[Written in or about 2005]
When a begger asks for change, who among you gives? Do you open your heart and your wallet and pull out paper money? Have you ever given a fiver? Or a ten? Once, when a miser threw a $100 bill into the church collection plate by accident, instead of the one dollar bill he intended to give with what he thought of as generous charity, and before he could grab it back, though he tried, it had begun to travel down the row, out of reach. He approached the preacher after the service to ask for it back.
“No,” said the preacher, “what’s given to the Lord is given and cannot be taken back.”
“Well, then, the miser said after a lengthy pause, a tear in his eye, I guess I’ll get my reward in heaven for the hundred dollars.”
“Oh, no!” the preacher told him. “You’ll get a reward for what you intended to give. You gave a dollar in your heart and that’s all you can hope to be rewarded for.” So, do you give the begger on the street in winter a twenty five cent piece, even? Ever? Well, go your ways and sin no more.
Willhelmut Klassen dragged out his sermon for a good half hour longer than the usual time for sermons allowed and 3/4 of an hour longer than the patience of the congregation tolerated. He droned on in his whispering way, smiling and genuflecting, firing off quiet words and ricocheting, till he fairly shone with the sweat of it all. When he finally walked mild-mannered back to his seat under the choir and turned with happy self-satisfaction toward his expressionless audience, he gave himself a mental heave-ho up onto his own shoulders for having preached a good sermon. It was on the Mount of Olives. The sermon’s metaphor exhorted all to understand how olive oil is better than canola and both are our spirits, spirits slippery with hope, sweet with the taste of homegrown geography.
The audience members were former belongers to the church who had left and then come back to it later, having found no better place to attend. Regina Wangbutt, for instance, not a Mennonite, as her name clearly indicates, still found herself drawn to Klassen’s church because of her former ties here. She had once been in charge of the adult Sunday school and organized it each week without fail. And now that she had discovered her own dispensability away from this institution and this body of believers, she found that she would like once again to feel the false relief of being an important member of a group. No other group recommended itself to her, even though she attended many other churches in the interim. Back now, she dressed in long elegant dresses with slits up the side so that men in the vicinity of her seat might notice her one good trait. Her face left others cold. Her bosom was nondescript. Her bum, attractive in and of itself, was usually so covered up with bulky sweaters – since she was anal retentive – that no one knew for certain what it looked like, and her hands had the long and slender appearance of things unliving. Yes, she wanted to be here and learn once again the joy of full acceptance in a group that professed to love you.
Candida Reimer, a longtime member, lived alone. She watched TV a great deal. She had no income, but nevertheless continued to eat and drink and afford the necessities with a degree of luxury uncommon in the penniless. Her cat loved her and kept her constant company, even at the most unlikely moments in her ablutions. She longed for a husband to console her on those bedtimes when she felt the cold wind of night waft over her limby frame. Never much of a thinker, she could not help but reflect with unusual intensity on the words Willhellmut Klassen had brought before them. She guessed that they were her call to mission work, but she was afraid of the dark-skinned men who she would meet. She was not afraid of them, exactly, but reconciled to the danger she posed for them and so determined to remain at home where she will be free of being tempting.
Hansberg Snive Ling was Chinese by origin, but a Mennonite in faith and tradition. He had been a Mennonite when those here had only been a thought in their parents’ young minds. He was 97 and spry as a chicken. He clucked his reluctance frequently as the minister spoke, and looked about him as if to say, “When do we get to eat?” No one paid him much attention and he had to content himself with looking at hymnbooks as a way of taking his mind off of Candida who sat two seats over. He groped himself now and then because he had no comfortable shorts in his underwear drawer and must needs be content with what his trembling hands came up with in the morning when he dressed. He coughed up phlegm and spat into a hanky and then put the hanky into his shirt pocket. Now and then he hurled a note or two from the hymnbook at the front as if to say, “Yes, this is a fine song and I wish we would sing it today.” He died in church at the age of 98 not long after this day’s lamentable sermon.
Zeldanna Duecky and her former husband, Penner Duecky—now dead since that Sunday a few weeks ago, of a massive heart attack brought on by, the doctor thought, a total collapse of inner hope and longing—had found the comparisons apt though disquieting. They told no one at their family gathering what the context or content of Willhellmut’s reflection had been, but kept these things and pondered them in their hearts. Their dog, Sniggles, missed his master enormously and told everyone that. It shat uncharacteristically in the neighbour’s hedge and barked continuously throughout the first fortnight of nights after his interment. When Sniggles got hoarse and no longer could bark a single bark, a neighbor, fed up with the insistence of his nightly howling, shot him while he peed against the undertaker‘s car, and so Sniggles’ long illness ended. His testicles were emasculated and small from so much mouthing. His penis hung permanently out and elongated. When they laid him in his little coffin it got pinched in between the lid and the box proper and those who filed by it noticed its pink tip protruding and they looked away.
At war with himself most of his life, Sniggles had given everything to his master within his power. The rest he did not give since he did not own it to give. He could not stop nipping at himself in private or in public. How Penner knew that Sniggles was at it again was that he would hear a howl and a sudden outburst of pain and whining from whichever corner of the yard Sniggles had retired to, to perform his shameful self-hurting. In public it was more obvious, even to the ones preoccupied with heavenly things. All you needed to do was to look at the dog there, bending toward himself, nipping, snapping quickly sometimes, and then immediately peering around him with laconic and guilty complacence so that any idiot could not help but know what he’d been up to.
Nevertheless, Penner Duecky’s trials were over. He left to mourn him his precious doggy who died a couple of days later peeing on the undertaker‘s car. Zeldanna lived long and fruitful. She had seldom had any thoughts about their childlessness but, when Penner died, she began to make available for herself occasional interactions with her husband‘s brother, Ronnie, and found herself suddenly with child. This (finding herself thus maternally blessed) pleased her to no end. So, in her 33rd year, she produced an offspring who lived to a ripe old age and proved the old adage that the wise make a fool feel his foolishness. He became the president of a fountain drink company and prospered. His ashes are buried in the cemetery near his town and he has a large headstone over his grave with a picture of a dog neatly chiselled under his name. And just below that the name Sniggles.
Now, if you wish to give charity to those who need it, do not hesitate to give a lot. Ten percent won’t hurt you. Before you know it, you’ll end up like old Penner and Sniggles, peeing on tires and getting shot, so give and do not begrudge the poor their comeuppance.
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