Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [91]
He was a tall fellow, six-one, and weighed about a hundred and ninety pounds. With his even features and his hair cleanly parted on the side, he looked real handsome up there in the pulpit. In fact, he created a ripple among the girls. The Ward Colleen belonged to at the University was, after all, a single Ward, that is, single girls and single boys there to meet each other.
Before Max got up to speak, the fellow who introduced him said, Many couples get introduced to each other right here in church and later they get married, but there is one guy who didn't meet anyone last year and that is Max Jensen. "He really wants to get married, you know," said the friend up there in the pulpit.
At that point, since Max hadn't risen yet to speak, all her roommates and herself were looking around, and asking, which one is Max? and laughing about it. Right here was where Max had to stand up. However, he got back at his friend in a real neat way, by telling a story how that fellow, who was a football player, happened to wake up from a dream one night yelling signals, then bashed into the line-except it was the wall. Max now connected that to the subject of his talk by pointing out how it was not enough to devote your life to living by the Scriptures, you also had to know just where you were in life, otherwise you might not relate the teachings properly to your own situation.
2
A few weeks later, Colleen invited her cousin and his five roommates to come over for a little dinner party with herself and her five roommates. Everything was laid out on the table and people walked by to get their porcupine meatballs, that is, hamburger-and-rice casserole. Since they were all strict Mormons, no iced tea or coffee was served just milk and water. A pleasant meal on regular plates, not paper, and they talked about school, basketball, and church activities. Colleen remembered Max sitting several feet away on a big pillow and laughing with the group. He had a distinctive voice that was a little bit raspy. She learned later he had hay fever and it gave his voice the deep throbbing sound that comes from having a cold. One of Colleen's roommates later described it as being very sexy.
The next day he called. One of her roommates told Colleen she was wanted on the telephone. This was their little trick. If a girl was on the line, they would yell, "Phone!" but should it be a guy, then "Telephone." Colleen was used to hearing the second, so she had no particular idea it would be Max. The night before, she certainly hadn't gotten the feeling he was making any special attempt to communicate with her, yet he now asked her if she would like to go to a show tonight. She told him yes.
Afterward, it was kind of funny when they each admitted they had seen What's Up, Doc? before, but hadn't wanted to spoil the other's opportunity to go. Then they went to the Pizza Hut and talked about their ideas on life, and how active they and their families were in LDS work. Max said he was the oldest of four children and his father, a farmer in Montpelier, Idaho, was also a Stake President. That impressed Colleen. There couldn't be that many Stake Presidents in all of Idaho.
He also told her about his mission to Brazil. What got her respect was that he had earned all the money to do that by himself. Missionaries had to pay their own way over, of course, and then also pay for living expenses on the mission, so most of them had to be helped financially by their families. It wasn't easy for an adolescent to earn enough money by the age of nineteen to maintain himself for two years on a mission in a foreign country. Max, however, had done that.
He enjoyed Brazil, his conversion rate had been high. On average, you could hope to convert one person a month over your two-year stretch in that country, but he had done considerably better.
He remembered it as a time of great challenge and much necessity to learn how