Читать книгу I’m Not from Here - Will Willimon - Страница 6

“Brother, can I talk to you about the most important thing in life?”

The man slowly stretched out his full lazy length. . . . “If it’s insurance, I got too much,” he said. “If it’s oil-wells, I don’t touch ‘em, and if it’s religion, I’m saved.” . . .

“That’s fine. There is no greater pleasure than to talk over the big things with a believer.”

“I’m saved,” continued the other, “from making a goddam fool of myself in public places. I’m saved, you little peahen, from putting my head into other people’s business. So shut your damn face and get out of here, or I’ll rip your tongue out of your throat.” . . .

“You’re angry, brother,” said Brush, “because you’re aware of an unfulfilled life.”

—Thornton Wilder, Heaven’s My Destination

The next morning, Sunday—emboldened by a pop tart and a glass of decaffeinated, saccharined tea, unpacked, done with his usual half hour of meditative reading and memorization—Felix ventured forth. Even as early as ten, it was sweltering hot, streets of Galilee shimmering, steamy, musty.

Jefferson Davis Street, the town’s main thoroughfare, was phantasmal, archaic, and empty. The houses he passed, constructed during the town’s bygone era of prosperity, were uniformly Southern Victorian: white, wide porches, sheer-draped windows, dry birdbaths in the yards. They looked vacant. He suspected that the inhabitants were older women, replicas of Mrs. Swanson. Pots of begonia, Wandering Jew, desiccated hydrangea were numerous. Also, overgrown shrubbery stressed by drought, even though the Georgia summer had barely begun.

No lane that crossed Jefferson Davis had been deemed worthy of a street sign. Everyone must know where they are, thought Felix. Galilee looked frozen in place in 1880, fixed and final. Nothing more is needed.

Felix saw neither a soul abroad nor any sign of active habitation—though a lone dog ambled toward him without taking notice. The dog continued down the middle of the sidewalk, refusing to give way to Felix, forcing him to step out into the street.

It’s good to be a place where life is so pleasant that nobody wants to change anything or go anywhere else.

Looking down each bare street, the town seemed either eerily quiet or wonderfully serene and settled on a summer Sunday, depending on how you looked at it.

In three blocks the residential area (without evidence of residents) gave way to the alleged business district. Hollow storefronts testified to little commercial activity in Galilee. Felix was relieved not to see a phone shop. The closer he came to the center of town, the more eccentric Galilee appeared. Wilson’s Hardware displayed dusty, antique kitchen utensils alongside a gallon jar of preserved rabbits that caused Felix to pause and wonder.

Tarbox Insurance had in its front window a set of framed black-and-white photographs of the charred remains of houses that had burned in Galilee in the past. Over all of them was a big, hand-lettered, yellowing poster: “ACTS OF GOD. Is Your Home Next? Tomorrow is Full of Uncertainty. Don’t Gamble with the Future. Turn to Tarbox Today.”

Felix’s goal was church. Though he was gradually, with the help of The Prophet, extricating himself from the clutches of his Southern Baptist background, and though he had a mannerly tolerance for organized religion, he had personally moved beyond conventionally religious practice. The reason for his venturing forth this morning was obedience to his mother’s injunction, “Go to church so you can get a good start. Maybe you will meet a girl.” Eager to get off on the right foot, Felix walked two more blocks toward the center of town and, in a spiritually adventuresome mood, made for the first house of worship he saw—the yellow brick home of the Methodists.

As he walked he listened to his iPod: “But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, . . . so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self. You are the way and the wayfarers.”

He paused before crossing the last street and surveyed the church—rambling, squash-colored brick with a bell tower to the side, preserved meticulously from the early twenties. Switching off his iPod, he pondered the inscrutable wisdom that he had just heard. Could he be in a procession towards his god-self, both wayfarer and way?

The rusted black sign read, “GALILEE FIRST METHODIST CHURCH, SOUTH, The Revernd Doctor Dimsdale Witzkopf, DMin., 11:00 Sundays. Youth Activities Cancelled All Summer. No United Methodist Women’s Meetings until Farther Notice.”

He was surprised that a service was scheduled; there were few traces of activity around the building. (Later he discovered that it should have been designated as Galilee Only Methodist Church, the town’s sole congregation of that denomination.)

Two aged Fords were parked beside the church, even though it was 10:40. Felix climbed the worn granite steps toward a door on the left side and optimistically pulled the handle. The door refused. He turned, faced the street and smiled, feeling stupid. He walked down the steps and over to the front of the church, half-hoping that someone might appear so he would not have to risk trying another locked door in vain.

He gave thanks when the central door gave way. As he stepped blindly into a darkened entrance hall, an elderly woman’s high voice called, “You are new, I take it. Heard you rattling the side door. It’s always shut to protect from wetness.”

“Thank you,” he responded awkwardly. “I’m from Salisbury.”

Her expression did not change.

“Near Charlotte,” he explained.

“Yes, well, there you have it,” she declared as she shoved a folded piece of paper at him, opened the sanctuary door, and gestured him into the main body of the church. “Our large organ from Ohio is susceptible to wetness.”

At fifteen minutes before the churching hour the room was empty except for a couple of shuffling members of the choir in the loft behind the pulpit.

“I’m not really going through Galilee,” Felix said in an attempt to prolong their conversation. “I’m a new resident, having just moved here to begin work in communications technology.”

“One would think, as hot and dry as this summer has been, wetness wouldn’t be a problem,” she continued. Then, shoving him into the empty sanctuary, the woman laughed, shaking her head in amusement. “No, you are just passing through.”

* * *

Plopped on an empty pew, he stared at a sprawl of gladioli on the altar table. A minute or two before eleven, Felix heard a church bell clang, as if someone were beating a bucket with a hammer. Then slamming doors and muffled voices. People shuffled in, murmuring as they took their habitual seats. The organ gurgled a prelude. An aged choir (four older women, two ancient men) chirped a tremulous call to worship, “Here We Are,” sung with resignation.

The pastor appeared from a side door next to the choir loft and then disappeared in a chair behind the pulpit. All that could be seen of him was his spouting hair. Then a couple of hymns that Felix remembered from his childhood at Beulah Baptist in Salisbury. An offering was collected and Felix, noting dollar bills in the plate, discreetly crumpled in his ten-dollar bill, smiling at an elderly woman down the pew. As he did so he spotted his landlady across the aisle and toward the back. Mrs. Swanson appeared to be whispering to the woman seated next to her. Both looked toward Felix. He smiled at them over his shoulder. They looked away.

When an usher thrust the attendance pad at him, Felix dutifully signed with the blunt golf pencil that had been provided. He included his new address and checked “Desire a Visit,” because there was no category for newcomers. On the “Prayer Concerns” line, he wrote, “‘You are the way and the wayfarers’—The Prophet.” He smiled as he stretched to his left to pass the pad to his sole companion in the pew, an older woman who glared at him as she received the pad, jerking it from his hand.

Felix perked up when the service at last made it to the sermon, about 11:30, according to a quick glance at his muted Gotcha Dragon.

The pastor seemed as little interested in the subject of his sermon as the passive congregation. His text was from one of the gospels, wherever Jesus says to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The preacher announced, “This is what Christianity is all about. The whole point of Jesus, in case any of you were wondering.”

Felix smiled. He saw himself as on a pilgrimage in search of the point of it all. He had ventured forth on an assignment that took him away from the narrow, negative, judgmental Christianity of Beulah Baptist, upwards into some new but as yet indistinct, graciously vague, neighborly spirituality. The preacher’s declaration that the point was “love your neighbor as yourself” sounded like The Prophet.

Witzkopf’s interest in his subject quickened. His voice rose as he pronounced that most people don’t notice that Jesus stressed “as yourself” as the key to Christianity. “So ‘love your neighbor’ isn’t the mush you people think it is.”

“Self-love is the basis for all true love,” claimed the preacher. “If you can’t love yourself, lots of luck loving anybody else. Schopenhauer said that love does not let itself be forced. So there. I say unto you that love, like faith, isn’t forced. No means no.”

Witzkopf gave a giggle that was unreturned by the congregation.

Felix scarcely had time to turn over these arresting thoughts before the preacher sneered, “As my mentor, the great Schopenhauer, put so well, ‘If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.’ Get it?”

Holding his Dragon near his crotch, Felix surreptitiously Googled Schopenhauer. A German philosopher, he was surprised to learn. The preacher had a mentor, a philosopher. Felix also had a dead mentor. He liked a preacher who cited great people. He was trying to memorize quotes too, even though most people had forgotten Gibran.

The preacher mentioned “the insidious myth of altruism,” and some other things, then carefully read, spitting the words, “Again, Schopenhauer: ‘Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her. . . . She is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.’” A couple of older women toward the front turned toward one another and frowned.

Felix had encountered a co-intellectual. “Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her . . .” Though Gibran probably would not put it that way, Felix liked the quote. He saved “truth is no harlot” to the notepad on his Dragon, thinking, “That sums it all up.”

At the end of the service Felix followed the pastor and an adolescent acolyte out the door of the sanctuary and into the entrance hall. A few loitered and chatted. The Prophet’s maxim, “Your daily life is your temple and your religion,” confirmed.

“Passing through?” Witzkopf asked as he shook Felix’s hand. The man’s coiffure sprouted in various directions, though in the noontide heat some of his hair was now plastered to his forehead. He wore a clerical collar and scuffed, brown shoes, neither of which Felix had seen on preachers back home.

“Actually, I’ve just moved to Galilee,” Felix responded.

“What in God’s name for?”

“Communications. Trinity Communications,” said Felix.

“Really? Odd. Don’t get newcomers. Just about none your age. In a way, you and I are in the same profession. Are you a Methodist? Must not be, what with your invocation of the Trinity.”

“I grew up Baptist. Actually, I’m a seeker, a searcher, sort of,” Felix replied. He felt the aggravation of the older couple behind him, displeased at this extended conversation in violation of post-service custom. “Maybe we could talk sometime next week. I agree that truth is no harlot.”

“I’d like that,” said the pastor as he passed Felix on down the steps. “I’d really like that. As you see,” he said under his breath, “this bunch of dolts isn’t much into searching or seeking. I can tell you.”

At the foot of the steps a jovial older man offered Felix an outstretched hand. “Well hello and welcome to Galilee, son!” he called. “George Grimes here. By the prodding of the pastor, head usher; by the will of the people, public servant. Saw you made it to our attendance pad.” Felix brightened and shook his hand eagerly. “I take it you are just passing through. Nobody ever uses those attendance pads. What brings you by our fair city?”

“Communications, sir,” answered Felix. “Trinity Communications.”

“And just what did you want to communicate?” Grimes asked with a grin. An older woman, very thin, stood just behind Grimes, looking at Felix through large, pink sunglasses. Felix assumed that she was Mrs. Grimes. She smiled at Felix with brightly painted red lips.

“Uh, Trinity is only the how of communication, not the what. We aren’t even the why. We’re the means, not the substance,” Felix said, quoting verbatim from Quattlebaum’s sales manual. “We help keep folks on the same page.”

Grimes shook off these remarks congenially, then asked, “Say, what did you mean by what all you wrote on the attendance pad? That thing about us being ‘the way and the wayfarers.’ Was that meant as an evaluation of the service? If so, take heart. I think our organist may be on his way out, if you get my drift?”

“Why, no,” said Felix. “That’s from my spiritual mentor, the great . . .”

Looking over his shoulder, Grimes called out, “Somebody go tell that boy to stop smoking near the church steps!” The acolyte, free of his cassock, was lighting up on the sidewalk. “We got company here.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Felix said. “Though smoking is wrong for me, I do feel people ought to be free to . . .”

Grimes, ignoring Felix’s comments, wheeled about and coaxed a young woman toward Felix with the words, “Here. This is my precious little Margarita. I want you to know that it’s not really a Spanish name.” He laughed loudly.

“You young folks go ahead and get to know each other. Margarita honey, you make Fred feel welcome. I fear Fred is not long with us. Maybe you can make it worth his while to stay awhile. Get him to take off his shoes.”

The girl smiled shyly as she and Felix moved to the edge of the street. He nervously chattered, comparing Salisbury with Galilee, mentioning the heat, asking her where was a good place to get groceries, repeating his actual name. When she apologized for the heat, Felix told her about his childhood asthma. He had learned to be content in almost any weather because, as he told himself, everything depends on how you look at it. All a matter of what’s in your heart.

“What’s in the heart means everything to me,” she said. He beamed when she explained, “You’re gonna find that there’s not many folks our age in this dead town. Not many have got much heart left. You’ll let me show you around, won’t you? Nothin’ more interesting than a good-hearted boy, particularly one that we don’t know nothin’ about.”

“That would be great!” As they swapped phone numbers, Felix’s Gotcha buzzed with a new text: B & E MON AM GIT YOKLE LST AT CT. HSE. MARGARET MEAD.

He turned aside to decipher: Bright and early Monday morning (or perhaps brash and eager?); obtain list of local farmers from the county courthouse.

“I know you are just so busy getting settled,” she said. “But I hope you will have time to hang out. Everybody but Daddy calls me Rita. Wouldn’t want to see you get too settled.”

He noted her pure, pale face, the perfect complement to her blonde hair. The lace collar on her dress suggested that she was an old-fashioned sort of girl. Friendly, not pushy, he thought. Good-hearted. He could hardly believe his good fortune to have met so nice a girl on his first full day in town.

“I’ll call later, Felix,” she said with a wink as her father led her and the thin, blonde woman (her mother?) down the street toward their car.

Felix’s slight smile and curt wave concealed his great delight.

“And son,” said Grimes in a lowered voice, “in the future please use the attendance pads for what they supposed to be used for, not to sound off with your pet peeves. I can tell that you are the sort of young man on the way up who doesn’t mind good advice. You’re not a Democrat are you, by any chance? I know somebody up in South Carolina who is a member of the party. Can’t think of his name right now. Well, good to meet you, Frank.”

“I’m more of a seeker, actually, than a member of any political party,” said Felix to Mr. Grimes’ backside.

A couple of old folks smiled but did not speak as Felix turned toward his apartment. The heat of midday was now scorching in its intensity, but Felix was light-hearted as he made his way back to a Sunday peanut butter sandwich at his new home, pleased at his good luck his first Sunday in Galilee, thrilled at having met a girl like Rita and a fellow traveler like the pastor. It’s like I’m already home. He spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in front of his whining air conditioner reading Gibran in one hand and the Gotcha sales manual in the other.

* * *

Late that same Sabbath, near dusk, when he was reasonably sure that Galilee had cooled a few degrees, Felix set out to get gas for his Corolla. Finding a lone gas station toward the edge of town, he treated his car to a full tank of regular. When he returned, he was shocked to see a woman standing on the landing at the top of the steps before the door of his apartment. She turned and looked toward the street, and he recognized Rita. She had changed out of her church clothes and into a snug T-shirt and tighter cutoff jeans.

“‘My, my,’ I said to myself, ‘that rascal is prowling around town already,’” she called to him cheerfully. “Looking for action, Mr. Newcomer?”

“Actually, I went to get some gas,” Felix replied.

Standing with Rita on the stoop, Felix fumbled for words, managing only another comment about the heat, then his surprise at finding just one gas station and the challenge of preparing for his first day of sales.

“Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?” Rita asked. “I’m wringing wet. Sweating bad. Besides, I brought you some of Mama’s red velvet cake.” She offered him a plastic container. “Don’t worry. She don’t use that red dye that kills people. A little heavy on the vanilla, but most folks like it.”

“Uh, I wasn’t sure if it was right to invite a woman, or anybody for that matter, into my little apartment. I haven’t got but one chair, so I’d have to sit on the bed, so . . .”

“You’re silly,” she said as she breezily brushed around him and opened his screen door, letting herself into the apartment. “God it’s hot in here.”

“My landlady requested that I turn off my air conditioner when I leave,” Felix explained.

“That’s when you should have requested her to go to hell,” said Rita as she plopped on the bed, leaving Felix to sit stiffly in the chair as they talked. She advised him of the one good place to eat in town, laughing at his admission that he had already eaten at Robert’s Drive-In. (“Nasty,” she pronounced.) Then Rita gave him a thumbnail history of Galilee’s economic ups and downs (tied directly to the price of cotton). Felix listened with rapt attention. She moved from sitting on the bed to lounging there, head propped up on a pillow, gesturing with her left hand as she oriented Felix to Galilee. His genuine interest in her narrative was disarming to Rita, unaccustomed as she was to anyone listening as she talked.

“The only job I could get in this hurtin’ town is at Tarbox Insurance,” she said.

“I passed by there this morning,” Felix said, brightening.

“It’s a dump. And I get barely minimum wage to do nothing but answer the phone. Rings about twice a day. And to file some policy, if creepy old Mr. Tarbox ever sells one. So you can see why I’m so glad to see a new boy like you show up.”

After an awkward pause Felix nervously interjected, “‘Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.’” Rita acted as if she hadn’t heard him and continued to prattle on about life in Galilee.

At length she suddenly sat up and said, “Why, it’s next to dark. Surely it’s cool outside. Let’s go for a walk.” Felix, who had been wondering what next, jumped up and said, “Great idea! Walking is so good for you. I like to stroll.”

“Well I don’t,” said Rita as she exited the apartment. “You’re not suggesting I need to worry about my weight, are you?” she asked, thrusting her hips to one side and putting her hands on her exposed tummy. “But what else is there to do in a place like this? Besides, I want to keep this little body in shape.” She patted her hips for emphasis.