The Book of Harold Read online

  “I want to go to bed.”

  He nodded. Without another word he helped me dry off, helped me undress, helped me to my cot. He said nothing, but occasionally laughed a little, as if remembering a joke he’d heard earlier that day.

  Questions

  Question I asked Harold:“What is God like?”

  Harold’s answer:“Close your eyes,” he said. I did. I waited. And waited. I opened my eyes. He had walked away.

  BOOK III

  Home

  Terry met me at the bus stop and drove me home, informing me that my daughter was at her grandmother’s and I’d see her at the hospital. The lawn was an uneven patchwork of weeds. Unrolled newspapers lay scattered along the driveway. Inside, the house smelled stale, that subtle odor of an unoccupied home. I fell asleep on the living room couch.

  Later Terry drove me to the hospital for visiting hours. Tammy met me in the waiting room looking older, her eyes all grown-up. I hugged her and she cried. My mother-in-law hid herself behind a magazine, but I had nothing I could say to her anyway. Then I saw my wife.

  She was dying. I knew it the moment I saw her lying in that clean, narrow hospital bed. She was asleep, taking in loud gasps and looking thirty pounds smaller. Her hair was thin, the color of dead grass. Her skin, yellow.

  “Jennifer?” I said. She opened her eyes and smiled.

  “You look different,” she said. It hadn’t occurred to me, but my hair had grown, and I, too, had lost weight.

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “I bet I look different.”

  “You look beautiful,” I said.

  “I don’t feel it.” She smiled. “It was there for a while. In my ovaries, just growing and spreading, and I didn’t even know.”

  I nodded and squeezed her hand. She nodded too. Soon she closed her eyes and seemed asleep. I watched her face. There was no peace in her expression. Just discomfort. I rose to leave.

  “We have to talk about Tammy,” she said without opening her eyes. “You need to think about what’s best.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” I said.

  “That’s not true.”

  I sat back down and put my hand to her cheek. She leaned her face into my palm and rested. I stayed until she was sleeping.

  In the waiting room, I asked to borrow Terry’s car. He gave me the keys without question or hesitation. I told Tammy I was going for help.

  “Dad, there’s no where to go.”

  I told her not to worry. I’d be back very soon and everything was going to be all right.

  “Please don’t leave, Dad.”

  I drove out of Houston on the same road I had ridden in on that morning. It took half the time to trace my path. I passed signs for towns we walked through, rivers we had crossed. Over forty days of walking in three hours of driving. My head was heavy with exhaustion, but I didn’t dare to stop. By dusk I was standing in the alleyway where I had last been with the others. They were gone, so I drove on. I looked down other alleyways, public parks, shelters. I prayed as I drove and rolled down the window screaming out Harold’s name. I found bums and college students and hookers and cops and kids and trash and piss and vomit but no Harold. So I drove on, checking golf courses and open fields. More alleys and abandoned buildings.

  Morning birds were beginning to shriek when I found them under a bridge on the south part of town. I tiptoed through the sleeping bodies. First I found Shael. Then Harold sleeping under his poncho. I shook him and whispered his name until he looked fully awake.

  “Okay, Harold, I believe in you. Completely believe. I know who you are. You’re the Messiah or the Christ or whatever. Is that it? Is that what you want? Now save her.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “Yes, you will. She’s sick. I’ve seen her. She is sick.”

  “She is supposed to be sick.”

  “You pick and choose, you bastard. You pick and choose.” I wasn’t whispering anymore and I saw Shael’s eyes blink open.

  “She is going to die,” he said. And I saw pity in his face. Worthless, boneless pity. I grabbed his shirt and lifted him towards me.

  “That’s not fair, Harold.”

  “You should thank God he isn’t fair,” he said without flinching.

  “Shut up!” I pushed him away from me. “What if it was Shael, Harold? What would you do then?”

  Harold looked over at Shael who was watching us with wide eyes.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Then help Jennifer.”

  “No, Blake.”

  “I lied. I don’t believe in you.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “Now go be with your wife.”

  I drove. A slow drive. My body and head drained. Everything but my eyes was asleep. Mindless and soulless. In all those hours only one thought seeped through. I loved my wife after all. The driving, the fear, were evidence. It’s unforgivable that I had to go so far to understand it.

  It was mid-morning when I reached my house. I gathered the old newspapers from the driveway and emptied a stuffed mailbox of unpaid bills, junk mail, and a box of business cards I’d ordered before I quit Promit. I carried them inside, slumped up the stairs to a bare bed, and slept.

  Six hours later I woke up and went down to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. I hadn’t eaten since the stale bagels, and my stomach was cramping. I checked the pantry and found two cans of corn and some olives. As the corn heated on the stove, I sat down at the kitchen table popping olives into my mouth.

  God’s Missing Leg

  The next day my wife didn’t open her eyes. Terry was waiting for me in the hospital lobby.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” he said. “It might cheer you up a little.”

  He drove me to his house. I didn’t speak. I just watched Figwood pass on the other side of his tinted windows. I smiled a little. Hello, little town, I thought. Silly little town.

  “I want to show you what I’ve been doing while you were gone,” Terry said. He led me upstairs to his office, a dark room lit primarily by his computer screen. He pulled up an extra chair and we both sat in front of the computer. He pressed a button on the keyboard and up came www.haroldpeeks.com.

  “Oh my God,” I mumbled.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” he nodded at the screen, his red hair bouncing. “It’s been up about a month, but I keep making improvements. I just added these graphics. I’ve only got this one picture of Harold. You didn’t take a camera with you, did you?”

  The picture was dark and difficult to make out. I could recognize Harold’s room at the old folks home. It was Terry and Harold standing together, both smiling like drunks. It looked as if Terry had extended his arm and taken the picture himself.

  “Does Harold know about this?”

  “Not yet. I can’t wait to show him. We get hundreds of emails every day asking how to contact him. I’ve been taking sick days to answer them all,” he said. Terry rubbed his hands and his knee bounced as he talked.

  “You said ‘we.’”

  “Sure, I mean the community. The people who use this page. Over three thousand hits a day. Check out this forum. People discuss Harold’s ideas or write in testimonials. There’re people all over. Houston and out west. All these miracles that people have seen. Amazing stuff. He cured someone’s cancer, saved a baby with third-degree burns, healed someone’s diabetes. That’s a sweet lady, the diabetes lady. Writes me every day and thanks me for the page.” Terry slapped his knees and jumped to his feet. “Let’s have some coffee!” He started scooping grounds into a tiny coffeemaker sitting on a file cabinet. I read the forum comments.

  “This guy says Harold founded a Young Republicans group at the University of Nebraska?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” he said from behind me. “He knew him in college.”

  “You think Harold is a Republican?”

  “It’s not about parties, Blake. It’s about winning America back. Everyone is welcome.”

&nb
sp; “Terry,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “How do you know these folks aren’t just crazy or lying?”

  “Good question, Blake. I’ve got a simple rule. If it sounds like Harold, then I let it stay. Otherwise I take it down. You’re right, there’s some crazy stuff out there. Some guy in Santa Fe says Harold is an official member of his Mosque. I saw that and thought, ‘Ah, no, thank you,’ and took it down.”

  The coffeemaker sputtered and Terry shook it.

  “There’s the lesbians in Dallas who claim to have had an orgy with Harold. One person swears they saw him levitating over Lake Jackson. A while back someone wrote in this story about Harold standing up in their church and yelling, ‘I’m God’s cock! I’m God’s cock!’” Terry shook his head and poured the coffee. “I took them all down.”

  “That last one is true,” I said.

  “Oh, I doubt it,” he said and handed me a cup. “Check this out.” He sat down and clicked on a star-shaped icon. The screen went black. Silver colored text faded.

  Like a thief in the night . . .

  Black again. Then more words.

  Sign up for Harold’s Summer Conference.

  “I got some help from some friends at church. We’ve started meeting. Planning.”

  “Planning for what?”

  “The conference. The future, Blake. Harold is just the beginning. This is big. We’ve been writing articles, sending them out. Things are changing. One woman, Cynthia Bock, she was a religious studies minor at Baylor and she thinks, just an idea, but she thinks maybe Harold is like another part of the trinity, making it a foursome. Which, to me anyway, makes perfect sense. I mean, think about it. And I have. Jesus was a carpenter. I bet he never built a table with three legs. Ha! Four legs make a table, makes a chair. Four walls make a house, four gospels make a New Testament, four seasons in the year. Harold is the final season, God’s missing leg. Pretty wild, huh? We’re thinking about making buttons and bumper stickers with the number four on them. Just that. Get a buzz going. Get people asking, ‘Hey, what’s the four for?’” Each time Terry said “four,” he raised four fingers in the air. “See? Double meaning. Is there anything worth living four? Is there such a thing as four-giveness? We’re four Harold. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Did Harold tell you these things?”

  “Harold wants us to think for ourselves. He just gives clues. It’s up to us to really dive in and work it out. That’s what I’ve been doing. Now I can help others. And others can help me, I’m sure. I don’t mind that.”

  More phrases faded in and out. Bible verses, personal testimonials, and some quotes attributed to Harold.

  This is what language is for.

  “Remember that, Blake?” Terry asked me, his eyes reflecting the shine of the screen. “At your house. The night you killed Pickles.”

  “I didn’t kill Pickles.”

  “Oh, I just presumed you had.”

  “No, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that on your web page?”

  “It can be removed.”

  “I need to go home, Terry.” I stood up.

  “This is big, Blake,” Terry said, looking up at me from his chair. “Harold is a catalyst. This movement is bigger than just one man. But I’m looking forward to Harold coming home. I’ve been invited to do a few speaking engagements. I’d love to bring him along. You know, at first when he said I couldn’t go with y’all I was upset. I was hurt, even. But now I understand. I had another job. Another way to follow. I had to make this web page, answer these emails, spread the word. Big things. God things. And you and I are right in the middle of it. I know what I was made four. I know what I’m living four. I know what we should be planning four. America is blessed again, Blake. Right now. I’ve already signed you in, by the way. You’re on the list. You should be getting weekly emails. Okay, you’ve gotta go, okay, I’ll see you later. Okay. I’ll be praying for Jennifer. Okay.”

  What Harold Wanted

  If Harold hadn’t died, there would be no Haroldism. He could never have been so popular while alive. We like our heroes dead, less chance of disappointing us. Van Gogh, JFK, Janis Joplin, James Dean. Let them promise. Let them die. Messiahs, politicians, and superstars.

  And who knows what he would have said, what he would have done, had he lived much longer. He was unstable, especially towards the end. He could never live up to his own promise. Who can?

  Peter is Planning

  Peter has a plan. He grins at me, whispers assurances that he’s “working on it.” Sometimes he flashes me four fingers.

  My Wife Died

  Jennifer died on January 30, three weeks after my return home It was hot. I remember that. Too hot for winter. People in Figwood were strolling around stubbornly wearing sweaters and coats, doing their best to pretend that things were not as they were.

  I was not there when Jennifer died. They called me at home and said to come quickly. By the time I had arrived, she was gone. The doctor shook my hand like a politician. “She passed away a few minutes ago.”

  Tammy and my mother-in-law joined me moments later, and the doctor offered to let us see her. Tammy refused, so my mother-in-law and I left her in the waiting room. Jennifer was in the bed. I touched her. Her face felt soft and warm.

  I spoke her name once and touched her hair. At the time, I remember trying to be angry that the hospital hadn’t called me earlier so I could have been there for her last breath. But the truth is I was relieved. I wouldn’t have known what to say, what to do. So I wasn’t there when she died, which is fitting. I was hardly there when she lived.

  Through all of this, Jennifer’s mother stood behind me breathing out quiet moans like a child after a tantrum. I got up to leave and she followed.

  Tammy stood waiting outside. When I came out, I put my arms around her and kissed her forehead. She walked with me and moved towards my car. My mother-in-law attempted to object, saying Tammy was coming home with her, but it was too hot and too sad to argue. So Tammy left with me.

  I was her father again. I had no idea what to do or who to be. Everything I thought I had learned from Harold was gone. We drove through the slow streets past half-crowds and non-smiles. At home we tramped through rooms like ghosts. I made coffee and Tammy went to sleep in her room. Later I ordered pizza for dinner. It sat in front of us untouched for half an hour.

  “Dad,” Tammy asked. “What was it like when she died? Did the doctor say anything?”

  “They gave her painkillers,” I told her. “She didn’t feel a thing.”

  Tammy might have hated me before, and she might hate me now, but for those three days she had no energy for hate and we were father and daughter.

  Sometimes we talked. I told her stories about the day she was born. She told me about a boy at school she liked. I told her things that Beddy had done that made her laugh. Often we didn’t talk at all. We shared the house in silence. Others came by with a casserole or a card, wanting a piece of our grief in exchange, but we wouldn’t let them have any. They could say they were sorry, and then they had to leave.

  The funeral was February 2, Groundhog Day. Tammy and I walked into the church together with Jennifer’s mother immediately behind us, her high heels clicking against the church tiles like the firing of an empty cartridge.

  All of our friends squeezed in with their tailored black suits and dresses. All decked out for a good long cry. The reverend melodically sang my wife’s praise. “Let me tell you of her life . . .”

  Let me tell you of her life. Because I do still remember. Camping in the Redwoods, making love in a two-person tent. Getting drunk on the cheap wine we smuggled into the movie theater. The day the flowers from our wedding died and she cried. The day her father died and she cried even more. I can see her giving birth to Tammy. Her eyes wide with wonder and fear. Then we grew up and I got lost in work and she got lost at home and I stopped loving her and she left me and then she died.

  The sermon was about Lazarus dying. Jesus
showing up three days late and then weeping. “Move the stone,” Jesus said and out stumbles the corpse. “Jesus is our hope,” the reverend proclaimed. “He is our resurrection.”

  I imagined Jesus arriving at my wife’s tomb and yelling for her to come out. She’d take a look at her moldy grave clothes, a quick whiff of the embalming fluid, and yell back, “I can’t go out looking like this.” The thought made me smile, and I missed her so much my head hurt.

  We walked to the grave and they placed the box in the ground. It was a varnished honey-oak coffin that her mother had picked out. The side had brass handles and imitation ivory inlays. My wife was inside.

  People came back to the house and ate tiny sandwiches and spoke in quiet tones and acted embarrassed that all this had happened. Tammy and I stood by the wall and nodded thanks as face after face told us how sorry they were.

  My parents, the good doctor and his wife, were there. They patted my shoulder and hugged Tammy. “Hell of a killer, cancer. Just grows and kills,” my father said.

  At one point during the afternoon I felt a hand on my back. I looked over my shoulder and saw Terry with his eyes closed and his lips moving.

  “Are you praying for me?” I asked.

  He opened his eyes. “A little,” he said.

  “Well, don’t.”

  “Sorry.” He stepped away and I noticed the small button on his lapel with a bold “4” typed on it. A few of the other guests had similar buttons.

  I moved to a corner of the living room and watched the crowd. My house was filled with uncles and aunts and neighbors and tennis partners and fellow PTA members and anyone else who was hungry for tiny sandwiches and a thick slice of mourning. But all of these people were strangers and I wanted them to leave.