by Jacob Beaver
After leaving Goose, we drove to Lee Buckner’s house. I’ve no idea what Steve had planned, though he probably told me. But it doesn’t matter. Buckner wasn’t there, and neither was his truck. Tino shot some “cutaways” of the lake, in case they were needed later, and Dave recorded “buzz tracks” for the same reason, I think. Steve didn’t do anything, just paced in circles and then said we should go, at which point we must have returned to the motel. I know that because I bought two barbecue sandwiches and ate them with Summer.
She was alone in the office. Nobody walked in, and the phone didn’t ring. We talked for a long time, me leaning on the counter and her tipped back in an office chair. I told her about my ex, how she’d vamoosed with the TV producer and I moved in with my parents, which was humiliating at thirty-five, and Summer said she knew all about that. Here she was, a grown woman, a mother, still living with her own mother—or her mother was living with her. And we talked about other things. Summer was really into hiking, she said, and this area was famous for its mountain trails. Some of them were Indian. Daniel Boone might have used them. She drew maps of her favorite trails, including one to a waterfall and another, very steep, that led to a beautiful bald.
“What’s bald?”
“That’s the name. A bald is a grassy place on top of a mountain. People used to put their cows up there in summer, and they’d have family picnics. Momma talks about it, how divine it was. The cows kept the grass down, you see, which ain’t the case now. Now the mountains are protected. They’re supposed to be natural, whatever that means. Ain’t we part of nature? Momma hates the Forest Service, calls ’em a bunch of eggheads.”
Summer grinned and blinked her green eyes, and I thought, I love you. It just came to me. Like a voice. I love you.
“Can I tell you something?” I said. “I haven’t told this to anybody, but I was contemplating suicide. That’s what people say, isn’t it? Contemplating. Like it’s a decision. I don’t think it’s that at all, or not until the very last moment, maybe, when the decision makes itself. Suddenly you’re done. You’ve reached the end. That’s all, folks.”
Her eyes stayed on me as I spoke, and then stayed after I spoke, each of us looking at the other in a deep well of silence that seemed to expand beyond the room, out into the silent parking lot, the silent trees, the silent sky.
“Don’t do it, John. Please don’t do it.”
“No, I won’t,” I said. “I don’t want to. I don’t even know why I said that. Let’s change the subject . . . Hiking. I’d like to go hiking. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Are you off?”
“I’m off all weekend, but I’m taking Momma to see her sister in Nashville. We’re going this afternoon.”
“Can you go another time? We’re flying back on Tuesday, which only leaves Monday and—”
“They planned it months ago, and Momma don’t like to drive. I’m sorry, I really am.”
“Me too,” I said. “Me too.”
What could I do?
* * *
I walked to the waterfall on my own. It was another cold day, with spitting rain. The rain didn’t touch me though, because the trail stayed in the trees. It began near the motel and wound uphill, crisscrossing the same creek, and ended at a wide pool. Above the pool, glittering against slabs of black rock, were the white veins of the waterfall. It went up and up, higher than the trees, and the trees were huge. Vines hung down as thick as the branches, which made me think of monkeys, stupidly, but that reminded me about bears. Summer had said to watch for them. If I met a bear, I should stand my ground and see what happened. See what happened? As my mother would say, famous last words.
The next day, Sunday, was even colder. I wore my leather jacket but wished I’d brought something smarter, because we went to church. I needn’t have worried. Buckner’s congregation were casual dressers. There were fifteen of them, mostly older people, and one very old—a plump woman in a wheelchair. She might have been more than plump, actually, but the person behind her confused my sense of scale. Pushing the wheelchair was a young man the size of a weather balloon. He was the largest human I’ve ever seen standing up, if you call it standing. The wheelchair clearly served two purposes.
Inside, the church was shadowy dark—because it was a barn, of course, and also both entrances had been sealed. The only light came from two low windows with fake leading. Looking up, I saw great beams disappearing into blackness, and a few tiny spots of daylight, like stars.
Lee Buckner was sitting on a low platform, beside a tall wooden box. His pulpit, I guessed. He nodded to us and looked away. I sat down with Steve and Tino, leaving Dave at the back with the boom mike. They’d decided to record audio only, to be sensitive, though I didn’t see what difference that made. I’d suggested asking permission, and Steve said he had permission: the signed consent agreement.
Now Lee stood and spread his arms.
“Welcome y’all,” he said. “Oh welcome, beloved.”
He called us “beloved” over and over, and told us to “listen, beloved” because he had “wunnerful news.” It wasn’t what I’d expected. In all the movies, backwoods churches are filled with shouting and singing, but Lee never raised his voice. He just stood in the twilight of the old barn and spoke about the parables of Jesus. I recognized some of them, vaguely. The others were news to me. Mysterious news. He said something about a king with ten thousand men, and that was related to the savor of salt and the building of a tower, all of which went over my head. But then he picked up a Bible and read from it. “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26.”
He said it so gently. You could tell he didn’t hate anyone. Then he started to cry.
I cried too, though I hid it from Steve.
Lee asked us to pray with him, and he mentioned several friends who were suffering, one from emphysema and another from loneliness, and then he produced a coffee can and handed it to someone at the front. Each person put money in the can and passed it to the next person and got up and walked out. Tino put in five dollars. Steve took the five out and put in ten. I put in more than ten, but I won’t say how much.
I’m not sure if Lee came outside. Steve persuaded several people to do interviews on the spot, so I was busy with the clearance forms. The last interviewee was the old woman in the wheelchair, who turned out to be charming. She joked about my pale skin and gave me a big green apple. Her grandson had picked it that morning, she said, and she’d put it in her purse and brought it to church, because she knew that someone would enjoy a nice apple, and that someone was me. Then she told Steve that Buckner was a prophet, a modern-day prophet in the wilderness, and that she believed he had the power to heal the sick. He’d walked on water, so why not this? Buckner hadn’t tried it yet, but she hoped he would lay hands on her grandson, who was battling diabetes.
Her grandson was the weather balloon. He had a squeaky voice and laughed a lot. When Steve asked him what he thought of Lee Buckner, he said, “Oh, he’s good. He’s real good. You see him cry? Yeah, he’s a crier. But he’s good. Ain’t he good, beloved?” And he gave a squeaky laugh.
After that, the other three drove off somewhere, maybe to eat. I walked down the road until I came to a tree with a red circle on it. The trail to the grassy bald began here, according to Summer’s map. “red paint on tree,” she’d written, and drawn a vertical arrow upwards.
Her map was accurate. That trail went straight up the mountain. What with all the rocks and tree roots, and the endless thickets of laurel (which Summer called “roughs,” for good reason), it took me three hours to get to the top. But I’m glad I did. Just as I clambered up through the last trees, the sun came out. I felt its heat and stopped to catch my breath, and then I saw where I was. Before me lay a broad green meadow ringed by misty peaks and brilliant bursts of cloud. It looked like a TV ad I’d worked on earlier that year, but without the naked woman holdin
g a bottle of shampoo, and all the people milling around the studio, and all the other people outside in the streets, milling around and yammering on their phones. There was just this, there was just me.
I sat in the grass and ate the apple I’d been given, and I thought about my life, and about Summer. Green apple, green grass, green eyes. That picture often returns to me, especially in dreams. It must be down deep. I imagine that when I die it’ll be among the last things to go, along with the sound of my mother’s voice and the silence of English rain.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but at some point I realized that I didn’t feel sad, or angry, or jealous, or excited, or anything else. I didn’t feel good or bad. I was . . . peaceful. That’s the only word for it. My sadness and anger hadn’t left me, and would probably never leave, nor would jealousy and excitement and all the rest, but now I understood that, and I was at peace with it. Because the hell that I carried with me was me. But that didn’t mean I was in hell. It meant I was beginning to see through myself, to see the world around me, and what I saw was the hand of God.
Does that touch you in any way? Does it even make sense to you? As I say it, the moment slips away from me, and I have to close my eyes and recapture it. Let me try again. I’ll put it as simply as I can.
I went up the mountain and sat in the grass and ate an apple. Nothing happened at all, on the outside, except that the sun came out. But the sun also came out inside me. Remember what I said about laughter? I said laughter is a ripple of light from above, a parting of the dark seas, a glimpse of forever. That’s how it was. It was like laughter.
* * *
I came down the mountain in the last thin sunshine. It was hard on the knees and I had to watch my step, so I almost missed the man on the rock. About halfway down, in a clearing above the lake, a man sat cross-legged on a mossy boulder, leaves drifting around him. He had his back to me and his head bent forward, but I thought I recognized him, and then I was sure of it. I saw the dark explosion of hair.
“Hello, Lee,” I said. “Am I disturbing you?”
He slipped down from the rock and shook my hand.
“Howdy,” he said. “I was jest reading my Bible. You ain’t disturbing me one bit. I’m happy to see ye, John. Airish, ain’t it?”
“Sorry?”
“Cold,” he said. “It’s getting cold. You been up on the mountain?”
I told him what I’d been doing and how much I’d enjoyed it, but that didn’t begin to describe the experience, so I went into more detail, a lot more. I don’t recall what I said. Even as I was speaking, the words seemed to fade like smoke, and I couldn’t tell if any of them reached Lee. He stood very still, watching me, until I finally shut up. Then he nodded and said, “I hear ye.”
“Oh, man,” I said. “I’m rabbiting.”
“Say what?”
“Talking too much.”
“No, no,” he said. “You’re jest a-talkin’ and I’m jest a-listenin’. Now you can listen and I’ll talk. Jesus, he went up a mountain. D’you know it? Okay, I’ll tell you. It was a high mountain, and on top of it God spoke to Jesus. He spoke out of a cloud and Jesus was revealed to the disciples. The Bible says transfigured. Jesus was transfigured before ’em, and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. Matthew 17:2.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” he said.
I gazed at the lake. From up here, the water looked smooth and strangely solid, like a dark pool of wax spread through the trees.
“They call it Watauga Lake,” Lee said, “but it ain’t a lake. It’s a reservoir. They’s a whole system of reservoirs running to the Tennessee River. They drop ’em in winter. This one drops ’bout ten feet. You go out in a boat, you can look down and see houses. That’s the old town of Butler.”
Both of us were quiet then, facing the lake. It was an easy quiet, the kind that goes on until someone feels like breaking it.
“John, I’ve a mind to pray. Will you pray with me?”
“Well . . . all right.”
“What’s your name?”
“My last name? Mallory.”
As the leaves fell around us, red and yellow, catching the sun, Lee bowed his head and I bowed mine, and he gave this short prayer:
“Lord, please holp this man, John Mallory. Holp him find his way. Guide him and comfort him and bring him to ye. Save him, Lord. That’s what I’m axing. Please save John Mallory. He’s an honest feller, and a real nice feller, and I’m a-gettin’ to like him, Lord, and I thank you for this day. It’s been a good ’un. Amen.”
Lee raised his head and looked at me, and a smile came into his eyes. I felt that wind blow through me, and I smiled too. Then he walked over to the rock. He came back with something in his hand.
“John, this is for you. It’s a red-letter Bible. That means the words of Jesus are in red. If I was you, I’d start with Jesus. Start with Jesus and end with Jesus. Oh yeah! There’s the recipe for a sweet life.”
“Is that your Bible? Didn’t someone give it to you? No, Lee. I mean, thank you, but I can’t accept that.”
“Sure you can. They’s beaucoups of Bibles. I got plenty others.”
“But it’s important to you.”
“It was important to me. Now it’ll be important to you. Please, John, take it.”
I took it.
* * *
“It’s a reservoir? And they drop it? In winter they drop it?”
“That’s what he said.”
“They bloody drop it!”
“So what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me? And why did he tell you?”
“He just told me, and I didn’t think you’d be interested.”
“Interested? John, what the fuck? I’m a journalist. I’m following a story. Everything interests me.”
It was late afternoon and we were sitting in Steve’s room. They’d spent the day doing “admin,” as Steve called it, which basically involved labeling tapes and cans of film, and arguing about what went with what. I’d been trying to catch Summer alone. Each time I walked past the office I saw this little white-haired woman in a flowery dress. She was either on the phone or waving a finger in the air. Summer acted like she was waving a knife. She seemed to be backing away.
Now Steve stood up and started kicking clothes around. He found his bouncy shoes, tightened the Velcro straps and headed for the door.
“Come on, you lot,” he said. “We’re going to see Buckner. He’s beginning to crack, I think, or maybe he’s playing with us. That’s okay. We can play too. Let’s give this one last shot. Tino and Dave, you better be ready. This is action stations. We’re going in hot.”
So we all piled into the car and set off for Lee’s house. Steve drove fast. It seemed like we got there in five minutes. As we came down the driveway, Lee walked out from the trees around the house. His chest was bare and he was holding an ax. He leaned the ax against a tree and watched us come.
We crossed the yard like soldiers, Steve walking point, Tino behind aiming the camera, and Dave and me in the rear lugging equipment. We stopped about ten feet from Lee, who folded his tattooed arms across his tattooed chest. For a moment no one spoke. The only sound was that bird I’d heard before. It seemed to be right above us, singing its heart out.
“Well, Lee, we’re leaving tomorrow,” Steve said. “I’ve been thinking, and I’d like to make you a proposition. If you let us film you walk on water, we’ll do it however you say. You decide where the camera goes. Put it anywhere. A hundred yards away, if you want. And we won’t zoom in. No close-ups, I promise. I also promise that people will see the film and be amazed, and you’ll spread the word of Christ. You’ll be doing God’s work. What d’you say?”
Lee didn’t say anything, just stared.
“Look, I understand what you’re doing. You’re changing people’s lives through the power of belief. Can you really walk on water? Who’s to know? And what’s the difference, as long as people believ
e it?”
Lee didn’t blink.
“How about if we put down the camera? Go off record? It’ll be just between us. Is there something you’d like to say? Now is the time, before we go. I don’t want to cast you in a bad light, but . . . I can see the water down there is shallow, and I know they drop it in winter.”
More silence, more birdsong. Then Lee spoke. He spoke softer than the bird.
“O thou of little faith. Matthew 14:31.”
Steve nodded.
“Faith, right. That’s what all this is about. Faith trumps fact. I get it. But still, there are facts, and I bet they’re sitting under the water. I bet they’re made of wood and anchored down somehow, and every now and then they get moved somewhere else. Shall we walk down there and see?”
Lee picked up the ax and looked over our heads, maybe at a passing car, except I didn’t hear a car. The bird above us had stopped singing. It was very quiet.
Lee’s voice came in a whisper, then gradually got louder, until he was almost shouting.
“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”
His voice sunk to a whisper again.
“Revelation 22:14.”
Lee turned and walked off into the trees. The last we saw of him was the rebel flag tattooed on his back. It rippled away through the branches and was gone.
