The Reluctant Prophet Read online

  I let him pull me into a this-is-a-hug-isn’t-it side-armed thing and smiled. I expected the weekly query about my health followed by, “How are things in the datil pepper business?” I’d stopped reminding him the datil pepper shop had closed a year ago and that I was now giving horse-drawn carriage tours. When I’d first come to Flagler Church, it had taken the dear man two years to remember that my name wasn’t Alice.

  But today he surprised me with: “Now—you heard in the sermon that I’m giving the small groups a new charge.”

  “Ah,” I said. So that was what we were taking to the foot of the cross.

  “I want you to head up this one in your group. I think it’s about time you took on a leadership role.”

  He patted both of my shoulders simultaneously. There was a lot of stroking and prodding of me going on today. This one made even less sense than the Nudge that told me to go get myself a Hog.

  “You make sure she knows she’s ready for this,” he said over my shoulder.

  “Done.” Bonner motioned with his head toward the steps. “Over brunch.”

  “I told you I have to work.”

  “Oh—right.”

  He glanced at Garry Howard, but the reverend was disappearing into the shelter of the cool church. A dark splotch of perspiration had already filled the space on his robe between his shoulder blades.

  “Okay,” I said to Bonner, “you want to talk? Ride with me to the Bay Front.”

  It was a sly move. Bonner would have no part of animals, especially Bernard, who—unlike most of the carriage horses that weighed in at about eight hundred pounds—tipped the scales at two thousand, and had once overrun a Fourth of July parade when some kid in the crowd set off a firecracker. Bonner was a sure thing for a rain check.

  “All right,” he said. “I can walk back and get my car. It’s a nice day.”

  “It’s already eighty-five degrees! The humidity alone will probably kill you.”

  “Are you inviting me or not?”

  “I’m just saying.” I headed toward Bernard, who left off scraping his chin on the carriage shaft and pricked up his ears at me. His big Belgian head tossed, sending the dark mane dancing.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said. “We’ve got a passenger. You okay with that?”

  Bonner raised an eyebrow at me as he climbed up onto the carriage’s tuck-and-roll driver’s seat, which was only wide enough for me and half of another person. “Why wouldn’t he be okay with it? That’s all he does is haul passengers around.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but he doesn’t usually like a man in the seat with me.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.” I pulled my sunglasses out of my bag and popped them on. “But we’ll see how it goes.”

  Bonner slit his eyes at me, the look he always took on when he wasn’t sure whether to believe me. In truth, he could always believe me. I never did have the knack for pulling off a lie. Bernard gave his chestnut head another toss—not necessarily a friendly one—and I told him to cool it before I signaled him forward. He ambled out onto Valencia and clopped toward Cordova Street, black tail flipping toward the lines on purpose. Eventually I’d have to stop and untangle him.

  Bonner kept his eyes glued to Bernard’s flanks as he put on his Ray-Ban Aviators. They hung from black Croakies dipping alongside his ears and resting on his already-dampening collar. The thing made him look like an entrepreneurial librarian.

  “Welcome to Camelot Carriage Service,” I said, “St. Augustine’s first and most reputable guide to the nation’s oldest city.”

  “Allison—”

  “Sit back and relax in old-world style as you discover all the secrets of this ancient town—”

  “Allison!”

  I lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper. “Keep in mind that this is not your basic tacky Orange and Green Sightseeing Trolley—but you already know that, being a discerning lover of history.” I winked at Bonner. “Not just another tourist.”

  “I don’t need the tour. I could probably give it myself.”

  “But I am a licensed guide. I had to pass a test for this job, you know.”

  “Congratulations,” he said drily. “You’re dodging the issue.”

  I guided Bernard right onto Cordova and listened as his hooves settled into their rhythm on the brick pavement. Bonner was soft spoken, even when he was annoyed with me, which meant Bernard would probably behave.

  Rats.

  “Fifty-five years before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock,” I said. “Forty-two years before the Jamestown settlement, La Florida was established here at St. Augustine.”

  “As the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States—blah, blah, blah. Realtors have to pass that test too.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Garry’s serious—he wants you to head up this new group thing.”

  I took Bernard right on Artillery Lane, one of the narrower of the labyrinth of streets that mazed through the historic district. He usually got jittery in the tiny alleys with the walled gardens snuggled up to the edge of the road and the wrought-iron balconies dripping pink petunias onto the top of his head. I was counting on one of the locals’ cars to come roaring through so Bernard would buck and we’d avoid this topic altogether.

  “You didn’t even hear what Pastor wants us to do,” Bonner said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you looked like you were in Neverland during the sermon.”

  I slanted a look out of the side of my glasses. “It was that obvious?”

  “To me it was.”

  He shrugged, and a small red smear appeared at the top of each cheekbone. I cut him slack and said something unnecessary to Bernard. Bonner knew that I knew that he was always “aware” of me, although we never talked about it. I didn’t want to have to tell him that he was “a nice guy, but …”

  “The discovery of Florida is credited to Don Juan Ponce de Leon,” I said instead.

  “Stop it.”

  “I like to say it. Don Juan Ponce de Leon—”

  “What is your deal with not wanting to take a turn as leader?”

  I grunted and let Bernard pick up a little speed. He could smell fishy Matanzas Bay ahead—who couldn’t?—which meant soon he’d get to stop. Not the most ambitious horse on the Camelot team, Bernard.

  “You’ve read the gospels at least fifty times,” Bonner said.

  “Well, yeah. I had to. That stuff is so freakin’ good.”

  “You’re in church every time the doors open.”

  “I have a lot of heathen-time to make up for.”

  “People respect you.”

  I let out a snort at the corner of Artillery and Charlotte.

  “They do,” Bonner said.

  “Why? Because I can manhandle a horse? Step up, Bernard.”

  Bonner slid his sunglasses down his nose and peered at me. “You told me before that you don’t manhandle the big horses, which is why they like you. That’s why people respect you—because you don’t bully them either.”

  “You’re reaching. For openers, as far as I can tell, leadership in the church means you have to get all involved with the money and pleasing the cranky old people who give the money so they won’t stop giving the money even though they have too much money in the first place—”

  “This isn’t even about that. We’re talking spiritual leadership.”

  “Oh. Well, for that, I am eminently qualified.”

  I had Bernard take a left out onto busy Avenida Menendez and glanced around for cars with the potential to backfire. Bernard had been known to do some serious kicking-up-of-hooves under those conditions.

  “Look, Bonner—faith-wise, I feel like it’s going to take me the r
est of my life to catch up to where everybody else is, much less lead anybody any further. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “So who says this isn’t part of that?”

  “What—leading the Wednesday Night Watchdogs up some spiritual San Juan Hill?”

  Bonner took his glasses completely off, and his eyes took on a mischievous green glow.

  Oops.

  “What did you call us? ‘The Wednesday Night Watchdogs’?”

  “Yes, and if you tell any of them, I’ll cut your heart out. I love those people and you know it.”

  “Watchdogs?”

  “In a good way. You all sniff out anything that’s … amiss … and alert the Mack Daddy.”

  “The Mack Daddy?”

  “Well, it’s not like Garry’s ‘one of us.’ He’s the one who gives us the ‘charges’—which is great—I mean, we grow through that. He’s there for the open-heart surgeries and the premarital counseling. Look how great he was with Sylvia. I’d want him with me if I were dying. But we’re not, like, his buddies. Maybe he just loves us in some kind of … corporate … way.” I shrugged, because I had ceased to be coherent.

  “Are you scared to be in charge of something?” Bonner said.

  “No. Lazy, maybe.”

  The carriage swerved, lurching Bonner against me. I tightened the line on Bernard. Beside us at the stoplight just before the under-construction Bridge of Lions, a rottweiler thrust his head out the passenger window of a van and chopped at the air with his fangs, snarling like a junkyard sentry. The horse did a sidestep that would have put Fred Astaire to shame and came within inches of an excavator parked on the Bay Side.

  “Are they ever gonna finish working on this bridge?” I said between my teeth. “Hold on, Bonner. I’m taking him through this light.”

  “It’s red.”

  “I know. That’s why you should hold on.”

  While Bonner white-knuckled the side of the carriage, I soothed Bernard and rolled us straight into the intersection. Cars stopped on all sides, some of them with tire squeals that wouldn’t have been necessary if the drivers had been doing the speed limit. The jerks. I nodded my thanks to the Lincoln Navigator, only because the driver looked the most indignant of any of them, and coaxed Bernard out of a sidestep and on to the other side of Cathedral Place.

  “Good boy,” I said.

  “You talking to me or him?” Bonner said.

  “Did you wet your pants?”

  “No!”

  I grinned at him. “Then you’re a good boy too. Bernard, you’re home free, Pal.”

  Bernard took the last four blocks to the Bay Front where the carriages lined up as if he’d had back-to-back fares all day and was headed for the barn. If he had that much energy when he was actually working, he probably wouldn’t weigh a ton. When we pulled up behind Caroline Cutty’s rose-colored vis-à-vis, I climbed down to get him the bucket of water he didn’t really need.

  Bonner hopped down too and brushed off the seat of his Dockers—despite the fact that I kept an impeccable carriage.

  “We’re not done with this conversation,” he said.

  “I have to be for now.” I swept an arm over the wide walkway bordering the Bay all the way to the old fort. “They’re not exactly lined up waiting for tours, so I’m going to have to go hustle some.”

  “You guys get hit by the recession?” Bonner said.

  “That, plus it’s always slow all through September and into October. So if I’m going to make a living …”

  I shrugged and took the bucket to the hose. When I came back, Bonner was standing with his arms folded, hands in opposite armpits, gazing over the Bay.

  “The dolphins will be in to feed in about fifteen minutes,” I said. “In case you want to wait around.”

  He shook his head, eyes leveled at some point between me and the horizon. He did that whenever he was about to tell me something he thought I didn’t know about myself.

  I groaned within. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Bonner. He was attractive enough if you were into clean-cut as an art form. No, that wasn’t fair. He did have a nice reddish tint to his hair and a certain energy in his eyes, as if he were always searching for the positive. And unlike half the men I’d ever met, he was at least as tall as my five foot nine.

  So, yeah, he was fine as somebody to drift through the St. John’s Flea Market with on a Saturday afternoon or call up to meet for quesadillas just because it was Tuesday. But I rarely even did that much. He’d been a widower for five years, and it seemed somehow logical to him that because we were the only two single people our age at Flagler Community, by default we should be a couple. If I said, “Hey, come over for burgers,” he’d turn it into a promise that next weekend I’d meet his parents.

  Been there, done that a long time ago. A run of serial relationships after that had pretty much convinced me I was unmarried for a reason. I wouldn’t be breaking my no-date-in-the-last-twelve-years record with Bonner.

  The problem was getting him to grasp that without feeling like a complete heel while I was doing it. I never handled well those situations that called for finesse.

  “Watch this,” I said as I set the bucket in front of Bernard.

  Bonner dabbed at his perspiring forehead with a monogrammed hanky, the kind I didn’t think guys even carried anymore. “I’ve seen horses drink before.”

  “Have you seen one not drink? Watch.”

  True to form, Bernard sniffed disdainfully at the bucket, took a mincing step back, and neatly kicked the thing over, sending a small river of water down the gutter toward Hypolita Street. Just like he did every single time.

  “Why did he do that?” Bonner said.

  “Because he’s ornery. We’re a good match, he and I.”

  Bonner folded the hanky over and tucked it out of sight into his back pocket. “You’re not as ornery as you pretend to be. And that isn’t going to get you out of this group thing. Maybe we need somebody ornery.”

  “But you don’t need somebody nuts.”

  It was out before I knew I was going to use it on him. I got the hoped-for cocked eyebrow, and nodded him toward the Bay.

  “Sit with me for a minute,” I said.

  I left Bernard nosing at the now empty bucket and led Bonner to the wide seawall. I sat cross-legged on its coquina top, now warm with absorbed Florida sunshine, and faced him. For once he didn’t examine the surface he was about to perch on.

  “Look, something strange happened to me in church,” I said. “It was probably my imagination … maybe last night’s tacos. Who knows, but it was weird, and I need to sort it out before I take on any—”

  “What happened?”

  “Promise you won’t think I’ve lost it,” I said even though that was exactly the conclusion I wanted him to arrive at.

  “What happened?”

  “Did you ever feel like God was, I don’t know—nudging you?”

  Bonner rubbed his index finger under his nose. “Not physically elbowing me in the ribs, if that’s what you mean. But, yeah, I’ve felt moved to do things and I pretty much knew God was behind it.” His eyes went soft. “That’s not crazy, Allison.”

  “Even if it felt like I was actually being pushed? Even if there was a voice attached to it?”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said, ‘Allison, go buy a Harley.’”

  “No it didn’t!”

  “Okay, then, you see—I am nuts.”

  “No—it’s just—that doesn’t sound like … God.”

  Bonner was looking at me exactly as if I’d just confided that I was having my tongue pierced. Two minutes ago I’d wanted that expression to appear on his face. Now that it was there, it marched up the back of my neck.

 
“How do you know what God sounds like to me?” I said.

  “I don’t. But, come on, Allison, a Harley? Isn’t that more like wishful thinking?”

  “Maybe—if I’d ever wanted a motorcycle for one second in my life, which I haven’t.”

  I unfolded myself from the wall and stood to shake the hip-crease wrinkles out of my impractical linen pants. I suddenly felt as ridiculous and shapeless as they were.

  “Y’know what? Forget it,” I said. “I was just trying to prove a point, which is that I’m not ready to lead us in some charge when evidently I don’t know God’s voice from schizophrenia.”

  Bonner rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Whatever. I’ve got to get to work.”

  I headed for Bernard, who looked up guiltily from the back wheel of the rosy vis-à-vis he was nudging to get a rise out of the high-strung mare harnessed to it. I could feel Bonner following me, but I didn’t turn around.

  “Did I tick you off?” he said.

  “Nope. You set me straight—which obviously I still need people to do. So how about if you ‘lead the charge’? You know I’ll be there to follow. Whatever you need.”

  I glanced at him then and caught him with his eyes closed, apparently cursing himself. I was okay with that. And I would be even more okay if he’d go … sell some houses.

  “See you Wednesday, then?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, so …”

  I smiled at him before I hoisted myself back up into the carriage and started Bernard toward the fort and around the bend in Castillo Drive. I really did hope Bonner didn’t develop heatstroke before he made it to the church, but I didn’t watch to make sure.

  The walking traffic was just starting to pick up as Bernard and I approached the top of St. George Street. St. Augustine is a city of strollers, people in no hurry to get anywhere who simply happen upon the next enchanting little café or the next Oldest Something. I let Bernard linger beside the City Gates—which were impressive but were no longer attached to a wall—and scanned the street for tourists who showed signs that meandering through the Spanish Quarter was getting old. I always looked for paunchy men with palm trees on their shirts and sweat gleaming on their bald spots. They’d usually climb into my carriage in a heartbeat to give their ankles a chance to un-swell.