CHURCH LADY P.I. Part # 10
(FACTORY WORK)
When Marc and I arrived at Bert's house he did not seem surprised to see us. Before Marc could even finish a quick "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night" knock on the door it flew open and Bert was wearing his jacket. He looked at me and asked directly, "Where are we going?"
I had to think about it for a moment. Where were we going? I felt that Bert held a key that would unlock some part of my understanding, but beyond that I was being led by my faith not by my sight.
With my eyes I could see darkness was quickly approaching, but as I looked up at the clear sky with it's almost full moon the desire to see where the Fireworks Factory had once stood came over me hard. So we grabbed a couple of flashlights and the three of us got into Bert's truck and headed for the sight of that massive explosion that seemed to still be shaking this small town, even all these years later.
There wasn't much left to see. It was pretty much just an empty field with a few piles of bricks here and there to show that a large building had once occupied that space.
I walked around a bit kicking at the dirt with my toes every so often and trying to picture what things had looked like as hundreds of town workers came each day to build the various things this factory had made through the years. But each mental path seemed to lead me nowhere.
I sighed a prayer out loud, "Lord? The stakes have never been so high before and I've never had so much trouble coming to a conclusion before either? Please show me what I'm missing. What am I out here to see?"
As these words melted into the night my eyes came to rest on Bert again. He was also looking around waving his flashlight along the ground of the former factory, except he seemed to be doing it with a purpose. As if he was looking for something specific.
I asked, "What are you looking for Bert?"
His answer, "The door to the bathroom."
"That's right. Your father was in the bathroom when the factory exploded, right?"
"Yup. That's what saved his life."
"How did being in the bathroom save his life? Where was the bathroom?"
"The basement."
I obviously had not yet acquired the ability to turn on the 'Bert motion light' that made him freely give off information the way that Marc could. So I looked to Marc to discover he was watching the exchange between Bert and I with intense interest.
He proceeded to ask Bert a couple probing questions about his father and suddenly I was getting an almost minute by minute account of what Bert's father had told him about the day he had almost died, but had been spared because of the need to relieve himself. The day that had also taken the life of so many of 'Bert Senior's' co-workers and friends.
Apparently Bert's father had been sent on an errand to retrieve something from a special storage room that was in the basement of the factory and told to return with it immediately, but had stepped into the washroom, which was also in the basement while doing this task. This strange "fluke" of time and place had saved his life and the lives of 4 other people who had survived the explosion.
But these 4 other people were not in the washroom with Bert's father as I and everyone else had supposed. They were actually in the "secret" storage room that he had been sent to. I got the idea of speaking directly to one of these survivors, but this suggestion brought on another wave of silence from Bert. I looked to Marc for an explanation.
He said gently, "They are all dead. They all died just like Bert's father. They survived the explosion to die of cancer not too long afterwards."
At the same time this revelation sent a sudden jolt of excitement through me emotionally, we also all jumped physically at the loud sound of a twig snap off to our right. Both flashlights flicked towards the sound to reveal Ginnette coming out of the nearby woods and walking towards us.
"Oh my Dear, you startled me!" I exclaimed as I let out the gasp of breath I had taken in.
"What are you doing here?" I quickly asked, scanning the rest of the woods behind her from where she came.
"I'm following you." she simply explained. "If anyone is going to find Sarah I believe it will be you. So I went over to your Aunt and Uncle's place and followed you when you left. You'll find my Sarah. I know it."
Her determined faith in my abilities made me feel both big and small, but ultimately gave me a boost of encouragement. For the first time I felt like I had all the "tools" I needed to solve this mystery right there within my grasp. I just needed to dig it up. I was just about to suggest we literally start digging to locate this basement storage room that had been beyond the reach of the explosion and fire, even if it meant digging up the entire field. But then, from a sky that just a moment before had been clear, it started to pour down rain on us. We all ran for the nearest vehicle, which was Bert's truck. As the four of us sat there on the bench seat of his truck looking out at the rain as the windows and windshield steamed up, I heaved so large a sigh that everyone turned and looked at me.
Marc quoted, "Then the LORD will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over all the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and the rain."
We looked at Marc as he said this. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Isaiah 4. Verses 5 and 6. It just popped into my mind."
I said, "That's the one I quoted the other day when it was raining and we were under the willow tree, right?"
"Yes. But I noticed you had quoted it wrong. Very unlike you. You're such a stickler for details and being accurate, especially when it comes to the Word of God."
As I wiped away a layer of steam from the front windshield with the side of my hand I said, "Well, don't blame me. I had just heard it that morning in church. That's why it was in my mind at all."
Ginnette responded, "Oh, they get Scripture wrong there all the time. It happens so often lately that people have started joking that Reverend Wright may be coming down with Alzheimer's."
With that declaration we all looked at Ginnette.
"I didn't say I joked about Reverend Wright having Alzheimer's. I know it's not a very nice thing to do. But there does seem to be something wrong with his memory lately. He'll tell me to play a certain hymn for a service and then he'll tell me to play it again the very next week or even at the end of the same service. Whenever I try to tell him I've just played that song or suggest another hymn he just gets angry and says, 'Don't question me. Just do it!' Who am I to argue, especially with the amount of money I get to play the piano? I'll play 'Take me to Mount Zion' a million times if that's what he wants me to do."
I nodded, remembering that we had indeed sung that song both at the beginning and near the end of the service I had attended the previous week.
Bert turned on his windshield wipers to remove the rain streaming down the front window of the cab of his truck. We all bent our heads a bit to look up at the sky through the clearing in the windshield which had been momentarily created from me wiping away the steam on the inside and Bert's wipers taking away the cascading rain from the outside. And at that moment not only could I see the sky, but I knew what the "picture on the box of the jigsaw puzzle" was supposed to be.
I laughed out loud at my own dullness and stupidity. But it was a laugh without mirth because I now knew who had been taking Sarah's bunnies and why. I also trembled with that knowledge because it meant that nothing less than Sarah's life was at stake!
LINK to Next Part # 11 "In the Truck"
FINALLY FINISHED: Church Lady P.I. Post from "Laura-Lee Was Here" Blog (COMPANION POST)
CHURCH LADY P.I. Introduction
Copyright 2015 "The characters and events in this story are not meant to represent any persons living or dead and are entirely a product of the imagination of the writer." LR
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