by Jacob Beaver
She smiled. “Well, good.”
Our eyes met and suddenly I blanked. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. What a nice motel? What a nice country? What big green eyes? It was a ghastly moment, and it seemed to stretch out forever. I felt the old blackness descend on me, and I might have turned on my heels and walked out, I really might, but then she spoke.
“I did go home for an hour,” she said. “I left early, but don’t tell anybody. My mother was all to hell. She gets crazy about the littlest things, and calls me up and . . . It was nothing. Just a porch step is broke and needs fixing. I’ll find a carpenter.”
“I’m a carpenter!”
I must have said it too loudly or with too much enthusiasm, because Summer gave me a look. “You are?” she said. “I thought you were a cameraman or . . . you know, for that movie y’all are making.”
Now I had plenty to say. Words came pouring out so fast that Summer laughed and slapped my shoulder.
“Slow down!” she said. “You’re in the South. We don’t do fast-talking. Now, let’s start again. One thing at a time. What’s your name?”
And so I explained about myself, or as much as I could in a suitably slow-talking way, how I lived in London and this was my first time in America, and Summer told me she’d love to see London, having grown up on the Mary Poppins movie, and she’d love to see other places too, like Paris and Italy and Hawaii, but she’d never been anywhere at all, apart from vacations to Myrtle Beach, partly because her daddy died and she moved back home with her mother, who wasn’t coping well, and was I really a carpenter?
“I really am,” I said. “Let me prove it to you.”
“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
“I am completely free,” I said, because I didn’t care what Steve thought, and because I was wasted.
“Well, okay,” Summer said. “I get off at two tomorrow. Meet me at the motel and we’ll go to my house.”
Then the band started up again, and now people were dancing. The music seemed to get faster and faster. I only recall the name of one song, “Freeborn Man.” When the banjo player announced it, the place erupted. Soon everyone was dancing, including Steve and Tino, and even Dave, and then even me. Summer waved me onto the dance floor, so I did my best, which isn’t saying a lot. Steve was surprisingly good, though. I hadn’t seen him dance since he was a kid, and I’d never imagined he could do much with that oafish body. Maybe the bouncy shoes helped. Anyway, that’s my last memory of the night, Steve floating around the dance floor like a fat Cupid on invisible wings.
Oh, and one other thing. I’ve just remembered it. When we left the bar, I saw Wade Henderson out in the parking lot. He was staggering badly. I thought he might collapse, but he made it across the asphalt and rested against an old pickup. Then he opened the door of the pickup and nearly fell backwards. That took a while. Finally he slid into the pickup and the door slammed and the lights came on. I didn’t watch him drive off. I didn’t even want to think about it.
* * *
I woke with an aching head. For a moment I thought I’d crashed my motorbike and was in hospital. Then I saw the picture on the wall. The picture showed a lion and a lamb sitting together on short grass beneath fluffy clouds. The grass was perfect, like green carpet. My father would have loved it. I imagined him sitting there with the animals, enjoying the heavenly grass, not a weed in sight.
Then Steve knocked on the door.
Outside it was bright and warm, almost hot. The other three were standing by the car, eating from paper bags. Steve handed me a bag.
“It’s called a sausage biscuit,” he said, “but it’s not what you think. Here’s coffee. You’ll need it.”
The “biscuit” looked like a scone without butter. It tasted like a scone without butter. But the slice of sausage tasted like sausage, and the coffee was nice and wet.
“Bene,” Tino said, and threw his bag in a trash can. “So, Steve. Last night you meet and greet, you ask many questions. Today you have answers?”
Steve yawned. “Not really. People know about Buckner, for sure, but they’re not saying what they know. Could be they’re protecting him, closing ranks. A community thing, against outsiders. Or it could be that . . . maybe he’s insane. Nutters make people nervous. Would you want him in your neighborhood, a man who lives like he does, and walks on water?”
“Hang on,” I said. “Walks on water? You keep saying that, but you just read it in the paper. You don’t know that Buckner claims anything of the sort.”
“Right, I don’t. That’s what today is all about. We’re going to put Buckner under the microscope. Let’s nail that fucker till he squirms.” Steve chucked his bag at the trash can and missed. “You ready?”
I hadn’t even brushed my teeth, but there was no stopping the Terminator. Before I could say a word, Steve was in the car and starting the engine. Tino and Dave got in too. I picked up Steve’s bag and dropped it in the trash can, and off we went.
Buckner was waiting for us. As we came down his driveway, he appeared out of the trees and waved. Steve told us he’d do the talking and I should help Dave and Tino, and I told Steve that was wonderful, honey, I love to hear you talk, and then we stopped on the dirt beside the old pickups. Steve sat there a moment, just sat there. He didn’t move or speak. It was kind of odd. Then he jumped out and walked off with Buckner, and we started unpacking the equipment, which took longer than you might think. I wasn’t surprised. I’d spent half my life working in film studios, and they are extremely boring places. Most of the time you stand around while some guy tries to repair a cable or something, and all the big shots, the director and the star and the star’s friends, they’re off in another room, laughing and eating peanuts.
When Tino and Dave were all set, we took the stuff around the side of the house to the back porch, where Steve and Buckner were sitting in rocking chairs like old friends. The porch had a great view of the lake, which was now sparkling, but the porch itself was in a state. Once it must have been handsome—wide and deep, with thick floorboards painted white. That was way back, though. Nothing had been done for years, it looked like, except to drop tools here and there, and kick some broken chairs into a corner.
Steve introduced us one by one, and we all shook hands. Lee spoke to each of us as we shook. “Howdy, how are ye?” he said, with a softness that reminded me of Summer’s voice.
The man didn’t look nearly as forbidding as before, and he was shorter than I’d realized—the same height as Steve but half the weight. He was a bit older than me, I thought, and maybe stronger. He had the wiry strength of a working man, though today his upper half was concealed in a loose shirt. So, no tattoos. No cap, either. His hair was dark and wild, like a little dark explosion on top of his head. But his face was clean-shaven. And his eyes were very clear, and very open. What do I mean? I mean he looked awake. Yes, that’s it. Lee Buckner looked wide awake.
“Now, Steve,” he said, “afore we git going, they’s two thangs to discuss. First thang, I’m gonna tell you sumpin, and then I’m gonna ax you sumpin. If it don’t settle right with neither of us, well then, it was good meeting you.”
Steve was right about one thing. The man was hard to understand. Although he spoke slowly, the lilt in his voice was bigger, or bouncier, than Summer’s. It made his words swoop about in ways I didn’t expect. I had to concentrate, and even then I missed a few things, but what Lee said was roughly this: he didn’t want to talk about walking on water, because he didn’t know what it meant. He was “praying on it.” When God anointed you to do something, he said, you should accept it and not use it. Or test it, like them snake-handling folks.
“What snake-handling folks?” Steve asked.
“Jest be happy to serve God,” he said, “to be in the Spirit. Ain’t nothing to talk about. Nothing to think about. That’s how you lose yourself, if you git my meaning. Jest be happy and praise the Lord.”
And he smiled.
I can’t explain it, but his s
mile seemed to blow through me. It was a like a small gust of wind, inside. All at once my hangover disappeared. I felt fine. It was good standing there with the sun on my back, the lake sparkling, birds singing.
Steve looked down, up again, blinked. “What’s the second thing?”
“It’s a question,” Lee said. “Do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do,” Steve said.
“How ’bout you?”
“Me?” I said. “Oh, I’m just here to help. I’m his brother, actually. These two guys are the film crew. Perhaps, er, ask them.”
“I’m axing you.”
I glanced at Steve, who gave a tiny shrug, which might have been a signal or might not, and either way the man was asking me and looking into my eyes and I felt the wind blow inside me and I opened my mouth.
“No, I don’t believe in God,” I said. “I think the world is a terrible place, full of pain. Pain and death. Where’s God? I don’t see God. No.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your honesty.”
I nodded.
Lee turned to Steve. “All right then. Where you wanna do this?”
They decided to do it right there, on the back porch, since the light was good and Dave liked the acoustics. While Tino set up the tripod and Dave fiddled with the clip mike, Steve produced the life rights consent agreement. He gave it to Lee, who held it close to his face, page after page, and finally signed it. Then Dave attached the clip mike to Lee’s shirt and Steve clapped in front of Lee’s face. That was a nice moment. Lee was so startled he almost went over backwards in the rocking chair. Steve had to calm him down. He explained that the clap was a marker, so they could synchronize the sound with the film. It was called a sync clap.
“Well, don’t do it agin,” Lee said, and we all laughed.
That was how the interview began, with laughter, but it ended differently. I don’t like to think about it, even now, and I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow of the whole event. Watch Steve’s film. Most of it’s there. No, I’ll give you a short version, my version, which is the truth.
Steve started with basic questions—where Lee was from, and so on—and then Steve stopped talking, because Lee embarked on the story of his life. He was born and raised in Mountain City, Tennessee (which he pronounced Tina-see). His father was a builder and taught Lee the trade, but Lee hadn’t seen him in years. The old man was long gone, maybe dead, and his mother was somewhere in Georgia or Alabama, maybe married. Early on, Lee got into drugs. Crack cocaine, crystal meth. He said, “And always, night ’n’ day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, a-cryin’ and a-cuttin’ hisself with stones. Mark 5:5. That was me.” At the age of twenty-three he lost his mind and shot up a convenience store in Majestic, Kentucky. The judge gave him ten years, and Lee did ten years. When he left the joint he was clean but homeless. Lee’s half-brother, Ryan, took him in. Ryan and his wife lived in a trailer park within earshot of Bristol Motor Speedway, the famous NASCAR track. They gave Lee a room, a pile of T-shirts left by someone, and a Dodge pickup that “kindly went along.” Lee was grateful. He found yard work in a new subdivision beside a golf course, and soon he’d saved enough to buy an old riding mower and had several regular customers. One of his customers was an old lady who lived alone, and they became friends. She told him about Jesus Christ, how he passed from death unto life, and she said that everybody could pass from death unto life if they listened to the words of Jesus: “Ye must be born again.” And she gave him a Bible, the same Bible he used today.
Here I got confused. I may have missed something that Lee said, or he may have missed something, perhaps intentionally. I remember that he paused. Anyway, he had a fight with his brother, who was looking to kill him, so he needed to get out of Tennessee. At the probation office he ran into an old cellmate, who offered him five hundred bucks to go on a drug run to Florida. A bunch of people were putting money in, and all Lee had to do was drive down to this pain clinic, where the guy had a connection, and pick up the drugs. So Lee went. He drove down to some place in South Florida and parked at Burger King, behind the pain clinic. He sat there and waited, and someone came up to his truck, but it wasn’t the person he was supposed to meet. It wasn’t a person at all. It was an angel of the Lord. The angel got into Lee’s truck and spoke to him without speaking, and then got out of the truck and walked away. Now Lee knew what to do. The purpose of his life was clear as a bell. He left the parking lot and drove to Vistaprint, where he spent the drug money on two thousand leaflets titled SAY HELLO TO JESUS CHRIST! He handed these leaflets to everybody, everywhere, sleeping in his truck and going where the Lord told him to go—north most of the time—until the Lord led him here.
“To East Tennessee,” Steve said.
“Right here,” Lee said. “This very spot.”
The house and barn had belonged to an old mechanic, a widower without kids. The man was about to move to a nursing home, and that’s when Lee came driving down the road. The man gave him everything. Ten acres. The land up behind the barn, that was all tobacco once upon a time. Now it was “growed up.” But the barn was still good. First thing he did was make a pulpit. He had to do some repairs too, but he worked with what he had, or what was given. Last month a junkyard in Buladean gave him two windows and a high-dollar front door, as a love offering, and he’d just hung the door, only the hinges didn’t seem—
“Wait a minute,” Steve said. “You’re driving along and meet this old guy, and he says, here you are, it’s all yours? Why? Why’d he do it?”
“I guess the Lord moved him to do it.”
“And that was when?”
“Five ears? Six ears ago.”
“So you turned the barn into a church, right? Don’t you need some kind of approval to set up your own church?”
“Where they’s two or three gathered in my name, there am I in the midst ’em. Matthew 18:20.”
“Well, okay. But to run a church you need qualifications. Ministers are ordained. They’ve been through training.”
“Trainin’?” Lee smiled. “I been through trainin’. My whole life is trainin’. Never stops. Son, if you wanna be a pastor, you need to love God, to let him into your heart. You need to be saved. Jesus will do the rest.”
Steve scratched his head. He literally scratched his head. That bit is not in the film. Nor is what happened next, though it should be. For me, the best moment came now, when Steve asked Lee how he knew what to say. Did he just stand at the pulpit and say what he felt?
“What I feel ain’t important,” Lee said. “It teetotally ain’t. What is important is the words of Jesus Christ. I preach the New Testament and only that. Fact, I had a mind to call my church the New Testament Church, but I seen it was the Devil tempting me. The Devil loves a division. Anything to git folks arguing, specially over the Bible. No, this church is nondenominational. It’s jest a church of God. It’s open to ever’body, and it’s always open, simple as that.”
Lee went silent. Then he looked at me and said this:
“I’ll tell you sumpin else. I don’t understand the Old Testament. I don’t understand it, so I let it alone. I ain’t a smart feller. Look at all the stupid thangs I done! But I love Jesus. And Jesus don’t care ’bout smarts, or where you been, what you done. He cares what you do today, tomorrow, the rest of your life. Listen to the Lord. Listen to him. Jest listen to him.”
There was a pause then, filled with birdsong. I don’t know what kind of bird it was, but its music spoke to me. Then a motorbike went past, a big one, and its engine spoke to me. The sunlight spoke to me too. It spoke without speaking.
Steve’s film cuts in at this point, although you can’t hear the bird. I suppose the clip mike didn’t pick it up. But it picked up Steve, very clearly.
“Lee, I want to know something. Did you walk on water? I’ve heard that you walked on water, more than once. Did you do it? Did you?”
Lee looked away at the lake.
“You see, I’d really like to film you wal
king on water. Would you consider doing that?”
Lee unclipped the mike, gave it to Steve and stood up. “You have a nice day, gentlemen,” he said, and went into the house.
* * *
We ate barbecue again for lunch, but I didn’t enjoy it as much today. The atmosphere must have affected the food. It was too quiet. There were only a few others in the bar, and Steve was pissed off. He’d hardly spoken since we left Buckner’s. Now Steve held up a french fry and gazed at it. He turned it slowly in his fingers, as if contemplating the mystery of french fries.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I just don’t get it.”
“What did you expect?” I said. “He told you not to ask him, he made a big deal about it, and then you asked him!”
“Because he wanted to be asked. That’s why he made a big deal. It’s a game. Celebrities do it to reporters all the time. Close you down, open up. The bottom line is that everyone’s dying to be on camera, to be seen doing their thing, including holy people. They might play harder to get, but they still want to be got. Otherwise how are they going to spread their message? Look at the pope, the Dalai Lama. If Jesus was alive today he’d have a PR person, one of the disciples. Another disciple would be his YouTube guy. Mary Magdalene would do Facebook. You know?”
Steve wagged the french fry at me, then ate it.
I said, “No, I don’t know. You’re just making stuff up. It doesn’t prove anything. The fact is, Buckner’s not like that.”
“Then why did he walk on water? Why’d he do it if he didn’t want attention? What was the point?”
“Maybe there isn’t a point,” I said. “Maybe he thinks he walked on water. He thinks it, but really he was . . . sleepwalking?”
Tino looked at Steve, who sat back and looked at all of us, and then shook his head. Steve said, “He did more than think about it. Something happened. I have a gut feeling. Whatever it was, and however he did it, something happened and somebody saw it happen. Ah, fuck it. Let’s go to Johnson City. We need to find that journalist. At least she’ll be happy to talk to us.”