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Part Three of "Queen's Gambit" was originally published here. All three parts have been combined into one, but I've left this file here to preserve the comments.

Part two of "Queen's Gambit" was originally published here. All three parts have been combined into one, but I've left this file here to preserve the comments.

This story was originally published in 3 parts. All three have been combined in this location. Parts 2 and 3 remain in their original location to preserve the comments.

This story was originally written in two parts. I've combined them but kept part one online to preserve the comments. Click here to see the comments from part one.

Part One

Foy started noticing churches while he was driving. He hadn’t noticed churches for a long time, but suddenly he was seeing them again. A church would rush toward him, picking up speed, then whoosh by, slowing down as it moved down the street behind the car. Foy’s head would turn to follow the church, then snap back quickly so he wouldn’t crash into anything. Then he would sneak a peek in his rearview mirror and watch the church float lazily out of sight, like a barge going around the distant curve of a river.

The more he watched churches, the more they seemed like living creatures with personalities. There were stone churches on the corners of older neighborhoods, some of them erected in the 19^th century. Their solidity seemed to transcend movement and change, as if ancient hammers had pounded them into place to keep the town from blowing away like a tarp in the wind. Their windows aged slowly in their stone settings, looking out and up, scarcely noticing anything happening on the ground nearby. Social trends threw themselves like breakers at the foundations of these spiritual castles, eventually losing energy and folding themselves into whatever fading decade had given them birth.

There were old-fashioned, white clapboard, African American churches ferociously holding the ground where country met city. The buildings looked frail, like matchsticks, but the paint was fresh and the wood was in good repair. The energy from within these churches was astonishing. White gloves, carefully delivered Sunday school reports, hats with veils, and cardboard fans worked hand-in-hand with stylized sermons, swaying singers, and intoxicating organ music to hold the modern world at bay by the sheer force of their determination to overcome.

The quiet and tired suburban brick churches of the 60s and 70s seemed the most at risk. Their functional architecture and weary, middle-class apathy made them appear to be on life support. You wondered how many more years their fathers would fire up the family car and shout for the kids to hurry so they wouldn’t be late for Sunday school.

Occasionally Foy would see an Episcopal church whose careful beauty would cause his heart to break with joy. He took pride in these churches from afar, like a collector of rare and beautiful things. Their Anglican heritage provided an appreciation for architecture, and an influx of American nature lovers who had only just discovered Saint Francis provided the energy for nurturing the grounds around the buildings.

Foy would slow his car when he passed one of these churches, looking at them the way you look at your childhood home if you drive by it after many years. He wanted to go inside but was afraid to ask. Sometimes he would sit on the curb across the street, letting his eyes follow the steps to the heavy, wooden door and then wander upwards past the windows to the roof, and then – if the church had one – to the bell tower.

He followed his urge to look at churches without introspection. If he had stopped to think about it, he might have recognized and perhaps resented the deep longing that was beginning to be born in his heart.

Foy did not plan to attend church that morning, but it was Sunday, and he happened to be out wearing long pants and a decent shirt. He was slowing down to take a look at an Episcopal church that had caught his eye a few days earlier when he noticed a sign that said worship began in half an hour. Moments later he had pulled into their parking lot, shut off his car, and was standing beside it looking around. There were only a few cars in the lot. Foy wondered which one belonged to the minister.

One of the cars was parked in a space close to the building. It was a few years old, sturdy and plain, and there were papers stacked on the dashboard.

“I bet that’s the minister’s car,” thought Foy with a smile.

He walked slowly toward the church, which was a collection of buildings around a central courtyard that was landscaped in a natural way. It looked as if the plants had been there before the church and had simply been allowed to remain as they always had been. Two huge oaks spread a canopy of shade over the entire courtyard, and there was a fountain in the middle with moss-covered rocks and a gentle sound.

As Foy approached the fountain he began to have a heavy feeling that was familiar to him. It was like soft but pressing fingers kneading anxiety into the muscles of his neck. He spoke softly to the fountain.

“This is the kind of place that once owned me, body and soul. If I thought the church was doing well, I felt like I was doing well. If I thought something was wrong at church, I felt worried and anxious about it all the time, even at night. If some families suddenly left, I couldn’t stop wondering if I had done something to make them leave. If I was mindful of my own sins and shortcomings, I felt like a hypocrite being a pastor. If I thought I preached a good sermon, I was proud, but later I would be depressed. If I felt the sermon wasn’t good, I had paranoid thoughts and my self-worth plummeted. If something happened to someone in the church, and I was too tired to feel something emotionally, I thought I was unfit to be the shepherd of the flock. If my theology was too liberal, I was seen as a dangerous influence. If my theology was too predictable, I had nothing challenging to say and my peers wouldn’t respect me. If my children were unhappy, I was a poor Christian father and a bad role model for the fathers of the church. If church attendance dropped or rose and I couldn’t explain it or deal with it, I was a poor leader. You see what I mean?”

The fountain gurgled away. Foy moved closer, sat on the edge of the fountain and began to look closely at it. It was made of a number of flattened, slate-like stones stacked in a haphazard manner that was pleasing to the eye. The water poured out of a small, cave-like opening near the top with plants dangling in front of it. It flowed across a flat stone, following gravity and the peculiarities of the stone until it collected in a little pool bordered by ferns. There was a low spot along the edge of the pool. The water overflowed at that point and ran down a mossy bank to a lower pool.

Foy watched a tiny curved leaf spinning in the upper pool. In an instant his entire focus narrowed to this leaf. The realities of the world around him faded away. He was not aware of the transition, but he was as lost as a child at play or a monk at prayer.

The leaf spun lazily and approached the waterfall at the edge of the pool several times, but each time a swirling eddy would shoo it away. Foy noticed a number of mossy, water-logged leaves at the bottom of the pool, and he wondered if some leaves made it over the edge while others died trying. Just then the leaf drifted right to the edge of the pool. It hung there for a moment, then it slowly began to tilt. In an instant it disappeared over the edge and tumbled down the mossy bank until it hung in the moss a few inches above the lower pool.

Foy stared at the leaf sadly. He felt a strange attachment to the little leaf and had wanted to watch it make the whole journey to the bottom pool. It occurred to him that the natural beauty of the fountain had developed because no one was controlling what happened to it. The water flowed in whatever way that gravity and the stones dictated. Leaves fell from the trees, some landing on the ground and others in the fountain. Some leaves followed the current from one pool to the next, and others became heavy with water and sank. All of this happened over time and created the unplanned, random beauty of the whole. Foy’s little leaf would stay there, stuck to the mossy bank, until it rotted, or until a breeze loosened it or something else happened.

Foy impulsively reached over and gave the leaf a little nudge with his finger. It tumbled the rest of the way into the lower pool where it floated about happily.

“And then there’s Divine Intervention.” He said out loud with a smile.

Suddenly the world came rushing back, and he became self-conscious. Foy stood up and looked around to see if anyone was watching him playing in the fountain and talking to himself. No one was paying attention to him, but more people had arrived for worship. They were streaming along several sidewalks that led to the open door of a stone building that was clearly the sanctuary. Some people were alone; others were chatting in groups of two or three. Some walked purposefully toward the door while others moved slowly and even stopped along the edges of the sidewalk to chat.

Foy stood looking at the open door. There were glimpses of movement visible through it. Rustling noises and subdued bits of conversation floated out into the courtyard. He caught sight of an arm in a robe rising to embrace a shoulder, then lowering to shake a hand. After a few moments, the robed arm took hold of the door and began to close it.

Foy took a step in the direction of the door, and then it seemed easier to keep walking toward it than to stop or turn around.

rlp

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Part Two

Foy reached the door a few seconds after it had closed. He opened it as softly as he could, but it made a small creaking noise. The minister, who was wearing a robe and was about to go down the aisle, turned around. His face lit up like someone who suddenly saw a long-lost friend. He held up his hand and beckoned Foy in with a smile.

Foy nodded and raised the fingers of his right hand in acknowledgment, then turned his attention to a wooden table in the foyer that had literature on it. He picked up an order of worship.

The minister disappeared down the aisle following someone carrying a candle. Foy was pleased to see that the church was designed in a traditional way. The pews were of dark wood, and there was a single aisle down the center. There was no carpet on the wooden floor, so it creaked and groaned as the procession passed by. Some of the congregants had turned in their seats and were watching the minister come down the aisle. Others were staring straight ahead or scanning the order of worship.

Foy felt a strong aversion to having anyone sitting behind him. Luckily, the last two or three rows on each side were relatively empty, and he was able to slide quietly onto the back row. He scanned the order of worship, then picked up a worn copy of the Book of Common Prayer from the pew. At that point everyone in the congregation suddenly stood up. Foy jumped up quickly to join them. The people spoke in unison in a rough, mumbling monotone. He wasn’t sure if the words they were saying were written down in the order of worship or in the prayer book. He looked at one and then the other, then everyone sat down again. Foy dropped into his seat a half-beat behind everyone else.

He watched the people around him to know when to kneel or stand and flipped through the Book of Common Prayer, paying close attention to a section of pages that were clearly more worn than the rest. Eventually he found the right place and began to follow the worship service. At one point an organist played a long piece. Foy put down the prayer book and relaxed. He let down his guard and became very emotional. His eyes filled with tears.

The minister stood to preach. The gospel text for the day was very familiar to Foy. It was the story of a prostitute who had come to Jesus and anointed his feet with a perfumed oil. A Pharisee who observed this was deeply offended that Jesus allowed himself to be touched by such a woman.

The minister read the text carefully, closed the Bible, and said, “Before we can understand the story, we need to be clear about a couple of things. First, the woman in the story was not a good person. Any modern, Hollywood idea of a kindly prostitute would have been foreign to the people of this time. She was violating the sexual and social values of her people, and she was offensive to them. A modern equivalent might be a woman who flirts and seeks to be intimate with the husbands of women who thought they were her friends.”

“Second, the Pharisee was a good person. Those of us who are familiar with the stories of Jesus can begin to think that Pharisees were mean-spirited, judgmental men. But the Pharisees were greatly admired by the people of that day, as well they should have been. The Pharisee in the story was a devout and pious man. He was a good citizen, a patriot, and he would have given 10% of everything he had to charitable causes. If you and I lived in that day, we would have liked and admired him.”

“If you think of the prostitute as a misunderstood, kind-hearted woman and the Pharisee as a mean-spirited, oppressive and judgmental zealot, you will ruin the story. You will take away its edge. Jesus’ acceptance of the woman and rebuke of the Pharisee was shocking in that day. They would have expected a righteous rabbi to have chased away the sinner and embraced the pious man. The story is nothing short of radical. It is a stunning example of the upside-down, topsy-turvy, unexpected nature of God’s love. Truly, even the least of us is precious in eyes of God.”

It was a brilliant opening. In one swift, simple move, the minister set the story free from the restraints of modern culture. Foy was impressed and wept softly throughout the entire sermon. A woman in the row in front of him reached back, without looking, and handed him three or four tissues. He accepted them gratefully.

Foy chose not to go forward for communion. He watched with a tender but distant affection as the people filed by to receive the bread and wine. In his mind he saw the faces of many friends from the days when he was the one handing out bits of bread and saying, “This is the body of Christ.”

When the service was over, Foy remained in his seat with his head bowed to avoid the rush of people trying to leave. When the crowd thinned, he slipped out quietly and returned to the fountain in the courtyard. His leaf was still floating in the lower pool. He watched it and marveled at the power the Church still held for him. The tasks and errands he had planned for that day now seemed painfully mundane and ridiculous. Perhaps he would go to the hardware store and pick up that sandpaper he needed. Maybe he would go to the supermarket and buy some cereal and milk for supper. Later he might rent a movie and eat peanut M&Ms while he watched it. It was hard to rise from the fountain and go back to his life, so he lingered there, watching the leaf drift softly in the water.

After some time he heard footsteps. He turned and saw the minister approaching. He spoke, but Foy couldn’t understand him because of the sound of the fountain.

“Heymuh naymzul airy.”

Foy cupped a hand to his ear to indicate that he hadn’t understood.

“It Slarry.”

Foy was disoriented by his inability to make sense of the man’s speech.

“Slarry?” he said, tilting his head.

The minister laughed loudly. “Oh, sorry. I said my name’s Larry. It’s Larry.”

They both laughed.

The minister slowed his laughter and transitioned smoothly into a greeting. “I noticed you coming into the service, and I’ve never seen you here before. I’m glad I caught you before you left because I wanted to meet you.”

Foy recognized the graceful, social charm of a minister at church. It was a charm he knew he could slip into with almost no effort.

“My name’s Foy. Nice to meet you, Larry.”

“So Foy, what brought you to Saint Mark’s this morning? I mean, obviously you wanted to go to church, but what brought you to this church?”

Foy looked around as if there might be a sign with the church’s name on it. He realized he hadn’t bothered to find out the name of the church.

“Oh, this is Saint Mark’s? Funny, I didn’t, uh, notice the name or anything. I saw this place a few days ago, and it was so beautiful. I just kind of wandered in, following the beauty I guess.”

Larry looked around the courtyard with appreciation. “Yeah, it’s quite a lovely place. Very peaceful. You’re welcome to come here anytime. I’m glad you found us this morning.”

Foy looked closely at him. He seemed like a sincere man. He was glad that Foy had come. The fact that a stranger came to his church was something that obviously pleased him.

“Great sermon, Reverend,” said Foy.

Larry smiled and thanked him. It was the polite thank you of a man who hears those words all the time, knows they don’t really mean anything, and has learned to be okay with that.

“It was the opening that got me, that part about her not being a good person and the Pharisee being, you know, a good man. It was so clean and simple and perfect. It was like going back in time and hearing the story with their ears. It was amazing. I can tell you thought a lot about how you were going to do that.”

Larry looked stunned and stared at him without speaking. Foy was amused by his expression. He probably didn’t expect that sort of comment from some guy off the street. The people in the pews rarely notice things like that. A good sermon would communicate well, but a layperson might not understand the work that went into such an opening.

“Wow, thanks. Um, you really got that, didn’t you?”

Larry looked at Foy, trying to figure him out.

“It’s just…most people don’t pick up on that kind of stuff.”

“Some do,” said Foy.

They sat quietly for a moment, then Foy spoke. “I want to ask you something rather personal. Of course, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I guess that goes without saying.”

Larry nodded his assent.

“How are you doing?”

Larry nodded seriously.

“I’m doing fine. The church is healthy – I think. Attendance is up, and we’ve got some young families again, so that’s good. I’ve got a good staff to work with. Charlie, our new youth minister, is doing a great job, so that whole area is picking up. We have some issues with the facility, but…”

Foy broke in. “No, not the church. I meant how are YOU doing.”

“Oh,” said Larry.

“The reason I ask is I have a friend who was a minister, and he had a hard time – how do I say this – keeping track of himself. He got lost in the role, if that makes any sense. It’s like you coming out here to talk to me. I look at your smile, and it’s perfectly sincere. I can see that. But you have to come out here and talk to me. It’s your job. My friend, he got to where he couldn’t tell if he had any real compassion left in him, or if it was all the job. He started feeling false, or wrong, or somehow not himself. It just got to where he didn’t like the feeling of it – being a minister.”

Larry looked directly at Foy, who looked right back at him. His eyes dropped. He turned his head a little to the right and looked away. Then he turned back and looked at Foy’s knees for a few seconds. He slowly raised his eyes until he was looking right at Foy again.

“Honestly? Just you and me talking? Not the kind of thing I would necessarily want to say at church?”

He looked at Foy, waiting for some kind of acknowledgment of informal confidentiality. Foy nodded and said, “Yeah.”

“Okay, I don’t know how I'm doing, exactly. That's hard to know. I know what your friend was feeling. Sometimes I don’t feel like a real person here at church - most of the time, to be honest. And yeah, I have to be nice to everyone. I have to. And I guess somebody’s got to be here, welcoming people, you know? Just, being the face of the church, I guess.”

“You know what’s hard? People at church don’t see me as a real person. Oh, I guess they sort of do, and one or two know me pretty well. But I think for the most part, I’m some sort of spiritual icon or something. For some I’m a mediator between them and a God they fear. Some need to believe that I’m living an authentic Christian life, especially those who aren’t doing that themselves. Those are the ones you’ve got to watch out for, because if they ever see, you know, your humanity or anything… And then, for some I think I’m roughly the equivalent of the pulpit and the stained glass. You know, every church has a minister in a robe down front – just a part of the furnishings - no big deal.”

Foy stroked his chin, looking at the ground and nodding solemnly. “Yeah, that’s the kind of thing my friend used to say.”

Foy picked up an acorn and pulled the little cap off the top of it. He threw the acorn away, put the cap on the end of his finger like a hat, and wiggled it. Then he flicked the acorn cap away.

“For what it’s worth, having watched my friend pretty closely, here’s how I see it. They think they need a minister, but what they really need is you. I know you’re a priest and you have to bless the sacraments and all that, and someone’s got to, so that’s fine. But they need to see you as a man - as a person. They might not want a straight dose of Larry, but that’s what they need.”

“And you think you should be a good minister, and I’m sure you are and try to be. But what you need to be – and I know I’m getting all mystical here – but what you need to be is Larry. You need to be Larry. It’s your right as a human, and I guess maybe your primary calling. I don’t know, don’t you think we’re all called – first of all – to be or maybe become the kind of unique creation that God imagined on the day we were born?”

Suddenly Foy became self-conscious about talking too much.

“Ah, what do I know? I guess while we’re all figuring this stuff out it’s good that you’re here, being what we need you to be. You know, showing up and handing out the wafers on Sunday, whether you feel like it or not. I admire you for that.”

Foy reached into the fountain and nudged the little leaf which was sitting perfectly still in the water of the lower pool. It scooted away from his finger, drifted sideways a bit, then slowed and stopped moving.

Foy stood up and stretched his back.

“I guess I better be taking off.”

Larry stood too. He held out his hand and Foy shook it.

“It was nice meeting you, Foy. Very nice, on a Sunday, after the service, uh, to meet you. Hope I’ll see you again sometime.”

“You probably will.”

As Foy walked away, Larry said, “Hey, what was your friend’s name anyway? That minister you were telling me about?”

Foy stopped but he didn’t turn around. He looked down, smiled, then rubbed his chin with his thumb.

“Foy. Same name as me, interestingly enough.”

Larry smiled. “Yeah, I thought so. All that shit you threw out about the sermon was a dead giveaway.”

Foy turned around and began to walk away backwards. He pointed at Larry with both index fingers. “C’mon, I meant every word of it. That was an awesome sermon, Reverend. Truly inspirational.”

Larry held his hand up and slapped it toward Foy, laughing.

Foy turned around and moved out of the courtyard into the parking lot. He turned his head to the right and shouted over his shoulder.

“Helluva good sermon.”

 

rlp

Note: The sermon intro from this story is based on a sermon by Reverend Sam Todd at the Episcopal Church of Reconciliation in San Antonio. The sermon was delivered sometime in the 90s. I still remember that sermon, which is as good a compliment as a sermon can receive, I suppose.

Read the Gospel story from Luke chapter 7

 

Part One

This story was originally written in two parts. I've kept the part one page here to preserve the comments. Click here to read the entire story.

 

This story originally appeared in two parts, but both may be read here. This page is maintained to preserve the comments.

rlp

 

Part One

Doug was carrying a cup of coffee and a legal pad. He came around a corner and saw Foy.

“Hey Buddy, how’s it going? You gettin settled?”

Part Two

This story was originally in two parts. You can read the whole story here. I left this entry in place to preserve the comments.

Note: This story is the third in a threesome of Foy Davis stories. The first is "Extreme Unction," and the second is "De Nada."

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

The bus made a squealing noise as it pulled into the New Orleans station. Foy’s face was very close to the glass.

Every place has its own look.

San Antonio looked dusty, with muted colors. Like it was the first hint of the West. New Orleans looked dark and rich to him, with deep colors and humid air. It was green and wet, and there were black people everywhere.

This is the beginning of the deep South. Everything east of here is like this.

Getting off the bus was a moment Foy had fantasized about for many years. Absolute freedom. No ties, no responsibilities, no one waiting for him, no one watching him to see how a minister would behave, no one to take care of, no schedule or agenda. He stood on the sidewalk outside the bus station. People were moving past him hurriedly. They had places to go and things to do. Foy’s destiny and direction were his own to choose. It was like a movie.

So how does it feel?

He stopped and his mouth opened a little. He lowered his chin and let it drift to the right and tried to pay attention to what was going on inside him. What he felt was a tinge of anxiety. Also a nagging and familiar need to know what he was going to do. He felt a strong, inner longing for a schedule and a purpose. This feeling disgusted him, but he tried to be gentle with himself.

It takes awhile to get used to this. It’s like going on vacation, but even harder. Just settle down; you'll be fine.

A college friend with some connections had gotten him a room above some retail space in the French Quarter. He had the address in his pocket but was self-conscious about hailing a cab since he had never done that before. Plus he wanted to see and feel everything. That was part of the deal. Someone pointed down a street and said he could get to the French Quarter on foot. He slung his duffel bag over one shoulder and his backpack over the other and started walking.

A few streets down, a man was sitting on piece of carpet, twisting and bending his body into extreme positions. There was a hat on the ground with some change in it. Most people were walking by without even glancing at him. Foy was fascinated and watched him for a few minutes.

So you get up in the morning and walk out of your house carrying your carpet for a day of yoga or whatever and people give you money.

There wasn’t much money in the hat. Foy dropped in some change and nodded at the man to show him that his odd skills were appreciated. The man saw his nod but gave no response, which amused Foy.

Nearby some young boys were breakdancing on flattened, cardboard boxes. They also had a hat on the ground. A large pile of discarded batteries behind their boom box indicated they had been at it for some time.  It didn’t seem that the money in the hat would be able to keep up with the expense of the batteries, which bothered Foy. He looked around for an electric outlet and spotted one on the external wall of a nearby shop. He had a brief fantasy of bringing them an extension cord and being something of a hero, but he played out the fantasy and it ended with the shopkeeper jerking the cord out of the wall and using it to drive the boys away from the front of his store. He decided they probably knew what they were doing and moved away.

In the French Quarter he was charmed to find that the streets were lined with two-story buildings that had wrought-iron balcony railings, just like in the photographs. He found his room and spent the afternoon doing things that people like to do in New Orleans. He had mile-high pie at The Pontchartrain and listened to jazz in a little club while drinking coffee with chicory in it. He went into a cigar store and asked for a really good cigar. He didn’t know how to answer the shopkeeper’s questions, so he just bought one that the man said was good. It was eleven dollars.

He found a café that looked right and sat outside smoking his cigar, drinking beer, and watching people walk down the street. It seemed strange to him, for some reason, that everyone had somewhere to go. The crowd flowed by the café like a river. People were in groups, laughing, drinking, and purposeful. For the first time he felt relaxed and at ease. He was not a part of the scene. He was only watching.

So this is what you do. You go into the streets with your friends and walk up and down. You drink and talk and maybe you’ll see something interesting. You do this a lot and eventually you’re there when something interesting happens and you can tell the story at work or whatever. You have to be in this. This has to be your life. Natural. Just what you do.

The cigar started making him feel sick, so he stubbed it out and left it on the table with some money. He got his beer and moved out into the street to walk with everyone else. He paused at a strip club and peeked inside. The music was tacky and the woman on the stage looked tired. He grimaced and pulled his head out of the door quickly.

There was a throng of people moving down the street and he allowed himself to get caught up in it. A woman was throwing beads from a balcony and he caught some. The young men around him started yelling, “Show us your tits!” They said it over and over, and the woman looked like she was considering the proposition. He felt giddy for a moment and looked around.

I can do this if I want.

He joined the crowd and shouted, “Show us your tits!” but he was immediately uncomfortable and self-conscious. He only said it once. The woman quickly lifted her shirt, and Foy yelled along with everyone else and lifted his beer. He hated the feel of it even before he lowered his arm. It was like being impotent. This is the stuff that should work but it didn't. Nothing felt right. He was on the outside, looking in.

Shit, I don’t even remember how to have fun. Maybe religion sucked the life right out of me, just the ability to hang out with some friends, get a little drunk, and enjoy whatever it is that they are enjoying. God, am I that lost?

Foy stopped in the middle of the street and became like an island with people flowing around him. He began to push through the crowd, heading for the curb. As he moved he began to feel frantic. He had to get out of the street and over to the sidewalk where he could get his back against a building and watch things again. He wanted to feel the way he felt in the café earlier.

When he got to the edge of the street, something against the curb got his attention. It was a battered Bible with no cover lying in a pile of leaves. It was open but in disarray, as if someone had dropped it. The left side was rolled under and had a wet shoestring draped across it. A cigarette butt was wedged into the valley between the pages. A muddy imprint from a tennis shoe obscured the page on the right.

It was such an ugly thing, like a corpse, and he could not control his reaction. He groaned and bent over it like it was a wounded puppy. He lifted a few of the pages and flopped them back and forth.

It was a generic King James, the kind that are printed by the millions and spread all over the world like cheap toys and good-luck charms. The kind you find in motels, homeless shelters, and used book stores. The kind of Bible that people who never read the Bible own. If someone asks them if they have a Bible, they will think for a moment and say, “Yeah, I might have one somewhere.”

Foy stood up and looked down at the Bible, wiping his hands on his jeans. He felt a little resentful of its sudden appearance that evening.

This doesn’t mean shit. Those cheap Bibles are everywhere.

He stood on the curb and looked back into the street. It was getting late and the crowd had grown. There were so many people now that the street was almost full. The movement of the crowd was more sluggish. It stopped and started and surged here and there. Suddenly there was a commotion across the street and about half a block down. There were angry voices and a burst of wild laughter. The movement in the street slowed and then stopped as people tried to see what was happening. By some miracle, the crowd parted unevenly and he could see all the way to the curb on the other side.

Perfectly framed in the division of the crowd was a small, preteen girl sitting on the curb. She was wearing jeans and a worn, faded t-shirt. Her tennis shoes were filthy and had no laces. In her hands was a flat box hanging from a rope tied around her neck, like the cigarette-girl boxes from the old movies. Foy had never seen one of these boxes in real life and he froze, staring at it. In the box were a few bags of potato chips and several varieties of candy. Her right heel was up off the ground and she was fidgeting, bumping it repeatedly against her left ankle. Her shoulders were curved and slumped and she had a vacant expression that looked as though it had settled into her face for good.

Foy felt a surge of emotion as he realized that this poor child was selling things in the middle of the French Quarter, all alone, late at night. He stepped off the curb into the street just as the crowd began to move again. The people flooded together, blocking his view of the girl. He fought his way through the crowd but was dragged along, so that when he got across the street he was about ten yards down from her. He turned his shoulders to the side and walked hurriedly through the crowd, digging a hand into his jeans pocket.

I’ll buy everything she has in that box and just give her whatever cash I’ve got left. Maybe I should find out where she lives and take her home. She shouldn’t be out here this late, working, selling stuff, whatever. That’s gotta be against the law or something.

When he got to the place where he had seen the girl, she was gone. He looked around quickly, then sprang up on the base of a lamppost, like that guy in Singing in the Rain. He could see nothing but a river of bobbing heads. Across the street another young woman on a balcony pulled up her shirt. The crowd hooted and surged in that direction. Foy looked up at her. Her breasts were bouncing freely and she had a huge smile on her face. She looked so happy, like she was having the time of her life. Below her there was a chorus of cheers and dozens of hands raised beer bottles in a raucous toast.

Foy held onto the post with his right hand and swung around it, looking everywhere for the girl, but she was gone. Then for some reason he didn’t like the idea of getting down, so he stayed on the lamppost, looking around in amazement.

I know nothing of this world. Nothing.

And then everything began to close in on him. The movement of the people below was repulsive, and he didn’t want anyone to touch him. The sounds from the balcony were screeching and sharp, clawing at his mind. There was too much of everything, and he began to panic. He wanted to feel his back pressed against something large and solid. He wanted a safe place – his home or a room, just a small place with maybe one friend there to laugh with him. He wanted something familiar.

I don’t want to be here. I don’t like it here. I’m leaving and going to a place where I want to be.

He climbed down and started walking, and then the truth hit him. He had nowhere to go. He had no home and no family and no job. There was no one in the world for him. Not one person to know him and to know what he was feeling right now. He would not sit down with a friend tomorrow and say, “You can’t believe what it was like out there on the street last night. There was this Bible and a little girl I saw.” No one would hear this story.

Foy pressed his back against the front of a store. He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. A thought came to him that was cruel and mocking.

This is what it means to be lonely. And you are going to know what loneliness means.

rlp

 

 

 

Note: This story is the third in a threesome of Foy Davis stories. The first is "Extreme Unction," and the second is "De Nada."

I found out yesterday that my college roommate died last week. His name was Kenny Cameron. I wish I could have gone to the funeral, but it was over before I knew about it.

My father was the associate pastor of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston in the 1970s. I spent a lot of time at church, as you can imagine. Two of my closest friends also went to Tallowood - Kenny Cameron and Mark Carter. Mark sent me an email yesterday and told me about Kenny’s death. I hadn’t heard from Mark in years either, maybe not since I officiated at his wedding close to 20 years ago.

Kenny and Mark. Kenny Cameron and Mark Carter. If I say those names, I can almost feel the 70s. I can feel the heat of Houston; I can hear the Doobie Brothers; I can feel my stomach fluttering when I tried talking to a girl. I can remember the church stuff - the youth camps, the revivals, and youth choir on Sunday nights. The memories are right inside me and also far behind me. Near and far.

So that you can have a feel for what Kenny meant to me, I’m going to break a sacred trust I have with myself. I’m going to tell you the truth about one of the Foy Davis stories. There are six Foy stories so far. Most of them are fictional. But one of the stories is true. “Freckles and Blue” is my best and most faithful recounting of some things that actually happened to me in middle school. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the heartbreak of losing “Emma,” but over the years that memory has become tender. It brings a smile to my face when I remember what a little boy I was and how deeply I felt the things that wounded me.

Kenny and Mark were on the bus from that story. I left for camp a stranger, and I came home a week later, having had my first romance and with Kenny and Mark as my best friends.

That was quite a summer.

Kenny Cameron is dead. I have to keep saying it because I can’t feel it. Kenny was funny. He laughed a lot and had a killer smile with perfect white teeth. He was handsome and smooth with girls. I tried my best to imitate him in this regard, but I was not smooth. Honestly, girls scared me to death until I was halfway through high school. After that they only made me nervous, but after being scared to death, nervous feels pretty damn good. But Kenny was never scared around girls or anything else, or so it seemed to me at the time. That's how I remember him.

Kenny wanted to be a doctor, and we went off to Baylor University together, along with “Emma” from the story and a few others from our church. Kenny and I lived in a tiny dorm room for one year. We hung everything on our walls upside down, for some reason. We thought it was funny. Believe it or not, they used to have an organized panty raid for freshmen at Baylor. The boys would wear their freshmen beanies and sing outside the girls’ dorms. The girls would toss panties out of their windows – specially purchased for this event, one hopes – with their phone numbers written on them. I have seen a thousand boys crowded around a tall dormitory and the air filled with panties. I have seen this. I bear witness to it.

Being very athletic at the time and rather determined, I snagged 13 pair, which was pretty impressive. We hung them all on our wall, upside down, and left them there for the entire year. But I never called a single phone number. You know, that whole nervous around girls thing.

Yeah, Supertramp playing on Kenny’s 8-track tape player, drinking Cokes and sitting in our dorm room, surrounded by upside down posters and panties. Those were the days, right?

But then Kenny joined a fraternity, and I got very serious about philosophy and my religious studies, so I made the cocky decision that fraternities were ridiculous - and I passed up no opportunity to say so. We drifted apart and by the end of college, we were saying hello if we happened to pass each other on the campus.

Life moved on, as it does. I heard that Kenny never made it to medical school and that he had a daughter. Then at some point I heard that he had multiple sclerosis. I never called him. I didn’t know his number, and his friendship was long gone by then. And I missed his funeral. That’s the last chapter I have for Kenny, and now that I write it in that way, I suddenly feel very sad.

Mark Carter lives in Austin now, with his wife and two daughters. We've agreed that it has been too long. We’re going to meet soon for Mexican food, cold beer, and about four hours of long overdue conversation. I’m sorry that it took the death of an old friend to remind us of how precious these early friendships are, but that’s the way it often happens.

Precious things pass quickly. Life and living wrap themselves around you and hold you fast to the present. Years fly by, and you find new friends and new ways of being. But the truth is, new friends are an infinite possibility, but old friends are fixed in stone. There are only a few of them, and no more will be added to their ranks. Some will be taken away.

So I’m coming to Austin, Mark. I want to see what 25 years has done to you and for you. I want to hear about your life. I want to talk about Kenny and the old days. I’m coming to Austin because there were only two of you, Kenny and Mark. And now there is only one.

rlp

A hero of mine died last week. I wept openly when I read about it, though I only met him in person a couple of times. His name was Foy Valentine. And yes, that is where I got the name of my fictional character, Foy Davis, though my character bears no resemblance to Foy Valentine in personality. No, it's only a name that they share. I intended it to be a private tribute to someone whose life has meant much to me. I had planned to write a story about how Foy got his name. I'm sure I'll eventually get around to that, but since the real Foy has died, it seems right to tell you about him now.

Foy Valentine was a Christian first, and a Baptist kind of Christian only second. A lot of people have a hard time keeping that sort of thing in its proper order. Foy did not. He was a Christian ethicist who worked for the Southern Baptist Convention years ago. Foy's job was to speak the truth to those in power. And that he did. He received a lot of hate mail over the years from Baptists whose world was not large enough to hold truth. And he was labeled many things: A liberal, a radical, a nigger lover, a troublemaker.

As a young seminarian, I "met" Foy Valentine while researching Southern Baptist responses to the bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham in 1963. Four Baptist children were killed in that blast. Four children whose skin was a dark color. I was shocked and dismayed to find that Southern Baptist newspapers throughout the South had nothing whatever to say about it. Not a mention.

But in my research I found the voice of one crying in the wilderness of the sins of my own people. It was a notation in the official record of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting of 1968. The record indicates that a man named Foy Valentine stood up on the convention floor and pleaded for his brothers and sisters in Christ to confess the sin of our racism and embrace people of all colors. He was the same age then that I am now. He was in his 40s and employed by those very Baptists to whom he spoke on that day. He had a wife and children and a lot to lose.

Apparently, truth meant more to Foy than comfort and security.

His remarks were not well received, to say the least. It would be another twenty years before the Southern Baptist Convention would confess that particular sin.

When I first read about Foy Valentine's courageous stance, I made a personal commitment that was so brash and bold that I am a little embarrassed to write about it here. I vowed that if I ever found myself in a similar situation, where being faithful to Christ would cost me dearly, I would follow in Foy's footsteps.

I fear that I will not be able to live up to Foy's strong example, and that fear haunts me always. What will it profit me if I gain the whole world, but lose my soul? But I hope that I am strong enough, because I would like my grandchildren to think about me in the same way that I think about him.

Thank you for the witness of your life and words, Foy. History has shown that you were on the right side of your generation's most important issue. May God grant us the courage to stand on the side of righteousness in our time as well.

rlp

Tribute to Foy Valentine by the editor of Christian Ethics Today, the journal that Foy Founded.

A very nice obituary and summary of Foy's life.

This Story Originally Appeared in Two Parts

 

"Hey mom, when are you going to the store? I need a big candy cane."

"What’s a big candy cane?"

"It’s just a candy cane. Only it’s…big. It’s like this big."

He held his hands in front of him, palms inward and about 12 inches apart.

"Also it’s kind of big around too. Fatter."

"What do you need a candy cane for?"

"Just…people have them at school. It’s a present for someone."

His mother looked interested. "Oh, for whom?"

He looked away and mumbled. "Just friends. You don’t know them.”

"Well, I’m going to the drugstore later. You can go with me, and we’ll see if they have them there."

"Cool."

She smiled and kept her eyes on the pot she was wiping dry. "It’s very cute when you say cool, you know."

He exhaled loudly and rolled his eyes as he slouched off toward his room.

---

The drugstore did have the big candy canes. They were on the aisle that normally held school supplies but was being used for Christmas decorations at this time of year.

Foy leaned forward and peered into a box on a shelf. It was about as high as his chin. There they were, the big candy canes he’d been seeing all week at school. Lots of the other 7^th graders were giving them to their girlfriends or boyfriends. It seemed like everyone who was cool had a big candy cane this year. He was tempted to buy one for himself so that he could carry it around, but he was afraid someone might ask who gave it to him.

He selected one from the box and looked it over carefully to make sure the cellophane wasn’t torn or the cane broken. Satisfied, he took it to the counter. The cashier, a high school girl, popped her bubble gum and said, “Thirty seven cents.”

He shoved his hand into the front pocket of his cool jeans, the ones made of real denim. He had talked his mother into washing them eight or nine times before he wore them so they would be properly faded. He pulled out a handful of coins along with some lint, a marble, and a Bazooka Joe bubble gum wrapper. With his head bent carefully over his full hand, he selected one quarter, two nickels, and two pennies. The cashier hit a couple of buttons on the register, then put his candy cane into a paper sack. After that he sat by the door, waiting for his mother and thinking about Emma.

---

It had been more than a year since he was plucked from his idyllic elementary school life with its marbles, playgrounds, and baseball and dropped into the strange and unforgiving world of junior high. His parents moved to Houston the summer before he began sixth grade because his father took a job as the pastor of one of the larger Baptist churches in town.

A week after they arrived, his parents sent him off to the church’s summer camp. They said it would be a good way for him to make friends. That Monday morning he boarded one of the middle school buses. A lot of the kids on the bus were listening to music on small radios, and some of the boys were even sitting next to girls. This immediately interested him but was too frightening to seriously consider.

Foy sat in the safest seat he could find, which was the front seat next to an adult, a place where no other kid wanted to sit. The drive was eternally long, or at least it seemed to be. He had nothing to do and no one to talk to.

Several hours into the trip, a note was passed up from the back of the bus. It was obviously from a girl. It was written in purple ink, and there was a flower sprouting from the tail of the y. It said, “Are you the new pastor’s son?” There was a yes and a no at the bottom along with instructions to circle one. Shaken and uncertain of where this was going, he circled yes and passed the note to the person behind him. He faced forward and sat as still as he could.

Another note arrived a few minutes later with a new message. “Why don’t you come to the back?”

Foy began to panic. Desperate for an excuse to stay where he was, he wrote, “We’re almost there so I might as well stay” and again passed it to the person in the seat behind him.

Soon he was tapped again, and a third note was put into his hands. This one said, “It’s like 2 hours until we get there!”

Foy wrote, “I know” on the note and passed it back. To his great relief, no more notes came, but when they got off the bus, a girl walked up to him and said, “Emma likes you. She’s the one in the purple shirt.” She pointed toward a girl, about his height, who had freckles and light brown hair that bounced when she walked.

Somehow he ended up next to Emma in the lunch line, and she said, “Hi.” He managed to squeeze out a meek, “Hello.” His eyes traveled over her slightly sunburned nose, past some enchanting freckles to her blue eyes. She was chewing bubble gum very fast. Suddenly she laughed, and it seemed like her whole face was laughing. He immediately fell hopelessly and completely in love with her.

The rest of the week was a blur of unthinkable happiness and emotions that soared to dizzying heights he had never before imagined. They sat together each night in the tabernacle. The preacher’s voice dimmed to a faint buzz as they passed notes back and forth. When she bent over to write, he would watch her hair flutter in the wind from the giant fans. His heart pounded in his chest, and there was a constant tingle of anticipation in his stomach.

On Wednesday, having been coached by a couple of girls about the next move that should be made, they walked together in a remote part of the camp. He swallowed hard and said, “Uh, do you wanna go with me?” She said, “Yes,” and the pact was made. They were boyfriend and girlfriend according to the rules of their small world. They held hands, and he felt the tickle of her fingers on his palm. His breathing came faster, and that was the moment that everything changed. Childhood was over and something new had begun.

He rode in the back of the bus on the way home at the end of the week. Emboldened by his romantic success, he joked with Emma and played rowdy games with some of the boys that he had befriended. He was rather drunk on his new life and did things that were beyond comprehension a mere five days earlier. At one point he even told a bawdy joke that he had heard in the locker room. The boys laughed and a couple of girls said, “Gross!”

Finally they arrived in the church parking lot. Kids poured out of all the buses. Foy was looking for his duffel bag in the compartment underneath the bus when Emma tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, smiling.

“I don’t want to go with you anymore,” She said meekly, almost as if she was embarrassed. Then she turned and walked away. She got into a brownish car that immediately pulled out of the parking lot.

The pain of it hit his stomach hard. Immediate, sharp, very physical. He froze from the shock of it, unable to move. Then she was gone, and he had said nothing to her. He looked around the parking lot. Everyone else was busy, and no one had noticed. Suddenly he felt completely alone again, as if the week at camp had never happened. He stood there for a few moments with his sleeping bag under his arm and his dirty clothes hanging out of a pillowcase. By some superhuman force of will he managed to say goodbye to the other boys, but when he got into his parents' car he put his face down to his knees and bit his bottom lip hard to keep from crying. Luckily his little sister was fussing, so his mother didn’t notice him.

When he had regained control of himself, he sat up and gently leaned his temple against the glass of the door and stared at the part of the ground that is close to the car and goes by fast.

When they got home he mumbled something about feeling tired and a little sick. As he hurried to his room he heard his mom say, “Why don’t you lie down awhile?” When he closed the door of his room he felt safe to let go of his shame and the fear of being discovered. Grief fell over him. He did not understand what had happened. Perhaps he had done something wrong or broken some unknown rule of boyfriends and girlfriends. He wondered if Emma had told the other kids and everyone knew how dumb he was. He didn’t know anything about this stuff.

He lay on his bed with his face buried in his pillow. Deep sobs came up from his belly and out of his mouth. There was no stopping them.

Suddenly he became concerned that his father might walk in and find him crying. He slipped over the side of the bed into the space between it and the wall, dragging his pillow down with him. He saw a familiar patch of golden fur and reached for it. It was his old teddy bear, the one he had finally stopped sleeping with a few months before. He told his dad that he had had thrown it away, but he had only put it under the bed. He pressed his face into the bear’s stomach and let go.

---

Foy’s memories of that painful summer were interrupted by his Mom who called him back to the present. She was finished with her shopping and ready to go. She had apparently forgotten about the candy cane, or at least she said nothing about it, a thing for which Foy was thankful.

On the ride home, Foy considered the big question. How and when would he give the candy cane to Emma? She didn’t go to his school. He was much too young to drive, and he didn’t know where she lived in any case. He did not want his parents to know anything about this, so asking for their help was out of the question. There was really only one option. He would have to give it to her at church sometime before Christmas.

The candlelight service at midnight on Christmas Eve was very popular at their church. Everyone came, and the kids liked it because they got to stay out so late. Foy decided that he would give her the candy cane on that night. He would find her before the service, and they would sit together in the balcony. At the right moment he would give her the candy cane, perhaps with a ribbon around it, and she would understand that he still cared for her. And then he hoped he would be brave enough to hold her hand again, like he had so long ago.

---

He had avoided Emma for about six months after the summer camp breakup. Whenever he saw her at church his stomach would churn, and he would turn around and walk the other way. Emma’s family did not attend as regularly as his, so he was only subjected to this agony a couple of times a month.

At choir practice, when the girls were singing, he would sometimes watch her in safety while her eyes were locked on the director. On one of these occasions she pulled out a tube of fruity lip gloss, applied it smoothly, as if she was an old hand at that sort of thing, then pressed her upper and lower lips together briefly before letting them pop apart.

He thought he might faint.

In the Spring of their 6^th grade year, he walked around a corner at the church and almost ran into her. She smiled shyly and said hello. The encounter seemed to break the ice a little, and after that they often waved or exchanged greetings. But he had been deeply wounded and did not have the courage to sit with her or reach for her hand.

Then Emma disappeared from church altogether. Week after week passed and she was not there. She did not attend camp that summer either, something that disappointed him greatly. He had begun to think of camp as a magical place where normal life was put aside and boys and girls walked together, held hands, and made solemn vows.

7^th grade began, and it appeared Emma was gone for good. Foy almost forgot about her as he became caught up in football and a number of activities at school. But in November she appeared again one Sunday morning, and he felt a hot flush of emotion. It was clear that he still adored her. She waved to him in a friendly way, and they talked after church. There had been some kind of family trouble, and for a time they had dropped out of church. But things were better, she said, and they were back. Slightly older and a little more confident, he chatted with her for a few moments. But he had no idea how to bring up the painful subject of the camp breakup, which was more than a year old by that time.

As Christmas approached, he came up with the idea of giving her the big candy cane. He did not realize that the candy cane craze was limited to his own school and was simply a passing fad. He thought that big candy canes were a well-known thing to give to a girl that you cared for. Unable to bring himself to say, “I still like you,” he thought he could perhaps be brave enough to give her the candy cane. He was certain she would understand.

---

In the days leading up to Christmas, the big candy cane sat in an honored place on his shelves, near his catcher’s mitt and baseball cards, right under his autographed picture of Roger Staubach. He had tied a crude and misshapen bow around it with a piece of wrinkled blue ribbon that he found in the box where they kept the ornaments for their Christmas tree.

School was out, and he went skating and played touch football in the front yard with his best friend Steve. But always a part of his mind was thinking about Christmas Eve and Emma. He was haunted by thoughts of her freckles, her blue eyes, and her laugh, which seemed in his young mind to be the very source of joy in the world.

On Christmas Eve, Foy’s mother was surprised to find him dressed and ready to go at 9:00. She laughed and told him they weren’t going to leave until 10:45. He spent the time in the interim fiddling with the bow on the candy cane and listening to music on his radio. Finally the time came, and his mother loaded the children into the car. They arrived a little earlier than most families. Foy found a good observation spot toward the back of the foyer where he would be able to see all three doors that led into the church.

The service began at 11:30. By 11:15, there was a steady stream of people pouring into the church. As they passed through the doors, each person took a candle from one of several boxes. Foy picked up two candles, in case Emma needed one, then returned to his post to keep watch.

At 11:35 the doors to the church were closed, and Foy was in the foyer alone. He wondered if perhaps he had missed her. He stayed a few minutes longer, then climbed the stairs to the balcony. He went down to the front row and began scanning the lower section of the large sanctuary, looking for that familiar bounce of her hair. The service dragged on. Scripture was read and carols were sung, but there was no sign of Emma. When the candles were lit at midnight, Foy sank into the pew with his own lighted candle in one hand and the candy cane in the other. Somehow he had missed her, but he couldn’t understand how it had happened.

“Maybe she came in one of the side doors,” he thought with renewed excitement. Of course that was it. Her family was probably sitting in one of the side sections where he couldn’t see them from the balcony. As soon as the service was over, Foy ran down the stairs and out into the night. People were everywhere, hurrying to their cars, and he darted back and forth through the crowd, looking for her. He ran back through the church to the other side, but she was not there either. Soon the crowds thinned and the reality of the situation became clear. Her family had not come that night. In all of his planning, it had never occurred to him that she might not be there at all.

He continued to watch the last stragglers with a faint hope for some miracle, but sorrow was already descending upon him. The disappointment was more, he thought, than he could bear, for he had no idea if or when he would see her again. Perhaps her parents would not return at all. Perhaps she was lost to him forever.

Soon his mother called his name, somewhat irritated that he had dallied and was keeping the family from going home. His little sister was asleep and his younger brother was cranky. Not wanting her to know what had happened, he looked around quickly, then laid the candy cane gently on the top of a hedge of thick holly that grew near one side of the church. It stayed on the top for a brief moment, then slipped between the leaves into the darkness.

In the car his mother chatted about this and that. She scolded him for his tardiness and went on about plans that the family had for Christmas. The conversation was odious to him and impossible to comprehend. That was her world and not his. He never said a word, and his mother never noticed his quiet sorrow in the darkness of the back seat.

This time he did not cry, but bore the weight of his grief silently in a way that he thought was right for a man. He was learning about all of these things.

rlp

Click here to read the other Foy Davis Stories

Advent was just one of the things they didn’t tell him about at the Baptist seminary. They also never told him about the lectionary, liturgy, Epiphany, Lent, or Ash Wednesday. All the high church stuff. It was too close to Catholicism.

When he first moved to San Antonio he saw a woman with a black smudge on her forehead. He discretely let her know about it.

“You’ve got something on your forehead,” he said softly.

The woman looked surprised. “It’s ashes.”

Foy was confused by her reply. “Ashes, you know, whatever. I was just letting you know that something was on your forehead.”

He learned about liturgical worship at a local Episcopal church where he liked attending evening services and also sitting alone in the sanctuary praying and sometimes dozing off.

That was before his own church had a building, back when he used to study and read at Ben’s office. The Episcopal church was on his way home, and sometimes he would call Jenny and tell her he would be late so he could stop off for prayers. Thursday evenings were nice because Sam would administer the sacrament of unction. On Thursdays there was sometimes twenty people present. They would line up at the altar, and Sam would come by anointing their foreheads with oil that smelled like flowers.

Foy had never seen anything like it. The only healing services he knew about were the embarrassing ones on television, where people threw walkers and canes down the aisles, and the ministers slapped their palms against people’s foreheads. But somehow in the Episcopal church healing seemed right and good. He loved kneeling at the altar. He felt like a regular person and not just a minister. That was the nicest part of it, kneeling there incognito, waiting for Sam to touch his forehead.

There was an special prayer for unction, and Sam said it to each supplicant. You could hear his prayers from down the line. At first a little baritone rumble like distant thunder, then a rolling murmur, then words you could understand; then he was right in front of you. His words seemed powerful because of the repetition. Like chanting. His finger would make the sign of the cross on your forehead, and it was all done for you. It was only for you. Yours.

Later Foy would touch the oily spot on his forehead and smell his finger, breathing deeply the flowers and feeling it make a difference inside his head.

Sometimes he slipped into the sanctuary and was the only one there. He would sit about four rows back and stare at the altar and the cross suspended above it by wires. The quiet was always a surprise. The noises from outside seemed to be coming from another world.

There was another man who sometimes came to pray. He seemed capable of extraordinary concentration and would sit, lost in his prayers for long periods of time. Foy was always looking around to see what everyone else was doing. He didn’t like that about himself.

After seeing each other five or six times, the man came over and introduced himself.

“Hi, my name’s Robert. I’ve been seeing you here a lot lately, so I thought I would come and meet you. You’re not a member of the church, are you? I’ve never seen you on Sunday.”

“No,” said Foy. “I just like stopping by to be alone and pray. It’s so beautiful, you know?”

“Yeah. Well, you’re always welcome here.”

After that they always nodded at each other or said hello.

Sometimes Robert would play the organ, and the music would fill the room so completely that it felt like you had left the earth altogether. Foy loved these times and would close his eyes and let the music be the only thing in the world.

The day came when the polite nods and hellos turned into a small conversation. Foy told Robert that he was the pastor of a local Baptist church. Robert said that he was the music minister and invited Foy to his office near the vestry. There was a keyboard, a table covered with sheet music in neat piles, and nothing silly at all on the shelves. It was a very serious and nice office. “It feels like Robert,” he thought.

On that day the conversation turned in an unexpected and intimate direction. Robert told Foy that he was gay, a thing that surprised Foy greatly. He didn’t know there were Christian churches that would have a homosexual person as a minister. He didn’t know what he thought about that either.

Once Douglas came by the church to see Robert, and Foy happened to be there. They seemed peaceful together and had been partners for a number of years. They were in their 40s.

“Thank Christ I don’t have to make decisions about Robert and his life and the church and all that. I’m nobody here, so it’s not my problem.”

Time passed gently for awhile, slipping along with no bumps or surprises. There was morning and there was evening, day after day. Months passed and Foy became familiar with the Book of Common Prayer and the quiet ways of what he now called his Episcopal church.

About half a year after he met Robert, Foy became aware that Jenny was deeply unhappy and on the verge of leaving him. The awareness of this came like a flash of inspiration. One day he knew nothing of it, and the next day he knew everything. There followed a frantic time where he tried to salvage things with frenetic energy, but it was like scrambling for receipts the day before taxes are due. It’s too late and there is too much. The best you can do is not enough.

His depression was raging but still unnamed in those days. He sunk down to a place where he was numb except for the constant feeling that something very bad was about to happen and the feeling that there was no chance in hell that all this religious stuff was true.

He dragged himself into the sanctuary one afternoon and was glad that no one was there. He sat in his favorite pew and let his head drop down almost to his knees.

“I don’t have to do this, you know? Just say the word. Hell, I don’t even know if you exist. The truth is, I’m pretty sure you don’t exist, but I can’t stop talking to you. You can’t have someone like me being a pastor. You can’t. It’s not right. I mean, the pastor does need to be sure about some things, doesn’t he? There is a bare minimum of belief, don’t you think? Yeah, me too and I don’t have it.”

He tried some of his prayer tricks. He listened close and then let his hearing go all the way out past the church to the freeway where he could faintly hear the trucks going by. It didn’t work. Staring at the cross didn’t work. Breathing deeply and letting the relaxation begin behind his eyes didn’t work. Nothing worked, and his agitation grew.

One of the bad times started happening.

“O God, I have fucked up my life. I’m in the wrong job; I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jenny and the girls; I don’t have any money. I can’t just quit or I would. You can’t possibly want me. You find some way of letting me know that you want me out and I’ll go. I swear I will. I’ll just find a job and be a regular guy if I can figure out how to do that.”

There was the clicking sound of a door behind him and to the left. Foy opened his eyes to find Robert standing by the end of the pew.

He was apologetic. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’ve been meaning to give you something and I keep forgetting, so I wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget the next time I saw you.”

He paused for a second, then continued.

“I was talking with Sam and the other staff about you, and we all agreed that we should give you your own key to the church so that you can come and go whenever you want. We like having you around here; it’s nice. It feels right.”

He held out a little silver key which Foy took with a trembling hand just as he burst into tears. These were racking sobs that made him ashamed so he put his face down and into his hands. Robert put his hand on his back and leaned over a little.

“Hey, are you okay? Well, I guess you’re not, but is there anything I can do?”

Foy looked up with his eyes blurry and his nose running.

“No, I’m sorry. Please don’t worry about me. This just means something…it’s big for me right now. Important. I can’t explain it; it’s too much, but thank you. Tell them It helped me more than they could know.”

Robert looked hesitant to leave, but respectfully withdrew. Foy got up and walked to the back of the church. It was the season of Epiphany and there was a picture of the magi on the literature table beside Sam’s sermon manuscripts. Foy gazed at the picture with intense longing and it seemed like a voice came from the ceiling.

“Even the pagans were called in their own way, to His presence.”

He wiped his nose on his finger and then wiped his finger on his jeans. He looked up to the ceiling and whispered.

“A gay man just gave me a key to his church and said that I was always welcome. A gay man welcoming a Baptist minister to church. Ain’t that some backwards shit? That is hilarious.”

There was the smallest ray of hopeful feelings born of a rogue giggle that popped out the side of his mouth. He looked up to the ceiling again.

“Okay. I understand. I’ll try.”

rlp

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This story originally appeared in two parts

The elevator doors slid open every morning, and there was your world. It was a world of fluorescent lights, fabric covered cubicle walls, and off-white plastic cases. It was a world of facades. Behind and inside everything was something else. There was a little vent on the side of Foy’s computer that emitted a steady stream of warm air. Once or twice a week, Foy would find himself staring at this vent, and he would feel compelled to lean in and sniff the odor of electricity, hot circuits, and plastic. The first time he did this he whispered, “That smells like technology.”

There were no seasons in this world. The temperature hovered around seventy degrees at all times. The only evidence of winter, for example, was the sudden appearance of coats, scarves, and other padded clothing on the people who got off the elevators. They shed these as they walked into the office, growing thinner with each step.

All the colors were neutral, all the edges were rounded, and everything was bathed in artificial light. It was like an environment drawn up in a board room and fleshed out by an action committee.

His old world had been richly textured. There were candles and dark wooden pews. There were robes made of rich cloth, and solid tables that held ancient elements. There were the lines on the faces of the elderly and the noises of children. There were the toys and other silly things stuffed here and there into the bookshelves of his old office. There was the sound and feel of his pen scratching out sermons on luxurious linen paper. There was the wonderful moment before worship when a deep bell rang three times, and everyone, even the children, became solemn.

There was great tension in his life in those days. Not the kind that comes from external pressure, but the kind that exists between truths. He lived along the slippery plane of a great continuum between life and death, flesh and spirit. He was in and out of people’s lives, baptizing them, blessing them, marrying them, and burying them. And all of this while the year moved gracefully through the seasons, Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and the long waiting they call Ordinary Time.

But there were some good things about this world too. For one thing, you could leave it. It took Foy a long time to get used to the idea that he could leave his job at the end of the day, and the thought of that still made him giddy. He watched people trudging toward the elevators and wanted to shout, “We can leave! Isn’t that wonderful?” But they wouldn’t understand because they had always been able to leave. They couldn’t imagine a job that you could never leave, not even for a moment.

He had been a little disappointed at first when he found out there were no punch cards. When he was young, he used to have a job where you punched out. You shoved a thick time card into a slot, and it made a satisfying “Ka-chunk” sound. Now you unhooked your ID card from your lapel and swiped it through a computer slot. When the green light came on you were good to go.

Over by the copier there was a smudge on the wall of a cubicle with an empty frame hanging around it. Apparently a woman named Doris, who wore too much makeup and was also said to have been a pain in the ass, fainted one day and slumped against the wall, leaving a smear of fleshy color on the fabric. Tom the technical writer brought the frame and hung it there, turning the smudge into a work of art.

Doris ended up leaving for reasons that no one remembered. Tom left, it was said, because they outsourced most of the technical writing to Pakistan. But the picture was still on the wall two years later, and there were still people around who knew the story behind it. Foy wondered what would happen if everyone who knew the story left. He could imagine the day when someone noticed the smudge and the frame, puzzling over them before dropping the frame in the trash and cleaning the wall. What would be left of Doris and Tom?

There were a lot of good stories floating around the office, many of them linked to various artifacts like stains, broken furniture, curious traditions, and quirky rules that obviously came into existence following some incident. In the cubicle village, how long you worked there was less important than your ability to hear and learn the stories and the corporate lore. Foy learned stories quickly, but then stories were what he always did best. He exegeted the office gospel, pulling out the archetypes and zeroing in on the hot spots. Hell, this was just like preaching. After a few months it seemed like he had been there for years.

All that was needed were eyes that could see, and Foy could see things. That used to be his calling – to see things. You can’t turn that off. If you can see things, you can see them, and you can never really close your eyes again.

One story he had not been able to figure out was the one about Suzanne, a woman who had some sort of accounting job, or so it seemed to Foy. He wasn’t sure what she did, but she talked about spreadsheets, and she walked around carrying a thick stack of computer printouts. Definitely a numbers person.

Suzanne’s son died of leukemia. That much of her story was whispered to him in his first week. But Foy began to see that there was something else going on with Suzanne. She seemed like some sort of outcast. It seemed to Foy that Suzanne lived on a whole other plane of existence. She moved gracefully among the office people, interacting with them, but she was not in their world.

Sometimes, if Foy was breathing right, like in prayer, it looked like everyone was moving around Suzanne’s cubicle in fast motion. It was like in the movies where all the cars and people are sped up, but one person is frozen in time, staring at the camera, jerking a little, out of synch with everyone else.

Occasionally Suzanne would put her head down on her desk, hiding her face in her folded arms and stay like that for a few minutes. Whenever she did this, Foy noticed that everyone looked away. There was something taboo about Suzanne and her cubicle, and the whole village was keeping a respectful distance.

A couple of days later, Foy was passing by Suzanne’s cubicle on the way to the break room. She stopped him.

"Hi, you’re Foy, right?"

"Yeah. And you’re…Suzanne?"

"Yep. We haven’t actually met, but I knew you were working with Doug. You used to write, didn’t you? Isn’t that how Doug found you? You wrote a book or something?"

"Yeah, I sorta wrote a little, but that was awhile back, so…"

"This place is getting too big. You can work with people for months now and never actually meet them. It didn’t used to be that way. I guess that’s how it goes, huh? Bigger, better, more money, less time."

"Company’s a lot bigger now, huh?"

"Oh my gosh, yes. When we first started everyone was on this floor, even Doug and Richard. They had the corner office over there. We all used to eat lunch together back then. Course they went upstairs a few years back, so we don’t see them much anymore."

Foy glanced toward the break room and Suzanne noticed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you’re taking a break. Could you stop by on your way back? I’m supposed to give you this thing we wrote for the stockholders and have you smooth it out. You know, go over it."

"You wanna just email it to me? You know…"

"Oh sure. I just saw you and thought I’d give it to you. Listen, before you go I wanna ask you something. Did you write that poem in the last office newsletter?"

"Poem? No."

"So you didn’t write it?"

"No."

"Hmm. Charlene was convinced it was you."

"Charlene?"

"Yeah, Charlene from graphics. Kinda light brown hair. She’s the one with that giant Macintosh."

"Oh yeah, I know who you’re talking about."

"I mean, we didn’t know. It’s just no one ever wrote a poem before, and they said you used to write or whatever."

"Yeah, well, you know…"

"Did you read it? It was so sad, but also happy in a – I don’t know – sad kind of way, I guess. We were just trying to figure out who wrote it. Oh yeah, your break. Sorry. Just come by later, or I’ll email that thing to you if I don’t see you."

Foy stopped by Suzanne’s cubicle later, but she wasn’t there. His eyes wandered around the walls. There were a lot of pictures of her son. Him in his little league uniform, the two of them at some amusement park, a couple of school pictures. No husband and no other children. Just the two of them.

One wall of the cubicle served as a bulletin board. It was covered with sympathy cards and there were a couple of dried flowers hanging from thumbtacks. A growing cluster of recent memos was starting to cover the cards. A vase with some mummified flowers in it stood between her monitor and a stack of software manuals.

“Jesus,” Foy thought. “I wonder how old those flowers are.”

His eyes were drawn back to the amusement park picture. Suzanne and her son were hugging and smiling for the camera. “That boy is dead,” Foy said softly. “He no longer exists in this world.”

For some reason, Jenny popped into his mind. When Jenny left him, there were a lot of shocks and changes, but he got used to most of them. The one thing that still hurt was not having anyone to talk to about his children. When you lose your spouse, you lose the one person in the world who wants to talk about them as much as you do.

At that moment he thought he understood the story behind Suzanne and her cubicle. Her grief had become tiring to the people around her. The people in the office brought flowers and cards, and they listened to her for a time. Now they were ready to move on, but she was not. She was stuck and still laboring with undelivered grief. She was still clinging to the leftover scraps of their comfort, but the mementos were drying up and fading away.

Her colleagues had done all they could do. The heavy lifting and the hard grief work should have been done with family or with an intimate community of friends. But maybe she didn’t have those. Maybe all she had was this strange world on the third floor. How could she pour all of her grief into such a small container? The cubicle village was moving on, and she was left alone, like a crazy woman, to grieve with her head down on her desk.

Foy walked back to his own cubicle and sat in front of his computer. His cubicle looked exactly as it had the day Marcie escorted him there and left him in it. No pictures, no plants, no mementos. It was very impersonal and he liked it that way.

He thought about Suzanne for a few minutes. He didn’t know what she needed – he didn’t have to know that kind of thing anymore – but he thought he knew what she wanted. And it would be so easy to give it to her.

Foy found Suzanne eating lunch alone in the break room two days later. He walked in and sat down across from her.

"Hey, I sent you that document. I, uh, just moved a couple of things around and smoothed it out a bit. It should be fine."

"Oh, thanks."

"Also, I owe you an apology."

"What for?"

"Um, I lied to you the other day. I did write that poem."

"I KNEW it. What, were you embarrassed or something?"

"No, yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I just liked it being a secret. Also I’m not a poet, but it felt okay to submit it as long as no one knew it was mine. Anyway, forget it. It doesn’t matter."

"Well, I liked it. It was so sad, but it made me happy in some weird way, you know what I mean?"

Foy nodded gravely. "Yeah, I definitely do know about that."

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"Anyway, listen, I want to ask you something and I hope it’s okay."

"What?"

"What was your son’s name? I saw the pictures around your computer, and I heard that he died. He just looked like such a sweet kid, so I wanted to know his name."

Suzanne paused for a moment, then spoke softly. "Jeremy."

"Hmm. What was he like?"

She put her hand over her mouth, as if hiding her mouth might let her hide her feelings for a minute. She sat there looking at him.

Foy knew this waiting game, so he said nothing.

Then she put her hand down. She had a sad smile, a nice smile but with sad eyes.

"He was the greatest kid in the world, Foy. I’m serious. I know I was his mother and all, but he was such a sweetheart. God, I miss him so much."

Foy nodded. "How old was he?"

"Eleven."

"Oh, I have an eleven-year-old daughter. Well 12 now, but isn’t that just the greatest age? They’re old enough to be able to talk to you about things, but young enough…"

"...to still want to be with you." Suzanne finished his sentence. "Yeah, it was great." She paused for a moment. "HE was great. You know, sometimes I want to hold him so bad that it hurts. I’ll go to his closet and get a bunch of his clothes and wad them up and hug them, but it never helps."

Foy gave himself the pep talk that he used in the old days to get himself ready.

Okay, this is her time. This is what you can give her. You ARE interested in her boy. He WAS the greatest boy in all the world. And you want to hear everything about him. It doesn’t matter how you feel or how tired you get. This is for her. Now listen. Put everything you have into listening.

Once she started talking there was no stopping her. She gushed, she laughed, she went on and on and on. And no matter how much she told him, he was always ready with another question, always asking for more. He didn’t ask anything about her. He only wanted to hear about Jeremy. It was almost like Jeremy was alive again and they were just two people talking about a little boy. It was like Indian Summer, one last warm day before the inevitable coming of winter.

At one point Foy let a little of his focus split off so that he could see what was going on inside of himself. The answer was nothing. He felt nothing for this boy. He didn’t care about Jeremy. That was the truth. Who was Jeremy? Just another kid in a long line of kids stretching back into his past. And who was Suzanne? Just another woman with a story to tell.

In the old days he used to feel with people. Not feel sorry for them, but feel with them. It helped make it seem real. But every time he felt someone else’s pain, he ended up carrying around a burden for them. Those burdens kept piling up until finally his back broke. And now something inside of him would not let him do that again.

He felt nothing. He was numb inside. He knew how to listen, but he didn’t know how to feel. He was all eyes and ears, but no guts. Nothing on the inside.

I guess I’m giving her what I can. Isn’t that okay, just to give what you can?

Suzanne was still talking. "You know what’s hard? It’s almost like Jeremy isn’t real to anyone else. For a lot of people he’s just a name and a picture, just the reason that I’m sad and broken now. Sometimes I want people to understand that he was a real boy, you know? He was real and he had a whole future ahead of him, but now he’s gone and that’s a terrible loss.”

“He was a real boy.” That phrase flew across the table and hit Foy in the chest like a blow from a fist. Something was loosed in him, and his chest filled with long-lost feelings.

Jeremy was a real boy, but now he’s dead. Suzanne is his mother. She lost him. He’s gone.

He felt it, and it was so good to feel. Compassion came to him after all this time. Foy’s eyes filled with tears, and he looked down at the table so she wouldn’t see.

Suzanne lowered her chin down to the table, trying to look under Foy’s forehead at his eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it’s nothing. It’s just something about what you said, about him being a real boy. It kinda got to me."

They sat quietly for a moment. Then Suzanne spoke. "Hey, thanks for listening. You can’t know how nice it was just to talk about him again."

"Sure." Foy waited a moment, then continued. "I want to tell you something about grief, because I know about grief. Is that okay?"

She nodded.

"Remember that grief is your last way of honoring Jeremy. The pain of it reminds you that he was real. You will carry this pain for the rest of your life, in his memory. It’s right and good that you should do that for him. He was worth it, wasn’t he?"

Tears filled her eyes again, and she nodded, dabbing at her nose with a tissue.

"I know he was. So carry this grief with pride and honor. Do not deny it. Embrace it and own up to it."

"At the same time, you don’t have to be owned by the grief. You also honor Jeremy by moving on. Sometimes people feel that moving on means forgetting and not feeling sad anymore. They cling to their grief out of fear of losing it, because it is the last thing they have connecting them to the one they loved. You don’t have to be afraid of that. You’re his mother, so there will always be a tender spot in your heart for Jeremy. This grief will not leave you. But it might be time to carry the grief instead of letting it carry you, if that makes any sense."

"But how do I do that?"

"I wish there was a easy answer, but there isn’t. I think you could get started by cleaning up your cubicle. Take home all the pictures and the dead flowers and all the cards. You don’t have to throw them away. Just put them in a box. You could even buy a fancy box if it makes you feel better. Give them a place of honor, but put them away. Sometimes, when you are at home, you might want to open the box and have a time of remembering. But that will a time of your own choosing, see?"

"Maybe that’s your first move. And I think you’re ready."

Suzanne blew her nose while she was nodding.

Foy got up to leave.

"Wait!" Suzanne said, blubbering a bit into her tissue. Foy stood patiently while she gained her composure.

"I want to tell you something, but don’t take it the wrong way or anything. I mean, it’s not a come-on or something stupid like that. But I just want to tell you that I like your eyes. I like the wrinkles in the corners and they’re very blue and sad and looking at them makes me think that you’ve seen some things in your life. They’re kind of sad and happy, like that poem you wrote. Sad and happy, you know?"

Something caused Foy’s throat to tighten, and he felt a surge of emotion. His lower lip trembled a bit. He looked down at his shoes so she wouldn’t see it so much.

"Sad and happy, huh? Yeah, I definitely do know something about that."
 

rlp

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