2

Animals Running on a Windy Crown

I

At morning prayer on Whitsunday, Father Martin is taken ill. See how his hands shake and his old legs buckle under him. Peter Beasley, the deacon, has to help him out of the sanctuary. For six weeks his name is read at intercessions, and prayers are murmured for his speedy recovery. But there comes a day when the congregation hears the visiting priest intone Father Martin’s name among the names of the departed; may God’s light shine upon them forever. Dozens of hands make the sign of the cross. Outside, the forsythia bushes are dropping their yellow bells on the wet sidewalk, and the bare elms stand misted with the promise of leaves.

Two months later, the vestry submits a list of suitable candidates for the new rector of St. Joseph’s to the bishop, who rejects them all and after a long delay sends a young man from a parish in Syracuse. He has wheat-colored hair, a red beard, and remarkably small hands. When he blesses the elements, his hands seem wax, his fingers tapers. He is unmarried, which many consider regrettable. Father Martin had a jolly wife and three daughters who took turns minding the nursery during the services.

The new rector, Father Hayden, is installed with great pomp, but not until All Souls’ Day is he persuaded to move from the boardinghouse, where he has rented two furnished rooms, into the rectory, where he has the care of twenty. Mrs. Stout, who cleaned for Father Martin and Father Legg before him, complains she can find nothing to do. Father Hayden’s furniture fills half the living room and one bedroom—he has chosen for himself the cook’s room off the kitchen—and he shows no inclination to buy any more. Nor does he order curtains for the windows. He pulls the shades in the evening and he raises them in the morning.

If it is Saturday morning, you can look into the rectory kitchen and see him baking bread, which he will distribute tomorrow at the ten o’clock service. If it is afternoon, you will find him at his desk in the parish house, answering letters and drinking great quantities of tea, a special blend of hyssop, skullcap, lemon grass, and the flower that is called life everlasting. All day long he keeps a pot of water boiling on the stove of the parish house kitchen, as one might maintain an eternal flame on the grave of a hero. During his first two weeks in residence, he has already burned the bottoms out of two teakettles and quietly replaced them.

At any time of the day you can hear him singing. Even the choir mistress says his singing could charm the devil and convert a dog. Hear him this morning, the first Sunday in Advent, standing behind the holy table, hands lifted like white birds:

The Lord be with you.

And the people answer him:

And also with you.

A small, dark-haired man wearing a windbreaker and a fur cap and carrying a duffel bag steps into the vestibule of the church. He removes his cap, stands swaying from side to side, and glances about him as if uncertain how he arrived here. He allows the usher to show him to the back pew, but he lets the mimeographed service sheet slide to the floor, and he sits, open-mouthed, kneading his cap, and watches row after row of men and women move forward and kneel at the communion rail.

When the last woman has returned to her seat and the deacon is wiping out the chalice, the little man walks carefully down the center aisle as if he were stepping around an arrangement of traps that he alone can see. Now he stands at the rail and he waits.

Father Hayden glances up from the prayer book, which lies open to the postcommunion blessing. Their eyes meet. The little man whispers without ceasing.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

The deacon nods at the head usher, who takes the stranger gently by the arm and draws him into Father Hayden’s office.

And after the service, it is there Father Hayden finds him, warming himself by the empty fireplace, still kneading the cap in his hand. Catching sight of the rector in the doorway, Peter Beasley, still vested, springs forward.

“I offered him the bread and wine you had reserved for the sick—it was all we had left—but he didn’t want any.”

The man nods and crooks his thumb and index finger to shape a wafer. Seen at close range, everything about him seems exaggerated, his pointed chin, the comic black tufts of his eyebrows, his sharp nose, and the size of the duffel bag which rises over his shoulder as he gestures toward the pictures of Jesus on the Christmas cards ranged along the bookshelf behind the rector’s desk.

“Jesus, Jesus,” he repeats tonelessly.

Father Hayden reaches for the nearest card and hands it to him, but the man shakes his head no, and motions to show that he wants a smaller picture.

“Some people don’t know when they’re well off,” snorts the deacon.

“Perhaps he’s Roman Catholic,” muses Father Hayden. “All that business about not wanting the bread and the wine. If I could find him one of those little prayer cards—you know, the kind they give to the children at Saint Mary’s—” And seeing how easy it is to make this man happy, Father Hayden takes his arm. “Is it a prayer card you want? Come back later. I’ll try to find you one.”

Now see him that evening, when a full moon silvers the cloister that joins the back of the rectory to the parish house and the church. Frost sparkles on the ground, and the grass around the broken sundial lies long and sparse like an old woman’s hair. He goes into his bedroom and has just started to remove his collar when he hears a knock at the front door. Assuming it’s the sexton stopping to remind him of the vestry meeting—though later it strikes him that the sexton, coming from the church, would have knocked at the back door—he shouts.

“I’m coming!”

He pauses in the kitchen to snap on the vestibule light. Though he feels sure he locked all the doors a few minutes earlier, he enters the hall and sees standing before him the small dark-haired man, wearing the collar of his wind-breaker straight up under his chin, like a priest’s. The filigree shade on the overhead lamp spatters him with a shining skin of light as he closes the door behind him. He is about to speak when he drops the duffel bag, and a dozen miniature boxes of breakfast cereal tumble out. Involuntarily Father Hayden kneels down to gather them up but recoils from the little man’s hands, snatching this way and that as if they were picking pockets.

Tomorrow, he reminds himself. I’ll stop by Saint Mary’s tomorrow.

Seeing his visitor is about to take off his coat, Father Hayden hastily opens the door for him.

“Where do you live?” he asks gently.

The man only shakes his head.

“Let me drive you to the Salvation Army. You can stay there for two nights, and perhaps by then something will turn up for you.”

They walk briskly across the front yard to the garage, and Father Hayden helps the old man into the red Volkswagen which gleams in the light from the street. Unaccustomed to owning a car, he backs out with great caution into Mansion Street. They pass the churchyard where angels and obelisks poke through the grass like the ruined monuments of a sunken city.

“Jesus, Jesus,” whispers the little man dreamily.

Father Hayden busies himself cracking open the vent, and he hears, very clearly, the long bleat of a tugboat on the Hudson a mile away.

He turns into Main Street, brilliantly lit, empty of people. A huge Christmas tree shines in front of the public library, its gumdrop-colored lights winking randomly.

He passes under the greenery stretched across the intersection of Main and Market.

He passes the big department stores whose windows show various winter tableaux, then he passes the used furniture store, and he comes at last to a small door marked with a red shield. Paper bells hang in the windows to the right and left of it.

Father Hayden stops, but the little man does not move. Frightened, the priest touches him and, seeing him stir, he reaches across and opens the door. Slowly the man climbs out. He looks around him for a moment like a fox nosing the wind, then he crumples to his knees and touches his forehead to the pavement.

“Here,” exclaims Father Hayden, springing out to help him, “stand up now. I’ll ring the bell.”

But the little man shakes his head no and bursts out laughing. The noise dies and renews itself again and again, filling the empty street like a parade. Masks of amazement peer from behind the paper bells. The man laughs and pulls out a handkerchief and flourishes it, as if preparing for some tremendous feat of conjuring. Father Hayden again reaches for the doorbell but the little man pushes him back, still laughing, still waving the handkerchief.

“Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!”

“Good night,” says Father Hayden, stiffly. The handkerchief flutters in the rearview mirror like a flag of truce all the way down Main Street, and only by turning onto Mansion Street can he push it out of his sight.

When he has parked his car in the garage, Father Hayden hurries up the steps of the parish house, reminding himself that he will very soon have a railing installed here for the old people to use in icy weather. But can he order the railing before he orders the repairs on the roof? So many people have complained about the unsightliness of the great crocks which the sexton puts in the chancel to catch the water on rainy Sundays.

Father Hayden hangs his coat on the rack in the dark corridor and steps into the comfortable warmth of his office. Peter Beasley, the deacon, is fanning the logs in the fireplace, which show no flames but send forth a pungent smoke and much crackling. He is a stocky man with a rosy, cherubic face and dark curly hair, and as he bends over the logs the rector notices with some surprise a purple flowered patch on the seat of his trousers, where the seams meet.

Tom Croft, the Sunday school superintendent, has drawn a folding chair opposite the door, so that he can watch for Father Hayden’s coming, and now he stands up respectfully. He is as trim as the deacon is robust. He lives alone in a room on Mansion Street. The deacon lives in the suburbs and has a wife as large and good-natured as himself, and five children.

“Well, let’s get down to business,” says Tom Croft, and he draws up the swivel chair for Father Hayden.

A long silence follows, as they all watch the fireplace hopefully. Father Hayden says, “What did you do last year at the Christmas Eve service?”

The deacon takes a large loose-leaf notebook from the coffee table and begins leafing through it, pausing to study one of the mimeographed programs collected there.

“We opened with a festival of lessons and carols. We omitted the confession of sin. And there was an anthem instead of a sermon. Ah, the fire’s started.”

They watch the red tongues leap up from the logs, and move their chairs closer. Father Hayden remembers, with a pang of guilt, the good Samaritan.

“Do you remember how Father Martin hated to give sermons?” says the deacon. “Remember how he always wanted a sermon hymn?”

“That’s against the new council,” says Tom Croft.

“I’ve already started writing my sermon,” Father Hayden assures them.

Tom Croft’s face brightens.

“And what’s the topic to be?”

“The fragility of the Word in the modern world,” answers Father Hayden. Seeing that the deacon is staring intently at the chandelier, he glances at it too, but sees nothing amiss.

“What I’d like,” says the deacon, “is something really high church. Incense, to start with.”

Silence.

“No incense,” says Tom Croft. “Prudence Barry doesn’t like it.”

“Oh, but her sister does,” says the deacon, “so they cancel each other out. Remember how Father Clair loved to swing the censer at St. Margaret’s? If that chain had broken, it would have hit the back choir. ‘We never use the bought stuff,’ he told me. ‘It’s too sweet. We always mix our own.’”

“You can’t use incense without a reason,” says Tom Croft.

“I fear we must abandon the incense,” says Father Hayden firmly. “Don’t forget the Bishop has ordered us to use the new rites printed in the green book, not the old rites in the Book of Common Prayer.”

The deacon looks round with an injured smile.

“Well, I should hate to see the old rites dropped entirely,” he says. “Why, people have nothing in common any more except the doxology.”

“The old rites are passing,” says Tom Croft quietly. “No one knows what they mean anymore. They’ve taken out all the saints’ days and put them on weekdays, and given Sunday the prominence.”

“A pity, a pity,” sighs the deacon. “But I’ll bet if I went back to the home church in North Carolina I could still find ladies who curtsied at the name of Jesus. In those days, you crossed yourself to show you were a Christian. My aunt used to cross herself as she passed the church, whenever the priest was raising the host inside.”

Father Hayden sits up straighter in his chair; he feels the evening’s purpose slipping away from them.

“Peter, read us the lesson for the Christmas service. We’ll start from there.”

“Where’s the green book?” asks the deacon.

“Isn’t it on the table? Ah, then it’s been borrowed.”

“Stolen,” says Tom Croft, crisply.

The deacon picks up the Book of Common Prayer and opens it at the crimson ribbon. Then he puts it down.

“Excuse me,” he says, reaching for the Bible on Father Hayden’s desk. “The lesson is from Titus two. Oh, you’ve got a marker in it.” And he reads very slowly.

“The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men—”

A passing ambulance drowns his voice but his lips continue to move, as if someone has turned off the sound which returns as suddenly as it has gone.

“—and our Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people—”

“Peculiar!” repeats Tom Croft.

The deacon hesitates.

“Do you want me to read the Gospel?”

“Never mind,” says Father Hayden, “we all know the Gospel.”

“But shall we have a Gospel procession?” persists the deacon. “I have to schedule the acolytes well in advance. We can use the six gold candles by the font. And I hope we’ll have our crêche again, for the children.”

“God willing the dead bishop doesn’t knock it down,” adds Tom Croft.

Father Hayden starts.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Bishop Legg,” explains Tom Croft. “When he was rector, he hated anything to do with Christmas legends. And now every time we set up the crêche, he knocks it down. There’s not a breath of wind in the sanctuary, yet every morning, right on through Epiphany, the sexton finds the figures scattered on the floor.”

“How curious,” exclaims Father Hayden.

“It was the wise men that offended the bishop,” continued Tom Croft. “He loved to remind us that the three wise men didn’t come to the stable at all. They stopped at a house. It took them two years to reach Bethlehem.”

“They didn’t have jobs,” adds the deacon. “Or vacations.”

A knock at the door startles them all. The sexton sticks his head into the room.

“Father, there are no more garbage bags. And there’s an awful lot of garbage.”

“Well, put it out in the cans, then,” says Father Hay-den, slightly annoyed. To his own surprise, he stands up to signify that the meeting is closed.

The clock strikes eleven. Closing the door behind him he goes into his bedroom, takes off his collar, sits down on the bed, and pulls out a letter from his mother. He opens it very carefully. He has carried it all afternoon, waiting for the leisure to read it. She wishes him good holiday from his four sisters in Yarmouth and his cousins in Halifax. The weather is nippy, the grandchildren are well, thank God. Her letters sound very formal, now that her sight is bad and she has to dictate them to someone else.

His mother has never visited the States, and now she is too blind to travel. But when she was younger, what fine walks they took together along the marshes at low tide. The rushes shone bright green at their feet, lupine and morning glories lit the hill at their backs. And when the fog burned off, they arrived at the mud flats, where kelp and gull feathers lay scattered on the sand. He filled his pockets with little gray whelks and watched for porpoises on the horizon.

Easter morning before sunrise his mother fetched her best carafe and walked far out on the flats to fill it with water, which she believed was always holy at that hour and powerful against measles, gout, falling hair, and general misfortune. By the end of the year, her holy water looked so muddy that Papa said it would sooner give the gout than cure it, and he already had more patients than he could handle. His patients often invited him to dinner, and he always consented, too kindhearted to refuse though he had a horror of gaining weight. Returning home, he would retire to the bathroom and tickle his throat with a feather. The children, lying awake in their beds, heard gagging, then silence, then singing as he climbed the stairs to kiss them goodnight.

Here’s to the thistle,

The bonny Scotch thistle,

The home of the free,

The badge of my country,

The thistle of Scotland

Is aye dear to me.

Papa never went to church; Mama went all the time, to the communion service on Sunday morning and morning prayer at midweek. Sunday morning she called out from the kitchen, “Who’s coming with me?” The girls slouched over their toast in silence. “Heathens!” she shouted. “All of you except James!”

Father Hayden, even as a child, liked to go to church. He especially liked the churchyard, for many of the graves had small porcelain photographs fixed to their markers. The widow of an admiral, hero of many battles in World War I, had all her husband’s medals engraved and enameled in color on his tombstone. He liked to run his fingers over those bright stars and crosses.

Inside the church, the boy did not go to Sunday school but stayed with his mother through the regular service. God the Father, wearing a beehive on his head, glittered in the window over the high altar (Mama called it a table); sometimes the shadows of birds darted over the glass as if God were dreaming them. The ring of candles above the communion rail was lowered and raised for special occasions. Each Sunday in Advent, the curate added another candle. Once, during the reading of the Gospel, a candle hurtled down from the ring like a falling star. The deacon sprang forward and stamped it out, fixing his eyes on the three remaining candles throughout the rest of the service. But old Father Jackson did not miss a syllable of his text.

“And that’s because there’s a special devil who picks up the words we drop in our prayers,” his mother warned him afterward. “His name is Titivillius, and he keeps all our lost words in a big bag. He has a bag for each one of us, and when that bag is full—watch out!”

But she never writes of this in her letters, only of the weather and births and marriages. Father Hayden folds the letter and puts it on the table by his bed. When he has finished his prayers, he undresses and lies down, and as soon as darkness settles on his eyes he sees clearly in his mind a little man in a windbreaker shuffling through a pack of cards. But now he does not look particularly lunatic, only unhappy, and Father Hayden watches his features shift like oil on water into the features of his schoolmaster, Duffey Kidd, a large, kindly man who in his spare time built a replica of Westminster Abbey out of matchsticks. He never married; he wanted to be a priest but had no money for divinity school. He earned, instead, the title of licensed chalice bearer, which allowed him to serve at communion and to walk in the litany processions. See him coming into the classroom on cold mornings, biting the fingers of his gloves, each in turn, to loosen them, then pulling till the gloves came off in his mouth, like a dog worrying a mitten. Oh, the steam on the windows, the red-hot scolding of the tiny stove which warmed only those who sat in front of it and left the rest to huddle in their wraps!

And Father Hayden laughs. And he remembers with keen pleasure walking downtown on Saturday nights. In the shadow of the Grand Hotel, young people promenaded up and down, the girls on the inside walking one way, the boys on the outside walking the other. On that sidewalk he fell in love with Helena Blackstone and brought her for Christmas a box of candy which, when she lifted the lid, let fly a blizzard of moths. She burst out laughing. He was sixteen; he never spoke to her again. Now it strikes him as marvelous that he is loved by so many women in the parish, young and old. They knit for him and bake for him, they all want to sit beside him at potlucks.

The moon peeps in at the window. He hears carolers singing far away, perhaps as far away as Montgomery Place. He wishes snow would fall and lighten the trees and the dark streets.

Coming by here? He raises his head from the pillow to listen.

No, no. The sound is moving farther off.

A passing car slides its shadow on the wall opposite his bed. He remembers as a child watching the shadows cast by the candles in church, and he hears his mother say, as she said so many years before, “Why do all the flames have such long haloes on them? They didn’t used to.”

Neither of them knew that she was just starting to go blind.

II

The third Sunday in Advent, women from the altar guild stay after the ten o’clock service to decorate the church. Now a sharp smell of pine and resin fills the sanctuary. Branches green the windowsills, and the cold flames of poinsettia ignite the spruce boughs on the steps below the pulpit. Father Hayden kneels on the first step arranging the crêche, which the sexton finds scattered every morning and which Father Hayden, smiling to himself, sets to rights. The dead bishop troubled Father Martin too, throwing all his books about at night till the old priest was obliged to move them out of the rectory into his office, untenanted by any lingering spirits.

In the evenings Father Hayden works on his sermon. The ragged music of the choir practicing in the library pleases him, though he hates to hear them start a hymn he especially loves and then break it off in the middle.

O, praise the Lord, all ye heathen!

He tries to recall the Christmas sermon he gave before his fellow students at the seminary. What was the topic of that sermon? Why can’t he remember his own? He only remembers the face of his teacher and a sermon on the Last Judgment, given by Bartholomew Kelly, who died in a car accident last year. Do you think Christ the servant, born in poverty, will come in glory to judge the living and the dead? Holy and gracious Father, teach us to judge ourselves. Father Hayden writes it down.

Then he stands up and wanders over to the bookcase and pulls out the history of the parish, careful not to lose the bookmarks he keeps there. He resolves to remind his flock that not so long ago the rich rented the front pews and had them upholstered to their own taste. Yes, he will revive the history of the first black communicant, the rector’s cook, who sat on a bench provided for her at the back of the sanctuary.

And he’ll tell them about the church where he conducted his first services, at Milltown, not far from Yarmouth, and how during the Christmas offertory, the people brought the fruits of their labor—chickens, bread, fish—directly to the altar. A rooster, its legs hobbled, crowed once, twice, three times during the sermon, and Father Hayden motioned the deacon to take it away. Not until he turned to bless the bread and the wine did Father Hayden discover that the deacon had wrung its neck.

A knock at the door makes him jump. The sexton, not waiting to be invited, pushes it open and stands there clasping a large duffel bag which Father Hayden recognizes at once.

“Pardon me, Father, but as I was emptying the garbage, I found this.”

“Where did you find it?” demands Father Hayden. His voice sounds louder than he intended it to.

“In the furnace room, Father. Shall I throw it away or keep it?”

For an instant there splashes across his mind the image of the old man lying dead under the everlasting arms of the furnace, like a trapped animal.

“Did you find anything else?”

“No, only this.”

“Well, put it back where you found it. Whoever left it will surely come back for it.”

The sexton shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“Shouldn’t you call the police?”

“I can’t telephone the police about a bundle of old clothes. How on earth did he get in, I wonder, without anyone seeing him?”

“I leave the door open on Thursday nights for choir practice, Father.”

He waits attentively for his orders. Father Hayden sighs.

“Put it back, put it back. If you see any suspicious persons, come and tell me. Don’t call the police.”

The sexton nods. Father Hayden turns back to his notes, but they reveal nothing to him now.

He goes to bed earlier than usual and does not drop off to sleep until early morning. And then he dreams that the sexton is chasing him round the sanctuary with a broom, shouting, “Do not loll on the altar! Keep your elbows close to your sides! When you make the sign of the cross, make crosses, not circles, and make them high or you’ll upset the chalice.”

Then he dreams that he wakes up. And in this two-storied dream, he sits up in his bed and hears music on Mansion Street, as from a parade far off. Running to the living room he throws up the shades and opens the great window that looks out on the street. From where do I know this tune? he asks himself, for it teases him like the smell of soap or tea when the memory of the smell has outlived the memory of the place it belonged to.

The street shines, paved in silver.

And now he sees the animals, the foxes beating their tambourines, the bears juggling firebrands, the goats tossing saucers and drums on their horns. The camels sing in thin, reedy voices. The hares and the marmots walk on their hind legs, paw in paw, all their grossness purged away as the souls of hunted and useful things must be, permanent as ivory, yet touching as flesh and fur. And he recognizes them at once; they walked on the silver lip of the tide on the first mornings of his childhood, before he learned to speak. Holding his mother’s hand, he often watched them pass. And now he knows they have been walking all these years, looking for him.

But are they real animals or men in animal masks? he asks himself. For what animals could create such a radiant presence?

At once the whole company vanishes, and he wakes up, ready to weep at the loss of them. He runs to the front door and unlocks it and stands for a moment blinded by the white brilliance of Mansion Street, empty but glazed with last night’s rain. Rain in December! He wishes that he might spend the morning walking that street, but he has four sick calls to make, and he has promised to visit Bertha Wells, the oldest living parishoner, who is bedridden and cannot attend the Christmas services that night. She lives in the Episcopal home across from the rectory. The others live in places less convenient to himself. Ah, he tells himself, someday there will be money to hire a curate who can make some of these visits for him.

Later that afternoon, he enters the sanctuary and pauses by the steps to choose a poinsettia for Bertha Wells. He lifts out the smallest pot, hidden among the spruce boughs. He stands up, hesitates.

Someone is watching him. He feels the skin on the back of his neck prickle. But looking out over the empty pews into the darkness, he sees nobody.

Is somebody watching me?

Nobody.

Holding the pyx in one hand and the pot in the other, he crosses Mansion Street and climbs the steps to the front door. Behind the frosted oval glass, the shadow behind the desk rises to meet him. And for a moment he feels like his father, calling on the sick, and he wishes he had the power to heal bodies as well as souls. To make the lame walk and the blind see.

The door opens and a young woman in a white uniform admits him.

“Father Hayden,” she smiles. “How wonderful to see you. Won’t you come with me?”

He follows her across the empty lobby. The sound of his footsteps sinks into the carpet. A TV set flickers soundlessly in front of a huge leather sofa. Hearing a clatter of dishes and voices to the left, he turns, but the young woman motions him to the elevator. They ride up smiling at one another.

“Flowers,” remarks the woman. “How nice.”

“Has Mrs. Wells had many visitors?”

“Hardly any. But she gets lots of cards. She’s outlived everyone in her family, you know. Her husband died five years ago. Her daughter died two years ago of TB. There were no grandchildren.”

“TB? I thought no one died of that anymore,” says Father Hayden.

Leaving the elevator, he walks close behind his guide down the corridor. When she holds a door open for him, he enters without hesitation.

“Bertha, you have a special visitor.”

In a bed against the far wall lies—is it a man or a woman? The figure is nearly bald. Father Hayden sets the flowerpot and the pyx on the bedside table. The bed nearest the door lies empty, immaculate. He puts his coat on the foot of it, and comes forward, extending his hand.

“God bless you, Bertha, and merry Christmas to you!”

The old woman’s blue eyes study him. Then she leans forward and whispers, “Just look at those people in the corner, Father. And they aren’t even married.”

Glancing behind him, he discovers that the attendant has vanished, and in that instant the door across the hall opens and he sees an old woman in a bathrobe peering into the drawer of her table and scolding somebody.

But Bertha still stares into the space behind him. Touching his arm, she draws him lightly toward her.

“I know they’re not real, Father, because you walked right through them.”

Hastily he takes his prayer book out of his pocket.

Hearing the familiar prayers on his lips, the old woman lifts two fingers to receive the host. Arthritis has crumpled the others.

“Here,” she says in a scratchy voice, “between these two.”

When she has received his blessing, she seems all at once to come alive. She sits up, stares at Father Hayden, and says, “Are you the curate?”

“I’m the new rector,” said Father Hayden.

“The rector?” she repeats, surprised. She studies him, as if she hoped to unmask an imposter. Then, satisfied, she says, “We had a curate when Father Legg was rector. But it was Father Legg I always wanted to serve me. Still, you couldn’t tell which side he would serve on. And if I sat on the right side, then I had to go to the right rail, and if I sat on the left side, then the left rail. And if the curate served me, I confess I felt as if I’d hardly taken communion at all. And then I had to wait a whole week to take it again.”

Father Hayden laughs in spite of himself.

“And we young girls, we always got our hands folded just so, long before it was time to go up.”

She closes her eyes. She is silent so long that he fears she has forgotten him. He takes her hand. Outside, snow is falling at last, draping the gravestones in the yard, the roof of the rectory, the steps.

He feels the warmth of her hand like a lining in his glove all the way back to his own door. And it’s there the sexton takes his sleeve and whispers, smiling.

“That bag of old clothes I found—it’s been taken away.”

And Father Hayden thinks, he’s been waiting for me to tell me this.

“Taken away? Who took it away?”

“I don’t know. It was gone this morning. Taken away,” he repeats, as if he has done nothing his whole life but bring old clothes together with their rightful owners.

“Well, that’s fine,” says Father Hayden. “A merry Christmas to you.”

“And to you too, Father. Peter Beasley tells me you’ll be taking dinner with his family tonight, before the service.”

Father Hayden nods. He unlocks his door and steps inside. The sexton is padding across the snow back to the sanctuary which is already aglow with candles for Christmas. Darkness comes now at four o’clock. Time! Time! There is not much time. Father Hayden remembers he must wrap the puppets he has bought for the deacon’s children, but a growing uneasiness has paralyzed him.

Can a man be living in this house and I not know it?

He hurries through all the rooms downstairs, turning on the lights. Then, standing in the vestibule, he snaps on the light in the second floor hall. Then he ascends the stairs, making as much noise as possible. He whistles. He bangs his feet. He sings a little. He reaches the top landing.

Now he goes into the first bedroom. Turns on the lights.

Nobody there.

Into the second bedroom and the third. Empty rooms he has forgotten ever existed, rooms painted colors he never chose or papered in fruits, ships, and flowers. His footsteps shake the floorboards, his shadow follows him, gigantic, inhuman.

Nobody there.

At the foot of the stairs leading to the third floor, he turns on the light. His chest tightens, he can hear the thump of his heart. How frail a thing the body is! That his heart continues its work without a word from him amazes him, that his limbs move in spite of his doubts and confusion fills him with a peculiar tenderness toward them.

Noisily he marches up the stairs. Into the first room. Nothing but dead flies in one corner, thick as sand. Now the second room. His hand on the light switch, he hears a scrabbling sound that nearly sends him running. In his heart miniature boxes of cereal are falling like hail and a pickpocket’s hand is snatching them up.

And then he hears the twitter of starlings in the eaves and relief floods him. I must call an exterminator to get rid of them, he thinks, for he has heard stories of starlings stealing lighted cigarettes from ashtrays left by open windows and sticking them into their nests. Great buildings have been brought low by such small causes.

Carefully turning off all the lights, he walks downstairs. The house is empty. And this certain knowledge floods him with a loneliness he had not expected.

Time! Time! The deacon is sitting down to dinner without him. Father Hayden hurries to take the box of puppets from his closet shelf. Is it possible he dreamed of animals this morning? He cannot remember their shapes now, only that he wanted them and looked for them in the street he saw upon waking.

And now see him. It is eleven o’clock, the faithful have arrived in their best clothes, they rustle in the pews, waiting eagerly for the service to begin. In the corridor, Father Hayden fastens his cope; its scarlet cross slopes down his back as he takes his place behind the acolytes and folds both hands over his prayer book. The acolytes lift their candles. Now he is standing at the borders of the forest of lights. He hears the opening measure of the processional hymn. And as the door opens and they move into the sanctuary, his heart too is lifted. For among the faithful, perhaps the madman has come back and is even now sitting on the bench behind the last row of pews like a stray animal that has slunk out of the cold, caring nothing for the Word but wanting only to warm its paws at these mysterious fires.