by Walter Kirn
I smiled at the elders and let them make their pitch. They couldn’t have come at a better time, as far as I was concerned. Woody Wolff had finally passed away that month and things were dire at home. And though later on, when I’d won the elders’ trust, they would reveal to me the sneaky trick behind their perfect timing, their sudden appearance struck me as miraculous. They were the sort of help that I’d been praying for, although I didn’t call my wishes prayers yet.
“Is the head of the house in?” Elder Jessup asked. For a moment I didn’t know whom he was talking about.
“He is,” I said.
“Is he available?”
“He should be.”
Because it was ten in the morning on a Wednesday, this was an embarrassing admission. Mike had been stopped for drunk driving that weekend while coming home from an ice-fishing trip and he hadn’t been to his store for three days. And though I should have been in school myself that morning, I had a valid excuse. Because of a foul-up at the pharmacy (they’d switched my five-milligram tablets for tens) I’d taken too much Ritalin that morning and gone back to bed with a racing heart.
“Tell him we have good news,” said Elder Knowles. “Also, a book your family can read and keep.”
Just then, from the TV room off the entrance hall, Mike’s voice rose in a dreamy, tuneless song that had been bubbling out of him for days: Nobody knows me. My life is halfway through. Mike Cobb is a pair of footprints. The footprint man …
Elder Knowles bit his lip and turned to face the side-walk. Our dog sauntered up and licked his fingertips. Elder Jessup set down his black briefcase on the threshold.
“I think we’d better come inside,” he said.
It could happen anywhere, at any time—Mike making crazy music of his thoughts. The sporting goods store, a Saturday afternoon. Mike and I are restocking the thermal underwear. I misplace the price list from the wholesaler and Mike pipes up with a droning, distant jingle that sounds like an ad from the radio, but isn’t: Time’s running out. Don’t shout. Don’t run about. Everybody knows time’s running out. Or maybe we’re in the high school gym at the district speech meet and I’ve just concluded an impromptu talk on “Polluted Rivers, Polluted Dreams.” As the judges and coaches shake my hand, a voice warbles up from the middle of the audience: My son is proud. He thinks he’s made his stand. So did Michael Cobb, the footprint man. And though everyone pretends that they don’t hear this and goes right on congratulating me, I hear the song loud and clear. It’s all I hear.
The nights at home were even harder on me. Audrey had left Maple Glen and had found new job at the hospital, working the late shift again, and after she left the house I’d lie awake trying to drown out the singing I knew was coming by listening to Night Hearts on the radio. The program’s host, Joe Sloane, a former baseball player and certified social worker, counseled anonymous callers nationwide, advising Jim D. to throw away his diet pills and start a regular exercise program, encouraging Catherine L. to leave her boyfriend and finish her law degree. Night Hearts’ signal came in sharp and clear from its Omaha home station, and listening to it in the dark while Mike yodeled softly and spookily in his bedroom helped me to view our family’s hurts and troubles as part of some vast American misery that it was no disgrace to be a part of.
In the daytime my big concern was visitors. If Mike was at home and a car drove in our driveway, I’d leap into action, shutting all the doors between whichever room he happened to be in and the entrance hall. I’d turn up the TV or blast the stereo while Audrey, zonked out in her bedroom wearing earplugs, slept through the whole crisis. And whatever it took to get rid of people, I’d do it: sign for packages, order Girl Scout cookies, sponsor some fifth grader’s diabetes walkathon. No one got past me, no one heard Mike’s singing. The Mormon missionaries were the first.
When Elder Jessup and Elder Knowles first saw him, Mike was propped on his side on the sofa, reading the blueprints for the gym and health bar he was opening behind the store. His eyes were red and had no eyelashes. He tended to pluck them when he felt anxious, and lately I’d been finding them everywhere—lying in the bathroom sink, floating in glasses of milk. Without any lashes, his eyes grew sore and runny, filling with dust and forcing him to blink a lot.
“Morning,” he said, not bothering to sit up.
The elders extended their hands. Mike raised himself partway and shook them limply, letting go before it was polite to.
“We’re from the LDS church,” said Elder Jessup. His scar kept his upper lip from fully extending when he tried to smile.
“I’ve seen you around town,” Mike said. “I figured you’d have to hit this house eventually.” He set his blueprints on the floor and sat up the rest of the way. “Are you boys thirsty?”
“Thank you. Yes. Plain water would be fine.”
Mike looked at me. “Get these boys a glass of water.”
“We have some orange juice,” I said.
Elder Jessup gave his strained half-smile. “Plain water. And a moment of your time.”
Already, just a few minutes into the visit, our house felt lighter, less gloomy, better ventilated; I wanted the elders to stay all morning, if possible. I fixed a pitcher of ice water with lemon slices, the way I’d seen Audrey do for summer parties. The elders held out their glasses as I poured, making throaty sounds of gratitude, then took simultaneous sips and grinned.
“It can’t taste that good, it’s from the tap,” Mike said.
“It’s the lemon,” said Elder Knowles. “I’ve never had that.”
“You’re overdoing it, boys. Sit down,” Mike said.
After I pulled up armchairs for the elders, Elder Jessup squared his briefcase on his lap and fingered the brass latches near its handle.
“What do you know about man’s fate?” he said. His tone was businesslike.
“You tell me,” Mike said.
Elder Jessup touched a latch and his briefcase sprung open with surprising suddenness. Inside it were elastic pockets holding an assortment of colorful pamphlets. He chose a red one and put it on the coffee table, snapping it down like a winning card.
“The basics are all in here,” he said. “God’s plan for mankind, from preexistence on. Mormons believe that everything that happens to us is the result of choice, of conscious choice. You see, we believe that souls come down to earth already knowing about their lives to come.”
Mike turned over the pamphlet and scanned the back.
“Meaning I don’t have to read this twice,” he said:
“How’s that?” Elder Knowles said. He looked truly confused. “Have you had missionaries here before?”
“He read it in preexistence,” I said. “He’s kidding you.”
The elders didn’t laugh. Their eyes grew clouded. Elder Knowles turned his glass of water in front of his face as if inspecting it for particles. I wondered if he’d spotted a stray eyelash.
“You’ve caught me at a busy time,” Mike said. He picked up his documents and shuffled them. His filthy white T-shirt was smeared with mustard stains. “Tell me something, though. I’m curious. How often, when you knock on someone’s door and they’re polite enough to let you in, do you actually get a new member? What’s your batting average?”
Elder Jessup shut his case and stood. Elder Knowles stood, too, with a slight lag. He was the follower here, the apprentice.
“Did my question offend you?” Mike said. “I didn’t mean it to.”
“We don’t keep statistics,” Elder Jessup said. “Ideally, what happens is what’s happening here: first there’s resistance, then curiosity, and then—when the person’s had a chance to think—a phone call inviting us back. That’s what we’re hoping for.”
“In the meantime, you’ll pray for me,” Mike said.
“Yes, we will.”
“Good luck with it. Don’t strain yourself.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
I showed the elders out to the front porch, where Elder Knowles reached
deep into his case and brought out a dark blue book: the Book of Mormon. I thanked him for it and promised him I’d read it, although I suspected I wouldn’t. I was mad at the elders for giving up so easily after promising so much.
“Our number’s inside the cover,” Elder Jessup said. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen soon.”
“Any siblings?”
“One little brother. Fourteen.”
“Take care of him. My partner and I are leaving you in charge here, so call us when the time comes. We’ll be waiting. Remember, you chose your life in preexistence, so you already know inside what you have to do.”
“Explain that to him further,” said Elder Knowles.
“It’s in the book. He can read it for himself. I don’t want to spoil it for him.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The elders said good-bye to me and left. In the driveway they fastened clips around their pants legs and mounted two old-fashioned bicycles with baskets. They had to stand up on their pedals and push down hard to get some traction on the snow and ice. Behind me, as I was turning to enter the house, I heard a song beginning. I couldn’t go in. I opened the Book of Mormon and started reading, standing in the cold.
Before the missionaries came, the only religious book I’d seen at home was a dusty, untouchable antique: the Cobb Family Bible. We kept it sealed in plastic, stored in a chest with diplomas and insurance policies. As thick as a dictionary and written in German, the Bible was covered in brittle, cracked, green leather. The only real contact I’d ever had with it came when I was in second grade and told a lie about seeing a timberwolf lurking on the playground. Mike asked me to set my right hand on the Bible and tell the truth, but I didn’t, and nothing happened. The only other item in the house that seemed to have anything to do with God was the framed copy of the Desiderata Audrey had hung on the wall above Joel’s bed after he’d lost an important tennis match and was considering quitting the whole sport.
Maybe because it seemed so unfamiliar, from its crisp gold-edged pages to its long concordance full of ancient-sounding names, I approached the Book of Mormon with real reverence. After poring over the first few chapters, though, I knew I’d never finish it. The language was stiff and old-fashioned and repetitive, worse than the Desiderata even, and I found no mention at all of preexistence, let alone any convincing explanation of how a person could live a life he’d already previewed in detail and still tell lies he knew that he’d be caught in or ask out girls he knew would cut him cold.
The pamphlet the elders left behind was better. I read it one night while listening to Night Hearts, which made its message seem more vital somehow. The pamphlet said families come together on earth in order to help one another achieve salvation. Each individual has a role to play, for no one can gain perfection on his own. We choose these roles before birth and then forget them, but after death we remember them perfectly and see how, in fact, they worked out for the best.
I was rereading the pamphlet when Audrey came in on her way to work.
“Your brother has pinkeye,” she said. “I put some drops out. Make sure he uses them first thing in the morning.”
“Sure will,” I said with my newfound sense of usefulness.
“What’s that thing?” Audrey nodded at the pamphlet.
“The Mormons left it.”
“The Mormons? When were they here?”
“The other morning. You were still in bed. Mike gave them a hard time and made them leave, though.”
Audrey’s mouth shrunk.
“He kidded them, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about. Just a little kidding.”
After I heard Audrey leave the house, I turned off Night Hearts and did some quiet, hard thinking. The idea that our family had volunteered to live together, knowing our fates were in one another’s hands, convinced me of my duty. It was time.
Mike was propped up in bed with a wineglass, holding a pen above a blank new legal pad.
“Come to see the footprint man,” he said. The phrase referred to a show on ancient man, Footprints in the Sands of Time, that we’d been watching the night of Woody Wolff’s death.
“Do you do this when Audrey’s around, or just when I am?”
Mike blinked his naked, lashless eyes. He rubbed his fist in one. I picked up the bedside phone and handed it to him.
“We’re calling the Mormon elders,” I said. “I’ll dial.”
Mike held the phone. He wasn’t stopping me. I dialed, then heard ringing and an answer.
“It’s me,” Mike said. They talked for almost two hours.
Elder Jessup set up a movie projector like the ones we’d used years ago at school. It weighed a ton and was made of dull gray metal. He clipped on the reels and threaded the film through while Elder Knowles stood ready to dim the lights.
“Most of our movies are on video now, but this one’s not for some reason,” Elder Jessup said. “It’s a shame. It’s my favorite. Extremely powerful.”
The elders went on fussing with the projector while the rest of us sat patiently in the dark, facing a square of stark white light on the living room wall. Mike and Audrey held hands on the sofa. Joel and I sat at their feet on the rug. Tonight was our first lesson, our new beginning. Audrey had date bars baking for afterward.
The movie began with a scene of freeway traffic. Horns honked. Exhaust rose. The sky was smoggy, foul. A narrator’s voice said, “Man is in a hurry. But why? To what purpose? Does he even know?”
“This next part’s incredible,” Elder Knowles said quietly. Elder Jessup raised a finger to hush him.
The camera zoomed in on a red-faced well-dressed man stuck in a luxury car behind a semi. His jaw was clenched. He was muttering under his breath. Suddenly, he grimaced and clutched his chest. His head tipped forward and rested on the wheel. The very next instant, we were at a funeral. Flowers. A crowd. A pretty young woman dressed in black flanked by two blond little girls wearing hats.
The voice said: “Separation. Death. The end.”
Elder Knowles snapped his fingers. “Happens just like that.”
The voice said, “Nothingness. Blackness. Is that what you believe? Well, we don’t. For us, the family is eternal, and earthly death is merely the beginning of the amazing story we want to tell you.”
The movie grew complicated after that, dense with experts, quotations, and history lessons, and even the elders’ attention seemed to drift. I watched Mike through the corner of my eye. He crossed and uncrossed his legs and scratched his arms as Audrey stroked his neck and swirled his hair around. “What is it?” I heard her whisper at one point, during a scene where the resurrected father hugged his wife and girls with ghostly arms. Mike didn’t answer her.
As the movie was ending the projector broke. There was an awful smell of burning plastic and the picture turned brown at the edges and started bubbling. Elder Jessup jumped up and pulled the plug.
“Almost wrecked our only print,” he said.
Elder Knowles rushed in to cover him. “So what did you think, Mrs. Cobb? Did you enjoy it?”
“I liked the scenes of the pioneers the best. The sacrifices those women made. Incredible.”
“Mr. Cobb?”
Mike didn’t answer immediately. He had the about-to-sing look on his face. Tiny muscles struggled near his mouth. His eyes were dreamy, absent.
I flared a look at him. “It was great,” I said.
Mike seemed to recover slightly. “Very emotional. Very professional job. Realistic heart attack.”
Elder Knowles looked thrilled. “That actor, you might like to know, is a convert. He’s actually a bishop in Los Angeles. There’s lots of Mormons in entertainment these days. There’s a rumor around that we might get Elton John soon.”
“The famous singer,” Mike said. “ ‘Rocket Man.’ ”
“One of his all-time best,” said Elder Knowles. He began to hum the melody. Elder Jessup sang some of the words. Then Mike joined in.
Bu
t it was a false alarm. Just normal singing. It ended after half a verse and Audrey went to the kitchen for the date bars.
Although we were only halfway through our lessons and still four weeks away from being baptized, we started attending Sunday services at the nearest Mormon church. Thirty miles away in north St. Paul, the chapel was built of pale yellow brick and looked like a clinic or elementary school. The only color was an American flag in a bed of budding daffodils. The flagpole was even higher than the steeple, which seemed odd to me. Also, the steeple was plain—it lacked a cross. I asked Elder Jessup how come.
“Let’s think it through. Say Jesus Christ had been murdered by a firing squad. Would people put sculptures of rifles on their churches? Or say he’d been hung. With a noose.”
I pictured these scenes.
“Anything else?” Elder Jessup said. “Don’t be the least bit embarrassed. It’s what I’m here for.”
“Preexistence still confuses me sort of. Let’s say I have children someday.”
“Of course you will.”
“Well, my children already exist as spirits, right? So does that mean they’re watching everything I do trying to decide if they still want me and how they’re going to help me out in life?”
Elder Jessup nodded. “That’s basically accurate. Why? Does it scare you?”
“It makes me dizzy.”
“That’s natural. You’re taking in lots of new information these days at a pretty incredible pace. I’m proud of you.”
The next Sunday was a fast Sunday. Except for Joel, who’d eaten an English muffin when Audrey became concerned about his blood sugar, we arrived at the chapel with empty stomachs. Mike seemed grumpy and tired, but I felt fine; pleasantly light-headed and alert. Elder Jessup seemed cheerful, too, but Elder Knowles, a much huskier kid, looked dazed. He had his digital watch on upside down and there were oozing shaving cuts on his chin.