"Art imitates life," of course, but sometimes art takes the lead and life follows. So it was for Nate when, three times over, his experience mirrored his fiction, or more precisely, his fiction foreshadowed his experience. In the spring term of 1995, at the age of 33, Nate ventured back to a college campus, Indiana University, South Bend, and audited Writing Fiction 301. The teacher, Dr. Mary Ann Cain wanted her students to read literature, to write stories, and, as she wrote in her syllabus, she wanted them to reflect on their "assumptions, or theories, about what stories are, how they 'make meaning,' and the role writers and readers play in that 'meaning-making' activity." Years later he reflected back on that whole process to deepen his understanding.
Nate's first work of art that foreshadowed life was created the first day of class. Dr. Cain, asked students to write either an obituary, a book review, a grammer school report card or a police report. Nathaniel chose the obituary. He made it his own. For his date of death, he picked the day of that first class, Tuesday, January 10, 1995. When he stood before the class to read that day, stage fright was mixed with death anxiety made conscious.
"Nathaniel, age 33 of Elkhart, Indiana, died in an auto accident Tuesday morning.... He was a graduate of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, and a clinical social worker. At the time of his death, he was on a personal sabbatical. There will be a viewing on Thursday evening at the Chapel of the Sermon on the Mount, Benham Avenue, Elkhart. A memorial service will be conducted along the Elkhart River Saturday morning at Studebaker Park."
Life imitated art the next Saturday morning, the day of his fictional memorial service, the would be day for scattering his ashes in the Elkhart River: Early that Saturday morning, the 14th of January, 1995, in the darkness before daybreak, Nate awoke to what he thought for a moment was surely his own mortal end -- his passing beyond the point of no return into the mystery beyond. It was only a moment, and his thought in that moment was mistaken: He had not met his mortal end, indeed, his mortal life continued for many years after that night. Nevertheless, Nate's flight that night remained, in Nate's way of seeing it, a very convincing, and memorable simulation death, the gift of a practice run, and his fictional obituary had foreshadowed it.
The second instance of life imitating art came two weeks later, Saturday afternoon, January 28, 1995. Nate's night flight had reminded him of a story of a "near-death experience" that he had heard years before and he was writing it creatively as fiction:
"...I moved to North Dakota Avenue, a bock off Rhode Island, one of hte spokes radiating North-West (sic. It was North-East) from the hub of Washington D.C. Up a narrow driveway, it's enterance flanked by limestone walls, my dad in his Lincoln Continental threaded theneedle with bearly an inch to spare.
He parked and I led my parents up the wooden steps to the side door. I knocked.
A young women (sic. woman) answered. She was wide-eyed and wore a perm in her brown hair that I mistook as natural curl. "Hi, I'm Dawn." She said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
We tourred the house, then in the privacy of the front bedroom upstairs, my parents and I said we loved each other. Tears flowed. We hugged and when they left, my world changed from black and white to color.
All nine students arrived that Sunday and in the afternoon, we had an uninvited guest. Fred's face was dark like varnished walnut, covered with pock marks, and his breath bore the rich aroma of beer.
"I grew up on this street and I used to come here for Bible School, " he said. "Mennonite missionaries lived here.
"We're Mennonites."
"Missionaries?"
"No, we're students. The mission board sold the house to the college."
"How long ago did you come here?" Dawn asked.
"I was in grade school. It was twenty-five years ago."
"The late fifty's"
"Yea."
We didn't invite him in.
"Well, I'll be on my way. Nice to meet you folks."
He walked down the street and the other students retreated inside. I paused on the threshold then ran after him. I wanted to break through the nice facade and see the real city.
"Fred."
"Yea."
"Do you smoke pot?"
"You not spose' to be askin' me that?" He said, with a high pitched voice and a look of mock disapproval.
At the bar on the street corner, a teenaged boy extended his hand and showed me a tan raisin-sized rock. "Ten dollars."
"What is it?"
"Hast, man."
"No thanks."
Inside, at the table, we ordered beer and Fred rolled a joint. Although I'd toked only once before, I inhaled, trying to look experienced.
"What do you do for a living?" I asked.
"I'm on SSI Disablilty."
"What happened?"
"My insides are fried."
"Oh?"
"OK. I"m on a construction crew, diggin' ditches. It's a rainy day and I'm down in the ditch staring at the buisness end of a back hoe. I says to the boss, 'That shovel hits an electric line and I'm dead.' I'm down there, up to my ankles in water and he don't listen. Just then, I get hit my a jolt that throw me ten feet."
"Wow," I say.
"Next thing I know, I'm looking down on my body and It's twitching like it's dead. Sock footed. The boots are still stuck in the mud. Then I'm goin' through a long dark tunnel and comin' up on an angel, bright as a star. The angel says, 'It's not your time yet.' Then I'm flying back down. Flying down from heaven to earth, from happiness to sorrow."
"Wow," I say.
"The Doctor tells me my insides were fried. When my organs tried to heal, the scars glued together. I' always in pain and you know what's the best thing for it? This." He said, raising his joint.
I shook my head in amazement and took another hit. My chest was numb, like a hole went throuhg it the size of a basketball. Then I got scared for no reason except tht I realized I was a total alien to that place.
"I gotta go."
"OK." He seemed absorbed in deep thought as if he' forgotten I was there. I ran home.
On Saturday the 28th, in the afternoon, Nate was in his dining room with this type-written text, doing some revisions. In particular, he was tweeking this scene: "...in the afternoon, we had an uninvited guest. Fred's face was dark like varnished walnut..." He thought it would be better if he had Fred ring the door bell, and he was trying various ways of wording a door bell transition: "The doorbell rang." Or, "When the doorbell rang..." He felt stuck on the doorbell scene. He was going over it again and again, when the actual doorbell of his house rang. The coincidence of timing of the written bell and the actual bell was enough to amuse him. But there was more.
Nate saw through the window that, like Fred in the fictional doorbell scene, the person at the door was a black, male stranger. Nate was stunned. This was exceedingly unusual. It was rare enough to get visits from strangers, but from black strangers! His house was in a predominately white neighborhood. Nate opened the door, and as soon as the man spoke, the smell of alcohol filled the air, Nate thought immediately about how it was just like Fred in the story. Nate knew what he wanted to ask, and his opportunity came quickly. The man at the door was asking for ten dollars to fill a perscription bottle that he was holding in his hand. He explained that he was suffering from a disabling disease, limphoma. So then Nate asked his question: Has his disease ever brought you near to death?
The man's eyes widened, and he said that he had a near-death experience. It happened on a hospital bed. Nate, spilling over with astonishment, told the man that he was just then writing about a near-death experience, and as the two of them stood there, having met only less than a minute before, Nate asked if he would share a little more about what happened. The man answerered with questions. Have you ever seen trees with golden apples? Have you ever seen a minotaur? (Or maybe the word was manticore. That is what Nate thought he heard. But days later, when Nate met the man in the street, and asked him about the "manticore," the man said that what he had said was "minotaur.")
That was pretty much the end of the man's story of being near death. Nate refused to give the man any money. He was concerned that the man would use it to buy illegal drugs. He did however give him a bag of food, and when the man returned another day, Nate was just leaving to go to the grocery store. He took the man with him and welcomed him to fill a cart, which the man did. The relationship rather awkward, and that is the last the two of them met.
There was another chance encounter with a black man with alcohol on his breath. It had happened years earlier. It had happened when in Mississippi in 1965 when Nate was four and a half years old: Nate's grandpa had died in a car crash. The other driver, who was not at fault, was a black man with alcohol on his breath who ended up in jail that night for drunk driving.
The third instance of fiction written in that class foreshadowing life was took many years to fulfill.
