“Mr. Luckie! You will not attempt to engage me in talk of that nature!” She was pleased that he was more interesting than he first appeared.
“Oh, that’s not me. That’s a quote from my spiritual guide, Kahlil Gibran.”
“Mooselim, I’d guess? Sounds New Age,” she sniffed.
“Actually, he wrote early in the last century.”
Awkward silence.
“And Gibran embraced all faiths equally.”
No response.
“Uh, I’ll be happy to pay for my rent six months in advance. That’s all the savings I have right now, but later . . .”
“That is not required, Mr. Luckie. The terms of payment I have outlined will be sufficient. Besides, I have no wish to become entailed with transients in long-term arrangements.”
Felix, fidgeting in his seat, nervously replied, “Uh, I majored in Ag Ed at North Carolina State. But wouldn’t you know it? When I got out, no jobs in agricultural education, at least not in North Carolina, because of the Republicans and . . .”
“Mr. Luckie, personal revelations are not required. Quite unnecessary for me to know the idiosyncrasies of persons just passing through. We have a business relationship, not one of a personal, social, or self-revelatory nature.”
He blushed and took a nervous gulp. “Yes ma’am.”
As they talked, Alberta Swanson noted that though he was very thin, pale, and slightly stooped in the shoulders, he had a well-proportioned face. A good nose. His rumpled clothes concealed his build, but she estimated that it was unnaturally slight for a man of his age, making him appear vegetarian. His unrestrained, prepubescent demeanor repulsed her but at the same time awakened an odd desire.
At length his phone buzzed. Felix fished it from his pants and glanced at the message: THR YET? JANIS JOPLIN. Quattlebaum.
“Oops. Need to check in with my field supervisor. My boss. Thanks for the refreshment and your warm welcome. I know I’ll enjoy the apartment. And I’m hoping I’ll be here longer than you think!” Felix abruptly rose and thrust out his hand cheerfully. “Can you recommend a nice church where I might visit tomorrow?” he asked.
Mrs. Swanson also rose, glanced at his soft, callow hand, took his near-full glass from him, ignored his question, and led him to the door. “Yes. Well, we’ll see. Place your first month’s rent check in the mailbox.”
Watching him walk jauntily toward his car, she moaned, “Just my luck.”
2
“Brother, can I talk to you about the most important thing in life?”
The man slowly stretched out his full lazy length. . . . “If it’s insurance, I got too much,” he said. “If it’s oil-wells, I don’t touch ‘em, and if it’s religion, I’m saved.” . . .
“That’s fine. There is no greater pleasure than to talk over the big things with a believer.”
“I’m saved,” continued the other, “from making a goddam fool of myself in public places. I’m saved, you little peahen, from putting my head into other people’s business. So shut your damn face and get out of here, or I’ll rip your tongue out of your throat.” . . .
“You’re angry, brother,” said Brush, “because you’re aware of an unfulfilled life.”
—Thornton Wilder, Heaven’s My Destination
The next morning, Sunday—emboldened by a pop tart and a glass of decaffeinated, saccharined tea, unpacked, done with his usual half hour of meditative reading and memorization—Felix ventured forth. Even as early as ten, it was sweltering hot, streets of Galilee shimmering, steamy, musty.
Jefferson Davis Street, the town’s main thoroughfare, was phantasmal, archaic, and empty. The houses he passed, constructed during the town’s bygone era of prosperity, were uniformly Southern Victorian: white, wide porches, sheer-draped windows, dry birdbaths in the yards. They looked vacant. He suspected that the inhabitants were older women, replicas of Mrs. Swanson. Pots of begonia, Wandering Jew, desiccated hydrangea were numerous. Also, overgrown shrubbery stressed by drought, even though the Georgia summer had barely begun.
No lane that crossed Jefferson Davis had been deemed worthy of a street sign. Everyone must know where they are, thought Felix. Galilee looked frozen in place in 1880, fixed and final. Nothing more is needed.
Felix saw neither a soul abroad nor any sign of active habitation—though a lone dog ambled toward him without taking notice. The dog continued down the middle of the sidewalk, refusing to give way to Felix, forcing him to step out into the street.
It’s good to be a place where life is so pleasant that nobody wants to change anything or go anywhere else.
Looking down each bare street, the town seemed either eerily quiet or wonderfully serene and settled on a summer Sunday, depending on how you looked at it.
In three blocks the residential area (without evidence of residents) gave way to the alleged business district. Hollow storefronts testified to little commercial activity in Galilee. Felix was relieved not to see a phone shop. The closer he came to the center of town, the more eccentric Galilee appeared. Wilson’s Hardware displayed dusty, antique kitchen utensils alongside a gallon jar of preserved rabbits that caused Felix to pause and wonder.
Tarbox Insurance had in its front window a set of framed black-and-white photographs of the charred remains of houses that had burned in Galilee in the past. Over all of them was a big, hand-lettered, yellowing poster: “ACTS OF GOD. Is Your Home Next? Tomorrow is Full of Uncertainty. Don’t Gamble with the Future. Turn to Tarbox Today.”
Felix’s goal was church. Though he was gradually, with the help of The Prophet, extricating himself from the clutches of his Southern Baptist background, and though he had a mannerly tolerance for organized religion, he had personally moved beyond conventionally religious practice. The reason for his venturing forth this morning was obedience to his mother’s injunction, “Go to church so you can get a good start. Maybe you will meet a girl.” Eager to get off on the right foot, Felix walked two more blocks toward the center of town and, in a spiritually adventuresome mood, made for the first house of worship he saw—the yellow brick home of the Methodists.
As he walked he listened to his iPod: “But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, . . . so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self. You are the way and the wayfarers.”
He paused before crossing the last street and surveyed the church—rambling, squash-colored brick with a bell tower to the side, preserved meticulously from the early twenties. Switching off his iPod, he pondered the inscrutable wisdom that he had just heard. Could he be in a procession towards his god-self, both wayfarer and way?
The rusted black sign read, “GALILEE FIRST METHODIST CHURCH, SOUTH, The Revernd Doctor Dimsdale Witzkopf, DMin., 11:00 Sundays. Youth Activities Cancelled All Summer. No United Methodist Women’s Meetings until Farther Notice.”
He was surprised that a service was scheduled; there were few traces of activity around the building. (Later he discovered that it should have been designated as Galilee Only Methodist Church, the town’s sole congregation of that denomination.)
Two aged Fords were parked beside the church, even though it was 10:40. Felix climbed the worn granite steps toward a door on the left side and optimistically pulled the handle. The door refused. He turned,