Excerpt from "The Floating Order" by Erin Pringle

SANCTUARY
(Excerpt from a story in The Floating Order)

Pete steps from the truck—Pete’s Moving on the door—and into the church parking lot.

Pete always inspects a job because, more than once, someone says twenty boxes, but when he gets there, it’s more like a hundred, so he has to borrow the phone or drive back to the office and call in the rest of the staff—if staff is what you call a brother-in-law and nephew.

This is the first job in a month. The last time he really made money was in the ‘70s when the tool-and-die factory was built on the edge of town. Now work mostly comes from kids leaving for the college forty-five minutes down I-70, but more kids graduate into the factory than college.

There are the basic jobs like today that Pete can do by his lonesome. This church sold their piano to a new church. A 1-2-3 job. Load it up, drive it across town, wheel it down the ramp and into the new sanctuary. Just like that. The kind of job that, if you’re considering closing the business because you can’t chew another ibuprofen for back pain, makes you rationalize the harder jobs. Like when the high school lost funding for Industrial Ed., and he lifted lathe and table saw and a dozen machines weighing as much as the truck cab—all the time praying for no one to stumble, the circular saw ready to slice through his very fleshy fingers.

As he walks toward the church’s double-glass doors, the bottle of ibuprofen rattles in his breast pocket next to his Dorals. Over the phone, the church secretary said she’d leave the doors unlocked and that the sanctuary was to the right. Then she paused. You will be careful? The piano is very old. It’s been here since the church was built. (Pete wanted to joke about the piano being as old as Jesus, but Reeva says his sense of humor amuses him more than anyone else). Although everyone knows that the wealthiest people attend this church, he wanted to ask the secretary why they wouldn’t sell an antique piano in condition good enough for playing, for shouldn’t every church need money?—But a fly landed on his sandwich, so he swatted it away and forgot.

When he used to try to make Reeva talk about how she won’t go to church because she can’t bear to hear a baby cry or laugh during the service, all she’d say was, Prayers don’t work. Reeva and he haven’t attended a church since their third pregnancy. As the children ran to the altar stairs to listen to the preacher’s lesson, Reeva snuck to the bathroom. While the children huddled at the preacher’s feet—congregation nodding and smiling—Pete sat rigid in the pew thinking of Reeva weeping in the locked stall, her hand on the flesh covering her empty uterus.

The only light in the sanctuary comes from the stained glass that provides no window onto the world. He doesn’t need clear glass, though, to imagine Central Street where cars pass occasionally on their way from the cluster of fast-food restaurants near the interstate to the town center of buildings that once held businesses instead of For Rent signs, or worse, that no longer bother holding For Rent signs. And out beyond and all around the town all the corn and bean fields, like a green or brown galaxy—depending on the season—that this very small town whirls inside, though the whirling is only obvious to those who remember.

As Pete makes his way down the aisle, his question about why the church isn’t selling the piano is answered by a sleek baby grand. This church will never beg for alms.

He has to squeeze between the glistening orchestral piece and altar to get to the back wall where the ancient upright stands.

Pete leans against the upright to check its weight. The secretary guessed it weighed seventy pounds; Pete smiled into the phone at that one. Women think only humans weigh over a hundred pounds, and everything else weighs either less than or as much as a truck. If they just remembered one bag of potting soil is forty pounds, things would run smoother.

He can’t fit a four-wheeler in the space between the wall and piano. If access to the back of this piano is necessary for tuning, nobody has tuned it in a long time. He touches a key. A long, long time.

He moves the piano bench to the side then grips beneath the keyboard and pulls. Wood creaks. The bones inside his knees creak. He adjusts his weight, pulls more. The piano bumps a foot across the carpet.

After the second miscarriage, Reeva’s counselor suggested a hobby. Because Reeva always wanted piano lessons as a girl, Pete called up a rental center in the next town over and had a piano delivered. A year later the repo man rang the doorbell. For a second, Pete sees Reeva standing between their piano and the repo man, her arms extended and shaking, begging him not to take the piano from her. But you didn’t pay, the man said. Reeva misheard him and began screaming, I did pray, I did pray, I did!

A thin veneer covers the back of the old piano and is peeling. Probably won’t survive the move. Pete’ll have to fix it. He nods and returns to the truck for his toolbox. Not for the first time does he pat his shoulder for carrying a toolbox. More than once during a job, he has bumped a chair arm or table out of whack. Usually, a few nails or hammers are enough. On rare occasions, he takes the item to his office, sands it down, re-stains or paints it, then returns it with an apology for accidentally leaving this in the truck, hope you haven’t worried—thus saving money and possibly a trip to the local law office.

Pete rummages in the truck for the toolbox and blankets to protect the piano. The urge to smoke creeps up his throat. He swallows. He’ll wait until the piano is loaded. He’s quitting again. Rather, Reeva decided. Usually, she gets on her soapbox after a trip to the doctor, all that time sitting in the waiting room reading pamphlet reasons for death.

This time she woke him up in the middle of the night. She was standing above him. He didn’t hear her until she said pregnant. She said, You quit smoking every time. But you never had a reason not to start again. If you had held just one baby, you would have quit, which means I’m why you’re killing yourself. I’m sorry, she said. Then she slid open the glass door and walked out into the backyard to the row of lilies.

Lifting the piano slightly off the floor as he pulls it from the wall, he sticks his arm between the wall and piano, pulling. The keys rise and fall, a hum crescendoing through the sanctuary. He startles at the sound and lowers the upright. He forgot to move the baby grand out of the way. He takes off his baseball hat and rubs his forehead. This is supposed to be an easy job. Look at yourself. A cigarette will clear your head.

Pete puts his hat back on and focuses his weight on his legs like Reeva reminds him when he’s pleading a bad back as why he wants to sleep. The truth is he doesn’t want a bedtime embrace to turn into anything more. But he’s learned when truth in marriage leads to disaster—when truth should simply become a secret. Long ago were the nights when their embrace held no ghosts within it.

Of course the baby grand slides easily, wheels slick with factory oil.

He picks up the sheet music lamp and sets it on the upright so he can see to fix the peeling veneer. It’s the same dark wood as the rest of the piano. No particleboard or plywood in those days. A handle once attached to the bottom, but it isn’t there now. Only the wounds left from the nails. Nails have been planted around the veneer’s perimeter. As he raises the veneer, the nails fall out and lose themselves in the plush red carpet. The cover comes off in his hands.

A large doll is his first thought.

He steps back.

He turns to see if anyone else sees the doll stuck in the back of the piano, a doll the size of a seven-year old girl.

But it isn’t a doll.

A little girl.

Or what is left.