The Reluctant Prophet Page 5

  “Well, I would think—”

  “Anyway,” I said, pressing India’s arm.

  “Anyway, the reason, according to the studies, is that Buddhism presents itself as a way of life, while Christianity presents itself as a system of beliefs.”

  Mary Alice’s hand fluttered over the chins as if she needed them more than ever. “That’s what I don’t understand. If you believe in Jesus, you do what he says. Don’t you?”

  “I think that’s right,” Frank said. “You ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ and then that’s what you do. It’s Jesus first, last, and always, now isn’t that right?”

  I waited for “God is good all the time, all the time God is good.” Frank seemed to live by those three adages and get along just fine. I always figured that must work in the black-and-white world of accounting.

  Beside me India re-situated herself against the cushions. “I think it might be a little bit more complicated than that, Frank, honey,” she said. “From my work with the girls, I know they’ve got to sort through a number of options before they know ‘what Jesus would do.’” She snapped her fingers into a fold on her lap and I knew what was coming. “I learned that myself with Michael Morehead.”

  India always referred to her ex-husband as “Michael Morehead,” and in a knife-blade tone. That was another thing she constantly reminded us of: that Michael Morehead was a womanizer and that was the only reason she divorced him, as Jesus said she was within her rights to do. The divorce had been ugly and public, but it had led her to minister to young women in the congregation who found themselves in the throes of relationship crisis. From what I’d seen, she was great with the acute-care approach. I’d often wondered if her counselees were able to move on as wonderfully well as she had. One thing she couldn’t fault Michael Morehead for: his alimony paid for that boutique.

  “But in the end you search your conscience and you do right,” Frank said, pitch rising.

  Mary Alice nodded. “And it’s all in God’s hands.”

  I could feel the gleam in my eyes as I looked at Bonner. “Well, there you go then.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, which meant he was about to calm Mary Alice’s chins and Frank’s pitch and India’s shifting on the couch. Me, of course, he considered a lost cause.

  “All Garry means is that he’d like to see us live our beliefs in a more obvious way, rather than just talking about them.”

  “He doesn’t think we’re behaving properly?” Mary Alice said.

  “I doubt that, Mary Alice,” I said. “If any of you behaved anymore properly, you’d be in the Wax Museum.”

  “Do you remember what he talked about in the sermon?” Bonner said quickly. “He doesn’t want us to just be Ten Commandment people. He wants us to be spiritual-formation people.”

  India leaned into me again. “Oh that clears it up.”

  “If Pastor asks us to do something, I think we should do it,” Mary Alice said.

  “Amen,” Frank said.

  Mary Alice blinked her very-blue eyes rapidly. “But I just don’t understand what he wants us to do.”

  “I think that’s what he wants us to figure out,” Bonner said. “We’re supposed to sort through our beliefs and make sure we’re living them.”

  “Which means we also have to look at how we’re not living them.”

  All four gazes locked on me. Did I just say that?

  “We all know we’re sinners,” Frank said. “At least I do.”

  “Amen, brother,” India said. “Could I have a piece of that pie now, Mary Alice?”

  She laughed the India-lightening-it-up-before-it-gets-too-intense laugh. Well-off Southern women do that so well.

  “I wasn’t speaking for all of you,” I said—although until I said it, I wasn’t aware that I had anything to say at all. “You’re angels in my eyes, and you know it. Mary Alice saved me from suffocating in my own grief after Sylvia died. She and India brought me to this church every Sunday until I could breathe without having to be reminded to.”

  They exchanged misty looks.

  “I ate up Frank’s Bible studies like I’d just been released from a refugee camp, and I know I was a leech on all of you, sucking in all the stuff I never even knew was there.” I swept them all in with a glance. “And every one of you was always willing to open a vein for me. When Garry started small groups—”

  “You remember how proud he was of his sweet self?” India said. “You’d have thought he invented the concept.”

  “Yeah, he’s always a few steps behind, but he gets there—”

  “The point is—” Bonner said.

  “The point is, when you invited me to be in this one with all of you—”

  “The older singles,” India put in, with an eye roll.

  “You started the beginning stages of me-the-Christian. You aren’t just angels—you’re saints.”

  India laughed and accepted the healthy wedge of pie Mary Alice offered on a china plate. “Then it looks like we already have it figured out.”

  “Pie, darlin’?” Mary Alice said to me.

  I shook my head. I was suddenly feeling a little wobbly, the way you do when you’ve just told somebody off. I hadn’t, obviously, or they wouldn’t all be looking at me like I’d canonized them.

  Bonner took my slice from Mary Alice, but he left the fork resting on the plate. “So I’m going to tell Garry what? That we’ve decided we’re all good God-fearing people and we don’t need to go any further?”

  Everyone blinked at him.

  “Way to end the party, Bonner, honey,” India said.

  “We can all learn and grow,” Frank said. “I pray every day, ‘Lord, grow me.’”

  Mary Alice frowned at the wedge she’d just cut for herself. “I think I might be big enough.”

  “Maybe it isn’t just about us, then,” I said—once again hearing the words launch from my mouth without a flight plan.

  “What do you mean?” Bonner said.

  “Maybe we’re in such a great place that we ought to be, what—taking it outside the group. I don’t know….”

  I didn’t. Well, I did, in a way, because the Harley message was once more whispering in my head, although why now was beyond me. That had nothing whatsoever to do with what we were talking about.

  “You all right, Miss Allison?” Frank said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  India peered at me through the eyelash squint. “You looked a little intense there for a minute.”

  “There’s something you can help me with,” I said. I’d actually intended to bring it up more casually, but since words were pretty much acting on their own anyway …

  “You know Sylvia’s Jaguar has been sitting in my garage all this time, and I think it’s time to sell it.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s all I need to do is buy a Jag,” India said. “Michael Morehead would have me in front of the judge so fast, saying if I could afford a luxury car, I sure didn’t need his alimony checks.”

  “I’m not expecting any of you to buy it,” I said. “I just thought maybe you’d know somebody who’d be interested.” I looked at Frank. “I know you have some wealthy clients.”

  “My clients need tax write-offs, Miss Allison,” he said. “A Jaguar doesn’t usually qualify.”

  Mary Alice motioned at me with the last slice of pie. “I have to say I’m glad you’re getting rid of it and buying something practical.”

  Practical. I took the pie and dug into it, just to keep myself from blurting out what I was selling it for.

  “How much do you want for it?” India said. “Just in case I run into somebody that looks like Jaguar material.” She pressed her shoulder to mine. “I do get a lot of cougars in my shop.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Wa
s I supposed to understand that?” Mary Alice said.

  “No, Mary Alice,” Bonner said. “You’re fine.”

  He’d been uncharacteristically quiet for the last few minutes, and when I looked at him to exchange grins, I found him looking at me like he knew exactly what was going on.

  Do not say it out loud, I telegraphed to him. Or I will strike you dead.

  He got the message. But I wasn’t surprised when, as the meeting was breaking up and everyone was promising to look at the non-Christian behaviors in their lives for next time, he touched my elbow and said, “I’m walking you home.”

  I didn’t argue. This would be a good chance for me to swear him to secrecy about my word from God.

  Good-byes said to the others, we stepped from the church into the humidity and started down Valencia. It was a little like walking through the middle of a down pillow, even at eight thirty at night. Ah, the beauty of pre-autumn in Florida.

  “Thanks for not outing me,” I said.

  “You’re going to buy a Harley. That’s why you’re selling the car.”

  He was taking the corner onto Cordova at an annoyed clip and I had to practically do the two-step to keep up.

  “I know you think I’m out of my mind,” I said, “but—”

  “Have you ever ridden one?”

  “I’ll take classes.”

  “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  I stopped on the sidewalk, just out of earshot of a group on the porch of a tapas restaurant. Their laughter was suddenly jarring.

  “I feel like I’m talking to my father, Bonner,” I said between my teeth, “and trust me, that is not a good thing. Look, I’ve gotten more than just that one ‘hint’ in church. If you can hear about it without launching into a lecture, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, g’night.”

  The chortling over the Asian duck quesadillas ceased abruptly. I shrugged at the curious faces of the diners on the porch and pitched myself on toward the light at King Street, arms swinging. I was surprised by my own anger.

  Bonner was beside me before I got to the walk signal. “No lecture. Tell me.”

  I cast him a quick glance. He had his hands in his pockets, face intent on the stoplight.

  “It won’t leave me alone,” I said.

  “What won’t?”

  “This Nudging thing. I’ll be giving a tour or clipping my toenails or shoveling horse poo and there it is, whispering me to … do this … buy a motorcycle—and I don’t think it’s just about me being born to be wild. There’s something else attached to it.”

  “What?”

  “I have no idea, but that’s not the only unplanned thing that’s been coming out of me lately.” I let a cab crawl past us and stepped off the curb. “Tonight when we were all congratulating ourselves on what wonderful Christians we are, and I said maybe it was time to take it outside the group?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t think that up. I didn’t even want to say it. I’m fine with the group. The group is the only stable thing in my life.”

  “What you said, though—that I would believe was God.”

  “It was the same voice, Bonner. Do I get to pick when I obey it and when I don’t?”

  He didn’t answer and I didn’t prod him. We walked the last block in muggy silence. With each step I cared less whether he agreed with me or not, and that made my heart ache a little.

  When we got to the house, I folded my arms and shrugged my shoulders up to my earlobes.

  “You don’t have to buy into this,” I said. “But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ride me about it.”

  He nodded toward my garage. “Is the Jag in there?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Let me take a look at it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did you notice Miz Vernell and Owen sitting on his porch when we walked by just now? If I take you into my garage at this time of night, they’re going to start planning our engagement party.”

  “I just want to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I might want to buy it.”

  I felt my jaw drop, chin slamming to chest.

  “Are you serious?” I said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, but … why?”

  I didn’t finish, because I was sure we both knew what I was thinking. There were going to be strings attached to this.

  “I’ve never heard you say you wanted a Jag.” I said.

  “I never heard you say you wanted a Harley.” His gaze went to the garage roof. The effort to understand was all over his face.

  “Okay, come on,” I said. “I’ll show her to you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’d been away from Chamberlain wealth long enough to forget how fast things can move when there are large amounts of cash involved. Bonner presented me with a check for $20,000, I waltzed into the Harley dealership with one for $18,000—trying not very hard to hide my smugness from Stan as we posed together for the obligatory photo by the bell they rang when I made my purchase—and came out with a Red Hot Sunglo Heritage Softail Classic. Which Stan then had to drive home for me while I followed in the van.

  “You won’t be riding it until after you pass your class,” he told me when we had it safely tucked in the garage. “You’ll learn on a little Buell on the range. But after that …” The eyes grinned. “You can ride it like—”

  “I know,” I said. “Like I stole it.”

  That all happened in forty-eight hours. Friday night I took the classroom portion of Rider’s Edge, during which Ulysses, a fortyish instructor with a curly dark bun of hair at the nape of his neck—a look India would have had a stroke over—basically told us which questions were going to be on the written test. Some, obviously, were not.

  “Here’s one,” he said to the class of six—all of whom were men except me, and all of whom looked like they had spent most of their youth astride a Hog. “Why can’t a motorcycle stand up by itself?”

  Before any of us could give the obvious answer, he said, “Because it’s two tired.”

  We groaned appreciatively, which only encouraged him to give everything he said a punch line. Except his parting words to us as we left for the evening.

  “All joking aside, we’re going to get serious tomorrow,” he said. “Very serious. Because more than half of all motorcycle crashes occur on bikes ridden by the operator for less than six months.”

  Until then I’d thought, you know, how hard could it be? I had learned to ride a ten-speed, surf on a short board, drive a two-thousand-pound horse. I could do this.

  After he said that, I barely slept all night.

  But I showed up the next morning in the new jeans and boots and gloves and jacket and helmet I’d bought with some of the profit I’d made on the Jag. It was a sweltering steam bath of a day, but the sweat that poured like a brook down the hollow of my chest wasn’t just from all that required clothing I was wearing.

  I was scared spitless.

  The six silver-gray Buells were lined up, ready to serve as our training bikes. They were made by Harley-Davidson for the less affluent rider. In other words it wouldn’t cost the dealership as much if one of them crashed, which did nothing to relieve my fears.

  “The body of a Buell is a naked minimalist,” Ulysses said as he led us to them. “Nothing fancy to distract you. Just a nice simple machine.”

  Uh-huh. When I threw my leg over and stood the bike up, I did not get the I-belong-here feeling I’d gotten on my Classic both times I’d mounted it. This one clearly said, “You want to lay bets on how long you can stay upright on me?” The insides of my thighs flooded with terrified perspiration.

  Ulysses gave instructions for starting our bikes using the terms we learned the night before for a
ll the switches and doohickeys. None of them looked like they did on the diagram in the workbook. By the time I actually got mine started, I was ready to throw up. All the other bikes were growling and snarling. I rolled the throttle like Ulysses told me to, and the sound actually brought some reflux up my throat. It was like being on the back of a bear. A starving bear—a just-out-of-hibernation bear.

  Ulysses had us all stop our engines so he could describe the first exercise. I swallowed my breakfast again.

  “You’re going to power-walk it until you get up to ten miles an hour. Then you can put your feet on the pedals and give it a little gas. Stop when you get to the orange cones down there.”

  I peered at the cones. They had to be a half mile away. When did the parking lot get that long?

  “All right—you know what to do,” Ulysses said. “Put it in neutral, start your engine, and then put it in first and start walkin’.”

  Engines fired up around me and brought my entire stomach into my throat. Frantically I searched for neutral with my left foot. That was my first issue with this whole riding thing. I’d read in the book that the gear shift was by your foot and the clutch by your hand, but twenty-six years of driving stick-shift cars made that counterintuitive, not to mention impossible to remember. By the time I finally located neutral, with some personal coaching from Ulysses, the rest of the class was already at the other end of the range, bikes turned around, facing me.

  I got mine started, nearly blowing Ulysses aside when I rolled too hard on the throttle with my right hand and tried to walk it forward.

  “You’re not going anywhere in neutral,” he said over my engine’s screaming complaint. “Engage the clutch and put it in gear.”

  I did, though it wasn’t easy with my hands shaking as if palsy had set in.

  “Okay, let out easy on the clutch and give it some gas.”

  I did that, too, and shot across the parking lot, legs flailing out to the sides. Oh my gosh, where the Sam Hill was the brake?

  I groped for it with my foot, but I couldn’t find it with the wheel turning in a direction I never told it to go. Oh wait—the brake was in my hand. I let go of something and grabbed and squeezed something else and the thing lurched to a stop with a squeal matched only by my own as I went over, onto the blacktop, with the machine on top of me. Mercifully it shut off, so there was only the fear that I’d broken every bone in my body to contend with, rather than the terror that the engine was going to eat me alive.