by Kyp Harness
Happy Henry swivels on his stool and looks shyly over at the man. Feeling his gaze, the man turns to Henry and stares balefully at him, like a bear through the bars of a cage. His eyes widen as Henry smiles, lifts himself from the stool and comes hobbling over to his table. The man’s mouth falls half-open in outraged surprise as he looks up at Henry and Henry says, “Some reading material? For free…” while placing a pamphlet gently on the table before the man, bowing slightly and smiling.
The man’s eyes slowly tear themselves from Henry and take in the pamphlet—ETERNITY IS FOREVER. He stares sullenly down at the words—HAVE YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE?—and then cranes his head slowly up to Henry again. His mouth hardens into a compressed, furious sneer and his dark eyes beam at Henry, smouldering with hatred.
Henry smiles and nods, licking his lips. “You’ve accepted Lord Jesus as your own personal saviour?” he asks pleasantly.
The man parts his lips slightly, revealing the tiny tightly clenched white teeth. His eyebrows arch and his eyes widen and his glistening, sweating face shudders with rage—the coffee in his cup quivering and splashing up over the side.
Henry looks down at the man and a faint doubt causes his smile to falter. “You… you’ve been cleansed in the blood of the…” he begins, but the man leans forward and a deep guttural sound, something like a growl, burbles up from his throat behind his clenched teeth, causing Happy Henry to step away hurriedly, blank faced, feeling the tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickle up in a quick, cool wave as he shuffles back from the man, something in the man’s dark eyes causing his heart to skip a beat as his hands jerk in little aftershocks.
Happy Henry stands in the centre of the coffee shop floor, his eyes troubled and unfocused, until he turns and spies at a table in the far corner, a gentleman sitting peacefully paging through a newspaper, a middle-aged man of average height in a sky-blue shirt neatly tucked into his pants, wearing a brown corduroy sport coat, his calm eyes perusing the paper from behind silver-framed spectacles, his placid mouth a thin gentle curve within the strands of his trim, conservative beard. Henry approaches the man meekly, shyly observing his absorbed and down-tilted profile as he reads the paper; he makes ready with a pamphlet.
“Good morning…” Henry lisps timidly.
The man’s head lifts from the paper, his distracted eyes focusing in upon Henry quickly. He smiles pleasantly. “Well, hello, good morning,” he says softly, his smile widening, causing friendly wrinkles to form around the edges of his eyes, the irises green and glittering with unguarded warmth from behind his spectacles.
Henry, uncertain, falters a moment in the sincerity of his attention. “H-how are you?” he asks, fingering the pamphlet restively.
“Quite well,” replies the man generously, nodding. “And you?”
“I’m… very fine!” exclaims Henry, his head suddenly pumping up and down on the end of his long skinny neck like a piston.
The man stares at Henry, smiling, blinking with bemused forbearance. His eyes take in the sight of the strange, trembling, black-coated individual before him with a sort of cheerful, genial curiosity. He folds the newspaper and places it on the table. “Would you like to sit down?” he asks quietly.
Henry nods and seats himself quickly on the edge of the chair, licking his lips and beaming at the man excitedly and all of a sudden it comes out of him in a tumbling, exuberant rush, the pamphlet sliding swiftly across the table: “Some reading material,” he offers, his upraised eyes glistening hopefully.
“Mm-hm,” the man says, glancing cursorily down at the pamphlet. He looks up at Henry and with a sigh he reclines back in his chair. “My name’s Sam,” he says, extending his hand across the table.
“Henry,” says Henry, grasping the man’s hand hungrily and shaking it. “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour?”
The man smiles wistfully, glancing down at the pamphlet. “Well,” he says.
“The Lord Jesus loves you,” murmurs Henry, “and He wants you to know that whatever sins and bad things you’ve done are forgiven… an’… and’ve been paid for up on the cross… for as God’s only begotten son, He has died so that we may… may live and know His love and mercy of God’s grace.” He whispers breathlessly, his body bending towards the man, his neck craning and the features of his pale face gyrating with a terrible urgency.
“Mm-hm,” says the man.
“An’… an’ to be lifted up into heaven to sit upon the right side of the Lord. Not to fall into the eternal fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth of… of…”
“Hell,” says the man.
“An’… an’ to trust in the mysterious ways of the Lord, for the wages of sin is death,” recites Henry, his eyes closing as if his speech is written on their inner lids. He sways a bit in the chair.
“Mm-hm, well, yes,” says the man, nodding thoughtfully. He considers Henry for a moment, smiling faintly, his eyes peering hospitably through his glasses yet at the same time detached, removed, as if observing the situation from an incalculable distance through a telescope. “You attend a church in the area, do you?” he asks.
“Oh, yes. Yes… I attend many churches,” replies Henry enthusiastically. “I go to the Harveston Presbyterian, the St. Luke Lutheran, the Baysfield United, the St. Paul Anglican, the Mandaumin United, the Lawford Pentecostal, the…”
“Mm-hm, yes, I see,” says the man.
“…the Wigford Baptist, the Point George Anglican, the Wigford Presbyterian…”
“Mm-hm,” says the man, looking down for a moment. “Actually,” he notes, checking his wristwatch, “I’m heading into Wigford myself. Perhaps I could give you a lift if you’re heading in that direction.”
“Oh—yes, yes, I’d be very grateful for that, sir,” Henry enthuses. “If you’ll just… Yes…” he murmurs, jumping up from his chair and moving to the counter where he left his suitcases, gathering them up hurriedly.
The man smiles and chuckles inwardly at Henry’s frenetic bustling as he rises leisurely with his rolled-up newspaper and walks towards the door, Henry following at his heels, stumbling with the cases and whispering fervently to himself as he shuffles past Roy and Gus and Frank at their table.
“Well—looks like ol’ Henry’s got himself a new convert,” observes Frank archly.
“Yep, yep, sure does, Frank,” says the other man, tamping down his pipe.
“Heh, heh,” laughs Roy, shaking his head. “Shee—it!”
And the sun like a gleaming, white, shining nickel now one quarter of the way creeping up the sky through the torn, ragged clouds, beams down upon the man named Sam rustling his keys from his pocket and Happy Henry tramping behind him as they make their way across the parking lot to the car. Sam assists Henry with his cases, packing them away in the back seat.
Now pulling out of the lot onto the highway, Sam a man who enjoys driving, the wheel firm beneath his gently guiding hands as he’s leaned back far in his bucket seat, his profile serene, his eyes placidly and without resistance drinking in the road which runs straining and feeds itself disappearing beneath the hood of his car. Happy Henry at his side staring straight ahead, off and up to where the road wedges to its fine point on the horizon, the clouds shifting slowly overhead, the fence posts rushing swiftly forth and multiplying themselves endlessly.
Henry sees them and beyond them and in a most profound manner, sees them not at all, blanketed and overthrown as they are by the thick veil hanging always before his eyes: the veil ruffling and shimmering and composed of all his most fervent convictions and apprehensions, his highest-hoping anticipations and the passion of his highly excitable knowing, which in fact compose and funnel the perceptions of these eyes and is thus more real than all that stands or passes before them—real because true and knowingly grasped as such, the world at large fluidly streaming around to either side and washing over them yet never gaining foothold—me
rely rippling, trickling, subsiding, dripping, transparent, tasteless, fading, evaporating, waning, gone. Nothing is real but what is true.
Nothing is true except what is necessary, nothing is necessary except that each human soul must be saved from its own sins (whose wages are death) by the love of Jesus Christ, to know that love and trust it and live it and feel it gathering and solid in the entrails, hard, coiled, firm, in the chest and lungs, stretching out along the furthermost limits of the limbs, and deep within the narrow confines and crevices of the brain.
And so Henry turns to Sam, blinking meekly. “Jesus loves you,” he whispers tentatively, almost like a question, bending over from his seat, his eyes searching and hopeful.
“Mm-hm,” says Sam, guiding his car from the highway onto the road into Wigford, shifting gears. He turns and smiles at Henry. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
He turns back to the road. “Do you live around these parts? I’m from out of town myself, just here on a little business,” Sam muses reflectively, the sun gleaming on the rims of his spectacles and on his beard.
“A lot of nice country around here,” Sam remarks after a moment, his eyes taking in the broad flowing fields passing by the window, the fences and the little farms sailing past. “Quite a difference from the big city,” he smiles, turning to Henry, his expression warm and inviting, his words flowing out easily with a breezy goodwill.
“I… I live with Father,” Henry volunteers, looking straight ahead, his eyes darting sideways to the stranger.
“Hm,” says Sam. “And he’s a big one for attending church too, I suppose, is he?”
“Oh, no, no,” Henry replies. “He cannot walk. He stays inside of the house. He… he takes care of the house… he… but he reads the Bible,” Henry pronounces, nodding his head assertively.
“Mm-hm. Handicapped, is he?” Sam notes. “And your mother, she’s not around?”
“Oh no, no,” says Henry emphatically, shaking his head from side to side, closing his eyes. “She… went away after… She was sick for a long time and she went away… an’… then we buried her away in the ground… because she was sick and then she went away…” he stutters quickly, his voice like a recording played at double speed, high and nasal.
“Hm,” says the stranger. “Died, did she?”
“But… but… she was a sinner,” murmurs Henry, his eyes glazing over as his mouth moves awkwardly, straining, little drops of spit jumping from the furiously working lips. “She said no to the Lord Jesus, and she used many curse words, even though she was sick for a long time in the bed. She… closed her heart against Jesus and cursed Him and cursed Father and Father was very angry, an’… said she was damned to go to hell… an’… even though Father told her many times, she cursed Jesus and cursed Father, an’… even when her legs turned black… an’… she was very sick…”
“Mm-hm,” says the stranger, nodding slightly, his features taking on a serious cast, his eyebrows narrowing as if deeply involved in the problem being discussed.
“An’… an’… me and Father prayed for her even though Father told me and told her she was damned to go to hell and she shouted curse words back at him still. Father said we should pray for her soul, but not after she went away… for Father said we shouldn’t pray for her then, not then when she was gone,” Henry says hurriedly.
As Henry says this, the veil in his mind splits and parts like a curtain and opens onto the scene of an aged man sitting in a wooden kitchen chair, naked, a dusty blanket over his lap and resting upon the blanket an open bible. He sits before an old-fashioned wood stove glowing red with the crackling fire within it, his deep-set furious eyes staring at the stove, gold and yellow shards of reflected light from the flames dancing over his clenched, wizened features, his creased forehead, his hollow cheeks, his grimly compressed mouth.
The old man’s long, white, snowy hair sweeps from his temples and tumbles back from behind his ears onto his thin bony shoulders and his wrinkled, sinewy hands grasp at the arms of the wooden chair with such force that the veins along the backs of them stand up in thin, bluish ridges and his chest heaves as he breathes long, quavering, determined draughts of air in and out through his nostrils, his chest red and weathered beneath coils of wiry white hairs.
He stares into the fire of the stove angrily, his jaw working back and forth with an outraged, livid fury not entirely of this world. A wooden cross is nailed to the wall above the stove and on the wall behind him his saviour stares skyward with large, long-suffering, soulful eyes from an oval-shaped framed print, His right hand uplifted in a gesture of peace and also of supplication. Pieces of broken glass lie on the floor at the old man’s feet, and at the side of his chair is an overturned dish caked with the congealed remains of a long ago, half-eaten dinner.
The old man sits and stares, and around and above and piercing through the rumble of his sonorous breathing are ravening, cascading sheets of sound, the brash, pure, high, metallic shattering sounds of a woman’s screams, breaking over his head and ears, the white, blasting, frozen, howling, consciousness-shredding sounds of hysteria and gut-wrenching, horror-filled pain, the broken anguished words rawly torn from the lungs and bloodily hurling the vilest and most graphically wounding curses invented since the dawn of the spoken word, the ringing gale of vengeance and hatred and disgust wrenched from the marrow of the bone and sent screaming in delirious, scalding waves of white noise crashing through the room, the voice breaking and splintering into rough, moaning gasps from time to time as if in disbelief at the extremity of its own suffering.
The old man sits like a stone carving in the midst of it, his large, clear, pain-filled eyes unblinking. His thin, parched lips can be seen to be moving slightly, mechanically, as if repeating a vow or an oath or a ritualistic chant. “The mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth…” his low rumbling voice repeats, trembling with emotion, “…drunken with the blood of the saints, and the martyrs of Jesus.”
“And then Father said that it was well that she died,” Henry says. “For she had so offended the Lord that surely misfortune and enmity would be visited upon her the rest of her days, for she was BAD,” Henry says, nodding solemnly to himself. “She… was a BAD woman.”
“Mm-hm,” Sam says, gazing out the window abstractedly.
“An’… an’ so we buried her in the ground and Father took her picture down,” Happy Henry concludes.
“Hm,” says Sam. “We’re coming up to the area where the church is right now, aren’t we?” he asks, looking around as the car rolls into Wigford, past the IGA grocery and the line of grain wagons pulling up to the granary by the feed store across from Bickerman’s Lumberyard by the railroad crossing and the train tracks bisecting the town. People are striding in and out of the grocery, going into Andy’s Restaurant for lunch, paying their bills at the bank (checking pieces of paper and passbooks as they emerge and clamber into their pickups)—the bustling activity of the people revving up as the morning flowers open and progresses.
“Um… oh yes,” says Henry, extricating himself from his trance and seeing for the first time his surroundings, craning his neck and looking about. “Right down that street there,” he says, pointing.
“Mm-hm,” says Sam as he pulls the car over to the side of the road. “That would be the Wigford Baptist, would it?”
“Oh yes, they have a fine minister there, Reverend Palmer, a very fine minister,” Henry lisps excitedly, his eyes regaining their sparkle.
“He is, is he?” notes Sam, his quietly amused, heavy-lidded eyes considering Henry warmly.
“Oh yes, sometimes the cleaning people are angry… an’… an’ don’t like to let me into the church, and I say to them Reverend Palmer says I can come in, and they say ‘No, the church is closed till Sunday,’ and that I should go home, but then… then… I tell Reverend Palmer and he goes and TELLS them. He says Henry is allowed in anytime. He tells them�
� that they are WRONG,” says Henry, frowning with severity, his eyes flashing sternly. “He goes and he says to them that they are WRONG and he says that Henry can come in ANYtime, anytime he wants, he says!” Happy Henry nods his head grimly to punctuate the tale.
“He does, does he?” asks Sam, smiling.
“Yes… He says that the church is God’s house and not the cleaning people’s and he says Henry is allowed in ALL the time, an’ he tells them that they are WRONG!” Henry repeats, his voice rising with his recollected anger.
“Well… that seems a nice thing for him to do, eh?”
“An’… an’ so the cleaning people know, because Reverend Palmer told them all,” Henry says.
“Mm-hm,” says Sam, looking off and around the town.
“An’… but some ministers do not do this, they say I must go,” Henry continues. “But then some other ones say I may stay.” He smiles, reaching down for his big leather-bound bible and bringing it up on his lap.
“They do, do they?” Sam remarks, looking down with a trace of trepidation at the bible.
“Oh yes,” says Henry, grinning, opening the bible and taking out a stack of snapshots. He hands one of the pictures proudly to Sam: a church organ, mahogany brown, against a wall beneath a stained-glass window.
“Mm-hm,” says Sam. “Very nice.”
“That’s… that’s one of my favourites… at the Harveston Presbyterian,” notes Henry. “And this one from the Longford Pentecostal. And this one,” he says, delivering the snapshots to Sam, fingering through them: a succession of organs, some large, their pipes stretching up the walls to the steeples of the churches, others squat and unimposing. One of the pictures shows Henry seated at an organ, his fingers poised above the keyboard, grinning proudly back over his shoulder into the camera.