One Night Two Souls Went Walking

by Ellen Cooney

  The director of the club was the first one he tried to reach, at home. The man’s wife was gracious about being disturbed. But her husband, she explained, had been suffering from one of his bouts of insomnia, and only a little while ago he’d taken sleeping pills. She knew from past experience she’d have more success waking someone dead than waking him, and if she did, he’d be so groggy, the manager would have to give up trying to get through to him. She herself didn’t know of any ministers. She only went to the club for functions she had to help host, and she rarely interacted with members. She had heard quite enough about golf and golfers as it was.

  But the wife called back. She advised the manager to try the membership director, who as it happened was someone the wife did not get along with, or she’d be making the call herself.

  The manager did so. His call went to voice mail. But it was returned a few minutes later.

  The membership director agreed to handle this distressing situation. To her, the golfer was a superstar. She only wished she could send someone who could make it happen that the golfer had many more years to be alive, and to keep showing up at the club.

  This was a woman who swore every year that she was about to retire, and then once again she didn’t. She knew everything about everyone.

  Soon she was waking up my parents.

  “Tell your daughter they’ll send a car for her where she is. And tell her thank you from the club, even though she hasn’t been here since she was little, and she didn’t like our Christmas parties because the presents were golf things, which by the way I never forgot.”

  I went back to my office. Once again, no one was there. I always had a clean change of clothes in a drawer of my file cabinet, folded up as if meant for a suitcase, and fresh collars too. I changed fast. I had a toothbrush and toothpaste in my desk. In our bathroom, I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, and did not have a hairbrush right there, so I never minded about my hair. Not that it shows if it’s brushed or not.

  From a drawer of my desk that doesn’t hold anything else, I retrieved my favorite stole, a brightly colored one, a gift from my sister and brothers when I was still in seminary. They had actually gone into a shop together, which they’d had to drive a long way to do. It’s a white satin strip of a banner embroidered in different shades of green, bright yellow, bright blue, bright red.

  I folded it gently, then tucked it in the compartment of my handbag that’s only for my stoles.

  They had told me the driver would pull up by the main entrance, which was newly unlocked from the night.

  And there was the car. I had guessed they’d send a town car, like an upgrade of a basic taxi. It turned out to be a Land Rover SUV, the very most expensive one, gleaming and proud of itself in its body of black and silver.

  I was stricken with awe. I’d never had the chance to ride in something so large and so luxurious. I climbed into the back to what felt like an ultra-plush couch of leather, as creamy and smooth to the touch as it was creamy in color.

  After the night I’d been through, I did not feel guilty for suddenly loving the word “luxury,” instead of thinking about things such as fuel efficiency and the tremendous amount of money spent on this mode of transportation, when a compact hybrid like my own car would get me to my destination just fine.

  I leaned back. I was falling asleep before I knew it, falling into a dark and beautiful tranquility, like arms were circling me, and the arms were soft as pillows.

  Thirty

  A little over an hour and a half later, I woke up. The car had come to a stop. Before my eyes were all the way open, I knew we had not reached the home of the golfer. No houses were visible, no lake.

  I blinked myself into an alertness, the same as if I’d dozed off in a bedside chair. The car was at the side of a narrow, unpaved country road bordered by trees, mostly high old maples.

  It was only just barely a road; it could have been someone’s long driveway. The Rover’s engine was still going, in a softly contented hum that was almost a purr.

  My driver was an almost-elderly man, lean and sharp-featured, wearing a tweed cap and navy blazer. He was clear when I climbed aboard he did not welcome conversations with passengers, not that he said in words that we needed to ignore each other.

  I learned, though, as we were pulling away from the medical center, that he didn’t know the golfer, or anything about her. He didn’t even know she was a golfer. All he had was an address. I had made the mistake of thinking he was one of her staffers.

  He had informed me that the company he drove for had a fleet that was mostly limousines. He’d been on call for short-notice transports. When they assigned him the Rover and sent him to the medical center, he figured he’d be picking up a high-powered executive or very rich doctor.

  That explained why he looked surprised when I appeared in a collar.

  And now he had turned in his seat to speak to me. My impression of him as a gruff, stern man proved wrong.

  “You turned off the ringer,” he said. “On your phone. They had to call me instead. You were too asleep to hear it. There was a message from them at the house. I have to tell you, she changed her mind.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not following you. What are you talking about?”

  “She changed her mind. I’m under orders to bring you back to where I picked you up. I pulled off to turn around. Then I thought I’d better stop a minute. I was thinking about, you’d want to know we have a different plan now. I would’ve woke you, if you didn’t wake up on your own.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. Heck of a thing it’d be, if you woke up and we were back where we started.”

  “She changed her mind?”

  “That’s what they said. I guess it’s a pretty big deal. Unexpected, like.”

  If he told me the golfer had died as I was traveling toward her, I would have bowed my head to honor the passing. But this felt wrong in a very wrong way.

  “Are we far from her house?”

  “Ten minutes, give or take. Why do you want to know, if it’s canceled?”

  “I was feeling curious. I’m not sure where we are.”

  “Are you a pastor?”

  “I’m a minister.”

  “Well, that would mean Protestant. Like it would have to.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard that Protestants hate it when Catholics call everyone that’s a Protestant, a Protestant. Instead of, like, the individual denominations. Like Protestant is all one thing.”

  I was grateful to him. I knew he was waiting for me to confirm the new plan. He was, after all, temporarily my chauffeur. But I couldn’t bring myself to.

  All along, the engine was pulsing, in what felt to me now like a tender background humming. When the driver swished down his window, the scents of clean spring watery air blew in on a faint little breeze.

  “So, you’re Catholic,” I said.

  “Was,” he answered. “Maybe I still am. I don’t know. They closed down my parish. It was a bankruptcy. I don’t like to discuss it, but I’ll tell you, I drove a rabbi to a wedding a couple weeks ago. She was a woman too. When she was finished and it was time to go, she handed me what I think was the most incredible plate of food I ever ate, all wrapped up. If I told you it was gourmet, that wouldn’t be the half of it. It was deluxe. There was cake too, six layers, every one of them different. I don’t as a rule like pastries. Never in my life had a sweet tooth. But I will never forget that cake.”

  I sat there on the cream-colored seat that didn’t feel as profoundly comfortable as it did before.

  I said quietly, “Where you were taking me, where the woman changed her mind, it’s not for a wedding.”

  He understood what I was telling him. He was still at an angle to me, leaning in toward the back. I saw him cross himself, touching his fingers to his forehead, his chest, his left shoulder, then his right. I saw that the gesture came swiftly, and almost, to him, unconsciously, as if done by pu
re instinct.

  He asked me, “Do you spend a lot of time with people that are making the crossing over?”

  “Yes.”

  “I used to drive a hearse, for years and years,” he said. “Most of my passengers, they don’t want to hear about it. But I’ve got loads of stories. Me and the rabbi I was telling you about, we really got into it. She had stories too.”

  “Well, we have a drive ahead of us, and I’m awake.”

  “You work at the medical center?”

  “I’m a chaplain there.”

  “When I picked you up, were you coming off a fight shift?”

  “Does it show?”

  “Kind of, but only before your nap. I’m just saying, I won’t take it personal on the way back if you nod off.”

  That was when the pair of cats appeared in the road ahead, coming toward the car: two calicos, tails in the air, out in the sun to check out their world, one plump, one lean.

  I looked at the trees on either side of the Rover. I looked again at the cats. I looked at the narrowness of the dirt road. There came over me a powerful burst of heat, like something inside me had just heated up, like a sunburn or rash, but on the other side of my skin.

  I had to get out of that car. Somehow I kept my voice normal, steady, calm.

  “Would you mind if I take a walk, before we go back? I’ll just go a little way.”

  “No problem. Go for it. I’ll catch a few winks. Stretch your legs. I’m paid by the hour, and they didn’t say I had to hurry about bringing you back where I got you.”

  When I left the car, the cats stared at me in silence, then arched up their backs. As soon as they saw I was walking their way, they turned and fled beyond the trees.

  “You’re a lane,” I was saying to the road. “You’re a lane.”

  I did not hear dogs barking. But I hadn’t been heard yet: the approach of a human, the opening of the door to the reception area. It was probably their breakfast time. Multiple staffers would be present, like an any normal morning.

  The woman asleep in the parlor might have gone home. The dog who lay on the floor might not still be there. Someone might be cleaning that parlor.

  There was a bend in the lane, a half-circle. My feet were crunching along on pebbles. The ground, I saw, had once been covered with gravel. Much of it had scattered, either worn or washed away. I didn’t notice that when I was here before, but then, I wouldn’t have. I had not been touching the ground.

  When I cleared the bend, I could only make out an edge of the building’s front section. It looked to be the corner where the wing of the cats and the parlor stretched back. I saw the plain simplicity of wooden boards. I knew I was about to see those curtains again, covered with dogs that look like Teletubbies.

  I made myself slow down. I was getting excited. I could not enter that building in an emotional way. I thought of the lawyer. I thought of his calmness when he told me his story. I thought of how logical he was. I thought of how I didn’t go back to his room to speak to him again before he left the hospital. I thought of how it might have really happened that he rose up in his spirit and walked through his maze and reached the same room I had reached, with its beautiful cloud. I thought of how he would never be saying, “That’s it? Just paint on a wall?”

  The sound of the Rover’s horn hit me with the force of a punch.

  “It’s on again! They just called me!”

  The driver’s voice was a bellow, a clarion, a piece of thunder.

  “Reverend! Are you hearing me? The lady changed her mind again! She just got nervous! Or shy or something! She’s sitting up and she wants you! She’s sorry she caused a fuss!”

  I froze where I stood, one foot raised in the act of stepping forward. I had the feeling I had to work hard to get it back down.

  “Reverend! Come on! She’s waiting for you!”

  The barking from up ahead came a little muffled. The sounds of one dog gave way a moment later to more: two, three, and then I couldn’t tell how many. Their voices were big, deep, small, yappy, all combined: a chorus, filling the air.

  I was ready to rush forward, kicking up my feet like an athlete, a racer. Yet I paused. It was just like what happened with the teller’s wrong angel. Where should I put myself? Really, how is anyone ever supposed to know where to go?

  Forward or back, forward or back?

  Then everything felt solemn to me. The joy of my excitement crested in me like an ocean wave, then gently rolled to a rest, like a wave on a shore that sticks around for a while before pulling away. I turned myself around.

  The driver opened the door so I could ride up front with him. I accepted the invitation, but first I went into the back to get my phone.

  “I sure hope no dogs come chasing us,” he said.

  “There’s a building. I think they’re inside,” I said, buckling the seat belt.

  “I can drive fast, even on roads like these. I’m still making up from the days I went slow with the hearse. In other words, Reverend, hang on.”

  He backed the Rover out of the lane, then swerved so abruptly, it seemed we were tilting, rolling forward on two wheels only. We turned corners in that maze of back roads. The air grew more watery, and I could see the wide open sky above the lake, blue mixed with gray, air on water, curls of clouds here and there doing slow-motion floating.

  It was afternoon in Germany. I only had a minute. My fingers were a little shaky. It wasn’t only from the ride. What to say? What to say? What to say?

  I decided to be casual about it. Like it was no big deal.

  “Hey, there’s a frog in a red bow tie I have to buy for you,” I typed. “But it could break, so I’m scared about mailing. Talk later? I’m still on duty—overtime.”

  I shut off my phone again. I thought about how it felt to be small and wild, running around in wet grass of a green, as barefoot as if I’d never in my life worn socks or shoes. Clouds of morning fog came into my hair, and all over me, and some geese would run by, or flap and rise and fly, being chased by the grounds crew, and I’d fall to the ground. Or I’d fling myself down like I was unbreakable, and I’d roll around and get up and run again, like that was my sport, and I was never so alive in all of myself as I was when I was playing it.

  I remembered the smell of the grass, the dew, the goose poop, the damp sand of a trap. I remembered a sky wide open, no buildings anywhere, the clubhouse far away, the fog turning shiny as sunlight broke through.

  Then I went about recalling everything I knew about golf. I needed to run through in my head the words I’d picked up all my life from my family: irons, woods, tee, putter, birdie, par, bogey, mulligan, slice. I needed to take a deep breath, getting ready to do my job.

  Discussion Guide

  Do you have a favorite character or patient? Which one, and why? What made them feel real to you?

  How do you respond to the chaplain’s relationships with Plummy and Green Man? What role do you think they play in the chaplain’s work, and in the story?

  The chaplain talks often of “doing her job,” and she also frequently references her patients’ occupations. Why do you think this is? What do you think the novel says about people, their work, and how they do it?

  Although the chaplain is not a medical doctor, the work she does is understood as a crucial form of care. Patients and their loved ones depend on her companionship and wisdom nearly as much as the scientific and technical work of the medical staff hat saves physical lives. Why is this type of care so essential, and where do you see the chaplain proving that her work is necessary? What does spiritual or emotional care look like for you?

  Reason and spirituality coexist in this novel, though they are often treated as opposites. Instead of being disappointed when the explanation for an unusual circumstance is simple coincidence, the chaplain understands that even in those coincidences, revelatory possibility exists. What moments of striking coincidence were meaningful to you in this book? How does the chaplain’s perspective on spirituality an
d coincidence resonate with yours? The chaplain holds deep reverence for the differences in beliefs between each person whose bedside she visits. These patients’ versions of what heaven or the afterlife look like are each unique to their own experiences. Which of these versions were memorable to you, and what details made them so? What does an afterlife look like if you imagine it for yourself?

  In a moment of desperation as she sits with an elderly man in distress, the chaplain asks herself, “How can a soul speak to another soul?” Connecting with others without relying on words is a talent of the chaplain’s, and part of what makes her work so essential. Where did you notice these moments of connection without language? Have you ever experienced a sense of shared feeling with a stranger?

  Coffee House Press began as a small letterpress operation in 1972 and has grown into an internationally renowned nonprofit publisher of literary fiction, essay, poetry, and other work that doesn’t fit neatly into genre categories.

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  Funder Acknowledgments

  Coffee House Press is an internationally renowned independent book publisher and arts nonprofit based in Minneapolis, MN; through its literary publications and Books in Action program, Coffee House acts as a catalyst and connector—between authors and readers, ideas and resources, creativity and community, inspiration and action.

  Coffee House Press books are made possible through the generous support of grants and donations from corporations, state and federal grant programs, family foundations, and the many individuals who believe in the transformational power of literature. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to the legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Coffee House also receives major operating support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, Jerome Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Target Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). To find out more about how NEA grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.