The Book of Harold

by Owen Egerton

  “Got your jellies, got your bagels,” he sang out. “Who wants a bear claw?”

  This was not a fish and loaves miracle. It was the miracle of being homeless in a country so sick with wealth that it throws out food.

  But that was already changing.

  Soon we were in the outskirts of Austin. Open land and farms turning into suburbs and twenty miles of Home Depot, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Repeat. Home Depot, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Repeat. But on a closer look, we saw the parking lots were near empty, gas prices were climbing like acrobats, and every fifth box was closing its doors. We came upon one large electronics store, the same chain I had purchased my flat screen from so many months back. The store’s exterior was plastered with liquidation advertisements. “EVERYTHING MUST GO THIS MONTH!” Over a hundred well-dressed people, white resumes in hand, lined up outside the door.

  “How many are they hiring?” Beddy asked a young man near the back.

  “They didn’t say. Ten, maybe.”

  Gilbert glanced at the line again. “It’s just a month long job.”

  The young man scowled. “You know something better? Point the way.”

  We moved on, Gilbert rubbing his cheeks and chewing his tongue. “This looks bad,” he mumbled at one point. “You could smell fear on those people.”

  “God’s tilling the soil,” Irma said. “Must be planning to plant something.”

  An Introduction to Haroldism

  Renouncers

  Those who remain in constant pilgrimage are most commonly called Renouncers because they have renounced the world and chosen a path of poverty and prayer. During the skyrocketing unemployment that followed in the wake of the Collapse, many Americans found themselves thrust into poverty against their will. In Renouncing, people found away to approach their new poverty not as an unfortunate burden but as a chosen act of faith. In those early, turbulent years, it was economic hardships that stole jobs and homes from people. It was Haroldism that allowed them to view their plight as holy.

  Renouncing has only grown in popularity. It is estimated that close to 5% of the American population define themselves as Renouncers.

  A Renouncer can be recognized by the red stripe drawn or tattooed down the nose. This is referred to as the “Fingerprint of Harold” and signifies the belief that the wearer has been touched and has chosen to leave the responsibilities of work and family in order to seek God.

  Most cities in America now feature a Nest or a Renouncer’s Field. These parks or campgrounds are reserved for Renouncers.

  It has become common to see Renouncers sitting openhanded along city streets in the early mornings. The afternoon is dedicated to public teaching and discussion. The evening is a time of prayer. Often at sunset the low hum of hymns coming from a large city’s Nest can be heard for miles around.

  There has been an ongoing national debate concerning Renouncers. Many feel that encouraging a lifestyle of begging and vagrancy can only hurt America. Others argue that the Renouncers play an essential role in society. As Josh Erton writes in his book Road to Roads, “[Renouncers] are the soul of our future. Their chosen poverty is our culture’s penance. They are our walking prayers. In their wanderings we offer our requests and praise. If God smiles upon America, it is in part because we allow these prayers to thrive. So, yes, we must fill their begging hands because the worker is worth his wages.”

  A more cynical defense was offered by former senator Robert Karyn who said, “There’s simply not enough jobs to go around. Thank God they’re not trying to get one.”

  Austin

  On the morning of January 6, we arrived in Austin. First just a silver and stone blur to the west, reflecting the pale predawn light. We walked faster, wordless, each of us breathing in the cool air. The growing glow of morning light, the city before, the miles behind, it felt as if the moment was the center of all history. We were the center. We marched through the flat east, gazing at the hills far off to the west, finally touching the city in between. And you could smell the change. Earth stretching its arms in a morning yawn, and the city tapping its feet. Still no words, just slower steps and a new sun behind us coloring everything gold.

  Buildings slick and tall, chrome and glass, others brown stone and aged. In the middle, surrounded by taller buildings but still managing to dominate, stood the granite-pink dome of the capitol. From a distance, downtown was clean, structured. The closer we got, the dirtier the city got. But we were dirty too.

  Soon people were everywhere, driving cars, cleaning windows, running in state-of-the-art shoes, talking on tiny phones, yelling from roofs. I was walking through a world I was not a part of. People were making money or spending money. It was a community, and I was not a member of the community. The little things were the hardest. Passing a Starbucks, I realized I could not go in. Couldn’t sit in the cushy chairs, couldn’t browse the espresso machines. I didn’t have the money for a cup of coffee, and that was the price of admission. I had become unwelcome. Worse. I had become unseen. The people walking and driving and buying and selling never even saw us. We were ghosts. They moved right by us. The voice on the radio and the picture on the billboard were more real to them.

  Strange. To me people had never been so real. The faces overwhelmed me. I had been in crowds before, in traffic jams or elevators. But then a crowd of people was just a crowd, now it was a crowd of people with names and lives. I had never realized that each face had a whole life behind it.

  Harold sat on a bench by a bus stop. “Ever hearing, never understanding. Seeing, but not perceiving. Dull ears and closed eyes. Otherwise they might turn and be healed.” He looked at Beddy, “Ask me how long.”

  “How long?”

  “Until the cities are ruins and all the houses empty.”

  Springs

  Our first day in Austin, we found the swimming hole pictured on Beddy’s postcard, the one from his bible. It was January, but the sky was clear and the air warm, and the waters of Barton Springs, surrounded by grass slopes and towering oaks, shimmered green in the noon sun. Beddy whooped, stripped to his boxers, and dove right in. No pilgrim walking through the gates of Jerusalem could have been happier. I followed, leaping head first into the waters, the sweet chill touching every part of me, surprising me, waking parts I didn’t know were sleeping. I swam deeper and deeper, the waters carrying every trace of the walk’s grime from my skin. The quiet of those waters, the clearness of that muted world. Plants waving in slow motion, sunlight stuttering from the surface. At the bottom I ran a hand along the moss-lined limestone floor and finally, feeling my lungs protest, I pushed against the stone and floated back to air.

  Gilbert and Irma sat on the side dangling their legs in the water as Beddy and I raced each other across the pool. Harold and Shael walked the circumference of the hole, hand in hand, wading in the shallow waters at the far west end. Eventually, I crawled out, trekked some yards up the hill and lay back in the yielding grass, letting the sun dry my skin and warm me to sleep.

  Later, before indulging in the changing rooms’ hot showers, all six of us sat on the hillside and talked for an hour. I can’t remember a word any of us said, only the buzzing joy that we were together and in Austin.

  An Introduction to Haroldism

  Feast of the Fast

  Perhaps the most popular tradition in the Haroldian calendar is the Feast of the Fast. On this day believers pause from the self-imposed scarcity of the Season of the Fast to prepare an extravagant meal. There are no particulars to the meal, only that every member of the family help in the preparation and that the outcome is truly a feast.

  Once the table has been set and the food laid out, the family members exit their home, leaving their front door open. On finding a neighbor’s house with an open door, the family enters and enjoys the meal set out, knowing someone is doing the same in their home.

  In many parts of the country the meal is followed by street parties and neighborhood carnivals. No holiday better captures Harold’s proclamation
, “The only way to truly feast is to feed another.”

  Right as Rain

  The next day was gold in the morning, then blue. But in the afternoon a gray-green carpet of clouds rolled in from the west and the air turned cold. Just before five, it started to rain. We tried to stay at a homeless shelter, but they were packed. A volunteer with tired eyes suggested we try another shelter a mile away. “They close their doors at six, so hurry.”

  A block from the shelter we passed an obese woman kneeling in the rain, picking from a pile of pennies on the sidewalk and dropping them into an oversized jar. Harold stopped and watched her for a moment. Then he knelt beside her and gathered some pennies.

  “One penny at a time,” the woman said, her eyes never leaving the pile. “One at a time or it won’t work.”

  So Harold started picking up pennies, one by one. Shael knelt down too.

  “Harold, it’s almost six,” Gilbert said. Harold didn’t respond. Beddy and Irma joined him on the ground. I helped as well, stooping next to the woman. I could smell her. Wet stink. I could see her thin hair, her red scalp underneath.

  “This is my pay. I spilt it. I was in Nam and the Gulf. This is my pay.”

  “Ah crap,” Gilbert said and squatted. “Can’t we just scoop them?”

  “It won’t work that way,” she said, still staring at the pile. “You have to do it slowly. Very slowly or it won’t work.”

  The pile wasn’t all pennies. There were a lot of buttons and some bottle caps. Too pitiful to stomach. Not just this sad woman, but our charity as well. A pointless act. Nothing gained. And the rain drizzled the whole time.

  When we were finished, the woman picked up the jar and squeezed it to her chest.

  “Good work, everybody,” she said and waddled down the street.

  “It’s past six,” Gilbert said.

  “Don’t worry,” Harold said and started walking.

  A block away, I turned and saw the woman dumping the jar on to the sidewalk, shaking out every last coin, button, and bottle cap. The others didn’t see and I didn’t tell them.

  A half hour later we passed a young priest, black shirt and white collar, locking up at a high-arched, downtown church. Shael asked if he could give us a place to stay.

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid we don’t have the resources,” he said, a little fear in his voice.

  “You have a roof.”

  “I’m sorry,” he unlocked the door and stepped back inside. “There’s a shelter not too far from here.”

  We started walking, cutting through alleys and parking lots. It was dark now and cold. But the rain had let up. We turned a corner on to Congress Avenue and there, lit by spotlights, stood the capitol. Less pink at night. More gray.

  “Let’s see if anyone’s home,” Harold said and ran across the street and into the grounds.

  “Harold, wait,” I said, chasing after him.

  The grounds were a rolling green lawn filled with oversized oaks also lit up. Harold was standing between a spotlight and an oak. His shadow climbed through the wet branches.

  “They left all the lights on,” Harold said, making the shadow of a Doberman with his hands. The shadow barked at the capitol. In the drive sat a police car with its parking lights on.

  “Here comes Harold,” the shadow sang, transforming into a bird. “He’s gonna preach up a storm. Gonna speak some truth.”

  “Come on, Harold. Let’s find a place to sleep.”

  He dropped his hands and turned to me. “I could tear it down,” he said. “Every stone.”

  “The others are waiting.”

  We made our way south on Congress Avenue passing bars and restaurants. We could hear music being played from blocks away to the east and to the west and on the rooftops above us. On the edge of a strip of water, where Congress Avenue became a bridge, we passed a hotel with large, yellow windows. I could smell food from the connecting restaurant. Warmth and food. Gilbert stopped walking.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “My treat. Tonight we stay here, get a good bath and a night’s rest. Celebrate our arrival.”

  My whole body smiled at the thought. Beside me Beddy was nodding like a bobble-head doll.

  “That’ll cost a lot,” Irma said.

  “Not a worry,” Gilbert grinned. “I’ve got credit.” He pulled out his wallet and raised it above his head. We laughed, half for the joke, half out of hope for a warm night.

  Harold walked through the rest of us, not smiling. He reached out an open hand to Gilbert. Gilbert looked at Harold’s face. He placed his wallet in Harold’s hand. For a moment Harold held it on his open palm, as if feeling its weight. Then flung it over the side of the bridge.

  I gasped and ran to the edge. I could just see it splash into the reflection of the city. When I turned back around, Harold and the others, even Gilbert, were already walking.

  We camped under the overhang of a warehouse. The ground was wet and sleep was hard to come by. The cold creeping into my bones. A man and his son took shelter under the same awning.

  “We’re okay, aren’t we son?” the man kept asking.

  “Yeah, Dad,” the boy said each time. “Right as rain.”

  The next morning Beddy woke up at dawn and scrambled off. He came back in an hour with a bag of stale bagels, which we shared with the father and son.

  I was grateful for those bagels. Rock hard and dry, but I was so damn pleased. I didn’t need to think or make an effort to be grateful, just took a bite and my body thanked God that something like food existed.

  It rained again that day. Harold stayed beneath the overhang, leaning against the building and curling into a ball within his red poncho, watching cars pass and puddles form, rubbing his temples with the heels of his hands.

  “Harold?” I said. He didn’t seem to hear me. “Harold?”

  He looked up, pulled from somewhere else.

  “We’re in Austin,” I said. “Now what?”

  Half a smile appeared on his lips and he closed his eyes.

  We waited, keeping a distance. Hours and hours.

  Beddy took a napkin, held it in the rain for a moment and added it to his bible.

  “It’s getting late,” Gilbert said. “Should we try the shelter again?”

  “No shelter,” Harold said. His first words that day. “Let the others have the shelter.”

  We stayed in the same spot until a police car pulled up and ordered us to move on. No suggestion as to where to move on to. Just move on.

  In the late afternoon we trudged through more of downtown, walking through the condos and cafes on the west side and the east side bars just opening their doors. People on the street hurried past in closed coats and umbrellas, the cold reddening their cheeks and noses. Christmas lights were still strung across Congress Avenue, tinsel on the dismal day. We came upon a crowd, maybe forty, shuffling around the black tinted glass of a corner building. They squeezed near, peering through the windows.

  “What’s happening?” Shael asked.

  “Damn bank won’t open. Hasn’t opened since last week,” a woman said. “They’re in there. You can see them, but they won’t open the doors or answer the phone or give us our money.”

  Over their shoulders, I could just see the suited figures moving far behind the glass, pacing from office to office, not risking a glance at the door.

  Someone near the front of the crowd banged on the window, shaking the glass. “Hey, we see you!”

  Gilbert took a few steps back, almost to the curb. “This is my bank.”

  Beddy turned. “Do you want to check on your account?”

  “No. I mean, I own this bank. Or at least most of it.” His face was the color of ash. “I need to make some calls. I need to do something.”

  “Don’t,” Harold said.

  “Harold, this isn’t some Vegas game. It’s my business.”

  “You save it now, the only thing you learn is that it can be saved. And that’s a lie. It’s dying, like everything else.” Harol
d wiped water from his face, looking around quickly. He jumped onto the hood of a car parked on the street and yelled at the crowd. “Who’s surprised? Anyone? Who?” People turned. Harold’s face, so corpselike that morning, was now burning. “You’re surprised? You thought this, all of this, would last? Everything is going to let you down. Everything. Your banks, your lovers, your children. Not because they don’t love you. They’re just fuck ups, we’re all fuck ups!”

  Someone chuckled. Someone else shouted for Harold to shut his mouth. But they might as well have been throwing grass into a hurricane. His eyes met every person standing there, his tone cut through the cold. “Your body will eat itself up and let you die. Your brain will turn soft and throw out all your favorite memories. And God . . . He’ll let you down too. I promise. He’s going to let babies die and rapists live. He will. He does.”

  He was breathing hard, white air puffing out. He shook his head slowly.

  “There is one thing . . . just one thing. Fainter than a smell you can’t catch. One thing that makes any of this worth anything. It’s hiding. It’s hiding right here now. Love is the closest word, but it doesn’t do it justice. But don’t look for another word. It will fail as well.”

  He looked up at the sky and back at the crowd, his voice quiet.

  “It’s faint. Easy to miss. Not enough to stand up in a courtroom. And that’s it, you see. Life is on trial and the evidence is stacked against it. But still, that faint something. That is what I choose. Because of that hint, that splinter of hope, I choose to believe the world is good, being alive is good.”