The Prayer List

             Horace Lundsford was doing just fine until Gracie Rodgers reported his name on a prayer list. Shortly thereafter, things fell apart. The unfortunate thing was that he didn’t even know he was on it until the calls started. Prayer lists originate in church on Sunday morning and Horace didn’t spend Sunday mornings in church although his wife, Sarah, did. That had everything to do with it, he would understand much later.

            The first to call, while he was finishing a breakfast that he had cooked for himself, was the oldest Thorton girl, the nosey one. Well they were both nosey but this one had elevated it into an art form.

            “It’s Carlota,” she said though it wasn’t necessary. She had this snorting sound that she made when she breathed. To him, when she really got excited, it sounded like a pig trying to read scriptures. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was one of the many reasons he didn’t attend church.

            “Sarah’s not home,” he said, hoping to head off even a short conversation.

            “It’s you I wanted,” she said. “I called to talk to you.”

            Horace remained perfectly quiet, the way a child who has broken something will, hoping in that instant that the disastrous thing didn’t happen, but knowing against that hope, that it did.

            “Did you hear me?” she said.

            “Sure I heard you. What’s up?” His mind inventoried his collection of tools, believing that must be why she called: to borrow something. He began to weed out the most precious of them, the ones he wouldn’t part with, from the ones he might let her use.

            “You tell me,” she said. Just like that, “You tell me.”

            What the hell was that supposed to mean?

            “Tell you what?”

            “Why I need to pray for you.”

            “I don’t need you to pray for me.”

            “Then why, tell me, is your name on a prayer list, big as the state capitol building, right there in the Armistead County Informer?”

            “The what?”

            “The paper. Gracie Rodgers put in the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church news that you are on the prayer list,” she drew a breath and snorted. “And I need to know what kind of troubles you got.”

            “I don’t have any troubles.”

            “You got to have troubles or your name wouldn’t be on the prayer list.”

            “I’m tellin’ you I ain’t got no troubles and you can keep your prayers to yourself.”

            But, like a tree planted by the waters, she stood firm. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

            “A what?” He could see his face in the large hall mirror and it was growing red like there was a fire lit somewhere deep within it—a volcanic fire that rested directly on top of an explosion.

            “Are you and Sarah having trouble?” She snorted again and sounded proud of her own nerve.

            “What?”

            “Trouble. Are you two having, you know, marital problems?”

            “Goddamn it, who told you that?”

            “If you are going to blaspheme the Savior, I shall refuse to pray for you.” Snort.

            “Well don’t then!” He crashed the phone’s receiver into its cradle so hard that a piece of plastic detached and shot from it.

            “Sarah!” he yelled, then remembered that she was visiting her mother in Dallas County.

            Before he could think, the phone rang again. It was Ida Covington.

            “Is it cancer, Horace?”

            “Is what cancer?” he said. Then he remembered.

            “My cousin had it and he didn’t live but six months. And he had two churches praying for him.”

            “Your cousin?”

            “Uncle Fred’s oldest son, Chester. But Horace, it was the most wonderful thing. He surrendered his soul to Jesus just before he died and he’s in heaven right now. Not a doubt in my mind but what he is praying for you.”

“Jesus,” Horace said aloud.

“Yes, Jesus. Oh Horace, if you coulda just seen that smile on his face layin’ there in that coffin. Why you…”

            “Ida,” he said and he said it loud so she would pay attention.

            “Yes Horace.”

            “Get off this damn telephone,” and he slammed the receiver again and another piece of plastic flew away and bounced across the floor. He looked at his hand. It was shaking. As soon as the fact settled upon him, the phone rang again.

            “Shit,” he said. Then “Hello.”

            “Horace, if you need money…” It was his brother.

            “I don’t need any money,” he said, this time quietly, like he was expecting the call.

            “Don’t let foolish pride keep you from seeking help from those who love you,” his brother said.

            “I don’t need money,” he said. “But I’m touched that you offered.”

            “Oh, I couldn’t help you,” his brother said. “No, no, not at all. I just wanted to remind you of what the scriptures say: ‘Pride goeth before the fall.’ Don’t be prideful, Horace.”

            He placed the receiver gently in its cradle this time. Before he could leave the room, three more people called. Mostly, they were just nosing around, except for a nephew asking what would become of his tools if something dreadful happened to him. Pressure mounted in this head. Each call added to it as if someone was pumping air into his brain.

He reached for his coat and was going to go outside, away from the kitchen and the phone.

It beat him, though. The ring caught him just as he reached the door. He turned and stared at it, hoping it would stop. It rang louder.

            “It’ll just follow me outside,” he said to himself. He flung the coat across a chair so hard that it knocked the chair over and it slid into the kitchen cabinets. He snatched the receiver from the cradle and yelled a hello into it. It was Gracie Rodgers. She started to say something, but he cut her off. The whole stupid, ridiculous, malevolent monster of a morning erupted deep within him.

            “Gracie, tell me one thing,” he said calmly but with the force of far away thunder.

            “What’s that, Horace?”

            “Why, tell me why, in goddamn hell is my name on a moth… on a…,” he was having  difficulty breathing now, but he managed to yell, “On a stinking prayer list?”

            “Well Horace, if you must know, and I wish you could ask it a little nicer, Sarah said you have a problem with your temper.”