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Driving for Jesus
- University Press of New England
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DRIVING FOR JESUS % later that night, Howard and Birch met with Obadiah and Charley in Birch’s office, formerly the pool room in the days when men smoked cigars. The room was cluttered with samples of Birch’s hall-ofmirrors identity: a crucifix (gift from his grandmother Elenore Elman); pictures of the mother he had never known; an artist rendition of the hippy bus in the woods where his father had raised him; a black and white photograph of his grandmother Persephone Salmon teaching him to drive, and another of his grandfather Raphael dressed for bird hunting standing beside the Bronco when it was new; various wooden spoons, some hand-carved by Birch’s dad, some by Birch; storyboard drawings from Darby Doomsday. Howard was cheered by snapshots of himself and his trash collection truck in bygone days with his crew, Cooty Patterson and Pitchfork Parkinson. There were also computer printouts of pictures of Birch with his first best friends and confidants, Missy and Bez, on Grace Pond and in the tree house they built on the Trust when they were kids, and Birch’s photographs of deer that he had stalked on the Trust lands with all the guile of a hunter, though he did not kill. There was also a framed and glassed copy on vellum of the Trust’s charter beside Birch’s degrees from Dartmouth College. Birch had a great big desk that held a great big computer, but it was a smaller table that caught Howard’s attention. The table was three feet wide, five feet long, designed like a three-by-five index card. In place of the white space of the card was the blond sapwood of lilac. In place of the blue lines and of the one red line was the darker heartwood of lilac. Lilac had been Lilith Salmon’s favorite flower. Inlaid on the table in dark lilac heartwood, as if typed, along the first line was the phrase “ext. darby—doomsday.” You don’t know what “ext.” means, do you, Howie? 66 So what? The table was off to the side under a window that overlooked the lilac bushes Birch’s mother had planted on the day he was born. The lilacs were now mature and grand. In May they would burst forth with fragrant purple flowers. Howard occasionally would catch Birch sitting at the chair, reading, or writing on a note card, or gazing out the window, perhaps thinking of his mother. In a corner were a dozen or so walking sticks of various kinds of hardwood one might find on the Trust lands—sugar maple, red maple, white oak, red oak, ash, cherry, apple, elm, locust, beech, shag bark hickory. You can make songs from the names of trees. Who had said that? It was Heather. Remember her, the daughter you betrayed? Another furnishing in the office might confuse the casual visitor, but Howard knew what it was: a shaving horse, a low bench with a foot- operated vice. F. Latour carved his wooden spoons on such a device. He had made this particular shaving horse for his son. On the floor were wood shavings, and on the bench of the shaving horse was a draw knife and a walking stick Birch had shaved out of a maple sapling. Birch had told Howard that working with a draw knife on the shaving horse was his way of relaxing. Howard knew it was more than that. It was Birch’s way of staying connected to his father. Howard admired F. Latour tremendously for the way he had brought up Birch; the two were so close. How to say, Son, you done good with your boy, like I never done with you. You want me to apologize for being myself? Yes, and while you’re at it, confess love without being sarcastic. I don’t know how to do any of that. Too bad, old man, too bad. Birch sat in an arm chair in a circle with Howard and the loggers. He made it a point never to sit behind his huge desk with its wide computer screen when he had guests in his office, because he didn’t want to appear in a superior position. He would be a leader among the people , not above them. “We’ve found out that a logging truck with a faded blue cab and a crunched right fender was coming down the road from the Trust,” Birch said. [54.242.75...