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Stories and Parables

 

THE TREE OF LIFE

            

            Alexander the Great learned of a garden in the east.  In the middle of this garden was the Tree of Life, and anyone who ate its fruit would always be young and innocent.  To own such a tree, Alexander said, he would conquer the world. Crossing the Hellespont, he destroyed the Per­sian army, cut the head of Xerxes from his shoulders, and set it on a pike.

            Moving ever eastward, he rode over the mountains into India.  The people who lived there sent an emissary, an ancient wise man, followed by a hundred ser­vants riding elephants.  In saffron robes, they stood on the road leading to an alabaster city, waiting for Alexander, and when he arrived, they offered him spices, silver, and emeralds.  Alexan­der said noth­ing, however.  He never left his saddle, but only leaned toward the old man, and in a whisper, asked him about the garden, the earthly Paradise where the Tree of Life grows.  The old man bowed, whispered back that yes he had heard of this place, but unhappily, it could not be found in his country, but in a country far to the east, over the moun­tains, near the Palace of the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom. 

            Alexander thanked the old man for his gifts, but then left them lying in the road, for what were emeralds and silver compared to the Tree of Life?  As his army disappeared over the foothills of the Himalayas, the emissary returned to his home.  That afternoon, he laughed as he tended the pear tree in his garden, pruned the branches to let more fruit grow in the Spring.  "How foolish these westerners are,"  he said.  "There are thousands of magic gardens, ten thousand trees of life, a hundred thousand wonders in the world, but there is only one pear tree like this, with fruit so sweet."

Stories

 

PARADISE

 

            The people who live in Paradise are without anxiety.   In the mornings, they walk along the river of life, eat sweet berries and tell stories about a faraway, mythical place where nations fight wars and orphans scrabble for food.  No one is ever happy there--the sun is too hot and the wind too cold.  In the stories, the people, in the midst of their sufferings, invent for themselves a paradise, a land of endless peace.  

            The people who live in Paradise are often puzzled by these stories.   "How could anyone be unhappy?" they say. "And why would anyone invent a paradise, when it is already here?"  But then they tell the stories again, they love them so.  There is one about an old woman whose only desire was for a teapot, a china teapot enameled in blue with Dutch girls and boys in wooden shoes. The old woman dreamed, schemed to find her teapot, she planned, she yearned, but she never got one, never in her whole life.  Hearing the story, the people who live in Paradise feel sad, a feeling they have never known before.  How poignant.  How lovely, this sadness.  Gradually, their desire for sadness grows stronger with each night, and they begin to dream their own dream of unhappiness, to wish for the one thing they cannot have, a world of sadness, a world of emptiness and pain, where people weep for their sins and die alone in their beds.

The Angel of Death Postponed

 

            A blast of bad air had come from the east, bringing a plague into the country.  Every day, with the rising of the sun, the old women sat at the gates of the village to watch for the angel of death.  Would he come from the east?  From the South or the West?  Or from the North? 

            One woman, a great great grandmother, still had wonderful eyes and ears.  She could see a bird fall to the ground ten miles away, or hear bells on a honeybee's necklace, or smell the first blush of love, and the villagers, knowing this, set her inside the belltower, up high so she could see far off.

            They waited and waited.  They told stories about death, about how terrible he was.  How awful. They pictured him--a giant with five heads and six pairs of black wings and a sword fifty miles long.  Every time a cloud passed in front of the sun, the people jumped to their feet, expecting to see a  giant stepping over the mountains.  But it didn't happen that way, for he angel of death was nothing like that. When he finally arrived, he was more like a shadow, nearly invisible, a heat ripple in the air as he crept from rock to rock.  If it hadn't been for the old woman, he would have been upon them between one breath and the next.

            From the top of the belltower, the great grandmother smelled him coming, like the odor that comes off of old books long collecting dust, and she cried out.  "From the East!" she said, and everyone in town ran to see. At first, they couldn't find him. They strained their eyes, but saw nothing.  Then a child pointed to a pale shadow which killed the flowers as it passed.  In terror, the people called out to God. "Save us, Oh God!  Save us!"

              From the top of heaven, where he hears everything, God turned an ear.  "What's all that shouting about?" he said, looking down.            

            "Save us!" said the people in the village.

            "Save you?" said God, seeing the angel of death nearby.  "Save you from my own servant?"

            "But aren't you a God of the living and not of the dead?" shouted the villagers.

            "Oh...yes.  Quite right," God said, clearly taken aback.  "I am the God of the living.  I nearly forgot.  You people are quite right."  So he called out to the angel.  "You there!  Angel of death!  Bypass that village for the time being."

            Frustrated, the angel of death let off his skulking, stood straight.  He shaded his eyes from God's brightness, shouted back, "But Lord," he said.  "What about your command that cannot be changed?"

            "That's right," God said, his brow furrowing in thought.  "My command cannot be changed.  I nearly forgot. Oh bother!"  This was a problem--he was a God of the living and not of the dead.  That was certain.  But his commands, once given, couldn't be changed. That too was certain.  More than a problem--it was a paradox.  God hated paradoxes.  He thought and thought on it, but he didn't know what to do, so finally he shouted back.  "Wait till next year!"

            Unhappy, the angel of death bypassed the town. No one died in the village that year, not even the sick or the very old.  In fact, no one took ill, and no one grew any older.  Those who were sick to begin with climbed out of their beds and were never sick again.  But the angel was coming back, one way or the other, so their good fortune was only temporary.

            Luckily, the old woman was high enough in the belltower to overhear the exchange between God and death, so the next year, when the angel was due to return, the village was ready once again.

            "From the north!" the old woman shouted, hearing his footsteps on the sand like the skittering of a wasp, and all the people ran to the northern gate.  Just as they had done the year before, the people called out to God, "Have you forgotten already, oh God, that you are the God of the living, and that you save even sinners from death?"

            "That's right!" said God, clapping his hand to his forehead.  "I nearly forgot.  I save even sinners from death."  So once again, God leaned down to speak. "Angel of death!" he called out.  "Bypass the town."

            The angel, thoroughly angry now, kicked at the dust and stamped his feet.  "Lord," he said.  "Why won't you let me take them?  You promised me!"

            God frowned at the angel.  The sun dimmed and several mountain ranges cringed. "Just do as I say," he said, his voice rolling over the countryside.  "And no backtalk."

            The angel, who didn't want to displease God anymore than he had, bypassed the town once again.  This went on, year after year.  The angel came, the people prayed, and God gave them a repreive.  It went on a hundred years, a thousand years.  Everyone in all the surrounding villages had long since died, but this village, with the old woman and her belltower, was as healthy and young and alive as ever before. The flowers were brighter, the bees busier, the sheep and goats fatter.  The dogs barked only for the fun of it.  It went on for a thousand years, for a million years.  It went on for a billion more.  It went on until the sun dimmed and the galaxies burned out, until the stars winked out of existence one by one, and all the universe became a cold empty place.  The people in that town knew nothing of this, however, for in their world, the sun was bright and the great great grandmother’s eyes and ears were still keen.  The children played and every year the angel of death arrived, and every year the people prayed to God, and every year the sentence of death which could not be denied, was postponed.

Suffer the Children

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

 

            A narrow four-door sedan puttered into the vast parking lot of the Global Radio Gospel Ministries; the engine dieseled for two seconds, as if refusing to die.  The floodlight beside it was dark, and with the new moon, the car was dunked in shadow.  After five minutes, the sedan rocked as if by lovers, but then a dark figure stepped out of the back door, shut it silently, and turned from the car without looking back, toward the wall of trees at the end of the parking lot.  The car beeped once and the rear lights flashed as it locked itself.  By that time, the figure had disappeared into the shadows, and then nothing moved.

 

The next morning, three ladies from the Freewill Baptist Church of Alexandria, Arkansas arrived for an early morning Bible Study.  Emma Jean Johnson had joined Marcie and Maggie, the Sisters. They were part of a stream of ladies who had come expecting to praise the Lord, mainly, but also to lose themselves inside the musky, man-smelling voice of Reverend Henry, to listen to his sweet words, and to sigh over those blue blue eyes under the shock of white hair, just like Charlton Heston’s after he had seen the face of God.  Besides, the Bible Study allowed them the opportunity to exchange sweetmeats of gossip, and to confer about the recent disappearance of a five-year-old boy, which was on top in everybody’s mind.

“That poor little boy,” said Emma Jean. “His mama must be in a terrible state.”

“It’s the judgment of the Lord, mark my words,” said Maggie.

“That poor boy is gone for good, because I don’t think our new Sheriff is up to the job,” said Marcie.  “I knew last year when he was elected that we were in for trouble.”

“What’s wrong with Sheriff Rosebush?” said Emma Jean.

“You should ask that?  Having a colored President is one thing,” said Marcie, “but a colored Sheriff of Alexandria County is another thing entirely.”

 “We don’t say ‘colored’ anymore, Marcie,” said Maggie.  “We say ‘African American’.”

“It will come to no good, I tell you,” said Marcie, ignoring her sister entirely. “I heard our new sheriff wants to fire everyone and make the whole sheriff’s department colored.”

“I can’t believe that! That just wouldn’t be right,” said Emma Jean, whose cousin RJ Lewis was the chief deputy.

“Of course it wouldn’t,” said Marcie, “but you know how those people are.”

“Lord save us,” said Maggie.  “And what would his granddaddy, old Harlan, think of that?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Emma Jean.

“Can you imagine Harlan Rosebush having such a grandson?  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  It will come to no good, electing an “African American” to such a high office within the County,” said Marcie.  “My Bob said it would be the end of Christian civilization as we know it.”

“But Sheriff Rosebush is a good Christian,” said Emma Jean.  “And his wife is a good Christian, too.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Marcie. “She’s always celebrating that Kwanzaa.  Not like Christmas or Halloween.”

“But she has a picture of Jesus in her home,” said Emma Jean.  “I’ve seen it.”

“When were you in her home?” said Maggie.

“I paid her a visit as part of the mission society.”

“I bet it was a colored Jesus,” said Marcie.

“Now that I think on it, it was.”

“Hmph,” said Marcie, as if she needed to say no more.

In her quiet moments, Emma Jean did not approve of such conversations, for she knew them to be mean spirited gossip and downright unchristian, but something pagan in her stirred whenever she was out with the ladies, so that within the microsecond it takes for sin to etch itself upon the soul, she was gnawing on every little tidbit along with the rest of them.  Even so, she suspected that Jesus was listening in, and shaking his head with unutterable sadness. 

The Global Radio Gospel Ministries lay before them in the distance, a looming imitation gothic church made of glass and steel, with lights and more lights inside like a window onto heaven, and with a small forest of radio towers and mushroom satellite dishes in the field behind it. It was the biggest building in Alexandria, and it was a sight to behold.  Surrounding the church for what seemed like miles and miles was a parking lot that was so big the Reverend had hung loudspeakers on all the light poles to allow the worshippers to listen to the choir as they trudged onward toward salvation.  The early morning Bible Study was nearly always full, but even so, the parking lot went on and on, like life itself, even beyond the light poles, leaving pockets of shadow in the corners.  The ladies had parked as far out as they could because Maggie wanted to protect the paint job on her husband’s new Lincoln, and to add a thousand steps to their pedometers.

When they had finished gnawing on the Sheriff and were moving on to the new youth minister at the First Baptist Church, who seemed to lisp just a bit more than they thought appropriate, they happened upon a blue Ford Focus with all the windows rolled up.  The car was sitting under a light pole where the bulb had burned out.  The silhouette of a man sitting in the driver seat, unmoving, grabbed their attention.           

“Someone should go over there and invite that man into the Bible Study,” said Emma Jean.

The Sisters looked at her.

            “Oh, no, not me,” said Emma Jean.  “I’d be too embarrassed,” she said to Maggie.  “You do it.”

            “I’ll do it,” said Marcie, before her sister could take a step, and trotted over to the car, one hand pressed to her hat so it wouldn’t fall off.  “Sir,” she said tapping on the window, “sir! Why don’t you come in to the bible study?  It’s too hot to stay out here in the parking lot all by yourself.  Sir?”  For a moment, there was silence as Marcie peered through the closed window, and then she began to scream, high pitched and rhythmic, like a train whistle.

            Maggie ran to her sister to calm her. “Why, what’s the matter?” she said, but then she too peered into the car, and then she too backed away and turned, fanning herself with a Ministries flyer, her face suddenly pale. Other groups of ladies joined them piecemeal, and soon they too were screaming, fanning themselves, and bursting into epic tears, while Emma Jean, who had started it all, remained at a discrete distance watching in horror at the growing pool of ladies standing around the blue Ford Focus, alternately weeping and screaming, weeping and screaming.  Emma Jean wasn’t going over there for all the money in the bank.  She didn’t want to know.

 

 

 

 

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