25

Besty, never allow Daniel to go into the pulpit until he has had his rum.

Mrs. Charles Stearns
Lincoln, ca. 1800

Next Sunday, Homer ascended the pulpit steps and regaled the congregation with an oration on the abolition movement in nineteenth-century Boston. He was charming, outrageous, informative, and learned. Mary grinned at him from her pew in the back of the church, and Homer was relieved, because sometimes Mary didn’t grin, she just looked sorrowfully at her lap. As a temporary substitute for Joseph Bold, Homer was a big success, and Ed Bell congratulated him warmly.

But that afternoon Ed’s private meeting behind the sliding doors of his living room was a disaster, because of the boy Paul Dobbs. In the middle of the meeting there was a tumultuous uproar from outside. It was Paul on a motorcycle, a big shiny Mitsubishi belonging to one of his brothers. Once, twice, Paul thundered around the house, and then he tore out onto Acton Road and pounded away down the hill.

Five minutes later, the people assembled in Ed’s living room heard the phone ring in the hall, and then Eleanor Bell threw open the closed doors and cried out to her father, “It’s Paul. He’s had an accident.”

The meeting broke up in disorder. Ed rushed away with Bill Molyneux, Rosemary went home with Eloise Baxter, George Tarkington drove away in his noisy old car with Phil Shooky, and Thad Boland and Agatha Palmer and Percy Donlevy walked home, highly agitated, in different directions.

But as it turned out, Paul wasn’t badly hurt. He was merely mauled by the rasping scrape of his side against the pavement after the motorcycle collapsed when he leaned over too far, making a U turn in front of the Town Hall.

The motorcycle itself was totaled, slamming out of control into a stone wall. Afterward Paul’s parole officer told Ed it was stolen property. The parole officer wasn’t happy. He wanted Paul back in the Concord Reformatory.

Ed put up a fight. “The boy didn’t know his brother stole it. And he’s got a job. He’s learned his lesson. We’re happy to have him living with us. Why can’t he go right on doing what he’s doing?”

“Well, all right,” said the parole officer. “But you’re asking for trouble. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Lorraine agreed privately with the parole officer. “I don’t know,” she told Ed. “Really, dear, I just feel so uneasy.”

“But you thought at first he was going to rape Eleanor, didn’t you, now?” said Ed, smiling at her. “You’ll have to admit you were wrong. They hardly even see each other.”

“Oh, I know,” said Lorraine. “She’s only got eyes for Bo Harris. Still, I worry about it.”

Lorraine didn’t tell Ed about the teaching session she had overheard one afternoon on the back porch. Eleanor had suddenly taken it into her head to teach Paul to read and write. She had set up a card table on the porch. Lorraine was stuffing a chicken at the kitchen sink. She couldn’t help hearing the voices outside. And she wanted to interfere, to protest, to tell Eleanor she was going too fast. Poor Paul couldn’t keep up.

“Who cares about the alphabet?” said Paul shrewdly. “Listen, how you spell ‘I love you’?”

“Oh, Paul, don’t be dumb.” Eleanor was angry.

“I am dumb,” said Paul. “How you spell ‘fuck’?”

Lorraine didn’t tell Ed what she had heard. The poor man had too much on his mind. Trying to keep the church going and attend his usual board meetings and help Bo Harris fix his car and drive Paul Dobbs back and forth to work—it was more than any one person should be expected to do. “It’s too much,” she complained to him. “Really, dear, you’ve got to slow down.”

But instead of slowing down, Ed took on more and more of Joe Bold’s neglected duties. Parish visiting was one of them. Ed was a natural at parish visiting. He was already an old friend of the head nurse in Howie Sawyer’s ward at the County Hospital. Now he called on the eldest Ott boy, who was recovering from an appendectomy at Emerson Hospital. And then he drove into Boston to see Geneva Jones at Mass. General.

“Damn it, Ed,” said Geneva, “my face-lift was supposed to be a secret. What are you doing here?” But then Geneva clasped Ed’s hand and held it tightly. Going through the whole thing alone had been harder than Geneva expected.

It took a good deal of nerve to stop in at Wally Pott’s house to ask about Wally’s wife, but Ed had plenty of nerve. And he was worried about Arlene’s continued absence. There were rumors afloat that Arlene had fled, that Wally was a wife-beater. There were counter-rumors that Arlene wouldn’t run away, no matter what, that she would have thrown Wally out instead, because the house belonged to her, not Wally. Arlene’s neighbor Ethel Harris was upset about Arlene’s disappearance.

“Wally must have some idea where she is,” Ethel told Ed. “I wonder if she’s with her sister Beverly?”

But Wally claimed complete ignorance. When Ed knocked on the door and inquired politely about Arlene and asked how he could get in touch with her sister, Wally shifted his bare feet on the hall carpet and said, “I don’t know where the hell Beverly lives. Someplace down South.”

“May I come in?” said Ed, beaming at Wally.

“Well, I’m pretty busy,” said Wally.

But Ed was already inside, exclaiming at the elegance of Arlene’s living room, the glass coffee table, the split matched marble of the fireplace.

Wally gave up and waved him to the beige sofa. “She left me for good, that’s the truth of it. She just walked out, and I don’t know where the devil she’s gone.”

“Might there be letters from her sister? A Christmas card with her return address?”

Involuntarily, Wally Pott glanced at the tall desk against the farther wall. It was an expensive-looking dusty piece of furniture. The hinged front was closed, but Ed could see that a press of papers behind it had pushed it partly open.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s any letters.” Wally looked carefully back at Ed, keeping his eyes away from the desk.

If Ed Bell had been Homer Kelly, he would have jumped up, crossed the room in two strides, and poked in Arlene Pott’s papers, then snatched up the sheaf of unopened letters from Arlene’s anxious sister in Abilene, Texas, and shaken them under Wally’s nose. But Ed was not Homer Kelly, he was himself, and he didn’t think it courteous to doubt Wally’s word.

He made a polite suggestion. “Do you think perhaps you should call the police?”

“Oh, heck, no, not yet. She left me once before—came back in three, four weeks. I don’t want to make, you know, a big fuss.”