ATHEISM DISCOVERED 12. ATHEISM DISCOVERED The news spread quickly on Saturday evening, and yet on Sunday morning, during the 10 a.m. service, when Pastor Ingqvist announced Evelyn’s death there were gasps and tears. Only thirty-four people in the pews and they had been pummeled hard by the substitute organist, Tibby Marklund having gone to Vermont for three weeks. Her sub was a pale thin man with colorless hair who liked to put the pedal to the metal so the prelude was like an artillery barrage before the invasion, and the opening hymn was one nobody had ever sung before in their lives, a 15th Century English plainsong, a hairshirt of a hymn, and it sounded like a fishing village keening for its dead. The pastor came down into the congregation for the announcements, pale and blue-eyed in his big white tablecloth vestments. “We’ve had bad news. Our sister Evelyn Peterson passed away late Friday at home and I know this comes as a shock to many of you,” he said, hearing the communal intake of breath, seeing heads turn toward Barbara’s empty seat in the fourth row from the back.
