Reverend Evans filled the air with big words that drifted far over my head like the summer clouds. His slow speech, like background music, lulled me to sleep. Words, words, and more words for nearly an hour, and then there would be silence. In that silence, I knew my freedom was near. I cared not for hermeneutics and exegesis. I cared not for the dusty old words of a dusty old man who was long past his glory. In my childishness, I was unable to see past his glaring monotony to the character of the man underneath the drab tie and worn coat.
When I expressed my feelings by playfully mocking the reverend or complaining about hating church, I was shushed and told to stop being rude. I found it difficult to believe that the God who sounded so boring in church and came cloaked in ancient religious rhetoric, ritual, and choir songs was the same God who created the fascinating world around me. I was told on many occasions that because of my youth, I was too foolish to understand, and I ought to pray for wisdom and repentance for my ignorance. I spent “the Rev’s” sermons playing with sticks and pebbles or whatever else I managed to sneak in with me. Was I to be blamed that God lived in the woods and the fields and the sky but not in this whitewashed building? Even a child could see that God could not be confined to such a space as this, any more than you can catch a summer day in a jar to take out and play with in the miserable cold of winter. No, I did not find God in that place, dressed and pressed in polished black shoes and itchy-collared shirts. Perhaps that is because he was waiting for me outside, calling me to come and play, calling me to come and marvel at his handiwork. He gave me well-worn shoes of wonder that carried me as I ventured through the hills and paddocks and across streams. My adventures were beyond numbering, like the night stars that lit my way home along well-trodden paths. What a sad day it was when I traded those shoes in for responsibility and boredom; what a sad day when I forgot that God was not to be found in the wooden box building, when I stopped hearing him calling my name to come out and play and marvel and dream.
My favorite part of church took place after all of the religious “stuff” was over and done and the real life of the church began. Each Sunday we had a communal potluck, as families were reluctant to turn tail and run back to the endless work waiting at home. So, Sunday afternoon became a sanctuary for us all. For a few brief hours, we forgot about the copious worries of life and lived in blissful ignorance.
While the adults played dress up, a small gaggle of church boys ventured forth boldly to capture and subdue the land. For a boy used to spending his days alone in nature, the company of other young boys provided a completely new sort of joy. We would quickly pilfer a few slices of meat and stuff fresh rolls into our pockets before bolting away from the crowd in a frenzy of flying vests, ties, and shoes. Oh, the adventures that we had together. Like a pack of wild hyenas, we laughed and chattered our way across the large church grounds. There was no end to our pranks and our curiosity. Our fibbing knew no bounds when we attempted to avoid trouble. At times, when falling upon the right set of ears, our outlandish excuses left the adults in stitches of laughter that only encouraged our gross story telling. I cannot recall how many times we were told it was a grave sin to lie on Sundays, but the twinkle in the eye of the teller led me to believe that those were merely words, and so they were immediately disregarded. While the adults gossiped and hobnobbed, we combed the nearby fields for bugs and snakes and scoured the small stream for fish and crawdads. Those were the good days—the days of eternal summer.
CHAPTER 2
A Year of Change
SADLY, IT COULD NOT ALWAYS
be summer. Too soon, the days grew shorter, and the rays of sun grew cool. It was time to return to school.
I turned thirteen that year. Thirteen was a terrible year. Thirteen was the year of death. Thirteen was the year I realized that the world was broken and that pain could nearly kill you.
I was thirteen when my mother died. She was cruelly stripped away from me by a high fever that burned the life out of her. Like Elijah, she was taken to the heavens in a fiery chariot.
For three weeks, I sat by her bed night and day, patting her forehead with a cool cloth, spoon-feeding broth to her when she woke up, and reading to her from the family Bible. I prayed constantly that God would make her better, but in spite of my earnest pleadings, my prayers went unanswered. I sat for hours on end, holding her hand while she slept fitfully. And then one night, without any warning, she drifted away in her sleep.
I was asleep on the floor next to her bed on a thin mattress when I felt a stiff gust of wind blow through the open window as her soul drifted up to heaven, leaving me alone. I awoke all of a sudden and knew in my spirit that she was gone. Her eyes were as if in sleep. Her forehead was still beaded with perspiration. I shook her gently, but there was no movement. There was no fluttering of her eyes or curling up of her lips into a small smile to reassure me that she would be okay. “Mama. Wake up. Please wake up,” I pleaded. She couldn’t hear me. Tears began to run down my face, just a few at first and then streams of tears—tears dripping with the sorrow and grief of a young boy not yet ready to be a man, tears that washed away the beauty of my childhood, leaving behind a barren wasteland. All that had once been good and beautiful was suddenly covered in the blinding horror of pain. I stood up and gently kissed my mother on her loving lips. She did not move. Her body was small and pale, bathed in the moonlight streaming through the window. I could not stand her stillness.
I tore out of the house and into the fields glowing in the same lucid light. It was there that I raged against God. Like the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, I screamed and spat. Kicking and frothing, I whipped myself into a wild frenzy. I waited for fire to come down and heal my mother, but instead she lay in bed cold, consumed by death. And then when all hope of the miraculous was gone and the Red Sea stood before me un-parted, I crumpled to the ground, overrun by pharaoh’s chariots. I lay there trampled, and all that existed was pain, pain so big it could not be overcome. Like a millstone, it crushed me, grinding, grinding, grinding. Death. Death. Death. Part of me died that night as I lay there covered in dust on the warm earth. My childhood was cruelly torn from my flesh and buried somewhere in that forsaken field, buried deep below the surface in that field of tears. The part that survived was ragged, raw, and bitter. On that day, at the age of thirteen, I became a man. Cynical and angry, I was ushered into the realm of manhood.
I found my way home, but Father was not waiting for me with a loving embrace. Instead, I came home to lonely silence and, leaving my shoes at the door, I went to find him.
I remember waking my father as I stepped through the door frame. He sprung up in bed, fully awake. “What is it?” he asked.
In that moment, I did not know what to say. I had no words to express everything welling up inside, so I spoke hollow words that echoed into the night.
“Mother is dead.” I hung my head and felt the urge to cry again, but this time I refused myself that childish delight. This time I was a man. I looked up at Father, wanting desperately for him to hug me and hold me. I needed the warmth of his embrace and the strength of his arms, but that was beyond him. Mother had always been the affectionate one.
He bounded down the hall where Mother’s cold corpse lay, growing more and more stiff with each passing minute. A sharp cry pierced the air, pulling me from my own dark thoughts. My father’s crazed cry shattered the silence. The anguished howl of pain sounded like his soul was breaking, leaving behind shards of what he used to be. The cry drifted into the night sky, gradually fading into nothing, and then again, there was silence. I dared not enter the room, feeling as if somehow I would be trespassing. I imagined my father kneeling on the floor, holding my mother’s hands, willing life back into her body. But death merely laughed at his pain and his feeble efforts. Death had no time for the love of a husband or a son. I waited a long time for Father to emerge, but he remained hidden away with my mother’s lifeless form. Unsure of what to do, I finally went over to his bed and curled up underneath the warm blankets. Overcome by weariness, I fell into a fitful sleep. I awoke in the morning and was still alone.
Filled with his own hurt and unable to express his emotions, Father did not know how to handle me. His cold exterior simply became chillier, and he withdrew further into himself. He tore into his work at our family-owned general store, leaving long before I awoke and coming home late at night. We avoided each other as much as possible. It was easier that way. When we were together, mother’s absence was too powerful. We had no words to convey our separate heartaches, no language to share our feelings, so silence became our companion. Solitude became my dearest friend. He alone traveled with me day and night. When I needed my father most, he did not come to rescue me. In some ways, I lost my father that year as well. He was never the same again. I lived with a stranger wearing my father’s face, but he was not my father. Of that, I was sure. When at home, he seemed not to care about anything. There were no more rules or discipline, no comments about my poor marks at school that previously would have been the cause for a beating. Nothing was said about the shabby state of my clothing or my unpolished shoes or my shaggy hair. The world might have been falling apart, but as long as his shop was neat and tidy, nothing else mattered. I see now that the shop was the one area of life he felt he could still control in the midst of everything else, so he held onto it with ferocity for fear that he might lose himself otherwise. The store became his beloved child. Prim and proper, he carefully cultivated it while it robbed him of his own son, who waited night after night to hear his father’s footsteps on the front porch, hoping beyond hope that he would come in and kiss me good night. Instead, I heard him trudge wearily down the hall into the study. He would uncork a bottle of whisky and pour himself a large glass. Dry and warm, he would sip it slowly while looking blankly out the dark window, his once-piercing eyes now filled with sadness. After two or three glasses, he would drag himself out of the chair, flounder his way to his bedroom, throw himself across the bed, and sleep in his clothes. The next morning, he’d wake up and do it all over again, silently sleepwalking through the days—awake but not alive.
Grief piled upon grief and remained bottled up inside my bitter soul. I did not have language to express the sorrow I buried deep, deep down where no one could find it, but its poison seeped into my soul, threatening to destroy me. It was a battle to get out of bed every morning.
We continued to attend church week in and week out, but it had become a meaningless ritual to me. Though we never mentioned it, we endured for mother’s sake. I counted the minutes while we were there, antsy and irritated, as the services seemed to drag on for eternity. My mother was everywhere in that church. Wherever I looked, I sensed her presence, from the dusty choir loft to the fresh flower arrangements. Sometimes I thought I saw her coming out of the Sunday school classrooms or cooking in the small kitchen. She was inescapable. Her ghost haunted me. I wanted to run, but I was chained to that miserable pew listening to the reverend drone on and on about Jesus. If Jesus was so wonderful, my thirteen-year-old mind thought, why did he take my mother from me? He was not my God. He was not my savior. He was not my king. I took all the flowery church language that I knew and spat upon it. I wanted nothing to do with this weak God who could not heal my mother. I was done with religion.
My peers were wise enough to leave me to myself. I wanted nothing to do with their silly games and chatter. While the boys flirted with the girls and played catch and kickball, I disappeared behind the school building and sat silently staring into nowhere. Most teachers tried to coddle me, but I did not want their pity. I did not want their sympathy. I just wanted to be left alone to grieve in my own way. I think it is because I was born with an acute sense of delight and appreciation for beauty that my mother’s death struck me so strongly, and I was sent reeling in a worse way than most children who lose a parent. This gift of delight that had once brought me so much happiness as I explored the natural world around me became my solemn curse. It opened the door for depression long before people talked about such things. I was merely a melancholy child. My natural tendency was to draw within myself, and that is what I did.
CHAPTER 3
Moving On
ONE TEACHER AT SCHOOL CHOSE
not to treat me differently. Mr. Livingston was a thick fellow who taught English literature. Barrel-chested with stocky legs, he looked more the part of a farmer or day laborer than a professor of literature. In spite of his size, he moved with the grace of a dancer under his white button-down shirt and striped ties. He always kept a handkerchief in his back pocket to dab at his forehead, and somehow his bright red suspenders managed to keep up his oversized khaki pants. Mr. Livingston had a real wittiness about him, often drawing out the most interesting and peculiar observations from our readings. His class provided the only source of comfort for me because his reading assignments gave me opportunities to shed my own skin and just for a while lose myself in the world of others. The characters of those countless books became my steadfast friends. I realize this was very unusual behavior for a boy of thirteen, and it was not long before Mr. Livingston noticed me devouring the reading materials. In spite of my ravenous hunger for new stories, I never spoke in class. Though he would call on me, I would sit in silence. My thoughts were private. I had no interest in sharing them with my shallow classmates who still lived in blissful ignorance, thinking that the world was good and beautiful. I had lost all such notions. Mr. Livingston never pushed me to speak. I could sense that he wanted me to know I was an important member of the community, and if the day ever came when I was ready to share, my words would be welcome.