by Ian Woollen
Mary leaned back on the bed and groaned. “Please don’t tell me you and Rusalka are up to something.”
Ward fiddled with his tie rack. “Hell, no. Things are hard enough without complicating them that way. I mean, you know Rusalka. She does gossip about hanky-panky and she likes to use words like ‘swinging.’ ”
“I can’t believe she’d suggest that,” Mary scoffed. “And what do you mean, things are hard enough?”
Ward took her question as a license to vent. “Maybe you’re the one who hasn’t been paying attention. Maybe you haven’t noticed how many regrets we’ve been getting to our parties?” He croaked, “Of course not. Why would you? You get to disappear to Maine for three months every year. Disappear and pretend that life just goes on its merry way.”
“But, honey, how often have I suggested that you try to spend more time with us on the island?” Mary countered, wondering if his harshness was an effect of the pills.
Ward shook his head scornfully. “You don’t get it. That’s not possible.”
“Okay, how bad is it?” Mary asked, sitting up.
Ward rifled his suit pockets for stray cigarettes. He said, “We probably should have sold this house five years ago, along with the office building. Everyone lives out in the suburbs. Glendale, or farther, and they don’t want to drive all this way back into town to socialize anymore. And you heard what happened yesterday: demonstrators broke into our lobby and spray-painted graffiti on Fat Man and Little Boy. Wangert Public Relations is considered a stodgy old firm that keeps the symphony conductor’s name in the paper. We still have Randy and Stu’s account, and some lobbying business, the liquor distributors in Evansville and Fort Wayne who want to change the Blue Laws. I should probably try to get in on this new basketball team deal.”
“The ones who want to play in funny-colored uniforms with funny colored balls?” Mary asked. “Sounds like a gimmick to me.”
“Gimmick or not, that’s what is happening,” Wardsaid , “at least the ‘Pacers’ name is better than the old ‘Kautskys.’ ”
“Should we be inviting the basketball players over for dinner?” Mary asked. “The boys would like that.”
Ward managed a smile. Mary seized her opening. “Listen, instead of taking those pills, it would be much better to talk to somebody, a psychiatrist, or that analyst I saw way back when—Dr. Keller.”
“Don’t have time. They want to see you three or four times a week,” Ward grumbled.
“What about our minister, Father Tyler? He went to Yale Divinity School. That should count in his favor,” Mary said.
Ward knew his wife was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to throw away the pills. He wanted her to throw away the pills. He couldn’t ask her, and she didn’t do it. She trusted him in all the wrong ways. He moved the vial to a different drawer in his dresser.
The Dexedrine developed its own logic. It told him that if he complied with her request to talk to someone, it would be okay to keep taking the pills, because while he was talking to someone about the pills, he would need to be taking the pills to be able to talk about them.
He stalled for a week. He made some more inquiries about the Reverend Paul Tyler, a Korean War vet, who dramatically waved his eyeglasses in the air when preaching, and had in fact delivered a sermon on the Bomb as God’s Gift of Free Will.
When Ward arrived at the rector’s office, he wasn’t sure what to make of the loud television set on Tyler’s desk. The Reverend was watching a basketball game, the new Pacers.
“Gotta get with the local team,” Paul Tyler explained. “Have you seen them play yet?”
“Not yet,” Ward said. “My sons have been clamoring for me to take them to a game.”
“Those uniforms are something,” Paul Tyler said. “Bright as vestments.”
“And the ball looks like a big piece of candy.”
Time out, the referee signaled on the TV. End of the quarter. It was Leukemia Day at the game. The TV announcer cut in to promote Leukemia Day and to bolster public support, while the camera tightly panned a long row of afflicted children parked in wheelchairs at one end of the Coliseum court. Ward stared in dismay at the waving children in the last four wheelchairs—Robbie, Duncan, Vincent, and Kayla.
Ward prayed the minister wouldn’t notice.
“Oh, my goodness!” Father Tyler said, squinting at the set. “Are those your sons? Is that why you’re here to talk to me; they’ve got leukemia?”
Ward hung his head and shrugged, “No, I’m sorry. They don’t. They must have snuck into the Coliseum somehow. I can’t believe the temerity of those squirts.”
“I still say the choir would be good for them,” Father Tyler commented.
He turned off the television and offered Ward a flask-enhanced mug of coffee. They talked about Yale and tested each other’s recollection of professors and restaurants. It came out that Paul Tyler had met He Who Remains Classified through the current chaplain. “Before seeing the light, and the blood on his hands, our bulldog chaplain ran C.I.A. missions in Eastern Europe. And that other guy … he’s so important, he doesn’t even talk to himself,” Paul Tyler said.
They chatted about other increasingly tarnished Best and Brightest, and about the aging congregation of the Little Church on the Circle and the renegade vestrymen who wanted to move to the suburbs. Ward indulged in some historical erudition about Henry Ward Beecher, another promising easterner who had been called to Indianapolis early in his career and honed his abolitionist message, before returning to a big church in New York.
“That’s when my Wangert ancestors started using the name, ‘Ward.’ ”
“Oh, yes, the infamous Beecher,” Paul said. “He did change the course of American Protestantism. He changed the topic from Sin to Love.”
“And you’re hoping to change the topic from Love to, uh … Urban Renewal?” Ward said.
Paul’s dogged face darkened. “Let’s just say I’m trying to expand the definition of Love to include impoverished cityscapes. As for changing the topic, how about we get to what really brought you here today?”
“Right, of course,” Ward sighed. The dim church office suddenly felt like a confessional. For the Wangerts, members of this congregation since before the time of Henry Ward Beecher, church was still about Sin.
“My wife sent me to talk about Dexedrine pills.”
“Just Dex, or painkillers too?”
“No, but there is more.”
Ward grimly described his sense of impending failure with the business and his struggles with the family—the boys’ expulsion, his mother’s widowhood, his dependence on the pills, his resentment of Mary’s time in Maine, his stupid suspicions of Rusalka. Tyler listened and poured more doctored coffee. Ward’s confession evolved in an unexpected direction. He admitted that his heart had never been in the business, especially with his father gone, but it was too late to do anything different. Ward spoke for the first time about Moscow, without giving all the details, and described what he realized was a long-simmering grudge against He Who Remains Classified. “That jerk is riding high in Washington, and I’m out here barely keeping my head above water, all because I chose to clean up one of his messes.”
“His day of reckoning will most certainly come,” Paul Tyler said.
“Not soon enough,” Ward said.
The minister mused, “I learned an interesting Hoosier-ism from my secretary this morning: ‘Resentment is like swallowing rat poison and expecting the other person to die.’ ”
“I’d do worse than swallow poison, if I thought it could knock him back,” Ward snapped.
“Hmm … are you saying you wish you hadn’t married your wife?” Paul asked.
Ward paused and loosened his tie. “No, no,” he groaned, shaking his head emphatically, “I don’t know what I’m saying. Without Mary, I’m more than nothing.”
“More than nothing ….”
They crossed and re-crossed their legs and both stared silently out a narro
w, leaded Gothic window onto Monument Circle. “The Black Moth of Meaninglessness,” Paul Tyler announced. “That’s my diagnosis. It flaps inside many a head these days. Mine included. The only reason I’ve got this collar on is that nothing else makes any sense either, especially after the Army.”
Ward nodded and added a feigned salute.
Paul slowly leaned across his desk. A flat silver cross on a silver chain slipped out from inside his jacket. “Listen, if I could somehow manage to help you, would you do the same for me? We both bet on the wrong horse. On the fate of this city’s downtown. In the year or more since I’ve been here, it’s deteriorated badly.”
Ward growled, “And now the radio station is sponsoring a contest for the best completion of the sentence, ‘Downtown Indy is deader than ….’ ”
“The winner will probably be unprintable,” Paul said, and added, “Of course, twenty square blocks of urban decay provides a fertile backdrop for my sermons. I can make Jesus come alive out there on those miserable streets as well as any old-time revival preacher.”
“So how do you think you can help me?” Ward asked.
“Next time we meet, bring all your pills, and I’ll flush them down the toilet for you,” Paul said.
Ward groaned and glanced up at the ceiling. “I thought you were only supposed to talk to me.”
Paul explained, “I spent a year in a VA hospital after Korea. I know about pills.”
Ward found a cigarette in his breast pocket. “And how do you think I can help you?” he said.
“Join my vestry. I need some fresh blood. If we’re at least going to make this place an oasis in the desert, we’ve got to stop the faction that wants to move the church to the suburbs.”
Ward closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “I’m afraid such a position might violate my firm’s policy regarding political neutrality.”
“I thought you told me your father was dead,” Father Tyler said.
Ward flushed the pills that afternoon, in Mary’s presence, and also destroyed the vials. Without either accepting or rejecting the vestry position, Ward phoned the church to invite Father Tyler to an event that would heighten the new minister’s visibility with other prospective supporters—the annual downtown pigeon shoot, one of his late father’s favorite gatherings.
“A pigeon hunt in downtown Indianapolis? Explain this to me again, please,” Paul said.
“It’s a public health function that dates from a nineteenth century campaign against the ills of pigeon poop. One autumn Saturday each year the city fathers cordon off several blocks around the Circle and blast away with birdshot at the pigeon roosts under the eaves of department stores, the post office, the Columbia Club.”
Ward waited while Paul finished laughing. “Downtown Indy is deader than the dead pigeons that deaden it,” Paul cracked. “I’d love to join you, but there is one problem. I’ve taken a vow never to lift a rifle again.”
Ward offered an ethical hedge. “My firm owns a collection of antique firearms, some of which predate the invention of rifles, per se.”
The next Saturday, the Reverend Paul Tyler and Ward Wangert Jr., vowing to eradicate the Black Moths of Meaninglessness, joined the troop on the corner of Market and Meridian Street. The two Yalies carried muskets. They managed to withstand the guns’ sharp recoils, which garnered approval for the new eastern fellow over at the Little Church on the Circle. He was quoted afterward in the newspaper as saying, “Truly, brothers, this is the New Frontier!”
Chapter 27
Probationers
Forced to join the choir as penance for their wheelchair-scam, Robbie and Duncan recruited Vincent to share their misery. Aptly, Robbie and Duncan and Vincent became ‘probationers’ in the treble section of the Cathedral Men and Boys’ Choir, a serious outfit, belting out descants since 1883. A twice weekly trip downtown on the bus was required. The boys rehearsed on Wednesday after school, then together with the men on Thursdays.
Grandpa Fred Stark, despite his scunner against GM, insisted the boys ride the city bus. He claimed they needed “a taste of real life.” They climbed aboard the #7 bus at 46th Street and Central. Their mothers instructed them to give open seats to the old ladies. Their mothers obviously did not understand bus-riding. Robbie and Duncan and Vincent grabbed the first seat available. All three squeezed in tightly and piled their backpacks at the aisle side to create a buffer. They preferred to sit as close to the driver as possible, in case of incidents. Fights erupted between the Shortridge High teenagers. Someone tried to sneak in the back door without paying, and someone always missed their stop and frantically pulled on the cord.
Below 34th Street, the landscape worsened. Burned out cars lay upside down in vacant lots. Open fires threw sparks from barrels. Rain blew into houses with broken windows. Obstructions blocked the street, a dead dog, a stray shopping cart, a police car with flashing lights.
They climbed down at Market Street and scurried past the City County Building and bail bonds storefronts, arriving finally at the relative safety of Monument Circle. Once inside the church, Robbie and Duncan tried to pretend that Vincent was the only one who felt scared.
Choir membership did come with a few benefits. It meant being excused from Sunday school. And the choirboys got paid. A lot of money. Five dollars and fifty-two cents a month, which more than doubled Robbie and Duncan’s measly allowance.
Another unexpected bonus of choir membership during Sunday service was the close study of female asses at communion. The choir stalls offered a great view. In order to take communion at the upper altar, congregants slowly paraded through the nave. They waited patiently between rows of posterior-level adolescent eyes. The miniskirt had just arrived in Indianapolis. The miniskirt turned church into a religious experience for Robbie and Duncan and especially Vincent, who was often accused of drooling.
The director, Dr. Manning, was an experienced hand with ‘project’ probationers. He saw through the angelic faces in robes and ruffs. The life-skills inculcated through his practices were very basic. Always have a pencil handy and admit your mistakes. He demanded that his choristers immediately signal when they’d sung a wrong note or missed an entrance. Simply raise your hand and recognize your mistakes, acknowledge them, move on.
Otherwise, there would be consequences during Slaughter Ball.
Slaughter Ball was its own lesson in penance. Slaughter Ball occurred in the church catacombs during the supper-break between the boys’ afternoon rehearsal and the arrival of the men for the Thursday evening rehearsal. Many tenors and basses, aspiring professionals from the Indiana University Music School in Bloomington, arrived early in order to participate in this tribal ritual. A red rubber ball, slightly under-inflated, was hurled mercilessly at close range at thighs, butts, calves, arms, and bellies. Beware, the uncoordinated! Cry-baby Vincent, for example, suffered at the hands of his supposed best friends, Robbie and Duncan. Upon the ‘twweeee’ of the choirmaster’s whistle, all pain must be suppressed in order to file obediently back upstairs to sing motets by Henry Purcell.
The burly, meticulous Dr. Manning yanked at his ears when annoyed. He worked the boys hard on intonation and their high notes, and on the crisp pronunciation of consonants and vowels. Choristers truly sing in tune, he lectured, only when all the vowels are pronounced communally the same. Physiologically, high notes were healthy for boys, he believed. If they learned to breathe from the diaphragm and send the breath up the spine, locating the tone inside the cranial bowl, slightly above and between the eyes, the resulting harmonic vibrations in the skull expelled all manner of bad-seed karma.
Mary and Rusalka volunteered to serve as Choir Mothers. They slowly began to see results. After being interrogated one too many times on the moral of the Reverend Tyler’s sermon, Duncan snorted, “Mom, look, I don’t get anything out of that stuff. All I know is that when we’re singing Orlando Gibbons, it feels like God is in the place.”
Bits of text from the anthems lodged inside the boys’ min
ds. Not that they understood the bits, but repetition made them lodge deeper. Duncan began adapting the line, “No greater love hath a man, than he who lays down his life for a friend,” for his own purposes, as in, “No greater love hath a lead-off hitter, than he who lays down a bunt for the number-nine man.” Robbie hummed Randall Thompson’s “Choose Something Like a Star” in the bathtub. His mother overheard him reciting the Robert Frost lyrics from memory.
At the Wangert’s monthly card night, Rusalka’s reports on Vincent and Kayla were less encouraging. Her “lee-tul nee-hilists” were obsessed with BB guns. Kayla still consumed quantities of dirt. Vincent told his mother that sometimes on the choir bus downtown the boys played a Jesus-spotting game, inspired by Reverend Paul’s sermon on seeing the face of Jesus in homeless people. Elbert reported that Vincent made up a riddle, “Why does Jesus always wear a Purdue sweatshirt? Because he’s lost. Ha-ha!”
Mary smiled, “I’m glad to hear Vincent made a joke, but I don’t get it.”
“In French,” Elbert explained, “ ‘Purdue’ sounds like the word for ‘lost.’ ”
Ward, shaking a fresh round of martinis, said, “I didn’t know Vincent was studying French.”
“Nighttimes, I speak French to children,” Rusalka said. “Old Russian tradition.”
“Of the nobility, wasn’t it?” Ward said.
Draining his glass, Elbert chimed in, “Aha, yes—revealed at last—my Rusalka is a Russian princess. Is she finally admitting it?”
Rusalka spat an olive pit at him.
Ward shared the Purdue anecdote with Father Tyler, who included it in his next sermon, a cute story about a choirboy and Jesus in a Purdue University sweatshirt on a city bus—to Vincent’s bitter humiliation.
Vincent blamed his mother for betraying his confidence and she, in turn, blamed Mary. And Mary, in turn, saw an opportunity to finally unload on Rusalka for giving Ward the Dexedrine pills. The two women were smoking cigarettes in the powder room of symphony hall during intermission. The encounter snowballed into Russian swear words. “I have to tell you how much this disturbed me!” Mary said, and made the mistake of calling Rusalka “a snake in the grass,” a phrase Rusalka didn’t understand and Mary’s explanation only made worse.