Come Back

by Rudy Wiebe

  “It must have been something okay, Gabe was so strong at Norman’s funeral. He was even a pallbearer.”

  “I know I know, we sat on the log-jam above the beaver pond, that one in the bend where you see the cabin on the cliff, but I can’t remember … not one word.”

  “Why,” Miriam’s voice so gentle, “why does it matter?”

  “Oh I guess we must have talked about life and death—we’d all been through both grandpas and one grandma dying, open coffins, good Mennonite face-to-face funerals, older people okay, but his friend and age, from his church Young People, I just … I hope I didn’t talk about God too much, that we talked about Jesus …”

  “Dad, you would have.”

  “I just hope to hell I—excuse me!—I didn’t say Norm’s death was God’s will.”

  “You would never!”

  “I don’t know … then … I remember once arguing at a funeral there was no such thing as ‘accident.’ After a car crash.”

  “Did you call the crash ‘God’s will’?”

  “No no, I think I said, ‘a law of nature,’ like Thomas Hardy’s ‘convergence of the twain.’ ”

  “Didn’t Hardy mean something different? Like ‘inevitable destiny’—‘fate’? You never talked like that to us kids.”

  “I guess … I hope not,” Hal said, hopelessly.

  “No! You talked about laws of nature and our decisions, us deciding what we did, not fate.”

  “You remember it that way?”

  “I do, Dad.”

  “Good. But in Gabe’s last years of desperate writing—it really is … reading it now it’s sometimes more than desperate—heavy heavy Holy God is there a lot, a Creator who made us whatever we are, he calls himself a ‘fool’ so often, or ‘shy,’ ‘sick’—‘So here I am, God, the sensitive fool you made, me! I never asked to be …’ But he never mentions Jesus, not once.”

  “Listen,” Miriam’s voice changed quick and strong, “Gabe talked about Jesus to me that last summer, I remember it, about Jesus and the two thieves.”

  “What?”

  “On the cross, the two thieves.”

  Hal can only grunt, his surprise staggering him. He stretched out completely on the floor, away from the rustling paper and with his eyes closed: seeing his tall daughter’s beautiful face leaning into the telephone, her voice murmuring gradually into happiness,

  “It must have been August because we were in Leo’s apartment, 80th Avenue, drinking coffee, Leo was out working and Gabe told me he was reading the Gospels and he noticed—”

  “August ’85? Gabe was reading the Gospels?”

  “Yes! And he said all three Synoptics say there are two thieves crucified with Jesus, and Matthew and Mark say both reviled Jesus when they were nailed there but Luke says one thief did not revile. He defended Jesus and that’s a big difference, Gabe said, but it’s two against one, no, actually three against one because John’s Gospel mentions the two thieves too but no defense either, three to one, so why, he said, do we believe Luke?”

  Hal sang quietly, “ ‘Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom, Jesus, remember …’ ”

  “Yes!” Miriam exclaimed, “our communion song! The thief’s prayer on the cross, in Luke, yes.”

  “That last August?”

  “In Leo’s apartment, it had to be right at the end … August.”

  “I just read his two diaries and the third notebook, and you know before July ’85 there’s all these names of movies—he went sometimes to two a day—sometimes a quick fact, ‘lunch with Oleg,’ ‘drink with …’ stuff like that, and about every week notes of weeping and anger and ‘God, please have some mercy’ … and then there’s nothing at all in the notebook and nothing daily in the diaries, no movies and all the dates ignored, it’s all just overwritten down and sideways with rage, despair, his mind seems made up, no debate or discussion, and he’s just sorry for the person who finds him but everything seems deci—”

  “Dad, I’ve never read them.”

  “Sweetheart,” Hal said.

  They were silent. Breathing as they could; good he was lying flat, stretched out. He had never even thought that Miriam might not … okay, young Dennis not, nor Leo, but Yo had packed them away after he had seen her reading them, again, and until now he’d simply assumed that Miriam long ago had … why? We all live alone, Hal thought, beyond comprehension alone within whatever secrets we cannot forget. Years of talk, so much secret. This small plastic in my hand and our words—they mirror some thoughts if we dare to speak a few out loud—our words pass each other somewhere, like spirits flung from space satellites and there was a time when I was so happy to simply believe heaven was up on high, Jesus seated at God’s right hand singing “in the sky, Lord, in the sky,” where the circle would forever be unbroken in that better land awaitin’ and all the dead who had been saved from everlasting hell by accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord forever and ever were with him watching me. And I was so scared at them seeing me every single minute and also so happy at never ever being alone, not even on the Wapiti road allowance walking home in the dark and Deacon Block’s farm dogs came roaring out of the black trees at their corner but they knew me instantly and I could pat them on the head, especially Felix jumping so huge and black, his long tongue almost knocked me over there in the wagon track soft as dust.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m here.”

  “At the phone in the kitchen … did you bring them up, the diaries?”

  “I’m in the basement,” and then, before he thought, “You do know about Ailsa.”

  “Yes,” Miriam said quickly. Then, “Is there much about her?”

  “Enough.”

  After some time she said, “I will read them.”

  Hal’s mind leaped sideways, ‘No rush, it’s only twenty-five years,’ but luckily that stuck in his throat. He offered, more sensibly,

  “He expected us to read them. Once he writes ‘Hi’ on a blank date that August—like he’s greeting a reader, and other times he seems really angry, ‘Quit reading this trying to find clues who I am!’ But … really they’re … his words, to us.”

  “He wanted us to read them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” Miriam said, barely audible. “He could have destroyed them.”

  “Who knows what all he destroyed, he planned everything so … but this he didn’t destroy, no.”

  “All the papers he left, I will.”

  “Okay,” Hal said, steady again. He took a long breath, but Miriam was silent. “So-o,” he said finally. “Three to one, what did you say: Why believe Luke?”

  “Oh … I remember I was surprised, then. Gabe never talked Bible with me, not really, not after his year in Bible College. That’s probably why I remember, it’s so different.”

  “From your usual Edmonton talk?”

  “Yes … that last August he was so … silent … heavy … but sometimes he seemed really happy too and we’d get into it like we used to in college when I’d go visit him in his room full of books and posters, and his guitar he was always strumming—”

  “I know I know, that beautiful picture Yo took of you together stretched out on his dorm bed and laughing—”

  “Yes! Like that! In college, like we all always argued at home around the supper table, and we got into the textual arguments again about the Gospels, the ‘oral witness’ argument, and the ‘date of composition’ problem.”

  “That they were written long after, from stories people told about Jesus?”

  “Yeah, at least thirty, fifty years after he died, but Gabe said Luke has that careful introduction about writing an ‘orderly account from eyewitnesses,’ like a classic Greek historian’s investigation. And all four Gospels do agree, there were two thieves—”

  “But only Luke says one supported Jesus, he didn’t revile him.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what did Gabe think?”

  “I’d never noticed
the Gospels there were different—Gabe asked the question.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve thought about it … I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t, but what do you think?”

  Miriam’s laugh, “Dad! You old prof!”

  “No no, I’m trying to be a histor, a wise Greek who gathers stories—”

  “Like Luke? Are you gathering stories about Gabriel? To write down?”

  “No … yes … not write. Think. Stories, so I can think his life, over. I haven’t talked to anyone for so long about him, just you now—” Dennis’s phone call flashed across his mind, but no, leave that for the moment—“nothing about him for so long, and now you just told me a story I’ve never heard! Twenty-five years after. Look, all of a sudden I want to know his stories, for myself … those he left us, to think …”

  But Miriam’s continued silence pressured him into more: “His written words are often so much the same, just a movie name, or a bit of music, or book read—but more his one-track obsessions too, and anger, rage, it’s despair, endless, obsessive despair.”

  “About Ailsa.”

  She had said it, so he could respond.

  “All the way through, yes, that’s the—that’s one big one. At least whenever he wrote—but he had so much other life, I know that! There are glimpses of it—and I remember the last summer how often he came home, after NFT he had no steady job but then he got Unemployment Insurance and he was looking for jobs, he applied—jobs were really tough in ’85, but there was a picture-framing job he thought—and he’d come for supper and Yo and he and I we talked, and I remember he yelled a lot, out of the blue, anything, I can’t remember exactly why—but we talked and he had quite a few friends, not church much but NFT and university and you and Leo came back from Ecuador and we were planning your wedding at the cabin, he too, and he always saw his philosophy friend Oleg …”

  “But he writes about Ailsa?”

  “Yes. One strand, all the way through, of his sadness is always Ailsa, but at the end, in the last two months it seems like it’s not much her anymore either, he doesn’t even write the goddamn initial of her name, he’s just one black hole of anger and overwhelming despair!”

  Into his burst of rage Miriam spoke quietly, “There was more, to his life, lots more, but he could live that part out with us. The writing was secret. He was always so controlled, polite, but it was often a ‘don’t bother me’ polite that—”

  “Evasion—”

  “Yeah, but more secrets, you know, we all have them! Maybe Gabe, alone with that notebook, then he could write the stuff he never could say, to anyone. His depression.”

  “I hate that word, it’s so fucking small!”

  “Yeah. Like ‘ash’ is so fucking small for the tree outside your window.”

  Her sudden curse echoing his shattered his rage.

  “I’m sorry.”

  After a time she said, “Listen, we did discuss the two thieves, Gabe and I, ideas flying all over—about the oral eyewitness stories written down years later, memories changing as you keep telling them to different people—”

  “That’s why I’m reading what he wrote, what he’s thinking that minute he wrote it …”

  “Yeah, exactly, and how some people at the crucifixion would have heard just voices yelling from the two crosses, in horrible pain or cursing, who could understand what—and how loud was it? Doctors say when you’re crucified you have terrible difficulty breathing, hanging like that you can only breathe at the top of your lungs and you actually choke to death, on air you can’t get out—”

  “So who knows how loud or clear they were yelling at each other?”

  “Sure. Some heard reviling, some rebuttal, prayer, and then someone heard and understood Jesus’s really quiet promise—all four versions could have eyewitnesses.”

  Eyewitnesses! He had seen the Orange Downfill. He should tell—no, the weight for Miriam now, how could he confess to her the disaster he had started: she could do nothing from Vancouver and he who could had done nothing—he flipped into facetiousness:

  “Eyewitness … the Bible is ‘The Word of God,’ every syllable true!”

  And Miriam did laugh a little at the old joke. “I know, especially in English translation—no, only in holy Luther, right? Well, they could all be true, four little bits of The Big True. As they say, God only knows … four bits of ‘true’ isn’t so bad.”

  Only one flitting pass of orange is worse.

  “Dad? There is something wrong.”

  “I … tell me, what did Gabe say about Luke. You remember?”

  “He liked the second thief in Luke, he liked him.”

  “Not ‘If you’re God’s Son, you get us off here’?”

  “No no, the other one.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why! I can’t actually remember, exactly, what he said. I’ve thought about that so often, and maybe … maybe I just want him …”

  Hal said it: “ ‘Jesus, remember me.’ ”

  Perhaps Miriam was crying. Hal could never quite tell, on the telephone; she had practiced that as a teenager, he had sometimes noticed the phone at her ear and tears running down her cheeks but her voice steady, steady—but he could hear it, yes. He was tormenting his only daughter.

  “Mir, forgive me. I’m being stupid, too much … stuff here … look, if I can find Gabe’s Bible, I haven’t yet, maybe he marked that story—sweetheart, it’s marvellous you told me this, and I’m sorry. Please.”

  “You could come to Vancouver, Dad, a few days? Away from so long alone.”

  “Well …”

  “You promise but don’t come, Leo was saying just yesterday. Not since Mom. It’s so good to talk but there’s a lot we never say on the phone. And we haven’t remembered this together.”

  “Never dared,” he said, evading again.

  “That’s the word, ‘dare.’ If we sat face to face and deliberately …”

  “It’s been long.”

  “Yes. Twenty-five years long enough.”

  “What about Denn?”

  “With him too, of course, but even just us two starting with Gabe, starting—and Leo. He has memories too, a lot.”

  “I will come,” Hal said quickly, momentarily meaning it and feeling good. “Soon, real soon. I’ll call in two days, this time, at most three. I promise.”

  “I want to tell you,” Miriam said, “I pray that, every night.”

  Every life is lived in secret. “ ‘Jesus, remember me.’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “Pray it for me too?”

  “I will. Sorry to talk so late—goodnight, beloved Dad.”

  “Goodnight, darling daughter.”

  Dial tone. Kyrie. Kyrie eleison.

  Nearly midnight of an unending day. But he had to search for it, he could not think to stop, not the first GABRIEL box, not the second, the third box on the shelf, below bundles of cards and sympathy letters, below some photocopied pages there lay the blue Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version.

  Hal did not remember how unbelievably used it looked. The blue cloth cover a maze of grey rubbing tracks, every edge worn down and open, raw to the glued press of tan cardboard, every inch of both front and back covers, their corners worn round, blue cloth curling back bare off the worn cardboard. And the spines double-taped in wide black binding tape, both the outside spines and the inside line of the front flyleaf; the flyleaf where small Gabe had practiced writing his full name in cursive, twice, as if taking full possession above the

  TO: Gabriel Wiens, from his mother and father, Jan. 28, 1968

  His seventh birthday, already half through Grade 2 … Seventeen-and-a-half years of reading, wearing the cover raw, down into layered, separating cardboard. The stack of pale-blue-edged pages soft as old cloth.

  And dog-eared, tiny tears from much fingering, colour pictures—“Jerusalem from Mt. of Olives,” “In The Wilderness”—and many pencil marks
as he riffled; a grey square around 1 Samuel 3: “Now the boy Samuel was ministering …”; Jeremiah 10: “They are both stupid and …” not heavy marks, brief underlines, dozens of them; Habakkuk 3: “The mountains saw thee, and writhed …”; and then a thick pencil line under Matthew 4: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he”—no Luke, the thief on the cross, Luke—he was riffling swiftly, the pages years ago fingered so soft they still fell open quick and flat: chapter 23, verse … 39: “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him …”;

  But there was not a pencil nor pen mark, not anywhere in the entire paragraph. Not anywhere on the two crowded pages, nothing—but then he saw something … possibly … in verse 42. He lifted the book, angled it up at the ceiling light … there. A faint, almost invisible pencil stroke between two small words:

  And he / said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power.”

  Remember me. He. Said. On the cross.

  And then Hal noticed: the paperclipped pages under which Gabriel’s blue Bible had been lying. The pages were covered with Hal’s own handwriting. From that unbearable September, scribbled tight, words twisted: photocopied sheets of Hal’s personal 1985 Daily Appointments book.

  Photocopied? He had never … had Yo made them? Had she read his cryptic notations, and then copied and deliberately placed them in Gabriel’s boxes as well? Hal knew he never—who else could have? Here they were: all his 1985 diary words. O Yo, stone facts.

  Monday September 9

  awoke 2:30 a.m., read diaries, papers till 6 when Yo woke Oh why didn’t I see—clothes for coffin / funer. arrangements and cremat. details / plan funeral talked of obit—started working on it—all relatives both sides arrive, Yo’s mom, all my bro.+ sist. even ancient David. Talk/talk/people everywhere—I’m trying to quote my beloved son: he has left/given me too much to condense: make it clean, true / some grace, grace / first U Eng Lit class: evening, George will go, cancel

  Tuesday September 10

  His frozen face hands only the coffin body suit / shirt / tie white satin lid open in lobby, shut in church—some grace for him at funeral. Ps. 51—also Allegri’s Miserere Mei, 3 min. on intercom / choir: Children of … / obit just possible to hear Herbert read / after in church hall a wash of sorrow: who was I crying with? Church, university, business, people of a lifetime. Yo beside me but soon separated: hundreds crying, everyone crying with/for/over Clara dreamed G dead the night before he was found Wanda’s praying hand on my head Mike’s contorted face Joan holding and holding me, “He was so beautiful when he was vulnerable” you should know—seemed hrs. and evening useless talk, house full of bro. and sis. and sudden crying and