community of Arrow Junction, there had been numerous times when his wife Lottie had gotten up in the middle of the night and found the good reverend on his knees making an impassioned appeal to the heavens to give him more adequacy of communication.
But that did not mean he wished to be exactly like Reverend Maynard Styles. Now as he and Lottie were driving home from the Babcock Ministers’ Conference, Reverend Andrews was even more certain that he did not want to be exactly like Maynard Styles.
“It was a nice conference, wasn’t it?” Lottie asked. When Lottie and Reverend Andrews had been married, Lottie’s daddy, Horace Tellwinder, had described his daughter as, “Just a big little girl.” That was twenty-three years ago. Lottie was an even bigger little girl now. But she had retained that tiny voice, and nobody, including Reverend Andrews, thought of her as anything but a little girl. She adored her husband. Though the Reverend was smaller-boned, an inch shorter and a good deal leaner, nobody ever thought of large Lottie as anything but Reverend Andrews’s little girl.
“Yes,” Reverend Andrews said, “it was a nice conference, Lottie.”
“The food was so good.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Dear, you seem so blue.”
“No, I’m not. I’m feeling very thankful that the Good Lord allowed us to make this journey with so much enjoyment.”
“I know that, dear. But even if you’re grateful to the Good Lord, that doesn’t mean you can’t be blue, does it? I wish you’d tell me. You always keep things to yourself.”
Reverend Andrews shook his head. “I don’t know, Lottie. We should always think well of our brothers, particularly our brothers who have rallied to the call of the Lord and taken up the yoke of duty. But—”
“You’re thinking about Maynard Styles, aren’t you? I know what usually makes you upset. You think Maynard is—well—”
“Don’t say it, Lottie. Let’s leave judgments up to the Good Lord.”
“Well, I can’t help but feel that Maynard isn’t always thinking about the Good Lord.”
“Now, Lottie.”
“It’s true. He didn’t seem to be thinking so much about the Good Lord when he kept going on about how much the church in Babcock was paying him. And then about that extension to his house.”
“Jealousy is the Devil beckoning, Lottie.”
“I do wish we could have a little more money. But I’m not jealous, John. It’s just that Maynard seems to be more concerned with worldly things than a good minister ought to be.”
“He’s doing very fine work, Lottie. You know that.”
“I know that. And he talks an awful lot about it too. Just because we all grew up in Arrow Junction, I sometimes think he tries to make us jealous. Talking on and on about his programs over KWTC. I don’t think that’s the way the Good Lord likes things to be done.”
“Now, Lottie,” Reverend Andrews repeated, but Lottie had opened the tap that allowed the whole disturbment of being around Maynard Styles wash through his mind. Even as he prayed for an unembittered attitude, the Devil kept beckoning.
Maynard Styles was a tall broad-shouldered man with a handsome and strong profile. There was the strength of Samson in his looks. Reverend Andrews, when he examined his own insignificant features in the morning mirror, often wondered at the Good Lord’s oversight in this unequal distribution.
Moreover Maynard Styles owned the voice of thunder, a voice that caused Reverend Andrews something very close to shame when he compared it to his own slightly rasping sound that always seemed to fog in the middle of particularly emotional utterances.
Yes, Maynard Styles certainly owned all the physical assets that a good minister would want to own. But for a good number of young years Maynard Styles had been quite deaf to the clarion trumpet of the Lord. Reverend Andrews well remembered one evening in 1932 when Maynard Styles had been discovered drunkenly passed out in the middle of the