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Idol Worship

Ronald M. Wade

    I was working on a manuscript when Max walked in and sat down on my couch. He had his own coffee in a thermal cup.
    I hit “save,” turned around in my swivel chair and waited for him to speak.
    “Go to church today?” he asked.
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Take part in that cannibalistic ritual?”
    “You mean the bread and the wine? Yes, we do that every Sunday. And not only that, we lit another Advent candle.”
    “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Got to have candles. Some big, muck-a-muck candle maker must have been on the first ritual committee back in Biblical times. Made sure you churchers burned up lots of candles. The Papists are especially big on that. And come to think of it, the Jews have their Menorah.”
    “Can’t have religious rites without candles, Max,” I said.
    “You know, talking about candles reminds me of a time when I took part in a religious ceremony,” Max said, looking out the window.
    “Surely, you jest!” I said skeptically.
    “No, I really did. It was a Buddhist rite.”
    “No doubt caught in a compromising position with a delicate flower of the Asian persuasion by heavily armed, non-Anglo-Saxons and had to convert to save your skin?”
    “No, nothing like that,” he said, laughing. “I’ll tell you about it.”
    To set the scene, I have to tell you that Max is a big fellow and spent years as a spook doing work that, to this day, he doesn’t talk about. I know he has been through some rough stuff but I probably don’t want to know what. In other words, he can be dangerous.
    He leaned back, took a sip of his coffee and began.
    “It was a long time ago when I was fairly young and new to Southeast Asia. I had been, ah, working in some European venues and had just arrived in Thailand, staying in Bangkok, waiting for a flight upcountry to Takhli. Well sir, I got tired of sitting around the hotel, so I went out on the street to do some sight-seeing. It was about eight in the evening and most of the stores were closed. I was strolling along looking in shop windows when I felt a tug on my pants leg. I looked down and there was this little Thai girl, couldn’t have been more than four or five, cutest little thing you ever saw, looked more like a little Chinese doll than anything. When I looked at her, she said, ‘You buy!’
    “She was holding some stuff in her hands and insisting that I buy it. It was a little garland of fleshy flowers, a small candle and a package of something wrapped in delicate green paper. I said, ‘No, I don’t want to buy.’ But she insisted, she frowned and became very intense and said, ‘You buy, you buy!’
    “Of course she was so cute, I couldn’t resist her. I looked over in the shadows of a doorway and saw what must have been her mother, holding a supply of the goods displayed by the little girl, watching us intently. I finally said, ‘Okay, I buy. How much?’
    “She answered, ‘One baht.’ So I fished a baht, which was worth about a nickel, out of my pocket and handed it to her. She shook her head and said, ‘three baht!’
    I pretended outrage and said, ‘You said one baht.’ She knew she had put one over on me and smiled the most endearing smile you ever saw and said, ‘One baht each.’ So I fished out two more baht and she handed me the goods.
    “So I had a candle, a flower garland and a package of something or other. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the stuff and walked down the street sniffing the flower garland. It had a sweet and pleasant aroma. But I got the drift that I was in over my head when I met some round-eyes walking the other direction. They looked at me like I was Jojo, the two-headed boy in the side show.
    “When I approached the end of the block, I realized why I was getting those stares. At the corner, there was a plaza given over to worship. There was a great, six-armed Buddha sitting there on a covered dais of some kind with its back to the street. In front of the Buddha was an iron fence about three feet high upon which dozens of flower garlands were draped. In front of the idol, there was a bed of sand in which candles and incense sticks were burning. You can imagine my consternation; me, a non-believer, carrying the implements of a pagan rite in my hands. I turned and started to bolt but who confronted me and barred my path but the little girl who had sold me the stuff. She looked at me intently without smiling. Now understand that in my day, I have walked through some pretty unpleasant chaps who attempted to bar my way, so to speak. But this tiny little doll-like girl had me buffaloed. I stood there looking at her, trying to figure out what to do next.
    “About that time, a Thai lad of about nineteen or twenty saw my consternation and offered to help. He opened the paper-wrapped package which turned out to be incense sticks, counted them to make certain there was the right number and explained to me that I was to approach the idol, drape the flowers on the iron fence, stick the incense sticks upright in the sand, light the candle and light each incense stick, then place the candle in the sand all while maintaining a pious attitude.
    “I looked back at the little girl who was still watching me and walked over to the entrance to the plaza. Accustomed to Middle Eastern religions and concomitant hysteria, I assumed I would get stares and perhaps a few smart remarks from the spectators and worshippers since I stood out among those relatively small people like a sore thumb. (Max is six feet, two inches tall.) But no one seemed to notice. I approached the altar with bowed head, placed the flowers over a fence picket, lit the candle, lit the incense and placed the candle in the sand. Then I backed away slowly to a respectful distance and hastened out of the plaza. To my surprise, no one seemed to even notice me, a tall round-eye in their midst paying homage to a six-armed idol! When I got back on the sidewalk, that little girl was nowhere to be seen so I went to the nearest bar and had a martini.”
    Max was silent for a moment and I said, “I’m trying to discern a moral somewhere in that story, Max.”
    Max finally said, “What really went through my mind was if I left without using those things in the proper manner, that little girl would have been disappointed. She obviously believed very strongly in the religion and the ritual, otherwise, she wouldn’t have followed me to make sure I acted responsibly. The ritual meant nothing to me, of course. It was just that little girl’s eyes.”
    “So you’re not so tough, you’re a big softy, Max!” I laughed. “You did something just to keep from disappointing a little girl. If one of your marriages had lasted and you had a daughter, she would have wrapped you around her little finger.”
    Max sat quietly for a long while, looking at the floor. “I doubt that,” he said. “Well, I’ve got to go.”
    When he left, I could have sworn I detected a little bit of regret in his eyes, but then it might just have been my imagination.

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