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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

SHANAN SLUGGED LAZILY INTO DES MOINES, IOWA, in his oil-glut station wagon, broke. A cruise through downtown, a pawnshop located, an old but trashcan-salvaged color television demonstrated and peddled, and he was on his way again. This piece of money, nonetheless, had dwindled precipitously low by the time he reached the city line of Omaha, Nebraska, which suddenly necessitated action for survival. He snugged his rig into a parking slot halfway down a long city block from a storefront homeless shelter, at last counted himself among the needy, and silenced his vehicle.

 

 

“YOU ALLOW FOLKS to sleep here overnight?”

 

     “You must first show two forms of I.D.,” was the reply, “and take a shower before eating.”

 

     Shanan scratched his head.

 

     “You gotta take a shower before you eat?”

 

     “Lowers the lice population….”

 

     Our indigent ceased scratching his head. Not that Shanan had lice—or no desire to take a shower, mm’hm—but aware in his own heart that his preference was rather to reside in his vehicle, he inquired, “How ’bout if I just ate and left? This way I wouldn’t be dirtying your sheets, and I can sleep in my car.”

 

     “This, can more than likely be arranged….”

 

 

A HALF-HOUR ELAPSED, and the antique clock hanging high on the stained green wall click-ticked itself four-thirty P.M.. Shanan was ushered and seated in the midst of ten long pressboard tables facilitating more than a hundred homeless—males, females, and theirs, of every age and so poverty-struck that if red, yellow, and blue were selling for five cents per set, their lives would still be operating in black and white. To each of these guests of the charity of the more charitable of mankind was given a large, gray plastic cup.

 

     At last through the double doorway of a noisy kitchen came straggling two lackluster, hunchbacked and elderly men wearing lackluster shirts, lackluster trousers, lackluster shoes, weak-kneed and feebly sharing the side-handles of a huge cast aluminum bucket of something.

 

     The mission administrator delivered a protracted, haranguing sermon—solemnly—and two extremely lengthy and haranguing prayers of thanksgiving—solemnly—and more than a hundred homeless heads winced solemnly back into a vertical position, quivered, leaned slowly toward this shoulder and slowly toward that shoulder, and swirled their head for but a tendon-relieving moment. A second ensued, and the servers walked their familiar path leisurely behind the seated, ladling from bucket to cup, from bucket to cup, from the bucket and into the cups….

 

     Shanan just sat, droop-shouldered, and stared dumbly and un-solemnly into his now half-filled—“miniature toilet bowl!”—Shan—“Uh…Err…Um …Say —Heh, heh, could I be excused? I…uh, mm’hm— gotta go get my, uh…yeah…!”

 

     They, but outwardly displaying sentiment valued as unbelief, cordially allowed him the break, and he fled to his automobile and annihilated a room-temperature can of hash. “Gads! I ain’t used to their kind of cooking…!”

 

 

Old Man Desperation plays the wise instructor, and Shanan had to let go of his pride, and listen to the real side of his heart. He felt a level of guilt for so rudely jumping off his seat and leaving those poor, homeless people behind to their cup of—“Ooze A La Lumps—” Shanan, I will do the writing! “Okay, but I was only—” He had achieved ten hard minutes of sorrowful but serious contemplation, when: Let’s see…the mission? Maybe the food tomorrow will be better. He ran to the halfway mark of the long city block and dashed quickly into a convenience store and purchased a mini-bottle of window cleaner and a can of Scouring Powder and tossed them into a five-gallon bucket he had used mining gold and wasted no time in finding a pair of deteriorating rubber gloves and tearing newspapers down the middle and snatching a whiskbroom from his glove compartment and throwing this vocational collage into the bucket with the rest of the gear and crushing his foot down onto the gas pedal—

 

 

SELECTING gas stations, muffler shops, tire shops, and a goodly variety of other like-size businesses, he employed himself diligently by offering to clean their restrooms. On this evening, business was sparse, though meagerly profitable; but Shanan’s new venture unveiled a secret far more profitable: If you want work badly enough, the work is built within you, not unlike nut-hunting built into a squirrel.

 

 

HE ASKED ONLY A PITTANCE: sixty cents per bathroom; and, in the four hundred and eighty miles to Denver, only two persons denied him, and only two persons had paid him less than a dollar per rest room. In that evening in which Shanan had launched his innovative enterprise, at the very first public appeal, a silvery-whiskered man, who apparently exercised sovereign power over that gas station, just about chased and cursed Shanan off the property. This did not impede his main objective; he was a born prospector, resolute in his cause, and there were many hills and valleys to be dug, with a garden trowel or, if need be, with a D9 Caterpillar.

 

     As those days were hustling their footprints through assiduous sands of time, a number of owners and managers had given bonuses. Another, for each of his two five-bay bathrooms, gave him five dollars per bathroom, maintaining he knew they were twin pig sties. Shanan, humbly grateful for the unexpected reward, put the total money into his gasoline tank, on the spot. He figured the man was nice enough, and the gauge for his tank was nearing the [E] mark, anyway. Three benevolent managers offered him extra work at their store, or automotive establishment, and Shanan fattened his wallet appreciably by accepting those liberal extensions, and would muse inwardly: What’s the difference with the dollar? The dollar doesn’t have the faintest idea as to why it left the hand of its last owner. A washed rest room, a pile of raked branches and leaves, who cares!

 

     At the close of each workday, tires now finding themselves in inactive work bays, shops finding themselves being locked tight, overhead doors finding themselves drawn to the concrete, blinds finding themselves pulled to their sill, blue-on-white Open signs finding themselves turned to yellow-on-red Closed signs, soon after enjoying an inexpensive but wholesome evening feast, a cold quart of milk concomitant to the repast (in a local cafe, or with a delicatessen sandwich in his van), Shanan, I say, soon afterward, would provide for himself his habitual six-pack of cheap beer, settle at a roadside park, generally near the outer edge of the last off-highway town he had finished, and feed his Amy. Amy always had her open fifty-pound bag of dry food, half a can of moist food, a bowl of fresh, cool water, all because of her customary eliminations. We will discreetly omit the exact literary relationship of the word eliminations to your own imagination.

 

     Until Ms. Midnight Hour had finally decided twelve P.M. was indeed an appropriate time for her to descend into Shanan’s section of the world, our well-satisfied day-worker would throw sticks or toys gaily for Amy to chase or chew, or both, read the Bible by flashlight, and smoke a half-dozen low-cost cigarettes, along with a half-dozen cheap beers. The following morning, Mr. Sun, back from his temporary leave of absence, Shanan would rise high-spiritedly from his oil-glut station wagon sleeping bag and begin the remunerating cleaning pursuits again: restroom after restroom after restroom, until he had earned thirty or forty honest dollars for the day.

 

     Just West of Lincoln (formerly Lancaster), Nebraska, Shanan directed his baby insect—“Buggy!” Excuse me, Shan, I was only trying to formalize your noun. “But it was my noun.” his buggy (formerly Shanan’s station wagon, I presume) south on U.S. Highway Eighty-one to Interstate Seventy west. Along these routes, he gradually worked his way to the oil-rich town of Mons, Kansas. In Mons, after a flawless spraying, scrubbing, and the toweling of the employees’ restrooms at an automobile dealership, the owner of the dealership offered extra work: brush- and roller-painting an entire new show room in exchange for cash; and, Shanan conveniently solicited an add-on of a rear oil seal for his limping vehicle.

 

 

SHANAN LABORED HARD through an acrylic-filled week. The owner told him he had a couple of mechanics check the seal, but quarts of oil still flowed pumpuously from beneath his station wagon and onto the streets of Mons. Thus, Shanan, his emotions swelling in the misused again department, but with the hundred dollars the owner had paid him, withdrew from the town, long after the stars had flown into the cloudless heavens. The riled owner had earlier asked him to pay for the rear seal work (work-factor zero), but as far as Shanan was concerned, the deal had ended without tangible compensation; so, he departed, repenting to God to forgive him if he had unintentionally cheated the man.

 

     Yet, he left with a memory: The man in Mons did allow him to stay in a four-room sandstone house eleven miles east of town, in the tiny hamlet of Abbey, Kansas—rent free. The house had no electric, merely cold running water, natural gas, and furniture— “Natural gas!”

 

     Shanan, the head of the family, had bathed and fried his and Amy’s potatoes like the Happy Chef for a week. Additionally, having now found a dash of peace and security, whenever our boy had a clear opportunity, if he was not working for the man, he read the Bible, and, after dark, by a fluttering candle—on a real table.

 

THE FIRST DAY into that memorable week, having worked only until two in the afternoon, Shanan decided to take a very early but very lengthy and muscle-loosening bath. Feeling altogether refreshed, as a finale to the rinsing and the toweling, he reached into a cupboard for his only remaining pack of cigarettes and, as he did, simultaneously and adamantly beseeched the Lord.

 

     “Hey! God! I’ve begged you twenty-nine times to get me off these things, and now I’m serious, Father!” he bellowed. “Come on, now, I mean these words from my soul, Lord! You can see I mean what I’m saying here. Please, get me off these lousy things!”

 

     With no ritualistic amens or solemn thank-yous, he entered the kitchen, spent an hour and a half preparing a supper fit for a, a—as you and I might see it—maltreated slave, relaxed it into his stomach, and burped robustly. Feeling superbly satisfied, he washed and rinsed his frying pan, spatula, dish, and fork, tossed away the hash can, took a seat at the front-room table, and began reading the Scriptures. He had not read long enough to complete two pages, however, when suddenly and for no visible reason, he jumped to his feet, turned toward the kitchen, and threw his hands and face high into the air.

 

     “I promise you, Lord! When my cigarettes are gone this week, I’ll quit smoking. No cigarettes, Lord. Not even cigars. Not anything. I give you my word on this, Father. Amen and amen!”

 

     Relocating himself into his hardback chair, he began to read his Bible again—and lit another cigarette.

 

     Not a full three minutes went by, and again without warning, Shanan shot up from his chair, as if grabbed by his shoulders and jerked by an unseen force. He spun round again and stood wide-eyed as ever, the setting sun beaming her radiance through a curtainless window behind him.

 

     “And I include beer, too, God! In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed with a vow. “Just as soon as I got no more beer, I quit. No alcohol, period, Father! I promise. Amen!”

 

     Taking his seat again, but of a self-quizzing mind, he could not understand his last declaration: Why the heck did I say beer? “Hoo, boy!” he exclaimed with a bowing headshake. The man paused, raised his head, and focused back to his favorite reading.

 

 

’TWAS AFTER TWO A.M. by the time he and Amy climbed onto a double bed with an overstuffed but void-of-sheet mattress, and a plush but denuded downy-stuffed pillow. Religiously, he whispered his Lord’s Prayer; and, as he drifted desirously into his sleep, he again petitioned the Lord to open wide the mysteries of His Bible.

 

 

AS THE TWILIGHT HOURS OF DAWN were being summoned to finish the conquering of the swiftly dying night, as a new day was in the midst of creation, Shanan began to dream at the level of a mild vision. He was walking in an ancient city in the Holy Land, walking with certain wise men wearing long, plain robes as in the days of Jesus. Shanan was attired in like archaic fashion, but barefoot and considerably ragged. What was more, the face of that young man seen hitchhiking with his llama back in Big Bar, California, was slowly materializing just above the neck of the figure to Shanan’s immediate left. The right side of the man’s face emanated extreme youthfulness, spiritually glowing, but implying thousands of years of wisdom both of God and of man. The opposite side of the young man’s face, as it slowly turned toward the mind of our dreamer, faintly imaged that peaceful, angelic expression Shanan had not yet liberated from his collective consciousness. He observed that their party was simply strolling through an unrecognizable but narrow and busy street, at peace, yet filled with grave decisions, but curious citizens surrounding their modest group—hated all of them.

 

     Shanan awoke as abruptly as his first blink, sensing a spiritual relation to his vision, perchance even relative to the old stones from which his quarters in Abbey were built. He arose with the morning brightness of the daystar peering unrestrained through his bedroom window, slapped his bare feet onto the cool, wooden floor, began to don his blue jeans, but cogitated a chat he had had with the owner of the house. The contractors, as legend told, had quarried the stones from an area twenty miles from the house, and had used the same materials to build the Catholic Church across the street from the house.

 

 

     This made sense to the Bible man as he reflected upon his vision: Another far-out dream! Nope. Too real. Wonder who those men were? And that young guy! Sheesh, those other people were really evil. With these puzzling thoughts churning obliquely in Shanan’s inquisitive mind, he set about readying himself for his usual day.

 

 

THAT DAY, after a trouble-free painting session, a well-earned bath, and a hardy supper, as the hours raced into all the rooms of the Kansas evening, while investigating the Scriptural source of Jesus’ prophetic reference to the abomination of desolation, the living waters flowing within the Book of Daniel began to raise a rather unusual tide. The eleventh chapter read as if it were a parallel to the Jim Bakker episode with Jessica Hahn. Although likelihood more implied a future happening, Shanan read the chapter again, astounded at the remarkable similarities: The king of the North; the king of the South; the vile man. Within a flash of a thought, Mr. Bin had realized he could be looking at Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart:

 

 …but he shall not stand: for they

shall  forecast devices against him.

26 Yea, they that feed  of the por-

tion of  his meat shall destroy him,

and his  army  shall  overflow: and

many shall fall down slain.

27 And  both  these  kings’  hearts

shall be  to do  mischief,  and  they

shall  speak lies at  one  table;  but

it  shall  not prosper:  for  yet  the

end shall be at the time appointed.

 

     He could not believe his bewildered eyes, more-so after reading through that passage: Jimmy Swaggart’s going to fall? How could this be? Jerry Falwell leave the P.T.L.? impossible—money to be grabbed! None of these speculations, however, influenced him, for by the time Shanan had retired for the night, he was fully convinced: I can’t get over this….

 

 

AT THE END OF THAT UNFORGETTABLE WEEK, the last of Shanan’s cigarettes had fallen to sloppily tapped ash and neglectfully tossed cigarette butts, and the concluding can of his beer had found a small network of funneling parts directly behind and just above his jawbone and disappeared and, as he sat calmly reading, he discovered television mentioned in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ to Saint John:

 

15:2 And I saw as  it were a sea  of

glass mingled  with fire:  and  them

that  had  gotten  the  victory  over

the  beast,  and   over   his   image,

and  over  his  mark,  and  over the

number  of  his  name, stand on the

sea  of glass,  having  the  harps  of

God.

 

     He reasoned to himself that this sea of glass mingled with fire was a television picture tube with electricity blazing away inside it. The rest of the verse strongly suggested a description of future religious television programs, with Jews: the song of Moses, and Christians: the song of the Lamb, praising God because they received not the mark of the beast. The Lord was ringing bells inside Shanan’s fertile two-eared steeple, as fast as he could write them—often faster.

 

     He ran to his car, grabbed the portable typewriter, typed the Daniel prophecy in uninhibited depth, and promptly mailed copies to seven close friends, and his son, Buddy. The Revelation television mystery he kept to himself. Furthermore, having read and now thoroughly believing the Book of James, he prayed all the more earnestly for more wisdom to share and to give a more perceptive understanding to folk he would speak with inevitably in the years to come, Lord willing.

 

If any of you lack wisdom,

let him ask of God,

that giveth to all men liberally,

and upbraideth not;

and it shall be given him

 

     Another item he noticed while in the Mons area of Kansas was there were at least five thousand oil wells within a fifty-mile radius, pumping an average of twenty-five barrels of oil out of the ground daily. To Shanan, these figures meant approximately six million eight hundred and seventy-five thousand gallons of crude oil were being removed from beneath the area of that fifty-mile radius on a daily basis, leading him to surmise verbally to himself, “Remove the stuffing, and the mattress collapses.”

 

 

NOW, he was back on the exhilarating, unpredictable road, with his glorious Bible, and his precious Amy. “How great thou art, O Father!” Two heads (one being of a furry composition) and four nostalgically preoccupied eyes snapped uncountable trillions of mental photographs of western U.S.A. sceneries over hundreds of miles of picturesque periphery and well-paved highways. In the Mile-High City of Denver, Shanan endeavored for hours (driving to this pub, asking that person, dialing this number, dialing that number, fingers blurring themselves across pads of telephone buttons) to locate his long-time friend, Joseph Cooney, a man with whom he had shared plenty of interesting ventures off and on through the years, and in many a state, crowded cities, and little towns. No success. He admittedly was not a missing-persons detective, and now the only inspiration left within Shanan’s energized heart was the towering and majestic, half-snowcapped mountain range west of where he stood.

 

     So, brain-camera on the ready, off toward the Rockies and the attracting West he drove, excitedly dumping into every bending and listening ear at every stop (and, expectedly, there were many) along the prophecy-disclosing way that “Jimmy Swaggart’s going to fall. They’re going to find he sinned like the devil,” he would expound eagerly, “and he’s going to fall.” At three rest stops and during a used oil safari at a municipal barn in Salt Lake City, he left his prophetic proclamation in writing, on picnic-table tops and several readily extended hands.

 

     In northern California, however, while temporarily sidetracked and merrily gold panning an incredibly deep ravine, as he attempted to accelerate his rig up and out of the ravine, his failing engine clanged a rod through the bottom of the oil pan. He coasted backwards to the base of the ravine, emptied his car, found a nearby gentleman camped with a powerful vehicle, to assist in the transporting; and, in front of a local fast food store, roadside-sold all unnecessary gear.

 

     From the mountainous regions of northern California, with his five-gallon bucket now half filled with meager belongings, Bible wrapped neatly in plastic bags and tucked under his arm, he and his Amy hitchhiked confidently into the remote, desert town of Deserthigh, Oregon. He dearly yearned to visit a mining buddy he had made back in Idaho, while roughing it nearly fifty miles into the untamed wilderness area of the Boise National Forest, another but vastly mountainous region, where they had settled temporarily on either side of the gold-rich Middle Fork of the Boise River. Shanan had high hopes his friend would baptize him in the wilderness desert of Oregon: Christmas Valley, specifically. Friend John, in Shanan’s trusting eyes, was a very religious and God-fearing man, the like of which Shanan had not ever known; and, his name was…John!

 

     As he made his roundabout way to Deserthigh, while hiking through a hill-surrounded town only a quarter-mile long, Shanan entered a dusty but merchandise-loaded thrift store. For a five-dollar bill, he purchased a used indigo backpack and filled it with the items from the five-gallon bucket. Having given glory to his God for the wonderful find, Shanan left the bucket with the storekeeper, unlatched Amy from the front doorpost and, in less than a minute, was riding north in an antediluvian Volkswagen driven by a California pastor. He was well past retirement years and had just left an active pastorship in a large California church after funding and building a little church in a very little and very out-of-the-way town in Oregon.

 

     He had recently abdicated his position in the California church and was returning to take the new pulpit in Oregon. As they traveled a highway northward and another eastward, the pastor solemnly confided to Shanan why the return trip to Oregon. “While praying for the Lord to send a pastor to take the responsibilities of the little church, I heard a living voice speak from out of the thin air compassing the ground where I was praying: ‘Why pray ye for that which I have established for you?’”

 

 

CHRISTIAN JOHN JORDAN and his Christian wife, Ann, made Christian Brother Bin feel like the closest of Christian kin. They allowed him use of a pintsized, loaf-shaped, aluminum-shelled trailer parked a hundred grassy feet from the back of their quiet home, for privacy sake, and charitably supplied the propane gas and battery power. Whenever the need to replenish arose, from the outside pump directly behind the House of Jordan, for both he and Amy, Shanan packed to the pintsized, loaf-shaped, aluminum-shelled trailer eight one-gallon jugs of the “tastiest spring water under Heaven.” Adding to the aforementioned hospitalities, John allowed his new guest the use of the bathroom shower once or twice a week, and invited him in for supper at least as often. Mr. Jordan told him not to care a worry or a wart about anything, but to respect a monthly cattle drive that would meander its lowing way past no farther than twenty feet from Shanan’s trailer, while heading to the old railroad stockyards at the edge of town. The drove were harmless, he emphasized, but an impressive treat to behold. John was indeed a good-natured friend, and Shanan loved both Christian he and his Christian wife—she.

 

 

AS OUR BIBLE ZEALOT was conscientiously converting the idyllic preferences of his few belongings in a used indigo backpack, to becoming his few belongings in an aluminum-shelled trailer, tossing them idyllically into their new home an item at a time, with no argument perceived by his idyllic ears, he spotted a dried and gnarled piece of tawny-colored wood a half-inch thick and not far from the open side door of the trailer. He kneeled silently, picked the wooden curiosity up, and asked Brother John its nature. “We call that matrimony vine, Shan, boxthorn. You should see them when they’re alive: all its purplish flowers…” To Shanan, this was more than just a welcoming sign, but something else, as well; and he stuffed the intriguing branch gently into his backpack, to keep as a memento of his stay at Deserthigh. The piece of matrimony vine looked exactly like the Greek letter omega: the end.

 

    

 

SHANAN ATTENDED the four Deserthigh churches—Church of the Bible (a time-weathered, white frame church in the center of town), Friends (in a nicely renovated house trailer), Catholic (in the high-school auditorium), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (in their Kingdom Hall)—alternating his Sunday Service presence but attending each Tuesday and Wednesday Bible study, and all of the Sunday school classes, providentially provided with an hour’s leeway between each class. Not the Catholic Church, though, as the Catholic Church was administered by an itinerant priest who catered to four other Oregon churches, held Sunday Service every fourth Sunday in Deserthigh, but administered no Bible study.

 

     At the Church of the Bible, Shanan gave Pastor Cyril Mures a copy of the prophecy made from the eleventh chapter of the Book of Daniel and energetically told Cyril about Jerry Falwell and his ten appointees’ impending departure from the Praise the Lord Ministries, and Swaggart’s soon-to-be fall from grace. “To me, Pastor Cyril, prophecy is no more than fact yet to unfold.”

 

     “Impossible, Shanan!” Pastor Cyril rebuked glaringly. “Jimmy Swaggart is not a dishonorable man. We even send money to his ministry, on a monthly basis. He’s a regular tithe of ours.”

 

 

YET, AS BRILLIANT as Shanan thought he was on Scripture—and he was without a doubt—the following Wednesday evening, he cried the holy blues after the Church of the Bible Bible study. He imagined (and he had quite a vivid imagination) his wretched soul sinking directly into the bowls of hell, shrieking at the top of his lungs for mercy into unhearing, uncaring ears, drowning in a murky sea of morbid faces crying, skulls weeping ooze from unhallowed eyes, half-fleshed, forever-burning skeletons clacking noisily against their equals, as whirlpools yawned and wildly swallowed these defenseless victims, sucking them downward to the base of an infernal stomach wherein they would be digested by fire eternally. Owing this neoteric tyranny and self-persecution to the myriad of terrible deeds he had plagued others with during his lifetime, this was a genuine worry, and this genuine worry bugged him terribly.

 

     Pastor Cyril, and Les, the church’s principal deacon, took him aside.

 

     “Do you have confidence in Jesus Christ, Shan?” Cyril asked.

 

     “Yes, absolutely. You know I do.”

 

     “Have you repented and received baptism?” Cyril pressed.

 

     “Yeah…” Shanan popped instantaneously to Cyril’s question, not fully comprehending the word repentance.

 

     Pastor Cyril stood shaking his head but peacefully appraising his guest. “Are you awake to why Jesus died, in the first place, Shan?”

 

     “To save us from death.” Shanan acknowledged posthaste. “But if I die, and my soul ain’t dead—man—the sins I gotta pay for yet, you couldn’t begin to number. You don’t know the extent of my sins. I lived them, not you. Next to Jesus’ righteousness, my righteousness is as flat as the shadow of an airplane landing on a runway in hell, with me its only terrorized passenger, screaming wild-eyed through my window!”

 

     Cyril and Les countered immediately, both exclaiming at once, ““No!”” “This is why he died,” Cyril smiled: “He died to pay for your sins, Shan! He paid for your sins, on the Cross—with his life, Shan, not your life—” Les interrupted excitedly. “Shan, we don’t have to go to hell to pay for our sins—not anymore. We’re saved. We don’t owe anything now. Jesus paid!”

 

     “Shan, as smart as you think you are in the Bible,” Cyril added, “and you weren’t wise to this? I’m surprised at you.”

 

     “—God….”

 

 

PUTTING THIS MILD—“Thank youuuuuu, Lord!”—LY, if you will: As he was dancing—“I love you, God!”—and praising the Lord and jum—“Ain’t nothing like you, Lord!”—ping, as if he were a living couch spring, and fervently thanking God, he raised his eyes and stretched his—“Wait’l Amy hears this!”—naked hands into the heavens, squealing gleefully on his way homeward, gazing into His magnificent starry night, and inhaling deeply the divine desert bouquet, found exclusively in the Oregon desert, and at last rejoicing with smi—“You sneeeeky lil self, you!”—ling Amy and hopping around—Not this time, Shan!—his trailer doing absolutely everything that meant precisely (???) and singing and jum—“I love you, toooooo!” Thank you—ping, a virtual cartwheeling tumbleweed, and praising the Lord…. Well—my God…! I guess so…and another beginning of what is usually found in your average newborn.

 

 

SHANAN read his perpetually unveiling Bible from the moment the humble Earth bowed in its grace before the rising of the sun to way after its midnight rendezvous with the stars, before calling it quits. Hour after astonishing hour, at a relentless pace, the powerful words from page after page leaped swiftly down the throat of his gorging consciousness. In addition to the beautified raptures rising from chapter after chapter of the Holy Bible, host John lent him four Biblical reference books; and the sweetest of hours beckoned to be wholly consumed in commanding, uninterrupted savory gulps.

 

     Yet, as was forever common in Shanan’s cubistic life, he had a problem: all the epistles written by the Apostle Paul, including his Book of Romans, dictated to Tertius. These letters confused our Scriptural student to no end: Women with their head covered; women longhaired, or let them be shorn; men prophesying with their head uncovered: We’re certainly under no works of the Law! Shanan brooded to himself. Nature teaching men shouldn’t wear long hair? Nature doesn’t teach; Jesus teaches! Jesus said we have only one master, and that he is that master.

 

     Paul’s extraordinary writings often appeared to contradict the outwardly intricate, though inwardly uncomplicated, teachings of Jesus. Shanan took selected advantage of Paul’s teachings, to a degree, and occasionally quoted a verse or two; but during each reading of a chosen epistle of Paul’s, somewhere amid the strokes of the apostle’s consecrated pen, Embroilment would affectionately exhume himself up from the pages before Shanan’s discernment and purblindly give unsolicited struggle. Finally, the inevitable night arrived wherein sheer desperation forced our Shanan to fall to his knees, tears flooding his misunderstanding face, and pray.

 

     “Dear Lord and dear God, please show me Paul!” he cried in confusion. “You have truly allowed Satan equal time in this thine book, O Lord!” he mourned. “But you wouldn’t have permitted Paul’s letters, so many of them, in your holy book unless you had a good reason—All things work to the good, for those who love God, not the bad. Oh, my God, please…I want to see Paul, and I want to know him, and I love you, Lord…but I want to understand Paul…,” he whimpered, praying ardently and longer than usual before retiring to bed.

 

And account that the longsuffering of our Lord

is salvation;

even as our beloved brother Paul

also according to the wisdom given unto him

hath written unto you;

 

As also in all his epistles,

speaking in them of these things;

in which are some things hard to be understood,
which they that are unlearned

and unstable wrest,

as they do also the other scriptures,

unto their own destruction

 

 

THE FOLLOWING DAY, after recovering somberly from last night’s prayer, and after obtaining a cordial permission from the Deserthigh postmaster, Shanan tacked a handwritten notice to the post-office bulletin board. He felt this would guarantee him work and steady cheese and honey.

 

I WILL WORK FOR $1.00 PER HOUR

FOR PEOPLE OVER 65 AND $2.00

PER HOUR FOR PEOPLE UNDER 65.

I DO ODD JOBS OF ALL KINDS

AND CAN DO THEM ALL PRETTY WELL.

 

 

     Deserthigh, Oregon, was nestled in the middle of the Oregon desert, ninety-three miles south of Bend, and probably had a population of thirty locals at best, and, of course, four churches. Through faith, nonetheless, and appropriate to his unheard-of rates, work came to him perpetually. His needs were scant, honey poured onto slices of blocked cheese produced an ultra-tasty delight, and his customers regularly made him a delicious hot lunch. Shanan esteemed his country clients as “Just plain folks who loved everyone, and Jesus.”

 

 

TWO BIBLICALLY STUDIOUS DAYS after the posting (and scribed hereupon with the purest of truth is Shanan’s memory though paraphrased for clarification of the following): He was in the process of painting the entire house of John Jordan’s white-haired, spunky, eighty-four-year-old grandmother. Nothing specific was inspiring his sunny mood, but the painter began casually turning over in his mind an endless collage of wicked atrocities committed against defenseless children throughout the country—several of these mental turnings from events he had witnessed during his overland sojourns. He dwelt upon these sad reflections as he climbed a rickety, wooden ladder slowly, and daydreamed of his reactions if ever he did catch a person harming a child. Five unforgiving strokes of his brush, he found himself drifting back into peaceful meditations concerning the Bible.

 

 

     When he found himself pondering a Biblical issue, he would dig for his notepad, and scribble the item forthwith, to be studied and dissected when a yawn on the mouth of Time indicated worthlessness if not filled industriously, which, from this period in Shanan’s history, was always. This imitation-recall method usually occurred if he was anywhere but with his Bible. Months after leaving Deserthigh, he would buy a pocket tape recorder; and, during work breaks, or as he drove through the U.S.A., would memo his ideas electronically. Evenings, he would examine his Biblical challenges with a fine-toothed comb.

 

 

THAT STAR-EMBROIDERED NIGHT, before retiring into his cushy mattress, he said the Lord’s Prayer (as he had nearly every day of his English-speaking life) and fell soundly to sleep in a tranquil disposition soon after, “One lil sheepy, two lil sheepy, three lil…” Two thirty in the silent and shadowy desert morning, he, sobbing violently beneath his heap of bedcovers, awoke from a very disturbing nightmare. He had dreamt sorrowfully of the beatings and the horrors and the miseries hundreds of thousands of defenseless children and babies were suffering daily throughout a horrific world, and awoke as if shot from a gun, deliberating and crying aloud—“And here I am, Lord, lying in the lap of luxury…!”

 

     The pain grumbling overpoweringly in his wakening heart was unbearable. Terrible projections of those harmless babies’ and children’s haunting faces wailing and begging for mercy from faceless attackers filled his mind; and he shared abundantly their anguish and agony throughout the now storming clouds of his soul. Weeping wildly, lying beneath his ample quilts, he raved loudly, “I will punish them all!” and wept more despairingly than ever, “I will render justice upon the wicked in the world. I will destroy them all—I can’t live with this, God! Oh…God…”

 

     Still in his bed and as though inhabiting the very heart of a grieving spirit, he had no idea why this cruelty was allowed to take place in a world the Lord had created. Nevertheless, Shanan knew they occurred, and God could not change these matters…at least not yet.

 

     He dragged himself dolefully from his bed and walked hunch-shouldered into the cramped kitchen, wherein he did his studies. He clicked the light switch, reached for and raised his Bible from the table, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, God,” he moaned in a severe state of melancholy. Gazing upward but seeing only a watery blur, he opened his Book and pressed a finger quickly between its fanning pages. Raising and rubbing his upper arms against his eyes in an attempt to dry them, he, without donning his reading glasses, lowered his sobbing head into the pages, and squinted at the diametrically opposing sentiments beneath his finger.

 

…I will render vengeance  to mine

enemies, and will reward them that

hate me.

 

     Shanan was amazed to the marrow of his bones: God knows! God even knows my dreams!

 

     A deep breath was drawn solemnly, a Bible was closed just as solemnly, and his last action was repeated. After pressing his finger blindly into his Book, he peeked onto the page, with a light curiosity: Can he do it twice?

 

To  me belongeth  vengeance, and

recompense; their foot   shall  slide

in  due  time:   for  the  day of their

calamity is at  hand, and the things

that  shall come  upon  them  make

haste.

 

     Can He do it twice? Not only did the Lord do it twice, He directed Shanan’s finger to the same Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy, the same chapter thirty-two, on the same page three hundred and fifty-two. Can He do it twice...? Tch!

 

     Shanan’s eyes were dry now, and the verses were clearer than at first, clearer in reference to his position among the faithful of the Lord. Regardless, he still could not fathom these extraordinary coincidences: the nightmare, the misery and horror in the faces of those nightmare-huddled children, and the Bible verses, the Bible verses. He at last and very appropriately decided to himself: God is the only judge. I don’t have squat to do with those people. But I’m sure he gave me the dream for a reason. Is this prophecy…? Was God reading my lips…?

 

 

DAILY HE TOILED for his dollars or eight, four hours or less, and afterward filled his leisure with his Bible. Having read its entirety through a second time, he decided it was finally safe to begin writing comparative notes and related cross-references upon its unblemished pages. His inky jots streamed from ballpoint and felt-tipped writing utensils as if being poured unremittingly from a gem-filled International Falls. Yellow highlights; red highlights; blue highlights; penned lines sweeping side to side, up to down, connecting word to word, verse to verse, and even page to page. Indelible markers the same: variant shades of green, gray, orange, and winging it into a rainbow for more….

 

 

A MONTH OF DETERMINED STUDY, and the pages of his Bible now resembled the personal memos of a Romanesque physicist. Countless marks and endless notations now garnished and flowed over half the pages. Moreover, a Jehovah’s Witness friend had lent him an immense Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, which supplement further extended his boundaries of examination and the exploring of interchangeable relationships of the often-perplexing Hebrew, Chaldean, and Greek words, clearly as the tinging of a crystal bell.

 

     Higher and higher he sailed, heeding neither the day nor the hour being swept into the past. The words from the deep were steadily opening a galaxy of awesome insights. Biblical facts, and items not ever heard from pulpits, at least to his knowledge, inspired him to celebrate daily in accordance with each mystery revealed—and there were many.

 

     Our Scriptural student hastily communicated each unveiled insight to every soul whose ears appeared lonely for Biblical elucidation. His increase in the Word of God was so intense and so rapid it often seemed to offend half of his friends in the churches. The offending, however, did not matter; his passion to expound was uncontainable. Example: Two Jehovah’s Witnesses, while visiting Shanan in his trailer one balmy afternoon, after being showed an Isaiah verse “…prophesizing that hanks of Jesus’ beard would be ripped out by his accusers (I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.),” which had distressed the two Jehovah’s Witnesses to the point of asking Shanan if he were a devil, and became a tad more distressed when Mr. Bible Miner indelicately disclosed a nugget proving that Jesus was the same comforter He had prophesied of in John fourteen/sixteen and twenty-six. “‘And I will pray the Father,’” Our Scripturalist explained with a zeal, “‘and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.

 

     “‘But the Comforter,’” Shanan pressed on from his tables of proof, “‘which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’”

 

     “How,” the higher-ranking Jehovah’s Witness had demanded, testing Shanan’s canonical sources, “do you associate Jesus with the Comforter?”

 

     “Easy.” this lower-ranking testifier asserted calmly. “But take note that the Comforter will remain with us forever. See, here in First John two/one: ‘My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,’” Shanan smiled.

 

     “That doesn’t say anything,” his visitors replied, prompting for more, “about Jesus being the Comforter.”

 

     “Not in English; but it does in the Greek language. Mister Crane’s concordance shows us the Greek word for advocate is the same word Jesus used for comforter—parakletos. And parakletos isn’t used for anything else except comforter and advocate, and only once for advocate, in the verse I just mentioned. That’s our Lord, nobody else. The verse I just read to you, First John two/one, says so—parakletos: advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous. Our Lord reminds us of all things, if we’re really sincere in our search and admit what the Bible says is true. And someday, you’ll be preaching this because it’s in the Bible, and what Isaiah prophesied about Jesus’ beard….”

 

     Shanan was well aware that if he held back the glorified word his Lord was showering freely upon him daily, God would cancel all further perceptions, and maybe him along with them; and he feared the Lord.

 

Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents:

behold, I have gained beside them

five talents more

 

But he that had received one

went and digged in the earth,

and hid his lord’s money

 

And I was afraid, and went

and hid thy talent in the earth

 

His lord answered and said unto him,

Thou wicked and slothful servant

 

Take therefore the talent from him,

and give it unto him which hath ten talents

 

And cast ye the unprofitable servant

into outer darkness:

there shall be weeping

and gnashing of teeth

 

     Shanan was neither ashamed of the truth of the Word of God nor afraid. He was not afraid of these spirit-filling talents and Holy gifts, which he knew came from the Lord. On no occasion did he contemplate hiding or burying them, for he assuredly did not want them cut off or given to a stranger, unless, of course, they were on a sharing basis; and he constantly shared. His portions were shooting straight from the Principle of his heart. Shanan was his name, and giving was his gain. He was a zealot! Besides—unprofitable servant? Outer darkness? Inner darkness would have seemed as fatal; and, weeping and gnashing of teeth seemed to pertain to slow-walking mourners circling and staring at an untimely grave, weeping.

 

 

HIS INHERENT RESTLESSNESS was materializing again, and the day arrived ultimately in which Shanan and his beloved Amy departed their helpful friends at Deserthigh. Transparent but body-caressing coldness was swiftly invading the more elevated parts of Oregon, and Deserthigh’s dry desert nights were frosting or freezing the foliage cloaking the land, also rendering the propane required to warm Shanan’s thin-walled trailer—double.

 

     There was but a single business item left unaccomplished: He had not asked John to baptize him. Shanan’s parents had had him sprinkled with clean and ritually blessed tap water, when he was a baby, and he had eventually realized that this was sufficient. The Bible was already very explicit with respect to objects and humans sanctified through sprinkling for the atonement of sin, whether by the blood of animals or by water mixed ritually with the ashes of a red heifer. Furthermore, Ezekiel thirty-six/twenty-five prophesied ‘by clean water,’ meaning ashes-free, and Shanan did firmly consider the words of Ezekiel—indelible.

 

 

From the secret citadel of eternity and into the ambience of now, the Dawn had carried forth another lustrous virgin: October Eleven, and laid her life at the feet of a grasping world, to care for and to respect and to share her memories with another day; but well before the evening (filled with caverns of the unknown and the unsuspecting) would bring its waves of sleepy darkness to submerge her sunny face, others would tear Miss October Eleven in two and shove her pieces mercilessly into an open casket, with their last dead moments of dusk.

 

     Shanan and Amy took off in the early hours from Deserthigh and headed north on State Road Thirty-one to U.S. Highway Ninety-seven toward Interstate Eighty-four east. By three in the afternoon, though not yet fully eastbound, they were sending hungry thoughts through the cedar-wood door of the cedar-wood general store in the quaint and country-road burg of Caines, Oregon. Shanan leashed Amy to a cedar-wood post, entered the cedar-wood store, paced the cedar-wood aisles, scrutinized, and priced the temporary occupants displayed resourcefully upon their cedar-wood shelves, a tornado of cedar-wood yet spinning incessantly around the inside of Shanan’s eyeballs.

 

     Finally, after opening a glass-door refrigerator and withdrawing a pre-packed chicken sandwich, a pint of chocolate milk, and walking to a shelf and carefully selecting a humongous dog biscuit, he made the purchases, and departed. As he did so, he happened to glance inadvertently downward, to the right, and through the plastic window of a green newspaper stand. The man flipped emotional. “Holy jeepers!” he shouted into the angel-filled heavens, “Would you take a peekaboo look at this?...!” He doubled back into the cedar-wood store, changed three one-dollar bills into quarters from the grinning clerk, leaped as if wing-footed through the cedar-wood doorway, into a telephone booth, dialed…and finally, “Pastor Cyril!” he reported loudly. “Did you see the news? Jerry Falwell quit the P.T.L.. And so did the other ten guys on his board, just like the Bible said they would.”

 

     Cyril was puzzled. “I don’t know how you did it, Shan.”

 

     “You don’t know how I did it, Cyril? I—didn’t do anything; the Bible told me it would come to pass. I just believed the words in the Bible. The Lord showed me. God, I just relayed his words to whoever I met!”

 

     Seven abbreviated paragraphs, and Pastor Cyril led our Bible surfer to a marooned conclusion. He rarely, it often appeared to Shanan, privately speaking, appreciated his Biblically oriented presence. Augmented intellectually by the knowledge he had so exhaustively gleaned from the Scriptures, Shanan was filled with an abundance of answers to a vast number of Biblical questions, and glowed, but unbeknownst to him, with intimidating posture spoking from the hub of nearly every Biblical subject and nearly every Biblical doctrine wherein lay a Biblical brainteaser.

 

     Believing the Bible exactly as written was certainly Shanan’s greatest peculiarity. For example: He had disputed with Pastor Cyril at length, steadfastly maintaining, that because proof was written in the Bible, John the Baptist was “unquestionably” the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. Unfortunately for Shanan, though he loved the man dearly, Pastor Cyril had accomplished his religious apprenticeship in quite a different school of thought and could not come near to accepting “these facts” as Shanan has declared unreservedly to me.

 

———

 

     [Reincarnation, as Shanan had evidenced from his Bible, is the act of dying and disintegrating back to the dust, after which, as Shanan might point from the Scriptures: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him (God), and to every seed his own body (optimistically an acceptable body, unless the recipient is not choosy). —First Corinthians fifteen/thirty-eight. The soul in the above formula is thus born again, but into Heaven and into a new living body (unblemished and very personally acceptable or, perhaps, as we know not everything, of a ghastly construction), closely paralleling that of the Resurrection, but, in the herein Earthly disputed case, through a woman. Elijah had lived in the flesh, but was translated. He did not die, that is, until he, by the inconceivable powers of God, was born again into the flesh of John the Baptist and was thereafter martyred; but, traditionally, who stops to assess these minor trivialities?]

 

Marvel not at this:

for the hour is coming,

in the which all that are in the graves

shall hear his voice

 

And shall come forth;

they that have done good,

unto the resurrection of life;

and they that have done evil,

unto the resurrection of damnation

 

———

 

     “The Bible doesn’t teach reincarnation,” Cyril had insisted stubbornly on a cool afternoon back in Deserthigh, as though he, not unlike many preachers, had missed nothing pertaining to every hidden chamber of the Holy Word. “Believing that stuff is a sin.”

 

     “Oh, my heavens, Cyril,” Shanan had contested passionately, eagerly pointing to the words in his Bible. “Jesus said it himself!”

 

Matthew 11

 

12 And from  the days  of  John

the Baptist…

. . .

14 And if  ye will receive it, this

is Elias, which was for  to  come.

 

     “Gads, Cyril,” Shanan had plowed insistently. “Right here in verse fourteen; Jesus says ‘This—is, Elijah,’ and he said in verse nine, John was ‘more’ than just—a—prophet. Jesus meant John was—two—prophets: Elijah—and—John the Baptist.”

 

     With Shanan, if Jesus said it, His word was a living mountain of iron immovable by a thousand mountains of lunging iron. No scholarly argument under the sun could alter this confidence. Seemed only two kinds of devotees were left in the churches in those days: those hard-of-hearing, who believed in all their new prophets, and those who yet accepted the prophets of God, as found in the Holy Bible.

 

     Still, if it was possible to reach a pinnacle of this order, with Cyril, it had to have occurred at a Sunday afternoon dinner at the pastor’s two-story, ranch-styled house in the outskirts of Deserthigh. The small congregation (seated round the liberal dining room table, with four at a sturdy folding card table) was in the middle of their dinner, when Shanan blurted unconsciously, “Ya know what reincarnation is to a cow?”

 

     Every man, woman, and child—except Pastor Cyril Mures—turned their inquisitional head. “No, what, Shan?” they puzzled.

 

     “Being, re - vealed,” he smiled thinly.

 

     The folk at the tables booed and laughed, including Cyril’s wife. Cyril rebuked her censoriously for doing so.

 

     “Reincarnation’s not in the Bible!” the pastor declared dryly.

 

     “Gee, honey, Shan was just telling a little joke, the pastor’s wife interjected, but cautiously, not being fully familiar with the opposing views shared by her husband and his anagogical guest.

 

 

PEOPLE ENJOY reading about men like Shanan, they honestly do. However, when they verily find themselves in front of anyone possessing his manner of personality—duck! They cannot wait to remove themselves from his presence. His type—love the Bible and actually believe the writing therein, and what was I doing last night? Scribes and Pharisees, Pharisees and scribes. I feel confident that at least several of you readers, especially the more worldly, are familiar with this uncommon singularity.

 

 

SHANAN, finished with his devaluating chat with Pastor Cyril, puzzled to the base of his itching feet, hung the telephone on its tarnished cradle: How could Cyril be so cold? The prophecy was in the Bible, and— BAM! here it is. Falwell resigned from the P.T.L.! Daniel said the man would be destroyed neither in anger nor in battle. Now Swaggart’s next, and it can’t be long from now. But someday Pastor Cyril will come to believe like I do. I’m positive of this.

 

     Look out folk! From this moment on, everyone Shanan had verbal exchanges with had to hear of Swaggart’s embarrassing future, commencing with the grinning store clerk. Out through the cedar-wood doorway, with an eager thumb and just as eager and unleashed Amy (snapping at the dangling dog biscuit swinging from the fingers of her person’s loosening grip), the herald ran.

 

 

RIDE AFTER RIDE heard the discriminating representations of the words of God. “Jimmy Swaggart’s going to fall!” Shanan would proclaim excitedly, as he leaned forward and cocked his head and telegramming eyes toward the driver. “I don’t know what he’s going to do to deserve it, but he’s going to fall. I don’t know when, but it sure can’t be too long from now. The Bible indicates Swaggart’s fall could be as soon as tomorrow. You wait and see. Ain’t gonna be long from now!”

 

 

THREE thrilling days of hitchhiking and tutoring the prophecies of Daniel (every inch along the way), and he and dusty Amy finally arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, midnight, at a truck stop at the crossroads of Interstates Eighty and Twenty-five. Many a past driver or bystander was now filled to at least a speculative level with the Bible’s news of the future, and many a past driver had sprung supportively for a filling lunch or an unsolicited five-dollar bill in respectful gratitude toward their intelligence-gathering, happy-go-blessing passenger.

 

 

A MOMENT of your time, please. I feel I have to insert here, as sensitive to idealism as I am, this unfortunate reality: On highly unexpected occasions along the Scripturally kaleidoscopic way—Oh, bleah on all those monotonous, so over-detailed, depthless lexicographically portraitured book-inflaters pertaining to every atom within the periphery of the next scene—shapes of ashtrays, colors of dashboards, he wore a (?) jacket sewn with (?) gauge thread, and who cares what (Although I use them myself once in a while) else. Let us just say as assertively as possible: Regarding the innumerable charitables (and that they were) who had responded affirmatively to Shanan’s animated thumb—“Two of them suckers stopped their vehicles in the middle of nowhere and told me to get out and WALK!” Shanan was yet a wee naive and a wee amateurish to the dispensing of prophecy to strangers. A fair comparison might be that he was as zealous as a soprano rooster ushering in an eternal sunrise, but basically—I say only basically—as innocent as the first day in Paradise. Now, where was I? Oh….

 

 

     ’TWAS nightfall, and the weather on the high plains and in the mountains was becoming single-mindedly cold and miserable. Weary-tongued and tiring in the bones, Shanan had found a truck stop, and tried to connect by pay phone, with his Denver, Colorado, friend, Joseph Cooney (we have contact). A mild Wyoming rain in wandering sheets here and there across the scenery had begun drizzling intentions of developing judgments and wetter highways; and, shapeless smudges of inkiness—rolling, expanding, and flashing internally in the southwestern sky between vanishing blue-black backgrounds seemed to be clawing at Shanan’s heedful perceptions, I’m an impending and dangerous storm. A week and a half before he departed from Deserthigh, Shanan had tried an old post office box address of Joseph’s to get in touch with him, and had succeeded. Mr. Cooney had replied and included a fifty-dollar bill with his letter, a telephone number, and wrote that a visit would be nice if he was ever in the neighborhood. So, after listening to Joseph’s truck description and reminding friend Joe…

 

 

AN HOUR AND A QUARTER was thoroughly consumed by wind and washed thoroughly by rain, and Joseph, with half a T-bone steak open-boxed on his lap, can of beer in hand, a pretty blonde girlfriend forking chunks of meat into his toothy and wide-open mouth, in his old lapis lazuli pickup, pulled into the truck stop parking area, coasted guardedly across the glistening surface of the blacktop, lightly applied the brakes, and slid to a splashing halt only yards from the double doors of the truckers’ cafe.

 

     The prevailing scene was of a torrential downpour strafing its pummeling rain and hail as if they were miniature cannonballs bombing a million muddy eyes out of the ground and across the splattered and icing landscape. Shanan and smiling Amy waiting patiently and waterproofed inside the foyer of the truckers’ cafe spotted Joe’s handily parked conveyance, sent the double doors flying, leaped wildly through the violently pelting rain, and came a running truck^.ward beneath the flashes and sky-booms of southern Wyoming. Both man and dog conjoined on the fly and jumped sideways and diagonally and slantwise and cattycorner and sidelong through the open-slam-shut door of Joe’s truck, landing crosswise and sliding anxiously over and mid-seating the banqueting twosome, Amy’s wet head and wet smiling eyes now upward and protruding through wet fur and wet eyelashes between Shanan’s wet knees.

 

     “Joe!” Shanan gasped loudly, trying to outcry the racket of rain banging away on the roof of Joe’s truck. “Jimmy Swaggart’s going to take a dive! The Bible says he’s going to fall. I can prove he will! I don’t know how God’s going bring it to pass. I don’t know how long it’ll be. But the Bible says…”

 

     If he liked you well enough, Mr. Joseph Cooney (more often preferring Joe) would sell the gross sum of his worldly effects to relieve whatever problem you may be encountering. He was a sacrificing man, and sacrifice was a quality Shanan admired. He and Joe were like—how shall I put this—brothers: half the time at each other’s throat. Off to Denver they drove, but, for now, happily filling the cab with high-and-low stories from over the past years and, of course, Joe’s golf games, and, as fittingly expected, a rolling-eyed reminder of the fifty-dollar invitation: “Hell of a neighborhood, Shan!”

 

     Joe’s girlfriend was as mute as a shrunken head the entire way back, for no room was available betwixt the rapid procession of words tumbling reminiscently into the ears of those dear old pals, and the hundred-and-eighteen-plus mile return was finished before she had a chance to say Huh? On top of which, three-quarters of the drive to Denver, she was looking apathetically through the passenger window, slowly finishing the forgotten steak and beer.

 

 

IN THOSE DAYS (by the way, Amy got the bone), Joe was not exactly religious. He was a well-tanned, burly guy, hard as the front bumper of a fifty-three Cadillac, and had helped Shanan through his misadventures—financially or physically—so often in the past they reminded him of a daylong game of golf with invisible balls. Mr. Cooney’s second wife, Francine, had, as Joe related it, treated him unjustly, divorced him; and, over the ensuing years and through the depressing woods of anguish, Joe had grown rather contentious toward a select group of altruistic sentiments. Still, even considering these frailties, Shanan could not restrain himself from preaching poor Joe’s ears off, until they were itching to be removed.

 

 

“Knock it off!” Joe chipped, as he strolled to his apartment’s refrigerator for a beverage. “I don’t want to hear another word about Jesus.”

 

     Unrelenting, Shanan fired back rapidly, “You got to call him Lord, Joe—Lord Jesus! The seven sons of Sceva didn’t call him Lord,” he pealed, “and they all got beat up by the man with the evil spirit. Jesuses are everywhere, Joe—Jesus Gonzales the drug smuggler, Jesus Jones the baby molester. You got to call him Lord, Joe; it’s written, Joe: ‘And fear fell on them all, and the name of the LORD Jesus was magnified’! Hey, Joe…!”

 

     Joe would run and hide himself, plugging work-roughened fingers into indifferent ears, ranting loudly, attempting to stifle his buddy’s perpetual spouting. Shanan chuckled…but certainly with a measured dose of compassion.

 

 

SHANAN’S FIRST WEEK in Denver was a literary boon. The downtown library beckoned covertly with its vast and fascinating offering of printed scriptural treasures: the DNA of every known religion upon this planet, exposing its infinite and intellectual cornucopia to Shanan’s exhilarated lust for the Word. Pen and notebook clutched tightly in hand, he ascended the stairs to the second tier, proceeded through a maze of gray steel shelving, and began to devour methodically every non-Christian scripture he could locate. The nineteen thirty-four edition of the Yusuf Ali Koran was finished off in a read-saturated two and a half visits, thick pages slapping mercilessly from right to left, ending with an astonishment at a Yusuf Ali commentary referring to the teachings of Jesus as mere fragments of an imperfect philosophy. Shanan knew of nothing imperfect about Jesus: If that were so, Shanan pondered inquisitively, why does the Koran even mention Jesus? The Koran itself said God gave His Holy Spirit to Jesus and His Mother; but, our Shanan, look as he may, had noted with real wonder, not to the Muslim’s Apostle Muhammad.

 

     Regardless of doubt, question, or alarm, Mr. Bin, believing devoutly that the Holy Spirit of God delivers no imperfect philosophy (eyebrows descending hotly), especially to Jesus and His Mother, saw Yusuf Ali as a criticizer of God, and a contradictor of Himself. Shanan also recognized Yusuf as not a well-practiced man in the vernacular of the King James English, as Shanan openly admitted he himself to be; but he had promptly recognized this kindred deficiency while reading Ali’s Koranic text). Moreover, and apparently disregarding both the Old and the New Testament doctrines of Jesus, Mr. Ali seemed to prefer the old-fashioned philosophy of taking vengeance into his own hands, a favored practice in many religions who would rather deny what the God of their book commands.

 

     Hindu texts were scanned briefly but conscientiously, which referred to Jesus as an avatar of Vishnu—an incarnation of a Hindu god and part of a triad, or trinity, which Shanan viewed, and somewhat mistakenly to a degree, as distorted information that misguided many citizens of India at the inception of Christianity. Spiritual paperbacks were fanned before speed-reading eyes, two books pertaining to Buddhism and its few hundred followers (or so a nearby researcher, a Chinese man, had disclosed to Shanan.

 

     “Although there are tens of thousands of Buddhist temples in China, unless a man in China is rich, he would not choose to become a practicing Buddhist. Practicing Buddhists are wealthy and have enough free time on their hands to devote to their religion. Our mainland population is poor and more interested in how they are going to get their next meal. Gardening? Yes, they garden, when and if they can. But as to faith, they believe in nothing but food, and money. Oh? Sounds like you sometimes? But you still believe in God more? No, I’ve not rubbed the belly of a Buddhist statue. Oh? Interesting you should mention that. Yes, the Buddha does look pretty well fed.” were cracked, skimmed through, and slammed shut; voluminous journals pertaining to Freudian and Jungian psychologies and therapies were analyzed sympathetically; Pythagoras, Socrates, Aenesidemus, Plato, the world and all its ism^.ists in general were all opened and each after the next placed back among the uncounted ranks of those ideal-arguing categories.

 

     Throughout the next five invigorating days, Shanan allocated his attention assiduously to all the other religions and as many philosophies found randomly along the embankments of the library’s shelving. He had hit all of them conscientiously—weakly, yes, but by the end of the week, not a book even a trifle relative to the Bible required dusting.

 

 

THE FOLLOWING DENVER WEEK, Joe Cooney introduced his houseguest ebulliently to Lambert Henry—a local and prominent contractor and Joe’s employer. Joe had interested Mr. Henry into backing Shanan in a mirror-engraving venture and had expounded commendably on how he had made himself a small fortune while etching mirrors and panes for glass pyramids during the King Tut exhibition in New Orleans.

 

———

 

     There are guaranteed jackpots available in Las Vegas, for the starving who ride self-assured clouds; there are pots at the end of rainbows, for those whose unfeasible wishes are supplemented thereafter with fountain-bottom coins; there are scholarships for successful thinkers; and, there are miracles delivered from on high. A man might attempt to obtain all of the above; a wise man waits for but one: the miracle, wherein is freedom to expand from the gain a miracle brings. There is waiting; there is pause; there are delays; there is instant fulfillment, be it soul-liberating relief by expected denial, or in great surprise by sudden and unexpected gain.

 

———

 

     Lambert bought Shanan a clean, dark-green nineteen seventy-six air-conditioned V-Eight Ford Van, and gave him an additional thirty-five hundred dollars to bring the engraving operation to fruition. Shanan rented an attractive apartment at the Denver Downes—a row of impressive buildings situated unpretentiously only a couple blocks from Joseph’s favorite golf course, an apartment that also allowed dogs. Our Christian glass engraver bought bundles of lumber and board, two boxes of nails and a box of fine-threaded screws for the building of glass shields and worktables, necessary craft materials of the glass-engraving trade, a handful of precision tools, a matching pair of vacuum cleaners for the perpetual removal of glass dust, a large, used mahogany office desk, had activated the apartment’s telephone jacks, and had purchased a preowned telephone from a Salvation Army used merchandise outlet. Before the first week had slid frantically into home plate, Cloud-of-Dust Shanan had built his workroom into an artisan’s efficacious delight, and his spacious living room into a combination study-office, but was now riding precariously on his last thousand dollars, perhaps less.

 

 

TWO FURTHER CONVENIENT EVENTS OCCURRED, which lent an ambiance of imaginative stimulation to the interior of his new apartment. On the fifth evening of Shanan’s tenancy, while homebound from a short but chilly stroll, he spied a portable color television complementing the top of the trash heap in the over-crammed and colossal Dumpster adjacent to his building. In earlier years, Shanan had stumbled onto similar toss-outs, and, on occasion, they worked. Forbearing the wintry elements, he hustled himself up the side of the Dumpster to its lofty apex, tugged the reclusive television painstakingly down off the cluttered and ever-shifting trash deposit, and carried his prize ecstatically through the wintry elements, a series of doors—glass, steel, and wood—and into his residence.

 

 

“WHAT’S MY LIL FUZZY-NOSE DOING NOW?” Smiling Amy knew not what to do as she pranced and sniffed curiously around her person and his latest friend, or whatever it was. Upon placing the more-than-economical amusement center onto the floor area just inside the semi-naked living room, Shanan stooped and, with a wide and confident sway of his arm and hand, jammed the plug into a wall socket. Our industrious bargain-hunting trash shopper heard a clear imitation of human voices, but encountered nothing of imitation life—no picture. Reasoning that God would not have given him this electronic tube of many colors, unless He had an objective, Brother Bin gave a light kick to the left side of his half-and-half, and PING—he was suddenly listening to and watching Pastor Jerry Falwell preaching the virtuous benefits of adult baptism. Is that a sign, or what?

 

 

Three artsy-craftsy days had all flown into the past, no differently than days fly into the future, and nearly three nights. Shanan’s battery-operated musical tick-tocks clock seemed to be intimating that its flat but stoic face and schedule-efficient hands would soon be disappearing from Shanan’s overstrained vision, which was compelled briefly thereby to intimate to its owner to disappear into the bedroom and disappear to beneath a pile of blankets and, from there, to disappear into that eyeball-relaxing affair we know as the dream. Tempted, rather, to play with his audio-visual Toy from Trashville, Shanan, wearing his favorite pair of cutoffs, sleepy-lidded as ever, his tired eyes wanting to emulate a pair of terrified clams, twisted the on switch to the picture box, leaned a shoulder casually against the refrigerator-side door-casing of the kitchen, and discovered Pastor Jimmy Swaggart crying loudly “Is it I, Lord? Is it I?” and offering a free set of gold-anodized lapel pins, resembling a Cross and an angel “…for free! Just call…”

 

     Shanan scooted noiselessly across the carpet, leaped his skinny legs nimbly over Amy, whose silent eyes raised suddenly and appeared to be following a low-flying ostrich in shorts, finally reached the desk, grabbed the telephone, dialed the number, connected, and ordered a set of the golden freebies. He believed that the Cross would add a pleasant touch to his Sunday-go-to-meetings. Images of angels, he remembered authoritatively, were against the Second Commandment, and he had burned his photograph albums years ago: I’ll throw the angel pin into the rubbish. Now, if I could only rid my drivers license of its photo.

 

 

THE CHRISTMAS SEASON, which if ever eliminated would bring global economies crashing to an everlasting halt, was ringing and singing her way into hearts and department stores around our entire world. The Egyptian Rameses II exhibit, an overnight addition to Denver, accelerated into high gear at the fine arts museum. Joe had spoken the truth to Mr. Henry: Shanan had engraved his mirrors and glass pyramids for the luxurious King Tut exhibit when it was engaged in New Orleans, and again when the same show was in Los Angeles; and now this near duplicate scenario and its potential opportunity fell perfectly with Shanan’s reawakened ambitions. This timely event indeed sat favorably with him, but to become affiliated with its commercial activities, a number of applications and negotiations had to be submitted to, and considered by, the museum’s directors and those associated with the exhibit, and time dragged on apprehensively.

 

     While waiting nervously, and somewhat pessimistically, for the museum’s verdict, Shanan drove miles of Denver streets and boulevards, soliciting his exquisite works eagerly to at least a hundred gift shops and art galleries; but, for reasons not in his control, he had batted a virtual zero. Three boutiques, collectively speaking, took twenty mirrors on consignment, yet only three pieces ever sold. He eventually did get accepted by the Rameses extravaganza, but only after the Yellow Pages of telephonic destiny had turned into dreamless electrical impulses. At the museum, he at last began selling his mirrors, and now pyramids, for a decent profit, and at a fairly successful pace. “Praise the Lord!”

 

     Nevertheless, along with the expanding of his artistic works, he could not shake this minor idiosyncrasy: Anytime he was standing or sitting in the presence of the owner of at least one functioning ear, he would begin his nonstop expounding on the Bible.

 

     (Whether people are aware of the phenomenon or not, this Bible-expounding condition is a condition which cannot be altered easily, other than by the powers of God. Thus, those who are annoyed by this herein-mentioned phenomenon do have this last-ditch option available to them, of which the majority of the populace is simply not cognizant: They can pray to the Lord to mend their “Jesus freak’s” uncertain problem and cure him—make him shut his mouth and stop talking about Jesus. You know…get on God’s good side. He might even reduce your pharmacy bills.)

 

     Unfortunately for Shanan, a presumptuous young woman with the Rameses show took a personal offense against Shanan and, with her little influence, managed to persuade the Egyptians to remove him from the exhibit: “Damned Satan…!”

 

     Hatred knew not a superior next to that which swelled in Shanan’s soul. His loathing of the young woman was as a raging fury burning in a tormented heart. His apartment was a cast-iron cage housing a wildly afflicted beast filled with tempestuous hallucinations. He disdained and abhorred the simplest thought of the woman. The dark designs twisting throughout his shadowy spirit fantasized not an effort less than burying her beneath the deepest grave in the blackest regions of hell—for eternity. The sheer horror of his imaginations against this woman could have distilled the finest of sweet wine into the vilest wretched bile of a dead man; and, to make these reprehensible matters worse—if worse could be accomplished—the young woman’s apartment was—coincidentally—in the same building as his.

 

     Many days he fried her perpetually in his mind, and on the first evening of the first day, which did make matters worse, he contracted a horrendous case of the flu, or so it seemed.

 

     Knocked cold to his floor-mattress bed, he could barely move a muscle. The sweat pouring off his steaming body could have filled a gallon-size lobby spittoon, and constant shivers were as violent as a loose tin roof in a hurricane. Limp-eyed and dizzy from severe weakness, feeding Amy was a chore overwhelming. He was a sick, sick man, dumping half her bag onto the kitchen floor, dry-heaving four vicious gasps, and staggering his quaking flesh deliriously back to his spinning mattress. He was a sick, sick man…with sick, sick thoughts!

 

 

A MISERABLY NAUSEOUS WEEK ENSUED, and Sunday A.M. verily found Shanan had not yet changed his position: flat on his back, staring hazily at the ceiling, in all despair, in all wonder, in all confusion; but, at the end— “You win, Lord…You win…” he groaned desperately. “I love Marsha, Lord,” he moaned again. “You know I don’t hundred-percent mean it, Lord, but I forgive Marsha; I pray for Marsha… Lord, I bless her. Oh, God…,” he pleaded, “please forgive me my vile mind, O Jesus, God. I love her…I do…and I love you, Father. In the name of the Lord Jesus’ name, I pray, Father…. God…!”

 

 

FROM TWO WIDE AND WELL-SEASONED FRYING PANS, Shanan Flip de piled a hardy and sizzling breakfast of a mound of slightly burnt hash-browned potatoes, four extra-brittle strips of bacon, three humongous cinnamon- and real butter-sweetened, corn-loaded golden fritters; of sausage: four perfectly browned links and two leftover spicy patties; two thick slices of crispy, lightly syrupped, eggless French toast buried with heaps of grape jelly and a hill of melting butter onto a broad and yawning oven-heated oval platter—the whole of which could be detected easily by spellbound noses throughout the entire building, which now was vibrantly alive with nostalgic rhapsodies of freshly clinking and clanking pots, frying pans, dishes, and flatware, rattling impatiently out of kitchen pantries, off kitchen shelves, out of kitchen cabinets, and onto only recently cleared stovetops and kitchen tables for the second time that miserly appetite but now starving morning.

 

     Shanan had just finished rearranging and placing in order his large workroom and was running a hot, bubbly tub for a lazy bath. He had given fresh water to Amy and pumped half a can of moist food into her bowl, mixing it wisely in with her dry. Silvery-gold sparkles of winter’s Sun in all her brilliance were drifting their incoherent rays through quarter-ajar windows and into an elated heart. Shanan hummed and whistled and sang loudly—Heeeee’s a Yankee doodle dough - nut—as he scurried busily from bedroom to kitchen, from workroom to kitchen, from near the condemning doorway of death, to a thriving, spirit-packed life in far less than five miraculous minutes—and he knew the Source!

 

 

BY TWELVE THIRTY P.M. the same day, he was grinning and burping, standing at the counter of the main front desk of his building, with healthy, outstretched hands and a verbal reference to his mail. Amy was back in their apartment, smiling from ear to ear, and eating better than a queen a half-minute after the end of her latest diet, and burping.

 

     A young lady, rosy-cheeked from a sub-zero outdoor exercise, and having just entered and seated herself in the office, appeared in a jovial mood behind the manager’s desk, and queried as she began to rise, “Did you hear the news? We evicted Marsha today. Her check bounced, and her boss fired her on account of a slew of problems back home,” she smirked as she strode to the counter. “The welfare department took her kids, and she’s broke. She’ll probably lose her job at the museum, too. We’re even sending her mail back to whoever sent it,” she gloated, waving a small stack of letters fervently up and down in front of Shanan’s fervently bouncing eyes. “You should have seen her carrying on here this morning, ‘Pay the rent or I can’t get my—may-ell?’ You would’ve ran and hid. She can’t pay her bills now, Christmas is coming… and…! And…!

 

     Shanan stood at the counter, dumbfounded, half assuming the desk clerk herself might have had a personal grudge against Marsha. Striving to grasp the fullness of Marsha’s ill fortune, our boy raised his eyes inadvertently through the window behind the clerk’s desk. Marsha was stepping clumsily from the middle side entryway, through the freezing snow, and awkwardly through the rear door of a taxicab. The woman wore no coat and was shivering from the top of her naked head to the bottom of her open-toed shoes. Obviously, her entire world was shattering completely around her, and her face wore the grim veil of dejection—as if she had just shoved the last of her life’s savings into a dead slot machine. This distressing scene verily confirmed the desk clerk’s hard-hearted story. A fleeting moment after grabbing his mail, Shanan sprinted back to his apartment. He entered immediately and bowed his head, Marsha’s dramatic plight replaying itself over and over again on a lifelike stage inside Shanan’s mind.

 

     “Oh, God! God have mercy,” he pleaded, “I didn’t want you to kill her! Gosh, Father…”

 

     His perplexing emotions for Marsha had suddenly turned to the sympathetic side of the spectrum of his soul, and he prayed for her above three long and shameful minutes.

 

     He had thoroughly deduced from the beauty and the power of the Word of God, that when or if he handed his enemies to the Lord, and told God he loved them and forgave them, the matter of vengeance would be totally left in the judgmental hand of the Man above—all things. God would have to, according to God’s own laws of recompense, intercede for him and trash his enemies; and Shanan, after all, did lean on the Word.

 

     In Shanan’s awestruck eyes, Marsha’s hopeless predicament seemed to be somewhat excessive, but he did not rejoice even the slightest, outwardly or inwardly. He was afraid that if he did, the Lord would whip him into a clump of compressed human. A vital contemplation of the entire affair, and Shanan finally had to admit to the bottom line—his straightforward repentance had worked—Love your enemy; vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’

 

     The hatred he had felt toward Marsha was indeed intense and nearly impossible to let go: The resulting week of formidable flu symptoms had offered proof from that dreadful pudding of malevolence, but was no less than amazing. The verified testimony in his heart—was in his heart to stay, yet occasionally over the following years sometimes difficult to affect.

 

 

FRIDAY

 

CHRISTMAS MORNING’S topic of verbal intercourse in Mr. Joe Cooney’s spacious apartment directed the day’s divergence from the norm. “New Times, Shanny. Let’s do—new times! To THE ROLLS!” Thus, the merry ol’ pair clicked off the twenty-five-foot wire strand of colored and blinking Yuletide lights draped hither and thither round a fifteen-piece (over the past week, arguing daily until twenty-four hours past sunset, the two of them had salvaged discarded Christmas tree limbs and boughs from neighborhood curbs and sidewalks), tied-together genuine bachelor’s delight of a Christmas tree and drove straightway to Civic Park at Colfax and Broadway, to visit the homeless and men and women of circumstance, who had seen no Christmas materialize gift-laded before themselves. Joe had saved large jugs and drinking mugs of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters over the year and had merrily rolled the sum of the monies into coin wrappers on Christmas Eve while singing “ Here Comes Santa Claus…!” at the top of a pair of philanthropical lungs, interrupting only once with—“Say, Shan, if Santa Claus is so magicky and wizardy, how come he looks so old and he’s forced to wear glasses to see his huge sleigh?”

 

     “I dunno, Joe, but Jesus didn’t wear glasses. But I wonder how many kids these days believe more in Santa Claus than in Jesus? I’d bet that adults used to believe in Jesus the same way they used to believe in Santa Clause, and maybe many of them believe the same way today, you think?”

 

Later Photographed from Van Window

 

AT THE CHILLY BUT SNOWLESS PARK (Heaven’s downy had melted soon after the last storm), smiling Joe and smiling Shanan approached drifter after drifter, did a little preaching, and handed them each a roll or two of coins, until no rolls were left, after which, Joe treated Shanan to a huge, multi-coursed lunch at a modest diner on East Colfax. Although they had quarreled half the day into a blush, Joe was strangely—well, becoming a dash religious—enjoying the festive Yuletide moment of peace. “Merry Christmas, Shan.” “Merry Christmas, Joe. And this year I really mean it, heh, heh, heh.”   ““Merry Christmas, Jesus…!””

 

 

HOWEVER, not the whole from the alpha to the omega was celebrating in merriment. Late December of nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, in the State of Israel, in the Gaza Strip in the State of Israel, a Palestinian intifada movement had begun and was spreading as if it were a vengeful torch of hatred burning across the land and into the cities of Israel. This intifada illustrated itself vehemently by civil disobedience and numerous demonstrations, during which, Palestinian youths, with no regard to crime and penalty, stoned Israeli security forces and civilians frequently. This intifada was independent of earlier movements by Palestinians (against what they saw as an Israeli occupation), by the evident scope of popular participation, its lasting duration, and the principal part played by Islamic groups: referred to internationally, at the present, as extremists—later on referred to as terrorists.

 

 

SUNDAY

 

NOW, CHRISTMAS WAS OVER, and Shanan, two weeks prior had stumbled by chance upon a convenient opportunity, by which to open his own church in a gigantic bingo hall on the west side of Denver. The owner-manager of the hall, a slender-framed but healthy-looking individual of about forty years, without the least display of reluctance, committed to Shanan instant permission to use the place. Shanan thanked the man and promised him ten percent of the “obvious” income in return for the privilege. The owner of the bingo hall, exposing a deep and smiling respect toward the concept, told him the money was not necessary; bingo paid for everything: For God, the owner-manager was more than happy to accommodate.

 

     Shanan wanted desperately to tell the inhabitants of the world the indisputable truths they were not getting from the glorified pulpits they were paying for, and to beware, and to be extremely careful, when reading Paul; and oooohhh, how today’s preachers were not ever to be trusted again!

 

     He had prepared everything meticulously, even distributing elaborately designed fliers of his own imaginative construction, announcing the forthcoming addition to the Faith, throughout the bingo-hall-side of Denver. To further enhance his evangelical debut, he had built a lone-legged wooden tithe box, which he planned to place twelve unobstructed feet in front of the double entryway leading into the hall, humbly concluding: When the congregation passes by, they can put their money in the box, instead of me having to openly pass a plate. I don’t have my first deacon yet.

 

     Saturday night arrived, Opening-day eve, and conscientious Shanan had prayed God to get in the way of this endeavor if it were not truly destined to be.

 

 

AH, ’TWAS HERE AT LAST. Sunday morning—Opening-Sunday morning, December twenty-seven in the year of our Lord, Jesus Christ, nineteen hundred and eighty-seven. The ever-glorious sun was budding punctually through the bedroom window and into an exhilarated Shanan, as he arose along with his last emotion: euphoria. Throughout the lengthy night, only four and a half feet of snow had fallen in Denver. “Where the heck’s my van?…!”

 

 

INTERSTATE TWENTY-FIVE SOUTH to New Mexico, during an average winter, presents a superb and diverse array of beautiful sceneries to scores of its interested travelers. The snow-covered and mountainous range-line loftily fences the right side of the freeway, while snowy white pastures adorn the left, and the closer an individual comes to the city of Colorado Springs, the denser the assembly of summits on both sides of the freeway. Shanan’s eyes routinely devoured every bit of this uplifted panorama of igneous, though uncalculated grief was soon to be laid at his rolling doorstep. Furthermore, to add shame to injury, he had left his Denver backer, Lambert Henry, in the dust—judiciously pee-eye-ess-ess-eeeee-deeeeed.

 

     Before he departed Denver, however, Shanan had arranged to have his mail forwarded to Mr. Cooney’s apartment and shared a mutually reciprocal, “I love you in the Lord.”

 

 
Taken Several Years Later.
Right, Joe?

 

†