The Custodian Who Only Asked For The Bell
Grant spoke first.
“I called an emergency meeting for tomorrow morning,” he said. “Christmas morning. I know that’s not fair to ask of anybody, but I think we need to settle this before the new year, and I don’t want it hanging over anybody’s holiday, including yours.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I want to say something to you tonight, though, in front of the rest of the board, before tomorrow, because I don’t want it to sound like I’m only saying it because of how tonight looked.”
He took a breath.
“I came onto this board to fix a budget. I still think the budget needs fixing. But I treated a man’s whole life like a line item, and I did it three days before Christmas, and I didn’t once ask what this church would be giving up besides seven hundred dollars a month. I saw it tonight. Every pew and every folding chair in that church filled up, the fullest I’ve ever seen it, and near as I can tell every single person who came, came because of you, or because of something you fixed, or because of a funeral where you kept them warm, or because an eleven year old boy told his mother he had to see you ring that bell one more time.”
Wilma Dunkel, who had stayed to help stack chairs same as always, stood quiet in the doorway listening.
“I’m not asking the board to keep you on out of guilt,” Grant went on. “I’m asking tomorrow that we find the eight thousand four hundred dollars somewhere else, because I think I finally understand what we’d actually be buying with it. We’d be buying a cheaper invoice and a church that forgot what held it up for forty five years. I don’t want that church. I don’t think any of us do.”
The other four board members nodded. One of them, an older farmer named Russ Thoreson who had sat quiet through the whole mess, said simply, “Should’ve said all that a week ago, Grant, but I’m glad you’re saying it now.”
I did not gloat, and I want you to know that, because it would have been easy to, and I did not feel like gloating anyway. I felt tired, and grateful, and something close to the way I’d felt the day Vivian said yes to marrying me, which is to say, like a man who has been handed back more than he thought he still had any right to ask for.
“I never wanted a fight,” I told them. “I asked for one bell, not a reversal. But if the board’s asking, I’d be glad to keep taking care of this place. I don’t know how many years I’ve got left in these knees to climb that tower, but I’d like to spend them here.”
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