Hannigan stands in the belfry even after the day’s final call to prayer has sounded. He wonders how many people in this town have actually dropped to their knees at the sound.
Above him, the bell still swings gently, and though the clapper no longer strikes the rim, the copper still hums. Up and down, the fat rope passes through his loosened grip. Soon, scattered pigeons will return to the bell house sills, and both bell and rope will come to rest. When he was a boy at the orphanage in Pennsylvania he’d ring the bells at church time and the rope would take him with it, and off he’d be on a ride, at the mercy of all that clanging power. That’s what he liked about the church as a boy; the power of God was a secondary draw. And down here, in Louisiana, he’s found there are greater powers still: poverty and bigotry and fear. In the face of these it sometimes seems to him his mission doesn’t stand a chance.
He drops his hand from the rope and leaves the belfry. In the nave, late sunlight falls slantwise through the arched windows and lies broken by the panes in glowing rectangles across the wooden pews and dull linoleum of the floor. St. Edward’s is a humble building, nothing like Hannigan’s Spiritan base in Pittsburgh, with its soaring ceiling, marble floors, and stained glass. But Hannigan is more at ease inside St. Edward’s. He takes comfort in the simple cross on the white east wall, the spare wooden pews, the modest altar. When the church is empty, the space looks small, and so on Sundays he’s always amazed by the sea of faithful faces, the multitude of bodies the rows in fact accommodate. In here, he feels at home, that things are right, that humanity has a chance; it is out there on the streets of New Iberia where even after several years he feels he hasn’t found his footing, a way of wading through blind hate. The south feels more foreign to him than his mission in Madagascar ever did.
His footsteps are silent as he walks down the aisle toward the open church door. Outside he can see a car parked at the curb, the hanging branches of an oak, the accounting office housed in the low building across the street, kids playing baseball in the ballpark beyond. He thinks of Willie Jones, not much more than a kid himself. His throat tightens.
At the back pew, Hannigan turns to face the altar, and though he doesn’t always do so before exiting the church, he kneels to make the sign of the cross before he leaves. He shuts his eyes, and waits, for something, anything. But he feels only the weight of his heart.
When he opens his eyes again, for a moment he stays kneeling there. Then he stands, and though he isn’t ready, he steps out into the gathering night. The woman and then Willie are waiting.