The Book of Harold

by Owen Egerton

  “May I help you?”

  In another twenty minutes I left with another button-down blue cotton shirt, another pair of loose-fit khaki pants, and another black belt, all perfectly folded and packed into my very own The Stop bag.

  Next came Froner & Co.

  Then Zondee’s.

  Then Crash Course.

  Then New Crop.

  I was trying to disentangle the smells of the food court when my cell phone rang and my daughter informed me that she was ready to go. I collected my bags and went to meet them.

  “Oh my God, Dad! What did you get?” Tammy asked.

  “Just some clothes.” I smiled, but already the pebbles were once again rolling through my veins. We walked out to the car, the girls ahead and me behind, waddling with my bags. “Red car, blue car, green car, my car.”

  “He’s just trying to be funny,” my angry daughter told her sulking friend.

  Stay, Stay

  A mile from our house I pulled to the side of the road and told the girls to stay in the car.

  “Dad! What are you doing?”

  I popped the trunk and grabbed the blue cooler. It felt heavier now. The weight sloshed around as I heaved it to the curb. Then I pulled out my cell.

  “Yeah, Waste Control?” It was a machine. I left a message. “There’s a roadkill over on Shepherds Drive. Near the Texaco. Thanks.”

  I wanted to leave him in the cooler, but they’d never find him. So with a kick, I dumped the cooler—dog, water, and ice. Pickles rolled out—wet and stiff like some corpse floating up from the Titanic. Stay. Stay.

  I threw the cooler back in the trunk and climbed behind the wheel.

  “What were you doing?” my daughter asked in a slow, quiet voice.

  “Public service,” I said and turned on the radio.

  Released

  Once home, I disappeared to my room and carefully unpacked my treasures. I pushed the old clothes down the rack to make room for the new. I sat on the bed and watched them hang—so still, so sure of themselves. What now? What now? What now?

  “Dinner in ten!” my wife called. Thank you, God.

  I came downstairs and fixed myself a drink.

  Jennifer wanted to check in. “Let’s see, I restocked the freezer. We were nearly out of everything. I still need to make another run. I finally organized our photos from the ski trip. That took a while. And Rebecca called. We talked about last night and Pickles and your friend. I told her you had fired him, and she said it was lucky he didn’t come over with a gun. It happens. So, that was my day.” She squeezed my hands. “Now you.”

  “I mowed the lawn, I bought some clothes, I fixed a gin and tonic.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I did three.”

  Jennifer waited a moment. Then nodded and released my hands.

  I opened a bottle of wine. Drinky drinky stop the thinky.

  My daughter’s sulky friend stayed for dinner and the four of us gathered round the table for twice-baked potatoes and awkward silence. Jennifer filled the space with questions for the friend: How were classes? Was she taking driver’s ed? When are musical tryouts?

  I asked a question too. “Would you rather be burned at the stake or buried alive?”

  “Excuse me?” The friend giggled nervously.

  “Blake!” my wife said, banging her fork to her plate.

  “It’s a good question. A person needs to know these things.”

  “You’re drunk, Dad.”

  “Not yet,” I said, pouring the last of the wine.

  “That’s not funny.” Tammy’s face was red. “You’re not funny.”

  “Now, Tammy,” Jennifer started. But Tammy jumped to her feet.

  “It’s true, Mom. He drinks too much.”

  “Maybe you don’t drink enough,” I said. To this day I believe that to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever said. Tammy grunted and ran from the room. Jennifer followed. I stood, the room moving around me. I took my drink and walked to the patio door.

  “Buried,” the friend said, still sitting at the table. “If you’re buried, there’s a chance someone could find you.”

  I nodded my approval and stepped outside.

  The pool water wrinkled in the night breeze and cast blue ripples onto the side of the house. I watched, sipping my wine. The blue, the pool, the night—all sufficiently blurry. I tried to calm my head, ease my blood. I walked to the side of the pool and touched the surface with my foot, wondering if it could, if it would, hold me. Why shouldn’t it hold me? It should. I took a deep breath and stepped. I sank like a stone. Under the water the world was even blurrier and the chlorine stung my eyes. That was my baptism. Dunked in failure.

  I was in bed when my wife came in the room from the shower. She sagged. Everything about her sagged, her face, her breasts, her stomach, all slinking to the floor in a slow spill.

  She crawled into her side of the bed. “Did you go in the pool?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said and not another word. My hair was wet, I smelled like chlorine, the sheets were damp—of course, I had been in the pool, of course, I had just lied, but she wouldn’t challenge it. I wanted her to accuse me of lying, just once to tell me she knew I was lying. Instead, she switched off the light. We lay quiet in the dark.

  “I’m going to stop drinking,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Lump on the Lump

  The next morning I woke early and quickly dressed. Work would be a relief. An escape from questions like, “What do you want?”

  I was tightening my tie when Jennifer rolled over and stared at me with sleepy eyes.

  “Honey,” she said through a yawn. “It’s Sunday.”

  I stopped tightening the tie. I took off the suit and got back into bed.

  What now? What now? What now?

  I had sex with my wife. It was a sad, clumsy episode. Thankfully, it didn’t last long. Then I was sitting on the edge of the bed feeling sick with Jennifer running her hand down my back.

  Downstairs, I found the automatic coffeemaker making coffee. The yard looked like a prison haircut, the television was still broken, and I wanted nothing. So I went back to bed. But by the time I got upstairs, my wife was already gathering the sheets in a ball and throwing them into the laundry basket. The bed was dead.

  I dressed in a button-down blue cotton shirt, loose-fit khaki pants and black belt and sat in front on my broken television.

  Tammy went to a friend’s house. Jennifer went shopping for groceries. The house was mine. I thought of the homeless man and Harold telling him what he really wanted. What did I want? Really want. I really wanted a drink, but I resisted.

  The day was a lump, and I was a lump on the lump. It was morning. At some point it became afternoon. Jennifer and Tammy came home but left me to my broken television and tangled thoughts. Then it was dark.

  I left the house and walked alone. Though the sun was long down, the air was warm and sticky. Down one block, then another block, past the pretty lawns and wooden fences and hidden cat graves.

  At first, I walked aimlessly. Then, to avoid circles, I moved in one general direction. Finally I headed for Harold’s house, three quarters of a mile at most. Block, block, block. Corner, corner, corner. No curves where I live. I turned onto Maple Street, breaking into a jog, then a run. I saw my entire life and I wanted none of it. None of it. I spotted his yellow house. The light on the front porch was on, but the windows were dark. It was late, but I had to knock, had to be invited in and asked to sit down and rest. I wanted that. I knocked. Nothing. I knocked again, a little louder. Nothing. Slamming fists. Nothing. I waited, still expecting to see some light from deep inside the house switch on and hear shuffling feet. Nothing. I had run to heaven’s gate and the Savior wasn’t home.

  My legs weak as water, I walked from the door and down the front path. I heard a click and turned. Harold stood in the doorway wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of stained blue jeans.


  “It was unlocked,” he said and walked back inside leaving the door open.

  Blue Harold

  The house was warm, the air stale.

  “No AC. Too much of a distraction.” He walked in front of me slowly, listlessly.

  Besides a lamp and some books scattered on the floor, the house was empty.

  “Gave everything to the Baptists. Distraction.” He scratched his head and walked though the living room. The white walls had slightly whiter rectangular spaces where framed prints no longer hung. The built-in shelves in the living room held nothing but a half-filled glass of water.

  When I was five, my family moved from the suburbs of Chicago to Dallas. While clinging to my mother’s leg, I watched men in blue jumpsuits strip the walls and lug our belongings away. I discovered my home was simply a house posing as a home. I ran from room to room, spying as the men dismantled all the details. We spent our last night in an empty house, lying awake in the blank space.

  Besides a fridge, a stove, and a few glasses, Harold’s kitchen was also empty. He poured me a glass of water and turned to me. His face looked yellow and tired. As he handed me a glass, a fear swelled up in my stomach. Who was this man? What was I doing in his house in the middle of the night with questions like, What do I want? Why am I here? These questions don’t have answers, at least none that satisfy. Like a poison ivy rash, the more you scratch the worse the itch.

  “Harold, I—”

  “What do you think Son of God means, Blake?” he asked, rubbing his face and leaning against his kitchen counter. “Son-of-God. The words are too vague. Right now I’m working on Son. Then I’ll move on to of. I doubt I’ll even try God.”

  “What have you got for Son?”

  “Shared DNA, maybe. Or adoption. A natural contract demanding care. Maybe God has parental instincts. Sons are heirs. Or burdens. Hell, hamsters eat their sons. What good is being a son?” He flinched and pressed his fists to his head.

  “You okay?”

  “Headaches,” he nodded. “Get me sometimes.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “No. A doctor might make them stop.” He lifted himself up to sit on the countertop. “Why are you here?”

  “Not sure. Maybe to talk,” I said. “I’m not very happy.”

  He nodded. “There was a boy in my hometown who couldn’t feel pain. For a buck, he’d let you punch his face as hard as you want. He wouldn’t feel a thing.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “He was a slow kid. Didn’t talk much. One summer he stepped on a nail. He didn’t even know he’d done it. The foot got infected. They had to take it off.” He breathed in through his nose. “That’s you, Blake.”

  “What? I’m numb?”

  “You want to be,” he said. “Can’t blame you. I’d hate to feel your life.”

  No one ever talks about this side of Harold—when his words were cruel and his eyes looked dead. The way they tell it he was always sure, always happy, whistling wisdom to every open ear. That wasn’t him. If it had been, I never would have followed.

  “Listen, Blake. I’ll be gone for a while. I need to think through some things.”

  Head Shakes and Shrugs

  I slouched home. My wife was awake, wiping down a clean kitchen counter with nervous swipes. She looked up as I crept through the back door. I knew the look, the question in her eyes.

  “I went for a jog.”

  “In your slacks?” she asked.

  “Spontaneous jog.”

  “There’s a message on the voice mail from the police.” She sighed. “They found a drowned dog on Shepherds Drive with our tags.”

  I puckered my lips and nodded.

  “What’s going on, Blake?” she asked.

  The air conditioning was chilling the sweat off my body and I shivered as I tried to shrug.

  “Is something wrong at work?”

  I shook my head.

  “Is it us? Is it that?”

  I shook my head again. I knew it was taking everything in her to ask these questions. Even though I could see the strain in her face, I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t find any words of comfort. Just head shakes and shrugs.

  Seeing her there, red-eyed and cheeks sucked in, I knew there must be as much doubt and life in her as there was in me. But we never showed each other anything. I didn’t know how to say anything.

  I confess now: I should have loved her more. I remember loving her. She was twenty when we first met. I was twenty-two. I remember her large eyes, brown skin, and a laugh full of hiccups. She smelled like the inside of a snapped branch. We met in the fall and I was in love by the spring. I remember the first night we made love, in her college apartment, muffling moans so her roommate wouldn’t hear. Jennifer would bite her pillow. That was wonderful.

  Eventually we got our own place. A cheap apartment with skin-thin walls. We still muffled ourselves. No pillow-biting, just quiet. We got married. Still quiet. Hardly a noise. There had been this passion, which we’d bridled for the sake of the roommate or the neighbors. But when we were alone and let go of the reins, the passion whinnied and laid down. Nothing. We bought a big oak bed. Two sides, two tables, two lamps, two novels. Eyes on the page until it was time to close them.

  I had a few affairs. One timers, at conferences, once at an office Christmas party. I wanted that old feeling. I wanted the lie that danger tells, the lie that there is more. The lie saying you would scream if you could. But then you can scream and you don’t.

  You know the best sex Jennifer and I had after we got married? Her mother’s house. There in my wife’s old room with posters of unicorns and her mother asleep twenty yards away.

  Love should be dangerous. There should be a fear of losing control. And a fear of losing the other. Scared to death you’ll lose them. Scared to death you’ll have to keep them. Scared of the change waiting to drag you down.

  That night in the kitchen we stood in silence for a solid minute. Sixty seconds of waiting. No danger was left between us. All I could do was shake my head. All she could do was stare.

  “Do you want to, maybe, check in?” she finally said.

  For a second—less than that—a hot pressure pulsed behind my eyes, then tears. They came fast, my head leaking like a punctured water balloon.

  Jennifer was near, her face a kind blur. She hushed me, took my hand, led me up the stairs, and removed my shoes and clothes. All the while, my tears fell. She crawled in bed beside me, wrapping her arm around my shuddering shoulders. “Hush now,” she whispered. “Sleep now.”

  An Introduction to Haroldism

  First Baptism

  Over the years, the Haroldian church has developed two annual baptisms. First Baptism is traditionally practiced on the second Sunday of September. It was on this day, many believe, Harold baptized himself in the cold waters of the Frio River in West Texas. Believers reenact the sacrament, baptizing themselves in any body of water available. Though some choose to share this rite with family, it is widely considered a private experience.

  Stones Throw (see entry on Second Baptism) is celebrated towards the end of the nine-month liturgical cycle on April 18. For this rite, the presence of others is essential. These two poles of the calendar highlight the Haroldian ideal that both our individuality and our need of community must be embraced and honored. As Harold once said, “We are utterly alone and unavoidably connected. That’s who we are.”

  Mrs. Saint Peter

  Today in the basement I read the last page of a half dozen novels I won’t have time to read. Today I made faces at a Pastel looking at me from the window in the door. Today I tried to breathe the way Beddy taught me. Today I used the watercolors to paint a portrait of the wife of Saint Peter.

  I’ve never read one word about her, never seen a picture. I know she existed. Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, but we never meet a wife. No gospel mentions her. Maybe she had died before Peter met Jesus. Maybe she left him. Maybe she was never around.

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sp; I paint her looking away. Streaks of brown, yellow background, streaks and streaks. I wish she’d come visit, drip down through the sprinkler and watch me paint. I’d stand back and let her see my work in progress. She would smile. She would be grateful.

  Today I slipped my dinner knife under my mattress. Peter did not seem to notice. An hour later he came back in and asked if I’d seen a “utensil.” I shook my head and continued my writing. After he left, I retrieved the knife and examined it. More of a butter knife. I tried attacking my pillow and made only dents. I should have stolen a fork.

  Figwood

  I wanted to forget about Harold, about my weekend misadventures, about all the questions scavenging around my brain like raccoons in a trashcan. My family helped. Outside of a few side comments and a few concerned looks, my wife never mentioned my shenanigans again. My daughter was no more angry than before.

  My greatest ally in forgetting Harold was our town of Figwood, a suburban paradise designed to gloss over any embarrassing flirtations with a spiritual crisis. Figwood, like a mother, cradled and calmed me. “Hey, don’t get all excited,” she whispered. “Here’s the sports page. Don’t you need an oil change? Want to learn to golf this weekend?”

  Figwood took its name from the fruit that had been its first major industry. In the late 1800s there hadn’t been anything in the area but some mosquito-infested woods and several narrow creeks with a tendency to flood. But after the Civil War, a number of former soldiers found riches in the fig. There were fig fields as far as the eye could see. Then the fig industry was replaced with the oil industry and then the technological industry. The figs are long gone and so are the oil and technology. These days, three decades after I left, Figwood’s major industry is Harold. It is second only to Austin for holy spots on the Haroldian map. It is a town of hostels, museums, and houses of prayer.