41) The Lord’s Plan

“What time did you tell this guy that we’re coming?”

“I told him that the Uhaul place opens around 9:00 and that by the time all the paperwork is signed and we get on our way that we’ll probably be getting to him around 10:30ish…”

“Ok. That sounds about right.”

“How much was he selling them for?”

“He was selling them for $35 each but I had asked him if he’d do $25 a piece if I bought all three and he said that was fine.”

“So by the time we pay for the Uhaul to grab them we’re looking at less than three hundred bucks.”

“I think that’s a deal don’t you? We’re getting seating for 15-20 people…”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good price.”

Tendrils of blue grey smoke curled up and aloft from the lit joint that David held in his teeth while he absently scrolled his phone. You were never able to hold yours in your mouth like that, the smoke always stung your eyes. You exhaled deeply releasing a wispy cloud into the room. It was still cold and you sat in front of the little space heater while you mapped out the address to Dan’s storage unit. He was a good hour and fifteen minutes away. A little town in the middle of nowhere… just about everything you were beginning to realize, was in the middle of nowhere.

David wasn’t wrong when he said that everything here was either seven minutes away or over an hour… If you couldn’t find what you were looking for in your small town (just about a seven minute drive in any direction before you were outside the boundaries), you were going to be hauling it to the next inhabited place… usually an hour or more drive through sparsely populated farmland, forests, and or fields. Nothing was really close.

“I’m thinking that we can stop by the Amish sawmill on our way back. I want to get a quote on the wood for the baseboards.”

“Yeah that’s fine… we’ve got time…” you said.

The nice thing about purchasing wood or workshops from the Amish was that you were going to pay a fraction of the price that you would pay dealing with the “English.” The bad thing about purchasing anything from the Amish was that you had to physically go to them. There was no Amish hotline to get in touch. Which neither of you could ever really figure out because they had no phone… you couldn’t call them… yet they would call you from a phone when your order was ready to be picked up. Seemed like there was a phone usage loophole that pertained only to incoming calls… You had thought about asking Moses next time you were out there but you never worked up the nerve to do so. You didn’t want him to get the wrong idea that you were pointing out some sort of technological hypocrisy (you weren’t - you were just intrigued by the Amish rules) and you reckoned that you preferred the cheap wood to satiating your curiosity.

“Is there anything else that we’re picking up while we’re headed in that direction or have the Uhaul?” David wanted to know.

“Nah, I checked all my saved listings on Marketplace and everything I have marked is in the opposite direction.”

You appreciated that David wanted to utilize the Uhaul as effectively as one could during the rental window.

David took one last long drag before stubbing the remaining bit of the joint into the ashtray then stood up and brushed off his pants and pocketed his phone.

“I’m going to go make myself a cup of tea and then I’m ready to go. Do you want one?”

“Yes please. Thank you.”

David walked out of the room and closed the door behind him, his footsteps heavy on the 131 year old staircase as he made his way down into the basement. You looked outside the large belfry bedroom windows, you couldn’t help but notice that the grass looked a bit more green than the day before. Spring was on its way.

****************************************************************

“This guy mentioned something about his son being there to help us move them… I’m hoping these things aren’t ridiculously heavy because I don’t know how I’m going to help you get them into the church when we get back.”

“We’ll figure it out. Worst case scenario I’ll ask someone to help me move them.”

The heat was on full blast in the Uhaul. You had picked it up twenty minutes ago and now you and David were riding out to the middle of nowhere watching bare trees, open fields devoid of any crops, and ancient barns stream by the Uhaul’s large windows. There was virtually nothing out here save for land and the occasional farmhouse. Before you had found the church, you and David had considered buying a farm, you had always wanted to live on a farm with cows and pigs and goats and chickens and maybe even a donkey. Now you laughed at the thought…

“So we bought an old farm…” you said.

“Huh?”

“So we bought an old farm… that’s what we’d have been doing if we hadn’t bought the church… can you imagine?”

“No,” David laughed, “I have to say I’m glad we didn’t go that route, I can’t imagine mucking stalls… well you mucking stalls in January.”

“Same. I think we made the right choice… though I’m still not ruling out a farm and animals one day…”

“Do me a favor and do it when I’m dead.”

“Roger that.”

As the truck rounded a bend in the road you spotted a little buggy being pulled by a beautiful deep chestnut, almost black horse… his reins held by an Amish man. He looked cold, it was freezing outside, though maybe you were just projecting. You reached for your camera, you wanted to film them and then remembered that the Amish had this thing about being filmed… like electricity it was another big no-no.

“How’s he gonna know Vaness? Is he going to see himself on TikTok?”

“No I know… but it just feels disrespectful…”

David shrugged.

You put your phone back into your coat pocket. You didn’t want to break any Amish code of conduct, even if you were about as far from Amish as one could get… and even if you figured that like the phone, there was probably some sort of loophole here too.

“Do you miss St Pete at all?” You asked David when the horse and buggy and driver disappeared around the bend.

“Yes and no…” he said thinking for a moment, “I miss being with the family for the holidays… it’s kinda weird just us for Thanksgiving and Christmas… I miss being able to go to any number of amazing restaurants… I miss all the things there was to do… No though I don’t miss the daily grind… having to work nonstop, just to barely get by with how expensive everything was. I don’t miss the heat. At. All. I don’t miss dealing with customers and climbing through attics and crawl spaces. I don’t miss traffic. Overall I think we made the right choice and I’m really happy with where we’re at. What about you?”

You didn’t need to think about it… you knew exactly what you missed, “I miss my friends and family. I miss good food… sushi especially. I miss my art studio and the art community and the commradery that went with it… there’s nothing like that here. I miss doing shows and painting. I miss my old yard and pond and the turtles and my aquariums. I miss our old neighbors. I miss that I’d see and talk to them every day. I miss seeing lizards… I don’t miss the heat. I don’t miss living in a flood zone. I don’t miss having a mortgage and astronomical flood insurance. I don’t miss the traffic. And I definitely don’t miss the frickin Palmetto bugs. I don’t think I’m over that shit… every time I see a leaf blow by me out of the corner of my eye I jump a mile thinking it’s one of those disgusting fucking things. I think I’m kind of scarred by that shit… It will probably be a long time before I stop freaking out about them… 20 years of that shit doesn’t go away overnight.”

“I do that too! I can’t tell you how many times I think I see one of them and it’s just my imagination. Remember sitting on the couch that time watching TV and one ran across the living room floor?”

“I’m pretty sure that memory is permanently etched into my soul. I know the kids haven’t forgotten either… they still bring it up. Remember Bev, Harrison and I took off running while you and Elliot tried to find the damn thing? And then none of us wanted to sit back on the couch when it ran under there and disappeared? So fucking gross.”

“Oh I remember…”

Farmland and trees soon gave way to a sleepy little town with aging Victorian homes in different stages of decay; sagging porches and faded paint, rusty tractors that may or may not have been used in at least a decade sat idle in side yards. Save for an occasional pickup truck coming down the road, there wasn’t much activity. You noticed boarded up farm stands and stores… “CLOSED for the season” signs affixed to cobweb covered windows, an old faded billboard covered in a tangle of leafless vines advertising an antique store stood solemnly just off the road. There was one gas station with a nearly empty parking lot… a single rusted sedan parked off to the side. There were very few businesses outside of the DollarTree you passed…

“All I see are these fucking DollarTrees… you notice that? Hardly any stores but you’ll find a DollarTree in every little podunk town in this country?”

“That’s end stage capitalism for ya…”

“It’s kinda like Kudzu… seemed like a good idea when it was first introduced and now it’s strangling every last mom and pop store out of existence. These frickin DollarTrees might even be more prolific than Kudzu if ya think about it…”

“I think this is it up ahead no?” David said changing the subject as long red single story buildings with roll up doors came into view. Each building was a rectangle with a single roll up door on each short end and multiple doors on the long sides of the buildings. There were probably twenty of these structures aligned perfectly parallel to one another. They were plain no frills buildings but neatly kept and well maintained… a stark contrast to the decaying town. There were no cars or signs of life when David pulled the moving truck off the side of the road and onto the strip of the storage center’s pavement.

“That guy Dan… he said his is the unit all the way at the end row, last one in the back… Over there,” you said pointing to the last storage building up ahead. David brought the truck to a crawl as he made his way down the asphalt passing each identical building to the right. When he brought the truck to the final row there was a lone car parked all the way at the very end and an older man standing in front of the last unit, his unit’s door rolled up to reveal a plethora of ancient wood furniture stacked nearly ceiling high. He waved you in, David slowed the moving truck even more and put it into reverse backing all the way down to the open unit.

You didn’t see his son that he had mentioned would be there to help load. You hoped that he was crammed in the storage unit. You didn’t see how with your messed up arm, you were going to manage lugging the heavy church pews onto the truck and judging by the look of Dan, you didn’t think he was able to manage these things either.

As if he could read your mind, “I should have brought the dolly to move these things…” David said putting the large truck into park and turning off the ignition.

“It is what it is at this point,” you said as you zipped up your winter coat and opened up the Uhaul door. Cautiously you jumped from the high passenger seat onto the pavement below. The air was raw… spring was coming but the cold hadn’t yet gotten the memo.

“You must be Dan,” you said as you rounded the truck, “Hi I’m Vanessa,” and you extended your hand to shake his.

“Hi,” he said.

Dan looked to be in his late 70s. He wore a black baseball cap that covered a shock of silver hair, new blue jeans and sneakers. He had on a black coat that was unzipped to reveal a red t-shirt with faint lettering that you couldn’t quite make out as he stood gesturing to the open doored unit…

“Well these are them…” said Dan, pointing inside his packed space.

You couldn’t help but notice the lack of a strong young son that you had assumed would be helping you load up… certainly there was no way he could be packed into the nearly overflowing unit and there they were… three massive church pews stood up on their ends reaching vertically to the aluminum ceiling. They were wedged in between old chairs and desks and bureaus and shelves… a time capsule of refurbishing jobs that had never come to fruition.

“We’re going to have to move some stuff around…” he said.

Which really didn’t have to be said, there was no way to get the pews out of the unit without doing a lot of rearranging.

“Ok well that’s not a problem…” you said, still hoping his strong young son would pop out from behind a dresser.

“Hey, I’m Dave,” said David as he rounded the other side of the moving truck before adding, “Oh wow… there’s a lot of stuff in there…”

“There is… these are all projects I didn’t get around to yet. I used to have a shop where I’d fix this stuff up and sell it at the flea market but I can’t do that anymore with my heart like it is…. I can only work on small furniture and nothing in here is really small…”

“I can see that,” you said.

“Yeah… I had a heart attack,” Dan continued, “and now I’m not supposed to lift anything over 20lbs… after my stroke I thought I’d be fine but my heart said different… which I guess is ok because I wasn’t expecting to be able to lift anything anymore after I had all those vertebre in my back fused together… ha!” He laughed.

“Huh… and here I thought that I was in rough shape with my arm,” you replied, “I guess that’s nothing compared…”

“Oh yeah… I’ve had three heart attacks now, this last one was the worst. My cardiologist said he’s surprised I survived it! I told him it’s because of my twelve kids and six grandkids that I’m raising… my wife said it’s time for me to start cleaning out this unit though because she doesn’t think I ought to be doing this sort of thing anymore… which I guess makes sense because of the hernia I’ve got along with the lifting restrictions.”

“Uhhhhh… wow! You have twelve kids?” Said David…

“Oh yeah… I had three coming into the marriage and my wife had four and then we started adopting kids… and well they’ve all got a lot of issues… fetal alcohol syndrome and stuff like that… that’s why my son isn’t here… the one who normally lifts stuff for me… he’s got a baby with fetal alcohol syndrom too and my wife is taking care of the baby and my son is there… so we’ve got that going on… but I say that it keeps my heart ticking… all these people to take care of! Ha!”

You couldn’t help thinking that all of that probably would have shut your heart right down… twelve fucking kids… hard pass…

“Well that’s something… so how do you want to do this then?” You said eyeing the towering pews landlocked in among the long abandoned projects.

“I guess we’ll have to take some stuff out…” said Dan grabbing at an old wooden chair, “I can manage this chair just fine… I get pretty dizzy sometimes, the doctor said that sometimes my blood pressure will just drop and then I’ll pass out… so I guess it’s good to have a chair handy!” He laughed again…

You and David made nervous eye contact, not sure if you should be laughing with this guy about his never ending health maladies or just erring on the side of politeness and ignoring his laundry list of afflictions.

“Yeah my fetal alcohol syndrome son helps me… but he can only do so much with everything he’s got going on and the other baby he’s got that was born with its heart on the outside of its body…”

“Jesus Christ,” you caught yourself murmuring…

“Though I guess that’s nothing compared to the other kid with the hole in his brain… Yup… I gotta stick around to take care of all these kids. HA!” He chuckled again.

David’s eyes were wide as he quickly carried broken furniture out of the packed unit. What did you even say to something like that? Clearly neither of you knew because you didn’t say much. Dan seemed to do his coping with humor… though you didn’t see the humor, you just caught the laughing…

“Yup… well the Lord Jesus our Savior must have quite the plan for me…!” Dan smiled.

You couldn’t help but think that maybe his Lord didn’t have a plan but rather had it out for him on account of the three heart attacks and the stroke and the fused spine and the hernia and the fetal alcohol syndrome kids and the grand babies with brain holes and hearts on the outside of their bodies… you weren’t sure what the fuck kind of a plan that would be… a shitty one if he had asked you, but he hadn’t and that probably wasn’t your place to say… especially considering that the pews were still pretty well buried in the furniture and you didn’t want to leave without them.

“I guess that’s quite the plan Dan…” you had managed.

“It sure is! But honestly that’s nothing compared to my fetal alcohol syndrome son’s wife… that’s where we got the pews from by the way in case you were wondering (you had wondered but didn’t dare ask)… she had a friend that got married outside and she had bought these pews for the wedding… that was before she got sick though… now that poor gal… talk about rough! She’s fetal alcohol syndrome too and I guess she was dropped on her head as a baby and can just about get around these days, then she’s got those two babies with all the special needs…”

David at this point was moving furniture a lot quicker you noticed.

“Yup… my wife though… she’s got stage four cancer and will probably be dead by this summer and she told me… she said, ‘Dan… before I leave this earth and meet our good Lord… I want this storage unit emptied out…’ HA that woman has got a sense of humor on her! I said, ‘Sweetheart, I can’t make that kind of promise…’ and besides… what will I do with all my time when I’m not taking care of her anymore?” He laughed again…

What in the absolute fuck… you said to yourself… smiling awkwardly and now you were finding that you too were starting to move furniture more quickly as well.

“Yup… ever since our dog got hit by the combine tractor… well my wife’s spirits have just been low… even the praying doesn’t seem to help much these days. She loved that dog… I think that dog kept her going on account of the baby with the brain hole and the other one with the heart on the outside of its body… “

“Your dog got hit by a combine tractor!!??” David said incredulous… you glared at him and let your eyes do the talking, “Please for the love of fuck move the furniture faster and don’t ask any fucking questions…” He understood.

“Oh yea… that dog was good but she was old… she was blind and deaf and she didn’t see the tractor and I didn’t see her and oh Lord… ripped her head clean off her body… I was hosing fur and guts off that tractor for hours… what a mess! Ha… but I told my wife that the Lord works in mysterious ways and that it was probably best on account of her suffering because the dog had cancer too and was starting to chew open her stomach so… at least the combine harvester was quick ya know?”

Your jaw was on the floor… no ya did not know… and you didn’t even want to think about hosing your best friend’s guts and fur off a fucking John Deere combine harvester and calling it a blessing.

“Yup… we had thought about getting her a kitten after that… me and my fetal alcohol syndrome son… our barn cat had kittens and we thought we’d bring one inside for her… but I found them all dead… the cat and the kittens… I think they got into some poison or something… which I guess is the Lord telling me that I’ve got too much on my plate with my dying wife and my heart and my grandbaby with the brain hole…”

“Jesus Christ David… move the fucking furniture faster…” you whispered to your husband…

“I’m going as fast as I can,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Yup… buried my dog… the pieces we could find at least… and those kittens and my barn cat all within a few weeks of each other… that was tough on account of how much they meant to me and because I broke my foot when I tripped over one of the dead cats… You know my doctor he said to me, he said ‘Dan… you have some luck!’ Imagine that! Luck! Ha… I don’t think it’s luck… I think it’s the good Lord with his plans…”

Your eyes were huge now…

“But honestly the broken foot was nothing compared to this titanium rod I had put in my femur… during Nam… got shot right in the leg when our platoon was ambushed… but I was lucky you know… watched all my friends get their brains blown out… only reason I survived was because one of their lifeless bodies fell on mine… hid me from Charlie all right Ha… that’s the Lord’s plan I’m talking about…”

“David… we need to get the fuck out of here…” you whispered…

“Vaness I’m going as fast as I can go…”

“Yup… that was something… “ Dan said staring off into the distance massaging his thigh… where you imagined the steel rod was holding him together, at this point though, you knew better than to ask if that was where he had gotten shot… just in case it was the other leg and this leg was actually another story.

“Yup… I guess I am lucky… “ Dan laughed.

What seemed like an eternity had gone by when you and David finally made it to the pews.

“I don’t think I can do much to help on account of…” Dan started…

You and David both practically shouted, “It’s fine… we got it!” Cutting off Dan and what you assumed would be a story about more beheaded pets or babies born without faces…

Dan just smiled, “Hmmm well have you all got any children?”

“Uh yes, we have three,” you managed to grunt as you helped lower one of the upright pews to the ground and helped David carry it to the back of the Uhaul…

“You sure you got this?” David whispered…

“YES… just go!” You said.

“Well that’s nice,” Dan said…

“Yeah my first three kids were pretty healthy… it was after that when they weren’t so healthy anymore… but like I said… it’s all in the plan…”

You were expecting another onslaught of horrific stories but Dan stopped and asked how old your kids were…

Your arm was throbbing with each labored step and the weight of the pews… you knew that you were going to pay for this… and you weren’t talking about the $75 dollars you had given Dan, but rather the stabbing pain that was shooting down your bicep and up into your neck and shoulder blade… the only thing that kept you going was knowing that your head, unlike that of his dying wife’s beloved dog, was still intact and that your heart was right where it should be and that you needed to get the fuck out of there before another onslaught of horrific “Lord’s plan” stories came up… and if that meant that your tendon might sever so be it… as long as you made it into the Uhaul first and out of earshot of Dan’s horrific stories.

“We have an 11 year old, a nine year old, and an almost eight year old…” you said straining as you dropped the pew to the Uhaul’s diamond plate floor.

“Ah… that’s nice… I remember those days. That was before my wife got sick…”

You and David both looked at each other and without saying a word somehow managed to go even faster than you thought you could… practically running the last pew up into the Uhaul at break neck… er arm speed.

“Yup… those were the days! I think that’s right about when we adopted the first baby…”

“Uh huh…” you grunted from inside the truck, practically dropping the last pew onto David’s foot, your arm finally giving out in a surge of pain… yet you were thankful that it had held out through moving all of the pews… the Lord’s plan you’d venture to guess…

“Huh… speaking of kids… you want these three chairs? Most of our grandkids are grown and the ones that are confined to their beds will never be able to use them anyway… well isn’t that funny… I’ve got exactly three chairs… I was going to throw them out too… because my wife wants this storage unit cleared out before she dies and all… and well look at that… you’ve got three kids… if that’s not the Lord looking out for us then I don’t know what is!”

Probably not your dog’s head being torn off by a tractor you thought…

“Ummm sure… that’s fine… thank you. I’m sure the kids will love them.”

“Oh I’m sure they will too. I bet my wife would have loved to see these chairs all finished up but those grandbabies of ours can’t sit in chairs with the feeding tubes and heart monitors so I guess it’s just as well…”

“Well Dan… it was a pleasure but we’ve really got to run… “ said David shoving his outstretched hand to Dan before he could go off on another tangent…

“Oh… yes… thank you… it was nice meeting you both! And I appreciate you all helping me get some of this stuff out of here… my wife will appreciate it too though at this point she’s too sick to get out here…“

“Ok well bye Dan… thanks again!” You said practically running to the truck.

You could hear David slam the Uhaul’s pull down door shut and latch it into place as you made it to the passenger side door.

You did your best to clamber up into the high seat with your fucked up arm as the driver’s side door flew open and David practically jumped into the truck.

You hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot when you and David both turned to look at each other…

“What the fuck just happened back there?” You said, as you watched Dan waving in the rearview mirror… His jacket was wide open and you were able to read his shirt, “GOD: The Man With A Plan”

“You tell me Vaness… you tell me!”

“I mean… I think that’s one of the funniest things that’s ever happened to me to be honest but also none of it was funny if that makes sense…”

“Situational humor I guess?”

“Can you imagine… his fucking dog’s head got ripped off by a combine harvester and that wasn’t even the worst of it…”

“The Lord’s plan…”

And you both laughed your asses off while feeling really weird for laughing… on account of the whole brain hole baby and dying wife and dead pets thing… which wasn’t even the half of it.

The further you got from Dan’s storage unit the more sane the day became. David dropped in to the Amish sawmill and ordered 207 linear feet of baseboard wood for the basement, while you opted to sit in the truck. When you made it home and your arm was screaming as you tried to help pull the pews out of the Uhaul your town’s mayor showed up in his nice work clothes and helped bring your pews into your 131 year old, 7,000 square foot church that you bought sight unseen… because clearly this entire journey was weird as fuck and that was the only logical conclusion to the day: the town’s mayor helping move pews into an atheist’s house which wasn’t a house at all but rather a church … also you were really grateful that the mayor was a pretty quiet guy and didn’t have any headless pet stories.

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The pews and two of the three chairs Dan gave us…