The Un-Decorating

In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. Each year, a few days after Christmas, a small group gathers in the sanctuary to take down the Christmas decorations. Senior Pastor Henry O’Donnell always has mixed feelings about this day. On the one hand, he loves the Christmas season and this final annual ritual makes him melancholy. On the other hand, church secretary Tammy Billings always brings Christmas leftovers – including plenty of pie and cookies. Tammy is an excellent cook but a light eater. And her husband Ralph is a bit of a health nut, which means O’Donnell traditionally gets to overindulge to his heart’s content.

Every year the church has asked for volunteers to help with the project, but invariably the only people who show up are Tammy, Ralph, and Pastor O’Donnell. Normally this was fine with the pastor. It meant more of Tammy’s goodies for him. Last year the church brought on a new young Associate Pastor named Michelle Tellum who felt obliged to help with the un-decorating as well, but O’Donnell didn’t mind because she didn’t eat much. Unfortunately this year she also brought her boyfriend, Ian, and he could eat quite a bit.

To everyone’s surprise one other volunteer showed up as well: Missy Moore, a heavyset woman in her forties. As she dug into a piece of Tammy’s pumpkin pie, she explained that she thought the clean up project would help her burn off all those Christmas calories.

“With so many hands we’ll be done in no time,” Tammy said.

O’Donnell agreed that was a plus, but he was concerned because there were only two pieces of pumpkin pie left. O’Donnell loved Tammy’s pumpkin pie, but wanted to save a slice for when they had finished with the work. And the way Ian was digging into a hunk of leftover fruitcake, O’Donnell didn’t think he could count on the pie lasting that long. So while Tammy was assigning duties to the others, O’Donnell slipped a slice of pie onto a paper plate and stuck it under a pew on the left side of the church.

Tammy was determined to keep the decorations organized this year. She’d listed each type of decoration and assigned it a box, which she had numbered. As things were packed away, she would check them off on her chart. Hopefully that chart would allow her to quickly find things when it came time to decorate next year.

Most of the others tried to follow Tammy’s instructions diligently, but she was usually unsatisfied with the way they folded this or coiled that. However she was too polite to criticize so she would often just surreptitiously repack the items when nobody was looking. After all, everything had to be just so or it wouldn’t fit neatly in the designated boxes.

Ralph was the most rebellious of the volunteers. When he saw something that needed done, he tended to just do it rather than waiting for directions. So he frequently brought things to Tammy that she wanted at the top of a box before the things that belonged on the bottom were packed.

About twenty minutes into the project, O’Donnell saw Ralph carrying a twenty-foot ladder into the sanctuary. “What are you going to do with that?” O’Donnell asked.

“Take down the Advent wall hangings,” Ralph replied.

“That’s a two man job,” O’Donnell said. “I don’t want you climbing up there yourself.”

“Fine,” Ralph grumbled. “You can climb the ladder while I hold it steady. Then you can pass the hangings down to me. Okay?”

“Okay,” O’Donnell said, not quite sure how he’d volunteered to climb a twenty foot ladder. He wasn’t good with heights.

Meanwhile, Michelle, Ian and Missy were taking down the decorations on the two trees that had been put up in the chancel. What they didn’t know was that Bart, a bat who usually lived in the church’s bell tower, had taken up temporary residence in the left tree and was currently fast asleep on one of the inside branches near the top.

Michelle climbed up on a step stool to reach the string of lights wrapped around the top of the tree. As she started unwinding them, she woke Bart up. Startled at the unexpected disturbance, he flew out right in front of her face.

“A bat!” Michelle screeched. It was her first encounter with Bart. She instinctively vaulted backwards, spun in midair, cleared the railing at the edge of the chancel and landed on the front pew. Ian, who was watching from under the piano where he’d dived when Michelle had yelled, thought his girlfriend might have broken some kind of long jump record. As she leaped from pew to pew, her hands fluttering about her ears, he wondered if she was planning to go for a hurdles record as well.

If she was, she failed. On her third jump her toes caught the back of a pew, tripping her. She flew through the air toward Ralph and the ladder. Ralph caught her, preventing a disaster.

Unfortunately disaster turned out to be only delayed. O’Donnell had turned at the commotion and discovered the panicked bat was flying straight toward him. He ducked instinctively, throwing the ladder off balance. Without Ralph steadying it, it began to lean.

O’Donnell realized the ladder was going to fall. He reached out and grabbed the nearest handhold – a light fixture hanging from the rafter beams by a three foot chain. He clung to it as the ladder fell out from under him.

O’Donnell was almost as surprised to find himself uninjured as he was to find himself hanging from a light fixture twenty feet in the air. Then a creaking sound drew his attention upward. He could see the three screws attaching the chain to the rafter slowly pulling loose from the wood.

Fortunately, Tammy had kept her head in the chaos. She tossed aside her chart and sprinted over to the ladder. Meanwhile, O’Donnell’s eyes were fixed on those screws working their way millimeter by millimeter out of the beam. He wasn’t even aware that Tammy had righted the ladder under him until she called his name.

O’Donnell stepped onto the ladder with indescribable relief. He made his way down, step by step, his hands trembling. He was greeted by Michelle. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said. “I guess I have a little phobia about bats.”

“Don’t worry about it,” O’Donnell said, just happy to be back on solid ground.

“Did anybody see where it went?” Ian called from under the piano.

They all looked around but Bart the bat seemed to have vanished.

O’Donnell decided it was time for his pie. But when he crouched down to get it, he was startled to discover Bart had beaten him to it. The little bat was lapping at the pumpkin filling curiously. Bart ultimately decided it paled in comparison to a good housefly and took off, planning to relocate back to the belfry. The humans were causing too much of a ruckus in the sanctuary.

O’Donnell thought about what kind of germs bat saliva might contain, then thought about how those screws had been the only thing between him and a painful fall. He decided maybe he didn’t need the piece of pie after all and tossed it in the trash.

He rejoined the others who were excitedly analyzing every second of the brief adventure. Suddenly there was a loud crack above them. O’Donnell looked up and realized the light fixture screws had finally escaped from the rafter beam. Worse, Tammy was standing directly under the fixture. He grabbed her and pulled her aside just as the lamp plunged to the floor and shattered.

“Thank you,” Tammy gasped.

“One good rescue deserves another,” O’Donnell said.

The group finished their chores without further incident and Ian and Ralph took the boxes down to the storage room under the social hall. The following day, Tammy dropped by the O’Donnell residence with a fresh pumpkin pie as a reward for his gallant rescue.

A bit after that, Jose the janitor went into the sanctuary to clean up the broken glass from the fallen lamp. He discovered someone had left a piece of paper on one of the pews. It was full of itemized lists and codes. He didn’t really understand what it was referring to, but it looked important so he put it on Pastor O’Donnell’s desk. Over the next few months it became buried under mounds of paper.

When it came time to decorate the church for Christmas the following year the volunteers had to struggle through without Tammy’s chart. But at least there were no bat encounters.

Bart the Belfry Bat

Hear the story read by the author

In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. Like most churches, this one has a bell tower, though instead of a bell it contains speakers that broadcast a recording of bells. Recently the tower has acquired some new residents – a family of bats. And Bart is the most curious bat in this family.

Bart isn’t his real name of course. He has a bat name. But bats communicate at a pitch too high for people to hear which makes their names difficult to transcribe. So let’s just call him Bart.

When Bart awoke on the first night in his new home, he decided to check out the neighborhood. He skimmed along the eaves of the church, snapping up the occasional passing mosquito for breakfast.

He spotted a small glowing red light and headed over to investigate. It was Walter Tibble, the church’s organist, who had stepped outside to have a cigarette. Smoking was a vice Walter had picked up in college and never shaken. Not that he’d really tried all that hard. Walter was now forty-eight, tall and thin. He wandered around the lawn as he smoked, enjoying the solitude and quiet.

And then the automatic sprinklers came on.

Walter muttered, “gosh darn it” under his breath – cursing was not one of his vices – and scurried for the door, tossing his cigarette into the scraggly bushes growing along the wall. He knew it annoyed Pastor O’Donnell to find his butts there, but Walter didn’t care. He’d suggested they get one of those trashcans with an ash receptacle on top, but O’Donnell refused saying it might encourage others to smoke and, the pastor always had to add, smoking was a filthy habit. Walter decided if O’Donnell was going to be that way he could just deal with butts in his bushes.

Bart didn’t understand any of this, of course. Very few bats take up smoking. But Bart’s curiosity compelled him to follow Roger through the door and into the church.

Roger went down a hall into a room blazing with light. Being a bat, Bart didn’t much care for light so he broke off to explore on his own. But a few minutes later Bart’s sharp bat hearing picked up a lovely harmony coming from the bright room. He doubled back to check it out.

The music Bart heard was the choir at their regular Wednesday night rehearsal in the choir room. Bart flew through the door, gliding around the ceiling in gentle arcs in time to the music. After a couple of verses a plump woman spotted him and began making a noise that was louder and in a different key than the others. This was Missy Moore who was not a fan of bats.

Bart decided he wasn’t a fan of hers either. Not only was she ruining the lovely music, her screeching hurt his sensitive ears. And it seemed to Bart that the rest of the choir was just as annoyed at Missy’s harsh wail since they all stopped singing and began dashing chaotically around the room. It didn’t appear that the harmonious tunes were going to resume any time soon so Bart figured he might as well move on.

He found his way to the social hall, which was pleasantly big and shadowy. After exploring a bit he stopped for a rest in the rafters. He had seen all kinds of interesting things but he would need to focus on finding more food pretty soon. He was getting quite hungry.

Suddenly the lights came on, nearly blinding Bart. Del Winslow, a heavyset man in a choir robe, entered carrying a broom and looked around. Bart didn’t know what Del was up to and didn’t really care. He flew into the adjacent kitchen to get out of the light.

There Bart made a discovery that pleased his grumbling stomach. Someone had left a piece of cake on the counter during coffee hour the previous Sunday. Now of course bats don’t eat cake, but they do eat flies. The abandoned cake had attracted a whole swarm of those. What a nice housewarming gift, thought Bart as he enjoyed the insect buffet.

The door to the kitchen burst open and the light went on. Bart instinctively flew up to the ceiling. Del Winslow stomped in with his broom. Del spotted Bart and swung the broom at him. Bart darted away, indignant. This was hardly welcoming behavior!

Bart bobbed around the ceiling staying just out of reach of the flailing broom. Then one of Del’s swings struck the overhead light, knocking the plastic cover off and shattering the bulb. The room went dark again. Bart settled on the counter as Del made a hasty exit. That explained it, Bart thought. The big man wasn’t after Bart at all; he just hated the light too.

Bart finished off the last few flies who hadn’t beat it to safety in the commotion then decided he’d better go back outside where the hunting was better. He flew out into the social hall and saw Del seated on a couch catching his breath. Bart was careful to stay up near the ceiling where Del wouldn’t notice him. He was not quite sure what to make of the man just yet.

A couple of the windows were cracked open so Bart used one of them to make his exit. As he flew out, though, he smelled something funny. There was smoke rising from the bushes near the front door. Bart went to investigate.

It seemed Walter’s cigarette had landed on a dried leaf that was caught in the bush and ignited it. The small flame had grown hot enough to spread to some of the green leaves around it. Bart didn’t quite understand what fire was but he could feel the heat and his instincts told him it wasn’t good. Only he didn’t really know what to do about it.

Then he got an idea. Maybe the big man inside could take care of it.

Bart flew back in the window and buzzed Del’s head. It certainly got Del’s attention. Del leaped to his feet and chased after Bart who flew back out the window.

However Del didn’t follow. He simply closed the window and walked back toward the choir room. So Bart flew in through a different window and did a couple of loops around Del’s head. Del chased Bart back to the second window where Bart made his escape again. This time, though, Del paused before closing the window. He smelled something.

Del came out the front door to investigate and saw the small fire in the bush. He yelped and quickly beat the flames out with the broom. Then he cupped his hands and caught water from the sprinklers to thoroughly douse the bush. Once he was certain everything was out, he looked up into the night sky and said, “Thank you, bat. You might have just saved the church.”

Bart was perched on the roof above him and would have told Del he was quite welcome except of course Bart couldn’t speak English.

Del went back inside. A few moments later the music resumed in the choir room, drifting softly out to where Bart was gliding above the spray of the sprinklers hunting his food. He began bobbing back and forth in time to the music.

This was going to be a pretty good home, Bart thought.