by my room if you’ve got a minute. How’s after breakfast? It won’t take long. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. After breakfast then? Got something for you, too.”
“Really?”
“Don’t sweat it.”
My room could have been any other in the Abner Henry Residence for Men. An olive, all-weather carpet stretched across an uneven floor 12 feet square, separating a pair of stacked, pine bunks bracketed to gyprock and a chipped, silver radiator beneath a small, screenless window that had been painted shut. Against each of the other walls a formica-topped desk squatted beneath pressboard cupboards and pressed against a narrow, oak-panelled closet with a door scuffed from years of radiator strikes. A cheap tuna-coloured loudspeaker — wired to the dean’s office and without an off switch or volume control — was screwed into the plaster over the door. Every wall was antique white, and every ceiling washed in a stormy ivory stucco with a stingy splash of homely copper spangles. At night, in moonglow and the high-beams of infrequent traffic, it resembled the empty starfield of a hyperextended universe.
The week of my arrival, I gathered with the other frosh in O.B.l’s tabernacle for a special exhortation from Dean Blier on the godly principle of stewardship. He admonished us to “live as sojourners, calling no land but heaven home,” and referred us to page 44 of the school handbook, where we read that room damage would earn us five property damage points. Twenty points could mean suspension; 30, expulsion. If we wanted to decorate our rooms we needed to use an adhesive putty called “NoMar,” which was the colour and consistency of a dry wad of grape bubble gum and, taste aside, about as useful. In four years, the only friends whom I never heard grouse about the property damage rules were from Singapore, and therefore, I supposed, somewhat accustomed to pernickety despotism.
Despite the risk, few left their walls bare. In my first week I hadn’t seen an unadorned, occupied room until I visited Moon’s.
Delbert was sitting at a desk with his Bible open to Revelations, wearing a shirt the colour of unstirred yoghurt. His pants were a flared Tory-blue wool blend — too heavy, I judged, for this time of year, though his room seemed unusually cold — with ringmaster-white pinstripes as thick as pencil lead running up his shanks. Dressed like that, it seemed odd he was barefoot.
There were no posters on the walls, no books on the shelves, and the only bedding I could see was a rolled up khaki sleeping bag at the head of the top bunk. There was little evidence he lived there. He was an over-dressed extra on an under-dressed set.
“Hi bro — breakfast’s over, huh?” He tucked a yellow felt highlighter in his breastpocket and folded the Scriptures shut. I nodded. “I hardly ever eat breakfast. Don’t like to rush devotions. Come on in and close the door. Pull out the other chair.” He read my face like I read Dagwood Bumstead’s, and smiled as though he saw a halo of question marks. “I know. I guess I like things tidy.”
“I guess. Where’s all your stuff?”
“I don’t need much — not like I used to. What I have, I keep out of the way. I refuse to be tyrannized by thinghood. I won’t be possessed by possessions. Cluttered room means a cluttered mind. I like both of mine to be shipshape.”
“My place is a mess already,” I said as I sat. “Mostly my roommate’s stuff. Books and socks and boot polish everywhere.”
“I see, I see,” Delbert grinned and nodded too sharply. “I’ve got a room all to myself. Where are you from, Gideon? Gideon— you’ve got such a neat name. He’s one of my favourites from the Book of Judges. ‘The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.’ He’s right up there with Deborah and Barek — way cooler than Samson. Casting the fleece to test the Lord — I mean, we do stuff like that all the time — but then, reducing the number of his army so the whole world would know that it was God’s victory …. Now that’s a real hero. You’re fortunate to have such a neat name.”
“I’m named after my uncle. He designed amusement rides. You ever heard of the Eager Beaver?”
“I loathe my name. ‘Delbert’ is my thorn in the flesh. Wish I had something historical. Martin Luther Moon, maybe.”
“Church History’s the best; man, I love that class. And Sophia Faulkner’s a great teacher. I guess you must have had her too, huh?”
Moon leaned back, resting both elbows behind him on his desk, then crossed his legs and craned his neck to stare hard at his curled toes. And then ignored me.
“I mean, I can live with Delbert, if that’s God’s will, but my parents weren’t Christians. Certainly not when they named me, anyway.” He flashed a brittle smile. “My father was a drunkard and a complete whoremonger. Don’t be shocked; I choose my words prayerfully. He was in Vietnam when I was born. A Canadian volunteer. Heard about them? Not many have. I don’t grudge him his war. I’m still proud of whatever it was he did over there. It’s just I wish he’d never come home.” He took a deep breath and raised his eyes, briefly meeting mine. “Mom’s a believer now, praise Cod. Only a couple of years old in the Lord. Only since Dad died. I know it sounds terrible, but it was the best thing that could have happened to her. Whether it was the best thing for him, I can’t say. I just hope that he called on Christ before he lost consciousness.” Moon took another deep breath and shrugged, then flashed me a strange, soft frown. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all this but it feels right to, and ‘if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God.’ Right?” I nodded, but he didn’t wait for it. “Where you from, brother?”
“Toronto.”
“Right, right. I remember from the other night.” He shifted in his chair, raising one buttock and then the other just enough to sit on his hands, palms up. His thumbs poked out and occasionally drummed on his cheeks. “I was there once. I used to subscribe to Maclean’s.”
The static crackle of the loudspeaker interrupted Delbert. The Dean cleared a throat jagged with feedback, then informed us of an opening for the Sunday crusade team to Drumheller prison (worth 10 Christian service points), and confirmed that, henceforth, ties would not be required in the library on Saturdays after tour p.m.
“Sodom,” Moon sighed. “Toronto, I mean. Sorry, I know it’s your home — it’s just all those prostitutes, drugs and theatres everywhere. Man, it must take as much grace to live a godly life there as it did in pagan Rome — or like it still does in Rome, for that matter, what with the Pope and dirty Italian movies and all. It’s a real fiery furnace, eh?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say —”
“I’m from Shadrach, up Peace River country? I couldn’t even find it on a map, so don’t feel bad. You’d think we’d know about fiery furnaces, but we got, like, six churches for 300 people and just one of them Catholic. Nobody blinks at a six-day creation, Noah’s Ark, the whole biblical ball of wax. It’s not right. There’s no scandal to the Cross. Some people like that, but not me.”
“Why?”
“When everyone’s sanctified and set apart it’s easy to forget how freakish we must seem — should seem — to the world. And I’m not just talking about folks out in Toronto, but to the liberals and papists in Edmonton and Peace River. It reminds me of something I heard the Keaton twins say… I can’t remember exactly right now, but it was good. You ever heard the Keatons preach?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“No?
