Wednesday night I showed up in a calf-length floral dress I had bought just for the occasion. I put my hair up and did my best to look like a good Big Box Mega Church Lady. I had been fretting all day about whether to go to the choir meeting. I tried to convince myself it was a bad idea. I told myself I wasn’t going while I got ready. Then I got in the car and drove down to the enormous parking lot. I checked my makeup one more time in the rear view mirror before I wobbled across the lot in my heels and pushed open the door to the choir room.
About twenty women were inside, all of them wearing jeans or dirty sweat pants, their greasy hair up in knots, their T-shirts too large but definitely T-shirts. I could not believe it. The women looked at me, sizing me up, the disapproval clear on their faces.
One of them said, just loud enough for me to hear, “Sometimes people come here looking for a man instead of wanting to serve the Lord through singing.” I stepped backward, planning to leave, but I bumped directly into Gabe. I smelled him before I turned around. He smelled like ambrosia and vanilla and I wanted to take a bite right out of him.
He smiled, a broad, friendly puppy dog smile. “Hiya,” he said, and he took both my hands in his. “I’m Gabe.”
“Lara.”
“Soprano or alto?”
“I can do low soprano, but I’m an alto.”
He winked. “Wonderful.” He was still holding my hands when he said, “Welcome to the Sonshine Singers.” He still wore the white turtleneck and pants. It must be nice to be a single man. He probably never changed his clothes. Or maybe he had a closet full of identical outfits for every occasion. He let go of my hands. A crowd of men filed into the room, followed by Caroline, still in her khaki pants and church shirt.
She bustled over and hugged me. She showed me where the altos stood, because the choir arranged itself into ghettoes based on vocal range. The women showed minimal interest in me, although Caroline’s presence seemed to keep the outright hostility at bay. Twice I saw Gabe steal a glance at me.
A thin little man with owlish glasses and a wreath of hair called for everyone’s attention, and he explained that we would be working on our Christmas Cantata, which gave us just over two months to prepare. He handed out folders of music, and as we shuffled them around to our groups he sat at a piano and started to play scales for warm up.
The door flew open. Pastor Nate stood on the other side, his unflappable hair and toothy smile practically inviting the surprised applause of the choir. He glided in and grinned while he shook hands with a number of the singers before resting his palm lightly on the piano. He asked the director what we were working on. I looked at my folder. “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”
Pastor Nate looked off into the distance, a dreamy smile on his face and said, “For years, this choir has served our congregation faithfully. And now I have another difficult service to ask of you.”
The choir director slammed his hands down on the piano and said, “Pastor Nate, I told you there’s not enough time. We’re learning the Christmas Cantata.”
Pastor Nate nodded, as if he hadn’t considered this. “I understand. I thought we could ask the fine people in your choir, however. Perhaps they would be willing to work extra hard to prepare when they hear about this amazing opportunity.”
Gabe asked, “What is it, Pastor Nate?”
Nate spread his hands and, with a dramatic flair he said, “A Halloween Cantata.”
The whole choir laughed, me included. Christmas Cantata: of course. Easter Cantata: sure. But Halloween Cantata? Who ever heard of such a thing? Most churches I was in never even said the word Halloween in the building if they could help it. One of the sopranos sniffed and said, “We could never learn the parts that quickly.”
Pastor Nate fixed her with his dazzling smile and said, “I have faith in you, Melinda.” The soprano flushed and looked away. “I have faith in all of you. For years we have allowed Halloween to be the province of monsters, ghosts and witches, a night of sugar-fueled revelry. But no longer. The time has come to take back the night.”
That same soprano, Melinda, said, “But what about the harvest party? The children love it!”
“Canceled,” Pastor Nate said. “We’ll replace the party with a full service. I will preach. You will sing. We’ll do a traditional service without making allowances for candy or costumes or pagan nonsense.” I could see the concern on several people’s faces.
One of the men said, “We’re supposed to tell our kids that instead of a party with candy they’re going to sit through a church service? That will never work.”
Pastor Nate never stopped smiling. “Pagans used to celebrate the harvest around this time of year. The church invented Halloween -- ‘hallowed evening’ -- to provide an alternative. We took their holiday away. But over time the pagans slowly took it back, so now we’re dressing as monsters in our own churches, celebrating their ungodly holiday here. They’ve kept the holy name and corrupted the practice. Ironically, the church took up the ‘harvest festival’ idea. So now the pagans celebrate their ritual with a Christian name and we celebrate their ritual with their pagan name. It’s an embarrassment to the church.”
One of the moms asked, “Can we at least give candy to the children? Or have a special children’s service?”
Pastor Nate scowled. “An embarrassment to the church,” he repeated. He slapped a folder onto the piano. “There’s a church called South Pine Evangelistic Wonders that has over twenty thousand members and they do this Halloween Cantata and we’re going to do it, too.”
One of the men came down and put his hand on the folder. “Pastor, you know we discussed this in the elder board meetings, and we can’t afford to do this thing, not the way you presented the budget. Television commercials and print ads and renting equipment from South Pine. And for what?”
“It’s an outreach,” Pastor Nate snapped, and he tugged at the sleeve of his suit. “South Pine had fifteen thousand people skip Halloween and come to their service.”
“But the elder board voted no.”
“Perhaps you’re forgetting that I started this church. I built it, brick by brick. I’m not going to let the elder board get in the way. You say it’s too expensive? Fine. We’ll fire the secretarial staff and cut our missionaries off. You say no one will come? I say if I preach to an empty auditorium, it will be a victory for the gospel. Have you forgotten when I started the church baseball outreach? Or the golf tournament to raise more money? Or when I invited the rodeo clowns or the professional wrestlers or when we stopped giving away food to the homeless and used that money for creating a coffee shop in the church? I am the head of this church and what I say goes.”
Gabe said, “Those are all ideas you took from other churches.”
Pastor Nate chopped the air with his hand. “They have it and I want it. End of discussion.” He pointed at the director. “Your job is on the line. If there is no choir at Halloween, then there will be no choir director once Halloween passes.” He swirled out of the room, leaving a shocked silence in his wake. The choir director began to pass out the Halloween folders.
The lead soprano crossed her arms and refused her folder. “I’m taking my kids out for Halloween. We already made plans.” She picked up her purse and walked out and, as if on cue, so did the other sopranos, half the altos and a third of the men.
Caroline leaned over and said, “The sopranos control this choir. They just vetoed Pastor Nate.”
The choir director leaned over the piano and put his head in his hands. I said, “Let’s just try to learn the music, maybe the sopranos will come back.”
“They won’t,” he said. “I’m better off using this time to find a new job.”
Gabe was flipping through the music. “Maybe we could re-write the soprano parts for the altos.” He stopped. “I don’t even see an alto part, it’s all soprano.”
The director groaned, but Gabe turned toward me, his face flushed and said with a grin, “Lara, you can be the lead sopra
no!”
Gabe’s smile warmed me to my toes. I felt my eyeteeth lengthening, sharpening. Caroline cocked her head, studying my mouth carefully, and I covered my lips with my palm. “I don’t know,” I said.
“We’ll have to sing a duet together,” he said, not listening to me. “Hours of practice time, just the two of us.”
I tried to hold myself back but I blurted out, “I’ll do it!”
The choir director’s face filled with amazement and thankfulness and a small cheer rang out from the few people left in the choir. My fellow choir mates pressed in around me, clapping me on the shoulders, introducing themselves. Except for Caroline, who stood outside the throng, arms crossed. I smiled at her, and when her eyes narrowed I covered my teeth with my hand again. I knew I couldn’t sing soprano and probably couldn’t keep from sucking Gabe’s blood, but at least I could keep my secret. No reason to get the whole church in an uproar, chasing me around town with stakes.