in the area, do you?” he asks.
“Oh, yes. Yes… I attend many churches,” replies Henry enthusiastically. “I go to the Harveston Presbyterian, the St. Luke Lutheran, the Baysfield United, the St. Paul Anglican, the Mandaumin United, the Lawford Pentecostal, the…”
“Mm-hm, yes, I see,” says the man.
“…the Wigford Baptist, the Point George Anglican, the Wigford Presbyterian…”
“Mm-hm,” says the man, looking down for a moment. “Actually,” he notes, checking his wristwatch, “I’m heading into Wigford myself. Perhaps I could give you a lift if you’re heading in that direction.”
“Oh—yes, yes, I’d be very grateful for that, sir,” Henry enthuses. “If you’ll just… Yes…” he murmurs, jumping up from his chair and moving to the counter where he left his suitcases, gathering them up hurriedly.
The man smiles and chuckles inwardly at Henry’s frenetic bustling as he rises leisurely with his rolled-up newspaper and walks towards the door, Henry following at his heels, stumbling with the cases and whispering fervently to himself as he shuffles past Roy and Gus and Frank at their table.
“Well—looks like ol’ Henry’s got himself a new convert,” observes Frank archly.
“Yep, yep, sure does, Frank,” says the other man, tamping down his pipe.
“Heh, heh,” laughs Roy, shaking his head. “Shee—it!”
And the sun like a gleaming, white, shining nickel now one quarter of the way creeping up the sky through the torn, ragged clouds, beams down upon the man named Sam rustling his keys from his pocket and Happy Henry tramping behind him as they make their way across the parking lot to the car. Sam assists Henry with his cases, packing them away in the back seat.
Now pulling out of the lot onto the highway, Sam a man who enjoys driving, the wheel firm beneath his gently guiding hands as he’s leaned back far in his bucket seat, his profile serene, his eyes placidly and without resistance drinking in the road which runs straining and feeds itself disappearing beneath the hood of his car. Happy Henry at his side staring straight ahead, off and up to where the road wedges to its fine point on the horizon, the clouds shifting slowly overhead, the fence posts rushing swiftly forth and multiplying themselves endlessly.
Henry sees them and beyond them and in a most profound manner, sees them not at all, blanketed and overthrown as they are by the thick veil hanging always before his eyes: the veil ruffling and shimmering and composed of all his most fervent convictions and apprehensions, his highest-hoping anticipations and the passion of his highly excitable knowing, which in fact compose and funnel the perceptions of these eyes and is thus more real than all that stands or passes before them—real because true and knowingly grasped as such, the world at large fluidly streaming around to either side and washing over them yet never gaining foothold—merely rippling, trickling, subsiding, dripping, transparent, tasteless, fading, evaporating, waning, gone. Nothing is real but what is true.
Nothing is true except what is necessary, nothing is necessary except that each human soul must be saved from its own sins (whose wages are death) by the love of Jesus Christ, to know that love and trust it and live it and feel it gathering and solid in the entrails, hard, coiled, firm, in the chest and lungs, stretching out along the furthermost limits of the limbs, and deep within the narrow confines and crevices of the brain.
And so Henry turns to Sam, blinking meekly. “Jesus loves you,” he whispers tentatively, almost like a question, bending over from his seat, his eyes searching and hopeful.
“Mm-hm,” says Sam, guiding his car from the highway onto the road into Wigford, shifting gears. He turns and smiles at Henry. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
He turns back to the road. “Do you live around these parts? I’m from out of town myself, just here on a little business,” Sam muses reflectively, the sun gleaming on the rims of his spectacles and on his beard.
“A lot of nice country around here,” Sam remarks after a moment, his eyes taking in the broad flowing fields passing by the window, the fences and the little farms sailing past. “Quite a difference from the big city,” he smiles, turning to Henry, his expression warm and inviting, his words flowing out easily with a breezy goodwill.
“I… I live with Father,” Henry volunteers, looking straight ahead, his eyes darting sideways to the stranger.
“Hm,” says Sam. “And he’s a big one for attending church too, I suppose, is he?”
“Oh, no, no,” Henry replies. “He cannot walk. He stays inside of the house. He… he takes care of the house… he… but he reads the Bible,” Henry pronounces, nodding his head assertively.
“Mm-hm. Handicapped, is he?” Sam notes. “And your mother, she’s not around?”
“Oh no, no,” says Henry emphatically, shaking his head from side to side, closing his eyes. “She… went away after… She was sick for a long time and she went away… an’… then we buried her away in the ground… because she was sick and then she went away…” he stutters quickly, his voice like a recording played at double speed, high and nasal.
“Hm,” says the stranger. “Died, did she?”
“But… but… she was a sinner,” murmurs Henry, his eyes glazing over as his mouth moves awkwardly, straining, little drops of spit jumping from the furiously working lips. “She said no to the Lord Jesus, and she used many curse words, even though she was sick for a long time in the bed. She… closed her heart against Jesus and cursed Him and cursed Father and Father was very angry, an’… said she was damned to go to hell… an’… even though Father told her many times, she cursed Jesus and cursed Father, an’… even when her legs turned black… an’… she was very sick…”
“Mm-hm,” says the stranger, nodding slightly, his features taking on a serious cast, his eyebrows narrowing as if deeply involved in the problem being discussed.
“An’… an’… me and Father prayed for her even though Father told me and told her she was damned to go to hell and she shouted curse words back at him still. Father said we should pray for her soul, but not after she went away… for Father said we shouldn’t pray for her then, not then when she was gone,” Henry says hurriedly.
As Henry says this, the veil in his mind splits and parts like a curtain and opens onto the scene of an aged man sitting in a wooden kitchen chair, naked, a dusty blanket over his lap and resting upon the blanket an open bible. He sits before an old-fashioned wood stove glowing red with the crackling fire within it, his deep-set furious eyes staring at the stove, gold and yellow shards of reflected light from the flames dancing over his clenched, wizened features, his creased forehead, his hollow cheeks, his grimly compressed mouth.
The old man’s long, white, snowy hair sweeps from his temples and tumbles back from behind his ears onto his thin bony shoulders and his wrinkled, sinewy hands grasp at the arms of the wooden chair with such force that the veins along the backs of them stand up in thin, bluish ridges and his chest heaves as he breathes long, quavering, determined draughts of air in and out through his nostrils, his chest red and weathered beneath coils of wiry white hairs.
He
