Mark Richard - House of Prayer No. 2 - A Writer's Journey Home

Going out the door one morning, you turn and see him put on his hat, and you say, You’re one of the Blind Boys, aren’t you? I remember you from the radio days . He says he thought you looked familiar when you talked. He says he sometimes used to fill in when his uncle needed him to. But I ain’t blind , he says. I see that , you say, and you all go to work.

IT IS THE WEEK OF YOUR THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY, and instead of sitting in a wheelchair, you are hitchhiking along Virginia Beach Boulevard after selling your car. You are moving to New York City to become a writer.

It turns out your New York girlfriend is a swimsuit model who is in videos in store windows on Fifth Avenue. She finds you a place to stay on a futon on a friend’s floor in Queens. You call Tom and say, I’m here, now what?

You and he sit in a bar, and he draws up a list of ways you could possibly become a writer. One thing he puts on the list is a writing class with a guy who is an editor at a publishing house. The class costs two thousand dollars. Tom is not so sure it’s a good fit for you, but you think it’s kind of like a lottery: you buy in on the chance the editor sees your work and you get published, so you borrow the money from your girlfriend and sign up for the class.

The teacher is named Gordon and he wears khaki shirts and trousers and a military campaign hat. The classes are six hours long and are in a rich lady’s apartment. Sometimes Gordon talks for the whole six hours, and he says things about writing you have never heard, like what makes art is the occult, the arbitrary, the unexampled, the uncanny, the passionate, the intractable, the dire, the dangerous. When you stand up to read a story you’ve written about a storm at sea, after a couple of sentences he tells you to sit down, that you’re just writing adventure stories for teenage boys.

Maybe Tom was right, this isn’t a good fit for you, so you go see Gordon and tell him you’d like to drop out of the class, and you’d like your money back. He says, No refunds. Okay, you say, just prorate it, and he says, No refunds.

Two thousand dollars is a lot of money, and you’re still looking for a job. In your Queens neighborhood is a bar called the Irish Pony, and even though it’s mainly for Irish, you explain to them how the Irish settled the South, and after a while it’s okay for you to drink there. The night before St. Patrick’s Day you stay in the bar until dawn drinking green beer and doing shots of Irish whiskey. When you head home, it’s starting to get light, and you remember you have a ten o’clock job interview. You take a cold shower and put on your cheap grey summer suit and pick up your cheap plastic briefcase and head to the No. 7 train stop. The cold doesn’t seem to help sober you up.

When you get into Manhattan, there’s a big parade down Fifth Avenue that you have to cross to get to your job interview. The policemen will not let you cross. About a hundred bass drums come down the avenue booming, booming, booming, and the booming feels as if someone is punching you in the gut, and you look around and there’s a construction site and you have to stand on tiptoe to throw up green beer and Irish whiskey into a Dumpster. Some construction workers look down and laugh at you and point. You wipe your mouth slime on your suit sleeve and dab at the puke on your tie with a handkerchief, and when there’s a break in the parade, you tuck your little plastic briefcase under your arm, and you limp across the avenue the best you can.

Upstairs in an office building you check in with a receptionist who leans away from you when you tell her you’re there for your job interview, and you hope you have a breath mint. She tells you to have a seat. The next thing you know two big guys in dark jackets are shaking you awake where you’ve been curled up asleep in a fetal position on a couch, your little plastic briefcase for a pillow. You think it must be time for your job interview. Instead, they lift you by your elbows and tell you the interview is over as they bum-rush you out of the office of the business for which you are seeking employment, a public relations firm.

YOU FIND WORK BARTENDING FOR A RESTAURANT that is hiring people with Southern accents. It’s on the West Side Highway. There’s a view of the Statue of Liberty across the way.

Things aren’t going well for you in the class. You sit on a radiator and glower at Gordon. Two thousand dollars is a lot of money. You decide to write a story for the next class that’s a parody of the things the teacher is praising. It’s a little story called “Momma Hates Texas.” You tell him you’ve brought something to read, and when you stand up to read, he doesn’t stop you, and you read to the end, and he says you’ve had a breakthrough!

Whether you want to admit it or not, you have had a breakthrough, and Gordon’s class is the place you begin to understand what he means when he says an artist can find salvation in his art. You work hard and he pushes you hard, he becomes an advocate for you. He lets you sit in his office and watch him work, he buys you a brandy downstairs when you need one, and gives you a fleece-lined bombardier’s hat during one of the coldest winters on record in New York. He will publish your first short story collection, and in his class you will meet the girl you will marry ten years later and who will bear you three sons. You will miss him keenly when later he says you have abandoned him and he has no use for you.

THE FIRST PIECE OF WRITING you sell in New York is a true story that happens to you coming home one night from working at the bar. It’s about four in the morning, and you’re in the bottom of Grand Central waiting for the train back to Queens. You have about two hundred dollars in tips hidden in the storm collar of your old diesel-stained sea coat, the warmest thing you could bring from home to wear in New York City. Three black guys come down the end of the platform, see you, and start to walk toward you. You start walking to the other end of the platform, there’s some stairs leading up to a tunnel, but with your legs you know you’ll never outrun these guys. When you get to the bottom of the stairs, you turn and there they are, standing around you, and you know what they want. You’ve never been robbed before. One of the guys reaches out for your arm, and at that moment in the stillness of the station you hear footsteps coming down the tunnel up the stairs. As the footsteps get louder, there’s whistling, then singing, a hymn, and you pray to God it’s a big Irish cop with a nightstick and a gun, and you see that your three guys hear it and stop and wait to see who it is, and all four of you turn your faces up to the top of the stairs as the footsteps approach and the singing becomes louder.

Suddenly there’s nobody there. The footsteps stop, the singing ends, right at the top of the stairs. It seems to be just as spooky for the three guys who are about to rob you as it is for you.

Just then the No. 7 train roars into the station and people get out, including two transit cops, and you get on the train and go home.

The next day you get a call from your mother and she wants to know how you’re doing in New York City. She was against you moving to New York. She says the night before she had woken up wide awake because she had a feeling that you were in danger. She says she got down on her knees beside the bed and she prayed that you would be surrounded by legions of angels.