Perry Ray Pruitt was a big, good-looking young man with a slightly lost expression on his face. Tolliver was rambling on, gushing approval and occasionally stopping, exasperated, as the hammering of Sammy fixing the baseboard right outside the door came through the wall. Sammy was having fun and making a good deal of unnecessary noise on purpose, pounding extra loud whenever Tolliver was speaking and staring at him blankly when he came out to stop the noise. Noise? he thought innocently. I'm deaf; I don't understand what noise is. He smiled pleasantly as the committee and the new minister trooped out to have a look at the new baptismal font, and kept pounding, measuring and fixing when Tolliver and his friend Percy Queen, a dour-faced fellow, came back in, Percy complaining about Pruitt's bad grammar.
"He's perfect, I tell you," Tolliver said, not bothering to lower his voice much since it was only Sammy. "Not the type to ponder insurance reports much."
"Reverend Driscoll was getting suspicious before he retired," his friend replied.
"It's an act of Providence, I tell you."
"Helping yourself to the church's insurance fund is an act of larceny, Tolliver, not Providence!"
The years had taught Sammy not to react, but he was listening for all he was worth.
"Hey, you don't trust me?" Tolliver said.
"How can I when I don't even trust myself? I'm the one not sending in the premium papers to my underwriters. You're the one losing it on one bum deal after another!"
"What are friends for, Percy?"
"For sharing a jail cell, maybe."
Tolliver laughed. "Just relax. We'll put it back with interest. We've gone a hundred years without trouble."
"The church is only eighty-seven years old, Tolliver."
"See? We've got thirteen years grace period!"
Percy sighed. "I am in the insurance business, not the numbers racket! We've got to pay the premium!"
Tolliver just laughed again and led Percy out, leaving Sammy staring after them. Why wasn't he surprised that that was what Tolliver was up to?
Something else was going on at the church, too. That evening he saw two of Thacker's sons measuring the new baptismal font, muttering about whether it would all fit and how the timing had to be right. And one of them, Abraham, quoted, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."
The other, Isaac, laughed and responded, "Well thought."
Two trash haulers staging Shakespeare at the baptismal font of Barrington Church? Just a little thing, probably, but it struck Sammy that something peculiar was going on.
Perry Ray Pruitt gave his first sermon, losing his place occasionally, misquoting a verse, and not gaining any new converts to be baptized. Later, as Sammy picked up all the bulletins and gum wrappers and hair ribbons left after the service, he saw Perry sitting dejectedly on the side of the baptismal font, floating paper boats in the water. He went over and sat next to him, smiling at him in a friendly fashion.
"You're Sammy Ayers, aren't you? I hear you've kind of caught off on some of the people here." He sighed. "So have I." Sammy was easy to talk to; for one thing, he was deaf, so you could say anything, and for another he looked at you as if he cared. "The great Reverend Perry Ray Pruitt," he said with a bitter laugh, "with the call of God on his life. I never heard a call. It was my mother who heard the call. You can tell. You surely can tell."
Sammy continued staring at the paper boats in the water, wishing he could do something for Perry. He was used to fixing things, and sometimes he wanted to fix people's problems, too. The things he heard sometimes made his heart bleed for people.
Perry stared up at the ceiling. "Oh, God, give me a sign! If You've really called me, give me a sign or let me go! Just let me go."
Sammy was still thinking about that the next Saturday when he went into Lucille's Kitchen for breakfast.
"Mornin', Sammy," Lucille waved at him. "You want One or Two today?"
Sammy held up four fingers.
"Four? Different for once. The one Saturday you sleep in past seven, Norm decides to take off on one of his fishing trips. I don't see why he can't take you along, but I figure a body's entitled to some privacy. You know, he figures you've done more things for more people in this town than anybody since the town was founded." She smiled at him. "You're good for Norm, you know? I could see right away he was going to hang on to you like his life depended on it. He woulda retired and gone fishing a long time ago if it weren't for you—and your Aunt Lucille." She gave him his plate of food, and he reached across the counter and gently tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, a tender look on his face. She patted his hand. "You could say we're family, I guess."
It wasn't a fishing trip. They never had been. For years Norm had been traveling on the bus up and down the routes he figured Sammy and his mom might have taken, looking for some sign of Ellen Ayers. And now he'd found it. A police inspector showed him the site where the unidentified body of a woman had been found years ago, expressing his gladness that they could now get a proper headstone for her. The man who'd done it had been caught and had died in jail. Norm shook his head.
"She stepped off that bus to stretch her legs, have a drink, intending to get back on. She had some unfinished business at the end of the line…"