Read Online Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore - Free Book Online Page B

summer. I had learned my lesson, and I think he had learned one, too. Leaving this town was not going to be something I needed his permission to do. It was going to be my choice, and my journey had already begun.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Preparing the Lord's Table for the Preacher and His Girlfriend
    S unday lunch was a sacred time at our house. It came with a certainty and sameness that was wonderfully comforting. Daddy would get up before daybreak and read over his sermon, spend a few quiet moments with the Lord, and then pull a chuck roast out of the refrigerator. He'd pat it with butter and brown it in a frying pan. The smell of the meat cooking was our wake-up call, an omen of sorts that this Sunday was going to be just like all the others that had come before it.
    Any disruption to our Sunday routine, like when Buster Black finally died of old age and Daddy had to leave right after church to officiate at his burial behind Mr. Naylor's garage, always left me feeling kind of edgy, like something was seriously wrong with the world but nobody was going to dare tell me—the way I felt when Mama died.
    But when things were as they should be, Daddy would lift the chuck roast out of the frying pan and put it in the Crock-Pot about ten minutes after seven. He bought that Crock-Pot at the Dollar General Store right after he and Mama got married. Mr. Tucker told Daddy that it was the newest concept in slow cooking and that every family needed one, and being a good husband, Daddy said he wasn't leaving the store without it. Ours was an awkward shade of green. Daddy called it avocado, which didn't mean much to me since I hadn't ever seen an avocado.
    Daddy said the Crock-Pot must have been made by a churchgoing, Christian man because it was the only way a preacher could sermonize and cook all at the same time. Even when Mama was alive, Daddy always cooked Sunday lunch. He said the good Lord and a hardworking woman both needed a day off. He added four big potatoes, cut into chunks, one finely chopped onion, a bunch of baby carrots, and a bag of Green Giant frozen peas. Then he'd add a cup of water and one cube of beef bouillon, turn the Crock-Pot on high, and put on his Sunday suit. By the time we got home, the whole house smelled of perfectly prepared chuck roast. It was a warm, friendly smell, and I just wanted to wrap myself in it completely. I knew this was the same smell that my mama had come home to every Sunday after listening to her husband preach.
    People were always begging us to come to their house for Sunday lunch. Apparently it was something of an honor to have the preacher share a meal at your table. But Daddy always respectfully declined their invitations, even Doctor Brother Bowden's. He said it was our special family time and that only praying over some poor soul about to depart this world and burying one that already had would cause him to miss it. Or at least until Miss Raines came to town.
    One Sunday, after Daddy had delivered a particularly loud, fist-pounding sermon about loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself, he came up to me and Martha Ann, and almost in a whisper, asked if either one of us would mind if Miss Raines joined us for lunch. We both looked at him, not knowing how to tell him that we minded a whole heck of a lot, and then said nothing. He asked again, and I finally mumbled some sort of reply, which he must have taken to mean that it was okay with Martha Ann and me, because the next thing I knew I was putting an extra placemat on the kitchen table.
    Our Sunday routine was suddenly changing, and I couldn't do anything about it. Our sacred family time was being sacrificed for an appetizing, young Sunday-school teacher who was unusually talented with a felt board.
    Daddy always sat at the head of the table, which long ago had been determined to be the end by the refrigerator because his arms were long enough to open the door without rising out of his seat. Martha Ann and I sat on either side of him,