“Reverend, come quick,” Lloyd Saunders, the lately reliable church bell ringer hollered into the dangerously cluttered church office. “It’s Gloria, from the Grubby Cauldron.”
Dropping a typed draft of a sermon focusing upon the sinful nature of temptation onto his mahogany desk, the tall lanky minister rose from his overstuffed black leather chair. Quickly, he bolted towards the door. His surprised wide-eyed wife, Denise, remained behind, watching her frocked husband move in haste. She sat speechless.
“What is it?” Rev. Paul Purpose blurted to Lloyd as they rushed past the ornate chapel decorated with the finest stained glass windows north of Minneapolis. Lloyd had spoken so rapidly that the good minister had trouble understanding.
“It’s bad. Real bad,” Lloyd repeated, gritting his big yellow teeth. He trailed behind the youthful minister. “Gloria is eating sausages.”
Abruptly stopping, Rev. Purpose’s dark eyes narrowed as his face wildly contorted. “She’s eating meat?”
“By golly, I’d say she’s eating meat. Sausages stacked as high as Mt. Rushmore on her plate. And it’s worse. She’s doused them with maple syrup.”
Had it been any other person in the community wolfing down a mountain of sausages, Paul Purpose would have discarded the information as ridiculous, inconsequential. But Gloria, an avowed vegetarian?
“She must be flipping out,” Lloyd opined, rushing again to keep up to the minister who suddenly lunged forward, breaking into a run. “Flipping out at the V.F.W.’s annual pancake feed.”
(V.F.W. stands for Veterans of Foreign War. A local clubhouse straddles the boundaries of Dalton Springs and neighboring Brightan, on the north end of Raven Lake, in Hobnar County. Each year, the V.F.W. members host a pancake feed, with sausages served on the side.)
© 2006 by author. All rights reserved.
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