For some time Nanci and Trent stood leaning on the fence, looking at the buffalo in the pen. Over the course of the next half hour, Nanci learned a lot more about the big, shaggy beasts. While it was clear that there was a lot more science to raising them than she could have ever imagined, it was also clearly an art that Trent stated he hadn’t mastered yet, and could probably never hope to.

It was a surprisingly long time before the topic turned to Elmer Pepper. Trent had known the man for all of his life, of course – at nearly four miles away, he had been one of Trent’s closest neighbors. “I knew he was getting bad,” he admitted, “But I had no idea he was that bad. It makes me wish now I’d paid a little closer attention. Maybe there was something I could have done, but I have no idea what it could have been.”

“From what little I’ve heard, there wasn’t much anyone could have done,” Nanci sighed. “But it seems sad that he had to suffer and die alone like that.”

“It happens out here more than we like to think about. It’s always been lonely out here, Reverend. While we have friends and neighbors, we mostly have to depend on family. When you’re like Elmer and you don’t have any family left …” he shook his head and obviously reached for words before he went on “… it’s not the first time I’ve seen it happen. People get involved in their own lives and maybe aren’t as aware of their neighbors as they ought to be. Maybe that’s part of the reason why the church is so important to us, since it encourages us to check in on our neighbors once in a while. That’s not as big a deal as it once was since there are fewer and fewer of us left out here.”

“I would like to think that I would have tried to do something if I had known about it, but since he wasn’t a member of the church, I probably wouldn’t have known him anyway,” she replied. She realized that she was going to have to get to know these people better, especially the ones who were older or were in bad shape. It was one of those things a minister had to do. “It’s too bad his grandson couldn’t have done something to help.”

“From what I got from Art, Elmer barely knew his grandson existed. They hadn’t seen each other in, who knows? Twenty years, maybe. According to Art, the sheriff said that he’d been able to get a message to the guy, but that it wasn’t easy to find him. Sometimes families grow apart, Reverend. Cathy has a brother she hasn’t seen since we got married. We get a letter from him maybe every five years, if that. We have three kids. Keith is the youngest by several years. His sisters are grown up and gone, and we don’t hear from them as often as we’d like. They’ll never be back here to live. They’ve gotten too citified. I sometimes wonder about Keith, and he’s the last hope if the ranch is to stay in the family. If he doesn’t, well, I could see myself winding up a sick and lonely old man living by myself out here on the prairie like Elmer.”

“You think Keith is going to stay?”

“Too early to tell,” the rancher shrugged. “He says he wants to, but he’s still a kid. Lots could happen. Ask me in ten years and maybe I’ll be able to tell you. A lot can happen in ten years. You know that.”

“All too well,” she reflected. “I’m not the person I was ten years ago. I would have laughed in the face of anyone who told me where I’d be today or what I’d be doing.” There was a world of truth to that statement, too; ten years before, she had quit college and had been sliding down a very slippery slope with no idea of the disaster or agony she would face. God had had to tear her down a very long way before He could build her into the person He wanted her to be.

“You’re probably not the first person to say that,” he smiled, taking a glance out to the gravel road that ran past the ranch buildings. “Looks like he’s back, too. I was expecting it would take him about this long.”

Nanci looked up to see a battered old pickup truck turn into the driveway, the dust it had kicked up along the road settling behind it. She turned and followed Trent back in the direction of the building they had been setting up for the potluck. “What the heck?” she heard him say. “He’s got someone with him. He’s an underage driver to begin with, and while the sheriff will let ranch kids get away with it so long as they stay on the back roads, he ain’t supposed to have any friends with him.”

“Maybe he found someone who ran into trouble.”

“Could be, but who knows? Guess we’ll find out.”

They got a few steps closer as the pickup backed up to the machinery shed. “Now what the hell?” Nanci heard him say. “That’s that skank Linda Wallace’s daughter he’s got with him. What brought that on? The damn fool kid ought to know better than to be fooling around with a girl like her.”

Nanci could feel the tension in the air as the two kids got out of the truck. “Son,” Trent said sharply, “What do you think you’re doing bringing her out here?”

“She helped me load up the tables and stuff,” he replied apologetically. “She, well, you said we ought to bring some friends to meet the new pastor.”

“We didn’t mean it like that and you know it,” Keith’s father replied in a hard voice. “You shouldn’t even have been driving with her, let alone messing around with her. Now, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Things were very quiet for several seconds, as Keith looked in the general direction of his boots, obviously trying to come up with something to say. It was Amber who broke the silence. “I’m sorry, Keith,” she said apologetically. “I was afraid something like this would happen, and I shouldn’t have agreed to come with you. I know you were trying to do the right thing, but I don’t want you to get in trouble with your parents. Thanks anyway.” With that, she turned and started walking for the road.

“Amber,” Keith spoke up. “It’s twenty-three miles back to town.”

“Maybe I can get lucky and hitch a ride when I get back out to the highway,” she said, the brave words coming over her shoulder. “Thanks again. See you in school.”

Nanci had a gut feeling that she should get her car and drive the kid back to town, but her attention was diverted by Trent saying, “Keith, what in the name of sin did you think you were doing? Her mother is the biggest pile of trouble in the county.”

“Her mother disappeared a week ago,” Keith said stalwartly. “She has no idea what happened to her. She’s hungry, Dad. She hasn’t had anything to eat all week but school lunches and cattle feed.”

“Cattle feed?” Trent frowned.

“Yeah, spillage she scrapes up off the ground at the mill at night. I thought, well, we’re going to have all this food out here, and, well …”

“Cattle feed?” Nanci asked softly.

“She says she sifts it to get the bugs and some of the dirt out, and makes a sort of porridge out of it. I know no one thinks very well of her or her mother, but that’s no reason to let her starve. I tried to do the right thing and now she’s the one who pays for it. Doesn’t the Bible say something about feeding the hungry?”

Trent silently stared at his son, then looked up at the girl walking quickly out toward the road. Nanci said softly, “The Bible says, ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.’”

“All right,” Trent said finally, perhaps a little reluctantly knowing he was in an awkward spot in front of the pastor. “Whether you were right or wrong, she shouldn’t be the one to be punished for it. Give me the keys, I’ll go catch up with her.”

“Dad, I think I better go with you.”

The two of them quickly got into the pickup, leaving Nanci standing there. Though she didn’t know the girl at all, she couldn’t help but think that Keith had done the right thing, whether his father approved or not. Nanci knew all too well from back in the dark days of her life what it was like to be hungry, but it looked to her like Amber retained some pride, which was more than Nanci had done back then.

Amber was out to the road by the time Trent and Keith caught up with her. Nanci stood and watched from a distance as the two talked with her, though she was too far away to make out the words they were saying. It looked to her like Trent was being rather apologetic, though, and it took at least a couple of minutes for Amber to be talked into climbing back into the truck with them.

She watched as the truck turned around and came back into the yard. The three of them climbed out, and Trent seemed subdued as he said, “Reverend Chladek, I’d like you to meet Amber Wallace. She’s going to be our guest for dinner.”

“Pleased to meet you, Amber,” Nanci said warmly. “I’ll be going back into town after dinner. If you like you could ride with me.”

“Thank you,” Amber smiled thinly. “Mr. Westbrook already offered to take me, but it would probably be less trouble if you’re going that way anyway.”

Nice and polite, Nanci thought – but it was clear that there was ice not far under the surfaces of both Amber and Trent, not surprising after the cold way she had been greeted in the first place. That must have been some discussion they had out by the road! No matter how beaten down Amber might have been, there was still clearly some spine left in her. Nanci couldn’t help but get the feeling already that she would like to get to know this girl better. “We ought to get back to setting things up,” she suggested in hopes of lowering the tension a little.

“You’re right, Reverend,” Trent agreed. “We need to get things unloaded. I expect Cathy will be back before long, and there’ll probably be others along pretty soon.”

The four of them turned to unloading the truck. The tables and chairs were dusty after their ride down the gravel roads from Tyler, so Amber and Nanci found a couple of rags and a bucket of water to wipe them down after Trent and Keith had set them up. There wasn’t much talking; Nanci could see very easily that Trent and Keith were still pretty steamed at each other, and Amber clearly wasn’t very happy with Keith’s father either. While nothing much was said Amber seemed to be pointedly quiet and Nanci didn’t blame her a bit. Everybody seemed to be trying to avoid the explosion that seemed to lie right beneath the surface.

They were just about finished with getting the tables and chairs set up when Cathy showed up. Art and Shirley Gamble were right behind her, bringing several covered dishes along with them.

Although Cathy didn’t say anything directly where anyone else could hear, she obviously recognized Amber and wasn’t happy to see her. “Trent,” she said, “Could you help me bring some things from the house?” Nanci didn’t have to be telepathic to figure out what the topic of conversation would be once the two of them got inside; when they emerged, carrying a couple of heavy but good-smelling roasters, Cathy also pointedly didn’t have anything to say to Amber, not even a friendly hello. It was pretty clear that Amber would just as soon have been out on the road walking toward Tyler, and now Nanci didn’t blame her much.

Helping Cathy and Shirley organize food on the tables diverted Nanci’s attention from the tension surrounding Amber. The meat course was pulled buffalo with some kind of homemade barbecue sauce, and it looked even better than it smelled.

Over the course of the next half-hour, a lot more people arrived, most of them in pickup trucks – in fact, the Camry that Nanci had owned since she left high school was one of only two sedans present. There were enough hands around now that she let the women of the church concentrate on the details of getting the meal ready, while she spent time talking with people, just getting to know them.

One of the people she got to talk to for a few minutes was Art Gamble, who introduced her around – there were more people here than had been at the church service the previous Sunday. Nanci made polite inquiries about everyone and found that most everyone was a rancher. It was interesting that Elmer Pepper was mentioned several times in the conversation, and he seemed to have been a man who everyone had liked, especially when his wife Gladys had still been alive. She heard a few stories about him, but she also got the impression that no one except for Art had seen much of him in the last few years.

Of course, Nanci was asked a lot about her history as a boatman in the Grand Canyon, which seemed just about as strange to everyone as being a rancher and doing things like riding horses seemed to her. Several people offered invitations to “drop by and see us sometime,” which she promised to do – getting to know the people in the church was really her primary chore at this time, and it was what this gathering had been intended to do in the first place.

Finally Art spoke up. “It’s good to see all these friends and neighbors together. I’m sorry that we don’t meet the way we used to, but at least this afternoon we all can be together for once. I want to thank everyone for coming out to get to know our new pastor a little better. I haven’t had much time to talk to her myself, but I think she’s going to mean good things for Conestoga Methodist. I don’t know if any more people are coming, but if more do show up it wouldn’t surprise me. I think we’d better not let all this good food get any colder, or warmer as the case may be. Reverend Chladek, I think it’s your turn to speak.”

“Thanks, Art,” she replied. “I know I’ve only been here a week, but I know I’ve already learned more than I expected to. I also know I don’t know any of you very well, but I hope to get to know all of you a lot better as time goes by. I’ll try to talk with everyone some more as we’re gathered here, and of course I hope to see you all in church tomorrow.”

She paused, took a breath, and went on, “Let us pray.” She waited for a moment while people bowed their heads, then went on, “Father, we thank You for the nice weather to gather together as friends and neighbors, to enjoy the fellowship with one another and renew the ties of friendship. Bless this food to our bodies, and fill us with Your spirit as we gather here in Your presence. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

There was a scattered chorus of “Amens” from around the crowd gathered in the shade of the barn. “That food really looks and smells good,” she added, more casually. “I think we ought to eat some of it.”

Cathy spoke up. “The way we’re set up, the thing to do is to start at this end of the table,” she said. “There’s plenty for all. Reverend, after last Sunday I think I know better than to ask you to go first.”

“See, we’re learning about each other already,” Nanci laughed as she stepped back out of the way.

Slowly and without comment people formed a line from the head of the serving table; Nanci found a spot close to the head of the table to talk to people as they came by. Again it was an opportunity to get to know people a little better without getting into great detail. It did not surprise Nanci much to discover that there were few people present who were relatively new to the area, and in fact it was a good conversation starter. Most of those present were third, fourth, even fifth generation descendants of people who had originally homesteaded these lands a hundred or more years before. There were tales mostly passed down from generations before of the agony of the Dust Bowl days seventy years before, and mentions of people and families who had given up and moved away. Nanci slowly began to realize that Larry Reed had been right the previous Sunday: these people were survivors in a place that was not terribly friendly to them.

Eventually the tail of the line reached Nanci, and she joined in; she hadn’t seen Amber for a while, but now the girl joined her. “I was wondering what happened to you,” Nanci said as casually as she could manage.

“I thought I ought to stay out of sight,” the girl replied in a sad voice. “I mean, I know I’m really not wanted here. I was over looking at the buffalo.”

Nanci really wanted to talk to the girl but realized this wasn’t the time or the place. But she knew she would have the opportunity later. “Interesting animals, aren’t they? I’ve seen them before but never that close. They really look powerful, don’t they?”

“Yeah, they are. Keith tells me they’re tough and dangerous to work with.”

The food line was different than the dinner at the Tyler church the previous weekend in that large paper plates had been provided, along with plastic tableware. The centerpiece of the meal was the pulled buffalo, served on hamburger buns. While the level of the meat in the roasters was getting lower, there was still plenty left. Nanci made herself a sandwich, and filled the rest of her plate with portions from several of the bowls and pans and plates along the row of tables, trying once again to sample everything she could. She noticed that Amber wasn’t shirking at filling up her plate, but she wasn’t overdoing it, either.

Once Nanci had her place filled, she looked around for a place to sit. The tables were pretty full, but she found a couple of open spots at a table across from Ralph Westbrook and his wife Eleanor – she remembered that Ralph was some kind of cousin to Trent and Cathy. She headed over that way, halfway expecting Amber to follow, but realized that Amber must have gone somewhere else, presumably somewhere out of sight – and not anywhere around Keith, who was sitting with his family. Well, that was understandable on both sides of the equation.

“Looks like a pretty good turnout,” she commented lightly to the Westbrooks.

“Yeah, it is,” Ralph smiled. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had this many people from around here together in one place.”

“We’ve all drifted apart a little, especially since there aren’t as many people around here as there used to be,” Ralph’s wife added.

“There used to be a time when we’d get together a lot more,” Ralph explained. “Back when I was a kid we’d have barn dances at one person’s place or another except in the coldest of the winter months, but they slowly died out. We’d have square dancing and the like, just a chance to be neighbors.”

“There are enough people here that you’d think someone could revive it,” Nanci observed.

“It gets talked about every now and then,” Ralph told her. “But we don’t have anyone who can play a fiddle any longer, and no one who can call a square dance anyway. And this crowd is a lot older than the people who used to show up at those dances.”

“Too bad,” Nanci shook her head.

“Oh, those were fun,” Eleanor smiled. “We’d start dancing before dark, and sometimes we’d go on until well after midnight. I ought not say it to you, but there were always a few bottles being passed around, and, well, let’s just say there were a few marriages made at those things, too. That was in the days before people had television out here. Only a few people had them, and all you could get was a fuzzy black-and-white picture that wasn’t really worth watching. But it got better, and I think that did as much to kill the barn dances off as much as anything.”

“You are not the first person I’ve heard say something like that,” Nanci agreed. “One of the professors we had at Hickory Run Seminary had a church way out in the country like this when he was first starting out. He said television pretty well killed off his Sunday night services, and the Wednesday night services dwindled to a handful. It was easier to stay home and watch TV.”

Of course, that set off another discussion of the old days in western Walke County, and some other people joined in. Nanci eventually tore away from the exchange, got another paper plate and sampled several of the desserts, which were starting to get picked over, some more than a little. She noticed with satisfaction that her peach cobbler had already been cleaned out.

The meal was soon gone, but people stood and sat around talking for several hours after that. Again, Nanci tried to make sure that she got some time in talking with everyone and got several more invitations to drop out for a visit sometime.

As the afternoon progressed people began to pack up and go home; for at least some there were chores that had to be done, taking care of animals and the like; neighborliness and hospitality aside, those still had to be done. There was still plenty of food remaining, and much of it was packed up for people to take home with them; Nanci had several foam boxes and such with her, and it was clear that she was going to be able to eat pulled buffalo sandwiches for a while. She’d noticed that she hadn’t seen much of Amber, but that the girl had joined in for a few minutes helping to clean off the tables, fold some of them and the chairs up and load them back onto the pickup. She disappeared again shortly after that, and Nanci’s mind lost the thought of her as she kept finding other people to talk to and interesting stories to hear.

As the group dwindled down, Nanci realized it was time for her to be heading back to Tyler herself. With Keith’s help she loaded the food into the back seat of her Camry and then again wondered where Amber had gotten to. The way the girl had acted and been received, she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started walking back to town already. If she had, at least Nanci thought she’d had a good meal.

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