Book Two Chapter Two

   But as usual, there was another side to the coin. While Toby's grandparents undoubtedly possessed a faith in many of the Christian norms, to his undeniable advantage, theirs was not the full and perfecting faith of Catholicism. They were Baptists, denying the Real Presence and the Mass, ignoring the successor of Saint Peter, seemingly unconscious of the Virgin Mary, and narrow about moderate participation in innocent amusements.
 
     And yet, their faith in Christ and the Scriptures had accomplished an undeniable resemblance to one of the great saints common to ordinary daily devotion of Catholics, and it was easily apparent to Toby as a small boy. In the spring in one of the early years of the war, on a sunny Saturday morning, his grandfather had invited him to help him dig up the potato patch, not only turning over the soil in preparation for the new crop, but also to remove any horse radish that might have grown in the way of the potatoes. Toby was to keep all the horse radish he could find.
 
     For the occasion Walter Skinner had bought a little trenching tool from a second hand store. He was a pacifist - perhaps from something that had happened to him in the First World War, when he was living in the Yukon - but Toby was too small to handle anything like a normal shovel or even a spade, so the size of the little trenching tool was just right for the boy, and also a reminder that his father was in the army.
 
    They worked side by side in the morning sunlight. Walter dug the rows, one by one, in which he would later plant his crop of spuds, while Toby rummaged in the dirt with his trenching tool for horse radish roots. There were not a lot, but there were enough to make the effort worthwhile, And besides, he was working along with his grandfather, most certainly the quietest, calmest, most self-possessed man he knew then, and would always know as quite unique among any and all of the sons of men. Toby never remembered what they chatted about. Probably his grandfather, who was not talkative at any time, had just let him ramble on, but in such a fashion as to prove himself such a gentle listener that all of a sudden Toby felt himself wondering if the old man was actually Jesus, even though, in his garden pants and garden jacket and hat and gumboots, he was not at all dressed like the Man with the long hair and the white robe who had spoken to him in the Sunday School basement of the Baptist Church.
 
    Nor did he speak to Toby in the mysterious, interior, words of a divine locution. Walter's conversation tended to be as gravelly as it was sparse and kind, so kind on that particular morning as to raise the question of his actual identity.
 
    Such is the capacity of virtue, in a genuine Christian of any stripe, to connect the observer with the ever restless desire of God to connect with his creatures, no matter how young, and to the world, how insignificant. And in the most ordinary places, amongst the most ordinary activity. What could be humbler than a search in early spring for last year's horse radish roots?
 
     The profoundly interesting question did not move Toby to say anything on its behalf. As with his other experiences of this kind he was given no words, no inspiration to articulate his little vision of his grandfather's virtues, and the event was forgotten, hidden away for decades until its memory could serve its full purpose within his full and visible membership in the Mystical Body. He simply went on enjoying his grandfather's company, the morning sun and the pleasant colour and smell of newly turned earth, and appreciating the old man's ability to spot horse radish roots he might otherwise have missed.
 
    Toby also appreciated that the grandmother of this most interesting house and huge garden and chicken shed facilities has said he might have all the roots to give to his other grandmother. His Nana too had a nice garden, although not as big as this one, and he doubted it had any horse radish in it. There were a lot of raspberry canes, and a long wall of sweet peas, but no potatoes, and therefore, he assumed, no horse radish. And no chickens, especially not such a lot of chickens as Walter and his wife looked after. He had never seen any other place that had so many chickens, nor of any kitchen that produced better tasting chicken than his grandmother's. His grandparents sold their eggs, too, and there was a place in the basement where his grandmother held up each egg and looked at it in front of a light. Candling, she called it. Looking for something in the egg that shouldn't be there. Toby sometimes thought that it would be more exciting if his grandparents kept cows and horses, especially horses, but the chickens were still a very live adventure, and horses wouldn't be any good to eat anyway.
 
    Toby had learned about cows and horses not only from books and movies, but also from real farms in the Fraser Valley when his Dad had worked for a dairy and would take him in the truck when he drove out to pick up the milk containers. Although there was no shortage of trees where he lived, two blocks west of the acres of old growth forest that was Central Park, his neighbourhood was also full of houses, which did not have the magic of the farm country. They were solid, comfortable houses, with pleasant gardens and standing beside paved streets, but they lacked cows and horses.
 
    What the neighbourhood lacked in farm animals, however, it made up for in churches. There were three, all within easy walking range, especially of his grandfather's house. There was the Baptist church, where his paternal grandparents attended - and where his grandmother taught Sunday School to the big girls - and two other Protestant churches, one of which, on Sunday mornings, tolled a large bell. No childhood should lack a judicious balance of nature and grace. The absence of either does more damage than Freud could imagine, and the lack of both is truly a hell on earth.
 
    In spite of this atmosphere, or perhaps because of it, Grandma Skinner almost never taught anything like Sunday School to Toby. She understood perfectly that she had to tread carefully around his parents, especially her son, Toby's father. Too much Baptist catechism, and the lad's visits might be curtailed? But her house had an effect of its own, as she was well aware, and she was wise enough to let that suffice in the place of regular direct instruction. Thus Toby's relationship with his grandparents' faith was essentially peaceful, with little interference with the light and the spirit that followed his extraordinary experiences. Simply to be in their quiet, thoughtful, company was to know the grace of God and absorb its blessing. It met him constantly, it entered into him as easily as did the welcome cups of tea his Grandma served him as he began his regular Saturday morning visits as soon as he was old enough to walk the few blocks from his other grandmother's house. Tea with cream and sugar in it, with a bantam egg to take back home with him when the visit was over.
 
    The tea was served in his grandmother's kitchen, and Toby sat on the south side of the table, where he could see out the window into the side garden, and look into a tall old oak tree, in which sat the first Stellar's Jay he ever saw, with it coat of radiant, electric, blue and a topknot like that of a kingfisher. His grandmother called it a blue jay, because she was from Ontario and Manitoba, and that was just as well because Toby could not imagine how any bird so brilliantly blue could be called anything other than blue. There were also oaks on the boulevard at the front of the house, along with a pair of weeping willow trees, all reminders of how things had been back in Ontario, where his grandfather had also come from. But inside the front fence, there was a wall of Douglas Firs, the tallest trees on the property, and a specific indication of the property's Pacific setting. He found no Douglas firs, when not much later than his first adventures with tea and blue jays he moved to roam for a bit among the among the evergreens of Nova Scotia and Ontario.