The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  It brought Audrey out of her chair. She took a short walk to the steps, also faced the road (still dark as it was), then turned in place and said one word. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you go back to her; and why did you stay, rotten as you’d been?”

  In full daylight, Mabry might have resented it, coming from the unwed mother of two boys by two separate fathers. But here and now he tried an honest answer. “Pure guilt, a great deal of pity, then eventually love. Frances was that good to know at last, and the main thing we learned was that we had a lot we could laugh at together. Why can’t more young couples learn that, near the start? As time moves on, it may be the main thing—for middle age anyhow. And then we were ready to talk about how we’d failed and to understand. Frances wouldn’t let me take what I knew I richly deserved—the entire blame for a broken marriage, a broken home, and the daughter I’d abandoned. In fact, two days before she died, just before the morphine overwhelmed her, she told me she took at least fifty percent of the blame for our failure. When I said ‘Oh no,’ she said ‘Ah yes.’ But when I asked how and why, she wouldn’t say more than just ‘I was not some body you needed, not steadily.’ I’ll swear she said it as two distinct words—some and body.”

  Audrey stayed in place but sat on the top step, hugging her knees, still facing him. “All right, two words. What did they mean?”

  Mabry thought Let up, Audrey. But he said “Oh Christ, I’ve thought about that ever since. I have to think she understood that part of me long before I did. See, I’d started sex as a very young boy—fourteen years old—with willing girls my age and a little older. By the time I knew Frances, and before we were married, I’d been close to a good many bodies. Not that I thought of willing girls as meat. I truly didn’t and a fair number of them are friends of mine still—Christmas-card friends, as my mother used to call them. Well-wishers anyhow. No, I honestly think the trouble was that, starting so early, I couldn’t get over the pleasure of watching another face at my personal mercy. And I kept on doing it—”

  Audrey rushed in. “God in Heaven, what’s wrong with men?”

  “Didn’t I just tell you? That’s one wrong anyhow. This week, in New York, we’ve seen other things. God can drive people crazy—maybe He’s the main problem—but that’s your department.”

  Audrey said “I’m far from a theologian yet. You may have a point, though.”

  It wasn’t by any means Mabry’s main point. “Audrey, you know we’re the monsters of the Earth—men, upright humans with cocks and balls (most of us anyhow). Wherever this New York horror ends, we could just finish the human race sooner or later—men, just men, forget hyenas and hammerhead sharks. But one of the few things every man’s had is a mother, right?”

  Audrey wouldn’t answer that. She waited awhile, then slowly rose and came back to her rocker.

  Mabry leaned back in his; and they sat on in place, each dozing off, then rousing and asking an easy question or making a short remark about tomorrow or a bird that would wake and try a few notes (practicing for dawn) or a car that would pass, inexplicably late or early. It was all but dawn when at last Audrey stood and said “Father Kincaid will be waking up now in another half hour. I’ll go back in. You need some coffee yet?”

  Mabry thanked her but no. Then he said “Maybe we can talk a little more tomorrow, at least before I leave on Monday.”

  Audrey said “We can try” and moved on toward the door.

  Mabry stayed in the rocker, dozing onward, till full daylight sent him to his bed. The whippoorwill had also quit, long since.

  He slept through the normal hour for Sunday breakfast. The house had stayed quiet and no one tried to raise him. Then when he heard Audrey sweeping the porch, he put on his robe, stepped to the door to wish her good morning, and told her he truly wouldn’t need breakfast—not to worry. He also told her he planned to leave for New York tomorrow and would like to have a little more talk with her this evening, if she could manage that.

  She said she had no other plans than to be right here.

  So Mabry made his plane reservation, then phoned the Algonquin and booked a small suite. The clerk was a man he recognized from older days; and the clerk claimed to recognize Mabry—“Come right on, Mr. Kincaid. You’ll have the entire place to yourself, except for me and a bellman or two. All our guests have fled. I’ll put you in the Dorothy Parker suite. At least the framed quotations on the walls can help cheer you up.” Then Mabry left a message on Charlotte’s answering machine to say he’d arrive, late afternoon tomorrow, and would get a taxi straight to the hotel and phone her from there. At least now he had the money to fund this mildly luxurious return to his home.

  Toward midday, while Audrey and his father were at church in Sherwin, he found sandwich makings and a glass of buttermilk, then headed out. And through the next four hours, he drove himself—in what seemed all but perfect health and in surely perfect weather—up and down country roads, working hard to convince himself of at least one thing his father believed: I could live somewhere besides New York. Whatever his answer would be to that, if it came anywhere near the plain word Yes, then he’d need to ask himself Where though? Would it need to be a city? Not if I could find a small stream of clients elsewhere. And however much body care I’ll need if I’ve truly got M.S. And a woman I might just manage to live with, in whatever condition I wind up in—with however much or little my body and mind will have to give her through the years. Or months. That led him on into wondering Am I thinking of love? I can’t have truly loved anybody but Mother and Frances ever—and Charlotte as a baby—and I wound up treating Frances like a rag doll after two or three years. If I’m badly sick, then won’t I mainly be looking for a nurse? And what are my chances of finding a nurse I might manage living with, not to mention vice versa?

  By the time he’d thought his way that far, the rental car had got him to the pool hall; and though it was Sunday, the Cold Beer sign was on. So he went in—for whatever reason—in the hope of seeing Vance Scott. When he stepped on into the smoky gloom of the long narrow space, he saw only a single lanky biker planning the final shot of a personal pool game as gravely as if his heart would cease the instant he failed. Mabry knew not to speak; he couldn’t ask for Vance. So he turned back to leave.

  But at last Vance’s voice spoke out. “Hell, buddy, you leaving without a kind word for the hopeless and needy?” He was nearly hidden behind the beer counter (beer and cigarettes, peanuts and girly magazines and out-of-sight rubbers—the proto-stock of all such spots).

  Mabry smiled for the first time in nearly a whole day. “Oh, say an extra word to me then—hopeless and needy are my first two names.”

  Vance raised both giant hands far into the air above him and gazed to the ceiling. “I’d call on the Ancient of Days to bless you, if there was an Ancient of Days anymore.”

  Mabry said “What happened to Him?”

  “Didn’t He die this past Tuesday morning, with the rest of those lily-white Christians and Hebrews in New York City?”

  Mabry said “Surely not.”

  “Then He sure as hell lost one major round in somebody’s game.”

  Mabry recalled his father’s line on the same event—very much the same line. But he only said “You must have lost a round yourself to be working back there. Is this your second job?”

  Vance said “You forgot I own the place.”

  If Mabry had ever known it, he didn’t now. But he said “Is it legal to sell beer on Sunday?”

  “Jesus, Mabry, where have you been these past hundred years? Satan reached Dixie, on his swing down the globe, some forty years ago.” Vance set a frosted Michelob on the counter.

  Mabry took out his wallet.

  Vance waved it off. “Don’t insult the only friend you’ve got.”

  The last time they’d met—three nights ago—Vance had known way too much of Mabry’s news. Was this another oracular finding from the mouth of his oldest sodden acquaintance? B
ut it’s likely true—have I got another friend, a male anyhow? So he sat on a stool, four feet down the counter, and asked a question he’d thought about often as he waited with Frances in her hard last days. “Vance, why don’t American men have friends?”

  Vance turned it over once. “After they’re married you mean?” But before Mabry could agree, Vance said “For a start, American women won’t let us.”

  Mabry slapped the counter firmly. “Right. But why the hell not? It would get us out of the house and out of their hair—all their various hair departments.”

  Vance said “Pure meanness or jealousy or mother-love. They birth you and raise you, so they want to give you all the love they’ve got and that takes forever.” When Mabry nodded and drank a few sips of his beer, Vance said “So you got up with Miss Gwyn Williams.”

  The oracle, again, God damn his nosey soul. “You her social secretary, are you?” There was more than an edge of resentment in his question.

  Vance raised both flat palms to say Back off. “No, Mabry, but this is a really small place—not even an honest town anymore. We’ve even shrunk since your prime days. Last census said we had eighteen hundred souls, give or take a few dozen—more than half of them black—so white folks know everything every other white folk does. We even know each other’s license plate numbers.”

  Mabry said “I’m driving a rental car.”

  “And rental cars have a numerical prefix that tells you, right off, a stranger’s in town—or an old local boy that went off, made good, and is gracing us po’ folks with a visit. Some fellow the same age as you and me came in here the other night, late in the night, and told me he’d seen your rental car parked outside Gwyn’s house. Congratulations. She’s a serious looker still, so I hear (you know she and I were in grade school together, but I haven’t seen her since she left here for Asia).” By then Vance had opened the ancient cash register and was counting a considerable stack of paper money.

  Mabry said “Maybe you shouldn’t flash that dough.” When Vance said nothing, Mabry tried it another way. “You ever been robbed?”

  Vance set the money down on the counter and began to open the buttons of his shirt. After the first two, he continued downward with a comic imitation of striptease. Finally with a gentle shout of “Whoa there, boys!” he revealed his whole chest. It was not just surprisingly lean and well-muscled, it bore a long wide scar below the breastbone—fully the size of a man’s giant hand. After five seconds, and no explanation, Vance slowly rebuttoned and took up the cash.

  Mabry said “Looks like somebody dropped a big rock in a pool of lava.”

  Vance finished counting and stretched a rubber band round the stack. First he said “Eight hundred and twenty-two bucks—a right good take for an average week in a country village.” Then he finally smiled. “You always could say what you saw, clear as any poet.” Next he started wiping down the counter, as if the money had been human shit. Then again he smiled. “It felt more or less exactly like you said—but let’s say a boulder got absolutely flung into cooling lava. Yeah, that was it.”

  “A pistol or what?”

  “Just a sawed-off shotgun.”

  Mabry said “Progress comes to Peanut County.”

  “Wouldn’t progress have called for a well-cleaned Kalashnikov at the least?”

  Mabry said “Right! How long ago was it?” The center of the scar looked old, the edges fresh.

  “Nine or ten months, not quite a year.”

  Mabry said “It looks amazingly healed.”

  Vance nodded but then he said plainly “It’s been steady hell.”

  “Pains you still?”

  Vance said “Every hour on the clock—the thing I saw. It never really quit me.”

  “What thing?”

  Vance said “The living fellow that shot me—a white man I’d never seen before—was of course after money. I didn’t try to fight; he’d unveiled his shotgun when he came to the counter. I just emptied the register and gave him the whole take, but then I tried a fool trick I’d heard about on TV back in the days when the streets of New York and D.C. were ninety percent muggers. I looked him in the eye—his face wasn’t covered—and said ‘I think I know your mother.’ He looked as shocked as if I’d thrown two thousand volts through him. So I tried it another way. ‘Don’t I know her? Son, I think I went to high school with her.’ I thought it might somehow change his mind about harming somebody that knew his mother. Turned out I was wrong. He must have hated every gut she had. That’s when he raised his gun and fired.”

  Mabry was stunned. “Jesus Lord.”

  Vance smiled. “You got it, first guess. That’s who he was—the true Son of God, come to wake me up, I’m damned nearly sure.”

  Mabry took a slow swig of warm beer and wished for about six ounces of Scotch. Jesus—I knew this used to be the Bible Belt, but that’s the last thing I thought I’d hear from Vance. Before he could ask though, Vance bent way down, brought up a full pint bottle of Dewar’s Scotch and an old tin cup, and poured a big drink which he pushed toward Mabry—an almost surely illegal transaction. So when he’d all but drained the cup, Mabry said “You want me to ask what he woke you from?”

  Vance was smiling still. “Not especially, no, though you’re likely the only friend I’ve got.” Yet in the face of Mabry’s hands, declining the question, he said “I woke up from the trance I’d been in forever. Now I just mainly think about every person I’ve ever done wrong by, especially the children—I’ve had four, you know, so far as I recall. I try to write at least two letters every week, begging all their pardons, one by one, enclosing whatever profit I’ve made since the last two letters. Some of them write to thank me, but that’s not why. I’m a more or less happy man, standing here.”

  Mabry said “You do look good, considering our age and the wear we’ve taken.” He finished the whiskey. “Did they ever catch the fellow?”

  Vance shook his head. “Nobody to catch. You guessed who he was. They caught him once and nailed him up high. Then he came back for me.”

  Crazy as any bedbug. And it came as a surprise. Mabry had known a handful of old friends who fell in the holes they’d dug for themselves with the drugs and drink that had seemed such cushions in the longish dream of the 1960s; but though he’d seen Vance so seldom since boyhood, he’d have guessed him a good deal tougher than this. He slid his right hand forward on the counter, though, more than halfway to Vance.

  And Vance looked down but made no move to meet the gesture. Yet when Mabry stood and offered to pay for the single beer, Vance looked toward the one boy still in his deep dream with the cue stick; and he lowered his voice to speak in private. He was speaking to Mabry. “That thing you mentioned—that sickness you dread? It’s the grandest blessing you’ll ever receive.”

  Mabry laughed. “You get that wisdom from your Friend Upstairs?” Despite his words, he’d wiped all irony from his face; and by the time he finished the question, he was all but serious.

  Vance took it that way. He said “No, but lately I make very few mistakes, as you likely noticed. You know what I learn just by staying in this room, tweaking my ears.”

  Mabry said “I’ve noticed and I know.” He gave a mute wave and walked toward the door.

  He was almost out before Vance laughed, a great cascade of likable laughter. He was reaching behind him for the calendar—young Marilyn naked as any grand jaybird, stretched on her famous red velvet blanket. Vance said “Come here.”

  Mabry obeyed, took the calendar, and studied it closely. She was way more perfect than any girl should have been—or should be now. He’d only recently heard on the radio that, if she’d survived, she’d be seventy-five. Well, she hadn’t survived and here she was in mere perfection. He offered it back to Vance. “Maybe if you’d handed this to Jesus, you’d have a smooth chest.”

  Vance said “Good idea but I didn’t think of it. I doubt he’s heavily into blonds, though.” He wouldn’t accept his gift back from Mabry. “No, you take it
back to New York when you go—if there’s a piece of New York left by next week. You could sell it on almost any street corner, I’ll bet you anything. Or if not, just give it away to some needy man who’s your and my age. He can take it back behind an old garbage can and whack off till his heart quits on him. Or his whacker falls off from radiation poison.” The great stream of laughter poured out again.

  How much of any of this has he meant ? Is it all a big joke on the godless City Slicker? But Mabry knew not to ask, so he tried again to say a second goodbye and get to the door—with Marilyn safe for another few moments in his two-handed grasp—and this time he left.