VI – When Rachel was Worried About the Baby (and Her Husband Clogged the Toilet)

A Story for Anxious Times

Chapter 6

How do you start over again at forty-four? New state, new career, and alone, since the marriage you sought to save was cut short by the wife you’d wronged? For Randy, the answer lay in a group of people whom met in a brick building that used to house the Ironwood Telephone Company. That building wore a new moniker in the Cincinnati that Randy had arrived in: Redeemer Church.

The people there, Bo’s and Linda’s people, became Randy’s closest confidants and friends quickly. Part of it was the fact that Randy was an easy guy to like, especially now. He was big and warm and did not take his status in the social strata seriously at all, the last of which is an intrinsically disarming quality. But it was also the generous way the people of Redeemer treated a newcomer. They asked him questions and then listened intently, like Jerry had. They took him for coffee and paid. They showed him around Cincinnati (a city showing its age much more than Omaha had).

There is at this point no way of telling the story of Randy’s life without telling about these people. Which is exactly how God intended it. Starting with David.

David was the lead pastor of Redeemer Church. He was in his mid-forties, like Randy, but he seemed a little younger since he was in particularly good shape and also had a quick mind. In another life, he might have been a playwright, but there are no other lives, so he was a pastor. And a good one.

He was the only person in Randy’s day-to-day life who was taller than he was. David was 6”4, though not nearly as muscular as Randy. He had short, receding black hair, sitting year-by-year farther and farther above his simple black glasses. He also had six kids whom he wore well, and a dozen plain white t-shirts which he did not. David was a spiller, and when you drink your coffee black and wear your t-shirts white, being a spiller will add about five degrees of temperature to your slob thermometer. When it came to first impressions, David had a low-grade fever, somewhere between self-declared “professional blackjack player” and assistant manager at a generically named pawn shop. But when it comes to impressions, wisdom often lags a quarter-mile behind a man’s wardrobe, as John the Baptist exemplifies on one end of the bell curve and your typical well-dressed celebrity on the other. David struck you with his profound wisdom and sturdy heart before you were done wondering if any of the coffee had made it into his mouth. And it didn’t matter whether that conversation was about soccer or 70’s soul music or the nature of God.

David’s eccentric band of daily companions at the church building included an Administrative Pastor about fifteen years his senior, a pastoral intern, an assistant in her early sixties, Randy, who volunteered four days a week as a combination maintenance man and sounding board, and his own oldest daughter Melanie, recently graduated from a local Christian high school and taking a year off to decide what was next.

The Administrative Pastor had an amazingly subtle sense of humor, dry as the Mojave, and Randy, who was much more gregarious and childlike in his jokes, ate it up. He was almost always good for at least one Mel Brooks-reminiscent one-liner during the morning devotion in Pastor David’s office, at least when Randy was there for it. He always had a nice shirt buttoned up to the last button, and even though Randy was no longer dry cleaning his clothes, he admired it since he still had a soft spot for good dressers. This Administrative Pastor’s name was Terry Goldschmidt, and he had a very friendly wife named Colleen, who worked at a physician’s office as a medical assistant. The two of them had three grown daughters who were all members of the church.

Brandon, the pastoral intern, was Randy’s kind of guy, even the old Randy’s kind of guy. He was outgoing, loved sports, was able to joke about almost anything under the sun, and loved taking lunches at the Mexican place not far from Redeemer’s building. Real Mexican, too. Fresh chips fried every day and tacos al pastor Mexican.

Brandon was from across the Ohio River in Kentucky. He had the slightest twang in his accent, but his speech was also slower than most people’s, which somehow gave Randy the impression he was more Southern than he was. He dressed like Pastor David, especially once he saw that the man he was interning under found it acceptable to dress like it was Spring Break of your sophomore year in college. He had a scraggly beard, light brown like his unkempt short hair, and a wife who was expecting their first child.

Brandon’s office was a prima facie case in ordered chaos. There were two comic books open on the floor, surrounded by open copies of systematic theologies by William Shedd and Wayne Grudem, but despite their haphazard appearance they were all open to particular pages because he wanted to pick up where he’d left off in each. Namely, the gifts of the Spirit, when the Hulk first fought the Hunchback of Notre Dame in the sewers of Paris, when Aquaman’s adoptive father died, and the two natures of Christ. The fact that two involved the character of our world’s Maker and two involved cartoon men fighting other cartoon men (or fish) was indicated by the fact that the theology texts were underlined, while the comic books were resting mintly on their plastic protective sleeves. The swivel chair he’d pilfered form a conference room no one really ever used (back when the Ironwood Telephone Company had called the building home it had been the operator’s break room) was spun not towards his computer, on the wall the door was in, immediately to your left, nor facing the big window in the wall adjacent, which overlooked the tree-lined street sloping down towards the small business district of their neighborhood. A good view, actually. No, Brandon’s chair was spun haphazardly, facing the corner where his bookshelf was, a bookshelf having swallowed twice its recommended dosage.

Brandon had a stack of six to ten books on top, each shelf filled with titles lined up vertically and then having several books stacked one on top of the other in front of them. There were two steno pad notebooks, one black and one red, laying on the floor directly in front of the bookshelf. A hooded sweatshirt lay crumpled on the floor in between the swivel chair and the book corner, and so you might’ve thought at a glance that Brandon had turned away from his computer to eye the bookshelf for something he’d just thought of and realized he needed, then got up to go get it, and then mid-step spontaneously combusted. But the hole in the theory was that there were no pants or shoes there. Unless they were under the sweatshirt.

But before Randy had a chance to nudge the hoody with the toe of his Adidas, Brandon squeezed in behind him and into the office, calmly saying, “Cheers,” with his long, laid back mid-Dixie drawl.

Randy launched right into what he wanted, mainly because he really wanted it. “You want to go to Guadalajara?” he asked. And for some reason he expected Brandon to say no. If he’d had time to think about it, he’d have realized it was because Brandon had seemed angry at that morning’s devotion, and Brandon was not an angry young man. Opinionated, yes. But not angry.

And so Randy was delightfully surprised when almost immediately Brandon turned back to him, smiled lightly, and said, “Yeah.”

And even more delightfully surprised when he said, “I’ll buy.”

Diet Coke , three tacos al pastor, chips and hot salsa (not the mild that came as the default), and a single steak fajita. Randy was about as near to Heaven as he felt he could successfully climb without having to say goodbye to his loved ones. The fajita would be first, so he could eat the steak while it was still sizzling. He ate one piece right off the table skillet, then started laying the rest, along with the peppers and onions, into the hot flour tortilla.

Brandon had been gutsy. Neither of them had ever tried seafood at Guadalajara, but he’d felt like having something new and was willing to roll the dice. In front of him was a creamy white lobster enchilada. And he’d asked them to drizzle the ghost pepper sauce from the signature hot nacho dish on top of it. Randy actually grimaced when Brandon took the first bite. Lobster at a Mexican restaurant? With what was essentially acid layered on the top? But Brandon pounded the table with an open left palm and shouted “Whoo!” in pleasure. Which made Randy laugh, like about half of what Brandon said and did.

Randy had a seemingly unprompted image of Brandon in an irritable mood in Pastor David’s office that morning. So he asked him what was wrong. Brandon gave the Authorized Version of the male answer to that question: “Nothing” (Copyright, 4000 B.C.). Luckily for Randy this particular edition of the AV had explanatory notes at the bottom of the page. Brandon, after swallowing another bite of his lobster enchilada (which was already forcing his digestive tract to draw up terms of surrender) said, “It’s Rachel and the baby, man,” and then drank one half of his Sprite without coming up for air.

That was not at all what Randy had expected. For one, Brandon clearly had a happy and healthy marriage. He and his wife Rachel were all inside jokes and kisses goodbye and had read what felt like to Randy fourteen Lord of the Rings books together in the two years Randy had by this point been in Cincinnati and with Redeemer (it was actually just The Hobbit, the three Lord of the Rings books, The Silmarillion, and a book of Tolkien’s short stories). They seemed to be a unit, a shared living experience, as much as any couple Randy had ever known.

He had seen Brandon get miffed a handful of times over, in order, a Cincinnati Magazine cover story about a local megachurch pastor who did not seem to have much regard for the Bible, an argument online with someone about the inconsistencies of the 1990s cartoon “X-Men,” the disappearance from stores of a flavor of Mountain Dew he drank daily in amounts that would kill a small horse, and the lack of Christian evangelism in North Korea (brought on by a book he’d devoured in three days). So Randy thought that whatever had had Brandon giving terse, one-word answers this morning and looking like he was ready for his weigh-in as the undercard at a semi-pro mixed martial arts event at a local flea market had been related to theology, superheroes, or soda. He had not expected it to be about his marriage and baby.

“This sucker’s hot,” Brandon said in his typical understated, slow way of talking about his food. They’d had many lunches together at this point.

“Is something wrong with the baby?” Randy asked, guessing correctly. It was amazing how much better his intuition had gotten since he’d become a better listener.

Brandon nodded. He was the kind of young man who pretended almost nothing, which is to say that he was a very rare kind of young man.

“Yesterday we had our first ultrasound, and-” and here he took a bite, which Randy smiled at, knowing him well enough by now to know that that did not indicate in the slightest that Brandon loved his enchilada more than his wife and baby. It meant precisely one thing: Brandon was hungry. “There was some thickness at the back of his neck-” he smiled softly, his white teeth standing out against his scraggly light brown beard. “Yeah, I have a son.” He smiled bigger and looked up at the ceiling, taking in one of the colorful light fixtures up there and enjoying the fact that he’d just said something about their baby boy out loud. “But the doctor said this thickness,” he said, coming back to the topic at hand, “can indicate Down Syndrome. It’s a ‘risk factor’ is the way he put it.”

Oddly enough, Randy’s first sensation was a lot of pressure in his stomach, which would have surprised him if he’d considered it at all (he didn’t). And it would have made Brandon that much more grateful for his much older semi-daily lunch partner. A man’s body doesn’t lie about who and what he loves.

“We prayed out in the car, and we talked a lot on the way home. And we both agreed that the Lord works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. I mean, we really internalized that last night.” He paused only for a second, looking away. No bites, no inhaling his remaining half of Sprite (Randy made a mental note to flag the waitress when he next saw her). Randy realized with a shock that Brandon was trying not to cry. He could barely imagine this playful, opinionated, loyal bear cub of a young man crying. He’d never struck Randy as prone to big emotional ups and downs of any kind. (Having wrestled with his increasingly past but still familiar hurricanes of rage, Randy was good at knowing who was and who wasn’t likely to have a lot of emotional tectonic shifting under the surface.) But Randy also knew Brandon wasn’t trying to avoid tears out of embarrassment, but only because they would make it harder to talk.

“But then last night I saw she wasn’t in bed. It was maybe 2:00 AM. And I saw the bathroom light wasn’t on, so I knew she wasn’t-” he paused, then held up his hands and nodded his head forward like a turtle. Randy nodded, and waited for him to go on. Brandon smiled a little and said, “Pregnancy, you know?” And Randy returned the smile and nodded twice, silently, though he realized a second later he technically didn’t know, other than from TV and movies. But he decided the technicality wasn’t worth an interruption to correct. This conversation wasn’t about him.

“So I got out of bed and went out to the kitchen.” Randy had never been to Brandon’s house, but surmised from the fact that he didn’t say “down to the kitchen” that it was a ranch, and he was right. Again, it was startling how much better of a listener he was since he’d stopped merely waiting for his chance to speak. “And she was just sitting there.” Brandon suddenly looked so mournful and confused that Randy wanted to come over to his side of the booth and hug him. But Brandon wasn’t a hugger, so he started in on the first of his tacos and kept listening.

“I thought at first that she was going over a bill or something. She had her head kind of resting on one of her hands. But she wasn’t. She was crying. She was crying harder than I’ve ever seen anybody cry, Randy.” And whether this was literally true or not, Randy got the point. “I didn’t know what to do, man. I still don’t know what to do.” And he sat there then, without eating or speaking, looking first at Randy then down at the floor.

“My son,” he said again, but this time sad about something. Sad about Rachel.

Randy didn’t know what to say, either. So when the waitress came by, he asked for a to-go box and a to-go Sprite.

“No Sprite,” Brandon said quietly. “Let’s go get some Mountain Dew.”

Randy never figured out what to say. But it turned out just being his joyful and present friend was enough for Brandon to figure out what he had to say. We’ll cover that another time, but for now just know that luckily Brandon figured it out before the lobster enchilada with ghost pepper sauce elicited its final terms of surrender from his gut. It was at about 4:15 that the first meetings at the Appomattox Court House in his lower intestine ended, and all the troops had been evacuated by 4:45. But when the time came to rebuild the South, it was evident that Reconstruction would require a plumber.

There was a quarter-inch of standing water in the stall Brandon had occupied in the unfortunately unevenly floored old bathroom of Redeemer Church nee Ironwood Telephone Company. And when no amount of plunging would unclog the toilet, and the water, though mercifully shut off at the valve by Brandon once he realized how bad the situation was, was clearly seen to be seeping down the back walls of the bathroom, professional help was sought. And one plumber later Redeemer Church knew about their mild enough mold problem that needed to be remedied before it became a ghost pepper level mold problem. And thus that Tuesday the church began treatment, and after surveying the situation Pastor David decided to cancel Wednesday night service.

Which is how Randy was at Bo’s Coffee to unlock the door.

“I have no plans,” said the happy roofer, “on a Wednesday night for the first time in a while.” He took a sip of his own coffee, and Jesse Henderson realized he was giving him a chance to tell him why he’d been sitting out in front of the closed coffee shop in a suit and tie in the middle of the day, sobbing like a very young boy.

And Jesse would never have talked, just as he would never have screamed at the top of his lungs in his cubicle or walked down Johnstown Road to try a coffee shop he’d never heard of, if this hadn’t been the most desperate he’d ever felt. But as Brandon Coogan had once said over a lobster enchilada, the Lord works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. And as Jesus once said to an angry crowd, no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him, and the one who comes to Him He will never cast out.

So, Randy did not have plans that Wednesday night, and Jesse Henderson did do the fourth thing that afternoon that he never would have done on a less desperate day. And so only one Henderson man died on August thirteenth.

Jesse smiled grimly, and looked down at the counter in between him and the happy roofer. “Have you ever lost your wife and your career in the same stretch?”

Randy smiled less grimly. “Funny story.”