Anti-story

 Anti-story 

One of you wrote me about the last post in which Michael Gerson was telling his story, but I wasn’t telling mine because I had none (Click here.): “Didn’t you run into someone you knew, for instance? Something must have happened. If so, there must be a story.”

I ran into two people I knew. I ran into the big, fat, angry preacher that was out to preach last time I was there, about a year ago. (See here. The story of that stay begins here.) He still comes, apparently. And he’s been coming all along.

     The day I ran into him this time must have been a Sunday, but I wasn’t keeping good track of the time, so I didn’t realize it was Sunday. I hadn’t gone to “worship.” But he came over at lunch; he remembered me somehow. And I saw that lunch was “Sunday”: fried chicken - a leg and a thigh - covered with corn-flake batter thicker than the meat; a runny lump of mashed potatoes and a stew of mashed green beans, which I stirred together into one camouflage-colored glop. Also: sweet tea; and Jell-O with fruit in it for dessert, a smudge of whipped cream on top.

     The chair across from me was empty. He sat down in it - or surrounded it - and he asked me how it felt to be back. There wasn’t a touch of irony in his voice that I could tell. It was as if he genuinely wanted to know, as if we’d been vacationing for years on the same week on the same half-mile of road leading off Highway 12 to Canadian Hole Beach, and I’d missed last year for some reason.

     I didn’t know how to answer, so I said, “Fine.” Then, after a minute watching him watch me while I ate, I asked him what he thought God was up to the when he struck Saul mad. He looked at me. He shook his head. Then he said he was in the loving-God, not the second-guessing-God business. I said, “Oh.” He started getting up, pretending that it wasn’t an effort to get all that weight from sitting to standing and that he wasn’t angry about gravity, about my question, about everything else in the world God had made good but Man insisted on mucking up. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Good to see you,” I said. I didn’t mean it, but I don’t think he meant it either. Still, it was good of him to see and try to say something to me.

Staff

I heard from one of the staff that has been around longer than the preacher has been coming out - much longer - that Molly had been back but was gone again. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that kind of thing, he said, “But I got such a kick out of it when you guys broke out of here that time.” 

     That was at the end of December two years ago. And we didn’t exactly break out; more, we drove away. (Molly enters that story right after Roz takes me out for Christmas dinner, which is here. Just page on from there.)

     Staff said he wasn’t supposed to tell me this either, but Molly was about the same. “He reminds me of a dead leaf blowing along the sidewalk,” he said. “He looks like he’s dancing in the sun, but you know . . . .” He stopped. “Well, you know that it’s not dancing, it’s something else.”

     I hadn’t thought about Molly for a while, I told staff. “Do you know where we went?” I asked, “not that you could tell me.” No, staff said, he couldn’t tell me if he knew; but he didn’t know. “He just blows in and he blows away again,” staff said as he went back to scrubbing the floor. When someone throws up, he mops up, staff said; then he scrubs the whole hallway; then he mops again.

03.08.19