...The Last Shall Be First

The little theater at Whit's End is a wreck. Whit admits he never followed through on having it cleaned after a show a couple of months ago, and now he and Artie Powell are picking their way through the mess in search of a hammock. Artie doesn't want it for himself. His sister has come down with the chicken pox, and a hammock is the one thing that made him comfortable when he had them, so he figures it is worth a try.

Jimmy Barclay bursts in with the new issue of his pastime magazine and an advertisement for Super Zappazoids 3, the home version. The game looks wonderful. The price does not. Whit suggests the boys pool their money and share the game, but when they add up what they actually have, the total shrinks fast: Artie's twenty dollars turns out to be more like ten, and closer still it is five dollars in a piggy bank, and Jimmy's savings amount to whatever Artie has. Whit offers a better idea. Clean the little theater and he will pay a fair wage. He proposes ten dollars apiece. Jimmy haggles him up to fifteen apiece plus an hour for lunch, and Whit shakes on it while remarking that he is in the presence of a real smoothie.

Connie Kendall comes looking for one of the church's introductory pamphlets. She is on her way to see her great-uncle, and she has been working on him for a month to come back to church. Her mother remembers him going often when she was a girl, but somewhere along the line he stopped. Only as Connie heads out the door does Whit learn who the stubborn great-uncle is: Joe Finneman, who owns Finneman's Market. Meanwhile Donna Barclay arrives hunting for her brother and the magazine, discovers that Jimmy is cleaning something and being paid for it, and signs on for fifteen dollars herself.

At the market, Joe deflects Connie's question until she pins him down. He will not go, he says, because he already knows exactly what will happen. He walks her through it: the handshake at the door that nearly takes your arm off, announcements about one member's gallbladder and another's rheumatism, songs everybody mouths, a prayer, a choir, the collection, and then a preacher he nicknames Pastor Pyron Brimstone reminding everyone what wretched creatures they are. Nothing about church ever changes. Connie points out that nothing about his store changes either, and he still likes it and still gets something out of it. Joe answers that the store affects his life directly. And God doesn't, Connie asks. Pressed further, Joe gives his real reason. He is on the downward slope, he would feel out of place among people her age, and you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It is too late for him, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Back at Whit's End, Curt and Lucy Cunningham-Schultz turn up with a case of what they call the Saturday blues, and the promise of fifteen dollars cures their boredom instantly. Watching the latest hires head for the theater, Whit keeps feeling that something about the day is familiar. When Connie returns discouraged and hands back the pamphlet, saying her uncle believes God doesn't want him anymore, the feeling comes again. Whit tells her she has done all the planting and watering she can, and it is up to God to provide the increase. Then it clicks. Not the theater. The workers.

Whit and Connie bring Joe to the little theater to watch the crew finish. Whit thanks them all and pays every one of them fifteen dollars, starting with the newest hires. Jimmy objects at once. He and Artie were there since morning, Donna came at noon, Curt and Lucy arrived only a couple of hours ago, and he thinks the early workers should get more. Whit reminds him that he did some sharp haggling to set his own price and that fifteen dollars is exactly what they agreed to. Is Jimmy upset, Whit asks, because the owner chose to be generous with his own money? He tells Jimmy he sounds like the men in the parable of the workers in Matthew 20, where the owner paid no more than the agreed price. Artie, invited to weigh in, reports only that they never did find the hammock.

Joe assumes he has just watched a staged scene and asks whether he should clap. Connie tells him it was real, then asks whether Jimmy had a right to be angry. Joe says no, because Jimmy agreed to a wage, and Whit refused to shortchange the others simply for starting later. That, Connie tells him, is the point. God works the same way. He does not penalize anyone or push them aside for coming to Him later in life. No matter how old a person is, it is never too late, and God is still waiting. She asks her uncle one more time to come to church.

The next morning Connie fidgets through the singing, craning to see whether he came. Whit tells her they did everything they could and it is in the Lord's hands now. Then a familiar voice behind them complains that the whispering is drowning out the song. Joe is there. It is the same hymn they sang the last time he came, he grumbles, proof that things never change. One thing has, Connie tells him. You're here. And Joe allows that maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks after all.