Excerpt from the book Seven Hills:

This story is fiction, though it feels true. One of my favorite childhood pictures shows me dropping a dime into an offering plate at Church. Mom, Dad, and my older sister watch solemnly as an unknown man awaits my gift. I always wondered if I plunked the coin or placed it. Garrison Keillor tells a story about a donor who unintentionally added a zero to his gift offering. This is a mashup of those two offering plate memories.

This story is also an excerpt from the book I am writing. Seven Hills is set in a small mining town in Oklahoma. This particular scene occurs in 1947.

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The Jasper Congregational Church was the largest house of worship in town. It was the heartbeat of the community, the place imprinted on the souls of those who sat shoulder to shoulder each Sunday, the place fathers walked daughters down a center aisle before center aisles and giving away daughters became quaint and provincial.

It was also where the most money changed hands between the people of God and the Lord’s treasury. When alms were given, folding money, coin, and handwritten checks were placed into felt-bottomed silver trays passed from pew to pew with a solemnity that might have impressed even the early Christians in Acts 5:5—who, as we know, learned the hard way that God and Peter sometimes audit the books.

Children dropped dimes into the trays with trembling fingers, well aware that in those stricter times, giving was to be seen and not heard. Careless coin-tossing could lead, if not to the embrace of Satan, at least to the sharp elbow of a vigilant mother.

But it should not be confused with the Annanias and Sapphira sin of deceit, a tainted offering made without full accounting disclosure. Nor should it be compared to the adult version of carelessly throwing money into the offering tray, the kind of error Merle ‘Spud’ Dinkins made one Sunday.  

Merle Dinkins, known to everyone in town as Spud, had been with the Jasper Sanitation Department since Roosevelt was in office. He was sturdy, sunburnt, and smelled vaguely of motor oil, even in his Sunday suit. Most Saturday nights, Spud could be found at Harlan’s Tavern, nursing a Schlitz and waxing poetic about the proper way to lift a trash bin without throwing out your back. But every Sunday morning, without fail, Spud was in the third pew from the front at Jasper Congregational, squinting at the hymnal like it owed him money.

On one particular Sunday, after a longer-than-usual night involving a pint of Long John Dew whiskey, Spud fumbled for his wallet during the offering and scribbled out a check. He meant to write ten dollars, as he always did—“ten bucks to stay on God’s good side,” as he put it—but added an extra zero with the flourish of a big spender. 

By the time Spud realized his error, the deacon had already taken the plate and disappeared behind the locked counting-room door with a deacon sentry posted outside like a vault guard at Fort Knox. Spud leaned toward his wife, Dora, and whispered, “I think I just tithed my fishing boat.” Dora, without looking up from the bulletin, said, “Good. Maybe the Lord will let you keep the motor this time.”

On Tuesday morning, Spud Dinkins arrived at the Jasper Congregational Church office wearing work boots and a limply-collared paisley button down shirt.

He walked past room 112 where the women’s quilting circle met to discuss doctrine and needlepoint, though the needlepoint often gave way to needling of another stripe.

Behind a desk stacked with bulletins and felt-board cutouts of Bible characters sat Miss Ernestine Pribble, church secretary and unofficial gatekeeper since 1942. Ernestine had a beehive hairdo that defied belief and Oklahoma wind. She did not suffer fools or late submissions to the church newsletter.

Spud removed his cap. “Morning, Miss Ernestine.”

She looked up from her typewriter, eyes narrowing slightly. “Spud Dinkins. I assume this isn’t a social call.”

“No, ma’am. I come bearing a financial irregularity.”

She folded her hands like a judge preparing for sentencing. “Is this regarding the ten-dollar check you wrote on Sunday?”

“Technically, yes. Though that check came out at a hundred dollars on account of my hand crampin’ up.”

Miss Ernestine raised one eyebrow—her left, which was widely known to be her more sarcastic one. “The Lord’s books don’t typically allow for buyer’s remorse, Mr. Dinkins.”

“I ain’t asking for all of it back,” Spud said quickly. “I’m just sayin’ the decimal wandered.”

She flipped through a ledger, ran her finger down a list, and tapped the line beside “DINKINS, MERLE (SPUD)”.

“Funds have been deposited. Reverend Amos already assigned the surplus to the orphanage in Possum Grape, Arkansas.”

Spud rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, can’t the Lord make do without the ninety?”

Ernestine removed her glasses and stared at him, long and hard. “This is not Sears Roebuck. However…” she softened, slightly. “…we can make a notation in your giving record for next quarter.”

Spud squinted. “You mean like store credit?”

She sighed again. “Yes, just more Divine.”

“Well, alright then,” Spud muttered, putting his cap back on. 

As he turned to leave, Miss Ernestine called after him. “Oh—and Spud? The Ladies’ Circle wanted to know if you’d consider testifying about the error at the next stewardship luncheon. About how the Spirit moves decimals in mysterious ways?”

Spud didn’t break stride. “Tell ’em I’ll pray about it.”