Free The Lutheran Ladies' Circle: Plucking One String by Kris Knorr, Barb Froman

wall. From the seats, one could have an eye-level stare into the face of the picture hanging there.
    “Mrs. Henley?”
    She gasped, “Is that my painting? Why is it in the High School Room?”
    *
    Vera did not wait until she got home to make the call. She proceeded to the secretary’s office, unlocked it with her personal key, and phoned Walt, the Property Manager. When he didn’t answer, she left a quiet message loaded with meaning, “Walt. I found Saint Peter.”
    *
    Walt, set in his ways for sixty+ years, only answered the phone if he felt like it, and often he wasn’t in the mood to be disturbed. He hadn’t had much use for chatter before his wife died, ten years ago. She was the one who used the phone. His kids had brought him an answering machine. He’d finally hooked it up and found it surprisingly handy. He could listen to calls and never even get out of his chair.
    He used the remote to turn down the TV when the phone rang.
    “Walt. I found Saint Peter.” He could imagine Vera’s face. Her mouth tight like two boards epoxy-ed together and eyes like drill bits biting into him. God bless the person who’d invented the answering machine.
    Her St. Peter picture was like a squeaky floorboard. It kept coming back, no matter what you did to it. It must have been over fifteen years ago when she’d painted the thing.
    The white hair on the old guy looked like it needed a dryer sheet, sticking out in all directions as though he’d been hit by lightning. Maybe he had been, because his overly large fingers curled inward like claws, and his eyebrows, black as night, fuzzed upward in eternal anger. It was the eyes, though, that gave out the jeebies. Walt had never seen a human with black eyes. They cut right through a person—at the neck.
    He remembered talking about it with Ruby, his wife. She’d said that Peter sure was a scurrilous bub if that’s what he looked like. Walt agreed, saying that was a face to guard hell, not heaven’s gates.
    He’d dutifully hung it in the narthex, as instructed by the Council. After all, it was a gift of art to the church. Walt supposed that he wasn’t much of an art connoisseur because he never heard anyone comment about how menacing it was. The ladies always sat the Christmas tree in front of it. Visitors stared at it. But no one said anything.
    When it was time to paint the narthex, the portrait was removed and it never reappeared. Vera seemed pleased when she was told that her masterpiece was making guest appearances in the Sunday school rooms. It was true. If a Sunday school teacher found the painting in her classroom, she’d sneak it into another room because small children cried if they had to stay in a room with a guy who looked as though he’d cut off your hand if it caused you to sin.
    When the kids were taught they were both sinner and saint at the same time, their eyes grew big. Imagining the scowling, pirate-faced portrait, they stuttered, “Like Saint Peter?” Walt figured those kids would need therapy to get over their exposure to that painting.
    Then one day it had disappeared. Other members of the Property Committee told him it was in storage. He hadn’t spent much time looking for it, but he knew Vera had. He figured it must be in the attic with the organ pipes. It was the one place Vera couldn’t get to.
    Now, it was Saint Peter’s second coming.
    *
    Walt had expected more phone calls from Vera during the next few days but heard nothing. Only Phil, the youth director, seemed concerned about the artwork.
    “Hey, Walt.” Phil stopped outside of the propped-open door of the men’s restroom at church. Walt stood inside, on a ladder, replacing a ceiling light. “Pastor Poe said I should check with you to see if the youth could keep St. Peter a while longer. Mrs. Henley said it was an important piece of art that was to be installed in the narthex.”
    “Uhh. It’s been missing for a while; where’d you find it?”
    “Oh, when we had the