Disappearance
My father, pastor of the Trail First Baptist Church, was adored by his congregation. That meant I was often close to the center of attention. Two days after my fourth birthday, I was getting ready to perform with a group of preschoolers on stage at the Sunday School Christmas Concert. Because I was taller than the other children, I was supposed to arrange myself on the far-left side of the line on the crowded stage. As I shuffled to get into position, the platform beneath me suddenly disappeared. I plunged off the edge of the three-foot-high stage. The fall knocked the wind out of me. My embarrassment overpowered the sharp pain in a skinned elbow. The gasp from the audience was followed by “tsk-tsks”, then, muted laughter. Gulping for air, I awkwardly struggled back onto the stage. At that instant, like the pop of white light from a flash bulb, the absence of my father became a sharp reality.
The end of the concert was marked by a rumbling noise, like far off thunder, as the audience clapped, and metal chairs were shuffled on the wooden floor of the church annex. The fading noise was replaced by a swelling murmur of spontaneous conversation. As my mother, sister and I moved toward the exit, past the anxious children at the table laden with tea, half pint bottles of chocolate milk, and sweet-smelling Christmas cake, the crowd parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Coats on shoulders, hats and mittens in hands, we were rushed into the cold winter air to the back seat of our 1945 Chevrolet. It took three tries before the engine turned over. Tires spun on the frosty asphalt as we skidded out of the parking lot.
My father had neither been seen nor heard from in the two months since leaving on a three-day trip to Ontario. Naturally, this mystery was all the parishioners could talk about. Some were genuinely concerned, but not nearly so concerned as mother. On the evening of the Christmas concert, she was much more embarrassed than I could ever be after my tumble off the stage. She was six months pregnant with a four-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter to worry about. As if she alone guarded a secret everyone had a right to know, the disappearance of her husband made her the source of gossip and innuendo.
The congregation’s adoration of their minister quickly turned to skepticism and collective betrayal. Two funerals had to be arranged with pastors from competing denominations and several Sunday services had to be cancelled. Talk among the parishioners turned from concern to the urgency of getting a new minister and moving what was left of the family out of the church manse.
Mother’s struggle to act as if things were normal gave way to desperation. Finally, the point was reached when there was nothing left to say to the enquirers. “No”, she quivered with swelling tears and dread in her heart, “I have no idea where he is”. It would be eleven years before I would see him again.