The door buzzer sounded cranky but Benjamin Greenman opened the door anyway
expecting his case manager Bridget, but instead there were two smiling boy-men with dark suits and neckties looking like to choke them, yet they were smiling in the middle of their tight shaven faces and soapy smell, holding pamphlets and asking if he had some time to talk with them about the state of the world.
He had lots of time and was in a safe feeling mood as usual on Bridget days,
so he sat them down on the couch near the coffee table, got them
Oreos(R) and glasses of milk without asking because it just seemed right and he didn’t want his hospitality turned down. He agreed with them about what a sorry state humanity was in, the sinning and all that, the greediness that shriveled souls, and they asked him if he believed in God, so he told them about his walks in the woods and his rituals among the trees, but they misunderstood him on purpose and said they were talking about a personal God who sent his only begotten Son who died for all of our sins. He said he grew up being taught that, and it was fine for a lot of folks, but it just didn’t fit him too well because he couldn’t sit through sermons and didn’t feel saved
in church, but he did feel saved when he walked in the woods because more than once the woods hid him away and saved his life. While he tried to explain he smelled hemlock trees and felt a breeze, sure signs a spell was coming strong, but nothing he could do about it so he kept talking.
It started to happen while they were telling him they were frightened for his immortal soul which had fallen prey to Satan who was making him be a
tree worshiper like the Druids who made human sacrifices, and the witches
dancing naked right here in modern day Salem. The boys’ pupils got so big their eyes were all black, no whites or color, sooty like the inside of smokestacks, and at the bottoms little fires which grew and burned away everything like holes burning through the movie picture when the film jams and the lamp is too hot. In the holes he saw burning forests, burning women tied to stakes, burning crosses, with men hanging from trees for miles and miles, red hot coals heating irons for robed men to torture heretics in dungeons. There were white hot metal monsters smashing and cremating everything living, every color, all the people and babies and flowers and birds into smoking charcoal, creating the stench of burning flesh in black smoke, all under the supervision of the boys who had eaten his cookies and drunk his milk.
Mr. Greenman knew what he had to do, so he stood up and told those boys they were the ones working for Satan, that he’d never seen so much hate and mean spirits burning in one place before, telling people the forest wasn’t holy
and that life on Earth didn’t matter so they could make up all types of excuses for people to kill each other in wars and ruin the Earth God lets us live in; with grace Greenman would save their immortal souls! The green started rising in him and he ordered the boys not to move.
They didn’t move or say a word, they just stared with their black eyes watching the power fill him from the soles of his feet, up through his legs, groin, belly, chest, arms, fingertips, shoulders, neck, head, mouth, eyes, crown of head, pushing through and out so that he got past being mad,
was joyous and shining forth with his singing. Notes and syllables took the shape and color of leaves cascading out of his mouth weaving into his beard and clothing him, all covered with shining light almost like flames but cool.
The boys stood awestruck as the breeze strengthened, blew tendrils and leaves right into them so that the green entered their ears eyes and mouths,
growing right around every inch of their terrified bodies until suddenly those bodies felt holy, connected and intimate with all the Creator’s wondrous creation. They sang wordlessly to the rhythm of their heart beats, as the leaves gently withdrew back to Greenman, and then within him.
He gazed on the young men, told them that now they had their eyes back, and a great deal more. He said he’d thank them never to bear false witness again, or spread fear where it wasn’t warranted. They didn’t have anything to say, so he said they could leave. They put their milk glasses in the sink, thanked him, and left. There was no need to shake hands.
When Bridget came in and saw the pamphlets on the coffee table, and Ben not at home, she filled a bottle with water, knowing she’d find him in the park.
He was there face down in the grass, holding a twig, as a nursing child sometimes holds its mother’s thumb or hair. The other hand was clenched into the earth. Purging the poison, to the purifying earth, he’d once told her. She waited, thinking about the two pale men she’d seen walking away from his door.
When he got up his face was wet, a blade of grass stuck to his cheek. She offered him water, which he needed and was grateful for. Brighid, he said, pronouncing it Bree-id. Keeper of hearth and well. His voice was soft and a little raspy. Smiling, she told him she didn’t feel like any Irish Goddess, being African-American as she was and the way he was tiring her out. She asked what he had done to those poor young men she’d seen looking like ghosts. Smiling back, he said he’d given them some green and sent them on their way. “Have you been taking your medication?”, Bridget asked. Ben nodded, took the grass leaf off his cheek, put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed.
“You really scared those guys, you know.” He nodded again.
“They scare you?” Not them so much. What they were becoming.
The Destroyer had them. We saved them, though. They won’t forget.
“I bet they won’t.”
Together they walked to the community mental health center, where Ben was to spend the night in an unlocked crisis stabilization unit bed. Bridget feared
she was losing objectivity. She was puzzled at the warmth she felt when he called her Brighid. She wished she knew what honorific to call him in return.
It was just as well she didn’t.
Her supervisor had warned her
about getting enmeshed in
a client’s delusional system.
~ Wry Welwood
Late twentieth century
re-edited April, 2021.
Previously published in The Pom on Medium,
and Oak Leaves publication of ADF.