Riverbend Reunion(10)

He listened to about half of the song and said, “I get the messages, Danny.” He opened the door and picked up the cooler from the back of the truck.

“Did y’all even go home?” he yelled at the women sitting in the same chairs they’d been in when he left the night before.

“We’re waiting on you, so we can go see inside the haunted church,” Lily called out. “We need two heroes to chase away rats and snakes. One’s not enough.”

“It’s not haunted,” Daisy declared. “Did you bring a gun to kill the varmints? Jessica says that she killed all the spiders and even swept their carcasses up so they won’t scare us.”

“We don’t waste ammo on those things,” Jessica said in mock seriousness. “We use our Ka-Bar knives to take care of critters like rats the size of possums.”

“Avoids the noise of gunfire.” Wade was amazed that he could joke after the morning he’d had.

“I want to grow up to be like y’all,” Lily said. “I may go into the army or the air force when I get out of high school.”

“The army is better,” Jessica said.

“And,” Wade said, “the army has even begun to let women go to sniper school.”

“Oh, no!” Lily shook her head. “I went hunting with Daddy one time, and I hated the idea of killing an animal. I sure couldn’t ever draw a bead on a person, but I could be a dang good nurse to help the ones who get wounded.”

“How about you, Daisy?” Jessica asked. “Army or air force?”

“Neither one,” Daisy declared. “I’m going to go to college and get a job in an air-conditioned office. I’m going to wear high heels and pretty dresses to work every day.”

“There you have it.” Wade set the cooler down beside the last empty chair. “One goes to the military, or maybe to nursing school and then the military. The other one to college. They’re already planning their careers. Shall I leave the beer and root beer out here or take it inside? It’s been on ice for a couple of hours, so it should be cold.”

“Big as these mosquitoes are, I think we should take it inside.” Jessica got to her feet and headed that way. “The power and water have both been turned on, so we have electricity and bathrooms. I didn’t go back inside until everyone was here, so you might have to fight a few cobwebs. I can grab some toilet paper from my RV.”

“That’s better than squatting behind a tree,” Lily said.

“And that’s why I wouldn’t go hunting with Daddy,” Daisy declared. “Granny Martha said that ladies stayed home and cooked the food. They didn’t go out in the woods and hunt.”

“She also said that we weren’t part of her family anymore, so whatever she said don’t matter anymore.” Lily fell into the line behind Jessica and Wade.

“Go on in, Wade.” Jessica opened the door and stood to one side.

“My mama would rise up out of her grave and cut a peach-tree switch to whip me with if I went into a place before a lady,” he said.

“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” Jessica smiled as she stepped inside the cool building.

“Ladies?” Wade set the cooler on the porch and stood to one side.

“Thank you,” Mary Nell said and followed Jessica into the church.

When everyone had gone inside, he picked up the cooler, walked through the foyer, and went from the sanctuary through an open side door into the fellowship hall. The whole place seemed quiet as a tomb, and like Jessica had said, every pew, the floor, and even the light fixtures were covered with dust. Cobwebs hung beneath the pews and were thick in all the corners, but he didn’t see any spiders. He plugged the refrigerator in, and it immediately began to hum. Half dreading to open the door, he was surprised to find it cleaned out and smelling only slightly musty.

“This place smells like Granny Stella’s attic.” Lily’s voice carried through from the sanctuary.

“Or like the well house at Granny Martha’s place,” Daisy suggested. “But I haven’t seen a mouse or a snake.”

“I killed one spider so far,” Haley said. “And I haven’t seen a mouse or rat, but then I’m not surprised. There’s nothing in here but dust and cobwebs for them to feed on. I’ve never been in this church before, but it doesn’t look a lot different from the one Mama took me to when she was alive.”

“A church is a church is a church,” Risa said, “and by any other name, it would still be a church.”

“So, if we put a bar in this building, would it still be a church?” Wade leaned on the doorjamb.

“It would.” Mary Nell nodded. “Remember what happened when they started up a little nondenominational one in that old service station on Main Street a few months ago.”

“Yep.” Wade left the cooler and went into the sanctuary. “Folks still ask me if I’m parked out behind Sparky’s church, and he just rented the building out. He never even went to the services there.”

“What happened to it?” Jessica asked.

“They built up a congregation that got too big for the service station. They pooled their money then, and built a cowboy church in an old barn between Burnet and Riverbend. I heard that they baptize in a galvanized tank that folks use to water cattle,” Wade answered. “Guess it don’t matter, long as it holds water, what a person gets baptized in.”