No Dark Valley (64 page)

Bruce turned from the window and took the binoculars back to the living room. The empty cover of the new video was sitting on the sofa. Even if
Sleepless in Seattle
ended up in Kimberly's collection like several others she had given him—such as
Enchanted April
and
Out of Africa
, to name a couple—he still wanted to go back and watch that one scene another time or two before taking it upstairs. He walked over to the VCR and ejected the video, then slipped it back into the cover and put it on the bottom shelf of the bookcase next to the television, where he usually put newcomers and rentals. All the others, the ones that had been officially accepted into his collection, were in alphabetical order on the upper shelves.

He stood there, scanning all the titles he owned. He wondered what kinds of movies Celia liked, if she had favorites that she watched over and over. He sincerely doubted that she had seen
The Untouchables
and
Hunt for Red October
as many times as he had, but there had to be some in his collection that she really liked, maybe something like
Casablanca
or
Rear Window
. Maybe
Pride and Prejudice
—he wondered if she had ever watched that one.

If he would ever ask her over for dinner and a movie, say—though it was a preposterous idea—which movie would he select for the cool and caustic Miss . . . Now wait a minute, this was funny. He wasn't even sure of her last name. He closed his eyes and tried to remember if Milton had told it to him at some point and he had merely forgotten. When he was younger, he used to be very bad about not bothering to learn girls' last names, though he noticed that girls always seemed to know a guy's last name.

He had known a girl once who told him she always said her first name aloud with the last name of any boy who asked her out, to see if they sounded right together. She would write them together several times, too, as if signing a check or a letter, and if they didn't fit together, she wouldn't waste her time. Bruce had laughed at her, told her she was mighty picky for somebody named Shannon Worm. That really was the girl's name; he remembered that one all right. Shannon
Worm
. But she had a perfectly logical explanation. She had put up with her last name for so long, she said, that she wasn't about to trade it in for another bummer.

He opened his eyes again and looked at his video collection. Maybe Celia didn't like movies—something that wasn't real. She had been a journalist, after all. Maybe she only watched documentaries. He remembered how suddenly angry she had become when he had mentioned the movie
The Cider House Rules
to her that night.

Maybe there was something in the movie that had touched a sore spot. He didn't own the movie, so he couldn't go back and watch it to try to figure it out. But maybe it wasn't the movie at all. Maybe she had simply reached her limit of social interaction for the day and wanted him out of her apartment.

Surely somebody like Celia wouldn't have that feeling he had discovered in some of his church friends, that moviegoing was bad. He remembered very clearly the discussion in Sunday school, almost a year ago now, when the topic had been something called Christian Liberty. Virgil Dunlop had been teaching the lesson that day. Bruce had heard of people who thought things like movies and dancing and smoking and swearing were wrong—people like the Amish and Quakers and ultraconservative Baptists—but he had never actually carried on conversations with any of them.

From what he could tell, the discussion in Sunday school hadn't really changed anybody's mind, but it seemed to make them all think more about why they did or didn't do certain things. A man named Lyman Maxwell had been the main spokesman against movies, a specific issue that came up toward the end of the lesson that day. His wife, a jolly white-haired woman everybody called Bugsy, interjected comments that didn't always make a whole lot of sense but did help to keep everybody in good spirits. Early in the discussion she stated that she had been to only one movie as a girl, and all she could remember about it was that a boy's britches fell down at school when he reached up to pull the map down.

Lyman forced a point on the basis of that comment by following up with “See? Out of a whole movie, she comes away with
that
. Movies put pictures in your mind you can't purge out, even after fifty years!”

Lyman's main argument, however, was that by attending movies, you were supporting Hollywood, which was a hotbed of corruption and the single biggest shaper of culture and attitudes in modern-day America. “Things folks yawn at today when they see 'em on the screen woulda scorched their hair back in the fifties,” Lyman said. “Them moviemakers are leading the whole country downhill a little bit at a time, and the Christians are tagging right along with 'em!”

“Well, that's what the ratings are for,” another man said. “You can decide for yourself whether you want to go to an R-rated movie or to a PG. You get to pick—nobody forces you or tricks you into it. Just like you can choose whether to read a good book or a trashy one. Or go to a beer joint at night or to the Dairy Queen.”

“But it's all Hollywood!” Lyman said. “You might pay your money to see something PG, but it all goes into the same pot! And besides that, even them PG movies got bad stuff slipped in here and there, real easy and underhanded so's you don't hardly notice it.”

A soft-spoken woman Bruce had never heard say a word in any other Sunday school discussion raised her hand and leaned forward to say, “And people who see you in line to buy a ticket at the theater don't stop to find out whether you're going to a kiddie movie or something R-rated. They see you going to a movie, and it might be a stumbling block to a weaker brother.”

Another woman spoke up. “Well, anything you do could be a stumbling block to
somebody
.” She gave a huffy sigh. “I think there's people that go around
looking
for things to be offended at.”

“Like those Boy Scouts that come around to the door selling candy bars and popcorn,” Bugsy said. There was a silent pause as people weighed the analogy. Several laughed.

“Yeah, exactly like that, Bugsy!” somebody in the back said. This time everybody laughed.

Virgil Dunlop, standing at a podium in front, said, “I wonder, would it help anybody resolve the issue of movies if we asked ourselves each time, ‘Will this make me more Christlike?' Or is that too rigid a standard for something that's supposed to be merely entertainment?”

“So we have different standards in our entertainment than our other activities?” This was from Virgil's wife, Joan.

“Well, I'm not saying we should,” Virgil said, “but do we?” Nobody spoke for a moment. “I mean, okay, before you decide to drive to Atlanta for a Braves game,” he continued, “does anybody say, ‘How will this help me in my walk for Christ?'”

“I'm new to all this,” Bruce said, “but that's a good question.
Does
anybody ask that?” He looked at Virgil. “Do
you
?”

“Way to pin me down in front of everybody, pal. Thanks a lot.”

Bugsy's laughter rang out above everyone else's, louder and longer. “Cracker jack!” she said. Bruce thought maybe it was the mention of a ballgame that elicited that one.

“Or maybe we should approach it from the other angle,” Virgil said. “Maybe we should ask, ‘Will this make me
less
Christlike?'”

“If you want to see a movie bad enough,” Lyman said, “you oughta wait till it comes on the TV. They clean 'em up for that.”

“Or rent a video and watch it at home,” the soft-spoken woman said. “That way you're doing it in private with only your conscience to answer to. You don't have to worry about anybody else seeing you and judging you one way or the other.”

“But people see you go into a video store, too,” Joan Dunlop said, “so I don't see the difference, really, if it's other people we're worried about. They might think you're sneaking in to rent an R-rated movie. I don't get the difference between watching it in private and watching it at a theater.”

“I think it's sure a sad state of affairs when we have to plan our lives around how some other person is going to
judge
us.” This was from a man in the front row.

“If your argument is against Hollywood as a whole,” Bruce said, “I don't catch the thing about waiting till the movie is on TV or renting a video. Hollywood gets their cut of all that, too.”

Virgil nodded. “Yes, you're still supporting Hollywood regardless of where you see the movie. Good point, Bruce.”

Lyman Maxwell seemed to have no response to this.

“Missionaries could sure use more money,” Bugsy said. “That little Schwartz couple in Argentina that lost their baby and had all them medical bills . . .”

Right then the bell rang indicating an end to the Sunday school period. But miraculously, Bugsy's last comment made perfect sense to Bruce, and before the closing prayer had ended, he had made a decision. Lest somebody judge him, though, it was going to be a private decision. He would have to see if he had what it took to stick by it. And for almost a whole year he had, though he had to admit it had been really tempting to cave in several times.

He had an envelope in his top desk drawer marked
Movie Money for Missionaries
, and every time he read a review or heard about a new movie he really wanted to see, one he knew he would have gone to see if he hadn't made his decision, he put the cost of a ticket into the envelope. Sometimes, if he didn't have the cash on hand, he wrote out an IOU for the amount and stuck it in the envelope instead. At Christmas he planned to total it all up and write out a check for the full amount, then put it in the offering at church and designate it for the mission fund.

He didn't know what he had proved exactly, except that he could make a decision and follow through. And for somebody who had gone to at least one movie a week for a good part of his life, it hadn't been easy. Of course, it wasn't like going cold turkey, because he still had his video collection, for which he had been very thankful as the months wore on.

It was funny, though, how different it was now, with his new way of looking at everything. He had found it harder and harder to watch certain movies and then be in the right frame of mind to read his Bible and pray before bedtime. After watching
The Godfather
, for example, there wasn't much of a chance he was going to transition smoothly into a sweet hour of prayer. He might try to pray on those nights, and try earnestly, but instead of being on Mount Pisgah's lofty height, he would feel like he was much farther south, in a hot, smoky, closed-up space from which his prayers couldn't find a way out.

And he wasn't sure whether he should be worried or not at the way all these hymns were taking over his thinking, springing up all over the place like dandelions, their little seeds blowing into all corners of his life the same way lines of movies used to do. And to think the only hymns he used to be familiar with were a few he had heard in movies. He would never forget his surprise when he looked through the alphabetical index of the old hymnbook out of curiosity the first time he visited Community Baptist with Virgil, checking for the hymn titles from the movie
Sergeant York
—the ones they sang in the little backwoods church in the early 1900s, where Alvin York's mother prayed for the soul of her wild son. And there they all were. “Beulah Land” and “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” and “The Sweet By and By.”

In a way it grieved him to feel himself becoming critical of movies he had always loved so much, picking out little flaws here and there that had never bothered him before. Not
Sergeant York
—that was one he could imagine them showing at church maybe for July Fourth or Veteran's Day—but he was thinking of other titles in his collection. More than once he had come close to admitting that Lyman Maxwell and some of the others might have a point when they hinted at the powerful suggestions beneath the text of a movie, the insinuation into one's mind of certain attitudes, language, lifestyles, and so forth. He tried to make himself smile at their alarm over the “corrupting influence of Hollywood,” but he couldn't always pull it off.

Not that he was about to give up something he enjoyed so much and something that was so good in so many ways. Not at all. He surely had no intention of becoming one of those extremists who avoided something altogether just because a certain part
had
been wrongly used. He couldn't help wondering, though, if over the years to come he might not pare down his collection even further, might become even more selective about admitting new titles.

He turned away from his bookcase now, from the collection of which he had always been so proud. At one time, and not too terribly long ago, he had considered changing over to a DVD player, which gave a much sharper picture, and he had actually checked to see which of his videos were available in DVD format, had made a list of them and stuck it somewhere, he couldn't remember where. Now it seemed like a big investment with very unreliable returns.

He walked down the hall back to his bedroom. He really ought to try to get something done before noon. He had some grades to record from the last couple of weeks, also a pile of laundry he really ought to tackle, as well as dirty dishes in the sink. But the thought of staying in his apartment on one of the few Saturdays in his favorite month was something he couldn't do. Giving up movies for a year, okay, he could handle that, but not spending a Saturday inside.

Pulling on a pair of jeans a minute later, he asked himself a question: So have I gained anything from a year of movie abstinence? Then another: Have I lost anything? These were questions to ponder, maybe in his truck on his way to the mountains a little later today. He did know one thing right now, though—that come Christmas, he would have somewhere close to four hundred dollars to put into the offering plate at church.