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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781681629216 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Turner Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 06/01/1999 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
David Sage met his savior early one Monday morning in the day room of a psychiatric ward, 6 North, Municipal Hospital, Horton, Tennessee.
A short, stocky man, broad through the shoulders, and approaching middle age, Sage had a peasant body that was in stark contrast to his face. His even features had a thoughtful, intelligent look, maybe even aristocratic, at least before his nose had been broken. He was dressed in blue jeans and a checkered shirt, his standard costume even when he wore an out-of-date knit tie and a sports jacket to work.
The savior, in this particular incarnation, was one Gaynel Potts, a dwarf-like woman with frizzy hair and humped shoulders. Her disproportionately large head was accentuated by a pair of black framed glasses with lenses as thick as the bottoms of soft drink bottles. She was about forty-five years old.
Sage would never hear Gaynel claim to be the only child of God, though at times she did infer that she was the favorite of the moment.
She twirled in slowly that first morning as Sage sat, hands trembling, drinking black coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He tried to ignore the woman as she danced in his direction, like one of those plastic ballerinas glued to a magnetic base that skims drunkenly across the mirror of a cheap music box.
Stopping in the middle of a dainty turn, she lifted the cup of coffee from his hands and took a sip, closing her eyes and momentarily holding her breath as though she was savoring that cup of coffee beyond all other cups she had ever tasted. Herhair stood out in a frizzy halo, a home permanent gone bad.
"Good morning, my child. You look troubled," she said in a deep, melodic voice. Her expression was one of bliss. Sage would learn that she was always blissful, except when her husband showed up for a visit. During those times, she would revert to being an ordinary, frumpy little housewife with a squeaky, strained voice.
"So what else is new?" he asked irritably, getting up for a fresh cup of coffee. "As far as I know, this is the place for troubled people."
"Dance is worship also," she said, "but the scribes and Pharisees never saw that. You must learn to accept me if you are to be saved." She took another delicate sip of coffee and again savored it dramatically.
"Great," he mumbled, turning his chair away from her as he sat back down, "a woman who thinks she's Jesus Christ."
"No, no, no." She patted him from behind on the shoulder. "There was only one Jesus. Each of us comes wherever and whenever we are needed. I am sent here to minister with my dance. You must accept me to be saved."
David Sage turned angrily to look at her, vile words on the tip of his tongue. He never spoke them, though, for he quickly became lost in her brown, watery eyes as they stared back at him through the thick lenses, her pupils seeming twice their actual size.
"Repent and be saved," she said quietly, placing her left hand gently on top of his head. "The kingdom is at hand."
Opening his mouth, he tried to spew out the anger that had become his social coin. Instead, he began to sob, great chest-wracking sobs of agony. There within the pale, sickly green walls of the short-term psychiatric treatment center where the air was permeated with the odors of urine, cigarette smoke, and disinfectant, David Sage broke down.
"Yes, I repent. Please forgive me," he begged.
"What is the nature of your sin?" Gaynel asked.
"I don't know! I really don't know," he cried.
"Have no fear child, when your time has come, I will save you. Wait on the Lord."
* * *
"Let's see," Dr. Wohlford said, holding Sage's chart at arm's length. A man in his early fifties, he had not yet accepted that he needed reading glasses. Psychiatrists, Sage had decided, gave in to the ravages of time no more gracefully than the rest of humanity. "This is your third visit with us in three months. Still depressed, I take it?"
Wohlford was too tall for the size of his small, bushy head. He always wore a bow tie, which only drew attention to his scrawny neck. A bad case of boyhood acne had left his face deeply pitted, and his Adam's apple bounced like a rubber ball when he talked.
"Yes."
"Have you been taking your antidepressant?"
"No."
"What have you been taking? The admitting physician says you were extremely intoxicated when you came in last night. The woman who brought you in told him you had been talking about suicide." The psychiatrist fished a curved briar pipe out of the pocket of his tweed jacket and stuck it in his mouth, but did not light it.
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember what you were taking, or you don't remember what you said?"
"I took about fifty milligrams of Xanax over the course of an evening and drank a fifth of vodka. I don't know what I said to Jamey."
"It's dangerous mixing drugs. You know that, don't you? Of all people, you should know that, considering the nature of your work." He made a wet sucking sound with the unlit pipe.
Sage nodded assent.
"Anything new to report other than feelings of anxiety and worthlessness?"
"Well, nothing ... except ... it's not important." Sage jiggled the bait.
"I'll decide what's important," the doctor said, leaning forward to look at Sage the way a pathologist examines a specimen under a slide.
"My savior has appeared to me," Sage blurted out, as if with great reluctance.
The doctor's eyes lit up. He tried unsuccessfully to cover his glee at finding a psychotic symptom, where he had suspected only a dull, run-of-the-mill neurosis.
"When did this happen?"
"Well, I've been in search of salvation for some time, looking for my lost soul, I guess you could say. But it was only this morning when the savior appeared in the flesh to save me from my sins. Right here in the day room while I was drinking coffee."
"And what did the savior say?" Wohlford laid his pipe on the table and stared with rapt attention.
"To repent and be saved," Sage said. "It was a very clear message."
"Interesting." The psychiatrist picked up the cold pipe and began to suck on it again, his cheeks puffing in and out, fishlike. "You've never manifested hallucinations before."
"I know, but it was as if I could have reached out and touched the savior if I had wanted to. We were that close."
"Mr. Sage, as you know, we normally stabilize depressed patients and move them out as soon as possible, but I'd like to watch you for a few days to see if these hallucinations clear up or if you're going to need long-term help. I'll order something for your obvious anxiety, and we'll talk about a course of treatment later."
"Whatever you say, Doctor. I want to get better, no matter what it takes."
"All right, then." He made a note on the patient's chart. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Sage hid his delight behind a solemn mask. There was no way he was going to leave Gaynel—not until he found out if she truly could save him. He intended to keep inventing psychotic symptoms as long as necessary, for that morning as Gaynel had put her hand on his head, he had been overwhelmed by a vivid memory.
He saw a cherry wood framed plaque hanging on a bedroom wall in his grandmother's old house on Watauga Avenue. The gold and black lettering in Old English script stood out from the faded and peeling floral print of the turn-of-the-century wallpaper. As a child when he stayed overnight at his grandmother's, the plaque was always the first thing he saw when he awoke. He didn't remember when he was first able to read it, but one morning, when he was around seven years old, he had suddenly realized that he knew the meaning of the words:
Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
Psalm 27:14
David Sage had not been able to save himself, that was for sure. The vodka and the pills had not worked. Studying the Bible brought no relief. But the savior, in the guise of Gaynel Potts, had promised to save him when it was time. God had obviously been preparing him all of his life. What other explanation could there be for the plaque over his grandmother's bed, his infatuation with the Bible, and Gaynel's promise to save him if he would only wait?
* * *
"Have you thought about your soul?" Gaynel asked the old man on the couch beside her. He appeared to be about sixty and had fluffy white hair and startling blue eyes. His mouth was devoid of teeth. From time to time, he would yell, "Beal on deck! Beal on deck!" Otherwise, he remained silent, except for an occasional hearty chuckle.
David Sage listened attentively to the conversation that was taking place after the doctors' rounds and just before lunch. Most of the patients had taken their places at the card tables and were waiting on the meal cart. Since there were never enough card tables, many patients sat at the old Ping-Pong table on folding chairs, napkins laid out as if in a fine restaurant.
"There was still a lot of sailin' ships around in them days," he replied to Gaynel's inquiry about his soul.
"It's easy," she told him, reaching over to pat his arm. "All you have to do is put your trust in me and the heavenly Father."
"I sailed out of Boston in 1938 on the Crimson Lady, goin' to China. We was a hundred miles to sea before I knew she was a jinxed ship. The last cap'n had strangled his wife. Women on a merchant ship was always bad news."
"If you need more time, my son, I'll wait. Just remember I love you and the Father loves you."
"The Tin Lizzie, on the other hand, was as fine a ship as I ever sailed on." Without interrupting himself, the old man reached over and lifted the hem of Gaynel's dress, the pattern of which looked like the ticking from an old feather pillow, exactly like the ones Sage's grandmother had used on her beds. "I spent three years aboard her, sailed the world twice around."
As he lifted her dress, Gaynel slapped his hand away, then said in a kind, even tone: "You must focus on God, my son."
Gaynel fended off the old man twice more before a nurse's aide noticed what was happening and grabbed the old sailor's gnarled hand. "Mr. Beal! You stop that, right now! That type of behavior is totally unacceptable—and it's disgusting."
Gaynel looked up at the young nurse's aide intently for a moment, and said, in her beautiful melodic voice: "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone."
Then, taking a deep breath, she primly pushed the dress down, got up and danced away as if nothing had happened.
"Beal on deck! Beal on deck!" the old man yelled with a laugh from deep in his chest.
Gaynel Potts, Sage decided, was, as the apostle Paul had claimed to be, all things to all men.