Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story

- Text Size +

Miss Parker Goes To Church
Chapter 18


“I am not going to church!” Miss Parker stormed.
“Sure you are, Miss Parker. Barney and I don’t want to miss the pastor’s sermon to stay here and babysit you, and we cain’t leave a prisoner here alone. You look right pretty and presentable, so no need to worry on that account. Now, come on.”
“No.” She sat down and crossed her arms.
“Miss Parker! You stop actin’ like a baby! Now, get in that car!”
Caught by the unusual sharpness in Andy’s tone (maybe he was tired after a night spent on the cot in the back room with one eye open?), Broots and Sydney stared at him. Then they turned and stared at Miss Parker as she slowly got up, walked out of her cell, and got in the back of the squad car, sitting very stiff with crossed arms. Andy got in front next to Opie and Aunt Bee, and Broots and Sydney crowded into the back seat with Miss Parker. She leaned down and whispered in Broots’ ear.
“If you ever hint a word of this to anyone, I will make sure that—” Here she lowered her voice still further and hissed something that made him gulp.
“Hint a word of what, Miss Parker?” he squeaked. “I don’t know anything I would want to tell anyone.”
“You’d better not.” She glared over at Sydney, but he was staring out of the window, one hand at his chin, hiding, no doubt, his amused smirk. He was like that. It was where Jarod had got it, except Jarod didn’t bother to hide his smirks. Oh, she wanted to slap him—better, to shoot him—when he smirked at her like that. What business had a lab rat to be smirking at a Parker?
Opie had turned around in the front seat and was staring at her. Little brat with red hair. She glared at him.
“What are you looking at?”
“You. Gosh, you’re pretty. Want one?” He held out a bright PEZ dispenser with a cowboy hat on top.
Miss Parker snatched it from him. “Where did you get that?”
“Jarod left it for me when he left. Sure was nice.”
“Opie, did you bring that candy along?” his father asked. “You know you ain’t allowed candy at church.” He put his arm back over the seat and opened his large hand to Miss Parker. “Hand it over.” Reluctantly she put it in his hand. “You can have it back after church, Ope. Now, you kids behave yourself in church, you hear?”
Sydney’s shoulder seemed to be quivering. Opie made a face at Miss Parker, and she scowled back. On second thought, maybe she liked the kid.
Church was a white building with a steeple on top, conventional small-town church, not that Miss Parker had been to any. She was a little more used to Catholic mass, though she hadn’t been in years. People were milling around talking to each other. They greeted Andy heartily and gave her, Sydney, and Broots stares, though not unfriendly ones.
“Why, Sydney!” a dark-haired young woman exclaimed. “Are you still in town?”
“I am indeed. Let me introduce you to my colleagues, Miss Parker and Broots. This is Helen Crump, who was so kind as to loan us her newspapers.”
“How do you do, Miss Crump?” Miss Parker said with one of her warmest, most insincere smiles. “Thank you so much for the papers. I might have gone mad with boredom without them.”
“You’re welcome,” Helen answered, just as warmly and far more sincerely. “Andy runs a nice jail, but I’m sure it must still be rather dull. It’s nice that he let you come to church.”
“Oh, yes. Very nice. He knows how grateful I am.”
“I shore do,” Andy said with a raised eyebrow. “Now, why don’t y’all come have a seat. It’s about to start.”
Broots and Sydney both enjoyed the service far more than they had a right to. When everyone got up to sing from the hymnbook, they both sang along, Broots revealing more enthusiasm than tone and Sydney a surprisingly pleasant and harmonious voice. He tried to share his hymnbook with her, but she only gave him one of her withering stares. On her other side, Opie was just as enthusiastic and disharmonious as Broots, and Andy’s voice was astonishingly good, though she’d already known that.
Then the pastor got up to speak, and she prepared herself to be bored and possibly disgusted. But she wasn’t. Oh, he wasn’t that great of a speaker, but he might as well have been sitting inside the jail next to Otis the day before, listening to their conversation on purpose to write a sermon about it.
He talked about children. He talked about how they were small and weak and easily abused and led astray and how many rebuked children for being who they were. Then he read a passage she had never heard before. It went, “And they were bringing little children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’ And he took some of them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.”*
This, the pastor said, showed Jesus’ attitude toward children, and his followers ought to follow his example. Jesus even reserved some of his strongest words for people who did wrong by children: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”^
And which am I? Miss Parker wondered bleakly. One of the innocent little ones, or one of the monsters to be drowned in the sea? Can you be both?
It was clear Broots and Sydney were both thinking along the same lines as they left the church. Sydney had his blandest expression on, the one that said he was hiding, and Broots was nervous, whispering, “Guess we better watch out for those millstones at the Centre, huh? There’s a nice sea handy.”
Miss Parker ignored him and waited without a word for Andy and Aunt Bee to stop talking to people so she could go back to jail.

*The Gospel According to Mark 10:13-16
^The Gospel According to Matthew 18:5-6









You must login (register) to review.