"Alden Lozier's Sabbath" (short story)

[CFDavid]

ALDEN LOZIER’S SABBATH

by David Dwyer​

Alden was the family name which Alden was given, and that was fine: it hadn’t seemed at all unusual until classmates repeated it as a question. By his late thirties he’d aged into it, and by now he had old farmer’s hands: long, thick, calloused fingers that worked deftly and inkstain-blue veins ribbing skin dotted with liver spots. Some of his knuckles were swollen from a lifetime habit of cracking them, which pained him mainly in the winter when the work slowed down. His left hand’s forefinger had a slight crook in it; he had broken it in a high school basketball game and Doctor Pegan had set it a little wrong. Alden never pointed quite straight again.
He shook himself from his meditative inventory and was back to task. He pulled on his boots over the cuffs of his pants.
“The county’s snowed in,” his wife admonished. “No one’s going to have church.”
“You can’t just not have church on a Sunday. That’s what we got a tractor for, anyway.”
“Why don’t you get on your radio and ask if the plows are out?”
“Phones are down.”
“The radio.”
“Phyllis? I don’t care if they’ve got the plows out or not. Is it Sunday?”
“Yes, but — ”
“Is it Sunday?”
“Yes, Alden — ”
“I’m just doing the parking lot and the sidewalks, and get the furnace going.”
“I don’t think you’re going to see many people there.”
“Well, I don’t want the preacher to show up and see that his Deacons haven’t opened up for church. I bet you Mark Fowler’s there with the boys.”
“I don’t think you could get two junior high school boys awake and shoveling snow by 4 AM.”
“They’re good boys,” Alden said, a little wistful, and accepted the thermos of coffee Phyllis handed him.
“Make sure I got the cap on tight. My hands.”
“It’s not the cap,” he said, taking it off. “It’s the — the thing, the plug.” He tested the thermos to see that it was secure, and it was. He replaced the cap, and she handed him his scarf.
“I want to put it on over the coat.”
“I want you to put one on under and one on over.”
He looked up at her and blinked.
“It’s cold,” she emphasized.

• • •​

It was morning but still night, for practical purposes, so Alden had to navigate 250 North by the tractor’s headlights. They didn’t have much of a span and he found it easiest to crowd the shoulder of the road and focus on the line the fences and telephone lines made to guide him. This was the easy, mellow part: rolling along at twelve miles an hour or so, sipping hot coffee, thinking his thoughts: he’d forgotten to ask for Phyllis to add sugar, and she of course needn’t be reminded. Forty-nine years; the big five-oh next July. A good woman. A good wife. Sometimes more sense, maybe, than he, but not today. It was Sunday, and that church was going to be open.
The sharp wind was whipping his scarf into his face, and he squinted against it and swatted. He slowed the tractor and lowered the plow and bit into the snow. He felt the bucket dig and then scrape the road. He lifted and had a look. Must have snowed eight, maybe nine, maybe ten inches. Wet snow packed hard.
Alden pressed on toward the church. The Fowlers were probably already there, but he nurtured a little desire to be there first.

And he was, which both delighted him and disappointed him a little. Mark Fowler was the chairman of the Building and Grounds Committee; if this was anyone’s job, it was Fowler’s. Alden just wanted to put in a show as a member of the Diaconate. He checked his watch. 4:27. Mark would be here soon, and Pastor Davis would follow a little later. The pastor wasn’t expected to work, but he was expected to show up to work so others could tell him not to, or steer him toward one of the less strenuous tasks, which he sometimes protested. But he’d had a minor heart attack the winter before — shoveling snow, come to think of it — and everyone had encouraged him to go a little easy from now on. He’d put on some weight since then which looked good on him.
Alden shut off the tractor and hopped down. Now his job was to find the corner of the parking lot which was hedged by the hyacinth bushes and mark them with the flags he’d brought. If he tore those out, accident or not, Mae Egolf would have his head.

• • •​

It took less than an hour to clear the parking lot, carefully dumping the snow in a strategic area, and as the night gave way to twilight, Alden grew more irritated. Not only were the Fowlers and Reverend Davis absent, but Alden hadn’t seen any sign that the county plows were active. How much of this road was he going to be expected to plow? People often excavated sections of rural roads as sort of a necessary favor to the county, and that was fine; but in this case, he hadn’t seen a single headlight other than his own.

He shoveled a walkway to the Narthex entrance, assuming that a roomy two abreast would be sufficient. The exercise left him damp but feeling vigorous, and as the minutes passed on and the sun began to rise, he found himself checking feelings that he knew were self-righteous, but he also thought justifiably so. It was Sunday. You keep the Sabbath day holy. Where was everyone?
Not even the preacher?
Alden cleared the doorway and stripped off a glove and dug for his keys and allowed himself inside. He made sure he stamped as much snow off on the welcome rug as he could, then pulled one of the heavy doors open and stepped into the sanctuary.
His eyes usually went first to the stained glass. The image was Jesus kneeling at a rock in the garden, praying. The morning sun was warming it. Alden was very proud of the piece; his uncle had arranged, by subscription from the congregation, for the glass to be installed. That was 1972. The church had been standing for nearly forty years before that without a proper piece of stained glass, and without a proper piece of stained glass, you really don’t have a proper church; that was his uncle’s thinking, and many in the congregation shared it. (Alden wasn’t dogmatic on the point himself, but all the same, was pleased that have-or-have-not was no longer an issue.)
He flipped the switches and the lights came on, and he surprised himself by letting out a breath he’d been holding. But they had power, so at least that issue was settled. Even as he adjusted the thermostat to a sensible sixty-six degrees — bodies further heated the place quite quickly — he heard the furnace click on and flames leap into service. Good. Now to check the phone and get the salt bucket and scoop.

He unlocked the Diaconate office and found that a package had been delivered during the week. It was addressed to “Diaconate” but no one in particular, so he fished in his pocket for his knife. He brushed Styrofoam kernels away and found some Sunday school curriculum: a videotape, one teacher’s manual, and about a dozen workbooks addressing the subject of the letter to the Hebrews. This might be Jerry Powell’s group. The nature photo on the cover was very nice, and Alden wondered how the photographer could make the forest all purple but the sun shining through bright pink. Maybe that was something done with computers these days. He was going to have to have his son show him e-mail. Or grandson — that might be even better, though Rory was usually pretty impatient. Maybe he could learn from Andrew and get tips from Rory.
The telephone. Alden picked up the receiver and did indeed hear a tone. He dialed home and it rang; service was up again.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Well, honey, I told you, didn’t I? Prayer Circle has been getting the word around that Pastor Tim called off the service today.”
“Intercessory Team.”
“Intercessory Team — I can’t call it that, I can’t get used to that. It’s a prayer circle. So he says we should just watch it on the TV today and just worship at home, is what he says.”
“But I just shoveled the whole parking lot! I was just going to throw the salt down!”
“Well, Alden, what did I tell you? We are snowed in, and I knew that when you went to that church this morning, the only people who was going to be there was Alden Lozier. Did you stay warm? How’s your leg?”
“I’m fine! — never heard of such a thing — “
“Of course you have — “
“It’s a Sunday, you go to church! Snow — “
“Dear, this is not the first time. Not the first time. And the radio says we almost set a record — twelve and a half inches; record’s fifteen and a half.”
“We didn’t do it, the snow did it.”
“Now you’re just being a grump.”
Alden let out an exasperated breath, indignant fist on hip. “Well, I guess I’ll come home, then, if that’s the way people want to be. I cleared the whole lot, Phyllis — ”
“What?”
“What? I said I cleared the whole lot, ‘what?’”
“You’re coming home?”
“Yes,” he said, patronizingly stretching the word so she could absorb it. “Why? Should I pick up a loaf of bread? On the way?”
She sounded genuinely astonished: “Dear heart, I don’t believe you.”
Now Alden was equally perplexed and asked cautiously, “What?”
“You rode all the way up there on your tractor to get that building opened up for church, and now you’re not going to have church?”
“How am I gonna have church? There’s just one person here!”
“Two, Alden,” his wife said meaningfully. “Four, I guess, to be theological.”
“That’s silly.”
“It’s not silly. What’s silly is you going all the way up there to that church only to turn around and come back and not have church. Sometimes I wonder what kind of a Christian man you are, my dear.”
He squinted his eyes in thought. “Well, it’s just me here. What would I do?”
“Just — have church! Honey, you know how to have Sunday worship!”
“Yes, I do, and I don’t see a choir here, and I don’t see a preacher — ”
“I swear to you, fifty years we’ve been married and sometimes, the things you say, you’re a stranger. Where have you been all your life, sitting in that pew and now saying you can’t worship, that you can’t have church? Alden?”
“Phyllis, honey, I’m tired — ”
“I’m thinking God’s got you there today at this hour, by yourself, for a reason. God’s got a reason for everything, dear heart, and you’re there today having church with just you and Him.”
Alden felt a little shudder in his heart. Not just the shudder he usually felt when he had to concede that his wife was right; this, he would have to say, was a spiritual shudder.

(continued)

 

[CFDavid]

He stood in the aisle, looking forward generally at the altar, his eyes usually falling on the podium or the organ pipes.
“Dear God,” he said, and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “Well, well -- hi. Thank you for this day, and for this time…” His mind registered that there were altar flowers on the organ, and the carpet badly needed cleaning. He opened his eyes and on inspection, he realized the carpeted needed replacing. But he was here to worship, so he closed his eyes again and settled in.
“I’ve come here today to thank You, celebrate You; thank You for the sacrifice of your Son.” Alden nodded, eyes closed, and tried to think of more. “I should probably sing something,” he muttered, and, opening his eyes, he saw that someone left their scarf draped over one of the chairs in the choir loft. It looked familiar, but it wasn’t Phylis’ — she’d had to babysit for the Nelsons on Choir Thursday on short notice, unless she’d left it the week before and no one could figure out whose it was. She had a habit of losing scarves, for some reason — scarves and pens. For Alden, it was —
He shook himself devout and started again, reaching for a hymnal.
“Well, Lord,” he paged through the book, looking at different titles. “I have no idea.” He looked up at the altar, trying to fix on some idea. A little put out, he turned to the stained glass Jesus.
“Okay,” he said, pointing the hymnal at the praying figure. “I’m going to just look at you, okay? Just to have something to look at, some direction. So! — sing You a song — ” Alden paged through the hymnal, resting on one song, then dismissing it at moving on. “We’re taking requests,” he joked, “so if there’s anything in particular You want to hear, WAHL, just let me know -- ”
— and a tune coming to him disarmed him and he was humming it and recognizing it in a moment. Not even a particularly favorite song of his — “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” Huh. He found it quickly in the hymnal and indulged the whim.

Phyllis had heard the dim combustion sounds grow louder as the tractor returned, but when the front door opened and it didn’t sound like Alden. She called for him and held still until he answered, and even still, something casually robust in his voice was missing. In a moment, he entered the sitting room. Something about his look was odd — as if he were re-recognizing all the familiar things, and there was some question he wanted to ask but couldn’t.
“Honey?” she asked, rising to steady him, if need be. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“You look like you just escaped a car wreck.”
“No, nothing like that. I was at the church, like you told me to.”
“What's happened?”
She watched him chew his finger, struggling with his thoughts. “I can’t... I can’t put it in words.”
She waited, then gently brushed something invisible from his shoulder, just to touch him.
“I think — well. Yeah. Let me... let me — ”
“You sit down.”
“Yeah,” he said, and sat. Phyllis sat next to him on the couch, and he stared past her, trying to recover the experience.
“I can’t put it into words. I can’t, I — can’t.” The scarves were bothering him, and he began to unwind them from his neck.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just let me sit here for a minute.”
She did. He was silent for a time, still staring ahead, eyes moist.
“Hold my hand a minute,” he said. She did.
She gave him his time, then asked, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“What happened? You had church? Did someone else show up?”
He pulled at his nose.
“I sang a couple of songs, I took the offering... and when I took the offering, I was putting it up on the altar, and, in my head? — that, that, that scripture came into my mind, about not being mad at your brother before you give?”
“Be reconciled?”
“Is it reconciled? I thought it was don’t be mad.”
“Well, both. Go on.”
“Well, so this is when it happened. Just... things were sort of coming into my mind, Phyllis, or I could feel it, like which song God wanted me to sing, or what God wanted me to pray? Does that sound crazy?” He felt that she was shaking her head. “And I’m thinking this is a little crazy, but there’s no harm in it, so I would just go along with it...” Alden’s eyes began to fill with tears. “And I was mad. I was mad at everyone for not making the effort, you know? On a Sunday? Making the effort to get to church on a Sunday, and that the Fowlers didn’t show up to help shovel, or that you didn’t want me to do it either... and I just took the plate back and stepped back, and I was looking up at Jesus, there, in the glass, and He was praying. And for a second, I thought He was praying that all those people would make the effort to get to the church in time for church, and as soon as I thought it — just as soon as I thought it I knew right in my gut that he was praying for me.” Alden held a steadying breath to keep himself composed. “I was — it just hit me what a self-righteous — ! That I didn’t have grace. That I wanted to put a blizzard on people’s backs that they’d have to shovel out from under so they could get to church on Sunday, be as good as me. Does that make sense?”
“Oh, Bear!” she whispered.
“So I sort of... prayed about it and apologized about it, and then it seemed like it was okay, so I took the plate up and put it on the altar, on the steps? On the steps there.” He nodded off into space, into his memory, then looked at his wife, checking her reaction. She was waiting, and he returned to the memory.
“So I — so I prayed then. And I swear to you, Phyllis, I swear. All the sudden, I knew God was in that church. I could feel Him, right behind me, and He — just huge, filling all of it. And I knew, I knew right then, that if I were — if I just turned around, I would see Him. It was almost like He was giving me a choice then whether I wanted to see Him. Whether I’d turn around.”
“What did you do?”
“I just stayed there, kneeling, with my back to Him. I’ve never been so frightened in my entire life.
“I was just frozen there. Couldn’t move. For... forever. Must have only been five minutes, but it seemed so long. And finally I just made myself speak. It took about eight tries!” he laughed. “I mean it — I would open my mouth, and it was completely dry. Couldn’t speak. I’m not even sure if I actually made words or if it was just breath coming out — “
“What did you say to Him?”
“I just said... ‘I can’t.’”
Now he looked again at his wife for her reaction. He smiled, amused, at her smile.
“And as soon as I said it... I can’t explain it. It was still Him, I could still feel Him, but everything changed. And it was fine. Everything was just fine.”
Phyllis absorbed this. “Then what happened?”
“We just stayed there for a while. And it was just... you know how much we like it when it’s just you and I sitting on the porch, and nobody’s saying anything, but it’s just nice?”
“Yes.”
“It was like that. But, you know: bigger, you know,” he laughed, then again grew thoughtful. “But not that much bigger, in a way. I can’t put it into words, Phyllis.”
She squeezed his face — “It sounds wonderful” — and kissed him, then sprang from the chair and headed to the kitchen. “You ready for some coffee? Warm you up.”
“No, I’m fine,” he called out, and sat thinking. He hadn’t realized he wasn’t completely certain of his salvation until today; but now, the deepest hidden doubts were gone. God wouldn’t stay mad for any number of sins Alden either knew or didn’t know he was committing, like whether shoveling snow was the right or the wrong thing to do or whether his expectations of others or God’s expectations of him or any of the whole mess — it didn’t matter now. Things he didn’t know to worry about or even know he was worrying about, or the ones he was worrying about — all of those things: things would be all right. •

(c) Copyright David Dwyer