THAT SUNDAY DAVID SAT in the first row of the Grove Drive-In Church of God to watch Darren Whitbrend deliver his guest sermon.
The young minister looked fuller in his robes. More authoritative. David had noted Whitbrend’s elevator shoes earlier in the vestry where they had enrobed. David could feel the worry coming off Whitbrend. Downcast eyes, tight jaw, few words.
Which was fine with David, who felt his own body on the verge of falling apart.
Barbara held one of his clammy hands. Wendy the other. Rachel lay on Barbara’s lap wrapped in a blanket. Two-year-old Matthew sat beside his mother, frowning his way into a bowel movement.
David watched with envy. He hadn’t had one since talking to Hambly, then Howard, on Thursday. Nothing would stay down long enough. He had drunk half a coffee mug of pink antacid earlier, trying to keep down his breakfast of white sandwich bread. Pretty much the same for dinner the night before. Almost no sleep. Hours of wideawake worry that the cops would see through Linda Langton’s words. That Howard would face a lineup and hang his final alibi on David. Then more hours of sweat and stomach pain, right on the cusp of sleep, as his conscience wriggled back into its deepest crannies to retrieve his most trivially shameful moments and present them to him for…what? These were things he hadn’t even thought about for years. The time he slugged Clay for breaking a gallon mustard jar he wanted for butterflies. The time he told Lydia Maxwell she was the ugliest girl he’d ever seen. The time he purposefully overcooked Barbara’s steak because she liked it rare and had called him a coward for not standing up to a drunk evangelist who had pawed her at a church mountain retreat two summers ago.
The pains in David’s stomach were coming faster now, like contractions for birth.
He felt a drop of sweat roll off his nose but couldn’t get a hand free in time to stop it. Watched it plop onto the leg of his Haggar knits.
Whitbrend began slowly and softly. His oratorical voice hardly stronger than his speaking voice. At first it seemed too low, so David found himself having to pay extra attention. Wondered why Whitbrend didn’t just get a little closer to the mike. Then David realized the whole congregation was listening closely.
Whitbrend told about growing up in Oregon. In a godless family. No church, no prayer, no belief. He was a mean-tempered boy. Utterly selfish. When he was seventeen he fell “helplessly” in love with a girl. All he felt in his heart was love for her and for everything around him. Took her to the homecoming dance, the Sadie Hawkins dance, and the junior prom. On the way home from the prom a car ran a stop sign and crashed into them. He had lain trapped in the upturned car, caught in metal and vinyl under her bleeding, unmoving body, praying to the God he never knew to save her life. He told God he would do anything asked of him if He would spare her life.
Whitbrend looked down at the pulpit for a moment. It was so quiet David could hear the cars on faraway Beach Boulevard. Could hear the squirting and sloshing inside his own stomach.
Whitbrend stepped away from the pulpit, then back.
She was dead when the police got there, he said. They lifted her off him and took him to a hospital. He suffered a broken wrist and minor cuts. All that night he stayed in the hospital for observation, and he prayed to the God he never knew that when he awakened this would all be a bad dream. He squeezed his eyes and arched his back and trembled on his heels and he ground his teeth in prayer. Over and over and over. When he awakened his father was standing over the bed with a broken tooth in his hand.
The broken tooth, thought David. The cap just slightly whiter than the other teeth. A reminder of faith for anyone who had heard this story.
Brilliant.
Whitbrend looked down at the pulpit again. David admired this, too. What at first had seemed evasive now seemed humble. Darren Whitbrend was not asking the congregation to bear his burden. He was showing them how it was done. Alone. Through the making of scars. Through the capping of teeth broken by prayer.
The young minister looked out at the congregation.
He said that after the funeral he made the God he’d never known an offer.
“I offered my life and flesh and soul to Him,” said Whitbrend, “if He would do one thing. That night I took the revolver from my father’s drawer.”
He walked outside and down by the river. He popped the cylinder and removed all six cartridges. Threw one into the water. It didn’t make a sound. Reloaded the other five and spun the cylinder hard, once. He closed it. And told the God he’d never known to save him only if he could know Him. And to take him if he could not. Then he sat down and pulled the trigger.
David heard the blood surging in his ears. Heard the dread and surprise ripple through his chapel, then the twitter of realization.
“And I ask all of you,” said Whitbrend, “to let me share Him with you.”
Whitbrend opened his arms to the believers and smiled. David could see the cap from here. Almost took his breath away.
David’s fever broke halfway through the closing prayer. While Whitbrend talked softly about peace beyond understanding, the tormented muscles of David’s stomach relaxed and the ache departed from his bones. The demons in his mind were quiet. He felt his strength begin to return, the strength to love and care and offer. He knew he would soon have a partner to help him guide the future of this congregation. God would help him through this other thing. Please, God, help me through this. It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked that’s all for me.
The closing hymn was a thundering, joyful roar of the spirit.
THAT NIGHT they all had dinner at Max and Monika’s home in the orange grove in Tustin. David and Barbara and the kids, Nick and Katy and theirs, Andy and Teresa.
David sat at one end of the long table, his father at the other. Everyone held hands while David said grace. He had never said a grace of more than one minute in his life but this night David took almost five. Wandered a little, because he hadn’t thought about it ahead of time. Mentioned every person at the table. And Clay. Simple thanks, but so much to be thankful for.
When he opened his eyes David looked at every person and thought a secret prayer that they would all be around this table, just like this, many times in the years ahead.
NICK LISTENED to the grace. One hand in Katy’s and one in Stevie’s. Opened one eye and spied up and down the table. Been doing that since he was a kid, and wouldn’t you know it, he caught Willie pulling the same stunt. Willie shut his eye and Nick almost smiled.
But he shared David’s thankfulness and felt the grace of God hovering around them. It was a good family. Even without Clay it was still good. Everybody had their problems but that was human nature. That was life.
Nick paid extra attention at the “watch over us” part. Really tried to make his heart open up and let God know he was needing something. He and Lobdell would be in Mexico by this time tomorrow. Katy’s hand squeezed his hard. Her little brother had been beaten and robbed down there when Katy was nineteen and she’d never traveled there again. Hated the place. Hated that Nick had to go. But understood.
When he opened his eyes Nick looked again at every person and believed in his uneasy heart that this was the last time they would all be together.
ANDY LET David’s words fall down on him like a warm rain. He didn’t personally think that God heard or responded to prayers, but who really knew? It was nice to believe for a minute or two. He felt Teresa’s hand and Wendy’s hand. Both soft and warm, one grown and one growing. He thought of the way the years run through everyone like a big river. Of the way we hang on to our little crafts and try to get to wherever it is we think we’re going. Sometimes flail and cough and spit up the river water, too. How some get a long journey and some get what Clay and Janelle got and some don’t even get that much. Which meant the people still here, still on the river, really should be thankful for it.
When he opened his eyes Andy looked at every person at the table and knew he was lucky to be there among them.