Safe from Harm (9781101619629) by Stephanie Jaye Evans

yelled and got out of the tent and woke Brick up. He was in time to see a naked girl, holding my beach towel in front of her, crawl out of my tent and hurry over to the girls’ side of the camp.”
    â€œSo the damage is limited? You, Brick and Phoebe?” I opened the fridge and pulled out the milk.
    â€œI’m going to say no.”
    The pantry offered me Alpha-Bits, Super Sugar Crisp, Grape-Nuts and Cheerios. I pulled out the Alpha-Bits.
    â€œBecause?”
    â€œBecause I wasn’t the only one yelling.”
    I didn’t say “Oh, dang” again, but I was thinking it.
    â€œPhoebe made a scene?” I asked.
    â€œEvery tent I can see is lit up with iPhone light. Tomorrow morning—”
    My phone beeped to let me know I had another call. I pressed Decline.
    â€œâ€”you might get some phone calls.”
    My phone pinged—a text from Jo: “Ya got trouble in River City.”
    It almost made me laugh. It’s from
The Music Man
, a favorite of hers when she was about five.
    â€œBrother Wells?”
    â€œI’m thinking,” I said. The house phone rang three times and I heard Annie answer it.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    By six thirty Sunday morning, Annie and I had gotten twenty-four calls, and I learned that one of the callers, whom up to then I had deeply respected, was a rampant racist.
    Peter Martinez and Morse Mealey, both church elders, came to the house when they couldn’t get through on the phone, and, when I couldn’t get off the phone right away to talk to them, had bowls of Grape-Nuts with Baby Bear who was excited at the unusual predawn activity. Baby Bear stole Morse’s loafer twice. Morse was a good sport about it. Peter put on a pot of coffee, blessings on his head.
    I may be the church minister, but I can’t make decisions for the church—that’s the elders’ responsibility. Some ministers run their churches like a fiefdom—I don’t think many of those churches are in the Church of Christ.
    Here’s what we were faced with.
    Judging by the phone calls we’d had so far, a good portion of the church would walk into services that morning knowing something had happened. Shortly thereafter, the people who hadn’t heard anything yet, would. Rumors would multiply like bacteria, and most of those rumors would be wrong. We wanted to nip those rumors in the butt, as my brother-in-law would say, but we couldn’t. We didn’t know enough.
    I didn’t have any doubt about Jonathon’s truthfulness. I believed him absolutely.
    The elders’ decision was not to say or do anything until there could be a meeting between themselves, the youth ministers, Jonathon, Phoebe and the Pickersley-Smythes. Until then, our answer to any questions was to be, “Everything is in hand; we’re looking into it.”
    Which was guaranteed to satisfy nobody.
    From: Merrie Wells
    To: Walker Wells
    WHAT is going on in Sugar Land, Dad? I’m hearing strange things from my homeboys. LOL
    From: Walker Wells
    To: Merrie Wells
    Not LOLing over here, I can tell you. Give me a call later tonight. I’ll fill you in.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    To avoid more phone calls from people asking questions I didn’t have the answer to, after church Annie Laurie and I both turned off our phones and went to Houston to have lunch at our favorite barbeque restaurant, Goode Company, and stroll around the Museum of Fine Arts. It took my mind off the mess Phoebe had stirred up.
    We returned to the church parking lot at three forty-five to pick up our daughter. The youth group was due at four. We had barely pulled into a parking place before a small crowd converged on our car.
    Annie put her hand over mine. “Loins girded?”
    I said they were and we got out of the car.
    No, I said, no one had been raped, no one was hurt, yes, there had been an incident, but we didn’t want to make too