Charity (From Purgatory)

Six am, Mavis hammering on the Kombi window, “You ready?”     

Amory and Augie sitting up, Augie saying, ‘For what?’

“Church,”     

“What church?”     

Mavis wearing a long, red dress, trailing in the mud and shit,

Her twin sister Shirley, smart slacks, loose shirt, cravat, like there was a conference,

and she was the key speaker;

Her face beside her sister’s at the window, “We like to get started by eight,”     

Augie looked at Amory, “I don’t remember them saying anything about church.”     

Either way, Sunday morning had always been church for the Mattiskes,

The gum-booted sisters setting off across the field, Bibles and thermoses in hand,

Mavis calling, “When yer ready.”

Augie pulling on his pants and shirt and boots, sliding the door open and saying,

“Where’s the church?”     

Mavis indicating a distant hill.

Dressed, ready, Augie and Amory set off after them.     

Augie tripping on an old plough, sitting in the grass moaning about his ankle, but this

didn’t stop the twins;

Amory taking him under the arm and leading him towards a distant Calvary,

Said, “I’m dying for a pee.”     

But there was no time for that, God was calling under a grey sky, and the sisters were

running towards Salvation,

A herd of cows following in their wake; 

Mavis turned back, waited for them (as Shirley continued), saying, “I’m sorry for the

inconvenience, but these things don’t take care of themselves,”

And Augie, “What things?”

There was no reply,

Mavis continued and Amory said, “Screw this,” squatted in the long grass and

emptied her bladder;

Augie, too, because he’d been holding it in all night,

Scared of waking Amory (using his belly as a pillow).

Over the hill, down in a valley, they saw Ma Godwit sitting on fertilizer bags,

Facing a flatbed truck; no tires, cab doors hanging off, (“Mattiske & Daughters”     

and painted beneath it: “Cattle, Prayer, Amway &c.”);

Mavis and Shirley climbed a set of steps onto the truck,

Stood in front of a twelve-foot cross held up with cables, and Shirley opened her

Bible, placed it on a lectern, and Mavis sat at what was left of an upright

piano.

Amory and Augie walked through the herd (sniffing them),

Sat beside Ma Godwit and introduced themselves;

She said, “Shirls told me so much about youse,”

Although they had no idea what.

“Michael was all set to come, but he’s laid up,”

“Michael?”

“My boy,”

“That’s a shame.”

Mavis tickling the ivories, strings out-of-tune, just enough harmony to suggest music, 

As the sisters sang, “The wonders of th’ Almighty hand, Devoutly we admire ...”

Augie turned to Amory and said, “Do you know this one?”

But she just shrugged, “I’m hungry.”

But it didn’t matter, church had begun,

Broken music mixing with a distant angle-grinder, crows, God’s breath (Augie

thought, before dismissing the idea) flattening the grass;

The sisters wailing an out-of-key ode to their Lutheran Savior,

Mavis turning to the congregation of sixteen and smiling.

Shirley noticed the lack of participation,

Called down if Ma Godwit could share her hymnal;

She offered it up,

Saying, “Don’t worry about the notes.”

So they all sang,

Augie and Amory improvising (something):

“Oh! fear not, doubt not, that our God Hath all a father’s care,

With joy to heaven your hearts uplift, For endless joys are there.”

The cows, too, happy with green grass,

Stopping to look up at their keepers;

Amory and Augie giving up, mouthing the words,

Augie saying, “There’s rain coming. How long do you reckon it lasts?”

Irrelevant!

Mavis stopped playing and there was quiet in the long paddock;

Shirley explaining, “For those of you new to our service, now we have the homily,

followed by the blessings,”

Amory wondered where breakfast came into it, but maybe that was the price you paid

for sleeping in.

“How does a person learn to believe?” Shirley began,

Augie was unsure if it was rhetorical, but decided against making a fool of himself;

“I’ll tell you how,”

Looking from Ma Godwit to Augie to Amory, Amory to Augie to Ma Godwit, short

stares, long stares, look-aways, intimate discomfort in an infinite paddock.

“God makes himself known to us, doesn’t he, Mavis?”

Who nodded;

“He waits until we’ve reached our limit then,” and in a trio with Ma Godwit,

“Makes himself known to us.”

Augie thought this was fair, he was still waiting for a sign,     

Amory, too, knew the long and short of it, but just watched Augie’s face;

Augie felt, somehow, somewhere, in some form, he was in the presence of a God he

didn’t believe in,

But that, too, seemed part of his Mission.

“I was a right cow, wasn’t I?” Shirley said to her sister,

Who smiled and nodded, holding her dress against the wind (though Augie had

already seen her Reg Grundies);

“I gave Dad hell, didn’t I, Mavis?”

“You did.”

Augie didn’t get it,      

How had he come to be in a paddock listening to two mad sisters talking about God?

But he was here, and that was all that mattered,      

What happens, not what might’ve (and certainly not what should’ve). 

“Anyway,” Shirley continued, “I’d give Dad hell ... he’d drag us to church, up this

Hill” – indicating – “and I’d scream and shout and kick and curse, like it was

the worst thing someone could do to another person,”

Checking with her sister, who smiled again, and said, “The worst thing.”

As Augie looked at Amory,

Waiting for a reply. 

“I remember him dragging me by the arm, didn’t he, Mavis?”

“Yes.”

“In the dress Mum made me put on, and look at us now, sister, still putting it on,”

Letting in a personal silence, like there was something in that, too.

“Dragging me through the mud and I’d say, No bloody way am I ...”

Sighing, “I was a shit.”

Mavis and Ma Godwit agreed, a shit, but God, they said, was patient,

And time was more than seconds, minutes and hours.

Augie felt Amory’s eyes on him,

Turned and said, “We could be here all day.”

But she didn’t reply, just smiled, turned back to listen to Shirley,

And the sermon on the truck.

“Anyway,” Shirley said, “this went on for years, didn’t it, Mavis?”

“It did.”

“And eventually Dad got sick of trying to convince me and gave up and left me at

home on a Sunday and I guess he was so disappointed,”

But perhaps, she said, he knew.

“Years went by … is everyone comfortable?”

Augie said, “Fine, continue, please” as Amory smiled at him;

And Shirley said, “Years went by, and this one day, it was down the hill there, and it

was raining, heavy, a real storm, and I was out with the girls, and I was soaked

and cold and wet and shitty and I tripped on a branch and fell into this puddle,

a big puddle, right down there it was, and I spat the mud from my mouth and

looked up at the sky, at God – yes, God, see! – and I said, You miserable

bastard. I curse you forever and ever, every minute of every day and all time

I curse you, you miserable shit.”

The truck windows, the ground, the air rumbling with thunder, the sisters looking at

each other, but saying nothing, because when it really mattered, words weren’t

necessary.

“But then, sitting there, I thought, how can I curse a god I don’t believe in?

How can I get angry at him, why do I care about him?

And at that moment,”

Holding the sides of the lectern, trying to steady herself.

Mavis came over, held her, squeezed her,

Returned to her piano stool;

And with all the fight in the world,

Shirley said, “That was the moment I realized I’d been wrong, everyone, we were

all wrong if we refused to believe in something that made us from the

dirt and hay and blood and barley and all of it, made us, what other

explanation could there be for it?”     

Then she looked at him, and said,

“Have I convinced you, Augie?”

Who said, “I’ve always wanted to believe, but I’ve never been able.”

“That was me!” Shirley said, “but I moved outside of myself, see, in the storm,

something bigger, outside of me, God, and you must, too, Augie Sauers.”

Above the approaching storm, Augie said, “It never seemed to add up, to make

sense,”

“Let go of your facts, Augie Sauers,” Mavis said;

“I’ve tried and tried but I can’t, how do you do it?”

“Let go,” Ma Godwit said, then the three of them, like witches: “Let go.”

“But it didn’t, it doesn’t make sense, some old guy living in the sky controlling it all

and giving kiddies cancer,”

“Why should he be blamed for that?” Shirley asked;

“He claims to control everything.”

“Where, where did he say that?”

Augie wasn’t sure, he probably never said it, but it was implied, wasn’t it?

“It’d be good to have faith, and I’ve tried but I can’t, and if there’s a way?”

Amory staring at him,

“You’re a man of surprises, Augie Sauers.”

“Patience,” Shirley said,

“But I’m an old man, I’m nearly dead.”

“Nonsense. If it’s meant to be it’ll be, won’t it, Amory?”

She agreed, when it came to death, age hardly mattered.

Either way, the weather was getting worse, 

So Mavis said they should get the blessings done;

She and Shirley came down from the flatbed, moved among the cattle, motioned for

the others to follow them, 

Shirley placed her hand on a heifer’s head and said, “One: Though I speak with the

tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding

brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

Augie stood back, bothered, but strangely bucolic, 

Like he hadn’t inherited a life full of pessimism;

Like love was everywhere and always had been and it was him, his stubbornness, 

That’d prevented him seeing this.

Shirley moved to an under-nourished steer,

Placed her hand on his head and said: “Two: And though I have the gift of prophecy,

and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith,

so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”

Although Augie understood charity as something different,

Something more closely resembling love. 

He looked at Amory, who took his arm, who dropped her head onto his shoulder,

Like George had been saved, like the park, her father, Herzog, all of them;      

Saying to Augie, “You should have a go,”

“But I’m not a Christian.”

They all agreed, it didn’t matter, love was greater than labels,

So he stepped forward, touched the next cow on the head and read from Shirley’s

Bible;

“Three: And though I bestow all my good to feed the poor, and though I give my body

to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”

Continuing, as the storm grew up around them, as he tasted the rain and paddocks and

animals and people and charity in his mouth.

As he tasted history and hate and salt,     

His lost love’s breath and body and shit and sweat;

“Four: Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not

itself, is not puffed up,”

And his old enemy Boniface, he loved Boniface (though he couldn’t say why), and

the old man Germano and the vet and the girl in the servo and the journalist,

he loved all of them.

“Five: Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,

thinketh no evil.”

Working through Corinthians 13 as the rain fell so hard it hurt, but what’d it matter?

“Six: Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.”

Thunder, lightning, but none of the cows moved, none of them wanted to move.

And then, just short of some revelation,

He approached Mungu (the only steer the Mattiskes had named) and touched his head

saying (without even looking at the Bible):

“Thirteen: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these

is charity,”

As Mungu looked into his eyes, like there was something he wanted to say to him.