The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance - Hardcover

Benjamin Anastas is the author of An Underachiever's Diary. He lives in Brooklyn and is an editor at Grand Street.

The founding member of the Monday Reflection Group noticed first, arriving at the church to find the pastor's driveway empty and the curtains in the parsonage still drawn, but she knew nothing of his sudden and astonishing disappearance, not yet, only that the Reverend Thomas Mosher, well-liked minister of the Pilgrims' Congregational Church ("An Historic Church with a Modern Message" they included below their name in all the literature) in W-----, Massachusetts, spiritual mentor to his well-heeled but undeniably eccentric congregants, author of competent -- if sometimes esoteric -- Sunday sermons heavy on the Book of Psalms, culminating in his very last one, "The Shapes of Love," which had veered away from the usual Easter Cycle to explore the possibility that God is an "infinite sphere," an idea that had bored some members of the church dumb and had seemed to others inappropriate for a Trinitarian; eligible bachelor rumored to have carried on an affair with a married woman in the church, Bethany Caruso (née Coleman), the mother of a preteen son and pious daughter widely considered angelic, if, at times, unusually frank when speaking to adults, and prone to disruptive behavior during Sunday school, the product, many believed, of Bethany's frequent separations from her husband (not a regular churchgoer), making her, already envied for her smoldering good looks and close relationship with the pastor, the object of persistent disapproval, despite the fact that an adulterous tryst between the two had never been confirmed, and the Reverend Mosher, according to the local women who openly pursued him -- Sadie Maxwell, flashy owner of the town's leather boutique; twice-divorced Alessandra Palacios y Rio, self-styled socialite and beneficiary of a Hollywood divorce settlement -- showed no interest in matters of the flesh, possessing, as he did, an awkward bearing in the world of men and women, little sense for the subtleties of flirtation and its deeper second step, seduction; truth be told, the Reverend Mosher seemed comfortable only at the pulpit, draped in his black Geneva gown and elevated slightly above his audience, able to communicate with an ease that usually escaped him, projecting authority with his lovely voice (they all agreed that, with their eyes closed during the morning prayers, his intonation could often be transporting), while in life he was acutely absentminded, a chronic mumbler, famous for calling members of the church by the wrong name, as well as accident-prone (how many times had he driven his car, the unfortunately named Ford Probe, off the road? The product of relentless dreaming), known for his inept pitching in church league softball, and sloppy housekeeping, according to the Thursday Housekeepers, who grew so tired of scrubbing down the parsonage they pooled their resources and hired a cleaning woman; no, the Reverend Mosher was not like the dull and energetic middle managers who had lately moved to town for a short commute and joined the congregation out of some imagined duty, who talked too loud among themselves and, but for a few opening minutes, paid little attention to his painstakingly prepared sermons, although there were notable exceptions, troubled men who had no choice but to display their depth, like high-strung Carlo Wagner, a physicist with a wide repertoire of nervous tics (clearing his throat, touching his glasses, pinching the end of his nose, scratching his ear with an index finger, and twitching, all in no particular order), or Ed Brooks, a school administrator who was obviously manic depressive, but refused his wife's attempts to have him seek counseling and -- this was her ardent hope, expressed in weekly talks with the Reverend Mosher -- a prescription for antidepressants, no longer a stigma in the community, or even a topic of gossip and/or debate, quite the opposite: Paxil and Zoloft had long since entered the local vocabulary, and stood, now, for happiness and hope, as if a tablet could ever contain these illusory states of being, reinventing the founding principles of W-----, Massachusetts, as well as of every other place in the New World chosen by displaced men and women for settlement: a belief in the value of work, the importance of family, the dominion of God over all things personal and political . . . The pastor was a complicated man and seemed to live across some subtle divide from life, certainly from happiness, and often from the members of his congregation, still he was an admired figure on the pulpit (already mentioned) and in the church office, the scene of so many helpful -- if halting -- conversations, and, as the black leader of a traditionally white church (although this, too, was changing), the object of some pride, as if his position were irrefutable evidence of their forward-thinking politics and enlightened Christianity; but no one in the church -- not one worshipper out of a scant few hundred souls -- could have predicted the events that began to unfold on the fine spring morning in question, when the Monday Reflection Group, such as it was, convened at the appointed time, and the Reverend Thomas Mosher was missing.  

Copyright © 2001 Benjamin Anastas