Seeing no way out of it, Herman and I shook hands with him and introduced ourselves back, and the Reverend Mac promptly followed up with just what we did not want to deal with.
Smiling to the fullest under the rim of mustache, he made the modest gesture toward his collar again. “A contribution I can still make to the good cause is to distribute Bibles into hotel rooms,” he confided. “I have been doing so in Billings, which needs all the salvation it can get.” He gave another clickety chuckle, Herman and I trying to politely match it with heh-hehs. I think we both were a little afraid of what was coming, rightfully so. Slick as a carnival barker, the man of the cloth or whatever he was now pulled out a black book with gilt lettering, unmistakably a Bible, saying, “I happen to have an extra, and would be gratified if you gentlemen would accept it as a gift from a fellow traveler.”
With it deposited on him that way, Herman had to take the offering, mumbling a thanks and shoveling the Bible along to me as if I were its natural audience. I gave him a look, but he wouldn’t meet my eye, attending instead to the minister’s rambling about the inevitable good that the Good Book would do in those dens of sin, hotel rooms. What he gave us proved to be a flimsy paperback version with typeface about the size of flyspecks, but it still unnnerved me enough that I didn’t want it paired with the autograph book, and quick as I could, stuck it in my opposite coat pocket.
“It does provide its rewards, spreading the good word.” The minister still was holding forth to us as if we were in a church on wheels. “And that brings me to a question, if I may”—Herman and I both braced, now really knowing what was coming—“are you followers of the Lord, in your own way?”
The bus saved us, barely, gearing down into the town of Laurel at that moment, followed by the driver’s announcement of a ten-minute stop to pick up passengers. As the Greyhound pulled over at the hotel serving as depot, I pleaded to Herman, “I need to go,” although the urge wasn’t really about using the convenience. “Real bad.”
“Me, too.” He was out of his seat as if his pants were on fire, with me right after.
“I’ll mind your seats for you,” Reverend Mac obligingly called after us.
? ? ?
MAKING USE of the restroom since we were there anyway, we spraddled side by side to discuss the minister matter. Escaping a preacher may not sound like the worst problem there is, but you have to admit it is among the trickier ones.
“Sky pilot, Old Shatterhand would call him,” said Herman, buttoning up.
“Nosy old Holy Joe, Gram would call him,” I said, doing the same.
“Ja, he is sniffing awful close to us.”
“Guess what. I’ve got an idea.”
Hearing me out as we headed back to the bus, Herman brightened up and paid me the ultimate compliment, saying I had a good think.
“You do it first, then I do same,” he whispered before we stepped on. As we took our seats, Reverend Mac, his hands peacefully folded, welcomed us back.
He looked as if he’d been jolted in his prayer bones when, first thing, I leaned across Herman and thrust the autograph book at him, asking him ever so nicely to contribute some words of wisdom.
“My goodness, this is quite an honor,” he recovered quickly enough, “and I had better make the most of it, hadn’t I.” He stroked his mustache as he studied the opened album, apparently sorting through holy thoughts. Then he began to write, surprisingly like a schoolboy toiling away at a handwriting exercise.
The Good Book is a stay against the darkness
a source of wisdom
and a comfort in troubled times.
Yours in the fellowship of man
Isaac M. Dezmosz
“Written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond. That’s biblical,” he said, handing me back the Kwik-Klik with that click of his own. “Hallelujah, brother, I thank you for the chance to get those words down.” It seemed to me sort of a preachy inscription and didn’t even rhyme, but what else could I expect, I figured.
“I see you wondering about the last name,” he provided next, noticing Herman’s puzzlement as he studied the inscription over my shoulder. No wonder the man went by Reverend Mac, was my own reaction to what looked like a line from an eye chart.
“A touch of Poland in the family, way back.” He smiled as if we all knew what a tangle the family could be. “Mankind is such a mixture sometimes.”
Herman could readily agree to that, yawning prodigiously some more as he had made sure to do while the reverend wrote.
Yawns are of course catching, and following his, mine were absolutely epidemic, according to my plan. “You know what,” I stretched drowsily, which did not take much pretending, “I’m all in but my shoelaces.”