She opened the front door and on the other side of it stood her brother, Grahm. Behind him his wife, Cora, had her arms wrapped around a cardboard box as big as an orange crate. Because of the direction of the sun, both looked carved in granite.
“We came last night,” said Grahm, “but you weren’t home.”
“We waited until after eleven,” said Cora.
“I worked last night. What’s in the box?” asked Gail.
“These are copies of something very important,” said Cora in her usual manner of assuming everything in her life was very important. “We need you to keep them.” And she marched into the house, walked down the hall, and put the box on the kitchen table.
“Grahm thinks you’re our best hope,” she said, appraising the kitchen with a scowl. A mound of Styrofoam take-out containers, mismatched ceramic and paper plates, cups, glasses, and plastic wrappers rose out of the sink and spilled onto both sides of the counter.
“You guys want some coffee?” asked Gail as Grahm and Cora seated themselves at the table.
“Look these papers over when you have time,” said Grahm. “Keep them in a safe place.”
“They probably won’t mean anything to you and it’s not necessary they do,” added Cora. “We just need you to have them.”
Gail started coffee and set three cups on the table. “Either you tell me what this is all about—right now—or take your old box home.”
“You tell her,” said Grahm.
“These are shipping records and report forms that prove American Milk is stealing from farmers, defrauding the government, and selling tainted product.”
“Holy shit,” said Gail. “Where did you get them?”
“I took them.”
Cora talked for quite a while longer and Gail realized somewhere near the end of the narrative that she hadn’t been listening. The picture in her mind of her sister-in-law making off with papers from work had crowded out everything else. The coffeemaker groaned twice, grueling sounds of concentrated mechanical anguish ending in a gasp of caffeinated steam. As though in response, the CD player in the living room turned off.
“Coffee?”
“Sure,” said Cora.
“No thanks,” said Grahm. He was currently feeling guilty about bringing his sister into the same awful business that had been destroying his relationship with Cora for the past six months. Gail gave him some anyway, and he drank it after pouring in enough milk to bring the liquid up to the rim of the cup.
“You should get milk from us,” said Grahm. “This stuff from the store has been boiled to death.”
“Yes, but they take all the fat out and I perform for people on a stage.”
“Doesn’t seem to interfere with your drummer’s eating.”
“Men don’t have to look good, especially behind a set of drums. Everyone notices women.”
“Tell me about it,” said Cora, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Our society is shot through with double standards.”
Gail frowned at her but didn’t say anything. As far as she was concerned Cora had directly benefited from those double standards. She lived on a farm inherited in the final act of a long drama of double standards, mostly written, directed, and acted out by Gail’s mother, who expressed her preference for boys in general and Grahm in particular with every embittered fiber of her being. The leather strap she kept hanging beside the stove might as well have had “Gail” embossed on it, so seldom was it used on anyone else.
“What am I supposed to do with these papers?”
“You won’t understand what they mean,” said Cora, burning her tongue and spilling several teaspoons of coffee on her sweatshirt. “Just keep them in a safe place.”
“People get in trouble over these kinds of things,” said Gail. “You hear about it all the time.”
“Oh, calm down and stop being so dramatic,” said Cora, who privately admired her sister-in-law’s talent for walking around un-surrendered in her underwear. She had a figure, for sure, but who didn’t before having two children? And she probably exercised, what with all the free time she had. Still, there was something intrinsically unwholesome about just wearing underwear, even clean underwear. “As long as we have these papers we have nothing to worry about,” she said. “There are laws that protect us from lawbreakers.”
“By the way,” said Grahm in his getting-ready-to-leave voice, “what’s the matter with your lawn mower? It’s sitting out by the road.”
“It won’t start.”
“I’ll look at it on the way out.”
After they left, Gail put the cardboard box in the closet and found her bass. She was feeling lucky and ready to try to learn the Barbara Jean song again.
KEEPING A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE
WINIFRED SMITH HAD BEEN IN FULL- TIME PASTORAL MINISTRY for six years. At thirty-three, she remained confident that God had a plan for her, a purpose, but she did not yet know what it entailed. And though she eagerly anticipated the joy that would accompany embarking on her life’s mission, she avoided imagining in any detail what her future might hold—for fear vain predilections might block the Way in which unseen forces were guiding her. Allowing things to develop all by themselves would open doors of experience.
In just this manner she had been led to the Words Friends of Jesus Church and into her current circumstances. The opportunity had come unexpectedly, while she was waiting for a barber to trim her hair in a tiny three-chair shop in Cincinnati.
As the steady snipping of long-handled stainless steel scissors performed thin, rapid, rhythmic, metallic insect music, she turned the pages of limp glossy outdoors magazines. Oily smells from colored bottles on the shelf along the mirror combined with the odor of men in vinyl chairs and pictures of trophy animal heads to create a not exactly pleasant atmosphere, and her discomfort—not with the room itself so much as her condemnation of it—was reflected in her face shrinking around her eyes.
“So you attend the Bible college,” said the barber nearest to her, resuming a conversation he had attempted to start earlier. Of the three men cutting hair, this one seemed the most dedicated to establishing personal connections, and Winnie thought he might be the owner. His arms, hands, and wrists moved with an effortless, rubbery fluidity. As the youngest person in the room and the only female, she assumed she was fair game for conversation. One of the social obligations of being younger, and female, entailed letting people talk to you.
“Yes, I’ll graduate soon.”
“Congratulations to you, Ma’am,” the barber said, gesturing with his rubbery limbs. “We need good preachers and I understand there’s a shortage of them in all denominations.”
“Whether I will be good remains an open question,” said Winnie. “I will try to be.” She put down the magazine and smiled in what she hoped was a professional manner.
“As far as I’m concerned,” spoke a man sitting next to her, waiting to have his hair and beard trimmed, “women make just as good pastors as men. The Man Upstairs made both men and