Mountain Top(4)

The small white sanctuary couldn’t handle the crowds. Some of the older members, not wanting to vacate the well-worn pews occupied by their ancestors, fought the building program, but their efforts proved as futile as a skirmish by Confederate soldiers against advancing Yankee troops in 1865. Within a year and a half, a new sanctuary stood like a big brother next to the old one. The old sanctuary became a wedding chapel and funeral parlor.

Mike’s office was at the back corner of an administration wing connected to the new sanctuary. He sold the leather-inlaid, walnut desk from his law office and let Peg decorate his new work space. She selected an effeminate worktable with Queen Anne legs and expensive antique furnishings. Typically, Peg ran over budget, but Mike bit his tongue and didn’t complain. He secretly paid the extra expense and viewed it as an investment in convincing Peg to accept the transition from lawyer’s spouse to minister’s wife.

Mike put down a book about how to be an effective minister in a changing community and looked at the large clock on the wall. It was 11:15 a.m., and he’d only had two phone calls all morning. Compared to the stress of a law office, the pace of church leadership was like floating down a slow-moving eastern North Carolina river. At semiannual ministerial meetings, Mike heard other pastors complain about the hassle and pressure of their jobs, but he kept his mouth shut. Dealing with a church member’s concern about the condition of the flower beds in front of the old sanctuary or complaints about the choir director’s hymn selections was a lot easier than a four-hour deposition in which the opposing lawyer continuously raised spurious objections and a duplicitous witness refused to tell the truth. There was a light knock on his door.

“Come in,” he said.

Delores Killian, the sixty-year-old church secretary, stuck her head into the office. A widow and holdover from the old guard, one of Mike’s early triumphs had been winning her support. His strategy was simple. He never asked her to do anything except what she’d always done, and she praised him to all her friends as an excellent administrator.

“Someone is here to see you who didn’t have an appointment,” Delores whispered in a husky voice that revealed a forty-year love affair with cigarettes.

“Who is it? I’m having lunch in Shelton with Dick Saxby, a man who visited the church on Sunday, and need to leave in a few minutes.”

“Muriel Miller. She’s not a member of the church. Her husband is in jail, and she wants you to go see him.”

“What are the charges?”

Delores raised her eyebrows. “She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.”

Mike waved his hand. “Don’t bother. I’ll talk to her on my way out.”

During his legal career, Mike handled criminal cases and interacted with scores of men wearing orange jumpsuits, handcuffs, and leg irons. Since becoming a minister, he’d not visited the jail and had, in fact, ignored the squat gray building a couple of blocks from the courthouse. He returned to his book. It was an interesting chapter. The author offered several creative suggestions for bringing rural and cosmopolitan church members together. After several minutes, Mike dictated a memo of his findings for the elders. Mike was a hunt-and-peck typist, but Delores was even worse at transcribing dictation.

After checking his hair in a small mirror beside the door, he walked into the reception area where he was startled by the sight of a small, gray-haired woman with a wrinkled face. She sat on the edge of a small sofa and wrung a tissue in her hands. The woman’s dress, a plain yellow cotton print, revealed her country roots. She looked up at him anxiously.

“Oh,” Mike began. “You’re Mrs., uh . . .”

“Miller,” Delores said. “Her husband—”

“Is in jail,” Mike finished, regaining his bearings. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Muriel stood, and Mike shook her hand. Her fingers were small but her grip firm.

“Reverend Andrews, would you visit my husband? He’s been in jail for almost three months.”

“Do I know him?”

“His name is Sam Miller. We live off McAfee Road. He has a lawncare business.”

Mike thought for a moment but couldn’t connect the name with a face. McAfee Road was ten miles on the west side of Shelton, almost twenty miles from the church. No one that far away came to Little Creek Church.

Muriel continued, “He told me you were a good lawyer.”

“Not for over six years. I represented a lot of people when I practiced law, but I don’t remember your husband.”

“Oh, he’s never gone to see a lawyer in his life.”