“I came in the name of the Holy of Holies,” said Grover unabashed. “I have been purified by the death on Calvary and I am here in Christ’s sweet name that ye maybe redeemed and walk in light and power and glory.”
The old man looked dazed. “Well, what’s come over you?” he said, giving Grover a feeble, consolatory smile. My mother had just come in from the kitchen and had taken a stand behind Grover’s chair. By making a wry grimace with her mouth she was trying to convey to the old man that Grover was cracked. Even my sister seemed to realize that there was something wrong with him, especially when he had refused to visit the new bowling alley which her lovely pastor had expressly installed for young men such as Grover and his likes.
What was the matter with Grover? Nothing, except that his feet were solidly planted on the fifth foundation of the great wall of the Holy City of Jerusalem, the fifth foundation made entirely of sardonyx, whence he commanded a view of a pure river of water of life issuing from the throne of God. And the sight of this river of life was to Grover like the bite of a thousand fleas in his lower colon. Not until he had run at least seven times around the earth would he be able to sit quietly on his ass and observe the blindness and the indifference of men with something like equanimity. He was alive and purged, and though to the eyes of the sluggish, sluttish spirits who are sane he was “cracked”, to me he seemed infinitely better off this way than before. He was a pest who could do you no harm. If you listened to him long enough you became somewhat purged yourself, though perhaps unconvinced. Grover’s bright new language always caught me in the midriff and through inordinate laughter cleansed me of the dross accumulated by the sluggish sanity about me. He was alive as Ponce de Leon had hoped to be alive; alive as only a few men have ever been. And being unnaturally alive he didn’t mind in the least if you laughed in his face, nor would he have minded if you had stolen the few possessions which were his. He was alive and empty, which is so close to Godhood that it is crazy.
With his feet solidly planted on the great wall of the New Jerusalem Grover knew a joy which is incommensurable. Perhaps if he had not been born with a club foot he would not have known this incredible joy. Perhaps it was well that his father had kicked the mother in the belly while Grover was still in the womb. Perhaps it was that kick in the belly which had sent Grover soaring, which made him so thoroughly alive and awake that even in his sleep he was delivering God’s messages. The harder he laboured the less he was fatigued. He had no more worries, no regrets, no clawing memories. He recognized no duties, no obligations, except to God. And what did God expect of him? Nothing, nothing … except to sing His praises. God only asked of Grover Watrous that he reveal himself alive in the flesh. He only asked of him to be more and more alive. And when fully alive Grover was a voice and this voice was a flood which made all dead things into chaos and this chaos in turn became the mouth of the world in the very centre of which was the verb to be. In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So God; was this strange little infinitive which is all there is – and is it not enough? For Grover it was more than enough: it was everything. Starting from this Verb what difference did it make which road he travelled? To leave the Verb was to travel away from the centre, to erect a Babel. Perhaps God had deliberately maimed Grover Watrous in order to hold him to the centre, to the Verb. By an invisible cord God held Grover Watrous to his stake which ran through the heart of the world and Grover became the fat goose which laid a golden egg every day . . .
Why do I write of Grover Watrous? Because I have met thousands of people and none of them were alive in the way that Grover was. Most of them were more intelligent, many of them were brilliant, some of them were even famous, but none were alive and empty as Grover was. Grover was inexhaustible. He was like a bit of radium which, even if buried under a mountain does not lose its power to give off energy. I had seen plenty of so-called energetic people before – is not America filled with them? – but never, in the shape of a human being, a reservoir of energy. And what created this inexhaustible reservoir of energy? An illumination. Yes, it happened in the twinkling of an eye, which is the only way that anything important ever does happen. Overnight all Grover’s preconceived values were thrown overboard. Suddenly, just like that, he ceased moving as other people move. He put the brakes on and he kept the motor running. If once, like other people, he had thought it was necessary to get somewhere now he knew that somewhere was anywhere and therefore right here and so why move? Why not park the car and keep the motor running? Meanwhile the earth itself is turning and Grover knew it was turning and knew that he was turning with it. Is the earth getting anywhere? Grover must undoubtedly have asked himself this question and must undoubtedly have satisfied himself that it was not getting anywhere. Who, then, had said that we must get somewhere? Grover would inquire of this one and that where they were heading for and the strange thing was that although they were all heading for their individual destinations none of them ever stopped to reflect that the one inevitable destination for all alike was the grave. This puzzled Grover because nobody could convince him that death was not a certainty, whereas nobody could convince anybody else that any other destination was an uncertainty. Convinced of the dead certainty of death Grover suddenly became tremendously and overwhelmingly alive. For the first time in his life he began to live, and at the same time the dub foot dropped completely out of his consciousness.
This is a strange thing, too, when you come to think of it, because the dub foot, just like death, was another ineluctable fact. Yet the dub foot dropped out of mind, or, what is more important, all that had been attached to the club foot. In the same way, having accepted death, death too dropped out of Grover’s mind. Having seized on the single certainty of death all the uncertainties vanished. The rest of the world was now limping along with dub-footed uncertainties and Grover Watrous alone was free and unimpeded. Grover Watrous was the personification of certainty. He may have been wrong, but he was certain. And what good does it do to be right if one has to limp along with a club foot? Only a few men have ever realized the truth of this and their names have become very great names. Grover Watrous will probably never be known, but he is very great just the same. This is probably
