A Change of Heart (8 page)

“What for?”

“For not entering the Sausage Queen contest. It would have been a terrible embarrassment to the other girls when you got all the votes.”

“You think?” Barbara asked, with a chuckle.

“I know,” Sam said. “I know.”

T
he end of September found Asa Peacock in his barn, staring out at the rain, listening to the weatherman on the radio prophesy an even wetter October. Miniature rivers coursed through the fields, carrying the topsoil down to the creek. Much more of this and his land would belong to a farmer downstream. A northwest wind had blown for three days and was starting to lay the beans over. Asa was wishing he’d gone into the insurance business like his brother. Fifty-six years old and retired down in Florida, golfing every day without a worry in the world.

It was twelve o’clock and off in the distance he could hear the noon whistle from the fire station in town. Vinny would be serving ham and beans at the Coffee Cup. Ham and beans on Monday, meat loaf on Tuesday, Wednesday was beef manhattan day, spaghetti on Thursday, and a fish sandwich on Friday if you were Catholic, a cheeseburger if you weren’t.

He was on his own for lunch. Jessie had driven up to the city to visit her sister. He ran across the barnyard, hopscotching around the puddles, and into the mudroom, where he pulled his boots off. He surveyed the leftovers in the refrigerator and elected to go with ham and beans at the Coffee Cup.

It was a ten-minute drive. He drove slowly, observing the runoff in the ditches and stopping on the bridge over the White Lick Creek to watch the frothy torrent of water and mud. He went past the Hodges’ farm. A combine was stuck in the mud up to its axles. Ellis would never live that down.

People have long memories in Harmony. Stanley Farlow blew up his truck twenty years ago and people talk about it as if it were yesterday. It happened in the fall, about this time of year. He’d doused a brush pile with gasoline, thrown a match on it, and hustled back to his truck. To his eternal regret, his truck became mired in the mud ten feet from the brush pile. The fire crept across the grass and began licking at the tires. It took him three minutes to run the half mile back to the barn for his tractor, an impressive time for an elderly gentleman wearing clodhoppers, though not impressive enough. They heard the explosion all the way to town.

Asa rolled down Main Street. The square was thick with farmers waiting for the front to pass. He had to park two blocks away, in the funeral home parking lot, then hoof it through the rain over to the Coffee Cup. He stepped through the door, shook off the rain, and looked around for a seat. There was only one open, next to Dale Hinshaw at the counter. A desperation seat. A seat that came with a price—a half hour of Dale Hinshaw questioning your commitment to the Lord and speculating about the imminent return of Jesus.

Asa studied the bulletin board, hoping someone would vacate a booth, but with the rain coming down, they were there for the long haul, so after a few minutes he took the seat next to Dale.

“Hey, Dale. How ya doin’?”

“Just thankin’ the Lord to be alive.”

So that’s who we should blame, Asa thought.

Heather Darnell stopped in front of him, a glass of water and tableware in one hand, a paper place mat in the other, which she arranged neatly in front of him. Asa gazed at her discretely. Such a beauty. She smiled. Thirty-two beautiful teeth, not a cavity among them. Her hair was done in a French braid. Asa loved French braids.

“Hi, Mr. Peacock.”

“Hello, Heather. How are you?”

“Just dandy. What can I get for you?”

He studied the menu at length, even though he knew what he wanted, a clever ruse to keep her in his vicinity.

“Hmm, how about ham and beans and a glass of sweet tea,” he said, handing her the menu.

“You get two sides with that. What would you like?”

“Oh, I didn’t know it came with any sides. Maybe I better see the menu again.”

He had developed ordering into an art form.

He studied the menu once more, looking up every now and then to gaze at Heather, who was waiting patiently. She was so much nicer than Penny, Vinny’s wife. With Penny, you were lucky to get a menu. Penny terrorized the customers into submission, bending them to her will. “What’ll you want and make it snappy. I don’t have all day. And don’t be making a mess everywhere, or you’ll clean it up. I’m not your personal slave.”

“We have good coleslaw,” Heather volunteered.

“Coleslaw it is, then, with a dish of pudding,” Asa said, returning the menu with a flourish.

She hurried off to place his order. His eyes followed her. He inadvertently licked his lips.

“Matthew 5:28,” Dale said, snapping Asa out of his reverie.

“What?”

“Matthew 5:28. Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

It was going to be a long lunch. He glanced around to see if a booth had come open. No such luck.

“So what are the doctors sayin’ about your heart?” he asked Dale, changing the subject.

The one thing Dale liked even more than quoting Scripture was discussing his ailments. He took Asa on a verbal tour of his body, starting with his toes, which had lately been aching with all this rain, and concluding ten minutes later with his scalp, which itched something terrible after his wife had switched brands of shampoo.

“So,” Dale said, summarizing his ailments, “with all these other problems, I just hope I live long enough to get a heart transplant.”

“We all hope that,” Asa said with a charity he didn’t feel.

“I can’t help but wonder what the Lord’s kept me around for,” Dale pondered aloud.

“There are many of us who wonder the same thing,” Asa said.

“I tell you one thing,” Dale said. “If the Lord sees me through this, I’m gonna start my Scripture eggs ministry up again.”

Three years before, Dale had housed a dozen chickens in his basement, feeding them scraps of paper with Scripture verses printed on them, then distributing their eggs to people who in his estimation needed saving—mostly Catholics, Democrats, and Masons. Mercifully, the chickens soon died of a poultry disease and the town was temporarily spared from Dale’s attempts to save them.

Fortunately, Heather appeared and placed Asa’s food before him. “Ham and beans, coleslaw, one pudding, and a glass of sweet tea. Enjoy.”

“Thank you, Heather.”

She turned to Dale. “Can I get you anything else, Mr. Hinshaw?”

“No, that’s about it.”

Heather bustled off. Dale stood, stretched, extracted a five-dollar bill from his wallet, and laid it on the counter, an exorbitant tip for Dale, who customarily left a Bible tract. Vinny rang him up at the cash register, Dale shuffled out the door into the rain, and all over the Coffee Cup people relaxed. Penny cleared away his dishes, swiped a wet rag across the counter, and then picked up the five-dollar bill and studied it.

“That tightwad,” she said rather heatedly. “He’s got a lot of nerve.”

“What’d he do now?” Asa asked.

She handed him the five-dollar bill, which wasn’t a five-dollar bill at all. Though it appeared genuine on one side, on the other it read:
Disappointed? You won’t be if you accept Jesus as your Savior.

“Well, that’s Dale for you,” Asa said, handing it back.

“That right there is why I don’t go to church,” Penny said. “Here Heather is working hard, trying to make it on her own, and Dale pulls that kind of nonsense. The cheapskate.” She called him a few more names that, though justified, were unsuitable for public places. Then she wadded up Dale’s “tip” and flung it in the wastebasket.

She appeared to be launching into another tirade when the bell over the door tinkled and Ralph Hodge walked in. Ralph Hodge, who, while he’d lived in this town, was a pastor’s dream, the man they had warned about from their pulpits, the “before” picture, a walking abomination. That God hadn’t struck him dead was a puzzle to many. And yet in his depravity he served a purpose. No matter how bad things got, people could take comfort they hadn’t fallen as far as he had. But now Ralph was sober and holding down a job, and the town was sorely in need of a new bad example.

Ralph sat on the stool Dale had vacated. Asa reached over and shook his hand. “Ralph, good to see you. How ya doin’? I heard you were back in town. How’s the missus?”

“She’s fine. Thanks for asking. How’s Jessie?”

“Off to the city to visit her sister.”

Asa was not much of a conversationalist. He tended to run out of gas after a few questions. “Some weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

Ralph nodded his head in agreement. “Sure is.”

Asa stirred another teaspoon of sugar into his tea. “Yes, sure is some weather we’re having.”

Ralph leaned closer. “Say, Asa. You’re pretty good friends with Ellis, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I’d say so. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if he said anything to you about me.”

“Nope,” Asa said.

“I can’t figure him out. About three weeks ago he and Amanda stopped by the tourist cabins where we’re stayin’ and invited us to dinner, so we went, and he stayed out in the barn the whole time. Came in for ten minutes to eat, then went right back out. Then I saw him the other day at the Five and Dime and he barely spoke to me. I just want a chance to make things right with him.”

The last thing Asa Peacock wanted was to wade into the Hodge family fracas. “Maybe he was feeling puny. Lot of sickness going around, what with all this rain we’ve been having. It sure is some weather we’re having, isn’t it?” He drank the last bit of his iced tea, made one final pass at his bowl of ham and beans, wiped his mouth, then rose to leave. “Sure has been good seein’ you, Ralph. Be sure to tell the little lady I said hey.”

Ralph sat alone at the counter another hour, watching Vinny at the grill. It was his day off from the glove factory and Sandy was working at the Wal-Mart. The last thing he wanted was to sit in the tourist cabin, alone, smelling the mold and mildew, watching a soap opera.

After a while, the din faded as the lunch hour ended and people returned to their jobs. Vinny and Penny were in the back room washing dishes, while Heather wiped down the counters with bleach water and refilled the salt and pepper shakers. Ralph sipped his coffee and watched the rain slide down the front window like tears.

Maybe he should never have come back, he thought. Maybe he and Sandy should have stayed out in California and written Amanda a letter instead. But he’d wanted to prove to Ellis that he’d reformed, that he was good for something after all. And he’d wanted to apologize. So the prodigal son came home. But with his father dead, there was no one to welcome him back. No ring for his finger. No fatted calf. No party. Just an older brother keeping score.

He wanted to be mad at Ellis, but couldn’t muster the bitterness. No one to blame but himself.
Step number four: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself.
No one had held the bottle to his lips.

He looked out at the rain again, then glanced at the clock over the grill. One thirty. Another three hours before Sandy got home. This was when he missed the liquor the most. The long stretch of afternoon with nothing to do and Sandy gone. The god-awful thirst, the temptation to crawl back in the bottle.

He’d been going to AA at the Quaker meetinghouse on Wednesday nights. He and Uly Grant and a handful of people he’d never met. Seven o’clock every Wednesday, sitting in folding chairs and talking about how much they missed it. The taste, the liquid warmth spreading through his body, calming, soothing. The rain pounded down harder, slanting against the window.

Two years and four months without a drink and not one bit easier.

He wondered if Uly was at the hardware store. Maybe he’d go visit him for a bit. He pulled a five-dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the counter, then turned and walked from the Coffee Cup and into the rain. Past the Kroger and the Buckhorn, where he paused to stare in the window at the smear of colors from the neon beer signs along the back wall.

Most people remembered their first kiss. Ralph Hodge remembered his first beer. He was sixteen. The summer his father and Ellis had driven to Colorado, leaving him home to finish cutting the hay. The third day it had hit ninety-eight degrees. He’d quit the fields early and driven the farm truck into town, where he’d ended up going into the Buckhorn on a dare from some friends. One beer, then two, then three, then he’d lost count.

If he closed his eyes, he could still taste it.

He raked a trembly hand through his hair, pushing it up and back, then turned the corner and walked down the pot-holed, brick alleyway and stood underneath a metal awning at the back door of the Buckhorn, out of the rain. There was a wooden crate next to the door, which he pulled under the awning and then sat on.

Sometimes he wondered how his life would have turned out if he’d gone on the trip to Denver with Ellis and their dad. He hadn’t been invited, but maybe if he had asked, they’d have taken him along and things would have turned out different. Just maybe.

He watched the rain puddle in opalescent swirls on the oil-stained bricks. Days like this he wondered how people who didn’t drink made it through. The back door was wedged open. He could hear the clink of bottles and Willie Nelson’s “Stardust.”

Jesus hadn’t finished the story. Ralph had looked it up himself. He’d hoped the older brother eventually came around, but if he did, Jesus never said so.

He’d driven by Ellis’s farm that morning, thinking, what with all the rain, Ellis might have time to talk. But he’d been busy trying to loosen his combine from the mud.

“Can’t talk now,” Ellis had told him. “Got work to do.”

Ralph had offered his help, which Ellis declined.

Ralph had lingered to watch. Ellis revved the engine, rocking the combine back and forth in a failed effort to dislodge it. Stuck. Then he’d piled boards underneath the rear wheels to give them purchase, but they slid sideways off the boards back into the mud.

Just like me, Ralph thought, as he sat on the wooden crate in the alley behind the bar. Just like me. Stuck in the mud with the flames drawing closer, like Stanley Farlow years before. Why bother trying? And he rose to his feet and walked in the bar.