When We Were Saints

by Han Nolan

  He had read the card over many times since the day of the funeral, but it was only then that he understood its meaning, and he wondered how the girl had known this would happen to him—and that the words would speak to his feelings exactly.

  Chapter 5

  ARCHIE DIDN'T TELL anyone what had happened to him, but he wanted to. He wanted to know why it had happened. Why him, the lowliest of worms, as the card said? He had spent his life bedeviling his grandfather every chance he got, and in the end he vomited on him and caused him to have a liver attack and die. He knew he didn't deserve to feel so wonderful, so holy, so—so like a saint for that little while up on the mountain. Still, he tried to recapture the feeling again, that spiritual unity with all things, but it didn't happen. Each time he climbed the mountain and stared out over the fields and forest, the cows just looked like cows grazing in a distant field. The rocks and stones lay about him, hard and gray. The trees did not speak, and the wind and sky did not pass through him. Everything was as it had always been.

  A few days after his experience on the mountain, Archie's grandmother caught him talking to the maple tree that stood outside their kitchen window, and later that same day she saw him talking to the rocks he held in his hands, and she stepped out onto the farmhouse porch and asked, "Archibald, sugar are you feeling all right?"

  Archie looked up, startled, and dropped the rocks. He opened his mouth to speak, thinking to tell her about his strange experience, but then he caught the look in her eyes, a look that said, "I can't cope with your problems right now, so please say you're all right." Archie knew she had thoughts of her own to dwell on, thoughts that caused the creases between her brows to deepen and that had made her burn the roux she was stirring on the stove a few nights before, so he nodded and said, "I'm fine, Grandmama. I was just studying those rocks and thinking out loud."

  His grandmother nodded, a look of relief spreading across her face. "Well, that's all right then." She hesitated a moment and continued, "I just got a call from Lenice Oates down at the library. She says a book you wanted came in. I have some—some errands I'd like to get done, and Clyde is busy, so I thought you might drive me to town and pick up your book at the same time."

  Archie looked at his grandmother: A pink flush rose up her neck, and her glance strayed from Archie's face to some distant something off to the left of her,

  Was his grandmother uncomfortable about asking him to drive? He had been driving since he was twelve. All of the kids on the local farms learned to drive early, so he didn't think much of it, but he knew his grandmother believed in obeying the law, and he was driving into town, not just on the farm the way he had done before his grandfather died.

  Archie was eager to get a look at the saints book he'd ordered, so he ignored his grandmother's behavior and told her he would run get the truck.

  On the way into town, Archie's grandmother sat beside him, unsnapping and snapping her purse. Archie glanced at her and decided something other than his driving her to town was upsetting her but he didn't say anything. She stopped fiddling with the purse and fussed with her dress instead, tugging at it and brushing her lap over and over again. Then when Archie pulled up in front of the grocery store, his grandmother told him to move on down the road a bit to the bakery shop. Archie did as he was told, and his grandmother climbed out of the truck and told him to pick her up in two hours. Archie blinked, surprised. What could take so long at the bakery? He looked at the other shops that lined the street—The Beanery, The Natural World, Century 21, a law office, and two art galleries. Maybe his grandmother was going to change her will.

  Archie didn't say anything. He only nodded and waved good-bye. Then he drove on to the library, parked, jumped out of the truck, and ran up the steps, eager to see the book about saints that he had discovered on the Internet. He had read that the book had three hundred and thirty-two beautiful illustrations. The Web page he had found only showed four but that was enough. Archie felt he just had to see the whole book. He had a passion for all art, even though he had enjoyed goading his grandfather with his love of comics, saying to him once when his grandfather tore up one of his drawings of Mountain Mike and called his art a waste of good time, "Why shouldn't I love drawing comics? After all, I'm named after a comic strip character aren't I?" His grandfather had been livid. Archie had been named after Silas's own father a war hero, and not the redheaded doofus in the comics.

  When Archie reached the top of the steps, he yanked open the library door then tried to act nonchalant as he walked toward the counter—no need to look too eager over a book about saints.

  Mrs. Oates saw him coming, pulled out a thick blue book from beneath the counter and handed it to him. She smiled. "Is this for art or religion this time, Archibald?" she asked. Archie knew after his recent experience up on the mountain that it was for both, but he lied and said, "Just the art." Then he blushed, and he knew he had given himself away. He felt bad about the lie. Mrs. Oates was the only one who really knew and understood the depth of his passion for art. She was the one who told him about the interlibrary loan system, which made it possible for him to get hold of almost any art book he wanted, and who introduced him to El Greco and van Gogh and his other favorite artists, but still he couldn't admit to her something he could barely admit to himself: that he was interested in anything religious. That had always been his grandfather's territory, not his.

  He took the book and sat down at his favorite table in the Art section and, with trembling hands, opened it. He hoped that maybe somewhere within the pages he would find a description, an explanation of what had happened to him up on the mountain. As ridiculous as he felt the idea was, he hoped to discover that his experience was common among saints and that his grandfather hadn't mocked him but had made a true prophecy.

  He was drawn at once, though, to the many paintings inside—some of them colorful and beautiful and some of them terrifying, with illustrations of all kinds of evil creatures surrounding the praying saints. All the saints, male and female, wore long, flowing robes, and all of them wore halos. Some of the halos were bright gold discs that gleamed off the page at him. Archie ran his fingers over them to see if he could detect the difference in texture and color from the rest of the illustration. They looked so real to him. Other halos were not discs but just thin gold circles floating above the saints' heads, barely visible.

  Archie read some of the text beneath the paintings and discovered that long, long ago, everybody worshiped the saints because they believed that saints could perform miracles. The book called this the cult of the saints. Archie closed the book and took a deep breath. He knew about cults. His grandfather had warned him that cults were dangerous, the work of the devil on earth, and he had sworn that he'd kill him with his own bare hands if Archie ever thought of getting involved with one. "It's soul danger and we don't mess with that, ya hear?" Archie bad heard, and he believed with all his heart that his granddaddy had meant what he said: He'd kill him with his own bare hands.

  Archie stared at the book's cover plain blue with black writing. Even the cover seemed like a deception. Looking at it he would never have guessed that the book held so many beautiful illustrations. One in particular caught his eye. It was a painting of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus, the two of them surrounded by angels with blue-tipped wings. Most of the picture was painted in a deep, rich blue. It was a blue like he'd never seen before, and he wondered what colors the artist had to mix to come up with it. Not everything in the painting was blue. Jesus was wrapped from the waist down in a gold cloth and wore a gold halo. Mary, too, wore a halo, and the angels had hair of gold, but it was that blue in all the robes and in the wings that made him draw in his breath.

  Archie thought surely a painting of Jesus and Mary would be all right to look at again. He reopened the book and found the picture. The blue was electric, and the charge ran straight through his eyes to his brain. He stared at the illustration a long time, and he felt something strange come over him. He didn't
know how to explain it to himself. He felt the way he believed he was supposed to feel in church but never did: holy and close to Jesus. Archie couldn't help himself; he looked at more illustrations, read the captions, read the chapter headings, read the chapters—first one, then another and another: "This is soul danger" he whispered to himself.

  He read about the way Catholics prayed for the intervention of the saints on their behalf. They prayed for Saint Anne to protect pregnant women, Saint Apollonia to heal toothaches, and Saint Basil to protect someone unjustly accused. There were all kinds of rituals and prayers a person could offer up to each saint, and once the saint had granted someone's wish, the person was supposed to offer up still more prayers.

  He read how to make a red sachet stuffed with laurel leaves and valerian and oregano, plus a piece of paper with the saint's name on it. The petitioner was supposed to burn the collection of herbs once the saint had granted the wish.

  "Just like witches," Archie said. "Pure, unholy witchcraft." He closed the book again. He'd found nothing in the writings that told of an experience like the one he'd had, and he knew that his grandfather's last words were not words of praise but an accusation. "You have accused me, Granddaddy Silas," he whispered. "You meant to curse me with your words, didn't you?" His only answer was the dull pressing sensation in his stomach.

  Archie stood up to return the book to Mrs. Oates and saw his grandmother's three best friends coming toward him in a line, their faces lit up with excitement.

  Archie hid the book behind his back.

  Mrs. Wally Hoover short and plump, with cheeks that jiggled when she talked, was the first one to speak. "Archibald, we're all just so excited you and your grandmama will be coming to live with us. Won't it just be so much fun? And you'll love living in town. We've got the band concerts in the park, and the art festival. You'll be able to walk to them, and you know, I still play quite a mean fiddle. People always love cloggin' to my fiddle."

  "Huh?" Archie looked from one to another of the women. What is she talking about?

  Then Miss Nattie Lynn Cooper a sturdy-looking woman who always carried her knitting stuffed in a backpack she wore slung over one shoulder the needles poking out like weapons, spoke up in a firm voice. "It's a good idea, Archibald. All of us have been rambling around in our big old houses all by ourselves now that our husbands and children are gone. It just makes good common sense to consolidate and all live at my place, don't you know. And we can help one another out. I've got my heart, you know, and Callie her arthritis. It'll be good to be able look after one another:"

  "And don't forget, I play the fiddle," Wally Hoover said again.

  "We're going to be living with y'all?" Archie asked, stunned. He imagined Wally Hoover with her fiddle, playing "The Devil Comes Back to Georgia" and shouting out to him, "Keep a-cloggin', Archibald!" He couldn't imagine how clogging the day away would make for a grand old time, especially since he couldn't dance worth a darn. And how could his grandmother sell the farm? Why hadn't she told him? Wasn't the farm supposed to go to him someday? How typical of her to do it this way, after the deed was done, and through her friends instead of telling him herself. She had gotten her friends to tell him the bad news the same way she had always gotten his grandfather to tell him anything important or painful. No wonder she had been so nervous in the truck. Archie looked at the three smiling women and felt helpless.

  Miss Callie Butcher the shortest and oldest of the three, said, "Won't it be wonderful, Archibald? We will all have the opportunity to raise you up in the way you should grow."

  Archie was speechless. How could he bear to live with four women—four old women? Four voices telling him to wipe his feet and clean his room and study longer and turn out the light and get to bed. Four women wanting to know where he's going, where he'd been, what he's got hidden behind his back or down in the basement or out in the barn. No, he couldn't bear the thought of four women fussing over his cuts and tears and broken bones. His whole life would change. Nattie Lynn's house was close to town, which meant it had no land to speak of, just a few acres, and no woods, no ponds or streams, and no mountain rising up from behind the house like a giant hunchback—no Caswells' Mountain, his sacred mountain. How could his grandmother turn her back on her whole life, their whole life, and move away?

  "Well, Archibald," Nattie Lynn said, "what do you think?"

  Archie swallowed hard and looked at the women's smiling faces; they were waiting for him to speak, to say something, to tell them what a great idea it was. He opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say.

  Callie Butcher shifted her cane to her left hand and Archie saw her hand shaking. His grandmother's hands shook, too. They always shook—from age or some secret illness, Archie didn't know, but they always shook. She was eighty-four years old. The other women were in their eighties, too; Callie, maybe in her nineties. He supposed it made sense for them to live together, just not with him.

  Archie smiled as best as he could and said, "It sounds like a sensible idea, y'all living together: Me and my grandmama can talk it over later." Archie checked his watch. "But right now I got to get to some errands that need doing, so—so, if you'll excuse me." He scooted out from behind the table, nodded at the women, and hurried away, dropping the book about saints at the front desk on his way out the door.

  He ran to the truck and climbed in. He pounded the steering wheel with the palms of his hands a couple of times and sat staring at the brick wall of the library, blinking back tears. Then he saw the women coming out of the library and started up the truck, backed out of the parking space, and sped off, unsure of where he was going. He wanted to go yell at his grandmother but two thoughts stopped him. The first was that he had never in all his life known his grandmother to change her mind once it was made up, and the second was that he was afraid if he stormed into the bakery or wherever she was and yelled at her she would collapse and die, like his grandfather had, and he couldn't live with that; things were hard enough already.

  He drove through town, past the boutiques and the brick-front stores, not knowing where he was headed. Then at the end of one of the last blocks on Main Street, he noticed the only eyesore in town, a narrow, pale green home, three stories tall, with peeling paint and rotten windowsills and a sign outside that had a hand painted on it with the words PALMS READ written in bold black letters above it.

  Archie had passed that house for fourteen years and had never given it much thought. His grandmother always said, "A fool and his money are soon parted," every time she happened to notice the sign or see the old woman who lived there rocking and fanning herself out on her porch. This time when he came to the house, Archie stopped. He didn't know what compelled him—a desire to get back at his grandmother by doing something he knew she'd disapprove of or a desire to know something of his future—but he turned into the driveway and shut off the engine. He stared at the sign a minute, took a deep breath, and said to the roof of the truck, "Lord, help me. What am I doing here?"

  Chapter 6

  ARCHIE CLIMBED OUT of the truck and followed the arrows pointing to a side entrance. He came to a door that had the word ENTER, written on a piece of poster board, stuck in the glass window. Archie entered. Beads hung down like a curtain in front of him. He parted the beads and stepped into a hallway with a large round table in the middle of it. A bell sat on the table. Archie studied the bell. His body wanted to run, but his mind told him to ring it. He picked it up and rang the bell. A man called out, "Coming!" Archie was startled. A man? Where is the woman? They always saw a woman sitting on the porch, fat with long gray hair and lots of jewelry on her hands.

  He had just decided to leave, to bolt back through the beads and into the truck, when a door opened and a man stepped into the hallway. He was thin, with black hair and a long mustache that he wore waxed and turned up at the ends. Archie recognized the man. He'd seen him in town before, at the gas station and sitting on the bench outside Ye Olde Country Store, reading the newspaper. He
was wearing baggy black pants that were held up with red-yellow-and-green suspenders.

  "You want your palm read?" the man asked, smiling, his deep-blue eyes looking eager.

  "Maybe," Archie said. "I thought a woman did it, though."

  "Used to; now it's just me. You still interested?"

  Archie shrugged. "I don't believe in palm reading."

  The man smiled, exposing his crooked, coffee-stained teeth. "Neither do I."

  "Then why...?"

  "Let's just say I'm perceptive. Anyway, people like palm reading. I look at their palms and tell them what the lines on their hands mean. They leave happy. Anyone can do it. Go to the bookstore, buy a book—lots of them around—spend about an hour studying the meanings of the lines, and you're in business."

  "'A fool and his money are soon parted,'" Archie said.

  "People get their money's worth and then some, sonny."

  "But you just said..."

  The man looked impatient. He set his hand on the doorknob as though ready to retreat back into whatever room he had come out of. "I said I was perceptive. I don't just read palms. I read people, but you can't put that on a sign. Tourists wouldn't understand. They expect palm readers in the South. They like to think they're doing something tacky and different, something they can go home and tell their friends they've done. That's the first time. By the end of the first visit, they're hooked—and they come back every summer to get a reading."

  "What do you mean by 'a reading' then? Like fortunetelling?" Archie took a step toward the man, setting the bell back on the table.

  "No, I don't tell people they're going to meet a tall, dark stranger or that the plane they're about to fly on is going to crash. And I'm not a prophet like your granddaddy supposedly was, either I don't proclaim doom and disaster if you don't change your sinful ways."

  "'Supposedly'? You don't think my granddaddy was a prophet?" Archie asked.