A Step Of Faith Part 21

"Me too," I said. When we'd finished eating, I said, "Let me help you clean up."

"No, you'd better get on your way. You've got a long walk ahead of you."

We stood up from the table. I retrieved my pack from the room, then met Pastor Tim at the front door.

"I have something for you," he said. He held out a small pewter coin engraved with the word FAITH.

"Powerful thing, faith," he said. "All journeys are an act of faith."

I nodded. "My father said I needed faith."

Pastor Tim smiled. "Then there you are."

I took the coin from him and put it in my pocket. "Thanks."

"And about the vision. Don't think about it too much. Just have faith that G.o.d's at the wheel."

I wasn't sure how to take that. I finally just said, "Thank you for everything."

"My pleasure. G.o.d be with you on your journey, Brother Christoffersen."

"And on yours," I replied.

"Well said," he replied. "Well said."

I put on my hat and set out again, grateful for the man's kindness.

Again, I had gotten a late start, but this time I was glad for it, as I felt rested. In spite of the pastor's admonition, I couldn't stop thinking about his vision. Falene in a wedding dress? This had to be a sign, didn't it?

CHAPTER Seventeen

People can become so blinded by their own perceived victimhood that they make victims of everyone around them.

Alan Christoffersen's diary

The next town I walked through was called Pevely, where I came across a cultural relic of the American past-a drive-in theater. I couldn't tell if it still functioned as a drive-in, but I doubted it. The screen was still there, but it looked a bit worn and tall weeds grew up from myriad cracks in the asphalt. The sign out front read:

Pevely Flea Market

I've always had a special place in my heart for drive-in theaters. I have fond childhood memories of lying between my parents in the back of our green, wood-paneled Dodge station wagon watching a Disney movie. I once wrote an essay on drive-in theaters in a high school English cla.s.s.

You probably don't realize that someone actually holds a patent on the drive-in theater. The original drive-in was created by a Camden, New Jersey, man named Richard Hollingshead. His idea was to create a "family experience," a solution to finding a babysitter. "Now it doesn't matter how much the baby cries," the first advertis.e.m.e.nt for his theater read. I suppose Hollingshead failed to realize that parents actually went out to get away from the crying baby. Not that it mattered. He still hit the bull's-eye, just on a different target. The theater became a make-out haven for youth who knew they wouldn't run into their parents.

Drive-in theaters always reminded me of what might be the most bizarre thing I did as a teenager. One midsummer afternoon McKale, one of her cousins and I were just sitting around the house bored when McKale said, "We should go see a drive-in movie tonight."

The closest drive-in was a one-screen theater located in the nearby town of Monrovia. The movie playing that night was Braveheart, an Academy Award winning movie about Scottish rebel William Wallace, played by actor Mel Gibson.

That's when a bizarre idea struck me. "I've got a better idea," I said.

The three of us took some of my father's old clothes, stuffed them with newspapers and rags, and then safety-pinned them together, making a life-sized dummy. We made its head out of a garbage sack stuffed with wadded-up newspaper. McKale dubbed our creation "Mr. Vertigo" in homage to the Hitchc.o.c.k movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.

Carrying our dummy and a ball of kite string, we walked along the wooden fence at the back of the theater until we found a hole someone had dug beneath it, and snuck inside. This is the crazy part. Slinging the dummy over my shoulder, I climbed up the back of the screen about a hundred feet to the very top.

The prank seemed like a much better idea from the ground, as shimmying seven stories up the rusted metal railing was terrifying-especially when I startled a flock of nesting starlings who weren't pleased to encounter a human in their neighborhood.

When I reached the top of the screen, I clung for my life with one hand and pulled the dummy from my back with the other, laying him across the horizontal beam that ran the length of the screen. I tied the end of our ball of string to the dummy and threw it down over the front of the screen to McKale and her friend, then shimmied back down.

When I reached the ground, McKale yanked the string. To our dismay, the string snapped six feet above us, dangling just out of reach. Unwilling to abandon our prank, I climbed the screen again, retied the string to the dummy and climbed back down. This time I carefully tugged the string until Mr. Vertigo fell over the front of the screen, hurtling headlong to his death. I think the movie viewers appreciated our prank, judging by the honking horns and screams.

McKale spotted a group of people running toward our dummy from the projection house so we ran too, leaving Mr. Vertigo behind to answer for our crimes.

Two evenings later my dad called me in to his den. "Did you drop a dummy from the top of the Monrovia Drive-in Theater?"

It was pointless denying my involvement in the affair, as the very fact that he asked meant he somehow already knew. Though I was afraid of getting in trouble, I was more curious as to how he'd found out. "Yes, sir."

"How did you get the dummy up there?"

"I carried it up."

"You climbed to the top of the screen?"

"Yes, sir." I left out the part about doing it twice.

"That sounds dangerous."

"I know."

"Don't do it again. I don't want you hurting yourself."

"Yes, sir. How did you know?"

"I got a call from the theater. There was a dry cleaner's slip in the pants pocket. Next time ask before taking my clothes. I still wore those pants."

"Sorry," I said.

He went back to his paper. "You can go." As I was walking out, he said, "Al."

"Yes, sir?"

"Did it look real? Like someone falling?"

"I think so."

He nodded. "That's pretty funny. I would have liked to have seen it."