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  “Don’t tempt me,” she said. “I know we’re supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us. Only God can do that for me. Keeping from broomsticking that man would be the hardest work I’d ever have to do.”

  The rest of the night, Grace busied herself packing. Thomas handled the big stuff and pleaded with her every half hour or so to take a break, get some sleep, start again in the morning. But she kept working.

  Monday evening | Dennis Asphalt & Paving | Addison

  Alejandro was stocky with smooth dark skin, a moon-shaped face, gleaming teeth, and a full head of black hair that hung over his forehead. He leaned back in a cheap chair before a desk covered with a mountain of papers.

  “Okay, Mr. Brady Darby, you might be in luck. I got a guy hurt his back and is gonna be out awhile. Can you give me two hours a night, Monday through Friday?”

  “Two?”

  “Needs to be two, man.”

  “Okay. But I can’t get here till seven.”

  “You mind workin’ alone?”

  Brady shook his head. “What do I do?”

  “I’ll teach you, and right now. You ever drive a forklift?”

  “No.”

  “It’s easy. I mean, you gotta learn, but you’ll get it. Follow me.”

  Alejandro led him to an outbuilding where row upon row of steel forms had been filled with cement or concrete—Brady didn’t know which, so he asked.

  Alejandro looked surprised at the question. “Cement is in concrete, man. Concrete is the cheapest way to make car stops. Some people call them blocks. There are some plastics and composites coming that might eventually run us out of the business, but for now, we’re the biggest. Our crew spends most of the day pouring these and letting them harden. They’re six feet long, four inches high, and six inches wide. Once they set, our guys knock off the holds and free the blocks from the forms. You see how each one has two slots underneath? That’s where the lift forks go, and that’s where you come in.”

  Alejandro motioned for Brady to follow, and the foreman scampered up into the seat of a forklift truck, proving more agile than he looked. He fired up the machine and deftly handled the controls, expertly lifting each finished car stop and setting it in place on a thick wooden skid.

  “Once you have a load that’s as high as it is wide,” he hollered over the engine noise, “you’re ready to load it onto the truck!”

  The six-foot square load of car stops appeared to tax the forklift, and Alejandro slowed now as he pivoted the machine and proceeded to the back of a flatbed truck with a winch built onto it.

  “Just ignore the winch, unless you set them on there wrong and have to straighten ’em!” Alejandro shouted. “That’s for off-loading at the job sites otherwise!”

  In a few minutes he had loaded three pallets onto the truck. “It’ll hold twelve total, three more on the bottom, six on top. You wanna try it?”

  “Sure!”

  Alejandro showed Brady the controls and had him drive the forklift around the yard, around a pile of raw goods, between a couple of paving trucks. Brady was tentative and overcorrected at first, but soon he began to get the hang of it. Then Alejandro had him feather the controls until he had a feel for lifting and tilting the forks. When he had to maneuver inside the outbuilding, however, things got dicey. Once he slammed on the brake just before hitting the metal doorframe.

  “You can see that’s been hit a lot of times, even by experienced guys,” Alejandro said. “But it’s good to not do that.”

  When Brady tried lifting the first car stop, he drove the forks into the stop above the slots, pushing the entire form into the next and breaking the first stop.

  Brady swore.

  “That’s all right. Everybody’s got to learn. You got a week to quit doing that. Then we start taking it out of your pay. Each of these stops costs about what we pay you per hour, so you don’t want to break any. Break two on a shift and you make no money.”

  “I’ll learn!”

  “Of course you will.”

  It took Brady an hour to load two pallets and get them onto the truck.

  “You’ll get better and faster each time,” the foreman said. “Just remember, we have to dock you for broken or even cracked ones, because they become scrap. Can’t sell ’em.”

  In two hours each night, provided Brady could manage this, he would make three times what he made in an hour at the Laundromat. The first two hundred would go to Tatlock, of course, but soon enough he’d be back on track with his car fund. That day couldn’t come soon enough.

  Peebles, Ohio

  Thomas Carey felt fortunate that old Bible college friends had proven hospitable without even having to be present. Thomas had caught them by phone just as they were leaving for vacation, and his old buddy insisted that the Careys “camp out at our place for as much of the next two weeks as you need.” He told Thomas where to find the key and was adamant that he and Grace wholly make themselves at home.

  “He didn’t even ask why we needed a place, Grace.”

  She had been dozing next to him in the front seat. “That’s wonderful. True friends. Maybe he knows of an opening somewhere.”

  It was nice not to have to unload much. Their stuff filled the trailer, but all they needed were their toiletries and a few changes of clothes. Thomas immediately phoned the denomination headquarters and left his temporary phone number for Jimmie Johnson. When he found Grace hanging their clothes in the guest room closet, he said, “You need to get to bed. You look terrible.”

  “Why, thank you, Dale Carnegie.”

  “You seriously don’t look well. And that bruise has grown.”

  “Can’t figure that one out. Age, I guess.”

  “It’s more than that. Once we get settled somewhere, you’re seeing a doctor.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should,” she said, which startled Thomas. Grace was the most doctor-averse person he had ever met. He’d had to force her to get an annual physical once she turned forty. Not once had she gone willingly, let alone volunteered. And now she was saying that she supposed she should? He prayed she would take it easy in the meantime. Fat chance.

  To his relief, once Grace had dropped into bed, despite that it was a small and strange one, she slept soundly.

  The next morning, as Grace continued to sleep, Thomas began calling everyone he knew, briefly explaining that their most recent assignment had simply not worked out and they were now eagerly looking into new opportunities.

  Thomas meticulously kept track of every phone call, determined to reimburse his hosts for the use of their phone. He enjoyed several long conversations with old friends, reminiscing and updating, but no one was aware of openings anywhere.

  When hunger pangs hit midmorning, Thomas realized he had not heard Grace stirring. On the one hand, she needed her rest. On the other, she also needed to get moving and eat. He found her awake but still. He told her of many of his phone calls and passed along greetings from old friends.

  “I’ve just been praying and thinking and singing.”

  “You can sing at a time like this?”

  “Sometimes it’s all I can do. I’m dreading the next conversation with Ravinia. I want to scold her, to advise her, to be the parent I should be to a prodigal. But you know she’ll come out with guns blazing when she realizes what’s happened. They’ll wish they’d never tangled with her.”

  Thomas had to smile.

  “What?” she said.

  “Imagine Paul Pierce trying to deal with her.”

  Grace chuckled. “Imagine Patricia. I’d tell Rav to keep calling her Pat.”

  Tuesday evening | Dennis Asphalt & Paving

  Alejandro was closing the office when Brady showed up with Peter and introduced him.

  “Nice to meet you, muchacho Pedro. You are welcome to watch your brother break my car stops, but you must stay far from the machinery and the work area, comprende?”

  “He talks funny,” Peter said.

  “He
wants to know if you understand, Petey.”

  “Oh yeah, I do!”

  “Call me if you need anything, Brady. And don’t worry about doing too much tonight. It would be good if you can load the whole truck, but keeping from breaking any is more important. And you know I’m only paying you for two hours, even if it takes more time.”

  “I’ll fill that truck, sir.”

  14

  Peebles, Ohio

  The call from Jimmie Johnson came late that night. “Thomas, your daughter is frantically trying to reach you. All she had was the number in Oldenburg, and when she finally reached someone at the church, they told her you were no longer there.”

  “Thanks, Jimmie. We’ll call her. And you mentioned a potential opening for me.”

  “I did, and there’s a real possibility here, but I want to talk with you in person first.”

  “Why?”

  “Really, Thomas, I don’t want to talk about it by phone. It’s not a pastorate, but it’s still full-time ministry. It would require a move to Adamsville. I’d like to meet you there on my way back to headquarters. Could you be there for lunch tomorrow? I would not advise bringing Grace.”

  “Grace is always with me.”

  “I know. But I’d like to chat with you in private, and then I want you to decide whether to pursue this before exposing Grace to it.”

  “You make it sound like the city dump.”

  “No, no. It’s really quite interesting, but you need to check it out for yourself. You said she was under the weather anyway.”

  “That’s why I’d rather not leave her.”

  “She’s that bad off?”

  “It’s just that we aren’t sure what the problem is. But I’ll let her decide.”

  Dennis Asphalt & Paving

  “Boring!” Peter called from atop the cab of the flatbed truck. “And I’m tired!”

  “I gotta finish this,” Brady hollered back from the forklift. “And I don’t want you walking home alone.”

  “Ma’s gonna be worried about us and probably mad.”

  “I left her a note. Now just hang on.”

  Brady had broken only one car stop, which he left in plain sight for Alejandro. But being so careful had cost him time, and it was already after ten. He was determined to fully load the delivery truck. He wanted to prove himself quickly and lock in this job. He liked the idea of being so close to the office—and, he assumed, petty cash or even a safe—with no one else around.

  Peebles

  “Seems to me if there’s one person we can trust,” Grace said, “it’s Mr. Johnson. I’ll be fine. You go tomorrow and hurry back because I’ll be dying to hear.”

  Thomas got on the extension phone in the guest bedroom while Grace dialed Ravinia from the living room.

  Their daughter had never been one to ease into a conversation.

  “All right,” Ravinia said, “I know we’ve got some hard talking to do, but tell me why I should forgive you for worrying me to death. For all I knew you could be lying somewhere dead by the side of the road. What happened?”

  “Now, dear,” Grace said, “we knew how you’d react, and obviously you know how we feel about your new living arrangement.”

  “Does that make me an untouchable, Mom? You were never going to speak to me again?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, now stop being ridiculous. Your father will tell you what happened in Oldenburg after you tell us about your conversation with Patricia Pierce.”

  A long pause.

  Finally, “Well, first of all, I liked the idea. She sounded nice enough, and I was actually encouraged that a church had finally figured out how to welcome a new pastor. But then she said she hadn’t realized that I was married, that my parents hadn’t mentioned that for some reason—and believe me, I caught her tone—but that my husband was certainly welcome too, and wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise.

  “Of course I told her right away that Dirk and I were not married, and you could have cut the silence with the sword of the Lord. She said, ‘Yeah, well, I’m going to have to get back to you on that.’

  “I said, ‘So, we’re uninvited; is that it?’

  “She said, ‘Are you telling me that you and this Dirk are roommates?’

  “I said, ‘More than that, ma’am; we’re lovers.’”

  “Oh, Ravinia,” Grace said.

  “C’mon, Mom. This is not news to you. I figured you had called. I hadn’t wanted you to hear it that way, but you know I wasn’t going to hide anything.”

  “I almost wish you had.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar. You have to give me that.”

  “That is commendable, Rav,” Thomas said. “But there is the matter of considering our feelings.”

  “Your reputation, you mean. So you got run out of there because you’ve got a daughter living in sin; is that it? You don’t have to answer. I know. I grew up with people like that.”

  “We’re not like that, Rav.”

  “I’m not talking about you, Dad. You’re surprisingly nonjudgmental, considering the people you associate with. But what do you call it when they judge you unqualified because a grown woman doesn’t still obey your wishes?”

  Thomas spoke haltingly, telling Ravinia about the suggested course of action by the elders.

  Ravinia responded with a hint of tears in her voice. “Dad, I’m about as livid as I can be. I’m sorry you and Mom are on the lam again, but I couldn’t be more proud that you did the right thing. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll find somebody to make these people wish they’d never even dreamed of this.”

  “You know we’d never allow that,” Grace said.

  “Of course I know that. But it’s a crime that they hide behind their religious status, their . . . their . . . I’d just love to teach them a lesson.”

  “Leave that to the Lord,” Grace said.

  “Dad, please get out of the ministry. I know you believe in it and think you’re serving God and all that—”

  “I am serving God, Rav!”

  “So where is He in this? Why does He let you get bludgeoned every time?”

  “We don’t blame this on God, honey,” Grace said. “It’s His people who are imperfect, and—”

  “You consider Patricia and her husband and their cohorts God’s people?”

  “They’re just human, Ravinia.”

  “They’re evil.”

  “Now don’t—”

  “I know. I’m evil too. But I have to tell you again, most of the people I’ve met since I left home have zero interest in God or church and certainly Jesus, but—with a few exceptions—none of them would ever do to another person what your so-called fellow Christians have done to you your whole career.”

  Thomas rubbed his forehead and forced back a sob. “Rav, we would be remiss if we didn’t express how we feel about where you are right now.”

  “I know, Dad. I know, I know, I know, okay? Spare us both the lecture. I don’t mean to hurt you. I hope you know I still care about you or I wouldn’t have even tried to find you.”

  Thomas fought the urge to say she was showing her concern in a strange way. “And we want you to know that we love you unconditionally and that we’re praying for you.”

  “And for Dirk?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mm-hm. Dad, please find something else to do. I mean for work. You’re smart and you’re kind. There must be something less stressful, more fair.”

  “Well, I’m looking. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Addison

  Peter was yawning as they moseyed home. “I don’t have to come with you every night, do I?”

  “’Course not. But you got a chance to see what I do.”

  “Yeah, and it was cool. But it’s just the same thing over and over. And it looks harder than cleaning the laundry place, but at least you get to drive that thing.”

  “It’
s more money, and that’s important. I don’t want to live here all my life. Do you?”

  “No way. But I don’t know what I want to do.”

  “Just get out, I hope.”

  “Long as I can live with you.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to be easy. Soon as I get out of school or get a car, I’m gone. I’d have to fight Ma to let you live with me, and how would that work anyway? I couldn’t watch you, be home when you get out of school, all that. Maybe I can still talk Uncle Carl and Aunt Lois into taking you till you get out of school.”

  “Ma’ll never let that happen.”

  “Let me worry about that. She touched you since I warned her?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “You tellin’ me the truth?”

  “Yeah. She hollers at me a lot. Threatens me.”

  “Just one more time . . .”

  “I know. And she knows. But when she’s drunk, I get scared because I think she forgets.”

  “That I warned her? She’d better not.”

  “Why does she hate me, Brady?”

  Brady shrugged. “She hates everybody. She’s had a hard life, but you’d think she’d want to keep us close. I hate her.”

  “Families on TV look like they have fun sticking together.”

  “That’s just made up, Petey. You know anybody but Carl and Lois whose family is still together and seems to get along?”

  Peter shook his head.

  When they got home, Erlene Darby stood in the doorway, staring at them.

  “What are you thinking, keeping Petey out this late? Give me one reason I shouldn’t whip your tail.”

  Brady pushed Peter past her and told him to get to bed. “Because I’d kill you, Ma, that’s why. You think I’m gonna leave him here with you when you come home drunk and mad?”

  “I’m not mad at him, Brady! I’m mad at you!”

  “Just don’t worry about me. If Petey’s with me, you know he’s okay. If he’s with you, I never know.”