but Patti and I had finished eating and were beginning a crowd pleaser called “We’re from Nairobi” when I noticed two figures stamping towards the clearing.
We’re from Nairobi and we’re on best team
We do the watusi we’re seven feet tall.
Patti still had a couple of marshmallows melting on her whittled maple twig, and I had room for at least one more Shopsy’s dog, so I coolly lifted one from Tallboys’ bag while he kept on singing and thrashing and impaled it to half its length through the circular seam of its prick end.
The cannibals may eat us
But they’ll never beat us
‘Cause we’re from Nairobi and we’re on the ball.
Sing along! Sing ALONG!! SING ALONG!!!
I’d refused to join in since Leimerman had led the group through the opening number, “Rodney the Round-Eyed Chinaman.” It was an ugly doggerel of pigeon English which frequently required both hands pulling one’s eyelids tight or forming the point of a coolie’s hat above one’s head. I chose to protest silently, eating early and often throughout the song, filling my hands and mouth as much as possible, She might just have been hungry, but Patti did the same.
“We’re from Nairobi” called for us to leap up at the end of each verse, beat our arms and stomp our feet wildly, and chant “Ungawa! Ungawa! Ungawa! Ungawa! Ungawa! Ungawa! UngaWAWAa!!” It was a favourite of the counsellors.
As the second verse began, Drieger ambled out of the darkness, while Pastor Filmore stepped softly into deeper shadows. He disappeared to my right, in the direction of the counsellors’ piss-bathed bush. I ate my hot dog and didn’t think much of it, until during the chorus I heard the scrabbling of rubber soles on rock and a shower of gravel off the cliff face.
“Um, I think maybe —”
“Pastor?” Drieger looked puzzled as he entered our circle and the fire danced in his eyes. The singing stopped. “Pastor Filmore? He was right behind me …”
“He’s fallen over the cliff!” Terry’s voice was a mix of horror and delight at having scooped the rest of us.
“Oh, my Lord! No!”
Patti was on her feet and with me as we scampered to the edge of the rock, where Tallboys fell to his belly and slithered until his head and shoulders were suspended in space. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bleated Filmore’s name. Then we all called.
“Shut up!” Tallboys snapped. But there was no one answering. No sound at all.
“Drew,” said Drieger calmly as he knelt beside him, “we’ve got to go down there.”
Tallboys nodded. “You and me.” He threw himself erect, ran to the circle and grabbed the nearest pair of flashlights. He whispered a brief something to Yano, who had been hanging back close to the fire, and disappeared with Drieger.
“Everybody now, come on, back away from the edge there,” said Yano with a tremulous voice. He wasn’t built for life in the bush — his arms and legs were marked with appalling bruises from turning over in his sleep — but as a recent graduate of Overcomer Bible Institute, Yano commanded respect as the camp’s uncontested spiritual leader. (Though he wouldn’t join the other counsellors in their pissing contests, he also refused to cast judgement upon them, deciding it was between them and the Lord.) In the gross physicality of Muskoka he seemed like a skittish house cat left with strangers for a weekend, looking for a low table to crawl beneath. “Let’s gather around the campfire and pray,” he suggested.
Patti moved towards Yano on the opposite side of the fire, and I moved towards Patti to close the circle. I barely noticed when Patti took my hand. I glanced at her and saw her eyes were shut tight, her mouth open and moving without making a sound.
“Oh Lord,” Marinda began uncertainly, and then was racked with sobs. “Please, Lord —”
“Jesus,” whimpered Terry. “I just —”
“Please let Pastor Filmore be okay.”
“Yes, God.” It was Patti. I knew it was her more by the tensing of her palm than by the sound of her voice. It was remote and humourless. It was as if I’d never heard it before.
“God,” I managed to say after a long silence “just make everything better.” Yelps of aniens and tears surrounded me. Then I squeezed my eyes shut.
I opened them at last during Yano’s scripturally-rich yet rambling prayer, at the sound of voices and cracking twigs outside our small circle. I squinted through the smoke and falling cinders and could make out three figures in the flames, burning yet unconsumed. The large shape in the middle had his arms outstretched upon the shoulders of his two companions. As he approached, I saw across his forehead a dark slash of blood. His shirt was ripped at the belly where it had snagged on a branch. At first his face seemed expressionless, but as he drew closer I realized it had jammed at a singular moment of astonishment. Yano poured a cup of grape Freshee from his thermos and rushed to his side. Patti squeezed my damp palm even harder.
“He landed between two huge boulders!” Tallboys shouted. “A little to either side and he’d be dead for sure!” He handed Yano the flashlight he’d grabbed, who then set it down within the fire circle.
“You used this flashlight?” Patti breathed. “It’s mine. I’ve been trying to get it to work for days.” She took her hand from mine and pressed it to her forehead. “It’s a miracle,” she whispered, trying to understand.
“I’m a miracle,” Filmore mumbled as he passed us, a dribble of blood streaking his cheek and spotting the grass at Patti’s feet. Then he stopped and looked back at me with wide, vacant eyes.
“You,” he said, feebly pointing. “I was coming up behind you. Sneak up. Surprise. You weren’t singing. Meant to surprise. Supposed to be funny. Jesus…!”
Five minutes later I knelt with Patti and two others beyond the circle of the fire, where the black flies were thickest, and asked Jesus to enter my dumbfounded heart.
3
“So basically,” I said, taking a deep breath full of sock dust lifted from the crusty, amber shag carpet and borne upon the buttery steam of fresh popcorn, “that’s how I came to know the Lord.”
I scooped a few kernels onto a paper napkin which was so oily I could see through it to the arm of the lavender sofa and passed the bowl to Dylan Geisler, a jumpy sophomore who had been crossing and uncrossing his legs all evening. All we’d heard from Dylan had been a timorous “Praise God” when Tibo Fung described his exorcism in the Marshall Islands. Dylan whispered thanks and held the bowl tightly in his lap with both hands, and didn’t eat from it.
“Wow,” Joel Kajinsky murmured, bobbing his head like a lazy oil pump. Half of the two dozen other heads of the other occupants of the fourth floor of the Abner Henry Residence for Men did the same. “Heavy conversion, brother. Why’d you decide on Overcomer?” Donny Loveless, our floor leader, glanced at his Timex and rested his forearm immodestly upon the hip of his acoustic guitar.
Overcomer Bible Institute — in the world (though just barely, so it seemed) but not of it, artifact of dustbowl revivalism and factory outlet of global evangelism — God’s big house in south central Alberta. I was there because I’d asked Jesus to help me pass my final high school geometry exam and the answer was “No.” I accepted my 27% as a sign that Christ wanted me at a Christian college. O.B.I.’s academic admission requirements were not nearly as demanding as its measure of godly character.
“Because of its strong missions emphasis and commitment to the Word,” I told Joel.
“Excuse me, bro’.” It was a serene voice that I didn’t recognize, addressing me from a doorway obscured by a brass lamp and pressboard bookcase laden with 20 years of Reader’s Digests and