Читать книгу Anxious Gravity - Jeff Wells - Страница 11

“So basically,” I said, taking a deep breath full of sock dust lifted from the crusty, amber shag carpet and borne upon the buttery steam of fresh popcorn, “that’s how I came to know the Lord.”

I scooped a few kernels onto a paper napkin which was so oily I could see through it to the arm of the lavender sofa and passed the bowl to Dylan Geisler, a jumpy sophomore who had been crossing and uncrossing his legs all evening. All we’d heard from Dylan had been a timorous “Praise God” when Tibo Fung described his exorcism in the Marshall Islands. Dylan whispered thanks and held the bowl tightly in his lap with both hands, and didn’t eat from it.

“Wow,” Joel Kajinsky murmured, bobbing his head like a lazy oil pump. Half of the two dozen other heads of the other occupants of the fourth floor of the Abner Henry Residence for Men did the same. “Heavy conversion, brother. Why’d you decide on Overcomer?” Donny Loveless, our floor leader, glanced at his Timex and rested his forearm immodestly upon the hip of his acoustic guitar.

Overcomer Bible Institute — in the world (though just barely, so it seemed) but not of it, artifact of dustbowl revivalism and factory outlet of global evangelism — God’s big house in south central Alberta. I was there because I’d asked Jesus to help me pass my final high school geometry exam and the answer was “No.” I accepted my 27% as a sign that Christ wanted me at a Christian college. O.B.I.’s academic admission requirements were not nearly as demanding as its measure of godly character.

“Because of its strong missions emphasis and commitment to the Word,” I told Joel.

“Excuse me, bro’.” It was a serene voice that I didn’t recognize, addressing me from a doorway obscured by a brass lamp and pressboard bookcase laden with 20 years of Reader’s Digests and maybe 20 pounds of raw turnips. “Why did your pastor jump off the cliff? Did the Lord tell him too?”

I twisted my neck towards the doorway. Stretched against the white casing trim was a sallow, spindly young man in a red terry robe, his slender fingers folded together at his groin around a sandy brown vinyl Bible. His thinning hair was the colour of his scriptures. His features were rudimentary and wholly forgettable.

“He didn’t jump. It was an accident.”

“Oh, right. Accident.” He spoke it as though the word lied against God and Heaven. “Sorry, brother. Guess I missed that part. We were late getting in from Calgary.” Open-air evangelism, I imagined; O.B.I.’s Friday night crusade on the 12th Street Mall. Two Christian service points towards graduation. Two points of 50. “Still, no accidents with the Lord, eh?”

“He was trying to sneak up on me and this girl because we weren’t singing. I’m not sure exactly what he was planning; just fooling around. Breaking the ice, I guess.”

“Praise the Lord

“It’s like God made him fall just for you…”

“Kinda funny your church is called Cliffside, said Ferly Norman, the short, red-haired running-back of the senior loot- ball team. (Everyone called him “Tennessee” because he had an aunt in Nashville, though he’d lived all his life in Saskatoon. The name was his idea. He refused to answer to I Ferly and we respected that.) There were nods and grunts of agreement all around our circle.

“It’s the name of the street the church is on, but for that to be a coincidence …. I mean, the odds must be pretty wild.”

“Astronomical,” someone swooned.

“How about one more song before we pack it in?” Loveless suggested, picking over the salty husks of an earlier batch of popcorn. “Before I forget, remember to grab some turnips on the way out. Remember to thank the Newtons. A card, maybe, would be nice.”

‘“When the Roll is Called Up Yonder’?” Jerry “Nebraska” Cheeseman — my roommate and proud Nebraskan — suggested.

“Just three verses. Only 10 minutes before lights out.”

In the dream Jesus says, “Fear not, I am with you always,” and I believe him. I believe him even as our heavenly ascent is arrested; even as the bottom falls out of the world and I squeeze my eyes shut against the hole we’re tearing in the sky. The air as we drop chafes my face and in the strange roar of metal, wood and wind I can’t tell if I’m screaming, and I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t. I want to cover my ears but my hands are not about to let go of the steel bar that spans my lap. Is Jesus still there? Has he lied to me? I cock my head towards where he’s supposed to be, dare a peek, and there he is: head snapped back with a laugh, thick curls blowing freely, his arms and wounded hands thrown carelessly high, all for the lovely hell of it.

In the Overcomer handbook, on page iii, I read this:

Welcome, Soldier!

That’s right: a soldier in the army of the Lord! First you enlisted by confessing Christ as Saviour. Now it’s time for boot camp, where you’ll learn how to better wield your weapons of the faith. (“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world .…” Ephesians 6:12)

You’ve probably heard all kinds of stories about Overcomer. (No, we don’t have blue sidewalks for men and pink for girls!) It is true, though, that we are a Bible school with a difference; a difference for which we make no apologies. What sets us apart from many other institutions of Christian learning is our philosophy of education, which encourages a personal RELATIONSHIP between the student and God’s precious Word. Given this, it is important that worldly distractions be kept to an absolute MINIMUM. Still, you’ll find a cheery atmosphere and many new friends with whom you can grow in the Lord.

I folded it back among the socks and cookies of my shoulder bag, then switched off the overhead light which had obscured the prairie night outside the bus. I’d read it many times already, and this was my first Alberta sky, one week before the dormitory floor “sing η share.”

My father had driven me to the airport without many words left besides “Take care” and “I hope you know what you’re doing.” I’d expected him to fight my conversion like he had my mother’s, but apart from a fit the first time he saw me bow my head over a plate of gluey macaroni, there was nothing. Before I could ask him — before I knew that I could — he had paid for my flight and tuition.

The Greyhound from Calgary made five scheduled stops before Three Trees and two after, but we didn’t need to ask each other, “Are you going there, too?” — though we did. It was easiest to single out the male students. Our fabrics gave us away (too many double-knit polyester trousers; too little denim), or our haircuts (too short or too long or just right: whatever, they’d been paid too much attention), or our reflexive, embarrassing way of being in the world: a smug, godly Nya-Nya that said, “I know something you don’t know.” Female Bible schoolers were tough to spot. Every woman in Alberta dressed alike and looked equally God-fearing to me.

Airdrie; Crossfield; Acme …. The Christians had collected in the back of the bus, and by the time we reached Carbon we were singing all four verses of “Amazing Grace” with guitar accompaniment. I sang, too, but softly, not wishing to be a righteous nuisance to the half of the bus which didn’t share our destination in this world and the next. From across the aisle I watched a beautiful sophomore named Monica close her eyes and raise her open palms to heaven (though only to shoulder height, so as not to draw attention to herself), while a track of tears glistened on her cheek like a scar from a duel with the Devil. That first night, as I turned back to the window and the cold dank of the world, the wheat fields seemed as strange to me as lunar seas.

“Uncle Corey used to have this expression at the dinner table — I ever tell you boys about ?I’ Corey? — Anyhow, he used to say, ‘Not as good as skinned cat’.”

“Jeepers, Jerry,” Montana whooped. “We’re eating.”(Kansas, Montana, Tennessee …. In four years not once did I meet a student nicknamed Yukon or Manitoba or Prince Edward Island, though I did meet a guy from Fredericton who called himself “Dallas.”)

“No matter what he was served, whenever we’d ask how it was, that’s what he’d say.”

“Did he ever eat here? Anybody know what this is?”

“So anyway, we all got a little tired of hearing this —”

“Why didn’t you just stop asking him?”

“So just before Corey’s next visit Dad went and caught this stray cat.”

“No way!”

“Mom wasn’t sure what to do with it, but figured the meat’d look like chicken anyway. So when dinner came around there we were, right, all with barbecue chicken in front of us except Uncle Corey. We could hardly keep a straight face, watching him shovel it down. Good it was a big ‘o1 tab; he couldn’t get enough. When he was sopping up the plate with the corn bread Dad asked him how it was. ‘Great’, he says. ‘Not as good as skinned cat, of course.’ Well, we all start hooting, and the look on Corey’s face … man, I wish I had a camera. And then of course he pukes right there.”

This was my first supper in the O.B.I. dining room, and the last meal I intended to share with my roommate Jerry Cheeseman. The day before I arrived on campus, he had tacked a huge ?l’ Glory Stars and Stripes to the wall at the foot of the top bunk, and taken the bottom bunk for himself. “Don’t mind the flag, bro’,” he’d told me before introducing himself. “They call it North America, right?” Jerry was an unabashed John Bircher who could not wrap his head around the idea of Canada. He loved Canada — what he’d seen of southern Alberta looked just like home — but our untimely Thanksgiving, three down football and universal health care seemed either whimsically foreign or perilously un-American. Gingerly, I let Jerry know how I felt about the stars and bars being the first thing I’d see between my legs by the dawn’s early light. He suggested we switch beds. I agreed, not expecting him to continue his habit of kneeling next to the lower bunk for prayer. After his evening’s devotions my sheets were often damp with his salty cries unto the Lord.

Jerry had a poster of Rembrandt’s Christ on the road to Emmaus taped to the cupboard above his desk. A faithful reproduction, but for the Lord’s crew cut. (“Nothing in the Bible proves Jesus had long hair. I’m not saying he had a crew cut. We just don’t know. When he comes back I bet he will. Not that I’ll actually place a wager. The Devil’s a gambler, Daddy says.”) All this and his “skinned cat” yarn confirmed him as a crypto-hillbilly cocksucker (though not in so many words: I’d been saved, thank God, from such a vocabulary). He was someone who could be trusted with neither big ideas nor small, furry things.

“So roomie,” Jerry drawled, hitting the lights the night of our first floor meeting, “What do you make of Delbert Moon?”

“Which one was he?” In the long shadows of the lower bunk I pulled the sheets and blanket to my chin, brushing my penis back upon my belly.

“The late guy, who asked about that stuff with your pastor.”

“Oh yeah.” Careful so as to not inflame my loins, I flipped my cock down against my right thigh before folding my hands behind my head. An elbow was moistened by a stain of Cheeseman’s tears and I rolled to my side in disgust. “What about him?”

“He’s a funny guy.” Jerry paused for my, “Funny how?” but I said nothing. He waited so long that I was nearly asleep by the time he added, “A real funny guy.”

“Funny how?” I finally mumbled, but Jerry didn’t answer. He was snoring a minute later.

My roommate aside (who was, I’m sure, my father’s nightmare of what I would become), I was thrilled to be at Bible College. I threw myself into my studies and obedience training. I wanted to melt into the mould of God’s plan for my life, which he’d known (and God was a he; the heist He) since before the foundations of the world. I was delighted to be suddenly subject to the rules of sober men (and they were men; and by God they were sober) whose selfless, sole concern was that I and my classmates grow into the disciplined officer core of the Church Triumphant’s shock troops. My hair is too long, and has to be off the collar and behind my ears? Off it comes. I’m to be woken daily at six for a 30 minute spell of private prayer, and I’m to be asleep by 10:30 (11 on weekends) after another half hour of compulsory devotions? Hey, I’m awake — I’m asleep. No folk music, not even Burl Ives, let alone rock and roll? I’ll take my Heavenly Father over Big Daddy 10 times out of 10. (And even now Bob Dylan — that Bob Dylan — was singing about Jesus and the End Times and being born again. How much am I, I thought, on the right side of history?) I’m permitted to speak with female students on the O.B.I. grounds, but only so long as we’re walking, and walking in opposite directions? I don’t have a problem with that; I can do without. I can do without everything but the Truth, I wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible my first night on campus, and without everyone but Jesus.

Overcomer Bible Institute had been a baby of the Great Depression; conceived, delivered and breastfed by the Reverend Charles Kaye Barstowe of the popular Glory Hour radio program. As a young Baptist minister in rural Alberta, Barstowe believed he had heard the call of God to evangelize China, and was to sail with his wife and child for Shanghai when, as described in his book, At Home with God,“God stopped me with a cow”:

We’d brought in nearly all the Derby’s crop of barley, such as it was, when a great ruckus drew us to the barn. “Father! Edwin! Pastor! Come quick! It’s Libby!” Derby’s youngest lad, Pelton, cried at the top of his nine-year-old lungs. When we arrived upon the scene Pelton’s eyes were wide as saucers, and he was jumping up and down as he shouted, “Libby talked! Libby talked!”

“What do you mean, boy?” The elder Derby, as flummoxed as I, asked with the patience of Job.

“I was cleaning out her stall, just like you asked, and she lifted her big face towards me and said ‘Proverbs 16:9.’”

“What do you mean?” the good farmer repeated. “Our cow’s quoting scripture?”

“She didn’t quote it,” Pelton explained. “She just gave the reference.”

“‘A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps,” I recited.

“Cows can’t talk, you crazy pug!” said Edwin, tearing a strip from his little brother.

I said nothing while the family argued their heifer’s loquaciousness. Finally, Derby sent the children away so as to confer with me in private.

“Perhaps it is true,” he ventured cautiously. “If God could speak through Balaam’s donkey, I suppose He could speak through my cow. Perhaps it’s a sign that you’re meant to stay.”

“Brother Derby, I began, “I have no doubt that Cod could speak through a rheumatic cockroach if He saw tit. I think, however that young Pelton is the author of this ‘miracle’. You know of course that he’s quite good chums with my boy Matthew, and he’s dreading the thought of our sailing.

“Furthermore, I believe that Miss Ibbotson’s lesson last Sunday drew heavily from the 16th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. Ask him about this before we call it the Lord’s work. If he confesses, let your correction be gentle yet firm — he meant well, though his little heart came close to blasphemy”

1 waited in the barn while Derby repaired to the house to confront his son as to the cow. As I suspected, Pelton owned up to it all, weeping mightily upon his father’s breast for forgiveness. (Which he was given — along with a tender paddling, of course.) I was in no shape for self-congratulations, however, for shortly before Derby returned to collect me the cow suddenly dropped dead, falling upon my legs and breaking them both. Regardless of whether God had spoken through the animal in life, He spoke clearly through her in death: my travel plans were immediately cancelled.

Within the year Derby surprised Barstowe with a deed to one quarter of his land, with the provision that he build a Bible school upon it. (In his mischievous Your Shoes Are Too Big, Lord, the late, self-ordained Reverend Beau Hammond of the Beiseker Four Square Christian Academy hinted that Derby’s cow had been demon possessed. During the autumn of ‘43 the issue was more hotly debated in some prairie evangelical parishes than the timing of a second front or the true count of Hitler’s testicles. To most believers of the day, Barstowe satisfactorily answered Hammond’s charge with his famous Glory Hour sermon, “The Milk of Divine Kindness” Shortly thereafter, Hammond disgraced himself with a pair of war widows and returned to his native Montana, where his ministry flourished until the summer of ‘57 when three boys, drunk on their first guns and beer, mistook him for a scavenging, flannel-vested moose.)

Barstowe was still alive during my time on campus, though he’d passed the mantle of presidency to his son a decade before.

The years and the harsh prairie winters had shrivelled him like a failing star — a brown dwarf, not a black hole — and he seemed to have collapsed upon himself until all that was left was all that was necessary for him merely to be. Judging by the photos in his book and on the library walls, Barstowe had had a pinched and aged face — a face perpetually expecting a fist to be thrown at it — since his high school days in Lethbridge when he played goal for a junior hockey team, and each puck that struck his unguarded nose drew blood by the permissive will of God. Holy shit happens. “The determined set of his modest frame, when filled with the Spirit, has scared many a sinner to heaven,” read the back cover blurb to At Home with God, but as his body twisted and withered to at last match his face, Barstowe grew quaintly freakish; becoming both more humane and less than human. Watching him and his wife of half a century carefully measure their steps from bungalow to church and back again, I’d sometimes reflect on the tenacity of God’s grace or the persistence of godly love, but mostly I’d be reminded of a set of novelty ceramic salt and pepper shakers grown precious with age.

In the fourth floor washroom, early in the morning after our Sing ’ Share, Delbert Moon took the sink beside me, cocked his smooth head at a sharp angle and said, over the soft buzz of fluorescence and electric shavers, “I dreamt of you last night.”

“Really?” I laughed, nervously, then squirted a ball of shaving cream into my hand and spread it thick across my neck and cheeks. “What was it about?”

“Not much,” he answered flatly, pulling a disposable razor from the pocket of his scarlet robe while he stared absently at the mirror. “just remember bits and pieces. It began with a birthday party for my sister on the lawn outside my house. Mom’s place, actually. You show up with a big chocolate cake, and just as my sister Loris made her wish. a giant bear jumps out of it and chases us all inside. I start running around, making sure all the doors are locked and the windows shut. Then — I’m kind of fuzzy on what happens next — but alter a while I’m standing on this tiny island in the middle of nowhere with you and an old man with a beard and pyjamas.”

“No kidding?”

“Oh no. An Old Testament prophet, I think. The sea’s rough and filthy. I’m trying to keep clean and dry but there’s no way. I feel dizzy and think my head’s bleeding, but you tell me I’m OK. I say something like — I forget what, exactly — then you give me a plastic whistle and the old man pulls out a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and we all eat. That’s when I woke up.”

“Whew. Pretty wild.”

“I know. Amazing, eh?” Delbert leaned closer and chuckled while he ran hot water over his blade until the basin steamed. “I wonder what it means?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

Moon winced, as if he’d nicked himself, but his razor was still in the sink. I twist my face up and away from his so I could better shave my neck and put some distance between us. His breath smelled sweet and ruined, like a butter tart in a garden compost.

“Sounds funny.” I smiled gamely. “Especially the chicken.”

“Sure, sure, there’s some humour in it,” Delbert agreed, lathering his cheeks. “But I wonder: maybe there’s something else going on.” He must have glimpsed my unease because he laughed curtly and shook his head, and then explained himself. “Don’t worry, bro’. I don’t mean any of that Freudian garbage. Freud and Jung,” he spat, pronouncing the J as harshly as he might for “Jesuit” or “Jehovah’s Witness.” “Reich — Have you heard of him?— full of demons, all of them. We may as well burn their books, because they’re burning themselves right now.” He shook his head with revulsion, and then looked at me with a slight, incongruous grin. “Sorry to go on like this. Anyway, all I mean is, I wonder what the Ford’s trying to tell me.”

“Oh….” That’s what I was afraid he’d meant. After all. I knew Freud only second hand, thanks to the Montgomery Clift movie and bits on The Carol Burnett Show.“Don’t you think — I don’t know — it could be just a dream, right?”

“Just a dream? Have you ever had just a dream? ‘And it shall come to pass that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams ….’ Joel 2:28. I think we always need to listen for that still small voice, even in our sleep. Maybe especially in our sleep. It’s scriptural. It’s like God’s shortcut to our hearts. Plus, this being the last days and all Then softer, conspiratorially: “Not everybody here goes for that kind of talk. This kind of talk, I mean. No one says anything, but a lot of people suspect I’m some kind of Pentecostal or something.” He shook his head slowly, rolled his eyes and smiled.

“I’m sure God can use dreams,” I said carefully, and in the mirror caught Donny Loveless’s concerned glance as he shuffled behind us before turning towards a urinal. At sinks on either side of us and in stalls quietly feigning a shit, there were godly men confirming their judgements of Moon and shaping their judgements of me. There was a hush about us. The walls wouldn’t take our words, but they were absorbed by the porous souls of holy ghosts. I wished Delbert hadn’t singled me out for conversation. I wished he hadn’t told me his dream. Most of all, I wished he hadn’t dreamt of me. “The thing is, if we really believe the Bible to be God’s final Word, don’t we have to be awfully careful about how we interpret stuff?”

“Oh, absolutely, absolutely,” Moon nodded vigorously, drawing his razor with long strokes down his slender, unlathered neck. There was silence between us until I wiped my face dry. Then: “What’s your schedule like today?”

“Well, Delbert, it’s pretty crazy. Lots of stuff. Dean says I need a haircut before classes Monday.”

“Come by my room if you’ve got a minute. How’s after breakfast? It won’t take long. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. After breakfast then? Got something for you, too.”

“Really?”

“Don’t sweat it.”

My room could have been any other in the Abner Henry Residence for Men. An olive, all-weather carpet stretched across an uneven floor 12 feet square, separating a pair of stacked, pine bunks bracketed to gyprock and a chipped, silver radiator beneath a small, screenless window that had been painted shut. Against each of the other walls a formica-topped desk squatted beneath pressboard cupboards and pressed against a narrow, oak-panelled closet with a door scuffed from years of radiator strikes. A cheap tuna-coloured loudspeaker — wired to the dean’s office and without an off switch or volume control — was screwed into the plaster over the door. Every wall was antique white, and every ceiling washed in a stormy ivory stucco with a stingy splash of homely copper spangles. At night, in moonglow and the high-beams of infrequent traffic, it resembled the empty starfield of a hyperextended universe.

The week of my arrival, I gathered with the other frosh in O.B.l’s tabernacle for a special exhortation from Dean Blier on the godly principle of stewardship. He admonished us to “live as sojourners, calling no land but heaven home,” and referred us to page 44 of the school handbook, where we read that room damage would earn us five property damage points. Twenty points could mean suspension; 30, expulsion. If we wanted to decorate our rooms we needed to use an adhesive putty called “NoMar,” which was the colour and consistency of a dry wad of grape bubble gum and, taste aside, about as useful. In four years, the only friends whom I never heard grouse about the property damage rules were from Singapore, and therefore, I supposed, somewhat accustomed to pernickety despotism.

Despite the risk, few left their walls bare. In my first week I hadn’t seen an unadorned, occupied room until I visited Moon’s.

Delbert was sitting at a desk with his Bible open to Revelations, wearing a shirt the colour of unstirred yoghurt. His pants were a flared Tory-blue wool blend — too heavy, I judged, for this time of year, though his room seemed unusually cold — with ringmaster-white pinstripes as thick as pencil lead running up his shanks. Dressed like that, it seemed odd he was barefoot.

There were no posters on the walls, no books on the shelves, and the only bedding I could see was a rolled up khaki sleeping bag at the head of the top bunk. There was little evidence he lived there. He was an over-dressed extra on an under-dressed set.

“Hi bro — breakfast’s over, huh?” He tucked a yellow felt highlighter in his breastpocket and folded the Scriptures shut. I nodded. “I hardly ever eat breakfast. Don’t like to rush devotions. Come on in and close the door. Pull out the other chair.” He read my face like I read Dagwood Bumstead’s, and smiled as though he saw a halo of question marks. “I know. I guess I like things tidy.”

“I guess. Where’s all your stuff?”

“I don’t need much — not like I used to. What I have, I keep out of the way. I refuse to be tyrannized by thinghood. I won’t be possessed by possessions. Cluttered room means a cluttered mind. I like both of mine to be shipshape.”

“My place is a mess already,” I said as I sat. “Mostly my roommate’s stuff. Books and socks and boot polish everywhere.”

“I see, I see,” Delbert grinned and nodded too sharply. “I’ve got a room all to myself. Where are you from, Gideon? Gideon— you’ve got such a neat name. He’s one of my favourites from the Book of Judges. ‘The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.’ He’s right up there with Deborah and Barek — way cooler than Samson. Casting the fleece to test the Lord — I mean, we do stuff like that all the time — but then, reducing the number of his army so the whole world would know that it was God’s victory …. Now that’s a real hero. You’re fortunate to have such a neat name.”

“I’m named after my uncle. He designed amusement rides. You ever heard of the Eager Beaver?”

“I loathe my name. ‘Delbert’ is my thorn in the flesh. Wish I had something historical. Martin Luther Moon, maybe.”

“Church History’s the best; man, I love that class. And Sophia Faulkner’s a great teacher. I guess you must have had her too, huh?”

Moon leaned back, resting both elbows behind him on his desk, then crossed his legs and craned his neck to stare hard at his curled toes. And then ignored me.

“I mean, I can live with Delbert, if that’s God’s will, but my parents weren’t Christians. Certainly not when they named me, anyway.” He flashed a brittle smile. “My father was a drunkard and a complete whoremonger. Don’t be shocked; I choose my words prayerfully. He was in Vietnam when I was born. A Canadian volunteer. Heard about them? Not many have. I don’t grudge him his war. I’m still proud of whatever it was he did over there. It’s just I wish he’d never come home.” He took a deep breath and raised his eyes, briefly meeting mine. “Mom’s a believer now, praise Cod. Only a couple of years old in the Lord. Only since Dad died. I know it sounds terrible, but it was the best thing that could have happened to her. Whether it was the best thing for him, I can’t say. I just hope that he called on Christ before he lost consciousness.” Moon took another deep breath and shrugged, then flashed me a strange, soft frown. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all this but it feels right to, and ‘if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God.’ Right?” I nodded, but he didn’t wait for it. “Where you from, brother?”

“Toronto.”

“Right, right. I remember from the other night.” He shifted in his chair, raising one buttock and then the other just enough to sit on his hands, palms up. His thumbs poked out and occasionally drummed on his cheeks. “I was there once. I used to subscribe to Maclean’s.”

The static crackle of the loudspeaker interrupted Delbert. The Dean cleared a throat jagged with feedback, then informed us of an opening for the Sunday crusade team to Drumheller prison (worth 10 Christian service points), and confirmed that, henceforth, ties would not be required in the library on Saturdays after tour p.m.

“Sodom,” Moon sighed. “Toronto, I mean. Sorry, I know it’s your home — it’s just all those prostitutes, drugs and theatres everywhere. Man, it must take as much grace to live a godly life there as it did in pagan Rome — or like it still does in Rome, for that matter, what with the Pope and dirty Italian movies and all. It’s a real fiery furnace, eh?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say —”

“I’m from Shadrach, up Peace River country? I couldn’t even find it on a map, so don’t feel bad. You’d think we’d know about fiery furnaces, but we got, like, six churches for 300 people and just one of them Catholic. Nobody blinks at a six-day creation, Noah’s Ark, the whole biblical ball of wax. It’s not right. There’s no scandal to the Cross. Some people like that, but not me.”

“Why?”

“When everyone’s sanctified and set apart it’s easy to forget how freakish we must seem — should seem — to the world. And I’m not just talking about folks out in Toronto, but to the liberals and papists in Edmonton and Peace River. It reminds me of something I heard the Keaton twins say… I can’t remember exactly right now, but it was good. You ever heard the Keatons preach?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“No? You don’t know what you’re missing, brother. Siamese twins out of the Amazon jungle, totally on fire for Jesus. It’s really something to hear them preach the Word. My, my, my …” He shook his head and snorted. “I think freakishness, if you want to call it that, is a spiritual gift. We should stick out like sore thumbs.” Moon drew his breath sharply, then twisted his neck to stare vacantly out the window at a queue of jaded grain elevators. “No; we ought to be healthy thumbs. Christians ought to stick out like healthy thumbs on the mangled hands of the world.”

Mentally, I was practising excuses for leaving when he said, “You must be wondering what I wanted to show you, right?”

“Sure,” I shrugged. “Lay it on me.”

“It’s really just a little thing. Actually, it’s got something to do with our conversation in the washroom. Remember? Just remember for a second.” He leaned towards me slowly and dropped his voice like it was the other shoe. “Feeling embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed?”

“Ashamed I should say. Convicted, maybe?”

“No,” I drawled slowly. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Hmmm.” Moon took a deep breath but gave up just a tiny sigh. He arched his eyebrows and drooped his shoulders, and I felt as though I’d punctured him. “Okay. No problem; don’t worry about it. It’s not as though you’re very old in the Lord — no offence. I have something you might find interesting.”

Moon gave his desk’s top drawer a couple of firm tugs. “A little stuck,” he mumbled, curling a corner of his lip into an apologetic smile. Then he twisted in his chair and pulled harder.

The drawer, when it finally opened, was crammed with creased and mangled papers, at least a dozen pens (a good half of which, I assumed, must be dry), two Bible highlighters, a set of precision screwdrivers, a rusty garden trowel and maybe three bucks in pennies. As he strained to stretch his slender forearm towards the back of the drawer, I heard a muffled jangle which sounded like several vials of pills.

“Ah ha!” He took out a stained and dog-eared red pamphlet, closed the drawer with his elbow and pressed it into my palm.

“Heck No! The Secret Sin of Minced Oaths,” I read. “Hmm. Minced oaths? Sounds interesting.” He frowned. “Interesting but, you know, like, sinful. So, what are they?”

“I didn’t think you’d know,” Moon beamed. “When you weren’t embarrassed, I was hoping for your sake. They aren’t things that worry most people, even Christians, but — well, let me tell you about them and you can decide for yourself. Now you take a word like ’.heck’. Say, for instance, I show up for Mr Gurney’s Doctrine class and he’s got a pop quiz on soteriology. If I groan ‘Oh, heck’, there’s not many around that would consider that foul language, even though we all know what ‘heck’ stands for, don’t we?”

Delbert folded his hands behind his head, staring at me as though he didn’t know a rhetorical question when he’d asked one.

“It stands for ‘hell’, doesn’t it, Gideon?” I nodded, just to let him know it had sunk in. “Worse than heck, though, are words like ‘golly’ — a contraction of ‘God is holy’ — ‘gee’ for ‘Jesus’ and ‘goshdarn’ for … well, I just don’t want to say what, but you can imagine, I’m sure. And that’s precisely the problem: you can imagine!”

“Oh,” I said. But what I’d meant to say was, Oh?

“The best you can say about a minced oath is that its a loophole: a way to swear without saying bad words. But how do you think the Lord feels — believe me, I don’t mean to preach at you, brother; every time I point a finger I’ve got three pointing back at me — when we twist his name to make it foolish, just to comfort ourselves that we haven’t actually blasphemed? Why not curse and be honest about it? Better yet, why not acknowledge we’ll be asked to account for every idle word? The hateful thing about minced oaths is that they follow the letter of the law, not the spirit, and ‘the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.’ I’m not making this up. It’s all right there,” he said, pointing at the pamphlet, “and there,” pointing to the Bible.

“Pretty heavy stuff,” I sighed after a moment’s silence. Could he be right? He could be crazy, but I’d read enough Bible to believe he could be right and crazy. “I don’t remember what I said.”

“‘Gee’, if I recall correctly.”

“Oh.” Worse than ‘heck’, though no gosh darn’. I felt like shit. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Don’t be hard on yourself.” Moon knitted his brow and smiled grimly as he slowly, gracefully let a hand fall on my knee.

“Okay then. I’ll try not to be.”

“You’ve been a Christian now, how long? Not long, right?”

“Not long.”

“You’re still a babe in Christ. No offence.”

“None taken.”

“Just a babe.” Now, I was offended. “Read the pamphlet and pray. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I trust God for that.”

“Alright. Thanks, Delbert.” I wanted to leave, but Moon’s motionless, leaden hand fixed me to the chair just as I used to press together freshly-pasted model parts while the glue set.

“Got something else that might interest you.” Moon stood to open a cupboard and, as though he’d raised me up himself, suddenly I was standing at his side.

His cupboard was overstuffed with paperbacks and cardboard boxes. Most of the books were arranged in neat piles with their spines aligned on the left; some were filed, two deep, in vertical rows; others lay at odd angles over the piles and rows like a layer of frosting squeezed from across the room. The boxes, I imagined, held more books. I was startled, not surprised, when I realized they were all copies of the same book.

“Like to read? You read much? Ever see this?” Moon grabbed a copy from the top of the nearest row and handed it to me. Its cover was a coarse charcoal sketch of a pair of empty sandals against a lurid taupe and purple background. The book smelled bad, almost mossy, as though the sandals could use a pair of Odor Eaters. The book was a Your Shoes Are Too Big, Lord.

“Take it. I’ve got others. I think you’ll find that the name of Beau Hammond isn’t exactly honoured around here — you’ll see why in the 8th chapter — but I find it a great devotional aid. If we’re going to ‘rightly divide the word of truth’ then we’re bound to make some unpopular choices. And I’m pretty unpopular,” he chuckled mirthlessly.

“Okay. Thanks, then.”

I squinted at the tract and the book in my palms, smelled the cover and felt a headache coming on.

“Why do you — I mean, all these books

“My uncle — he’s not really my uncle; more like an uncle in the Lord — my uncle has a little publishing company in Red Deer. He reprinted Shoes a couple of years ago. He always figured someone had it in for Hammond. I’m not saying it was Reverend Barstowe. All I know is my mother’s going to heaven because of this book.”

“Wow. It must be good.”

“Precisely.”

I thanked him again and told him I had to run. He said he’d like to talk again soon; perhaps we could have devotions together sometime? I said that sounded fine.

I knew he was nuts, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right.