It's finally finished! It's a fictional story about an old Jw. It is very long, about 7000 words.
The Opal Ring
By Sheree Stokell
Barbara was never meant to die. She’d grown up a Jehovah’s Witness and was told all her life that Armageddon and God’s new world was just around the corner and she’d never see death, and certainly not from cancer. Now she was gone, and her husband Alfred was getting on in years too, something that was also never supposed to happen.
Barbara and Alfred had prayed every day to Jehovah that he just might keep her alive to see the beginning of Armageddon. Just the beginning, so she could die happy, knowing her life’s work had come to fruition. Then Alfred would not have long to wait for her to be resurrected to the bloom of life in the beautiful paradise Earth.
But Armageddon never came. Barbara grew sicker, and while the doctors said she could have another two years, she refused the treatment. Her blood was so weakened by the chemotherapy that the doctors wanted to give her a transfusion, their Hippocratic Oath demanding they do nothing but the best for this patient they’d slaved over for years. She refused to take any, so with downcast faces they sent her home to die. Once a healthy plump woman, Barbara withered before everyone’s eyes.
Alfred’s heart now had a great big empty place where Barbara once lived as part of him. They had been somewhat close though not in love; they were married at 18 after a six month romance and after several years had realised they had very little in common other than their religion. Their religion forbade divorce except for when one spouse cheated, which was something neither Barbara or Alfred would consider due to their good standing in the congregation and fear of reprisal. Despite this they lived as good friends for four decades, developing a familial fondness for each other.
They had one son, Adam. A career Jehovah’s Witness, he was full-time witnessing (pioneering) straight of school at fifteen and was an elder at 29. Now 35, he had even worked as a substitute Circuit Overseer.
Adam was never even meant to be born. In the scramble for Jehovah’s Witnesses of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s to witness to everyone in the lead-up to 1975 when Armageddon was said to be coming and the organisation was experiencing huge increases, no-one was meant to have children. With Armageddon imminent, the brothers looked down on those who wanted to start a family. It was constantly preached at the Kingdom Hall and assemblies that having children was pointless and selfish. Barbara and Alfred had always loved children, but had taken the admonition to heart not to have any of their own. There’d be plenty of time for that after Armageddon. When Adam had unexpectedly arrived in the late 70’s and they had to quit pioneering for a few years, Barbara suddenly realised what joy she had been missing. She pined for another child, but Alfred, frazzled after a long day’s work and endless Kingdom Hall meetings, put his foot down as the God-appointed head of the household and told her it wasn’t going to happen. Armageddon was too close. The world was becoming too bad. The other pioneers also had stopped associating with them as much since Adam had come along, and they didn’t want to be excluded further.
One day Alfred sat Barbara down and showed her from the Bible where it says wives have to be obedient and in submission to their husbands. He reproached her for being selfish, when Jehovah’s name and its vindication was their mission in life. Barbara relented and stopped begging for another child. She moped around for a while, going through the motions of being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Alfred felt he had every right as her husbandly head to put his foot down, but he wasn’t made of stone. It was a struggle, but he saved a tiny amount of money from his weekly pay cheque for a gift. A fabulous gift. After over a year of secretly saving, he presented her with an opal ring on their anniversary. One could gaze into the huge stone and feel like one was already in Paradise, so deep and brilliant was the colour. It matched Barb’s eyes, and she especially loved to wear blue.
The ring became Barbara’s favourite possession. The eternity represented in that ancient stone, forged by Jehovah himself in the very creation of the universe, became her reminder of the eternity she would spend in the paradise Earth after Armageddon. The years wore on and Armageddon didn’t arrive, but Barbara buried herself in Watchtower study and pioneering, funnelling all her frustration into being the best Jehovah’s Witness she could be. She studied with many children in the congregation, first being looked up to as a spiritual mother, then a spiritual grandmother. She’d counted 17 children she’d led to baptism, and had another on the way when she died. This was her motherhood.
And the ring: as she felt her mortality slipping away and with it the girlhood promise of Paradise, she could not decide which of her spiritual daughters she would give it to. Many of them had moved away anyhow, and there were three she refused to speak to because they had left the organisation. Then as she was praying in her bed at home, Alfred brought the latest Watchtowers over from the meeting he’d just been to. When she was strong enough, she was a voracious reader of the life experiences, articles exhorting young ones to pioneer, and the study articles. Then there towards the back of the magazine, was an article on making donations to the Watchtower, especially when one dies. A dying Jehovah’s Witness could will property, insurance benefits, shares and – jewellery! to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
Barbara knew to whom the ring would go now. Her last gift to Jehovah would be her precious ring, which could be sold to bring Kingdom Halls and literature to the poor brothers in Africa. That ring, which Alfred had had valued at over four thousand dollars, could pay for the plumbing or in a Kingdom Hall in Nigeria, Rwanda, or even Malawi, where Jehovah’s people had been so cruelly persecuted.
She told Alfred of her dying wish, and quietly slipped away that night. And the ring went to the Australia Branch Office in Sydney.
With Barbara gone, Alfred lived alone in their little rented unit in a dingy suburb. Adam was off in another town, filling in for their late circuit overseer. The guy had just dropped dead one day from a heart attack, and Alfred couldn’t help but think of so many other circuit overseers he’d known who had never made it to 70. But the new system would be here before Adam reached that age, Alfred reminded himself dutifully, even though he was starting to doubt it. He focused on his hope for Adam. Adam would see the new system alive, even if his mother and father arrived in the sleeping carriage.
Between circuit work and Adam’s local congregation duties, he came and visited his father. Alfred was still able-bodied, but lately had been unable to dig himself out of the hole in his heart left by Barbara’s death. He went to every meeting at the Kingdom Hall but somehow it seemed different now, like although he was surrounded by a hundred smiles, they seemed painted on and he felt remote. He was part of the crowd but somehow peering at it from a parallel dimension, as if he could see them but they couldn’t see him. He’d taken himself off the pioneer preachers list because he just could not face random strangers every day of the week. After 30 years of it, three of them nursing Barbara through her cancer, he was just dog tired. He heard from the platform and Watchtower every week about how now was the time for Jehovah’s people to be doing even more for the kingdom, but his mind slid around what he was hearing like ice on a car bonnet, and he just wanted to sleep.
“Dad, think of all the encouragement you give the brothers and sisters!” Adam too missed his mother, but the more he felt it the more he ploughed himself into his religious career. He felt his father should do the same and keep pioneering.
“Dad, the time now is so reduced. This system can’t go on any longer. It just can’t! People are streaming to the Organisation, and think of all the lost sheep you’ve brought into the Truth. There are so many more out there Dad, and the time left is reduced! I miss Mum too, but we have to keep going if we want to see her again.”
Alfred’s tiny lounge room was littered with relics of his life. Wedding photos. Old Bibles. A photo of him with the Sydney Branch Overseer. Watchtower bound volumes from 1967. 1972. 1975.
Ninteen Seventy-Five. The lettering on the dusty-coloured bound volume leapt out at him. Adam was continuing on about a how much the Faithful and Discreet Slave (aka the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses) cared so much about the brothers, which was why they continually exhorted everyone to keep as busy as they could in the preaching work and avoid not just hobbies and recreation, but in putting too much emphasis on their own feelings.
Nineteen Seventy-Five. Dim memories of that year stirred in Alfred’s mind. Adam was very young so he didn’t remember the excitement of that time. The waiting, the brothers selling their houses, the huge push for pioneers – and the disappointment. Nothing happened. The world continued, and just as in the days of Noah men were marrying and women being given in marriage, but unlike Noah, the end of the world didn’t happen. Alfred himself had been caught up, but prided himself on his faith when he stayed loyal to the Organisation when others he knew didn’t, and even one of the Governing Body turned apostate.
It was the end of a world, but not in the way that was preached. It was rather the catalyst for new, stricter policies regarding anyone who ever said the Organisation just may have made a mistake. Alfred had to shun his brother who left over the affair, and while he had always been close to him, he just couldn’t run the risk of his brother’s gangrenous apostasy rubbing off on him. His brother chose to leave Jehovah’s organisation, Alfred reasoned, so he was worse than dead. His brother would never be spoken to another Jehovah’s Witness as long as he lived.
Alfred refocussed on the present. Adam was reading aloud from the book of Job, something about being an integrity keeper.
“Adam.”
He stopped reading.
“I’ve been in the Truth a long time. My parents were in the Truth. Mum heard Brother Rutherford give public talks. Her mother, your great great grandmother, came into the Truth after hearing “Millions now Living Will Never Die.”
“Millions now Living MAY Never Die,” Adam corrected.
“No, I remember it. “Millions now Living WILL Never Die.”
Adam frowned, but let his father continue.
“Adam, your mother was never meant to die…”
Adam cut his father off, “I know, Dad, it just shows that we were never meant to be living in this system, that we were designed to live forever, that the end is getting so close! We need to more obedient to the Faithful and Discreet Slave than ever before as this system comes to its end.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Alfred with a mournful gaze. “What I mean is, we were told you wouldn’t reach primary school. My mother was told I wouldn’t reach primary school. And she too was told…yet Mum and Nana are long gone.” He was about to confess something to his son, something he felt guilty for even thinking. Adam was flicking through the Bible, running his finger down the columns as he searched.
“Adam!”
“Hang on, Dad, I’m looking up something to encourage you.”
“No son, put that down. Remember I told you that what makes a good elder is not how much you know but how much you care? Just listen.”
Adam acquiesced. He had always been a good boy, taught to respect his parents and Jehovah. While other kids had been giving their parents grief by running off to parties and getting drunk and smoking but smiling like perfect Witnesses at the Kingdom Hall next morning, Adam had always been involved in ‘spiritually upbuilding’ activities such as preaching and helping with the microphones at the Kingdom Hall. He hung out with pioneers and ministerial servants and was a model Jehovah’s Witness kid.
“Adam, what I’m saying is, since your mother died, I’m not sure the end is coming at all.”
“Dad!” Adam boomed. Alfred had always been a pillar of faith, and now he was coming out with this heresy!
“Dad, we all have doubts! That’s why you need to ‘always have plenty of work to do in the Lord.’ Maybe just auxiliary pioneer if you can’t handle the 70 hours. The Slave is so loving to provide these options for Jehovah’s people. I can show you how to access the new Watchtower Online Library. Here, let me call the elders and arrange a shepherding call. They can encourage you, maybe take you on some Bible studies…”
Yes, Adam was a good boy. He knew where to go for all the answers. Somehow though, the answers didn’t seem to help Alfred anymore. The meetings seemed empty, and all these young elders lacked the life experience and empathy needed to give him any real comfort.
“I’m doing all that, son, but your mother’s death got me thinking. I read through some of those old bound volumes over on that shelf, and realised just how much the Truth has changed. But one thing hasn’t, and that’s that the end will be here any moment. I just don’t see it happening anymore. It’s been 100 years since the last days began and that generation has passed away. You don’t remember 1975 or the 80’s, but I remember them clearly.”
“Dad, where are you getting this from? What have you been reading?”
“Reading?” Alfred was astonished. “Just the Watchtower. See them on the shelf there?”
“But what else have you been reading, Dad, where are you getting this from?”
“Getting what?”
“This APOSTATE talk!” Alfred rarely saw Adam angry, but now he was tensing up like an offended cat.
“Nowhere…call those elders for a shepherding call,” he muttered. Alfred was somewhat startled by Adam’s strong reaction to his doubts, but apostasy had been a problem for the Organisation of late. It just showed Adam cared. He needed to talk to those elders. He certainly didn’t want to experience a shipwreck of faith, like even some anointed Christians in the first century did.
“Dad, Satan is using Mum’s death to get a hold of your mind.” Adam called Brother Wanis and organised a shepherding visit for his father. Then, as he had to get back to his circuit work the next day, he left his father with some scriptures and went home.
Somewhat perplexed by what had just passed between them, Alfred left his marker on the page and closed the Bible Adam had handed him. The house seemed so cold, as though Adam’s departure had drained it of life. He hauled himself out of his easy-chair and walked to his bookshelf. There was a photo of Barbara from the last congregation picnic she’d been well enough to attend. Her blue opal set the picture alight, and Alfred wondered what had become of it. He had hoped to receive an acknowledgement of her donation, but so far nothing had come from the Branch Office.
***
Christopher Wanis strutted through the door with his flash new grey Bible in hand and tucked up against his side. Although only about 33, he had started balding early in life and was only about 5’6”, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t considered one of the hottest single brothers on the circuit. With 17 years of full-time service under his belt, five of which were at Bethel, he came from a long line of Jehovah’s Witnesses strong in the ‘truth’, and knew he was a hot commodity.
Married women went to him for advice on raising children and men went to him for advice on their marriages. Single sisters found any reason they could to talk to him at a gathering or Circuit Assembly, yet none were up to his standard. He knew what he wanted: a slim, blonde pioneer sister with large breasts and a wealthy family in the ‘truth’ who could support two pioneers. She also had to be no older than about 19, for he felt entitled to young virgin. No second-hand sister for him! Teenagers were also easier to mould than sisters his own age.
While Brother Wanis strutted in like a bantam rooster, Peter Edrupt almost tip-toed in behind him. A lined, colourless man of middle age, he took Alfred’s easy-chair and seemed to disappear into the décor.
Alfred pulled out a folding chair when he saw Christopher go for the other easy-chair, and sat adjusting his tie. These gifts from God were here to encourage Alfred, yet all this sitting about the lounge room in suits and ties seemed distant and formal, like a meeting with parliament.
After some pleasantries and a prayer, Brother Wanis went straight to the heart of the matter, interrogating Alfred about his thoughts and what had led him to this point. Alfred spoke honestly and frankly, believing that only a full confession would allow Jehovah’s Holy Spirit to work and help him with his doubts. This Brother Wanis was younger than Alfred’s son; Alfred had been an elder when this guy’s mum was still wiping his butt. Yet the Holy Spirit had appointed him an elder, and Alfred needed to respect that if he wanted Jehovah’s blessing. Alfred was no longer an elder and so he knew his place and that he had to be obedient to the ones taking the lead.
He told the two elders about how many he’d seen die believing Armageddon was going to come soon, and about the disappointment of 1975.
“So if they were wrong about that, what else might they have been wrong about?” Alfred knew he was in dangerous territory, but he knew these young elders would not disregard his sincerity.
Brother Wanis’ eyes glittered like obsidian. He tensed as though about to pounce, then calmed as Brother Edrupt shot him a glare.
Still, through tight lips, those black eyes like a hawk’s, he intoned, “Who have you been talking to? What have you been reading? Have you been reading apostate websites? Alfred, do you believe the Governing Body is directed by Jehovah?”
Alfred was stunned. He knew from years of being an elder that this was the ‘apostasy’ question. He’d expected some scriptural thought or encouraging true story and not an inquisition. It was never that way when he was an elder.
“Christopher, that’s the apostasy question! I am not an apostate. I just have some doubts, since Barbara’s death I’ve had a lot of time to think…”
The colourless Brother Edrupt came to life, “Yes we all miss Barbara. She was such a good example to the young ones, and married sisters who had problems with submission to their husbands. We all miss her.”
“And if you want to see her again, Alfred, you have to get your thinking in line with the Faithful and Discreet Slave,” said Christopher.
Alfred felt the colour drain from his being. Of course he wanted to see her again, and be with Adam forever too. After so many decades, he couldn’t give up now. He remembered the words of Jesus: “But he who endures to the end is the one who will be saved.”
Brother Edrupt spoke again in a kindly drawl. “Alfred, we know you’re a faithful brother. We know you love Jehovah. You’re just having some doubts. Do you think maybe Satan is taking advantage of your emotions right now? Of course he is. You are the one he wants to get now. Barbara slipped his noose by dying faithful to Jehovah. And we are so close, so close, to the end. For you to give in now would be throwing away all the blessings Jehovah has given your for your faithful service to him.
“Think about how much you have been blessed by Jehovah. Adam a substitute CO. All those people you helped come into the Truth. Service privileges. Pioneering. And you’ve never gone without anything materially: I remember once Barbara told me that although you were supporting her and Adam by washing windows when he was very young, working long hours for little pay and putting Jehovah first, you managed to buy her that opal ring!”
Ah yes, thought Alfred. How she loved that opal ring. It was not really a blessing, but a necessity, something small to give Barbara in lieu of the other child she wanted.
Alfred just looked at Brother Edrupt and then at Christopher. "You know brothers, that's actually one of the things that got me thinking. Barbara loved that ring and I sent it to the Branch Office in Sydney according to her will. Barb's dying wish was that it be sold to make Kingdom Halls in Africa and her will stipulated that. But I never got a receipt or acknowledgement for it."
“Just what are you suggesting, brother?” said Christopher, again beginning to bristle.
“What am I suggesting? No- nothing. I just thought something like that, something specifically willed, should have meant I got some sort of acknowledgement…” Alfred shifted his bony haunches on the hard chair.
“Hang on a sec,” Brother Edrupt began in his distinct Queensland drawl, “You mean to say you feel Christ’s anointed brothers owe you some sort of confirmation, like you don’t trust them to use what Barbara legally gave them?”
Brother Wanis caught on quickly, and when he revved up there was no stopping him. His speech was rapid and his voice took urgent. “Brother Alfred, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that love hopes all things, bears all things, believes all things. If you truly love the brothers, you will believe them. Are you suggesting Christ’s anointed brothers in Sydney have misappropriated Barbara’s gift?”
Alfred sat there somewhat poleaxed as this had not been what he was wondering at all. He wasn’t even sure at that moment what he had been wondering about the fate of the ring. After all, he had never received confirmation for any of the numerous gifts he’d sent to Sydney Bethel over the years, but then he’d never sent anything so valuable.
“Of course not, Christopher.”
Christopher’s movements were sudden and excited, yet another stern glance from the colourless Brother Edrupt calmed him down somewhat. He checked himself and said, “You don’t need to worry about it. If Barbara willed it, the brothers in Sydney will honour that. We counselled her when she made that will out though, that the Kingdom Ministry always says we cannot choose where our donations go, but she did not take that to heart. She did not obey the Slave’s direction on giving without specific instructions, so how could you expect Jehovah to bless her decision? She disregarded our counsel and willed it as she wished.”
“We did not feel we could deny a dying faithful sister such a final wish,” added Brother Edrupt.
A pang of pain shot through Alfred. His lounge room now contained the bodies of three living, breathing men, but somehow seemed emptier than ever, cold and bleak. He again shifted his bony behind on the hard folding chair.
Christopher Wanis ploughed on regardless. “Look Alfred, if you’re worried about this little thing, you just need to wait on Jehovah. When has he ever let you down? Do you really want to be stumbled now, on the threshold to the New World? Do you really want Barbara to wake up after Armageddon, meet up with Adam then look around and say, ‘Where’s Alfred?’ Do you really want her to go through the pain of realising you’re not there?”
Alfred felt like he was in primary school again. Like the time he refused to stand up at the Anzac Day parade and copped a harangue from the head teacher about how-dare-you-disrespect-the-men-who-laid-down-their-lives-so-we-could-live-in-freedom-today. Unlike that day at school around six decades ago, Alfred was not receiving ‘the cane’ on the backside, but he might have well been. His feelings crushed in upon themselves and lay in a wreck like a collapsed house of cards. He wanted to see Barbara, and more specifically, be there with Adam and see his own dear mother again. He wanted to wake up with no aches and pains, and be able to walk with the lions all day long. He wanted live in a house no one could sell out from underneath him like this rental. Not have to lock his door or watch where he left his car. And no door-to-door ministry in the stinking heat. He could sit in the shade by the estuary with Adam and teach him to fish like he’d always wanted but somehow never found time.
Yet in the dying light of the afternoon, surrounded by dusty old reminders of a life now gone and another on the way out, these dreams were further away than ever before.
Like a school yard bully who knows his victim is beaten into submission, Brother Wanis drew up in his chair and pinned Alfred with that hawk-like gaze. “Brother Alfred, do you believe the Governing Body is directed by Jehovah?”
*
2014 rolled around but Armageddon hadn’t. Alfred began making preparations for the International Regional Convention in Melbourne, scheduled for December. Adam was traveling with his lifelong friend Chris Wanis and his parents, leaving Alfred to travel on his own and stay in the only little hotel room he could afford. Others in the congregation had banded together with family and friends to share accommodation, but Alfred had been overlooked. It happened a lot of late. Congregation picnics, get togethers, witnessing groups, barbecues- people he had known for years seemed to forget he existed.
His seat at the Kingdom Hall was front left, away from the relentless air conditioning vents that weren’t ever shut off, even in winter. His frail frame was a coat hanger for layers of sweaters, over which the obligatory suit jacket sat. He was glad the convention in Melbourne was in summer, because at least that city’s unpredictable weather tended not to be freezing. As long as it wasn’t one of those weekends with 44 degree days of heat being blasted in from the Australian outback or freezing Antarctic winds, Alfred would be fine.
Staying in Melbourne was presenting more than just health problems though. Melbourne was an expensive city to visit and from where Alfred lived, expensive to get to. The sisters in the congregation brimmed with excitement at the thought of having an excuse to visit Australia’s shopping Mecca while some of the brothers hoped to take in some sports events, while the teens and twenty-somethings were already planning which music events they would attend. Alfred however, was just tired.
His body ached and his head hurt. Individual thoughts were hard to grasp, and points from public talks and Watchtowers slid up against a wall in his mind and then slid out again. Field service was a drag, and more often than not, when the door opened and the householder fronted him, he couldn’t remember what he was about to say. A hollow futility enveloped him as he trudged door to door with whoever was assigned to work with him that morning. Gone were the days when brothers organised to work with him at the Kingdom Hall or book study group. Now he was often the one left over, the one in every witnessing group with whom no one wanted to work.
Entire days would go by in which in which Alfred did not experience a single emotion. Like a mannequin moving of its own accord, he went to the meetings, went witnessing and attended hall cleaning bees. Alfred knew he was supposed to feel joyful about being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and performing this sacred service as one of the most privileged people in history, but he just felt numb.
And still no acknowledgement of Barbara’s old opal ring had come from the Branch Office. He’d gone as far as to call them one day, and the curt voice on the other end had assured him he would look into it. Shortly thereafter a little slip with the Watchtower logo had come in an envelope, stating that they had received a donation. No word about what the donation was or what had become of it. Alfred saw his own mortality looming, and he wanted to hear about the kingdom halls in Africa before he died so he could tell Barb about it when they woke up together in paradise.
Adam was little help during these days. Since the conversation some months before with Brothers Edrupt and Wanis, Adam had cooled contact with his father. Whenever Alfred called, the conversation lacked the depth it once had. He could no longer share his thoughts without Adam loudly correcting him with Watchtower and Bible quotes and then finding some reason to wrap up the conversation. He did say, however, that he would allow his father to sit with him at the Melbourne Convention.
It all had to do with Brother Wanis’ question, “Do you believe the Governing Body is directed by Jehovah?” Alfred had answered with a soft yes, but Brother Wanis narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t convinced Alfred spoke from the heart, and so a judicial committee was formed. When he had received the letter informing of his secret trial he had nearly fallen over in shock. Apostasy? Me? He had sat on numerous apostasy judicial committees before, and cleansed the congregation with relish. Apostates were never repentant. Apostates spouted things they’d read off the internet and showed printouts. Apostates always tried to find fault with the organisation and win the elders to their filthy, sneaky arguments. Apostates were too far gone by the time their judicial committee was formed. They were to be cut off as the rotten fruit they were.
With a crushed heart, Alfred mounted the steps to the hall and took the familiar door to the elders’ meeting room. His feet automatically brought him there where he found the door locked, while Chris Wanis popped his head out of the door to the second school, the infamous ‘back room’, and told him to get inside.
Three elders half his age grilled him, while he insisted he was not an ‘apostate’. These cold faced young men threatened Alfred with the prospect of never seeing Barbara or Adam ever again, and of losing the protecting embrace of Jehovah’s organisation.
“Just look at how bad this system is getting, the end is so close!”
“Have you been spreading your apostate ideas to others in the congregation?”
“Now more than ever we have to get our thinking in line with the faithful and discreet slave.”
“If we criticise or find fault with Christ’s anointed brothers or here on earth or the earthly part of Jehovah’s organisation, we are criticising Jehovah himself. Do you really want to be guilty of touching Jehovah’s eyeball?”
Red flags popped up in Alfred’s mind even while their voices battered against his reason. He himself had sat on apostasy trials, and he’d always appealed to the sinner to repent and turn back to Jehovah in a spirit of compassion. The elders then were far more fatherly it seemed and wanted to save the errant one from himself, but these young guys seemed eager to punish and browbeat. Rather than a shepherd wanting to gently correct a sheep, these guys were more like hunters looking for a reason to kill it.
Alfred saw something gleaming in their eyes that had disturbed him of late: the gleam of the school yard bully. Not the fatherly shepherd, but the school yard bully. He told himself what he’d told others to do for decades when some test of faith perplexed them and they expected the elders to do something: to wait on Jehovah.
*
The strident nasal American accent booming through the stadium’s PA system woke Alfred. Adam was off being an attendant somewhere, and Christopher Wanis was three chairs away with all his books and bags and pens strewn over the intervening chairs. Alfred pulled his blanket closer around him as that accent ran through him like a pin.
“Brothers, the better the university, the greater the spiritual harm it can do to you!” A member of the Governing Body, Anthony Morris III, was delivering a talk entitled, “Getting the Best out of Your Youth” as part of the Saturday afternoon program.
“And one day I had to tell the mother, ‘Sister, your son has developed independent thinking! He wants to be a biologist!’ Can you imagine how difficult that was for me, brothers? Youths, don’t be tempted by the offer of a prestigious education.”
A hushed “ooo” of assent floated from the mouths of the people in the audience around Alfred. Parents with teenagers looked askance at their kids, while the kids donned a look of sheer boredom or even hopelessness.
“And it’s you parents who are lettin’ ‘em go to college! You parents are helpin’ ‘em with the applications! Then you wonder why your kids come home and say, ‘I don’t wanna pioneer, I wanna go to meetings anymore!’”
Alfred glanced at a sister a few seats away. A tear trickled down her face. How many times in his decades as an elder had Alfred told the bright kids to stay away from university! That they should become full-time pioneers!
And how many of them did he know now, getting on in years like himself, nearing retirement with little superannuation, or even worse, having suffered serious injuries or illness from only being able to find the most back-breaking jobs with the longest hours. He knew that feeling well: at 75 he still washed the odd window to supplement his pension. Chris Wanis’s father had had multiple spinal surgeries from his heavy physical work as a storeman because never learn a profession as a young man because ‘the end was near’. Then there was Brother Green whose knees were shot from decades of laying carpet, when he could have moved into a physically easier job with the right education. Worst of all was Sister Castagno who still cleaned houses for a living at 72 because she left school at 14 and then pioneered and pioneered.
Once upon a time a speech like the one coming from the stage now would have had Alfred thinking about how he had been blessed for his obedience in not letting Adam go to university when he wanted to become a civil engineer. He had the grades for it but Alfred had given him piles of Watchtowers to read and told him they would be the only education he’d need. So Adam left school as soon as he legally could and pioneered.
What would happen when Adam reached Alfred’s age? Many Australians were investing in their retirement funds and in property in the belief that the government’s age pension will be phased out in the coming decades. Alfred barely lived on that as it was, yet even just a few years ago he counselled Witnesses in his congregation against working full-time and investing in property.
“We’re just preparing for if this System continues and the government stops the pension,” they’d say.
“That may happen, but your attitude is all wrong. You’re not relying on Jehovah to provide.”
Now as Alfred looked around at the tens of thousands of his fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses, he saw not a people brimming over in joy at being part of Jehovah’s means of salvation, but tired people. Older people were napping, as he had done. Women with children looked gaunt with fatigue under all their makeup and finery while their little ones grew restless and fidgeted and wiggled around. Attendants shifted their weight where they stood and stared at the distant ceiling. Teenagers were playing on their smart phones or heading out to the concourse to meet with friends. They looked like they’d rather be anywhere else but listening to one of Christ’s anointed brothers speak.
Alfred knew how they felt. At the Sydney International Convention in 2003 he’d felt beyond privileged to hear another member of the Governing Body, Brother Stephen Lett, give a number of discourses. Now, the words of the Faithful and Discreet Slave members rattled around in the hollow of his head. He found himself sceptical that these men had anything to do with Jehovah at all. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t reconcile their extreme talk with what he read in the Bible. But there was nothing he could do about it.
He was an old man now, and his whole life had been living and breathing Jehovah’s Organisation. There was nothing he did not sacrifice for the Organisation: children, career, home ownership, hobbies and even his youth. It all seemed like it was in black and white, like a silent film playing out before him.
It had dawned on him after his judicial committee that the Organisation was all he had. He’d sacrificed everything for it, and now it stood before him like a giant idol filling up his entire vision. Even to look away was to look into emptiness: he was a pensioner who depended on the odd kind act of his son or someone from his congregation to take him to the doctor when he was sick, help with his chores or give him some leftovers from a bbq he was not even invited to. If he stopped going to the meetings and just rested his tired body and mind, he would lose that and have nothing. Not one person or means of living. Every person he’d ever known would shun him. The best he could do would be to move into the local nursing home and fade away in some corner.
Alfred’s eyes, cloudy from years of witnessing in the harsh Australian sun in the days before sunglasses were invented, tried to focus on Brother Morris on the giant stadium screen.
“…tight pants! Homosexuals love nothing better than for you young brothers to wear tight pants! It’s disgusting! Do you really want Jehovah to look down from heaven and see homosexuals enjoying the sight of our brothers in tight pants?”
Alfred wondered how Brother Morris was so familiar with what homosexuals liked.
And then, something appeared on the giant screen with Brother Morris as the live camera feed zoomed out a little from that rigid square face. It was like a hummingbird had landed on the man’s tie. Alfred adjusted his glasses and concentrated.
Something iridescent like a tropical reef seen from the air lit up the screen, and there, fashioned into a tie pin, was the opal. There was no mistaking it. There was not another one like it that Alfred had ever seen. There was no mistaking that deep azure flecked with hummingbird-green and frozen fire as it shone and danced in the stadium lights. There was the eternity promised to Barbara all those years ago, glittering on the tie of one who was supposed to be Christ’s humble brother.
Alfred erased all emotion from his face. It was a habit he had picked up of late when he realised his emotions were no longer the same as those of all the other Witnesses. He picked up his thermos and blanket and walked out. He left his Bible and song book behind.
Alfred returned to his hotel and bought a ticket for the airport shuttle bus. For the first time since Barb’s death, he could think with certainty.
*
Alfred sat sunning his bones like an old cat on the porch of his tiny studio apartment at the Westminster Assisted Living Residence. It wasn’t such a bad place. It was a short trundle to the shops and the staff were very caring. The neighbour’s little granddaughter would pick Alfred a flower when she came to visit her Nana. A local taxi driver never charged him for the trip to his doctor either, after having discovered Alfred was a fan of home brewed beer.
The apartment was tiny, but after Alfred threw out decades worth of old Watchtowers he found he didn’t need quite as much room. He existed between his easy-chair and this sunny porch, content to rest his weary bones after decades of exertion on that never-ending quest to please a god which couldn’t be pleased. It was a relief to be released from that.
There was an ancient sister of 93 who lived in the complex, a withered arthritic old thing who relied on her monthly scheduled visit from the elders for company. Alfred tried to visit Doris for old times’ sakes, but all she could talk about was how everyone else in the home was a damned fool for believing they’d be going to heaven soon. Alfred chose to spend most of his time on his sunny porch instead.
He was turning the page of a book the taxi driver had lent him, when the sounds of heavy feet heralded a visitor coming down the path. He saw Christopher Wanis carrying his clumping great meeting bag, the sort that was almost the size of a carry-on suitcase.
It must be time for Doris’ monthly visit and Christian has been assigned, thought Albert. There were always two elders, or an elder and a ministerial servant assigned, but maybe the other man couldn’t make it this time.
But no, the heavy footfall that came next was that which Alfred knew like no other: Adam hove into view, pulling a suit jacket on even though it was nearly 30 degrees.
He walked right past Alfred as if he wasn’t there.