The Barefoot Believers (22 page)

“Go where?” Esperanza kept at her heels, which meant she had to move in a jerking, quick step-stop movement to keep from overrunning cast-wearing Kate.

“As I recall, Santa Sofia has a small hospital.” Struggling to keep her grip on the squirming child, Kate used her shoulder to hit the light switch. The kitchen, where she had left the first-aid kit when she'd wrapped Jo's ankle days ago, flooded with light.

That did not help Esperanza's dim news. “Not anymore.”

Kate slowed but did not stop. “What?”

“The hospital closed last year,” Esperanza said.

Kate stopped a few feet from the sink, trying to give her brain a shot at processing this info and at assessing what to do next.

“We do have an urgent-care clinic.”

“Okay.” She took another step. The stopper clinked into place in the drain. A twist of the knob and the rush and splash of water filling the sink underscored Kate's hurried order. “Get dressed. We'll go there.”

“I don't have a car.”

“My sister will take us.” Kate tested the water then moved to the cabinet where she had tucked the first-aid kit away.

Esperanza finally agreed with a nod and headed for the back door.

“Jo!” Kate yelled as loud as she could.

Fabiola cringed then yowled at the rude blast of sound.

A response that Kate took as a good sign. “Jo! Wake up, we have—”

“She's not here.” Esperanza stood in the doorway and whipped her head around. “Her car is not in the driveway.”

“What? It's early Sunday morning. Where could she be?”

“Church?”

“We don't have a church here.” When they were younger they had always just gone to the Traveler's Wayside Chapel for…“Travis.”

“What should we do?”

They couldn't exactly call Jo now. If she was in church, she had probably silenced her cell phone. If she hadn't silenced it, then their call would intrude on the service for others. Kate wrestled to get the medicine bottle out of the kit, then measure out the dosage as she mentally ticked off their options.

“I can call Vince,” Esperanza said. It was not a question. It was a habit. The same answer the for-all-practical-purposes single mom had learned to give to any problem.

Fabiola fought the dropper at first, but Kate persisted and in a moment had emptied out the medicine. She took a moment to wipe the thick red liquid from the child's chin. “I know, sweetie, sometimes the things that are best for us are the hardest for us to swallow.”

The last words slowed and faded on her tongue.

Kate jerked her head up. “Esperanza?”

“What?” The girl's delicate footsteps resounded across the back deck, she stuck her head in the door. “Is she worse?”

“No.” Kate gazed down at the child, who had relaxed a bit and was making faces and sticking her tongue out trying to get rid of the medicine's aftertaste. The child wasn't worse, but Kate might just be about to make things between herself and her one-time love worse. She had no business doing it, either. But that wasn't going to stop her.

She had run from the big life decisions, from the looming specter of loss, from her own silence for too long. It ended today. No matter what the costs.

She would put away those childish fears and do the right thing, by giving someone else the chance to do the right thing also. “Don't call Vince. I am going to call Gentry.”

“S
o no service?”

“Are you kidding?” Travis brandished a long silver spatula and in one fluid movement used it to pry an overcooked pancake off a portable griddle on a counter in the chapel's basement kitchenette. “Best service in town, don't you think?”

Jo had arrived early, hoping to, well, planning to make sure the adorable minister knew she had made the effort to come to worship this morning. She'd worn her best non-Realtor business-suit type of dress and a pair of modest—in style but not in price—shoes. And had even managed to tame the shreds of her custom-cut- to-accommodate- her-extensions hair into a fluffy, girlie hairdo. Cute but not out of the question for a minister's wife. Or friend.

A minister's
friend,
she reminded herself.

She had had visions of herself sitting in the front pew, all sweet and blond and attentive. Of listening to the message of grace, singing the Lord's praises from her heart and afterward inviting the resident man of God out for lunch.

But lunch was not exactly on the menu.

“Why breakfast?”

“It's the most important meal of the day?”

Jo put her hand on her hip and looked up at him.

He grinned at her and went back to work pouring batter on the griddle. “The answer is in our name.”

“Wayside Chapel?”

He nodded. “Wayside missions have a longstanding tradition of existing for those who are off the path, who have literally fallen by the wayside. We meet those people where they are, not where we are most comfortable.”

That made Jo squirm a little. Her life, even life in her daydreams, had stayed pretty much tucked safely inside her comfort zone.

“So we serve meals and run food banks and clothes closets—”

“And loan out crutches.”

He grinned. “And loan out crutches, to anyone in need. In Santa Sofia that also includes reaching out to our significant tourist population, of course.”

“We used to come here ourselves on Sundays. And sometimes Mom would come for the evening service, also.”

“We still do it on Wednesday and Sunday evenings—we call it All Souls Worship and Praise Sing-along.”

She smiled at the thought of all those strangers and locals coming together to lift their voices and make a joyful noise. Or as in the case of her own singing, a boisterous noise, emphasis on
noise.

“Maybe you can come by tonight, then.”

“I'd like that.”

All around them people had begun to gather, most of them calling out their hellos to Travis first and then to each other. All of them eyed her. They whispered with one another, then stole another peek at her again. And Jo did not think it was because of her darling hairdo.

“Maybe I shouldn't have come by this morning?”

“Don't say that. I'm glad you did.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I could always use an extra hand in the chow line.”

She had deserved that gentle but firm reminder. This was neither the time nor the place for trying to get Travis's attention. In this place, and at this time more than any other, he must rightly focus on the people who came to him seeking the love of the Lord.

She made a sweeping glance of the room and noted all the people dressed more for cleaning out a garage than for congregating in a church. At least she thought they had come seeking the Lord. Maybe they just came because McDonald's was too crowded.

She watched a mom kneel in front of a small boy, spit on a tissue then clean a smudge from his cheek. He endured it, but fidgeted the whole time, dancing up and down in his sneakers with the busted seams along the side. And it dawned on Jo. They weren't dressed this way out of lack of respect for the chapel.

As was her habit, she looked at the woman's shoes. They made her son's ragged sneaks look good. Suddenly even Jo's modestly priced shoes seemed a silly extravagance.

“Surely there is something I can do,” she whispered.

“You want something to do? Check the ice chest at the end of the table and make sure there is plenty of milk and juice boxes.”

Jo took a peek into the chest then at the crowd. “Just barely enough. If you'll tell me where to get more, I'll restock it.”

“More? There is no more, Jo. Just tell people as they go through not to take anything they won't use at this meal. That usually works.”

“And on the days when it doesn't work?”

“Somebody goes without,” he said softly and she could see in his eyes it troubled him.

Not that mother, she wanted to say. Not that child. Instead she licked her lips and thought of how much she had in life. How much she had taken for granted. “Meals, food banks, clothes. What else do you do? Support groups?”

“AA.” He kept working away.

“What about a women's group?”

“For…?”

“Women?”

A slow smile crept over his face. He shook his head. “We don't have a woman on staff to lead that kind of thing.”

“I could.”

“You?” He looked her over, up and down and up again, his last glance resting on her crazy-expensive shoes.

“Yes, me. I could lead a class. I know the Bible. I have the ribbons from Sunday school to show it.” She would have slipped those shoes off on the spot but thought better of it since they were essentially in a makeshift kitchen preparing food. “In fact, we could…we could meet on the beach. No shoes required.”

“A regular group of barefoot believers, huh?”

“Why not?” That question burned itself into Jo's head then and there. “Barefoot Believers. Kick off your shoes and walk awhile with the Lord.”

His mouth quirked up on one side.

If he said yes, he was saying yes to more than just her help and they both knew it. He was saying they were a team, of sorts. She held her breath and waited for his answer.

“Almost have the first round ready, folks. Why don't you line up and get your plates? I'll stop long enough to say the blessing in just a sec.” He motioned with the spatula to the people closest to them, then turned to Jo. “It won't be easy. It sure won't be glamorous.”

“I know.”

He smiled. A real, warm, genuine smile.

But he didn't say any more. He didn't say yes to her wanting to be a part of his work.

Jo wanted to cry and she didn't know why. Pettiness? Travis cared about all these people as individuals, not just her. Had that realization made her overly emotional? She searched her heart and shook her head slightly. No.

Jo watched an older woman being helped ahead in the line by a young man. They both had plain white plates in their hands and Jo couldn't help wishing she knew their story.

Everybody has a story; it dawned on her then. She certainly did. And Kate. And Travis. He had one that people all over the country had once wanted to learn. These people had their stories as well and those stories mattered. They mattered to the man making them breakfast to make sure they got a meal today and they mattered to God. Each of these people mattered because of God, because His Son had died for all of them.

Jo blinked and to her surprise found tears in her eyes. She never thought like this. She never got all spiritual about, well, anything.

It certainly wasn't the kind of thing that ever came up in the Monday-morning motivational meetings at Powers Realty. The message there was always “Sell. Sell. Sell. Money. Money. Money. There's a boom going on out there. Which would you rather do? Ride the explosion or get caught in the fallout?”

Jo had ridden that explosion
and
gotten caught in the fallout. She had come to Santa Sofia trying to hop on whatever firepower the boom had left, and suddenly she felt ashamed of herself for it. She had a home. She had an apartment in Atlanta, but she also had a home here in Santa Sofia. A home she no longer wanted to sell off for a quick fix.

She had a family who loved her.

And plenty to eat.

And clothes on her back.

And shoes on her feet.

She shifted her heels over the old linoleum floor. Her gaze dropped down to the footwear that had cost her more than Travis had probably paid out to feed the small cluster of folks here this morning.

Why not? Why not the Barefoot Believers? She wasn't doing it to be a part of Travis's team; she would do it to be a part of God's team.

And in that moment, she knew He wanted her.

She waited for Travis to lift a short stack of pancakes onto somebody's plate, to share a kind word, then to wipe off his hands and turn back to the griddle before she asked, “How do you do this?”

He poured some batter then grimaced. “I put the first two aside for the dog.”

“What?”

“You wanted to know how I make such perfect pancakes. Right?” He grinned at her.

“This is your idea of perfection?” She pointed to the griddle bubbling with things that looked like paint splatters more than circles, in various shades of barely beyond-batter to burned-beyond-belief.

“I suppose you can do better?”

She took the spatula from his hand without saying a word and went to work. “My question, by the way, was how do you do this, early mornings, hard work, for people you may never see again?”

“And a few I see every day even though we are supposed to supply temporary help only?”

“Yeah. How do you face that every day?”

“The simple answer is with faith.”

“Faith? It sounds like anything but a simple answer to me.”

“It's all I've got.”

She looked at him over her shoulder, studied his honest, open expression a moment, then finally said exactly what she had wanted to say since the moment he'd walked though her door. “Do you ever regret it? You gave up so much.”

“I guess this is where I say look at all I've gained.” He spread his arms. The noise of people chatting, scraping forks over plates, of chairs scooting over the dingy floor and of complaints about the coffee being too hot and the syrup too cold rushed at them. Not a single person looked up.

“I have to ask you again, how do you do it?”

He opened his mouth.

“And don't just say faith,” she cautioned. “Faith is
why
you do it. I'm talking about how. How do you get up day after day and look at this life over the one you could have had and not become bitter? How do you keep at it when nobody seems to even notice? How do you pay your bills?”

“Some days, I don't.”

“Which? Bitter? Ignored? Bills?”

“All of them.”

Jo could not understand this man. “So…?”

“You want to talk impossible? Living up to an image that has nothing to do with you, with the real person. With my goals and hopes and even my actual abilities. That was impossible.” He handed out another breakfast plate then turned to her, looked her over and began unwinding the big apron from around his neck. When he got it free, he held it up to her.

She ducked to allow him to slip it over her head. “Don't even try to tell me about that. I have lived with that all my life, only the image was a walking, talking, becoming a doctor perfect sister.”

He reached around and nabbed the apron strings, brought them around front and tied them together for her. “You have to learn to accept yourself.
Be
yourself. God didn't make any other person more qualified for the job.”

“Ugh.” She clucked her tongue. “Where'd you get that? From some sign in front of a church?”

“Actually from a book—” he folded his arms as if to say
yeah, I read a book,
then stole a sideways glance toward the crowd before he bent down and whispered “—of sayings that have been used on signs in front of churches.”

She laughed.

“So it's corny. That doesn't make it less true.”

“For you maybe.” She slid the spatula under a fluffy golden pancake and moved it to the pan waiting to be served. “But what if the ‘you' that you are stuck being is a person nobody else wants?”

Travis frowned, his arms wound not quite so tightly now. “Could you put that in quaint cliché church signese, please?”

“My mom chose Kate.” She poured a pancake. “My father chose my baby sister.” Another pancake. “Nobody chose me.” No more room for more batter. “Ever.”

He shook his head. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It's true. When I was five years old, my father left my mother, taking my baby sister with him. We never saw either of them again.”

“And you wished he had taken you with him?”

“No. I wish…” Jo paused with the spouted mixing bowl of batter still in one hand. “I wish he'd have at least tried to take me with him.”