A Rhinestone Button by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Page A

when I was six. I loaded up my arms too full, you know, trying to impress Daddy, so I couldn’t see where I was going. I walked into the rough edge of the log, cut a gash to the bone.”
    “Must of hurt.”
    “Yeah. Dad said, ‘Why weren’t you watching where you were going?’ He was pissed he had to take me in to get stitches and couldn’t finish picking up the wood. He said I’d made him waste a day. He couldn’t see I was trying to impress him, you know?”
    Job nodded. At the age of five, at Tom and Clara Dumkee’s wedding reception, Job climbed the stairs to the stage of the Godsfinger community hall, danced by himself to Sem Gillespie’s accordion rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening.” Abe grabbed him from the stage, spanked him several times. Shouted, “Show-off!” His voice bristled across Job’s arms like the gristly lick of a cow’s tongue.
    Job plucked a couple of oranges out of the grocery bag and did his one-hand juggle. Trying to impress. He dropped the oranges.
    “Here,” said Liv. She took the oranges, and a third from the bag, then she stood and juggled. “The idea,” she said, “is to keep your eye on one spot above you. Keep your back straight, move your feet for balance and throw like this.”She threw an orange up in an arch and caught it in her other hand. “Let your hands throw to each other,” she said. “They know where they are.” She did this without effort, sending the oranges into the air one by one until she appeared to have a tiny, vibrating, swirling sun in her hands. She tossed Job the oranges. He rumbled, catching one, letting the other two fall to the ground.
    They ate and talked of who was ill, who had cancer. Who’d been hailed out, who’d been bankrupted and lost their farm. Who’d just died, or was about to. Who’d hung themselves from their barn rafters that month because they were about to lose their farm. The usual talk.
    “Will you have to move?” asked Job.
    “I don’t know. I want to keep the house. It’s not like Darren wants it. He thinks his dad’s still prowling around the place. I kind of like living with a ghost.”
    “You’ve seen it?”
    “Yeah. I think so. I got up to use the washroom and was washing my hands when I looked into the mirror, into the room behind me. The bathroom door was partially closed, but in the dark space between the door and the door frame there was this old man watching me. Scared me. I swung around and there was no one there. I was so sure I’d seen the ghost. But then I kind of exaggerated when I told people about it, for effect, so after a few tellings my story kind of muddled the memory of it.” She shrugged. “When I saw the thing, I was still half asleep. The ghost could have been a dream that followed me into the bathroom.”
    Job had known Darren’s father, of course. Albert Liebich wasn’t a man who tolerated opposition to his opinions. He’dthrown the whole congregation into an uproar at an annual general meeting when he put forward a motion forbidding anyone at church to use the word
luck
. To say there was such a thing as luck, he said, was to suggest that God was not omnipotent. “God,” he said, “does not play dice.” It was a testament to the power he wielded that, in the end, the motion was passed. From then on,
luck
was no longer used by the pastor during a sermon, or by the board, or printed in the church bulletin. The ladies’ auxiliary no longer held
potluck
, but
cooperative
, dinners.
    “Darren says one day the ghost walked up to the house and stood off the deck, looking in through the window right at him. It was pouring rain, but the ghosts coat didn’t get wet. Then he just disappeared.”
    “That’d creep me out,” said Job. “Having my dead dad watching me all the time.”
    “It’s not so different from how your God watches you all the time, is it?”
    Job chewed on that thought for a moment. “So you’d want to keep the house,” he said, “even with the ghost