A Rhinestone Button by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Author:Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Psychological, Fiction, General
ISBN: 067697550X
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2002-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Job sat in a metal folding chair near the front of the church, watching as Pastor Divine worked his way down the line of those who came forward to be slain in the Spirit. Penny took Job’s hand, her moist palm a thrill in his. She wore a pink blouse with a ruffle at the neck, and her hair was piled on her head in an elaborate do she might have worn to the prom. “Isn’t this exciting?” she said.

Ben slouched in his seat beside Job, kicking the underside of the empty chair in front of him. He was dressed much as Job was, in a Sunday shirt and clean jeans. Next to him Lilith chewed the side of her ring finger, her eyes on Jacob as he walked down the line with Pastor Divine, as one of the catchers for the slain.

Bountiful Harvest Church was an old Safeway building, with an S-shaped roof, and all the windows covered over in a light grey stucco. At the entrance to its parking lot there was a sign with an arrow that read Miracles This Way.

Inside, high above the crowd, fans churned the air. On the stage hung two childishly constructed fabric hangings depicted flames of fire, of renewal, of the Holy Spirit. Between these flames hung an unpainted wooden cross.

Pastor Jack Divine had had the crowd stand and sing for nearly two hours before finally announcing it was time for the anointing. The air was stifling, filled with the stench of men’s aftershave and sweat. A number of the women held their hands cupped in front of their chests in supplication, as if holding a bowl and waiting their turn for the bowl to be filled. Some held their hands higher, in the way small children ask, “Up?” One man wore an ambulance driver’s outfit. A woman in her forties danced in the aisles, twirling a bright pink flag tied to a stick.

Penny looked so happy, so certain, the excitement of meeting God rosy in her cheeks. It took Job’s breath away. To feel that excitement, that certainty. To know. He felt instead as though he couldn’t swim, the rescue rope was slipping from his grasp, and the boat was pulling anchor, leaving him adrift in this strange ocean. Pastor Divine had said there was no faking this; if God wanted you slain in the Spirit, he’d take you. If he didn’t think you were ready, if there was something standing in the way, some secret sin, some flaw in your Christian character, then he wouldn’t let the Holy Spirit flow. “You can fake a conversion experience,” Pastor Divine had said, “but you can’t fake a baptism in the Holy Spirit.”

As Divine came nearer, Penny took her place in the aisle. Divine touched her lightly on the forehead. She fell into Jacob’s arms, and he laid her gently on the floor.

“Why aren’t you standing?” said Pastor Divine, stepping up to Job’s seat. “Don’t you feel the call to be baptized in

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