In the crease between pages 320 and page 321 of the Guinness was the photograph of the infant Mikel in the arms of his smiling father.
“He loved you very much and was proud to be a father. That’s why he is smiling,” Mikel’s mother would explain.
In the photograph his father had rust-colored hair shaved close to the scalp and a long curly beard of a slightly darker red. Between these parting crimson whiskers, there was the smile. It was the only photograph of the hundred or so that Mikel owned of him in which his father smiled. As far as he knew, it was the only photograph in the whole wide world in which his father smiled.
Mikel had never seen his father’s smile in real life, but that was all going to change because his father had called yesterday with a message: “I want to see you. Every boy should know his father.”
When Mikel changed buses, he sat next to a new nice woman, who stared and said, “You’re very—”
“Tall for my age,” laughed Mikel.
On the trains it was the same thing: “Tall . . . for your age.”
“Yup,” said a beaming Mikel, offering gum all around until he ran out. When he ran out, he offered breath mints. He was a very gentle, very friendly child, and people reacted to him with both amazement and kindness.
On the final bus, the one that took him into Mapleton, Mikel was plumb worn out and he rested his head against the back of the seat ahead of his and fell asleep. He awoke and looked up and saw that the bus driver had come back to his seat and was shaking him.
“This is your stop, kid.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m going to see my father.”
“I know,” said the bus driver. “I’ve met your father a few times.”
Mikel was eager to hear more. “What’s he like?”
“He’s big.”
“Oh.” He already knew that.
He got off the bus in Mapleton, a small community way up in the hills. There weren’t too many houses, but everyone he encountered seemed to know of his father, seemed to know immediately that he was the son of his father, and pointed him in the right direction.
His father lived in an immense Tudor mansion overlooking a cliff. It was gray with black trimmings. In the yard maple trees grew in abundance like a well-manicured forest, and here and there daisies and hollyhocks bloomed in patches.
The main door of the estate was left open and built high enough to allow entrance to a man of great height, and Mikel skipped delightedly through it.
Inside, Mikel giggled. No bumping of his head would go on in here—the ceiling was high enough! The grand paintings on the wall were at a level with his eyes so that he could enjoy their magnificence without stooping or stepping back to view them. There was ample space between the furnishings so that his wide hips and big feet could move about comfortably without knocking things over. All the chairs and tables were sturdily built to accommodate his great height and weight.
Mikel had never had it so good.
For the first time in his life he felt like a normal-sized kid. Giggling madly, he ran from chair to chair, plopping down and testing each for comfort and bounce.
When he caught sight of his father at the entrance to the main room, silently watching his antics, he froze.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said his red-bearded father in a voice that casually boomed from his slightly parted lips.
Mikel’s jaw dropped. His father looked to be head and shoulders above him. He had to be sure, so he rose from the chair, and even standing, he had to look up to see his father’s face. His father was over nine feet tall.
“You’re so . . . tall!” Mikel exclaimed.
“Yup.” His father embraced him and lifted him as easily as any father would his nine-year-old child.
“Daddy,” Mikel said and began to cry into his father’s chest. He had so many questions. There were so many things he needed to know. And now, at last, they would all be revealed to him.
His father said, “There, there, son, do not cry. Your patience has been rewarded. Every boy needs to know his father. Now wipe your tears away and I will tell you all you need to know. I will tell you the story of my mother and my grandmother, and of my stepfather Jack and my real father the oaf, and you will learn the meaning of your great height and mine. I will tell you of a land of silver. I will tell you of the small singing harp of gold. I will tell it to you as my mother told it to me when I was younger than you are now and shedding many tears because I did not fit in. It begins in a place far, far away, but not too far at all. It begins with a boy who had a man . . .”
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The following is an excerpt from Jesus Boy (Akashic Books, 2010)
by Preston L. Allen
I. TESTAMENT OF INNOCENCE
Thirty Fingers
I never really wanted to play the piano, but it seemed that even before I touched my first key I could.
When the old kindergarten teacher left to go have her baby, the new teacher made us sing: “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream …”
“Elwyn,” said the new teacher whose long name I could never remember, “why aren’t you singing with us? Don’t you know the words?”
Yes, I knew the words—just like I knew the words to “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—I had memorized them as soon as the old teacher, Mrs. Jones, had sung them to us the first time. But I could not sing the words. Mrs. Jones knew why I could not sing the words but not this new teacher.
“Elwyn, why won’t you sing with us?”
I could not lie, but neither was I strong enough in the Lord to tell the teacher with the long name that singing secular music was a sin. So I evaded. I pointed to the piano and said, “Mrs. Jones plays the piano when we sing.”
“But I can’t play the piano,” said the new teacher. “Won’t you sing without the piano?”
I had assumed all adults could do a simple thing like play the piano, so this amazed me. “I’ll show you how to play it,” I said, crossing the room with jubilant feet.
“Can you play the piano, Elwyn?”
“Yes,” I said. Though I had never touched a piano key before in my life, I had observed Mrs. Jones at school and the ministers of music at church and had developed a theory about playing I was anxious to test: high notes go up and low notes go down.
After a few tries, I was playing the melody with one finger. “See? Like this,” I said. My theory was correct.
The other kids squealed with excitement. “Let me play, let me play,” each cried.
What’s the big deal? I wondered. High notes go up, low notes down. It only made sense.
But the new teacher had to give each one a turn and I directed them: “Up, up, now down, down. No. Up, up more.”
When it came to be my turn again, I played “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The new teacher got the others to sing the tune as I played. I had but a child’s understanding of God’s Grace. I reasoned that if I sang secular words, I’d go to hell, but I had no qualms about playing the music while others sang.
I was young.
That day should have been the last time I played the piano because in truth my fascination with the instrument did not extend further than my theory of high and low tones, which I had sufficiently proven. No, I did not seek to be a piano player. I assumed, most innocently, that I already was one. Should I ever be called upon to play a tune, I would simply “pick it out” one note at a time. This was not to say, however, that I was not interested in music.
On the contrary, music was extremely important.
Demons, I was certain, frolicked in my room after the lights were turned off. At night, I watched, stricken with fear, as the headlights of passing automobiles cast animated shadows on the walls of my room. Only God, who I believed loved my singing voice, could protect me from the wickedness lurking in the dark. Thus, I sang all of God’s favorite tunes—hummed when I didn’t know the words—in order to earn His protection. When I ran o
ut of hymns to sing, I made up my own.
I am Your child, God. I am Your child—
It is real, real dark, but I am Your child.
God, I believed, was partial to high-pitched, mournful tunes with simple, direct messages. God was a brooder.
What did I know about His Grace?
What did I know about anything?
* * *
Ambition. Envy. Lust. Which was my sin?
I did not want my neighbor’s wife. I did not want his servant. I did not want his ass. There was, however, a girl. Peachie. Brother and Sister Gregory’s eldest daughter.
I had known her all of my life, but when she walked to the front of the church that Easter Sunday, sat down at the piano, and played “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”—my third-grade heart began to know envy and desire.
Peachie Gregory did not pick out tunes on the piano. No, she played with all of her fingers—those on her left hand too. Such virtuosity for a girl no older than I. And the applause!
That was what I wanted. I wanted to go before the congregation and lead them in song, but all I could do was play with one finger. I had to learn to play like Peachie.
An earnest desire to serve the church as a minister of music, then, did not compel me to press my parents—a maid and a school bus driver—for piano lessons, though that is what I claimed. When they said they could not afford piano lessons, much less a piano, I told them a necessary fiction.
“Angels flew down from heaven playing harps. They pointed to this great big giant piano. They wanted me to join them. I trembled because I knew I couldn’t play the piano.” I opened my eyes as wide as possible so as to seem more scared and innocent. “I have never taken any lessons.”
“Were you asleep?” my father asked, one large hand clutching my shoulder, the other pushing his blue cap further up on his head, exposing the bald spot. “Was it a dream?”
Before I could answer, my mother jumped in: “He already told you he was wide awake. It was a vision. God is speaking to the child.”
“You know how kids are,” said my father, from out of whose pocket the money would come. He chuckled. “Elwyn’s been wanting to play piano so bad, he begins to hear God and see visions. It could be a trick of the devil.”
My mother shook a finger at him. “Elwyn should have been taking piano lessons a long time ago. He is special. God speaks to animals and children. Elwyn doesn’t lie.”
My father peered down at me with a look that said, Tell the truth boy, but I kept my eyes wide and innocent, still struck by the wondrous and glorious vision I had seen. My father said to my mother, “But we can’t be so literal with everything. If it’s a dream, maybe we need to interpret it.”
“Interpret nothing!” shot back Isadore the maid, who pursued Roscoe the school bus driver to the far side of the room; he fell into his overstuffed recliner where it was customary for him to accept defeat. “You call yourself a Christian,” she shouted, raising holy hands, “but you’d rather spend money at the track than on your own boy! Some Christian you are.”
My father hung his head in shame. He was beaten.
He did, however, achieve a small measure of revenge. Instead of giving up his day at the track, he told my grandmother, that great old-time saint, about my “visions,” and my grandmother, weeping and raising holy hands, told Pastor, and Pastor wrote my name on the prayer sheet.
How I cringed each week as Pastor read to the congregation, “And pray that God send Brother Elwyn a piano to practice on.”
I believed that God would send one indeed—plummeting from heaven like a meteor to crash through the roof of the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters and land right on my head.
I had lied and liars shall have their part in the lake of fire.
I prayed, “Heavenly Father, I lied to them, but I am just a child. Cast me not into the pit where the worm dieth not.”
Thank God for Brother Morrisohn and his ultrawhite false teeth. If he hadn’t stood up and bought that piano for me, I would have surely died just like Ananias and Sapphira—struck down before the doors of the church for telling lies.
Brother Morrisohn was a great saint, a retired attorney who gave copiously of his time and energy—as well as his money—to the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters. It was his money that erected the five great walls of the church, his money through the Grace of God that brought us warmth in the winter and coolness in the hot Miami summer. It was his money that paid Pastor’s salary in the ’60s when the Holy Rollers built a church practically on our back lot and lured the weaker members of the flock away. After a fire destroyed the Rollers’ chapel, it was Brother Morrisohn’s money that purchased the property back from the bank, putting the Rollers out of business for good.
“I can’t sit by and watch God’s work go undone,” he always said.
On the day they delivered the secondhand upright piano, he told me, “You’re going to be a great man of God, Elwyn,” and he extended his forefingers like pistols and rattled a few keys.
He was already in his seventies by then, but lean and healthy and proud of his looks. His full head of gray hair, which he parted stylishly down the middle, was a contrast to his dark, handsome complexion. He always wore a jacket and tie and carried a gold-tipped cane. Grinning, he showed his much-too-white false teeth. “I love music, but I never learned to play. Maybe someday you’ll teach me.”
“I will,” I said. I had just turned eight.
“I wish you would teach him, Elwyn,” said Sister Morrisohn, the wife who was about half Brother Morrisohn’s age. From a distance she could be mistaken for a white woman with her fair skin and her long black hair cascading down her back. She was the prettiest woman at church, everyone always said, though she had her ways, whatever that meant. She removed her shawl and draped it lovingly over his shoulders. “We have that big piano at home no one ever plays.”
“I’m not cold,” Brother Morrisohn protested, frowning, but he did not remove the lacy shawl. He rattled the keys again.
“I’ll teach you piano, Brother Morrisohn,” I said.
He reached down and patted my head. “Thank you, Elwyn.”
I was so happy. I hadn’t had my first lesson yet, but I sat down on the wobbly stool and made some kind of music on that piano.
A little after midnight, my father emerged from the bedroom and drove me to bed.
“Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight,” he sang, accentuating each beat with a playful open-palm slap to my rump. It was a victory for him too. Just that weekend he had won $300 at the track. It didn’t seem to bother him that my mother had demanded half the money and set it aside for my piano lessons.
Every night I offered a prayer of thanksgiving, certain God had forgiven me.
* * *
Peachie Gregory was another thing entirely.
Peachie Gregory—with those spidery limbs and those bushy brows that met in the center of her forehead and that pouting mouth full of silver braces—I didn’t completely understand it when I first saw her play the piano, but I wanted her almost as much as I envied her talent.
She dominated my thoughts when I was awake, and in time I began seeing her in my progressively worsening dreams—real dreams, not made-up visions—dreams of limbs brushing limbs, and lips whispering into lips in a parody of holy prayer. Then I began manipulating my thoughts to ensure that my dreams would include her. At my lowest, I dreamt about her without benefit of sleep.
By age thirteen, when I began to use my hands, I knew I was bound for hell.
I couldn’t turn to my parents, so one Sunday I went to the restroom to speak with Brother Morrisohn.
He said, “Have you prayed over the matter?”
“Yes,” I answered, “but the Lord hasn’t answered yet.”
He smiled, showing those incredible teeth. “Maybe He has and you just don’t understand His answer. I’m sure He’s leaving it up to you.”
“Leaving it up t
o me?”
We stood inside the combination men’s washroom and lounge his money had built. Four stand-up stalls and four sit-down stalls lined one wall. A row of sinks lined another. In the center of the room, five plush chairs formed a semicircle around a floor-model color television. We were between services, so a football game was airing. Otherwise, the television would have picked up the closed-circuit feed and broadcast the service to the Faithful who found it necessary to be near the facilities. These days Brother Morrisohn, pushing close to his promised four score, attended most services by way of this floor-model television. His Bible, hymnal, and gold-tipped cane rested in one of the chairs.
“I don’t care what anyone tells you, God gets upset when we turn to Him for everything. Sometimes we’ve got to take responsibility. Elwyn, it’s your mind and your hand, and you must learn to control them. Otherwise, why don’t you just blame God for every sin you commit? God made you kill. God made you steal. God made you play with yourself.”
Brother Morrisohn was so close I could smell his cologne. His teeth made a ticking sound each time his jaw moved. Suddenly, he began to tremble and coughed a reddish glob into his hands. He moved quickly to the faucet and washed it down, sighing, “Age. Old age.” Then he turned off the faucet and looked down at me with an embarrassed smile.
I said to him, “What about the dreams?”
“Dreams?”
“The nasty dreams about … Peachie.”
“God controls the dreams,” Brother Morrisohn explained. “They’re not your fault.”
“Okay.”
“Control your hands.”
“I will.”
Every Boy Should Have a Man Page 15
