The Organ Bench Nobody Could Take

Pastor Caleb Rhoades said it between the birthday prayers and the potluck sign-up sheet, in the same easy voice he used to tell us the nursery was out of diaper wipes.

“Starting next Sunday, we’ll be moving to worship tracks for our music,” he said. “Professional recordings. The sound is fuller, and it frees us up. We want to thank Sister Ardith for her many years of faithful service.”

He did not look at the organ. He did not look at me. He looked at a spot about two feet above the back pew, the way a boy looks when he has practiced a speech in the mirror and wants to get through it before his nerve gives out.

Many years.

I sat on the organ bench in my blue Sunday dress with the offertory music still open on the stand. The music committee, which is three people and I am one of them, had not been told one word of this. Now I knew, along with everybody who had come for the birthday prayers.

It was forty-nine years that October. I was 20 the first time I sat down on that bench. I had worn my wedding band for exactly two weeks, and I wore my mother’s good shoes because I did not own a pair with a heel low enough for the pedals. My husband Vernon turned pages for me that first Sunday. After that he took pew 6 on the left aisle, where he sat with his hat on his knee and watched my hands, and he did it every Sunday until the November his heart gave out in the cab of the grain truck.

Now 102 people turned in their pews and looked at the back of my head.

I did not move. I kept my hands in my lap and my eyes on the hymn board, where somebody had slid in 214 and 108 for the day, and I listened to Pastor Caleb thank me for my service the way you thank a clerk who has finished ringing you up.

The sermon was on gratitude. I am not making that up. It was on the ten lepers, and the one who came back.

I played the closing hymn, because it was on the board. I will not tell you how it sounded.

Afterward folks came up the side aisle and stood around the bench with their Bibles held against their chests. Nobody knew what to say. Marjorie Kloster, who is 91 and has sat in the second pew on the aisle since Eisenhower, patted my arm three times like a woman checking a loaf of bread. Hannah Rhoades, the pastor’s wife, squeezed my hand hard, said, “Ardith, I’m so sorry,” and went out the side door before I could answer. I believed she meant it. I still do.

Her husband had shut himself in his study. I could hear him not coming out.