California Girl

24

DAVID WALKED THE NEW CHAPEL that morning with young Darren Whitbrend. David leaned slightly forward, half a step ahead of his prospective partner, hands locked behind the small of his back. He was finding it very difficult to shake the words that brother Andy had written about brother Nick in this morning’s Journal. Max, their father, had called David just after 6 A.M., perplexed and fretful at the hostility between his sons.

“Is televangelism a word?” asked David.

“I heard it somewhere, sir,” said Whitbrend. “And thought it was perfect.”

“Barbara tells me you’re a televangelism guru,” said David.

“Guru was her word, sir,” said Whitbrend with a smile. Whitbrend was fair-complected and white-haired. Eyes small and quick. Round spectacles. He had a trim, wiry frame and a blunt face.

“I think televangelism is the future of ministry,” said Whitbrend. “I think there will be a day, in my lifetime, when churches become the studios for Christianity. Faith will surge across the airwaves. Entire networks will be dedicated to God’s word. Empires built with satellites and antennas and closed-circuit broadcasts and pay-as-you-view events. A television set in every room and in every vehicle and in every public space. Screens so small they can fit in your pocket. Screens so big they’re placed on the sides of buildings. A staggering apparatus for transmitting faith and making money for God’s purpose.”

David sighed and shook his head slightly.

“Is that distasteful to you, Reverend?”

“Grim shit,” David said.

“Why?”

Whitbrend was direct and comfortable with words. David wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“Like I said on the phone,” said David. “I love my congregation. I don’t want to lose them.”

“With respect, sir, if you don’t televise, you’ll surely lose them.”

“Preach to millions? How can one man minister to millions? I can hardly keep Mrs. Hartley’s allergic papillon straight from Mrs. Harley’s allergic grandson.”

Whitbrend smiled. It was somehow transparent and conspiratorial at the same time. It forced David to figure out which and he didn’t appreciate the extra work. He noted that one of Whitbrend’s neat front teeth was capped and slightly whiter than the others.

“Well, sir. As you and Mrs. Becker and I understand, one man can’t do everything. We see that it will take two. Two. You and whoever you choose for the astonishing journey you are making.”

David eyed the young minister. Whitbrend’s résumé had billed him as a “nondenominational, faith-based evangelist in the tradition of Billy Graham.” He was twenty-two. But it was difficult to see the spark in him. Billy Graham could light up like a Texas bonfire. You could feel the heat. Whitbrend, however, seemed only intelligent. And probably tenacious. David pictured him behind the pulpit here in the Grove Drive-In Church of God, unknowingly leading the congregation-his congregation-into bored resentment. Faith was joy. God was joy. Jesus was joy. Whitbrend was a Lutheran-trained mutineer without pizzazz.

Outside they toured the playground and storage buildings, the classrooms and the extra drive-in stalls. David felt like a homeowner entertaining buyers he didn’t want to sell to. They stood approximately two hundred feet back from the full-screen Raising of Lazarus, the optimal distance for taking it all in. The speaker-studded expanse of sky blue asphalt stretched all around them.

“This is all well and good,” said Whitbrend. “But your congregation deserves more. You want to inspire awe.”

David suspected he’d entirely misread Whitbrend. “This inspires me every morning when I see it,” he said.

“With what? Not awe.”

David thought for a moment. “Satisfaction. Every Saturday when the deacons and I run the street sweepers over it and dose it with Orange Sunshine. And the nice chapel we were just inside? And the painting up there? And the playground for the kids? This is a good thing, Whitbrend. I’m surprised you can’t see that.”

“I see it, sir,” Whitbrend answered quietly. His face colored. “And I agree with everything you just said. But it’s quaint. You need majesty around you. Majesty a camera can capture and transmit. You need to broadcast your message from a place that looks like heaven. Sir, I understand that you are at a crossroads. You have a wonderful ministry here. But it’s growing and you need a partner. My belief is that the only way to keep the traditional congregation is through television. That was my thesis at the seminary. I’ve given it some thought. May I entertain you with my vision of the Grove of God?”

“Go for it,” said David.

“Keep The Raising of Lazarus,” said the young minister. “Erect three more screens at cardinal points, like they used to have here, and commission equally impressive Christian paintings for them. These will serve as your franchise images. They will draw the curious to your services. Guided tours will be free. Postcards and T-shirts based on the paintings will be in demand. More importantly, the paintings will become the visual introduction to the televised ‘Grove of God’ worship hour, produced and distributed by the Grove of God in Orange.”

“This is the Grove Drive-In Church of God,” said David.

“Get rid of all of the drive-in stuff,” said Whitbrend. “It’s space-consuming, air-polluting, and it already-honestly-feels dated and overstated. Like the giant rotating donuts and the huge plaster hot dogs you see in L.A.”

“Drive-in worship is the soul of my congregation.”

“Was,” said Whitbrend. “Bob Schuller started like this, then went on to much bigger and better things.”

David waved aside thoughts of Bob Schuller. “The cars fill our lot every Sunday.”

“But believe me,” said Whitbrend, “if they think that worshiping in their cars is convenient, they’re going to love watching your sermons on television, at home, still in their jammies, with cereal and a cup of coffee.”

David pictured it. Family on the couch. Socks and slippers up on the coffee table. Milk dribbling on flannel. Kids with stuffed animals or plastic machine guns. Burps and farts and comments during his message. Not much different from inside the cars here on Sunday mornings, if you were honest about it.

“And do what with all this land?” asked David.

“Do you really want my opinion?”

“No, but I’m dying to hear it.”

Whitbrend smiled. “Listen. You tear out the car stalls. You tear down the outbuildings. Leave the playground. Convert the main chapel to a utility building, day school, study center, and business office.”

Whitbrend lifted an arm and pointed to the north. “There, in what is now just asphalt and speakers, you build the Grove of God Chapel. It is magnificent without being showy. It is a true monument to God. You build it of mirrored glass that will magnify its dimensions when it appears on-screen, and will dazzle the viewer. Its look is neither modern nor old, but a…contemporary-Gothic synthesis that is both ancient and ageless. There is no asphalt around it, but a simple grove of orange trees-ten idyllic acres. The green leaves and bright fruit of the trees are caught in the reflective glass of the chapel. The chapel is the heart of the Grove of God. The center of Eden. The beginning of life. Through the beautiful trees winds a wide boulevard to and from the chapel. Not an asphalt boulevard. Brick. I think brick painted sky blue, like your asphalt, would be perfect. Inside, this is a chapel that God Himself would be honored to visit. Not just honored. He’d wipe His shoes before entering. And smile with pride. It is resplendent but controlled. It is internally wired for video and sound, of course. And from a pulpit of tasteful splendor you deliver the finest sermons of any televangelist in the country. That inspires me with awe.”

A ripple of fear and revelation shivered down David Becker’s back. “Are you an evangelist or a television marketer?”

Whitbrend blushed and looked away. “I’m a minister by calling. But I’ve never delivered a sermon that can compare with one of yours. I’m not even in the same league. You have strength and authority. Your strength is wide and inclusive rather than focused and specific, which is what it takes to minister. I attend your church occasionally. When I can’t, my wife attends on my behalf. In a white sixty-two Impala. She tape-records your sermons for me so I can learn from them. I’m probably the only minister on earth who hustles home from his Sunday duties so he can listen to another minister perform his. Incidentally, there’s a nice aftermarket out there for tapes of your messages. I’m surprised you haven’t tapped it yet.”

“Why flatter me? You’ve got twice the imagination and ambition that I do.”

“But you’ve got all the talent.”

David considered this twenty-two-year-old minister. “What do you want?”

“To be a vehicle for God’s power.”

“Does He speak to you?” asked David. More eagerness in the question than he had planned.

Whitbrend looked at David. His blush was gone and his expression was grave. “I feel that He guides me.”

“Have you ever actually heard His voice?”

“No,” said Whitbrend.

“Does that bother you?”

“It’s the soil for my faith.”

“God’s silence is the soil for your faith,” said David. “That’s good.”

Whitbrend shrugged. “Have you? I mean, have you actually heard the Voice?”

“No. So I listen all the harder.”

“What more can anybody do?” asked Whitbrend.

An uncomfortable silence.

Then David looked out at The Raising of Lazarus. Saw the colors clear and rich in the morning sun. Tried to picture the Chapel of the Grove of God peaking toward the heavens. Imagined the glass flanks dotted with oranges. His own father could plant and tend the grove. David imagined his congregation inside. Imagined the sky bristling as the Word rode the airwaves to the corners of the universe. The Word the rider. His voice the horse.

“I’d like you to deliver the Sunday message,” said David. “All three services. After that, we’ll talk again.”

Whitbrend studied him with a tensile calm but a brightness in his eyes. Trying to keep his enthusiasm under control, thought David.

“Okay,” he said, breaking into a nervous smile.

David wondered how he’d broken the front tooth. Why he didn’t take the whiteness down a notch to match the others.

AT TEN that morning David counseled a young couple about their upcoming marriage. Ron and Diane. This was one of his favorite pastoral roles, because he got to experience the power and energy of love between human beings. The younger they were, the more pure and simple this love would be. David often believed he faltered in this capacity, because he failed to warn some young people strongly enough about all that can go wrong. The list was awfully damned long. Perils upon perils. So why not let them find out on their own? Maybe they’d be just fine. The divorce rate was soaring and this “free love” thing seemed to have everyone under thirty heading for the sheets and everyone over thirty heading for the motel or the divorce court. But people were still getting married like there was no tomorrow. David tried to emphasize forgiveness, and giving your partner respect and liberty as well as love. Basically, with the young ones, he just sat across the desk from them while they held hands and nodded. Ron and Diane were very young and very much in love. Ron had gotten a medical exemption for flat feet from the draft board. Diane was going to put him through college. Ron was headed for IBM. Scrubbed, pink-faced, straight-toothed. They actually had pimples. Not severe acne, just the vestigial marks of youth. David noted that Ron hid an erection, which amused Diane. The young lovers made him smile.

Just before noon he ministered to a believer dying in a hospital. It wasn’t easy to watch a person die. It challenged his belief in an afterlife when the present life so conspicuously and finally departed a body. And after such a long and tenacious fight. Life was the strongest thing he’d ever seen, but it was really kind of brief. It was there, then not. Really, totally, absolutely not. The dying person was a mother of three. Metastasized lung cancer, though she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life. Her children were too young to endure the scene, and the overwrought father was a blur of tears. He looked at David as if David’s God-the one to whom he and his family had reported for duty every Sunday of their lives-had specifically chosen his wife for this unfair and painful end. Which David fully believed and was exactly what he’d said about Janelle Vonn in his sermon on her death. That God chose some people to endure so that others wouldn’t have to. That we should love and respect these people.

The father looked at David like he wanted to kill someone.

When the children were ushered out David asked the young father if he would like to pray.

I hate your fucking God, he hissed, tears hitting the linoleum floor around him.

Let’s pray, anyway.

That afternoon David sat in with the Grove Drive-In Church youth league. It was Barbara’s group, Tuesday and Thursdays. Social, spiritual, and philanthropic. They’d recently delivered another two thousand dollars’ worth of new clothes to children in Tijuana. David sat at a table in the back of the meeting room, his presence simply to encourage them. Watched Barbara handle the details of a car-wash fund-raiser. Thought back to an earlier voyage to Tijuana and the way Miss Tustin Janelle Vonn had been so beautiful and unself-conscious as she handed a new red sweater to a skinny wisp of a girl with dusty black hair and a smile bright as a lightbulb. The rain was pounding on a leaky sheet-metal roof and David clearly remembered what Janelle had said to the girl.

Quiere a Dios con tu corazón, preciosa hermana. Pero lava tu pelo con tus manos.

Love God with your heart, pretty sister. But wash your hair with your hands.

David looked down at the little stack of worship pamphlets on the table. Yellow this week. Leftovers from the Tuesday youth league meeting. Picked one up and read the title of his scheduled sermon, “Integrity in a Relative World.” Had some nice moments in it, but not his best. A moot point, he thought, now that the Reverend Darren Whitbrend was set to take the stage. An acid test for the young minister. If Darren couldn’t move the congregation, then there was no point in further discussion.

He thought again of Janelle and the towering foolishness he’d committed by bringing her an early copy of just such a worship pamphlet. On that of all nights. Night of nights. He closed his hands around the pamphlet and closed his eyes and thanked the Lord for the trust of a brother and the love of a wife and the loyalty of a friend. And prayed that the vile Hambly of the FBI had only been bluffing, trying to get something for nothing.

When David opened his eyes Nick was standing before him. He looked tired and unhappy. Exactly how he had looked every day since taking his first homicide case. But dark around the eyes now and heavier and somehow dangerous.

David set the curled worship program back on the table, stood, and led Nick outside.

“Terry Neemal wants to talk to you,” said Nick. “I think he’s going to confess.”

“He told me he didn’t do it.”

“He’s been changing his story. Better take your own car, David. If he’s good for this, I might be there late.”