An Atheist walked into a Church

Elaine from the church called me to ask if I would donate three pounds of butter to the drive-by chicken pie supper scheduled for Halloween, the last Saturday in October. Sure, I said. And do you need me to do chicken picking, too? She did. By the end of the brief call, I feel like I ran five miles on Zoloft, my nervous system awash in endorphins. Why does she make me feel so good? And why am I really excited about chicken picking: pulling meat off of over-cooked chickens?

A lot of it is Elaine. She was born with the gift of making others feel good. I talk to Elaine two or three times a year. I don’t see her at church because I don’t go to church, except for the fundraisers which soothe my atheistic soul. She’s long been a volunteer for the town on voting days. I’d always stop by her table to say hello. She always makes me feel like she’s been waiting all day for me to show up and cast my vote. Right now, she is a balm to my troubled heart, a reminder of what matters in this world: donating butter and picking chicken.

For years, Elaine asked me to contribute potatoes. I was good for five pounds for three years running. Through some mysterious process, I was promoted to pie maker. I donated two and was on the pie team for a while. But only a few women (always women) get asked to pick chicken, and one year I got Elaine’s call.

“Deb, would you have any time to help us pick chicken this year? We meet at 10, and we’re done by noon. Can you make it?” I had recently retired and was likely free Thursday afternoons may have had something to do with this call, but I prefer to think it was my enthusiasm for helping that prompted my promotion.

“You bet!”

The annual Chicken Pie Supper is one of two fundraisers for the old Baptist church in a rural part of town. The congregation meets there only in the summer; on the other Sundays, worshipers attend services down the road in a building much cheaper to heat.

The fundraisers help pay for the upkeep on “the old church,” a perfect specimen of New England architecture, minus the frou-frou pointy steeple, no doubt considered unnecessary and too expensive when the church was built in 1840. It sits back from the parade ground where since the Militia Act of 1792, able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five enrolled in the local militia on Muster Day. The Commanders updated their lists: old guys crossed off, new guys added. They’d march on the parade ground with their muskets, maybe fire at a scarecrow. The muster was accompanied by the provision of spiritous liquors which ensured a good turnout. The practice died away after the Civil war, although my guess is that women put an end to the annual drunken spree coupled with firearms.

There still is a Muster Day, although there are few, if any, muskets. The flags are placed on veterans’ graves, the Boy Scouts present colors, and old guys make a speech or two. It’s the present-day embodiment of the second amendment, but the emphasis is on past threats, not real or imagined present ones.

This year, there was no Muster Day. The Boy Scouts are in bankruptcy, and Elaine’s family convinced her to retire from her poll duties because, as her granddaughter said, “she’s getting up there.” But Elaine still has the ultimate control over the annual chicken pie supper, held the last Saturday in October, every year since God knows when, pandemic or no. The churches around here are big on church suppers as fundraisers. In the fall, ham and beans, roast beef in the winter, pulled pork is a current summer favorite, and chicken everything all year round. And while I know that church suppers occur everywhere in this country, New Englanders did it first, although probably not better.

Elaine has the skills of a general as she marshalls the battalion of volunteers that set up, cook, and serve hundreds of meals, this year, all packaged for pick up. The chickens are purchased, but I think most everything else is donated: onions, potatoes, squash, pies — although this year, Elaine’s daughter made all the pies in the family’s restaurant kitchen for reasons related to pandemic restrictions. Elaine oversees it all with a sweet voice and an iron will: everything will get done, on time, as it always has. The picked chicken will be dumped into the gravy, which will go over biscuits. The squash (the only color in this meal) will be squashed, the onions boiled, the potatoes mashed. A slice of pie (only apple this year) will add a grace note to old fashioned, filling, comfort food. Exciting? No. But it gets the jobs done: money raised, bellies filled, community ties tightened.

It’s that last job, the community connection, which means so much to me, especially now. I showed up at the old church in my mask, and Elaine introduced me to the tables of women pulling chicken off steaming birds, hot out of the huge pots where they are boiled unto death by a squad of guys. Some folks there know me; most don’t. We chat. Elaine tells everyone that I sharpened every paring knife a few years ago. There is talk of grandchildren, children, operations, the new pastor, the old pastor. Elaine takes calls from people trying to make reservations. “So sorry, all sold out.” Then she listens to the caller, and we listen to her as she is brought up to date on the caller’s life.

This goes on for a very long time. We get the giggles as we hear Elaine trying to end the conversation. “I’ll call you if we get a cancelation. I promise. So good of you to call. Yes, I will. You too. Really? I hadn’t heard. My oh my. Well, I’ll keep you in mind if we get an opening. Oh? You’re kidding? Now that’s interesting…” We look at each other over our masks, eyes rolling, little snorts of amusement pushing through our calico masks.

When she gets off the phone, she wryly observes that the caller “has a lot going on.” And she, and we, get back to the chicken: bones and skin in one pile, minced chicken in another, white and dark meat mixed, over and over, a community built and rebuilt through service on a Thursday morning in New Hampshire.