20 years ago
Sitting in the pew of the old church, Tommy thumbed through the hymnal, looking for anything to draw his attention away from the boredom he felt. He came here because his mother insisted he attend church with her on special occasions and over the past year, it’d become a Sunday morning ritual for them.
His mom was sitting beside him, tissue in hand, listening to the story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ for probably the 45th time in her life. Tommy had heard the story every year of his 15, except of course he surely didn’t remember the first few times he’d heard it, being a babe in arms, or as a toddler who didn’t hear anything of interest except the clashing of toys in the toddler’s room.
Tommy was a farm boy with a city-boy attitude. He was the requisite tall, but not too tall, lanky, but not skinny, with a pleasant friendly face, though not too handsome. His arms were strong from working part time at the granary three afternoons a week and on Saturday mornings, when it didn’t conflict with baseball practice.
Tommy’d had a relatively easy childhood, as childhoods went. His parents had divorced when he was still young enough not to realize visiting his dad every other weekend wasn’t unusual for his family. His dad lived less than a mile from his mom and both had moved on with their lives. Dad remarried a woman Tommy didn’t like very well, but tolerated. His mom did not remarry, but she dated often enough to give Tommy a free night on his own when his friends could come over to watch videos and eat junk food.
He was the only child of Doris and Kevin, his mom having medical issues that didn’t allow more kids. It was the pivotal reason for the divorce, or so he’d gathered from dropped comments from his parents over the years. He didn’t much care as his parents, while he loved them, weren’t a big part of his life. Tommy carried his life in his head.
He began attending church when his mother decided it was important for her to start attending again. He was dragged along at first, until his best friend Aaron started showing up too. It wasn’t a bad way to spend Sunday morning, and once in a while he actually heard what the pastor was trying to tell him and the rest of the congregation.
Tommy was not a religious boy. He did not succumb to the preaching of anyone, whether it be a minister who presumed inside knowledge of what God wanted, a teacher who acted as if the answers were all in the textbooks he carried to class, or a parent, who had the first three years of his life to teach him everything he needed, then let him learn on his own. Tommy believed in a God, he just didn’t think others could think smart enough to tell him what God wanted of him.
Sitting next to his mother now however, he was as far from this little church as his mind could take him. He wanted to be home right now, sleeping in because it was his day off from everything and his mom had badgered him into coming to church with her like she did every Sunday morning. Mom was good at throwing a guilt trip on him, then heaping on more guilt until he succumbed to the weight.
He’d expected, for whatever reason, probably the recitation of the previous 15 years of the Resurrection of Christ, that today would be a milquetoast sermon, similar to many years before.
This Sunday morning however, the new pastor, Rev. Jacob Callahan, was emphatically preaching the resurrection with a gusto seldom heard in the little church. Glancing around congregation he could see several “blue-hairs” holding tight to the handles on their canes, either because they were looking forward to pinnacle of the story, Mary falling to her knees when Jesus reappears and says “I’m back!” or their backs had finally curved enough that they had to prop them selves up.
No really caring, what he did hear from the pastor did seem to energize the story more than Tommy had heard before.
Rev. Callahan was his mother’s age and had come from a large city in the southern part of the state, replacing the 80-year-old Rev. Wayne Portman just after the first of the year. Portman had been very much loved in the little church with an average congregation of 54, but today had a swell of nearly 75 people.
Portman had told the congregation he was going to retire midway through the previous year and a search was done for his replacement. A big deal was made by the congregation of choosing what type of minister would fit best in the conservative, backwoods church and two men and one woman made the final selection and were asked to come in for an interview with the three-member advisory committee just after Thanksgiving.
The woman, in reality, never had a chance, but the church wanted to look progressive to the younger members. Of the two men, one was in his early 30s and divorced, and then there was the 48-year-old Jacob Callahan. Callahan was a passionate Christ follower with a gentle speaking voice and a convincing baritone preaching delivery. He’d been married for 19 years to the same woman and had three children, a son 18, a daughter 15 and another son who was an impish nine years old.
The committee recommended him to Portman and Portman agreed to officially retire the third weekend of January and hand over the pulpit of the small church in the backwoods of Michigan
He’d been scheduled to start just after the first of the year, but Portman passed away just before Christmas and Callahan offered to fill in. The church mourned through holidays and the transition went as smooth as it could have.
Callahan began his first regular sermon speaking about the Sermon on the Mount from the book of Matthew, a good solid sermon subject to start off his career with the church and it endeared him to the older generation who frequented the church, and people like his mom.
Tommy didn’t much care. He was biding his time until the after-service get together. Callahan usually went on for about 45 minutes, then there’d be a hymn, and closing prayer. In and out was about an hour and 20 minutes of his Sunday morning.
The best part of the Sunday however, was for about a 15 minutes after the service, while his mom talked to her friends, Tommy, his best friend Aaron, the pastor’s daughter Casey and the hanger-on Jerry, would meet each other out back of the church and tell the same old lies of how much they were going to do with their lives after they graduated.
They’d toss about a Nerf football Jerry always seemed to have and gossip about other kids in school, who was dating whom, which girls were putting out, who was failing which class and other things teenage boys talk about when free of adult supervision.
The three boys usually spent 15 to 20 minutes after church together. Since they were too young to have a regular job, and too old to be babysat, and just barely not old enough to back talk to their parents, the three were often asked to help with church functions, like hiking trips, clean-up Saturdays, fund-raising efforts and such. They spent a lot of time together and became good friends despite their very different personalities.
Casey had been coming along to the after-church bull sessions shortly after her dad took over the pulpit and at first the boys treated her as a decently attractive someone to look at, but not a real part of their trio. They were nice to her, but Tommy and Jerry knew she was much too pretty for them to have a chance at and Aaron’s advances were rebuffed with enough regularity, he too gave up and just thought of her as one more girl who populated the earth.
She’d entered into the boys’ life just by being one of four people attending the church about their age. There were no girls in the congregation the same age as her; they were either much older or much younger. Casey, not a big fan of kids, didn’t volunteer with the toddlers or nursery, and just wandered out of the church and saw three boys standing in the snow pack, slapping their hands together to keep them warm. She’d seen two of them in school, one was a minor celebrity on the wrestling squad and another was in her math class so she walked down the hill and introduced herself.
Casey was not an unattractive young lady, yet she wouldn’t be considered top-cheerleader material either. She was slender but athletic, intelligent eyes, a smooth, kind face and although it had a simian architecture to it, it wasn’t ugly to look at even though she had a full set of braces, and her blond hair, which was usually tucked up in a bun, hung well over her shoulders on Sundays. Her voice was sultry without the usual annoying teenage cracking that girls of her age go through as they mature. She was also not a gabby girl. When she spoke, it was almost song worthy the way she phrased things and she wasn’t filled with gossip she felt she needed to pass along. Too many girls her age had the ability to talk faster than their brains worked, but Casey seemed to think about everything she said before she said it.
She had a good sense of sarcasm and humor, which the boys found out the very first day and they found she could take a joke without breaking into tears. They found after a few weeks, she gave as good as she got in their little group and they began to accept her as just one of the guys.
Tommy enjoyed her presence and looked forward to the Sundays when she joined them after church. He knew he never had a chance of reaching even first base with her, but he liked her anyway. There was a special way about her that he liked even though he couldn’t point to one thing and say “This is why I like you.”
Aaron accepted her as a necessary evil and talked with her and treated her as one of the guys after being shot down with kind words and rolled eyes. He’d even gotten comfortable enough, or unconcerned enough, he’d even talk about his latest girlfriend within earshot of Casey, and what base he was hoping to achieve before moving on. Casey would either roll her eyes, something she did often when Aaron was bragging, or simply smile that smile she had that said nothing and revealed nothing.
Jerry also treated her with indifference, but not unkindly. It wasn’t that he didn’t like girls, it was just that he’d rather spend time with guys. Tommy and Aaron both suspected Jerry would end up gay, but they didn’t care. Jerry was a classic side kick with a good throwing arm from the outfield during baseball season and wrested for the high school in the winter.
Aaron had Casey in Sophomore Algebra and they sat near enough to each other to talk before and after class if Aaron wasn’t schmoozing some other girl.
Two or three times a week, Tommy would see Casey at her locker and would stop to talk with her briefly if he had the time and she didn’t have one of her girlfriends hanging with her. He considered her good a friend, but didn’t want to share that friendship with others and he believed she felt pretty much the same way. He also didn’t want anyone to draw some conclusion about the way he really felt about her, instead of the surface “lite-friendship” they had.
Tommy didn’t want himself to become a topic of discussion among her and her friends and he knew one of her girlfriends as one of the school’s top gossip mongers, so if they were with her, a passing nod was good enough for the both of them. He didn’t think Casey talked about their Sunday get together because he hadn’t heard about it from his friends on the baseball team, because as sure as God made little green apples the guys on the team gossiped as much as any trio of teenage girls, or the regular guys he hung around with at school.
It seemed to have become an unwritten rule among the four that the Sunday meeting was theirs alone to share. It was something they alone knew about because the church they attended was small and removed from the big town they lived near. It was the lone building at the T of a dirt road and a barely paved road. The people who attended the church were mostly older people who’d been coming to the church for dozens of years, or the offspring of the older folk who hadn’t moved away with their lives and continued to show up every Sunday because of it’s proximity to their homes.
With just the four of them being in the same age group, there was no clique to be a part of, no one-upmanship games to be played out, no others of their own age to look up to or down upon.
“…and with grateful hearts, we offer you our thanks, amen,” Rev. Callahan said to finish the sermon. Everyone started standing and moving to the aisle. Groups of two or three old women stopped to talk with each other, his mom headed off to talk with Mrs. Callahan and Tommy worked his way out to the side door, next to the alter and large basin the church used for baptisms.
He knew Jerry and Aaron would leave out the big double doors in the back of the church as their parents always sat together in the rear. Jerry’s parents would head upstairs to grab his younger brother Marcus and Aaron’s parents would head home without him. They lived a quarter mile down the dirt road and Aaron often walked it after church.
The side door creaked open as always and a brisk breath of cold air caught Tommy in the face. The snow had completely melted and today’s temperatures would reach into the high 60s at least.
As he went down the cracked steps, that went down to an equally cracked sidewalk, the stairs shook side to side, showing the number of years since serious maintenance was done on that side of the church building. A caterpillar was on the cold steel handrail, rusting where the paint was peeling, and died by accident as Tommy moved his hand down the rail. He wiped off the smear on his pants and didn’t give it another thought. He could see dozens of other caterpillars climbing on the chipped white paint on the side of the church, so was sure he hadn’t endangered a species to eternal extinction.
Jerry, he saw was reaching into the back of his dad’s Grand Cherokee to grab the football he knew was always there and Aaron was talking to one of the older girls. She was probably 19 or 20 and way out of his age group, but Tommy knew Aaron would try anyway because it was in his nature.
Working his way carefully down the hill, avoiding the muddy spots where no grass ever seemed to grow, Tommy found Casey already behind the church. She’d obviously gone straight downstairs and out the back door next to the classrooms in the basement. She sat in the front row every weekend with her mom and younger brother.
“Hey,” he said to her and she smiled at his arrival. It made him feel good that she smiled every time she saw him. It was a real smile, not one of the fake smiles many girls gave him. At 15, nearer to 16 now that spring was well underway, he knew how girls could fake a smile, but Casey never did.
“What up, chicken butt?” he asked her, noticing the slight wind was swirling around her legs and that she was shaking a bit from the chill. The black and powder blue dress she wore was covered now by a mid-length coat, but from her knees down, Tommy noticed her athletic legs for the umpteenth time and really liked what he saw.
“Not much, but it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here this morning,” she replied as she hugged her arms around herself. Tommy smiled at the comment as it was the same one said by Aaron less than a month ago when he showed up out back without his jacket and there were still areas where snow drifted to six or seven feet deep that hadn’t melted. “Where’s Jerry with that football?”
“He’s coming. I just saw him,” he answered. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
There was a silence between the two as Casey looked to the opposite side of the building, probably looking for Jerry and Tommy checked out her legs again.
“You sure look nice today,” he blurted before he could stop himself. He was saved from her response when the football bounced off his back and he turned to see Jerry and Aaron coming from the same hill he’d just walked down.
“Hey losers…and you too Casey,” Aaron said, his smile wide and infectious and what got him so many girls. Casey smiled at him too and responded in kind as Tommy went after the errant football that was now rolling down the small incline behind the church.
“Well if it isn’t dumb and dumber. What took you so long? I’ve been freezing my ass waiting on you two.” The football Tommy retrieved came flying back up the hill at Aaron and he caught it with one hand.
“I was scoring points with Chelsea
“Yea,” Jerry finally chimed in as Aaron threw the football at Casey’s head and she nimbly grabbed it before it could hit her in the face, “wants him to keep away from her until some place we all know about freezes over.”
All four laughed and Casey tossed a decent spiral to Jerry, who caught the ball with feigned trouble and tossed it on to Tommy. The ball went between the four of them for a few throws and each had some little small talk to the others, but it was the normal after-church-on-Sunday get together. It was a time cherished by the four of them because together the way they were now, they were safe from the drama of high school, the demands of their parents and far away from the future that was running toward them.
All was right in the world until Aaron received a good throw from Casey.
“We’re moving,” he said to the other three as he hauled the ball in to the crook of his arm. “Dad told me this morning.”
“What? When? Where to?” his three friends asked all about the same time, and walked up to him, looks of disbelief on all their faces. Each was trying to get their questions answered first.
He held up his hand to shut them up.
“Yea, the first of July,” he said, slapping the football into his left hand, “down to Alabama
The three were shocked.
It was the last time the four of them would spend their Sunday morning after church throwing a ball around, but none of them realized it.
Tommy stood dumbfounded. He and Aaron had been in school together for his entire life. He didn’t want to believe that Aaron would be gone.
Casey looked sad. She had a look on her face Tommy had not seen before and it looked like anger, but he wasn’t sure. Jerry was looking down, drilling a hole in the soft ground with his heal.
“Shit,” Tommy said. “That sucks.”
The four stood around for another 10 minutes bitching about Aaron and his family moving before Tommy’s mom opened the door Casey had come out of and told him it was time to go. They’d see each other again many times before the move, but never again would their Sunday morning be the same.
Tommy punched Aaron in the shoulder and Aaron let loose some pent up gas in response. Jerry gagged and Casey called Aaron a gross pig.
That was the way of teens showing friendship.
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