The Bible School Under the Cottonwood

Wednesday

By Wednesday there were thirty-eight kids. I had not planned for thirty-eight. I sent Emma to the Cenex for more juice, and Noah started cutting paper plates in half to stretch them.

Steve came in from the field at ten for a part he had forgotten. He stood at the corner of the house with his cap pushed back, looking at thirty-eight children doing the song about the wise man and the foolish man, with the rain coming down and the house going splat.

He did not come over. He just raised one hand to me, the way he waves from the tractor, and got his part and went back out. But I saw him stand there for a full minute first.

That afternoon Emma drove to the elevator to pick up a bag of feed for the calves, and she went past the church on the way.

When she got home she came into the kitchen and stood there with her keys.

“Mom,” she said. “There’s like eleven cars at church.”

“So?”

“So they’ve got the big banner up, and the doors open, and you can hear the music from the street.” She picked at the counter. “Jessica’s little brother is in it. She said there’s nineteen kids. In the whole fellowship hall.”

Nineteen kids. Twenty-four had signed up. Some of them had gone on vacation, I supposed, or found it was not what they expected.

Six counselors from Fargo, with a sound system and a jungle set, in a hall that seats two hundred.

I want to be honest about how I felt. A small mean part of me wanted to call somebody. I did not. I told Emma, “That’s still nineteen kids hearing about Jesus. That’s a good thing. Don’t you dare say a word about it.”

She rolled her eyes. But she did not say a word about it, and that is how I know I raised her right.

The Silence

Tammy did not call me all week. I did not call her either.

Thursday at the Cenex, I ran into Gail, who is on the council and was one of the two votes against. She leaned across the ice cream freezer and whispered, “Tammy knows. Everybody’s told her. She’s just sick about it.”

“I didn’t do it to make her sick,” I said.

“I know you didn’t. But it’s thirty-eight against nineteen, Robin. And the paper came out to take pictures at church on Tuesday, and there were all those empty chairs behind the kids.”

I had not known about the paper. I bought my milk and drove home and sat in the pickup in the yard for a minute, looking at the clothesline full of paper arks, and I prayed for Tammy. I meant it, mostly.

I want to tell you that I was all grace. I was not. Part of me was hurt still, from that parking lot, and part of me was proud of the full yard, and I had to ask God to sort out which part was which, because I could not.

Thursday was Jonah. Noah played the whale. He wore a gray tarp and a pair of swimming goggles and swallowed Emma whole behind a hay bale, and thirty-eight children screamed so loud the calves came to the fence to look.