Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books)

by Brad Whittington

  There were others in the crowd who didn’t share my disability. The altar was crowded with penitents. Even Ralph made his way down, tears streaming down his cheeks, and dropped to his knees. I didn’t know what to make of it. I had sat next to him every Sunday for years, and he had never displayed the slightest interest in anything Old MacDonald or Dad had to say. Then I saw Sonia. She was walking slowly to the front, mascara running like a bad Alice Cooper impersonation. Brother Bates welcomed her, seemed to ask her some questions, and they talked for a long time, more than ten verses of “Just As I Am.”

  When she returned to her place next to the Harmons, I almost didn’t recognize her. It was as if someone or something had whisked away what had been Sonia from beneath that perpetual coating of makeup and had substituted another person without even disturbing the dark purple eye shadow or clotted eyelashes. Another person with the same bleached hair with brown roots, same brown eyes, same clothes and body, but another person nonetheless. I studied her like those puzzles where you are supposed to identify the six things that are different between the two pictures, but I couldn’t identify any single characteristic that was visibly different. Except her eyes. Looking into them used to be like looking into a well of insecurity and confusion. Now it was like looking into a serene pool of confidence and contentment.

  For a week the cycle continued: preparation for enlightenment by day, trial by fire at night. One by one everyone around me walked the plank as I looked on, people I had never suspected of having a single spiritual bone in their bodies. However, Brother Bates’ labors were lost on me. He hadn’t produced any information I didn’t already know or exposit on any principle I didn’t already accept, but by the sheer force of the masses of humanity streaming down the aisles, I felt as if I must be missing something, that I was somehow mocking him in my refusal to admit an abject depravity that I didn’t believe I shared.

  Attendance had been building all week, which meant that on Sunday morning the usual crowd combined with the growing throng packed the building. Brother Bates delivered the goods with his dramatic testimony of drug addiction and salvation. People streamed to the front like there was a blue-light special on salvation. Church members came down out of the choir to the altar before we finished the second verse of “Amazing Grace.” After the last tear was shed and the last nose was blown, we bid a reluctant (well, most were reluctant) farewell to Brother Bates, and he left with a sizable love-offering.

  The final night was before me, the preamble to my rendezvous with destiny: the baptism service, an early bedtime, and then I would turn my back to the dawn and set out for the Promised Land. I was ready for a return to the more sedate routine of Dad’s services. The Sunday night baptism service would be just us home folks, plus the new additions queued up for a stroll through the baptistry.

  We started with a few songs, a short reflection on the meaning of baptism delivered by Dad, and then he disappeared to suit up in his hip waders. We sang a few more songs before we saw, behind the empty choir loft, the troubling of the waters that presaged Dad’s appearance in the baptistry. There were more than twenty people—segregated and sequestered by gender, of course—in the two rooms on either side of the tank. Dad diligently, and joyfully, worked his way through them like a scythe in a hayfield, alternating between sides. I watched as Ralph dutifully submitted to being dunked by Dad (something that would have earned me a licking if I had tried it at Toodlum Creek) and exited stage right, solemn and dripping.

  Sonia descended the steps on the opposite side and was baptized. As she was rising up, water streaming from her bleached hair, the back door of the church slammed open against the wall. Every head jerked around in one accord to see Parker come striding down the center aisle, his good eye bloodshot and burning with intensity. His face was flushed, the scar dead white in contrast. He clutched a small paper sack in his left hand. He stopped two-thirds of the way to the front, swaying slightly, and held out an accusing finger as he scanned the crowd, starting on the back left.

  “Meddlin’ do-gooders,” he hollered. His good eye darted back and forth, and he slowly spun on the heel of his boot. It alighted on me for a second and moved on. I flinched as if the dirty fingernail had scratched my face in its arc through the crowd. “Wife-stealin’ hypocrites,” he thundered like Brother Bates’s evil twin, spewing saliva. He completed his scan on the back right and swung back again, finally locating the objects of his fury—the Harmons.

  “Christians,” he hissed, as if uttering the most obscene word he knew. “We was married, not in this church, but in the sight a Gawd all the same. ’Til death us do part.” He paused for a hit from the bottle in the paper sack.

  “Parker Walker, it’s about time you got here.” Dad’s voice reminded everyone that something else had been happening only a few seconds before. Dad was standing on the edge of the podium in his white shirt, black tie, and hip waders, a trail of water leading through the choir loft to the baptistry where he had evidently climbed over the wall.

  The sight of Dad in this unlikely ensemble caught Parker speechless. His forehead creased, the scar cutting through the ridges. His one eye squinted as if trying to make sense of what he saw.

  Dad didn’t wait for comprehension to sink in. “There’s been a world of folks praying you would come in here, and now, there you stand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “You,” Parker growled. “Yer the one what put her up to it. Tellin’ a wife to leave her own man that she married in the sight a Gawd. Poisonin’ her mind agin me. Poisonin’ the whole town agin me. What right you got to tell these folks to pray for me? If I’m hankerin’ for some prayin’, which ain’t so likely, I’ll tell ’em myself.”

  “Parker, you’re the one who is poisoned,” Dad said, slipping the straps of the hip waders off his shoulders. “You’ve poisoned yourself with lies and with the bottle you think is hidden in that sack.” He slipped the waders off, holding them in one hand, standing there in his black trousers and stocking feet. “You’ve loaded yourself down with a weight that you don’t have to carry, and it’s driving you mad. But you can take it off, just like I’ve taken off these waders, and be free of it forever.” Dad threw the waders across the podium, and they landed with a wet thud on the floor by the piano.

  “Don’t you start preachin’ at me, you citified Bible-thumper. I ain’t no weak-minded woman what can be twisted one way and t’nother. You ain’t never dealt with the likes of me, and you don’t want to start now, I guarantee it.” He spun unsteadily on his heel back to the Harmons. “Where are yer hidin’ her? Yer ain’t got no right to keep a lawful husband from his wife, not in the sight of the law or God.”

  Parker was interrupted by a racket that caused everyone to look to the front of the church. There was no apparent cause of the noise, but I noticed the water in the baptistry was rippling against the glass in front. Then Sonia stood up in the back row of the choir, where she had evidently fallen while climbing over the wall.

  “Parker,” she said, looking at him steadily while climbing over the pews in the choir loft, “didn’t nobody steal me. Didn’t nobody trick me. Didn’t nobody make me leave. Exceptin’ you.” She finally cleared the rail at the front of the choir loft. “You.” She stopped at the edge of the podium next to Dad. “You drove me away. I had ta leave before you killed me. You ’n’ that bottle. Didn’t have no choice.”

  “Lies! Filthy lies! Forget this bottle, it ain’t nothin’ to you.” He jerked it from the sack, drained it in one gulp, dashed it to pieces on the floor in front of the podium, and started toward Sonia.

  Dad put his stocky frame between them, pushing Sonia back away from the edge of the platform. “Parker . . .”

  Mac suddenly appeared between them, whipping the wheelchair around in the broken glass. “Hold on, Parker,” he shouted. “You’ve already killed one good woman. Isn’t that enough?”

  Parker jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “Mac.” He shook as if he’d seen the ghost of
Peggy and Kristen accusing him. And for all I knew, maybe he did. Given what he’d been drinking, he could be seeing anything.

  “It’s enough already. It’s time, Parker.” Mac’s eyes burned with a ferocity that paled the fire in Parker’s eyes like the sun overshadows the moon. “God, how I have hated you.”

  Parker blinked rapidly, looking confusedly around him, slowly backing away from Mac as if from a rattlesnake.

  Mac closed his eyes. “I laid there in that hospital, half alive, knowin’ you were just down the hall, and I prayed for you to live, and I prayed for strength.” His fingers were white as he gripped the arms of his wheelchair. “Just life enough for you and just strength enough for me. To crawl to your room and kill you myself with whatever I could find.” He opened his eyes. “And you lived.” He leaned forward. “And I finally have the strength.” His right hand jerked up as it pulled the armrest from the wheelchair.

  Mac looked at his hand as if surprised at what it had done, as if it belonged to someone else. Parker fell to his knees and bowed his head like a prisoner awaiting execution. Sonia let out a cry and started forward, but Dad held her back, shaking his head.

  Mac rolled the wheelchair forward, crunching through the glass, until his knees were almost touching Parker’s nose. “But there’s been enough death. It’s time for some life.”

  Parker’s head jerked up, face to face with Mac. He squinted at Mac with his good eye and shook his head, confused. “But . . .”

  “Hate is death, Parker. I’ve killed you a thousand times in my mind, and it’s made me a murderer. You and me, Parker, we’re the same.” Mac threw the armrest to one side. “No, that’s not right. You killed by accident, by carelessness at worst. I killed with knowledge and will, and gloried in it. Rejoiced in it. Desired it.”

  Parker shook his head violently. “No, no . . . ,” he blurted out, clambering to his feet and stumbling backward. “No!” he shouted. “I killed ’em. I done it!” His hands flew to his face. “I got the mark to prove it,” he declared, tearing the patch from his face. The white scar slashed his flushed face from his hairline to his jawbone across a pale, sunken eyelid. “I don’t get no mercy. I been marked for hell, and the devil’s done took me.” A single eye glared down with fierce despair at the small man in the wheelchair. “You can’t change that, Mac. Can’t nobody change it.”

  Mac looked back up at him, tears overflowing his eyes. “You’re right, Parker,” he whispered. “I can’t change it. Won’t never be able to change it.” He rolled closer. “But Jesus can. Jesus did.” Parker watched him anxiously, but stood his ground. “Can’t neither one of us bring back Peggy or Kristen. Whether we hate or love, can’t change that. But two lives wasted is enough. There ain’t no reason for me to waste another life in hatin’ you, or you to waste a life in provin’ to yourself that you ain’t no good.”

  Parker shook his head. “It’s too late. I done crossed the line. I can’t come back. Look at me.” He held his arms out in a plea, desperation on his face as plain as the scar.

  Mac looked at him for a long time. “I see ya,” he said quietly. “And I see it ain’t too late. You look at her and tell me it ain’t so.” He spun his chair around and pointed at Sonia.

  Parker looked at Sonia. I looked at Sonia. Everybody looked at Sonia. Dad stepped aside and turned back to look at her. I looked, and hard. She looked like Sonia to me. A Sonia without makeup, which was pretty rare. A Sonia with wet hair plastered to her head and clothes dripping a big puddle on the podium, which was somewhat out of the norm, but still just Sonia.

  Well, almost just Sonia. It wasn’t the same Sonia I had sold a paper to, shut up in a cave of a house. It wasn’t the same Sonia I had seen hysterically dropping keys and boots on the garage floor. This Sonia seemed a little more solid, even while looking around self-consciously before looking back at Parker.

  That was all I saw, but I was at the end of a week during which everyone around me had seemed to see much more than I did. Now, during what I had hoped would be a reassuringly boring service, I was once again playing the role of the puzzled observer. I turned back to Parker.

  Parker looked at Sonia with a wild distraction that made it hard to think he could see her at all. But he did. His eye focused on her, and pain seemed to pour out of him like water through a breached dam. He clutched his head and reeled like a man caught off balance, falling to his knees. Mac turned back to him and held out a hand. Parker buried his head in Mac’s lap, his shoulders heaving.

  Dad stepped down from the podium and picked his way through the shards of glass to where Mac and Parker held everyone captive. He put one hand on Mac’s shoulder, the other on Parker’s shoulder, and waited for a long time—his head bowed so that I could see clearly where the crew cut ended and the bare scalp began. When the sobs that wracked Parker’s large frame finally subsided, Dad spoke.

  “Parker, do you know that all these people here love you and have been praying for you?”

  Parker raised himself to a kneeling position and nodded his head, which was still bowed.

  “Do you know that Jesus loves you more than all the people here?”

  Parker nodded.

  “Nobody can undo what has happened, but Jesus can change what happens next. But only if you let Him. Are you ready to do that?”

  Parker nodded.

  We got home very late that night.

  The Mystical Land of Ultimate Cool

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Given the circumstances, early to bed, early to rise seemed to be a policy unlikely to be enforced. I did my final packing while Dad and Parker sat late into the night talking in his study. In my suitcase I included the AM radio, Pauline’s Bible, which took less space than mine, and for reasons unknown even to myself, Twain’s Mysterious Stranger. I set aside a stack of books to bring with me in the backseat, mainly science fiction. Then I turned off the light and lay in bed, trying to force myself to go to sleep. The events of the last few hours, the low murmur of voices echoing from the study through the air-conditioning ducts, and the anticipation of the trip conspired against my plans. I pulled the Twain book out of the suitcase and skimmed through it. Sometime after midnight I heard an F-150 start up and pull out of the driveway, followed by the click of light switches and footsteps as Dad traversed the length of the rambling house from the garage, past my bedroom, to his.

  Not for the first time I wondered how Dad did it. It was as though he could see through this world into another—through what was, into what could be. Or would be. When Sonia had burst into the garage, all I saw was a frantic, desperate, abused woman. I would have lost a considerable sum if I had been asked at that moment to bet on what her state of mind would be ten minutes later. But then Dad prayed, and I watched her change, literally before my eyes. How could that happen?

  The bolt-removal experience I could, and did, write off to Dad’s talent for improvisation, even if I didn’t mention it to anyone. But you don’t change people at the very core with improvisation. From what I could tell, you don’t change people at all, no matter how much you want to. Something else did it. The Parker who stormed into the church was no more like the Parker who walked out than I was like Jolene Culpepper. It was almost like in the movies, where something from outer space takes over a person, only backward. This invasion had left Parker more human, less alienated. Once again I watched a person change so completely that even his body seemed different. What could do that? Twain’s stranger didn’t seem to be acquainted with this side of God. Was a dream that powerful? Could a vagrant, formless thought alone in the universe transform other vagrant, formless thoughts? I woke up with the book in my hand, the sun in my eyes, and the questions still pestering my brain.

  I leapt from the bed, suddenly very awake in the anticipation of the day for which I had been preparing for months. But my impatience would have no effect on the measured pace of our methodical departure for a Cloud vacation, events which were steeped in traditions, unspoken, undocumented, but as reassuringly predic
table as any religious ritual.

  As those traditions dictated, Mom sat in the front reading the jokes from Reader’s Digest to Dad. We kids in the back listened to see if she would translate the occasional d-word into “darn,” or, as she occasionally did, render it in the original French. If we went for the original, we would glance at each other in the backseat and raise an eyebrow. That was living on the edge!

  We hit Houston about rush hour and the air-conditioning promptly failed, a harbinger, had we but known it. We resorted to the old reliable, 4-60 air-conditioning. (Roll down the four windows and drive sixty miles an hour.) Of course 4-60 air-conditioning is not effective against June in Texas, particularly during rush hour in Houston. When we got out of town and back up to seventy miles per hour on I-83, we cooled down. Mom gave up reading the jokes from the fresh Reader’s Digest because shouting over the wind made her hoarse.

  We arrived in Austin at the house of Aunt Maureen and Uncle Ernest late that evening, somewhat wilted. My sisters and I sat gingerly in the den sipping iced tea and enduring the baseball game Uncle Ernest was sleeping through. Dad and my cousin, Ernest Jr., tore into the air conditioner and had it fixed by midnight.

  Dad came in and tried to get us to load the laundry drum with our clothes, but Mom refused. We all changed to our pajamas, and Mom started a load in Aunt Maureen’s washing machine. Then Mom, Dad, Aunt Maureen, and Ernest Jr. talked over coffee around the kitchen table until we kids were dozing along with Uncle Ernest to the lullaby of a test pattern.

  Tuesday morning we were back on the road. But not for long. Before noon the car made a few choking gasps, and Dad maneuvered it to the side of the road before it sputtered to a stop.

  “Now what?” Heidi demanded of no one in particular. No one in particular answered.

  Dad got out and opened the hood. After a minute or so he poked his head in the car. “Everything seems to be OK, but I smell gasoline real strong.” He went back and looked at the engine.