Peoples' [sic] Vineyard Rock

I. Who We Weren't

Well, there was Charlie.  Wide-eyed, tongue-tied, always eager to please.  He came about every week and liked to bring in Pillsbury cookies he'd baked himself.  More often than not, burned at the edges or raw in the middle.  Either way, he always seemed pleased with himself and expected you to be pleased, too.  When he was indignant, he'd remind you how the guidance counsellor once told him he had permission to just be himself.   The house church on his street had a court order keeping him at least fifty feet away.  So, he'd started with us. 

There was Shirley, who liked to make sure everything was all squared away.  Including where everyone parked in the broken-up lot and where they sat in the folding chairs.  She wanted the tall ones at the back.  She'd say it was because of the accident when she was sixteen.  She'd tell you again how she collects nativities and would show you pictures on what must have been the last Windows phone in the universe.  No one knew what would happen if she ever, say, lost the charging cord or something.  She'd sometimes bring along her boarder– a college student in the seventh year of his undergrad who liked to go by the name "Thirteen Leviticus".  He'd named himself after what he figured was probably an early leprosy protocol, and then tried to add mystery by reversing book and chapter.

There was Cliff, who shuffled along, and who choked up under the duress of making conversation and we had to pretend we knew what he meant.  When he got that panicky look in his eyes, then we knew we'd gotten him wrong again.  Sometimes, during the longer hymns, his nose would start bleeding.  Cliff would show up for a few weeks, then we wouldn't see him for maybe a couple of months before he'd start coming again for a while.  A few of us were like that.  Desperate to be born again when we could feel how wrong, and misshapen, and lost we were, backslidden when we couldn't stand being around others like ourselves.  This one time at sharing, we think he told us how he'd tried to love God by loving his neighbors.  Like you're supposed to.  But his neighbors had told him to 'beat it', and to stay out of their driveway from now on.  Now, he wasn't even allowed to say 'Hi' to them anymore.  At least he had found his way to us.

There was Mary, who had lost her family in a house-fire when she was twelve.  Probably started by her six-year-old brother, they'd said.  But, sometimes, with a smile so bright, and pure, crooked from the scarring, it would get at you again each time.  She always wore a bow in her hair.  She always carried the wooden cross he'd made for her – a couple of popsicle sticks glued together at sort-of right angles and dyed a deep royal purple with dried run-off from a Mr. Freeze.  One day they'd found her crying in the Girl's room.  Some hard stepping alpha had made a show of wiping imaginary germs off his hands after he'd been made to partner with her at ballroom in gym, and everyone had laughed, including the teacher.  By then, no one cared if she finished school.

Ernie, who always looked surprised.   The only one anyone ever knew who'd show up to church every week in a Meat Loaf tee-shirt.  In earnest - said it was his best shirt.  Nineteen-seventy-seven – 'Bat Out of Hell' tour.  When he was excited, he'd tell you again how they'd tested him in this one time as qualified to buy a membership in the local MENSA chapter run out of some guy's apartment over on Fourth.   And how fast he could eat a jumbo cheese dog.  Two minutes - flat.  He figured the Bible-study he was in before must have changed houses or times  on him or something and forgot to tell him.  He'd staked out someone's place all night to make sure, and a neighbor had called the police.  This one time, at the fellowship time afterwards, he famously pitched a hissy-fit when he couldn't figure out how to get into the new 'Chips Ahoy!' bag.  Charlie hadn't brought in homemade cookies that time and I guess the cookie bag problem hadn't been on the MENSA test.  This other time, when it was his turn to read something, he famously opened his Bible at random to someplace, must have been in the Book of Numbers, and proudly read off a bunch or verses about how many heads of goat and oxen and sheep were allotted to the tribes of Reuben and Dan and Asher, and how many ephas of flour were in the shewbread in the tabernacle and stuff, then snapped his Bible shut like he'd just read from the Sermon on the Mount while the rest of us just kind of sat there and looked at each other.  Sometimes when it was his turn if you looked at his shirt  it was like Meat Loaf was reading you the Bible. 

Amy, who always showed up in denim overalls, and who never said anything, and who always seemed scared somehow.  Someone would drop her off and pick her up again in this old duct-taped Pontiac G5 with a mismatched fender, and an aftermarket spoiler, and a throbbing bassline that made the plastic components rattle, and what sounded like no muffler.  This one time, Charlie went over to the car to try and say 'Hi' and to proffer a cookie, but the guy just blew a cloud of smoke of some kind at him, and told him to 'Go boink himself with his Bible with the other losers'.  We'd never seem him look so crestfallen.

Ivor, whose thing was to always show up in a bow tie.   Somehow, a different color every week.  He must of had hundreds of them, like that was his thing or something.  Weird, frizzy hair tortured into a severe, ferociously correct part, and a sort of made-up British or something accent that came and went depending on whether he remembered to put it on.  Even though he took the bus, he'd sometimes manage to bring his contrabassoon and would try to accompany us during the songs.  And sometimes even during the prayer and the responsive reading and the sermon, too.  He liked to tell everyone he was our "musical director".  This one time when he was challenged on his ability to keep up with the melody, he indignantly claimed he was adding what he said was a 'contrapuntal'.    After that everyone called him 'Contra Ivorpuntal'.  For that he has an earnest word conflation by Charlie to thank.  This one time he left the contrabassoon at the building we used, and the janitor put it in the dumpster.  Said he thought it might be the muffler from Amy's boyfriend's car.  Guess he figured it somehow had that GM Goodwrench look.  People would say every fellowship has an 'Ivor'.  'Law of Ivors' - a certain inevitability.   But then this one time Ivor famously asked, forgetting his faux-British accent, "What if there's a fellowship with none of me, does that mean another one has two?  Maybe it's one of me on average.  Like it's statis-stistical."   No winning with Ivor.

Then there was Stew, who liked to apologize for being 'inverted' or something, but everyone knew what he probably meant was 'introverted'.  His social anxiety extended to video games.  He famously admitted this one time he'd paid almost seventy-five bucks for something called 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' and then just wandered around the virtual world collecting plants and rocks and stuff because he was too shy to interact with any of the non-player characters.  He didn't want to look dumb in front of them.  What, with his inventory stuffed with every wolfsbane and belladonna sprig within miles.  What if they ask about that?  It was like he was afraid his Dell Latitude D500 laptop might pass some kind of social intelligence test against him.   Although he probably shouldn't have worried - it was the Intel 1300 hertz version.  Or maybe it was really that thing that went wrong growing up.  The need for an escape into a world of his own from the home where he said his dad didn't want him.  He blurted it all out this one time at sharing.  It was the first time anyone had actually shared anything like that at sharing, and the embarrassed silence that followed went on until finally someone could be heard gently breaking a little wind somewhere at the back, and then the group quickly moved on to someone else.

Eaoim, who was sometimes allowed to do the 'Welcoming and Announcements', even though we never had any visitors, and he had to make up fake announcements, so he'd feel included, and like he was allowed to pretend he was helping.  Whose nineteen-seventies professor parents gave him this weird, made-up faux neo-Celtic or something designer name with too many vowels per consonant to be masculine, that he figured had ruined his life.  He'd ended up becoming an Esperanto instructor at the local college.  This one time, at sharing, he famously went on for almost five minutes, with preemptive defensiveness, about how he could feel like he was in the kingdom of heaven any time he wanted just by singing certain Olivia Newton-John songs to himself, like 'Magic'.  And 'Xanadu'.  Or anyways mostly it works, he said.   The lady at Second Baptist had told him he might be better off in a spiritual home somewhere else.   So, we got him.  At least, he said, at Second Baptist at their fellowship time afterwards, they'd put out Nutter Butters and Oreos.  The ones with 'double stuff'.  So, it's not like it was a total write-off or anything.