enjoyed living there. But the kids just haven’t been thriving the way I want them to. Petey’s getting ideas I’d rather he didn’t have, and Ruthie’s a shy little gal who gets overlooked and pushed aside too easily. The one I feel bad for is Ruthanne I’m really uprooting her from a garden she was blooming very happily in, and I’m sorry. But everybody’s so jumpy, now. There’ve been so many warnings that terrorists could target the larger cities in the east, and even CNN’s had some threats. You know they’re based in Atlanta. This anthrax thing has everybody spooked, too. Taken all together, I figured I had reasons enough to go ahead and do what my heart had been telling me for some time come home.”

  “Well, I, for one, am delighted,” the bishop assured him. “We’re kind of spooked around here, too, of course but probably not to the extent that folks in the bigger cities are.” With a couple of notable exceptions, he admitted to himself, thinking of the Jernigans. “Have you found a place to live? And what about your church?”

  “My assistant pastor is a fine and capable fellow. He’ll be able to take care of things until they can issue a call to a new senior pastor. In fact, they may even petition to have him promoted. He’s quite popular. I have enough saved to live on for a while, and I’m sure I can get something to do until a church opens up in this area. I know Pastor Hollowell at Friendship Christian is due to retire before too long, and maybe his congregation would be happy to have a hometown boy minister to them. And yes, I think I’ve found a house that Ruthanne will be able to live with, at least on a temporary basis. It’s a new section of town at least to me, I hadn’t seen it before. Over on the northwest, just beyond Indian Creek Park.”

  The bishop nodded. He knew the area. It was where the Padgett home was located.

  “Actually, there are quite a few places up for sale and for rent,” Mac continued. “That’s because of the pull-outs, I assume?”

  “Yep,” his friend confirmed. “It hit the local economy pretty hard, having ChemSoft leave and the base close in the same year. We still have unemployed folks in our congregation who haven’t worked since one or the other facility closed.”

  “I suppose that would be quite a blow, in a town the size of Fairhaven. Do you know of anything else on the horizon any businesses looking to locate here?”

  The bishop nodded. “I attended a Chamber of Commerce meeting last week, and they mentioned some interest on the part of an electronic parts plant I can’t recall the name of the company, but they said the facility would create at least four hundred jobs in the area, and they’d sure be welcome. Wal-Mart’s showing some interest, too. I don’t know I think we’ll pull out of the slump okay it just takes some time. We already have a couple of new restaurants in town, in spite of everything, and they seem to be prospering.”

  “Your store still doing a healthy business?”

  “Pretty good, so far, although there’s more competition from the big guys all the time. We keep trying to find ways to compete. My secretary thinks we ought to put in a deli bar, and sell salads and sandwiches at lunchtime. I’m considering it.”

  “Would that take a big outlay of money?”

  Jim nodded. “Considerable. But it may be worth it. We remodeled a couple of years ago, and we’ve sure been glad we did that. Have you seen the store, since then?”

  “I don’t believe I have. I still have memories of wavy old hardwood floors, dim lighting, and ceiling fans.”

  The bishop laughed. “Oh, man all those features are gone with the wind. We’re real uptown, now. You’ll have to stop in and check us out.” He smiled. “Of course, Ruthanne may prefer one of the chain stores, so I won’t hold you to anything.”

  “Ruthanne shops sales, so I expect she’ll get to know every market in town. How’s your family doing, Jim?”

  The bishop nodded. “We’re blessed to be doing very well, right now. All busy, of course, going in five different directions at once.”

  “And how’s your church calling bishop, is it?”

  “Bishop it is. It’s about a challenge and a half, I’d say. But it’s good. I’m sure you know what I mean when I say it’s good to be able to get to know the people really well, and try to help wherever there’s need. And somehow, since I became bishop, there seems to be a little different sort of line of communication with the Lord, if that makes sense. I’m sure it’s because He’s mindful of everyone’s needs, and He wants to be sure I’m mindful of them, too. Sometimes I can look out over the congregation and just know who’s having difficulty, or who I should make an effort to talk with. That’s been quite an eye-opener for me.”

  Peter MacDonald nodded thoughtfully. “It’s amazing to me, how your church is able to meet the needs of its members as effectively as it does, without a full-time, trained clergy.”

  The bishop laughed. “I don’t know about trained, but it feels pretty much like full-time, most weeks,” he said. “But the secret has been to surround myself with good men and women, and delegate like crazy. We also have our home and visiting teaching programs, and they’re a major help to a bishop. I certainly couldn’t get around to visiting everyone once a month, so I’m grateful to have other eyes and ears on the job.”

  Big Mac’s eyes narrowed, “And the members do they follow through? Actually make these visits, and become that involved with the families assigned to them?”

  “For the most part, they do pretty well.”

  “Don’t the people being visited feel like Big Brother is watching them, just ready to report any irregularities?”

  The bishop considered. “Some may feel that way, but I hope not it should all be done in a spirit of love and helpfulness, not in an effort to be informants or some kind of standards-police!” He grinned. “In fact, if I see that a home teacher is getting critical of someone he visits, he can expect a change of assignment.”

  “Pretty ingenious system you guys have going,” responded Mac with an answering grin. “I may have to adopt some of your ideas in my next church.”

  * * *

  “Who were you talking to?” Trish asked sleepily, as Jim crept into bed a short time later.

  “Peter MacDonald. He’s moving his family back to Fairhaven.”

  “Mac and Ruthanne are moving back here? Why?”

  “I think he feels this is a better place for his kids than the big city, especially after nine-eleven.”

  “Oh. Well, I agree with him, there. It’ll be nice to have them back.”

  “It will,” he murmured, raising himself on one elbow to bend over and kiss his wife’s cheek.

  * * *

  Though what he had told his friend Peter MacDonald was true, about the members doing a fairly good job in visiting and home teaching, the bishop of the Fairhaven Ward had already decided to institute a new and more ambitious home teaching program than had been implemented in recent years. Ward clerk Joseph Perkins had culled from the membership records a list of those who were less-active or part-member families, or who had just gradually lost contact, or whose whereabouts were unknown, but were believed to still be in the area. It was the bishop’s sincere opinion that of the people who had once been involved with the Church, or believed in its precepts, most would still have some vestige of interest or belief, even if they had become estranged for one reason or another. He and his counselors and clerks had prayed about the individuals or families whose names appeared on that list, and had divided it into home teaching lists for themselves this in addition to the families they already were assigned to visit.

  On the bishop’s list was Hazel Buzbee, an elderly woman who had been baptized along with her grandson some twenty-eight years earlier, and who had drifted into inactivity after the grandson moved away. The bishop barely remembered her, and he found his
way with some difficulty to her modest home, located east of town, at the end of a red clay road that dissected some corn and soybean fields. Hazel apparently didn’t have a telephone at least, not one that had a listed number. Maybe she had a cell phone, he reflected but, looking at her greenish-gray, weathered little house, he somehow doubted that. There was a small garden patch on the sunniest side of the yard, where a few late tomatoes still hung heavy and red on their lush plants. A row of collard greens stood stiffly silver-green beyond them their color reminding him of the house itself.

  A long-legged dog of some hunting variety mix lay stretched out on the covered front porch, and a gray cat hunched in the porch swing, barely deigning to open its eyes at his approach.

  “Hey, boy,” he said softly to the dog, who sat up and thumped its long tail against the board floor. “Hey, fella is your missy home?”

  He climbed the rather shaky steps to the porch and called out. “Hello! Sister Buzbee?”

  He knocked on the door, and heard the knocks reverberate throughout the rooms inside. “Hello?” he called again.

  “I don’t want none,” a cracked, elderly, but very loud voice shouted behind him. He turned to see a bent old woman carrying a shotgun tucked comfortably across her hip with one ropy arm. “I don’t read magazines nor papers, I don’t want a phone, and I don’t need no insurance. I don’t want to put sidin’ nor paint on my house, and I’m not gonna live long enough to need a new roof. So, whatever you’re a-sellin’, I don’t want it.”

  The bishop swallowed, and made himself smile. “I’m not selling anything, Sister Buzbee. I’m Bishop Jim Shepherd from the LDS Church in Fairhaven. How are you today?”

  “You’re who?” Sister Buzbee shouted, and the bishop realized the extent of her deafness.

  He shouted back, feeling foolish, but neither the dog nor the cat seemed to mind, and apparently there wasn’t anyone else about.

  “Bishop Shepherd, from the LDS Church. I’ve come to see you, Sister Buzbee!”

  “Mormon?” she inquired, and he nodded vigorously.