Chapter 11 The Little Church of the Rock
“Thank you for letting me come with Eddie, Mrs. Grant.” Crystal Beikreider stood with Eddie in the Grants’ living room, curling an end of her dark hair around her forefinger.
“Now, call me Anna Ellen. Everyone does.” She stood smiling with stiff shoulders and slowly working fingers, as if itching to get back to something, probably dinner preparation. “You make yourself at home. Eddie usually goes up to Bill’s room. Maybe you’d both like to go up there.”
“I’d like to use his computer,” said Eddie.
“Shoo, then. Thank you for coming, Crystal.”
On the stairs Crystal whispered, “How are Mr. and Mrs. Grant taking it that Hila sent out the mailings?”
“I don’t know. They’re not saying anything, and Hila’s hardly been here to talk to them.”
Bill looked up from an Omni magazine as they entered his sanctum sanctorum, his eyes blank at first. “Oh, yeah, it’s Thursday. I forgot you’d be over here, Eddie. Hiya, Crystal.”
“Hiya.” She dropped down on the edge of the bed. “We’ve got a problem.”
“So does everyone.”
“But this is about Hila.”
Eddie was pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket. “She’s getting worse,” he said. “She’s not keeping in touch with my Mom, and all day yesterday she was moody. When I talk to her, sometimes she doesn’t hear what I’m saying and I have to say it again.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?” Bill said. “I don’t have any influence over her when it comes to this religious stuff.”
“But couldn’t Mr. or Mrs. Grant talk to her?” Crystal said. “When I feel depressed I talk to my Mom.”
Bill looked at the ceiling for a moment. “I’m trying to imagine Mom doing that. You’ve got to understand that we don’t communicate so hot in our family. Mom and Dad are afraid to discuss anything sticky, and Hila, when she wants to be, she’s the star non-communicator of the family. If she wants to avoid something, she just locks up and her screen goes blank. And man, the looks she can give you if you keep trying! Actually, I think Mom and Dad are afraid of her.” Crystal gave him an unbelieving look. “No, really, she’s so far out there where they aren’t that they’re uncomfortable even just asking her how her day’s been. She’s liable to answer, ‘Oh, I went to Indy and let a guy stare at me’; or ‘I sent anonymous mail to your church’; or what was that place she used to go to in Indianapolis, Eddie? The half-way house? Yeah, Joshua House. ‘Well, Mom, I spent Saturday counseling teenage hookers and drug addicts.’ And Mom might come back with something like, ‘That’s nice, dear. Are you hungry? Let me get you something to eat.’”
Eddie laughed.
“When she first got ‘born again’ and came back from college on a break,” Bill continued, “she tried to save me and re-save Mom and Dad and was talking about it all the time. Jesus this, Jesus that. ‘If you died today, do you know that you’d go to heaven?’ Lord, it was uncomfortable. Before long things settled down, and she doesn’t bother us anymore. But Mom and Dad—well, they don’t like to open cans of worms, and Hila is like a whole supermarket full. Like, where’d this anti-Fulborne vendetta come from? I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
“Why would she go to Indianapolis to have a guy stare at her?” asked Crystal, who was having trouble keeping up.
Eddie handed the paper to Bill. “That’s a poem she was looking at today. I don’t know where she got it. When she put it down to fix some lunch, I copied the words. Just look at it, this is strange stuff.”
Bill glanced at Eddie’s handwritten copy. “Oh, that thing. Yeah, more of ‘Hila Visits Pluto.’ When she stopped by and talked to Mom for a minute yesterday, she asked me if I would look on the net for her and find any poems by a guy named Robert August. Well, it took me a while but I got several from a University site, and this morning I walked over early and stuck them in your mailbox. That was just one of them.”
“It’s sick,” Crystal said.
“Is it? I didn’t really read them.” Bill scanned a few lines and looked up. “I never cared for poetry. It takes too much effort.”
“It looks like it’s written by Judas,” Eddie said.
“Let me see it again,” said Crystal. She took it and read aloud.
I wear a mask impassive as the moon
Until my hour of opportunity;
And if He falls by other means than me,
No one will know my heart. My smile at noon
The same as dusk; my careless, whistled tune
Not one note more or less. Consistency.
Even the fatal, final kiss will be
Warm as the first. No twitch will show too soon.
But when He’s bound and all His friends dispersed,
And only then, my ragged, burning heart
Will push blood to my face; and then a few
Snarled syllables, unfeigned and unrehearsed.
And I myself, imprisoned by my art,
Don’t know what more I’ll scream, or wail, or do.
She took a shuddering breath. “That’s worse than Edgar Allen Poe. I thought that ‘Pit and the Pendulum’ was just awful. But I never thought about Judas, what he was like. It says in the Bible that Satan entered into him. Yucch! Can you imagine? Satan crawling inside your skin?”
“Bill, can we use your computer?” Eddie asked. “I want to e-mail Mom about this. She said she didn’t want me calling her long-distance unless it was an emergency.”
Bill waved him to the monitor. “Be my guest.”
While Eddie was laboriously typing, Crystal asked Bill if he had Baffled lately. He grunted a non-answer.
Hila stopped in Brainton, population 3,500, on the way to Indianapolis and asked directions to the Little Church of the Rock. This proved to be a new building located on the highway about a half-mile out of town, and it was not little. She pondered whether the expansion would yet result in a change of name, such as the Medium-Size Church of the Rock.
Except for a vestigial steeple, the building looked like a modern elementary school, complete with brightly colored playground equipment. The ample parking lot was paved, with freshly painted lines dividing the spaces. Hila wondered how full the lot had been Sunday morning and did not wonder idly, for she knew an answer to that question would tell her in what mood Pastor Cerf would be likely to receive her. A church bulletin taken from a table in the foyer told her that attendance was up and the debt for the building being whittled down. So a good mood. It also identified the Little Church as ‘a friendly community church where you can find a home.’
She still had met no one. As she approached the office, she heard a man’s voice. “They have to meet regularly,” he was saying. “You heard it on Sunday, how bad they were. If Jason doesn’t think he can be here to rehearse them every week, then he needs to choose an assistant who can fill in.”
“He says no one feels up to it,” said a woman.
The man sighed. “Then I suppose I’ll have to do it tonight. I could get away from the deacons’ meeting early.”
“The choir doesn’t know to be here.”
“Oh, that’s right. Well, from now on, whenever Jason has his classes….” Hila had shown herself in the doorway. “Hi there. What can I do for you?”
She introduced herself and told him that she was from his old church. He assured her that he remembered her and her family and proved it by mentioning that she had a brother. She asked for a few minutes of his time, and taking the hint that she preferred privacy, he steered her past his secretary and into his office.
They sat down. Cerf was middle-aged, handsome, somewhat overweight, tieless, tired. After a few polite inquiries Hila brought up the subject of Ollie Fulborne’s resurgence.
Cerf did not blink an eye. “That old rascal!” he said smiling. “And how old is he now? But he’s a tough old bird. He’
ll still be eldering when I’m in a nursing home.”
She did not know how to respond to his attitude. She had wanted someone to commiserate with her and perhaps even to offer some explanation of what she saw as a disaster.
“I’m deeply disappointed that he’s back in,” she said. Cerf pocketed his smile and waited for some cue from her. “In fact I can’t imagine anything worse. I could predict a lot of things, but one thing is certain: Steve Wurz will not be at River Grove much longer.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. So can you tell me why you’ve come here?”
She heard his change of tone. He wanted to know where he stood in this conversation, and he wanted to know right away.
“I’ve come because this has happened again and again till I’m sick of it. I don’t understand why our pastors have to last only three to five years. I want to know if anything can be done to keep a man longer. Pastor Cerf, you’ve been through it. When you look back, do you see anything that can help us at River Grove?” She did not volunteer that she had recently left the church.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking,” he said, rewarding her disingenuousness in kind.
“Do you think that there’s some way that you might have stayed in Viola? Something you didn’t try?”
He played with an empty pen-holder on his desktop. “I think if Pastor Wurz wants any wisdom along those lines, he can ask me himself. He didn’t send you, did he?”
“No, and frankly I think it’s too late for Steve. I’m thinking of the bigger picture, of the next fifteen years at River Grove, three to five more come-and-go pastors.”
He did not respond for some time. “Well, I’ve never been asked anything like this.”
She drew him into a shared smile. “No, I don’t suppose you have. And maybe you don’t have any answer, maybe there’s nothing that can be done. But I was on my way to Indianapolis and thought I’d detour over here and see you.”
He relaxed somewhat. “If there was some answer, it would be worth sharing with a million other churches. I read a statistic a while back that the average for an American pastor to stay with a church isn’t much longer than what you’re telling me about River Grove. It’s hard on churches, traumatic for pastors. But if there’s a serious disagreement on how to run things, I mean between a pastor and his board, who’s going to leave? Should board members and their families leave? People who have perhaps attended for generations? We have ten elders here at the Rock Church, and if they wanted me to go, I’d go.”
“Pardon me, but even if they were wrong?”
“Even if they were wrong,” he said unhesitatingly. “The church is a body. Decisions are made together, not by one man dictating. If the body comes to a decision, a wise pastor doesn’t buck it.”
“So that’s why you didn’t fight it at River Grove.”
“That’s why.”
“But—I know you said ‘even if they’re wrong,’ but Pastor Cerf, in my opinion they were wrong two years ago.” His unhappy look told her that she was straying into forbidden territory. “I was in Indianapolis but I knew all about it through my family. When you shut down the door-to-door visitation program that Ollie wanted, and he persuaded the board to put it back, it was like a struggle to see who was really pastor. I was home one Sunday in May and heard you say so yourself. You said to the congregation that River Grove could have only one leader.”
A ghost of a nod. “I said something like that.”
She could see this was getting nowhere. The logical next step would be to point out that there had been but one leader and that his name was Fulborne. She decided to skip that part. “So it must have been a strange feeling for you when you learned that Ollie was forced off the elder board just a few months after you moved on.”
“An odd turn of events, yes. But first was the deep shock of Mark Lambert’s death.”
She nodded. “Ollie had something to do with that.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He did. I don’t mean guilt, but he’s on record as having sent Kyle Dottison to meet Mark and get the diary.”
“Yes, I suppose he is. It was a sad, horrible situation all around.” He glanced at his watch. “I hope I’ve been of some help to you.”
She sat still. “I’m sorry, Alan, but I’m just floored by your lack of bitterness. It does you credit, but you don’t seem to blame Ollie at all.”
“He did me a favor,” he said, brightening. “Once I came here—and I was at Vincennes in between—things have never been so good. We’re nearly full now every Sunday. Lot’s of people drive out from Indy.”
And you look very tired, she thought. She stood up. “I’m glad to hear it.”
He rose with her. “How is Aggie Lambert now?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t attend River Grove anymore.
“Of course not, silly of me. But I just wondered about her, you mentioning bitterness. She was so very bitter when I tried to talk to her.”
“You saw her after Mark’s death? I mean, you drove up from Vincennes?”
“She called and asked me to. I’m afraid she was in the most painful stage of mourning at the time. She could hardly speak sense. Just kept railing against, well, not against Dottison but against Ollie actually.”
“Imagine!” she said with private sarcasm.
“Yes, she was irrational. Well, anyway, if you happen to see her, give her my best.”
“Of course.”
As they shook hands she made a quick decision to say something more. She would never see this man again, so it ought not to matter to her what he thought of her.
“One last thing. When you look at Ollie’s full record at River Grove—his impatience with pastors, his penchant for legalism, the charges that got him expelled from the board, all of it— plus how the congregation keeps accepting him—would you describe that situation as evil?”
He had just released her hand. He looked at her incredulously and laughed gently. “Oh my, what a question! No, Hila, no more evil than a lot of things that happen in this old world. Ollie’s a handful, I’ll grant you, but he’s on the right side. Do you think he’s evil?”
“Not him particularly but the general situation, that he could find a place in leadership there,” she corrected. “Thank you for your time.”
When she was gone, Alan Cerf found that he felt stirred up and depressed. He did not like remembering his River Grove experience, and he did not like unexpected interviews full of trip-you-up questions. Had she even told him the truth about why she was pumping him? Was it some sort of trick or trap? He went out to talk to his secretary.
She met him with raised eyebrows and a smirk that plainly expressed her amusement at his being visited by such ‘hot stuff.’
“Yes, Sally, I suppose my pulse is a little high. Don’t tell Rita, huh? But seriously, that’s a very troubled young woman. If there’s time, I might give Steve Wurz a call and compare notes. I think she needs counseling, possibly psychological counseling.”
Ronny Turkelson knew Hila Grant’s face better than anyone else did, so that what was often a cold mask to others was to him a book. After nine years of studying it, he flattered himself that he could read her soul through her face, certainly her moods and emotions. So that evening, while she sat on the edge of his bed and he played soft rock on his electric guitar, he could see what others might not have seen. He saw the brink of desperation. Not just the tiredness or nervousness that she had occasionally brought to him. No, that ever so slight tremble of the jaw, those wistful glances into the corners of the room, told him that she was cornered somehow. Her usual perfect posture was a bit lacking: she had no self confidence. A neck muscle twitched: time was running out for her.
Ronny’s own two suicide attempts had made him sensitive to such possibilities in others. Still he played on and said nothing. He did so even feeling that if she were to stop visiting him, he would not l
ive long afterward.