Excerpt of Jack in the Pulpit by Cynthia Riggs

"WHY DON'T YOU go home, Hal? I'll finish the kitchen. The tables and chairs can wait." When she had come into the kitchen and seen Hal Greene's drawn look, Victoria Trumbull, who, at ninety-two, was almost ten years older than the sexton, had put her basket of goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace on the floor beside the sink.

She had stopped by the church parish hall to arrange flowers for Sunday's service. Hal was clearing up after the pancake brunch, folding tables and chairs, and unloading dishes from the dishwasher.

"It's not your heart, is it?" Victoria pulled off her fuzzy tan hat and blue coat and dropped them on one of the tables.

"Stomach cramps," mumbled Hal.

"I hope it wasn't the pancakes." She smiled and ran her gnarled fingers through her hair.

Hal didn't seem to hear her. "I think I'll lie down…in the sanctuary."

Victoria took a stack of plates out of the dishwasher and set them on the counter. She watched Hal with concern.

Hal wrapped his arms around his stomach and bent his knees. "Lie down on a pew…" He straightened up suddenly, his face twisted in a grimace. And with that, he collapsed on the kitchen floor.

Victoria dropped the dishrag into the sink and hurried to Hal, who was rocking back and forth on the linoleum. She bent over him and put her hand on his forehead. He straightened his legs, kicking off one of his boating shoes as he did.

Victoria skirted around Hal's convulsing body and hustled out through the kitchen door into the Reverend Jackson's small office, which opened off the pine-paneled meeting room. Here, she grabbed the phone off the desk, knocking the base onto the floor in her haste, and punched in 911, her hands shaking so badly she could barely touch the big- print numbers.

"Hurry," she said loudly after she'd identified herself to the communications center. "Please hurry. It's Hal Greene in the West Tisbury church parish hall, and something is terribly wrong."

She snatched a calico-print cushion from the minister's chair, returned to the kitchen, and put the pillow under Hal's head. His eyes were shut tight. He blindly grasped one of the folded checked tablecloths that hung down from the kitchen counter and snatched it off, bringing down a cascade of dishes that had been stacked on top. Glasses and crockery smashed on the floor.

A few long minutes later, Victoria heard the siren on the police Bronco and then Chief Casey O'Neill's booted feet on the stone steps. Casey wrenched open the parish hall door and strode through the pine-paneled meeting room, her coppery hair bouncing on the collar of her blue uniform jacket.

"The ambulance is on the way, Victoria. Is it his heart?" Victoria shook her head. "Stomach cramps, he said." Casey bent over the writhing man. "Could be heart."

The pungent smell of fall wafted through the open door, ripe earth and maturing crops. Yellow leaves drifted down from maple trees that arched over Music Street. A slippery confetti of fallen leaves, wet from Friday's rain, littered the brick sidewalk.

Inside on the wall between the kitchen and the meeting room was a wide pass-through with shutters that could be opened to serve refreshments after church, and where dishes were stacked. The shutters were open now.

"Can you hear me, Mr. Greene?" Casey called softly. "The ambulance is on its way."

Hal's eyes were shut tight. He had kicked off his other shoe now. His pressed chinos had ridden up on his legs, exposing gray cashmere socks and hairless shins.

While the chief knelt by Hal trying to comfort him, Victoria hurried out to the Bronco and got a blanket. "It's all I can think to do," she said to Casey, who nodded. Together, they put the blanket on Hal and adjusted the cushion under his head.

"Does this seem like a heart attack to you?" Victoria asked as they attempted to soothe Hal, who was beyond soothing.

"I know he's had heart problems in the past."

"I don't know." Casey seemed puzzled. "How old is he?"

"Not that old," Victoria said. "Eighty-four or five."

The chief shook her head and muttered, "I can't believe this Island's definition of 'old."

"Hal had volunteered to clean up after the brunch." Opening the closet next to the rest rooms, Victoria brought out a broom and dustpan.

"Leave that for now," Casey said. "Better not clean up yet." A siren whooped to a stop outside. Victoria heard the iron latch clang and the gate slam open against the picket fence. Footsteps hurried up the brick walkway and bounded up the steps.

"In here, Jennie," Casey called. "In the kitchen." Two medics raced through the door, one with a medical bag. Casey stood up so the EMTs could see her through the open pass-through.

Jennie and the second young woman knelt by Hal, checked his pulse, his breathing, his blood pressure. The EMTs looked as grim as Victoria felt. Hal's convulsive movements were getting weaker and weaker.

The medics and Casey eased Hal onto a wheeled stretcher and pushed it through the parish hall door to the waiting ambulance. Jennie hoisted herself into the driver's seat, and the ambulance took off, siren wailing. Victoria, who had followed Casey out, climbed into the passenger seat of the Bronco, and they shot off to the main road behind the blue-and-white emergency vehicle. They sped past the school, past Whippoor-will Farm, past tall snags of dead red pine. The early afternoon sun glistened on the changing golden brown oak and beech leaves on either side of the road.

By the time the ambulance had gone down the hill into Vineyard Haven, had passed the harbor and the shipyard and the tall fuel tanks, had crossed the bridge that separated Lagoon Pond from the harbor, and had turned into the hospital's emergency entrance, it was too late. Hal had died on the way.

Doc Erickson was on duty in the emergency room. He checked for vital signs and pulled off his stethoscope.

"I'd been treating him for heart problems," he said. "I was afraid of this."

He listened while Casey told him Hal's symptoms. "Not typical of a heart attack. I'll check, of course." He shrugged.

On the way back to the parish hall, Victoria was quiet. "The church was his family," she said finally. "He and Caroline had no children and after she died he had no other relatives." When they turned onto Old County Road, sunlight dazzled Victoria, and she pulled down the visor. "We played Scrabble together at the senior center only last week."

Casey listened. "He was seven or eight years younger than me," Victoria continued. "And apparently in nowhere near as good health as we all thought."

"He was with some oil company at one time, wasn't he?"

"A vice president. He retired here about twenty years ago." Victoria sighed. "I suppose I'd better clean up the mess."

"I'll help," said Casey.

Together they swept the broken china and glass into a heap, finished putting the dishes in the cabinets, the tablecloths in a plastic bag to be laundered.Victoria set Hal's shoes to one side.

As they worked, Casey talked into Victoria's silence. "It was this church, as much as anything, that convinced me to accept the police job. Patrick is almost nine now, and I wanted him to have this sense of community. You okay, Victoria?"

Victoria nodded. She turned her deep-set eyes to Casey, listening.

"The day I came for my job interview almost a year ago, I looked in the church windows. I never dreamed the door would be open and that I could simply walk in. In Brockton, the door would have been locked."

Victoria picked up Hal's shoes, brushed them off, then put them down again.

"When I got to the church the town clock struck eleven. I remember it so clearly," said Casey.

"That was the only timepiece villagers needed a hundred years ago," Victoria murmured.

"The maples had turned yellow and the air was clean and blue. I knew right away this was where we belonged." Casey stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom.

Victoria stepped over to the closet next to the rest rooms and brought out a dustpan, which she held so Casey could sweep the mess into it. "When I walked into the vestibule," Casey continued, "it smelled like old wood and old hymnals." She stopped sweeping. "Hal was a good friend of yours, wasn't he?"

Victoria was tucking a paper napkin back into her pocket. "Hal was in the church that morning, but I didn't realize it at first." Casey spoke softly.

Victoria sat down on a stool and let Casey talk. "There were arrangements of chrysanthemums and scarlet maple leaves on either side of the pulpit. I bet they were yours, weren't they, Victoria?"

"Probably so."

"You know that large gilded cross on the wall behind the pulpit?" Casey leaned on the broom.

Victoria sniffed. "That cross was new when you first came. The Reverend Jack Jackson's idea. My grandmother would have called it popery."

"I was brought up Catholic. So when I went down the aisle I instinctively blessed myself and genuflected."

At that, Victoria smiled. "When I slipped into a pew on the left, I thought how generations of Sunday woolens and silks had polished the wood of that seat sliding in the same way I did."

Casey dumped the contents of the dustpan into one of the trash containers next to the sink. "When I raised my head, I saw this distinguished-looking man holding a bottle of Murphy Oil Soap and a rag. He stared at me as if I'd come from outer space."

"Hal Greene," Victoria said quietly.

"I didn't know who he was then, of course. I thought he was the mayor or something, figured I'd blown my chances of getting the job."

"He thought highly of you." Victoria shifted to a more comfortable position on the stool. "He often talked about how you've introduced modern police methods."

"Patrick and I go to church regularly now, and I got to know Hal." Casey put the broom and dustpan back in the closet.

"You know, Victoria, this is the toughest part of my job, losing someone like him. In Brockton, I didn't really get to know people. Here, we always go to church early because Patrick likes — liked — to see Mr. Greene ring the bell. You know the way Hal climbed the stairs partway to the choir loft and pulled the bell rope?"

Victoria nodded. "That was a big deal to Patrick. Before the bell began to sound, you could hear the rope rise with a rumble through that smoothed hole in the flooring of the choir loft, rubbing off a dusting of wood."

"I still love hearing the sexton ring the bell for service," Victoria said. "You can hear the rope rise through that hole, then you hear the bell swing in the steeple before it starts to peal."

Casey put the broom and dustpan away. "Such a bright sound. It raises goose bumps when I think of it."

TWO DAYS LATER, the Reverend Milton (Jack) Jackson, somber behind the pulpit in his black robe, conducted the funeral service. Short, dignified, it was a moving tribute to Hal Greene. He'd been a worthy, generous parishioner, the Reverend Jackson said. He had provided handsomely for the church's continuing good works.