Pride House: The Quest for Vainglory

by Rob Summers

Chapter 11 Pastor Truth

  A note was taped to the glass of Pastor Truth’s office door. Reason stood in the antiquated hallway, her arms loaded with textbooks, and leaned near the glass to read.

  Miss Reason,

  You will find me in the park across the street. We will have our session there.

  She thought this to be pleasantly oddball, for the day was cool and fresh.

  Crossing the street, she found him—a handsome man with a clear, brown complexion—just laying his jacket down on the park bench on which he sat and loosening his tie. He nodded to her and smiled. Laying her books between them, she sat down.

  He waved to the books. “You going to school, Miss Reason?” His voice was deep and pleasant.

  She explained the circumstances of her enrollment at MMU and added that she rather liked it.

  “—humh, but will you tell me a little more about Mr. Pride’s motive for sending you? What’s he up to?”

  Reason folded her arms and crossed her legs.

  “Pastor, I don’t want to get started on a session without telling you some things.”

  “What’s that?”

  “First of all, I very nearly didn’t come this second time, for a number of reasons.” She spoke crisply and methodically. “For starters, I find you to be too dogmatic and inflexible in your approach; and secondly, I doubt you really can help my eyes, and if that’s so, I’m misrepresenting you to my boss, who believes I’m having an eye appointment. Thirdly—oh my, your feet are bare!”

  Truth’s shoes and socks, she suddenly saw, were laid aside, and he was rubbing his toes in the grass.

  “They sure are, Miss. Feels good. Why don’t you try it?”

  “No, I don’t see how I could do that,” she said quickly.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  He leaned back with the sun on his face and sighed contentedly. “Yes, you do. But about these doubts of yours, I’d like to observe that, reservations or not, you came anyhow, so why belabor these points? What you need is something for what ails you.”

  Reason thought this statement to be at once profound and ridiculous. He certainly could get to the heart of a matter. But how dare he brush aside her questions about his credentials? Was he a quack? That ought to be the heart of the matter.

  “At any rate,” she went on with less assurance, “I left last time in such a heat that I never discussed your fee.”

  “No fee.” He examined a nearby sycamore through half closed eyes. “I never charge anything.”

  “Well, then, may I ask how you support yourself?”

  “Sure. Ambassador Grace of the Heavenly Embassy covers my expenses.”

  Reason’s heart drummed. “That means you’re just another one of them.”

  “Of who?”

  “Of Humility and Faith and Love and all that family.”

  “Well,” he grinned broadly, “as even you can see, I’m not directly related.”

  Reason had to wrestle down a smile. “But you live there in the embassy, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. I live in my office. That old building was a hotel in the old days, so the offices have bathrooms off to the side. I keep a cot in the closet and cook with a little microwave.”

  He leaned forward and pointed. “Look at Mr. Squirrel there. Can you see him? He’s getting to know me. If you weren’t here, I could get him to come up close. I’ve been feeding him crumbs most every day.”

  “I can’t see him.”

  He paused. “No, mostly I just roam around town. I’ve seen the inside of a lot of houses. I do some street preaching. Which reminds me, have you heard about the new city ordinance against street preaching that’s up before the city council? No? Well, there’s only one street preacher in town and that’s me. So you know who that law is directed against. It’ll pass, too.”

  “Why, then you’ll have to stop preaching,” she said. “At least until they change their minds.”

  “No, I’ll keep on preaching.” He leaned close enough that she could see a wild look in his eye. “I’ve been in jail before. It gives me a chance to reach folk who are otherwise inaccessible. There’s a whole other world in there needs me the same as this pretty one does.”

  Talk like this made Reason feel as if she were driving down a steep hill with no brakes. She wondered if the park bench was fitted with a safety belt, which made her want to laugh, and some of it escaped.

  “What are you laughing at?” he asked, ready to join with her.

  “Nothing. You’re very different. You’re not afraid of jail.”

  He said nothing, so she took a moment to look around her at the sky and trees. The squirrel was on a branch now, she guessed. At any rate, she saw a squirrel-like blur moving against the sky. She slipped one foot out of its shoe and stroked the grass lightly.

  “You,” said Truth presently, and let the pronoun hang there like a stroke on a blank canvas, “have not been following my prescription.”

  Reason said, “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Love and her mother: I’m not going to conspire against my boss.”

  “No?”

  “No—I—I’m a good employee. His parents put Pride in charge. That’s all settled, at least for now.”

  “Is it settled? All settled?”

  Another steep downhill curve, and still no brakes.

  “I know what you want me to say—that Pride is an effete parasite, and that a few other servants and I keep the house solvent and somewhat orderly in spite of him. Do you think I don’t see his faults? I practically raised him, or tried to.”

  “Calm down, calm down.” He gestured with a wide brown hand. “I’m just pointing out a few salient facts. You could take charge of the Pride place, that’s a fact.”

  “Well, I won’t.”

  Truth’s suit jacket lay on the bench beside him. From a pocket he took a scrap of paper, looked it over and smiled.

  “I wrote down a joke here,” he said. “Made it up this morning. It’s about Pride and very funny, if I do say so myself. Why don’t you take this and, you know, tell it to him some evening at supper?”

  Reason took the paper and read it. She laughed a little, her hand covering her mouth. She took a moment to straighten her face.

  “I could never tell that joke.”

  “Why not? Pride got no sense of humor about himself?”

  “It’s offensive. It’s personal.”

  “Yeah, but it’s based on facts. Why be afraid of facts?”

  “I’m not afraid of facts.”

  “Yes, you are,” he said firmly.

  “You’re being dogmatic again.” She set her jaw.

  “Well, you keep the joke and think it over.” He began to put his socks and shoes on.

  “Are you going?” she asked. “Is it over?”

  “I think we’ve covered about all the ground we’re likely to cover today,” he said.

  “But—I realize you said you don’t take a fee, but we can’t have been here fifteen minutes.”

  He finished tying his laces and straightened up. “Miss Reason, what would you like to discuss?”

  “I expected more direction from you concerning my cure.”

  He considered her thoughtfully. “I’ve given you several directions—the most important ones—and you’ve rejected them all. But you and I are alike because we both have a fascination with facts, large and small. So I have confidence in you, Miss Reason, that given time, the facts I have communicated to you will percolate just fine. Shall we meet the same time next week?”

  She nodded, clutching her purse.

  “You have a good day.”

  He went away, not in the direction of his office, but across the park. Reason sat on the bench and thought herself a traitor to Pride. And yet—as long as she would refuse to do what Truth said, what was the harm in seeing him? She thought him to be a quack, perhaps,
and unable to do anything for her eyes; yet he was an original, a flamboyant and fascinating person. Yes, she was seeing this man only to experience life, and not to be his patient, much less his disciple.

  She was well out of the park before she remembered her schoolbooks piled on the bench.