The Welcome Committee of Butternut Creek Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest gratitude and love go to my husband, whom I have followed to small-town churches from Dixon, Missouri, to Burnet, Texas. Without him, I wouldn’t have had the experience to write this novel or the confidence to keep going.

  To all of the kind people in the churches George and I have served, many thanks. You have taught me so much and shared your lives and your stories with me. Mary Alice, no one in this book is based on you.

  I appreciate Tim Tutt and Priscilla Holt for sharing several anecdotes and Jessica Scott, a fellow writer, soldier, and friend, for sharing her expertise. Any errors are mine.

  Many thanks to my wonderful editor Christina Boys and the terrific people at FaithWords/Hachette Book Group who have faith in Butternut Creek, its inhabitants, and the author.

  Finally, I cannot thank my agent, Pam Strickler, enough for her guidance and belief in me. Truly, without her, this novel would not have been written.

  This novel is dedicated to Cheyenne Steve, my dear friend.

  Prologue

  From the desk of

  Adam Joseph Jordan, MDiv.

  I’m a sad burden for Birdie MacDowell.

  Over the years, she’s often told me that.

  Miss Birdie has been a member of Butternut Creek Christian Church since—well, as long as anyone can remember. Certainly long before I showed up. I’m not sure at what age one becomes a pillar of the church, but Miss Birdie has been one for at least forty years. I think she probably took over running the church while she was on the cradle roll. For that reason, I often think of her as both Miss Birdie and, in my mind only, the pillar.

  The cause of her distress is and always has been my ministry, plagued by what she calls my sad ways and errors as well as what she describes as either disastrous decisions or, less catastrophically, the poor choices on my part. She tells me at least once a day, and several times on Sunday, that her ability to put up with all my failings plus my inclination to use incomplete and run-on sentences have equipped her for sainthood.

  Not that Miss Birdie hasn’t attempted to change me since the day I arrived ten years ago, to—in her words—help me avoid mistakes, both spiritual and social and, I’m sure she’d add, physical. Probably grammatical as well. She believes, she says, that this is her mission, the reason God placed her in Butternut Creek at this time: to train this imperfect fellow God has left in her care. Miss Birdie takes that responsibility seriously.

  Two or three times a week she drops in to see what I’m doing, to give me excellent words of advice, which I promptly either reject or forget. Not that it makes any difference which. If I could remember her advice, I’d reject it, and vice versa because it doesn’t meld with my beliefs about what is best for the church and best for the congregation.

  That propensity to think for myself is what makes her unhappy, makes her long for the imminent arrival of her crown and halo instead of the eternal martyrdom of having to put up with a young and still—in her opinion—very inexperienced minister.

  She often bemoans the fact that the elders didn’t heed her exhortation and call a man far more experienced and godly than I. Instead they called me, inexperienced and impulsive as I am, because I was all they could afford. A more experienced minister would be called to a larger church in the city. A married minister would expect to be able to feed his family on his salary.

  And so I then became the thorn in Miss Birdie’s side, her cross to bear, and her hope for everlasting salvation.

  That relationship, in great part, is what this book is about. But it’s also about what happened during my first year in Butternut Creek: the people in town, their joys and burdens and everyday dilemmas, death and sorrow and love, the stories my friends and members of the congregation have told me and even the gossip I’ve heard, as much as I attempt to avoid it.

  I dedicate this book to the wonderful people of Butternut Creek with my love and admiration, and in the desperate hope that someday Miss Birdie will forgive me for my many errors.

  Chapter One

  On a blazing-hot June afternoon in the middle of a clogged US 183 in Austin, Texas, Adam Jordan clenched his hands on the steering wheel of the stalled car and considered the situation. As a newly ordained minister, he probably should pray, but he felt certain the drivers of the vehicles backed up behind him would prefer him to do something less spiritual.

  The day before, he’d headed west from Lexington, Kentucky, toward Central Texas, a twenty-hour, thousand-mile trip, in a car held together by his little bit of mechanical skill and a lot of prayer. Sadly, on Tuesday, the Lord looked away for a moment as Adam attempted to navigate the crowded tangle of highways that is Austin. The radiator coughed steam as the old vehicle stopped in the center lane of more traffic than he’d ever seen gathered together in midafternoon. Did rush hour start at three o’clock here? He soon learned that rush hour on US 183 could last all day and much of the night, because the city grew faster than its highway system.

  He got out of the car and began pushing what had once been a brilliantly blue Honda across two lanes of barely moving traffic and onto the shoulder amid the honks and the screeches of highway noise and curses of angry drivers. If his defective directional skills hadn’t led him on a fifty-mile detour into South Austin, the pitiful old vehicle might have made it to Butternut Creek—but they had and the car hadn’t.

  As happens to everyone and everything over the years, the Honda had faded and frayed until no one could tell what it once had been. The identifying hood ornament had long since fallen off, and the paint was a crackled and blistered gray. And white. With rust peering through it. But it usually ran.

  Adam’s first thought was to abandon the heap right there, but he’d heard Texas had laws against that. Instead, he called Howard Crampton, an elder of the church and the chair of the search committee that had called Adam.

  “Hey, Howard,” he said when the elder picked up the phone. “I’m stuck in Austin on 183.”

  For a moment, Howard said nothing. Finally he asked, “Who is this?”

  So much for believing the church breathlessly awaited his arrival. “Adam Jordan.” When silence greeted that, Adam added, “The new minister.”

  “Hey, Adam. Good to hear from you. Sorry I didn’t recognize you at first. I’m in the middle of a bank audit and my brain’s filled with numbers. What can I do you for?”

  “My car broke down on 183, north of something called the Mopac.”

  “Know exactly where that is. I’ll send a tow truck to pick you up.”

  “All the way from Butternut Creek?”

  “Not too far. Sit tight.”

  As if he could do anything else.

  And that’s how Adam entered Butternut Creek: sitting in the cab of the tow truck, chatting with Rex, the driver, about fishing and hunting, neither of which he did back then, with his car rattling on the flatbed behind the two men. Although his disreputable arrival didn’t signal a propitious beginning, he fell in love with the town immediately.

  They entered on Farm-to-Market—FM—road 1212A, which passed between the Whataburger and the H-E-B. Rex pointed out the football stadium and high school about a hundred yards to the north and up the hill. Then the residential section began, big Victorians shoved jowl-to-jowl with bungalows and ranch houses, split levels alongside columned Colonials, interspersed with apartments and motels. Here and there, large, beautifully manicured lawns stretched out, some decorated with a gazebo or fountain while in a yard next to them appeared an occasional pink flamingo or enormous live oak trees dripping with Spa
nish moss.

  Everyone waved as Rex chugged along Main Street. Adam waved back, instantly charmed by the town, by the people who smiled a greeting, by the sturdy brick buildings with Victorian trim and enormous old trees standing tall and full and casting shade and shadows across the lawns and the streets.

  “Town square just over on the other side of the courthouse, that way, Padre.” Rex nodded to the right. “I’m fixin’ to leave you and your car at the church. I’ll help unload it. Don’t look like you’ve got a lot of stuff.”

  As Rex turned the steering wheel, the truck lumbered into the church parking lot. “You leave your keys in the car and I’ll pick it up later.”

  Adam swiveled to look at the driver. “Leave the keys in my car?”

  “Padre, you’re in Butternut Creek. No one steals cars here.” He glanced back into the rearview mirror. “Especially not that one.”

  While Rex lowered the car onto the asphalt, the new minister turned to study the parsonage.

  His eyes lifted, up and up. He’d seen Victorians but never one quite so big. When the pulpit committee had come to Lexington to interview him, they’d described the house, but he hadn’t realized the massive size of the pale yellow edifice: three stories, each six or eight windows across, doors and shutters of a dark green, every inch of surface covered with painted wooden curlicues of a dark purplish color—maroon?—plus newel posts and bric-a-brac and, bringing it all together, gingerbread. What in the world would he do with all that space?

  As he studied the turret and the bay windows and everything else on the house, he felt sure the parishioners expected him to multiply and be fruitful, producing enough babies to fill every bedroom and all the children’s Sunday school classes. He shook his head. Bad planning not to have brought a wife with him.

  Sadly for the hopes of the congregation and all those empty rooms, no prospect for a bride had presented herself over the last few years, not since his fiancée Laurel dumped him after she decided she didn’t want to marry a minister. The teas and worship services and good works, she’d said, weren’t really her thing.

  The church management professor at the seminary had warned the newly minted and still-single ministers not to date a young woman in the congregation. It could cause jealousy. It would cause discomfort if they parted. Gossip could ruin a minister’s reputation.

  Although warned by the professor, Adam had ignored the problem being a single minister presented several months ago. He’d known a few women interested in marrying a preacher, but they were in Kentucky. Even they wouldn’t covet that position enough to follow him to Texas. Besides, he’d always felt a little uncomfortable with the forward women who made their determination to marry a minister clear. Not that he felt comfortable with any young woman. That personality flaw probably doomed the possibility of, like Abraham, his fathering a multitude of nations or even two or three children to fill those rooms.

  Maybe the extra space could be used as classrooms for Sunday school? A library? A boardinghouse to bring in a little additional income for the church?

  Adam reached forward to try the front door. It opened right up. Getting used to all this trust in small-town Texas was going to be hard. Would he insult someone if he locked the door?

  Inside, his footsteps echoed. As he walked, he looked around the great expanse of hardwood floor, the huge and beautifully curved staircase leading up to a second story, the empty parlors on each side of a hallway that led back and back into unknown areas he’d explore later. The silence crushed in on him, and he felt even more alone than he had when his parents left him at boarding school years earlier.

  “Grab a box, Padre,” Rex shouted from outside, interrupting his reflections.

  “Coming.” Adam ran back out to the car and flipped the trunk open. Within a few minutes, the two men had unloaded the car and lugged everything inside.

  When Rex left, the sound of his work boots thudding across the polished floor, Adam glanced at the tiny heap of his possessions in the middle of what looked like a family room or maybe a dining area, and then began to explore. First he ambled back to the front porch, which looked as if it surrounded the entire house. His neighbors to the right and across the street lived in similarly huge Victorians. Then he turned to the left to study the beautiful brick church just north across the parking lot. Huge live oaks dripping with Spanish moss shaded the green lawn. Strength and love and serenity seemed to flow from the steepled roof and huge white columns. How could he have been so blessed to do the Lord’s work here, in this perfect place?

  Of course, he hadn’t met Miss Birdie yet.

  Adam’s college days and nights had been spent in a dorm room. During seminary, he occupied the furnished parsonage of his student church up near Maysville, Kentucky, a town founded by Daniel Boone and famous as the birthplace of Rosemary Clooney. Because, as an adult, he’d lived in furnished spaces, he possessed no furniture: not a card table, not a desk chair, not a bed. Oh, he did have a sleeping bag from the youth retreats and church camp, a television that he hoped to hook up to cable soon, and a computer with the sermons he’d preached over the past three years. He’d shipped all his books ahead. All those boxes should be stacked in the minister’s study at the church. Other than that, all his earthly possessions were in a couple of boxes and two ancient suitcases.

  He studied the pile of his things and shook his head. This little bit to fill a huge parsonage.

  Miss Birdie was horrified when she brought him dinner that evening.

  “You’re Adam Joseph Jordan?” Without identifying herself, she strutted into the barren desolation of the parsonage like a five-star general inspecting her troops. The fact that only one slightly terrified man stood before her didn’t lessen her resolve.

  “Yes, Miss Birdie.” Adam knew who she was. Howard had warned him, told him how to address her and how to act in her presence. In that moment, he realized Howard’s words of caution, the admonitions Adam had laughed off, were disturbingly true.

  “Well, I swan.” She looked way up at Adam. “You are a tall, skinny boy, aren’t you?”

  At six-four and 160, Adam had been tall and skinny as long as he could remember. Most people didn’t comment on it.

  She studied his face and height for a few more seconds. “With a name like Adam Joseph Jordan, guess you didn’t have much choice but to become a minister.” Then she took off across the entry hall. Her tiny feet, shod in tie-up shoes with fat rubber soles, squished across the hardwood floor before she stopped and stood between what Adam had labeled as two large parlors.

  She wore her white hair in a no-nonsense, almost military style: short and parted on the right. No curls, no waves. Straight with a hint of bangs brushed to the left. Her chest held as high as a proud robin’s, she turned to look at the empty space. Every inch of her body showed disdain as she inspected the area. How could such a tiny, thin woman give off such as air of authority, control, and doom?

  How could she intimidate a man more than a foot taller than she? But she did. Adam cringed inside.

  Chagrin oozed across her features. “Tut, tut, tut.” She made a quick turn in the middle of the room to glare at the new preacher, then closed her eyes and shook her head. When she finally opened her eyes, she glared at him again.

  “What kind of minister… what kind of person has no furniture at all?”

  Adam smiled at her in an effort to ingratiate himself. She didn’t smile back. He’d disappointed her, as he figured he would many more times.

  Did she expect Adam to be ashamed of his lack of furnishings? To look mortified? He didn’t because he wasn’t, but Miss Birdie wouldn’t understand. Generations separated them. She’d probably never heard of a futon. When he didn’t flinch—at least, not outwardly—or apologize for his shortcomings, she said, “Hmph.”

  He’d rapidly learn that she expressed some of her most powerful comments with sounds.

  With a quick turn, she marched down the short hallway and into the room where his few pos
sessions resided. She glared at the pile of stuff.

  “What’s this?” She pointed at his pitiful collection of belongings. “You really don’t have any furniture? None?”

  “I have a television and a computer and a… that’s about it.” Instantly recognizing that his words didn’t satisfy her a bit, Adam added, “I’ll have to work on that.” He again attempted to disarm her with a smile but learned in a moment that Miss Birdie was not disarmable, especially when the truth lay so heavily on her side. “Treasure in heaven, you know,” he added.

  Ignoring the biblical reference, she said, “Where am I supposed to put this?” She nodded toward the quilted tote that dangled from her arm and emitted a mouthwatering aroma. “Where are you going to eat it?” She tilted her head and squinted at him. “Are you the kind of man who stands at the kitchen counter to eat?”

  Yes, Adam was, although he hadn’t realized it qualified him as part of a decadent class of humanity. After disappointing her about the furniture, he couldn’t confess he was guilty of what she so clearly considered a lack of proper etiquette, of gentility and acceptable rearing. She would have turned, he feared, and taken that dish away. The aroma of what she’d prepared called to him, made his stomach growl after a ten-hour drive without stopping for meals because he’d been afraid the old car would conk out if it got a rest and a chance to think about how much farther it had to go.

  “Oh, no. I plan to get some furniture and sit at the table. For the moment, I’ll have to stand at the kitchen counter to eat.” He nodded his head, then shook it, not sure which action was required to respond to her question. “Only for a few days.”

  “Don’t suppose you have a bed?”

  “Sleeping bag.”

  “Sofa? Chair?”

  He shook his head.

  She took a step forward and scrutinized him. Adam felt judged and found wanting. No hope of redemption existed. Miss Birdie’s expression didn’t even hold out the promise of grace. “Do you have a towel? A bar of soap?”