Read Online Almost Friends by Philip Gulley - Free Book Online Page A

but don’t tell him.”
    Sam chuckled.
    “You can’t take Dale head-on, Sam. You got to come at him from behind. Wear him down. Make him want to be a Baptist.”
    That was a sweet thought—Dale Hinshaw joining the Baptist church.
    A barrage of protests met them as they entered the restaurant.
    “Took me the rest of the night to get back to sleep,” Stanley Farlow grumbled. “It’s my own church calling me and waking me up. Sixty-seven years I’ve been a member of that church and my parents before me, and you call and wake me up like that. You oughta be ashamed.”
    “Sorry about that,” Sam said. “Won’t happen again.”
    “Scared the missus half to death,” Harvey Muldock muttered. “She thought someone had died. Got her so nervous she couldn’t even fix my breakfast. Had to eat out this morning. Oughta send the church the bill, that’s what I should do. Makes a fella want to be a Methodist, getting treated like that.”
    “How about I buy you lunch, Harvey?” Sam offered. Harvey Muldock had given him a pastors’ discount on his last car, and Sam wanted to stay in his good graces.
    “What about me? You oughta buy my lunch too,” Stanley Farlow demanded.
    It occurred to Sam that maybe his father was right. He should have been a lawyer. Eight to five. Weekends off. Good pay. As for job security, as long as people bickered, lawyers had it made. Yes, he should have been a lawyer.
    He ate his lunch thinking about it. Three years of law school, pass the bar exam, and he’d be well-settled in his new profession by the age of fifty. No more Dale. Sundays off. It was something to think about, anyway.
    The remainder of the day passed uneventfully, which set him at ease—a dangerous condition for a minister. By bedtime, he was thoroughly relaxed, which made the impending calamity, when it broke loose in the wee hours of morning, all the more difficult to bear.

Nine
Some Deep Misfortune
    T hat night, as the grandfather clock in Sam and Barbara’s living room struck midnight, their phone rang.
    “Daggone that Dale anyway,” Sam cried out, leaping from his bed to answer the phone before it woke his children.
    He didn’t bother to say hello, just jabbed at the off button in a vain effort to end the call. Dale’s voice droned on, inviting him to worship at Harmony Friends Meeting. Beside himself with fury, Sam beat the telephone into its cradle repeatedly, trying to silence Dale’s bland preachments, to no avail.
    With a savage tug, he yanked the phone from the wall, stomped downstairs and across the kitchen, threw open the back door, and hurled the phone into the backyard.
    “Was that necessary?” Barbara asked, standing at the bottom of the stairs.
    Sam looked at her, crazy-eyed and maniacal. “He’s done it again. We told him not to call anymore, and he’s done it again.”
    Their kitchen phone rang. “Please don’t throw that phone away too. I’d like to have at least one phone in my house.”
    Sam snatched the phone from the kitchen wall. “Hello,” he barked.
    “Sam Gardner,” Mabel Morrison screeched into his ear, “not sixteen hours ago, you promised that nutcase would stop harassing me. Now you’ve gone and done—”
    Sam hung up, gently this time, and disconnected the phone from the wall jack. He slumped into a kitchen chair, his body aching from spent adrenaline and fury. “I can’t take it any longer. I’ve reached my limit. This is it. I’m quitting.”
    “Now, now, let’s go back to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning. A month from now, you and Frank will be laughing about this.”
    “No, I’m going to Dale’s house to cut his phone line.”
    “Don’t be silly. You can’t do that. Have another talk with him tomorrow. I’m sure it was just an accident.”
    He slept fitfully the rest of the night, finally falling into a deep sleep just before his alarm clock rang.
    That morning found him showered, shaved, and dressed, standing on Dale Hinshaw’s front porch,