Books of Color

George sat on the park bench next to Harold. It was the same bench they occupied almost every day. The days they skipped were used for church, or to keep out of the weather.

George and Harold. Passersby would think that they had been friends for fifty years or more. They laughed together, fought together, sometimes one or both of them shed a tear together. And many days they just sat there quietly. Maybe they were in between topics of conversation. Maybe the last topic had just out them into an introspective mood. Maybe they forgot what they were talking about.

Yesterday they’d had a new conversation. It happened more often than people would have thought. They had, in fact, not been friends for more than three months. George lived in a senior facility up the hill, near the eastern entrance to the park. They let their residents out whenever it was requested, as long as their memories were working well enough for them to remember to come back. Harold lived with his granddaughter some miles away. She worked in a skyscraper near the north entrance to the park, and brought him there every weekday, dropping him off before she went to the office. On Saturdays, she and her son, Billy, came to the park to play, and Harold came along.

Anyway, the two old men had found each other on the same bench one day. Being old, and having not much to hide, they didn’t wait long to say “hello” and make introductions. They were both in their nineties, and both had lived nearly all their lives in this goddamned city with its four seasons – three of which were miserable. They each had raised a family, but were each widowed long ago. The result of these discoveries was a long list of common experiences, and a fair bit of teasing about who had a woman in their life now!

They talked about war. Once they discovered that each of them had been in one or more, it was easy to open up and share stories. They hadn’t been in the same theater, but the experiences were similar. Most were about their comrades, their thrills, their sorrows. Very few tales were about their enemies.

“Do you remember The Little Red Book?” Harold asked George one morning. They had not finished their thermoses of coffee yet, so it was still early in the morning.

George had to think hard. “Uh, yeah, I think so. China, right?”

“Yes, it was a little book filled with sayings of Chairman Mao. Back then no one thought he would eventually be toppled from the summit of the Chinese Communist Party. The government must have printed millions of those little books, tens of millions, and handed them out to all their soldiers and workers. It was their indoctrination.”

“Well, we had those little Green Books, remember?”

Harold took his turn to think hard. “I don’t remember those.”

“They handed them out when I finished basic training. It was a thin little thing with the story of American history in it. I don’t know why the Army felt they needed to remind us of our own history, but thinking back, I suppose it was a kind of indoctrination for us.”

“Funny how books are named like that, by colors.”

“Well there were the little blue books. I never had one, but it was a whole series of cheap, paperback reprints of important works. Kind of a list of ‘what you should read to be educated’, I guess. Maybe I should have taken them up on it. Then I’d be ‘educated’ now.”

Harold chuckled at George. “Educated or nor, you’ve done alright in life.

“Here’s another one, and I’ve got a story to go with it. What about the little black book?”

“You mean the one you carry around, hoping to get women’s phone numbers written into it?” George teased.

“No! I’m talking about Bibles. I wonder why most of them have black covers. Maybe it makes them seem important to the owners. Sometimes I think it’s a bit depressing, especially considering the hopeful message inside. But anyway …” Harold knew that getting in to a discussion about religion would go nowhere good with George.

“Anyway, there was a time about twenty years ago. I was already widowed by then, and going to a nice church near here. We had missionaries sent out into several places in the world. It was not a big church, but it had a couple of hundred adults. We were all getting older – you know, not that many young people come into church these days?

“Well, one Sunday the minister he gets up at the lectern and begins his sermon with an announcement. He was in a very somber mood. We expected the worst: had someone in the congregation died? He explained that a small plane carrying two of our missionaries – a man and his wife – had crashed into a mountain somewhere in Asia. He couldn’t be more specific because it was one of those ‘closed’ countries. They had both dies instantly. They’d been going to deliver a plane load of small Bibles, recently translated into the local dialect. Each of the Bibles had a black cover.”

George interrupted when Harold took a breath. “That’s awful. What happened next?” He could tell that Harold was not at the end of the story.

“Well, after the minister made the announcement the whole congregation was silent. Then there were a few sniffles. The man and his wife had been sent out by our own church, so people had met them, had had them into their homes for dinner, had been excited to be in on the secret mission to send Bibles into remote places.

“After the sermon and the closing hymn, when people filed out, each one wishing the minister well,. I filed out, too. I said to him, ‘Can we get together for coffee?’ He agreed to do so.

“So, we met the next morning over coffee and bagels. I explained that I had been a donor to the campaign to raise funds for those Bibles and to support those missionaries. I asked him what was going to happen next.

“He explained to me that the missionary committee was wondering how they could continue. There was no one else to send, and no money for more printing.

“I offered that we should have a fund-raising campaign. The crash and deaths had been unexpected, and maybe there was an unexpected source of new money that could get the project started again. We could get more little black books printed and delivered.

“The minister looked at me and said ‘thank you, that would be great’. A wave of relief passed over his face. Then he asked me if I could keep a secret. I said ‘Sure’.

“He leaned forward across the table, almost spilling his coffee and almost putting his collar into the cream cheese. He said the name of the place where the plane had been heading. He said he’d never been there, and as far as he knew no one in the congregation had ever been there. Even the couple who died had not yet gone there. It was to have been their first trip.”

George could see that this was a sad tale for Harold. Not being a religious man, he didn’t share the experience of church, but he had been to some remote places himself in the Army. And he had seen more than one unexpected plane crash.

George asked Harold, “So, are you preparing to lead up the fund-raising effort?”

“Yes I am. You know I’m not all that busy these days. I’ll make up an e-mail and send it out to the congregants. Thankfully it’s not close to Christmas or Easter . People commit their money to things early in those seasons.”

“Well, tell me how it goes. How much money do you think you’ll need to raise?”

Harold replied, “More than twenty thousand dollars. It’s not just the printing costs. The books need to be shipped over there, and then flown in under the wire. We’ll probably join up with some other mission board who is also working in that area.”

“Can you tell me where this is?” George asked Harold.

Knowing already that George’s history in the Army had included many years of service in intelligence, Harold knew he could trust George to keep the secret. So he opened up and told him.

“Ah,” was all George said in reply.

“Well, I’ve got to get going,” he announced, slowly standing from the bench. He walked over to the waste bin and put in the empty coffee cup and papers. “Will you be here tomorrow?”

“You bet!” said Harold.

“Okay, see you then. I hope the weather holds. Bye.” And George was off. It was a bit of a hike for him, back up the hill to home, but he was in pretty good shape for ninety-plus. He started off along the lake shore, drinking in the smells, and the sounds of the water birds. He managed to avoid getting hit by bicycles, scooters, strollers and skateboards on the path. “More dangerous than the front lines,” he sometimes thought.

They met the next day and the days after that. Conversation drifted as usual from topic to topic.

The following week, Harold arrived at the bench moving faster than usual. He had news.

“George, George, you’ll never guess what’s happened.”

“Okay, slow down, you’ll spill your coffee all over yourself. What’s up? You’re out of breath.”

“Remember the talk we had a week ago about the missionaries and the little black books?”

“Of course I do! How old and senile do you think I am?” Even this jab back at Harold did not reduce the latter’s excitement to share his news.

“Well, yesterday I got a check in the mail. Seems someone on the list decided to make a big contribution. I don’t know why or who – the envelope included a cashier’s check but no name.”

“Wow! I can understand your excitement. How much was it for?”

“Twenty thousand dollars!”

“Holy shit!” George exclaimed. Cuss words rarely came into their conversation, but he couldn’t help himself. “And no name?”

“Nope. Nothing. I called a few people, but no one knew. I called the minister and told him. I said to him the project funds have been found already. He, of course, was thrilled”

Harold stopped to drink some coffee. George smiled and nodded his head.

“Tell me again about your time in the Army,” he said to his friend.

Harold gladly changed the subject and for the next hour they traded tales of terror from places as far away as the other side of the world. They’d made it there and back, lost friends, but kept others.

It was a long time ago, but it had shaped each of them. George knew this. He smiled again.

Copyright 2021 by William Altmann, all rights reserved.