Monday, March 23rd, 2020 at 8:26 AM
Redding Township, Illinois
Last night, I read an email from Merry, the leader of Faith and Fiction, a group I met with three times while living in New Orleans. Because Trinity Episcopal has closed all operations at the Garden District campus, the men and women haven't met in weeks. Sadly, she named three of the men who had contracted Covid-19. One had survived it. One had found care at the Baptist Hospital, "on a vent" as they say. One had just got the call from testing, bad news. The test came back positive. He and his wife had resolved to fight it at home. For now.
How could I have imagined three of the class suffering with this pestilence when we gathered in a parlor of a loving restored mansion next to the church in early January to read and discuss Tim Gateaux? Gateaux still adds to his body of work, hopefully daily, and surely the piquant ironies of the virus's impact have not been lost in him.
If Gateaux had a favorite book in the Bible, it would be the Book of Job. Job has everything and God himself allows the Devil to take everything away. The virus has taken so much away without the intelligence and power we accord Beelzebub. It just knows how to hijack a human cell and reproduce. We live the spring of Job.
The class has decided to stay together, planning a meeting Sunday at the appointed time using Zoom, a phone conferencing solution. Merry has agreed to send me a copy of the Gateaux story, one more tale of an arrogant person forced to deal with unanticipated consequences. Even Edgar Allen Poe could not conceive of tortures as subtle and intimate as this Southern author writes for protagonists. If Flannery O'Connor were alive today, she would have invited Gateaux to tea and asked for pointers. Alas she passed too young, an outcome of Lupus. Tennessee Williams would invite him to drinks for the same reason.
I look forward to hearing the brave voices of my book group once more. I found their insights to be made profound by a lifetime of experience. And I'm sure they have wondered about me. The book group had taken a hiatus during Mardi Gras. I was off to San Antonio by the time they sat together again in the parlor. I had promised to set up a comedy night at a Julia Street gallery and I still aim to keep my promise. Next winter, after our world community emerges victorious over the virus and counts our losses and weeps for them.
I love that at fifty-six years old, I still have elders. I have little idea when one will show up. I went on my daily walk Sunday afternoon even though the snow fell and the temperature was bracing. I walked the bridge over the Vermilion River, a high bridge that gave me vertigo, a cheap thrill for me. I found the solid fortress that the Illinois National Guard had built in the thirties last century. Sturdy but antiquated, the guard gave it to the city of Streator to turn into a Tech Incubator.
I called a number on a sign, but hung up when I realized it was the number of Two Rivers Outreach, a counseling firm. When the court charges a motorist with a DUI and orders counseling, Two Rivers often gets the referral. My phone rang. I decided to pick up.
"Hello, my apologies. I was calling for information about the incubator. It's good to have a number for counseling, but I'm doing pretty good today".
"That's all right. I'm bored stiff with my mandatory vacation. I'm Brian MacIntyre. I own Two Rivers. Let me tell you about the incubator".
The incubator has two main tenants, a dent removal company that doesn't ruin the car paint and Two Rivers. "Not what the city envisioned but it's a start. Let me tell you about me. I used to be wild and crazy but now, I'm just crazy".
MacIntyre once owned a home improvement company that boasted four hundred employees. And while he was pursuing sex, drugs and rock and roll like everyone else in the Eighties, he blew up the company and his liver with Hepatitis. The Mayo Clinic transplanted a liver and his body infected the second liver with Hepatitis. His fate seemed sealed.
Resting in the clinic, he had found himself "talking to the man from Galilee" after running for a long time, sixty-six years. Out of that "come to Jesus" talk, MacIntyre decided to return to University and earn credentials as a counselor in addiction and talk therapy. I knew he was good. I was standing in the cold, big flakes of snow falling on my face, and I had no inclination to stop listening.
"Let me guess. You're Seventy-Two years old".
"Close. I'm Seventy-Five. My doctor can't explain how but the Hepatitis left my body. He found for me a diseased liver of a forty-two year old man. I got his liver. He got a transplant. And my doctor promised us both a birthday cake with eighty candles".
"I see one with a hundred candles".
"Thank you for that. Counseling works as a LaSalle County business. There's a need and we meet it. Now we have a clinic opening in Carlinville".
"Right by St Louis." I knew the need was strong near St Louis. A man had overdosed on the Texas Eagle while it made an extended stop at the St Louis Station only a Sunday ago. How he found that trouble so quickly is beyond me.
I was amazed at how long he had talked with me and so patiently. He had the power to heal with listening and conversation. He offered to field any question I had as I got orientated to town. He had done business with most employees in the Illinois Valley. I thanked him and we rang off. I had not expected this conversation near the wild Vermilion River and along the Hopalong Cassidy Trail.
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