Light Switch, Part 3

The pain in his back and shoulders was exquisite.
Having been awake again for just a few minutes, Thomas remembered the dour Finns didn’t snicker much about anything. One of those dour faces approached him with two cups of coffee and sat next to him on the couch.
Thomas did his blinking best to be civil. “Thank you, sir.” He grabbed the offered cup and sipped while he thought of something else he might say. The man beat him to it.
“I just wanted to thank you for volunteering to help our community last night.”
So far, so good. Thomas needed only smile and see what else was coming, since the man obviously had something on his mind.
“It’s a very lucky thing you aren’t involved in our silly politics.”
Okay, so it looks like maybe another job ahead?
“I was wondering if you were looking for more work. My brother could sure use some help with a rather difficult situation over in another village.” The man pointed in yet a new direction Thomas had not planned to go.
The man continued to explain how the conflict between national and local laws, and yet again with private rules for land use. There was a forest near this village which was loaded with deadfall from a bad wind storm. With all the tangle of laws and rules, no one was allowed to clean it out. They could sure use the wood, what with global economics making other forms of heat so very expensive. The man was pretty sure a foreigner with no connections could “volunteer” to at least move the dead trees and limbs out of the forest where someone else was then permitted to haul it away and cut it up.
Of course, no power tools were permitted in this forest.
Thomas became freshly aware of the monumental stiffness. He also remembered those summers in his youth when he helped clear some of that hunting lease where he stayed until his forced departure.
While the old man drove him in a battered little station wagon to the next village, Thomas decided this was what had called up the image of his old Osage friend. The Indian man, good as his word, had arrived that Monday at Tom’s trailer and sat on the old log laying out front. He never knocked or said anything, just sat peacefully and at ease, waiting for Tom to come out.
Had not the old man’s Cadillac not made noise on the gravel drive, Thomas would not have known he was there. Glancing out the window, his anticipation buried all the other thoughts he might have had. He hurried out the join the man in the cold wintry air.
The ancient man ignored his offer of coffee or other refreshments. When Thomas fell silent, the old Indian waited a few minutes longer. “Expect everything; expect nothing.”
Tom decided this was the kind of thing where it was best to simply wait and absorb whatever was coming, precisely as the man had said. “Let nothing surprise you, because anything is possible. You have already met Death. He is your friend, now. Nothing else can happen you haven’t already faced.”
And so it went. It was not religion, per se, as Thomas had first expected, but nonetheless truth of a divine quality. It was all new, all ancient, and all familiar at the same time. Tom had no idea how long they sat there, as the Osage wise man mapped out a new reality for him.
Three days each week for the next two months they went through this same drill. Sometimes it seemed the Indian was repeating himself, but not quite. Rather, he was knitting things together into a fabric, weaving a tale of Tom’s future course of life. Not in specific detail, but in how Tom was to look at reality, and how he was to live it. In the hours between each visit, Tom could hardly chase down all the threads. Instead, the threads entangled his awareness, overwhelmed him.
While Thomas continued leading the church music program, something he could have done standing on his head because it was so instinctive, he found himself coming more and more to life. The music had its own meaning, speaking to Tom with a message not always precisely the same as the words.
It ended all too soon.
For Tom the truck company manager, politics had all been regulation and taxes. All the rest he ignored. Suddenly, it would be ignored no longer. Another major terrorist incident struck somewhere in the country, and all Hell broke loose. There were troops everywhere, even in his little hamlet in flyover country. Churches were compelled to offer certain types of information, and were warned to avoid certain other types. By this time Tom had been studying the Bible with a couple of new friends, and it all made sense in light of what the Osage man taught him. It also demanded Thomas not play along with this new program.
The old Indian told him a week ahead of time to pack one bag and prepare to flee. Tom was torn. He knew better than to doubt this warning, but was just getting his life in some semblance of useful order. So he met for two last hurried Bible studies with his friends, then told them he was ready for a new calling. They agreed this was their last meeting, as they were all sensing the same calling.
That night, as Tom sat staring at his rucksack, now ready to go, his cellphone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but did recognize the voice. It was someone in the church, a retired county deputy. Thomas and his friends were facing arrest warrants. The church building would be seized that very night, and Tom needed to be gone when the police arrived.
It was all so new, so impossible, yet ancient as mankind itself. Almost unconsciously Tom set the cellphone down without closing it. He was already dressed, so it meant only shrugging into the backpack and getting started. He left the door unlocked; no sense in making it more expensive for his cousin than necessary. He hiked over the back roads and into the night.
As the memories faded, Tom found himself now standing before a very old gate, the car which brought him receding in the distance. That rucksack had long given way to a sea bag, and some of the contents had changed. Yet here, another dour old man strolled toward him with an equally old dog following stiffly off to one side.
Thomas smiled peacefully, expecting nothing, everything, anything.