Simple Simon

by William Poe

  Randall looked at me with something like alarm.

  “It wasn’t black magic or anything,” I said. “My aunt was a spiritualist—maybe a white witch or something.”

  “I wasn’t thinking badly of your aunt,” Randall said. “I was just considering…” He paused, carefully choosing his next words. “At first, I couldn’t be sure. The spirits that accompany you are hard to read, but I’ve no doubt. You have strong ancestors. They led you here.”

  I felt a tingling sensation in my lower back. The idea that my ancestors had guided me wasn’t necessarily a pleasant thought. I imagined old JT standing next to me with a rope dangling around his neck.

  We took a break and made snacks in the kitchen, chopping celery sticks and slicing carrots to dip into a dressing made of mayonnaise and ketchup. When no one was looking, I went to the back porch and examined a stack of oblong boxes. They bore labels from a greenhouse in Colorado. Other boxes overflowed with bags of peanuts. The porch was rich with the aromas of fresh carnations and roasted nuts.

  Randall came to the doorway.

  “Do people really buy this stuff?” I asked.

  “Fundraising isn’t easy, but we believe when people make donations, they benefit spiritually. Money symbolically represents the universe. When we use donated funds to build God’s kingdom, it serves as an offering.”

  “Like karma,” I suggested.

  “Not a bad way to think about it.”

  I couldn’t imagine Stanley selling flowers.

  Randall sensed what was on my mind. “Don’t worry,” he said. “No one is asked to fundraise who isn’t ready.”

  Jim had recovered enough to continue with lectures, but Mary tutored him separately. Randall taught me, one-on-one, late into the afternoon. Though the group believed that Jesus was “one with God,” the other two blessings remained unfulfilled. Since Jesus could not establish a foundation for marriage, and instead offered himself as atonement for people’s disbelief, God sent the Holy Spirit as a sort of spiritual wife. After a person died, Jesus would resurrect believers to a realm called Paradise. Paradise opened to those who were adopted, or born-again, into the spiritual family of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

  “And so,” Randall concluded the afternoon discussion, “Christians speak of a second coming because Jesus was not able to fully realize God’s kingdom here on earth. That task awaits the arrival of a third Adam.”

  Divine Principle theology made sense of issues that had long troubled Christian thinkers, and which I knew well from the many books I had read about Christian heresies. I thought especially about the fourth-century battles concerning the nature of the relationship between “the Father” and “the Son.” Early Christians had so much difficulty with the concept of the Holy Spirit that they mostly avoided the topic. This group seemed to have answers to the intractable problem of the Trinity. Whenever I inquired about the source of the group’s teachings, Randall always deferred to the conclusion lecture. They seemed to place a great deal of stock in the last lecture.

  After dusk, the family members began coming home. The usually reticent Stanley chatted and laughed with the fundraisers he had accompanied. The German women I had seen in the One World Crusade van prepared dinner. I introduced myself and, though they spoke poor English, caught their names—Klara and Gretchen.

  The One World Crusade members formed a circle, sitting on the floor in the lecture hall. Klara and Gretchen served waldorf salad. I was hungry and worried that the salad would be all they had on the menu, but next came a generous dollop of turkey curry.

  After the meal, members shared experiences from the day’s activities. They seemed oblivious that I might find the stories alarming. A few spoke of running around parking lots all day, going long stretches without making a sale. One man reported that a Christian spat on him and called him an apostate after he tried to witness to the man. In one case, an irate store owner threatened to call the police. Many had gotten into arguments with students on campus while handing out flyers. Their “witnessing” sounded like a frustrating business. I thought of the many times I had demeaned these folks in my mind, if not to their faces.

  Eventually, members began excusing themselves to go upstairs to the prayer room before retiring for the night. They mentioned separate rooms for “brothers” and “sisters.” It made sense that men and women would sleep apart from each other, given Mary’s emphasis on purity during her lectures.

  Confused thoughts and mixed feelings swirled around my head. When I announced that I wanted to leave, Mary, Randall, and Stanley followed me to the door. Stanley’s bright eyes, released from the anguish I’d always seen in them, told me what I needed to know. Becoming involved with this “family” had been a positive development.

  Before Mary could ask, I said I would come back the next day. “Right after my last class,” I told her.

  She took my hand. “Tomorrow you’ll hear the conclusion lecture.”

  There would be drugs at Jake’s, but I didn’t want to get high. Instead, I drove home to Sibley. The minute I came through the front door, I heard Lenny ridiculing Vivian for reading a Harlequin romance. I went to the den to let them know I was there. Lenny’s cigarette smoke hung in the air, thicker than usual. He tended to smoke nonstop when something troubled him.

  Vivian acknowledged me with a faint smile.

  “You talk about my reading a harmless book,” she said to Lenny, “but a story isn’t going to kill anyone—not like those cigarettes. They are going to be your ruin, sure as rain.”

  Lenny crushed a cigarette butt in the sand that filled the slender canister beside his recliner and got up to raise the volume on the television. “I can’t hear the goddamn program for all the yammering,” he complained.

  Vivian, long accustomed to Lenny’s abuse, continued reading. When she realized I was still standing at the door, she said, “Did you have a good day?”

  “Yeah, it was a great day.” I might have said more, but Lenny interrupted.

  “Will you two pipe down? I’m trying to watch Gunsmoke.”

  I turned away with a quick “sorry” and headed to my room.

  Vivian scolded Lenny for being so abrupt, but I was already walking upstairs, polishing the rails with the palm of my hand as I skipped two steps at a time. I went through my vinyl records until I found Seventh Sojourn, the new Moody Blues LP. I put headphones over my ears and listened to my favorite song. The lyrics spoke about hopes and dreams, about “visions of our father, touched by his loving son.”

  Welcoming a bright morning, mockingbird calls echoed through the fields. Mist hovered above the swamp, visible out the kitchen window. I spotted evidence that neighborhood kids had been trespassing on our property. Two pairs of shoes were stuck in the mud at the edge of the creek. A trail of deep prints continued on the other side of the decaying tree bridge. The kids must have concocted quite a story to explain coming home wearing mud bricks instead of tennis shoes.

  I left the house before Vivian and Lenny got up, barely making my eight o’clock class. By midafternoon, I was ready for the final lecture.

  Nearly all the members were out fundraising or distributing flyers. On a table by the front door, I spotted a stack of leaflets. The banner touted, Hope for the Last Days.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said to Randall. “The lectures I’ve heard are all about spirituality. But the first flyers I saw on campus gave the impression that your lectures were about Communism.”

  Mary came into the room with a fresh pot of coffee. “I heard your question,” she said, pouring me a cup. “It’s embarrassing, really. The new flyers didn’t arrive until this morning. We try to reach people on many levels. Some are more interested in political philosophy than religion, especially on college campuses. We don’t believe in the dialectical materialism of Marxism. The Divine Principle suggests a give-and-take between ideas to arrive at a synthesis.”

  “If it hadn’t been for Stanley, I never would have come to hear the lectur
es—not for a discussion of politics or religion. In the beginning, I thought this might be a front group for the Jesus People, but Divine Principle is a heresy that makes Arianism seem orthodox. It’s closer to Ebionite beliefs—they considered Jesus entirely human as well. A Nicene Christian, who believes that God is God, but Jesus is, too, would never listen to what you are teaching.”

  Mary took a sip of coffee. Rather than engage my comment, she said divertingly, “Not the best coffee in the world, is it?”

  I made a face. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

  Mary finished her cup and prepared to expound on the lecture Randall had taught the day before, about the relationship between God and Jesus.

  “Because of the fall from grace, we are all disconnected from God.” Mary drew the three diamond-shaped diagrams that Randall had explained during my first lecture. Where Randall had written God over the Tao symbol at the top of each diamond, Mary wrote Satan.

  “This world, and the spirit world beyond, is ruled by Satan. Though God could have intervened at any time to end the suffering wrought by Satan, He chose to allow humankind the chance to return to Him voluntarily. And even though, two thousand years ago, people rejected Jesus as the true example of a perfected individual, God never gave up on His children.”

  Mary went on to explain, “A new messiah will complete the mission of Jesus and establish God’s ideal family here on earth. This time, the Messiah will succeed. The third Adam and his bride will become the True Parents of humankind and adopt all people into God’s family.”

  When the lecture ended, I said, “I can certainly understand that my own family isn’t perfect, but I can’t conceive what an ideal family would be like.”

  Mary smiled. “None of us could imagine such a thing before hearing the Divine Principle.”

  The long-anticipated conclusion lecture would be next, but just as Stanley had anticipated, I already knew what to expect. I followed Mary into the kitchen, where Klara, Gretchen, and several others were preparing the evening meal. Gretchen opened the oven door to baste a rump roast. She tore off a bite for me to sample. It was so tasty that I thought about asking for a sandwich, but the final lecture beckoned. If I was correct, my life was about to change dramatically.

  After taking our seats in the lecture hall, I heard someone coming down the stairs. When I recognized who it was, I rose so fast that the metal chair I’d been sitting on crashed to the floor. A beardless Stanley with short-cropped hair stood before me. His eyes glowed with the intensity of someone who had seen the face of God. Stanley reached out to close my gaping mouth.

  “It’s really me,” Stanley said with a smile. “I’m going to sit with you during the conclusion lecture.”

  “Seriously, is that you?” Stanley looked so different that I felt as though I had walked through the looking glass into a parallel universe.

  Stanley righted my chair and took a seat beside me. He held my hand and bowed his head in prayer, not a chant such as we usually shared before tripping on acid; this was an invocation to his “heavenly father.”

  “These are the Last Days,” Mary began. “It is the age when the Lord will come on the clouds of Heaven.”

  The familiar words made me sit up straight.

  “The phrase clouds of Heaven means that the Messiah will arrive among a huge following.” And, in a sense of jest, Mary proposed, “In our technological age, he will probably travel by airplane.”

  When I chuckled, Stanley dug a fingernail into my wrist.

  “We live at a crucial time in history,” Mary declared. “The Lord of the Second Advent has arrived from the East. The Bible prophesized that the Lord would come from a land divided between good and evil. The Korean peninsula is where the final battle is being fought between God’s forces of Democracy and Satan’s ideology of Communism.”

  So it wasn’t just to discuss philosophy that the flyers advertised talks condemning Communism.

  Randall came into the lecture hall at that point. He sat down on the other side of me from Stanley.

  Mary ended by saying, “The Lord of the Second Advent will establish God’s family through holy marriage and adopt us as children.”

  Stanley prayed aloud, joined by Randall. They invoked a name I didn’t recognize.

  “Simon,” Mary said, pausing for a moment, “Christ has returned to complete the task of salvation. He is our group’s leader, the author of our Divine Principle. His name is Sun Myung Moon.”

  Stanley turned to gauge my reaction. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “Many are called,” Randall said, peering directly into my eyes, “but few are chosen.”

  God had guided me through hallucinogenic experiences. The pine tree in Jake’s yard had revealed to me that nature was suffering—“groaning in travail,” to quote the Bible. God disclosed His glory in a beam of light and gazed upon me from the sky. The full moon and the majestic angel were harbingers, heralds of the new age.

  “We are Sun Myung Moon’s disciples,” Stanley said. “This is God’s family of brothers and sisters.”

  “Open your heart, Simon. You know this is true,” Mary urged.

  God was alive, right here, right now. I rose to my feet and shouted to the world, “Christ has returned!”

  Randall laughed. Stanley cried. Mary hugged me. We shoved aside the chairs and swung each other around. The Moody Blues song about minstrels announcing the greatness of love echoed in my ears: Everywhere, love is all around.

  Family members returned from their busy day of building God’s kingdom. With arms interlocked, we sang hymns. Each member greeted me as a brother.

  Looking into their faces, I realized for the first time what people meant when they spoke of being one in Christ.

  Had Tony felt something this powerful? If only I could tell him the good news. We could be together in the new kingdom that was to come.

  CHAPTER 17

  “This is a moment of decision,” Mary said. “Your choice is to leave the life you’ve known and join us tonight or return to the fallen world and continue as you were—aware that God’s kingdom is being built around you.”

  I must leave my friends and abandon my Powell heritage. God was the union of male and female. Man and woman reflected the very essence of God. I fully understood. Tony and I could never be together as I had first imagined. God had prepared a soul mate, a woman to complete my spirit. Together, we would know God.

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I told Mary.

  Randall brought the van around. I got into the passenger seat, barely aware of my surroundings as my mind raced through the possible scenarios I might encounter when we arrived in Sibley. I directed Randall to park under the sweet gum tree that always made me think of Mandy. Randall turned off the lights but kept the engine running. Mary suggested that we say a prayer before I left the van.

  “Father and Mother,” Randall began, “provide our new brother with the strength he needs.”

  My heart pounded as I went through the front door and dashed upstairs to gather a few belongings. A photograph of dead Uncle Wesley, and the charcoal portraits of more ancient forebears, spied on me as I went to my room and packed. I lugged a suitcase down the stairs as quietly as I could. The odor of oil paint and linseed oil overwhelmed my senses. I had not considered that I might have to give up painting. Leaving my canvases behind filled me with dread.

  I set the suitcase in the foyer and crossed the hardwood floor toward the den. Vivian was resting on the couch. Lenny tapped out a cigarette with his back toward me. He didn’t notice that I had come into the room until I shut off the television. Then he turned around so abruptly that he nearly tipped over the recliner.

  “Vivian, Lenny, I’m leaving home to join a religious commune.” With that simple announcement, I started for the door.

  Vivian rose from the couch and grabbed my arm. “Don’t do this, son! What about school?”

  Lenny followed close behind. He gruffly said, “What the hell you pul
ling now, boy?”

  In that moment, the mansion smelled like death and decay. How different from the church center with its atmosphere of life and joy.

  “I’m doing the right thing,” I said, knowing that Vivian and Lenny could never understand.

  “Don’t expect me to rescue you this time,” Lenny said.

  Rescue me! I swallowed hard and kept walking.

  The merest “I love you” from either one of them might have changed the course of my life, but a sense of betrayal consumed Lenny, and Vivian was simply at a loss. When I reached the porch, I heard Vivian’s voice coming from inside the house.

  “Lenny? Lenny! What’s wrong?”

  I thought about going back and making sure Lenny hadn’t collapsed with a heart attack, but if I did, I was afraid I might lose my courage and, who knows, perhaps turn into a pillar of salt. I kept walking toward the van with my suitcase.

  Randall opened the back door when he saw me coming and hoisted the suitcase inside. Once seated in the van, Mary put her hand on my shoulder. “God commanded Abraham to leave his homeland,” she said. “He did God’s will and obeyed. This is your moment, Simon.”

  Across the street, illuminated by the lights of passing cars, the lichen-encrusted tombstones of Aunt Opal and my Powell ancestors stood out in the darkness. The tire swing dangling from the hangman’s tree in the front yard twirled in the wind. Perhaps JT was watching to see if I would honor my destiny.

  “Give me a moment,” I told Randall and Mary as I jumped from the van.

  I walked across the road to the Powell cemetery, standing before Aunt Opal’s tombstone with its familiar carved angel. I needed a sign, something to confirm that this was the right thing to do. I was far away from the house, but from that spot, I saw Vivian through a window, making a phone call. Was it to Connie, or had Lenny indeed had a heart attack and she was calling an ambulance? I remembered the words Jesus had spoken to his own mother: Woman, what have I to do with thee?