There was a note of breathless triumph in her voice as she reached the end of her story.
The whole thing was gross. Somehow Jim kept down his nausea.
“Putting on a dead man’s clothes?” he said. “Driving around pretending to be an old friend you just bumped off?”
Ruth Rose met his scorn with her own. “You really think that would be such a big stretch for a man like Father?” she asked. “Every Sunday he eats the flesh of the Saviour and drinks His blood.”
“You are disgusting,” said Jim, his voice shaking.
“No,” she said. “He is disgusting.” There was a note of panic in her voice. “Jim, you’ve got to believe me.”
“Who told you all this?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Did one of your voices tell you this?”
For a moment there were only street sounds. Then she spoke. “So he’s been talking to you,” she said. “I should have known he would.”
“Listen…” said Jim softly.
But before he could continue, she burst out, “Yeah, 1 hear voices, all right. I already told you that. His voice, Jim. Father’s voice. That’s because I listen at his door. And if you heard it — heard the stuff he says — maybe you’d begin to understand.”
“I want to understand,” said Jim. “It’s just…”
“Yeah, right,” she said. He heard her sniffing. He wondered if she was crying but before he could find out, she hung up.
9
The Church of the Blessed Transfiguration was not grand, but it was big enough to require a public address system. It was not the kind of church that lavished attention on stained-glass windows or altar dressings or brass zibzobs or painted statues of Jesus. It was a modest church. A modest church with a very good public address system. That was the first thing Father Fisher bought when he became pastor. And the congregation was pleased because that way they could catch every word of his stirring sermons or his funny homilies full of memorable analogies. It was such a good public address system that it never squeaked or buzzed. It made the pastor’s rich baritone voice sound like he was sitting right beside you, talking to you alone, which kept the children and their parents attentive.
Jim felt strange being back. He hadn’t been to church since last Easter, and his Sunday clothes didn’t fit so well anymore. He had grown a lot since then. He had grown a lot in the last week. Grown to realize that church might be a good place for him to go after all.
Folks at the church smiled and greeted him with sympathy-hands and condolence-eyes. But for all that, it was almost worth going just because of how happy it made his mother. She hadn’t pushed him. She hadn’t said anything more to him about the church helping them out financially and how nice it would be for him to return the favour.
What she didn’t know was that he had his own reasons for showing up at the Blessed T. Something more than worship on his mind.
Ruth Rose had horrified him with her rendition of his father’s death at the hands of Fisher. But no matter how deranged it sounded, he couldn’t shake the vision from his head. It was as if he had been at sea for a year and she had thrown him this wrecked bit of flotsam, something to grab onto. He had no idea where it was carrying him but, somehow, she had stopped him from sinking.
However little Jim cared to believe what she had said, Fisher had lied to him. About a mystery book, about it being a coincidence that they had met outside the library, when the pastor had known Jim was going to be there all along. It wasn’t much, but if he could lie about such things, then maybe he could lie about a tube of lip balm. He could say he lost it while on a search party in an area where he wasn’t supposed to have been searching when, in fact, he might have lost it a lot earlier, walking away from Hub’s car in the cedar grove, in Hub’s clothes, just as Ruth Rose had said. Was she as crazy as Father made her sound?
The church filled up slowly. Organ music played in the background. There was no organ — the Blessed T. wasn’t that kind of a church — but the very good P.A. system had a tape deck.
Tepid sunlight painted the pale church walls. Jim kept turning in his seat to see who was entering the church. Nancy Fisher arrived in her wheelchair, pushed by a member of the congregation. Jim stared at the door, hoping Ruth Rose might follow, the good daughter. Ha!
Her mother took her station beside the last pew by the wall, so as not to be in anybody’s way. She was dressed in a colourful blouse and a bright blue pleated skirt. She looked cheery enough. She smiled a lot. People came over to say hello, and she chatted with each person in a nice subdued way, but as soon as they left, Jim noticed that her face fell and her eyes went neutral. There were pouches under her eyes, as if she didn’t get much sleep. And her hands in her bright blue lap held onto each other tightly. Poor Nancy.
From the vestry at the back of the church the old sexton, Dickie Patterhew, appeared and turned off the organ music tape at the P.A. control panel. The congregation took their seats and stopped talking and then Father Fisher appeared from the vestry, in a cassock that was almost the same blue as his wife’s skirt. He wore a starched white collar but, apart from his cross of glinty green rock, nothing fancy. Nothing to draw a person’s attention from his smooth and handsome face and his neatly combed, lustrous black hair.
He began with a Bible reading. Everyone was supposed to be praying, but Jim noticed that a lot of the congregation glanced at the pastor. The people of the Blessed Transfiguration were so proud of him. He was the first home-grown boy to make it to pastor, and it was generally considered that he could have gone to a much larger parish in a much grander place. No, he had said. When God spoke to him, He told him he must stay right there amongst his people. The congregation was glad about that. And they were smug, too, because the other churches in town which were bigger and older and fancier didn’t have a pastor who could hold a candle to their own Father Fisher when it came to preaching the word of the Lord. And no wonder. He was a man who had been saved from the fires of Hell and was thankful every day for his salvation.
Every child who grew up at the Blessed T. knew the story of how their pastor had been called to the sacred ministry. To Jim it had always sounded like a legend or something, and he had never questioned it. Just the way he had never really known that his dad and Father Fisher grew up together, right there on the Twelfth Line. It was as if the story told at church and the real story were cards in two separate piles. In the watery light filtering through the tall, plain windows of the church, with the farmer of souls leading his cattle in song and prayer, Jim sat and began, for the first time, to try to shuffle the deck together.
Fisher was the son of a shrewd and Godless farmer, so the legend had it. Wilfred Fisher had become rich capitalizing on the misfortunes of his neighbours. He had bought up half of North Blandford Township and young Eldon showed every sign of following in his father’s money-grubbing ways. Gifted with money and a clever mind, he had gone off to university to study business administration and take over the Fisher empire. He had got as far as his final year with top honours. And that’s when the Spirit of the Lord moved in him. The voice of the Lord spoke to him and told him to leave behind the ways of wickedness and go forth in the way of righteousness. And he had listened, forsaking his father’s fortune and becoming a farmer of souls.