The Eleven in the Pews at Bethel

The names in the hymnal

At eight o’clock Hank finished “Blessed Assurance,” turned off the lamp, and the hour was over. People stood and buttoned coats and came down the aisle past me one at a time.

Every one of them stopped and squeezed my hand. The young mother. Five people whose faces I could barely see. The two old men in the feed caps. Hank last.

“Same time next week?” asked the older of the two old men. He was the tall one, stooped, with a voice like gravel.

“There’s an offer on the building,” I said.

He nodded slowly, like it was news he had been expecting. “Art,” he said, and patted my hand twice, and went out.

When they had all gone, I walked up front and turned the lamp back on.

Mom’s hymnal was lying open on the music stand, the old red Baptist one with the cracked spine that she had carried for as long as I could remember.

I closed it to take it home with me. Then I saw the inside of the front cover.

There, in her pencil, in that neat piano-teacher handwriting I would know anywhere, was a list. Eleven first names, one under the other, each one added in a slightly different pencil, as if she had written them down over a long time.

Hank. Merle. Art. Nora. Donna. Ray. Tom. Sue. Bill. Kayla. And under Kayla, in smaller letters, baby Ellie.

Under the list she had written: “Lights by seven. Don’t let it go dark. Hank has the side key. Heat on by November.”

I sat down on the piano bench where she had sat every Wednesday for four years. I opened the hymnal back to where she had left it and put it on the stand exactly the way I had found it.

Then I turned off the lamp, walked out, and pulled the side door shut behind me.

I did not lock it.

Josh

Josh called that night from a truck stop outside Omaha. I could hear the reefer units running behind him and somebody’s radio playing a ballgame.

I told him everything. The lamp, the eleven, Hank at the piano, the baby falling asleep, the names in Mom’s hand. He did not say anything for a while. Josh is not a talker; he is a listener, and he was listening hard.

“Hank Pruett,” he said at last. “Big guy, gray beard? Pulls a dry van out of Kansas City?”

“I don’t know what he pulls. You know him?”

“I’ve seen him on the shoulder out there. Every Wednesday for a couple years. I thought he was just catching his ten hours.” He paused. “Huh. Your mom.”

“Lisa wants it locked. Dale’s waiting to look at it.”

“Then lock it next week,” Josh said. “But you go back first, Kris. You go back and you find out what you’re locking out.” He paused again. “And take a space heater. That building’s cold.”

That is Josh. He does not make speeches, but he always tells you the one thing you are going to need.