Winter Elders

They Materialized with the First Snow. That was how Bradshaw would always remember it. He was standing at the living room window, listening to Cheryl shush the baby, when he saw specks fluttering like ash against a smoky sky, then caught sight of someone on his front step, though he hadn’t noticed anyone coming up the walk. He could see about an inch of a man’s left side at the window’s border—an arm in a dark suit and a boyish hand holding a book bound in black leather. He knew instantly that there was another suit and another leather-bound volume out there, a companion to complete the pair: missionaries.

Bradshaw opened the door and blocked the frame. Body language was everything. Announce it—you’re not coming in. On the step were two kids in suits, short hair, name tags. One was tall—taller than Bradshaw, maybe six foot four—and the baby fat on his face had begun to jowlify. The shorter one was younger, with avid eyes and scraped cheeks.

“Brother Bradshaw?” the tall one asked as he looked into the house. “Hi, we’re here from the Church.”

“I can see that.”

“We’re just wanting to check in, see if there’s anything we can do for you.”

“You could clean out my gutters,” Bradshaw said. “Or rake the yard.”

The little one chuckled, but the tall one looked up at the gutters, spilling over with leaves and twigs. The falling snow had thickened.

“Don’t think we won’t,” he said.

His name tag read Elder Pope. He would not drop his smile or avert his eyes. There was something stubborn in him and, deeper, the sense that he was proud of his stubbornness. Bradshaw was impressed, a little.

“After you’re done you could change the oil in my car,” Bradshaw said. “So long as you’re just wanting to help.”

Elder Pope nodded softly, and pointed with his chin toward the inside of the house.

“Maybe we could come in and discuss your list of chores,” he said.

“Right,” Bradshaw said.

The littler missionary—his name tag read Elder Warren—said, “Could we just talk to you for a few minutes about Jesus Christ?”

“You could not just talk to me for a few minutes about Jesus Christ,” Bradshaw said, pushing the door closed slowly against Pope’s cheer. “I’d like it if you stopped coming here. Make a note back at the coven.”

Through the window in the door, Bradshaw saw Warren turn to go, but Pope stayed, staring for a few seconds.

Bradshaw was twelve years out of the Church and not going back. For a long time, a new set of missionaries had appeared every few months, cloaked in fresh optimism. Each time, Bradshaw’s hunger to disappoint them had deepened, until he finally asked them to remove him from the Church rolls for good. To kick him out. It had taken months, but they finally sent him a letter of excommunication, revoking his baptismal blessings and eternal privileges as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The letter read like a credit-card cancellation, and he and Cheryl had made much fun of it. “You’re out!” she would say and wrap her arms around his neck, and though he was glad to be out, too, her reaction made him defensive, and he would feel a germ of insult stick and grow. Now, staring at the place in the storm where the missionaries had vanished, he wished he’d asked what brought them back this time.

He heard the baby crying and went to check on him. He found Cheryl bouncing the boy gently, whispering, “And then the pig decided to become a happy pig and spread happiness into the world …”

“Who was it?” she whispered.

“Missionaries.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, bugging her eyes while she swayed and rubbed the baby’s back.

“I’m not kidding.”

Bradshaw leaned toward the boy and whispered, “Hello, Riley...