HANK ALDERFER - DONALD PERRY
1
Dawn and Derrick Perry had their hands full with little Donnie. Dawn was totally unprepared for motherhood, and Derrick was away on business too often to help Dawn out much. They seemed to do nothing but fight after Donnie came home from the hospital, and Donnie seemed to sense it. To add to the problems, Dawn resented Donnie for interrupting her career. She yelled at him often, and he was not a happy little child.
Derrick’s mother and father came over from England to visit a week after Donnie was born, and they extended the stay to two months. The conflict that went on between Dawn’s and Derrick’s parents made it all the worse. Dawn’s parents, the Baxters, thought of the Perrys as intruders in their Boston world, and interlopers in the raising of their grandchild.
It was only two weeks after the Perrys returned to England that Derrick announced he wanted a trial separation. He complained that he just couldn’t handle this parenthood thing. It distracted him from his work, and it caused him too much stress. Dawn was shocked and enraged. She packed some things and moved back with her mother and father that very night. Donnie was three months old at that time.
Living back with her parents actually rescued Dawn’s career. The Baxters were recently retired and they volunteered to take care of Donnie during the day. Dawn returned to work after four months of leave. Dawn couldn’t stand the thought of working in the same lab as Derrick, so M.I.T. found her a position with another project.
Donnie seemed to spend half of his time crying. At least that’s how it seemed to the Baxters. They hadn’t taken care of an infant for many years, so it was a struggle. But they really loved the baby and made an extra effort to give him the love and attention he required.
Donnie threw tantrums. That was the worst problem the Baxters had with him. He spent the first six months of his life in rebellion. He wouldn’t tolerate baths, lie in his playpen, or sit in his stroller. Millie Baxter estimated that she spent one quarter of her time holding Donnie to keep him quiet, and her husband Thomas estimated the same for him. The rest of the time they just had to let him cry.
Donnie was perpetually hungry for the first four or five months of his life. A bottle was the only thing that would pacify him. His weight reflected it too. He was grossly overweight, and the family doctor advised them that they’d better feed him less. The Baxters tried to comply, but it was difficult. They tried to feed him water, and watered down juices, but Donnie wouldn’t drink them. He carried on until he got formula. When Dawn came home each night, he demanded that she hold him while he drank an evening bottle, or he simply would not allow himself to be put to sleep.
Derrick was making noise about his visitation rights. The Baxters would not let him take Donnie out of the house. They made him spend his visits in the house under their supervision. He was threatening to take them to court, and this was all getting to be more than Dawn could handle. She arranged a one-on-one meeting with Derrick and she pleaded that they try to get back together for the baby’s sake. Surprisingly, Derrick agreed, and Dawn moved back home after only three months with her parents.
So at six months old, Donnie got his first taste of a normal family environment. Dawn decided that she was unwilling to put Donnie in day care. She accepted the fact that she would have to be a full-time mother, and she quit her job permanently. She spent a lot of effort trying to make Derrick feel stress-free and happy. She wanted the marriage to work. Derrick adjusted after a month or two, and things got back to normal for them.
As for Donnie’s tantrums, both Derrick and Dawn blamed them on those first six months of turmoil. The tantrums seemed to gradually disappear, but it was becoming clear to Dawn and Derrick that Donnie was developing another problem. He was slow to pick up on things. While this might not bother average parents too badly, it was a significant flaw in the eyes of a Physicist and a Mathematician. They had quite naturally assumed that their baby would be a genius. A slow learning baby was just such an embarrassment to them.
At one year, Donnie had settled down in his behavior, and was eating normally. His weight had stabilized at a normal level. But, despite his mother’s valiant efforts to teach him, he was still an extremely slow learner.
.....
Hank knew where he was and what had happened the instant he was born into Donald Perry. But the memories faded almost immediately thereafter, leaving only confusion. He forgot he had a former life, but he still knew his name was Hank. Every time they called him Don or Donnie he knew it was not his correct name. He had no sensations of a divided consciousness. He was totally alone in his body. The problem was that he had awareness that something was wrong. It just grated on him so badly each time they called him Donnie or Don. He was in a constant state of anger, and he didn’t keep it a secret.
When he cried, they fed him. He cried often and got fed often. He began to look forward to the meals, and the cycle reinforced itself. Food was all that interested him. He didn’t like being bathed, and he didn’t like being left alone. And he hated to hear yelling and loud noises. He didn’t see his mama very much, but when she was there he demanded that she hold him and feed him.
He paid little attention to what people were doing around him. He felt little curiosity. He was totally content just being held. Then his world was changed radically. His mama took him to stay in a different place with people called nana and papa, and most of the time they were the only two people he saw all day. The people who used to be there all the time were now there only occasionally.
Nana always forced him to look at her. It was annoying. She would sit there with him on her lap and play with rattles and other things that made noise. Then she would take his little hands and force him to do the same things. This went on every day, and Hank wanted no part of it.
The name problem was no small one to Hank. He was Hank! That’s all there was to it. He tried not to listen to them when they called him the other names. He ignored them. He wanted them to call him Hank.
2
When Donnie turned thirteen months, he exhibited a change in his behavior. For Dawn it was a small miracle. He became attentive, and he started to learn. First, he began to mimic her actions just like a chimpanzee. Then he started on his own to explore his world, as a normal baby would have done at three or four months. He progressed rapidly to a stage of development commensurate with his age.
He started babbling. He became a chatterbox. Dawn couldn’t recognize a single thing he said. Then it became clear to her that he would watch and listen to her say something, then say something back. It amazed her. He was thirteen months old, and paying attention to speech like an eighteen-month child. She’d say “papa” and “mama” to him and he tried to make similar sounds. He began making the correct number of syllables in his otherwise unintelligible responses. He even caught on to intonation.
Dawn would sit for hours on end trying to teach him to talk. Sometimes he would suddenly lose interest and start fussing. Other times he had the attention span of a much older child. Then, quite by accident, Dawn discovered a mind-boggling thing. Donnie flat out quit his vocal responses the moment she mentioned his name. She couldn’t believe it at first, but after a dozen or so experiments she was positively convinced. When she demonstrated this to Derrick, he was just as amazed as she was. But something else was happening too. The experiments were noticeably starting to annoy Donnie. As Dawn continued them, he began to scream and carry on when she said his name.
They began avoiding the use of his name, and he seemed to become a happier child. It wasn’t a dramatic change in behavior, but Dawn was certain that it was in fact a change for the better. She started calling him names like “sweetie-pie”, “honey-bunch” and “pumpkin”. Each of these worked for a while, but he would eventually react badly to them too. As unbelievable as it seemed to Dawn, Donnie did not appear to tolerate being addressed by anything he construed as being his name.
.....
Hank was having memory flashes. He absolutely could not understand what they were all about. But he knew for sure that they related to Hank, and not Donnie. He became obsessed with the issue of his name. He didn’t know why, but he felt compelled to let his mama and papa know his name was Hank. The only way to do this was to learn to talk. He set about this task with a passion. His determination was all consuming, but the lack of cooperation from his tongue and lips and throat was frustrating.
To get help from his mama, he learned how to manipulate her. If he did the things she showed him with his toys, she then spent more time teaching him to talk. The talking lessons were wonderful. She formed the words so clearly and spoke them over and over again so he could practice. She even touched his lips and showed him how to move them.
As he learned, the memory flashes came more often. They were glorious in a way, even if he didn’t understand what they were. He saw vivid colors and smelled wonderful aromas. The actual shapes and forms were mysteries to him. He needed to learn more before he could match his memories to things in his new world.
He was starting to get a good handle on the operation of his hands and feet. And he was starting to master crawling and climbing. He wanted very badly to learn to walk, just like his mama and papa. It was just awesome to see how easily they could do these things, while he could barely stand up with the help of the furniture. And if he let go of the furniture while he was standing, he instantly collapsed to the floor. He banged his head a lot of times and hurt other parts of his body. Mama came to soothe him when this happened, but he didn’t let these setbacks deter him from his mission.
There was a new awareness forming in him. It was an awareness of his own existence. He knew he was an entity with control over his own body and mind. He didn’t know a name for it, but it was a glorious feeling. He actually experienced a feeling of power.
Speech became more important than ever as he began to think of himself as an entity. That entity was called Hank, and he was desperate to convey this to his mama. He began to stop responding whenever his mama called him Donnie or Don. But, when he did this, she seemed more determined than ever to call him those names. It became a battle of wills for a time, but it was self-defeating. She would stop teaching him when he stopped responding. Then, like magic, she stopped calling him those names altogether. It was great, but his victory was short-lived. He soon caught on that she used other names for him now; names like “sweetie-pie”. As he began to identify these new names for him, he would find himself having to train her all over again not to call him by those names. It was hard, but she caught on.
3
Derrick and Dawn decided that it was time to start bringing Donnie to church. They had long ceased going themselves, but they felt a new responsibility to instill a sense of God in their child. He was coming up on fifteen months, and they thought it was an appropriate age. They dressed him in a special new Sunday outfit, and took him to see what it was all about. They decided that it would probably be a wise idea for them to sit in the last row of pews, just in case Donnie started fussing or getting loud in the middle of a sermon. They had all the bases covered, and they arrived early to talk to the minister, re-introduce themselves, and have him meet their son.
As they carried Donnie from the parking lot to the church, he became transfixed. He was staring at the church as if it were the most awesome thing he had ever seen. And when they brought him inside, Dawn could feel his whole body tense up in her arms. She instantly prepared herself for him to start a crying fit, but it didn’t happen. In fact, his jaw dropped open in awe as he looked all around the church.
Derrick was observing Donnie’s behavior very carefully, preparing to get him out of there at the first sign of any misbehavior. He was pleasantly surprised by Donnie’s behavior. To Derrick, it was almost comical the way Donnie scanned the church left to right and top to bottom. Dawn watched him too. She had the added advantage of feeling his physical reactions at the same time he was scanning. His body would relax for a moment and then tense up when he would spot something that held his stare. Then he would relax again and continue the scan until he tensed up at the next object of interest. This went on and on as she watched him zero in on the stained-glass bible scenes, the pews, the cross, the Mother and Child, and finally the image of Christ.
For a brief moment, his face contorted and they thought he was going to cry. His eyes filled up and his lips quivered, but then he calmed down. They carried him over to the minister and did the introductions. Donnie never once took his eyes from the minister’s face. It seemed such a curious reaction to all of them, and the minister even commented on how attentive Donnie was to him. Dawn and Derrick were unsure just what to make of it all.
Donnie sat through the entire service without so much as a sound. They were so proud of him. Afterwards, they stopped at the door to talk again with the minister. Dawn felt Donnie’s body tense up once more as his eyes locked on the minister’s face. She commented on how fascinated Donnie seemed to be with the minister, and they all thought it was so cute.
When they said good-bye and started back to the parking lot, Donnie looked up and fixed his eyes on the steeple. Dawn wasn’t sure whether it was the cross or the bell that he found so fascinating, but he wouldn’t take his eyes off it. Even as they put him into his car seat, he was leaning over to maintain his view of the steeple.
As they drove away, Donnie watched until the church disappeared from view. He turned his head forward as Dawn watched him from the front seat, and he stared straight into her eyes. She thought he was going to smile or say one of his babbling phrases, but he didn’t. It gave her goose bumps, but he stared at her for a full thirty seconds before he looked away. And the whole time he stared, his mouth was wide open. She could only interpret his look as one of total astonishment. And as he looked away, she saw the tears form and he began to cry. She turned herself around and leaned over the front seat to unhook him from the car seat and lift him over so she could hold him. When he was in her arms, he stopped crying and fell asleep.
.....
The sight of the church brought forth a flood of memories in Hank’s mind. It was so familiar to him that it was spellbinding. The cross at the top of the building was familiar, as was so much else about this place. The inside was so warm and comforting. There was so much to look at. He saw the beautiful colored windows and the rows of pews with the books tucked into their seat backs. The books! He knew there was something special about the books. And the cross of shiny wood was also special. Then he saw the statue of the mother and the child. It was so beautiful to look at, and it meant more to him than his own mama carrying him. But the most awesome sight to behold was the huge picture of the man on the cross. He was part of the cross. He was wearing that thing on his head and the blood was dripping from his head and hands and feet. Blood! The blood. It momentarily overpowered Hank and he felt as if he might cry.
The memories came to him in wave after wave. This place was totally familiar to him, but he also knew that he had never been here before. It was a good place, and a safe place. It was a place where he could be just Hank, and he knew that Hank belonged here.
Then his mama carried him over to see the man with the black clothes and the white collar. He looked at the man’s face. It was like the face on the man in the picture. It was the face of God. Hank knew the name God, but he didn’t understand who God was. And then the name Christ flashed into his mind. Jesus! Jesus Christ was the name.
When they sat down in the back row it also felt familiar and friendly. Hank watched as the many people walked in and sat down all around him. They picked up their books and looked all around. Some looked at him and his parents, then continued looking all around. They said words to each other and they smiled. Everyone talked so softly. Nobody yelled or made any loud noises. He suddenly remembered. The books they held were called Bibles. Bibles! They were special indeed, but Hank just didn’t understand why.
Then everything got so quiet. The man in black stood there facing them and he began to speak. Then the people also spoke. Later they began to sing. There was music coming from someplace, but he couldn’t see where. They all stood and sat again and again. It was all so familiar to him. It was about God, and Hank knew that he must learn all about this God. Then he saw the shiny gold plate being passed from person to person. His mama and papa put something in and then Hank had the most overwhelming desire to also put something in.
He couldn’t even mouth the words or make the sounds, but he knew the words Jesus, God, Bible, Christ, and church. His mind was flooding with images of a church so much like this one. He could almost reach out and touch the images. But the images didn’t match exactly. The people were different, and the windows were different.
When it was over, they brought him again to see the man in black. Minister! That’s who he was. His face was God. And when the Minister looked at him, God was looking at him.
They carried him back out of the church and again he could see the cross at the top. And the cross was God too. He couldn’t pull his eyes from it. It called to him....Hank....Hank.....Hank. Then when his mama put him in the car, he had to struggle to find the cross. But he found it. And he looked at it as they drove the car away. Then he turned to his mama who was looking at him. He looked in her eyes and felt love. And he was astonished by how beautiful and loving her eyes were.
An overwhelming feeling of emptiness came upon him then. He turned to look outside as he began to understand that Hank was in those images that flooded his mind. But the Hank in the images was sad.
He looked out the car window and he began to cry.
4
Donnie made rapid progress after that first church visit. By the time he turned two, he was speaking clearly and walking steadily. He was a normal healthy baby boy, and Dawn was the happiest mother in the world. She helped Donnie learn. She read books to him, drew pictures, and told him stories. And he gradually allowed them to call him by his name. His vocabulary was developing well and he was putting meaningful sentences together by the time he reached thirty months. He wanted to learn about everything. He began to ask “why” to almost every question they answered, and it annoyed them a bit. But they knew it would just be a stage, and that there was no sense in getting upset about it.
Dawn bought Donnie colored markers and tablets of drawing paper. He took to drawing as a fish to water. He drew remarkably well for his age, and began to draw whenever he had the chance. At three years, Donnie was drawing pictures and telling his mother and father the stories behind the pictures. Without the narratives, they wouldn’t have known in detail what the pictures really were, but Don was able to draw many recognizable things. He loved to “draw and tell”, and it became his favorite pastime. Dawn would find him sitting in his room drawing pictures and telling his stories out loud. It was almost like somebody was there with him. Dawn loved to see him like this, and she would peek from the doorway for ten or fifteen minutes at a time when she found him doing it. He seemed so creative for a three-year-old.
They continued to take him to church, and he always seemed so fascinated by it. Other little children were noisy and talkative in church, but not Donnie. He sat there like an adult. He even demanded to hold a Bible or a hymnbook, although he never opened it or looked at it.
Donnie started to watch the educational children’s shows on television. He was starting to know the alphabet and numbers as he approached four. His progress was just wonderful, and Dawn and Derrick were already discussing whether or not to send him to a private school that could challenge him more than a public school.
Still, he continued to spend a great deal of his time alone drawing his pictures and telling his stories. Then, while eavesdropping on one of his private drawing sessions, Dawn heard him talking to someone by name. She thought it was so wonderful. He had created an imaginary playmate named Hank.
.....
It was shortly after the first church experience that Hank decided to learn about God and about Hank. He set his mind to mastering all that his mother and father could teach him. He made the decision not to react when they called him Donnie or Don, because it just got in the way of the learning. When he let them call him Donnie, they seemed much more anxious to teach him things. He learned to speak, and as he did, he understood more and more of the images that came to him. His quest for knowledge was insatiable. Whenever mama and papa answered a question, it just caused two or three more questions to form in his mind.
Then a magical thing happened. His mother gave him colored pens and paper. He learned to draw, and he was able to set down on paper some of the images that came to his mind. At first, when the images were simple, he started telling his parents all about the drawings. But as time went on, the images became more complex, and they carried much sadness along with the delight. He soon realized that the images were the story of Hank. They were the story of another being. With this knowledge came an awful burden. He somehow sensed that he must not allow his parents to know about Hank. He knew he should not mention Hank to them until he was sure that he himself knew everything there was to know about Hank.
So he began the difficult task of creating on paper all of the wonderful and colorful images of Hank’s complex world. He spent countless hours on this task. And he began to see that with each church visit came an abundant flow of new images to draw on paper.
The television helped him learn too. He was able to grasp many new ideas as his vocabulary developed. He was looking forward to the day that he could read all by himself, and he worked diligently toward that goal.
A voice started to accompany the images that came to him. It was a deep, masculine voice that explained the images to him as they came; a familiar voice. And soon he understood that the voice was Hank’s true voice. He and the voice of Hank spent many hours drawing and learning. And he could ask the voice of Hank questions. He always got an answer, but it didn’t always make sense.
And then one day came a crash of images and voices so overwhelming that Hank almost passed out. He was so little and so innocent that it almost wasn’t fair that he should know such fear and confusion.
5
About a week after Don’s fourth birthday, he came in to Dawn crying his eyes out. She quickly scanned his body to make sure he wasn’t hurt or bleeding, then asked what was wrong. He told her that he had a horrible dream and he was frightened. She held him for a few minutes and then asked him to tell her all about his dream. Don told her that he dreamt about a wicked man named Oren who killed God and took Heaven away.
It struck Dawn that maybe the Bible stories from church were a little too graphic for a four-year-old to handle. She wasn’t sure which story Don had remembered, but she could certainly see that it scared him. She decided to pay closer attention herself at church, and then try to talk over the stories on the way home. She certainly didn’t want Don to get the wrong ideas from the stories.
She suggested that he go out and play, and that playing might help him forget about the bad dream. But it was cold outside, and Don was not in a playful mood anyway. He asked if she would just hold him a while longer. She held him for a good ten more minutes before he went back to his room.
Dawn felt sorry for him, but she didn’t think much more about it until the next day. Don came crying to her again, and this time the dream was a bit more ominous.
.....
Hank didn’t know how to handle the knowledge he had acquired. His mind was just not developed enough to understand the concept of rebirth. He had an instinctive fear about telling his parents about Hank’s previous life. But he felt an overwhelming call to warn everyone about the evil things that the Devil Oren had done to God.
6
When Derrick came home from work that evening, Don was eager to tell him about his dreams. Dawn had hounded him for details earlier in the day, but Don insisted on telling them both at the same time.
“So what’s all this about your dreams, young man?” Derrick asked at the dinner table. “Tell me all about them.”
“Oren killed God, Daddy. And he wouldn’t let anyone in Heaven.” Don checked to make certain both his mother and father were paying close attention. Once he was sure, he continued, “So when the souls came to get in Heaven, Oren just made them get out of there.”
Dawn was trying desperately to figure out which Bible story Don was referring to. She looked over at Derrick and they flashed each other puzzled looks. Then she asked Don, “Who’s Oren, honey?”
Don seemed puzzled that his own mother didn’t know who Oren was, but he answered anyway. “Oren was God’s friend. He used to live with God before he killed him.”
“Well, tell us more about this Oren,” Derrick added cautiously.
Again Don was amazed. Even his dad didn’t know who Oren was. He tried explaining better. “Oren is the one that tells all the souls they can’t go to Heaven. Anyhow, Oren says nobody can go to Heaven, even if they’re a good boy.”
At this point Dawn was pretty certain that this was no Bible story. She asked Don, “If there’s no Heaven, then where do good boys go after they....” She had second thoughts about saying it to a four-year-old, but she already started, so she continued, “after they die, sweetheart?”
Now Don was really proud of himself. He could now teach them something! He held his head up high and spouted, “They get to go back where they came from.” He beamed after teaching his parents this profound wisdom.
Derrick and Dawn looked at each other. They silently communicated their mutual fear of asking any other questions. But curiosity got the best of Dawn and she broke the silence. “And where do bad boys go, Donnie?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he answered, “The same place, too.”
Not that it was wise to argue with a child this size, but Derrick couldn’t help but ask, “Don’t the bad ones go someplace else?” It was the best euphemism he could think of.
Then Don answered the question in a way that shocked both Dawn and Derrick. They had no idea that Don even knew the words he used, let alone the way he spoke them. “No, Dad. But Oren says that God so loved mankind that He proclaimed that each soul shall know the truth of His creation before that soul shall be issued forth anew.” Don had absolutely no idea what he had just said. He was himself surprised that the words had come from his mouth. He suddenly felt scared.
Derrick and Dawn were positively speechless. They looked at each other in total disbelief. They were both actually afraid to ask their son any other questions.
This time it was Derrick that broke the silence. “Don, did Reverend Porter tell you that?”
“No, dad!” he said emphatically. “Reverend Porter doesn’t know that God lied about Heaven.”
