Songs in Ordinary Time Page 53

  “Yes, Sister, it is.” Cancer. Leukemia, actually.

  Father Gannon’s bed was empty, and the Monsignor was not surprised. Out all hours of the night, the young man could barely get up on time for morning Mass. When he complained, the Bishop suggested he should be grateful the young priest had found such a suitable outlet for his idealistic energies as the Kennedy campaign. “Sometimes,” the Bishop reminded him, “to keep this new breed happy we have to let them roam just a bit farther afield than we might like.” And besides, the Bishop added, he and the Senator’s dad went way back.

  He padded barefoot down the hallway, relieved when he came to the rim of light under the bathroom door. He tapped once, then turned the knob, bewildered to see Father Gannon at the sink, barechested, in his clerical pants, a razor poised at his lathered cheek.

  “But I can’t,” Father Gannon said upon hearing that Mrs. Ahearne needed the last rites. “I’ve got a meeting.”

  His stricken expression troubled the Monsignor. “You have a sacrament to administer, Father Gannon, and that is far, far more important than any meeting.” He looked at him, hard, adding, “With anyone.” No. No, he thought, seeing Father Gannon wince. It couldn’t be. Not right under his nose. No. He was a better pastor than that. In matters of celibacy the Bishop held his older clergy responsible for guiding the young men.

  “But I’m expected. And I can’t call now.” He swallowed with widening eyes. “Could you do it for me, please, Tom? Please?”

  His insolence was shocking. “She asked specifically for you, Father. Not me,” he said.

  Head bowed, the young priest shuffled miserably. “You could tell her I’m away. This sounds terrible, I know, but you see, this has happened before, and then nothing ever comes of it.”

  Something hardened in the Monsignor’s throat. It hurt to speak. “I think you have a choice to make here, Father Gannon. I pray your decision is the right one.” He returned to his room, where he sat in the dark on the edge of his rumpled bed, feet fast on the prickly wool carpet, eyes hard on the shaded window, until he finally heard the garage door rumble open and then the tires of his car turning over the pavement. There had been distant sirens wailing, and now their growing urgency seemed to justify his firmness with the troubled young priest. All this talk of nerves and needs and complexes was ridiculous. Father Gannon had been coddled, plain and simple. What he needed now was discipline before he ended up another of the insipid dilettantes who only dabbled in God’s work when the mood hit them. The seminaries were sending them out in droves lately: me, me, me, and the needs of the Church be damned. Gone were the days when a young priest cared enough about advancement to do all he could to lighten his superior’s load. It was time now for a dose of reality, time to teach Father Gannon responsibility to his vocation and his parishioners. He would call his cousin Nora in the morning. If her invitation to the lake was still open, he’d accept and leave Father Gannon completely in charge here.

  She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stand out here by the road any longer. Joe had never been this late before. All the lights in the lot were out. Mr. Coughlin had already left and the office was locked, so she couldn’t even call home for a ride. And she certainly couldn’t call the rectory and ask for Joe. Two of the girls had offered her a ride, and so had Blue Mooney, with Carper grinning and echoing everything his cousin said, until Blue had snapped at him to shut up. God, it was like living in a freak show, she thought as she started to walk down Main Street. It was worse at home, with Duvall in and out all the time, proclaiming that the soap was coming, yes, the soap was definitely on its way. He’d just heard, the soap was coming; the warehouse was working round the clock to fill all the orders. And now her mother was saying it, too: When the soap comes. What, you need school activity fees in two weeks? Well, maybe the soap will be here then. Whatever the problem, she’d take care of it after the soap came.

  Her father had been home for two weeks now and hadn’t called them once. Benjy was a nervous wreck, and the open animosity between Norm and Omar was almost frightening. And on top of it all, last night as she was putting her clothes back on in the Monsignor’s car, Joe had said that making love to her was all he ever thought or cared about now. Even during Mass. Twice during the Consecration that morning he’d lost his place and had to start over. When he talked like that, she never knew what to say. Upset by her silence, he’d beg her to tell him what was wrong, what was bothering her. But how could she explain this violent commingling of guilt and longing that left her feeling bruised and sore, without it sounding like confession, an admission of the worst sin, desire but not love. What if Lester was right? What if she was so tainted by base needs that there would never be love, only corruption? When pressed, she would tell Joe that it was the same with her, that she loved him, too, thought of him every bit as much, all day long. And as the evening wore on, the desire would feel like another organ, as hot and throbbing as if it were about to burst. She was afraid of what was happening. But she couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t admit when he held her close, whispering that he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving, that she was counting the days until school started. It was the only way it could possibly end without the shame and damnation destroying them both.

  She was walking past the municipal swimming pool now, when a car slowed behind her. Joe. She walked a little faster, smiling.

  “Hey, hop in,” Blue Mooney called as he drove alongside. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  She didn’t need a ride; in fact, she was enjoying the walk.

  “But it’s late,” he protested, cruising so close she could feel the car’s heat on her legs. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Please. You never been in my car. I’d really like you to see it. Look,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “I got all velvet on the dash and same with the seats.” He looked up, his pale eyes shining under the streetlamp. “I’ll bring you straight home, if that’s what you’re thinking. Honest to God.”

  “No.” She stopped and shook her head. “I really, really want to walk.”

  At that he turned off the lights and parked the car. He got out and came toward her. “Then I’ll walk with you,” he announced, tugging his jeans down over his hips and rolling and flexing his shoulders.

  Stupid creep, she thought, hugging her arms and growing more annoyed as she hurried along to the clop of his thick-heeled boots through the midnight quiet.

  “God, you’re going to wake up the whole town,” she snapped, irritated then to see him scurry onto the grass, where he kept stumbling in the ruts. He’d been telling her about his job and now he was advising her to avoid retreads. “Granted they’re half the price, but when they blow, I mean, you have no idea what that’s like, being so out of control. I mean, they lay down rubber in this, this whole long strip.” He held out his arms to show her. “A person could get killed!” he said, his earnestness a poultice to her venom.

  “Then how come you sell them then?” God, did he really think that driving tires back and forth to Burlington was such a big deal?

  “Well, I mean, it’s my job,” he stammered. “You know. Besides, I don’t sell them. I just haul them.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “No, why should it?”

  “Well, what if one of the tires you’ve hauled blows out and somebody gets really hurt or something. I mean, wouldn’t you feel responsible?”

  “No.” He looked at her. “Not at all. I mean, why should I, you know?”

  “Well, I would,” she said, stepping off the curb to cross the street. They were near the park. Joey’s popcorn stand was empty. The dark grass was dotted with cans and papers. Norm would be busy tomorrow with his pick.

  “That’s because you been hanging around that priest too much,” Mooney said, and for a moment she stopped breathing. They came past the diner, the boardinghouse. “What’s he, a friend or something?”

  “Yah,” she said with a weak shrug.

  “Well, just make sure h
e doesn’t pile all that Church stuff on you about sin and guilt. I mean, the way I figure it is, I’m just gonna do the best I can, and if it don’t work out, hey! I’m not gonna go around feeling guilty all the time.” He laughed self-consciously when she didn’t say anything. “Jeez, listen to me with all the good advice tonight. Hey!” He stopped and put his hand on her arm. “Listen!” He cocked his head. “Can you hear that?”

  All she heard were crickets and the stale rasp of his smoky breath by her face. He kept urging her to listen, listen close.

  “What is it?” she asked, pretending to hear it as she eased from his grip.

  “Must be an owl,” he whispered, his eyes scanning the black treetops over the park. “There! Hoo, hoo,” he called softly, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Hoo! Hoo!”

  Now she did hear it, faint as an echo. Mooney hurried beside her. He said it sounded like a great horned owl. “We used to go down the pond at night and shine flashlights on them. It was weird the way they’d freeze for a minute. They’d stare back like they were ticked off, and then they’d raise these big wings and the weird thing was, they’d take off without a sound. That always got me, the way they seemed like part of the night, and then the light catches them, and they’re, you know, what’s the word I want, exposed, I guess, and then they’re gone. Right back into the dark. That’s what they know, you see. That’s where they belong.”

  Goose bumps rose on her arms and then the back of her neck, as if a winter door had suddenly blasted open. I don’t know anything, she thought, feeling big and clumsy beside him, though she was half his size.

  He paused, listening, then cupped his mouth and hooted softly again.

  “I can’t believe you heard that. It was so, so faint.” She hadn’t heard anything that time, but she wanted to say something nice.

  He smiled. “It’s like, you know how some people have great night vision, well, I’m that way with sounds.”

  “Must be that same thing animals have, a real keen sense of hearing.”

  “I don’t know. I hear things in this weird way. I don’t know how to put it, but sometimes I hear things before they’re even sounds. That’s kinda weird, huh?” He seemed embarrassed.

  “Well, it’s probably like with dogs,” she said. “They hear things we can’t hear. It’s this whole other range they’ve got and we don’t. It’s probably something like that.”

  “Yah, well, maybe,” he said, growing quiet as they neared her corner. When they turned, he spoke suddenly, calling her by name for the first time. “Alice!” He looked surprised. “You’re not still going out with Lester Stoner, are you?” he asked in a torrent of words and nervous gestures. “I mean, I never see him around or anything, that’s why I was wondering.”

  Sensing what he had in mind, she said that she and Lester had broken up and that she wasn’t interested in dating because there was so little time left before she started school.

  He smiled. “Oh well, yah! I mean, I can see that. I mean, not having, you know, a steady boyfriend or anything—but how about just going out for a drive maybe or even a movie with somebody.” He looked at her. “With me, I mean.”

  Oh God. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  His mouth twitched as he struggled to hold the smile. “Hey! Don’t be sorry! Like I said, you been hanging around that priest too much.”

  “There’s my house. You don’t have to go all the way down there.” She assured him she’d be fine. He said he’d gone this far, and he just wanted to make sure she got the rest of the way home safely. There was nothing to worry about, she said, then hurried on ahead. When she was almost at the house the sound of sirens tore up Main Street. She looked back as she turned into the driveway, and sure enough, he was still watching her. He waved. Groaning, she waved back. She opened the door, then looked again before stepping inside. He was still there, watching.

  In the park Sonny Stoner squatted by Joey’s side, holding his hand until the ambulance came. His patrolmen’s flashlights passed slowly over the litter-covered grass for clues. Whatever the weapon, it had split open the back of Joey’s head but hadn’t killed him. His cigar box with the night’s receipts was missing. He had closed the stand and was coming along the path when he heard footsteps behind him. He had felt a tug as someone tried to yank the cigar box out from under his arm. He had held on to it, wrestling with his assailant, who kept begging him not to. “Don’t,” the man had pleaded. “Please don’t. I beg you, please.” And then the blow had been struck, and Joey lay at the edge of the rhododendrons “for so long,” he told Sonny, his flat eyes rolling with pain. He had lain through green heat and wind and brilliant falling leaves and frost and drifting snow and chilly mud, then heat again, while to all his cries for help had come the answering hoot of an owl with fiery glowing eyes.

  “I saw it, Sonny. Right there in the bush, watching me.” He groped for Sonny’s hand and held it against his face. “I never took money from Towler. Never.” Tears ran from the corners of his eyes down his blood-smeared temples.

  “I know that, Joey. I’ve always known that,” he whispered, leaning close. “You’re a good man, Joey, a good honest man.” He squeezed Joey’s hand. “You never took a damn thing that wasn’t yours.”

  “No, listen. Listen!” he said, his voice breaking. “It was her I took, his wife. Winnie.”

  “Shh. Just relax, Joey. Don’t say any more now. Just breathe deep, in and out. I hear them coming.”

  “He was my friend. He knew money wouldn’t work. I’d go up and I’d say, Ark, Ark, I gotta do something. People’re talking. You’re forcing my hand, Ark. So what he did was, he let me have her. I’d come. He’d leave. I thought she loved me, but you see, I was just one more of her chores, only I was the one she hated doing most of all, and I was so stupid,” he said, both laughing and crying, “that I never knew it. Took me years, all these years. Ain’t that something, huh?” he asked with wonder.

  “Don’t, Joey. That’s all—”

  “No, no, I know, but you see, all these years I’ve been sending her money. The Judge took care of it. Sonny, if I die, send her what I got, please?”

  “Sure, Joey, sure.” He patted the old man’s hand as he looked past the bandstand right at the spot where she’d stood all those years before, hugging her children to her skirt, with that peculiar look of bitter triumph on her angular face.

  The arc of a patrolman’s flashlight guided the ambulance down the path. The attendants jumped out and dropped to their knees beside Joey.

  So that’s why, Sonny thought, as they prepared him for the stretcher. All these years that’s why he endured the town council’s annual humbling. For her. For a woman he kept hoping might still love him.

  “Jesus Christ,” the ambulance driver called when the back door closed. “What a night!”

  Sonny watched the ambulance speed up Main Street, its lights flashing and sirens screaming.

  The accident up on the mountain earlier tonight had put two kids in the hospital, Donna Creller and Weeb Miller. There had been beer in the car. Young Miller wouldn’t say where he had gotten it, but Sonny Stoner knew it had to be from Hildie Carper. Tomorrow, between Al Creller and Jarden Greene, and God knew who else, all hell would break loose. And where had their illustrious Chief been through it all? Getting laid, that’s where, in Eunice’s perfumed satin sheets while his wife shriveled to bones and the circles under his depressed son’s eyes darkened.

  “Chief!” Officer Harrison called.

  His two patrolmen were leading Blue Mooney toward him.

  “Look what we got here. Says he just happens to be passing by,” Bernie Clapman scoffed.

  “Yah, out for a little midnight stroll,” Vince Needer sneered.

  “Go fuck yourself!” Mooney growled, jerking free of their grasp, feeling safer now, Sonny knew, in his presence. “Chief, I—” Mooney was starting to protest just as Sonny grabbed his shirt and yanked him close.

  “I’m gonna ask you one time and
one time only. Did you touch Joey Seldon tonight?”

  “No! Of course not! Jesus! I already told them. I never even saw him.”

  They drove Mooney back to his car. Harrison was going through the trunk, which was filled with cigarette cartons and bags of clothes. He emptied the bags onto the ground. “Look at this!” Harrison called, coming around the side of the car, carrying a cowboy hat. “Here,” he said, holding it out. “Put it on.”

  “What for?” Mooney asked.

  “Cause I said so,” Harrison said, jamming the hat on Mooney’s head, pulling it down over his ears. “Leave it on!” Harrison barked as Mooney reached to take it off.

  “So tell us again, now,” said Harrison as Needer took his place rifling through the mess in the trunk. “You’re driving along, and all of a sudden, for no reason, you stop. You leave the car here, two blocks from the park. It’s a nice night, right? So what the hell, you figure you’ll take a little stroll through the park, and what do you see but old Joey gimping along with a box of dough under his arm, and you’re broke, right? So you figure, what the hell, this is one easy—”

  “Chief!” Mooney pleaded.

  This time Sonny wouldn’t interfere. This time he’d let them do their job. Besides, he was almost enjoying the punk’s humiliation with the hat flapping his ears forward.

  “I don’t need to go mugging a blind man. I got a job, a good job! I’m working for J. C. Colter.”

  “A job?” Harrison said. “I thought you were on leave.”

  “He’s on leave, all right. Permanent leave,” Vince Needer said, swaggering around the side of he car. He handed Sonny the document stamped with the Marine Corps seal that attested to the Dishonorable Discharge of Travis T. Mooney.

  Sonny squinted over the rim of his glasses. His officers, Mooney, the car—all glowed in the light from the streetlamp. He had tried to save men whose redemption was easier than his own, and now this was the end of the fouled trail. He was no better than any of them, only worse in his hypocrisy. Simpler, better men than he was saw the truth in life. Because Joey had looked the other way, the gods had demanded his sight. There was always a price to pay. As talismans he’d offered Mooney and Joey, even, he realized now with disgust, his wife’s suffering, to prove his goodness. He stepped closer and his shadow obscured Mooney’s face. His voice was cold and steady. “I should’ve let them put you away when I had the chance.”