The old man said, Still writing?
Yes. I’m trying, anyway.
I’ll bet that it’s hard.
You’d win that bet.
I never could write. English was always my least favorite subject. More of a numbers guy, myself.
I don’t remember having any talent for it either, said Silvio. And I could never get over the idea that so many writers went to their grave thinking that they weren’t any good at it.
Any good at going to their grave?
Any good at writing.
Oh. Yeah. That just sounds like a typical writer problem.
I just mean that it’s remarkable to spend your life feeling like you just aren’t very good at what you do. Or, if not that, then you die knowing that you were never appreciated. I couldn’t imagine being at the end of my life and thinking that maybe I’d wasted it. Writers like Melville and Dickinson and Poe and Hurston. That’s a hard way to die. And then, however many years later, to have people begin to recognize and appreciate your work? After you’re dead? That’s sick.
The old man shook his head and said, I guess that’s just not a worry that I can relate to.
Silvio stole a glance at the portrait of the old man’s wrinkled features. He said, Are you afraid of being forgotten?
The old man replied, People can’t forget what they never knew.
Does that bother you?
The old man shook his head again. No, he said. I don’t think so. I never had aspirations to get remembered by anybody. I’ve always just tried to do right for the people that I care about. Are you going to forget about me when I’m gone?
Of course not.
The old man offered a smile of great satisfaction. He said, Well there ya have it.
Silvio partially rolled his eyes and then focused his attention on the fan directly above them that, by his estimation, must be broken to be spinning so slowly.
I guess you’re right, Silvio said. Maybe you should be the one writing.
We already decided that I’m not any good at that kind of stuff. Why don’t we try to figure you out? Maybe just tell me about your approach.
I don’t have one. I just try to create good writing.
And what is good writing?
Good writing marries Truth and Beauty.
That’s lovely, the old man said.
That’s because I didn’t write it.
Well it’s a nice place to start.
Silvio shook his head in frustration and said, The problem is that I know no Truths. And if I did, I certainly don’t know how to make them beautiful.
The old man frailly leaned forward and ran the rag across the bottom of his seat and then inspected the white cloth as if its dusty sediment held secrets of great import. Look around you, Silvio. This place isn’t for people who know Truth. This place is for the people who are, at least, willing to look for it.
I guess that I’m still looking.
We all are.
Does anyone ever find it?
If they want to? All the time.
How?
The old man placed the bespeckled rag on his lap and reached into a wooden bracket attached to the pew ahead of them. Every church pew had this same cubby, and from it the old man pulled a worn copy of the Bible. He flipped his wrist up. Right here, he said.
The main door of the church opened behind them and the two turned in their pew to see an older lady peek her head inside. They both waved and their waves were friendly enough to suggest familiarity, and she edged her shoulder inside enough to give a wave back and she reminded the old man that he was the one locking up tonight. He said that he always was, and she wished them a good night before slipping back into the darkness.
They both turned in the pew to face the front of the church again. The old man said, Son, you’ve been telling me about this idea of yours about being a saint, and if you’re trying to be a Christian saint then there is one truth. It’s right here.
The old man tapped the Bible that he then placed on the pew next to him.
Silvio chewed on the inside of his lip. He said, I know that. But maybe the omniscient, omnipresent—you know, the omni words—can’t be understood in that way. I’m not convinced that one collection of testimonies can possibly embody the everything that ever has been and will be, everywhere. How can the alpha and the omega be compressed into one book? It should be more complex than that.
Son, those aren’t just testimonies. That’s the word of God in there, as spoken through his prophets and the like.
Prophets declaring themselves prophets doesn’t make them anything. Just arrogant, and big mouthed. Claiming to be a hero or a villain can’t alter your very essence into something it is not—into something it is not designed to be. I’ve met people that had no claim for what they thought they were, and the ones that did hardly ever got it right by my estimation.
The old man ran a hand over his sparsely haired head. He said, Well if we are going by that logic, I’d declare you to be something like a Quaker.
I’m not a Quaker, Silvio said.
Okay, but that goes to your point.
What point?
The old man said, That, when confronted with a mirror, we hardly recognize ourselves. That, if we take someone at their word, they will likely fool us. But they are what they are, and you’re no different Silvio. I know that I, for one, am comforted by the fact that inside all of us is the true knowledge that something, somewhere, knows what we really are, and a time will come when we will need to answer for whatever that is.
Well if we are what we are, then what is there to answer for?
The old man’s beaten face didn’t change and neither did his tone. His right hand still rested on the worn Bible cover as he stared forward at the generic jacket of the hymn books shelved in the pew’s cubby.
It’s not a test where everyone gets the same questions. We each of us have our own events to answer for, and the better we answer for them here the better we can answer for them wherever we are going. We know what we are supposed to do, but whether we do it or not is something else entirely. Whether we do it or not is what we must answer for.
Now the old man leaned forward on the pew with his hands folded in his lap and his feet gone under the bench like some existential gargoyle. Silvio measured him momentarily with a look of concern and then diverted his attention toward the front of the nave again. On the wall hung a large crucifix with an exhausted depiction of Jesus carved skillfully out of the wood’s origin. Like the pews, it was heavily lacquered, and it glowed dully in response to the church’s indistinct lighting. Even with the poor lighting he could make out the defeated features immortalized by the carving. An alleged god come to the dirty stratum of man to share a message of life and love and here hung the response to such things. And what else to do with a slain god other than forge trophies of its defeat?
Through his stony lips the old man said, If you were to send a blind man down some path, would you let him know where that path ended up if you knew so yourself?
What