Almost Friends (3 page)

C
harlie Gardner was lying in bed when he had his first heart attack. At least he thought it was a heart attack. The week before he’d read the symptoms while waiting at the Rexall for Thad Cramer to fill his prescription. Thad had posted the symptoms of major diseases on the wall of the pharmacy. Charlie, who dabbled in hypochondria, read them and grew alarmed, convinced he was suffering some dreadful malady. He had come home one day worried he was entering menopause.

Lying in bed, he tried to recall the signs of a heart attack—a heavy weight in the chest, numbness in the arms, sweating, and difficulty breathing.

He thought of waking his wife, but decided against it. She’d want to call Johnny Mackey to come with his ambulance. He’d have to go to the hospital in Cartersburg, instead of going fishing with Asa Peacock the next morning, as he had planned. So, being a fatalist, he decided that if this were
the time and manner in which the Lord had deemed to take him, who was he to resist God’s will?

Charlie lay perfectly still, asking forgiveness for specific sins he’d committed. Then, just to cover his bases, he sought forgiveness for his inadvertent sins, wanting to go out with a clean slate. Years ago, back in the 1960s, on a trip to the city, he’d bought a girlie magazine. He had hidden it out in the garage, in the cabinet underneath his drill press. He resolved to throw it away if he lived to see the sun rise.

He grew alarmed thinking of the magazine. What if he died and his wife and minister son found it while going through his things? What would they think of him? He probably couldn’t have his funeral in the church after that. They’d have to bury him in the pagan section of the cemetery, along with the town ne’er-do-wells.

After a while, whatever was sitting on his chest rose and left, and he began to feel better, so he got out of bed and went out to the garage to throw the magazine in the trash. He buried it deep in the garbage can, underneath the coffee grounds.

When Charlie came out of the garage, his wife was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“What are you doing up?”

Charlie had never been quick on his feet; he paused while he contemplated how to answer.

“Uh, there’s something about me you don’t know.”

Gloria Gardner looked at him the way she looks at him when she doesn’t believe what he’s about to say. “And what would that be?”

“I’ve got a drinking problem.”

A drinking problem was infinitely safer than a
Playboy
problem, the former being a disease beyond his control, the latter being a moral failure that could get him divorced, or killed.

“A drinking problem? You mean you’re an alcoholic?”

Charlie feigned embarrassment. “’Fraid so.”

“And how long have you had this drinking problem?”

“All my life I guess,” Charlie explained. “It’s not like I can help it. It’s a disease, you know.”

“I’ve never subscribed to that notion,” Gloria Gardner said. “If it were a disease, people couldn’t stop. People stop drinking every day. I think it’s a moral issue.”

This wasn’t going as well as Charlie had hoped.

“Let me smell your breath,” she commanded.

He exhaled on her.

“Just as I suspected. I don’t smell a thing.”

“That’s because I’ve been drinking vodka. You think I’m stupid enough to drink something people could smell?”

Charlie walked into the house, brushing past her, perturbed. “It’s a terrible thing when a husband tells his wife he’s a drunk and she doesn’t believe him. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Gloria went out to the garage and poked around, looking behind the mower and in his workbench drawers, but couldn’t find anything. When she came back in their bedroom, he was sprawled across their bed, clutching his chest.

“Now what’s wrong?”

“I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“Oh, sure. Try to get out of trouble by faking a heart attack. You think I’d fall for that old trick?”

That’s the problem with dishonesty—one lie casts doubt on a thousand truths.

He lay in bed thinking of his death. It was what he’d always hoped for whenever the subject of death arose—to die in bed, at home, next to his wife. To just not wake up. Somehow, though, it was more difficult than he’d imagined. For instance, getting someone to believe he was dying wasn’t as easy as he’d thought.

He rolled over, grabbed the phone, and dialed Sam’s house. It rang three times before his son answered.

“Hi, Sam.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“I’m having a heart attack.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Pain in the chest, my arm hurts. Yep, I’m pretty sure.”

“Is Mom there?” Sam asked, starting to sound frantic.

“Yeah, she’s right here. Do you want to talk with her?”

“Yes.”

Sam’s mother came on the line.

“I’ll be right over,” Sam told her. “Meanwhile, I want you to call Johnny Mackey to come with the ambulance.”

“Oh, he’s fine. I caught him out in the garage doing something and he’s trying to drum up sympathy. I can’t believe he called and woke you and Barbara up. Go back to bed.”

And with that she hung up the phone.

“It’d serve you right if I died,” Charlie groaned from his side of their bed.

But his wife was already fast asleep. That woman could sleep standing up.

He lay still, making his peace with death. He thought that perhaps it was better this way—to die in the peace and quiet of his own home, instead of at the hospital among strangers poking him full of needles.

The birds woke him a little before eight. He looked around, surprised that heaven looked so much like his old bedroom. Then he smelled coffee in the kitchen. He got up, went to the bathroom, pulled on his bathrobe, and tromped downstairs to the kitchen.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he groused. “I was supposed to go fishing with Asa Peacock.”

“I thought since you’d had a heart attack, you might need the extra sleep,” Gloria said.

It was embarrassing to be on the verge of death, then to recover as wholly and quickly as he had. It caused people to doubt your sincerity.

“Since you’re not going fishing, maybe you could mow the lawn today,” she went on. “It’s looking pretty shabby. And don’t forget to take out the trash. It’s starting to smell.”

She walked over and kissed the top of his balding head. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

That made it a little easier.

“Want some pancakes?” she asked.

“Sure.”

He ate four of them. He was famished. Almost dying could wear a man out.

Sam stopped by his parents’ house on his way to work. Walking over, he’d decided not to bring up the night before. Who knew what went on between two married people, after all. It seemed the wiser course to avoid the topic altogether. But his father wouldn’t let it rest.

“Your mother tried to kill me last night,” he announced, between bites of pancake. “I was having a heart attack and I called you to come get me, but she hung up the phone. I think she’s after my life insurance money.”

“If he’s having a heart attack, ask him why he felt good enough to be sneaking around out in the garage at three o’clock in the morning.”

When Sam was a child, his parents had presented a united front against their children. If they had their differences, they settled them privately, out of earshot. Now that their sons were raised, they felt free to turn on one another and enlist Sam on one side or the other.

“By the way,” his mother said. “Your father has a drinking problem.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You said so yourself last night.”

“I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?” He turned to Sam. “She never could take a joke.”

“Then what were you doing out in the garage?”

Charlie sighed, then appeared hurt. “If you must know, I was checking on your anniversary present.”

Their anniversary was the following week, which he hadn’t remembered until that morning when he’d noticed it written on the refrigerator calendar.

“You remembered our anniversary?”

“Of course I did.”

Gloria bent down to kiss his head. “You’re a regular Clark Gable.”

Charlie tilted his head for another kiss.

Sam wasn’t sure what was worse—watching his parents fight or kiss. He glanced at his watch. “Would you look at the time? I gotta go. I’ll see you later.”

His parents were too distracted to see him to the door.

Charlie Gardner had painted himself in the corner with his mention of an anniversary gift. Now his wife had her hopes up, and an ordinary gift wouldn’t do. At the very least, this meant a trip to the Wal-Mart in Cartersburg. She’d been hinting around for a television set for the kitchen so she could watch the
Today Show
while she drank her morning coffee. It had caused an argument when she’d first suggested it.

“What, aren’t I good enough to talk to anymore?” he’d asked her. “You don’t even know those people. They sit up there in New York City in their fancy high-rise apartments and limousines, and you’d rather spend your morning with them than with me. That’s a fine how-do-you-do after all the years we’ve been married.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Then why didn’t we go to Florida last winter? You don’t want to be alone with me, that’s why.”

Charlie brings up their almost trip to Florida every time they argue. Winter depresses him, so this past December he’d suggested they spend a few months in Florida, at his cousin’s condo south of Tampa. But Gloria had nixed the idea and suggested he take an antidepressant instead.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get me all drugged up and have me declared incompetent, then take all the money.”

“Money?” she’d asked. “What money? Where’s all this money you’re talking about?”

“Are you saying I haven’t taken good care of you? Is that what you’re saying?”

They didn’t speak to each other for several hours before making up. Arguments for them are a slow-release aphrodisiac. They start their day bickering, then by afternoon are steaming up the windows.

Charlie drove to Cartersburg that afternoon and bought a television set small enough to sit on their kitchen countertop. Gloria watched him unload it from the car and carry it into the garage. When he walked in the door, she asked, “What was that you were carrying in?”

“You shouldn’t be so nosy around our anniversary.”

“I thought my anniversary gift was already out there. Isn’t that what you told Sam this morning?”

“You think that’s all I got you?” Charlie asked. “For crying out loud, can’t a guy get his wife two presents?”

It was turning out to be an expensive anniversary.

Under the guise of visiting Dr. Neely to have his heart checked, Charlie drove to Kivett’s Five and Dime and bought Gloria a parakeet. They’d had a dog, Zipper, for years, but she had died the month before, which had not been soon enough. In her last year the dog had taken to rolling in road-kill, then barging indoors to snooze behind the couch, where she couldn’t be dislodged.

On the upside, having Zipper provided an excuse not to visit certain relatives on his wife’s side of the family. When she had suggested visiting her sister in Minnesota, he’d said, “Who’s going to take care of Zipper? Were you just going to leave her here and let her starve to death? Is that what you want? You never did like our dog, did you?”

But with the dog dead, Charlie was without an excuse for staying home, so he bought his wife a parakeet so that he could continue avoiding people who annoyed him.

He used to worry they would divorce, but now the momentum of years is on their side. Charlie attributes their longevity to arguments. He believes couples who talk out their problems are eventually exhausted by dialogue and find it easier to part company, while arguing permits a couple to settle disagreements with a quick, loud efficiency. At least this is his theory, and so far he’s been right.

As for not going to bed mad, if they did that, they’d never sleep. Fortunately, Charlie and Gloria are blessed with short memories and wake up in love. The very passion that drives them to argue is the same passion that gets Charlie pumped and primed when he catches a glimpse of his wife’s naked collarbone. Then they’re off to the races. Ardor, they have learned in their almost fifty years, is a welder’s heat, cleaving them one day, joining them together the next.

I
n the one month since Dale Hinshaw had proclaimed himself the Chief Evangelist of Harmony Friends Meeting, he’d managed to alienate half the congregation. Attendance at worship had declined precipitously, owing to Dale’s weekly rants about people not coming to church. Why he scolded the people who did show up was a mystery to everyone.

Attendance always declined in the summer, due to vacations and family reunions. But every year it was the same; Sam panicked through July, until Barbara reminded him folks would return in the fall, refreshed and rarin’ to go, just when Sam was pooped and in need of time off.

Dale Hinshaw, who kept careful records of who was attending and who wasn’t, didn’t help matters. “The Muldocks were gone today,” he announced to Sam at the front door after worship one Sunday. “Asa told me they were going to the Methodist church now. Ellis and Miriam weren’t here last Sunday or today. Plus, the Iversons haven’t been here for a month.”

“The Muldocks are at the Methodist church today because Harvey’s niece is having her baby baptized. Ellis and Miriam are on vacation in Michigan, and the Iversons went back east to visit their parents,” Sam explained.

Even though he had perfectly plausible explanations, Sam felt a rumble of anxiety deep in his bowels.

“I saw the Iversons yesterday at the Dairy Queen,” Dale said. “They’re back in town. I wonder why they weren’t here?”

“Maybe they just wanted to spend a quiet morning at home. Maybe they went to the state park for the day to have a picnic. Maybe they got tired of certain people badgering them about why they hadn’t been to church.”

Subtlety is lost on Dale. So too, for that matter, is the obvious. “I think I’ll give them a call,” he said, then paused. “No, I think we ought to go see them in person. When can you go?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam said firmly.

“I think you’ve forgotten our Lord’s counsel that two should go to confront a brother who’s lost in sin.”

“Who said the Iversons are lost in sin? They’ve been visiting with family. They go every summer when Paul gets out of school. Wanting to see your aging parents is not a sin.”

“Let the dead bury the dead, that’s what I say,” Dale intoned piously. Then he pulled a computer printout from the inside pocket of his plaid sport coat. “I did a graph on our attendance. As you can see, we’re down 28 percent in the past month. It appears the Lord has turned His back on us.”

Dale had purchased a computer that spring and had pestered Sam ever since, presenting him with pie charts and bar
graphs chronicling their church’s decline. “The way I got it figured, we’ll have to close the doors next February if we don’t do something right now.”

Tossing Dale out of the church would reverse the decline, but Sam was too charitable to say so.

Of course, Dale has been predicting their church’s demise ever since he began attending decades ago. The computer has only allowed him to do it more dramatically. He bombards people with e-mails, calling down the wrath of God on those who won’t forward his missives along. Apparently too cheap to buy virus protection, he has infected half the computers in town, causing them to crash and their owners to long for his slow and torturous death.

“I could always e-mail the Iversons,” Dale said. “I got this story I’ve been wanting to send them anyway.”

Dale’s e-mail stories invariably concerned themselves with tales of people who’d slighted the Lord, causing all manner of misfortune to befall them.

“Let’s give them another week,” Sam suggested.

“Well, just so you know their souls are in your hands, not mine. I tried to get ’em right with the Lord. It won’t be my fault if they die this week and go to hell.”

“I’ll assume all responsibility,” Sam assured Dale.

Talking with Dale reminded Sam what he dreaded about his job—facing Dale Hinshaw after worship. It never failed. When Sam uttered the final amen, Dale could be depended upon to make a beeline for him, generally to critique his sermon. Over the years, Sam had become adept at smiling
while Dale prattled on, pretending to listen while thinking of his afternoon nap.

Indeed, that was what he was doing that very moment, when Dale’s question brought him back to the present.

“…and so that’s what I was gonna do. What do you think, Sam?”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, Dale.”

Sam had no idea what wacky scheme he’d just endorsed, but was too tired to care.

“So you don’t mind, then?”

“Not at all. Best of luck to you,” Sam said, then turned to greet Bea Majors. “What a Sunday morning! Bea, I don’t know how you make that organ sound the way you do.”

Bea made the organ sound like a catfight, so Sam was purposely vague with his comments, which allowed him to retain his integrity, while Bea, like most people who have an inflated regard for their talent, thought him sincere.

He shook hands and visited with his flock for another ten minutes, before gathering his Bible and sermon notes from the pulpit, turning off the lights, and locking the doors.

Locking the doors is something new for Sam. The doors of the meetinghouse have been unlocked since 1949, when Harry Darnell, who headed the trustees, bolted to the Methodist church in a huff and took the key to the church with him.

No one noticed it missing until 1972, when a vanload of hippies driving through town stopped for the night and slept on the pews. When Pastor Taylor discovered them the next morning, they were seated cross-legged around the pulpit in
the midst of transcendental meditation. He phoned the police, who came and arrested them, even though the door was unlocked and a sign on the door said, “All are welcome.” The transcendental meditation was the hippies’ undoing. If they’d been saying the Lord’s Prayer, Pastor Taylor would have fallen to his knees and joined them.

It led to the first church fight Sam remembers. The next Sunday, Ellis Hodge had casually suggested they put a new lock on the church door, which had caused Dale Hinshaw to achieve orbit. “Yes, and just as soon as we do that, somebody might want to come inside and get saved and he’ll be locked out. Do you want that on your conscience? I sure don’t!”

“Why can’t folks get themselves saved on the front steps?” Ellis had asked.

A perfectly reasonable question, it triggered a half-hour harangue from Dale Hinshaw on the importance of accepting the Lord at altars. “I think you’ve clearly forgotten Scripture’s reminder that the Lord is in His holy temple. It doesn’t say the Lord is on the front steps of the temple. It says He’s in the temple.”

“Isn’t that in the Old Testament?” Ellis had asked. “What’s that got to do with us?”

“Are you saying the Lord’s a liar?” Dale had screeched. “If He said it then, He means it now. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

This had led to an hour-long argument on whether or not Christians were obligated to follow the Old Testament.

The battle wounds cut so deep it had taken decades to get a lock put on. Even then, someone had to sneak and do it, and that
person had not confessed. Dale Hinshaw has been looking for the culprit ever since. The month before, Sam had come to meeting and there it was, a brand-new lock on the church door with three keys taped to it. He’s been locking it ever since, except when he forgets, which happens more often than he’d like to admit.

Dale suspects Ellis Hodge is the guilty party and has tried to wring a confession from him, but Ellis won’t budge, so Dale has been looking to bring him up on other charges, with little success.

Sam doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on these matters for fear it will cause him to leave the ministry. Sometimes his father will recall a particularly grisly episode in the church’s history, and Sam will have to leave the room so as not to become too discouraged at the prospect of pastoring such malcontents as Dale Hinshaw.

In his first five years at Harmony, Sam had made every effort to steer Dale in the right direction. He tried reasoning with Dale, directing Dale’s vast energies down more reasonable paths. It never worked. Now Sam was trying a different approach, one that involved the total abdication of pastoral responsibility—letting Dale do whatever he pleased, which was what Dale generally did anyway.

As they walked home from meeting, Barbara said, “I saw you talking with Dale. What’s he want to do now?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

“I’m sure whatever Dale does, it’ll work out fine,” Sam said.

Barbara studied him for a moment. “Are you feeling all right? Have you hit your head and didn’t tell me? Because what you just said suggests you might be suffering from a brain defect.” She touched his forehead. “You don’t feel fevered.”

“I’ve just decided I’ve spent too much time worrying about Dale Hinshaw. At some point I’m going to have to relax and trust the Lord.”

“Trusting the Lord sounds nice in theory,” Barbara said. “It’s what all the martyrs said just before they were killed.”

Sam elected not to respond.

Their sons had run on ahead, so it was just the two of them. They rounded the corner by the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop, walked past the
Harmony Herald
office, then paused to look in the window of Grant’s Hardware. A sign was taped to the glass.
For Rent. Apartment Above Hardware Store. No pets, smoking, alcohol, rock music, or loud parties allowed.

“I guess Uly fixed up Kenny Hutchens’s old room,” Sam said.

“Who’s Kenny Hutchens?”

“He mowed lawns and hauled trash when I was a kid. Uly’s dad rented him the room upstairs, but no one’s lived there since Kenny died. That was years ago. Back in the 1970s, at least. I wonder what it looks like up there now?”

Barbara shuddered. “I’d hate to think.”

“Maybe I should rent it,” Sam mused. For the past several years, since his sons had begun bickering as if it were an Olympic sport, Sam had dreamed of having a quiet retreat. Initially, he’d thought of buying a cabin in the woods outside
of town. But desperation had made him less picky, and the room over Grant’s Hardware seemed more than sufficient.

“You keep wanting to get away from us,” Barbara said. “What’s wrong with our house?”

“Nothing at all. I just thought it’d be nice to have a little place I could slip away to and read. Someplace without a phone, where I could have a little peace and quiet.”

“Peace and quiet? Why do men always need peace and quiet? Boy, it’s a good thing we women didn’t always need to go away for a little peace and quiet or nothing would get done.”

Sam chuckled and draped his arm across his wife’s shoulders. “Women are the stronger sex. No doubt about it. But if you must know, I wanted the peace and quiet to write a book.”

“A book? You hate writing,” Barbara pointed out. “When you have to write your article for the church newsletter, you complain about it for days on end.”

“That’s different. I have to write that. If I wrote a book, I could write what I wanted.”

“I’m the one who should write a book,” Barbara said. “I’ve got things I’ve been wanting to get off my chest for years.”

Sam was feeling frisky—like his father, squabbling excited him—and he thought dreamily of his wife’s chest. He took her hand. “I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we rent Uly’s apartment and not tell the boys where we’ve moved. Then we’ll both have peace and quiet!”

They walked another block without speaking. Sam was thinking of peace and quiet and how dear it has become to him. He used to have a high tolerance for chaos and clatter. When the boys were younger and would quarrel, he would reason with them, trying to understand how their fight had begun. Now he doesn’t care who started it; all he wants is for their sons to hit one another quietly.

Sam feels the same way about church. He has given up illusions of pastoring a megachurch. Now he just wishes people would get along. Being a pastor is like negotiating a minefield—one wrong step and your world explodes, so you tread carefully. Like the month before when Frank had suggested they ask the trustees to put a new lock on the front door of the meetinghouse. Sam had advised against it. “You don’t want to go there,” he’d told his secretary. “Because Dale Hinshaw will want to rehash everything. It’s better just to leave it alone.”

When Sam had come to work the next morning, the new lock was on the door and Frank was putting away his tools.

“I know nothing,” Sam said. “I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I have no idea where that new lock came from.”

“What new lock?” Frank asked.

There are some things it’s best not to know—which of your children started the fight, why it took fifty years to replace a lock, or what grand scheme Dale Hinshaw might be cooking up. Knowledge is a good thing, but ignorance is not to be discounted.