Your Body is Changing (16 page)

A three-year-old who knew about the bird! And holding a flag on a wooden stick that could easily poke out his eyes! These people were obviously poor and dangerous. The goats kept slowing down, and Henry hoped that Brother Lampey wasn’t stopping altogether, though he felt guilty for fearing the poor, who were one of Jesus’s favorite groups.

On the other hand, wealth was nothing to be ashamed of—it was simply the external blessing of the Lord bestowed upon a faithful soul. If you were poor it was usually your own fault because you hadn’t been praying hard enough. Suddenly Henry understood the phrase “white trash,” which he had heard on TV from famous intellectuals like the old guy who talks about movies and the intelligent comedian with a beard. It really did mean trash, like garbage!

“We are nearing Highway 43 to Tuscaloosa,” said Brother Lampey. “I expect that even a goat would have enough common sense not to run out into oncoming traffic. Nevertheless I cannot risk losing a goat. You run up ahead, into the traffic, and attempt to halt it until the safety of the goats has been assured.”

Henry did as he was told.

They had not gotten far up Highway 43 before a state trooper skidded up the median, raising a cloud of greenish dust. Brother Lampey blew his whistle and manipulated the reins, and the goats pulled off to the side of the road and divested the land of its greenery.

A black fellow with bright green sunglasses and an impressive hat got out of the car and crossed the road. Brother Lampey motioned to Henry to stay where he was, then he scrambled down from his high seat.

The state trooper was about as tall as Brother Lampey, and much broader. They stood toe-to-toe and almost eye-to-eye. Cars crawled past. People honked and some made inappropriate comments.

“What are you supposed to be, one of the Oak Ridge Boys?” said the state trooper.

“I do not understand your cultural reference,” said Brother Lampey.

“And who are you, sonny? A model for Ambercrombie and French?”

“There is no law on your paltry books about an old man driving a buckboard down the public highways,” said Brother Lampey.

“First off, Oak Ridge, that ain’t a buckboard.”

“When the Lord God instructed me to build it, He called it by that name and instructed me in its very dimensions.”

“Was that in cubits?” The state trooper laughed and then spat on the ground through the cleft in his front teeth.

“I think the Lord knows better than you what a buckboard is,” said Brother Lampey.

The state trooper took out his ticket pad. “Now what I’m doing right now is, I’m writing you up for not having any warning lights, no red flags, no danger signs of any kind. Come to think of it, you’re destroying state property, too. It’s somebody’s job to water that ditch and make it look nice.” He nodded toward the grazing goats, then tore off the ticket and handed it to Brother Lampey. “Now you keep to the side of the road until you get to the exit, all right? My motto is live and let live. You can practice all the voodoo you want. Your boy there can wear a fig leaf on the main street of town, if that’s the way his mama dresses him. That’s called conservative libertarianism. But I can’t have you snarling up my highway, is that understood?”

The state trooper held up his hand and the traffic stopped for him. He crossed the highway and sat in his car a few minutes, just a greenish silhouette behind the window glass.

The cowardly part of Henry wanted to be found in the rolls of a federal computer, identified as a missing child and sent directly to his mother in Texas. She’d have to take care of him then! But Jesus didn’t want crybabies playing on his team. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother…He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…”

The state trooper started his car and took off without even saying goodbye.

“Come down here, my son,” said Brother Lampey.

Henry climbed down from the wagon. Brother Lampey grabbed his shoulder so hard it hurt. Strange feelings went through Henry’s sinuses and his eyes brimmed over.

“Libertarianism! Live and let live! Do you know who says that? Do you know who that was?” said Brother Lampey.

“No sir,” said Henry.

“Satan, the Beast, that Old Serpent which is the devil.”

“Oh my gosh,” said Henry.

“Gosh is right. He seeks already to block our path. His minions will be looking for us all up and down this highway. I believe with proper whipping I could convince these goats to break through yon barbed-wire fence. Nevertheless I cannot risk one of them being scratched and subsequently suffering the ill effects of tetanus. You will therefore tear down a sufficient portion of said fence with your bare hands.”

Henry did as he was told. It hurt. They crossed into the green pastureland beyond.

The sun fell like a bloody shawl across the Alabama fields.

The goats, which Brother Lampey had been driving with alarming force for some time in an effort to outrun the devil, had slowed again to a meditative trot when Henry spied a little farmhouse at the edge of a forest, beneath a majestic silver cross: the biggest high-voltage power pole he had ever seen. He could hear it humming with energy from across the pasture.

When they pushed open the door of the little house they found an old farmer sitting in an easy chair with the footrest raised. He had a cat the color of snuff stains on his lap. The old farmer was skinnier even than Uncle Lipton and he had patches of rough white hair too disorganized to form a beard on his skinny orange face, which was not the healthy kind of orange.

He wore overalls and a brown-and-white checkered shirt and a certain kind of cap that had been popularized in liberal Hollywood by Ashton Kutcher, a star of liberal Hollywood. It was called a “trucker’s cap.” Lately Ashton Kutcher had gone on TV and told everyone that the “trucker’s cap” was out of fashion and he wasn’t going to wear one anymore.

Ashton Kutcher had a girlfriend who was like three times his age, a movie actress from the olden days. Henry had seen her in a commercial where she was holding a surfboard and wearing a black bikini and looking real strong, like she exercised a lot. Henry thought that if he met her she might grab the most private part of his pants and just pull and yank like a mad gorilla. He would be like, “No, no, stop, it’s against Jesus,” and she would just look at him right in the face real serious with her jaw clenched like she was mad and keep right on yanking no matter what he said. That would be great.

“Well, come on in,” said the old farmer. His trucker’s cap had a picture of a scrawny rebel soldier printed on the front. The rebel soldier looked kind of like the old farmer even though it was just a cartoon holding up a tattered old rebel flag and saying, “Fergit, hell!”—referring to the Civil War and the fact that even though people would have liked for him to forget it for some reason, the old rebel soldier had decided not to forget it and he was very angry about it. The old farmer didn’t look angry at all, despite the picture on his cap. The old farmer didn’t look anything.

The saddest part was that he was out here in the middle of nowhere and didn’t even know he was out of fashion. It was like the time his mom had taken Henry to buy his school uniform and he had accidentally walked in on an old man in the dressing room; Henry had heard a slurp slurp slurp coming out of one of the cubicles; he pulled back the curtain and saw a very old man, an employee of the store, hunched low to the ground on a shoe salesman’s stool, eating a bowl of soup. At that moment, Henry felt exactly like Jesus, sorry for the whole world. He felt that way again as he thought of this old farmer walking around as the subject of mockery and scorn in his unfashionable cap. Then Henry realized that he, Henry, was the one feeling the scorn. He asked Jesus for forgiveness and immediately he could feel the scorn going away. Jesus was like Kryptonite for scorn!

“Thank you for your invitation, brother,” said Brother Lampey to the old farmer. “My name is Brother Lampey and this is my young ward, Theodore Cleaver.”

“Am I hearing aright?” said the old farmer, cocking his head toward the dirty window.

“Yes, there are quite a number of mighty rams outside. By mighty ram is how we arrived. They pulled us on a buckboard. I will command them to stop bellowing if you like.”

“Huh. Well, I ain’t got nothing against mighty rams but I wouldn’t keep ’em around here too long if I was you. More for their safety than my pleasure.”

The old farmer told how his wife and children had been consumed with tumors and consigned to the dust from whence they came and how his few cows had filled up with tumors and keeled over dead and his chickens had started laying tumors instead of eggs and how the corn and tomatoes and potatoes and cabbage and snap peas he tried to grow came up black and tumescent.

“Does your cat have tumors?” said Henry.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” said the old farmer. “He’s got kindly a bump on his head. I was just a-feeling of it. That’s how come I call him Bumpy.”

“But the Lord in His mercy spared you from tumors,” suggested Brother Lampey.

“I got tumors just about everywhere a body can have a tumor,” said the old farmer.

“Your eyes?” said Henry.

“Yep.”

“Your knees?”

“Lordy, yes.”

“Your brain?”

“I reckon so. Here’s a picture of it.”

The old farmer reached in between his overalls and shirt and pulled out an X-ray. Henry looked at it. It didn’t look like much.

“My uncle got an exploding sore in his brain,” Henry said.

“Aw, that’s nothing,” said the old farmer.

“They took him to London, England, for it, that’s how bad it was. Now he’s in Texas for it and that’s even worse.”

“Shoot. They couldn’t take me to London, England, if they wanted to. If they was to put me on an airplane I’d break in two. I got so many tumors to where I can hear ’em rattling around when I walk.”

He shook one of his legs and the cat jumped off his lap.

“Did you hear that?” he said.

“Did I hear what?” said Henry.

“The tumors rattling around.”

“No sir, I don’t think so.”

“I can hear ’em in my head. It’s on account of acoustics.”

The old farmer stayed in his chair, but he offered Brother Lampey and Henry the pot of navy beans on the stove. The navy beans were cold and the stove couldn’t be lit and the navy beans had been sitting so long they had turned into glue. Brother Lampey and Henry sat at a card table near the old farmer’s easy chair and picked at their beans in a polite manner.

There were roaches, damp-smelling magazines, little bowls of half-eaten cat food and full ashtrays everywhere. The old farmer’s entire life seemed to be stuffed into one room. There was even a chair with a white plastic tub attached underneath, apparently for going to the bathroom in.

“Would you like me to pray for you, brother?” said Brother Lampey. “I could check and see if the Lord would be willing to cure you.”

“Naw sir, I reckon I near about prayed my ass off at one time. Let me ast you something. Now I know God is fairly big, but He cain’t keep his eyes on everything at one time, can He?”

“Why yes, He most certainly can. God has no size as one would conventionally think of it. Nor is God limited to our weak and fallible human perspective.”

The old farmer looked disappointed by the news.

“His eye is on the sparrow,” said Brother Lampey.

“That’s just what I’m talking about,” said the old farmer. “All them sparers He’s bound to keep an eye on. Seem like that’d take up a good chunk of His time. There’s probably more of them little sparers than there is human people. Or maybe I just think that because they’s smaller.”

“Well, friend, I think I see the problem. You are misinterpreting the Lord’s Word. When Christ observes that the Lord sees even the fall of the sparrow, He is pointing out that our concerns as Christians are of even greater importance.”

“So I reckon what you’re saying is, He has heard my prayer and He’s telling me, ‘Tough titties, Charlie. You oughtn’t to’ve lived next to them power poles if you didn’t want tumors.’ I reckon He’s already decided I’m a goner and there ain’t a blessed thing I can do about it.”

“Not necessarily. When two or more are gathered in His name…”

“I reckon if everybody got their prayer nobody wouldn’t never die and there wouldn’t be no room to walk.”

“Lay not your treasures up on earth,” said Brother Lampey.

“You see any treasures around here?” said the old farmer.

“I am only saying that decay must come to us all. Don’t blame God, my brother. That was the sin of Job.”

“I ain’t blaming God. I ain’t even blaming the power poles. College feller come around here, tried to get me to sign something to where I could sue somebody or another over the power poles. Said I could get a million dollars for what them power poles done. Naw sir, I don’t believe in suing. Way I see it, me and them power poles just happened to cross paths at the wrong time. If you go suing over every little thing, you’d never stop suing. Life is just one damned awful mess after another, ain’t nothing you can do about it. Ain’t a lawsuit in this world can make anything better. I might’ve got that check for a million dollars and inflicted a paper cut on myself with it and died of the gangrene long before the tumors ever got me.”

“Dear Lord,” said Brother Lampey, “We beseech you today to work your healing powers on this, your humble servant. He needs Your blessing, Lord, so that he might be whole again.”

“I just thought of something funny,” said the old farmer. “Praying is exactly like suing, ain’t it? You blame the world for your problems and you ast the Judge to fix it.”

“And please bless his land, O Heavenly Father, so that it might once more spring forth with the bounty of Your goodness. More importantly, please help this old sinner get over his cynical attitude toward life.”

“Is that it?” said the old farmer.

“For now,” said Brother Lampey.

“I don’t feel no different.”