a miracle,” Filmore mumbled as he passed us, a dribble of blood streaking his cheek and spotting the grass at Patti’s feet. Then he stopped and looked back at me with wide, vacant eyes.
“You,” he said, feebly pointing. “I was coming up behind you. Sneak up. Surprise. You weren’t singing. Meant to surprise. Supposed to be funny. Jesus…!”
Five minutes later I knelt with Patti and two others beyond the circle of the fire, where the black flies were thickest, and asked Jesus to enter my dumbfounded heart.
3
“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
