Part 9 (1/2)
”We have all night.”
He fumbled, fumed, and finally put his gla.s.ses on. ”Well, I'm sorry, I mean, I really do apologize, but I don't have all night. I have to get back to the motel and run my business.”
”That's all right. Baby steps, Norman.”
”One little step at a time,” said Blanche.
He smiled at them and hurried to his car before he said something unkind. Once he got the door closed and drove away, he did say it. And he believed it too. He kept on saying it and believing it all the way back to the motel, gesturing wildly, wagging his head, addressing his reflection in the rear view mirror. Those people up there were crazy! They were an embarra.s.sment! Fanatics! He was amazed they were allowed to roam freely about the town. People were traveling from far and wide for this?
Yes, Norman, and staying in your motel, he reminded himself. By the time he got back to his office, he'd taken some baby steps toward getting used to the whole idea.
MATT KILEY had no intention of getting used to it. Monday morning, when I stopped in at his hardware store for some molly screws, he was still fuming about a visit he'd had from some crucifix watchers.
”I told 'em to spend some money or get out of here,” he said, propelling his wheelchair down the aisle where he stocked all his fasteners. He was still disgruntled. ”If they can't cope with it, that's their problem. I cope with it because I have to and I'm not asking for any favors. What are you hanging, anyway?” Matt was a decorated Vietnam vet. He was proud of that, and I was proud of him. He still wore camouflage fatigues around the store when he felt like it, flew a flag over his front entrance, and kept a POWaMIA poster on the wall behind his cash register. I never found him overly rude or obnoxious, but he was crusty, no doubt about that. In his younger days he'd come out the winner in quite a few rib and nose breakers down at Judy's-the other guy's ribs and nose, not his. In Vietnam he'd dispatched his share of Vietcong and taken more than his share of risks for his buddies before a sniper put a bullet through his spine. Now, running his hardware store from his chair, he wasn't bitter about the war or about his injury. He just didn't like people fussing about it.
”Some more shelves in the bedroom,” I told him. ”A lot of heavy stuff.”
”Got a stud finder?”
”No, but you can sell me one.”
”I'll do that. Anchor to all the studs you can find. And here, these mollies'll do the trick through the drywall.”
He pointed them out to me and I grabbed as many from the little drawer as I thought I would need. Matt had four employees to do most of the stocking and high reaching, but customers helped by Matt were often responsible for reaching any items Matt couldn't. We headed up the aisle.
”They were all hot to trot. *Matt, you gotta come down to Our Lady's so you can walk again!'” He abruptly turned left. ”Stud finder. Magnetic or fancy?”
”Depends on how much they cost.”
He kept wheeling along, perfectly at home with every square inch of this place. ”Like all I have to do is look up at that crucifix and believe, and that'll do it. Trav, you know what it's like. I've had crackpots before try to get me to walk.” He quickly added, ”Well, not all of 'em were crackpots. You know what I mean.”
”Sure.”
”There's just some people who can't leave it alone, that's all I'm saying.”
”I know what you mean.”
”Yeah, sure you do. You've been there.” He grabbed a stud finder off the tool rack. ”These are fun. You slide it along the wall and watch the little lights come on.”
I checked the price. I figured I could swing it. ”Great.”
I followed him as he wheeled toward the front, executing snappy turns around corners and past merchandise. He rang up my purchase at a cash register built on a lower shelf just for his use. I paid him, he threw my goods into a sack, and then stopped to ponder. ”Funny. I made some friends at the VA hospital, I've met some other folks in wheelchairs, and we got along fine. They never told me to go down and look at some crucifix or wash in some special kind of water or say some kind of magic prayer words. It's always the walkers who know what you need.”
Our eyes met. We understood each other.
It's always the walkers who know what you need. Matt Kiley's words, his cynical wisdom born of experience, haunted me for the rest of the day. Yes, I understood. I had been there.
I just didn't want to go back again. . . .
6.
IWAS SEVENTEEN the year my father took a hiatus from the ministry and relocated the family from Seattle to a small, almost nontown on an island in Puget Sound. Back in Seattle, we had a great church with great wors.h.i.+p and a great youth program. I had a girlfriend. I was a junior at the high school my brother and sister and several uncles had attended and had school spirit that bordered on pathological. I had some friends at that school-it had taken me long enough to make them. Then we moved, and I began my senior year in a run-down, fund-hungry high school with caved-in lockers, sagging floors, and three hundred total strangers.
Like any plant torn up by the roots, I didn't take well to the transplant. I used to have the acceptance of my peers, and now I couldn't be sure I even had peers. I used to be part of something, but now I was an outsider. I was in pain. I was lost.
Lost, and absolutely certain that it couldn't be right, much less the will of G.o.d.
You see, I knew G.o.d back then. I knew exactly what he expected from me and what I could expect from him. I'd grown up attending the Allbright Gospel Tabernacle, a Pentecostal Mission church in Seattle's Rainier Valley, and when we gathered for wors.h.i.+p, we always counted on G.o.d's tangible presence. We felt no qualms about calling out to him aloud, right from our pews, right when we felt the need or the unction. We heard from G.o.d regularly in prophetic utterances that usually began with ”Oh my people” and admonitions that usually began with ”I hear the Lord saying . . .” We prayed for the sick and expected they would get well.
Dad preached the Word of the Lord from the pulpit, and we worked it in at the altar afterward. Our sessions at the altar were usually noisy, often tearful, and altogether glorious. I couldn't tell you now how much of the commotion was due to the Holy Spirit and how much was simple Pentecostal fervor, but I know I did precious business with G.o.d in that place. I got saved in that church when I was eight years old. Being Pentecostal, I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit in that church when I was twelve, kneeling at that wooden rail with my head on my coat sleeve until the pattern was pressed into my face. Over the years, I dedicated and rededicated myself to the Lord's service, repented, praised, confessed, and pet.i.tioned, all from that little brick building in Rainier Valley. That was where I knew G.o.d.
But Dad was tired, Mom was unhappy, and the family needed a change, so Dad quit preaching and we moved.
The church we found on the island was . . . restful, you might say. Kind of like a stalled car. These folks didn't smile much, sang all possible verses of really slow hymns, and absolutely, positively, never, ever clapped. As far as I could discern, G.o.d was not expected to move, speak, or convict-he was expected to follow the printed order of service and keep quiet like everyone else. There was never an altar call after the service. Instead, people worked the sermon out of their memories over coffee, cookies, and idle chatter in the bas.e.m.e.nt.
I was seventeen, living in a strange new place, enrolled in a school that felt foreign, and attending a church dedicated to deadness.
Which made me a prime target for the KenyonaBannister movement.
David Kenyon, a fellow senior I got to know in art cla.s.s, pinned me down one day. ”Hey, are you a Christian?”
”Sure!”
”Spirit-filled?”
”Yeah.”
”Speak in tongues?”
”Yeah.”
He extended his hand and we shook. ”I knew it. I just knew it.”
It had been a while since I'd met anyone excited about what G.o.d was doing, so while I worked on a sculpture and he worked on an oil painting, David talked and I listened.
”The Holy Spirit's moving,” he said. ”Just blows my mind what G.o.d's doing. I had a real confrontation with a demon yesterday. I think he knew we were moving into Satan's territory. We had a prophecy last week and G.o.d told us to get our act together, get off the acid and gra.s.s and get high on Jesus. He was talking right to some of the group and it really shook them up.”
He started naming kids in school I'd known of but didn't know.
”Bernadette Jones-” Wow. She always impressed me as being tough and unapproachable. She had a crusty mouth when she could get away with it and never missed a chance for a smoke.
”Karla d.i.c.kens-” I knew of her from drama cla.s.s. It seemed every skit she did had something to do with marijuana.
”Andy Smith-” Very musical. Had a rock band and was already working on a symphony.
”Clay Olson-” Uh, no. I couldn't think of a face to go with the name.