spectre

I don't know how many of y'all have seen Big Fish, but there's a scene in which one of the characters, in a sort of half-dream world, walks through a cypress swamp and arrives in a town called Spectre, an unreal fifties utopia of lush green manicured lawns and little girls in party dresses, where everyone turns out to be, guess what, ghosts.

Four days before we ended the walk, we walked into a little town in South Georgia (I've forgotten its name by now!) Okay, let's call it Thingy. Paul had been telling me we would get to Thingy Saturday afternoon and probably go to church there, but we'd had this debate about shopping because he hadn't found any listing online for a grocery store there. Well, that gave me a pretty good idea of Thingy, Georgia. The picture in my head was an alternate version of Ty Ty, Georgia--two churches, a few clapboard houses, and a peanut processing plant.

Instead, when we passed the Thingy town line, broad sweeps of manicured lawn, old-fashioned lampposts, little girls in dresses playing in their front yards. The whole place was perfect, and so different from what we'd been seeing up till then that in my head I immediately dubbed it Spectre.

In Spectre we searched quite awhile for a good place to sleep, and finally settled on our plan B: a little play-house in a tiny gravelly playground behind a large Baptist church. We'd been planning to try the Methodists on Sunday morning, mostly because we felt turned off by the Baptists' used-car-lot-style flashing and scrolling sign out front. ("Jesus Saves," said Paul. "Hot Dogs $1.") But it's discourteous to sleep behind somebody's church and not pay them a visit, and besides, as we sat on a bench outside the church in the cold morning trying to warm up in the sun, the pastor pulled up and invited us to the service and the catered lunch afterwards.

The service was much like any Baptist service in the South, really, except that there was no sermon; it was a celebration of their new sanctuary and there were songs and brief "sharings" on their several themes for the year. In Sunday school we met people who asked us our story, and we told it, and as sometimes happens we soon heard strangers telling strangers "They walked here from Boston!" A few people were interested enough to listen to the whole tale of our retreat ministry. One man asked me if there was anything we needed. I hesitated, pondering whether to be fully frank with him, but he looked like he'd meant it. "We need to wash our clothes," I said.

He looked a little worried at that. I quickly amended it: "I mean we can do that at a Laundromat, but I don't know where there is one..." He gave me directions to the nearest one, his face clearing of worry; but mine (I think) was not. We didn't have very much money left--enough for a little while certainly, but I wasn't sure how much longer we'd be on the road, and it didn't seem like a good time to spend money on a wash. I think he must have seen that. That's my best explanation for what happened next.

We parted; but later as we stood in line for our catered lunch (smoky barbecued chicken--very good), the same man came up to us and said he'd taken a collection among our Sunday school class and pressed bills into my hand. I thanked him very much and he asked us to say a prayer for him when we left--looking like he really meant that as well. I put the bills in my pocket. A little later I looked at them and, well, it was definitely more than we needed for laundry!

I prayed for him as we walked out of Spectre that afternoon. And I never used his money at a Laundromat. It was the very next day that Paul and I suddenly began to discuss how soon to let his parents pick us up, and eventually decided to ask them to come in only two days. There was no more need for laundry.