Ted May Goes to Church for a Change

"And, so, brothers and sisters, that's it for the temple trip and so let's get that put together and get the youth to commit to that and there's gonna be lessons this month on the various temple work: the baptism of the dead and what's it called? Endowments. And one of you counselors need to remind me," here the Bishop grinned in self-deprecation and the congregation tittered as he looked back over his shoulder at his two counselors, and he continued "to get them donations set up and the bus is," his heavy breath was too close to the microphone as he looked down his nose through his crooked reading glasses at a scrap of paper "thirty-five dollars each person over to St. George."

He paused. "Okay, and then we got the storehouse project which this month is peaches and," he looked out over his glasses at the congregation. "Sister Christiansen?"

"It's huckleberry jam."

"That's my favorite. Good on a sandwich." They laughed. "Ok, so we got the peaches and the jam and we need to represent the ward over to Youngville gettin all that canning done, and it's not just the sisters need to get this job done, brothers. There is boxes to haul and when they got a bulging can, why, some brother's got to step up and taste it and see it's not got the botulism." The congregation laughed again.

"You can't say it's anyone's fault," Ted thought. "She could say I was a drinker and she would not be wrong, but who did not want sex and drove me to drink?"

"Okay, then. I think we got a announcement from the Relief Society." He looked through some scraps of paper, one of which fluttered down from the pulpit into the first row of folding chairs, where someone caught it and handed it back up. The Bishop took it absentmindedly while he read from a scrap. "Sister Smith? C'mon up." He turned and lowered himself heavy between his counselors.

"And who is a scrawny and bony son of a bitch with a temper that she didn't want to have sex with? You can't say it's her fault."

Sister Smith strode to the pulpit and seized the microphone with an abrupt wrenching grasp, setting off feedback that she alone seemed not to hear. "Brothers and sisters, it's that time of year again. The annual Gold and Green Ball will be October first. Brothers, you need to dust off your good suits and get your wives, your wife some red roses, which they are four-ninety-nine the dozen at the Ditchfield Walmart, and set the date aside. Every couple should be there. It's pot luck and the decorations will be the loveliest thing you ever seen. October one. And we got to get the punchbowl back from who took it home last year. And we need volunteers to stay after and put up the chairs and tables, so brothers each and every one of you got to sign up on the sheet going around in Elders' Quorum today. Thanks and see you there." She strode off the stage, her heels beating the floor.

The Bishop heaved himself up to the pulpit again and raised his eyebrows and grinned for a couple seconds, for no reason other than to show his affability in contrast to Sister Smith's officious brusqueness. "I wish someone would make a best-of video of me up here," he thought. "I am a entertaining son of a gun."

"Course, she knew who she was marrying. It's not like I was unknown to her. She knew I'm a angry man. If I didn't have the ranch back then she woulda married a man who did." He pictured her sitting up there at the organ the way she used to do, with her bony back too straight and her hair too young streaked with gray. He pictured her sitting on the other side of the cold woodstove in the kitchen wearing her coat, and in his mind he held his hand palm-up, in a simple gesture as if to say "Light a goddamn fire if you're so cold," but when he looked up the Bishop was talking:

"...gonna be your last chance in September, so let me know or talk to the ward clerk and we'll be sure to meet, long as I'm home before my dear wife's got the roast out of the oven."

"You always take blame all the way back to Adam. Or Eve," he thought. "Goddamn her. For taking my youth. For her cold self and for taking everything." He thought of the ranch as it had been when they got married. The wide and neat hayfields. The new Ford. The house painted. He pictured her at the woodstove looking up and seeing him gesture, and saw her turn back down to her book with a sour expression on her face. Not a word between them. Both just bones and sinew and silent resentment still in their twenties. "If that lawyer walked in here..." he looked around the chapel and at his neighbors and lifetime friends, the long row of yellow crewcuts where the Bishop's boys flanked their roundshouldered mother, "...I would shoot him in the head," he thought.

The Bishop eased himself back down into the chair. It creaked loudly as the organist played the first moaning notes of the Sacrament hymn.

"...shoot him and be justified," he thought. "Come into my life, don't even talk, don't cook good enough to get a hog to eat it, the sour looks, the avoiding me, the never once showing me gratitude or appreciation."

The Bishop looked out over the congregation as they sang. He looked at his boys, all broad and yellowhaired and dressed in the white shirt and blue clip-on. He could hear Sister Gladys sing. "What a lovely voice," he thought, "she still has got after all these years." He thought back to when he was a boy and they sang a duet at the talent show and won, and that everybody laughed as they took the stage, both of them big and chubby and apple-cheeked and dressed to match in clothes his mother had made special, not counting on the comical effect of the bold plaid. He thought "This is the life I have got." He looked at his wife, not singing but staring forward with her thick arms folded high across her bosom. He looked at Ted out there at the back of the room, scowling and holding his hat. Ted smiled up. The Bishop felt okay about being the Bishop, right then. He thought ahead to his funeral. They would say that he had always been a kind and decent man, raised his boys right, been a hardworking rancher and mill-man and a valiant defender of his faith.

"Then leaving and taking the ranch and I pay both lawyers. That dried-up lying thief."

The middle-C was sticking again, producing a slightly warbling drone. The room was too hot and smelled of deodorant and diapers and mothballs. He could smell the storebought white bread all the way back here.

"Makes a man drink and drink bad," thought Ted. "Shit on them." He found himself up and walking to the door. Outside he smelled woodsmoke, and the yellow cottonwood leaves ticked across the parking lot. He loosened his tie and got in the old Ford and found his Waylon Jennings cassette, and drove the few blocks home. The mountain was in clouds. He pulled his handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped dust from the dashboard.

He removed his Sunday hat and put it atop the coat-tree. In his hurry to be on time this morning he had left his plate in the sink. Now he washed it and placed it in the rack. He fired the stove. The same one. Her rocker sat there still all these years later. A lightweight ladderbacked chair his mother had also used. He slid it 'til the runners were under the iron stove, then wrenched it hard forward and the old dry wood splintered almost without his effort. The legs came out of their mortises, then the spindles and armrests. The back took some work. He finally removed the kettle from the stove, raised the chair above his head, and brought it down. Then again with vehemence and it broke to sticks. These he swept into a pile in front of the stove. Sitting in his own chair now, he fed the stove the shambles of the chair. The old maple caught and a surge of heat filled the room. "A winter in here," he thought, and reached for the Jameson.