Son of a Preacher Man

by Karen M Cox

  Richard thought this pill would solve a lot of problems, for doctors, for men and women, and for society. I guessed it could, but change was hard, no matter how things turned out in the end. And I had a feeling something like this pill would instigate a lot more changes than just how many babies women had.

  I wondered what Lizzie Quinlan would think about this news. She’d probably have an opinion like Richard’s. How different her own life would have been different if that pill had been around in 1956. Would she even have been able to get a prescription for it, given that she was a teenaged girl in tiny Orchard Hill? I couldn’t imagine Doc Miller giving her such a thing. But if he had, she at least would not have had the strain of worrying about being pregnant. I reminded myself, though, that she still would have been used and abandoned by Seth Corbett. No pill could have prevented that.

  But it would have been one less trauma, and surely, that was better, right? Although, if she knew she wasn’t pregnant, she wouldn’t have gone to Mrs. G for help. Would they have become friends even without Lizzie imagining herself in trouble? And if Lizzie hadn’t become Mrs. G’s protégé, would she have ever been able to go away to school? Or would she have been stuck in Orchard Hill, even now?

  During my college days, I took a survey course of the world’s religions. Dad tried to talk me out of it. He wanted me to take Old Testament instead, but to be honest, I already knew the Old Testament pretty well. I’d heard it from the time I was old enough to talk, and I was curious about what other people around the world believed. One of the concepts that I found interesting was the Taoist idea of yin and yang, the complementary forces that bent and shaped the world. According to that world view, shadow accompanied light, choice also produced confinement, good outcomes occurred along with bad.

  It sounded a lot like Newton’s third law of motion to me: to every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. Then I thought—if Eastern and Western philosophies both came up with this concept, didn’t that make it a universal idea? And, could I not apply this Eastern concept to Western medicine? What would be the consequences of this little pill? Changing if and when babies came into the world? I couldn’t think of anything that would affect humanity more than that, in good ways and in bad. The endless possibilities made my head swim. But perhaps I, Billy Ray Davenport, wasn’t smart enough or wise enough to make sense of it. Was it foolish to try? Because if God could create the Earth and part the Red Sea and transcend death, surely, He had control of twentieth century medicine too—as much control as He wanted anyway.

  “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”

  Could it be that He chose this time and this place for this particular change in people’s lives?

  My mind raced along the chapter of Ecclesiastes to the last verse:

  “Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?”

  Those used to be just words to me, words I’d heard many times, that I’d memorized. But now I began to see how they fit—in medicine, with people, in the world. They told me to rejoice in the time I’d been born. I should claim the works of my world, for they were my right as the Good Book said. But I couldn’t see God’s plan for it all, and I would have to accept that. Because He was God, and I was not.

  However, I didn’t see Him being angry at me for asking the tough questions or not forgiving me when I didn’t understand.

  The gentle spring shower turned into a brief deluge outside the library’s open window. The librarian came over and smiled at me, saying, “I’m going to close this window, dear. All that moisture isn’t good for the books.”

  Maybe it wasn’t good for the books, but rain was good for the landscaping in front of the building and for the crops just outside of town. Action and reaction. Yin and yang. Every thing beautiful in His time.

  Chapter 18

  By coincidence, Dad was scheduled to preach in Orchard Hill on Easter Sunday 1961, and I was home for a well-deserved four-day weekend that year. The second year of med school was just as demanding as the first, and although I was holding my own, the mini-vacation was a welcome respite. Easter had always been a big holiday in our house, as big as Christmas, if not more so. So, on Saturday, I made the three-hour drive with my father from Aunt Catherine’s house in Kent to the Miller’s in Orchard Hill.

  The Miller household had changed in the two years since I’d been there. Louise had married some local yokel and was living in a house across town. Just like he promised, as soon as he graduated, Charlie married Jeannie and took her to California. Marlene was still living with her parents, working as a teller at the local bank. Doc and Mrs. Miller seemed just the same, however. Mrs. Miller was quiet and busy, and Doc’s easy-going kindness, thankfully, had never wavered at all.

  Just as they had that fateful summer in 1959, Doc and Marlene were waiting on the porch for us to arrive. It wasn’t a hot, sultry day this time. A spring wind, heavy with moisture and the smell of the warming earth, stirred the unsettled feeling I harbored in the pit of my stomach.

  Marlene was immaculately put together, as always. The blonde ponytail was gone, replaced with a teased up do that a lot of the young women were wearing now. But her syrupy perfume was the same, as well as that unpleasant glint in her eye when she smiled at me.

  “Hi there, Billy Ray. Long time, no see.”

  “How are you?” I said in a solemn voice.

  Her smile faltered a little, but after a second or two, she rearranged her features and dredged up a cheerful veneer. “I would offer to carry your bag, but you never let me before, so I guess it won’t be any different this time.”

  “You’d be right about that.”

  “Billy Ray!” Doc turned from greeting my father, shaking my hand and clapping me on the shoulder. “Good to see you, my boy! You look all grown up. Doesn’t he look all grown up, Marlene?”

  Her eyes slid up and down my person in a way that still felt slimy. “Yes, he does.”

  “Come on in then. It’s too bad Charlie isn’t here, but he and Jeannie don’t get back on this side of the country too often.”

  “Too often? Daddy, they haven’t been back at all since the wedding last summer.” She looked at me. “Mama always said that Jeannie Quinlan would take him away from us, and I guess she was right.”

  “I thought Charlie had a job waiting in California before he married Jeannie.”

  “Well…” Marlene looked surprised, as if she wasn’t aware I knew that. “I’m sure it was Jeannie’s idea.”

  I was sure it wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to argue the point.

  After a quick lunch, I left Dad and Doc chatting in the living room and slipped out to take a walk around Orchard Hill. I passed the library, the Dairy Queen, the laundromat—replaying each event from Lizzie’s and my past. I could sense her there, feel and hear her, but my image of her kept shifting and shimmering like a spirit. How odd it was to be in a place that felt familiar but see it with eyes that had absorbed so much else of the world. It unnerved me to be in the town that initially sparked so many changes in my thinking.

  Lizzie’s town.

  With no Lizzie in it.

  She was gone, at school of course. I knew that. I had carried a tiny hope that she might be home for the holiday, but there was no sign of her. I even walked past Mrs. G’s house, but there was no one home.

  When I got back to the Millers’, Marlene was waiting on the porch, a scarf over her hair in an attempt to preserve it from the windy day.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Here and there.”

  “Well, you missed Lizzie Quinlan,” she replied, her eyes glittering with a sharp, cruel light that I now recognized as jealousy tinged with bitterness.

  “She was here?” I couldn’t help the tremor in
my voice as I tried to speak around the lump in my throat.

  A derisive chuckle escaped her. “No, you dope. She’d never come here—not in a million years, not even to get a glimpse of you. But she was in town last month when your dad came to preach. Sat all by herself in the back pew.”

  “She did?” Curiosity made me tamp down my anger at Marlene’s cruel joke, even though I knew better than to trust her to tell the complete truth.

  “See? I knew that’s where you’d gone today. You were looking for her.”

  “I was not. I only went for a walk.” It wasn’t a lie—I hadn’t gone looking for her specifically. I was just sort of hoping.

  “You know, I pity you, Billy Ray.”

  I leaned back against the porch post and crossed my arms over my chest. The wind whipped up and left me with a distinct chill in my bones. “Why’s that?”

  “For all your high and mighty morals and principles, you’re no better than any other guy.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “You let that cheap, little tart tie you up in knots, just like she did to every boy in Orchard Hill. You’re still letting her do it. And she’s probably been with a dozen other guys since you.”

  “And you know this how? She doesn’t even live around here.”

  “I know the type.”

  “You know the type.”

  “Yep.”

  “The type of girl that uses guys.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Marlene Miller, you are the type.”

  Her eyes grew round with shock and anger. “How dare you? I have never—”

  “In all the time I knew Lizzie, she never treated me like a trophy or a possession or—”

  “The Lizzie Quinlans of the world just want to pull a guy’s strings.”

  Lizzie had said those same words before, but… “Lizzie didn’t want to do that to me,” I insisted, knowing I sounded hopelessly naive, even defensive. But even if I couldn’t convince Marlene of the truth, I knew it in the bottom of my soul. Lizzie and I had too much happen between us for me to doubt her. She had turned me down because she didn’t want to trap me. I knew for a fact that if Marlene ever got her hooks into me, she’d never let me go.

  “I wish I knew how she does it.” Marlene shook her head and looked genuinely puzzled.

  “You want to know how she does it?” My voice was dangerously low, even cruel sounding. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I’d walk to the moon and back for Lizzie because she let me be myself—not who she might have wanted me to be. That’s why I liked her so much. That’s why I still care what happens to her and why I wish her well. She was honest, even when it hurt or embarrassed me. She didn’t think she could own me. And never would she have done anything so sneaky as to let herself into my bedroom uninvited. Or steal an address out of my schoolbook.”

  Marlene sniffed. “That last bit sounds like an accusation.”

  “If the shoe fits…”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She got up and put her hand on the door.

  “Dad and I are staying in the same guest room, so you can’t try any midnight marauding under my blankets.” I had never spoken such ugly words to any woman, but they just kept tumbling out of me. I wanted to hurt Marlene’s vanity, since it was impossible to touch her heart.

  Her eyes glittered with malice. “Lizzie Quinlan is gone. You’ll never see her again. You should be thanking me and God and your lucky stars that you’re rid of her. She never had a thing to offer you but a reputation and estrangement from your father.”

  She went inside, and I stayed there for twenty minutes or more, letting the wind lash me until the clouds finally succumbed to their tears.

  On Sunday evening, we arrived back at Aunt Catherine’s. She had Easter ham, green beans, mashed sweet potatoes, and walnut bread waiting for us. We ate in virtual silence as was typical for her table, although Dad tried to engage me in conversation. I just wasn’t up for small talk.

  “You been working hard at school, have you?” he asked, his eyes resting on me in what appeared to be a casual manner. I, of course, knew that he was observing me carefully.

  “Yessir.” I pretended to be very interested in cutting my ham.

  “One of my parishioners here in Kent has a son who is currently in medical residency. He says that second year is awfully tough, academic-wise.”

  “It’s difficult, but I’m holding my own with the help of my study group.”

  “That’s good.” There was another stretch of silence; then Dad spoke again. “Maybe you could talk to him—my parishioner’s son, I mean. It would be good to talk to someone who’s been in your shoes. He could give you some pointers, introduce you to some people.”

  “I appreciate you thinking about me, Dad, but, really, everything’s going fine.” I didn’t want to put up with some cocky resident giving me advice at my father’s request. I knew the pecking order, and I was right near the bottom of it.

  “If you say so,” he said, clearly wanting to say more, but knowing he couldn’t convince me.

  After supper, I returned to my room to pack up the few things I’d brought with me. I had to leave early the next morning, before breakfast even, and it would help to have everything ready to go as soon as I woke.

  I wasn’t surprised at the knock on my door. Dad asked to come in, and when I said “sure,” he sat down on the bed next to my suitcase.

  “You okay, Billy Ray?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You seem…subdued. If you’re not sick in your body, are you sick in your soul? Are you fighting the blues? I never had much trouble that way, but sometimes your mama did, and my father did as well.”

  How could I tell him that this life I had wanted so much, this desire to be a doctor, was starting to wear on me?

  “I’m just tired, Dad. It’s nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”

  “Are you able to get yourself to church on Sundays?”

  Annoyance bubbled up in me that once again, that was his solution to everything. Church couldn’t give me the sleep I needed. Church couldn’t make time for me to eat a real dinner instead of instant coffee and take-out over the sink.

  “I go when I can. Sometimes I can’t.”

  “You—”

  “And starting in June”—I said over him—“it will be even more sporadic. I’ll start doing clinical work, and I’ll have to work on Sundays sometimes. People still get hurt and sick on the Sabbath.”

  “I know that, Son, I do. I’m proud of you for taking on this calling. Medical school is a challenge. Just make sure you keep the Lord in your life.”

  I looked down, resigned, and not willing to really talk about what was bothering me because it was all about Lizzie, and he wouldn’t want to hear. Most of the time I could put her out of my mind but going to Orchard Hill and listening to Marlene’s venomous words had dredged it all up again.

  “I’ll try to make sure I get to church on Sundays.”

  “Good.” He stood up and looked around the room, his hands in his pockets. “You’ll call if you need me, right?”

  “Sure, Dad.” I knew the chances that he would be around when I called were not very good. He still traveled a lot, and if I phoned, I’d be more likely to get my aunt or Zelda, the housekeeper.

  He gave my shoulder an awkward pat, and I read a helpless kind of bewilderment in his expression. He looked as if he might say more, but apparently, he changed his mind because he turned around and left the room.

  Chapter 19

  Back at school, I was restless and unsettled. By the time the week ended, I thought I would go crazy in that tiny apartment, so I grabbed my books, strapped a spare belt around them and headed to the library. A couple of hours studying made me even more antsy, so I took off toward Barney’s. Maybe some of the guys were there. After all, it was a Saturday night. I was in desperate need of some
thing to get my mind off my past.

  Barney’s was an old hole-in-the-wall place decorated with pictures from the Thirties and a gleaming showcase of bottles behind the bar. Wine and pilsner glasses hung upside down under cabinets that housed every variety of old fashioned and highball glass. The Studly Group usually sat at one of the tables, but I didn’t feel like sitting all alone, so I chose the bar instead. At least there, I could talk to Big Theo about the World Trade Center that New York’s governor had just authorized or current goings-on with the Cubans and the Russians. Theo always loved to talk about the news. I couldn’t very well sit at a bar and drink a Coke, or at least that’s what I told myself, and I was feeling reckless anyway, so I ordered a glass of that Scotch whiskey Ed sometimes drank. Theo raised his eyebrows when I asked for it, but he served it to me in a glass with some ice.

  The first drink was like the bitterest medicine, but I told myself I’d drink it slowly and then walk back home. Funny, but after about the third sip, it really wasn’t so bad, and that’s when I noticed the woman at the other end of the bar. She was watching me, so I smiled at her, and she stubbed out her cigarette and hopped off her bar stool. She walked over to the chair beside me and made herself at home.

  “Hey, I know you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, I’m the secretary in Dr. Griggs’s office.”

  Dr. Griggs was my histology professor last year, and it felt like I was in there about once a week during his office hours, trying to make sense of the notes I’d taken in class.

  “Oh.” My eyelids were starting to feel heavy, but at least I didn’t feel like the walls were closing in on me anymore.

  She stuck out her hand. “I’m Marian Baker.”

  “Nice to meet you, Marian Baker. I’m Billy R—I mean, I’m Bill Davenport.” I didn’t want to hear her say Billy Ray. It always sounded odd coming off strangers’ lips these days. And tonight, I didn’t want to be Billy Ray anyhow.