Two Pauls

By Warren Buckles

The first Paul said he found the Bible in the Taos dump — no covers, Second Chronicles incomplete, some family data filled in. He showed up one night during a snowstorm and asked me for a ride. I talked him into staying the night, but that was all I could do.

It was an early snowstorm, water from the Gulf of Mexico driven into the Rockies, chilled to fat, heavy flakes that settled on my roof. I could hear the old beams groaning as the snow deepened, and I had begun to wonder if the whole place would collapse when Paul’s knock rattled the door. It wasn’t much of a door, just a few boards nailed together and hung on strap hinges.

He knocked again, this time more gently, as if sharing my fears about the house. I stood and picked up the lamp, moving slowly to keep the flame steady. The sweet kerosene smelled of bus stations and sleepless night-long rides.

Snow came in when I opened the door, the flakes making red spots on the dirt floor. The doorway was empty, curtained by falling snow. I watched it, trying to follow single flakes to the ground. Giving up, I stepped back to close the door when a young man appeared. His features were smooth, unmarked by life, and his eyes were wide open and bright, lit by something that outshone my lamp.

He began speaking quickly as we walked toward the wood stove, continuing as I stoked the fire and fiddled with the damper. He was Paul and needed to get to Lama and see Ram Dass. He didn’t know the way but he was sure they would let him in, now that he could explain. The words were all there, in the Bible he found in the Taos dump. He promised to show me, too.

The fire was starting to warm the stove when he paused. The black iron clicked and snapped as it heated, marking time in random intervals undisciplined by pendulum or Geneva wheel.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Too late to drive eighty miles in a snowstorm," I answered.

He gave me a disappointed look.

"I can’t drive my truck in this,"I told him, annoyed at having to justify myself, "and it won’t start in the cold unless I crank it by hand."

"Oh, I can do it for you," he replied, moving his hand in a circle to demonstrate his understanding, fingers poking through holes in his gloves to curl around an imaginary crank. He smiled at me, his hand spinning faster, the frayed yarn blurring into a circle. I thought of him trying to start my International, those fingers gripping the cold iron bar, the balky engine misfiring and breaking his wrist.

"Yeah, maybe you could help," I said, "but I’m still not driving you anywhere. It’s late and I’m going to sleep."

Disappointment erased his smile and I decided to meet him part way. "I’ll take you there in the morning. You sleep here and we can go when it gets light."

The dirt floor was dotted with muddy red spots where water and snow had fallen from his clothes. He carried a lumpy bag, once perhaps a feed sack, the outline of book covers showing through the rough brown cloth.

I sat by the stove and pulled my other chair close.

"Sit down while you make up your mind," I said.

He looked at the chair, tipping his head like a bird to study it from different angles. Finally he backed into it and sat primly with the bag on his lap.

"Would you drive me tonight if I show you what I found?" he asked.

"You don’t have to show me anything. I already said I will drive you." His smile started to return and I added, "But not tonight," speaking slowly and separating my words with long pauses. "Your Bible won’t plow the road and it won’t get my truck out of the ditch. Wait until tomorrow."

"Why should I show you if you won’t change your mind?" he asked, petulance creeping into his voice.

I had long been immune to mysteries or secret truths and didn’t answer, but he took my silence as indecision and began to expand on his subject, opening his bag and pulling out the coverless Bible. The stove was warm. I began to drift off, caught myself and jerked my head up. He took this as a form of assent and plowed on.

I finally resorted to a primitive sophistry and told him it must be after midnight and already tomorrow. Since I had promised to drive him tomorrow, and tomorrow was today, I would drive him today. But first I had to rest. He could read his Bible while I rested.

I blew out the lamp and lay down on my bed, a few boards and a foam pad. Paul sat by the stove reading his found Bible. I had given him my only flashlight.

He was gone in the morning. He had left the Bible and my flashlight. The batteries were dead.

It was a blinding bright day, blue sky, white snow. I started the truck, cursing while I fed it ether and strained at the crank. I drove up the road, following his tracks from the door. They ended by the highway in a little stamped down circle where he had stood before someone picked him up.

His Bible is on the shelf opposite me, between Aristotle, Selected Works and VanWylen, Fundamentals of Thermodynamics. I have read it a few times, but I haven’t yet found the part that explains everything.

Paul got to Lama. I heard the story a few months later, third or fourth hand. They put him up for a while. Maybe they heard his secret, although, without his Bible, it might have gotten scrambled. But he didn’t stay there long. He walked out in the snow one night and didn’t come back. They found him a few days later, after the coyotes had stripped his blameless face.

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Two Pauls

By Warren Buckles