The Barefoot Evangelist: (Book; Part III)

By: Frank Georgalis

‘A German soldier hit me when I went to see my Papa in jail,’ she cried and rushed to me.

Although I was sometimes unkind to my sister and brother as most big brothers are, she always found comfort standing next to me in her moments of distress; my little brother, on the other hand, would keep away from me for days.

“Shh! They are not going to kill him. Don’t cry!” I said.

‘Erik,’ said my mother, raising her head and looking at me with a stream of tears coming down her face, ‘your father is gone. You must now be the man of the house.’

“I must confess to you Susan and Randy, hearing those words from my mother, broke my heart,” said Erik, looking at them with an earnest glance. “Being the lookout man was a game. But now I wanted to cry like they all did, but I couldn’t. I had to be the man of the house and men don’t cry. Some say that they have lost their childhood. I lost my years of crying. I have never learned how to cry.”

“You are right,” said Susan “I have never seen you cry.”

“Another confession I must make to you at this time,” said Erik, lighting another cigarette.

“The day they captured my father we were all scheduled to die. It was to be another Kalavrita massacre. The Colonel in command wanted us dead, but the second in command urged him not to do it. Anyway something happed to the motorcycle that was bringing the orders back from the higher-ups in another town, Agrinion. So what they did, they chose seventy-seven men to die including my father, but before they set up the machine guns to kill the men, another motorcycle came urging the local commander to send those seventy-seven men to be executed in another town.

“ The hostages were placed on trucks “

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“ The Greek guerrillas destroyed the roads”

They loaded them on trucks but the guerrillas blew up the road that led to their place of execution, so by the time they were transferred to the other town, the schedule of execution had already taken place with the killing of other men. Then they were ordered to send them to Athens to be executed, but the train to Athens was derailed because of sabotage, and finally the men were sent to Germany. My father survived and after the war he came home. After listening to his story of being a hostage in Germany, I realized he escaped death and was kept alive for some unknown reason. I also escaped death plenty of times, during the war when I was a young lad and later in life.” Erik stopped and looked around nervously, “Somehow, down through the years, I learned that I was destined to come to America. You may call it an omen.”

Susan looked at her husband with both love and pity in her glance. “Don’t you feel better now that you’ve vented out?”

“Yes, like you said, I always feel better after telling my dream, but to go on and to leave the past, I must tell you that I have some good news and some bad news,” said Erik, digging his fork into his food with no apparent desire to eat. “Which do you want to hear first, the bad or the good?”

Susan carefully placed her fork down and fixed her eyes on him as if she were clearly expecting something bad and fearing the worst.

“This good and bad news has nothing to do with your last night’s dream?”

“Yes and no.”

“Good news and bad news, yes and no… Say whatever you have to say.”

“Which do you want to hear first, the good or the bad news?”

“The good news first, Daddy, the good news,” said Randy, with much delight in his voice, “I don’t like bad news,” continued the little boy. “Bad news always makes me cry.”

“Randy, when was the last time that you heard bad news and cried?” asked Erik with a grin.

“The last time was when I told you that I was in love with Ellie, Mrs. Fletcher’s big daughter, and when I told you I wanted to marry her, you told me if I would marry her I had to leave home.”

“That’s it?  That’s the bad news?”

“Wait!  I’ll tell you. I’m not finished yet,” replied the little boy.

“Okay, okay. Take your time, big guy, take your time.”

“You told me that when you were a little boy in Greece, you were only six and you were in love with a Gypsy girl, who was nine and lived with her family in a big tent, near your house. You said you got up one morning and ran to her tent, as you had done ever since you’d met her, but that day the tent was gone and the whole family moved away and took her with them. You told me you were very sad, you cried, but later on you told me you found somebody better, my mommy, but I still cried.”

“Why did you cry?”

“I cried because you told me that you haven’t seen her since then.  I thought it was very sad and that’s why I cried.”

The boy glanced at his father with a quivering lower lip and flooded eyes.

“I understand,” said Erik, caressing the boy’s head, “and I love you very, very much. This news is not as bad as that news.”

“Mommy, were you in love when you were six, like my daddy and me?”

“No, honey, your father and you are early risers.”

“The early bird gets the worm, they say,” rejoined Erik, smiling.

“You should be very tired, but you are not,” said Susan soberly.

“Why?  For getting up early?” asked Erik, still smiling.

“No, for eating all those worms,” replied Susan. “Let’s have the news. We have heard enough of your sunrise conquests. We all know you are a hot-blooded Greek.”

“Me too, Mommy?” asked the little boy anxiously.

“Unfortunately yes, my son,” replied Susan, still looking at her husband and waiting for a response to her first inquiry.

“It gives me great pleasure to pass on to you that as of yesterday, I became a free man.  I quit my insurance job,” said Erik almost in one breath, fearing that during that recital he would have lost his ability to breathe.

For the first moment there was no message in her glance as she looked at her husband.

“Where is the good news?” she wondered out loudly.

“I am free, as free as a bird.” said Erik, leaning back and letting out a joyous smile.

“Now that you are free, as free as a bird, as you put it, what are you going to do, fly?”

“You may say that.”

“That’s not news, Erik dear, you have been flying your whole life. Deciding to settle down would be news; good news indeed.”

“Oh, that’s where you are wrong, Susan dear, I am going to fly a little higher.”

“While you are up there flying, don’t forget to look at the ground, you have a family you know,” remarked the wife.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry, how about money to live on?  Where are you going to get a job as good as the one you had in that insurance office?  The only other things you know how to do are what you learned in the army, jumping from planes and shooting pistols, and they’re only good for robbing banks or hijacking planes.”

“Susan,” said Erik, becoming very somber in face and in manner, wishing his statement to appear as solemn as possible, “I swear to both of you that I will do something so rare and so big it will leave a mark on this here earth. I need your help.”

Susan dropped the fork into her plate of eggs, raised her eyes toward the clouds as he was making the above appeal and assumed a look of fear that showed in her face how terrified she had become at the idea of her husband’s reflexivity in pledging himself so emphatically. “You scare me when you talk like that.”

“Susan, I told you that I was destined to come to America. I don’t hear voices in my head. Oh, no. I believe that everybody has a mission in life. My mission is my destiny. God, Zeus, Allah, some invisible spirit is hiding my mission somewhere here in America and I must find it. I was kept alive long enough to find it, to accomplish it, and then I will be taken away,” said Erik emphatically.

“It sounds as if you went off your rocker, that is amusing,” remarked Susan.

“My dear lady, any new and bright idea seems amusing and laughable to the common mind,” said Erik, with as much celebration and dignity.

“Pardon me, sir, for passing on information that I can’t find the words to thank you. Thank you for letting me know that I have a common mind for thinking straight. All who think straight, according to you may be fools and I remember you telling me once that one million fools won’t make one wise man. I’ll tell the rest of the fools to stand by and see what you carry in your bags once you open them.”

“No. I carry no bags.  It’s locked in my head and in my heart. It’s been there for the longest time. I simply didn’t let it out.”

“Are you sure it’s the right time to let it out, Erik? Aren’t you afraid that it might bite someone?”

“I am not afraid of anything. If you are afraid, then you and the rest of the fools should stand back and watch. It is not amusing. I’m sorry you find it so amusing”

“Amusing? It’s terrifying. You are giving me no hint. The only hint you are giving me is that you are ready to be committed to the New Jersey Institute for the Insane.”

“I gave you a hint, Susan.  I am going to be a movie star. Didn’t you hear me?” said Erik.

“To tell you the truth I am astonished with what I hear,” said Susan.

Susan’s astonishment was too real and too evident to escape her husband’s observation; he therefore proceeded, “Or a writer, or a singer – any of the three.” Having delivered that message with a very sage and mysterious air he looked profoundly around and then at his wife and child with an air of authority and accomplishment.

Susan, who had the time to deliberate upon his answer, ”What?”

“Do you want me to repeat the answer?” replied Erik, with much indifference in his tone.

No, please. I heard it all and I find it so unreal, to say the least.”

Susan’s astonishment turned into very loud laughter and Randy giggled along with her.

She took as much time to deliberate the contents of his statement as she had done to deliberate the answer. She suddenly turned serious and composed.

“You mean you believe that you were kept alive through wars and other close call events so you could become an actor? Are you serious?” asked Susan.

When the laughter from the astonishment stopped, the situation seemed to be more serious. Erik looked at her as severely as she had looked at him.

“I am dead serious, Susan. Quit playing games with me as if I don’t know what I am doing or saying. It is only the beginning,” responded Erik sternly. “I said that I wanted to do something big and different.”

“You want to be a movie star or a writer or a singer. Is that what you’re saying? Is this why you left the security of your job, Erik?” There she stopped and looked at him, partly to think and partly to hear something from him.

Erik, having heard his wife’s question which sounded like a sarcastic comment, remained serious and stared at her indifferently.

“Erik, you were an actor, you were a singer, you were a writer and a poet and nothing came out of it,” said Susan, letting her eyes rest on him. He now felt the necessity to say something.

“That’s funny, I was all those crazy things, that’s why you fell in love with me.  Do you remember?  Do you remember saying to me, ‘I love you, Erik, because you are a poet, a singer, an artist and many other things; all those things you loved about me, those are the very same things that make you dislike me now.   There is an old Greek saying. ‘A woman marries a man and is hoping to change him, but when a man marries a woman he is hoping that she doesn’t change.’

“I don’t want you to change, Erik; you are my husband and I love you. I am just disappointed that you haven’t grown up yet! Grow up, Erik.  Grow up!”