Easily Fooled

By H. Nigel Thomas

Less than an hour after Millington receives his permanent resident visa, he wonders if his husband Jay would now end their marriage. And Jay has multiple reasons to. Millington is an ex-Methodist minister, who once believed he could be celibate. When he fled Caribbean Methodism and came to Montreal, he thought he'd resolved the issues that made him leave, but he comes to understand that psychological trauma, childhood conditioning, parental and community expectations and his own need for community and family valorization are not easily exorcised. The third installment in the No Safeguards quartet of novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781771835824

H. Nigel Thomas

H. Nigel Thomas est né à Saint-Vincent-et-les-Grenadines. En 1968, il a immigré au Canada. Professeur retraité de littérature états-unienne à l’Université Laval, il vit à Montréal. Poète, essayiste et romancier, H. Nigel Thomas est l’auteur d’une œuvre importante écrite en anglais.

Book preview

Skull"

1

HE HAS BEEN pacing the corridor backward and forward— from the main door, through the living room, to the dining area. His skin’s tingling. It began as soon as he got into the elevator on the ground floor. Now sweat’s coursing down his sides from his armpits. An hour and a half ago he received his permanent resident visa. Starting over at thirty-six. Tough.

He takes off the navy-blue blazer he wore to the Citizenship and Immigration office earlier and hangs it in the coat closet. He should change his damp shirt too. It reeks of the Paco Rabane he sprayed himself with. He moves to the couch, begins to sit, but hears the crows clamouring outside. They come around 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, garbage collection day. He walks to the dining area, unlocks the patio door, goes onto the balcony, and watches them. Twenty-one are feeding rowdily from atop the three overflowing dumpsters. On the ground below, five gulls, their white plumage contrasting with the crows’ black, move around and eye the crows nervously. The simple, instinctual life. He sighs. Do crows worry? If they’re as intelligent as the biologists say, they probably do.

He hums:

All things which live below the sky

Or move within the sea

Are creatures of the Lord most High

And brothers unto me.

One of the few hymns from his Methodist past that he’s still comfortable singing (minus the third line).

On the metro on his way home from the immigration office, he vowed to start focusing on what’s beautiful in his life. Took over three years, 2012 to 2015, to process his immigration application. Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Today he has something to be thankful for and one thing less to worry about.

He returns inside, walks back to the living room, and sits on the couch. His mind turns to Gladys, a parishioner back in Barbados now studying at McGill. This afternoon he’s meeting her for the fourth time since she arrived in Montreal at the end of August. She insisted that she must see him urgently but wouldn’t say why. He thinks she has found out something. Is she about to confront him? No surprises, please. Not today.

He wonders: Will his nightmares end now? Will he stop dreaming that he’s back in St Vincent looking for a job and a purpose for his life? The feeling that his marriage to Jay is a mistake, will that too end? Suppose Jay says to him when he returns from Atlanta today: Millington, you are a permanent resident now, so let’s annul this marriage.

That Friday evening: February 17, 2012. What came over him? Why did he uncork so easily? Why did he spill like that? He’d sealed it for a long time. Longer and he might have exploded, gone insane for real. If Jay’s brother Paul hadn’t stayed behind in the hotel lobby, he would have been more measured. But the stopper blew and he gushed like a geyser. The bar was deserted, just a man and a woman at a corner table at the far end from them and the bartender behind the counter.

He told Jay that he’d resigned from the Methodist ministry. Jay complimented him for doing so, if that’s what you wanted. And now I’m destitute, he resisted saying. He asked Jay about the possibility of immigrating to Canada. Jay said he’d heard that the easiest way was to marry a Canadian citizen ... That the government had launched a campaign to discourage Canadians from marrying people they meet while holidaying abroad. A long pause. I’ll check out the Citizenship and Immigration website and let you know, Jay said, his head turned away.

Millington took a deep breath, held fiercely onto the sides of the table—his hands slippery with sweat—closed his eyes, and said: Did you ever suspect that I’m gay?

No.

He wanted to take back the question.

That’s why you left the ministry?

Millington nodded.

Jay put his hand under the table, tapped him on the knee, nodded slowly, and said without even glancing at him that he understood.

What did he understand? He was silent, his head down as if contemplating the table, pensive, for a long time afterwards. Was he recalling the rumour he’d heard from someone he’d met at the Vincy Thousand-Islands Picnic in 2011? That fellow from Havre, Millington, AMC Methodist minister, heard he went through the looking glass. Took four months after they’d been married for Jay to tell him.

Back home. Sitting up in bed. Unable to sleep. Angry over his poor self-control. His cell beeping. A text message from Paul: Millington, Jay is gay. Was in love with u while u2 were in h-school. Can u meet us at the airport no later than 7 a.m. tomorrow? A tearful meeting next morning. And Jay and he were married four months later. If a parishioner had presented him with such a scenario, he would have discouraged it.

In the nightmares in which he’s back in St Vincent and penniless, Melvin, his ex-superintendent, and the other ministers laugh at him. One time he dreamt that he met his dad Edward coming up Pasture Road toward their house, and Edward glared at him and spat as he walked past. Another time, near the bottom of the hill, Neil Charles, in the soiled white gloves and white soutane that he took to wearing after he returned crazed from a Catholic seminary in Trinidad, accosted him. Neil, now skeletal, no longer sensual and desirable: crimped beige skin, eyes dark and feverish in their hollow sockets, mouth agape as if wanting to swallow him, arms extended in a semi-circle to embrace him—rushed out from his father’s house onto the road and blocked his path. Still have eyes for Jay only, huh—exactly as he’d done on two occasions back in 2011. When Mem’s present in the nightmares, she screams Disgrace, and wags a finger at Millington.

These dreams? Perhaps no more than the fluff that fills our heads when we’re unfocused. Not the one in which he’s on his belly pushing himself through a narrow tunnel and gets to the tunnel’s end and can’t go back. That one’s definitely not fluff. In the last month before he left his ministry in Barbados, it occurred almost every night.

The nightmare in which his godfather Elijah first points a handgun at him, then shoots himself on Millington’s parents’ porch, and a finger-wagging Reverend Hennessy shouts over and over at Millington: You caused it—that’s definitely not fluff. That one goes back to when he was fifteen. Elijah had sent him to Ma Kirton’s shop to buy a tin of sardines and a packet of crackers. Upon his return he called to Elijah to come onto the porch for the items. Elijah told him to bring them into the house. Millington met him seated at his dining table. On it a bottle of rum, a half-filled tumbler, and a handgun.

That’s a real gun?

Elijah nodded. Don’t look so frighten. I not going shoot you. Might shoot meself though ... Only joking. He picked up the handgun, turned it over in his hands three or four times, then put it back down. Buy this from a sailor in Kingstown ... Sit down. He pointed to the dining chair opposite him.

Millington hesitated. He had never sat in Elijah’s house before, had never gone beyond the porch.

Sit. What’s your hurry? Your mother know you running a errand for me. His eyes glazed, his speech slurred, his breath rummy.

He sat. It would have been impolite not to. A long silence. In one gulp Elijah downed the rum in his glass and refilled it. Millington didn’t know his godfather drank. He started getting up to go, but Elijah waved him back down. What’s your hurry? ... Heard about my wife? Yes?

Millington nodded. Haverites knew that his wife had left him, had fled with their two daughters to the U.S.

I want to see my two girls. What they look like. I don’t have even a photo of them. He stared at the handgun for several seconds. I buy this when I find out Thelma been butting me. Been butting me coming and going ... With Smallboy. He snorted. No-count Rasta scum! Live in bush like wild beast. Thelma use to leave here, not a care what anybody think. I been the last one to know. When I find out, I buy this gun, and the next day I head for Smallboy shack. I did plan to kill the two o’ them and meself. But half-way there, I start wondering what going become o’ my two daughters, and I change my mind. Two days later I go out to the kitchen where Thelma been cooking, and I cock the gun, and I push the nozzle ‘gainst her chest, and I say: ‘Thelma, I know you is horning me. You is horning me with Smallboy. I will blow your brains out if you don’t stop.’ Then I go back inside and lock away the gun. She run away a week later. First to Trinidad, then New York. Three years later she send me divorce papers, then she send for Smallboy and the girls ... I ain’t see my daughters since. Irene and Ophelia. They was eight and six when they leave. Now they is twenty-three and twenty-one. Ain’t see them since. He wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve.

Millington felt sorry for him and was about to say so when he heard Mem’s voice calling: Brother Elijah, Millington by you?

Millington answered her, got up, and left the house.

Two months later, it was Millington’s life that he threatened, and his speech wasn’t slurred, and alcohol wasn’t on his breath.

He’s not to dwell on such things today. He should cancel the meeting with Gladys too. Put it off until next week. No. She said it was urgent.

What’s her situation with Horton now? Some nights, while Jay’s snoring away, Millington stays propped up with pillows for hours, wondering how his relationship with Horton would have evolved, if he hadn’t fled Barbados and Methodism.

He wants to be candid with Gladys ... So much he cannot tell her. So much. If he does and she leaves Horton, they’d blame him for the breakup.

He likes Gladys. Most people pretend to be good. She’s genuine. The little masquerading she does is beneficent; done for smoother relationships. Too trusting though. But distrust causes worry. Physician, heal yourself. His suspicions about how much she knows are probably unfounded. That or she dissembles well. Maybe she has decided that today she’ll tell him all. Maybe that’s what urgent means.

Horton. Con-man Horton. Can’t blame him for his double life. People do what they must to blend in. Attention seekers of every ilk are on the prowl for outliers, to make scapegoats of them.

Why did Horton plant suspicions in Gladys’s mind about him? ... Horton set him on the path toward honesty, but he doesn’t relish how he did it.

Would his situation be different today if they’d been in contact less often? Less dramatic for sure. But he might have dragged out his ministry and found rationalisations not to leave. The womb of faith is a comfortable place, says Matthew Arnold. Too comfortable. Or he might have done something stupid—something truly disgraceful. Or turn cynical and become a hypocrite. Takes unusually powerful storms to topple deep-rooted trees. He got out of Methodist soil dirtier but wiser than when he entered.

Not overly soiled.

Untainted?

I’ ll need a therapist to confirm or dispute that. Left with my sanity too—contrary opinions notwithstanding.

And left many tongues wagging. Even Neil Charles’.

Yes, Neil, theology has been bad for both of us. Let the tongues wag.

Might have lost my sanity for real if Jay hadn’t intervened.

And when the full facts of his intervention become known there’ ll be venomous tongues.

We’re staying away from that today. Remember?

2

HE REMEMBERS A sandbar in Havre’s bay that bathers used to stand on safely year after year, then one day he walked out to it and dropped into deep, dangerous water. Gladys invited him, her pathetic bachelor minister—he was sure it was how she saw him—for supper almost every week. Most times he declined. Their two boys—Len, six at the time and Alex, four—called him Uncle Millington. He was Alex’s godfather.

As the junior minister in the Authentic Methodist Church (AMC) Christchurch Circuit, it fell on him to chair the planning committee of the South Caribbean District for the synod that was to take place in Barbados in 2009. As steward of the circuit, Horton was automatically part of the committee. One Wednesday morning Horton came to the manse for them to go over the programme before sending it to be printed.

At various points in their discussion, Horton paused and fixed his cow-like, usually sleepy eyes intensely on Millington. He felt uneasy and probed his memory to see whether he’d left something undone. When he dined at Horton’s house, Horton rarely looked at him, even when speaking to him.

They finished synod business an hour early. Doris, Millington’s domestic helper, brought them a pot of tea. Horton poured himself a cup and held it suspended half-way between his lap and lips for several seconds while he stared into Millington’s eyes. He was certain then that some item he’d overlooked was bothering Horton. Horton took a sip of tea and looked guiltily at Millington. Millington felt his palms moistening. Less than a metre and a half, the width of the desk, separated them.

The silence lengthened. Millington wanted to break it but knew there’d be a quaver in his voice. He might have said that he had another appointment, but they’d planned to meet from nine till noon, and it was 11:10.

Reverend, Horton said, quite loud, startling him. Church officials used his title only when several people were present. Otherwise they used first names. Millington waited, tense, for the rebuke he thought was coming. "You look puzzled. Aren’t you my reverend pastor, my shepherd who vowed at your ordination to lead me to watering holes and suc-suc-cu-lent green pastures and protect me from wolves?" Said with a wink and a slurp.

Didn’t know you were a sheep. Millington chuckled nervously. His parishioners certainly expected him to beg God to grant them special favours. One had asked him to plead—her word—with God to send her a decent husband, cause Reverend, these-here children too much to care for by muhself. John Wesley, Methodism’s founder and Millington’s de facto boss (though more than two centuries dead), had ordered Millington, in number twelve of his rules for ministers, to engage in prayers; at Millington’s ordination ceremony, he had vowed to obey Wesley’s rules and teachings. He’d been told too—ordered rather—by Melvin, his superintendent, to heed St Paul and feed milk to the ninety percent of his congregation who couldn’t digest meat. Paying the ministers’ stipends and keeping the churches in repair required lots of money—lots; every lost member was lost revenue, facts Melvin hammered on incessantly, facts he used to push his ministers to imitate the fundamentalists.

Okay, Millington. This is hard to say. Horton’s eyes, now two honey-coloured glowing marbles, were fixed on Millington. Don’t look so rattled. Millington, I believe you’re gay.

A wave of spasms crisscrossed Millington’s gut. How dare you! The demeanour drilled into him to deal with prickly parishioners kicked in. He inhaled deeply, deliberately, and said, in carefully paced words: Horton, my sexual orientation is none of your business. He expected Horton to stumble out some sort of stuttering apology and drop the subject.

Millington, get serious.

"Get serious. I am serious. In Jamaica—"

"We’re not in Jamaica. You’re my minister. You’re to get to the bottom of my troubles and commiserate with me and comfort me ... Maybe more." He moistened his lips.

Millington had complimented him on his cologne when he arrived. A mistake perhaps. Caribbean men who wear cologne are sometimes asked why they smell like women. Horton was wearing a close-fitting peach tank-top that outlined his paunch and love handles (he’s about six centimetres shorter than Millington and has a smallish frame with about five kilos of extra weight), and tight dark brown three-quarter shorts that accentuated his very round buttocks. Until the maybe more, his clothes and cologne had meant nothing to Millington.

Moving his head like a cat appraising the mouse in its paws, Horton said: Millington ... Oh, Millington ... You’re thirty ... Unmarried ... Need I say more? ... Eligible young women—more than a few—have their eyes trained on your every move, shower you with smiles, flirt with you at every opportunity. Do you acknowledge them? Never. Not the faintest hint of encouragement do you give them. He stopped, puffed his cheeks, and let out the air with a pop. You’re a minister in the Authentic Methodist Church; you’re not a Catholic priest. Get real.

At fifteen, Millington did wish he were Catholic, so he could enter a monastery and escape from this disgusting world. And when Neil Charles left Havre for training to become a priest—Millington had just begun to work in the St Vincent and Grenadines civil service—he’d envied him.

Horton, my mother’s financially dependent on me. I can’t start a family.

"Lame, Rev, lame. You’re not inclined to want a family." His stare was intense, his eyes still glowing.

Millington stared at the door.

Horton swivelled his head, glanced at the door, and shook his head. "Not yet, Rev, not so soon. We’re supposed to be here till midday. There’s more than half an hour remaining. Enough time to accomplish a great deal. He winked and glanced at his crotch. What I want to say is ..." He stopped, frowned, bloated his cheeks again, let out the air, without amusement this time.

Is, is ...?

"Since you’re that way inclined, you shouldn’t start a family."

Millington would have asked him to leave then, but he feared making him his enemy. Customer satisfaction. "Never forget that the congregation pays your stipend"—Melvin’s words.

I’m speaking from personal experience. Horton stood up.

A long silence. Millington’s fingers dripping sweat. His face burning.

Horton grinned. There’s sweat on your brow. Gorblimey, Rev! I’m sweating the truth out of you. And, Rev! ... You’re violent! Setting to cuff me down?

Millington looked at his fists on the desk. They were balled. He breathed deeply and straightened my fingers.

Seriously, Millington ... I am being ... shall we say, honest with you. Have you been honest with yourself?

Horton continued to stare at him. Millington stayed silent.

A life of lies. The life you’re forced to live in Barbados when you’re gay ... In all the West Indies ... Did you know that in Barbados you could get life imprisonment for buggery? Of course they don’t enforce it. They harass you and hope you’ll jump into the sea ... Good riddance. If you disappoint them, then they hound you and insult you coming and going. Make it clear that you’ll pay a high price for existing.

Millington felt cold. The day was sunny. A breeze came in through the open window and occasionally rattled the wooden slats of the venetian blind. He glanced at the goose bumps on his arms. He looked up at Horton, who was staring at the desktop, at the sweat dripping from Millington’s fingers. A small pool was already there. Millington put his hands under the desk and wiped them on his trousers.

The faces of Gladys, Len, and Alex paraded across his mind. He’d had supper at their house five days earlier. Alex had come running to him with a word game, which he played sitting beside Millington on the sofa. Len was the quieter one, was already a bookworm, and a year ahead of his grade. Millington felt that they adored their children, that they were a happy family.

Horton and he fell into a long silence. Just as it became overbearing, they heard Doris’s footsteps coming toward the study. Millington stood, put his wet left hand in his pocket, wiped the right on his trousers and extended it to Horton just as Doris entered the doorway. She knew Horton well. Their parents had been neighbours in Eagle Hall. She still lives there.

You ain’t leaving, Bro Horton? I put a place setten for you too.

Horton looked at his watch and shook his head. Doris girl, I gotter take a rain cheque. I already late for a meeten. Rev—he turned to face Millington—think over that matter we were discussing, and if you have any further thoughts on it, call me on my cell. Doris, girl, I gotter be running. I know is delicious Bajan coo-coo you gi’ing the reverend today. I done smell it. Like you scheming to turn he into a real Bajan.

She smiled broadly.

He left.

The rest of that Wednesday was ruined. Wednesday afternoon, 2–5 p.m., was time he set aside for his parishioners’ visits. The three who came that afternoon did so to chitchat. Doris was off. She had a half day off on Wednesdays and Saturdays and a full day on Sunday. That night he fell asleep after 2 a.m. and dreamed that Horton and he were naked in bed and Gladys and Elijah stormed in on them. He awoke around 5 a.m., frightened.

If he still believed in prayer, he would have prayed, as he’d done many times before, to be cleansed of such desire. Gladys was his treasurer at AMC Hastings. There was such selflessness in her, a desire to give and give and give again, as the hymn says. Always willing—always —to perform any task, from chauffeuring members around to coordinating fundraising activities to visiting shut-in members. She taught math at Combermere. And her effusive warmth showed that she was a fine, caring person. Her face—caramel, rotund, with a dimpled smile, slight buck teeth, and sparkling hazel eyes—held a childlike innocence. She told him that her favourite hymns were All Things Bright and Beautiful and Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown? When a fundraiser they’d done to repair the church roof fell short of what they’d expected, her response was: Behind every cloud there’s a silver lining. We’ll look hard and find it. We’ll have other activities and we’ll work harder. (She knows now that what sometimes looks like silver is often tin.) There wasn’t an iota of malice in her smiling, bouncing, butterball body. To wrong her would have been unpardonable.

The second time Horton and Millington met to plan synod business five persons were present. At the end of the meeting, he tickled Millington’s palm in their goodbye handshake. Slowly he came around to accepting what his dreams were already telling him: that he desired Horton. Did Horton awaken his sexuality? ... No. More like that coal fire that’s burning below ground in Pennsylvania. Give it air and it will conflagrate. Horton had merely set ablaze what had long been smouldering.

He found himself repeating in his sleep: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. At breakfast the next day, he’d remember the dream and mutter: Do not desire your church treasurer’s husband.

And so a war ensued between his sexual desire and the ethical behaviour he’d vowed to exemplify. During the day he imposed a truce, but at night desire laid siege to his psyche. He’d awaken, his pyjamas damp with semen, relieved that he’d only been dreaming, and console himself with the thought that he wasn’t responsible for what happened while he was asleep. But on those occasions when he supped with them, he returned home guilt-laden.

3

THERE IS AN election commercial on the television set on the wall separating the study from the living room. He changes the channel to BBC World. It comes on in the middle of a news broadcast about barrel bombs being dropped on Syrian civilians. He turns the television off . Not today. Hume’s views that human misery contradicts the concept of a benevolent God come into his mind. He nixes those too.

The decisions we make. That others make for us. That fate forces us to make. Why did he become a minister?

He’s thirsty. He heads to the kitchen in search of water, stands in front of the drainboard intending to take a glass but doesn’t. Instead his mind wanders back to the first time he began wondering about God. (He had been parroting the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed since he was four. Woe to the mother whose child couldn’t.) It was an evening when he was around six and in the first year of elementary school, a year behind his peers because he couldn’t go when he was five. At five he was in and out of hospital. The doctors told his parents that he’d contracted typhus, and it had stayed untreated for too long. His parents had put too much faith in the folk remedies that his godfather Elijah made and sold. During the last of those hospital stays, Edward asked the doctor if he thought Millington would die, and the doctor said maybe. The same afternoon, Mem, Edward, and Reverend Hennessy came to the hospital, kneeled around his bed, and prayed, asking God to spare his life.

Manny, the boy in the bed beside him, was South Asian. The day after the prayer, Manny did an imitation of what Millington said in his sleep. Me nah want fo’ dead. Aah! Aah! Me nah want fo’ dead! Ahh Ooh! Ahh Ooh! And laughed. Then they both became quiet until Manny said: You think me going dead too?

Nah, you no going dead. You and me going live and we going be good friends.

Manny was from Calder. He was eight years old. When his parents and his two sisters visited, they brought him food, and he told them to give Millington a share. Millington shared with him the fudge and coconut cakes that Mem brought. On occasion Manny shrieked, and the nurse would come and give him an injection, after which he’d go to sleep.

How come you don’ bawl out fo’ pain? Manny asked him one morning.

Cause I tough.

Manny steupsed. Crap! Me does hear you bawling for pain in your sleep. Aah! Ooh!

Manny died three nights later. The nurses behind the curtain preparing the body must have thought Millington was asleep. They spoke in whispers. One nurse gave instructions to the other: to close his eyelids, bandage his jaw, straighten his arms and legs, put cotton wool ... Millington wondered if Manny could hear them. When they left wheeling out the body, he became afraid that he would see Manny’s jumbie, and had trouble falling asleep for a couple of nights until a new patient occupied the bed.

Millington lived, felt that God had spared his life, and wondered if God would have spared Manny’s too if his parents had prayed and asked God to. For a long time after he got better, he’d stare at the dark spots where the typhus rashes had covered his skin, and wonder about death and heaven and hell. He was sure Manny went to heaven because Manny had been a good boy.

That evening when he was six, Pastor Bowles—his son Brinsley was in class with Millington—who lived at the very bottom of the hill from Millington in a big wall house behind the church with the huge lit-up green letters SAVED AND SANCTIFIED BAPTIST CHURCH, had come to hold services at the junction where Millington’s street, Pasture Road, met Hill Road, some fifty metres up from their house. Pastor Bowles used a megaphone. Lying in bed, Millington listened to everything he said.

Millington already knew that, when Mem and he went to church on Sundays, it was to worship God: that they were in the presence of the person who had made everything, and who was powerful and invisible, and who knew and heard and saw everything, even people’s thoughts—and he wrote it all down in a big book, and sent people to heaven or hell depending on what was in his book. And they asked this powerful man to do all sorts of things and to grant all sorts of wishes, and sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. When he didn’t it was because he knew that the thing they asked for was bad for them. That’s what Jay’s neighbour, Teacher Morrison, taught Millington in Sunday school. Teacher Morrison was scrawny, fast-talking, with eyes so bold that Millington trembled whenever Teacher Morrison looked angrily at him. Some adults and the ne’er-do-wells on the Anglican Church patio called him Twiggy, but most kids and Haverites called him Teacher Morrison.

God had granted his parents’ wish that he live. Millington didn’t know the word awe then, but it was what he felt. Mem told him often that God loved him and that, if he loved God by being a good boy, God would let one of his angels protect him all the time, and if he got sick again and ... she couldn’t bring herself to say died, so he said it for her. She paused long before adding: You will go to heaven, where you go have plenty nice things; you will have nice white clothes that never get dirty and plenty to eat. While poring over the description of heaven in Revelations, during his time at Ecumenical Theological College, he recalled that conversation with her: He sitting on a makeshift bench Edward had made with scraps of wood brought from his workplace; she standing facing the wood fire blazing under the tripod cast-iron pot that was bubbling