When the pie came out, Pastor Jim said, Chad, before dessert, since you brought up Rickys work, I think you ought to know who you are sitting next to, and he took an envelope out of his Bible and set it on the table in front of Chad.
Pastor Jim asked Chad to open it. Inside were photographs. A wheelchair ramp. A rebuilt bathroom. A whole bedroom moved to the first floor of a little house. And a list, in the pastors hand, of names.
The drywall hanger Chad offered to teach Excel had spent years quietly building wheelchair ramps, widening doorways, and remodeling homes for the sick and the dying of the whole congregation, for free, on his own time, with his own materials, and never once let the pastor say his name from the pulpit.
Pastor Jim told the table that in 2022, when his own wife lost the use of her legs, it was Ricky who showed up on a Saturday and built her a ramp, and then widened every doorway in the parsonage, and then moved their bedroom downstairs, and refused a single dollar, and asked only that the pastor never mention it.
And it was not just the parsonage, the pastor said. The list of names was long. Every family in the church who had someone come home in a wheelchair, someone dying who wanted to die at home, someone who could not afford the contractor, they all had one thing in common. A drywall man from Omaha with white dust in his hair and a truck with 240,000 miles on it showed up, quiet, and made their home work for them, and vanished before they could thank him.
Chad, who works in tech in Kansas City and makes three times as much sitting behind a wall, looked at those photographs and set down his iced tea.
Pastor Jim closed his Bible and said, son, you offered to teach this man Excel. This man has built more mercy with his two hands than most of us will build in a lifetime. You are not sitting next to a laborer. You are sitting next to the finest Christian I know.
My daughter was not giggling anymore. Chad went quiet, and then, to his credit, he reached across the table and shook Rickys dusty hand and said he was sorry, he had no idea. Ricky just said, glad you could come, Chad, and reached for the mashed potatoes, same as always.
Somebody has got to hang the walls, Chad had joked. The man who hangs them spends his weekends building ramps for the dying and asks for nothing. My son never wanted anybody to know. But a pastor with an envelope in his Bible decided, that Sunday, that somebody finally should.