fingers folded together at his groin around a sandy brown vinyl Bible. His thinning hair was the colour of his scriptures. His features were rudimentary and wholly forgettable.
“He didn’t jump. It was an accident.”
“Oh, right. Accident.” He spoke it as though the word lied against God and Heaven. “Sorry, brother. Guess I missed that part. We were late getting in from Calgary.” Open-air evangelism, I imagined; O.B.I.’s Friday night crusade on the 12th Street Mall. Two Christian service points towards graduation. Two points of 50. “Still, no accidents with the Lord, eh?”
“He was trying to sneak up on me and this girl because we weren’t singing. I’m not sure exactly what he was planning; just fooling around. Breaking the ice, I guess.”
“Praise the Lord
“It’s like God made him fall just for you…”
“Kinda funny your church is called Cliffside, said Ferly Norman, the short, red-haired running-back of the senior loot- ball team. (Everyone called him “Tennessee” because he had an aunt in Nashville, though he’d lived all his life in Saskatoon. The name was his idea. He refused to answer to I Ferly and we respected that.) There were nods and grunts of agreement all around our circle.
“It’s the name of the street the church is on, but for that to be a coincidence …. I mean, the odds must be pretty wild.”
“Astronomical,” someone swooned.
“How about one more song before we pack it in?” Loveless suggested, picking over the salty husks of an earlier batch of popcorn. “Before I forget, remember to grab some turnips on the way out. Remember to thank the Newtons. A card, maybe, would be nice.”
‘“When the Roll is Called Up Yonder’?” Jerry “Nebraska” Cheeseman — my roommate and proud Nebraskan — suggested.
“Just three verses. Only 10 minutes before lights out.”
In the dream Jesus says, “Fear not, I am with you always,” and I believe him. I believe him even as our heavenly ascent is arrested; even as the bottom falls out of the world and I squeeze my eyes shut against the hole we’re tearing in the sky. The air as we drop chafes my face and in the strange roar of metal, wood and wind I can’t tell if I’m screaming, and I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t. I want to cover my ears but my hands are not about to let go of the steel bar that spans my lap. Is Jesus still there? Has he lied to me? I cock my head towards where he’s supposed to be, dare a peek, and there he is: head snapped back with a laugh, thick curls blowing freely, his arms and wounded hands thrown carelessly high, all for the lovely hell of it.
In the Overcomer handbook, on page iii, I read this:
Welcome, Soldier!
That’s right: a soldier in the army of the Lord! First you enlisted by confessing Christ as Saviour. Now it’s time for boot camp, where you’ll learn how to better wield your weapons of the faith. (“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world .…” Ephesians 6:12)
You’ve probably heard all kinds of stories about Overcomer. (No, we don’t have blue sidewalks for men and pink for girls!) It is true, though, that we are a Bible school with a difference; a difference for which we make no apologies. What sets us apart from many other institutions of Christian learning is our philosophy of education, which encourages a personal RELATIONSHIP between the student and God’s precious Word. Given this, it is important that worldly distractions be kept to an absolute MINIMUM. Still, you’ll find a cheery atmosphere and many new friends with whom you can grow in the Lord.
I folded it back among the socks and cookies of my shoulder bag, then switched off the overhead light which had obscured the prairie night outside the bus. I’d read it many times already, and this was my first Alberta sky, one week before the dormitory floor “sing η share.”
My father had driven me to the airport without many words left besides “Take care” and “I hope you know what you’re doing.” I’d expected him to fight my conversion like he had my mother’s, but apart from a fit the first time he saw me bow my head over a plate of gluey macaroni, there was nothing. Before I could ask him — before I knew that I could — he had paid for my flight and tuition.
The Greyhound from Calgary made five scheduled stops before Three Trees and two after, but we didn’t need to ask each other, “Are you going there, too?” — though we did. It was easiest to single out the male students. Our fabrics gave us away (too many double-knit polyester trousers; too little denim), or our haircuts (too short or too long or just right: whatever, they’d been paid too much attention), or our reflexive, embarrassing way of being in the world: a smug, godly Nya-Nya that said, “I know something you don’t know.” Female Bible schoolers were tough to spot. Every woman in Alberta dressed alike and looked equally God-fearing to me.
Airdrie; Crossfield; Acme …. The Christians had collected in the back of the bus, and by the time we reached Carbon we were singing all four verses of “Amazing Grace” with guitar accompaniment. I sang, too, but softly, not wishing to be a righteous nuisance to the half of the bus which didn’t share our destination in this world and the next. From across the aisle I watched a beautiful sophomore named Monica close her eyes and raise her open palms to heaven (though only to shoulder height, so as not to draw attention to herself), while a track of tears glistened on her cheek like a scar from a duel with the Devil. That first night, as I turned back to the window and the cold dank of the world, the wheat fields seemed as strange to me as lunar seas.
“Uncle Corey used to have this expression at the dinner table — I ever tell you boys about ?I’ Corey? — Anyhow, he used to say, ‘Not as good as skinned cat’.”
“Jeepers, Jerry,” Montana whooped. “We’re eating.”(Kansas, Montana, Tennessee …. In four years not once did I meet a student nicknamed Yukon or Manitoba or Prince Edward Island, though I did meet a guy from Fredericton who called himself “Dallas.”)
“No matter what he was served, whenever we’d ask how it was, that’s what he’d say.”
“Did he ever eat here? Anybody know what this is?”
“So anyway, we all got a little tired of hearing this —”
“Why didn’t you just stop asking him?”
“So just before Corey’s next visit Dad went and caught this stray cat.”
“No way!”
“Mom wasn’t sure what to do with it, but figured the meat’d look like chicken anyway. So when dinner came around there we were, right, all with barbecue chicken in front of us except Uncle Corey. We could hardly keep a straight face, watching him shovel it down. Good it was a big ‘o1 tab; he couldn’t get enough. When he was sopping up the plate with the corn bread Dad asked him how it was. ‘Great’, he says. ‘Not as good as skinned cat, of course.’ Well, we all start hooting, and the look on Corey’s face … man, I wish I had a camera. And then of course he pukes right there.”
This was my first supper in the O.B.I. dining room, and the last meal I intended to share with my roommate Jerry Cheeseman. The day before I arrived on campus, he had tacked a huge ?l’ Glory Stars and Stripes to the wall at the foot of the top bunk, and taken the bottom bunk for himself. “Don’t mind the flag, bro’,” he’d told me before introducing himself. “They call it North America, right?” Jerry was an unabashed John Bircher who could not wrap his head around the idea of Canada. He loved Canada — what he’d seen of southern Alberta looked just like home — but our untimely Thanksgiving, three down football and universal health care seemed either whimsically foreign or perilously un-American. Gingerly, I let Jerry know how I felt about the stars and bars being the first thing I’d see between my legs by the dawn’s early light. He suggested we switch beds. I agreed, not expecting him to continue his habit of kneeling next to the lower bunk for prayer. After his evening’s