Embracing Darkness

by Christopher D. Roe

  Mr. Mason shook his head slowly. “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Hodges, but my wife is right. I can’t think of anything we’d need you for. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

  Beverly kicked the beans around her with one swipe of her foot and snapped, “If you still want the beans and flour, just give me another minute, and I’ll get them for you.”

  Ezra nodded, studying the floor where the opened boxes of goods lay, wishing he could snatch it all up and run out of the store. Mrs. Mason retreated to the storeroom while Dwight, still on his hands and knees as if repenting his clumsiness, sifted through the broken glass in the carton.

  The scraping sound of Beverly Mason’s high-heeled shoes grew louder as she came back from the storeroom. “That’s eight cents for the beans and eighty cents for the flour,” the woman snapped. “Eighty-eight cents all together.”

  Ezra handed her a dollar bill, and she returned twelve cents to him, slamming the change on the counter in an obvious effort not to touch him. Ezra and Jonas turned without another word and began to walk toward the door. Using the tips of her thumb and index finger, Mrs. Mason dropped the dollar into an open tin box as though it were infected with some contagious disease. Just as Ezra and Jonas passed the threshold of the front door, they heard, “Ouch!” and turned around.

  It was Dwight. He was now hunched over, unable to stand up straight. “I THINK IT’S MY BACK, MA!” he exclaimed in an agonized shrill. “I MUST HAVE HURT IT WHEN I FELL.”

  Coming to the aid of his son, Mike Mason told him to lie down upstairs on the couch and put his feet up.

  “Alright,” Dwight said weakly, excusing himself as he squeezed by Ezra and Jonas and limped out of the store. Beverly simply shook her head slowly.

  “Uh, wait a minute, please!” a voice called from inside the store to Ezra Hodges. Mr. Mason waved his hand at Ezra and asked him to come back in. “If my son’s going to be laid up indefinitely, we’re going to need somebody to assume his duties. What do you say? It won’t be permanent. I can’t rightly say when my son will be fit to work again, but in the meantime the job’s yours.” Then Mike Mason motioned to his wife by tilting his head in her direction, as if to remind Ezra of the hazards that came with the job. “That is, if you still want it.”

  Ezra Hodges snatched the hand of Mike Mason and wrung it. “Oh yessir, Missuh Mason! I do a powerful good job for you! Yessir!”

  Beverly Mason just scoffed, turned on her heel, and walked into the storeroom.

  Ezra worked for the Masons for several days, earning three dollars per day, while Jonas would sit and watch. He liked being with his father when he was working. Earning a living and having the means to support his family made the man happy and proud. And during this time he didn’t feel compelled to frequent “The Watering Hole.” The Hodges family seemed to be getting back to normal. Ezra would eat dinner with his family, get to bed at a decent hour, wake up at dawn, and be out of the house by 6:00.

  And so this was how things went. Ezra’s steady work created stability in his home, and once Dwight, who had sprained his lower back, was able to return to full-time employment, Mike Mason was pleased to recommend Ezra to several other business owners. The week Dwight came back to work, Ezra worked one day in the Holly Post Office, where he mopped, removed cobwebs from the ceiling, polished the counters, cleaned all the windows, and helped bring in bags of mail from the Crossley mail car parked out front. The bundles were brought into town by Julius Gorman, the shortest man in all of Rockingham County, who was too weak to handle the bags on his own. Mr. Gorman’s usual method was to grab handfuls of envelopes and run them up the stairs—that is, until Ezra Hodges came along.

  Ezra worked two days the following week at Wheelwright Academy as an assistant to the handyman. There he helped paint, tidy up, and run numerous errands around town, such as delivering mail to the post office (he enjoyed that because he got to say hello to the people he had come to know during his stint there) and picking up the Academy’s mail. Ezra even found employment two nights that week at “The Watering Hole,” which Wilma at first feared would rekindle his drinking, but it didn’t.

  Ezra reported for work at the speakeasy at half past four in the afternoon. He’d take down the chairs from the tables, polish the bar, dust the piano, mop the stage, and act as a bouncer, which soon became his primary role. A man the size of Ezra Hodges quelled any potential for rowdy behavior. Then at four in the morning, when the place closed, he’d put the chairs back on the tables and sweep up. Although he was working only half the day, Ezra loved it because he still received a full day’s wages. In fact, he was so happy to have found steady employment that he didn’t have time to think about drinking. Soon after the stock market’s collapse Mayor Errol Aberfoyle assumed ownership of “The Watering Hole” and asked Ezra whether he wanted more hours. Ezra accepted the full-time position, which carried a salary of twelve dollars a week. Although not quite as much as Mr. Mason had paid him on a daily basis, it was steady work.

  Jonas finished frying the eggs and slabs of ham for his mother and father, took the frying pan off the fire, and put the food on a large plate, which he quickly brought over to the table. He then returned to the stove, grabbed the coffee pot, poured some into two cups and put them on the table as well. “Mamma! Daddy! Breakfas’!” Jonas called to his parents.

  After a loud yawn Ezra called back, “What time it be, boy?”

  Jonas leaned out the window. “By the looks o’ the sun, I reckon it be middle o’ the mornin’.”

  Wilma yawned as well, and soon husband and wife emerged from the blue curtain that now acted as the partition between their bedroom and the rest of the apartment.

  FIFTEEN

  Zachary Black

  Just about the time Ezra Hodges had attained steady employment, Father Poole and Sister Ignatius were wondering what to do about little Jessica Benson, the recently orphaned child who was now related by blood to no one. The suicides of both great-grandfather Ben Benson and her father Johnny Benson II, coupled with the accidental death of her mother Georgiana, left the two-year-old all alone. For the last few days since the triple funeral she had been staying at the rectory with Father Poole, Sister Ignatius, Mrs. Keats, and (for most of the day) Argyle Hobbs.

  Jessica’s first words had come at eleven months. They were “mamma” and “babba,” the latter being her bottle. At a year and a half she was talking in short sentences. Her favorite things to say at that time were “Oh, gosh!” and “No way.”

  Once, while sitting on her father’s lap just after supper, Johnny yelled to his wife, “Those sons of bitches won’t get away with manipulating those stocks. Soon they’ll come crashing down on their bleedin’ heads!” All Jessica remembered was “sons of bitches,” which she turned into “somms on dishes.” Georgiana hadn’t approved and asked Johnny to refrain from such language in front of the child.

  Now at two years old Jessica was a very fluent talker. “I wanna play,” she said to Father Poole and Sister Ignatius from the main staircase of the rectory. “I’m gonna take my dolly. She can come out, can’t she?”

  Sister Ignatius called for the child to come to her, and she did most obediently. Father Poole observed the close bond the two had formed in the short time since the little girl’s arrival.

  “It’s strange, Father,” Sister Ignatius began as she picked Jessica up and put her on her lap. “She hasn’t cried once for her mother. She asked for her only once. I think it was the day I found… you know. It was just that one time and that was it.”

  Father Poole said happily, “Hey you!”

  The child giggled.

  “Go see Mrs. Keats in the kitchen. I think she’s got a cookie for you!”

  Jessica jumped excitedly off Sister Ignatius’s lap and ran into the kitchen. Taking another sip of his coffee and getting his thoughts together, Father Poole said, “You know I value your o
pinion in all this, Sister.”

  She concentrated on a fray in the tablecloth, poking under it to find the loose thread. Then, finding it, she tried to break it off while holding the fray down with the fingers of her other hand. She attended to it as if she were being judged on every little imperfection in the house by the Your Home Your Life people and needed to get that fray out before it was spotted.

  “It’s been eight days,” he went on. “We’ve got to notify the authorities. She can’t just stay here.”

  Sister Ignatius let the fray in the tablecloth alone and fired back at the priest, “And why not? She has no one, Father, except us.”

  “It’s not that simple, Sister. You know that. There are adoption laws to consider. We can’t… that is to say, we don’t… .”

  “Do not presume to tell me about adoption, Father. I’ve been down that road and know all the ditches in it.”

  Father Poole hadn’t the slightest idea what the woman meant. Did she mean that she once had looked into adopting a child? Did she know what it was like to be an adopted child? Had she once been an orphaned child?

  “Sister,” said Father Poole. “We need to stay impartial and reasonable about this, as we are not members of the Benson clan. Now I’ve been on the phone with Dolores Pennywhistle, and she’s agreed to come up this afternoon so that we… .”

  “DOLORES PENNYWHISTLE!” Sister Ignatius roared. “WE ARE NOT GIVING THIS CHILD UP TO THAT WOMAN!”

  The nun pushed her chair back violently, causing it to slam into the already much-abused hutch, breaking one of the small panes of glass in the left door. “That child would be better off here with us,” she continued. “We can raise her better than anyone. She’ll grow up with love. Love for us, love for God, love for… .”

  She paused, not able to think of another thing to add. Her head swiveled back and forth like the pendulum balls in one of those gold-faced clocks you see nowadays that’s protected by a glass dome.

  Then she blurted out carelessly, “Love for those cookies Mrs. Keats keeps baking for her.”

  Father Poole got up and approached the nun. He rested his hands on her shoulders. Expecting her to flinch, Father Poole was surprised that Sister Ignatius seemed receptive to his touching her.

  He then said to her in a quiet voice, “I know you’re thinking of what is in Jessica’s best interest, but so am I. We have no authority to raise a child. We cannot adopt her legally, and you know that. What’s more, we could never be a real family to her, any more than if a couple of muskrats came by and took her for one of their lost young and decided to take her in. She belongs in a home with a man and a woman who can be her parents, not pretend to be. And perhaps have a sibling or two, and a puppy or a kitten to cuddle with at night. We can’t offer her any of that.”

  Sister Ignatius’s expression still appeared hard, but her voice was soft, possibly as soft as Father Poole had ever heard it. “Don’t you think we could be the girl’s parents?” she asked.

  Father Poole suddenly realized that he had never before felt as close to Sister Ignatius as he did at that moment. He shook his head and whispered, “No.”

  Twenty minutes later there was a knock at the rectory’s front door. Argyle Hobbs could be heard shouting from the porch, “IT’S MI-SS-US PE-NNY-WHI-STLE!”

  Dolores cleared her throat to get the handyman’s attention. He glanced slowly over to her, as though he weren’t in any rush to hear what she had to say. As he did so, she saw his eyes roll a little, as if he were about to pass out.

  “For your information, impertinent old man, it’s ‘Miss.’”

  Confused, Argyle Hobbs asked, “Eh?”

  Dolores huffed in frustration and wished that she had never agreed to come here.

  “I said that it’s not ‘Mrs.’ You referred to me as ‘Mrs.’”

  Argyle Hobbs answered, “Ah yeah?” as if waiting for her to make a point.

  “I’m not a ‘Mrs.,’” she reiterated, as if every insistence on making the point drew half of what remaining energy she had left in her after her trek up Holly Hill. “I’m a ‘Miss.’”

  Argyle Hobbs blinked twice. He really didn’t know at first what in the world the woman was making such a fuss about. Then it came to him that he had messed her title up something awful. He slowly removed his dirty hat, mockingly bowed to her as a court subject would to his monarch, and replied, “Oh, so sorry, ma’am.”

  As Father Poole opened the front door, Argyle boomed, “IT’S MISS PENNYWHISTLE!”

  Father Poole greeted Dolores, then inclined his head to Hobbs and said, “Argyle, you don’t have to shout.”

  Turning back to his guest, he courteously gestured to the rectory’s entranceway. “Please, Mrs. Pennywhistle.”

  She grunted, annoyed that he too had referred to her as “Mrs.,” and then decided to let it go. She entered the rectory, and Father Poole shut the door behind them.

  As Argyle Hobbs walked back to the lawn, he said to himself, “Actually I did know she wasn’t married. Judgin’ by the sight o’ her, who in his right mind would ever make that mistake.”

  Dolores was a pudgy woman who stood about five feet tall. She wore her bright red hair short and had pale white skin. She always wore shoes that were too tight, and so the tops of her fat feet bulged out. Dolores Pennywhistle also had a terrible habit of wearing the gaudiest outfits of anyone in Holly.

  Miss Pennywhistle particularly loved gardening. She’d won the Annual Holly Gardening Expo the last three years in a row, and the two years before that she was runner-up. She assumed she would be a shoe-in the following June and had already begun preparations for which vegetables she would grow. It had even crossed her mind to attempt orchids, but she thought better of it since vegetables were cheaper and less risky. Not only was Dolores Pennywhistle as thrifty as a Scotsman, but she also was not as confident of her gardening skills as she made people believe. In fact, every time Mayor Aberfoyle pinned a blue ribbon on one of her tomatoes, she’d think to herself how lucky she was that everything went as planned in the end.

  Since she had such a green thumb, or acted as though she did, Dolores Pennywhistle was quite keen on anything associated with horticulture. As a result, she adored sunflowers and watering cans. They would, of course, be a fine combination on fabric for anything ranging from tablecloths to a quilt.

  When Dolores first saw a bolt of such material in Mason’s General Store, she became hysterical with joy. Its pattern of sunflowers and watering cans was intended for lining a chair or shelf, but that did not deter this enthusiast from envisioning a host of other possibilities.

  Speaking as quickly as she could, which meant that the average person perhaps understood one word in three, she said, “Oh, my stars and gardens! I can’t believe it! My two favorite things in the whole wide world! Sunflowers and watering cans! You can’t have one without the other, now can you?”

  She posed that question to young Dwight Mason, who responded with a shy, confused expression on his face. “Uh,” he began, “how much of it do ya want?”

  “HOW MUCH?” she shrieked in a playfully surprised voice. “Oh, I am such a fan! I will take no less than eight… no, nine… no… . You know what? You better make it the whole thing. Yes, I shall take the entire bolt! I can’t see my way to not getting all of it. I simply MUST have the ENTIRE BOLT! I can’t RISK another woman coming in here and taking a few yards of it for herself and attempting to steal MY IDEA and make a dress out of this fine material, now CAN I? You see, they are two of my favorite things. Them and CHOCOLATE! Chocolate is DIVINE as well, but I can’t very well wear CHOCOLATE on a DRESS, now CAN I?”

  Dwight flinched every time Dolores’s voice shrieked. Almost like Morse code, where some of the taps are longer than others, so was Dolores Pennywhistle’s staccato voice. Stupefied and slack-jawed in disbelief, Dwight stared at her blankly. “I
guess,” he said, “but I can’t see wearin’ watering cans neither.”

  Dolores, however, didn’t hear his remark. She took the entire bolt home with her and had enough material for two dresses and three scarves. She would don the scarves every day, wrapping them tightly around her bulky neck. She would even wear them in the summertime. They became her trademark, bright yellow sunflowers and dark green watering cans on an insipid background of white.

  She was dressed no differently for her visit to St. Andrew’s. “I hope this isn’t going to last too long, Father,” said Dolores. “I have many engagements back in town, you know. As you are well aware, not only am I instrumental in finding homes for all our poor, unfortunate, parentless children, but I am also chairwoman of Wheelwright Academy’s Annual Spelling Bee, chairwoman of the Chocolate and Strawberry Day Feast, and chairwoman of WHALE, which as you probably know stands for Women of Holly Against the Legalization of Exeter Ale.”

  “Exeter Ale?” Father Poole inquired, biting down hard on his lip to keep from laughing at the acronym WHALE, which he immediately thought must have been named in her honor. Add that to your list of sins for the week, ol’ boy, he thought to himself.

  “Yes, Father. Exeter Ale, as you may know, was a popular brand of beer that was the most consumed type of alcohol before Prohibition. And I happen to know for a fact that that cursed ale is still being distributed.” She let out a chuckle as if to excuse her digression. “But that’s not why I’m here, is it?”

  “Mrs. Pennywhistle,” Father Poole said, as she bridled again at the marital title. “As I told you on the phone, we have a bit of a situation here on the hill. As you know, Ben Benson died a short while ago, as well as his grandson a short time before him and the grandson’s wife just a week ago. They left behind a beautiful child, a two-year-old daughter. She’s been living with us ever since, and I… .”