The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  “They won’t tell you, will they? I been begging to know for four days now. They won’t barely give me air to breathe, much less the truth. They think I’m just some rickety hick from back in the corn rows.”

  Mabry said “We can certainly see you’re not.”

  She thanked him for that. “You reckon you could help that little Indian fellow give me the time of day? For a start, you could tell him my boy is the only thing I’ve got left aboveground today. Even that cold bitch wife of his is gone, took every cent of his money and ran—didn’t leave us even a single food coupon. Not a single grandchild.”

  Audrey said “Then you live alone?”

  “Alone? Christ Jesus,” she said, “I’m so alone I can still hear termites clipping their toenails deep in the floorboards, not another sound anywhere near me and I like noise.” But again she laughed.

  So Mabry said “I’m going downstairs to the cafeteria right now, ma’m, to get me a bite. If I see Dr. Sharma, I’ll mention we talked and that you need attention.”

  Again she thanked him but before he reached the door, she called again “Mister.” When Mabry took a step back toward her, she lowered her voice. “We’re talking about the same fellow, aren’t we?—that gentleman with all the eye makeup on, that knows more about everything I can mention than I’ve ever known about anything, even having babies; and I’ve had four, three of them I buried: flu and whooping cough.”

  Mabry smiled. “I doubt it’s eye makeup, just his natural shadows; but yes he does seem highly informed. Named Dr. Sharma, a fine name where he comes from in India. To me he mainly seems homesick; but I’ll make an extra effort to find him, next thing I do, and I’ll mention you’re feeling alone yourself.”

  “Alone, son! I feel like the last soul breathing, except for you and these friends of yours here.”

  Audrey and Marcus were still in the room. They made sympathetic sounds.

  Mabry gave them all a small wave.

  And he did have a chance to find the doctor—seated downstairs in the farthest corner of the dim cafeteria, alone with no more than a veggie burger. Quickly, he tried to explain the old woman’s genuine woe.

  Then Dr. Sharma’s face begged him to sit, a sudden revelation of some immense solitude. “Yes, Mr. Kincaid, I know of those matters and am moving every mountain I can for her; but I’m gravely afraid I’ll leave her alone—here on Earth, tonight if not sooner—with her son’s dreadful wife.” At the shocking word dreadful, Sharma blushed deeply. And at last he actually touched Mabry’s hand. “You will not say a single word of this to anyone please.” He pointed above him.

  When Mabry stood he could only thank the young man, another lost creature.

  Back in his father’s house, Mabry made a pot of coffee, then realized coffee was his last present need. Every cell craved sleep. But some no doubt Scottish gene floating in him demanded he drink at least one hot cup of the coal-black brew. He sat at the kitchen table and let that fine drink take him. A few yards behind him, he could see that his father’s room was still disheveled from the quick departure two days ago. Why hadn’t Audrey straightened it up when she and Marcus were here yesterday? Is she silently thinking he’ll never get back? Maybe she’s right and Lord help us if she’s not. Still the disorder bothered him. He walked in, neatened the white bedspread, and picked up his father’s black-leather New Testament, “With the Words of Our Lord in Red Ink”—it lay on the floor beyond his wheelchair near the whiskey bottles.

  Then the telephone rang. Oh Christ. Mabry couldn’t think what to pray for, if he’d prayed for anything at all—a better few months or years of life for Tasker or an easy death. He trotted to the hall.

  Right off, the voice was clearly Gwyn Williams’s. “Mabry, sweetheart, you’re here. I’ve been frantic to find you.”

  “I just this minute walked in from Roanoke Rapids. I got there yesterday afternoon.”

  Gwyn said “I’d have called a lot sooner, but I just heard half an hour ago. Tommy Waller at the drugstore said Marcus Thornton had told him several days ago.”

  “It was Wednesday afternoon. I flew down from New York yesterday morning and spent last night in the room with Tasker.”

  “And it was a stroke?”

  Mabry said “A fairly light one apparently. I shared a cafeteria lunch in the hospital just now with his Indian doctor. Pa’s paralyzed down his whole left side, but his right arm and hand still work occasionally.”

  Gwyn said “But can he speak?” From her tone, the importance of that was plain.

  “He’s said some three or four words to me. He’s clear enough but it’s obviously a struggle.”

  “He’s bearing up, though?”

  Jesus, Gwyn, bearing up is not quite the phrase. But he said “He seems sufficiently patient anyhow.”

  “So what’s the outlook?”

  Again, something in Gwyn’s voice rubbed him wrong. Was it merely her lifelong officious air? I own all the facts; I can solve this problem in under two seconds. Mabry said “I doubt he’ll be pouring you communion very soon.”

  Gwyn kept her silence for a full four seconds—she counted the time. Then gently she hung the receiver up.

  Mabry knew he’d badly offended her and cheated on his father’s confidence. I’ll call her back in another few minutes. Just give me some air. The stale air in the shut-up house seemed a powdered dry poison, and he moved toward the front porch. But before he was there, great bone-dry heaves climbed up his throat like hands on a rope and stopped him in his tracks. He could tell himself, rightly, that this was no symptom of any disease but a poor-assed son’s inadequate guilt for long stingy years with a parent who can never have meant worse than kindness.

  Before he was even in full control, he returned to the phone and was punching Gwyn’s number like a combination to the actual doors of Heaven or Hell—that urgent anyhow.

  She didn’t answer.

  He dialed her again and, when he still failed to rouse her, he thought of driving straight to Sherwin and explaining himself. But then he might be out of touch with his father. All right. I’ll phone Audrey and tell her where I may be.

  Marcus answered on the third ring but hardly seemed to know him. Instead of addressing Mabry by any of his several names, he’d only reply to direct questions in a voice that seemed understandably exhausted. He’s a lot younger than Audrey and me though.

  So at last Mabry had to say “Is somebody there in the room right now?”

  “Nobody but Father Kincaid, no.”

  Still polite, yes, but not as tired sounding. So Mabry’s own voice hardened very slightly. “Then, Marcus, I’m his son—the man who’s running this show or paying for it.” The money part was not strictly true, though it might come to that.

  Marcus took a long pause, then said “All right.”

  Something peculiar’s surely going on. He asked to speak with Audrey.

  Marcus said “She’s gone to get her a Coke.”

  So Mabry had to ask straight out. “Then please take the pencil on my father’s table and write this number down.” He read him Gwyn’s number, then said “You got it?”

  “I do—Miss Williams, yes. We’ll call you there, if anything happens.”

  Hell, does he know every number in town? Very likely yes—maybe from his business. Then I’m blocked on all sides. No point in denying the rumor that I’ve gone out now to find a woman. He had no time or strength at the moment to dig further down into Marcus’s mood. He’s a very young man after all—nineteen. Mabry sat in the front hall another ten minutes. Then he took up his bag and went to the bedroom he’d last occupied. The bed was made neatly—clean pillow-case and sheets. He’d stretch out there and beg for sleep. Oddly, it came.

  Mabry thought he’d waked himself. He was lying on his left side, facing the window; but it took him awhile to realize that, again, his eyes weren’t working, not normally. Before he could sit up and check on the problem, though, he heard a loud knocking at what seemed the front door and the
n a voice maybe calling his name. When he’d got to his feet, he nearly fell over. He could see fairly clearly; but when he paused to check, he realized that only his left eye was seeing. The right eye had gone fully blind again. Whoever had knocked, and called his name, called out again—some unintelligible string of words—a woman’s voice most likely. So half blind and tattered from his nap, he walked to the front door.

  Gwyn had given up and was halfway to her car before he opened on her. He literally couldn’t think of words to say, but she turned back toward him and slowly came on.

  By the time she could hear him, he’d remembered to say “Sweet lady, I’m sorry as I can be. I tried to call you straight back and say so, but not a soul answered.”

  That stopped her on the porch steps. “My soul got killed nine years ago in south Taiwan.”

  For at least five seconds, Mabry’s good eye faded in and out of function. He didn’t mention it but put both arms out beside him and braced his hands against the door frame.

  It made Gwyn smile. “You posing as Samson in the Philistine temple? Victor Mature you ain’t, baby boy; but—with this house being in the state it’s in—go easy: you might bring it all down on us.”

  “Step here please, Delilah,” he said, though still not saying why.

  While he looked quite normal, Gwyn still caught the air of something wrong; so she went on to help him, if help was called for.

  They’d found the makings of an early scratch supper—cold ham, burger buns, a big tomato, Swiss cheese, mustard, frozen green peas, two flavors of ice cream. And only when they’d eaten and pushed back to make fresh coffee did Mabry tell Gwyn more about anyone’s physical shape than his bad-off father’s. He began by pretending to realize that he’d missed today’s doctor appointment in New York (in fact, he’d phoned and canceled the appointment yesterday).

  That gave Gwyn the obvious chance to ask him how he was.

  He mentioned this afternoon’s patch of blindness, which had now almost resolved itself.

  Being cold sober, Gwyn was smart enough to know she shouldn’t light in at this point with a red-hot campaign to urge him back down here—a southern retreat in the face of age and weakness. She started by telling him about her talks with Randolph Baynes and his recent estimates for work on her homeplace. It seemed that the merest facelift on the roof, the floor joists, the plaster, and a good paint job would run her somewhere near eighty thousand dollars. Anything more ambitious would put her in deepest debtors’ prison, but she’d almost decided to phone young Randy with the go-ahead. “Hell, Mabry, I’m old. This was home at the start, and there’s nowhere else on the planet to hide—or lean back on.”

  Mabry said “I hadn’t failed to notice that.”

  “About me or you or the two of us together? God knows, nobody is calling for me.”

  Mabry made no effort to contradict her. He’d have thought his silence was an effort not to be stampeded into calling insistently for Gwyn; but he knew too surely that the same was true for him. Even then and there, with his vision very nearly returned, he knew he was rooted—here and now—in the safety of his birthplace, an entire house which might as well have been the first good rocket soaring past the planet Neptune with him as its single still-breathing occupant. As Gwyn leaned toward him across the length of the loaded table, he laughed at the image and again extended his arms at his sides, flapping them this time as if to add further power to his rocket.

  Gwyn said “What’s funny?”

  “Oh me,” he said, “—a billion ways. Shall we sit here and list them, one by one?”

  “Darling, I’ve likely got no more than thirty years. Will that be time enough?”

  Mabry said “I wouldn’t have the least idea, but I think it’s likely that we’ve got enough coffee to see us through.”

  After their coffee—which turned out to be decaffeinated, like all the coffee that was left in the house—Mabry asked Gwyn to walk with him back to his old bedroom. He didn’t think of it as any first step in a planned seduction (otherwise wouldn’t he have shaded the roadside windows?). He wanted her to see Philip Adger’s picture once again in a peaceful house. He hadn’t really noticed earlier, but it was still where he’d left it when he went to New York. He went to the mantel and took it up in both hands. Gwyn came up beside him, and in silence they both spent a good while studying it.

  In fact the silence went on so long that at last Gwyn had to say “You know I’m right, don’t you?”

  “—About what you said the first time you saw it?” Mabry held it out for her to hold.

  “I’m not about to put my invisible oils, or any mold spores I’ve brought from Tibet, on that precious thing and have somebody accuse me maybe a century from now of brutal behavior.” She smiled but was earnest.

  So Mabry kept it and when Gwyn turned as if to leave, he held her by liberally wetting the end of his right forefinger with saliva and stroking the upper right of the canvas.

  That stopped Gwyn cold of course.

  “Idiot! Quit!” She came back to him and at last took the picture. When she’d given the wet corner only a glance, she set the picture where it belonged—or had been for some days.

  Mabry said quietly “The owner is dead.”

  “The lawyer who sent you to Paris is dead?”

  “I told you he’d apparently been at his office when the building was struck and maybe when it fell. Nobody has heard a word from him since, not from him or anyone else on his staff. His likable butler, a lad from Australia, is hanging on to a few shreds of hope; but it’s been ten days.”

  Gwyn said “He’s dead. Or has chosen to change his name and reappear in East Borneo as some other man his wife will never find.”

  “He left no wife, no children, no family so far as we know.”

  Gwyn said “And who knows you’ve got this picture?”

  Mabry paused to think. “A teenaged girl in Nova Scotia, a good friend in New York, then you and I. Plus Audrey Thornton and Marcus her son; but nobody knows about the Van Gogh connection except you and me, the New York friend, and the girl in Nova Scotia.”

  “The family you stayed with for those two days?”

  “Yes, and she’s likely forgot it by now.”

  “It was she, though, who found Philip Adger’s note—right?”

  Mabry said “Ah right.” Then with exaggerated care he moved the picture into absolute center place on the mantel. “She’ll no doubt barge in here any day now, with Interpol, and declare it belongs to La République française.”

  Gwyn said “Stranger things happen almost every week.”

  Mabry said “So they do.” He realized that his eyesight had gone back entirely to normal; and suddenly he felt tired in every cell, enormously tired. He said “I haven’t had a wink of sleep for two straight nights. I’ll either have to collapse right now, for half an hour on that iron bed, or fall to the floor.”

  Gwyn looked toward the bed he was pointing to. Years ago he’d mentioned being born there, and nearly killing his mother in the process (an awful breech birth, with his gigantic skull refusing to turn and come out first as he had to do). What other boy she’d ever met knew the bed he was born in or thought to mention it? In any case she felt like saying “May I join you?” and she did.

  Mabry said “By all means, pal, but I doubt I’ll be good for one damned thing but literal sleep.”

  She waited a moment to see how insulted she ought to feel. Hell, not at all. So they both stretched out.

  And sleep was very nearly all that happened in the next two hours, very nearly all.

  When Mabry woke it was dark at the nearest window; and though Gwyn’s body was turned away, he could hear from the even rate of her breath that she was still asleep. There was no way for him to get up without waking her, so he lay in place on his back another good while. He was mainly consulting his own assaulted body. At the moment his eyesight seemed to be working, but the whole length of his spine and both legs were jangling hard—rattling so fierc
ely that Mabry could scarcely believe they weren’t truly audible to Gwyn. An honest assessment of the past month would have to conclude that—whatever any hundred doctors might say, American doctors, not counter-culture shamans—he’d taken, or had forced down upon him, a huge slow course of wide curves in his path.

  So far they were crazily unpredictable. So far the jangling wasn’t quite definable as pain. Again, it was a kind of horrifying music played by his nerves—or played by his brain on the million-stringed instrument provided by his neurons. And again, the horror lay mostly in the fact that no one but he could hear the music. He could lie in this bed, on his ample back, for another long century and try to help another human being—however sympathetic—

  comprehend the nature of what might yet drive Mabry Kincaid mad or lead to his imminent total paralysis, requiring total round-the-clock care from another human being (if not more than one); but even he couldn’t ask for that. Couldn’t or wouldn’t—at present the choice seemed meaningless.

  Whenever, Gwyn spoke without rolling toward him. “How does New York feel?”

  “Ma’m?”

  “Your city. Can a human being with natural feelings live there, ever again?”

  Mabry turned to his left side and laid a hand on her broad upper hip. “Gwyn, don’t human beings still live at the North Pole and on the garbage dumps of New Delhi?”

  “Not quite the Pole but, close, I’ll grant you—and the garbage dumps, sure. I’ve climbed all through them, hunting antique Shivas—found two at least and a gorgeous Ganesh, four feet high with a lovable belly.”

  Mabry said “Then what did you mean?”

  “I meant can you visualize your particular soul and body staying on now in a place that’s the number-one target on Earth, for every form of punishment that any band of psychopaths can muster?”

  “Wells could be hit by a moon-sized meteor an hour from now.”

  Gwyn thought about that, then surrendered to laughter.

  Mabry’s hand came up under her breasts as he joined the fun, but then he said “I may have to flip a coin.”