Chapter 2: FAIRFIELD
FAIRFIELD
"... forty-seven, fifty-eight , forty-nine, fifty ! Ready or not, here I come !"" I yelled out confidently.
I was a master finder . There was no one like me. In most hide and seek games , the term "It" meant you had to do the seeking. Most folks believed that being pursed was more enjoyable than being the pursuer. Not me.
I'm Cam, formally Camilo, which is the family name of my long departed great grand father Camilo who, along with my great grand uncle Oliver immigrated from the old country some eighty-five years earlier.
I turned to survey the panorama. Home base was an old telephone pole in being undefeated in the finding department. No one could elude me, not my younger brother Ben, not James, John, or any of the guy's, not Comfort , or any of the girls for that matter . I was the king of finding things.
Ben no doubt was hiding behind the old combine in the shed next door. James, attempting to be tricky , had buried himself inside a haystack by the Lawrence place at the end of the lane. John , always trying to outmaneuver me, had cleverly found an empty fifty-five gallon drum that he turned over on top of himself in the vacant lot. The girls had probably stuck together and selected the tree house, thinking that it had not been used for a while and therefore was exempt from suspicion. I knew they knew that and so, of course, it was high on the list of possible target sites.
I quickly prioritized the best route to flush out the hiders. I estimated their individual foot speeds , their relative locations to the proximity of home base, their access to firm footing and time, and the distance and their desire to reach their maximum rate of speed over the untilled farmland. Taking all the variable into consideration, I laid out a plan. Knowing that most of the kids could outrun me, I had to rely on my wits.
"Ready or not, here I come !" I gave the required warning. I deftly sneaked up and captured the attention of the girls first , John next , then James , and finally Ben , easily beating them all to home base . Once again victorious, I was the master . It was another successful game with not one person uttering Ollie Ollie oxen free. For me , it was a cinch_ just another day at the office.
"How do you do, that Cam ?" Comfort wanted to know .
"What?"
" Find everybody so fast all the time." I pointed to my head and asserted. "I read in a book that most people use only eleven percent of their brain. I'm using twelve."
I didn't really like the moniker Cam. I liked Camilo even less. It was a traditional name. I wanted to be referred to as Buzz. I asked my family and friends to call me Buzz , but no one did. They all called me Cam. You can't come up with your own nickname. One of the guys has to give you a nickname, like Pee-wee or Eight-ball, and it has to have a reason that's far-fetched or unflattering, like you're oversized-slats or you're clumsy-Butteefingers-or something. But no one could make the Buzz connection with me. I couldn't either, really, I just liked the name Buzz. It sounded like a tobacoo-chewing , home-run-hitting baseball player. I hadn't made up my mind about the tobacco-chewing , but I liked the home-run-hitting baseball player part.
The church bell rang.
"Come on, gang , let's go," John yelled . "Lunch!" I followed the older boys , and Ben tagged behind me to the field beside the church. Every year the Anderson opened up their fresh cut alfalfa patch to the Baptist Church for the annual summer picnic. It was always on Anniversary Sunday. Good over flowed the tables that were set up in orderly rows on the grass not too far from the wood-framed sanctuary built by the townsfolk some thirty years earlier. It was a real potluck cornucopia; all the ladies brought their favorite dishes with pride of family specialties passed down through generations. It was a beautiful day: clear , not too hot. Every Anniversary Sunday was a beautiful one, as far back as I remembered . Maybe God made it that way just for me.
The families gathered around the tables as my father began with a prayer. My dad was the minister, Dr. Jonathan, named after his grand uncle. Actually, he was a medical doctor turned pastor.
After the opening prayer, the mixed quartet sang the national anthem and then led the congregation in the a Cappella hymn, "Higher Ground." Everyone stood at the tables in family groups. We all knew the words by heart. I sang along with the crowd.
I loved my church. I loved my family. Life was good.
My mother Florence wanted me to learn a musical instrument. She thought it a necessity for a well rounded education . She pushed the trombone on me with no luck. She then switched to piano lessons, which were ever worse. She finally gave up and told me to go outside and play. I wore her down. I liked music, but I had no personal musical acumen. All I wanted to do was okay baseball or dig up buried treasure.
In the summertime, I was fanatic about getting in on a pickup game with the gang on a homemade baseball diamond on the vacant lot. When that option was unavailable, I would take a shovel from the shed and go out into the country all day just to see what I could dig up. I'd take my finds to the local public library. The Librarians would roll their eyes when they saw me coming because they knew I wanted then to help me research something impossible. During the school year, I loved to learn and read _ a real bookworm, they called me . None of the other kids read the books I took out of the library. Many of them were so old , I might just as well have dug them up, too. Some of the kids even called me Poindexter. If I couldn't be Buzz, I sure didn't want to be Poindexter.
The preliminaries concluded and the potluck line opened. The kids were allowed to muscle into line right behind the old folks , who always got the right of way. The trick was to jockey your way into position in order to arrive at the desert table Mr. Jack cobbler was gone. Eventually, everyone settled down to the annual focus of Baptist community and food.
Much of the talk and laughter that day centered on the practical joke that Alexander had pulled. Yes, my brother, eleven-year old Ben , had done himself rather proud.
It seems that he had given to Comfort , under the guise of a 4H project, some little chicks to raise . Comfort was a sweet , naive , slight ten-year-old who lived in town and was unfamiliar with the growth rate of poultry. Anyhow, Ben gave Comfort several newborn chicks with the warning that she must be conscientious to feed them and mother them to adulthood. Comfort took this admonition very seriously. She mothered them as only a serious mother would do. After all, she would someday be a real mother and this , she told herself, was the testing ground. She had a lot invested in their potential for full-blown chicken-hood.
Comfort carefully kept the little chicks in a safe coop she made herself in her own backyard in town. She was a responsible girl and didn't need any help from her parents or anyone.
By all accounts, the chicks should have thrived. Unbeknownst to Comfort , however, Ben periodically sneaked into that same backyard in the middle of the night and replaced the neophyte chickens with a fresh batch of newborns. Comfort's chick never seemed to grow at all. You really can't tell the difference, one chick from another. Comfort fed them and watered them , but they remained the same _ or she thought. This pattern went on for weeks . Ben would replace and Comfort would experience increased concern . Every morning Comfort went out to tend to her chicks , and every morning they seemed to be the same. This lack of progress began to prey upon poor Comfort's self worth . What kind of a mother was she ? Where had she failed ? She altered their ration of food. She changed brands of chickenfeed . She lost sleep . Nothing helped ; they remained small chicks . She dreaded scurrying out every morning to see if there was any growth , while there was none.
Finally, out of frustration and resignation, she threw herself on her bed and cried her eyes out , swearing she would never be a mother. Her parents were dismayed . The pastor was , naturally consulted for wisdom. Experts were brought in . Ben finally confessed the truth , and Comfort was humiliated_ and a little relieved. Eventually she got over it .
Ben publicly admonished and punished , but privately praised and admired _by most .
My younger brother Ben adopted practical joking as a lifestyle. He would take the newcomers to our country school snipe hunting on a Sumner's Eve . He left many a new kid out in the fields all night . It was sort of a fire of passage in this small town.
"Oh, yeah , I went snipe hunting with Ben last summer; caught fire of ' em in one night . It was a hoot !" Some second years would boast .
And on April 1, Ben would tip cows and put salt in the sugar bowl and sugar in the salt shaker. He did all the stuff that the family came to expect but liked just the same. We were ever a little disappointed when he didn't do such things . But the ever loving Lulu of all time was when Ben somehow swapped gallons of white wash paint for some fresh milk at the Goodman Diary .
There was also the time when my brother and I found dead the puma that had been killing chickens and causing quite a little stir in our small rural town . The local farmers were in an uproar for something to be done to eliminate this scourge. So, naturally, Ben secretly cut off the foot of the huge cat, buried the carcass and , with the leg, laid down some pretty convincing big cat tracks all over the place. He had Sheriff Bender and a volunteer posse tracking an already dead, notoriously troublesome mountain lion over half the country for a six week period. I was mortified; Ben was gleeful. My brother was indeed calculating for an eleven-year-old preacher kid.
Did I mention that my dad's workplace was that little Baptist Church where he served faithfully for years ? I guess I did. And I also suspect I'm repeating myself when I say my dad was actually an educated physician who willingly left the medical field shortly after his certification because he felt the call of God to be a pastor. I suppose I was proud of that . Anyway, Ben and I were known as preacher's kids.
My dad , being the senior pastor of the only Southern Baptist Church in Fairfield, Missouri, was usually the center of attention. On a previous Anniversary Sunday when I was six, one of the elders , thinking himself to be funny , threw a coconut cream pie in my dad's face. Everyone laughed , and so did my kind-spirited daddy. I remember crying my eyes out and burying my head in my mother's dress .
On this particular annual-church-picnic Sunday , after most the people had gone home , my father sat the family down to make an announcement.
Dad loosened his belt, leaned back, and cleared his throat. He spoke in his slow gentle way.
"Boys, your mother and I have been talking and praying about something very important to us." He paused.
Ben leaned forward and widened his eyes. I furrowed my forehead and crossed my arms. I knew this was big .
"We're leaving our church in order to take up calling from God."
Uh oh..., I thought. I already didn't like where this was going.
" Mom and I for a long time have been burdened with the continuing need for the Gospel in Africa, and we have decided to accept this leading to be missionaries to Kenya and Tanzania." My father hesitated and glanced at us to test the effect of his most recent statement. We just sat there.
"So, in a few weeks we will say goodbye to our friendly town here and have ourselves a little adventure in another part of the world."
Our mouths dropped open.
"What do you think?"
Finally, I piped up and turned to my mother . I asked , "Mom, what do you think about this?" She was my last hope of reprieve, however remote .
She responded quite predictably. "Your father and I have prayed and talked it over, and we both think it's the right thing to do, for the sake of the lost and needy . We feel called to do this ."
"Well , I don't feel called," I said adamantly.
"God,God , God! Why does God always have to be in charge of things ?" My mother paused and looked at me gently . She said winsomely yet firmly.
"Hush now, son. We must have none of that irreverent tone about our Savior's will. We have not raised you that way."
I immediately knew that if my parents were on board and armed with a call from God , there was no way to dissuade them . We were going to Africa , whether we liked it or not.
I glanced at Ben for confirmation. We exchanged little else but a look of silent resignation.
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