Riverbend Reunion(53)

You’ve actually got three sisters who are as close as twins would be. Her mother had popped into her head, and Jessica could swear she got a whiff of Chanel No. 5, the perfume her mother had always worn. When Jessica had cleaned out her mother’s closet, her clothing still held the scent.

“Want me to take the cookies out to the front?” Jessica finally asked. “You don’t have to deal with her and her protesters. I’ll be glad to take care of it for you.”

“No, that’s my job.” Risa picked up two packages. “I want Mama to see that I’m not backing down from any of this.”

“I’ll take the case of bottled water.” Oscar tucked a twenty-four-pack under his arm and followed Risa across the kitchen. “This is more than I would have done for those lousy protesters, but it will show the folks that we aren’t evil, I suppose.”

“That’s the idea,” Mary Nell told him. “But if they want the good stuff, they’ll have to wander around to the backyard.”

Wade carried dirty dishes to the sink and looked out the window. “There’s more cars out there right now than there ever was when Elijah had services here.”

Haley, Mary Nell, and Jessica finished clearing the table and put leftovers in the refrigerator, then crowded around the window to peer out at the people climbing from their vehicles with hymnbooks in their hands. Stella looked downright proud of herself as she marched up to within six feet of the porch. With a straight back, and her head held high, she had plastered a smile on her face that said for everyone to look at her and know that she was wearing robes of righteousness.

More like self-righteousness. This time Oscar’s gruff old voice was in Jessica’s head.

“Think we should step out there to support Risa and welcome everyone?” Jessica asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I sure do,” Wade answered, “but we don’t have a microphone set up out front.”

“I’m not a tiny thing,” Jessica told him. “And I can be heard when I raise my voice. You just be there to push me out of the way if Stella brings a pistol out of her pocket and starts shooting at me.”

Wade motioned toward the door with his hand. “Then lead on, and I’ll stand beside you.”

Jessica straightened her back and muttered one of the basic training cadences as she marched toward the front door: “They say that in the army, the chicken’s mighty fine. One jumped off the table and started marking time.”

Wade got into step beside her and joined in the cadence. “Oh Lord, I wanna go, but they won’t let me go home.”

“We make a fine pair, don’t we?” Jessica giggled as she spun around on her heels and saluted sharply.

Wade returned the salute and opened the door for her. “Yes, ma’am, we surely do.”

The crowd had gathered around Stella as if they didn’t have any idea what to do now that they were there. The queen bee had given them orders, but now they waited to see what they were to do next. Several of the folks stared at the long table where cookies had been set on one end and a case of water on the other as if they didn’t know whether they might be poisoned. Jessica clapped her hands, but no one paid any attention to her. Then Mary Nell rushed out the front door and handed a microphone to her.

She flipped a switch on the side and said, “Hold it pretty close to your mouth. It will beat trying to yell over the top of the wind and the folks talking. Poor things act like they don’t know what to do. Stella didn’t do a very good job of organizing it past getting everyone to come out here. They’re acting like they’re lost.”

Haley came out of the building and went over to stand beside Risa and Oscar. Jessica glanced at all the members of her team, held the microphone close to her face. “Hello, everyone, if I could have your attention . . .”

“No, you cannot have our attention,” Stella said. “We are here to pray to God that, if this church can’t be used for a holy place of worship, He will send a tornado to blow it away or lightning to set it on fire. And we plan to sing hymns until it gets dark to show God that we are serious.”

“Well, in that case, we will leave you to your prayers and singing in a few minutes,” Jessica said, “but please know that there is water for when your throats get parched, and cookies if you decide you need a little sustenance for the next hymn.”

“We don’t eat with sinners.” Stella raised her voice over the buzz of whispered conversations and the wind making little knee-high gravel tornadoes across the parking lot.

“Are you a Pharisee or a Sadducee?” Risa asked. “They are the self-righteous ones that ridiculed Jesus for eating with sinners.”

“I am a Christian, and I do not even take a drink of water from a sinner,” Stella yelled.

Risa took the microphone from Jessica. “Then I guess you’d all best go home and never go to a church social again, because if I’ve read the scripture right, it says that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. If you don’t even eat a cookie or have a bottle of water because it’s offered from the hands of those you judge as sinners . . .”

“I’ve heard enough of you trying to justify your actions,” Stella shouted. “We will start by singing the first hymn in our books and sing one after another until God hears us and brings down his wrath upon this place. I’m asking that everyone sign this petition. It’s letting the city council know that we do not want God’s house made into a bar.” She marched forward, laid the petition on the porch, and held it down with a wooden cross.