***
Yesterday's story has an epilogue.
Belial, lazy as usual, did nothing except go zero for five for the guys on his list. Beelzebub saved only two of his six Harrys, a cowboy from Waco and an oil worker from Nacogdoche, neither of whom was likely to join a mutual support group for three male members called "Harry Dicks for Christ." But Beelzebub wouldn't let it go: Not fifty miles from the home of the younger Harry – Harry of Waco – Beelzebub found a girl with the truly extraordinary name of "Happy Bush." Beelzebub somehow managed to bring them together: "Harry saw Happy. Happy saw Harry. They fell in love. They're engaged to be married!"
I don't know if George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush has ever had any connection with a "Happy" Bush. On the available evidence, I doubt it. But this Happy Bush was a 19-year-old First United Methodist girl, as naive as they come. It seems never to have occurred to her that her own name was anything but cheerful, or that her truelove's name might invite unseemly witticisms. Her parents, Jim and Dolly Bush, spotted the problem right away with Harry's; but they bit their tongues and said nothing.
The Methodist minister, Rev. Thomas Cherry, had known Happy from the time she was small. “Pastor Tom,” as everyone called him (he did not like to say, "I'm Pastor Cherry," or to be called that) was pleased as well to meet Harry, the groom; but it never got personal. Pastor Tom subjected Harry and Happy to a half hour of premarital pastoral counseling (covering his usual lessons on sexual faithfulness and husband's-the-boss) with five minutes to spare.
Pastor Tom gave Harry's name no second thought until the wedding ceremony was already well underway: with one hand under an open Bible and the other upon his notes, Pastor Tom read the vows from his familiar fill-in-the-blank wedding liturgy:
"Brothers and sisters in Christ," he said, with great solemnity, "we are gathered together today in order to unite Harry Dick and Happy Bush in holy matrimony..."
And that's when it hit him – the peculiar collocatio n of surnames. Pastor Tom's eyes grew suddenly wide. You could almost see the wheels turning in the minister's head – "Is this someone's idea of a
joke?" – but there stood the bride, Happy Bush, smiling sweetly, deeply in love with the groom, a handsome Texas cowboy with the unusual name of Harry Dick.
The situation became more difficult. Each time Reverend Tom tried to speak following that initial moment of horror, someone in the congregation caught the giggles, which set off the rest of them. The bride's parents were not amused. Finally, even the Reverend could not keep a straight face. He blushed. He giggled. He choked. He wiped his eyes. He cleared his throat. Finally, he was able to say it: "By the powers invested in me by the Lord God, and by the State of Texas, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride."
The newlyweds kissed, then turned and faced the congregation.
Happy still did not get the joke. She was beaming.
That's when Pastor Tom – force of habit, not with malice aforethought – announced to the congregation, "Brothers and sisters, it is my pleasure to introduce you to our well-beloved, Harry and Happy Dick! What God hath joined, let no man put asunder.”
A Christian rancher across the aisle from me – some dude in cowboy boots and a pearl-snap western shirt – burst out laughing. Rev. Cherry nervously signaled for Señora Rosita Concha, the elderly but experienced organist at United Methodist, to begin the recessional. Rosita struck up Handel's glorious "Hornpipe." The ceremony, at last, was over.
Beelzebub, Belial, and I were sitting on the right, on the groom's side, about halfway back, behind several dozen of the Dick family. Beelzebub was no longer sitting. He lay sideways on the pew, laughing like a damned fool. No one in the sanctuary knew who we were, and it was a good thing. I felt humiliated even to be seen with Bubba, the way he was carrying on.
I did not stay for the reception.
Beelzebub later said it was the second-best prank he ever pulled in his entire life, right after Mormonism and the tablets of Moroni.
The one nice thing from all of this is that Happy and Harry truly loved one another, and they loved humanity. They became missionaries to Rwanda, where they lived among the Tutsi of the Ryumba region. They did not do much proselytizing – it wasn't their forte – but they taught school, fed the hungry, cared for the sick and elderly. They raised three lovely children, one of whom later married a Tutsi, all of three of whom dwelt among the Tutsi without thinking of black Africans as their social or spiritual inferiors.
Feeling a little guilty about having lent myself as an accessory to Bubba's stupid trick, I kept a watchful eye over Harry and Happy and their kids. Whenever there was civil unrest, as there often is in that mostly Christian part of the world, I'd try to keep the Bushes safe. I did okay until the Hutu massacre of 1994, a slaughter as horrible in its way as the wholesale massacres of Joshua or King David's time. I lacked the means to withstand it. The entire Bush family and most of their Tutsi neighbours were killed.
If Harry and Happy make it to Heaven come Judgment Day, and I'm sure they will, I wish them joy; but if they should think twice, and refuse to enter, I shall happily roll out the red carpet for them, down at my place. Harry Dick and Happy Bush and their kids were my kind of folks. I don't care if they
were born again. For Christians, those particular Bushes were among the most decent people I've ever known.
– L.
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Tomorrow: For those who want to find God – some places to look!)
