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
