The next time I ran into Harry, he invited me over to his place. I showed up on a Friday evening with a case of beer. He was sitting on his front steps when I arrived.
“Yo!” I yelled as I got out of my car.
“Good evening!” Harry yelled back. He stood up and walked down his front walkway. I popped open the trunk and took out the beer, looking around at the neighborhood.
“What’d you bring?” Harry asked as he arrived at the curb.
“Summer wheat, baby,” I answered, handing Harry the case of beer. “Already cold.”
“Perfect,” Harry said with a smile. “Come on in.” I followed Harry up to his house and in the front door. We walked into his kitchen, where he opened the case, took out two bottles, and put the rest in the fridge.
“Come on, I want to show you something,” he said, and motioned with his hand for me to follow him. We walked down a hallway, through a small room with a washer and dryer, and out the back door. We walked down a few steps and stopped on a concrete patio on which was arranged a table with an umbrella and four chairs around it. There was a propane grill to the right and a bench to the left. And straight ahead, at the back of the property, was a pyramid.
I say pyramid, but it wasn’t pointed on top like pyramids usually are. This was flat on top, with curved sides. “Wow, look at that,” I said as I stared at it. It was big – almost as tall as the house. I started walking toward it. Harry followed.
As I got closer, I saw that the structure was covered with brick steps. At the top, it looked like a chimney was sticking up out of the middle of it.On the grass around the bottom of it were small statues, ranging from a foot to three feet tall. There was a Buddha, a Hindu god of some sort, one of Jesus Christ in a robe and sandals. There was what looked like a totem pole at one corner, and several other small shrine-type things that I couldn’t identify. These were arranged neatly at the corners and along each side. The entire scene was quite powerful to look at, everything neatly arranged. I immediately wanted to climb to the top of the structure, whatever it was.
“What do you call this thing?” I asked him.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t really given it a name. I guess I refer to it as my mound.”
“Well, it needs a name,” I said. “This thing is amazing. Can I climb to the top?”
“Go for it,” Harry said with a nod. I put my right foot on the first step. The bricks had been perfectly placed. Each row was straight and level. Harry, or whoever had done this, had known what they were doing and had put a lot of care and attention into it.
I counted the steps as I went – three deep steps, seven shallow steps, and three more deep ones. I arrived at the top and turned around. The view was amazing – I could see over Harry’s roof and all the other roofs around. I could see the building where I worked a half mile to the north. I could see the sun toward the west. It was early evening.
“Harry, this thing is awesome,” I said.
“I agree!” Harry said smiling as he arrived at the top next to me.
“You built this?”
“Yup.”
I thought about it a moment, then asked, “Why?”
Harry squinted at me, still smiling. “Hard to say. Lots of reasons.”
I nodded, and took a sip of my beer. “Like what?”
“Well, I wanted a better view of sunsets, for one thing.” I nodded again. “And I like to sit out here and read, ponder. Two of my favorite activities.”
I looked at Harry. He was facing the sun. For the first time I realized that there was far more to this guy than I had thought. There were things going on inside him that I knew I couldn’t possibly understand. I could picture him sitting up here on his mound, watching the sun move across the sky, perhaps a book in his hand.
What I had thought was a chimney was a column of bricks, two feet square and about my height. “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to it.
“It used to hold up a flagpole. But I use it as a back rest. Like this.” Harry sat down and leaned back against it. I sat down and leaned back against an adjacent face.
“Ah,” I said, “I see.”
We sat there quietly for a moment. Then I noticed my bottle was empty. “I need another beer,” I said.
“Me too,” Harry agreed. We stood up and walked back down to the ground. Once inside, Harry filled a cooler with beer and ice and then we went headed back outside and up onto the mound.
We spent the rest of the evening up there. Sometime after sunset, the moon rose. It was a spectacular sight. I hadn’t watched the moon rise like that before. It was huge, a few days past full.
Harry and I talked about everything – sports, politics, even religion, which as I said was of very little interest to me. But Harry brought it up in reference to the situation in the Middle East, and he even managed to tie it into sports, though I can’t remember exactly how or why.
By midnight, I could barely walk back down the steps without stumbling, and I decided to crash on the couch in the living room. I awoke the next day with a splitting headache, left a note on the kitchen table, and somehow managed to drive home despite dizzying nausea.
And that was my first evening at Harry’s. My first time up on “the mound”. I would return many, many times over the next four months. At least once a week, and sometimes three or four nights a week, Harry and I sat atop the mound and talked, and talked, and talked.
I will share a few of those conversations with you because they were, quite frankly, life-changing for me. My perspective of myself, of the world, and of my reason for being alive changed dramatically during those four months, and perhaps you will find what I recount for you here as helpful and stimulating for you as it was for me.
So sit back, relax, make yourself comfortable.
And let me share with you what Harry told me.
