Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 6

Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 5  (13+) In which the boys enjoy some hospitality, but Toadstool becomes the butt of the joke. #1669797 by Ben Simon

   

6.

In which the boys receive a little religion

    I'm not sure what woke me quicker, the sun rising over the cornfield that laid across the county road, which even in the early morning seemed to be developing its potential of becoming unbearable; or the aches and pains of sleeping on the hard, dry earth in between those rows of beans finally catching up with me.  Anyway, I woke up stiff and sore and sweating a little bit and not feeling at all rested.  I pulled up the bottom of my t-shirt to wipe some of the sweat off of my face and noticed it was now stained in odd-shaped brown and green blotches and some other colors that I couldn't recognize.  I knew that I had to otherwise be a sight as I'd only washed up a little before supper the night before and I could feel that my hair was greasy and matted back on my head.  I wasn't hungry because I was still feeling the effects of the dinner the night before, but I was really thirsty and had no idea where I might get some water out there in the middle of that beanfield.

    I looked up to find Toadstool and didn't see him at first, which caused me to panic just a little, but then I caught sight of him over by the trees peeing.  He looked every bit as bad as I felt, with that black wire-mesh hair of his shooting out in every which direction and his shirt and jeans all ripped up, his right leg below the knee full of scrapes and covered with dried blood.  He got done peeing and limped back over to where I was and I could tell we weren't going to be walking even slower on that day than we had the day before. 

    "We need to find somebody with a phone," I said as he got back over to where I was standing.

    "No duh," he said in kind of a dead voice.

    "There should be some kind of farm somewhere around here."

    "No farms."

    "What do you mean, no farms?  Do you know how far it might be until we find some kind of town around here?  We could be in the middle of nowhere. . ."

    "No farms," he said with a kind of finality to his tone.  I began to whine to him about how big of a moron he was, but then I looked at his face and, even though the expression on it was pretty much poker-straight, his eyes were moist again, just like they'd been the night before.  To be truthful, I don't think that it was that he didn't want to go to a farm but that he couldn't, not after what those farmboys put him through.  So, for once, I just dropped it.

    I walked down the field to the road and looked down it to my right.  "Well, this road's got to lead us somewhere," I said.  "We might as well start walking down it."

    Toadstool limped up behind me without saying anything and we started off to the right because it seemed just as good a direction as the left.  Now, even without Toadstool being hobbled and all I would have been ahead of him by a good fifty yards within a couple of minutes and whining loudly about how he couldn't keep up, but to tell you the truth, I was pretty sore myself, having worked as hard as I did the day before and then sleeping in that beanfield for God knows how long.  So we were moving down that winding, hilly gravel-and-dirt road pretty slowly, all the time the sun moving slowly higher in the sky and getting incrementally hotter as it went.

    "So, what d'you think our moms are doing right now?" I said after a while, just to hear something besides the sounds of the birds more than to actually get a conversation out of Toadstool.

    "Going crazy," Toadstool said after a few seconds, his breath already beginning to sound heavy.

    "They've had to have called the cops by now."

    "My mom talking to a cop isn't a good thing."

    "You think?  By now she's probably gotten herself put in jail."

    "Are you kidding me?  You think any cop out there's got the nuts to put my mom in jail?  She's the one organizing the special task force right now."

    "Got full riot gear on and everything?"

    "She's probably consulting with Hondo right now about what strategy the SWAT team's gonna use to search us out."

    "Her, Hondo, and then they've even got McGarrett called in.  They should be able to find us in no time."

    Then Toadstool started humming the tune to SWAT while I did the same with the theme song to Hawaii Five-0 and we couldn't help but laugh at the thought of Toadstool's mom leading some elite force throughout the country in search of her son.  Now, I know that at that point she had to be past the point of panic and that it was kind of cruel to laugh at whatever she might've been going through at that moment, but I also know that it had been the first time either one of us had laughed since we got on that train the day before, and for a bit it got our minds off of the fact that we had no idea where we were going or how we were going to get ourselves home.

    We kept talking for a while about all sorts of things, like how big a problem that my sister was getting to be or how big Joannie Michels’ boobs were getting or whether the Fonz was cooler than Vinnie Barbarino (of course he was) and how either one of them stacked up to Kojak, and mostly we just kept our minds off of things.  To his credit, Toadstool wasn't stopping every five minutes like he normally did and I'm pretty sure it was because he wanted to get out of that predicament as much as I wanted to.  He was laboring pretty badly, though, and after a few minutes he stopped talking and we just made our way down the road, sweating more as the sun got higher.  I couldn't see any town in sight or even a sign telling us how far away a town might be and I was getting really thirsty and was pretty much convinced that we were going to have to stop by a farmhouse no matter what kind of mental trauma it might cause Toadstool when we were saved in the form of a 1973 Lincoln Continental.

    Being that we had seen absolutely zero vehicles on that backroad that early Sunday morning, it came as a little bit of a jolt to the system to hear the sounds of a fairly pristine engine coming over the hills, and I have to admit to feeling that it was a little bit of a desecration for a car like that to be getting it all dusty driving along the gravel.  I don't think either me or Toadstool thought about flagging it down because of the luck we'd had the day before, but the car did slow down as it pulled beside us and the driver's side window rolled down.  Behind it was this big old man with a barrel chest and maybe the reddest face I'd seen in my life.

      "What are you boys doing?" the old man asked as he rolled down the window, and I have no way of truly describing the voice that came out of that old man's throat.  It was like if you took thunder and were able to use it to make words, then maybe that's what his voice was like.  It was if he had a loudspeaker with a really deep bass tone to it attached to the inside of his mouth, it was that loud and deep.

    It took me a few seconds to say anything, I was that intimidated by his voice, but finally a choked out, "Trying to get home."

    "Trying to get home?  Where's home?"

    "Garen.  We're trying to get to Garen."

    "Garen?  Illinois?"

    "Oh, sweet Lord," came a small voice from beside the big man, and by tilting my head I could see a small, old woman dressed in her Sunday morning best sitting on the passenger's side of the Continental.  "How far is Garen from here, Alois?"

    "A good ninety miles, if not more.  Are you boys visiting someone up here, or what are you doing?"

    I don't know why I answered this guy, or why my mind didn't start coming up with all sorts of stories like it usually did, but I think I might've actually been too intimidated by his voice to lie to him.  Anyway, I answered truthfully enough by saying, "It's sort of a long story.  We're kind of lost, though."

    "Lost?  We're all lost, son.  We're all born lost.  Do you have parents, a home to go to?"

    "Yes, sir.  In Garen."

    "Well, do your parents know where you are?"

    "No, sir.  Like I said, we're kind of lost."

    "There's no 'kind of' to it, son.  You're not runaways, are you?  You're not potheads or junkies?"

    "No.  We just - we just took a wrong turn and ended up getting left behind."

    The old man sat back in his seat for a few seconds, as if he were meditating, then said, "In the end days many will be left behind.  But the good Lord found you boys, didn't He?  Just as he always finds the lost who truly seek Him.  Amen, Sister Mendenhall?"

    "Amen, Brother Mendenhall."

    "Boys, Sister Mendenhall and I are driving into Jennings there for our Sunday morning breakfast before the 10 AM service.  You boys can join us and after service we'll see what we can do to call your parents and get you home."

    "Alois, don't you think that maybe we should call their parents first?  They must be worried."

    "In due time, Sister Mendenhall.  Give the Lord His time and He'll give us ours."

    I gladly opened the back door of the Continental, but when I did I hesitated for a minute and not just because the good Brother and Sister were so obviously holy-rollers.  As dusty as the outside of the car may have been from that back road, the inside looked like it had just come off the showroom floor, it was that clean.  I mean, there wasn't a speck of dust in the car, and it had a smell like it had been disinfected every other day.  Me and Toadstool were covered with grass stains and mud stains and God-knows-what-other-kind-of stains and I knew we couldn’t help but dirty up the seats a little bit.  But in the time it took for me to think about it, Toadstool had already entered the car from the other side and was seated.  I sat down and closed the door but all that clean was really making me uncomfortable.

    "So, what do we call you boys?" the old lady asked looking back at us, and she was pleasant enough, with her granny glasses perched on the tip of her nose and all.

    "I'm Joey," Toadstool said before I could introduce him by his more popular name, "and this is Phil."

    "Well, praise God," she said in the polite way that religious types like to praise God for just about anything from good cheese to indoor plumbing.

    As hot and moist as it was getting outside, it was cool and comfortable inside that Continental and, though I was initially uncomfortable, I relaxed pretty quickly.  Like I said, the car was immaculate without a hint of any stray scrap of paper or piece of lint.  In fact, the only things I  could see in the car was Sister Mendenhall's oversize purse and a big, thick leather-bound Bible sitting on the dashboard, obviously well-read and repeatedly thumbed-through with a lot of little tabs sticking out of the pages to show them where to find some Bible verse or another. 

    Brother Mendenhall was the biggest presence in the car.  He was just big, not really fat for an old guy, and he didn't seem to be particularly muscular either.  He was just big, and he was wearing this solid gray off-the-rack suit, which for some reason made him seem bigger.  He had a pin on his lapel which indicated he was part of some sort of organization, but it was one of those things where you'd actually have to be a member to know what the pin meant.  His hair was white and slicked back and really stood out against the red in his face, and he had these big beefy hands that had obviously known work.  As big as Brother Mendenhall was, Sister Mendenhall was small and a little withered, dressed in a dress suit that was bluer than it needed to be.  Brother Mendenhall was talking, and in the closed space of the Continental that big voice of his seemed to surround us.

    "I'll tell you, you boys are truly blessed of God that He led you to walk down this path this morning.  Occasionally, Sister Mendenhall and I have seen stragglers traveling on this road and we've just considered them to be local kids, wayward and derelict in their duty to be in God's house on the Sabbath.  But when I saw you, the Lord spoke to me and told me to stop, and blessed is he who heedeth the voice of the Lord.  Amen, Sister Mendenhall?"

    "Amen, Brother Mendenhall."

    Then the good Brother continued to ramble on, about how the Lord always tended his sheep and how he would leave the entire flock in search of that one lost sheep, and after about five minutes of that I considered that me and Toadstool might be getting our Sunday morning sermon in advance.  As Brother Mendenhall talked we entered the small town of Jennings and that voice of his in that closed space made my eardrums rattle the entire trip.  I don't think he said anything that he would've come out of his own head the entire time, he just spoke in Bible verses and Christian sayings, occasionally turning to Sister Mendenhall for an amen or asking for some kind of response from us, and when he did so we'd just grunt our agreement.

    Now, I know how obnoxious that holy-rollers can seem to a lot of people and to say they can be overbearing is an understatement.  I mean do they seriously believe that only people who completely agree with them and the way they see the world are going on to the Great Reward?  There must be only fifteen people going to heaven, then, as far as they're concerned.  Still, I don't really have a problem with them and I'd had some experience with holy-rollers.  When my dad died, mom was left with the house, which needed a ton of work and she had no experience doing that kind of work.  Now, my mom had moved six hundred miles from her home in Wisconsin when she married dad and she didn't have any family who could help her out and dad literally had no family who could help with things.  We would've been in a pickle if it hadn't been for the holy roller church just down the street from us.  Some of the men from the church would re-shingle the roof, put new insulation in the house, clean out the gutters or do whatever else men would usually do around the house.  I was just in second grade and couldn't really help out and Pill was just a baby, not that she'd ever help anyway.  But Derek would generally try to help them out and in turn mom would send him to some of their services, mom not really being much of the church-going type.  I think that's why Derek eventually became a holy-roller himself after he got out of the service, because of all the time he spent with those people.  Mom tried to send me a couple of times but I whined about it long and loud enough that she just got fed up with it and stopped trying to get me to go.  I guess because of that I've never felt particularly inclined to join their ranks, but I do know that we'd have been in a world of trouble if it hadn't been for those guys.

    It turned out that Jennings was one of those generic small towns that are scattered throughout south-central Illinois, complete with a main drag which had all the local businesses on it.  A little bit into town we pulled up to this yellow rectangle building with the words "Red Lantern Restaurant" painted in big red letters on the brick of the building, the word "Restaurant" being spelled out in cursive.

    "You boys are quite a mess to say the least," Brother Mendenhall said as we got out of the car, "and I really hate to take you into a place like this.  But we've got a deacon's meeting before the 10 AM service and we really don't have time to clean you up.  Make sure you clean up a bit in the bathroom before we eat and then, while I'm in the deacons' meeting, Sister Mendenhall here can lend you some clothes from our community store and you can clean up in our downstairs shower before service."

    "Yes, sir, thank you," Toadstool said, and we fell behind the good Brother and Sister as they went into the restaurant.

    The inside of the Red Lantern Restaurant of Jennings, IL was your typical small-town diner, a thin, rectangular building with an aisle-way running through the center of it, with a counter where the single people and weekend warriors ate their eggs and biscuits-and-gravy on one side of the aisle and booths for families and groups by the storefront windows on the other side of the aisle.  Brother Mendenhall didn't wait to be seated but instead made his way down the aisle, ignoring the first booth before standing beside the second booth, as if he was presenting it to his wife for her approval.  She gave Brother Mendenhall a quick, polite smile before scooting into the booth, and me and Toadstool scooted in on the other side of the booth, which seemed to me like it was large enough to seat a group of twelve.  Brother Mendenhall was the last to take his seat, and as he did an old lady came over to take our order who was wearing a wrinkled blue-and-gray waitress uniform that was way too short for her hefty figure.

    "Good morning, Marjorie," Brother Mendenhall said as he sat down, that giant voice of his booming throughout the restaurant.  "How are we doing this Lord's Day?"

    "Just fine, Mr. Mendenhall,. . . Mrs. Mendenhall," the waitress said as she pulled out her ticket book without looking at Brother Mendenhall, and I couldn't help but notice that she sounded a little annoyed.  I didn't know if it was the good Brother that made her seem that way or if she was the sort of waitress that was simply annoyed at all of her customers.

    "Well, Praise God, then.  I believe I'll have my usual this morning and the same for you, Sister Mendenhall?"

    "That's fine, Alois."

    "These two boys are a couple of stragglers that Sister Mendenhall and I found walking lost alongside the road," Brother Mendenhall said, pointing towards me and Toadstool.  "The Lord's charged us with seeing them safely home, and I imagine we should start them out with a decent meal, eh, Marjorie?"

    "Gotta be careful picking up strangers these days," Marjorie said without looking up from her pad.  "Y'never know when you're picking up some kind of axe murderer.  They let that Charlie Manson live out there in California, and you know he's still got all kinds of followers."

      "The Good Book tells us to fear not or be afraid, for the Lord my God will not fail me nor forsake me.  I'll trust my God over any satanist murderer from out there in California any day of the week.  And the Lord spoke to me and told me to be a Good Samaritan to these boys, and you know you'd best pay heed when the Lord speaks to you."

    Marjorie looked up from her pad again and peered down her nose at me and Toadstool, and she didn't really make an attempt to hide the contempt she felt for us.  Either that or she was just gassy, I don't know which.  Anyway, she cleared her throat a little bit and then looked back down to her pad, waiting for the rest of the order.

    "Why don't you get the boys here three of those buttermilk pancakes a piece, and throw in a few links of sausages.  Will that do you boys okay?"

    Me and Toadstool both mumbled out a yes and a thank you, both kind of in unison and our voices jumbled up so you really couldn't make out what we were really saying.

    "Coffee?"

    "Black, and keep it coming," Brother Mendenhall said emphatically.

    "Just a half a cup for me, and could you cut it with some milk?" was Sister Mendenall's response.

    Marjorie finished writing on her pad, then walked behind the counter and placed the ticket on one of those carousels that restaurants have on their kitchen windows.  Then she picked up one of those brown coffee pots and a small carton of milk and brought it over to the table, turning over a couple of cups that were already sitting face down on the table and pouring a full cup for the brother, then half a cup and a dribble from the milk carton for the Sister. 

      Brother Mendenhall took a long, loud sip from his cup and sat it down, stating, "That'll get you going in the morning, don't you think?"

    As Marjorie had brought me and Toadstool a couple of tall glasses of orange juice instead of coffee, we couldn't really answer him, but we both mumbled our agreement anyway even though it was clear that the Brother wasn't listening for our response.

    "You boys have a church home of your own back in Garen?" Brother Mendenhall asked while putting the cup back up to his mouth.

    "The First United Pentecostal Church of Garen is two blocks down from where I live," I answered without really answering whether I attended there or not.

    "United Pentecostal, eh?  Good Christians, though a little misguided, to be honest.  The Free Pentecostal movement, now that's where the Lord is doing his work.  We've seen the Lord do some miraculous things in our little congregation.  Have you boys ever heard of the Solid Rock Pentecostal Church here in Jennings?"

    "Brother Mendenhall," the good Sister said while nursing her cup of coffee, "I doubt if word of our little church has spread as far as their town."

    "Now, hush, Sister Mendenhall.  You never know how far the Good News of our Lord will carry.  Anyway, boys, let me tell you a story.  About fifteen years ago or so, a handful of us who had seen the errors of the United Pentecostal Church started holding services in the house of one Brother Jacob Miller, who would become an ordained minister a year after we started holding those meetings.  Anyway, at one of those services the Lord was moving powerfully among those of us gathered there and several of us had a vision of the future that the Good Lord had in store for our small community, amen, Sister Mendenhall?"

    "Amen, Brother Mendenhall.  The Lord's presence was beautiful that day."

    "The Lord showed us a plan to build a new lighthouse to the Jennings community and all the surrounding area, a haven from the iniquities of this world.  The Lord, in His glorious way, had allowed for three of us, Brother Joseph Maynard, Brother David Els and myself, to have houses with titles that were completely clear.  And it was at that meeting that the Lord showed us how we could build this lighthouse without burdening the church with a cent of debt.  So the following day, Brother Maynard, Brother Els and I, along with Brother Miller, went down to the Community Bank here in Jennings and the three of us took out second mortgages on our homes in order to finance the building of the Solid Rock Pentecostal Church.  It took us three years to complete, with our men working in their off hours or on the weekends, but the Lord blesses those who labor in His name, amen, Sister Mendenhall?"

    "Amen, Brother Mendenhall."

    "On Easter Sunday in 1964 we held our first service with forty-five of the Good Lord's children in attendance.  Since then, we've seen lives saved and those lost in the sin of the world come to know the mercy of God.  Our flock has doubled and every day we see more miracles from our Lord Jesus Christ, who is never-ceasing in His wisdom and mercy."

    While Brother Mendenhall was talking Marjorie had come out with our breakfast, and she laid out plates for me and Toadstool that contained three of the biggest pancakes I'd ever seen in my life on them, with three sausage links on the side whose tiny size seemed kind of silly in comparison to the pancakes.  Now, on a good day I'd have started in on that breakfast like nobody's business, but the supper I'd eaten at the farmer's house the night before was still sitting pretty heavy on my stomach, so I slowly poured some maple syrup on the pancakes and started picking at the edges of them with my fork.  Toadstool, who hadn't eaten that much the night before, didn't have the same hesitation that I had and he was busy devouring his pancakes pretty quick.  Brother Mendenhall's "usual" looked to be eggs and sausage with a side of biscuits and gravy, and he barely stopped speaking as he started shoveling his breakfast into his mouth. 

    "Of course, the Lord took Brother Miller home last spring, and as much as we rejoice in his gaining his reward, we do miss him at the church.  Solid Rock would not exist without Brother Miller.  He had retired from his job as the manager of the Kroger's here in Jennings when he received the call, and never once did he take a bit of pay from the church other than traveling expenses for some conferences and the like.  A quiet man, almost too quiet to be giving sermons on a Sunday morning, but more dedicated to the Lord than any ten people that I've ever met.  He was what you call a dying breed, and I doubt we'll ever see the likes of him in our little church again."

    "I would imagine that that's a fact," Sister Mendenhall said, staring down at her bowl of oatmeal.

    Brother Mendenhall gave a quick, somewhat disapproving look at his good wife, whose tone had been a little bit on the sarcastic side.  He then returned to his biscuits and gravy, continuing on as if she hadn't said anything.

    "We’ve been blessed with Brother Miller's nephew, the Reverend John Masters, who came to relieve the church after his uncle had passed away.  The Reverend hasn't pleased some, he's new and he's young and like most of the young in this generation, he's headstrong and needs to learn to be quiet and learn the way of the Lord.  Still, I think we've found a good young pastor to carry on our Lord's work, if he's given time and patience, amen, Sister Mendenhall?"

    "I suppose, Brother Mendenhall," the good sister said, still picking away at her oatmeal.  "After all, St. Paul was no jewel prior to the Lord finding him on the road to Damascus.  Still, there's more than a little bit of weasel in him. . ."

    "Shush, Sister Mendenhall.  These children don't need to be hearing talk like that," Brother Mendenhall said sternly, forgetting his feast for a moment.  "Reverend Masters is chosen of God, and remember what the Bible says what could happen to those who mock the chosen ones?  I think it best to give the Reverend his due and remember our place in the body of Christ."

    Sister Mendenhall had little more to say to that, and as Brother Mendenhall's chastisement had made the air a little uncomfortable around our booth, me and Toadstool proceeded to carve away at our pancakes, praying that the big red man sitting across from us wasn't the type who suddenly went bonkers whenever his point of view was challenged.  However, after a few moments of silence and more than a few bites of his breakfast, Brother Mendenhall forgot about the good Sister's insubordination and his old demeanor returned.

    "Finish your breakfast, boys, and while we're at the deacons' meeting you boys can clean up and we'll be ready to give the Lord His due."

    Toadstool had already finished most of his pancakes, saving those sausage links for last, and I thought it might be rude not to finish up my breakfast, so I started to inhale those ridiculously large pancakes as best I could.  Still, a few minutes later I had more than a quarter of those cakes to eat and I hadn't touched my sausages, and in the meantime Brother Mendenhall and Toadstool had both finished up and even the good Sister had scooped up the last of her oatmeal, which left me as the last one standing.

    "It's not a wonder that you're so skinny," Brother Mendenhall said, wiping his chin clean of gravy and gesturing over to Marjorie for the check.  "If you want to put on any weight, son, you've got to learn to eat what the Good Lord's provided you."

    I wanted to say to him that I still had three pork chops dancing around in my belly and that adding all that dough from the pancakes didn't help matters any, but instead I just said, "Yes, sir."

    In due time Marjorie came with the check and Brother Mendenhall gave her the cash, then when she returned with the change he left it on the table with what seemed to me a fair amount of bills as a tip. We all then slowly got out and made our way to the Continental.

    The Solid Rock Pentecostal Church of Jennings, IL was on the other side of town, a three-minute drive down the main drag, and I would imagine that it was a little bit outside of the Jennings city limits.  It sat back from the road a bit, surrounded by a gravel parking lot that could maybe hold thirty cars and surrounded by tall oak and maple trees.  The church building was small, to be sure, but it was pretty nice looking for a church that was put together on weekends.  It had white stone in the front and red brick running down the rest of it, with a hand-made wooden cross on one side and a steeple with a gold cross on top of it on the roof.  There were only four windows running down the side of the church and they contained this opaque, dimpled yellow glass which kept the outside world from seeing what the holy rollers were doing inside the church.  There was only one other car in the lot when we pulled in, and Brother Mendenhall announced to no one in particular that Sister Flanders must have arrived early in order to get the monthly communion service ready.  He pulled the car up in front of the church and instructed Sister Mendenhall to lead me and Toadstool downstairs to the showers, and after we got out he drove the car down to the far end of the lot to park it.

    The glass double-doors in front of the church were unlocked and Sister Mendenhall led us through them into the vestibule of the church.  The inside of the church was nothing fancy, just white walls and blue carpet, with five or six pews on either side and three or four of those tube-type lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling.  The most ornate thing in the entire church was the pulpit in front, a wide cedar thing with a cross on front of it carved into the wood surrounded by a sort of halo and a scroll below it reading "Jesus is Lord!"  It was up on a platform that was maybe a foot or two above the main floor, surrounded by a short iron railing and, in front of it, there were two simple wooden alters on either side of the pulpit.  In back of the pulpit area, behind a couple of pews, was yet another one of those hand-carved crosses, and I couldn't help but think that the guy who made those would've had an easy time finding work in Biblical times.  As uncomfortably hot as the air was getting outside, it was uncomfortably cool inside, and as we walked in Sister Mendenhall shook her head and gave a little "tch" sound.

    "Sister Flanders must like living in an ice box," she said, like her husband, to no one in particular.  "We'll end up taking a special collection just to pay the electric bill in here."

    She walked up to a thermostat on one side of the vestibule that was protected by a clear plastic box and, fishing a key out of that purse of hers, opened it up and pushed a couple of buttons on the control.  Somewhere the air conditioner made a clunking sound and, satisfied, she closed the box and walked back over to us.

    "The men built some showers downstairs when they were working on building this church," she said.  "They would come here some days in the early hours before they went to work in order to get something done.  Anyway, that's where you boys can clean up, and we have to have some clothes in our community store that'll fit you."

    Sister Mendenhall led us down a wide stairway that went off from one side of the vestibule and around the corner into the basement area of the church, which I'm guessing served as some sort of community room for the church or something, because there were about a dozen or so folding tables lined up on either side of it with accompanying folding chairs scattered around them.  The ceiling was all panel and the floor was bare concrete, and in the back of it was a little kitchen area divided off by a wall covered in fake wood paneling with a rectangular window cut into it.  Behind it we could see a woman that looked like a cross between Aunt Bea and Grandma Walton pouring grape juice into thimble-sized cups (because holy-rollers didn't drink wine at their communions) and arranging small oyster crackers on a tray.

    "Good morning, Sister Flanders," Sister Mendenhall said as she led us through the center of the tables.

    "Good morning, Sister Mendenhall.  Goodness, who do we have here?"

    "These boys are a couple of stragglers that Brother Mendenhall found walking alongside the road on the way here.  The say they're from Garen."

    "Garen?  Oh, my Lord, how did they get here?  Where are their parents?"

    "Back in Garen, from what I gather.  I'm not even sure they're sure how they got here, hmm, boys?  Anyway, they seem to be okay, even though they're a little dirty, and Brother Mendenhall felt God calling to help them out."

    Sister Flanders waddled towards us and looked us over without the approving look in her eye that Sister Mendenhall had given us.  She smelled like a ton of tulips squashed together and her voice sounded like a bird dying.

    "We need to call their parents," she said after examining us for a few minutes.

    "The phone is in the office and the men are about to start their meeting and they're not going to want to be disturbed.  We should be able to call their parents after the meeting gets out before Sunday school."

    "If they don't get to fussing and grumbling too much.  Is Reverend Masters even here yet?"

    "John Masters is on his own time, which means he's always a little late."

    "Fashionably late," Sister Flanders said with a screeching laugh.

    Sister Mendenhall laughed, or at least she lurched about a little like she was laughing because you couldn't really hear it.  Finally, she said, "In the meantime, these boys need to get cleaned up and made presentable for service.  I'm just going to show them the shower and see if I can find some decent clothes in the community store."

    "A couple left some new clothes last week that their boys had grown out of.  I'd think they had some shirts and slacks that might fit the boys, though it might be a tight fit for the big one there."

    "As many clothes as we have back there, I'm sure we'll come up with something that's suitable.  Come this way, boys, and I'll show you where you can shower."

    Sister Mendenhall took me and Toadstool back the other way to a small room by the stairway and opened up the door.  Inside was about as bare a shower as you'll ever find, basically just a showerhead with a couple of faucets for hot and cold and a drain drilled into the concrete floor.  There were no walls on the inside, just some supporting beams for the stairway which ran above the shower.  On one of the crossbeams was a soap dish with a used bar of soap in it and one of those sample-sized bottles of shampoo beside it, and a gray-white towel was laying on a makeshift towel rack across from the showerhead.

    "You boys can take turns showering while I see if I can find something for you to wear," Sister Mendenhall said.  "I'll bring them out in a minute, and you can hand the clothes in to each other."

    Before I could even think about it, Toadstool had the door closed and I could hear the sound of the water running.  It was amazing how fast that fat boy could move whenever he really wanted something, and at that moment I'm guessing he wanted to be clean.  Sister Mendenhall came out a few moments later with a couple of outfits, both of them including long dress shirts that were just ridiculous for the weather.  Mine was powder blue, with a pair of plaid polyester slacks that I'd never be caught wearing normally.  I'm guessing that she couldn't find any boys' shirts Toadstool's size, because she brought out a large black men's dress shirt with a pair of corduroy pants that I judged to be too big for him.  I heard the water shut off and the door opened a crack and Toadstool's pudgy, damp hand came through it.

    "Gimme my clothes," he said, and he sounded like he was shivering a little.

    For some reason, I wasn't feeling really cooperative at the moment, maybe because Toadstool had just went right into the shower without even asking me if I wanted to go first.  Anyway, I stood there with my back against the wall, not really looking at that fat hand of his, and said, "Why should I?"

    "C'mon, gimme my clothes.  I'm butt naked in here."

    "So?  Maybe you need to come out here and get your clothes."

    "I can't come out there," he said, and the whine was coming back in his voice.  "There's ladies out there.  Now, c'mon, gimme my clothes."

    "There's nobody out here, they all went upstairs," I lied, as the two Sisters were standing in the kitchen area, chatting away.  "Now, come out here so I can go in and get cleaned up."

    "No way," Toadstool whined that much louder.  "Now hand me my clothes."

    This time Toadstool's whining was loud enough for the women to hear, and they both looked up from their gossiping and looked at me with that kind of stern look that only old women seem to have.

    "Is there a problem over there?" Sister Mendenhall asked, and all the friendliness had gone out of her voice.

    "No, ma'am," I said, reluctantly picking up Toadstool's clothes and handing them to him, then whispered, "Man, these are gonna make you look like a clown."

    After a couple of minutes Toadstool came out, his black-wire hair still damp and uncombed and awkwardly trying to keep his pants up above his butt.  I was right, he was swimming in that big black shirt, but amazingly the pants seemed just a bit too small for him.  He brushed past me hard when he came out and whispered, "You're gay."

    "You wish," I said and, grabbing my clean clothes, went into the shower.

    I put the new clothes as far in the corner away from the shower as I could so that they wouldn't get too damp and then I stripped, throwing my belt, shoes and underwear on top of the clean clothes and piling my dirty ones in another corner.  When I started the shower I understood why Toadstool had been shivering so badly because there wasn't a whole lot of hot to the hot water faucet.  After playing with it a little bit I finally got it to a temperature to where I could manage to get under the water and even then I had to go slow to keep from hyperventilating.  I was able to soap myself up, though, and get some shampoo in my hair and quickly rinse it all off before deciding I'd had enough and shutting it off.  To make things worse, that concrete floor was cold thanks to the water and rough against my feet.  All things considered, that was probably the worst shower I'd ever taken in my life, made even worse by the fact that Toadstool had left the only towel in the room damp and wadded up on the floor.  I shut off the shower and dried myself off as best I could, then pulled my clothes on over my damp skin.  The shirt was a pretty good fit, but amazingly Sister Mendenhall had found a pair of pants that was a size too small for my skinny frame.  If it had been jeans I doubt if I could get them on, but because it was polyester I could stretch them enough to get them around my waist and pull my belt around them to keep them in place.

    In spite of it all, I actually felt pretty good once I got out of the shower.  I was clean for the first time since before me and Toadstool had decided to go fishing the day before and the church basement actually felt kind of comfortable once the temperature was set right.  I started to feel kind of sleepy-tired and thought about how easy it would be to sit and take a quick nap before church started.  A couple of other dour-looking women had joined Sisters Mendenhall and Flanders in the basement and they were involved in a pretty animated conversation about God knows what, completely ignoring the two kids at the other end of the basement.  Toadstool was sitting in one of the folding chairs at one end of a table, looking over one of those comic strip religious tracts that holy-rollers used to love to give out that foretold gloom and doom in the future for all sinners.  Without looking up from the tract he was reading, he said, "You look stupid."

    "You look worse," I said quietly, not wanting four pairs of stern eyes looking in my direction. 

    I sat down in a chair across from Toadstool and shut my eyes for a minute, thinking I might nap, but the women were being mighty loud themselves and I kept getting little snips sounding like they were awfully offended by something.  Finally, I looked across at Toadstool and said, "Let's go upstairs."

    "Why?" he asked, still thoroughly interested in the tract.

    "Because I don't want to stay down here with all these old women.  The men are supposed to be having a meeting, so I'm guessing they're still in the office."

    "Other people have probably come in by now.  I'm fine right here."

    "All right, you stay here.  Me, I'm going to go upstairs."

    Now, I know that Toadstool didn't want to stay downstairs with all those old ladies either, because sooner or later their attention was going to turn to him.  So he threw the tract down as quietly as he could while still showing how agitated he was at me and waddled after me up the stairs.

    The real reason that I'd wanted to go upstairs is that I'd seen those padded pews upstairs and thought they'd be a lot more comfortable to snooze in than those hard metal folding chairs in the basement and, even if there were people upstairs, I didn't think they'd bother us, figuring we were someone visiting nephews or something.  As it was there was no one upstairs when we got there and the only noise was some sort of muffled conversation going on behind the office door at the front of the church.  I grabbed a spot on the back pew and Toadstool sat on the same pew but pretty far down to let me know he was still miffed at me.  He picked up a beat-up hymnal from a holder that was part of the pew in front of us and started thumbing through it and I leaned back in that comfortable pew and started to snooze, the cool air and the lily scent of the church putting me in a relaxed mood.  I was far enough out of it to get the bejeezus scared out of me when the office door suddenly burst open and the deacons walked out.

    Brother Mendenhall was the first to walk out, and he was well in the lead of the three men behind him.  One of the old guys was tall and skinny, looking like one of those morticians in an old western movie.  The second one was short and squat and looked like he had enough rage in him to burst out of his skin at any moment.  The third guy, the only one of them that looked to be under sixty, was short and plump and wore the kind of pencil-thin mustache that I didn't think anybody really wore.  He had an expression on his face like he'd eaten some bad eggs for breakfast and they weren't agreeing with him and he walked slowly and more deliberately than any of the three older men walking in front of him, and I couldn't help but think he looked a little like a used car salesman.  After a few moments it dawned on me that, from the Mendenhalls' description, the younger guy was the pastor of the church.

    "Try to understand the importance of unity in our assembly," the younger man was saying in a voice that was deep but not quite as powerful as Brother Mendenhall's.  "Strife is Satan's tool, he'll use it to tear down God's plans and make our church impotent.  We must have one vision, that is to say, His vision, to lead us forward."

    Brother Mendenhall sounded as if he was trying to be respectful towards the pastor, but I couldn't help but notice some defiance in his voice.  "So, nothing is left to debate here?  You make a decision and we simply exist to rubber stamp and ratify that decision?  Why do we even exist then, Reverend Masters?"

    "Brother Mendenhall, God has given me a clear vision as to where this assembly is headed, I speak with Him daily, sometimes hourly, about His direction, and I will not allow for those plans to be altered or scuttled by Satan deceiving one of our leaders, no matter how well-meaning that man may be."

    "So any time any of us questions your decisions it's the work of Satan?"

    "God has put me in this place to lead, Alois.  That is what I'm here to do, and this church cannot have two leaders.  Anything with two heads is a monster and an abomination."

    "I'm not questioning your authority, Reverend. . ."

    "Aren't you?"

    Brother Mendenhall stopped at that and the men were quiet for a little bit, though the angry guy looked like he wanted to add something but the mortician put his hand on his shoulder, which seemed to serve to stop him.  Even though it sounded like Brother Mendenhall was defiant, the tone in his voice wasn’t really like that.  In fact his shoulders were drooping like there was a two-hundred pound weight on them, and he seemed to grow a little smaller as he stood in front of the church.  I'm sure all that size was still there but he'd deflated a little, like a balloon with a slow leak.

    "That is why, as we stated, that the deacons have decided that perhaps it is best if we go our separate ways," the pastor continued, placing his one hand on his fairly large belly, as if he was trying to keep something in there.  "I'm certain that God has plans for you and that he'll use you in a great and mighty work.  You need to heed to His call, Alois Mendenhall, and I believe that call is not here, which is why, in an emergency meeting last night, we chose to relieve you of your duties as deacon and your membership in this assembly.  This isn't a rebuke, if anything it's a release so that you can follow God's true call in your life."

    "But this is my call," Brother Mendenhall said in a voice that was little more than a whisper.  "For the last twelve years this has been my home. . ."

    "We have got to make ourselves flexible to God's plans, Alois.  You're a valuable soldier in God's army and He will not allow someone like you to sit on the sidelines for long.  Come on, men, let's pray together on this, and you're certainly welcome to stay for this morning's service, Alois."

    "No, . . . no, I don't think we'll be able to do that," Brother Mendenhall said, sounding badly distracted, like his mind wasn't on the words that were coming out of his mouth.  "Let me go downstairs and inform Sister Mendenhall about your decision, and then I think we'll leave."

    It's always weird to hear the voice of someone who's really big and powerful crack, but I swear I heard a little sob in Brother Mendenhall's voice as he said he was leaving and I admit it freaked me out a little.  As he started to turn the two old men started patting him on the shoulders, not really looking at him and acting kind of ashamed about what they'd decided.  I looked over at Toadstool and he had been listening to everything the same way I'd been, and I suddenly knew we couldn't stay there anymore.

    "C'mon, Toadstool, let's go," I whispered as quietly as I could as I definitely did not want to draw any attention at this point.

    Toadstool looked at me like I was stupid for a moment, but he was always pretty quick on the uptake and he knew better than I did that, for someone like Brother Mendenhall, the pastor might as well have just pulled out a gun and shot him square in the head, he couldn't have hurt him any worse.  The thing is, he probably would've still done everything he could to help us, but it would've been really uncomfortable to hang around that old couple for the rest of the day.  So me and Toadstool got up off the pew as quietly as we could and made our way towards the double glass door at the front of the church.

    People had started to come in by this time and they were all milling around the vestibule area, shaking hands and making small talk, none of them really noticing two young teenagers wearing bad clothes heading for the exit.  Just before I opened the door I looked behind me for just a moment and saw Brother Mendenhall slowly making his way down the aisle, barely noticing people trying to greet him and not looking at anything in particular, and he looked about as lonely and confused as I'd ever seen a person.  With that, me and Toadstool took our leave of the Solid Rock Pentecostal Church of Jennings, IL.

Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 7  (13+) In which the Dreamer demonstrates his skills as a driver. #1835199 by Ben Simon