The Legend of Sander Grant

by Marc Phillips

  The kitchen sink had two basins but, of course, only one faucet. Jo was setting three places at the table and felt the floor shake a little. She looked up and saw them at the sink, both with soap on their hands, bumping each other with their hips, shoving back and forth. Laughing. Sander was taller than most men in town and broader, Dalton told her, than he was at that age. Dalton could still see the top of his head, though. The only time her boy looked like a kid anymore was with his daddy. Sander stomped on Dalton’s booted foot and put his shoulder into the man to nudge him out of the way. Dalton chuckled, flicked a soapy hand at Sander’s face and conceded the struggle in the name of hunger.

  ‘You think you can take the old man?’ he asked.

  ‘Any day now,’ Sander told him.

  ‘You know where I live. When you think– Ouch!’ Sander popped him on the rear with the dishtowel as he rinsed. ‘When you think you’re bad enough, bring it.’

  Their smiles were contagious, but hers faded fast with the knowledge of what was coming. Jo didn’t eat much. Sander cleared what few dishes there were and said he had a little more painting to finish before Jason came tomorrow. He excused himself. Dalton caught his wife staring vacantly at the baseboard.

  ‘You wanna tell me what’s wrong?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Where did you go today?’

  ‘I just needed to get out.’

  He put a hand on her shoulder and rubbed. ‘Is that too hard?’

  ‘No. It’s perfect.’ She closed her eyes.

  ‘I hired your boy today. Eight hundred a month. Is he worth it?’

  ‘I guess you’ll find out. That feels so good,’ she said, leaning her head into his hand.

  ‘You’re kinda pretty.’

  ‘That’s the sweetest thing any man has ever said to me.’

  ‘I want to teach him to drive.’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘If he’s got a job, he’s gonna need to. Right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Be careful with him. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Is it that bad, Jo?’

  ‘No, honey. It’ll be okay. I’m just very tired.’

  ‘Are we okay?’

  She kissed his forehead as she stood. ‘Yes.’ And she went upstairs.

  Jo had already eaten and had their breakfast ready when Sander and Dalton came down in the morning.

  ‘I want you to see to your guys out there,’ she told Dalton, ‘get them doing whatever they need to be doing, and then I want you to come back inside. We’re going to have a talk.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘You too, Sander. Get done what you need to and come to the living room.’

  ‘How long’s this gonna take, mamma? Jason will be here pretty soon.’

  ‘No he won’t. He’s not coming today.’

  Jo climbed onto the sofa and waited for them. She scanned the newspaper but couldn’t concentrate. Thirty minutes later, in they came. Dalton sat beside her and Sander took the big chair, both of them wondering what had her riled.

  Jo folded the paper and said, ‘I went to town yesterday to do a little checking on Jason Markette.’

  ‘I can’t believe you did that, mamma.’

  ‘Well, the sooner you believe I did it once, the easier it’s gonna be on you when I do it the next time. Your friend has a history with drugs.’

  ‘I already know that.’

  ‘I know you do, and it’s something you should’ve told me.’

  ‘Do what?’ Dalton wondered.

  ‘Easy, honey.’ She put a hand on his thigh. ‘He said he hasn’t taken them in a long time and I believe him. Sander, in a way it’s good you two have talked about this. Saves me from preaching over something we both know I haven’t a clue about.’

  ‘You went to see him?’

  ‘Yes I did. We talked about the time he spent in prison before he came here. Did he tell you about that?’

  ‘Prison!’ said Dalton. Jo squeezed his knee.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. He said he got into some trouble. With the drugs,’ Sander admitted.

  ‘Prison!’

  ‘Hush up a minute.’ Then, to her son, ‘Prison isn’t “some trouble”. Prison is prison. As long as you live in this house, you don’t get to keep those secrets.’

  ‘Mamma, I knew you wouldn’t understand. He just made some mistakes, and he paid for them. It embarrasses me that you went and gave him the third degree behind my back.’

  ‘It embarrassed me to have to, so we’re in the same boat there. And you’re right. I don’t understand a person needing prison to teach him that lesson. I wouldn’t have hired him if I’d known all this, but ...’ She collected her thoughts and said, ‘As long as we understand each other about secrets in my house, we don’t need to discuss it further.’

  Sander looked at his hands.

  ‘Jason and I also talked about going to church,’ said Jo.

  ‘Is there something wrong with church?’

  ‘Not at all. We never shared our views on it with you, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. We don’t mind if you go to church. I’ll even go with you if you want.’

  ‘I want to go to Jason’s.’

  ‘That’s fine. But go to others too. Whatever you end up placing your faith in, it shouldn’t be only because Jason believes it.’

  Dalton’s thoughts were on the hill by the pond. Then, on his disdain for zealots, their clannish cruelty and herd-like mentality. What if his son became one of those? How would he tolerate that? But he knew Jo was handling it the right way. If she spoke to God, then there was a God. Sander might stumble on his own way to commune with the guy, a way that had eluded generations of his people. He was plenty smart. Jo was saying something. Dalton felt her elbow in his ribs.

  ‘Will you kindly participate?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think church is a fine idea. You should see them all. See Jason’s last.’

  ‘Daddy, that’s not fair.’

  ‘Hell with fair. And so we’re clear on this, drug use is not a mistake you’re allowed.’

  Jo was breathing a little easier. Drugs and religion were checked off her list for the time being and no major snags yet.

  ‘And there’s one more thing, a little more difficult to talk about. I don’t know how much he’s told you about girls, and I’m confessing to being a coward about the subject myself.’

  ‘Sex? We talked about sex,’ he told her.

  ‘We’re gonna talk about it some more.’

  ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Afraid so. Did Jason tell you he’s bisexual?’

  Jo prepared herself for an outburst from Dalton’s general direction, but none came. Silence.

  ‘He is?’ Sander asked. His face was difficult to read, changing rapidly as he shuffled through several possible feelings about this and, at the same time, wondered if it could be true.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with him being what he is, either. But you are not that. It doesn’t make you worldly or any more of a deep thinker to experiment with your sexuality. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You can come to me or your daddy anytime. Ask anything. And please, please, please use a condom until you get married. Will you do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jo looked at Dalton. Her eyes went from pleading-wide to boring-narrow and he knew he better offer something else.

  ‘Pregnancy is always serious, son. But with us, even more so. There are special issues because of our size and abortion sometimes isn’t possible, even early on.’ He paused, studied the ceiling, then said, ‘Do we need to talk about masturbation?’

  ‘Dad, please.’

  ‘Right. Like she said, come to me anytime.’

  ‘So. Can I keep seeing Jason, or not?’

  ‘Your daddy and I need to talk about it.’

  As soon as he was up the stairs, Dalton said, ‘What is there to talk about?’

&nbs
p; ‘I don’t want to keep him from Jason.’ This discussion, Jo decided, was preferable to the one about Sander wanting a life that doesn’t involve cattle. If he had truly said such a thing. Didn’t sound like him. Either way, she thought as Dalton began his protest, Sander was a child. He would come to see their way of life much differently in a few years’ time.

  4

  Sander’s intellectual development nearly kept pace with his accelerated growth. It was the way with these men as far back as anyone knew. So, at eight years old, he recognized more wisdom in his parents’ admonitions and advice than most young adults would. That is, after his anger subsided. As well, he no longer took for granted that he’d be allowed to keep seeing his tutor, his friend, if he didn’t make certain concessions.

  Therefore, Sander announced that he would begin his investigation into spirituality by asking Grandma Doris to take him to her church. They didn’t go on a regular basis anymore, her and Frank. Sander knew this, but he suspected that was largely Frank’s doing. He knew his mamma came by her close, if unorthodox relationship with God through her own mother, and that his grandma possessed an abiding and unshakeable faith. Doris still helped at the church when they needed her and she spoke with her preacher often.

  His decision pleased Jo greatly and placated Dalton, who had always respected Doris’s faith as a source of her peace and patience. Her brand of worship was a private matter, and he felt that she must likewise respect him, as she had never once evangelized. To Sander’s surprise, when he brought it up at the next Sunday dinner, Frank said he would like to accompany them. Jo decided to let the three of them enjoy this experience without her. In truth, she felt nearly as uncomfortable inside a church as her husband would have – for different reasons, she imagined.

  The following Sunday, Sander’s grandparents picked him up at his house and they arrived at Mulberry Baptist just minutes before services commenced. Frank said that would minimize the obligatory hand pressing and general nosiness in the vestibule.

  ‘They call it “fellowship”,’ Frank told Sander. ‘It’s the only place I know of where somebody’s right at ease asking how much money you make these days and are your hemorrhoids still giving you trouble. Because God’s watching and they think you won’t hit em.’

  Sander, stretched out in the back seat trying not to wrinkle his pressed jeans, chuckled. Doris let Frank go on a bit, seeing that it eased her grandbaby.

  They sat in the back of the sanctuary so Sander wouldn’t block anyone’s view and nobody would notice his boots jutting out into the aisle. The conservative atmosphere of his grandparents’ church and almost dispassionate sermonizing of Dr Mullins was not remotely what Sander had expected, given the jubilance and communal spirit of the gatherings at First Unitarian Jason had described. Even the word Unitarian seemed more like something Sander would rather be associated with. As with all his endeavors, he took this task seriously, though, and willed the gates of his mind open.

  The Reverend Dr Mullins spoke at great length on morality, forgiveness, and repenting. He used his Bible mainly for bibliographical notes and he had a habit of repeating himself while he thumbed the onion-skin pages for his next bookmark. These aims, Sander thought, need not have been decreed by God. After all, these are the ways civilized humans should act toward one another irrespective of their spiritual ties. He had expected to learn the Bible, to have the ancient scripture explained in terms relevant to his life, somewhat like Jason did, though more intensive. He didn’t care much where in the book they started. He would catch up.

  But that wasn’t what this service was about. Sander felt underdressed and disrespectful in his expectations. Still, did the rest of the congregation really need to hear this kind of stuff week in and week out, lest they forget? At least nobody stared at him. As he kept wondering if this was what it was like in here every Sunday, Sander found himself staring– at all the unmoving hair in front of him, parts and curls glued in place. He pondered the sheer mass of hairspray in the room and knew he was going to have to buy his own Bible and begin reading it before he tried this again. With that determination, he fell asleep to the musty smell of the hymnals.

  He awoke to the amplified tinkling of a piano behind the pulpit. It was a slow, simple composition and seemed to be going nowhere. As he stifled a yawn, a woman from the choir began to sing. Sander couldn’t see her, but she had the most beautifully melodic southern twang, like a bell with bending notes.

  Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,

  calling for you and for me;

  see, on the portals he’s waiting and watching,

  watching for you and for me.

  Sander concentrated on the refrain, ‘come home, come home ...’ What a song, that sweet beckoning, and what a voice. This, he thought, this is what they should sing to children at night. Just like she’s doing it. He craned his neck to find the owner of that voice, but Dr Mullins remained at the microphone and began his own calling.

  In a hypnotic baritone, the preacher urged, ‘Come to the Lord, sinner come. He’s waiting for you. Right here, right now. Commit your life to Jesus before the congregation. Don’t keep Him waiting.’

  Though Mullins gazed across many sets of eyes as he did this, Sander thought the Reverend Doctor might have tarried on his face a bit longer. There was a benign pressure to the summons, but powerful, a current running beneath the ritual of the thing. Here was something new. Did this happen every Sunday? Sander felt an odd tug in his chest, pulling him toward the stage. Was there some preparation for this that he had missed? Others in the congregation seemed to be rounding up their belongings, waking their children and preparing to leave.

  He leaned over to Doris. ‘Is he talking to me, grandma?’ Because, nobody else was going up there. Maybe they already had.

  Before Doris could answer, an elderly deacon standing against the back wall stepped forward and put his hand on Sander’s shoulder and it startled him.

  ‘Yes, son,’ said the deacon. ‘He’s waiting for you, too.’

  The family in front of Sander heard, turned and smiled.

  Frank was incensed. He brushed the man’s hand off his grandson.

  ‘Can you not give the boy room to breathe, Cecil? It’s like you’re peddling timeshares or something.’ Frank was genetically incapable of whispering. Cecil retreated and Frank mumbled, ‘Creep up on a person like that. Damn.’

  Now the folks from several pews up were turned and looking back. They were not smiling. The song played on and more deacons appeared in the aisles with collection plates.

  ‘Come on,’ said Doris, patting Sander’s thigh. ‘Time to go.’

  Frank glared at Cecil as they passed and Doris dropped a ten-dollar bill in the slotted box near the door.

  Over the following weeks, it was much the same, absent Frank and Doris. Sometimes Sander asked his mother along, most times not. As he had done in school, he learned to ignore the gawking. He became accustomed to the intrusive questions, the visitor cards, prayer requests, and the gentle but persistent pressure to hurry up and join most of the churches he entered. He was astonished once when a pastor asked all the newcomers to stand before the service began so that the members might notice them and make them feel welcome. Sander constituted ‘all the newcomers.’ Standing there while four hundred seated people eyeballed him with impunity, he certainly felt like one of the group. Nevertheless, he remained undaunted. Dutifully, he went on to visit The Latter Day Saints, several different Methodist and Presbyterian services, The Church of Christ, Pentecostals, and something called The Seventh Day Adventists – which he missed on his first attempt, assuming they held service on Sundays like the rest. He carried ten dollars with him to each sermon and placed it in the tray. This he did out of respect.

  He rounded off his list with the Lutherans, because he loved the music of Bach and figured the famously devout Lutheran might have been pretty smart. Finally, he made his way to the one Catholic church in town just to see what Martin Luther found so o
bjectionable. It was hard to tell. Anyway, these last two were far and away his favorites, simply for the fact that, though they too were friendly, he sensed in every Lutheran and Catholic a private confidence in why they were there. Moreover, they really didn’t seem to care what had brought Sander among them.

  And that represented every faith and denomination in Dixon, except Jason’s.

  After his first lackluster experience at Mulberry Baptist, he had gone straight out and bought himself a Bible. Sander quizzed the woman at New Life Bible Book Store regarding the four versions they offered until she was ready to give him one of each to see him gone. He settled on the King James Version, acknowledging the caveat that it was only King James’s version. The woman at the store didn’t put it like that. She said that Hebrew was a tough language to translate into English because many of the Old Testament words had multiple meanings. Some of the other Biblical versions left those words in Hebrew. Unless you wanted to translate them on your own, the KJV was your best bet.

  That night, Sander took a pencil and notepad to his room and started on page 1. He got all the way to page 9 before finding Genesis chapter 6, verse 4:

  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

  He didn’t leap up to share this with anyone, suddenly feeling stupid, feeling that all his life people had known this was written here and, for whatever reason, they didn’t feel the need to tell him. He stared at the wall in his bedroom for the remainder of the night, not moving, not reading further, only vacillating between frustration, embarrassment, and excitement. When the sun rose, he determined that he would need more notepads, and much more time to read. The time to talk to someone about what he discovered in these pages – and there were so many pages – would come when he had digested the work in full. He figured this would take six months, minimum. It wasn’t an easy read.