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
