Bill Laggard

by Samuel O. Samuel

  Chapter 2- A New Discovery

  Few months after the event at the “Don Huzzay Coffee shop”, I took up the enlisting idea of appearing incognito. I still attended Oxford University, though, but my fears of whom the lecturers would take me for still prevented me from attending classes regularly. The pains always surfaced. Anything could do so but, most painful was the mock scowl given to me by my colleagues and most times, the teachers.

  Donna Bynun, visiting scholar from Edinburgh and a pen friend since my secondary school days, suddenly dropped by today. I was surveying the sidewalk, taking walks by road and scanning the horizon which led to a garden, a bit distant from that of Oxford. I was actually searching for a substantial and more appealing figure which I could put down. After a moment, I caught sight of a sublime combination of saffron flowers and scarlet rose flowers. I hurriedly put it down, taking good notice of the proportion and chiaroscuro in order to enable me easy application and varying of color changes in respect to area of light and shade. Inserting it into my rucksack, which had rested on the street sun lounger where I had positioned all through the drawing process, and scanning the other end of the walk, I decided to leave. I took a taxi to the school junction, and got off to resume my walk. At a crucial juncture in my pace, I felt a weenie quantity of water drizzle over my head. I turned slowly, surprised enough to see a willowy, slightly built lady, dark completion and tall, waving slowly to me, as a form of apology. An angler was seated next to her. She stood ever so slightly from the table, which was positioned on a platform, surrounded by anise plants. I found it difficult to realize who she was. As she picked up her bum bag and steadied it on her waist, I discovered her familiar looking face. I stood a little as she began making her way up the horizon which would link her to my lane. I pretended to sit, as she began to pass by and her layered hair and blue sparkling eyes caught my attention.

  “Hello there,” I said, extending my hands, “I'm Bill Laggard.”

  “Good day Bill. I am Donna Bynun,” stretching her hand to take mine.

  "I certainly have heard that name somewhere! But....I'm not even sure where I knew your name." I said still pondering.

  "Your name sounds familiar too, Bill."

  Then a light of remembrance overshadowed me.

  “Donna!” I exclaimed.

  “Laggard?” she responded, with great amazement.

  Then she fell into my arms as we both chuckled. Tears welled up in her eyes. Donna? Why here of all places? I didn't actually believe Donna would be here in Oxford. We studied together as classmates back in my secondary school days at Edinburgh, Scotland. A brilliant student, with an air of inquisitiveness, we battled first and second. It was only after Donna settled down and began to talk that I knew she studied here in Oxford; although that was another course entirely. Now, I thought of Donna as someone whose life I may never understand.

  After few minutes, she told me she would like us to go to her uncle's house to discuss issues of growing events in each other's lives. She offered to take me in her car, although I felt a little reluctance in following her because of the picture I had to design before evening. Within minutes, we arrived at an open area which appeared to be one of the major suburbs of Oxford. The atmosphere was sultry. We came out of the car, only to meet a huge building. We happened to be in front of the deck. Seated in the sitting room were two aged men. It wasn't really clear if they were having lunch, since they were seated in straight-back formalities. Donna Bynun and I sat on a different seat, facing the window. After a little discussion, Donna excused herself to get some water. As she dashed through the door, one of the old-man turned around. Jack! Which reminded me; he had promised me a conversation which he shifted to “some other time”. I turned away. My eyes squabbled with my brain on whether or not it was really him. I felt it best to call. He turned slowly, not to my direction but to the direction where Donna went. The other man stood up and went an opposite direction. There was sinister possibility that Jack would invite me over but he never did, nor did he turn my direction. It had been two months since I last saw him, and it wasn't so long an interval for him to forget me. It occurred to me that his departure was imminent and almost simultaneously, he began packing up his bags to leave. So I gesticulated frantically, trying to catch his attention. He waved me over to acknowledge my presence.

  “Do you recognize me, Jack,” I asked.

  “Somehow, I think...” Rivers of recognition came to flood his eyes. “Were you not the waiter who helped us find our places at Don Huzzay?”

  “I am. So how are the others?”

  “They are doing well, although they have all returned to Harvard.”

  “You promised me a discussion. Why can't we have it here?” I said, “Or, we should make it some other time? What do you think?”

  “We will have it downstairs, on the deck,” Jack responded. “I'm not at all sure I have heard your name.”

  “Bill, Bill Laggard,” trying to sound formal. I offered to help him carry his luggage down stairs.

  As we went down, I introduced myself further, first as a university learner, and then as a husband to be. I also tried some ways to get information about him, but he adroitly avoided them. He seemed to be some hard fellow.

  We had reached the deck and I motioned for him to sit. I had no way to bring up a substantive conversation other than to make reference to what he had said in the previous meeting.

  “Well Jack, I had been sorting ways to talk to you ever since last two months. I have a series of frustrating questions I want to ask you. Something tells me you have got what it takes to answer.”

  “What if I am not?” He questioned with a raised brow. I was a bit of frustrated to hear that. I had a great affinity to discover what he really had to say about my recent failures. By now, I had removed my jacket, which provided disguise by means of hood. I watched him as he gently leaned on his armchair. He looked at me deeply and demanded to know my question.

  “Really,” I began. “I don't know how to accentuate on this, but recently, I had problems with my teachers here in Oxford. They are displeased with the series of academic blunder that had befallen me. They accused me of being an unserious fellow, good for nothing. My aunt is angry. After the assistance she rendered me, I have nothing to show for it.”

  “You lodge at her place?”

  “Not really, Jack. She only assisted me in paying my fees when I ran short of money. She lives far away from town and it would do me no good in travelling 6 miles every day to Oxford University.”

  “What a good aunt to have!” Jack exclaimed. “And I hope you aren't blaming anyone for your misfortune?”

  The thought of whom I thought was at fault was really amusing for I blamed my fiancée. “Well, I blame my wife to be.”

  “Why?”

  “At a time, precisely during the month of April, a series of challenging events occurred between my fiancée and me. We were contemplating a separation.

  As the son of indigent parents, I have learnt to be contented with what I have. But one day, she, Catherina, saw me from one of those triangular windows in the fence of our university premises, hugging Carlin Hagges, a friend, she felt bad and I got home to receive explosive insults. I had never seen her like that before. This period of precarious imbroglio, I absented from Oxford for three months to settle matters with her parents.”

  “It was that bad,” Jack said, with a chuckle.

  “It's not funny Jack. With animosity towards me, and with tears, she groaned in anguish all day long. It was only hurting to the heart. I went to Edinburgh to free myself a little from the hurt and before I returned, she had left home. It was only when I returned and went to Harvard University, where she taught the scholars, to see an angler there that I saw her, sitting forlornly under a brazil. I was berserked. We reconciled, but ever since then, I found difficulty in facing my studies. Now to forget the pain, I take a boozy lunch even though it's strictly against my belief.” I shook my hea
d. “And above all, I blame God for letting me loose a whole lot of £150,000 and throw away my final year.” I shouted.

  “Do you think your wife, sorry, your fiancée, and God are behind it?” Jack questioned.

  “Why not!” I exclaimed. “As long as I go to Church regularly and am committed, God should know that I'm His to take care of. It is so puzzling. You can't imagine your father having enough money to pay your fees but still declining.”

  “You think it is a mutualistic association?”

  “You get it Jack. But you actually don't agree with that? I don't mean to be indelicate in my comments but the way you succinted your views made it indigestible. Expantiate, if you please.”

  He leaned forward. “I don't mean to lead you astray but I would like you to know that everything that happens to a Christian in God's will is under His will of permission.”

  “And what does that tell?” I queried.

  “It simply explains and illuminates the discovery and reality that in this aspect of your life, though you don't feel it, God is there working the whole thing out with you.”

  That was obverse to my belief. I then tried to find a way to ask a question that wouldn't make him the fuddy-duddy old man his actions claimed him to be. Recovering from my fagged state, I asked,

  “About my fiancée, what do you have to say? You think I'm fulminating wrongly at her?”

  “I don't know your fiancée, quite alright, and I can't tell you I know what she did.” I smiled, knowing he had actually fallen. To my surprise, he bailed himself off with another startling comment. “But what if I told you that God may have, by some miraculous ways, entered into her, for her to have walked all the way from Harvard to see you hugging Carlin who isn't a relative in any way?”

  “Should that be...mysticism?”

  “No,” he replied muzzy. “Look at it from this light; God did that to certainly prevent something dangerous from happening to you and the only way to do that was to let you fail. I realise that for your fiancée to have been irritated by you hugging a lady means she doesn't trust you and also shows her love for you. How has she been since then?”

  “Catherina has been some namby-pamby fellow since that incident happened,” I laughed. “God should have protected my interest and prevent such calamity from befalling me.”

  “Get this point right,” he said pointing at me directly. “Christianity isn't some mutualistic relationship you try to breed. You are mistaking it for the act of giving and taking, thinking that if you don't become too religious or add more efforts, He is going to become angry with you. He's not a God that wants you thinking He will not bless you if you don't become a religious person. He wants you to follow Him as He opens the way to greater walks with Him. If you haven't still come off the thought that you are into a commitment that deems it compulsory for God to fulfill your desires when you go to your meeting, I assure you, you are missing the mark. It's a zero percent strategy!

  “Your wife is a caring person but the actions she displayed and which you viewed from a wrong angle could possibly have great significance. Let's see after many years, you may get to know that her actions were an important and interesting step to your successful events. Just think of it! God permitted this to prevent a calamity from befalling you.”

  It was then I discovered that he was right. There were some guys I moved with during my sixth year. I never knew they were associates of a deadly cult. They visited me regularly in my seventh year and promised me that they would kill me if I left the university without their consent. I explained all these to Jack.

  Leaning forward, he asked, “What do you think you did?”

  “I don't know, Jack but I thought them to be kind friends.”

  “That is really why you failed, Bill.”

  “You don't get my point, Jack. I said I wasn't one of them but they assisted me in putting forward a colorful result in my sixth year. Ever since then, they had been a constant support, in my education especially. You see anything wrong with that?”

  “I didn't miss your point at first, Bill,” Jack smirked. “But that is really why you failed.”

  “Why would you say so?” I queried.

  “That is because the things of God and works of fleshy, carnal nature are two immiscible substances which can only be separated by means of divine decantation, as in your primary chemistry. It is that decantation process that is turning your world upside down.”

  Jack implied, “What is of the flesh is flesh and that which is divine, divine is.”

  “What do you really mean?” I asked.

  “It means that works of man are different from that of God.”

  “How does that define my Christianity?” “It means that you are making an outward-in approach, the real of which is obverse, Bill. And that was what I meant when I said Christian life isn't about going to church but letting the Holy Spirit first cleanse your mind from inwards. This gives ways to discipleship and communion with God. That is why most thought to be spiritual leaders and given names as 'gifted teachers' who only make a flare of set out characters, preach dry sermons.”

  “And the two immiscible substances, should that mean the help those guys gave me were wrong?”

  “Reasons why I said God loves you. Haven't you heard of many people in different countries who were rendered assistance by those guys, killed immediately they left school hall on the day of their final exams? That would have been your tragic fate, Bill. I told you, God knows about your failures.”

  “Quite alright, but couldn't there be any other way he could let me evade that disaster, other than to let me fail?”

  “There are other ways, but the way he did it also explains what I meant about the two immiscible substances. Those other ways had to fail for you to completely evade that. And besides, you can't resurrect unless you die.” He chuckled playfully.

  “Well I understand you and I am grateful for the answer. I have one last question, Jack.”

  “And what's that?”

  “Could you give some suggestions that would help me succeed without facing death?”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “I think they would put to practice their threat that if I left the university, they would kill me. I am afraid, Jack.”

  “Well,” he smiled. “I am only a mere human as Fred said the other day at Don Huzzay. But you know what I just discovered? God's will is what you should pray to prevail.”

  “Even at death?”

  “Death will bring you to life, so long as you are in His will.”

  “Thanks Jack. I will work towards that.”

  “You can't, Bill! Not in your strength. It is by grace that you are alive today. Pray for sufficient grace.”

  Almost simultaneously, I could hear squeaking steps of someone creeping down the stairs. We looked up to see Donna coming out of the screen door.

  “I forgot to tell you, Jack, who I came here to see,” I said with a shaky voice. Then I told him about my friendship with Donna, and introduced him to her.

  “That's wonderful,” he commented.

  “I only came to check out on you, whether you're ready to leave for Oxford university,” Donna said.

  “Not as yet,” I replied. “I will call you when am done with Jack.”

  As she retreated inside, I turned back to Jack. I had one last question for him. He had a puzzled look on his face.

  “Jack, do you recall the comment the lady made in that conversation at the pub, two months ago, the one that wanted everyone to notice her savoir-faire attitude?”

  “Yeah, Bill, I do,” he responded. “That was Lizy Callar. What did you find about that comment, Bill?”

  “Nothing really, Jack. I only remember doing something seeming similar to that few days back. It was as if God wanted me to have a part in that lesson. I had even done that innumerable times in church services.”

  “Really?” He asked, wide eyed.

  “Yes. I am
an usher on staff at 'Hour of Salvation Family Group'. I had delivered messages of criticism, still on this same issue of coming to church with right motives, but little did I realize I was only giving further description of myself.”

  “You got the right word there, Bill,” Jack pointed out, with a band of his fingers on the table.

  “What word?” I questioned, like a thief surprised at being caught.

  “Self! That's the word - self. It's perfect at putting forth good attributes but the real carnal, Adam nature of sin lies inside. Pointing someone's sin while we also do it, is a very wrong attitude. Before pointing that out; I mean something wrong in someone, you should be sure that the Holy Spirit has done the work of cleansing in that area of your life. In that way, you would be of great help to the person. Otherwise, you would be adding drying agent on the dry wire gauze of a dry desecrator.”

  “But I have quitted doing that, Jack.”

  “By God's grace, you know, a leopard cannot change its spots.”

  “I well understand that idiom, Jack. That's encouraging.”

  He apologized for having to leave and I saw him to the wooden dwarf doors which was connected to the picket fence. As I waved him off, Donna came by and told me she would be leaving for Oxford University that evening. I asked if she could take me in her car.

  “Yes Bill, I told you that before,” she replied.

  As I looked at Jack, walking towards the main road which was left side the house of Donna, I realized that I had lived all my days’ presumptuously that God would always back me up even when I put Him as second choice. This was only a pointer!