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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 32: Takano 94
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 292
Tommy was finishing her fish dinner. She ate directly from her cook pan, so there would be less cleanup, and threw the bones directly into the fire as she found them. She usually washed her dishes in the lake, but it was getting dark already so she would probably do this one in the water directly from the pipe.
In the dim light she heard footsteps shuffling through the leaves before she saw the form of someone approaching. It still took a moment for her to decide that it was probably Boronir.
Did the council meet today? She was tired; she really didn’t want to deal with council business.
“Hello, Boronir. What can I do for you?”
He walked closer to her fire and stopped, and even then he seemed hesitant. She waited; finally he spoke.
“Did you tell Sylwi she could lead the weekly Bible meetings?”
“Yes,” Tommy answered, raising her eyebrows. “Why? Is that a problem?”
“I just wanted to know why.”
“Because she asked, and I thought she could do it. I did tell her she would have to get the approval of the council.”
Boromir looked a bit disgruntled. Tommy waited, but it seemed he wasn’t going to say more without prompting, and he wasn’t going to go away. She really just wanted to finish her fish, wash her dishes, and go to bed. That wasn’t going to happen until she dealt with this, whatever it was.
“I sense that this is a problem.”
Again it seemed that the older fighter wasn’t eager to say what he was thinking, but finally he did.
“Don’t you think that gives her a lot of power?”
“Power?” She had not really expected power struggles.
“Sure. Every week she gets to talk to the entire tribe. She’s the only person who does that now. It was different when it was Lauren, or even when it was you; but she’s just one of us, and this makes it seem as if she’s more than that.”
O.K., maybe.
“As far as I know, she’s just going to be teaching what she reads in the Bible. How can that matter?”
“I think we all know that there is a lot in the Bible, and you have shown us that it can give us answers for our problems here. But I’ve been reading, and I can see that sometimes it gives different answers to the same questions–like when David attacked his enemies, and then when they came back and he asked if he should attack them again he was told to do something different. So whoever gets to lead those meetings has a lot of control over what we think God wants us to do. I don’t think it should be Sylwi.”
What you mean, she thought, is you think it should be you. Instead, she said, “Well, if something happens to me, someone is going to have to take over. She volunteered, I think it’s worth giving her a chance.”
She could see that he didn’t like it, although he didn’t say so.
“Well, look,” she said. “I said it was up to the council. You’re on the council. Why don’t you suggest that the six of you take turns leading the services? Or if you don’t all want to do it, you can just rotate between whoever does. That way Sylwi gets her turn, you get yours, and anyone else who wants to do it can also have a turn.”
“Can we do that?”
“It’s not up to me. I would expect everyone who does it to read and teach from their Bibles, but as long as you’re doing that I don’t have an objection.”
He nodded, and waited another moment.
“Was there something else?”
Shaking his head, he turned and left. Tommy ate the last bite of her fish, which had by now gotten cold, scraped the scraps into the fire, and headed toward the water pipe to clean up. Her bed was calling.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #502: Character Setbacks. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
