The Book of Harold

by Owen Egerton

  I nodded. He took a breath and began.

  “Not to brag, but I am very rich.” He raised his eyebrows, which made his whole scalp wrinkle. “I own Pagemore Beef and a good part of Rose Shipping and a few banks.”

  “Wow,” I said and meant it. Rich people always impressed me.

  “Oh yeah. I’m king of All Shit Mountain. A few weeks ago, I was turning seventy-eight and feeling twenty. Feeling like a goddamned twenty-year-old. So I took a vacation to Vegas with this girl I sometimes run around with.” He motioned to the bartender for another round. “We checked in, made love on the balcony, then again in the hot tub, and got something to eat. My girlfriend went shopping and I strolled the casino. You gamble?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, a gambler knows you never bet on a whim, nor do you waste time on slots. Slots suck. But what the hell, I had some time, I had some cash. I’m standing at a dollar slot when someone behind me says, ‘That machine won’t win, but the next one will.’ I turn around and there’s Harold. Of course, I didn’t know him from Adam at the time, so I tell him to back off and I drop the coin. And he says, ‘Two roses and a barrel.’ The wheels spin and guess what they land on?”

  “Two roses and a barrel?”

  “Damn right! Then he says again that the next machine will win, so I don’t even look at him. I just move over to the next machine and drop in another buck. ‘Three shamrocks,’ he says. And what do you know, three shamrocks and the machine spits out fifty bucks. So I ask Harold if he’s some kind of psychic and he says, ‘No. I’m the Son of God.’ And I say, ‘I don’t care if you’re the Son of Sam, I like your style.’ Then I ask him if he’s breaking any laws. And he says no. So I ask him if he likes roulette.” Gilbert gulped his drink and licked his lips.

  “Hot damn, that was fun. In an hour I’m up ten thousand and laughing my ass off. Around midnight my girlfriend comes looking for me, but I just send her to bed. I mean, hell, what a streak. Harold hadn’t missed a call all night. Twenty-three, fourteen, five. He just kept calling them and I kept placing them.

  “Then, out of the blue, he turns to me and asks, ‘Do you want to win or do you want what’s best?’ Well, I tell him I want to win, so he gives me the number and I win. Then he asks again, ‘Do you want to win or what’s best?’ Well, I tell him that I think winning is best. And he nods, gives me a number, and I win again. Then he asks, ‘Do you want to win or what’s best?’ And I tell him I think I can figure out what’s best and he says, ‘You can’t even figure out where the ball is going to land. How can you figure out what’s best?’ I ask him who can and he shrugs. Then I ask him if he’s a Mason, ’cause I don’t trust Masons and I don’t want to be one. You’re not a Mason, are you Blake?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Okay then,” Gilbert nodded to himself. “Where was I?”

  “Win or best.”

  “Oh yeah. So I finally give in and say, ‘Best.’ He says, ‘Pick seven.’ I call seven and the ball lands on nine. Again he asks the win or best question. I say, ‘Best’ and he says pick seven again. And I lose again. I look right at Harold and say, ‘Best.’ ‘Seven’ and I lose again, but I didn’t even see it land. I call seven again, this time all the chips. I lose them all, but I’m still watching Harold. Then I pull out my credit card and tell them to stack it to the limit. Twenty thousand on seven. The dealer gets nervous and has to call an owner, but soon enough the wheel spins and the ball bounces and lands snap-damn on the number eight. I lost it all.”

  He laughed and bit down on a piece of ice. “Best night of my life,” he said. “What about you? What’s your story?”

  “He broke my television.”

  “Damn,” he shook his head. “Crazy bastard.”

  I looked back at Harold. He was sitting now. So were the others. The scrubs had torn, exposing a good a chunk of one of his armpits each time he sipped his beer. As I watched, he started tugging at the rip and removed one sleeve completely. But the other he left hanging on. He was laughing and banging his hands on the table as if it were a piano.

  “So now I’m here,” Gilbert said. “Ready to walk to Austin.”

  “You’re going with him?” I turned back.

  “Hell yeah. He asked me to come and I’m going. How about you?”

  “I . . . I wasn’t invited.”

  “Well, what’s the saying? Many are called. Few are chosen.” He got up, patted my back, and went to join the others.

  I had thought Harold was going alone. I hadn’t wanted to walk to Austin. But now, now that I knew I wasn’t invited, wasn’t chosen, all I wanted was to go. I headed for the door, suddenly tired.

  Outside it was quiet and it had grown colder. Most of Figwood was asleep.

  “Leaving, Blake?”

  It was Harold. He had taken the detached sleeve and wrapped it around his head.

  I was a child asking to hang out with his big brother’s gang. “Harold, can I go to Austin?”

  He said no. I added please. He still said no. I asked a third time and he said we should go for a walk.

  In the made-for-television movie Harold Be Thy Name, there is a famous scene of Harold and me walking through Figwood and coming to the edge of the highway. The cars speed past at seventy miles per hour.

  “Blake, you must trust me,” Harold says. “Follow me.” He steps into a blur of traffic and walks unscathed to the far side. No horns honk, no cars swerve. When watching you can’t tell if Harold’s walking is so well-timed that he misses each car or if he somehow passes through the cars as if they weren’t there. Then, from the other side, Harold turns back to me and mouths the words, “Follow me.” I hesitate, watching the cars plow by. I reach out a foot and quickly pull it back as a red sports car screams past. The wind from the traffic blows against my face. Past the cars, I see the eyes of Harold. I take a deep breath and step. The cars continue to race, the wind blows, but I walk safely into the river of steel with my eyes locked on Harold. A minivan whips past my face and I yelp. I take my eyes off Harold. I see the cars streaming toward me and I start to panic. Horns start honking and cars start swerving. An eighteen-wheeler is headed right for me.

  “Harold, save me!” I yell. And in an instant I am safe with Harold on the far side of the highway.

  “Why didn’t you trust me?” Harold asks, a hand on my shoulder. I shrug and we walk on.

  This never happened. But it made for great TV.

  What did happen on that walk was far more dramatic for me. It was a sentence.

  “You have to learn what grace is,” Harold told me. “You’ll need it.” He went to stick his hands in his pockets, but scrubs don’t have pockets. He just rubbed his legs.

  “We start walking in two days,” he said.

  The Beast Is the Least

  Peter lingers. He brings in my meal and often stays until I’m done, sometimes speaking, sometimes pacing the basement with his hands behind his back.

  Yesterday he watched me paint a picture of the sky, adding layers of blue—morning clear, midday haze, evening thick.

  “You believe in God, don’t you?” he asked. I nodded towards my canvas and added some cloud wisps. “Does that give you any peace?”

  “Resignation.”

  “Must be nice,” he said.

  “Ups and downs,” I said.

  He helped to hang my Mrs. Saint Peter between Gauguin’s The Bathers and Van Gogh’s Cypresses.

  “Good company,” I said. “They were friends, you know. Gauguin and Van Gogh. Almost killed each other, but friends.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I read about it. Friends, but totally different styles of painting. Van Gogh would hunt for images, find the perfect cypress, set up his easel outside and paint what he saw. Gauguin made it all up in his head. Painted inside from memories and what he could imagine. You know what that means?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “It means that the cypress really existed and the bathers were made up.”
>
  “Oh,” he said.

  “Does it matter? I mean, now, looking at these paintings.”

  He grunted and turned to leave.

  “May I ask you something?” I asked as he reached the stairs. “Why am I being cared for? Why not just turn me in?”

  He nodded at a plaque on the wall and walked on.

  Take your greatest enemy, the one who stole everything from

  you, and give him a home. Give him food and care, and you

  will be giving to God.

  Harold Peeks

  So there you go. I’m the least of these. I’m the greatest enemy. To love me is to love God. When Peter leaves, I take my paintbrush and walk to the entrance of the bathroom. One of the wall’s cinderblocks has a jagged edge. I kneel down and begin sharpening the handle of my paintbrush into a dagger. I’ll use it to stab him in the neck. Then I’ll run run run.

  BOOK II

  Packing

  “Bring whatever you want,” he told me. “But know that you’ll have to carry all you bring and you’ll lose all you carry.”

  “So you’re saying I should bring nothing?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t believe me.”

  I didn’t. I went to my home, careful to stop by while my wife and daughter were away, and collected three weeks worth of clothes, shoes, and toiletries. I then went to an REI and bought an aluminum internal framed backpack, a synthetic down sleeping bag, and a yellow and black North Face Teflon jacket—perfect for rain, cold, and wind. I also purchased wool socks, sunblock, and an extra pair of waterproof leather hiking boots. I was set.

  “What about money?” I had asked Harold.

  He said a hundred would do it. Said we’d pool the money. I nodded and packed my credit card.

  The morning we were set to leave, I shoved all my supplies into my new pack. It looked like some extracted tumor leaning against the wall of Harold’s room.

  “That’s too heavy,” Harold said.

  “I’ll manage.”

  Irma arrived wearing a simple flowered dress and carrying a bag half the size of mine.

  “Is that your bag?” she asked, setting hers beside mine. I nodded.

  “Well, you won’t die of exposure.”

  Harold laughed and went off to collect some breakfast from the dining room, leaving Irma and me alone.

  “I didn’t know you were joining us,” I said, just an attempt at small talk.

  “’Cause I’m a woman or because I’m old?”

  “No, I just—”

  “I’ve been on my feet all my life. A little bit longer won’t kill me.” She sat down on Harold’s bed and tightened her shoelaces.

  Shael showed up a few minutes later, half nodding at me and giving Irma a long hug. Gilbert walked in almost immediately after, cussing about taxi prices and bad drivers.

  “Hot-piping dog crap,” he said as he stumbled into my backpack. “Who packed the closet?” I excused myself to help Harold with the food.

  Harold and I were balancing bowls of oatmeal when we came upon Terry standing in the hallway, a pack on his back as stuffed as mine. He was wearing sunglasses, a flannel shirt, and the same designer hiking boots I had in my bag.

  “I’m taking my vacation days, and Beth is fine with me going,” Terry said with a nervous smile.

  “Terry, I told you, this walk isn’t for you,” Harold said.

  “But I want to go. I want to follow.”

  “Go home to your wife.”

  Terry opened his mouth to argue but stopped. He glanced at me, embarrassed, envious. He nodded to Harold and walked down the hall with his backpack and new boots. Harold watched him go.

  “Are you going to send me away as well?” I asked with a light chuckle.

  “You should be so lucky,” he said. And how I wished he would’ve smiled when he said it.

  First Steps

  We began walking on an unseasonably warm November morning. Stepped out from the door of Autumn Winds and headed west. It must have been a laugh for the locals, seeing us march down the street like overage scouts. We skirted a golf course and walked past the middle school, crossed Main Street, and made our way through the older neighborhoods on the east side of town.

  After three hours of walking, I realized something horrible. We were only ten minutes from Autumn Winds. That is, ten minutes by car. Three hours and we had hardly left. I never imagined how long a mile really was until that day. You step and step and step and barely move.

  On a shady street on the east side, a boy on a dirt bike rode beside us, swerving to keep balanced at such a slow pace.

  “Where you guys going?” he asked.

  “Austin,” I told him.

  “Why don’t you guys get a car?”

  “Because then we’d never have met you,” Harold said.

  “That’s kind of stupid,” he said. “I had to slow down to meet you.” He sped away on his dirt bike and was out of sight within half a minute.

  It took half a day of walking before we left the Figwood city limits. My feet were already hurting, my legs were cramping, and the straps of my bag dug into my shoulders like overzealous bondage gear. What I had packed felt heavier than my body. The world was suddenly large. Distances meant more. Austin was too far away to imagine.

  Harold said it was better that we walk, that we see and feel the miles. In America, he said, you can travel a thousand miles and not feel a thing, you can meet a thousand people, live a thousand years, and still not feel a thing. “It’s the glory of our nation. The promise. Give us your poor, your troubled . . . they won’t feel a thing. It might be over a hundred degrees outside, but we have air conditioning. You won’t feel a thing. And if it gets cold, we’ll put on the heater. And you won’t feel a thing. Yes, we’ll execute him, but he won’t feel a thing. Yes, you’re dying, but we’ll make sure you don’t feel a thing.”

  From the start we were learning to feel everything. That’s what he wanted. He wanted blisters and tears as much as laughter and food. He sucked up experience. So we walked.

  An Introduction to Haroldism

  Community Pilgrimage

  Walking the Holy Road to Austin is the centerpiece of Haroldian ritual. The Road has no official starting point. In fact, many people begin walking from their own front door. But wherever a group starts, they eventually pass through Figwood, Texas, and from there on to Austin. Every year thousands of pilgrims from all over the world follow a route indicated by three-foot-high stone markers each engraved with a brick-red H.

  It is common to walk with a group to Austin and to use the time to celebrate community and family. As Harold himself said, “We find God amongst each other.” Groups ranging from two to two hundred walk together singing the many songs that have developed honoring the Road. The lyrics capture the joys and struggles of the walk. For example:

  We stride, we stride. To Austin, to Austin.

  To Austin we roam.

  We stride, we stride. To Austin, to Austin.

  The home we’ve never known.

  Another example:

  And though our hearts are heavy,

  Our lives are full of pain,

  Soon we’ll be in Austin,

  And be made whole again.

  A series of pilgrim hostels have been established along the Road which charge little or no money for a bed and a shower. These hostels with their communal kitchens and dining rooms epitomize the feeling of family and unity that the Road represents. The hostels were founded and are maintained by the Haroldian Order of Service. These men and women live in monastic communities and dedicate their lives to serving those who seek Harold. Recently a host of private hostels offering more luxurious accommodations have also popped up along the Road.

  Though walking is the most common way to travel to Austin, bicycling has become more and more popular. Some also drive or join an organized bus tour. However one travels, the journey to Austin is a joy-filled rite every Haroldian should experience.

  Pain

 
I didn’t mention my blisters. Just gritted my teeth and walked. Irma was the first to complain.

  “Harold, we’ve got to stop. I’m hurting.”

  “What hurts?”

  “My knees, my ankles, my everything.”

  “Don’t feed the pain,” he said, walking as he talked. “The more you feed the pain, the more it will hound you and the bigger it will grow.”

  “So what? Ignore anything that hurts?” Gilbert asked.

  “Acknowledge it. Be aware of pain, but don’t hate it, don’t dwell on it, don’t feed it.” He stopped and sighed. “We’ll take a break.”

  Why Austin?

  “Where the flat ends and the hills begin,” he told us. “There are rivers under Austin.”

  “Fine, but really? Why there?” I asked.

  “A feeling,” he said. “Austin is the place. Everything that is supposed to happen will happen there.”

  “A feeling? We’re walking over two hundred miles for a feeling?”

  He stared at me, his eyes squinting. “No one’s pointing a gun at you, Blake. You can go home. I’m walking to Austin.”

  Unpacking

  I started unpacking from the start, purposely forgetting my electric razor in a gas station bathroom and leaving a couple of sweaters at a campsite. It wasn’t generosity. I just wanted a lighter load.

  I did it all on the sly, not letting the others know how right they had been about the size of my pack.

  Losing my extra pair of hiking boots gave me trouble. On our fourth night out, we slept in a park next to picnic tables. Just before we set off that morning, I took the boots from my backpack and, while no one was looking, left them on one of the tables.