John Gardner: The King's Indian: Stories and Tales

2

As I stand at the back of the somber, dark-beamed church shaking hands, the smell of furniture polish all around me, the church windows burning with autumnal light, my people become individuals once more, as I too become individual. I’m used to this change and approve of it, though it baffled me some, when I was younger — made me doubt my authority. I would not say to them, individually, the things I have told them — the things I have been free to tell them — from the pulpit. Poor old Miss Ellis, the piano teacher, whose house is crammed with massive, ornately carved furniture from Burma, where a dear, dear friend (I have never heard the dear friend’s name) was a missionary. Miss Ellis hates Communists, destroyers of temples, and she does not like it that Jesus was killed for suspected revolutionary activities. Her bosom heaves and her blue eyes blink tears when she speaks of Foreign Missions. Once when a novelist from Kenya spoke to the Ware Class, gently but firmly explaining to those venerable ladies that the chief effect of Foreign Missions has been to soften up ancient cultures for colonialism and capitalistic exploitation, Miss Ellis nearly had a heart attack. Her mouth gaped, her face went pale beneath the paint and powder, her small, liver-spotted hands pressed hard against her heart. She was indignant, outraged, the man was an ungrateful beast. An animal! Miss Ellis spoke with tender passion of her friend’s dedication. The man from Kenya was sympathetic, the soul of courtesy (although a heathen). He did not mean that missionaries were aware of their effect. They were saints; no one who had watched them could deny it. But their effect in Africa was history. Miss Ellis left the meeting shaking, prepared to cancel her pledge because we’d invited such a man. But three days later she sat weeping in my office. She was lost. The world was meaningless. She told how her mother, all her life, had given every spare penny to the Missions. It did not matter that Miss Ellis had done the same. It was not her own waste that broke her heart. She had her music, at least. But her mother had meant to do good in the world — a generous, warm-hearted, love-filled woman: Everyone who ever knew her had been devoted to her. “Think of it,” she whispered. There was terror in her eyes, an emptiness dark as what astronomers call the coal-pocket. “Think of her lying there, in her grave in Philadelphia, and her whole life nothing, as if she’d never even lived!” She sobbed. I searched my wits for some honest comfort. She told of the death of her missionary friend during World War II in Burma. Her life, too, the friend’s, was meaningless. Everything was. Everything!

I could have told her — I hinted at it — that that was the point of Christianity. All systems fail: psychologies, sociologies, philosophies, rituals. To believe in any firm system whatever, even Foreign Missions, is to be left — like Adam biting into the apple — with a taste of blowing ashes. Flexibility is all, the Christian’s ability to respond, get up again, die if necessary, because everything is finally all right. We follow not a system but a man, I could have said. A conviction, a vital spirit. But who can say that to a piano teacher, for whom sharps and flats are the rock of ages, and goodness is not situational but metronomic? What I did— sighing, with a hasty private apology to God — was get down on my knees with her and pray. “Dear heavenly father have mercy upon us in our torment and confusion, for we are as children,” etc., etc. Miss Ellis wept, her scaling, painted lips trembling, her white fists doubled at her chin. And it was true, I saw, that she was very like a child, like one of her own terrified students suffering through Bach in the aquatic light of Miss Ellis’ front room with its oppressive oriental chests and red velvet drapes. I did not like the theology in which she was reared, but I was no missionary. Let her be converted on Judgment Day. She sobbed, kneeling on the carpet beside me, her face turned up toward the sign, THE CHURCHES OF CARBONDALE WELCOME YOU. And it worked, of course — as how could it not? She accepted her bafflement and disillusionment, turned over her helplessness to Jesus, just-as-she-was-without-one-plea and so on. Exactly as a Christian would have done. I could have told her, if I’d wanted, that prayer itself can be idolatry — a confusion of the symbol and the fact. I didn’t. I led her in a hymn. (The door was closed. My secretary, Janice, was in the back room running off mimeographs.) What a friend we have in Jesus, all our griefs and pains to bear … Our voices quavered uncertainly up to THE CHURCHES OF CARBONDALE WELCOME YOU. Miss Ellis caught my hand — hers was small, but her grip was as powerful as a monkey’s. What a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer. When we finished we stood up. “Reverend Pick, I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. Tears, trembling smile. I said, “Don’t thank me, Miss Ellis, thank Our Savior.” Callous, you may say. I prefer to view it as a momentary lapse from charity. Love is a difficult thing to sustain without hypocrisy on the one hand, stupidity on the other. I felt sympathy for her, but not enough sympathy to abandon my theology, accept her as an equal. Miss Ellis proves more generous. I sometimes think she no longer listens to anything I say in the pulpit: I’m a harmless lunatic, a dear, dear friend. But she does listen, strange to say. Heaven only knows what she thinks of it all. She tips her head now (blue hat, white berries), preparing her face for my greeting.

“Good morning, Miss Ellis.”

“Good morning, Reverend Pick. Such a splendid sermon! It makes a person think!”

The strange young man I noticed earlier, no doubt a college student, comes up behind her. He’s very tall. He has curly hair hanging to his shoulder blades, and wide blue staring eyes. He moves like a zombie, a creature in a dream. Gives me the willies even now. I reach up eagerly to shake his hand and inadvertently — unless he arranged it— catch hold of his thumb. He gives me a power-to-the-people shake. As he does so he passes me, speaking not a word, turning to keep his staring, drowned-man eyes on me. He turns the way a sign would, or a hovering object near the ocean floor. He backs out the door, still staring at me. Beyond all doubt a maniac, or else stoned. Or Christ come down to check on me. I feel a brief, sharp tingle of fear, a rising of the hackles, but it passes at once. I have no idea why the stranger rouses such feelings in me; but it’s of no importance. They too, the members of my congregation — Miss Ellis, standing at the door, looking back — are alarmed by him. Their distress is in their eyes.

“Good to have you with us,” I call after him.

As he backs past Miss Ellis into the too-bright October sunshine, I have a fleeting impression that it’s the world, not the stranger, that’s moving. In the arch that frames him, trees rise past his ghastly head like planets.

I reach toward Professor Stibitz, who catches my hand, squeezes hard, and smiles. “Very interesting sermon as usual, Reverend.” A voice like a cello.

“Why thank you.”

“Not at all.”

3

John Grewy, M.D., is in the church office counting money from the collection plates. Janice, my secretary, leaves as I come in. She never leaves anyone alone in the office. A careful guardian. Gentle as a dove, you might think at first glance; but watchful, everlastingly there. Her devotion could unchain earthquakes. I’m sometimes a little afraid of her myself. Dr. Grewy has his coat off — it’s on the back of his chair— and sits in his wide gray suspenders. He’s a short man, a few inches shorter than I am, and equally ridiculous. Brown hair crookedly parted down the middle, gold-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses, a neck whiter than a lily. He’d do well to grow a beard, in my opinion. Nevertheless, God loves him, and even I, I find, am glad, as usual, to see him.