Your Body is Changing (15 page)

Brother Lampey laughed some more, then suddenly stopped and stared at Henry. Without taking his gaze from Henry’s face he picked up a remote control and clicked off the TV.

“Are you a practicing Christian?” he said.

“Yes sir.”

“Do you believe in predestination or free will?”

“Yes sir.”

“Which one?”

“Oh! Free will, sir.”

“Do you believe that a man can get into Heaven by doing good deeds?”

“No sir. Only by the grace of God.”

“Would you be willing to comb out my beard?”

“Right now?”

“No, right now it is fine. But it is bound to become filled with brambles on the trail. One of your responsibilities will be the tending of it. As you can see, it is a nigh impossible task for one man. Are you good at tying braids?”

“I guess I could learn. I’ve seen it done.”

“No matter. Are you a virgin?”

“Yes sir.”

“I believe you. Shed your worldly clothing and put on this raiment of whitest samite.”

Brother Lampey got up and rummaged through a filing cabinet. He came out with a terrycloth bathrobe that said “Hilton” on it and a pair of plastic yellow flip-flops.

“Thank you, sir,” Henry said.

Brother Lampey told him how to get to the locker room for a shower.

When Henry was done he came back to Brother Lampey’s office wearing the robe and sandals and holding his clothes in a bunch.

“Put those on the pile,” said Brother Lampey.

“That pile?” said Henry.

Brother Lampey nodded.

“Will you make a scarecrow out of them?”

“I do not tolerate questions. By my count you have asked four questions since the beginning of our acquaintance.”

“Really? Four?”

Brother Lampey smiled grimly. “You remind me of the Beaver,” he said. “While your blithesome manner is pleasing, it is also, I fear, indicative of a distressing immaturity in one of your years. Jerry Mathers, the actor who portrayed the Beaver, at some point bodily outstripped the character he portrayed, yet chose not to alter his interpretation of the Beaver’s behavioral tics, which were more appropriate to a child of half his age. What is charming at seven, it need not be said, becomes alarming at seventeen. If you will promise to bear that lesson in mind, I shall indulge your curiosity this once.”

“Okay,” said Henry.

“Very well. Some discarded garments I fashion into my critters, yes. Some I burn. Some I shred and use as stuffing. The Lord often surprises me by guiding my hand in a way I do not expect. My instinct is that I will burn your particular garments. They lack the spiritual electricity that I normally require. Did you remove your underwear as well?”

“Yes sir.”

“Boxers or briefs?”

“Briefs, sir.”

“Then it is well that you have removed them. Had they been boxers, I may have reconsidered. Briefs, however, choke off the life and prevent the possibility of marriage. My son, my son, your clothes have changed as the flesh of man will change when Christ returns. Bid farewell to your worldly rags and tatters.”

Henry looked with some sadness upon the wadded tweed jacket of Duffy’s mentor. It had meant so much to Duffy, but to Brother Lampey it was not even good enough for a scarecrow! Henry thought about Duffy’s mentor, whom he imagined as a chubby, sly man with a pink face, a man who drank wine that cost thirty dollars and pinched ladies on the bottom and called everybody “dear,” even men. “For there is no remembrance of the wise more than the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.”

Brother Lampey reached into his bottom desk drawer, pulled out a tub of Crisco and bade Henry kneel to be anointed. It reminded him of a story that the headmaster had told to the assembly, about the liberal media laughing at one of President Bush’s helpers just because he liked to anoint himself with Crisco for extra holiness. Even Henry had been tempted to laugh when the headmaster said it—almost everybody in chapel had laughed, and the laughter never died out completely for the rest of the service.

But now that he was being anointed himself, he understood from personal experience that it was not funny at all to be anointed with Crisco. He was filled with a strange tingling, even in his private area, and became afraid for a minute that he might start speaking in tongues, which his church considered tacky.

After Henry’s consecration Brother Lampey walked him over to see the Ten Commandments that they were going to ride to New York City.

On the way, Brother Lampey asked Henry if he were filled with the Spirit.

“It sure seems like it,” said Henry.

“Either you are or you aren’t.”

“Okay then, I am.”

“That does not sound convincing. Oh well. The Lord has sent you to me. I must say I am taken aback by His choice.”

Brother Lampey gazed around the grounds, as if the Lord was playing a trick on him, something like a surprise party, and some other disciples were going to hop out of the bushes with big smiles on their faces. “Oh well,” he said again. “My niece was set to go, but then she told me to chop off my long, long beard for it was a vanity and surely to be my downfall. She was wrong, wrong on the facts and wrong to question me, and I banished her.”

“Jesus told me in person he wants me to go to New York,” said Henry.

“That does not sound very likely,” said Brother Lampey.

“He implied it,” said Henry.

Henry noticed several things right away: that there were only six commandments; that what few commandments there were, were incomplete and showed signs of poor penmanship; that they were not carved from “the living rock” but seemed to be Sharpied onto a brown cardboard refrigerator box tipped over on its side; that there were not one hundred and eighty bighorn sheep to pull the display, but about six or seven shabby-looking goats who smelled very bad and had a dull, evil look in their eyes. It all added up to the biggest disappointment ever. Standing there in the gym watching one of the goats nibble between a fallen scarecrow’s legs and another running up and down the aluminum bleachers, letting out little round pellets of poop as he ran, pellets that pinged and echoed on the aluminum, it began to occur to Henry that here he was standing in a bathrobe and plastic sandals with Crisco in his hair and nobody knew where to find him and maybe he had made a mistake in his interpretation of God’s Will.

“What’s inside that refrigerator box?” said Henry. “A refrigerator?”

“That is not a refrigerator box,” said Brother Lampey. “That is the Word of the Lord.”

“It stinks in here real bad,” Henry said. “It’s making my eyes water. These goats are so loud I can’t hardly concentrate. They sound like people imitating goats. It gets on my nerves.”

“You have done nothing but complain and make trouble ever since your arrival,” said Brother Lampey. “I do not know in whose charge you have been, but I can guarantee by my troth that he is a father of lax ways. These critters of God happen to urinate on themselves for natural causes we cannot begin to understand. And their mournful bleating is the only form of communication with which He has seen fit to bless them. Is it your intention to question the way in which God made nature?”

“I thought they were supposed to be a vast army of mighty rams,” said Henry.

“I call them my mighty rams,” said Brother Lampey. “I am aware that they are not rams. Mighty rams live in California and are protected under various conservation laws. Not that I feel the need to explain my ways to you, but I could not acquire a sufficient number of mighty rams for my mission, nor, indeed, a single mighty ram. Such are the vain laws of man! So I have goats, puny goats. Goats are easy to come by. You will often find a family willing to simply give away its goat for the asking, as the goat has become a nuisance, climbing on the doghouse and disturbing the family dog and so forth. Goats are intractable. You cannot stop them from climbing on things and urinating on themselves. They are devoid of personality, except for glimmerings of irritability and obstinacy. Their chief psychological characteristic is blind stupidity, for which they provide the perfect simile and parable. All the better. Just as the Lord chose for his followers the burliest of rough-hewn fishers, and even a tax collector, we will show the world that with such humble materials as a blundering goat God can proclaim to all the eternal message of His Commandments. Just as we imperfect and wretched humans may become vessels of the Holy Spirit, so may a lowly goat be called a mighty ram in service to the Lord.”

Henry had to admit it sounded pretty awesome. But the general sloppiness continued to disturb him—in fact he was scared that it might be sacrilegious—and he told Brother Lampey as much in the most respectful manner possible.

“Now you are making me think of Leave It to Beaver again, and not in a good way!” Brother Lampey thundered. “Have you ever seen the one where Wally dallies in a beer joint with a degraded whore who practically rapes Wally in a convertible?”

“No sir,” said Henry.

“It is one of the later episodes, and most uncharacteristic of the series in its vile implications. Sometimes I would rather that not one episode had been made, not one! If only to erase the existence of this foul blight from my memory. Likewise, perhaps I had best stay here, cloistered from the scorn of sinners, rather than go to New York with such an irksome companion as yourself. Perhaps, indeed, it is Satan who has sent you here to bespoil me.”

“It’s not him, I promise,” said Henry. “I just thought, seeing the Commandments written wrong, it’s not cool to do that, according to Bible teachings.” He saw Brother Lampey puff up at the notion of being lectured on Bible teachings, but Henry felt that God was giving him the words: “‘And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.’”

“First of all,” answered Brother Lampey, “I ran out of room as you can plainly see. God cannot blame me for that. If anything, He should blame the manufacturers of this flimsy refrigerator crate. Second of all, and I do not expect you to fathom this, a bit of strategic misspelling is essential to the nature of my earthly mission. Nothing pleases a wealthy heathen intellectual more than a large piece of art covered from stem to stern with ignorant neologisms and emblematic religious scrawls. Lastly, the passage to which you ascribe your fears, Revelation 22:19—Oh, yes! You see? You are not the only one here who knows his scripture chapter and verse!—refers only to the book of Revelation itself. There is no Biblical injunction regarding the artistic representation of the Ten Commandments; that is, stating that one would lose one’s soul by inscribing one or two of them imperfectly onto a refrigerator carton. In any case, by your logic, I would have had to fit the entire contents of the King James Bible onto the inadequate surface of yon box. Your strictures would make religious art impractical and indeed extinct. You strike me as being something of a Muslim in that regard.”

“Oh, no sir,” said Henry.

“Do not interrupt me. The Lord tells us through the Apostle John to take nothing away from ‘the book of this prophecy,’ by which he obviously means Revelation. The Ten Commandments do not fall under his ban.”

“But God always knew that Revelation was going to be part of the Bible,” said Henry. “He had the Bible planned out like forever ago. So when God says ‘book,’ He obviously means Bible. That’s just the way He is.”

Brother Lampey stood frozen in thought for a moment. The gym was filled with bleating and stench, and the light from the high windows illuminated the lightly dancing particles of filth and pollution that Henry was breathing.

“I admire your ignorance,” said Brother Lampey at last.

His tone suggested that it was a nice thing to say.

The sun was perhaps two hours shy of setting, winking at the travelers through a stand of poplars. Brother Lampey tugged a bit on the reins and blew on the slim silver whistle he used for signaling the goats. It was called a “boatswain’s whistle.” Brother Lampey had asked Henry to spell boatswain, which sounded like “bosun,” and Henry had messed it up real bad. Then Brother Lampey had spelled it correctly—he claimed!—to show that he knew how to spell for real. But how was Henry supposed to know it was right? And why did Brother Lampey concern himself with such weird things that made him seem like a weirdo?

Henry rode beside Brother Lampey on the elevated, backless seat and the Ten Commandments rode behind. When Brother Lampey blew the whistle, the team began to slow. There were nine goats total when they had all been gathered and counted, yoked three across in three rows, trotting along obediently, pulling the modest, flat wagon that Brother Lampey called a “buckboard.” There was also a tenth goat, a mascot named Little Bit, for emergency use Brother Lampey had said, such as extra pulling, or she would make good eating if things got bad. Little Bit was too small to pull much of anything, but Henry was surprised at the bigness of the other goats. He guessed he had never thought about it before. One time in fifth grade, Lance Scoggins, whose family owned a sheep farm, had started a report by saying, “If they was both standing on their hind legs, a sheep could beat up a man.” Everybody had laughed at him even though he wasn’t trying to be funny and they picked on him for the rest of his life, partially because he had a funny voice that sounded like somebody was pinching his nose all the time. Now Henry could see that what Lance Scoggins had said was true of goats, and was probably true of sheep, too, and he imagined going back in time and taking up for Lance Scoggins and saying, “Who cares how somebody talks?,” which, shamefully, he had not done at the time, or ever. He was so weak and human, Lord!

They were headed down a bad road. Henry looked to his right and saw a row of trailers with dirty white children gaping in almost every scraggly yard. One was wearing plastic drawers and standing in a wading pool, holding an American flag. Henry waved. The kid shot him the bird.