Flight Behavior

Dellarobia was impressed with his construction of a persuasive paragraph and use of relevant references. She wondered if he’d taken Honors English in high school, rather than the Jock English they’d set up for football players, which basically required a pulse for a passing grade. She’d bet anything Bobby had taken Honors from Mrs. Lake, as she had, in which case he knew the difference between Homer’s Ulysses and the one by James Joyce, and how to get down to business with a metaphor. Principles she had tried and failed to apply in Blanchie’s Bible class. But here at least was a form of salvation Dellarobia could appreciate: a once-weekly respite from hearing grown-ups say “Lay down” and “Where at” and “Them things there.”

Except that Bobby used covenant as a verb, and that really irked her. She’d noticed it before, and he was doing it right now. “Do you see what the Savior is trying to help us do? Can you covenant with me now to appreciate the wisdom of His advice?”

For crying out loud, she thought, how hard was it to say, “Enter into a covenant?” But Mrs. Lake had passed away, maybe the last one to care. The crowd was working up a lather now, calling out, “Yes, Brother Bobby, we do!”

In the café you got to skip the audience participation. She shrank into her green turtleneck. But Pastor Ogle wouldn’t embarrass anyone, she knew. He worked the crowd’s enthusiasm, encouraging people to share the burden of the hateful things that occupied their minds. No one was going out on a limb. “I have skirmished with evil business,” was about as explicit as it went, and “I have trucked with falsehood.” She could well imagine the skirmishes under discussion, the porno tapes these men were trying to throw away, the nips of whisky the women wished they didn’t crave every afternoon, the minute they got the kids down for a nap. The whole crowd had don’t-think-about-it blimps above their heads, which Bobby sweetly ignored.

“You’ve spoken honestly of the things that have hold of your mind,” he said. “But what I want to ask you right now is, What do you love?” He nudged the question again and again, the way Roy and Charlie herded the sheep, gently prodding a wildly disjointed group toward a collective decision to move in a new direction. “What has the good Lord bestowed on your home and family that has brought grace to your life?”

Someone spilled out, “My little grandbaby Haylee!”

A long silence ensued, with many congratulating themselves, no doubt, on being less impulsive than the besotted grandmother. Some ruckus was also going on outside the doors, in the entry hall. Women shouting, barely audible, definitely not congenial.

Bobby covered the awkward moment, congratulating the gushing grandmother and putting her at ease. “Blessed are the little children,” he said, “and it’s a beautiful thing that you hold your little Haylee first in your heart. I want everyone here to covenant with Sister Rachel and proclaim her a beacon. I want you to tell it.”

They told it. “Blessed be, Sister Rachel.” The crowd was starting to warm. Dellarobia had rarely paid much attention to the shining of the beacons. But it was touching. An old man with a narrow chest in a big white shirt pulled himself to his feet. “Our daughter Jill has done got over the cancer and her hair grew back pretty. I praise the Lord for Jill’s pretty yellow hair.”

Dellarobia found herself joining in the blessing of Sister Jill’s hair, feeling a startled gratitude she actually feared might lead to tears. There was no knowing what people held dear, it was one surprise after another as they called out the beautiful things: a new porch deck on a trailer home with a view of the sunset. The wedding of a disabled cousin. A pure white calf. Suddenly Cub was on his feet beside her, speaking up. Dellarobia felt unsteadied by his loud voice, almost singing. A beautiful thing like a heavenly host had come on their mountain, he said, and it was butterflies. “You all just can’t imagine, it’s like a world all to itself. I wish you all would come and partake of it.”

“Brother Turnbow, I thank you for that invitation,” Bobby said. “Truly I have to say it sounds like a miracle, what you’re telling us.”

“Praise the Lord,” a few agreed, tepidly, in the same way people said, “Have a nice day,” when they didn’t care if you did. They seemed less convinced than Bobby that a miracle had transpired on the Turnbow property.

Cub went a little defensive. “You’d have to see it to understand,” he said. “My dad and mother can tell you. It’s like nothing you ever saw. And she foretold of it, is the thing. My wife here foretold of it.” He pulled Dellarobia to her feet, to her profound dismay. “My wife had like a vision or something. She said we all needed to open up our eyes and have a look before we started logging up there. She had this feeling something real major was going to happen on our property.”

Dellarobia wasn’t sure how public Bear wanted to go with the logging plan, and wondered if he was catching this now in Men’s Fellowship, or just reading Field and Stream. The outburst was so unexpected, she was losing her footing. Bobby stood perfectly still, studying the family with his wide-set eyes. His gaze settled on Hester. “Sister Turnbow, tell me it’s so,” he said gently. “That your family has been blessed.”

Dellarobia had never seen Hester so subdued. She would not want to disappoint Bobby. “It’s true,” she said in a soft growl, needing to clear her throat. “My daughter-in-law was the one that told us. I guess she foretold of it.”

Dellarobia felt queasy. Cub gripped her around the shoulders hard, as if she might otherwise slide to the floor, which wasn’t out of the question. His conviction floored her, and once again she wondered if he could be making a cruel joke to punish her. But these were guilty thoughts, the falsehoods of a poorly directed mind, as Bobby said, luring her from the truth. Cub was as trusting as a child, incapable of cruelty in church or anywhere else. And if that alone did not a marriage make, it still was worth something.

Escalating voices interrupted Cub’s moment. Crystal and Brenda, it had to be, having it out in the hallway outside the sanctuary. “Don’t you talk to my boys thataway!” one of them cried, and the other shrieked: “I’ll slap those kids walleyed if they get up in my face again.”

All eyes fixed on Cub, as if his earnest bulk might steady them against the storm outside the door. He stayed determinedly on track, his brow crumpled. “It’s got us to thinking where the Lord must be taking a hand in things up there,” he said. “We’re supposed to be logging that mountain, but we’re in a quandary now.”