"Thank you, Don," Jude said. "Every donation helps, and we especially need high-protein foods like tuna. Right, Grace?"
I nodded and tried to pack one last coat into the bulging box marked men's . I gave up and dropped it into a half-empty women's box.
"And it was good of you to remember to pay Mr. Day," Jude said to Don. A huge grin spread across Don's face. He was as big as a grizzly, and his smile resembled a snarl. "You kids are truly D-vine. Just like your father."
"We do no more than anyone else," Jude said in that diplomatic voice he picked up from Dad that let him be humble but contradict someone at the same time. He grunted as he tried to lift the box out of Don's burly arms. "Wow, you brought a lot of tuna."
"Anything to help the D-vines. God's angels, you are.
Don wasn't the only one who treated our family like a group of celestial beings. Dad always said the pastor over at New Hope taught from the same good book as he did, but most everyone wanted to hear the gospel from Pastor Divine.
What would they think if they knew our last name used to be Divinovich? My great-great-grandfather had changed his surname to Divine when he immigrated to America, and my great-grandpa found it came in handy when he joined the clergy.
I often found it a hard name to live up to.
"Well, how about I let you carry that box out back." Jude clapped Don on the arm. "You can help us load the truck for the shelter."
Don paraded his hefty box through the social hall with his trademark snarl/grin on his face. Jude picked up my box of men's coats and followed him out the back door.
My shoulders relaxed once Don was gone. He was always lurking around the parish "wanting to help," but I usually tried to avoid him. I wouldn't tell my dad or brother this, but I still felt uneasy around Don. I couldn't help it. He reminded me of Lenny from Of Mice and Men--the way he was kind of slow and well meaning but could snap your neck with one movement of his baseball-mittsized hands. I still couldn't shake the memory of the violence that lived in those hands. Five years ago, Jude and I (and that person whose name starts with a D and ends in an aniel) were helping Dad clean up the sanctuary when Don Mooney stumbled through the chapel doors for the first time. Dad greeted him nicely despite his dirty clothes and sour stench, but Don grabbed my father and pulled a tarnished knife to his throat, demanding money-I was so scared I almost broke my cardinal "Grace does not cry" rule. But Dad never faltered--even when blood started to roll down his neck. He pointed up at the big stained-glass balcony windows that depicted Christ knocking on a wooden door. "Ask and ye shall receive," he said, and promised to help Don get what he really needed: a job and a place to live. It wasn't long before Don became Dad's most devoted parishioner. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten the way we met him. But I couldn't.
Did that make me the only Divinovich in a family full of Divines?
EVENING
"I don't know what to tell you, Grace." Pete lowered the hood of my father's decade-and-a-half-old, teal-green Toyota Corolla. "I think we're stranded." I wasn't at all surprised when the car didn't start up again. Charity and I regularly lobbied for my parents to get rid of the Corolla and buy a new Highlander, but Dad always shook his head and said, "How would it look if we got a new car when this one runs fine?" Of course, Dad meant
"runs" in a relative sort of way. As in, if you said a heartfelt prayer and promised the Lord to use the car to help the needy, it usually started on the third or fourth turn of the ignition. But this time I wasn't sure if even divine intervention could get the car moving.
"I think I saw a gas station a couple of blocks back," Pete said. "Maybe I should walk there and get some help."
"That gas station is closed." I breathed on my frozen hands. "It's been abandoned for a while." Pete looked back and forth down the street. Nothing much was visible outside the veil of orange light cast from the streetlamp. The night's sky was completely blotted out by clouds, and a frigid wind tousled Pete's rusty hair. "Of all the nights to forget to charge my cell phone."
"At least you have one," I said. "My parents are seriously stuck in the twentieth century." Pete only half smiled. "Well, I guess I'll go find a pay phone," he grumbled. Suddenly, I felt like all of this was my fault. Only a few minutes before, Pete and I had been joking about Brett Johnson's hiccupping fit during the chem test. Pete looked at me when we laughed at the same time, and our eyes met in that cosmic sort of way. Then the car made this horrible clunking noise and lurched to a stop in an alley on our way to the shelter.
"I'll come with you." I flinched at the sound of shattering glass in the not-so-far distance. "It'll be an adventure."
"No. Someone needs to stay with this stuff."
The Corolla was packed full of the boxes that didn't fit in the truck. But I wasn't sure I was the one who should stay behind to protect it. "I'll go. You've done enough already."
"No way, Grace. Pastor or not, your dad would kill me if I let you walk by yourself in this part of town." Pete opened the car door and pushed me inside. "You'll be safer--and warmer--in here."
"But ..."
"No." Pete pointed to the squatty building across the street. I could hear a couple of guys shouting at each other from one of the broken windows. "I'll just go knock on the door of one of those apartments."
"Yeah, right," I said. "Your best bet is the shelter. It's a mile or so that way." I pointed down the dark street. We were parked under the only working lamp on the block. "There are mostly apartments along the way, and a couple of bars. But stay away from those unless you want to get your teeth kicked in."
Pete smirked. "You spend a lot of time on the mean streets?"
"Something like that." I frowned. "Hurry ... and be careful, okay?" Pete leaned in through the doorway with one of his triple-threat grins. "This is some date, huh?" he said, and kissed me on the cheek.
My face prickled with heat. "So this is a date?"
Pete chuckled and rocked back on his heels. "Lock the car." He shut the door and shoved his hands into the pockets of his letterman's jacket.
I clicked the door lock and watched him kick an empty beer can as he walked away. I couldn't see him once he left the light of the streetlamp. I scrunched down in my coat for warmth and sighed. It might be going badly, but at least I was on a date with Pete Bradshaw, sort of. Sc-rape.