And the Shofar Blew (5 page)

Samuel took Abby to Denny’s for lunch. “Timmy was good as gold.” She sang the boy’s praises for fifteen minutes before she asked about Paul and Eunice.

“He has passion, and she plays piano and sings like an angel.” He smiled wryly. “You told Mabel about Eunice’s visit to Vine Hill the other day, didn’t you?”

Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “I knew it was the best way to get the word out to everyone else about what a wonderful young lady Eunice is. What about Paul’s sermon?”

Samuel told her, “He’s trying to raise the dead.”

“Good!” She sipped her decaf laced with cream and sugar. “You’re pleased, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“What about the others?”

“He shook ’em up.”

“We all need a little shaking up now and then.”

Samuel chuckled. “I don’t think it’s going to be a matter of now and then, Abby, but a matter of
from now on.”

Paul retreated to his church office and spent the rest of the day planning out a schedule for the week. He started up his computer, made a full list of the church members, elders first, with addresses and telephone numbers, and made lines and columns to keep track of future visits. He was going to meet every member of the church and find out how best to serve them. But he needed to meet others outside the congregation as well. The church would need younger people if it was going to survive.

He started another list. He’d call the chamber of commerce and see if there was a newcomers club. He’d drop by the high school hangout, get to know the proprietor, meet some more kids. He would make a point of meeting some of the merchants on Main Street. He would attend city council meetings and see what was going on in town. He needed to get involved in the community and let people know that the doors of Centerville Christian Church were wide open to everyone.

It wasn’t until Eunice called him at five and said dinner was ready that Paul remembered he hadn’t eaten all day. He’d been too excited before the service, and a little queasy before he entered the fellowship hall. He locked up the church and went home.

The kitchen counter was lined and stacked with crockery, pots, Tupperware containers, and Pyrex dishes. The mountain of food that had arrived over the last three days was gone. Euny saw his look and grinned. With a flourish of her hand, she opened the freezer so he could see the neatly packaged, family-sized portions in freezer bags sardine-packed onto the shelves. “I won’t have to shop or cook for weeks.”

“You can put the dishes in the fellowship hall and ask everyone to pick them up next Sunday.”

She closed the freezer door. “I’d rather hand deliver everything. It’ll give me the opportunity to get to know members of our little flock. And talk up my husband.”

He sat at the table. “I could use a public-relations representative right now.” She had put a nice tablecloth out, and a small bouquet of roses beside which stood a single red candle. He wished he felt more like celebrating. Instead, he felt as though he had failed.

“It’s your first Sunday, Paul.” She stood behind him, kneading his shoulders. Leaning down, she kissed his cheek. “People need time to get to know
you,
Paul, not just what you want to do for the church.”

“Where’s Timmy?”

“Asleep. I fed him earlier, gave him his bath, and put him to bed.” She laughed. “Abby wore him out. Bless her heart.”

Paul turned his chair and drew her onto his lap. He kissed her long and hard. She tasted like heaven. What would he do without her? “I’m going to start visitations tomorrow.”

She ran her fingers through the hair on the back of his neck. “They’ll love you.”

“It didn’t feel like love.”

“They’re still mourning the loss of Henry Porter, Paul. But these people are eager to get to know you. Ask them a few questions; encourage them to talk about their lives. You’ll be amazed.”

“You were born with people skills, Euny. I had to take classes.”

She kissed him again. “You’re very good with people.”

Five years of marriage and she still stirred him as much as she had when he first met her.

“Abby called a while ago and said Samuel was tickled with your sermon.”

“Tickled.” He wanted to stir them, light them up, get them off their pews and out into the community, not
tickle
them.

Euny ran her fingers through his hair again. “Samuel has been praying for revival in this church for the past ten years.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Abby told me, right after she said Samuel felt some hope after hearing you speak today.”

His worries seemed smaller as her hand glided down his neck and across his shoulder. She whispered a laugh in his ear. “Paul, your stomach is growling.”

“I didn’t eat this morning.”

“Or in the fellowship hall.” She rose and went to the stove.

He followed her. “I am hungry.” Smiling, he put his hands on her hips and kissed the side of her neck as she ladled thick beef stew into a bowl. He inhaled her scent, loving it. His stomach growled again.

She laughed. “You have a wolf in your belly.” She nudged him aside and set two bowls on the table. She took a book of matches from her apron pocket and lit the candle. He took his seat again and watched her turn off the kitchen light. When she sat, he stared at her. She raised her brows in question.

“I love you, Eunice.” So much it hurt sometimes, and scared him.

Her eyes softened and glowed. “I love you, too.”

She was sweet and wise, beautiful and so strong in faith; he was sometimes in awe of her.
Lord, I never thought I’d marry an angel.
His throat closed as gratitude overwhelmed him.

Euny leaned toward him, her hands outstretched. “It took you more than one day to win my heart, Paul Hudson. It may take them a little time, too. Be patient. You’ll win their hearts just as you did mine. Give them time.”

He took her hands, kissed her palms, and gave humble thanks to the Lord for His blessings.

CHAPTER 3

A
T SIX-THIRTY, Stephen Decker entered Charlie’s Diner and took a seat at the counter with the other early risers. He put his
Wall
Street Journal
down as the waitress turned from the cook’s counter with two breakfast plates in her hands. She gave him a double take and smiled before turning her attention to two customers several stools away. She set an omelet in front of a man in oil-stained coveralls and eggs Benedict in front of a man in a brown UPS uniform. In a fluid motion, she turned, picked up the coffeepot from its hot plate, refilled their cups, picked up another cup, and walked the length of the counter. She smiled. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

She set the cup down and filled it to the brim. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Black is fine, thanks.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. I’m sure I’d remember if I had.”

Lifting his cup, he smiled back over the brim and took a sip of the scalding brew.

“My name’s Sally Wentworth, by the way. And yours?”

“Stephen Decker.”

She looked from the
Wall Street Journal
to his work shirt. Stephen wondered if she was trying to get a fix on who and what he was. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Tom Selleck?”

“Once or twice.” He smiled. “He’s older.”

She laughed. “Well, aren’t we all? What sort of work do you do?”

“Construction.”

“Carpenter?”

“A little of everything.”

“You’re not exactly an open book, are you?”

The cook slapped the bell twice. “Hey, Sally, quit pestering the customers. Pancakes and a Denver omelet up.”

“One of these days I’m going to take that bell away from you, Charlie!” She looked back at Stephen and jerked her head. “My husband.”

“I like to see you jump!” Charlie hollered from the back.

“Yeah, yeah.” Laughing, she put the coffeepot onto the burner and picked up the two plates. She carried them out to an elderly couple sitting in a booth by the front windows. Stephen could hear her talking to her customers. Apparently, they were regulars because she told them to say hello to their daughter and asked about their grandchildren by name.

“Hey, you there at the counter!” Charlie peered at him. “If Sally asks too many questions, just tell her to mind her own business!”

Stephen laughed. “This is quite a place you have here.”

Sally sauntered back behind the counter. “We like to treat our customers like family.” She pulled her tablet out of her apron pocket and her pencil from the blonde bun on her head. “Now, what can Charlie fix you for breakfast? Something lean and mean or something loaded with fat and flavor?”

“Three eggs over easy, hash browns, and a steak, medium rare.”

“Good for you. You only live once. Might as well enjoy yourself while you’re filling up on cholesterol.” She called over her shoulder. “One he-man breakfast, Charlie! And get a move on! This guy looks hungry!” She winked at Stephen. “Want a little OJ to wet your whistle while you’re waiting?”

“Sure. Why not?”

She left him alone after that, talking with the UPS driver and auto mechanic.

Stephen shook open his newspaper and read while he waited. He’d been out of the mainstream for a while. Six months in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center tended to do that to you. He’d only been out for six weeks. He was still treading carefully, trying to stay dry in a wet world. He’d made a conscious decision to leave business behind and focus on recovery. It had been a sound decision.

Unfortunately, he’d waited too long for it to make a difference to his family. The day after he signed himself in, his wife, Kathryn, had closed out their bank accounts and checked herself out of his life, taking his five-year-old daughter, Brittany, with her. He’d faced down his first major temptation when he called home and found out the telephone had been disconnected. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to stick to the program and not pack up and head home to an empty house and a full bottle of scotch.

He’d calmed down when a friend did some checking and learned Kathryn had moved into an apartment in Sacramento, closer to the brokerage firm where she had worked for the past four years. But when he was served with divorce papers a month into the program, Stephen had really struggled. The old urges returned. The urge to get drunk and escape the pain—until it hit him harder the morning after. Fortunately, he knew this was no solution.

“Irreconcilable differences,” Kathryn had claimed.

He’d spent the next few weeks roiling in anger, casting blame, justifying and rationalizing his own behavior over the past few years. Except none of it worked this time. His counselor, Rick, didn’t let him get away with it, and the regimen of the twelve-step program kept bringing him face-to-face with himself. He didn’t like what he saw in the mirror.

Rick was blunt. “If you quit drinking for your wife and daughter, you’ll fail. You have to quit drinking for yourself.”

Stephen knew the truth of that advice. He’d tried to quit before, only to fall off the wagon. If he went back to drinking now, he knew he wouldn’t stop until he was dead. So he made the decision to turn his life over to Jesus Christ, and live one day at a time.
Live
, the program said. Live and let live, which meant he had to get his own life in order and allow Kathryn to do the same with hers. It meant letting go of the bitterness and wrath that sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. It meant not blaming her for his drinking, and not accepting the role as scapegoat for all of her problems.

He’d signed the divorce papers and contacted an attorney, even though he had already decided not to contest the matter. He took the hard slap across the face when Kathryn told him through her attorney that she wanted the house in lieu of alimony. A clean break, she said, but he knew better. The real-estate market was hot, and she’d make a killing off the house he’d designed and built on a golf course near Granite Bay. He agreed, never expecting her to punch him in the stomach by refusing joint custody of their daughter. When he said he’d fight her, she kicked him below the belt by claiming he had been an abusive husband and father, citing as “proof ” that he was living in a rehab center. She demanded exorbitant child-support payments and insisted they be made on a bimonthly direct-deposit basis.

When the attorney delivered the news, Stephen felt like a cockroach pinned to a display board. “Check the records and see if I’ve ever bounced a check or not made a payment on time. Call the bank! Interview my crew! Talk to my subcontractors! I may have downed a bottle of scotch a day, but I never laid a hand on my wife or my daughter, and I never left a bill unpaid!”

The attorney did check.

Stephen felt small satisfaction. Only a few close friends knew he had a drinking problem, and even they hadn’t guessed the depth of it. And the records showed he had run a successful business and made enough to support his family in an exclusive neighborhood. He’d never been arrested on a DUI or created a public disturbance. The only disturbances had been behind the closed door of his well-insulated, luxury home.

“Be thankful she’s instructed her attorney to have her name removed from anything to do with your business,” his attorney told him. “California is a community-property state, and she’s within her rights to ask for half of it.”

Stephen knew it wasn’t due to any hint of fair play on her part. She’d been through some of the harder years with him. Maybe she was afraid he’d self-destruct, and she’d get caught up in liens against spec housing projects. Construction businesses came and went with every hiccup in the economy. Kathryn just wanted every dime she could get up front. And she didn’t care if that left him with only pennies to live on.

“You can fight her,” his attorney had said. “You don’t have to take this sitting down.”

Stephen had almost given in to the temptation to hit back, and hit hard. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said he would think it over. He didn’t want to react in anger this time. He wanted to respond wisely, and do what was best for Brittany. And Kathryn. He could fight all right, and probably win some rounds. She had had an affair three years ago, after she’d farmed out Brittany to a preschool. In usual form, she’d blamed him for being too insensitive to her needs, and he’d bought a bottle of Glenfiddich. He could fight her, and fill his attorney’s pocket with money while accomplishing nothing but momentary satisfaction. He didn’t feel like punching back this time. They had done enough damage to one another over the past five years. Having Brittany had been an attempt to save their floundering marriage. And it had worked for two years. But how much damage had they done to their daughter during their shouting matches in the last three?

No, this time he’d swallow his pride and let Kathryn have everything she wanted. He’d crush the urge to defend himself. No more casting blame. No more rationalizing or justifying his side of things. Even if he had to go bankrupt.

Maybe when she was on her own, she’d find out he wasn’t the cause of all of her problems.

He was going to put one foot in front of the other and live one day at a time. He’d faced up to his drinking problem when he checked into the Salvation Army rehab facility. Knew he was going to live with the urge to drink for the rest of his life. The first few weeks, he’d worked the program on his own terms, determined to win against alcohol, to put a finish to addiction. Loss of his wife, daughter, and home had removed any illusions that he had control over his life. He crashed and burned. But it was in the anguish that followed that he knew everything was changing from the inside out.

It wasn’t until he hit rock bottom that he had been willing to look up and cry out to Jesus for help because he finally faced the fact that he was powerless. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Al-mighty.” Something happened that night that changed everything. Stephen heard what people who walked the walk were saying. He believed the promises the Bible offered. “Come to me and I will give you rest—all of you who work so hard beneath a heavy yoke.”

He had been warned of the enemy on the prowl. “Read your Bible daily,” Rick said. “Go to your AA meetings. Find a fellowship of believers. The biggest mistake an alcoholic can make is to isolate, going off by himself and thinking he can make it on his own.” Stephen took the advice to heart, knowing it came from the voice of experience.

He’d been out of rehab for six weeks now. He read his
One Year Bible
at five o’clock every morning, attended AA meetings three times a week, and worked out at a gym when the urge to drink hit him. The house had sold two days after Kathryn put it on the market. The few pieces of furniture Kathryn had left behind went into a storage facility until he could find an apartment. By the grace of God, Stephen had a project waiting for him, and would make enough off it to keep Decker Design and Construction in the black for months to come.

A few members of his old crew made themselves available. Carl Henderson, a carpenter dubbed “Tree House” by his friends because of his six-foot-nine-inch frame, and Hector Mendoza, Stephen’s “Mexican backhoe,” who could be counted on to do the labor of two men. Carl had been one of Stephen’s drinking buddies, so he warned him up front, “Those days are over for me.” Hector, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was a devout Catholic and dedicated son, helping support his mother, father, and various siblings still south of the border.

All in all, life was bearable. It would be even better when he moved into a place of his own, rather than paying by the week at a motel on Highway 99. He’d run his business out of his house, and now that the house was gone, he was going to have to make some decisions. The thought of going back to the rush of Sacramento depressed him, but Centerville wasn’t exactly his style either. He’d have to make do with his truck and fifth wheeler until the project was finished. Six months, at the most. Unless they ran into snags with the inspectors.

“Here you go,” Sally said and set down a platter with three eggs over easy, hash browns, and a T-bone steak. She replenished his orange juice and filled his coffee cup to the brim.

Stephen was finishing up the last of his steak when the bell over the door jingled.

“Parson Paul’s here, Charlie.”

A young man entered, wearing sweats and a damp T-shirt. His sandy brown hair was cut short. “Hey, Sally,” he said with a grin. “How’s business?”

“Slow this morning. I expect the crowd to come in around eight. What can I get you?”

“OJ,” he said, and waved to the elderly couple sitting in the booth before he slid onto the stool one down from Stephen. “I’m Paul Hudson,” he said, extending his hand.

Stephen introduced himself as he shook hands.

Sally plunked a tall glass of orange juice on the counter. “How many miles did you run this morning, Parson?”

“Took the short course. Two.”

“Wimping out?” Charlie called through the cook’s window.

Hudson laughed. “Something like that.” He turned to greet the UPS driver. “How’s your wife doing, Al?”

“Getting antsy for the baby to come.”

“What does she have to go? Another month?”

“Two weeks.”

The mechanic said he enjoyed Hudson’s Sunday sermon. “My daughter’s planning on coming to the next youth meeting. She said a couple of her friends are attending.”

“We’re up to twelve,” Hudson said. “Tell her to bring as many friends as she wants.” He turned his attention back to Stephen. “Are you a Christian?”

“I like to think so.”

“Well, we’d love to have you come and visit Centerville Christian. Two blocks down, turn left; look for the steeple. The service starts at nine.”

Sally chuckled. “Got to watch out, Decker. Parson Paul is always prowling the pubs for prospective converts.” She zeroed in on Hudson with a sly grin. “Mr. Decker’s new in town, does a little of this and that.” She picked up his plate and looked at it. “Eats like a horse.”

“Are you looking for work?”

“Nope. I’m building a house up on Quail Hollow.”

Sally put the bill in front of Stephen. “Quail Hollow? Are you going to be working on that big place for the Athertons?”