“Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave,

and grow old wanting to get back to.” –John Ed Pierce

ONE

Greenhouse

The Missouri River drops sharply out of the Little Belt Mountains before snaking its way eastward like a frightened rattler. Five miles west of us, where the land flattens and the plains begin, it slows dramatically, branching off to form Franklin’s Creek. The creek is shallow and lazy. Pronghorn antelope and desert reptiles sun themselves along its sandy banks. And by the time it reaches my hometown it has slowed to a crawl, like everything else around here.

To the east and north and south the big sky stoops to caress gently sloping wheat fields, sometimes stroking a wildflower or a grove of poplar trees. The Little Belt Mountains overlook the whole of my childhood, stretching with the horizon like silent sentinels, like friends. Beyond the lesser mountains loom the majestic Rockies, transparent and cloudlike. I sometimes wonder what lies to the west of them. Do they conceal mysteries that may intersect with my life one day?

The sleepy village of Grace rests within a rifle shot of the mountains—though most people here wouldn’t know it. We are quiet, law-abiding citizens, minding our own business. If we discover that another’s business is worth discussing, we will more than likely share it as a prayer request on Wednesday night at Grace Community. People here mean well. They are kind and decent folk who will stop when your tire is flat and drop off casseroles when your mother is sick.

If you spent a day here, or a week, or—heaven help you—a month, you would call us quaint, conservative, backward even. We wouldn’t blame you. The town is split in two by the sluggish creek and most of the Christians live on our side, apparently content to keep it that way. We attend our school, our church, and as much as possible support our businesses. There are the rare exceptions of course, like the few who attend the Catholic church and shop at The Bargain Wearhouse, but we are told not to look down on them, while there’s life there’s hope.

            Back in the late fifties, when there were more bars than churches here, Pastor Francis Frank arrived from Alabama intent on launching his own sacred colony just a sharp glance away from the pagans. Why he didn’t do this in Los Angeles or New York or even Seattle is anyone’s guess. But no, Frank had to choose the middle of Nowheresville to do the Lord’s bidding. Why my parents joined him I’ll never fully understand either, for Frank’s legacy stands in sharp contrast to theirs. He was an advocate of dressing from twenty-year-old catalogs and it caught on among his growing band of followers to the point where people began to look like they lived on the edge of the world and subscribed to the Flat Earth Times or something.

Not much has changed.

We are still characterized less by what we do than by what we refrain from, less by what we are than what we look like. Drinking, smoking, and chewing tobacco are taboo, of course. So too are dancing, cards, movies, jazz, make-up, earrings, pool tables, and watching from behind gooseberry bushes as the girls swim.

Pastor Frank defected many years ago, amid a rush of rumors, but not before leaving us the only book he ever wrote, Practicing the Principals, which despite the typo on the cover, pretty much described the drum he’d been pounding for two decades. The book was hardly a national bestseller, in fact I think he only mimeographed fifty copies, but to this day those tattered copies have a way of resurfacing during arguments among the faithful.

Thanks a lot, Frank.

Lately there are rumors that our former pastor is back in the vicinity living in some gated compound in the hills nearby. But rumors are more common than sagebrush around here, so I don’t put much stock in them.

When I was a child of ten or twelve, Frank’s endless list of prohibitions were more of a challenge than a problem. Truth is, I loved growing up here in the little town of Grace. You didn’t need to engage in dangerous activities to be noticed, didn’t need to pour gasoline on the schoolyard and set it ablaze to be a rebel. All it took was the flashing of a gap-toothed grin at the girl with perfect teeth across the eighth grade classroom and before you were fully aware of what was happening you were in the principal’s office listening to a lengthy lecture on Pastor Frank’s social regulations while scanning cheap wall decorations.

But by the time you reach my age, which is eighteen, Practicing the Principals is less a book than it is a millstone hanging about the neck of any able-bodied teenager hoping for just a glimpse of pleasure, or laughter, or normality.

Administrators at Lone Pine Christian School have designed matching handbooks to address every possible situation and they are thicker than a liberal theologian’s head, says my brother Tony. He should know, him studying to be a minister and all. “We’ve got more rules than baseball,” he says. And we do. We have rules on hair length, sleeve length, appropriate music and literature. We have rules for dating, dressing, driving and doodling. It’s enough to drive a teenager to drink, and for many of us it has.

The rules are fishbones, they stick deep in my throat.

They aren’t easy for parents either. I am the youngest in this family of six and I’ve noticed that Dad isn’t so strict as he once was, likely because he’s tired out from years of enforcing them. My older brothers used to ask, “Dad, do you mind if we go to the pool and soak?” and my dad, who lived with constant paranoia that others would see what an awful father he was and would call for his resignation from the church board or perhaps just shoot him, would say, “What? Go to the school and smoke? Are you kidding? You go to your room…now!” By the time I came along however, as my older brothers will tell you, I was able to get away with murder. I’d stroll into the living room and ask, “Dad, can I go to the school and smoke?” My father, who was reading the newspaper and obviously had more confidence in his parenting skills by then, would say, “Don’t forget to take your swim suit.”

Although I’ve experienced more leniency than my brothers, life here is stifling. It’s like wearing a parka in church on a hot day in July, you start sweating in places you didn’t know you had sweat glands, and you want to run from the building, regardless of what others may think.

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My sister Liz has been experimenting in the kitchen again. Her latest concoction is something she calls Banana Meatloaf, a dish that tastes like it came straight out of the compost. She doesn’t appreciate my saying so and after taking a swing at me, insists the recipe is from the Farm Woman Cookbook. Either she needs glasses or those farm women got a whopping good deal on ripe bananas from Ecuador.

We eat the meatloaf though. It’s surprising what you’ll swallow when your mother doesn’t do the cooking and your sister hauls things from the fridge two weeks after they’ve been buried there choosing to ignore that the color has drained away or the contents have turned unnatural shades of blue or gray or green. We cast a few knowing glances at one another, but apart from unwelcome comments about the compost, keep the complaints to ourselves. In fairness to Liz, she doesn’t like creating the mess any more than I like cleaning it up. Alhough she’s nineteen Liz stays at home, taking care of the place.

If only Mother would come do her part.

But that’s not likely to happen.

Not anytime soon, at least.

Liz has been trying her hand at growing things other than mold, too. The spring’s warmth saw her burying tomato roots in a flowerbed just like Mom used to do, popping the petunia seeds into holes she’d poked with her bony little fingers. A view to the south is perfect she claims, and the proximity to the house will protect the tomatoes from an early September frost.

Back in April she picked out the plants herself from Werner’s Greenhouse, a place that reminds me of our little town, a suffocating spot where they prepare tender shoots for life in flowerbeds elsewhere.

I once shared these perceptive thoughts with Liz and she did her best to imitate my mother: “Young plants need these conditions, Tare. And so do you.”

“And so do you,” I repeated, in a pinched off mimicy little voice, but she just smiled.

To me a greenhouse is a stifling cocoon, a sanctuary from the very things a plant longs for: the sun, the fresh air and a gentle breeze. 

Read Chapter Two