Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

canary when she was lying in bed she would whistle and it would fly over, perch on the covers and
pick her teeth.
In the summer, the children spent every waking hour after school outdoors. May, who had changed
her job and now worked as a clerk in the State Department of Agriculture and Publicity, bought a
small plot of land in the foothills of the mountains, about two hours' walk from the family home and
paid a local carpenter to put up a raw pine shack. It had just two rooms inside, with a long covered
porch at the front. They called it 'The Old Homestead' and used it at weekends and holidays, taking
enough food and drink with them to last the duration, and drawing water from a well on a nearby
property. Most times Lafe would drive them out in the Model T. and drop them on the Butte road at
the closest point to the house, from where they walked across the fields. The children loved The
Old Homestead for the simple pleasure of being in the mountains, playing endless games under a
perfect blue sky, optimistically panning for gold in tumbling streams of crystal clear water, picking
great bunches of wild flowers, cooking on a campfire and huddling round an oil lamp at night,
telling spooky stories.
When they were not planning a trip to The Old Homestead, Ron pestered his aunts to take him on a
hike up to the top of Mount Helena, where they would sit with a picnic, munching sandwiches and
silently staring out over the sprawl of the city below and the ring of mountains beyond. One of the
trails up the mountain passed a smoky cave said to be haunted by the men who had used it as a
hideout while being stalked by Indians in the mid-nineteenth century. Marnie used to take Ron,
squirming with thrilled terror, into the cave to look for ghosts.
Marnie and Ron, with only eight years between them, were as close as brother and sister. When
she was in a school play at Helena High, taking the part of Marie Antoinette, he sat wide-eyed
throughout the performance then ran all the way home to tell his grandma how beautiful Marnie
was.
While the children remained blithely unaware of events outside the comforting confines of 'the old
brick' and The Old Homestead, few adults in Montana were able to enjoy such a blinkered
existence. After years of abundant crops and high wheat prices, postwar depression brought about
a collapse in the market - bushel prices halved in the space of three months - and the summer of
1919 saw the first of a cycle of disastrous droughts. Every day brought further ominous tidings of
mortgage foreclosures, banks closing, abandoned farms turned into dustbowls and thousands of
settlers leaving the state to seek a livelihood elsewhere.
In this gloomy economic climate, Lafe Waterbury was forced to close down the Capital City Coal
Company. For a while he tinkered with a small business selling automobile spares and
vulcanizing tyres, but the depression meant that motorists were laying up their cars rather than
repairing them and Lafe decided to retire, thankful that he still had sufficient capital left to support
his family.
May helped with the household expenses, although she realized she and Ron would not be able to
stay there forever. Hub had been promoted to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in November 1919, and
whenever he could, had been coming home on leave to see his wife and son. He was still intent on
a career in the Navy, although he had already suffered some setbacks. He had been obliged to
appear before a court of inquiry in May, 1920, while serving as Supply Officer on the USS Aroostock,
to explain a deficiency in his accounts of $942.25. He also had an unfortunate tendency to overlook
personal debts. No less than fourteen creditors in Kalispell claimed he left behind unpaid bills
totalling $125; Fred Fisch, high-grade clothier of Vallejo, California, was pursuing him for $10 still
owed on a uniform overcoat; and a Dr McPherson of San Diego was owed $30. All of them