THEO
MY EARS and splitting skull were acutely attuned to every creak, stomp, and cheer of my parishioner’s entrée. The Gandels, mister being the tallest man in the valley, and the missus the stoutest woman in the valley, crashed through the heavy arched doors of Saint Mary’s first. Everyone else rushed out of the sudden downpour through the doors, shaking the rainwater off onto the stone floor of the cramped vestibule.
They parked their umbrellas in the holder, hung hats on the wall hooks, and pulled themselves together. They then filed one family per row into the twelve oak pews of the church, dropping to one knee, genuflecting, and moving on like a well-rehearsed, portly chorus line; most nodded to greet me. The six Church Ladies filed into their row. All widowed, most childless, they, too, a family of sorts. Last into their row were the twins, seventy-eight-year-old Sibbie and Ibbie McFall, who just finished teaching our Sunday school. The Church Ladies were dressed in their funeral black from head to toe (there was a funeral over in Wheeler later that day). Funerals were their hobby. They waited for people to die like a kid waits in line for a turn on the Ferris wheel.
Two teens entered, holding hands. Young love, so innocent, so naive. The boy was Gandel’s eighteen-year-old son. He was gentle with his girlfriend; you could tell they were lovers by the soft glances that sometime, very recently, had shifted from inquisitive hunger to knowing. Both blue-eyed blondes, who soon would make blue-eyed blonde babies, sat in the back pew in a dreamlike state, intoxicated by one another. The Gandels had always been as lucky in love and plump, blue-eyed babies as they were in farming. One had to wonder where all that luck came from and why God would allot so much to one family and so little to so many others.
Wavering for a moment, I braced myself against the podium, still nauseous, still shaky, with an excruciating headache. I glanced at the door wondering if Andréa would show up again, or if I’d actually seen her, or if it was a wicked, wicked mirage.
Permelia Hinkle, still shapely and fit at age seventy-nine, sat poised on the organ bench to the right of the podium. She wore her blue dress with a white corsage. Freckles the size of raisins covered her skin; her crinkled eyes, the shade of a copper penny, smiled with kindness. Forever understanding and forgiving of my headaches, Permelia knew the fires of hell were engulfing me as I clung to that righteous pulpit. She whispered, “Shall I begin?”
I nodded. She leaned forward with all her petite might and pressed her tiny foot on the pedal to play an austere chant from her list of five liturgical songs. Organ pipes moaned to life; nails on a chalkboard inside my head. Then to pour on the hurt, Effie Grimm began to sing.
In the crowd of thirty or so, Toreck Sealy’s wife and son were seated in the back. She had another black eye that, against her alabaster skin, beckoned like Imogene’s neon sign in the fog. Her withdrawn seven-year-old, Andy, clung to her arm. He stared straight at me. The fear in his bloodshot eyes woke me from my hangover.
“Good morning, everyone,” I said. Andy’s eyes suddenly cast down. He leaned into his mother, his head just above her hip. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. But at what price?” Mrs. Sealy stared straight up at the light pouring through the stained-glass window of Jesus with his lambs. Then her sad eyes settled on me as if I were hope itself, not a hungover priest clinging to a podium. “What do you think?” I continued, “If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hill and go to look for the one that wandered off? Of course he will.”
***
After the sermon, and after shaking everyone’s hands (hiding the shaking in mine), I turned to find that Mrs. Sealy and Andy had slipped away.
A spurt of sunlight filtered through the wet trees and spiderwebbed across the side of the church where Solomon sat in the courtyard. In the center of the pond was a statue of Saint Francis holding a basin for birds. Water trickled softly from the basin. Solomon handed me a bottle of seaweed-green liquid and said, “Drink. Feel better.”
He gazed down Laneda Avenue watching the reclusive old woman who lived on Neahkahnie Mountain enter Imogene’s store. Her long-absent daughter and a small child waited in her rust-covered pickup truck. I looked the other way, wondering if Andréa was coming back. But she wasn’t. She was never coming back. I knew that. I always knew that.
“The boy’s arms are black and blue,” Solomon said. “His mother’s eyes, bruised.” He turned his gaze back to me, his hazel eyes as sharp as the dagger on his belt. Then he stood to leave and said, “Someone should do something.” He walked away.
***
The following Sunday, Mrs. Sealy and Andy weren’t in church. Andy’s teacher said he wasn’t in school all week. I asked Bud if we could take a run out to the Sealy place to check things out—thought showing up in the sheriff’s car would be an effective deterrent.
“What a man does in his own home isn’t the law’s business,” Bud declared. “Not the dealings of a priest, neither. ’Less that man confesses or asks for help.”
“Asks for help? Confesses?” I said. “You’re far more optimistic than me.”
“I know, Theo. But my hands are tied. I have to deal with the justice system as it is.”
“In my experience there’s often a cosmic gap between justice and what’s just. But with a little jostle, push, and shove, justice can become a simple, understandable thing.”
“You scare me sometimes, Theo. You really do.” He lit his cigar. “If we don’t hear anything by Friday, I’ll check it out.”
“Friday is a long way off,” I said. “Besides, Fridays are bad luck.”