Pastoralia (8 page)

The crowd burst into applause. Tom Rodgers held up his hand.

“Now, what about you folks?” he said softly. “Is now the time for you to win? Are you ready to screen off your metaphorical oatmeal and identify your own personal Gene? Who is it that’s screwing you up? Who’s keeping
you from getting what you want? Somebody is! God doesn’t make junk. If you’re losing, somebody’s doing it to you. Today I’ll be guiding you through my Three Essential Steps: Identification, Screening, Confrontation. First, we’ll Identify your personal Gene. Second, we’ll help you mentally install a metaphorical Screen over your symbolic oatmeal. Finally, we’ll show you how to Confront your personal Gene and make it clear to him or her that your oatmeal is henceforth off-limits.”

Tom Rodgers looked intensely out into the crowd.

“So what do you think, guys?” he asked, very softly. “Are you up for it?”

From the crowd came a nervous murmur of assent.

“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s line up. Let’s line up for a change. A
dramatic
change.”

He crisply left the stage, and a spotlight panned across five Personal Change Centers, small white tents set up in a row near the fire door.

Neil Yaniky rose with the rest and checked his Line Assignment and joined his Assigned Line. He was a tiny man, nearly thirty, balding on top and balding on the sides, and was still chewing on his mustache and wondering if anyone or everyone else at the Seminar could tell that he was a big stupid faker, because he had no career, really, and no business, but only soldered little triangular things in his basement, for forty-seven cents a little triangular thing, for CompuParts, although he had high hopes for something better, which was why he was here.

The flap of Personal Change Center 4 flew open and in he went, bending low.

Inside were Tom Rodgers and several assistants, and a dummy in a smock sitting in a chair.

“Welcome, Neil,” said Tom Rodgers, glancing at Yaniky’s name tag. “I’m honored to have you in my Seminar, Neil. Now. The way we’ll start, Neil, is for you to please write across the chest of this dummy the name of your real-life personal Gene. That is, the name of the person you perceive to be crapping in your oatmeal. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” said Yaniky.

Tom Rodgers was talking very fast, as if he had hundreds of people to change in a single day, which of course he did. Yaniky had no problem with that. He was just happy to be one of them.

“Do you need help determining who that person is?” said Tom Rodgers. “Your oatmeal-crapper?”

“No,” said Yaniky.

“Excellent,” said Tom Rodgers. “Now write the name and under it write the major way in which you perceive this person to be crapping in your oatmeal. Be frank. This is just between you and me.”

On an erasable markerboard permanently mounted in the dummy’s chest Yaniky wrote, “Winky: Crazy-looking and too religious and needs her own place.”

“Super!” said Tom Rodgers. “A great start. Now watch what I do. Let’s fine-tune. Can we cut ‘crazy-looking’? If this person, this Winky, were to get her own place, would
the fact that she looks crazy still be an issue? Less of an issue?”

Yaniky pictured his sister looking crazy but in her own apartment.

“Less of an issue,” he said.

“All right!” said Tom Rodgers, erasing “crazy-looking.” “It’s important to simplify so that we can hone in on exactly what we’re trying to change. Okay. At this point, we’ve determined that if we can get her out of your house, the crazy-looking can be lived with. A big step forward. But why stop there? Let me propose something: if she’s out of your hair, what the heck do you care if she’s religious?”

Yaniky pictured Winky looking crazy and talking crazy about God but in her own apartment.

“It would definitely be better,” he said.

“Yes, it would,” said Tom Rodgers, and erased until the dummy was labeled “Winky: needs her own place.”

“See?” said Tom Rodgers. “See how we’ve simplified? We’ve got it down to one issue. Can you live with this simple, direct statement of the problem?”

“Yes,” Yaniky said. “Yes, I can.”

Yaniky saw now what it was about Winky that got on his nerves. It wasn’t her formerly red curls, which had gone white, so it looked like she had soaked the top of her head in glue and dipped it in a vat of cotton balls; it wasn’t the bald spot that every morning she painted with some kind of white substance; it wasn’t her shiny-pink face that was always getting weird joyful looks on it at bad times, like during his dinner date with Beverly Amstel, when he’d
made his special meatballs to no avail, because Bev kept glancing over at Winky in panic; it wasn’t the way she came click-click-clicking in from teaching church school and hugged him for too long a time while smelling like flower water, all pumped up from spreading the word of damn Christ; it was simply that they were too old to be living together and he had things he wanted to accomplish and she was too needy and blurred his focus.

“Have you told this person, this Winky, that her living with you is a stumbling block for your personal development?” said Tom Rodgers.

“No I haven’t,” Yaniky said.

“I thought not,” said Tom Rodgers. “You’re kind-hearted. You don’t want to hurt her. That’s nice, but guess what? You are hurting her. You’re hurting her by not telling her the truth. Am I saying that you, by your silence, are crapping in her oatmeal? Yes, I am. I’m saying that there’s a sort of reciprocal crapping going on here. How can Winky grow on a diet of lies? Isn’t it true that the truth will set you free? Didn’t someone once say that? Wasn’t it God or Christ, which would be ironic, because of her being so religious?”

Tom Rodgers gestured to an assistant, who took a wig out of a box and put it on the dummy’s head.

“What we’re going to do now is act this out symbolically,” Tom Rodgers said. “Primitive cultures do this all the time. They might throw Fertility a big party, say, or paint their kids white and let them whack Sickness with palm fronds and so forth. Are we somehow smarter than primitive cultures? I doubt it. I think maybe we’re dumber. Do
we have fewer hemorrhoids? Were Incas killed on freeways? Here, take this.”

He handed Yaniky a baseball bat.

“What time is it, Neil?” said Tom Rodgers.

“Time to win?” said Yaniky. “Time for me to win?”

“Now is the time for you to win,” said Tom Rodgers, clarifying, and pointed to the dummy.

Yaniky swung the bat and the dummy toppled over and the wig flew off and the assistant retrieved the wig and tossed it back into the box of wigs, and Tom Rodgers gave Yaniky a big hug.

“What you have just symbolically said,” Tom Rodgers said, “is: ‘No more, Winky. Grow wings, Winky. I love you, but you’re killing me, and I am a good person, a child of God, and don’t deserve to die. I deserve to live, I demand to live, and therefore, get your own place, girl! Fly, and someday thank me!’ This is to be your submantra, Neil, okay?
Out you go!
On your way home today, I want you to be muttering, not angrily muttering but sort of joyfully muttering, to center yourself, the following words: ‘Now Is the Time for Me to Win! Out you go! Out you go!’ Will you do that for me?”

“Yes,” said Yaniky, very much moved.

“And now here is Vicki,” said Tom Rodgers, “One of my very top Gold Hats, who will walk you through the Confrontation step. Neil! I wish you luck, and peace, and all the success in the world.”

Vicki had a face that looked as if it had been smashed against a steering wheel in a crash and then carefully reworked until it somewhat resembled her previous face.
Several parallel curved indentations ran from temple to chin. She led Yaniky to a folding table labeled “Confrontation Center” and gave him a sheet of paper on which was written, “Gentle, Firm, Loving.”

“These are the characteristics of a good Confrontation,” she said, a bit mechanically. “Now flip it over.”

On the other side was written, “Angry, Wimpy, Accusatory.”

“These are the characteristics of a bad Confrontation,” said Vicki. “A destructive Confrontation. Okay. So let’s say I’m this person, this Winky person, and you’re going to tell me to hit the road. Gentle, Firm, Loving. Now begin.”

And he began telling Vicki to her damaged face that she was ruining his life and sucking him dry and that she had to go live somewhere else, and Vicki nodded and patted his hand, and now and then stopped him to tell him he was being too severe.

Neil-Neil was coming home soon and Winky was way way behind.

Some days she took her time while cleaning, smiling at happy thoughts, frowning when she imagined someone being taken advantage of, and sometimes the person being taken advantage of was a frail little boy with a scar on his head and the person taking advantage was a big fat man with a cane, and other times the person being taken advantage of was a kindly, friendly British girl with a speech impediment and the person taking advantage was her rich,
pushy sister who spoke in perfect diction and always got everything she wanted and went around whining while sucking little pink candies. Sometimes Winky asked the rich sister in her mind how she’d like to have the little pink candies slapped right out of her mouth. But that wasn’t right. That wasn’t Christ’s way! You didn’t slap the little pink candies out of her mouth, you let her slap your mouth, seventy times seven times, which was like four hundred times, and after she’d slapped you the last time she suddenly understood it all and begged your forgiveness and gave you some candy, because that was the healing power of love.

For crying out loud! What was she doing? Was she crazy? It was time to get going! Why was she standing in the kitchen thinking?

She dashed up the stairs with a strip of broken molding under her arm and a dirty sock over her shoulder.

Halfway up she paused at a little octagonal window and looked dreamily out, thinking, In a way, we own those trees. Beyond the Thieus’ was the same old gap in the leaning elms showing the same old meadow that would soon be ToyTowne. But for now it still reminded her of the kind of field where Christ with his lap full of flowers had suffered with the little children, which was a scene she wanted them to put on the cover of the singing album she was going to make, the singing album about God, which would have a watercolor cover like
Shoulder My Burden
, which was a book though but anyways it had this patient donkey piled high with crates and behind it this mountain, and the point of that book was that if you take on the worries
and cares of others, Lord Jesus will take on your cares and worries, so that was why the patient donkey and why the crates, and why she prided herself on keeping house for Neil-Neil and never asked him for help.

Holy cow, what was she doing standing on the landing! Was she crazy? Today she was rushing! She was giving Neil-Neil a tea! She burst from the landing, taking two stairs at once. The molding had to go to the attic and the dirty sock to the hamper. While she was up, she could change her top. Because on it was some crusty soup. The wallpaper at the top of the stairs showed about a million of the same girl whacking a smiling goose with a riding crop. Hello, girls! Hello, girls! Ha ha! Hello, geese! Not to leave you out!

From a drawer in her room she took the green top, which Neil-Neil liked. Once when she was wearing it he’d asked if it was new. When had that been? At the lunch at the Beef Barn, when he paid, when he asked would she like to leave Rustic Village Apartments and come live with him. Oh, that sweetie. She still had the matchbook. Those had been sad days at Rustic Village, with every friend engaged but Doris, who had a fake arm, and boy those girls could sometimes say mean things, but now it was all behind her, and she needed to send poor Doris a card.

But not today, today she was rushing!

Down the stairs she pounded, still holding the molding, sock still over her shoulder.

In the kitchen she ripped open the cookie bag but there were no clean plates, so she rinsed a plate but there was no towel, so she dried the plate with her top. Hey, she
still had on the yellow top. What the heck? Where was the green top? Hadn’t she just gotten it out of her drawer? Ha ha! That was funny. She should send that in to
ChristLife
. They liked cute funny things that happened, even if they had nothing to do with Jesus.

The kitchen was a disaster! But first things first. Her top sucked. Not sucked, sucked was a bad word, her top was yugly. Dad used to say that, yugly. Not about her. He always said she was purty. Sometimes he said things were purty yugly. But not her. He always said she was purty purty, then lifted her up. Oh Dad, Daddy, Poppy-Popp! Was Poppy-Popp one with the Savior? She hoped so. Sometimes he used to swear and sometimes he used to drink, and once he swore when he fell down the stairs when he was drunk, but when she ran to him he hopped up laughing, and oh, when he sang “Peace in the Valley” you could tell he felt things would be better beyond, which had been a super example for a young Christian kid to witness.

She flew back up the stairs to change her top. Here was the green top, on the top step! Bad top! I should spank! She gave the green top a snap to undust it and discipline it and, putting the strip of molding and the dirty sock on the step, changed tops right then and there, picked up the molding, threw the dirty sock over her shoulder, and pounded back down the stairs.

There were so many many things to do! Not only now, for the tea, but in the future! It was time to get going! Now that she was out of that lonely apartment she could finally learn to play the piano, and once she learned to play and write songs, she could write her songs about God, and
then find out about making a record, her record about God, about how God had been good to her in this life, because look at her! A plain girl in a nice home! Oh, she knew she was plain, her legs were thick and her waist was thick and her hair, oh my God—oh my gosh, rather—her hair, what kind of hair was that to have, yugly white hair, and many was the time she had thought, This is not hair, this is a test. The test of white sparse hair, when so many had gorgeous manes, and that was why, when she looked in a mirror by accident and saw her white horrible hair, she always tried to think to herself, Praise God!