by Moulton, CD
On the Bus
Clint groaned inwardly when he got on the bus to Chiriqui Grande from David. The only seat open was next to a thin tight-lipped sour-looking man in his early thirties who had a Bible in his hands – which was probably why no one sat next to him. Clint nodded shortly, said “Buenos,” shoved his small maleta under the seat and sat.
“Good morning, Brother,” the man announced. “I am called The Most Reverend Emanuel Howland Charleston. May God bless our journey through these savage dangerous pagan lands with his never-ending love and mercy.”
“Whatever,” Clint replied. “Faraday. One of the savage pagans.”
The man looked more than a little embarrassed. “I meant no disparagement. These misguided people are unaware of their damnation for the unmoral lives they lead. I am here to attempt to educate them in The Way.”
“Oh, really? `Savage dangerous pagans’ isn’t disparagement of them?” Clint asked innocently. “Perhaps we have a different dictionary. I find most of these people to be very moral and peaceful people.
“I’m not interested in your brand of religion. Religion’s a personal matter. I would never try to force my beliefs – or lack of them – on anyone else. That’s never appreciated.”
“I fear for their eternal souls! The Bible tells us plainly what is the fate of those who will not accept the gracious offer of The Lord for eternal peace and plenty!”
“Uh-huh. And five hundred other cults also have the ultimate answer that excludes anyone who doesn’t follow their idiot codes.”
“Sir! I resent that! Deeply! I have found the ultimate truth and it is demonstrated daily for all but the deliberately blind to see and hear! There is but one path, one very clearly marked, to truth and salvation! The Bible tells us exactly which path leads to heaven and which leads to hell!”
“Oh? You didn’t read the part about spouting your religion on the streets being a fast way to guarantee you the hell you’re so afraid of? I believe the part I mean is something like `... for they shall not know the kingdom of heaven,’ or something in that vein,” Clint asked a bit stiffly. “Maybe you should check your concordance for the reference. It would seem to me you’ve taken a rather dangerous detour from your path to salvation.
“We should maybe discuss other things. I don’t prance around the fact I don’t like to argue religion in public.”
“But you do believe in an all-powerful god, surely!”
“Ask yourself, `If there is an all-powerful god why am I even needed?’ All such a god would have to do is put the socalled facts in the minds of everyone at birth. The least thing would be to make the announcement where there would be no question.”
“But every sunrise and sunset demonstrates the undisputable answer! Every flower and tree shouts the truth to us!”
“Really? Ever smelled Bulbphyllum putridum? Beautiful flower. A whiff of the odor and you vomit. How about cockroaches and scorpions? What evidence of god is there? A red sky in morning is an old warning that storms are to the east and will come toward you. The sunrise and sunset make statements, I guess, but they can be downright ominous warnings. It’s the nature of light, not a picture painted by god.”
“But those are not things of god, necessarily. Satan has placed such things to deter us in our thoughts and divert us from the true path!”
“So now Satan can create? I thought only God could create. Isn’t that what your Bible tells you?”
“You, sir, are among the damned! You will not see the truth when it is demonstrated by the very fact you exist!
“I am not descrying your sad life. Honestly, I am most concerned for your immortal soul!”
“I said from the first I don’t swallow your brand of crap. I’ll appreciate it if you save it for someone who gives a damn about it. It bores me and begins to get on my nerves. As the natives say, No moleste!’
“But, sir! I’m in great fear for your personal damnation if you refuse to see the True Path!”
“Here’s a quarter for your concern. Use it to spread the words or something. Just don’t try to spread it to me, Okay?”
Clint noticed how he seemed to be totally insulted – but he took the quarter. Clint almost laughed out loud at him. The man in the seat behind let out a little snort. Clint looked at him and grinned, which got him a grin in return. The man had very blue eyes, rare in the Panamanian people. Clint thought they must be contacts. Panamanians did like blue eyes.
About an hour later as they were crossing the Enel Fortuna dam, The Most Reverend Whatever put his head against the seat in front of them and was mumbling a prayer in what approached abject terror. He was reacting to the magnificent vista outside by never glancing out, but the dam is not something you can ignore. The view to one side was of a beautiful river/reservoir and a drop on the other of several hundred meters to the picturesque river, which seemed a small creek from the distance. Clint felt an urge to throw the ass’s words back at him, so pointed to the valley to their left, then to the river and said such magnificence did make one feel a reverence. It was humbling. Such a pity man built that dam in that spot, forming the reservoir, not god.
He got a very sickly nod from his seat partner. “I’m afraid of heights. Since birth.”
Clint forbore saying that must be a punishment from god for something his parents must have done. It couldn’t be a punishment to a newborn baby, surely!
He could picture the reply. It was a test of faith. Clint would point out that a newborn baby needed a test by an all-knowing god, of faith? Why would any test of any type be needed by this all-knowing, all-powerful god?
It might pass the time, but was hopeless. No one could reach the type.
On the other side of the dam Emanuel said he often wondered what God’s plan was for him that would include such a burden. He only knew for certain that God had a plan for him and that it wasn’t for him to know or understand what that plan may be.
Again, Clint was tempted to ask what the purpose of acute acrophobia in a devout disciple could possibly be. Wouldn’t that tend to deter him from spreading the word in these mountainous places?
Yeah, right! The answer would be that he went to such places in spite of the phobia to serve God! THAT could be what the test was about! There was a paradoxical answer to anything. Hopeless.
Just before Mali Emanuel said he suspected that there was more than one god. There was one for Earth, but each world where there were men might have a different one.
Clint said the Bible stated there was only one god.
“One God for this world! That is my question. I pray daily for an answer. I have studied religion as history. I have to agree that there were possibly, even probably other gods in ancient times. God was victorious in expunging them from this world. I believe this happened in the earliest times of the Greek civilization. The later Greeks and the Romans simply took the older religion – the older gods – and continued them. There were, and still are, followers of those old religions.
“I also have some questions as to the writing of the New Testament. I see some very frightening possibilities. It bothers me that it was written so long after Christ’s ascendance into heaven. The writers, if they were who is claimed, would necessarily be more than a hundred years old and people didn’t live nearly that long back then.
“I base my philosophy on the old testament and try to discern which parts of the New Testament are real and which are added later.”
“That’s the Jewish faith.”
“Perhaps. Much of it is, but interpretations vary, even among the Jews. The Koran is also much like the Old Testament. The problem I have is that God was almost viciously cruel and was a greatly-feared being. I find that is not what ... I don’t know! I believe in a loving and merciful God, not a vengeful God!”
Clint said he would be better accepted if he would simply lay his questions out to people and ask for help finding answers. Don’t try to impress a faith on people who’ll later learn how deep his own questions are of that
faith.
“You have found the deep basis for my dilemma, I fear. My faith was always very strong, from a very young age. My parents were, believe it or not, agnostics bordering on atheists. Hippies. A man of very deep faith took me in when I ran away from that sordid drug-induced lifestyle and introduced me to The Faith. He was not so driven to ... spread the word, as it were. He merely had me read the Bible to find strength to cross the dangerous path into the future, for a map of which path leads to the light and which to the darkness. My first fears were from the Old Testament. The vengeful, cruel concept of God. I found great solace in the New Testament – but was plagued with doubts and questions.
“I decided the truth was there, so pursued that truth with intense study. I was twenty eight when I knew I had the ultimate answer so set out to help my fellow man navigate the path. I never wavered a millimeter from that path. There was never a time when anything whatever clouded my vision. I spent more than two years in that quest and found that the US is deeply decadent. It is frighteningly so. Everything is the money, the economy, the banks ... pointless pursuits that have become so ingrained in the daily lives of most that they are unaware of how they are controlled by a few powerful people. I am not a conspiracy believer, yet it is obvious there is some kind of control of all of our lives. It is just that I cannot find a way to have even a minor influence against this travesty. None is so blind and all that.
“I decided to travel to places where I may make a difference in the lives of people. I do care. Deeply.
“I find they have given me questions that make no sense whatever in their answers. I find the native indigenous people to be very simple and very unbelieving, yet they are also well-suited to the very free life here. I wonder that I do more damage than good with my beliefs. I also find observing them and their ways leaves me with great doubts about what I perceive to be ultimate truth. It is horrible!
“You are a very accepting person, I feel. I am aware that you find me to be ... irritating. Possibly obnoxious. Perhaps there is reason. I watched the way the indigenous people greeted you as you entered the bus. You are one of them in spirit, which was the philosophy of my parents which I rejected.
“I have no warmth in my life. You have it everywhere. You can see how troubled my soul is about this. Nothing is as I first perceived ... that is not the word. I expected it to be.”
“It’s all about individual perceptions,” Clint replied, quoting his rather weird musician/botanist friend, Dave. “Reality is situational. Truth is as situational. It’s a matter of what you might call the angle from which you observe it. Life here is both very hard and very easy. The Indios don’t need the same things people in cities and socalled civilized areas need.
“I’m not talking about things. I’m talking about psychological points.”
“I understand that they have no word or words for ‘Thank you’ in their language, yet they quite obviously appreciate help in many areas.”
“They touch to say ‘Thank you.’ Words aren’t necessary. They have a beautiful lifestyle. They live in paradise and belong here. We don’t. I don’t believe in gods, but I say ‘Thank you’ every day to whatever force may be that I’m accepted by them. I love the Indios. They don’t need lessons in a belief or faith or whatever. That’s an unwarranted incursion into their lives.
“If you want a suggestion, simply observe them and try to understand where they’re coming from. Almost everything they don’t seem to have turns out to be a thing they don’t need and are better off without.”
He nodded. “I feel that is probably my course. I must question my life and wonder if my mission is a negative thing.”
“It’s neutral. You can’t affect these people. Stop questioning your own, as you call it, course in life. Simply wait and observe. Maybe the answers are too obvious to see from inside the box.. Get OUT of the box for awhile. You don’t have to change the way you live or whatever. Just step back and take a good long solid look at what the real world is. It just might surprise you as to how the way you’ve always looked at things from inside the states or inside your psychological box is almost the reverse of reality. Reality can be viciously mean – or delightful. You won’t know if you don’t go there.”
“I believe you. I’ve been a blind ... maybe just an ignorant soul who looked for answers to the wrong questions in the wrong places at the wrong time. I’m really, as you would say, screwed up, I suspect.”
“Give it time and distance. Lay back and relax. Meet people without expectations. That’s the Indio philosophy. It boils down to the fact we’re all individuals. The same things aren’t needed or wanted by everyone.”
He nodded again and sat back to look thoughtful. The bus was going across a bridge where there was a washout during the bad weather three years ago. There was a drop of over two hundred meters right outside the window. Emanuel looked down at it and giggled.
“That didn’t bother me at all! It was exciting and beautiful!”
“Maybe the fall you were so afraid of isn’t a physical one.”
“I think perhaps you are right.” He reached to touch Clint’s hand. It was obviously the way the Indios said “Thank you” that Clint had explained to him.
“As the gods said, ‘The truth shall make you free!’ I think maybe that’s the one truth in all this mess.”
“That’s a fallacy in a lot of ways. Don’t fall into another philosophical trap. Another view of the truth can enslave you as much as the old one.”
He touched Clint’s hand again.
Chiriqui Grande
Clint walked along the dock to greet Moises and Andres, two close Indio friends. He asked about the comarca and they swapped a few stories over coffee. Things were, as always, just moving along in the way of things. Clint told about the overly-religious passenger on the bus. He said there was a very small chance he was able to make the man step back and look at reality instead of some place and code that existed only in his mind.
“I imagine that, in the United States you could not reach his mind,” Andres, the more philosophical of the two, said. “Here? Who knows?
“The predictions you so studiously avoided indicated a period of easy tranquility for the people on the comarca. It has, once again, proven correct – so far.”
They discussed the predictions in the sunset that led Clint to a strange case (Omen) and other things. It was a pleasant time. Clint stayed at a friend’s place in Chiriqui Grande, then took his boat to Bocas Town in the morning to check on things.
Things were the same as he left them in Bocas Town. Clint spent some time at his neighbor, Judi Lum’s place catching up on the gossip. He told about his friends in Chiriqui Grande and about things being, as usual, tranquil and pleasant on the comarca. He told about his trip to Las Tablas and Chitre and about the preacher on the bus.
“I hate it when somebody tries to make me accept some nutcase religion. I hope you did make him question what he believed enough that he’ll stop doing it.
“Yeah! Get real! They never do.”
They decided to go to the Lemon Grass for Thai food that evening, then Clint went back home to straighten out his files and answer what of his e-mails he intended to answer. He had more than fifty waiting. If he actually won all the scam lotteries and bank transfers and such on them he would have over ten billion dollars in the bank. As Judi so recently said, “Yeah! Get real!”
There were eight legitimate mails he answered. None of them critical.
He went into town to talk with people, then laid around for a couple of hours until time to pick Judi up for the dinner. They had a good time and ate an exceptional meal. They went out of town a little way to a bar where the Indios spent a lot of time. They stayed talking with a number of them (Judi was learning the dialect), then called it a night when the “drunk hours” approached.
The Indios have no resistance to alcohol. If a majority of them have one beer they won’t stop until they’re either drunk or broke. They will most generally cha
nge to seco or other rum after a couple of beers.
They evolved without alcohol. The Europeans and Asians evolved with it. Gringos had built-in resistance, many of them, and could take a drink or three, then go home. What always amazed Clint was how the Indios could get so drunk they literally passed out in a ditch, then they’d get up in the morning and go to work. If he got half that drunk he’d have a hangover for a week!
Life was strange.
When Clint got home there was a text message on his phone. From Emanuel. He said he was going to go to a few small villages to, as Clint suggested, observe. He promised not to mention religion and to shy away from talking about it if asked.
Where did he get the phone number?
He asked about anyone. Clint was well-known. He sighed and went to bed.
“Clint? This is Moises. I’m still in Chiriqui Grande.”
“Coin dega.” Clint replied.
“Remember that preacher? Emanuel the Great or something such? The one on the bus?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He stayed here in Chiriqui Grande last night. He didn’t say too much about Christ or any of that. He actually made a couple of friends. He seems to really be interested in people. He had to stop himself, it was obvious, a few times from saving souls or whatever.
“Clint, I don’t know what’s going on. Two men came from Panamá City and were asking about him. We don’t like them and they aren’t the kind of people we ... we were suspicious so I told everyone to say they didn’t know who they were talking about. When gringos come into our places we mostly act like they’re not there. (Not true. The Indios are the most welcoming people in the world!) and deliberately don’t remember anything about them. They said they were from the government and that he had problems about his passport. They said they were afraid he was one of those terrorists from the United States. I said if there is anything the indigenos don’t give a shit about it is those stupid terrorists or the more stupid people who let them scare them.