The Bible School Under the Cottonwood

Logan

The parents started coming at noon. Pickups and Suburbans and minivans lined up along the road, and kids ran to them with paper arks and rainbows and cotton-ball sheep, and the clothesline emptied a craft at a time.

Doris came in the Ranger at quarter after twelve. Logan had been the last one off the hay bales every day that week.

He came over to me with his whale craft, a paper plate with a pipe cleaner spout, and stood there a minute holding it in both hands.

“Mrs. Hallberg,” he said. “Is it okay if I come Sunday?”

“Come where, honey?”

“To the real church.” He looked at the cross on the garage, and then back at me. “Not instead of here. Just also.”

I had to sit down on the hay bale. I am not ashamed to say it. Doris was standing behind him at the gate, and she had one hand over her mouth.

“Logan,” I said, when I could, “you can come any Sunday you want, for the rest of your life. And if your grandma can’t drive you, you call me, and I’ll come get you.”

“Okay,” he said, very serious, like we had signed something. Then he ran to the Ranger with his whale.

Doris stayed at the gate a minute. She did not say anything. She just nodded at me twice, and then she turned and walked to the pickup, and I watched her wipe her face with a bandana before she got in.

Tammy was standing beside me. I had not heard her come over. She had seen the whole thing.

“I never thought,” she said quietly. “I never thought about a boy like that at all.”

“Well,” I said, “you’ve thought about him now.”

Sunday

On Sunday Logan Brekke came to church in a clean button-up shirt that was a size too big, with his grandma Doris in her best church dress and his mother, Kim, who had come straight off a night shift in her scrubs and sat in the very back pew.

There were seventy-three people in church that morning. I know because Pastor Ann counted out loud from the pulpit, which she has never done before or since, and then said, “I think we need more coffee.”

After the service, at the council meeting in the church library, Tammy Wolff made the motion to waive the fee and refund every family who had already paid.

She read it off an index card in a steady voice. I seconded it.

It passed seven to nothing. Gail cried. Dave, who has been treasurer for sixteen years and has never shown an emotion in a meeting, said, “Well, that’s about the best money we never collected.”

Then Tammy stood up and said, in front of the whole council, “I owe Robin an apology. I called her Bible school outdated in the parking lot, and I didn’t have the courage to call her before the vote. I was wrong on both counts.”

She sat down. Nobody knew what to say. So I said, “Thank you, Tammy,” and Pastor Ann said, “Let’s pray,” and we did.