Signs and Wonders Read online

  In January, the Sausage Queen goes on to the state contest in the city, where she gives a speech on the benefits of pork consumption and talks about what an honor it would be to represent the state in the national Sausage Queen contest, and how her faith in God has brought her this far, so no matter what happens, she is confident something good will come of it, and how, in meeting the other Sausage Queens, she’s made friends she’ll have the rest of her life and she just thanks God she lives in a country where they have the freedom to be Sausage Queens or anything at all they want to be. Then she gives a little curtsy, people clap, and she cries, then steps aside so the other ninety-one Sausage Queens can say the exact same thing.

  What has everyone talking this year is that Nora Nagle, of Boraxo fame, has come back home to live and was invited to ride in Harvey Muldock’s Cranbrook with this year’s Sausage Queen, who was a little miffed at having to share the glory, but smiled and waved anyway, like it didn’t bother her a bit.

  In 1975, Nora Nagle went on to be crowned the state Sausage Queen, which she parlayed into a career on stage and screen. In addition to the Boraxo commercial, she was a dancing grape in an underwear commercial. Then she was hired as a stuntwoman on the set of Charlie’s Angels, where she drove a car over a cliff, fell from a hotel balcony into a swimming pool, and was struck over the head with a chair.

  When Farrah Fawcett left the show, Nora auditioned for the opening and would have gotten it, except for the permanently dazed expression on her face from being hit with the chair. Instead, they hired Cheryl Ladd (born Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor in Huron, South Dakota), which Nora believes was God closing a door to open a window, though God hasn’t gotten around to opening the window just yet.

  Being hit in the head with the chair was the high point of Nora’s career. It went downhill from there, which would have discouraged a lesser person, but Sausage Queens are resilient and bounce back quickly from adversity.

  She’s working at Kivett’s Five and Dime as a cashier, which she believes is only temporary. Her agent will be calling any day with news of her big break, but until then she’s happy to be home, where she can remember her roots and draw strength from the people who launched her career.

  In 1975, when she won the state Sausage Queen contest, the town board voted to rename Main Street the Nora Nagle Boulevard, but the street department dawdled around and didn’t change the street signs. Now that her career’s gone belly-up, everyone is grateful for their inefficiency. It would have been awkward having Main Street named after a cashier.

  In addition to working at Kivett’s Five and Dime, Nora has written a play, formed a community theater group, and secured the Royal Theater for the debut of Nora: A Sausage Queen Remembers. A no-holds-barred exposé of my life in the film industry read the poster she taped to the display window of the Royal Theater.

  Nora: A Sausage Queen Remembers was the topic of conversation around town the week of the parade. Mostly because Sam Gardner, a man of the cloth, had joined the community theater group.

  “Probably to snuggle up to that Nora Nagle vixen,” Dale Hinshaw said to his wife. He was giving serious thought to standing during worship and urging Sam to repent and separate himself from the taint of the carnal world.

  The town was of two minds on the play. The men at the barbershop talked about the importance of culture and thought they probably should attend the no-holds-barred exposé of Nora’s life in the film industry, purely in the interests of art and citizenship.

  “I don’t really want to go,” Kyle Weathers said. “I have other things to do. But I realize it’s not always about what I want.”

  The ladies of the Friendly Women’s Circle at Harmony Friends Meeting weren’t as civic-minded.

  “It sounds like filth to me,” Fern Hampton said. “A no-holds-barred exposé. I bet she ends up naked as a jaybird and prancing around on that stage. You watch and see.”

  But what really set the Friendly Women’s teeth on edge was that Nora: A Sausage Queen Remembers was scheduled for the same day as their annual Chicken Noodle Dinner.

  “Now people will have to choose between coming here for our wholesome chicken and noodles or going to the theater to see her smutty little play, and what do you think they’ll choose? Smut, that’s what!” said Bea Majors. “I think Satan’s behind this. He’d just love to see our Chicken Noodle Dinner flop. That’d be a feather in his cap for sure.”

  Bea is the town’s resident expert on Satanic activity, having volunteered as a devil watcher for the Reverend Johnny LaCosta’s television ministry. For a hundred-dollar donation, Bea was allowed the privilege of spying out the devil’s handiwork and notifying the Reverend, who would then expose the devil on national television and foil the Tempter’s snare.

  He had sent Bea a pamphlet listing thirty-eight signs of Satanic activity, the third clue being nudity. According to Johnny LaCosta, if someone’s naked, Satan is lurking in the vicinity. The Reverend advises true Christians to bathe in body-length bathing suits. He believes if Bathsheba had been attired more modestly, the devil could never have entered King David’s heart and gotten him in all that trouble. For a love offering of three hundred dollars, the Reverend will send you a body-length bathing suit that he himself has touched, thereby thwarting Satan’s advances.

  Bea was torn. She couldn’t decide whether to attend Nora: A Sausage Queen Remembers in order to spy out Satanic activity or bring people to the Lord through the Friendly Women’s Circle chicken noodle ministry. She sat in her living room, praying for a divine nudge. Then she flipped on the television, and there was Johnny LaCosta preaching from the sixteenth chapter of Romans about keeping an eye on those who caused dissension and offense.

  Well, if that didn’t describe Nora right down to her slingback pumps, Bea didn’t know what did.

  The Reverend was in a tizzy. He certainly didn’t mean to contradict Paul or add words to Scripture, but Paul probably hadn’t anticipated how bad things would get. It wasn’t enough to keep an eye on evildoers, the Reverend said. The Christian must be prepared to take charge, intervene, and nip Satan’s follies in the bud. He urged his television audience to become bud-nippers for the Lord, but warned them to be careful—that the world didn’t like bud-nippers and they’d face persecution.

  That’s when Bea realized her obligation—she had to take charge, attend the play, and nip Satan’s buds when the clothes started flying. Though honored to be called to such a noble mission, she was a little fearful. What if the community theater group rose against her? What if they killed her and used her body in a ritual Satanic sacrifice? She thought of turning back, but when you’ve pledged to be a bud-nipper for the Lord, there can be no retreat. To be on the safe side, she left a note on her kitchen table saying that if anything happened to her, people should look for her body in Nora’s crawl space.

  Bea was the first to arrive at the theater. She watched from the front row as the group rehearsed. Pitiful dimwits, all of them, Bea thought. Soft-headed people vulnerable to manipulation. And there was her minister, right in the thick of it.

  Nora was speaking to Sam. “Now remember, Sam, you’re playing the part of a Hollywood director. So when I ask what I have to do to be in your movie, you pat the couch and say, ‘Come sit beside me and we’ll talk about it.’ Then I’ll say my lines and do some things, the lights will dim, and the scene will end.”

  Bea trembled with pious fervor. She’d be right there, in the front row when the clothes started flying, ready to take charge and slam the door in the devil’s face. She wished the Reverend Johnny LaCosta were here to watch her. He’d be so proud.

  The theater began filling. Bea glanced back, scanning the audience to see who was there. It was mostly men, many of whose wives were at that moment laboring in the vineyards of the Chicken Noodle Dinner. Bea was sickened by the depravity. Filthy men out to get their jollies while their saintly wives toiled to bring salvation to the hungry masses. She wished she’d brought her camera to photograph these suppos
edly Christian men and publish their pictures in the newspaper. There were other men there she didn’t recognize. Rough-looking characters. Probably from the city, Bea thought.

  Sam’s scene was near the end of the play. So far everyone had kept on their clothes, but Bea knew it was only a matter of time. The third act ended, the curtain closed, there were shuffling noises backstage, and then the curtain opened again. Sam was onstage, sitting on a red velvet couch. A gold chain hung around his neck, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the top, his chest hairs plainly visible. A cigar dangled from his mouth.

  There was a knock on a door.

  “Come in,” Sam barked.

  Nora entered the stage with a flourish, talking about her dream of being an actress and how she’d starred in two commercials and was almost a Charlie’s Angel. She then turned to Sam, the Hollywood director, and asked, “So what do I have to do to be in your movie?”

  Sam patted the couch, then said, “Come sit beside me and we’ll talk about it.”

  All the men in the theater leaned forward. This was it, the payoff, their reward for sitting through three numbing hours of Nora recalling her torturous climb up the Hollywood ladder.

  Bea wanted to close her eyes, but didn’t. She edged forward, ready to bud-nip. Lord, give me strength to do your will, she prayed.

  Nora moved toward Sam, then said, “I won’t do it. I know what you’re after, but I’m not that kind of girl.”

  The men groaned. This was no better than church.

  Then Nora talked about how two roads diverged in the woods and how she had taken the one less traveled back to her hometown. She’d gone away to find success, and some people thought she’d failed, but she hadn’t. Because success wasn’t about being famous or rich or beautiful. It was about friendship and love and helping others, which people could do no matter where they lived.

  A morality play wasn’t quite what Bea expected, and truthfully she was a little put out. She’d worked up the courage to be a bud-nipper, only to discover Nora was a decent human being after all.

  Unfortunately, Bea wasn’t the only one disappointed. The man sitting behind her yelled that he wanted his money back, that he’d paid to see a no-holds-barred exposé. The other men started grumbling. Three hours and seven dollars down the drain. It was turning ugly.

  Nora began to weep.

  Bea leaped to her feet, two hundred and twenty-three pounds of bottled-up righteous indignation in search of a target, and said, “You want no-holds-barred? I’ll give you no-holds-barred.” She swung her purse at the man, striking him on the head. Then she hurried up the stairs, gathered Nora in her arms, and hustled her off the stage to safety.

  That was the picture Bob Miles from the Harmony Herald ran in the newspaper—Bea Majors throwing herself toward Nora, above the caption Local Women Involved in Movie House Altercation. There was no further explanation, no mention of Bea coming to Nora’s rescue. With the Chicken Noodle Dinner and the Corn and Sausage Days parade to report on, there wasn’t room for details.

  Beneath the picture and caption was an editorial, written by Bob’s wife, Arvella, lamenting the decline of civilization and congratulating those Friendly Women who labored to better their community through the Chicken Noodle Dinner. She listed all the women who’d made the dinner the success it was. Bea’s name was conspicuously absent.

  Bea read the paper while sitting in her kitchen soaking her feet. The Reverend Johnny LaCosta had it all figured out, she thought. It is a dangerous thing to be a bud-nipper for the Lord. The world will despise you. At first she was discouraged, but not for long. What mattered was that God knew her heart.

  Even when Fern Hampton told her she’d brought shame to the Circle, Bea wasn’t troubled. She didn’t bother to defend herself. She told Fern, “Don’t think you know the whole story, because you don’t.” Rich irony, coming from Bea, but if she could learn it, so could Fern.

  Meanwhile, Bea is thinking of joining Nora’s community theater group. They are a sad and sorry lot. Pitiful dimwits, all of them, who sat like lumps on logs while Nora was under attack. They need leadership, someone who knows something about taking charge. Someone who can fight the good fight. Someone like Bea.

  Thirteen

  Persistence

  With the Chicken Noodle Dinner over for the year, life at Harmony Friends Meeting has returned to normal. Frank, the secretary, has gone back to being his usual grouchy self. For three weeks he had to be polite when people phoned the meetinghouse asking when the dinner was and what exactly it was they would be serving.

  “Well, it’s still the second Saturday in September, the same as it’s been since 1964. And since it’s a chicken noodle dinner, I’d say we’re serving chicken and noodles. But that’s just a wild guess. I might be wrong.”

  That’s what he wanted to say. Instead he had to be polite and tell them the date and the serving hours and that, in addition to the chicken and noodles, the ladies would also be serving Tastee bread with one pat of butter, orange Jell-O with carrot slivers and pineapple, and your choice of cake or pie for dessert.

  Frank believes this whole chicken noodle business has gotten out of hand, that the women of the Circle are using it as leverage to get their way. The dinner is the biggest moneymaker for the church. When the meeting was slow about buying a new stove for the meetinghouse kitchen, the women let it be known that the Baptists had invited them to move the dinner there.

  “They’ve offered us a new stove, another noodle freezer, and six new tea pitchers,” Fern Hampton said during the monthly business meeting. “We’ve been telling you for years we need new tea pitchers, but nothing’s been done. Now we need a new stove, and you’ll dilly-dally about that and one day it’ll explode and that’ll be the end of the Friendly Women.”

  We should be so lucky, Frank thought to himself.

  The stove was purchased in 1953 in memory of Mrs. Ralph Hobbs, the founder of the Happy Helpmates Sunday school class, who for over thirty years trained the young ladies of the meeting how to submit to their husbands, manage a Christian home, and make noodles. The first two lessons hadn’t stuck, but they’d mastered the noodles.

  In 1953, the stove was the top of the line. Cast-iron, six burners, and two ovens. But it’s not worked right since 1967, when the late Juanita Harmon turned the gas on, went in search of a match, discovered they were out, walked three blocks to the Kroger to buy a box of matches, returned a half hour later, struck an Ohio Blue Tip to light the pilot, and died a martyr in service to the Lord. When the oven door is open, you can see the faint outline of her startled face.

  People still talk about her funeral. The Friendly Women served as pallbearers and folded a ceremonial apron at graveside, which they presented to Juanita’s husband, who said, “She was book smart, but never had much common sense,” which pretty well summed up the feelings of everyone present.

  They wanted to buy a new stove in 1967, but Juanita Harmon’s sister, Alice, was of the opinion the stove should remain in the kitchen as a memorial to her fallen sibling and got her knickers in a twist whenever anyone suggested replacing it. But in late September, Alice’s niece from California came to town for a visit, took one look at Alice, and shipped her off to the nursing home in Cartersburg. The next Sunday, Fern Hampton, with the Alice roadblock now removed, ordered the meeting to cough up a new stove or else.

  “Three of the burners don’t work, the oven burns everything, and we can’t get new parts. Buy us a new one, or we’re moving the dinner to the Baptist church.”

  Harvey Muldock suggested maybe he could fix the stove.

  Fern snorted. “You’ve been saying that since 1967. We’re tired of waiting.”

  The veterans of the church wars began trembling in their folding chairs. This was reminiscent of the Great Pew Cushion Battle of 1948, which had led to the Great Quaker Migration of 1949—all twenty-three members of the Darnell family packed their wagons and moved west to the Methodist church.

  Ten years later, Harry
Darnell hit it big in the concrete business, building thousands of bomb shelters across five states. When he died in 1981, he left half a million dollars to the Methodist church. It still rankled the Quakers that that money could have been theirs if Fern Hampton’s mother, Fleeta, had backed off and let Thelma Darnell pick the color of the new pew cushions. But the Hampton women do not have a reverse gear. It is not in their nature to retreat. Thelma Darnell wanted purple cushions, symbolizing our Lord’s Resurrection. But Fleeta Hampton wanted the orange pew cushions, which were thirty dollars cheaper, but ultimately cost the meeting half a million dollars.

  The Methodists used the money to build a gymnasium and buy a stove with eight burners, an irony several people were aching to point out to Fern, but didn’t for the sake of Christian charity.

  The silver lining of Juanita Harmon’s explosive demise was the Juanita Harmon Memorial Fund—a one-thousand-dollar certificate of deposit on ice since 1967, now worth six thousand dollars. With Alice banished to the nursing home, unable to guard her sister’s reputation, thirty-five years of repressed anger boiled to the surface.

  “We wouldn’t be in this mess if she’d just used her head,” Fern said. “I say we take the money out of her fund.”

  Miriam Hodge pointed out the Juanita Harmon Memorial Fund was a designated fund, to be used solely for mission purposes.

  Fern frowned at Miriam. “Well, Miriam, if you want to be legalistic, I suppose you’re technically correct. Though I think there’s something to be said for being open to the Lord’s leading.”

  Then she cautioned those present against being like the Pharisees and said she was grateful God had given her a spirit of freedom so she could follow his glorious will, which was to see a new stainless-steel, two-oven, eight-burner stove installed in the meetinghouse kitchen.