The Maestro by T. Davis Bunn

Author:T. Davis Bunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441270955
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The sound of soft laughter drew me from bed the next morning. I slipped on a pair of trousers, stopped by the bathroom to wash my face, and entered the kitchen to find Amy wearing a simple cream-colored dress and Jake a coat and tie.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Amy said. “You’ve got just enough time for a cup of coffee before we head out for church.”

“Can’t keep the Lord waitin’,” Jake said. “Not on His day.”

Although the morning still held a springtime chill, sunlight poured from a cloudless sky. We traveled through silent tree-lined streets, the other cars moving at a lazy Sunday-morning pace. Amy sat in the front seat beside Jake, stroking languid fingers along the back of his neck and humming brief snatches of songs.

There was no church anywhere in sight when we pulled into a crowded parking lot and stopped. Families moving toward a set of open glass doors turned, smiled, and waved in the van’s direction.

“Where are we?”

“International School of Dusseldorf,” Jake replied. “Leastways, that’s what it is during the week. Sundays it belongs to the Lord.”

“It’s for children from first grade right up through high school,” Amy said. “Almost all the classes are in English.”

“Big hit with the expense-account crowd,” Jake said. “They’re ’bout the only ones who can afford it.”

“Tuition is over fifteen thousand dollars a year,” Amy said. “Executives with big multinational companies send their children here.”

“Congregation’s been looking for a permanent home,” Jake said. “But ’til we find what we need, this’ll do all right.”

“A prayer group used to meet near here eight or nine years ago,” Amy said. “They wrote the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and asked them to send a missionary-preacher. A year or so later they sent over Reverend Bill DeLay from Atlanta, Georgia. Since he arrived, the church has grown from a dozen couples to over four hundred people.”

We entered a noisy, unprepossessing hall, its walls constructed of unadorned concrete, the balcony railings and ceiling of steel siding. Light filtered in through a filthy skylight, augmented by rows of naked bulbs with metal shades. Creaky folding chairs were being scraped across the floor and set into place. I allowed Amy and Jake to lead me toward the front, then slid into the indicated seat, enormously embarrassed to be there. I could not help but compare this to the church in Como, or even the one in my little village. I felt embarrassed for them all, to be forced to endure such conditions and call it a church.

The altar was a small rickety table covered by a simple white cloth; it held an open Bible, an old wooden cross, and two unlit candles in wooden holders. The minister’s podium was a battered music stand with a matchbook jammed under one leg to keep it level. Behind the minister’s place rose a makeshift stage; the stage-curtains were strips of old sheets sewn together with multicolored thread, drawn back and held open with masking tape. The backdrop was a crude painting, obviously done by very young children, of a man on a horse.

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