Chapter Nine

“Calm down, Maggie. Get a grip on yourself.”

Jack stood aside and Duff came out of the kitchen. He was dressed in his usual sweatshirt and jeans.

“Mama, what happened?” He seemed genuinely concerned.

I went past both of them out to the kitchen. It was indeed empty.

I turned back to Duff. “When did you come in here?”

“There’s no need to shout, Mother. Ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

He was lying, I was certain.

“You came in the back way?”

“No, Mother. I haven’t been outside today. I came downstairs and went right into the kitchen.”

He was lying. He hadn’t been upstairs when I went looking for him. He must have come in the back door and the man must have gone out at the same instant I ran to the front of the house.

“What about school?” Jack asked him.

“I don’t feel well,” Duff said. “I thought I’d stay home today and work on my history of the Caine family.”

“You might have asked our permission,” Jack said. He went to the back door and tried it. It was locked. “No one could’ve gotten out this way without Duff seeing him and then locking the door afterward.”

Did he think that was impossible? “Where were you when I looked in your room a few minutes ago?” I asked Duff.

“In the storeroom, probably.”

“You weren’t there either.”

“Then in the bathroom.”

I hadn’t gone into the bathroom. The door had been partly open, so I had assumed he wasn’t there.

“You sounded perfectly well when I talked with you early this morning,” I said.

“I was all right then, but now I feel lightheaded and nauseated.”

“Maybe he’s getting flu or something,” Jack suggested. Duff did look ill at the moment, but I was convinced it was a sham.

“Do you deny there was someone else in the kitchen?” I asked.

“No, Mother,” he said quietly. “I don’t deny it. I can only say I didn’t see anyone here except you.”

“And where were you when you saw me?”

“Sitting in that chair.” He pointed to the one in front of the wood stove.

“And you remained in that chair all the while I was here?”

“Yes. I was sleepy and I think I dozed off for a minute, but then I got up and walked toward you. I felt very sick and I wanted to tell you, but you screamed and ran out—”

“Liar, liar!”

Jack dropped his crutches and grabbed me from behind as Duff backed off.

“Get out of here,” Jack told him. “Go up to your room and lie down. If you’re sick, we’ll get a doctor for you.”

“I don’t think it’s all that serious,” Duff said.

“I don’t think it is either,” I said—or screamed, I suppose would be more accurate.

As he went up the stairs, I noticed that his sweatshirt was ripped along the shoulder seams. Moreover there were slits in the sides of both of his sneakers.

“How long have your shoes been torn like that?”

He stopped and looked, lifting one foot and then the other. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “This is the first I’ve noticed it.”

“Don’t wear those shoes to school, for God’s sake,” Jack said. “People will think we’re on welfare.”

“Where are your glasses?” I shouted.

“Upstairs, Mother, for pity’s sake.” He gave me a look that seemed to combine fear and incomprehension and continued up the stairs.

“Well now,” Jack said, “what is it with you, old lady? Are you drinking in the mornings now or what?”

I didn’t want to discuss it with him. I went into the living room, but he followed me.

“Do you think you might be going through menopause?”

“Shut up, Jack!”

“Do you really still think you saw a stranger in the kitchen?”

“What’s the use in talking about it. You don’t believe me. You’d rather believe Duff.”

“But why would he lie about something like that?”

That I couldn’t answer. It could hardly be because he wanted to keep the man’s existence a secret or he wouldn’t have written about him in his notebook and then left the book where I could find it. On the other hand, perhaps I was the only one in the family who was supposed to know about the man. Perhaps the man and Duff were conspiring to drive me crazy. But why?

“Look, Maggie, I’m sure you’re all right mentally,” Jack said. “I don’t doubt you thought you saw someone, but it was prob­ably only a trick of the light.”

I didn’t tell him that I had used that rationalization the first time I’d seen the man. But that explanation was impossible to even consider now because the man had walked toward me into the light, so close I could have touched him.

“Forget it, Maggie, that’s my advice. It won’t happen again.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” He picked up his writing pad. “Please, Maggie, don’t stand there staring at me. Why don’t you get out of the house for a while. Take a drive to Cainesville or somewhere.”

Angrily I got my purse and the car keys. In truth I didn’t want to stay in the house, but I resented being asked to leave it. For some reason I wasn’t afraid of the man’s appearing in the car again since Duff wasn’t with me. The obvious extensions of that thought didn’t occur to me until later.

I drove to Cainesville, not because Jack suggested it, but because there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go. I didn’t want to drive toward Ashland, and of necessity pass the place where I had seen the man and gone into the ditch.

As I got into the outskirts of town I decided maybe I could kill some time at the public library. I could take a book and retire into a corner and maybe even come up with a constructive idea for dealing with the situation. At least maybe an hour of quiet would settle my nerves.

The Cainesville library is on Whittier Street, just off Main. All the parking spaces in front of the building were filled, so I drove farther down Whittier. The first open space was in front of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church.

I remembered that Duff had mentioned a Father Fogarty, and I wondered if he had talked with the priest and possibly told him about his problems. The rectory was next door to the church and I decided it wouldn’t do any harm to try and find out.

As I walked to the door, I didn’t intend to ask for any help or guidance for myself. It wasn’t that I would have been ashamed to do it—under the circumstances I would have gone anywhere for help—but I had been away from religion for a long time and I really didn’t believe I could be comforted by it or by any of its practitioners.

Father Fogarty was in—maybe.

“I’ll have to see if he is in,” said a stout, white-­haired woman with a German accent who let me advance as far as a small vestibule. “He isn’t too well, you know, and he don’t like to be bothered by strangers. You’re not here about the miracle, are you?”

No, I had never even heard of their miracle.

“Father John was pestered quite a lot about that miracle, even by reporters from Cleveland and Columbus. He don’t like to talk about it now, though I think that’s partly Father Jackson’s fault. Father Jackson don’t believe in the miracle at all. You’re not selling something—church candles or something like that, are you?”

I assured her I wasn’t.

“ ’Cause we don’t need anything. And Father John will be madder than blazes if it turns out he’s in and you’re really a peddler.”

“I’m honestly not selling anything. I just want to ask your Father Fogarty a couple of questions.”

She stared at me for another moment, then sighed and led me into a small office just beyond the vestibule.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll see if he’s in, but don’t be too disappointed if he isn’t.”

After about five minutes I heard the shuffling of slippered feet and an old priest came into the office. He had a day or two’s stubble of beard and he was wearing a half-­unbuttoned cassock on which was a plentiful supply of ashes from the cigar he was smoking, and probably several previous cigars. He looked eighty or more but his eyes were bright.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

I told him.

“Caine,” he said, still watching me. “That’s a well-­known name here. This town was founded by Caines.”

“My husband’s ancestors.”

“Indeed. But you’re not from around here.”

“No, we’re from Scarsdale, New York, but we’re living temporarily in my husband’s family home.”

“Are you now. Are you a Catholic?”

“I used to be.”

“Hah.” He relit his cigar stub with a hand that was shaking so much I thought he would burn his lip. “If you want to go to confession, you’ll have to see Father Jackson. I’m too tired to be cooped up for a half hour or so in the box.”

“I don’t want to go to confession.”

“Hah. It’s that way, is it? Well I’ve run across your sort before. You’ve come here to defy the Lord and His Mother. You’ll want me to show you the shrine now so you can mock the Mother of God. It would take nothing less than another appearance by her, and even then you wouldn’t believe it.”

“When did she appear the last time?” I inquired.

“You know. It’s why you’re here.”

“Truly it’s not, Father. And if that’s the miracle your receptionist referred to, I told her I didn’t know anything about it.”

“She’s not a receptionist, she’s a housekeeper. We’re not fancy enough to have a receptionist. And we’re not sure yet whether it was a miracle or not, so I’ll thank you not to be spreading it around that Father Fogarty said it was.”

“What did happen then?”

“I thought it wasn’t that you came about.”

“Forget it,” I said irritably. “I’m not that interested.” I moved toward the door, but he held up his hand.

“Hold your temper. Sit down.” He indicated a chair, then shuffled around to the swivel chair behind the desk and lowered himself into it with some difficulty. “I just have to be careful. I can’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry coming in here pestering me. I’m too old for it.”

“That seems an odd way of operating a religious institution,” I said.

“You wouldn’t think it so odd if you were in my shoes and could see some of the nuts we get. And some of them pathetic too, I don’t deny that. People wanting jobs, wanting husbands back and wives, wanting sons and daughters to come home and, more than anything else, wanting to be cured of every disease you ever heard of and a lot you haven’t. We’ve had ambulances pull up to the door and people carried into this rectory on stretchers because they couldn’t get into the church.”

“Why couldn’t they get into the church?”

“Because it’s kept locked most of the time now, except for Masses and other devotions. For one thing some of them were spending the night there. Others were crawling from the curb up the steps of the church and down the aisle to the shrine on their hands and knees. One old fella, so crippled with arthritis he couldn’t straighten up, told me he had crawled back and forth three hundred and forty-­nine times.”

“Was he cured of his arthritis?”

“Not at all. He’s probably worse off now than before.”

“Have you had any cures as a result of people coming here?”

“None that I know of, unless you want to count the one who caused all the trouble. You see, we always had a nice quiet little shrine here where parishioners could come and offer their devotions to the Mother of God, and if they wanted anything, they could ask for it, but nobody ever pretended he had any more advantage praying here than he had at home on his knees beside his own bed. Then this Eyetalian woman, this Mrs. Scaravelli, came along and ruined everything. She was cured of cancer, or so it’s claimed.”

“Is that bad?”

“It is when people start thinking that’s what the shrine is for.” He regarded me balefully. “This shrine was founded as a place where the faithful could pay honor to the Blessed Virgin. Petitioners were never discouraged, but we never gave out that it was worthwhile for them to come either.”

“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I should think that any normal person, let alone a priest, would be happy when suffering was relieved.”

He glared at me for another moment, then sighed. “I suppose I ought to be happy,” he said gloomily, “and I would be if I was certain it was true—and also certain that it came about through the intercession of Mary.”

“Who else’s intercession, if the woman came here to pray?”

He didn’t answer that, just glared again.

“And why do you doubt the cure? Is there any medical evidence that the woman had cancer?”

“Oh, yes, X rays. I’ve seen them myself. The thing was as big as a football. The doctors at Ashland Hospital didn’t even want to operate on her.”

“And has she been X-­rayed since her visit here?”

“Yep, and the thing has disappeared. There’s no doubt of that, it’s gone. All the doctors have to admit it. They can’t explain it, but they’ve signed statements for her, attesting to the before and after condition.”

“Why did she want the statements?”

“To publicize this place.”

“And you don’t want it publicized?”

“I do not! That’s why I’ve chased off the reporters and the television people. It would probably mean a lot of money for us in donations, but I don’t want it.”

“But why?”

“Never mind why. It’s none of your concern. Now you’ve taken up a lot of my time already, without telling me why you came. You say you’re not a petitioner.”

“No, I just want some information. It’s about my son. I think he may have talked with you.”

“That’s possible. I talk to lots of people, though nowadays mostly when I can’t avoid it.”

“We’ve been having difficulties with him. If he did talk with you, I’d like to know what he told you about himself. It might help his father and me in dealing with him.”

“You could be asking me to break the seal of confession.”

“No, no, it wouldn’t have been in confession. Duff isn’t a Catholic.”

“So you’re not raising your children in the faith, either?”

“Oh, really, Father . . .” I arose.

“Sit down.” And when I didn’t do so immediately, “Sit down, dammit!”

I obeyed.

After a while he said grudgingly, “I apologize. It’s none of my business if you want to go to hell and take your family with you.”

“You’re right. It’s none of your business.”

“But, still, you’re asking me to reveal the substance of a private conversation.”

“Oh, forget it, Father. It’s for the boy’s own good, but if it goes against your conscience—”

“Sit down!” He paused. “You said your son’s name is Duff?”

I nodded. “Short for Duffin.”

“General Duffin Caine was a big man in these parts.”

“So I’m told. He was Duff’s great-­great-­grandfather.”

“And you’re living in Miss Hannah Caine’s place?”

“That’s right.”

He relit his cigar. It wasn’t more than an inch long now. “If I ever talked to your son, he didn’t identify himself. Describe him.”

“Well his hair is on the blond side. He’s fairly tall, about six feet, but rather frail looking . . . sometimes . . .”

“What do you mean sometimes?”

“Just that sometimes lately he seems stronger. Also, he wears glasses.”

“Sometimes?”

“Occasionally lately it seems he doesn’t.”

“I think I may have met your son, but he didn’t tell me any of his problems.”

“When was this?”

“One afternoon a couple of weeks ago. If he’s the lad I’m thinking of, he was in the church. He was standing in front of the statue of Our Lady.”

“I thought you said you kept the church locked.”

“It was after that we started locking it.”

“What was Duff doing? I can’t believe he was praying.”

“No.” Father Fogarty took a final regretful puff and then squashed the soggy cigar stub in an ashtray. “He was urinating.”

“Oh, my God, it couldn’t have been Duff!”

“Well, he looked like the boy you’ve described when Father Jackson caught him outside. When I saw him in the church, he seemed heavier and older. I was at the main altar, reading my office, when I heard some women yelling over by the shrine. It’s in a kind of apse, you see, off to the left. I rushed over there and saw him. He turned his head and grinned at me, but kept on doing what he was doing until he was finished. Then he rushed at me, almost knocking me over, and ran down the aisle. He would’ve gotten away, but I yelled and Father Jackson and a couple of men of the parish caught him outside.”

“Did you question him?”

“Yes, but he denied doing what I had plainly seen him doing. He even continued to deny it after we marched him back into the church and showed him the puddle on the floor. He just kept saying that he hadn’t done it, that it had been somebody else.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. Father Jackson wanted to, but I couldn’t see that it would do any good. I thought that having the boy arrested would just mean more publicity for us. I knew he wasn’t from around here and he promised not to come back again, so we let him go.”

“But it couldn’t have been my son. Why would he have mentioned you at all, if he did what you say? Wouldn’t it have been more natural to avoid saying anything about you?”

Father Fogarty sighed and took another cigar from a box on the desk. “You’d better tell me all about your troubles with Duff,” he said.

So I told him everything. When I began, I intended to hold back some of it and tell only about the attack on the boy at the high school, the car accident, and the attack on the police, but then I decided to include the rape of Stephanie (I didn’t use that word but said something about making love brutally) and hesitated for only a moment before going on to tell of Duff’s molesting Franny.

“What else?” asked Father Fogarty when I paused.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I get the impression there’s more.”

I definitely hadn’t intended talking about what might be my own lunacy, although I had mentioned the seeming change, at times, in Duff’s physical appearance. Now I told the priest about the man I had seen in the car and later in the kitchen. Then to bring the story completely up to date, I mentioned Stephanie’s disappearance and my fear that Duff might have had something to do with it. I also said that Stephanie’s mother and grandmother didn’t seem at all worried about her.

“They’re bad news, those people,” said Father Fogarty. “The old one especially.”

“Why?”

“She’s a Satanist, a devil worshiper. She’s been at it for a long time, long before that kind of thing became popular with the hippies and such. Some people say she’s a witch, and her daughter too. I’ve had trouble with both of them. I tried to get your husband’s Aunt Hannah away from Mrs. Reddy, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It’s true. First I tried to get Miss Caine to pension off the old biddy—give her a couple of thousand and get her out of the house. I could’ve gotten a decent Christian woman to go in there and take care of your aunt, but she wouldn’t have it. Then I wanted her to go into a nursing home, but she wouldn’t agree to that either.”

“My husband told me of your efforts to have Aunt Hannah buried in a cemetery here.”

“Did he? Well, there’s something else that went on between your aunt and me that I’ll bet he didn’t know. Your Aunt Hannah contributed most of the money for the building of our shrine. Forty thousand dollars she gave me, and that was thirty years ago when forty thousand was a lot more money than it is now. That’s how I became acquainted with her and why at the end I wanted her to be buried in a Christian place.”

“Why did she give you all that money? She wasn’t a Catholic.”

“No, and never wanted to be, as far as I know, and I never tried to push her into it. But she did believe in Christ and His Mother, and she wanted to make atonement for some of the evil committed by a member of her family.”

“Who?”

“Her father, General Duffin Caine. He was a Satanist too.”

That shocked me into silence for a moment, but then I said, “Father, do you think that means anything? Even if what you say is true, does being a Satanist mean any more than belonging to some local lodge or college fraternity?”

Father Fogarty didn’t answer immediately but sat puffing his cigar. The room was so filled with smoke now that I found it difficult to breathe. Then he rose and shuffled to the door.

“Mrs. Guenther,” he yelled. “Oh, Mrs. Guenther!”

The housekeeper answered him from somewhere in the back of the house.

“There’s a book in the upstairs library, Ashland County in the Civil War. Fetch it for me. It’s a big book with a red cloth cover. And ask Father Jackson to step down here.”

He shuffled back to his seat. “Father Jackson would tell you ‘no’ if you asked him. No, except for the deplorable attitude of mind of the member, it doesn’t mean any more than belonging to the Masons or the Elks, or, for that matter, the Knights of Columbus.”

“But you think otherwise?”

“Yes, I think otherwise.”

There was a lapse in the conversation then while I coughed and he puffed, ignoring my coughing. Then Mrs. Guenther came in, carrying a large book. She handed it to Father Fogarty and he blew the dust off it and began leafing its pages. Mrs. Guenther opened a window.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s for him,” she said, jerking a thumb at her employer. “The doctor has warned him about smoking in a closed room.”

She went out. Father Fogarty continued to browse through the book. Then he found what he evidently wanted, a full page reproduction of a photograph. He studied it for a moment, then turned the book around for me to see.

It was a photo of a seated man in a Union army uniform. Behind him was draped an American flag and what could have been a regimental flag. The reproduction wasn’t a very good one, but the man’s features were clearly visible. He had a short beard and a thin, hard-­looking mouth. He wasn’t grinning in the photo.