Still Life With Crows

A hush fell over the congregation as the Reverend John Wilbur made his fussy way toward the pulpit. The service began, as usual, with the entrance hymn, the prayer of the day. During the readings that followed, the silence was absolute. Ludwig could see that people were waiting for the sermon. He wondered just how Pastor Wilbur would handle it. The man, narrow and pedantic, was not known for his oratory. He larded his sermons with quotations from English literature and poetry in an attempt to show erudition, but the effect only seemed pompous and long-winded. The moment of truth had come for Pastor Wilbur. This was the time of his town’s greatest need.

Would he rise to the occasion?

The reading from the Gospel was complete; the time for the sermon had arrived. The air was electric. This was it: the moment of spiritual reassurance that people had yearned for, had waited for, had come to find.

The minister stepped up to the pulpit, gave two delicate little coughs into his balled hand, pursed his thin lips, and smoothed with a crackle the yellowed papers that lay hidden behind the elaborately carved wood.

“Two quotes come to mind this morning,” Wilbur said, glancing over the congregation. “One, of course, from the Bible. The other, from a famous sermon.”

Hope leapt in Ludwig’s heart. This sounded new. This sounded promising.

“Recall, if you will, God’s promise to Noah in the Book of Genesis:While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. And in the words of the good Doctor Donne,God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sheaves in harvest. ” Wilbur paused to survey the packed church from over his reading glasses.

Abruptly, Ludwig’s spirits fell, all the harder for having been falsely raised. He recognized these quotations all too well. Wilbur’s air of practiced improvisation had fooled him.Oh my God, he thought,he’s not going to do the harvest sermon again, is he?

And yet, beyond all understanding, that seemed to be Wilbur’s intent. He spread his arms with magisterial pomp.

“Here we are, once again, the little town of Medicine Creek, surrounded by the bounty of God. Summer. Harvest. All around us are the fruits of God’s green earth, God’s promise to us: thecorn, the stalks trembling under the weight of the ripe ears beneath the giving summer sun.”

Ludwig looked around with a kind of desperation. It was the same sermon Wilbur always gave at this time of the year, for as long as Ludwig could remember. There was a time, when his wife still lived, that Ludwig found Wilbur’s cycle of sermons—as predictable as the cycle of seasons—comfortable and reassuring. But not now. Especially not now.

“To those who would ask for a sign of God’s bounty, for those who require proof of His goodness, I say to you: go to the door. Go to the door and look out over the great sea of life, the harvest of corn that stands ready to be plucked and eaten, to provide physical nourishment to our bodies and spiritual comfort to our souls . . .”

“To be made into gasohol for our cars, you mean,” Ludwig heard someone nearby mutter.

He waited. Maybe the minister was just warming up and was going to get onto the real topic soon.

“. . . While Thanksgiving is the accepted time to thank God for the bounty of His earth, I like to offer thanks now, justbefore harvest, when the gift of God’s goodness is made incarnate all around us, in the fields of corn that stretch from horizon to horizon. Let us all walk, as the immortal bard John Greenleaf Whittier impels us to, ‘Up from the meadows rich with corn.’ Let us all then pause, and look out over the great Kansas earth covered with the harvest and give thanks.” He paused for effect.

The mood in the room remained one of suspension, of desperate hope that the sermon would take an unexpected turn.

“The other day,” the minister began in a more jocular tone, “I was driving to Deeper with my wife, Lucy, when our car ran out of gas.”

Oh, no. He told this story last year. And the year before.

“There we were, by the side of the road, completely surrounded by corn. Lucy turned to me and asked, ‘Whatever are we going to do, dear?’

“I answered, ‘Trust in God.’ ”

He chuckled, blissfully ignorant of the ugly undercurrent that was now beginning to ripple through the congregation. “Well, she got mad at that. Being the man, you see, I was supposed to have filled up the tank, and so it was my fault that we’d run out. ‘You trust in God,’ she said. ‘I’m going to trust in my two good legs.’ And she started to get out of the car—”

Suddenly a voice rang out: “and got the gas can out of the back and walked to the gas station!”

It was Swede Cahill himself who had completed the reverend’s sentence: Swede Cahill, the nicest man in town. But there he was, on his feet, red-faced.

Pastor Wilbur compressed his lips so hard they almost disappeared. “Mr. Cahill, may I remind you that this is a church, and that I am giving a sermon?”

“I know very well what you’re doing, Reverend.”

“Then I shall continue—”

“No,”said Cahill, panting heavily. “No, you will not.”

“For heaven’s sake, sit down, Swede,” a voice cried from somewhere.

Cahill turned toward the voice. “There’ve been two horrible murders in this town and all he can do is read some sermon he wrote back in 1973? No, this won’t scour. It won’t scour, I say.”

A woman had arisen: Klick Rasmussen. “Swede, if you have something to say, have thedecency to wait until—”

“No, he’s right,” interrupted another voice. Ludwig turned. It was a worker from the Gro-Bain plant. “Swede’s right. We didn’t come here to listen to a damn sermon about corn. There’s a killer on the loose and none of us are