Have A Little Faith Part 11

I nodded. I told him about the charity. How maybe we could help.

"Oh." His eyebrows lifted. "Well. That would be excellent."

I looked around.

This is a big church, I said.

"I know it," he said, chuckling.

You have a New York accent.

"Um-hmm. Brooklyn."

Was this your first a.s.signment?

"Yes. When I first came, I was a deacon and a caretaker. I swept, mopped, vacuumed, cleaned the toilets."

I thought of how the Reb, when he first arrived at our temple, had to help clean up and lock the doors. Maybe that's how Men of G.o.d develop humility.

"Long time ago," Henry said, "this was a famous church. But a few years back, they sold it to our ministry. Actually, they said if you can pay the upkeep, it's yours."

I glanced around.

Were you always going to be a pastor?

He snorted a laugh.

"Noooo."

What did you plan on doing when you got out of school?

"Actually, I was in prison."

Really? I said, acting casual. What for?

"Whoo, I did a lot of things. Drugs, stealing cars. I went to prison for manslaughter. Something I wasn't even involved in."

And how did you get from that to this?

"Well...one night I thought I was going to be killed by some guys I stole from. So I made G.o.d a promise. If I lived to the morning, I would give myself to Him."

He paused, as if some rusty old pain had just rumbled inside him. "That was twenty years ago," he said.

He patted his forehead with a handkerchief. "I seen a lot in life. I know what the songwriter meant when he wrote, 'Glory, Glory, hallelujah, since I laid my burden down.'"

Okay, I said, because I didn't know what you say to that.

A few minutes later, we walked to the side exit. The floors were caked with grime. A stairway ran down to a small, dimly lit gymnasium, where, he told me, the homeless slept.

I was noncommittal about the charity help that day, saying I'd come back and we could talk more. To be honest, the prison thing was a red flag. I knew people could change. I also knew some people only changed locations.

Covering sports for a living-and living in Detroit-I had seen my share of bad behavior: drugs, a.s.sault, guns. I had witnessed "apologies" in crowded press conferences. I interviewed men so adept at convincing you the trouble was behind them, that I would write laudatory stories-only to see the same men back in trouble a few months later.

In sports, it was bad enough. But I had a particular distaste for religious hypocrisy. Televangelists who solicited money, got arrested for lewd behavior, and soon were back soliciting under the guise of repentance-that stuff turned my stomach. I wanted to trust Henry Covington. But I didn't want to be naive.

And then, let's be honest, his world of faith wasn't one I was used to. So broken down. So makes.h.i.+ft. The church seemed to sag even on the inside. inside. The up staircase, Henry said, led to a floor where five tenants lived in dormlike rooms. The up staircase, Henry said, led to a floor where five tenants lived in dormlike rooms.

So, wait, people live live in your church? in your church?

"Yes. A few. They pay a small rent."

How do you pay your bills?

"Mostly from that."

What about members.h.i.+p dues?

"There aren't any."

Then how do you get paid a salary?

He laughed.

"I don't."

We stepped out into the sun. The one-legged man was still there. He smiled. I forced a smile back.

Well, Pastor, I'll be in touch, I said.

I don't know if I meant it.

"You're welcome to come to service on Sunday," he said.

I'm not Christian.

He shrugged. I couldn't tell if that meant okay, then you're not welcome, or okay, you still are.

Have you ever been in a synagogue? I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "when I was a teenager."

What was the occasion?

He looked down sheepishly.

"We were robbing it."

OCTOBER.

Old The synagogue parking lot was jammed with cars, and the spillover stretched half a mile down the main road. It was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the day when, it is said, the Lord decides who will be sealed in the Book of Life for another year.

Although solemn by any measure, this was always the Reb's s.h.i.+ning hour, the morning for which his greatest sermons seemed reserved. It was rare when congregants did not go home buzzing about the Reb's message on life, death, love, forgiveness.

Not today. At eighty-nine, he had stopped giving sermons. He made no appearance on the pulpit. Instead, he sat quietly among the other wors.h.i.+ppers, and I sat in the next section over, beside my father and mother, as I had done on this occasion all my life.

It was the one day I looked like I belonged.

At some point during the afternoon service, I walked over to find the Reb. I pa.s.sed former cla.s.smates, vaguely familiar faces but with thinning hair now, or eyegla.s.ses, or jowls that didn't used to be there. They smiled and whispered h.e.l.lo, recalling me faster than I did them, and I wondered if deep down they thought I felt superior because I'd moved on. They might have been justified; I think I acted that way.

The Reb was sitting a few seats off the aisle, clapping along to an upbeat prayer. He wore a cream-colored robe, as usual, but his walker, which he hated to use in public, rested against the nearby wall. Sarah was next to him, and when she spotted me, she tapped her husband, who looked over from his clapping.

"Ahh," he said. "All the way from Detroit."

His family members helped him up.

"Come. Let's talk."

He eased out slowly, finding the walker. People in the aisle drew in, hands at the ready, in case he needed help. You could see in their faces the mix of reverence and concern.

He grabbed the handles and steered himself out.

Twenty minutes later, after stopping every few feet to greet somebody, we found seats in his small office, across from the large one he'd once inhabited. I had never before had a private audience with the Reb on the holiest day of the year. It felt strange being in his office when all those other people were outside.

"Your wife is here?" he asked.

With my folks, I said.

"Good."

He had always been sweet to my wife. And he never chafed me over her faith. That was kind.

How are you feeling? I asked.

"Ach. They want me to eat today."

Who?

"The doctors."

It's okay.

"It isn't." He clenched a fist. "Today we fast. That is my tradition. I want to do what I always did."

He lowered the fist, which shook on its own.

"You see?" he whispered. "This is man's dilemma. We rail against it."

Getting old?

"Getting old, we can deal with. Being Being old is the problem." old is the problem."

One of the Reb's most memorable sermons, to me, anyhow, came after his oldest living relative, an aunt, had died. His mother and father were already gone, and his grandparents were long since buried. As he stood near his aunt's grave, he realized a simple but frightening thought: I'm next.

What do you do when death's natural pecking order puts you in the front of the line, when you no longer can hide behind "It's not my turn"?

Seeing the Reb now, slumped behind his desk, reminded me, sadly, of how long he had been on top of his family's list.

Why don't you do sermons anymore? I asked.

"I can't bear the thought," he said, sighing. "If I stumbled on a word. If, at a key moment, I should lose my place-"

You don't need to be embarra.s.sed.

"Not me," he corrected. "The people. If they see me dis...o...b..bulated...it reminds them that I'm dying. I don't want to scare them like that."

I should have known he was thinking of us.

As a child, I truly believed there was a Book of Life, some huge, dusty thing in a library in the sky, and once a year, on the Day of Atonement, G.o.d flipped through the pages with a feathered quill pen and-check, check, X, check-you lived or you died. I was always afraid that I wasn't praying hard enough, that I needed to shut my eyes tighter to will G.o.d's pen from one side to the other.

What do people fear most about death? I asked the Reb.

"Fear?" He thought for a moment. "Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?"

That's big.

"Yes. But there's something else."