Billy Coffey

storyteller

The poor folk

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I ask Larry if he’s still watching over the poor folk every time I see him, and every time he says yes. He says yes and then offers me one of those nods that are accompanied by pursed lips. You know, the kind of expression that means it’s tough to look but you have to anyway. Someone’s got to watch over them, Larry says, and it might as well be him. Especially since he was poor once.

He’ll tell me he still watches over them from the same place, right across the river from the big building where they like to gather. Not a pretty sight—Larry will tell me that too, and always—but one worth watching nonetheless, if only for the education the sight provides. “There but for the grace of God,” he’ll say, and then he’ll nod and purse his lips again.

He says there have been times in the past when he’s taken the bridge across the river and gone to see them. Or tried. The poor folk will sometimes entertain Larry’s presence for a while. He was after all one of them once, and the poor folk are mannerly on the outside even if they are lost inward. They’ll say hello and how-you-doing and come-on-in. Larry will hello them back and say he’s fine, just fine. But he never goes in the big building. He’s been in there too many times in his life, he’ll tell me, and he’s seen all there is to be seen. I guess that’s true enough, but sometimes I think Larry’s afraid he’ll catch the poor again, like it’s some sort of communicable disease spread by contact.

Better than driving across the bridge to say hello is to stay on the other side of the river and watch. That’s what he tells me. It’s sort of a warning, though it’s one I don’t need. To be honest, I don’t have much of a desire to be around the poor folk. I like it where I am, right here with Larry and the rich people. Maybe I’m afraid I’ll catch poor, too. Maybe deep down I think they’ll sneeze on me.

Larry says he has God to thank for being rich now, and when he says this he won’t nod and purse his lips. He’s much more apt to pat the rust spot on his old truck—a ’95 Ford from down at the local car lot, which was a steal at $5,000—or take off his greasy cap as a sign of respect for invoking the Almighty. Yesir, Larry will say, God stripped away all of his poor and made him rich. I guess that’s nothing new in a time when a lot of people think God’s sole purpose in the universe is to shower down hundred dollar bills on everyone who’s washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Sometimes I’ll ask him if the people who gather at the big building across the river are all poor. Surely there are a few rich ones mixed in. He’ll tell me yes, there are a few rich ones, but they’re rare. Once he said I’d just as soon go in the big building looking for a unicorn as I would a rich person. I laughed at that. I think it was the way he’d said it—“Yooney-corn.”

Still, curiosity kicked in. I had to find out for myself.

I drove up to the big building one town over, careful to park across the river as Larry suggested. Lines of cars filled the parking lot—from my vantage point, I saw seven Mercedes, half a dozen BMWs, and three Jaguars. I watched patrons adorned in fancy dresses and pressed suits go in for dinner, watched the golf and tennis players come out.

Larry’s poor folk.

He was once one of them (it was the Mercedes and the golf for Larry, the fancy dress for his wife, and the tennis for his kids). They were at the country club five days a week and sometimes six, depending on how busy they all were. He’ll say he swore he was rich. But then came the recession followed by the job loss, and suddenly the Mercedes was gone (replaced by the truck, a steal at five grand) and so was the country club.

That’s when God showed Larry that what he thought was riches was really poverty. That’s when Larry found that wealth is better measured in love and family and simple things.

Larry says he never knew how poor he was because all that money got in the way. Now he says he’s the richest man in the county.

I think he might be right.

***

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Patrick’s price

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Sit Patrick down beside his senior picture in the yearbook, you’d swear he graduated only a couple weeks ago. If I told you the truth, you’d scrunch your brow in one of those looks that says Huh-uh, no way. Then I’d tell you I wasn’t lying, because I’m not—Patrick graduated fifteen years ago.

Still looks like a kid, though. Still has that longish hair boys seem to want to keep now, still engaged in a war of attrition with patches of acne on his cheeks. It’s almost like Patrick slipped into some kind of crack in time way back and has just now found his way out.

But that’s not the case. He’s been around. I’ve seen him.

He still lives at home, though not with his parents. They’ve passed on. It was rough on Patrick just as it would be rough on any of us. His parents left him the house in their will, he’s the owner now, but he still sleeps in his old room and refuses to claim the master bedroom. Patrick’s momma used to tease him whenever he sat on their bed, saying that was the very spot where he was conceived. That thought has never left Patrick’s mind. He says there’s not enough Tide in the world to clean those sheets enough for him to lie there at night.

I guess you could say he has a good life. Steady job, place to live, food on the table. Patrick says he’s free. I suppose he is in some ways. He comes and goes as he wishes and is beholden to none but the Lord, whom he dutifully greets most mornings and every Sunday. He has friends, and though he’ll blush and shrug when you ask him, I have on good notice that women have called on him. That seems to be the one flaw in Patrick’s life, more or less. He’s say that’s true.

He’s seen thirty years come and go. Some people pay little mind to such things and Patrick would count himself among them, but I’m not sure. Whether we pay attention or not to the ticking of that great clock in us all doesn’t really matter I guess, because it ticks on anyway. This moment is both the oldest we’ve ever been and the youngest we’ll ever be from here on out. I think Patrick understands that, even if he’ll never say it.

He likes to talk about how he’s the only one of his friends who’s never been married and divorced. A smile will always come along behind those words, as though he’s happy to say them. Patrick will say he’s not made for matrimony, just like Paul the missionary. Paul was too busy living to settle down. Patrick reckons he’s the same. Besides, he says, why go through all the trouble of loving if it’s just going to fall apart in the end? Why give that best piece of yourself to someone who’s just going to up and move on without you one day? Doesn’t matter if that person ends up on the other side of town (as his friend’s wives have done) or on the other side of the ground (like his parents).

No, doesn’t make much sense going that far. Safer to keep your heart in your own chest, where it belongs. Patrick says that’s why he still looks so young, because he’s still whole and hasn’t given half of himself away. He says it’s easier to go your own way like that. To be free.

Maybe. And on the surface, I suppose he has some good points. But then again, life is never promised to be a safe thing, is it? We may come into this world unscratched, but we leave it with all manner of scars. Risk is worth the pain, I think. That’s how you grow. Trying and failing is better than not trying at all, whether it’s love or a dream. It can hurt (oh, how it can hurt), but I’d still rather look old and haggard than young and untouched by life’s thistles.

Real Simple

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It wasn’t the proximity of the magazine (right there on the table beside me) that caught my eye, it was the title. And since there is little else one can do in a doctor’s waiting room than leaf through germ-riddled periodicals, I did just that.

Real Simple, it read.

Though I’ve since learned it’s quite the popular publication, I had no idea it existed. Did not even know such a subject had been deemed to interesting as to devote an entire magazine to it. My wife has corrected my ignorance on the matter. She said simple is in now. Simple is cool.

Now that I’ve thought about it, I can understand why. It’s a mess out there in the big, wide world. All that shouting and pointing of fingers, all that angst and unease. There was a time not too long ago when most people felt we were all charging headlong into the future, and the future was going to be a wonderful place. No more war, no more hunger, no more want and hurt. Science and technology was going to save us from ourselves.

I think it’s safe to say that’s not really the case anymore. I think a lot of us are beginning to see that we certainly are charging headlong, but the future isn’t as bright as it once was. That our science and technology might help us a great deal, but it also sucks our time and, in the process, maybe a little bit of our souls. Everything seems so complicated, and that same hidden part of us that whispers a random cough might be a building cold is whispering that complicated isn’t good, complicated makes things harder. And the cure for complicated? Simple.

I think of a relative of mine living up in the mountains. A simple man with a simple home. Woodstove for heat, well for water. He doesn’t have much, but he has what he needs and is all the better for it. Sometimes I think riches are best measured not in how much of something we have, but how much of something we can let go of.

Snow is falling just outside my window right now. The smart man on the radio doesn’t really know how much will end up on the roads and grass, only that it will be “measureable.” And even now I can see men and women coming home after a long day with gallons of milk and loaves of bread in their hands. I’ve written before about how and why people turn to the basics when the world bares its teeth. I think the same applies here.

There is much to be said for simplifying things, of cutting back and trimming down. Let’s face it, ours is an imminently blessed nation to call home, and as a result we have an overabundance of stuff we could really do without. And by that, I mean things we possess and things that possess us, things on our outsides and others inside. Because most of us don’t just own a lot, we carry a lot as well.

I’m still on the fence with a resolution for this year. Maybe simplifying my life fits the bill. Maybe instead of getting more, I’ll give more. Maybe instead of hanging on, I’ll let go. Maybe we should all get back to the basics. Maybe getting away from them is the cause of much of the world’s hurts.

The Gospel of Hank

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Saturday afternoon, early November. Cold an dank. Mood? Questionable. Thirst? Very. So I pulled off the road along US Route 11 and into the parking lot of a no-name service station, the sort of which was what you’d expect for rural Virginia—dirty windows, questionable service, and people who made putting up with both well worth the effort.

People like Hank.

The man behind the cash register greeted me with a “Howdy” as I walked through the doors, each of which had been propped open by two twelve-packs of Budweiser. I nodded back and made my way toward the drink cooler in the rear of the store.

“BETTER ONES UP HERE,” shouted a voice.

I turned, and there beneath the mounted head of a deer sat an old man. His red suspenders clashed with his brown pants and blue shirt. He twisted in a vinyl chair and tapped his cane on the bin beside him.

“ICE MAKES ‘EM COLDER THAN THAT GOL’-DARNED ‘FRIDGERATOR CAN,” he shouted again.

“You got a point there,” I told him.

“HUH?”

“YOU GOT A POINT THERE.”

“AH,” he said and smiled.

I grabbed a Coke from the bin and swabbed the condensation with my shirt, nodding once more. The old man wheezed and coughed a hunk of phlegm into his handkerchief.

I took a sip and paced the store, taking stock of the sardines and canned vegetables, both of which had expired three months prior.

A mother and her brood of three came in just then, all of whom got their own howdy from the cashier. The kids made a bee line for the magazine rack while mom paced the aisles in search of an elusive Something.

“Do you sell salt?” she said to the cashier.

“LAST AISLE, YOUNG LADY,” the old man said, pointing his cane to the opposite side of the store. She smiled a thank you, and he smiled a you’re welcome.

He wasn’t done, either. In the next fifteen minutes, the old man had noticed the keys a customer had dropped, reminded another that his headlights were on, and squished a rather nasty cockroach.

“You have a pretty good helper over there,” I told the cashier as I paid.

He smiled and said, “Yeah, Hank’s been around forever. Used to own the place until he started getting sick.”

As if on cue, Hank began hacking again.

“So he still comes around?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said as he offered my change. “He’s deaf, weak, and the doc told him last month all those non-filter Camels
have eaten his lungs up. But he still shows up every day wanting to help out and do somethin’.”

I shoved the change into my pocket and looked at Hank, who had made himself busy by using his cane to scrap half of the dead cockroach from the bottom of his boot.

I had to smile at the sight. Though I knew nothing of the man, it seemed so utterly Hank.

That a simple man in a no-name gas station on a fall afternoon could teach me something was a little unexpected, but then again there are lessons to be learned in most anything. Especially in the sight of an old man clinging to what little life he had left.

Strip away theology’s pretense and philosophy’s theories and we are faced with this one basic question when it comes to the conduct of our lives—what does God expect from us each day?

Over the years I had come up with many possible answers—to love Him and others, to do our best to leave the day a little better than we’ve found it, and so on. But after watching Hank, I knew the real answer to that question.
What does God expect from us each day? Simple.

To show up.

We can give God our hearts and our desires, give Him our minds and our talents, but if we don’t give Him our time, those things just don’t matter.

Poor Hank could have spent his last remaining days at home watching HGTV, but he didn’t. He still showed up in that little gas station every day willing to do whatever he could to help despite his weaknesses and infirmities. I think we should do the same.

Because no matter how wounded we are, no matter how broken and beaten, we can always do something to help. We can always make a difference.

The walking dead

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Last Saturday I donned my best suit and tie and drove to the local funeral home, where I faced the unenviable task of expressing condolences to a family suffering through the worst kind of pain: the death of the man who was both husband and father.

Funeral homes rank just below hospitals as Worst Places I Want to Visit, and it’s still a pretty close race.
The reasons weren’t all that obvious. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of this world, knew that however much suffering and pain involved in getting there was worth the price, and knew that, in the end, everything would be just fine.

I didn’t like funeral homes because I was afraid of death. I was mournful of the pain the dead left behind. Like the pain felt by the wife left to tend to her family, the children left to mourn their lost innocence, and the parents who were burying their son. Parents who once found comfort in knowing they would pass first through the thin veil between this world and the next, but who were now left with the hard-won knowledge that it’s often the things we most take for granted in life that disappoint us in the end.

Standing in front of the open casket, I pondered who this person was. Son and brother. Soldier. Factory worker. Known to his family as Sweetheart and Dad, Lover and Best Friend. Lived a good life. Was a good man.

“It was so sudden, wasn’t it?” sobbed a stranger beside me.

I nodded to her. She was right. He left for the grocery store and offered a quick “Be back soon” to his family, but what came back was merely the earthen vessel I was looking down upon. One moment here, the next gone.

I moved on to others who represented a small portion of his friends and family, engaging myself in the polite and hushed conversations that funeral homes require. Small talk, mostly. Weather and crops first, which merged into recollections of the deceased second, which moved on to the sadness last.

Each exchange brought a variation of the sobbing woman beside me had said moments before.

“It was so sudden,” she had said.
Echoed by others as:

“He passed so quickly.”

“He died far too young.”

“There was no warning.”

I listened to them all, keeping my answers brief. A Yes to the question of “Horrible, isn’t it?” A nod to “Such a shame.”

A shame, yes. Unfortunate and horrible. But as I looked upon the solemn faces of the gathered, I realized there was far worse shame and misfortune in this life. Far worse horrors.

Should the quickness of a death that must come to us all be cause for added grief? Perhaps. But perhaps it would do us all well to remember that the next moment is never guaranteed. And perhaps it would do us all well to know there is a death worse than what I experienced in that room. One that does not strike with speed, but numbness.

Far worse than the buried dead are those who have perished and yet still walk. Those who have yielded to the crushing weight of the world, who have surrendered their hopes and dreams to the arid winds of despair. Who have seen too much darkness and so surrendered their light, believing it to be too faint to matter.

That life must simply be endured is among the worst of lies. We are not merely to tolerate this world, but overcome it. We are called not to plod on, but to laugh and skip.

God commands us not to guard our hearts, but to give them freely. To feel pain instead of ignoring it, if only so that pain can turn to greater joy. To face our struggles with steeled eyes and iron will. To take the arrows of circumstance in our chests, marching forward, and not our backs in retreat.

This is our duty. Our charge. And to fail is to fail both ourselves and our God. It is to meet the end before our ending. That is the worst death. Not the one that robs the body of its soul, but the heart of its passion.

Calling all angels

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742px-Angel_with_Mobile_Phone_420In the village of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, there is a cathedral. Atop the spires and colonnades are statues of saints and angels, many of which are smiling faintly, as if they know all the answers to all the mysteries that vex us so.

One angel in particular has caused something of a stir in that small village. The newest one, erected only last April. Whereas all of its counterparts are garbed in the traditional flowing robes and wings, this one has been modernized with jeans, a laptop, and a cell phone.

It’s the cell phone that captured the attention of one particular husband and wife in the village. The wife especially. So much so, in fact, that she set up a number so people can call the angel. Sort of a heavenly lifeline.

The church, of course, frowned on such a development. They didn’t think it appropriate for anyone to be playing an angel. In their wisdom, however, the bishops decided to let things be. A good thing, that. Because now upwards of thirty people a day dial the angel’s number, and each are greeted by the voice of a very normal and very anonymous Dutch housewife who says, “Hello, this is the little angel.”

It’s all become somewhat of a phenomenon. The angel even now has his own Twitter account (@ut_engelke). Calls come from all sorts of people in all walks of life—old and young, rich and poor, happy and sad. Recently, a little girl called the angel for prayers for her dead grandmother. A widow called for prayers for her dead grandchildren.

The angel (I suppose that should be “angel”) answers them all. She listens. I doubt if much advice is given, but I have no doubt that’s a good thing. When people are hurting, what they need isn’t advice, it’s an ear to whisper into and a shoulder to lean upon.

I read about all of this the other day. It stuck in me. Not so much like a nagging pain. More like an itch you get deep in your ear that can’t be scratched. I couldn’t define that itch then. I think I can now.

What struck me wasn’t so much that somewhere in the Netherlands there exists a statue of an angel wearing jeans and holding a cell phone. Not even that in a tiny village there lives a woman who is now heaven’s answering service. No, what struck me was the number of people every day who call a number they know doesn’t point heavenward to speak to someone they know isn’t an angel, for no other reason than that they are hurting.

That they need help.

That, my friend, is a powerful thing.

I’ve long believed that joy is an individual thing; what makes me happy, what brings me peace and laughter, might not be what would bring those things to you. But when it comes to what makes us hurt, what makes us afraid, what keeps us up at night staring at a vacant ceiling, those things are the same. Maybe not exactly, but close enough.

Our hurts unite us.

They define us.

They make us not only human, but a family.

And if that’s the case, maybe we could all be angels, too.

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