Joshua has hardly left the bus station before he is out of the commercial district, there being so little of it, though the residential neighborhoods are not free of the occasional shop or repair facility as well as small homespun enterprises announced by hand-lettered signs in the windows. An unzoned blurring of private and working lives, profoundly American. The wet street is aglitter with the sun shining on it and, though people are beginning to emerge from their doors, it is peaceful yet, as if newly created, and largely free of traffic. He had expected to feel out of place, but he does not. He can make a home here. The town is not as impoverished as he had imagined, though of course this is the Presbyterian side of it, so to speak (he is passing a quite monumental Baptist church even as he has this thought), and probably not where most of the miners live. He will visit those neighborhoods and discover their needs and bring the power of Christian love and the charitable weight of his own church to bear upon them. Here on these dripping tree-lined streets (he walks on the sunny side) there is the charm of the ordinary: brick houses with broad porches bearded with flowering shrubbery, white frame houses with mock shutters and screen porches and carports, others brightly painted, yellow, pale blue, rose. American flags fly, and in many of the yards there are portable barbecue grills and cedar picnic tables, bejeweled still with raindrops, poised for homely smalltown family pleasures. There are no fences; the yards are one shared yard. People greet each other from their porches. “Are your lights working?” a woman calls to another. “No, they must be out on the whole street.” “I hope my freezer don’t melt!” Some have well-tended lawns and colorful flower gardens, others are scruffier with balls and toys and tricycles in the front yard, rusting bicycles leaning against porch posts, a tire swing hanging from a tree branch, a dented pickup truck on cement blocks. Dogs have been let out and are chasing each other. In a house somewhere, a child is being scolded. Dandelions proliferate between the sidewalk and the street. Where a bent hubcap lies in the gutter near a clogged drain. Is all this beautiful? It must be. God is the first author of beauty and all his handiwork is a priori perfect, and thus good and true and also necessarily beautiful. It cannot be otherwise. Instead, one asks of all one sees: wherein lies its beauty? His inaugural sermon, as yet unwritten, is entitled “An Old Evangel for a New Day,” and perhaps that will be the theme, one of them: Seeking the extraordinary in the ordinary, the uncommon in the common. He feels quite wise and rich with insight, touched as it were by something holy (“Just a closer walk with thee,” he is humming as he strolls, “grant it, Jesus, is my plea…”), the world behaving as a theater for his inmost thoughts.
A block before the Presbyterian church, a convoy of three Army trucks full of soldiers comes rolling by as if conjured up from the puddles in the street. They are certainly not conjured up from his thoughts; they surprise them. The trucks pause and the driver of the lead vehicle leans from his window and calls out: “Hey, chubby! Can you tell me how to find the high school?” “I’m afraid I am not yet from here,” he replies, then realizes that will not be easily understood. “But I have a map.” He hands it up to the driver, who studies it. A young officer is sitting beside him, staring straight ahead. There are impolite comments from the back of the truck about the manner of Joshua’s dress. “Right,” says the driver. “Mind if I keep this?” “Well—” “Thanks, chief.” And they go rumbling on down the street, spewing black exhaust and rude remarks. A curious and, given his present transcendent state of mind, somewhat jarring apparition. Perhaps it was to remind him that that “peace in the valley” he longs for is not without its obligatory sacrifices. That there are those for whom peace is not a first priority. He knows them; they were the bane of his childhood. He is reminded of the line from Luke: And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. But he, young Reverend Joshua J. Jenkins, is a man of peace, yes, he is, through and through. He would outlaw all the world’s armies, if he could; he will never ask his congregation to sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” A man of peace like Christ Jesus and his Gospel of Love. His friend. His best friend. Yes, what a friend I have in Jesus! He is humming to himself again. Again, an old Sunday school song. In spite of his aptitude for abstruse and complex thought, so convoluted at times that he baffles his listeners and even sometimes gets lost himself, it is the simple songs that Joshua loves most, songs like the one he is humming now, standing before the church that is to be his home, his platform, his testing ground, and his awesome pastoral responsibility, tunefully murmured like a kind of prayer to Jesus: Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on…
The church is less impressive than in the photograph they sent him, a modest brick structure, vaguely modernist in style, far less grand than the Baptist church near the town center and not so classic a house of worship as the stone Lutheran church he passed a couple of blocks back with its solid square bell tower and big double doors; but just as Joshua loves the simple songs, so does he love the simple Christian virtues, which people in this country in their ignorance think of as American virtues, and this church in its honest friendly dignity stands as a quiet monument to them. It suits him. It suits Presbyterianism and its democratic community spirit.
As the church is presently without a minister, he fears the doors may be locked, but they are not. He removes his felt hat and wipes his brow. “I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m alone; through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light, take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home!”
“You have arrived, Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Joshua J. Jenkins.”
“Why, yes—!” He has been thinking so much about his friend Jesus that young Reverend Jenkins is not altogether surprised to see him standing at the pulpit. Sunlight enters the church through the high windows in clearly defined beams. Jesus is standing in one of them, exactly as he appears in the frontispiece of Joshua’s favorite book of Bible stories for children. It is an astonishing sight. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, Joshua is thinking, somewhat madly, the melody tinkling in his head as if played on glass bells. “But how did you—?”
“Your résumé, Mr. Jenkins.”
“My résumé—?”
“And what does the middle ‘J’ stand for, Mr. Jenkins? Not my name, I hope.”
“No!” He has been anticipating this visit to his new church with such excitement, perhaps he is only dreaming about it and the bus not yet arrived. That would explain the nightmarish army trucks. He touches his breast pocket; no, the map is gone. But dreaming is another mode of discourse, similar to the narrative mode but freed from some mimetic conventions. The map, for example, can be there and not be there at the same time. When he wakes, he will take notes. They will make for an interesting sermon. Perhaps his inaugural one. What happened to me on my way into West Condon. On the other hand, if he is not dreaming, and he probably is not, it can’t be Jesus, and in the realization of that he understands the terrible shallowness of his faith. Though in one part of his mind, that part he takes most comfort in, he is having a personal encounter with Christ; in the larger part, wherein his reason resides like the house demon, he knows it is not possible. “It’s…it’s Jehoshaphat. My grandfather…”