Notice: This story contains graphic themes of Christianity, faith, salvation, redemption, and religious experience. If you object to such material, you have been warned.

Seventy-eight . . . seventy-nine . . .

Nanci Chladek heard someone knocking on the door. “Yeah!” she said loudly, not taking a break on her pushups . . . eighty . . . “Come on in!” . . . eighty-one . . .

Sarah Lackamp stuck her head out of the door to the bathroom the two rooms of the suite shared. “Oh, good,” she said, watching Nanci continue her pushups. “I was afraid I would be disturbing you at your devotions.”

“Not quite,” Nanci grinned, keeping up the fast pace of her workout . . . eighty-six . . . “Come on in.”

Sarah stepped into the room, looking at Nanci doing her workout wearing shorts and a T-shirt, an outfit rarely seen in this neighborhood. Both of them were students at the Hickory Run Methodist Seminary just up the street, and while little was ever actually said, unnecessary displays of skin were not encouraged.

“I don’t have to bother you right now,” Sarah said shyly.

“No problem,” Nanci replied. “So long as you don’t mind watching me.”

“I don’t know how you can do that,” Sarah shook her head. She wouldn’t admit it, especially to her suitemate, but she’d never done a pushup in her life.

“Keeps the blood flowing,” Nanci grinned, not slowing down in the slightest. “I spend enough time around here sitting on my butt. Gotta stay in shape, you know.”

“Yeah, but still . . .” Sarah sighed. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen her five years older suitemate working out, but after knowing Nanci for almost three months the little blonde still amazed her. Nanci was shorter than she was and weighed less, but in her shorts and T-shirt it was clear that she had much more in the way of muscle. “It’s got to take a lot of self-discipline to do that,” she went on.

“Not really,” Nanci said as her pushup count hit a hundred. She rolled onto her butt, stuck her bare feet under the crossbar at the foot of her bed, and started doing sit-ups at a pace hardly slower than she’d done her pushups. “If I didn’t do it, next May would roll around, and then where would I be? It’s harder to get in shape than it is to stay in shape.”

Sarah glanced up at the poster taped to Nanci’s wall, looking once again at the picture of the gear-and-people-filled blue raft rearing high over a huge wave. The poster advertised Canyon Tours, a company that took people on raft trips down the Grand Canyon. The first time Sarah had seen it, she’d gasped when Nanci told her that she was the one rowing the raft in that churning cauldron of water. It was her summer job, her suitemate had explained, and she’d done it for years. “I’d guess you would know,” she replied, still amazed that a woman could do such a thing at all – and that the same woman could be a divinity student like she was. Nanci just didn’t fit that mold!

“I figure it’s like being a Christian,” Nanci said, speaking a little more deliberately as the sit-ups interfered with her talking a little. “It’s got to be pretty hard . . . to be a sinner all week, and then . . . turn righteous on Sundays. I mean . . . isn’t it just simpler to be a good Christian . . . all week long?”

It was just another of the aphorisms about leading a Christian life that Nanci seemed to drop without even thinking about them. She always seemed to have something in her supply, something that could really make Sarah stop and think. Sarah considered herself to be a good and faithful Christian, but there was something about Nanci’s intensity and exuberance that awed her.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sarah replied. Just watching Nanci exercise made her muscles ache a little.

“Got something on your mind, Sarah . . . or did you just come over . . . to be sociable?”

“Well, that too,” she replied, trying not to show just how guilty Nanci’s aggressive exercise was making her feel. “I just got off the phone with my folks,” she explained. “I guess I always feel a little lonely after talking to them. Do you ever feel like that?”

“Yeah, sometimes. You know . . . my sister just had her first baby . . . last month, and I guess I feel . . . a little guilty that I couldn’t . . . be there. But if I was there . . . I couldn’t be here.”

“It’s got to be hard to be as far away from home as you are.” Home for Nanci, Sarah knew, was Flagstaff, Arizona, at least two days of very hard driving from Hickory Run, Kentucky.

“It won’t be the first time I’ve . . . been away from home . . . for a holiday.”

“Yeah, I know, but my folks asked if you’d like to join us for Thanksgiving.”

“Sure. I’d love to but . . . I can’t stay over. I’ve got . . . some books to hit, I’ve got . . . my session at the gym in town . . . on Saturday, and I’ve got to . . . supply a pulpit on Sunday.”

“Again?” Sarah replied, only mildly curious. Since Hickory Run was a seminary, they were also a ready source of supply when a local church needed someone to fill in for the Sunday service. Like many of the students at Hickory Run, Nanci was already a minister, just seeking full Methodist ordination, so it was not the first time she would be supplying the service. “Where?”

“Colt Creek Methodist, down by . . . Mt. Erasmus,” Nanci replied, still not breaking her rhythm. “You were there . . . when I was there last month . . . they asked for me by name.”

“That was nice of them.”

“Yeah, you never know what it’s . . . going to be like when you . . . walk into a place as a . . . stranger, but they were nice . . . and friendly.” With her series apparently completed, Nanci stopped, took a couple of deep breaths – she was human, after all, Sarah thought – then stood up and started doing standing toe touches.

“I just don’t see how you do it,” Sarah shook her head. “I’d be scared to death to walk into a place with a bunch of strangers, cold like that.”

“We all have to do it sometime, so something like that is how you get in practice,” Nanci said. At least this exercise wasn’t interfering with the way she spoke. “I mean, the worst they could do is throw me out on my butt. It’s not exactly like Paul getting thrown into jail for speaking the Word.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Sarah shrugged. “Should I call my folks back and tell them you’re coming?”

“Yeah, sure. Are you planning on staying over?”

“I guess. I mean, we didn’t talk about anything else.”

“If you want, you could save them a round trip and ride over with me,” Nanci suggested, knowing that not only did Sarah not have a car, she didn’t know how to drive. “That way they’d only have to bring you back.”

“Sure. They’d probably appreciate it. Maybe we could go over Wednesday night, and you could stay over for at least one night.”

“Whatever. You work it out, and I’ll go along with it.”

At breakfast the next morning Sarah and Nanci told Mrs. Ellison that Nanci wouldn’t be at dinner that evening, nor at all on Thanksgiving, but that she’d be back late that night; Sarah would be gone until Sunday night. It was only courtesy, since it would allow their landlady to plan her food accordingly.

Hickory Run was very small for a seminary, with under a hundred students. Of those, most were married, and most were in their thirties, or older – some into their sixties. Those who had their families with them usually stayed in apartments or rental houses in Madison, the county seat a dozen miles away. Some were active ministers of churches as much as a hundred miles or more away, and commuted home either on the weekends or daily. There were always a few singles or married students, usually men until relatively recently, who chose to leave their families behind for a few months.

The seminary had never wanted to be bothered with the ins and outs of housing a few students – it took attention away from what they were there for in the first place. Over a hundred years before, a boardinghouse was founded by Mrs. Pauline Keller to serve those singles. Eighty years after Mrs. Keller’s death, her family was still running it; Mrs. Ellison was the fifth generation to do so.

Mrs. Keller’s Place, as it was called – no one seemed to be sure if that was its real name or not – served three square meals a day, family style, around a big table on the main floor. The food was good and hearty if a bit on the plain side, but it was tasty enough that it gave Nanci an extra reason to keep up her exercise program. The conversation around the dining table was almost always interesting and lively, if mostly, but not always, restricted to religious subjects. Sometimes one or more of the residents, Nanci often included, pitched in with Mrs. Ellison in getting the meals made and served, and cleaning up afterwards, just out of a spirit of community.

In over a hundred years not much had changed. Oh, the kitchen was considerably more modern, the heating system was much better, and thirty years before an extensive renovation had turned the one-bathroom-per-floor arrangement of the rambling old building into the shared-bathroom double suites it now had. There were a few other modern conveniences like Wi-Fi, but the ancient frame building, although kept in good shape, retained much of the atmosphere of the classic boardinghouse it had once been.

Hickory Run was a very small town, hardly worthy of the term; only Mrs. Keller’s Place, the seminary, a small church, and a few houses were there. Until recently there had been a small country store out at the corner of Hickory Run Road and the nearby highway, but it had closed when its ancient owner died. Nowadays, if someone wanted something like a box of tissues or a candy bar that wasn’t provided at the seminary or the boardinghouse, it was necessary to drive into Madison twelve miles away to get it.

Nanci found it a very comfortable place to live and the inconveniences were hardly worth her notice. After all, for the last five years she’d spent four months a year living in the Grand Canyon, mostly without so much as a tent roof over her head. If she forgot something when she started on a river trip, it was a case of make do or do without until she got off the river two weeks or more in the future. And at that, living in the Canyon was better than what she’d had before she’d gone there, so she wasn’t given to complaining.

It was different for Sarah, being without a car. When she needed something she was mostly dependent on her folks bringing it to her when they showed up, usually every other Saturday, or asking Nanci to pick it up for her, or riding along when Nanci went into Madison.

The atmosphere of Hickory Run – and that included the seminary along with everything else – was conservative, even for Methodists. Mrs. Ellison only served decaffeinated coffee; and that had been a relatively recent development, or so Nanci had been told. Mrs. Ellison also frowned upon tea and other stimulants such as colas.

Dress was rather formal; men usually wore ties, although a few wore clerical collars; on a warm day a dress shirt was acceptable, but suit jackets were usually preferred. Women were expected to wear skirts or dresses, and not short ones, either. Knee-length skirts were considered to be very borderline; Nanci usually wore one of three mid-calf length skirts she owned, and she knew Sarah considered them to be a little on the short side. The shorts Nanci used for her exercise sessions only went out of her room in a laundry bag, although she sometimes wore jeans if she knew she was going to be in her room studying and not going outside for anything. That was far more casual than Sarah, who Nanci suspected had never worn a pair of jeans in her life.

It was just the way things were at Hickory Run, and Nanci wasn’t in the mood to rock the boat on the subject – it was what was expected, so when in Rome and all that, she thought. She was there to learn what she could, not cause unnecessary trouble.

Nanci knew that Sarah’s parents weren’t a whole lot less conservative in such things than Hickory Run was in general, so she didn’t even think about changing out of her mid-shin length gray straight skirt when she and Sarah got in Nanci’s old Toyota Camry on Wednesday afternoon. Sarah was wearing an equally long print dress that somehow seemed dowdy on her. She was taller than Nanci, somewhat solider and not anywhere nearly as thin, but certainly not heavy-set. Her chin-length black hair was in a pageboy with bangs, which added to the well-scrubbed conservative if not terribly attractive look she projected.

It felt good to be getting out of Hickory Run. While both the girls were pretty devout, sometimes the place seemed a touch oppressive. Madison was not exactly a large town either, but it was big enough to have a fast food franchise, so the first thing Nanci did when they came to it was to go through the drive-through and get a large takeout coffee, black, and no, repeat, no decaf, thank you.

“Eeeew,” Sarah wrinkled her nose when she smelled the aroma. “How can you drink that stuff?”

“It is pretty lousy,” Nanci grinned. This was not the first time the subject had come up. “It’s weak and watery compared to how we make it on the river. A trip leader I know carries a stone in his pocket, and if the coffee won’t float the stone, it’s not strong enough. We get up early, so we need something to get us going.” She was not about to explain that the stone was volcanic pumice and would float in just about anything liquid.

“You know, Nanci,” Sarah shook her head, “you scare me sometimes.”

“You do, too, Sarah,” Nanci grinned as she peeled back the little plastic tab and took a taste of the hot, if weak coffee. “You do, too,” she repeated as she put the coffee cup in the cup holder and got the car moving again.

When the two first met three months before, Nanci learned right from the beginning that Sarah was very shy and very dependent on her parents; there were phone calls two or three times a day, and sometimes not short ones at that. Nanci had the impression that Sarah didn’t sneeze without asking her parents for permission, and then asking how hard.

That gave Nanci more than a little reason for concern. She had seen several cases where a girl had been brought up under absolute domination of her parents, who watched over her like hawks and disapproved of anything they hadn’t approved first. One of those cases had a very tragic outcome, and others were not very pretty, including one that wound up with the girl going into an epic and world-class rebellion from her parents. Although it had turned out well over a long run of more than fifteen years, only recently had the woman and her parents gotten back to anything approaching speaking terms and the relationship was still very touchy.

So, when Nanci met Sarah, she was predisposed to think that she’d run into yet another case of helicopter parenting gone wild. What’s more, because of that perception, Nanci had been prepared to dislike Sarah’s parents, Harold and Martha Lackamp. But, on meeting the couple the following weekend, Nanci only slowly began to understand that things were a little different for her newfound friend than she’d initially thought. Reverend and Mrs. Lackamp were actually good people, warm, likable, and friendly. Yes, they were concerned for their daughter, but rather than trying to keep her under their thumb it seemed they were actually trying to push her out of the nest a little, not with a great deal of success.

Nanci still wasn’t quite sure how Sarah had come out so naïve and sheltered, although from things both Sarah and her parents had said Nanci could put two and two together with the likelihood that the answer was somewhere around four, if not exactly there.

Nanci knew that the Lackamps had been missionaries in central Africa, but they’d come back to the States at least partly with the intent of Sarah being able to grow up in an American culture. Until that time Sarah had no friends her age, American or otherwise, and almost all her human contact had only been with her parents. She had been absolutely at a loss when exposed to an American middle school, so her parents had put her in a small Christian school, where she still had trouble relating to other people. The Lackamps had hoped that would ease as time went by and that Sarah would become more normal, but when the time came to go to college Sarah still didn’t want to leave home, so wound up attending a nearby, rather conservative Christian college.

Sarah still had limited experience of the world, but after some discussion it had been agreed that following graduation, further divinity studies might at least get her away from the house a little. It might also give her something of a career to build on – perhaps not as a minister, but in something else to do with the church; such training couldn’t hurt a missionary’s wife, for example. Hickory Run seemed to be the place to do it. The first night Sarah had spent at Mrs. Keller’s three months before had been the first night she’d ever spent more than a few yards from at least one of her parents, and she had been homesick and close to terrified.

Nanci had only slowly come to realize that she was the first real friend around her own age that Sarah had had ever had. She’d missed a great deal of the give and take a person learned by having friends at a young age. Though she’d never dream of using the words around Sarah, Nanci thought of her as an “incomplete personality” and couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever become a whole person. The odds seemed against it in fact. Even so, almost from the beginning Nanci had been doing what little she could to widen Sarah’s horizons.

But Nanci wasn’t sure she was entirely correct about Sarah’s shyness and withdrawal from the world. For no good reason, it seemed to her that she was missing a piece or two of the puzzle, and very likely some dark spots in her past that Sarah didn’t want to talk about. Nanci didn’t felt like it was something she really ought to push her friend about, at least partly because she had plenty of dark spots in her own past that she’d just as soon Sarah didn’t know about, mostly because they didn’t seem to be anything Sarah could truly understand.

So there was a limit to how deep their friendship could be. Besides, the two of them were up to their eyeballs in their studies; Hickory Run Seminary really pushed things at their students and it was hard to keep up. Sarah was, if anything, a little more technically proficient in their studies, although Nanci thought she was a little better at understanding the ramifications. They’d proved to be good study partners, especially since they were in all the same limited selection of classes.

It was close to a two-hour drive to get to Sarah’s home in Huntington, West Virginia. Much of the drive was on slow two-lane roads that ran through forested hills – pretty when green, but brown and drab on this grungy November day. Nanci was used to brown and drab, though; most of her last five years had been spent in more or less desert country. Much of the land around here was coal country; here and there were the scars of mining operations. The houses and towns were poor and rundown, evidence of not much money around them. It was a tough way to make a life, Nanci thought, although she’d seen tougher – much tougher.

Only the last few miles into Huntington were on four-lane, and there Nanci could zip right along in the Camry before pulling off at an exit ramp. She didn’t have to ask Sarah where they were going since Nanci had been to the Lackamp’s parsonage twice before. Both times it had been when she and Sarah had gone there partly to go to the Sunday services, partly to visit her parents, and partly for the chance to see something but the four walls of their rooms in Hickory Run.

In only a few more minutes, Nanci stopped the Camry in front of the parsonage next to the drab brick church where Sarah’s father was the pastor. “It’ll be good to be home for a few days,” Sarah said as she unhooked her seat belt. “Thanks for bringing me, Nanci.”

“Thanks for having me,” Nanci smiled.

They got out of the car. Sarah grabbed a suitcase from the trunk, while Nanci could get along on only a small duffel bag. Sarah used her key to unlock the front door, and Nanci followed her inside, where they found Sarah’s parents in the kitchen. “Sarah,” her father said, “and Reverend Chladek. It’s good to see you. Did you have any trouble?”

“No, just a nice drive, Reverend Lackamp,” Nanci replied, being just as courteous as Sarah’s father; if he was going to use her title, she would use his, too. He was formal that way, and she didn’t mind. “It’s good to see you again, too. So is anything new happening around here?”

“Yes,” he smiled with the widest grin she’d ever seen him wear. “There have been some interesting developments today.”

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