James Burke - Light of the World

The morning was bright and cool when Geta Noonen drove into Missoula and went into a hardware and farm-supply store and came out with four hundred dollars in boxed and bagged purchases. After he had covered them with a tarp in the backseat of the SUV, he drove downtown and found a parking spot under the Higgins Street Bridge, one hour in advance of the Out to Lunch concert held weekly in the park by the Clark Fork. He slipped on a pair of aviator glasses and bought an ice cream cone from a vendor and strolled along the river walkway, pausing on an observation deck that allowed him an unobstructed view of the children riding the hand-carved wooden horses on the carousel and the kayakers practicing their maneuvers in the rapids by the bank.

As the sun rose into the center of the sky, he took up a position by a concrete abutment in the shade of the bridge and watched the cars filling the lot. When he sighted a rusted compact with two teenage girls in it, he folded his arms over his chest and gazed at the riverbank and the crowd filing under the bridge to the concert. The two girls locked their vehicle and walked through the man’s line of vision without noticing that he was watching their every move.

He strolled close to their car, then placed his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky and the mountains that ringed the city, like a tourist on his first day inside the state. He stooped over as though picking up a coin from the asphalt and sliced the air valve off one tire, then another. After the tires collapsed on the rims, he inserted the knife blade into the soft folds of rubber and sawed through the cord so they could not be repaired. He folded the knife in his palm and dropped it in his pants pocket and watched the concert from the back of the crowd, his eyes fastened on the two teenage girls.

At 1:05 P.M. the girls returned to their rusted compact and stared in shock at the slashed tires.

“I saw a couple of bad-looking kids hanging around your car,” the man said. “When I walked over, they took off. I got here too late, I guess.”

The girls were obviously sisters, perhaps two years apart, with blue eyes and blond hair that was almost gold. The older girl had lost her baby fat and was at least three inches taller than her sister. “Why would anyone do this to us?” she said.

“Guess it’s the way a lot of kids are being raised up today,” the man said. “I’d offer to change your tire, but you’ve got two flats and probably only one spare. Is there somebody you can call?”

“Nobody’s home,” the younger girl said.

“Where are your folks?”

“Our mother works at the Goodwill,” the older girl said. “Our father drives part-time for a trucking company. He’s in Spokane today. He’ll be home tonight. He’s a minister. We have assembly at our house on Wednesday nights.”

“I’m Reverend Geta Noonen. Call your mother and ask if it’s all right if I drive you two home,” the man said.

“There’s no point in worrying her.”

“I tell you what. I’ll put your spare on, and we’ll take the other rim to the tire store and get the tire replaced. Then we’ll come back here and put it on, and you’ll be on your way.”

“I have to be at work at the Dairy Queen at three-thirty. I can’t think. I don’t have any money, either,” the older girl said.

“I’ll pay for it, and you can pay me back later.”

“What does a tire cost?” she asked.

When he told her, she looked as though she were about to cry.

“Look, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Take my cell phone and tell your mother what’s happened. We’ll drop the rim at the tire store, and I’ll drive both of you home. I’ll take you to work, if need be, or I’ll take you to pick up your new tire. We’ll handle it together. There’s no problem that can’t be solved. Whereabouts do you live?”

“Out Highway 12, west of Lolo.”

“You’ll have to give me directions. Now call your mother and tell her everything is okay.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. You’re giving me a chance to practice a little of what I preach,” he said.

Forty-five minutes later, he turned off Highway 12 onto a dirt road and headed up a gulch between wooded hills that were scarred by logging roads from the days of the clear-cuts. “It’s sure pretty out this way. Do you know if there are any rentals hereabouts?” he said.

“We rent out a room sometimes,” the older girl said.

“I just need a place to come and go, and a small storage area,” he said. “I’m a traveling minister, kind of like the old-time saddle preachers, except I don’t have a saddle.”

“You want me to ask my mother?”

“I’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t be any trouble. Say, that’s a big ranch up there.”

“That’s Mr. Hollister’s place. He’s a writer. Three of his books have been made into movies.”

The man pushed the sun visor across the driver’s window as he drove past the archway over Albert Hollister’s driveway and did not look at the rock-and-log house up on the bench or glance in the direction of the barn or the horses in the north pasture.

“Imagine that, a man who makes movies tucked away here in the backcountry. This life is sure full of surprises,” he said. “Is that your house in that green hollow at the end of the road? If you ask me, you have yourselves a regular paradise up here. It’d suit me to a T.”

I have always loved and welcomed the rain, even though sometimes the spirits of the dead visit me inside it. During the summer, when I was a child, no matter how hot the weather was, there was a shower almost every afternoon at three o’clock. The southern horizon would be piled with storm clouds that resembled overripe plums, and within minutes you would feel the barometer plunge and see the oak trees become a deeper green and the light become the color of brass. You could smell the salt in the wind and an odor that was like watermelon that had burst open on a hot sidewalk. Suddenly, the wind would shift and the oak trees would come to life, leaves swirling and Spanish moss straightening on the limbs. Just before the first raindrops fell, Bayou Teche would be dimpled by bream rising to feed on the surface. No more than a minute later, the rain would pour down in buckets, and the surface of the Teche would dance with a hazy yellow glow that looked more like mist than rain.

For me, the rain was always a friend. I think that is true of almost all children. They seem to understand its baptismal nature, the fashion in which it absolves and cleanses and restores the earth. The most wonderful aspect of the rain was its cessation. After no longer than a half hour, the sun would come out, the air would be cool and fresh, the four o’clocks would be opening in the shade, and that evening there would be a baseball game in City Park. The rain was part of a testimony that assured us the summer was somehow eternal, that even the coming of the darkness could be held back by the heat lightning that flickered through the heavens after sunset.

The rain also brought me visitors who convinced me the dead never let go of this world. After my father, Big Aldous, died out on the salt, I would see him inside the rain, standing up to his knees in the surf, his hard hat tilted sideways on his head. When he saw the alarm in my face, he would give me a thumbs-up to indicate that death wasn’t a big challenge. I saw members of my platoon crossing a stream in the monsoon season, the rain bouncing on their steel pots and sliding off their ponchos, the mortal wounds they had sustained glowing as brightly as Communion wafers.

The person who contacted me most often in the rain was my murdered wife, Annie, who usually called during an electric storm to assure me she was all right, always apologizing for the heavy static on the line. Don’t ever let anyone tell you this is all there is. They’re lying. The dead are out there. Anyone who swears otherwise has never stayed up late in a summer storm and listened to their voices.