The Book of Harold Read online

  Tammy was five when we first moved to Figwood. We had a house built, choosing from four different floor plans, my wife choosing from four shades of kitchen tiles. We lived less than a mile from the middle school and high school where my daughter would choose from four sports.

  Everything was easy.

  It was simple to go back to selling computers, paying bills, mowing the lawn. I planned a vacation with my wife and lectured my daughter about her grades. The television still didn’t work. I even bought a new one. But that one didn’t work either. No problem. My life had cracked, but it would go on. Nothing had to change, I was sure. But Harold wasn’t done with me yet.

  The Haunted World

  On a humid day in early October, I stepped from Promit Computers for lunch and came face-to-face with a smiling Harold. “Good to see you, Blake,” he said.

  He looked healthier than he had when I last saw him almost four weeks before. He even had a tan. Somehow he had grown sterner than I had remembered him. More solid. And if I hadn’t known better, I would say he was taller. His hair was longer too, just a bit. “Letting it grow out?”

  He chuckled and patted his head. “I’ve had a haircut every two weeks for my entire life. I don’t want to cut it ever again.”

  “So where have you been?”

  “I went west, traveled around, worked through some things.”

  “Well, welcome home, I guess.” I could hear anger in my voice. It surprised me. “See you around the neighborhood.”

  “I moved out. The house was too big. I’m living at Autumn Winds now.”

  “The nursing home?”

  “I volunteer a few hours and they give me a room.” He smiled as if this was the most natural of living arrangements. “I’m visiting a friend who works near here. Want to join me?”

  I hesitated. But not for long.

  We walked for half an hour past the faceless office buildings of the Skyline district and on to neighborhoods I’d been warned were too dangerous to even drive through. Storefronts busy with customers, music playing from open windows, fenced in playgrounds with children. The children surprised me most of all. I had never imagined children living in the city. I suppose I never imagined anyone living in the city. The city was a place to work. You lived somewhere else. You had children somewhere else. But there they were, children playing dodgeball a mile from my cubicle.

  Harold led me into a small used CD store just east of downtown. It was long and narrow and, at half-past noon, nearly empty. Behind a counter covered with band stickers was a tall black man no older than twenty-five.

  “Hello, Steven,” Harold said.

  “Harold, hey,” Steven replied, and I could tell from his undirected gaze that Steven was blind.

  “I brought a friend. Blake.”

  “Good to know you,” he said with a nod. “So Harold, you want to play some, or you shopping?”

  “Let’s play. What do you want?”

  “Let’s go for maroon.”

  “Maroon? That might be tough.” Harold went flipping through the shelves of CDs. I followed behind him.

  “There you go. Thelonious Monk, Monk’s Dream,” he said, handing Steven a CD.

  “Really,” Steven said with a grin. He gracefully removed the CD from its case and placed it in the stereo. Out poured jazz piano.

  “So, that’s maroon,” Steven said, nodding to the music.

  “That’s my guess. A little richer than bebop red.”

  “And there’s something sad in it, huh?”

  “Yeah, maroon is a little sad. Wagner has some maroon.”

  That was the game. Music for color. Blue was early Miles Davis. Yellow was the Monkees, but so was Vivaldi. Green was violins. “Smooth but with an edge,” Steven said.

  He asked if the store was empty and closed up for lunch. “Unless you want to buy anything first?”

  Harold looked at me. I shrugged. But Harold didn’t look away.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the one you’re playing. Monk.”

  I raised my eyebrows for Harold, miming the question, “Satisfied?” He smiled.

  We walked a couple of blocks to a pizza place, Steven talking the whole time about a girl who came into the store that morning.

  “Man, her smell. She smelled like ice cream. She’s been by three or four times, and I just can’t get up the nerve to ask her name. Ice cream is the sweetest smell, you know, ’cause it makes you think about the taste and two senses get all wrapped up in each other.”

  We squeezed into a booth with our slices, and Harold asked Steven if he’d always been blind.

  “Yeah, I was born blind, but I didn’t know it until I was six.”

  “You didn’t know?” I asked.

  “No one told me. My grandmother, she raised me, she didn’t want me to know. She thought it would make me feel inferior, so she never mentioned anything about sight. Never talked about the way things looked or what pictures were. She just cut those kind of words out of her vocabulary. I was just a kid so I didn’t know any better. I thought hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting were all there was.”

  “What happened?”

  “My cousin Nancy stayed with us while her mom was in the hospital. She kept letting things slide like, ‘Look at the brown puppy’ or ‘They painted stripes on the wall.’ When I asked my grandmother, she told me it was just new words for old ideas. ‘Look’ meant touch and ‘brown’ meant furry. Then she would take my cousin aside and give her a spanking. I remember one time my cousin tried to show me a mirror. I didn’t get it at all. ‘You see yourself in it,’ she said. I touched it and it felt smooth and cold. I just thought my cousin was crazy.”

  “When did you figure it out?” I asked.

  “A couple of things really got me. Like the day she and I were playing in the hallway of our apartment building, and Grandma’s sister came out of the elevator. My cousin told me, ‘Gracey’s coming.’ I could hear footsteps from way down the hall, but I couldn’t smell Gracey or hear her voice or anything. I just thought my cousin was teasing. Then, after a bit, Gracey was there picking me up and kissing me on the cheek. It was like my cousin knew some kind of magic.” Steven stopped and took a quick bite of pizza.

  “Then a few days before I turned seven, we were sitting by the window and she said, ‘Look at the sunset. It looks like the sky’s on fire.’ I heard my grandma grab her and whisper some harsh words as she pulled her away. I stood up and walked to the window. It was open. I remember trying to listen for crackling in the sky, you know, like a fire crackles. And I remember trying to feel the heat coming down. The sky was up, I knew that much. And then it got me.” Steven shook his head. “I knew something was out there that I didn’t know. It came up on me. I couldn’t name it or even think it, but there was this whole other thing or world that I didn’t know anything about—but my cousin did. A wind blew past, and it scared me so much I fell back and hit the ground.”

  “It scared you?” I asked.

  “Shit, yeah. My grandma picked me up and cradled me saying, ‘It’s okay. Nancy was teasing. It’s okay.’ And she started to cry. But, man, I knew. And my grandma’s crying made me even more scared.”

  “What did you do?”

  “For a while I did nothing. I was just scared all the time. I didn’t want to leave the apartment. I hated being alone. It was like the whole world was haunted. But I grew up and went to school and now I’m here.”

  “Still scared?” Harold asked.

  “Yeah, sometimes,” Steven said. “Sometimes in a good way. Music helps.”

  “Would you ever want to see?” Harold asked.

  “I think about that sometimes. How can you want something you can’t understand? But, yeah, I’d like to be able to see. I’d like to know what a girl that smells like ice cream looks like.”

  Harold’s Sanity

  Harold joined me for lunch the next day and the day after that. I mentioned this to Jennifer. This started her knuckle rubbing.

 
; “He’s crazy.”

  I didn’t argue.

  “He’s probably dangerous.”

  Again, no argument. I just shrugged.

  Some theologian said that Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. He had to be one of the three, and if the evidence didn’t point to liar or lunatic then an honest thinker must accept Jesus as Lord. The same logic has been used to discuss Harold. Liar, lunatic, or lord. But I knew Harold and I’m not sure that the three are mutually exclusive.

  “Don’t give him any money, Blake.”

  Irma, or How My Wife Lost Her Housekeeper

  Irma cleaned our home twice a week. Irma was black. Irma hated me. She was older, skin like shoe leather and eyes filled with weary resolve. I didn’t talk to her much. Jennifer wrote her checks, gave her instructions. She usually came and went while I was at work. But I had started to dread the office, the soft feel of my cubicle chair, the smell of the weaved flooring. I got into the habit of taking sick days, sitting at home doing nothing but listening to the Thelonious Monk CD, and lifting my feet so Irma could vacuum underneath them.

  Harold was walking. Everyday, hours on end, he hiked through the suburbs. Occasionally I joined him, but often he was alone. One afternoon I saw him strolling along the sidewalk in front of my house. I opened the front door and called his name. As he turned and waved, Irma pushed by me and ran out to the sidewalk yelling, “I know you! I know you!”

  She and Harold stood talking for a few minutes, both laughing, sometimes glancing back at me. Then they hugged, and he went on his way.

  Irma returned to the house, walked right by me into my little wet bar and poured herself a straight whiskey. I just stared. It was so strange that to object seemed absurd.

  “I’m not cleaning your house anymore,” she said and fell back on one of the leather armchairs in our living room.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “So, you know that man?”

  I nodded. She nodded and sipped.

  “And you know him?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. But I didn’t know his name till just now,” she said. I sat on the edge of the couch. She took another sip and looked up at me. “You know, Mr. Waterson, I hate cleaning rich people’s houses.”

  “I’m not rich,” I said.

  “Have you seen where I live?”

  “No.”

  “You’re rich.” She finished her drink, gathered her chemicals and soap, and left. Later, I asked Harold what he and Irma had talked about.

  “None of your concern, Blake.”

  An Introduction to Haroldism

  Irma Bragston

  Each of Harold’s original followers brought essential elements to the burgeoning movement. Irma Bragston was a devout Southern Baptist who melded her more traditional faith with Harold’s teachings. She, more than any of Harold’s closest followers, related his teachings using Christian terminology and imagery. Many credit her as being a bridge between conservative Christianity and the new faith.

  Her dedication to the Southern Baptist church never faltered. Even when the denomination declared Haroldism heretical, Irma Bragston held strong, courageously speaking her convictions. She and her daughter were publicly persecuted and harshly criticized by many church leaders.

  The efforts backfired. Parishioners responded by rallying behind the Bragstons, some turning to Haroldism for the first time. Many Church historians mark this persecution as the beginning of the end of any major Southern Baptist influence in America.

  Most Treasured Memory

  My wife blamed me for the loss of Irma.

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t.”

  She disapproved of my sick days, of my walks with Harold, of my spaced-out look. I wanted to explain, or at least try to explain, what was happening. How everything was falling into question. But the sand was so packed down we couldn’t get near each other.

  We had been happy at one time. I remember the three of us—me, Jennifer, and Tammy—renting films on Friday nights. It was family night. I remember years before, watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Tammy, only six, falling asleep on the floor, Jennifer resting her head on my lap, dozing as well, me all toasty with gin and tonic, and the Beast full of courage and love. There we were. Cocooned. Happy and safe enough to fall asleep. I had the love of these women. Unquestioning love. Jennifer wrapped her warm arm around my thigh like it was a pillow. I would lift Tammy’s little body, carry her to bed, and tuck her in. Later my wife and I would sleep close enough to smell nothing but each other. This is my most treasured memory. Life was fine. I had it. I lost it.

  Questions

  Question I asked Harold:“Does life have meaning?”

  Harold’s answer:“What would you tell your daughter?”

  No Sky at All

  No windows to the outside in this basement. The one in the door shows nothing but a short hallway. No sky. I know it’s night. I can tell it’s dark outside, though I’ve got every light turned on inside. I can smell it.

  I dab my watercolors. Beddy drips through the air vent and sits on my cot. Beddy was Harold’s finest disciple. Harold’s favorite, I think. I tell Beddy I’m writing a confession. I tell him I’m remembering things. He smiles and brushes back his bangs. I tell him I’m dying and he nods.

  I tell him I remember walking. Weeks of walking. I remember places where we could stop for a Slurpee or a Big Mac every mile. And other places that few roads led to. And still further out. One night we slept in an abandoned house. Flakes of paint and rotting floors. Dusk sucked all the light out of the sky. Dark night, days from anywhere. I had lost the world.

  I remember too, Beddy says.

  I go back to painting. He stays. He’ll stay most of the night, watching me paint, whistling every so often.

  Sight

  When we next visited the CD store, Steven was sitting on a stool behind the counter.

  “Hey, Steven,” Harold said as we walked in. Steven looked at us. He looked directly at us.

  “Harold?” he asked. He raised his chin and peered at us from the bottom of his eyes. It made his face look anxious, restless.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Did you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “What’s happened, Steven?” Harold asked.

  “If you did this,” he stood from his stool and started to walk around the counter, but he slammed into it, knocking down a stack of CDs. “Shit! I can’t even walk.” Steven knelt down and began collecting the fallen CDs. Harold joined him.

  “Steven, can you see?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s all this stuff pouring in—I guess through my eyes ’cause I can close them. And I do. I close them a lot.”

  “Why close them? If you can see, I mean—”

  “Are you Blake?” he looked up at me and blinked his eyes. I nodded, but he still looked without any trace of understanding.

  “Yeah, I’m Blake,” I said.

  “You don’t get it.” He picked up a CD. “I know this is a CD. I can feel it with my hands, I can even read the Braille title, but,” he dropped it back on the ground and pointed at it, “I couldn’t tell you what that is. I couldn’t even tell you its shape.”

  “But you can see. You’ll get the other stuff.”

  “And then there’s this. He stood up and felt around on the counter. His fingers reached a CD and he lifted it. “This is maroon, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But it isn’t Monk. I mean the color, it’s nothing like music. So I keep thinking the color’s wrong. It was better as music. I’m confused as shit and my head hurts.” His voice cracked.

  “Give it some time, Steven. It’s all new,” Harold said, placing a hand on Steven’s back. Steven spun around.

  “Did you do this?”

  Harold shrugged. “I don’t control these things,” he said.

  “You don’t?” I asked.


  “I don’t. Really. They just happen around me.”

  “Harold, I can’t even recognize myself. I look in a mirror and . . .” He swallowed whatever he was going to say. “It’s just so different. It’s nothing like I thought it was. And it hurts.”

  “Hold on, Steven,” Harold said.

  “My grandmother was right. It was better not to know.” Then Steven asked us to leave.

  Waves

  Outside the sky was sick cloud white. The air stunk of trapped car fumes and cement. We didn’t talk as we made our way back toward the office. I wanted to ask Harold about Steven, about not controlling the miracles, about my television. But he was thinking. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. His head was bent down, puzzled. Maybe it was the crow’s feet coming from his squinting eyes or his stooped posture—he looked old and hurt.

  He asked me, “Do you think it’s better not to see?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Would you drive me to Galveston?”

  “Now? It’s an hour away.”

  “There’s something I want to show you.”

  We drove east from the city, passing the suburbs and the exit for Figwood and then Clear Lake, where the astronauts used to live. Past refineries with smoke and burning torches, and then salty marshes and the arched bridge that lands on the island of Galveston. Within an hour we were looking at the brown waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Harold and I sat on the sea wall looking out and counting seagulls and oil wells. It was windy, a little cold. Above the rhythmic white noise of the surf were the sporadic screams of seagulls. The beach was empty of people. Just sand, patches of tar, and trash blown along by the fish-tainted breeze.

  “God is ancient and ever new,” Harold said. “God is the constant and the revolution. God gives and then gives again. Watch the waves, Blake.”