The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Guide #1)(22)
Chapter Five
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Joey Davis’s family was so picture-perfect that the people of Downers Grove often accused them of having made a deal with the devil. The claim was supposed to be ironic, since everyone knew Joey’s father was the pastor of the Naperville First Baptist Church—the second-largest Baptist congregation in Illinois.
Pastor Jeb Davis was a bit of a local celebrity in the tristate area. He shared the word of God with such confidence and passion the members of his church were convinced he was channeling Jesus himself. People drove in from miles away to hear his sermons every Sunday morning, and their daughters came along to gawk at the pastor’s handsome sons.
This was among the many reasons why Joey hated church. There was something very uncomfortable about getting winked at by teenage girls while listening to your father preach about the last temptation of Christ.
“When are you going to get a girlfriend, Joey?” was the question he got asked the most at church.
“As soon as I find the right girl,” Joey would reply, when he really wanted to say, Did you not hear my dad’s sermon about abstinence last week? Would you want to date with a father like that?
“What’s next for you after high school?” was the second question he got asked the most at church. “Are you going to become a missionary like your brothers?”
“Actually, I’m going to Oklahoma Baptist University for college,” Joey would reply, resisting the urge to say, “Absolutely not. Rewarding poor villagers with clean water and AIDS medication in exchange for memorized Bible verses isn’t my cup of tea.”
Joey was the middle child of five strapping Davis boys. His older brothers, Matthew and Jeb Jr., were doing the Lord’s work in Uganda. His younger brothers, Noah and Peter, were spawn of Satan that Joey had the misfortune of sharing a bedroom with.
“You goddamn heathens!” Joey yelled at them. “Where did you guys hide my phone charger? It was on my bed twenty seconds ago!”
He only had an hour before he and his friends left on their road trip and he was still packing. His little brothers weren’t making it any easier and kept hiding his belongings every time he left the room. The boys acted perfectly innocent as they lay in their bunk beds playing Moses: Escape from Egypt on their Game Boys.
“Matthew 7:8,” Peter said. “‘For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.’”
“I’m gonna knock open your skull if you don’t cough it up!” Joey threatened.
“He hid it in his whale,” Noah said. “I saw him do it when you were packing your toiletries in the bathroom.”
“Tattletale!”
Joey yanked a plush whale out from under Peter’s head and found his charger inside its zipped-up mouth. He hit his brother with the whale so hard a plush Jonah popped out of it.
“Now where the hell is my wallet?” Joey demanded.
“Matthew 13:50,” Noah recited. “‘And throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
“You won’t have any teeth to gnash if you don’t tell me where my wallet is!” Joey said, and raised his fist.
“He put it in the air-conditioning vent!” Peter said.
“Snitches get stitches!”
Joey used Noah’s Popsicle-stick model of the Tower of Babel as a footstool to retrieve his wallet, crushing a dozen clay figurines under his feet.
“All right, I’m done packing,” Joey said. “If either of you messes with my stuff before I leave, ‘Cain and Abel’ will look like Milo and Otis by the time I’m done with you.”
“Boys, come downstairs!” their mother called from the bottom of the stairwell. “Your father wants to say a prayer for Joey before we go to church!”
Joey and his brothers climbed down the stairs and joined their parents in the living room. There was a framed painting over their fireplace of Pastor Jeb and Jesus Christ embracing in matching robes, as if the two were on the same boxing team. The pastor was standing just below the painting, with one hand on the mantel and the other holding the notes for his upcoming sermon. His wife walked around him, brushing his suit off with a lint brush and snipping any loose threads she found.
As Joey watched his parents get ready for church, he found it hard to believe Jeb and Mary Davis were capable of causing a scandal, but they were the talk of the town when they first moved to Downers Grove in the late 1980s. Since Joey’s mother was white, the interracial couple faced some troubling times as they formed a church in the conservative part of town. Pastor Davis’s early days at the pulpit were challenging, but the more he spoke out against the discrimination he and Mary received, the bigger his following became. Today, many people gave Pastor Davis credit for bringing the community together.
The stories made Joey so proud, but also confused him. His parents had faced obstacle after obstacle on their way to acceptance, only to use their platform to discriminate against others in the same way. Pastor Jeb’s sermons were very compassionate, but he was never shy about condemning those he found “unfit” for God’s love.
Joey wondered if his parents simply ran out of compassion, or if all social trailblazers become hypocrites in the end.
The pastor finished going over his notes and tucked them away in his lapel. “God is good, God is good, God is good,” he sang to himself. “Okay, boys, gather ’round. We’re going to pray for Joey’s trip before he leaves.”