“I think,” John began, very shyly, “that you shouldn’t get any more dogs. They’re not worth it. Something always happens—”
“They’re worth it! I’ve got a chance to get a wolf cub, anyway. A timber wolf. Marion said his brother shot the bitch in the middle of August and has three pups in the shed behind his house. I guess she was killing his sheep. But there’s nothing hereditary about wildness. It’s learned. They’ll be just like dogs—only wouldn’t it be fine to have a real wolf?”
“I don’t think it’s worth it. Mom almost had brain damage worrying the other night when you were out feeling sorry over that dog, wandering around along the river.”
“My feelings are my own.”
“Maybe so, but maybe—”
“Forget that. Listen, Marion said Sy Bontrager picked up that anvil with one hand—by grabbing ahold of the horn. That true?”
“I saw him do it.”
“It seems impossible.”
“I know.”
“How could someone be that strong?” asked Wilson, and focused his eyes down into John’s face.
John blushed. “I don’t know . . . he’s big.”
He won’t admit it, thought Wilson. He won’t admit it. It’s like he’s ashamed. Very odd. If I could do that, everyone would know. I’d have the anvil put out by the road and once a week I’d lift it up; and if someone came into the store who had never seen me lift it, I’d pick it up again. And if I could do it with my right hand, then I’d learn to do it with my left, and then by holding it backhanded. (All of these thoughts he had while looking at the anvil.)
“Will you and Mom come to church this Sunday?”
“We already talked about that, John. If you want to, that’s fine. But there’s no reason to try to include me and your mother. Besides, I don’t see anything to it. The whole thing is too . . . superficial. No, that’s not quite right. Self-righteous is a better word. Vanity.”
“That’s not right, Dad.”
“We don’t go to church. Our lives are happy and full without it. Each worships in his own way . . . that’s what I think. And besides, Della is dead set against it.”
“I know. That’s why you have to convince her.”
“Foolishness. And anyway, Saturday night I’m going fishing.”
“That’s no excuse. Go some other time.”
“What could be closer to God than being on the river? If there’s anything in religion that belittles fishing or being outdoors in order to promote sitting in a building singing foolish songs and looking righteous—it can’t be of any value.”
“There’s a difference between enjoying God’s gifts and paying for them.”
“Enjoying them is paying for them. It’s neglect that falls in the red. And gifts are gifts.”
“Despite how you feel, come anyway.”
“I don’t like your reverend.”
“No excuses. You must come. I’ve decided it now. You must come.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You must. Don’t be childish; there’s something to it, you’ll see.”
“Maybe. Where are those field glasses you bought? Della said she looked through them.”
“Sure, they’re in the house, and are really exciting, though I think I would have been better off to get seven-by-thirty-fives instead of eight-by-forties. It’s too much magnification for using in the field. They’re fine for sitting still or using on the porch looking at wind hoverers, harriers and kingbirds, though. They say the Germans made a better pair of eight-by-forties.” Theycrossed over to John’s house, leaving the pumps on and the doors to the garage wide open. “Now I remember what I was going to tell you,” John almost shouted. “I saw an eagle the other day! An immature bald eagle. I couldn’t believe it. I was walking along in back of Mortimers’ pasture land and ...”
Wilson thought, He can be more excited about seeing some old birds than anyone I ever knew. But he did have an interest in the glasses, and later, at the very moment he looked through them and focused them down, he decided he would get a pair of his own.
“Turn them around, Dad,” said John, smiling, “if you really want to see something strange!” He had decided that subconsciously his father had given in, and would come to church, and would even talk his mother into coming once. The Bible and the experience of God were undeniably the biggest, most complete feeling he had ever had, and he wanted his parents to have it.
John Montgomery’s religious knowledge was nothing more than a fundamental, very ordinary kind of experienced knowledge. There were two parts to it: the Bible and God, though the two were sometimes so closely related, for him, that studying one was comparable to learning more of the other. He thought the Bible taught him about God. He thought of it being the same kind of book (though of a much higher quality) as a bird book, which gave him information; and after he’d studied about each individual bird, his experience of seeing one was greater because he would know what to look for, and appreciate more the beauty of the bird as it related to how he knew they lived—in the brush, forest, grub-eaters, fly-catchers and foragers, their migratory habits and natural predators. So his secondhand knowledge (from the book) added directly to his personal experience, even though the two were very separate. Could anyone think a picture and a short paragraph describing a bird the same thing as seeing one? So the Bible presented an accurate description of God which, the more he knew of it, heightened his personal encounters.
The Bible was indispensable. The experience of someone seeing a lone bird without ever having heard of birds before and having nothing to relate it to, though powerful, would be a very shallow experience compared to that of a man who had seen millions, and who knew how each one lived and how particular and sacred each kind was in its own way.
