Elders

by Ryan McIlvain

  The next morning, a P-Day, Elder McLeod leaned on Passos to accompany him to Sweeney’s (“I thought we agreed you’d go there less,” Passos said), then he leaned on Sweeney (“Where’ve you been?” Sweeney said) to accompany him to the mission president’s office in Belo Horizonte. On the bus ride up, and then over lunch, McLeod outlined the basic problems for his friend. A capricious companion. A stranded investigator. All the anti-American garbage. And a feeling of waste, still, and doubt, still.

  “I mean …” McLeod said. “Do you know what I mean?” He looked up from his buffet plate to see Sweeney bearing down on a forkful of rice and beans.

  Sweeney paused, ticked his eyes up. “You mean how you think too much? Yeah, I know.”

  “Don’t you ever doubt? When things go wrong for you and you look to those bedrock truths, don’t you ever wonder where they are, or even what they are? Don’t you ever listen to yourself teaching or street contacting and think, What in the hell am I saying?”

  Sweeney put down his fork. “Why would I want to think that, McLeod? I’ve had a happy life so far, and I’ve got a beautiful girl waiting for me at home. We’re going to get married in the temple, we’ll have kids, and we’ll give them happy lives too. Why would I want to jeopardize all that? Why would I want to mess that up? The gospel works, McLeod. That’s what matters. And that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “That’s not what you told me,” McLeod said. “That night with you and Kimball, the night of our Slump Day party? Do you remember what you said? You said if I wasn’t going to at least try to believe it then why the hell stay out here? Why even finish the mission? That’s what you said.”

  Sweeney sighed, went back to his food. “I don’t know if I have the energy for this anymore.”

  “The gospel might work,” McLeod said, “or it might work for you, but that’s not the same as it being true. That’s not the same as actually believing it. Because for me, as far as I’m concerned, if I don’t believe it, it doesn’t work. I can’t just act my way through it anymore, recite the lines. If I could do that, who knows, maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn’t have all these problems. I wouldn’t be on my way to the mission president to confess, you know, the capital-P problem …”

  Sweeney looked up from his plate again, eyes brightening.

  “And don’t you smile at me like that,” McLeod said, but he smiled himself. “Look at you—now you’re interested. You are certifiable, you know that?”

  “The capital-P problem?” Sweeney said. “You mean—” He started into the hand motion.

  McLeod cut him short. “Yes,” he said. “The very one.”

  “Yeah?” Sweeney’s smirk grew wider, but he tilted his head. “You’re not stashing girlie mags or anything, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, okay, then. What’s the big deal? Are you really going to town or something?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s complicated?”

  McLeod nodded, held Sweeney’s gaze for several poker-faced seconds. He wouldn’t give anything about Josefina. He couldn’t. After a minute more Sweeney shrugged, and returned to his buffet plate.

  An hour later Elder McLeod sat in front of President Mason in the office he’d stalked out of two weeks earlier. He wanted absolution—he wanted a kind of cure—and there was only President Mason to play priest to McLeod’s penitent.

  “I know you’re probably surprised to see me,” he began.

  President Mason’s wide round face stretched tauter than usual, his eyebrows were raised. He wore a ready, almost open expression. He leaned back in his chair.

  “I mean,” McLeod continued, “I suppose I didn’t, I don’t know, acquit myself very well the last time I was here.”

  President Mason lifted his hand. “You certainly didn’t, Elder, but this isn’t necessary. It was a difficult situation. I know these new rules will help the work in the long run, but for now they’re very difficult. I understand that. In fact, I’ll admit that I admired the way you fought for your investigator.” President Mason lowered his head a bit. “But what did you really come here to tell me?”

  “I’m angry,” McLeod said, and his words surprised him. He kept speaking, and the words kept surprising. He was listening to sounds from some other person’s mouth. He confessed all the images and the masturbation, though he didn’t mention Josefina by name. He confessed the stagnation he felt, the sense of waste. He even talked about his father, how he longed to be like him—he longed for that steadiness, that ruddered certainty—and yet he didn’t believe any more than he had two years earlier, before he even decided on a mission.

  “But why are you angry?” President Mason said. “You said you’re angry. I don’t hear that in these cases very often.”

  “I guess I feel like I should be changing by now,” McLeod said, “but I know I’m not.”

  President Mason switched over to English. “It doesn’t come like lightning, you know. It might not fully happen during your mission—it might not happen for years. A deadline wasn’t promised. That wasn’t written into the contract.”

  His father had said things like this, things just like this. McLeod looked down, trying to reset the thought, but he was already back in his father’s office at the church. The stern assignments, the little pep talk. You’ll feel like you’re falling, because you are. A week after that McLeod had gone to Jen’s house, a surprise visit, a sort of ambush. Jen in the lighted frame of her doorway, her form backlit at the edges but mostly dark. He couldn’t make out her eyes. She wore a jacket and what looked like red pajama bottoms. Her parents were home, she said. Upstairs.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. Then silence. “Is that all?”

  “Can I come in, Jen? I want to apologize properly.”

  “I don’t think coming in is a good idea.”

  On the other side of the cul-de-sac a rasping motorcycle started its engine. McLeod turned around to look, the close-set headlights like feral eyes. The motorcyclist revved loudly, then peeled out down the street.

  “Nuisance,” Jen mumbled, and when McLeod turned around again she was shutting the door.

  Right in his face, he had told his father. But his father was unfazed. “She doesn’t have to forgive you,” he said. “It isn’t a contract. It isn’t about her—it’s about you.”

  McLeod blinked several times in the mission president’s office. He pursed his face to remember that the words in the air belonged to President Mason, the man bearing down on him with his watery blue eyes and his round, moony face. “A testimony will happen,” he was saying. “You’ve just got to be patient.”

  McLeod’s equilibrium returned. “Maybe it won’t, though. Maybe it never will happen for me. Maybe some people can believe, and others simply can’t. The ground is fertile for some but infertile—”

  The president shook his head. “That’s false doctrine, Elder. That’s predestination. Everyone is capable of belief if they’re worthy of it. To say otherwise is to deny our Heavenly Father’s plan for us, and His love for us. The Lord will open your heart, Elder, but it’ll happen on the Lord’s timetable, not yours.”

  President Mason reached down to the black valise at the side of his desk and rooted around in it. He produced a small, yellow, laminated card. “Your testimony will come sooner or later, Elder McLeod. I know that. God lives and loves us and wants nothing more than for us to return to live with Him in the eternities. I know that too.” President Mason held up the card. “And as for your other problem—read these tips and follow them to the letter.” He stood up and moved to the door with the card. “They’re just tips, as I said, but they’ve worked for others. The operative doctrine here is that God lives and loves us. He wants us to be worthy to return to Him. I’m glad you came in, Elder. I’m glad we talked.”

  The president pressed the yellow card into Elder McLeod’s hand, gave him a perfunctory hug, and ushered him out into the fo
yer, where Sweeney slouched on the floral-patterned couch. Sweeney straightened up. The president showed him a tight smile. He said to the both of them, still in English, “I trust your respective companions are together today?”

  McLeod and Sweeney nodded.

  “Missionary exchanges are okay now and then,” the president said, “but remember that companionship assignments don’t end on P-Day.”

  Sweeney nodded again, sat up even straighter, in the same spot and the same position, McLeod realized, that Josefina had sat in two weeks earlier. President Mason turned from the couch and said to McLeod, “I never did ask how that investigator of yours is doing, did I? What was her name again? I’m sorry I’m so bad with names.”

  “Josefina.”

  “Yes, Josefina. How is she? How’s her husband? Is he progressing at all?”

  “Not really,” McLeod said. “We’re still trying, though. We’ve got a few ideas. We’ve got a tentative appointment this coming Saturday, actually.”

  “Good. Keep up the good work. Keep trying. The both of you. Goodbye, Elders.”

  After the president went back into the bishop’s office Elder Sweeney sprang off the couch and snatched the yellow card from McLeod’s hand. “I knew it,” he hissed. “ ‘The Guide to Self-Control!’ Ooooh, and laminated now.”

  McLeod put a finger to his lips and motioned toward the door. Outside, he asked for the card back. “I haven’t had a chance to even see what it is.”

  “You don’t know ‘The Guide to Self-Control’?” Sweeney said. “Dude, this is a classic of Mormon literature! Anybody who’s really going to town gets this card.”

  “And how are you such an expert?”

  “I’ve been going to town my whole mission,” Sweeney said. “A little different for me, though, isn’t it? I’m thinking of Tiff, and that’s practically kosher.”

  “Is that right?”

  “T minus four months to homecoming,” he said, handing over the card. “T minus five months to the wedding.”

  THE GUIDE TO SELF-CONTROL

  1. Never touch the intimate parts of your body except during normal toilet processes. Avoid being alone as much as possible.

  2. When you bathe, do not admire yourself in a mirror. Never stay in the bath more than five or six minutes—just long enough to bathe and dry and dress.

  3. When in bed, if that is where you have your problem for the most part, dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your vital parts, and so that it would be difficult and time-consuming for you to remove these clothes.

  4. If the temptation seems overpowering while you are in bed, get out of bed and go into the kitchen and fix yourself a snack, even if it is in the middle of the night, and even if you are not hungry, and despite your fears of gaining weight.

  5. Put wholesome thoughts into your mind at all times. Read good books—church books, Scriptures, Sermons of the Brethren. Make a daily habit of reading at least one chapter of Scripture, preferably from one of the four Gospels in the New Testament, or the Book of Mormon. The four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—can be helpful because of their uplifting qualities.

  6. Pray. But when you pray, don’t pray about this problem, for that will tend to keep it in your mind more than ever. Pray for faith, pray for understanding of the Scriptures, pray for the General Authorities, your friends, your family, but keep the problem out of your mind by not mentioning it ever—not in conversation with others, not in your prayers. Keep it out of your mind!

  On Saturday morning the elders left the apartment after companionship study and prayer. It was now March 1, the worst of summer behind them, and McLeod could take heart at the sounds of birds beginning to chatter again in the standing-up sun, returned after the long weeks of swelter and animal silence. The world was just a little more balanced now, a little more calm.

  They were en route to pick up Rômulo. He had agreed to accompany them to Josefina’s in accordance with the mission’s newest rule, which Passos insisted that they keep, of course. Of course, if their surprise visit turned into an actual visit, a visit that featured Leandro, they wouldn’t need a chaperone, would they? The very fact that they’d planned to take Rômulo along meant they expected the plan not to work. Elder McLeod tried to check these thoughts—tried. But the good money put Josefina at the front door as her husband escaped, slithered out the back. On some level McLeod didn’t even want Leandro to be there. He didn’t think of him as a problem to be solved, as he knew Passos did, so much as a problem to be avoided.

  The elders passed the first bus stop, the Pentecostal church, the lumberyard and the empty lots beside it, and all the while Elder Passos made attempts at levity. “Elder White-ee,” he chanted softly. “Your hair is invisible, your head is free … of visible hair …” These attempts carried the force of nostalgia, a nostalgia for the recent. They recalled a time not more than a few weeks past when the elders could joke with each other with impunity, without fear of awakening latent grievances or tripping one wire by its mere proximity to another. McLeod remembered the first time Passos had called him whitey, something only Maurilho had called him, and Maurilho did it with love.

  So do I. Of course.

  Today it annoyed McLeod to hear the word in Passos’s mouth, but he swallowed his annoyance. At least his companion was trying.

  “Or maybe I should call you Elder Blond-ee,” Passos said. “Wouldn’t that be more descriptive?”

  “I think I prefer ‘whitey,’ actually.”

  “Elder White-ee,” Passos began again.

  They passed the other bus stop, and the paint store, approaching the side street that fed into the convoluted back way they sometimes took to get to Maurilho’s. Passos started down the side street now, but McLeod called him back. They were going to pick up Rômulo, right?

  “Yes,” Passos said, “but let’s go this way.” He pointed down the strip of bleached asphalt that curved away behind orange-brick property walls.

  “Maurilho’s right off the main road,” McLeod said. “This way’s faster.” He looked at his watch—half past ten—then turned out his wrist to show the time to Passos. “We can’t afford the scenic route, Elder. We want to try to catch Leandro before lunch, don’t we?”

  Passos glanced behind him, then up ahead at the drive-through’s unlit sign that rose high above the property wall.

  “Is it the drive-through?” McLeod said. “Nothing’s happening there now.”

  Passos still hesitated.

  “You won’t even walk past it during the day?” McLeod said.

  “I’d prefer not to.”

  “It’s almost ten thirty-five.” McLeod held out his watch again.

  “Fine, let’s go,” Passos said, and he caught up to McLeod and overtook him, now at a decidedly hurried pace.

  They knocked at Maurilho’s a few minutes later. Rômulo came to the front gate in his Sunday best: a short-sleeved white dress shirt, a blue tie, brown dress pants, neatly creased, and matching brown loafers that looked to have been polished, the leather dully shining in the sun. Rômulo also carried a shoulder bag with the strap running diagonally down his shirtfront and behind his tie, just as the missionaries wore their bags.

  “Look at this guy,” McLeod said. “All he needs now is a name tag!”

  “You ready to go?” Passos said.

  Rômulo nodded, blushing. He pulled the door shut behind him. Passos said they were short on time. Did Rômulo have money for bus fare? He did. At the end of the street Passos and McLeod turned left onto the main road. Rômulo called after them: “It’s actually faster to backtrack to the bus stop there.” He pointed right.

  The elders stopped, exchanged a look. At length Passos nodded, then the three of them retraced their steps along the sidewalk that passed the drive-through on their right.

  “What’s in the bag?” McLeod asked Rômulo.

  “Mostly my scriptures.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Will you look at this guy? And on a Sat
urday morning too. I figured you’d have just rolled out of bed after another night of partying. All that wild partying you do, right?”

  “Yeah, well,” Rômulo said, and he gestured up at the drive-through sign just as the three of them passed under it. “I did get woken up last night, though it wasn’t any party I’d ever go to. The noises from this place, man. You wouldn’t think they could carry that far. I had to get out of bed and shut the window.”

  “What do you mean?” McLeod said. “Do they have loudspeakers or something?”

  “Loudspeakers? No, I mean the … you know …” He raised his eyebrows, grimaced a bit. After a minute more Rômulo cocked his head at McLeod. “You know what a drive-through is, don’t you?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” McLeod said, just as he wasn’t anymore. He had first assumed that the lot contained a drive-through movie theater, a deserted one, or maybe an adult movie house that opened for business only after hours.

  Passos scoffed. “I thought you knew what it was. It’s not a drive-through like McDonald’s, Elder. You don’t buy your American burgers there.”

  “You buy sex,” Rômulo said. “It’s a brothel. Or I guess you could bring your mistress there in your car. I think they’ve got stalls where you can park, or rooms. I’m not sure. I haven’t been, obviously. I can tell you all about those noises, though, especially on the weekends. Man are they terrible.”

  Elder Passos and Rômulo kept walking, but Elder McLeod stood moored a few yards beyond the sign. He couldn’t even pretend to nonchalance. He had never actually seen a physical house of prostitution—he could hardly believe they really existed—and now here one stood in the broad bright daylight. It had been here the whole time he had been here, less than two miles from the apartment, hiding out in the open. Had it not been for the sign Elder McLeod would have assumed that the brown stucco wall enclosed an abandoned lot. All at once it made sense why his companion preferred to detour around this particular stretch of road. It was impossible to behold even the walls now without thinking of the sinfulness and impossible bravery of some men. McLeod ticked his gaze up the length of the sign like a mariner looking for directions, and a different sky wheeled into view.