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Once every few years, even now … I find it impossible to bear.
– Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
TIME AND PLACE
Present time.
In a courtroom.
CHARACTERS
ARTHUR, male, 62, wearing a blue quilted jacket with zipper pockets.
EMILY, female, 18, dressed in jeans, a white shirt, and boots a bit too large.
PROBATE JUDGE, female.
FINCH, male attorney for the Petitioner.
SCENE
ARTHUR, sitting in the witness chair.
PROBATE JUDGE seated.
FINCH standing, facing the JUDGE.
JUDGE
You may proceed, Mr. Finch.
The witness has been sworn.
FINCH
Regarding our evidence, your Honor, as to the need to appoint a guardian for Mr. Immortal, he has voluntarily agreed to testify today himself.
He is our only witness, and we do not consider him to be an adverse witness.
His testimony should not exceed ten minutes; and we ask the court to allow him to tell his story as he tells it, without interruption.
JUDGE
Proceed.
FINCH
Mr. Immortal, please tell us your name and age.
ARTHUR
I am Arthur Immortal, age 62.
FINCH
And you have been a resident of this county your whole life?
ARTHUR
Not yet. But for 62 years I’ve been.
FINCH
Now, Mr. Immortal, tell us in your own way about Emily.
ARTHUR
I would have been a sinner had I ever had the chance.
Always wanting freedom to think my own thoughts my own way, and be my own person.
Always wondering whether wanting that wasn’t a sin.
In some churches it is, you know.
Or not caring that much about people, one way or the other, or myself, for that matter. Is that a sin?
I was in church once. Not just once.
At one time in my life, with Emily, for eighteen years, I knew the inside of a church.
Something in its certainty about the unknown appealed to me.
The readiness to overlook the idiosyncrasies of the Redeemer’s non-conforming life. His sorrow which passed all understanding. His freedom.
Like the water that flows under the McClugage Bridge in Peoria that I go watch three, maybe four times a week.
Staring down, thinking how much the world, East and West, listed to starboard in the grotesque seasons of the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Viet Nam, 9/11, Gaza and Ukraine.
Where are they now? The victims of those atrocities? Or does no one care?
And how far does the water down there go under that bridge?
It was in church I learned the certainty of Matthew 25.
Either you feed and clothe the poor and take in strangers, and go to heaven; or you don’t, and go to Hell.
That simple. And I do it. And could care less if one of them steals from me.
Except, I’ve learned something’s missing in Matthew: You don’t have to care.
All Matthew says is that you love your neighbor as yourself.
And I’ve never really loved all that much about myself. Only Emily.
My house is empty now. My dog Argos died a year after Emily left.
I walk alone.
I once was loved. I lived with love in the kitchen. And by the fireplace in the den.
When Emily would visit, and we’d make breakfast, or lunch, or dinner together.
My home was her home, always. And she loved Argos, too.
And we’d sit by the fire and talk.
Talk about things that made life matter to us. And laugh about it.
O! The stupid things that matter to twelve-year-old girls!
And O! The bitter silence that remains after laughter is gone!
There is no home when laughter leaves.