by André Alexis
– And because you’re a Methodist, you reconcile these oppo-
sites with love, don’t you?
– As a matter of fact, I do. Wilderness and civilization meet
in God like lust and courtly love meet in desire.
– Well, there you have it! It’s always love with you people,
isn’t it?
I thought for a moment that Reverend Crosbie was going to
slap him. There was something inadmissible about his smirk.
But, instead, she got up from her chair and said
– By “you people” I assume you mean those of my faith as
opposed to those of my gender. But yes, I’m afraid it’s about
God’s love for us. And since I don’t want to quarrel with you, I’ll
leave you and Alfred on your own. You should try to relax, Alfred.
You’ve been through a lot.
Professor Bruno, finally aware that he’d been too familiar,
apologized. But when the reverend had gone, he again made a
case for my vision being of a sexual nature rather than a spiritual
one. His arguments seemed to be the same as those he’d already
made, so, as politely as I could, I tuned them out. I thought,
instead, of how bittersweet it was that, in my vision, I should be
saved by my feelings for a woman who no longer loved me. I had,
in effect, saved myself by loving.
Yes, but that wasn’t the whole story. Reverend Crosbie had
been right to point out that the wolves may not have attacked me
because they felt I was one of them. Despite my love for Anne
and the purity of my longing – or, maybe, because of these things
– I rarely admitted my part in the death of our relationship. I
had ignored her needs, preferring my own concerns, preferring
my drawings and botany, my rereadings of Wodehouse, my friend-
ships at the lab. I had not been wronged. I was no innocent. I’d
been as selfish as John Stephens in my evocations of love.
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I, too, was self-interested, a kind of predator, however prissily
I hid my claws from myself.
That night, in the Methodist guest room, I couldn’t sleep. I went
over my vision again and again, trying to understand what I’d
seen and why I’d seen it.
Professor Bruno was in a bed on the other side of the room.
His clothes were neatly folded on a wooden chair beside him.
His snoring was constant but low and comforting. The night
light at the foot of his bed was in the shape of a crucifix. It was a
dim yellow glow.
My bed was beneath the window. Just above me as I lay down,
there were curtains that I pulled aside to look up at the night
sky. Far above me, Ursa Major, the great bear, had begun her
nightly search for her cub while, just beyond her, her child was
almost encircled by the sinuous curve of the dragon, Draco. I
stared at the constellations for the longest while, until it suddenly
struck me that they were beautiful, that each was a story in itself,
that beauty is both order and story. I’d never thought of it that
way, and I wondered if this is what Professor Bruno meant when
he used the word beauty. More: it occurred to me, as Ursa Minor,
the cub, came to life in my imagination and fled from the dragon,
that there is beauty because God or the universe or my own
psyche is merciful, that beauty is compensation for the oneness
I remembered but could no longer feel.
Not much compensation, though.
Not enough.
I let the curtain go then, with the hope that, at the end of my
days, I might feel the dissolution again. And I fell asleep thinking
of a field of wheat – stems bowing, leaves rustling – that I’d run
through, long ago, as a child, while my father delivered a sermon
at a church in Alma, Ontario.
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5
DAWN APPROACHES:
BARROW, TORONTO
We woke to the smell of fresh bread, its yeasty tang in the air.
The professor and I had visited all the towns we’d
meant to and then some. We’d interviewed the people we’d
planned to interview and, on top of that, Professor Bruno had
spoken to the man who’d been John Skennen. Given all this and
my ongoing wonder about what I’d experienced, I was ready to
go home. When, over breakfast, the professor and Reverend
Crosbie spoke about my case, I listened but I kept out of it. I
needed time to understand my situation for myself, and the best
place to do that, I thought, was at home.
But as we were getting ready to go, the professor said
– I know it’s out of the way, Alfie, and we really should be
getting home, but I’d like to visit John in Barrow. He’s here now,
cleaning the way to the clearing. But he won’t talk to anyone
while he works. He’ll be in Barrow by two in the afternoon.
Reverend Crosbie says he really wants to speak to us. I’m hoping
he’s changed his mind about my manuscript. I might want to stay
in Barrow tonight but I promise we can leave for home early
tomorrow morning. Do you mind?
I minded, but I said
– No, Professor.
It would be an hour and a half to Barrow, and the drive itself
would allow me time for reflection. Besides, I thought it might be
good to speak to John Stephens, helpful to talk to someone who’d
gone through what I had. So, after eating breakfast – soft-boiled
eggs from chickens that ruled the reverend’s yard, bread fresh
from the oven, grapefruit marmalade made by the Benedictine
monks from down the road, and back bacon from Mennonites
two streets over – I packed the car: our car, brought back (by
Michael) and left for us (with an open invitation to supper in
Marsville taped to the dashboard) when I was in the “sacred
grove.’ And we got ready for the drive to Barrow.
Before he got into the car, Professor Bruno thanked Reverend
Crosbie for her hospitality and again apologized for his “reckless
debating style.” The reverend shook his hand, bid him safe travels,
and closed the car door for him. But she held me back a moment.
– You’re not religious, she said, but do you believe in God?
– I don’t know what to believe about God, I answered.
– Well, despite what Professor Bruno said, I think you’ve
had a religious experience, not a sexual one or a Marxist one.
The kinds of people who have these experiences sometimes lead
complicated lives afterwards, Alfred. I don’t want to alarm you
but things may be different for you from now on. I want you to
know that you can come back to Feversham any time. You’d be
welcomed by any of the congregations. I know it won’t mean
much to you, but, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been blessed
by our Lord and if you have it in your heart, please pray for me
so I might one day know the Lord as you do.
She then kissed my right hand so earnestly, I was embarrassed.
– Thank you, I said. I’ll be sure to come back if I need advice.
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When I got into the car, Professor Bruno put his hand on
my arm.
– Listen, Alfie, he said, I hope the
reverend didn’t try to sell
you any more mumbo-jumbo. I don’t like to bad-talk people, but,
my goodness, these sinister ministers practically squitter their
garbage at you. It’s God this and God that, Love this and Love
that. What a load of stinking socks! If I were you, I’d take this
whole Feversham business for what it was: a brain fart that made
you think of edible hands and sexy wolves. No need to give it a
second thought.
I could see that he was worried about me, and that made me
wonder if I was behaving strangely.
– I’m sure you’re right, Professor. I’ll put it out of my mind.
But I was constantly reminded of Feversham. The world
itself seemed to be pointing at it. Not at the town but at the
experience I’d had there. As I drove along Highway 4, the beauty
of the land – my country as much as it was John Skennen’s –
overwhelmed me. Driving into Priceville was wonderful: a grey-
tar, two-lane highway, a dip in the land so that we looked down
onto a handful of houses encroaching on the wilds. To one side
of the road, a row of firs, windbreak for a rough green field
lying fallow, beyond the field a low-lying, plain brown farm-
house, beyond the farmhouse a forest of maples, oaks, and
pines. To the other side of the road: a field of dried grasses –
grey green, pale yellow – with a row of maples, perpendicular
to the highway, stretching on for miles. Above us, the late-
summer sky trafficked in clouds with, here and there, an opening
for the infinite blue. The world smelled of gravel, dried-out
grasses, pine, old wood, and various scents carried on the wind
but gone too quickly to be identified.
I’d seen fields like these all my life and I’d driven past similar
towns. Most had left little impression, only vague memories of
gas stations and telephone poles. But now, as we drove to Barrow,
the land folded itself into me. I experienced a milder version of
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the oneness I’d felt in Feversham – a ceasing-to-be – as we
passed Orchardville, Minto, Gorrie, and Wroxeter.
– Are you feeling okay? Professor Bruno asked.
– Yes, I’m fine, I answered.
– Oh, he said. I wondered if you were thinking about
Priceville. Wretched, awful place. They drove Black people from
their homes so white people could take the land. For years, they
even used a Black person’s gravestone for home plate on a base-
ball diamond. Idiots. Fervent racists. Sometimes I wonder if
there isn’t some foul spirit that haunts the province. The land is
beautiful, though.
It came to me then that those possessed by a spirit might not
know who or what it was that possessed them, possession itself
being so ecstatic. Was the spirit behind my own ecstasy sacred
or malign? How was I to know? As Reverend Crosbie had said,
it’s a wise soul that knows God from Satan.
We stopped for coffee at the Tim Hortons in Seaforth. I’d
have preferred the drive-through, but Professor Bruno wanted
to drink his double-double in “civilized fashion” – which was the
first time in my life I’d heard Tims referred to as “civilized.’ It
made me wonder what an alien species would make of our civi-
lization if Tims were the only thing left of us.
– That’s a fascinating question, said Professor Bruno. Do all
the Tims survive or just one?
– Do you think it makes a difference, Professor?
– Of course it makes a difference, Alfie. If your alien species
comes upon a single Timmy’s in the middle of a wasteland, they
won’t know what to make of it or us. This lone Tim Hortons
would be a mysterious artifact. But if all the Tims survived, like
Canadian industrial cockroaches, they’d think we were insanely
fond of plastic and bad coffee.
– But if that’s how you feel, Professor, why did you want to
stop at Tims?
– I’m Canadian, son. I am fond of bad coffee and plastic!
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For some reason, I found this joke of the professor’s moving. I
thought of the places we’d been, of house burnings and Indigenous
parades, of good intentions and savage politeness, of stories and
dreams. Were these, too, what was meant by “country”? It was easy
to be at one with a world of autumnal trees and washed-out skies.
It was something else to be one with a people’s worst impulses,
ideas, and behaviour. And yet, the Tim Hortons in Seaforth was
where I first felt that when all is accepted, all is transcended.
Though I said nothing about this feeling, I think something in me
gave it away, as if I were covertly broadcasting transcendence.
An old man, his hands knobby and cramped with arthritis –
so much so that he could barely hold his paper cup – looked
over at our table. He looked over at me, his white eyebrows bushy,
his face pink.
– Young man, he said, are you the healer?
– A healer? You mean a doctor?
– If I meant a doctor, I’d have said a doctor! I mean a healer.
Someone that’s got the touch.
– My young companion has no idea what you’re talking about,
said Professor Bruno. He’s not from an age of healers.
At a table behind the old man, there were a number of the
old man’s contemporaries. They were casually dressed, the men
wearing baseball caps, jeans, and T-shirts, the women in blouses,
slacks, and comfortable shoes. One of them spoke up.
– Maury’s right, she said. There is a healer in town.
– A Black one? said someone.
– You don’t see too many Black healers, said someone else.
– Or men healers, said a woman.
– I hope you’re not pc, said a man named Bill, but I just don’t
think Black people are sensitive enough.
– Now come on, Bill. You know it’s hard to be poor and sensitive.
– I didn’t say there’s no reason. I just said they’re not sensitive.
Professor Bruno, a man with no time for racism, was immedi-
ately annoyed.
185
– You’re wrong about Black healers, he said. There are more
of them than any other! Most of the Black people I know have
healing powers, and Alfie here is no exception. It’s too bad you
spent your time insulting him, instead of asking for his help.
– Who insulted him? No one meant any harm.
– I didn’t insult him, said Maury. I just want him to help with
my arthritis.
– Well, I won’t let him, said the professor. You hicks have shown
him no respect, and, besides, why should he work without money?
– How much does he cost? Maury asked.
– A hundred dollars a session, said Professor Bruno.
– A hundred bucks? someone said. You got to be kidding!
Things escalated from there. At the mention of money, it
seemed all the patrons came to our table or leaned in to hear
clearly. Most thought I was a fraud, a quiet fraud, and weren’t
afraid to say so. Not to me, exactly, but loud enough so I could
hear. Particularly interested were two barrel-chested men
with
long salt-and-pepper hair. They were, or had been, members of a
local motorcycle club, and dressed the part: leather vests, blue
jeans, black T-shirts, and, in one case, a blue-and-white bandana
around his head. They were portly and I was sure I could outrun
them, but I was almost certain Professor Bruno could not.
As for the professor: he was spooked. It wasn’t like him to
call anyone “hick” and I don’t know how he’d settled on a price.
But Maury, the man who had first asked if I were a healer, agreed
to pay me a hundred dollars.
– What are you going to pay him for? asked one of the beefy
men. Give me the money and I’ll touch your hands for you.
– Prob’ly get the same result, said the one in the bandana.
– Now listen, said Professor Bruno. This has gone far enough.
Alfred August Homer does not go around touching everyone
who’s got a problem. You’ve got to make an appointment.
– Now that you named a price, said a woman, I think it’s only
fair you help him.
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– That’s right. Maury’s got his money out. You can’t turn
him away.
Maury had, with some difficulty, extracted his wallet from a
back pocket. He’d stood up, one hand using a tabletop for support,
and then gently patted himself until he came to the square protu-
berance. His hands were so gnarled and his arthritis so obviously
painful that the extraction was slow and it was followed by the
equally slow pulling out of twenties from the black-leather billfold.
Watching him try to maintain his dignity while doing this simple
thing made me ashamed to take his money. But it would have
been insulting to refuse it after all his effort.
– If it doesn’t work, I said, I’ll give you your money back.
– You better, said the man in the bandana.
Everybody else nodded, even Professor Bruno, who now chose
to stay quiet. We were surrounded by a posse of excited or tense
older people. The air was florid with perfumes and baked goods.
And yet, despite it all, I was completely at ease: no shaking, no
nerves, no fear.
Maury’s hands were distressing to look at. They were pale.
Each of the joints and the knuckles was so badly swollen it
looked like his hands had suffered a disastrous pearling. Nor
could he lay his hands out flat. They curled up as if they were
