XIV – When Jesse and Randy Went to a Church Service (and Joe Saved Jesse)
“Brother, I needed coffee.”
“We’ll stop on the way back and I’ll buy some.”
“Gas station coffee?”
Jesse rolled his eyes, but he smiled a bit. They were on the way.
Jesse had spent four anxious hours changing seats in the Holiday Inn lounge and struggling to find the muted cable news interesting and eventually reading the USA Today from the stack a man delivered to the hotel lobby at about 7:00 AM. For some reason he’d flipped straight to the sports section, even though he hated sports the same way we all hate things we wished we liked, a blend of indignance and confusion. Then, finally, Randy had come down freshly showered and yet still looking to Jesse like a bear who’d just lumbered out of a groggy hibernation. The dispenser of “House Blend” coffee in the lobby had been out for the moment, and there’d been only Colombian left, which Randy wouldn’t drink. Jesse had jumped him and drug him out to the truck with only enough time to grab a blueberry bagel from the continental breakfast that, while Randy was interested by in his half-conscious state, truth be told probably would have let lay anyway (traces of Randy’s pre-conversion germophobia still lingered).
“They had coffee in the lobby, Randy.”
“I. Do. Not. Drink. Colombian.”
“Make a left here.”
Randy turned the truck left onto SR 139 and took a big bite out of the bagel. He shook his head and frowned.
“What?”
“No cream cheese. It’s not toasted. It’s like I’m eating a shoe.”
“Would you quit complaining? This will take thirty minutes and we’ll go get breakfast.”
Randy rolled down the window and threw the bagel out into the tall grass. “Real breakfast?”
“Orange juice and everything.”
“I actually prefer grapefruit juice,” Randy said, in an “interesting fact” voice.
“I don’t care.”
Jesse strained his eyes, trying to see the high school as he started to recognize a big building in the distance.
“Wait!” he shouted and banged the passenger’s side door. “It’s Sunday! There’s not going to be anyone there.”
“Wow, I forgot, too.” Randy pulled his Dollar General sunglasses out from his shirt collar and put them on to hide his tired eyes from the morning sun beaming between the intermittent cloud cover. “I need coffee.”
Jesse was crestfallen. He put his head in his right hand and with his thumb and middle finger scratched both of his temples so hard he almost drew blood. What did they do now? Did he go on to West Virginia? Take his chances with what he had? Or did he waste another whole day in Jackson? Spend another night here on the off chance it turned out like he hoped at the high school?
“All right, Champ, we’re heading to Waffle House,” Randy said, turning left into the parking lot of an unmarked industrial building and then back onto SR 139 towards town. He squeezed Jesse’s left shoulder the way a dad would his grown son.
What would Janie be doing right now? For a few seconds Jesse thought about asking Randy to take him back to Cincinnati. But he was still stubborn and desperate and so anxious to control his own life that he gritted his teeth and breathed out slowly and decided to go to Waffle House with Randy.
But they were turning into a gas station.
“Give me just a minute,” Randy said, and then was off, walking his breezy, confident way into the 76 station. Because the man who hated gas station coffee (and there is no gas station coffee worse than that at the 76 station in Jackson, Ohio) had a plan. Randy was a hopeful man, and so even when he was bone tired he was quick to recognize an opportunity when it hustled up next to him and winked, as he was sure it had now. He’d had a sense ever since taking Jesse home Wednesday night that God wasn’t after only the father. So Randy asked the cashier if a hunch he had was right and then walked back out to Jesse beaming that stupid smile he couldn’t resist.
“No way.”
“We’re going to be here either way. You want to stay and try the high school tomorrow, right? Besides, maybe Joe’s not the only one still there who knew your dad.”
“Randy, I know what you’re doing.”
Randy smiled like a good poker player might when a bad one tells him he knows what cards he’s holding. It was a smile that said you were probably wrong, but that even if you weren’t it didn’t matter.
“I’ll buy lunch. I need a steak to get the taste of this coffee out of my mouth, anyway.”
Jesse rolled his eyes and smirked. Because Randy had exercised a power over him no one else had ever had. Jesse’s guard went down, and his frustrated clutch on every lever loosened, because for some reason he’d never understood, come Hell or high water, he trusted this guy he’d known for four days.
“You know how to get there?”
Randy lifted his eyebrows high over his cheap sunglasses and smiled with all his teeth. “The guy drew me a map.”
It was 10:17 when they pulled into First Baptist’s seven-year-old building. Jesse noted the irony, but since churches are people and not buildings, contrary to conventional wisdom, the sign was actually still telling the truth. They were both surprised at the newness of the place, though, unaware that they had just slept in a Holiday Inn standing on the piece of the earth that used to rest under the same First Baptist at a different street address.
Randy parked the truck in a spot marked for “Visitors,” something that surprised Jesse. And he gave him a side hug as they walked into this new wine housed in the old wineskin of Jackson, Ohio. The little lobby scared Jesse. The whole place scared him, come to think of it. He had been in a church less than ten times in his entire life up to today, an impressive run for a man who’d spent all his days in America’s northernmost southern city. Who would try to talk to him? Could they tell he didn’t believe in God? Would they try to baptize him or something?
“It’s okay, Champ. Let’s just see if Joe’s here, and we can sit with him.”
“Stop calling me Champ.”
“I can’t. It stuck. It’s out of our hands, now.”
A smiling man who looked to be in his fifties came over to them and started to stretch out his hand towards Jesse. Which was crazy, because people always noticed Randy first because he was a big, handsome, dark-skinned bearded guy, the kind of guy your eyes were just drawn to. But humor was God’s invention, not ours, and so this kind man barely noticed Randy as he grabbed Jesse’s extended (and trembling) right hand in both of his and gently shook it.
“Good morning. We’re so glad to have you.”
What do I say?
“God bless you.”
That’s what you say when people sneeze!
“I mean, excuse me.”
I want to die.
The man nodded his head and gave a simple smile in response to Jesse’s word seizure as he let go of his hand. He was a gracious man, and while his place in this story ends here, know that his own is just as noble. His wife had died suddenly three months earlier, and he loved to see people come to know Jesus, and he had four children and fourteen grandchildren whom he treasured more than most men treasure their retirement accounts. He was a good man, and he made a mental note to pray for this sad looking visitor later today when he said his afternoon prayers. The world has a good many quiet stories like his, but someday the whispered things will be sung on rooftops and we’ll praise God for all the big things that looked little from here.
Randy smiled back at the stranger and asked if they could take a seat in the sanctuary, and the man gestured towards a big room much how Jesse imagined an attendant on the Titanic would have done when guiding him to his certain death.
They turned to the right and stepped into the bright, high ceilinged room that reminded Jesse of a small neighborhood theater, but with a much smaller stage and much more light. His chest got tight again as he realized there could be praying and things to say out loud he didn’t know how to say correctly, but mercifully Randy distracted him from such thoughts by spotting Joe Granger on the left side of the sanctimony or whatever he’d called this room.
Joe stared back as Randy smiled widely from across the room and waved, and then after a solid five seconds he nodded once, which for him was the equivalent of one of those overjoyed, teary bear hugs you see in videos of soldiers reuniting with their families. That’s about as big as you got with Joe Granger, unless your name was Gladys Granger. But this was summer number twelve since she’d been drawn home, so Joe simply nodded when he saw someone he wanted to do great good for, and here were two of them. One big and muscular and outgoing, the other looking to Joe like a draft dodger at his parole hearing. And something had poor Jesse scared even more than normal, because he was staring at little old Mrs. Stinson, who was clearly making her way to him, like she was an active shooter.
Randy left Jesse to fend for himself with Mrs. Stinson, who was still thirteen seconds away from greeting Jesse and telling him how much he looked like her grandson.
“Hey, Joe. How you doing?”
“Fine, thanks.” He nodded in the direction behind Randy. “She’s gonna’ make him faint.”
Randy turned to see Jesse struggling to smile as the old woman started to pat his hand and tell him how good it was to have him. The smile he was mustering made it look like he was getting pre-op done for oral surgery. To Randy it looked like he was about to cry.
“He’s fine.” Randy turned back to Joe.
“So y’all staying another day?”
“Yeah, Jesse had an idea about trying to find something out at the high school, so we’ll spend the night and then head up there. The plan was to try to find Bruce’s home, where he grew up, before the funeral.”
Joe looked into Randy, through him, finally nodding once as though he concluded something.
“What?” Randy asked.
“You think he’s ready to find something bad out there, something real bad about his father?”
Randy was tempted to say yes right away, but he’d have had a heck of a time trying to explain why. But he knew the true answer.
“No.”
“He doesn’t know Jesus?”
“No, he says he’s an atheist. But he was there the night his father trusted in Him. I was there, too.” Randy smiled big. “It was awesome.” He felt a little silly saying the word “awesome” to a man like Joe, but only for a second. Randy really never thought about how he was perceived for more than a few heartbeats.
“Mm,” Joe said, and nodded. But he was looking at Jesse. Randy had no idea what he was thinking, but it was something that took all of him. And then Randy actually jumped, something he’d probably done only five times as a grown man. Because Joe Granger thundered across the sanctuary, “Jesse! Come on over here. I need your help with something!”
Jesse, confused and still looking like he’d just been waterboarded, smiled as best he could (man alive, he looks like a weeping clown), extracted himself from Mrs. Stinson, gratefully, and started to make his way across the room to Joe and Randy.
Randy looked back at Joe, confused. But then Joe winked at him, and took his seat. As he stared straight ahead at the empty pulpit, he said, “He was gonna’ faint.”
Jesse came up behind Randy breathlessly. “Why did you leave me over there?”
“Shh. Service is getting ready to start.”
The two of them sat down to Joe’s right.
“What happens next?”
“Don’t worry,” Randy answered. “We sing to the Lord, the pastor will preach, we pray, stuff like that.”
“That’s it?”
Randy bit his lower lip and looked away.
“What?”
“Well,” he said, “this is a Protestant church.”
Jesse racked his brain and could not think of anything that that first word meant, anything that it told him.
“So?”
“It’s not a big deal, and I’ll help you when it’s your turn. But at Protestant churches they ask visitors to sing a solo.”
“What?”
“Hush,” Joe said to both of them, still staring straight ahead, as the pastor walked up to the pulpit.
“Randy!” Jesse whispered.
“Hush,” Randy whispered back.