Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [107]
“Yes, you did, Oris,” George responded. “But I don’t think it was her this time. It didn’t sound like her. The voice sounded different.”
“Who came to see you?” Trina asked, not having heard the stories about Alice. “And what did she tell you that made everybody listen?”
George thought about that morning he had awakened early and decided to take a hike. It was the morning after his last called town meeting, the one that only Oris had attended. He was discouraged and burdened and he left the parsonage and headed east and south, finally making his way to Alegros Mountain, the highest peak near Pie Town. He hiked all the way to the top and stood, looking over Catron County, over Mangas Creek and the San Agustin Plains. He peered out across the vastness of the earth, the mountains and the valleys, the land of high desert, dry washes, and hard, scrubby pines. And as he saw the miles and miles stretched and stretching around him, he finally began to see how small his little church actually would be and began to consider how insignificant his work, his call, his place was.
He stood looking out all around him realizing what was becoming his failure, his unfulfilled dream, and asked the question out loud, “What shall I do?” He waited and after hearing nothing, he called out again, “You sent me back, called me back, but nobody listens to me. I don’t know what else to say to these people.”
And in the silence of the morning, just as he was turning to walk down the mountain with no answer, no direction, he saw a hawk circle above his head, its wings outstretched, floating on the early morning breeze, alone and sailing, and he heard the voice speak to him, quietly and easily, like the voice of a child. “There is nothing more to say, only that to do.”
And with the words fresh upon his heart, that was what he did. He quit talking and starting building. He started building a ministry and he started building a church. He pulled his face out of notes or books or even scripture when he preached and he spoke only from the heart and only what he held to be true. He visited the townspeople and sat with them, sometimes for hours, talking only about ball games and lighter subjects, without mention of building projects. He smiled more easily, even laughing from time to time, and it had even been reported that he had been seen weeping openly on more than one occasion.
He comforted Malene and Roger, not by trying to push them away from their grief and sorrow by making them think about a new church. Rather, he would just show up, go with them to the grocery store, or take Malene to the beauty salon. He’d help Roger with some of the calls made to the sheriff by families in need or crisis, and assist Malene at the nursing home. Father George even found Angel and arranged a meeting for her with Roger and Malene, riding with them over to her new home in Colorado.
He became present and available to Trina, driving her to the clinic for her appointments, organizing the women in the church to help her buy some clothes, getting her the necessary medical attention when she started having trouble, making sure she was staying in bed, getting her books about having a healthy delivery, and even speaking to Frank Twinhorse on her behalf, not that she needed it, to get her a job at the garage after the baby was born, working as an apprentice and waiting for Raymond to come home since they had been writing letters to each other every day since his deployment.
Over the weeks, Father George and Frank actually became friends, Frank taking the priest to the most sacred place in the county, over to Salt Lake, where the Indians, the Zuni, Hopi, Apache, and Navajo, had been making pilgrimages for centuries and telling him stories of the Navajo way, the story of creation, of Spiderwoman, and how the earth and its inhabitants are all intricately related. The priest had even asked Frank to find a shaman to bless the ground