long? Not long, right?”
“Not long.”
“You’re still a babe in Christ. No offence.”
“None taken.”
“Just a babe.” Now, I was offended. “Read the pamphlet and pray. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I trust God for that.”
“Alright. Thanks, Delbert.” I wanted to leave, but Moon’s motionless, leaden hand fixed me to the chair just as I used to press together freshly-pasted model parts while the glue set.
“Got something else that might interest you.” Moon stood to open a cupboard and, as though he’d raised me up himself, suddenly I was standing at his side.
His cupboard was overstuffed with paperbacks and cardboard boxes. Most of the books were arranged in neat piles with their spines aligned on the left; some were filed, two deep, in vertical rows; others lay at odd angles over the piles and rows like a layer of frosting squeezed from across the room. The boxes, I imagined, held more books. I was startled, not surprised, when I realized they were all copies of the same book.
“Like to read? You read much? Ever see this?” Moon grabbed a copy from the top of the nearest row and handed it to me. Its cover was a coarse charcoal sketch of a pair of empty sandals against a lurid taupe and purple background. The book smelled bad, almost mossy, as though the sandals could use a pair of Odor Eaters. The book was a Your Shoes Are Too Big, Lord.
“Take it. I’ve got others. I think you’ll find that the name of Beau Hammond isn’t exactly honoured around here — you’ll see why in the 8th chapter — but I find it a great devotional aid. If we’re going to ‘rightly divide the word of truth’ then we’re bound to make some unpopular choices. And I’m pretty unpopular,” he chuckled mirthlessly.
“Okay. Thanks, then.”
I squinted at the tract and the book in my palms, smelled the cover and felt a headache coming on.
“Why do you — I mean, all these books
“My uncle — he’s not really my uncle; more like an uncle in the Lord — my uncle has a little publishing company in Red Deer. He reprinted Shoes a couple of years ago. He always figured someone had it in for Hammond. I’m not saying it was Reverend Barstowe. All I know is my mother’s going to heaven because of this book.”
“Wow. It must be good.”
“Precisely.”
I thanked him again and told him I had to run. He said he’d like to talk again soon; perhaps we could have devotions together sometime? I said that sounded fine.
I knew he was nuts, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right.
4
God is not a magician, but a Harry Houdini: a cosmic escape artist cheating Death and the Devil with a twinkle in his eye. The world wiggles with enchantment: a bothered nose, dripping blood like an Amityville faucet, recalls the blessed spigot tapping the veins of the sinless Son of Man. A smudge of rainbow in a puddle of gasoline pictures God’s promise and threat that never again will the world be destroyed by water. Next time, it’s fire.
Christ wears our flesh more comfortably than a politician dons hard hats and headdresses at election time. Of course, having once ascended to the right hand of the Father He reigns forever, but He doesn’t neglect his constituency. He still cares about all his flock’s lost loves and odd socks. Take the time to pray — always more expedient than writing your member of parliament — and every wrong will be righted and every hurt avenged in one world or another. Nothing is too trivial to escape the attention of a personal saviour: a comforting thought for a teenage fundamentalist with a clean conscious; a thought that sometimes haunted me at three in the morning.
When home for Christmas my first year of Bible School I began to suspect that my stereo, specifically my tape deck, was demon possessed. As Lucifer and a third of the angels fell on account of pride, and as my equipment — down to its three fat knobs for volume, balance and tone — was a 15-watt exercise in humility, I thought it judicious not to jump to conclusions. I only owned one Black Sabbath LP and had gone off Alice Cooper since my conversion. (Though as I anticipated Christmas break, I’d softly sung “School’s Out” to myself a couple of times.) Most significantly, I never played anything backwards. But if there was one area of my life that I hadn’t surrendered to the Lord (two, including my monkey-boy libido — Onan the Barbarian, another sweaty-palmed virgin for Christ), I had to admit it was my love of rock music.
Overcomer’s music policy was strict but fair, forbidding as it did almost everything composed since the death of Sousa. This meant leaving my scratchy Stones albums at home for the school term. (I’d left Frampton Comes Alive in my mother’s basement for the long, long term.) Rumours of Bob Dylan’s baptism in Pat Boone’s swimming pool lifted my spirits, encouraging me to hope that someday O.B.I. might come to accept that redemption could have a back beat. Until that great day, I determined that while on campus I would faithfully observe the music policy. Christmas vacation was another matter.
Of course I wanted to see my family, but I hadn’t heard “Tumbling Dice” for three and a half months. In early December, during a pop quiz on the Pelagian theory of sanctification, I even found a moment to fantasize of my earthly reward: a big bottle of Coke, a family-sized bag of barbecue Lays and my precious, unscathed copy of Exile on Main Street.
Things took a turn for the unearthly my second night home. Exile was cooling on the turntable and I was lying on my bed nodding off to Your Shoes Are too Big, Lord. Beau Hammond had just defended his dropping out of a B.C. Baptist seminary as “all I could do to salvage my soul. I’d been Daniel in a den of perverts, antinomians and closet hyper-Calvinists,” when the Best of the Doobie Brothers fell from the cassette rack that stood on top of the receiver, and broke apart on a blue cotton throw rug at the foot of the bed. The sudden clatter at the margins of my sleep was startling, but I didn’t suspect the machinations of “?l” Sooty Face” (Hammond’s words) quite yet. The cassette rack was no more than an inch from the stereo’s edge, and I figured that even 15 watts could have danced a tape that distance. I returned the Doobies to the rack, which I moved a couple of inches back from the corner, closed the book, jerked off remorsefully and fell asleep.
About four o’clock that morning I awoke to the sound of rolling, deep-throated laughter coming from my speakers.
I moved reflexively to turn off the stereo, but froze in the dark. There was no warm, green glow from the wave band indicator — I hadn’t left it on. Listening to the chortling basso profundo, I sat upright and clasped my arms around my shins, telling myself I was awake. The laughter lasted about forty-five seconds, but it faded so gradually I couldn’t tell the moment when it became a fearful memory. After a while I turned on a light, wondering why I’d sat in the dark through the whole thing, prayed, then tried to read more of Hammond but was too rattled. Still, having a book in bed with me settled my nerves some, but by the time I was relaxed enough to read it I was too sleepy to turn a page. With the foggy rationale of someone who, despite everything, is suddenly and truly tired, I decided to worry about it in the morning. (Though I also decided against turning off the light.) When I rose about six to take a piss I was ready to believe I’d dreamt the whole thing. Almost, that is, until I noticed my Best of the Doobie Brothers tape, shattered again, lying at the foot of my bed.
I was flustered, though not as spooked as one might expect. Since Filmore’s fall from the cliff, and particularly since my growing acquaintance with Delbert and his peculiar, sacred obsessions, I’d been feeling an encroachment of supernatural powers upon my person; as though I were Ground Zero in an intimate, other-worldly war. This wasn’t a big deal — it was nothing but the Christian life. The air hung heavy with the cloud of witnesses from Hebrews 12:1, and was so charged with angels and demons that when their spiritual brawling finally opened a second front in the material world I practically said, “What took you so long?” I heard no more laughter, but over the next couple of nights, despite