The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  The sound of his first name in Audrey’s strong voice was all but a shock. He said “Give me just long enough to visit the john, and we’re on the road. Will you come with us, lady?” He hoped he’d get an hour alone with his father, but he tried to conceal it.

  Audrey said “The lady thanks you but has to say no. I’ve got a few million chores right here.” She was plainly glad to pass Tasker on to his son for the morning.

  And when he’d got Tasker and the snazzy black wheelchair to the foot of Marcus’s wobbly ramp, Mabry looked behind them to the door where Audrey stood watching intently. He gave her a grin and waved her away.

  She managed a smile and went back into the kitchen.

  Then Mabry said “Pa, you claim you weigh—what?—a hundred fifty pounds?” He was overestimating in hopes of jogging the full truth out of this sparrow-boned man who looked a little plumper after weeks of Audrey’s cooking.

  But Tasker said “One hundred thirty-seven pounds, to the ounce. Old Nelson checked it at the feed and seed store on their big scale just before I broke this ankle.”

  Mabry smiled. “How many meals ago was that?” He meant to be teasing his father gently.

  But Tasker took it hard. “Look, son, this whole jaunt was your idea.”

  Mabry said “Still is” and moved in to lift the body that had launched his own tall body. It weighed no more than a small arm of firewood. When they both were settled and the engine had jumped into service agreeably, Mabry thought for the first time today I hope my brain behaves on us now. No double vision, no floods of light. A silent check of his checkable resources, and he seemed merely normal, so he turned to his father. “Choose your destination, sir. Or our first stop anyhow—we can drive to the moon.”

  Tasker said “I’m sorry it’s no place new, but you’re bound to know I need to visit the graveyard.”

  Mabry thought Where else? but he said “—My command” and off they rolled.

  By daylight the cemetery’s three piney acres had none of the weird weight he’d felt two nights before; and Mabry looped the car around the perimeter, passing again the stones of a few distant cousins and two or three dozen others whom even Mabry could place in the social order of their generations with a clean precision. There were whole families who ranged in station from the lowest category, which was “good country people,” on up to the highest, “well-to-do” (interesting that the lower reaches were described rewardingly as morally good while the highest were merely rich). The worst of all stations, the dread “white trash,” were not represented in this peaceful stretch by so much as a single corpse or stone; and of course there were no blacks. He even asked about the poorest whites. “Pa, is there some sort of dump way back in the woods for poor white trash? Where the hell are they?”

  It got a welcome laugh from Tasker. “That’s an excellent question. I’m afraid I can’t tell you. When I was a boy they buried themselves, one at a time, in narrow graves at the edge of the woods on whatever ground they were tenant farming at the time—mustn’t waste good cotton or tobacco land. Then when the Holy Roller churches moved into the county—Churches of God, they were usually called—I guess they could offer graveyards of their own. Now of course the trash can lie anywhere they want in the finest graveyards of Raleigh or Charlotte—they’re all running banks now or at least selling cars.” Mabry was almost passing the Kincaid plot without a pause. So Tasker said “Stop here. Right now.” He was suddenly urgent.

  Mabry stopped and even backed up a few yards so his father’s door was neatly flanking the plot. Surely he wouldn’t want to be lifted out here and rolled closer still. But Mabry waited in silence for Tasker’s next wish. The window rolled down, and Tasker looked out for maybe two minutes—it was just before ten, and the light and air truly couldn’t improve. When his father didn’t speak, Mabry finally said “Who was buried first—how long ago?”

  Tasker said “Bound to have been my father’s father, old Walter Kincaid—in the late 1880s. My dad was a baby when the bastard died.”

  Mabry said “Was he that mean?”

  “Mean as any six snakes, drunk by five a.m. most days and given to beating any flesh in his reach.” But when Tasker faced Mabry, his rheumy eyes brightened; and he burst out laughing. “Let me show you some more.” He actually opened the door on his side and tried to swing his gimp leg out.

  Mabry said “Whoa! You can’t walk, remember?”

  “No, but you can—or so you promised. You backtracking on me?”

  Mabry said “Not at all. We’ll need to ration how many times I pick you up today though—once already. Is this our next venture? You sure about this?”

  Exasperation, impatience, even a little anger swept over Tasker’s face before he calmed himself enough to speak. “I’m entirely sure of myself, Dr. Kincaid; and I’ll be most grateful for any amount of your ample strength.”

  Mabry nodded. “Just checking. And don’t forget, it’s Master Kincaid. I’m nothing but a simple Master of Arts, no PhD.”

  “You remember one thing too—I told you I’d gladly help you pay for a doctorate. You said you wouldn’t need it.” When Mabry tried to speak, Tasker held up a hushing palm. “Master Kincaid, kindly lead us to the dead. They’ve waited too long.”

  Mabry said “The Master is very much on his way.” He swiftly stepped out of his door and hauled out the crutches his father had insisted on bringing.

  Surprisingly nimble now, Tasker spent half an hour doing what he’d never quite done before—unloading on Mabry all he thought the next generation should know about these lost kinfolk. Two of them, he’d fairly recently concluded (from general hints on TV and radio concerning the nation’s male population), were incestuous molesters of Tasker’s own mother in her early girlhood. But then family sex was surely standard fare in the old rural and small-town worlds where your kinfolk were likely the only folk you knew; and genuine affection (not to speak of love or lust) could lead, soon enough, to a misplaced hand or other appendage. Tasker passed on beyond the molesters’ stones with no sign of hate or even condemnation. He revealed what he’d never mentioned before—that his own mother had shut his father off from any form of intimate contact once Tasker was born, though the marriage had lasted another thirty years (who had told Tasker that?).

  And perhaps most shockingly, he stood at the foot of his favorite sister’s grave and very calmly said “You know that Erma was all but a strumpet—was almost surely one in her days in D.C. when World War II was on? When she died of some kind of overdose, at age thirty-six (we called it a very premature stroke), her landlady sent me a packet of her leavings; and of course the main thing was four volumes of a diary. I made the mistake of gulping them down—nobody else in the family but me could read her handwriting—and line by line she got more obsessed with the bodies of men than anybody else I’ve ever known. Just the young servicemen she found in bars and, eventually, in Union Station where she’d pick them up and let them rent a cheap hotel room where she could turn loose all she’d learned about human skin and how to reward it—especially since, as she wrote in the margin more than once, ‘A high proportion are bound to be slaughtered before they can even recall my name much less my lips or how little I cost them.’” As Tasker tried to get the diary quote right, he stumped up the length of her grave—right on her body—till he paused, dropped his crutches and steadied himself on her stone with both his hands. Then he looked to Mabry, suddenly as lost as a child in the woods (had Erma’s memory stunned him?). “Help me out here, boy. Where the hell am I?”

  Mabry smiled uneasily. “You seem to be telling me all I never knew—and more than I need—about our sexual history.”

  Tasker said “Then I beg your full pardon. They were all grand people. Did I also say that?”

  Mabry said “I’ve always assumed that much was true. You’re a great forgiver, aren’t you?”

  But by then his father had somehow managed to bend and retrieve his dropped crutches, fending off any help from Mabry. He hoppe
d past two more stones and stopped again. Mabry thought it had to be his own mother’s spot, but Tasker said “One more time please—and I know it’s as painful for you as for me—tell me what you know about his death.”

  Oh Christ, it’s Gabriel. Can I somehow refuse him? Mabry walked on over. Tasker’s back was turned to him, a small mercy; so he spoke to his back. “Thanksgiving 1970, my senior year in college. Gabe’s freshman year and, as you recall, he was almost surely flunking out. I’d got home late the night before and had every hope of sleeping till at least noon—you know, repairing my almost infinite sleep debt. I’d also brought that girl you thought was the finest of all—Eileen Van Straaten—but Gabe wouldn’t hear a word of refusal. I had to get up at dawn with him and that pitiful boy he brought from Davidson—Campbell McClain—and lead them out quail hunting with Hector Smiley’s dogs. Maybe somebody could turn Gabe down, but I never could—God curse my soul—and so I joined him and that roommate for the gigantic breakfast Mother and Betsy had ready for us.” He stopped for a long ten seconds. “Where were you, Pa?” Mabry meant it as a genuine question.

  But Tasker stood in place, not turning, and shook his head. Did he truly not know?

  Had he held some kind of special service on that Thanksgiving? Mabry still didn’t know.

  But Tasker said “I was in the house, with my mother and yours, all ready for you three boys to get back and eat the gigantic meal that was waiting.”

  Mabry said “All right. We scared up more than one covey of quail and even glimpsed a few wild turkeys—the dogs had a grand time—but though we more than halfway tried to bring home some birds, we hadn’t hit a damned thing. Campbell came closest, and he’d never held a gun till that morning (or so he claimed). Then by noon we were chilled to the bone, and Gabe as always was starved for the next meal. So we gladly obeyed his order to start a great circle to the left and head on home. I’d long since noticed the sort of thing Gabe wouldn’t have seen if you’d forced him to train the Palomar telescope right on the spot—Campbell was almost dead from the cold. So when he got the signal to head for warmth, he speeded up well ahead of Gabe and me and got to the old barbed-wire fence first. Gabe’s bound to have known his city friend had slim acquaintance with the art of threading a human body, not to mention a shotgun, through that many strands of rusty wire. He yelled for Campbell to wait, then ran ahead to coach him through. But Campbell’s ears were either frozen shut or he was showing off. Since the last strands of wire were almost on the ground, he’d got to his hands and knees and was just starting the crucial move—pushing his gun ahead to the far side beyond himself, as Gabe had surely taught him (or he ought to have never left Davidson College). By then I was near enough to see it plainly but maybe not near enough to do more than shout. And somehow I didn’t even shout. But neither did Gabe. He didn’t run either. He only loped in longer strides—I guess he couldn’t imagine a fool as big as Campbell. But he got to his friend and dropped to his own knees. The gun was skewed toward them, and then it went off. I was no more than two feet behind him.” Mabry had got that far with his voice in bearable shape. He thought he could reckon on a couple more sentences before breaking down, so he said more than he intended to say. “It killed the wrong boy.” He meant himself of course; and at the moment, he believed his claim. But in another moment he realized he was waiting for a firm correction from his father, if only a merely polite refusal.

  No words came from Tasker.

  So Mabry said “You’ve understood that, all these years since?” What he meant was “I should have been the boy to die.”

  Still nothing from his father, though.

  “Sir, I’d be very grateful for an answer.”

  Tasker had actually gone to his own knees, awkward and dangerous as that was. His back was to Mabry, and with both arms he was leaning his whole weight on Gabe’s stone. He didn’t look back, but finally he said “Honest to Christ, I don’t have an answer.”

  “You wish I’d been the boy that got shot.” Nothing in Mabry’s voice indicated that he meant it as a question.

  And his father only said “Gabriel Kincaid was the one human being I ever truly loved. I’m not proud to be telling you that, though he was a splendid boy—not smart enough and careless with his gifts but true gold to look at, and remember that laugh?” Mabry didn’t speak and Tasker didn’t wait. “I should have loved his mother at least as much and you too, Mabry. But I’m way too old, out here in the open day, to tell you or God-above a lie. And Gabe’s been gone, as you can see, for very nearly thirty-one years. The end of the World Trade Center in New York is nothing—flat nothing—compared to the death of that one child. He very well might have saved the Earth with his plain goodness, if he’d bothered to last.” Even Tasker was conscious that his final sentence might sound demented.

  In any case, Mabry came up behind his father close enough to see the date on the nearly black granite. He didn’t deny a word his father had said. In the dry fall light, as gorgeous as light got to be anymore, he might have concurred with the very strange claim, whatever it meant. All he did, though, was look hard at the date till he had it memorized. Then he said “Yes, sir, I can see it, way better than even you could guess. But I’ve known it forever anyhow. You didn’t have to tell me.” He even considered, for maybe three seconds, turning then and leaving this truthful old man alone at the grave, his crutches unreachable beside him on the ground. But then he bent to get them.

  Tasker said “We need to hurry on home. I’ve got my appointment.”

  “What appointment?”

  “With that contractor, the one I mentioned.”

  “No sir, you didn’t mention any contractor.”

  Tasker then recalled the name. “Robo—something.”

  Mabry said “Robo Ketcham—the one that restores old local houses for millions of bucks?”

  Tasker said “That’s the man.” He looked to his watch. “And hell, we’re late.”

  To speed them onward, Mabry temporarily laid the crutches back on the ground and bent to hoist his father.

  Robo was rocking in the green porch swing when they pulled into the drive. Audrey had staked him out with a paper napkin and a Coca-Cola. He’d poured a small package of salted peanuts into the bottle, and thus awarded himself a real treat—one Mabry hadn’t thought of in thirty years but longed for at once (Robo had brought just the one pack of nuts). He was also reading the final pages of a thick hardback of Anna Karenina. Turned out he’d been a Russian major at Wake Forest and was reading the novel for the fourth or fifth time, this time in English because he’d heard the new translation was the finest of all. All Tasker had to say about Anna was “Mr. Ketcham, I’ve yet to read that book and may never get to it. It’s the inside dope on adultery, though—right?”

  For whatever reason of his own, Robo blushed ferociously—he was somewhere in his early forties, a genuine redhead with the naturally trim torso and hips of a boy who’s never been near a gym, thank God, but is worth a moment’s envy. When the blush began to fade, Robo held up the Tolstoy and shook it. “Yes sir, Reverend Kincaid. And it kills ’em all off—the lady anyhow and she’s the one you care about.”

  Mabry said “You ever see the Garbo movie?”

  Robo said “Never have but I saw Garbo.” By then he’d joined the Kincaids in the yard.

  Even Tasker, in his unworldliness, was mildly amazed. “Young as you are, you saw the most famous recluse of the twentieth century?”

  Robo said “Thank you, sir. I’m older than I look. The first time I ever went to New York, about 1970, I forgot to take a raincoat; and a man on the street told me I could find a good cheap one at Alexander’s department store, in their bargain basement. I admit I was fairly young at the time, but I’d already fallen in love with old movies, and I certainly knew who Greta Garbo was. Anyhow, soon I was roaming through a thicket of cheap raincoats—racks set so close together you could barely move between them. In no more than five minutes, this little short queer fellow stru
ggled to reach me through the coats. When I saw him coming, I was so young and startled I thought I should run; but running was completely out of the question, so I held my own and when the little fellow got right up to me, he beckoned for me to bend down to him. By then he looked harmless enough to trust. I leaned way low and he whispered ‘Don’t look right now but we are in a sacred place.’ I figured he might have lost his mind, but I whispered back ‘What’s sacred?’ I was young enough to think the Holy Ghost might be smothered here in cheap rainwear. But he said ‘Greta Garbo is right there behind us, not ten yards away. She’s a notorious bargain-hunter.’ I kept looking at coats for another two minutes while the guy wandered off; and when I looked around finally, Miss Garbo was standing no more than a yard from me. She had on a wide limp hat that nearly hid her face, but there was nothing she could do about her eyes—she had the best eyes I’d seen up till then, and she was staring directly at me.”

  Mabry said “Best eyes ever made.”

  Even Tasker agreed. “And the eyelids too. Ever notice her eyelids could have covered another two or three eyes?—they were that long and wide.”

  Robo said “You noticed just now I’m a terminal blusher. Well, I cut loose with a major blush. It felt like silent blood was pouring all down my neck and shoulders—and Miss Garbo actually touched me. Swear to God, she reached out and took me by the left elbow. And she said ‘Child, are you all right?’ I was sixteen already but plenty of people still called me child; so it didn’t seem strange, not in her deep voice. But all I could think to say was ‘Ma’m, have you seen any black raincoats?’ What I was after was a romantic trench coat, real spy-movie style. And she said ‘Oh sure, I just saw the best.’ She pointed way behind her toward a dark corner, and I squeezed my way on over there. Found my raincoat too and it’s still in my closet—can’t bring myself to throw it away. My wife thinks I’m crazy.”