SEATTLE, WASHINGTON:
We ended up in Seattle after many days of travelling in the hot July sun. This time we went to a real camp. It was along the Interstate 5 on the outskirts of China Town. I was surprised to see that most of the sisters I had met in New York were there. There were many tents, discreetly hidden.
One had to jump over a puddle of water, climb a fence and then find the hidden path to the site. I understood now why so much of our clothing was green and brown. Good camouflage gear!
Brother Evangelist suddenly appeared on the path going up the hill. He seemed to emerge through the trees as if he came from nowhere. He had sparkly, intelligent eyes, dark hair and the biggest beard I’d ever seen. Aged somewhere between 45 and 50, he was the oldest man in the church. We often referred to him as ‘the Elder’.
Everyone seemed to treat him with respect. In fact, I think many of the sisters were secretly in love with him. Often it was whispered amongst us, ‘The Elder likes this’ or ‘The Elder doesn’t like that’ or ‘Be sober! Here he comes!’ We were all in awe of him.
Jim Roberts is thought to have been born in Paducah, a small town in Kentucky. The son of a Southern Baptist minister, he was one of six siblings. After finishing high school he served in the Marines. I suspect this strict military background may explain why he was so big on discipline. He was the one who was in charge of everything that went on in the ‘camps’, dictating who should move where.
Most of us told him dreams we deemed significant. The dreams were interpreted by him and he often used them to make decisions on our behalf. We were a nomadic, underground, subversive force. We were against the world. The scriptures speak of pilgrims and strangers. Well, we were that. Strange, travelling people, often being moved by dreams.
The task of directing the Church was enormous. Brother Evangelist took it very seriously. Throughout the ten years that I was to travel with the Church I came to know him as gracious and hospitable, kind and considerate. In the winter, he wore the thinnest of shirts. In an attempt to please him, sisters were always sewing him wonderful garments, but he would pass them on to the younger brothers and those in need. He has been accused of having a Swiss bank account, which he reportedly used to stash money away for himself, but I am sure this is not true. He was always the one going without, making certain everyone else’s needs were met first. He walked his talk and he walked tall.
Early on a snowy morning that funny noise outside would be the Elder shovelling a path to the gate in the icy cold. Through his example, he quietly taught me a lot about service. I developed a great respect for him and he took the place of dad in my life. My much-missed, adored father.
7
PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA:
I am Tom Smailes’s daughter. My mother, Pat, really wanted me. They laughed after making love, while she stood on her head, to keep me in. It took her nine months to work out my name, Les at the beginning, les at the end, and L.E.S. as my initials. Lesley Elizabeth Smailes. She is clever like that.
My father was the centre of my universe. I loved him like I have loved no other. I loved his shortness and his strong-calved legs. I loved him carrying me on his shoulders. I loved his kind, blue eyes, his beautiful, wistful smile, his gentleman voice. To this day I still find bald men attractive. My dad, mom, elder brother Allen and I moved to Port Elizabeth when I was a baby after my father was offered a post in the English department at the local university. He was a lecturer and worked his way up to associate professor, eventually becoming head of the department.
He was also a political activist and spoke out against forced removals and other injustices of apartheid. His open face and controversial quotes sometimes showed up in the local newspapers. For this reason, our phone was tapped for years.
The stress of all of this eventually took its toll. He had an inherited cholesterol problem and had four major heart attacks over an eight-year period.
To make matters worse, he began drinking. The cupboard in his study became his ‘wine cellar’. He would sit down there or in my folks’ en-suite bathroom, marking papers and drinking into the early hours of the morning, going to bed with his crystal goblet. The mix of wine, anxiety and heart medication eroded his gracious and gallant personality. My vital, vibrant, healthy dad became stooped, skinny and small. No more long Sunday hikes at Sardinia Bay, no more looking for fossils or antique bottles. No more mountain climbing. He sedately played chess with Bobs instead.
Later my dad began an affair with one of his master’s students. When my mother found out about it, I was sent off to boarding school while my parents tried to patch up their marriage without me knowing anything. I am still not sure why only I went, and not the boys. The school they shipped me off to was Helderberg College, the Seventh Day Adventist school in Somerset West where they had met.
One December holiday I came home, arriving on the Sabbath. We all went to church in my dad’s orange VW 411 and then had samp and beans for lunch – my father had been raised in the Transkei and it was his favourite food. My friends, David and Lisa, came around afterwards and we went down to the beachfront.
When we came back home, nobody was there. My mom was a Life Line counsellor and she was on duty that day and, although my dad’s car was still in the garage, he was nowhere to be found. What was strange was that our dog, Lolly, was at home. Usually my father would take him for a stroll in the early evening. My mom came back, and she was worried. She thought my dad might have had a heart attack while he was out walking the dog and that Lolly had returned home by himself.
David, Lisa and I searched the surrounding veld until it was dark, but couldn’t find him. That night Lisa and I slept downstairs in the playroom just off the garage. In the early hours of the morning I heard a sound. I jumped up, knowing it was my dad. I pushed open the garage door and there he was – smelling of shit and vomit, smaller than small, clutching his crystal goblet in a brown paper bag. He could barely stand.
I woke my mother and somehow we managed to get him upstairs into a bath. After we’d cleaned him up, we put him into bed. He kept on repeating: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. The Lord is my Shepherd.’
The following morning we realised that my dad wasn’t just drunk – he was hallucinating. In an attempt to take his own life, he had overdosed on an enormous amount of pills. Mogadon and Serapax – tranquillisers and sedatives. He had been saving them for months in preparation.
Weeks later he told me how he had wanted to go out like a king. After his substantial samp and bean lunch, he’d taken his stash of pills and walked to the veld behind the municipal flats on the other side of our neighbourhood. With a bottle of vintage wine and his crystal goblet, probably watching the sunset, he had swallowed over 700 pills. How he managed to get home with his drug-shocked body and his crystal goblet intact we will never know. I would like to believe angels carried him.
Early on Sunday morning my mother called an ambulance. They took my darling daddy to hospital. He remained there for over a month – my entire Christmas holidays. He hallucinated for weeks. On New Year’s Eve my mom told me he was asking for a divorce. She finally broke the news to me about the affair he was having. His girlfriend was pushing for him to leave us in his sick and fragile mental state. By that time he was in PE’s state mental hospital, the Elizabeth Donkin.
My world fell apart that day. I went into a state of shock. I remember lying in a full bath at a friend’s house, looking up at drops trickling down the small, steamed-up window above me, wishing to cry, to die. I lay in the bath for hours. I went out with my friends that evening. It was hardly a New Year’s celebration. I had half a glass of wine and passed out under the table. Then I found myself in the toilet, retching and vomiting.
When the December holidays came to an end, I went back to boarding school. My dad only came home to collect his belongings. My childhood seemed to have ended. He went to stay with