Danny Gospel

by David Athey

  He pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and placed it on the menu. "C'mon, Danny, we need to leave these people alone."

  Kate followed us, fretting. "You both look so skinny. Why don't you stay and eat?"

  Jon shook his head. "Not tonight. Maybe next time, when things are more normal."

  Just then something told me to turn and run into the kitchen; so I rushed through the swinging doors and nearly fell on the greasy floor. Dot was standing beside the cutting board table, dabbing her eyes with her apron. I rushed up and wrapped my arms around her.

  She sniffled, and sniffled again, and finally spoke. "Danny, I became a new person at your family's concert. I was so inspired by the music, with no preaching and no collection plates, and I could feel the presence of God. And I let Him into my heart."

  I squeezed Dot tight and whispered into her ear, "Sing together, children. Don't you get weary. Sing together, children. Don't you get weary. Oh, shout together children. Don't you get weary. There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land."

  Dot kissed me on the cheek, a warm wet kiss of tears. "Danny, you have to sing with your brother."

  I touched her gently on the face. "I know. It's killing me."

  The cook shouted, "Order up!"

  Dot gathered the heaping plate of barbecued pork. And I returned to my brother. We got in the truck and I drove us to the cemetery, without a word spoken. Every moment felt like hell.

  "Well, here we are," I said, stopping the truck at the gate.

  "Here we are," Jon said.

  We waited for the other to start saying the things that needed to be said. It seemed like the gravestones were leaning toward the pickup, listening.

  Finally I broke down and asked, "Jon, do you think Mother committed suicide?"

  He stared out the window. "No, Danny. She fell."

  "But why was she up on the silo?"

  "She wanted to fly away."

  "She jumped?"

  "No, Danny. She fell."

  "It wasn't suicide?"

  Jon looked at me with sorrow, his eyes full of kindness. "Mother didn't mean to do what she did. She loved us, Danny. You know that."

  "But I had to watch it happen. She was wearing her good white dress."

  Jon put his hand on my shoulder. "I know."

  "She seemed to think she had wings."

  Jon turned away and looked at the graves. "She was drunk. She didn't know what she was doing."

  "Jon, I tried to catch her."

  "I know, Danny."

  "I almost caught her. I was just a few steps away, praying real hard."

  "It's a good thing you didn't get there in time. The weight would have killed you."

  "No. She was floating. She didn't hit the ground very hard. I think I could have caught her."

  Jon turned to face me again, with sorrow, with kindness.

  "Danny. About the farm ... After all of the funerals, I wasn't thinking clearly."

  Unforgiving words overpowered my tongue. "Yes, you made lots of mistakes. And I ended up with nothing."

  "You got the truck."

  "That's it."

  "Danny, listen. I'm not going to talk about this now. I thought maybe we could make some progress tonight. I thought we could meet somewhere in the middle."

  "In the middle of what, Jon? The cemetery?"

  A tear trickled down the side of my brother's scarred face. "Danny, I heard you're having problems at the post office, and financial troubles."

  "Who did you talk to? Grease? Plain Jane? They don't know the whole story. What I do with my money is none of your business. Maybe I gave it all away, or maybe I put a down payment on some farm equipment. What if I told you I'm going to start farming again?"

  Jon pondered the idea. "Where would you farm? Do you have a property in mind?"

  "I'm not starting over unless I start from the beginning. The family farm. The Garden of Eden. If I'm going to start over, I'm starting from there."

  "Danny, you have my phone number. You have my address in Des Moines. Call or visit any time. Okay? Don't be a stranger. And Danny?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Did you want to pray over the graves with me? We've done it every year on this date."

  "No thanks."

  "Are you sure? You always find comfort in it."

  "No thanks. Not this year. They never rise, anyway."

  "Your prayers? Of course they rise."

  "No, I mean the dead. I've prayed a thousand times for them to rise. And I've really believed it was possible. But my faith doesn't bring anyone back."

  Jon whispered, "I'm back."

  I shook my head.

  "It's true. I'm actually a pretty good lawyer now. And I want to be a good husband and father. Danny, I hope you'll be the best man at my wedding. You don't even have to attend the rehearsal or anything. Just stand up for me."

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  Jon nodded, satisfied with that answer. He climbed out of the truck without saying good-bye and walked, very slowly, toward the cemetery gate.

  I put the Chevy into gear and sped down the road. And I remembered the day after Mother's funeral. Jon and I had walked away from the mourners at our farm. Mile after mile, we'd walked in silence, ending up at the gravel pit. I paused at the edge, while Jon slowly descended the steep, muddy path. His head hung low, my brother searched the path for signs. There were some tracks, heart-shaped, fresh from the morning, when a doe and her fawn had climbed out of the pit to eat the grass above the ridge. Jon fell to his knees and traced a finger in one of the hearts. He seemed to feel haunted by the coolness of the clay, his whole body shivering. Something told me to rush down there and kneel beside him. But I stayed above, watching.

  My brother stood, as if answering a call, and walked deeper into the pit.

  "You're suffering, Daniel."

  I looked out the window of the Rural Mental Health Clinic. I thought I could see the tops of the twin silos above our farm, but they were only clouds.

  "It's called post-traumatic stress," Dr. Parsons said. "Everyone in the history of the world has suffered from this disorder, but you've got it bad. You're worse off than the soldiers I've treated."

  I turned away from the window. "So, I'm mentally ill?"

  "Yes, Daniel."

  I tried to smile. "Being mentally ill is illegal in Iowa, right? Isn't everyone in Iowa required to live a normal happy life?"

  Dr. Parsons folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. "I'm suffering, too."

  "You are?"

  "Of course."

  "Really? How?"

  He sighed. "It's a very long story, Daniel. But let that be. We each have our sorrows for not being angels."

  - four

  WHEN MY FRIEND Grease was a child, he was bullied at school. The kids called him Retard and Tardo and Hog Pile. But his mother and father treated him like a child of God and encouraged him to dismantle and rebuild lawn mowers and other small engines and spark them back to life. He eventually mastered the mechanics of cars, trucks, and tractors. By the time Grease was eighteen, he could fix anything. And after his parents lost the farm and filled their pickup with carbon monoxide, Grease got a job at a gas station in town. A few years later, he bought the station and increased its revenue by restoring and selling antique automobiles.

  Grease has his faults, like everyone else, but when he realized that I'd lost some weight, he arrived at my trailer loaded with so many barbecued ribs that I wondered if any pigs were left in the world.

  Fasting, I let Grease eat most of the food. He stuffed himself and spilled various sauces and condiments all over his shirt and my couch, while I politely nibbled a bit and soaked my aching feet in a bucket. I'd gone back to the mail route that morning, and the work seemed harder now, and I came home limping and exhausted. It didn't help that some people at the post office were gossiping about a bag of stolen mail.

  While Grease ate and ate, he sometimes paused to share his conspiracy theories. "Danny,"
he said, his eyes wide and bloodshot, "listen to this. I was plowing the Internet-"

  "Surfing," I said. "You surf the Internet."

  "Not me. I plow it. And today I found out why so many cell phones are ringing in church, making it harder to worship God."

  "Is it because people are forgetful?"

  Grease whispered, "No. It's the terrorists."

  "What?"

  "The terrorists are disrupting church services. They know how people lose their minds and forget about Jesus whenever a phone rings."

  "You're a lunatic, Grease."

  But he was my best friend, and occasionally wise. So I asked his advice about my love life. "Do you think Jane is the kind of girl who would sneak into my trailer at sunrise and kiss me?"

  "Plain Jane Jones?"

  "Yeah."

  "Your old girlfriend from ages ago?" "Yeah."

  "The one who works at dulcinea?"

  "Yeah."

  Grease mulled it over. "Hmm ... I don't think Jane would enter your bedroom unannounced. She'd politely knock first. She wouldn't just appear and start stripping for you. She'd call ahead. Plain Jane plays by the rules. Or maybe she has a wild side like Princess Diana. Yeah, it's possible Jane could be a secret stripper, now that I think about it."

  "It was an innocent kiss, whoever it was. Don't ruin it. That kiss is all I have right now."

  Grease trudged into my kitchen and filled half a thermos with coffee. As usual, he added a cup of sugar and a cup of chocolate sauce. He returned to the couch, took a big gulp of the potion, and began to have visions. "Danny," he whispered, "I'm working on something that will change the world. I'll tell you about it if you swear to secrecy."

  "Swear? No, I won't swear. But I'll keep your secret."

  "Shhh," he said, looking suspiciously around the room. "Now don't tell a soul-not even your stripper. Listen, Danny. I'm developing a toothpaste that also cleans the sink. And the toilet. And the floor. You just spit, and it whitens everything! It's called Spitzoclean. And I'm gonna be a billionaire."

  Grease chugged the rest of his syrup-coffee, and his eyes grew so wide that you could almost see into his brain. It was scary.

  I turned on the TV and found the local news. It was a follow-up story about Jack Williams. A bubbly blond reporter stood at the edge of the reservoir and proclaimed, "Tomorrow a dive team will arrive and begin searching the depths. And we will keep you updated about this tragedy.

  After the news, I told Grease to make himself at home, which he did by taking off his shoes and socks and showing me his craggy yellow toenails.

  "Hey, Danny, do you feel like clipping these things?"

  I pulled my feet out of the bucket and went slip-sliding toward the door. "Jack Williams is not in the lake."

  "Where is he?"

  "I don't know. But he's alive."

  "Can you find him, Danny?"

  "I'm gonna try."

  "Want me to help?"

  "No, Grease. Stay here until the coffee wears off."

  "Okay, Danny. Can I read some of your books?"

  "Sure, buddy. Help yourself."

  Grease went over to the bookcase and grabbed The Wisdom of the Desert. "Hmm ... Does this have pictures?"

  Not bothering to put on my shoes, I hurried out to the pickup and sped away, searching. The gravel roads that night seemed to go toward everywhere, toward nowhere, and I tried to imagine where a man might wander if he had no memory of wandering. Here and there as I drove, I saw harvesters crawling through the fields with their bug-eyes and ferocious mouths chewing up the last of the corn. I hated those machines and their heavy debts that had brought down so many family farms. But then again, the harvesters were helping with my mission, clearing away the hiding places.

  I stopped the truck and shouted out the open window. "Jack! Jack! Where are you?"

  Electricity crackled the air. Perhaps a storm was brewing. No, the sky was clear. The electricity was not outside. My fingers were warm and slightly glowing. That hint of holy fire should have fueled my faith, but my mind immediately fell into doubt. Maybe my spiritual charge was nothing but nitric oxide, the gas of the firefly.

  The glowing dissipated, and I left the truck and went for a walk. Breathing the crisp air, my head became clearer, and I wandered aimlessly up the road. It was cold and hard and my bare feet had to step lightly. The gravel gleamed as if the Milky Way had spilled a million frozen stars. Directly in front of me, a deer crossed over with a constellation on its head. And then a fox with a comet's tail. The road was busy with brilliant animals moving from one field to another, avoiding the harvesters. All night long, I limped up and down the road, with all of creation crossing my path and slipping away.

  When the stars faded over the horizon that morning of Halloween, I knew it was time to go home. Not to the trailer park, but really home. Even if the Gospel Family's farm had been bought by a corporation and ruined in a dozen ways, I still had to face my hauntings. I limped to the truck, climbed inside, and turned the key. Nothing. Not even a click. I said a little prayer and turned the key again. Nothing. The truck was dead.

  I went outside and laid my hands upon the frost-covered hood. "Please, God," I said, "if you wanted to, you could fix this thing."

  There was no flash of heat. Nothing. I raised my numb hands above the hood in a kind of blessing. "Good-bye, old truck."

  Into the field of golden stubble I stumbled, blowing steam and shivering. For some reason, there was a lone tree standing near the road. The tree stood dark and leafless, as if death were written all over it, and I felt somewhat afraid to approach because it seemed to portend something painful beyond. My heart sank at the thought of continuing, and sank further at the thought of turning back, and then the sky did its heavenly thing, opening up and finding a way to turn the desolate, unwelcoming tree into a greater picture of gold. Everything became glorious in the sunrise, the whole landscape backlit with a hint of God's own brightness. And I continued onward, searching for home.

  After an hour of walking, I figured the family farm was just a few more miles away, east and into the light. I squinted and searched the horizon. But I couldn't see the house, the barn, or the twin silos.

  The second silo was our final debt, the death of us. During a fit of cancerous madness, Father believed he could double our production, forcing miracles from our humble acreage. And he acted like it was all for my benefit.

  "You'll be the King of Iowa."

  In our faded overalls, we leaned against the side of the original silo.

  "I'm building another tower," he said, wiping his brow with a red handkerchief. He paused, his breath labored. "I want it to be a monument to my mother, your mother, and Holly. And that fancy girl of yours-"

  "Rachel."

  "Yes. Rachel will be more likely to marry you and live on the farm if we add cows and honeybees."

  "What?"

  "Milk and honey, Danny. We'll fill up two silos."

  "Dad, are you feeling okay?"

  My dying father stared at a large empty space in the sky. "Believe me, Danny. I'm building another tower."

  Where he was looking, the blue sky just kept going and going, high above and beyond our farm, to where Iowa wasn't even a place anymore.

  Wandering through the corn stubble, searching for home, I stepped into many memories, most of them fleeting, while others, like the morning of my thirteenth birthday, lingered. After doing my chores, I was about to shower when I looked out the bathroom window. The September corn was ripening in the sunrise, and I believed the best year of my life had moved from the horizon to the house. In my vision, our cornfield and the neighbors' fields that had rolled away to the sky were all returning in a tidal wave of perfect calm, not too high above the earth, delivering into my eyes a perfect floating garden with a happy family and a divine hint, among the blue and green and golden blessings, of more light to come.

  Just then, my father ended the vision. He stomped into the room with a straightedged razor in one hand
and a cup of foam with a brush in the other hand. He grinned and said, "Happy birthday, old man."

  I grinned back and rubbed my sparse chin. I hadn't thought about needing a shave, and even if I had, an oldfashioned straightedge was not something I wanted to hold at my throat.

  Jonathan appeared in the doorway. "Danny, look at that field of whiskers on your face. Maybe I should go start up the harvester. We might be able to get that field clean by sundown. I think we could get forty bushels off that face."

  Father laughed and reached out with the straightedge. "We can get fifty, maybe sixty bushels."

  I pushed my father away and threatened to snap him with a towel. "You guys get out of here. I'm not shaving today."

  "Danny," Jon said, "the girls all want a smooth gospel singer, not a rough one. Smoochy, smoochy!"

  I snapped the towel. The sting missed my brother's face by an inch. "Get out," I said. "Let me sing in the shower in peace."

  My father set the shaving gear on the sink and backed away. He and Jon stifled their laughter and ran stumbling down the stairs. I wrapped myself in the towel and leaned over the sink and stared at my aging face in the mirror. There was a light in my eyes that seemed to be shining from a place that was beyond me. I stared more intently. Was that the soul looking back? Or just the natural light passed on through generations?

  My grandmother had a forbidding apple face that seldom smiled, yet people knew that she loved them. Whenever we played a concert, she opened the show by softly strumming a few chords and then saying, "They call us the Gospel Family. On both sides of the family tree, we're farmers all the way back to the furrows of Adam and Eve. The Gospel Family has known joy, weeds, insects, war, and all kinds of suffering. We've had our share of death. And we know about resurrection. Just like your family, we've experienced what the world has to offer, good and bad. This first song is called `This Little Light of Mine."'

  Limping through the harvested field, headlong into the blinding sunshine, not sure if I was on the right path, I thought about my wonderful grandmother, and I sang into the fiery sky. "This little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine . . . "