by Joe Derkacht
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Fog as cold, gray, and frothy as the wind-whipped Pacific seemed to follow me inside the church’s windowless foyer. Someone was conserving electricity, or they thought freezing to death in church on Sunday mornings was an appropriate religious exercise, something like penance?
A young man handing out church bulletins urgently gripped my hand and immediately apologized for the lack of heat. It seemed the church organist, who normally arrived early to see to the furnace, had called in sick. Hoping to avoid conversation, I nodded my head and slipped past him into the sanctuary, where I found a seat in the back pew. The service was already in progress.
If I’d thought the foyer cold, the sanctuary was frigid. Sitting at the piano, a diminutive, kinky-haired elderly woman quietly feathered the keys as if she felt too frozen to play louder, perhaps afraid that her fingers would shatter like glass. The atmosphere seemed tense. I held my breath, wondering if some explosion was about to hit us.
Instead, people began to sing a hymn, their voices as tentative as the music emanating from the piano itself. I let out my breath and picked up a hymnal. Since numbers were still a challenge for me and reading was out of the question, I cracked the hymnal to about the same place other people held theirs and simply hummed along with the singing. If I’d seen or heard anyone whistling, I would’ve done that instead.
Three other hymns followed, with the pianist continuing to play at a whisper and the church’s steam registers occasionally banging percussively as if in protest. Continuing my humming, I looked around the room, taking in the scattered congregation (many of them sitting alone like me) and the rickety wooden pews, the poor lighting, the unadorned walls, and finally the dais, where two men sat at opposite sides in ornate but clunky-looking chairs. One of the men was frail and elderly, the other perhaps forty years of age, blond and crew cut, with a broad nose supporting thick horn-rimmed glasses.
In the middle of the dais stood the pulpit, shouldering its way into my consciousness like a living entity. I know my eyes goggled. It was difficult to understand how I could have missed noticing it sooner; in comparison to everything else I’d seen, it was like a pearl dropped into the dirt. Everything about it was elegant, its execution shouting excellence of craftsmanship. The front was a lovely barrel curve complete with tapering shoulders, like one might imagine the body of a gracefully executed chariot. A slender, beautifully-turned handrail crowned the top, perfect for a charioteer to grip as he leaned forward to goad the horses, or in this case, the pulpiteer his parishioners. Unlike anything else in the church, its face was dark wood, probably cherry, finished to a high gloss. The attractive trim molding and handrail, along with the cross, as well, were darker yet, ebonized and also in a high gloss. The pièce de résistance, though, was its ornate escutcheon, resembling a conch shell and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, creating a jewel-like setting for the cross. As I squinted from my pew I could make out flowers, perhaps diminutive hand-carved roses, garlanding the rood’s crosspiece.
While wondering from the moment I stepped into the church why I had ever attended there, sight of the pulpit was like the tolling of a bell through the chaos of a storm, something to focus on through the conflict of images and voices in my head. The one person I could think of who might have crafted it was my father. Or I had, linking it in every way to why I was in that church and not in another that morning.
The singing ended. The pianist rose from her piano bench to take a seat in the front pew, and the elderly man on the dais went to the pulpit. He read out announcements from the bulletin and then called for men to come forward to receive the offering.
I had forgotten an offering would be taken. I think I probably grimaced, as I took out the solitary dollar from my wallet and dropped it into the chrome plate thrust under my nose by the same young man who’d greeted me in the foyer.
A moment later, I was startled to hear my name called out. It was the elderly gentleman behind the pulpit, squinting in my direction and welcoming me back after a long absence. A handful of people turned and glanced at me, some of them with acknowledging smiles. I steeled myself, afraid I might be expected to answer, maybe say a few words of explanation or in the least a greeting. Instead, the elderly man smiled respectfully to the man on his left, and then asked everyone to turn to Matthew 7 in their Bibles.
Expecting a tedious half-hour, I closed the hymnal, crossed my arms over my chest, and settled as deeply into the wooden pew as possible. It seemed he was making his farewell address to the church before going into retirement, a message that could be summed up in three simple letters, one short word he wanted us to imagine as boldly, indelibly, and emphatically as if God Himself were the one planting it in our minds. That word was ASK!
Did we want something from God? We were to ask for it, because everyone who asks receives. If the blessing didn’t seem to be forthcoming, then we should seek for it. Except if we were seeking for something from God but not seeking God first, maybe we were missing the whole point, for everything we want is in God. And if neither of those seemed to be working, we had better knock, actively go after what we wanted from God, even enlisting the help of others in our cause, for to those who knock, the door is opened.
Ask. Seek. Knock. ASK!
Hadn’t Jesus invited us to ask of the Father, who wanted to give good gifts to His children, with one caveat? If we wanted anything from God, it was important to make sure that we had pure hearts, that we forgave those who trespassed against us. Having fulfilled that, God could freely give us all that was in His heart to give His children.
The man was no great orator, which was fitting, I thought, since except for the beautiful pulpit, the shabbiness of the sanctuary did not seem appropriate for great oratory. More than once he stumbled, had to repeat himself, sometimes fumbling with the microphone as if he perhaps could not hear the words passing from his mouth and into the air, sometimes even hacking out a brief, dry cough before he could go on. He was old and worn, stepping out of harness and turning it over to the new man. Still, in spite of his limitations, in spite of the fidgeting congregation seated sparsely throughout the sanctuary, his words seemed to carry to me like a lifeline flung out over the waves.
A-S-K! Ask. Seek. Knock. Was that all I needed to do? Did God really love me that much, actually want to be a father to me?
By the time he resumed his seat on the dais, turning the pulpit over to the new man in a record twelve minutes, I felt like I was losing a friend, a comfortable old house slipper of a friend. I had come through the church doors full of fears, as cold and anxious as the surrounding frigid atmosphere, and now found myself warmed to the core, fully reassured of the Heavenly Father’s love for me.
Then it was the new man’s turn.
He read his comments from a script, pausing to look up only once, when someone near the front of the sanctuary went on a brief coughing jag. The competition having lapsed into silence, he recommenced reading, this time louder. His voice was much clearer, steadier, more confident than the elderly pastor’s even if his speech was clipped and delivered in an almost military cadence. But if the first pastor’s words were like a lifeline shot straight from heaven, this man’s seemed to float in my direction like flotsam and jetsam across choppy waves. Snatches reached me about how we don’t raise our hands in church to praise God, how we don’t play jungle music, how we don’t speak in tongues, and something about how we must be careful of fellowshipping with people from other churches.
He concluded his speech by putting aside his script to tell us about his obligation to warn us of hell. Were we believers? Did we know that unless we walked the aisle, came forward to confess our sins, and received Jesus into our hearts, we were on our way to the lake of fire?
As though none of us had heard him the first time, he repeated the same spiel, this time poking his finger in our direction for emphasis. He stared owlishly at us through horn-rimmed glasses, demanding an answer. His g
aze roved the room, starting with the front pews and working toward the back, finally settling on me.
I felt panic, as his finger began to rise. Suddenly, he coughed. He cleared his throat, and coughed again, this time a long, hacking spell that set him to fishing for a handkerchief in his back pocket.
“I think we’ll dismiss the service,” the older preacher said, going to the microphone. “It’s cold in here. Could someone please bring Brother Danin a glass of water?”
Handkerchief to his mouth, the younger man nodded in speechless agreement.
Saved! As the congregation rose from the pews, I found myself able to breathe again and was the first to make it to the door to the outside world. I escaped to the sidewalk, with sunlight breaking through the morning fog, feeling as though I’d been released from a prison cell that I couldn’t have borne much longer without screaming. Nobody would ever catch me going back to that church. Zell had been so wrong!
I was halfway home before I began wondering what the preacher, who looked from his close-cropped hair and joyless demeanor like a new parolee from either a prison camp or the military, had meant by his comments: Speaking in tongues? Jungle music? Raising hands?
None of it made sense to me. It made even less sense, when I experienced a flash of imagery before my eyes. Strangely bright and beautiful creatures (I wasn’t sure if they were men and women, or angels) were raising their hands and speaking and singing ecstatic praise, while a burst of exuberant music struck my ear drums, overwhelming me like a wave. The last thing I remembered, before stumbling, was of those same bright creatures joining hands and swinging out in a long, sinuous reel, celebrating in dance!
As the world revolved around my head, with green shrubbery rushing at me as if it meant to swallow me alive, I wondered what he would have thought of dancing in heaven. Dead pine needles and hard dirt pushing into my face cut short my ponderings. Everything went black. A flash of light followed. Strong hands pulled me back to my feet. For one brief, supremely odd moment, I thought I was looking into a bright, leonine face. The sensation passed quickly; I instead found myself staring into the face of an elderly woman.
Disoriented and thoroughly embarrassed, I brushed dirt from my shirt and pants while trying to figure out why the woman looked familiar. After a few moments of furious thought, memory of the frail looking church pianist came trickling back. Brown eyes staring up at me through thick, round bifocals, she patted me on the arm. The swollen, arthritic knuckles explained her apprehensive approach to playing the piano. At the same time, they definitely could not explain how she might help lift me to my feet as if I were a child and not twice her size, nor even how she could carry the large Bible that was in her hands.
“Are you hurt, John?”
She actually said Johan, her quavery voice revealing a German accent. Her skin, nearly the color of dishwater, was sprinkled with age spots and appeared to have the texture of parchment. The silvery full hair, at first glance resembling a fright wig, proved to be real upon closer inspection.
She had asked me a question but I felt tongue-tied and frozen in time. Like the Salem doctor whose face had seemed infinitely familiar, hers was too, though it was more of a mask, as if at any moment her real face might break through, like a chrysalis shattering its husk to reveal something truer, more real, even pure and holy.
The impression faded. Birdlike, she cocked her head to one side, eyes attentive, waiting.
What was the question? I wondered. “I’m all right,” I finally muttered, brushing myself off one last time.
“I’ll walk you home,” she said, encouraging me in the right direction with a light touch on the elbow.
“Do I know you?” I asked. She didn’t answer immediately. Tit for tat, I wondered? As we walked, she held my arm by one hand, her fingers sharp talons clutching at me. Her lips moved soundlessly.
Was something wrong with my hearing? First my mind, now my ears were going? What next?
“What are you saying?” I asked.
She glanced at me, not really looking at me, just one of those polite acknowledgments of another person’s presence.
“You ask the oddest questions, John.” After a few more steps, she said, “I was praying.”
“Oh.”
“Silently. For you.”
“Oh. Oh, thank you.” What else could I say? What else should I say?
As if reading my mind, she said, “You needn’t say anything.” Glancing up at me again, this time meeting my eyes with a birdlike smile, she added, “You relax, young man. We’ll be home in a minute, don’t you worry. A cup of hot tea will do you good.”
We walked in silence the final block and a half to my house. One block or twenty, walking in silence suited me fine, though I should say it wasn’t complete silence, since I found myself whistling a hymn, perhaps even one she’d played on the piano that morning. I say perhaps because I didn’t actually remember precisely which hymns they’d been, even if she did glance up at me and smile in recognition of the tune, whatever it was.
I stopped whistling when we reached my house and stepped from the sidewalk onto the pathway of crushed oyster shells leading to the front door. It occurred to me, in that moment, that I should put in a gate, fill the opening between the two sides of the fence of woven driftwood, to give it a more completed look. From Zell I’d learned I was the one who hauled the driftwood from the beach in my beat up old pickup, collecting it over a period of months and finally constructing the fence during a few fitful bursts of creativity that lasted a solid week. Why I’d never put in a gate was a mystery to her, too.
The Pianist, as I’d come to think of her, looked more and more delighted, as we approached the door.
“Your house always reminds me of Germany,” she said, pronouncing the word always as alvays and of as off.
She must have seen my quizzical look, or read my mind again. My English cottage looked like Germany?
“You don’t often see exquisite craftsmanship in this country,” she explained. “And everything is so clean.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I know my face reddened a little.
She tried the doorknob before I had my keys in hand.
“You lock it now?” She asked.
Preferring as usual to let the other person do the speaking, I shrugged, letting us in and making a mental note to myself that I used to leave the front door unlocked. We walked through the living room and into the kitchen. I threw my coat over a chair and excused myself to wash up in the bathroom. Dirt still clung to my hands and face from my unexpected side trip into the bushes.
When I came back out, she had the teakettle on the gas burner and was rinsing a ceramic teapot with hot water in the sink. Cups, saucers, spoons, and paper towels were on a tray, along with a sliced lemon, ready to be transported to the living room.
“I always forget,” she said. “Do you like milk in your tea?”
I shook my head. Even if I did live in an English cottage, and tea was the preferred hot beverage of the English, I couldn’t stand milk in tea.
“Lemon and sugar,” I said, feeling as though I was a guest in my own home. By the time the tea was ready, I was once more wondering just who did own the house; she certainly seemed to know her way around my kitchen.
Neither of us spoke again until after we’d sat ourselves in the living room and had our first sip of tea. Her face brightened visibly, as she set her cup back on the saucer.
“You haven’t asked me about my trip to Germany,” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak but answering was unnecessary. She launched into a description of Day 1’s flight and barely drew breath until the end of Day 5. I must have looked at my wall clock one time too many, because at that point, as she was about to launch into Day 6, she squinted strangely at me, clamped her mouth shut, and grabbed her cup for a short sip.
“I talk too much,” she said, noisily banging the cup down on its saucer. “It co
mes from living alone. When someone’s willing to listen like you do—” Consternation crossed her face. “But then you live alone and seldom have a word to say to anyone.” As a seeming afterthought, she muttered, “Of course you don’t.”
Of course? Did she mean because of my stutter? Or did she mean because I was too stupid to have anything to say? Or maybe too crazy?
Staring into her teacup, she sighed.
“Why should you? You keep yourself busy. Having something to do all the time keeps your mind off yourself.”
She looked up, brightening again. “Reverend Grunwald said you were absent a long time. Did you take a trip, too?”
Reverend Grunwald? Vaguely, it came to me she meant the elderly gentleman who’d greeted me from the pulpit.
Not waiting for my answer, she asked, “What do you think of the new man?”
New man? While I fumbled for words and struggled to marshal my thoughts, she shook her head and clucked her tongue. Again, she didn’t wait for a response.
“I think we may have made a mistake with him. He’s not like Reverend Grunwald at all. He’s so negative. Even if he did make an altar call, he didn’t really speak from the Bible, now did he?”
For a few moments she was silent. From the changing expressions of her face, I could tell she was enduring some inner conflict.
“Of course we mustn’t be too critical. He did just complete his seminary studies, and like Reverend Grunwald says, it does take a man time to adjust, to get his feet under him, to find his depth.”
Her eyebrows seemed to twitch with thought. “But his wife! What a sad looking little mouse. She won’t do at all!”
“I was in the hospital!” I blurted. “In the nuthouse.” I deliberately rolled up my sleeve, displayed the minute crosshatching painstakingly accomplished by Salem General’s woman surgeon.
“I had an accident, too.”
Behind her bifocals, her eyes swam with shock.
“They-they had you—? All this time? Locked away?”
I shrugged resignedly and nodded, hoping it would be answer enough. She cocked her head to one side and looked at me. Her eyes radiated compassion.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” she said. “I know all about those doctors in Salem.”
She did? Had she spent time with them, too?
“Your father explained everything. It took him two years to have you released.”
“My father? But he’s dead!”
“John,” she said, speaking very kindly. “I know your father is dead. If you can call living in heaven death. I meant when you were ten, the first time they took you away.”
“What?”
Her jaw dropped and she stared. She struggled to pull herself together. She set her lips in a straight line.
“You don’t remember?”
I must have shaken my head.
“About your mother or about the house? Nothing?” She finished faintly. “God is truly merciful. Some things are better forgotten.”
“But—”
She shook her head insistently, cutting me off. “Just like this old world, one day we’ll forget it all, all the pain and misery, all the suffering and poverty.”
She gazed up at me and smiled brightly. “I know because I died once. It’s a beautiful world we’re going to, John. Your father already waits for you in heaven. You’ll see it all one day, if you remain faithful.”
She chattered on, my head still echoing with her remark about my mother and the house. Finally, I reached out and grasped her by one thin arm, halting her in mid-sentence.
“What do you mean about my mother and the house?”
“Oh John,” she said, pulling away from me.
I waited. She stared for a moment, her forehead crinkling in dismay. Clearly, it had nothing to do with my staccato style of speaking. Rising abruptly, she took cup and saucer back to the kitchen. I followed her through the open, curved archway.
“Zell is much better at explaining these things than I am,” she said, rinsing her cup out at the sink. Looking earnest, she faced me again. “Why don’t you ask her?”
I watched as she gathered up her Bible and purse and fled back into the living room.
“Thank you for the tea, John.” She pointed suddenly toward the windows, to my neighbor’s white Buick turning in at the driveway. “Here is your Zell, now! She can tell you none of us ever believed a ten-year-old should be held responsible for kaputting his house.”
“Kaputting?”
“Kaputting. Kabooming. Blowing up.” she said. She was out the door and on the sidewalk before I could react. I must have sat down without realizing it. I don’t think I actually moved for another several minutes. I was too much in shock.
Zell came to the door.
“John? Tyrollia said you—”
That was the woman’s name: Tyrollia. Tyrollia Grafhausen. I remembered, now.
“Are you all right?”
I blew up my own house when I was ten! I wanted to shout. Instead, I asked her about my mother.
“Oh, John,” she said, her chin trembling with emotion. She reached blindly for a chair and sat down. “Do we have to talk about that now? The day has been so lovely—please, don’t give me that hang-dog look of yours.”
I tried smiling, probably unsuccessfully, because she threatened to go home and lock her door behind her.
“It won’t do any good,” I said.
She stared questioningly.
“I have the key to your house,” I said. “You gave it to me.”
“I’ll call Blackie on you. Sometimes it’s useful being related to the town constable.”
“He thinks I’m harmless.”
“He never was a good judge of character,” she said, her eyes twinkling. I waited. The twinkle faded. She took a deep breath and soberly gathered her thoughts.
“Someday we have to figure out how to do this differently.”
I nodded my head encouragingly.
“I don’t like to have to remind you—”
“I killed my own mother?”
“No!” She said, staring in surprise. “She killed herself. That’s what the hospital always said.”
“But she said I blew up the house.”
“John,” she said sternly, leaning toward me. “You misunderstood Tyrollia. Your mother was taken to the State Hospital after she tried to kill your father. The doctors said she’d had a breakdown. You didn’t blow the—the house didn’t blow up until a few weeks after her funeral, so no, you couldn’t have killed her.”
Perhaps some things really were better left forgotten.
“You weren’t responsible, John. A child can’t blame himself for his parents’ problems. Your father always believed it was those treatments they gave her. She couldn’t handle it.”
Electroshock. That I could understand.
Zell sat back in her chair. “They said she must’ve hoarded her meds to take them all at once.”
I might have done the same, except for being rescued by Ralph from Dr. Laberly and Nurse Jo.
“Reverend Grunwald,” she said, her voice rising in surprise.
“What?” I said, startled by the change of subject. A white, 1965 Ford LTD had pulled in at the curb in front of my house. Great, I thought. Remembering the year and model of an old car was a snap. But try to remember a wife, or blowing up my house? It must be wonderful to have a brain.
The passenger window rolled down, revealing a white-haired woman. The driver door opened, and the elderly gentleman I’d heard preach that morning got out. His head was barely above the LTD’s roofline. He came around the car and stood talking to the woman.
“You think they’re coming here?” I started worriedly.
“I’ll see to his wife,” Zell said, hurrying out the door. She and Reverend Grunwald met on the walkway and exchanged greetings. Politely, it seemed to me.
I didn’t want company. If it had b
een the other, younger minister, I would have locked my door and pretended no one was home, maybe snuck out the back, left Zell to make up excuses.
“John?” Reverend Grunwald called. Zell had left the door ajar. Seeing me, he walked in without waiting for my reply. He seated himself in my wooden rocker and glanced familiarly around the room.
“You rushed out from church so fast that I was worried something was wrong,” he commented.
Was he serious? I wasn’t the only one who’d made a mad dash for the exit. He continued in an apologetic tone before I could muster an answer.
“If it was because of Reverend Danin, I’m sorry. I just hope everyone will give him a chance, give him time to come around. If they don’t, I don’t know what will happen to our little church. I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of shepherding the flock these last few years, with Mary’s problems.”
Mary? Through the windows, I could see Zell walking arm-in-arm with the pastor’s wife, the two of them chatting amiably. Looking closer, I saw Zell was doing all the talking. As they stood by the Scotch pine in my yard, the other woman’s jaw dropped and her eyes grew big, as if delighting in seeing a tree for the very first time. Still holding onto her arm, Zell took her to the driftwood fence and pointed out the curling, curving, tortuously interwoven forms, and elicited the same kind of overblown admiration.
I was drawn back to Reverend Grunwald’s dry, raspy voice. Finding the other minister, Reverend Danin, in my living room would have been as alien to me as entertaining a Martian. Unlike him, this man’s presence was comfortable, grandfatherly, solicitous.
“You’ve lost weight since I last saw you,” he said. “Have you been ill?”
I wanted to tell him it was none of his business, except that the next thing I knew, I was babbling, my stammer no impediment to the words that spilled from my mouth. What an idiot, I thought, when I finished telling him my problems. What would he think of me now? Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut?
He dabbed at rheumy eyes with a handkerchief, rocking assiduously, the chair squeaking in accompaniment. It occurred to me that he’d probably heard everything possible there was to hear; he was an old man, a minister. Maybe he wouldn’t bolt for the door. Or he was still thinking about it, how to escape graciously?
“Oh John,” he said, his gaze flitting between me and the scene outside. “If I was Catholic, I think I’d say we all have our cross to bear. But I’m Protestant, you know, and I still think we all have our cross to bear.”
He smiled faintly, wiped at his eyes one more time, and put the handkerchief away.
“The cold gets to me,” he said. “Ever had a hypodermic injection in your eyes for an infection? I have. You never forget it.”
He hadn’t given me the chance to respond, and I wasn’t sure if he expected me to; still, my first thought was that electroshock was far worse.
“My older sister was blind,” he went on, “which probably has something to do with my fear about anything to do with my eyes. But compared to losing a son in Viet Nam, or losing my youngest daughter to drugs…”
He squeezed his eyes together, foregoing recourse to the handkerchief. Tears ran down his cheeks. His children, if I’d ever known them, were a complete blank to me.
“There are times I’ve wished I could forget, times I wished I could be like you,” he said. He rose slowly to his feet, his eyes again on his wife and Zell, who were strolling up the walkway to my door. “But if I was like you, who would take care of my Mary?”
I shook my head, at a complete loss to know what to say.
“I wouldn’t like the thought of losing myself, either, John, forgetting who I am. I’m sure it’s a special hell to you.”
He turned from the window and came to me, lightly placed a trembling hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll be praying for you tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll come by early. Mary invariably sleeps in, you know. We’ll see just what you can remember about running those tools of yours. I’m still pretty handy, even if I am old and doddering.”
“Reverend Grunwald?” Zell said from the door. “I think Mary’s ready.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Zelig, I think so, too,” he said smilingly. To me, he said, “You pray tonight, too, John, and make sure you don’t limit God’s ability to answer your prayers by doubting. Allow him the grace to answer in his own way. Your part is simply to believe. Trust him. Trust him like—”
He hesitated. I think he meant to say like a child. But he must know trust had been stolen from me when I was a child, by my mother’s death in the State Hospital and the rape of my own mind through electroshock treatments.
“Just trust him to do right,” he said, his voice trailing off softly. “He might even answer in a miraculous way.”
