a trek in the sun

After our usual shopping run this morning, my mother and I went home for lunch. Tara, you will be happy to know that she fixed noodles with peanut sauce for lunch. It made her eyes water, but I relished it. :)

After lunch, my father drove Philip, Laura, Stephen, and I out to the Fs' house. This afternoon, a bunch of people had agreed to drive over to Enid to do door-to-door outreach for the new congregation we're trying to establish there. The Fs' house was the appointed meeting place, being on the edge of town.

As we pulled into the Fs' driveway, I grinned: Ben was driving the riding lawnmower around the Fs' huge back yard, turning it around the maple trees near the house. Dust plumed from the wheels. He had clamped headphones over his ears, and perched laconically on the mower. Meanwhile, SwanElf was ensconced in one of the maple trees, wedged like a bird between the silver branches.

Princess, Marigold, Estella, and Betty all joined us. I tucked deep magenta winecups behind Princess's ear, into her silver-blond hair. Violin sauntered out of the Fs' house while Mr. F, Mr. Y, and my father stood talking on the driveway. We piled into the car, doing a Chinese fire drill so that everyone was arranged next to their friends. Mr. F and Mr. Y sat in the front, with my father, Laura, and Estella in the first bench. Philip and Stephen came next, with Princess, Violin, and I in the next-to-last bench. In the last bench, Betty, Marigold, and SwanElf sat stoically.

We were a merry party as we started the hour-long drive to Enid. All the girls were chattering like a flock of little brown sparrows. Conversations spliced into one another like rope. We discussed possibilities for costumes to wear to the CY costume party in two weeks. Princess, Estella, and SwanElf (nurses-in-training) groaned in disgust when I suggested Florence Nightingale, and when Philip suggested that SwanElf wear white scrubs with blood splattered all over them. Violin asked Princess about the presents her father had brought home from China this week: purses, double-sided embroidery, combs, a jade dodecahedron. In turn, Violin told us about a frictionless ballbearing that Mr. F brought home from an engineering conference. In a lull in the conversation, I asked SwanElf about the book she was reading. She, Mrs. P (our pastor's wife), and I all write in our books: I told them about a note I'd found written in the cover of my new copy of Til We Have Faces. The note said that the book was given as a gift from a man to a woman, "Happy Valentine's Day, February 1994". I wondered dolefully aloud whether she'd dumped him along with the book.

The clamor of topics, words like flocks of starlings bobbing around each other, broke off when the van slowed down. We craned our necks to see over the seats. Violin, sitting on the edge, figured out that there was road work ahead: rollers were resurfacing the one-lane highway. We crawled along, then sat still while cars going the opposite direction were given a turn. Then, piloted in front and back by a couple of trucks, we drove forward. We passed a line of cars waiting to go the opposite direction: Philip laughed at them, "Haha, we're moving and you're not!" Violin giggled, "Wave, everyone!"

At last the van swayed into the Ws' driveway in Enid. Indoors, we crowded into the Ws' living room while Mr. W debriefed us about where we'd be going and how to interact with people. Mr. F broke us up into paired teams. We had nineteen people, and not enough clipboards, so some of the teams consisted of three people. Mrs. W, Violin, and I were a team. After prayer, we piled back into the van and drove to a neighborhood near the south edge of Enid: an older neighborhood, mostly ranch houses built low to the ground, like cats sprawled belly-up in the sun. We split into two larger groups, Mr. W and co. heading north, while Mr. F took the rest of us south. Then the real work began: two teams took one side of the street, and two teams took the other side, and each pair of teams worked down their side, leapfroging house-to-house.

The afternoon was dreadfully hot. Sun beat up off the white concrete. Clouds hung pale blue in the northeastern sky, as though fainting from the heat. A kite leaped and danced above the rooftops, exulting in the wind. Its wings bent and bowed to the wind, thinner than paper, supple as a stream of water on the air.

We walked from house to house. Oak trees rustled like green fountains overhead, but their pools of shade felt pitifully few. Water from my waterbottle, shared with Mrs. W, tasted stale. We knocked on most doors, receiving no answer and leaving only courtesy flyers behind. We spoke to probably ten or twenty people, taking turns. Most of the answers were either gruff "I'm not interested" or sweet-strong "Christ is my Savior". After each person we spoke with, we paused on the kerb of that person's house and prayed for them: for repentance on those who rejected us or seemed confused about spiritual matters, for blessing on those who proclaimed Christ as King, for the work of the Spirit to convict or to teach those about who seemed unsure, and for God's will to be done in every case.

Violin flushed and grew nervous in the heat. Mrs. W's face burned red except around her eyes, where her round sunglasses made little pale flecks under the squinting wrinkles. At one house, a kind, reserved older woman glanced at us when we opened the door. She told us that she went to a Christian Church. Then, "Would you all like some water?" she asked. "Well...." I paused, uncertain. "Yes, please," Mrs. W said with a shrug. We sat down on her front step, in the shade of an enormous oak tree. We bowed our heads and gave thanks while we heard water running from the tap inside the cool house. The woman came out with three glasses of water, which we drank eagerly. "Thank you, thank you," we said profusely. "No, no. I've been given a chance to host angels," the woman said with a quiet smile. "God bless you," Mrs. W called as we left.

After about an hour and forty-five minutes, we met up with the other two teams and sat on the kerb under an oak tree to rest before hiking back to the car. Back at the car, Mr. F turned on the A/C in the van. I doled out cups of water from the cooler, which my father had perched on top of a stool between the two front seats. I handed out cup after cup, water beading on the thin plastic. We sat in the cool for awhile, and when we spotted the other group shuffling down the street toward us, I poured nine more cups. Mr. F, Violin, and Betty carried the water out to them as they came up.

We drove back to the Ws' house, exhausted. At the Ws' house, I stripped off my sandals and sprawled on the cool carpet. People lolled on the sofa and on chairs, talking idly. Ceiling fans whirred against the high slanted rafters, and sleepy blue sunlight sifted through the windows. Sipping sweet mint ice tea, Missy and I discussed packing for our trip to Scotland. I asked Princess if she had any packing tips, since she's been to the U.K. a couple of times. She and Marigold told us about their father's trip to China. Marigold said she was glad she hadn't gone along because she doesn't like Chinese food (I confided that I don't like it either, though just about everyone else in my family, especially my grandparents, seem obsessed with it).

At about five-thirty, Mr. F told us that it was time to go. I felt as though I hadn't sat long enough in the cool, dim living room. But we all loaded back into the van, same seating arrangement as before. Princess, Violin, and I swapped journals. Once the car started to move, everyone sagged back like sleepy toddlers.

Halfway down the north-south leg of the highway that we take to get to Enid, Mr. F stopped at Waukomis, a little town consisting mostly of a gas station and an old hotel. He pulled into the gas station to fill up the car. He and my father stood outside and talked while Mr. Y washed the windshield. I watched a "sterling" character (hemhem) saunter out of the gas station, clad in nothing but ragged denim shorts and a straw hat, rawly tanned skin exposed to the broiling sunshine. A grey moustache trailed down this chap's chin, and I felt that someone of his age should have the decency to dress better. However, all of us made fun of a glaring spelling mistake in a sign posted on the side of the filling station: "If no receit prints, please pay inside." It would appear that in this part of the country there is a paucity of ps, as well as of common politeness.

Continuing down the road, Princess suggested she sing. She won out in the end. Philip balanced one of the Psalters on the back of his bench so that Princess and Violin could see it, while Princess passed another Psalter to the back bench. Pretty soon, everyone from Estella and Laura in the front bench to Marigold and SwanElf (on alto, as usual) in the back bench were singing. Except me. I wrote in Violin's journal, and stared out the window.

I heard SwanElf’s camera whiz behind me. She tapped my shoulder: “Will you smile for me?” “Ugh,” I groaned, “I’ll look awful.” “Turn around as far as you can and smile,” she coaxed, so I did my best. She tried to take a picture of Violin, but Violin, always twitchy, flinched away, resulting in an absurd picture of Violin pushing her glasses up her sweaty nose.

They sang several Psalms, filling up the miles between Enid and Stillwater, "Advancing still from strength to strength" (Psalm 84B) as we pulled into the Fishers' neighborhood. Mrs. S met us there to drive Princess, Marigold, Estella, and Betty home. We waved them good-bye, and said our good-byes ourselves. SwanElf shut the car door firmly for me, singing cheerily, "So I'd best be on my way/ In the early morning rain...."