He banged….then knocked… then tapped on the door. Every hit less determined than the one before it as though he was just realising how intensely termites had feasted on the waned door.
How was he just realising this? He smiled again for the last time that day. His most honest smile in years and the credit would be awarded to the old door or perhaps the insects which had caused its demise.
The face that appeared was old.
It fit the cliché of a priest of an old church. ‘’Oh yes, I wondered how long you’d be.’’ His welcome was blunt, even for his personality.
The younger man did not really mind, for the task ahead of him was far too cumbersome to afford the old priest the dignity of taking offence. He’d grown up only a few feet away from the church and knew every rusty inch as well as he knew his good days.
When he was only a boy, his mother had barked at him for not fetching water for the new pastor when the older man had first transferred to the town as a young priest. That was his first encounter with who would turn out to be a great acquaintance.
The godly man never cared about the way courtesy was extended to him except to say how amusing the boy’s anger reflected in his walk. He carried the water so close to his forehead that he looked like an act on a stage instead of a sent boy who was kind against his own volition.
The door looked fine then.
He offered him his usual seat across from him and it looked as old as it always had and just as uncomfortable. But today was not the day to offer him a new set of furniture again. He had barely eaten his way through the leftovers his wife served for breakfast that morning and furniture for an ungrateful priest was the last item on his invisible budget. The torts of akpeteshie that he topped it off with seemed like a better appetiser. However, the urge to sick seemed to contradict his good judgement.
‘’Today is the day Osofo,’’ he began in earnest before the older man had a chance to respond to his greetings. ‘’Why should I be the one that believes in good luck again when I’ve had it ripped from me?’’ When he realised that no response was forthcoming, he continued ‘’ the sooner I see a change, however small, the best it will be for us all.’’
The priest still said nothing.
This was not the kind of conversation that would require a taciturn priest, but that was all he intended to be for the lost younger man. After all, he would neither appreciate nor heed any advice he would offer him. In fact he had stopped praying for him since his last visit a few weeks ago. He could hardly blame him for all the hope he had lost in the bearded old man above.
The monologue went on for a little longer than he had anticipated.
‘’Osofo Bright, how do you expect me to trust in a God who annihilated his own son and shamed him on a cross only so he could prove a point?’’ The disgust on his face was so sickening it cut through the older man’s stare. He had no more help to offer the once hearty Sarkodie whose investments were the bane of his existence. His heart had been shattered when he returned to the town to resettle in his mother’s old house with same reluctance he exhumed that cold morning he set out to fetch water for the new priest decades ago.
The priest stared deeply as the man blabbed on. He was not traditionally handsome, but you could describe him as well taken care of when he had close to everything. Hell, he’d helped refurbish the church to its present glory and now his hopeless visits were his way of demanding repayment from the priest for all the good the church received on his account.
He tethered on the brink of sobriety. ‘’ There is as little hope for me as I can honestly afford.
No more than I can bear. I have worshipped hard in anticipation for new glories to replace the ones I lost but it is all gone. Did Job have to suffer this long? I highly doubt the chroniclers of the word spoke any truth.’’ The priest was as attentive to him as the younger man had been on the day he first offered him a seat in his room that cold morning, half soaked in the water he had brought. He told him about the God he had come to preach about in their town and he believed. Then, it had been with the curiosity of a half-witted child and as he grew and prospered in the city, with the gratitude of a blessed follower.
Now, he doubted with the knowledge of a disappointed follower, finding every justification in his new enlightenment of the word. The very word that he had embraced for as long as he could remember.
‘’ Now I give up,’’ this time the priest heard. ‘’ I renounce my faith in Him who has shown me a good hand and now deals me a bad one.’’ He rose to leave with ears ready to listen to no more promises of salvation from the priest. He had believed for too long.
The route back home seemed longer because of the way the alcohol made him stagger. The car missed him by an inch and he paused to rain fermented alcohol insults on the driver.
The car that hit him was the one behind the one that missed him. The told of white light did not appear. In its stead, the darkness was deep enough to block omniscience.
When Osofo Bright prayed that day at the funeral, he remembered begging his parish to send him back to the town in which he had grown up and seeded a young woman whose son would be old enough to fetch water for him.
On the Headstone, he wrote, THE LOST SON OF A LOST MAN.