CHAPTER 8

JAKE MEETS LENNY LAKE

At the time I met Mary Gold, I had become a religious skeptic, but not a spiritual skeptic. I have always believed in God, but I haven’t always known what to believe.  As a boy, I started out Catholic, but when I was around nine or ten my parents joined a Fundamentalist Protestant church.  I attended this church until my embarrassing incident with the Baumgartner family.  

Once my poor judgement became known, I was too humiliated to attend our church any longer. In the community though, specifically among my peers, the rumor was that Mr. Baumgartner caught his daughter and me in the act of intimacy.

Although this was not true, I did nothing at the time to correct the misconception. I figured I would let Heather do that. But for some reason she didn’t! So rather than keep a stoic silence with my friends, I did a little embellishing. Which means, the truth is I lied.

I now admit this to my shame, but I was eighteen and my buddies viewed me as some type of hero. This gossip also made me desirable to the undesirable class of female for some reason. The kind of girl you wouldn’t take home to meet your mother. So I tried to keep my distance. But I also kept a condom in my wallet in case the mood and opportunity coincided. Thankfully it didn’t.

The biggest surprise was Heather herself. She had been cold and hostile toward me after the incident, which was understandable. What I didn’t understand was her not setting the record straight herself. Did she still like me? We had even expressed loving each other several times. Would she still see me in secret despite risking the wrath of her father?

I had to find out. So I approached her when I saw her alone at her locker. “Hi Heather, can we talk for a minute?” I meekly asked.

“I can’t talk to you,” she replied cooly, but didn’t walk away. She just stood there hugging her notebooks. Her face was a blank mask as she gazed steadily into my eyes. Given what had happened, my toes curled. But she wasn’t mad, she didn’t appear sad, nor did she seem glad that I wanted to talk to her. She just waited on my next words, even though she declared she couldn’t talk to me.

“How come…” I began before pausing briefly. “You haven’t set the record straight? I mean… You know what people are saying.”

She shrugged. We had been a couple for two years. Maybe she wanted people to think she wasn’t… a what? A prude? A religious zealot? Or maybe she wanted people to think she was just one of the girls having fun with her boyfriend? “Why haven’t you?” she asked.

Now I shrugged. “I guess, since I’m an outcast at our church, I want them to think we, um, well, you know.”

I noticed her jaw tighten. “Maybe I should set the record straight then.”

I nodded. “If you do, I’ll acknowledge the truth.”

Now I noticed a little smile play at the corners of her mouth. Then to my surprise, she winked and began to walk away. I caught her by the hand, stopping her. I noticed we had gained a subtle audience, a mix of her friends and mine who didn’t hide their interest, but respectfully kept their distance. I spoke with my voice low. “Heather, if your parents hadn’t come home, would you have…?”

“You’ll never know, will you?” she replied with a coy smile.

“When I told you I loved you, I meant it,” I said.

“Me too,” she replied matter of fact. However, her face was a blank mask once again. But she did give me a quick kiss on the lips before walking out of my life forever. That kiss only added to the gossip.

In the months before Mary Gold and I started seeing each other, Heather was on my mind quite a bit. Two things played over and over in my mind. When she said “can’t” talk to you rather than ‘didn’t want to.’ Also, “you’ll never know.”

Ultimately, I’m glad how things turned out. Mary Gold is much better suited for me than Heather would have been. Yet when I found out how Heather’s life turned out, I once again felt guilt about the incident and the role I might have played.

Yet strangely, that would mean I would have ended up with Heather rather than Mary Gold. I would also have been a part of the rigid church we grew up in, rather than the Spirit filled church Mary Gold introduced me to. I’ll never forget that first day going to worship service with my future wife.

Mary Gold’s church was a quaint brick structure near downtown Cedar Rapids.  She was right about the members. Although she warned me there were some bad apples in her congregation,  I was truly amazed with the many relaxed, friendly people.  Even when I met Leonard Lake, he was pleasant and charming.  Mary and I were chatting casually with a pleasant, elderly couple when Lenny and his wife approached us.

“Well, hello Mary,” Lenny said, grabbing her hand and giving it several quick pumps.

I instantly noticed that Mary Gold’s smile went from bright and genuine to forced.

“Hello, Lenny,” she said.  Then she turned to Lenny’s wife and shook her hand. “Hello, Delores.”

Delores reminded me of someone that might have attended my previous church. She was a handsome woman with short blonde hair and close set blue eyes. But her sharp facial features tapered to a mouth that looked like it had bit into a lemon, and her eyes scanned about critically.

Lenny had slicked back salt and pepper hair, intense brown eyes, and a bulbous nose, above a smarmy grin. “So who’s your strong looking male companion?” Lenny asked Mary Gold.

What an odd choice of words, I thought.  He looked at me like he had an ulterior motive, and I believe he did. He gazed into my eyes, like a used car salesman longing to make the sale.

“This is Jake Weston,” Mary Gold told the Lake’s.

“Nice to meet you, Jake,” Delores said, eyeing me skeptically, then glancing at Mary Gold. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

Mary Gold looked startled. “Oh, he’s not my boyfriend. I mean he’s a friend and he’s a boy.  Well actually he’s a man, but he’s not, you know, my boyfriend so to speak. But we are friends! You know, platonically speaking.”

Delores looked relieved and I felt a little irritated.

“Glad to meet you, Jake,” Lenny said, shaking my hand.  He held it about ten seconds too long and almost seemed to pull me toward himself.

“Nice to meet you both,” I said.

“How are you doing?”

“Good, how about you?”

“I’m doing fantastic, other than a bit of hemorrhoidal itch,” Lenny said with a wink and a chuckle.

Delores pursed her lips even more if possible and frowned. Mary Gold’s eyes widened in mild shock and her mouth gaped. I was a little taken aback but laughed none the less.

“So what do you do, Jake?” Lenny wanted to know.

I told him my plans, and he told me about his produce business.

“I could use a good part time driver and laborer,” Lenny said.

I nodded. “Yeah, I might be interested.”

I glanced at Mary Gold and then had to do a double take.  She was staring at me with wide, straining eyes with a frozen smile on her face.  She almost appeared to be shaking her head, even though it was perfectly still.  Later she advised me not to work for Lenny. She said that she knew of a couple people from church that had worked for him, and he was completely different from how he was at church.  At church he appeared a cheerful, loving Christian.  At his business he was a greedy tyrant.

But the set up that Lenny was offering seemed like it would work well for me until I was full time at UPS.  I assured Mary Gold that my previous church experience would have prepared me to deal with Lenny.  At least I was partially right.

At the start of the church service, the Pastor read some announcements.  Lenny Lake read a few Bible passages, and then Lenny, the Pastor, and another man knelt in front of the congregation to lead in an opening prayer.  I noticed Delores trying to signal Lenny about something. It looked like she was making a zipping gesture. Then I noticed Lenny fly was wide open. He seemed to not understand what his wife was communicating. But I was wrong.

We all knelt, bowed our heads, and prayed.  When the prayer was over, we sat back in the pews.  I was barely seated when I noticed Lenny waddling and stumbling around the podium. Apparently when heads were bowed during the prayer, Lenny had zipped his necktie into his pants. Snickering and then laughter erupted all around us.  I contributed to this amusement to the point that tears leaked from my eyes and my stomach hurt.

That was my first encounter with Lenny Lake. Fortunately the rest of the day was uneventful.  The Pastor’s sermon dealt with the subject of hellfire, and he gave a lot of scriptural evidence that there is no eternally burning hell. He coupled this with the state of the dead, turning us to numerous Bible verses as well.

He pointed out that when a person dies, it is basically like being asleep until the resurrection at Jesus’s second coming.  I was fascinated by his sermon, because the thought of a loving God burning people someplace forever had always troubled and confused me.  To learn that hellfire was an event rather than a place made better sense.  I now saw it as similar to the flood during Noah’s time, only the earth would be destroyed by fire rather than water.

I found out later that he was inspired to speak on that subject that day for my benefit. Apparently, Mary Gold had told him that I was coming that day and she knew from our conversations that the topic of hellfire troubled me.  I had heard so many fire and brimstone sermons that she was having a hard time convincing me that I was misguided. But between her teachings and this powerful sermon, I was beginning to see the light.

Mary Gold and I went out to dinner that night.  There was nothing of significance to report.  We even just shook hands at the end of the evening.  From this point on, she and I would become best of friends. We seemed to put romance on hold, even as it simmered in the back of our minds.  But things would change in nine months on her twenty-first birthday as a matter of fact.  It wasn’t without a huge, uncomfortable wrinkle that was unknown to me in the moment.

I had only worked at Lake Produce a couple days when I noticed that Lon had the biggest coffee mug I had ever seen. Lon had sent Mervin on an errand to buy some jugs of bleach, and he and I were alone. In order to make conversation with the rather quiet leader of the sprout room, I commented on his coffee mug.

“It actually holds a pot of coffee,” he told me.

“I believe it.”

“I drink at least two, sometimes three a day.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not. I used to drink four a day. But I cut back, I was too jittery.”

“Imagine that. No wonder you make so many trips to the restroom.”

“Well, I need it,” he explained. “I was in a really bad accident 15 years ago. I was in a coma for almost a week. I made a good recovery, but ever since I’ve been prone to seizures. I have to take this medication that makes me kind of sleepy. So this coffee keeps me going.”

“What happened with the accident?”

“I was hit head on by a drunk driver on a highway south of town,” he told me. “The funny thing was I lived outside of Cedar Rapids, and was driving into town to meet some friends. When I was getting ready at home and brushing my hair, I heard a woman’s voice say ‘don’t go.’ I was alone and thought I was hearing things, so I ignored it. Then I heard it again even louder. This time it creeped me out. But instead of listening to it, I just left in a hurry.”

“Did you hear it after you left?”

“Nope. But if I ever hear that voice warning me again, I’ll obey. You see, that was the last thing I remember about that night, leaving my bedroom in a hurry. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.”

“Wow!”

Lon reached for his bucket of coffee and took a swig. No sooner had he set it down, when the door burst open. Mervin seemed to fly into the room. He heaved one of the jugs of bleach onto the table with such gusto, he lost his grip. The wayward jug bounced and rolled right into Lon’s tank of coffee. It shot to the floor, the entire contents spilling.

“Oops,” Mervin replied as he looked at the mess with hands on his hips. Lon gazed at him both patiently and menacingly. “Do you want me to go to the convenience store and refill it?”

“I’ll do it,” Lon said. Then imitating Laurel and Hardy, he continued. “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”