The Fantasy Years

PASTOR RYAN’S OAKLEY SUNGLASSES sat propped triumphantly over the bill of his St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. He told Brandon to call him Ryan because “titles can be so distancing.” He and Brandon sat in a Denney’s in Arlington. Ryan dressed in shorts and a polo shirt. His tan ran deep into ruddy, healthy skin. He looked like he could have just dismounted a riding mower at a golf course.

Ryan’s blue eyes glowed with peace and confidence, as if Ryan was accustomed to looking only at placid rolling greens, manicured grass covered hillocks with shepherds leading their flocks and golfers passing in the distance.

Already Brandon wanted that peace.

“Okay, Ryan. So I went through a period of my life—a few years ago when I was young—when I was lost. I was without direction. And my priorities were, well, skewed.”

Pastor Ryan nodded. “Go on.”

“To give you an example. I’d get off work and go spend time with my buddies. We’d drink beer and smoke drugs”— Brandon felt the need to couch pot in that bizarre, vague expression — “and yet, I didn’t even have a dependable car.”

Pastor Ryan blinked deeply as he nodded. A smile played at the corners of his mouth.

“It was bad enough to be wasting my time and money on such a lifestyle but to not even know for sure if I’d be able to get to my job on time…”
“Yes.”
“And so my car wouldn’t always start. A couple times it had alternator troubles. And I got in the habit of…saying ‘Please Lord let it start.’ I didn’t think anything of it back then. But as I look back, I realize that if my car didn’t keep going, I couldn’t have gotten to community college.

“And if I didn’t get to community college I wouldn’t have been able to improve my opportunity. And if the car didn’t keep starting, I wouldn’t have met Carolyn, who I’m about to marry and who helped give me direction. And I realized that if my car didn’t keep going, I wouldn’t be who I am today which is someone so much better off than back then.”

Pastor Ryan nodded.

“I used to joke with myself calling it the Covenant of the Car. I would pray to God that my car would start each time I got in it. I wouldn’t even turn the key in the ignition without first saying ‘Please Lord let it start.’

“And I thought I was just joking. I did. But I was also consistent about it. Real consistent. I would say it every time. Even if my stoner buddies were in the car with me. But I did it because the car kept starting. And so it kind of was like a covenant.”

“Turns out you had something there?”
“Yeah.”

Brandon looked down the row of booths. Sunlight flooded in the windows making everything seem buoyant, easy. Then he turned back to Pastor Ryan’s blue eyes which seemed to look right through him, to see the things Brandon was having such a difficult time saying.

“I was raised Catholic. But that seemed to putter out after I was confirmed. And of course, I lost interest as I turned my life over to pleasures of, well—“
“—of the here and now.”
“But the more I think about it.—Like, Carolyn and I, have this baby coming and I started wondering how I knew I was going to be a good dad to the baby because my dad wasn’t probably such a good dad. And I started wondering more and more, how I knew. How do I know?”

“You don’t know.”

“No. I don’t. But I believe I’ll be a good enough dad. And why do I believe? Well, that’s what got me thinking about the Covenant of the Car and how even back then in my lost years, how I had this sense all along that those bad, dark days would pass and something good would come. And it did. And it was faith. And I couldn’t say in exactly what. It was like a mystery.”

“But now you think you know?”

“I do. It’s felt like all along someone was watching over me. Like when I thought my prayers were just for good luck. But there was something there.”
“Jesus.”
“God, yes.”
“God through Jesus.”
“Yes. God through Jesus.”

“It’s pretty serious stuff, isn’t it? When you think about it? And the law is not of faith: but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Galatians, chapter 3, verse 12.”

Brandon wasn’t sure how to reply to that. After a tentative pause he said simply, “yeah.”

Don didn’t care what his friend Anthony said: the entire structure of white society was directed against the black man. The voices on AM radio gushed from his speakers, the voices rose and clamored, they crashed and thudded.

Don drove and watched with a sneer as a truck with an NRA sticker passed him. Don didn’t trust members of the NRA; it was a white power front group – with guns!

Thinking about it, Don didn’t trust the Jaycees, either. He wasn’t sure what they did, but there was no question they were white. And Don didn’t trust the Rotary Club for the same reason. Or the Chamber of Commerce. Almost any Chamber of Commerce.

Don’s didn’t trust the 4H club. The Benevolent Society of Police. And in no way did he trust the Future Farmers of America. Don didn’t trust the hick expressions on their country faces as they zoomed past him while he drove the speed limit for fear of having some white cop pull him over, and eye him suspiciously because he was a young black man.

Don didn’t trust the faces of the white cops, or the white gas station cashiers, or the white truck stop waitresses.

Of course, if he wanted to see black people, he only had to look into the kitchen of the truck stop. There would be the black faces, sweating over the grill, dragging out the garbage, like he had been at Denny’s.

Don didn’t trust the white news anchors on CNN or Fox News. Don didn’t trust the faces of the black news anchors fraternizing with their white counterparts.

Don didn’t trust people who liked Jethro Tull. Don didn’t trust Jimmy Buffett fans. Don certainly didn’t trust people who liked Clint Black. Or Charlie Daniels. Or any other of those racist country stars pining for the days of segregation.

Don didn’t trust Bob Dylan. Or the Rolling Stones. Or people who liked Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones.

And the worse part, Don realized, was that he didn’t trust a lot of Wu-Tang Clan fans, either.