After Sunday service, Pastor Stan began thinking about how to approach the new couple who had just moved to town; well, they hadn’t JUST moved. In fact, they had been living in Mt. Arliss for several months. Outreach wasn’t typically an issue because everyone, at some point, gravitated to one of the several churches in town; it was just something people did. Even if people claimed they weren’t especially “religious” (Pastor Stan had heard that one many, many times) people eventually found their way somewhere. Going to church was a good way to meet people, get involved in the community, get a sense of things. It also gave other people a chance to meet you and begin to get a sense of who you were. Young couples with children generally attended church to meet other parents and to help their sons and daughters meet people and make friends. Going to church – any church – was a signal to people that a new comer wanted to be part of the goings on of the town. It also let people know Where You Stood, which was crucial to social acceptance.
Not that there was much difference in the churches; except for those Unitarians one town over in Jonston (which Pastor Stan had trouble understanding) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses that had taken root one town over in another direction (which Pastor Stan considered only slightly less dangerous than Mormons), the denominations were conservative because the people in the area were conservative. They supported prayer in schools, the right to bear arms, low taxes, the war, and abstinence instead of sex education. They were farmers, or the children of farmers, and understood that the Good Lord had given them the Earth to use and take care of. And except for the Catholic Church (which Pastor Stan didn’t personally have a problem with, but many in his congregation did), the different churches got along pretty well. As a Methodist, Pastor Stan knew his place in the local hierarchy, and he was grateful that the Evangelicals, the Charismatics, and the Apostolics hadn’t taken hold. That they were extreme had been their undoing in Mt. Arliss because Mt. Arliss wasn’t a town that liked extremes. Which meant that, as a Methodist, Pastor Stan was generally liked or (at least) treated with a modicum of respect by people outside of his pastoral concern.
From what he could tell, no other church had bothered to reach out to the new couple and they hadn’t reached out to anybody else. According to the Pussmans, who were part of his congregation, the woman worked and the husband didn’t. He could be seen around town, either at the library or at the Moose Head, and no one really knew what to make of him. Peter Pussman seemed leery of him because he drank and Brenda wasn’t sure what to make of him because he seemed to have no ambition at all. There was some word around town that the husband had been a teacher before moving to Mt. Arliss; but he seemed to have no interest in finding a teaching job. Pastor Stan had also heard from Bob Watson, the publisher of the Mt. Arliss Standard, that the husband was a writer, or wanted to be.
He waited until Tuesday to pay a visit. Monday was never a good day for outreach; people were moodier on Mondays, and if they going to be having a bad day, the chances were better than average that it would happen on a Monday. Tuesday was a neutral day. Not frustrating like Mondays and not Hump Day. He hardly ever did any outreach on Fridays, except for shut ins who already knew him. Thursdays could be a good day or a bad day; and if, for some reason, the husband wasn’t home when he dropped by, Pastor Stan would try again on Thursday so he could at least say he’d done his due diligence.
Actually, the thought of another young couple was pretty exciting. Most of his congregation was significantly older than him; he wasn’t yet 40 and some people still thought of him as young. Of course, they liked what they saw as his passion and vigor; and they liked that his wife Patricia was also young and vigorous. His and Patty’s kids, seven year old Casey and ten year old Madison, attended Arliss County Incorporated Schools. Those things lent him the authority that his age denied him. The new couple was around his age, and he imagined what it would be like to have another couple around his own age to talk to. Similar backgrounds. Similar memories. The new couple didn’t have children – which would give them one less thing to talk about. But maybe, he thought, maybe once they settle here for a few years they’ll have kids and will come to him and Patty for advice. The thought made him smile.
He made sure to wear his lucky tie Tuesday, but once he got in his car to drive over to the house he thought better and took the tie off. He didn’t want to appear too stuffy; older people expected a certain level of decorum, but this man was his age. They came from a similar place and a similar time and (he hoped) had similar notions about things. He thought about all the other things they could talk about. Attending college in the 1990’s. Music. Growing up in the 1980’s. Grunge. Pastor Stan was trying to remember the names of the bands he’d like when he was a kid. Banabanabingbong? Whambam? Madonna? Black Hole Sunshine? He expected – because the man had been a college professor – that he would be more liberal than most in town; Stan prepared himself for that. And he kept telling himself the man’s name. Someone said his name was Boone and that he was originally from Kentucky. Boone, he repeated. Jarvis Boone. His wife’s name was Muriel. She worked at the theatre – another indication that they might be a more modern couple than what he (and Patty) had become accustomed to.
The Boones (Pastor Stan kept telling himself to think of them as The Boones) lived in an old house on top of the hill on North Teetum Street. It was one of the last old houses in town and the other houses, over a period of 75 years, had grown up around it. Old Mrs. Chisum had lived there before she died at the ripe old age of 101 – she’d been an old time Baptist, so Pastor Stan had only known her slightly – and the house sat empty for about year until The Boones moved in. The house was on a large corner lot that needed mowing.
He pulled his car in front of the house carefully. There wasn’t a car in the driveway; but it could be in the garage. Plus he’d heard that the husband – Jarvis – Mr. Boone – Boone – didn’t drive much and that he walked everywhere. They only had the one car and his wife – Muriel – Mrs. Boone – usually drove it. Before he got out of the car, he looked at himself in the vanity mirror and smiled his friendliest smile. Instinctively, he grabbed his bible that was sitting on the passenger seat; but then he thought better of it and left it in the car. “There will be time for that,” he said to his reflection.
When he knew someone, Pastor Stan would enter the enclosed porch and knock on the interior door; but he didn’t want to presume. Luckily the doorbell was on the outside instead of the inside. He took a deep breath, straightened his back, and rang the doorbell.
