The General's President Read Free

sleep now on the beds we used to have. And these chairs..." He patted the one he sat in. "The ones we used to have were homemade. Not bad, but not like these. And the fridge is new, of course, I never saw a refrigerator till I was in high school. Or used a telephone."
    He sipped his coffee reminiscently. "We didn't even have a wagon road till I was two years old. The river was the road. It was the main road till I was eleven, when the CCC graded and graveled the wagon road and put culverts in—made an auto road out of it. The country got a lot of good out of those hard-times projects. And when we had a real road, Dad bought an old truck; I learned mechanics on that klunker. Every month or so the whole family'd go in to Littlefork to a movie; it cost a dime each. And we'd eat popcorn! We thought we really had it made."
    Haugen laughed and shook his head. "That was a different world."
    Father Flynn nodded soberly. That had been "the Great Depression." Now they were in another, in some ways worse.
    "We were kind of crowded here," Haugen went on. "There were three of us boys that slept in the loft, and my sister slept in the living room. Mom and dad slept in that room"—he gestured—"and grandma in that one. We had a grandmother in the house till I was grown up and drafted. Sometimes we had two grandmas in the house. Grandma Salminen—we called her 'Mummo'—was with us all my childhood, and Grandma Haugen came to America when I was nine. She was 'Bestemor.' " He chuckled. "Neither one spoke English, and of course, Finnish and Norwegian are completely different. They lived in the same house together for years, sharing a bedroom, but they never had a conversation together. Each learned some words of the other's language and a few words of broken English, but not enough to really talk to each other."
    "How did they get along?"
    Haugen laughed. "Well, they didn't argue. Actually they were a lot alike. Both were old-country farm women, peasants, and both had a lot of patience. Except for cussedness. Neither had much patience with cussedness."
    ***
    The two men talked for a while longer, then Haugen took a small, battery-powered alarm clock from the pack, set it, and they got ready for bed. The bedroom was not totally dark; there was faint starlight through the newly washed window. Father Flynn knelt silently beside his army-style bed for a few minutes, then got between the sheets.
    "Steve," Haugen said after a minute, "I haven't prayed, actually prayed, since childhood. But while you were kneeling there, I was remembering. When Lois and I were younger, she used to drag me to church now and then. Lutheran. And we'd recite the creed. And there were things I used to wonder about."
    Father Flynn lay silent, waiting. After a moment, Haugen continued, reciting from memory.
    " 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.' " He paused. "That part I had no problem with. Understanding it, I mean. But then it went on—'And in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost. ' That's where I started to have problems. What does it mean by the Holy Ghost?"
    The priest paused only for a moment before answering. "The Holy Trinity," he said, "is important to our understanding of God. First of all, love is essential to God; it is basic to Him; and it's the basis of the Trinity. God the Father knows himself utterly, and his awareness—his image!—of himself is the Son. And the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son."
    The priest lay silent then, and after a moment, Haugen spoke again. "I once read somewhere in the New Testament where Jesus said 'Ye are all sons of God.' How does that fit in?"
    "We are, in a sense, though originally not in the same sense as Jesus. But because Jesus came to us on Earth, he raised us all to his level."
    After a few seconds, Haugen continued. "Then it goes on to say: He 'was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell.' Now what was that about? Why