“I’m Sergeant Roger Hampton,” the large, bearded one said, “and this is Burt Chavis.” Sergeant Hampton had a rigid manner and stiff face. Burt, younger and more timid, had a jittery handshake. I wondered if he was frightened because of the statue, but knew Sergeant Hampton was the type of man who wouldn’t show his fear even if he felt it.
“Will we be wearing something like this as well?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got two suits ready for you. It’s a little over two hundred degrees in there. You could stay in there for a minute or two without the suits, but they’ll help with your breathing and allow us to stay in there longer than we would without them. Otherwise you’d probably pass out after too long. Unless you think your priest outfits will protect you, that is.”
“I think we’ll take the suits,” I answered him.
He motioned for Burt to help us into the awkward getups and walked back toward the church. After helping us, Burt fell back as well and stood behind his boss, leaving us alone with Father Powell as we made some last minute adjustments to our gloves and boots.
“Mrs. O’Day said these firemen were members of the parish,” I said.
“They are,” Father Powell answered.
“Then why does it seem like the Sergeant despises us?”
“Don’t take that personally. He’s been through a rough couple of years. He and his wife lost a child recently and he hasn’t been coming to church since. The Sergeant has always been a little rough around the edges, but I reached out to him because of his expertise and because I felt he could keep quiet about what was going on. Perhaps he resents being here, but his wife is still an active member of the parish, so I suppose he still feels a sense of obligation to us for that reason. I owe him a great deal of gratitude for what he’s done in the last few days.”
I glanced at the Sergeant, viewing him differently now than I did moments ago. It reminded me to never judge someone. I couldn’t say that my faith wouldn’t also be stolen if I had buried a child.
Father Powell escorted us over towards the church as we waddled in our suits. “Are you coming in there with us?” Peter asked.
“No. I know how hot it is in there.”
Our conversation ended when we arrived at the church steps where the two firemen waited. They held large, rounded masks in their hands which I figured would go on our heads.
“Now, when we get inside,” Sergeant Hampton began, “you two have to listen to me. If I feel like something isn’t right and we need to leave at the drop of a hat, we will leave. It’s hotter than hell in there and I don’t feel good about what’s going on inside this church. For all I know this place could go up in flames any minute. I may not have figured this out just yet, but I sure as heck don’t see how you two are going to help.”
“You’re in control,” I assured him.
We pulled the headpiece and shield onto our heads and snapped the dangling flaps into place on our shoulders, chest and back. The sound of my own breathing echoed inside my mask, clouding my thoughts just as much as it clouded the glass face of the mask. We journeyed up the seven church steps behind Sergeant Hampton and Burt, each step made slowly and with great care.
Sergeant Hampton opened the red, oak doors and led us into the narthex. Once inside, I glanced back and saw Father Powell watching us with a face of stone.
The doors shut and he was gone.
I turned around and was engulfed by a wave of heat. It was hotter than anything I’d ever felt or could have imagined. I wanted to be inside this church from the moment Father Chase had told us about the infamous heated statue of our Virgin Mother, now I only wanted to leave this place and never return.
7
AFTER WALT gave me the address to the St. James AME Church, I went the very next Sunday. The minister seemed to be a good man, and the people I met after the service were all as friendly as they could be. As I drove back home, I felt real fine about myself, like sitting in that church pew for just over an hour changed my outlook on things, like suddenly all my sins had been forgiven and I would never sin again. Course an hour later I got to lying to the old ladies down the road about why I couldn’t come in and have tea with them. Instead, I took a walk.
As I strolled around the lonely streets of the island, my thoughts kept returning to Walt. I still listened to him play his violin each morning, but I listened with a different ear now that I knew the reasons behind why he played. I admired him for his dedication and the love he had for a woman he hadn’t seen in thirty-five years.
Thirty-five years.
I thought about that number a lot. Walt was probably in his seventies, maybe late sixties, and he said they’d married in their early twenties. By my math, which was never very good, they couldn’t have been married for long. Even after the story he told me I pictured Olivia to be an older woman who had just left this world. But in reality, she must’ve been a young girl when she passed, not much older than the picture he’d shown me in his wallet. I wouldn’t dare pry into the reasons behind her death, though. I had learned my lesson from before. Walt was a private man. If he wanted me to know something, he would tell me in his own time.
For the next year the two of us fell into a nice rhythm, something men of our age treasure. We fished together, played checkers, and took walks around the shore bend of the island. We journeyed to a nearby mall just before Christmas of 1989 and bought each other a special present—an extra dish set. That solved what seemed to be our biggest problem and made our dinners together more convenient. During that holiday time I drove us up to Gable so I could introduce him to my nephew. Earl’s only son was a good, young man with a wife and child. I took pride in introducing Walt to my kin. By the time we left their home two days later, I realized I was also proud to introduce them to Walt.
Olivia stayed close to my thoughts, especially each morning when I heard Walt play. But no matter how much my curiosity ate at me, I never asked about her death, nor did he ever tell me. It was as though Walt was testing my patience as a friend. In order to get a glimpse into that part of his life, I had to further earn his trust. I suppose I finally earned that trust one August day in 1990.
We had fished countless times off the nearby docks and sandy beaches, but a young restaurant owner in town named Connor Sullivan had become one of my good friends and offered to take us out on his boat. He said he’d seen Walt and me fishing off the docks many times and wanted to give us the chance to go out to sea. Connor had a boat he claimed was nothing special, but it sure was something special to a couple old men who had never fished offshore.
He took us out real early in the morning, before the sun had greeted the sky. In fact, it was so early Walt had to perform his morning ritual in the black tint of the pre-dawn hours. He later told me it was the first time he’d played on the beach with the stars still hanging above him.
Once the three of us got out on the water, we stayed there for nearly five hours. It was a strange feeling to be out so far that the land disappeared into the morning haze. Somehow I felt that all my problems had been left anchored on the sand back home. The open sea acted as a kind of refuge, cleansing my weathered soul of its many blemishes. As we floated several miles offshore, we caught fish that doubled the size of the ones we had caught off the dock and beach. Walt even had the chance to reel in a small shark, but the line broke before he could get it out. Despite the fact he’d let the big one get away, Connor and I let him have a celebratory beer.
That was the beginning of our grand day, but as days tend to do, it kept on going. We came back home and threw the ball with Sam for a bit. Luckily, it didn’t take him long to forgive us for leaving him behind.
Walt and I soon realized a nap was in order or we’d never make it to nightfall. Neither of us was accustomed to waking up at four-thirty, not even Walt. But after we had rested, we decided we would cook the newly caught fish, drink some beer, and play some checkers. I’ll admit it was strange, but checkers had become the center of our friendship. You w
ouldn’t think such a simple game would spring fourth all it did for the two of us, but while we played the best stories, discussions, arguments, jokes, and memories were shared between us.
As we’d done many times, we cooked the fish on my grill and ate as the night arrived. There was something mighty delicious about eating food that didn’t come from the market, but maybe that was all in my head. After dinner we packed a cooler full of beer and ice and set up shop on Walt’s porch, with Sam lying right next to the lantern at our feet. This was somewhere around the five hundredth game we had played, or at least kept score for. I knew that because we kept a tally on the wood floor of Walt’s porch. In the corner, just beyond his back door, there were about two-hundred tiny knife marks carved into the wood under my name, and about three-hundred under Walt’s name. Yeah, he was better than me.
But it wasn’t the game of checkers I recall from that night. I was about to make a move in the midst of our second game, when I realized something about Walt that I hadn’t before.
“Why are you always biting your fingers, Walt?”
At first he looked at me like I was crazy, then he chuckled.
“I don’t even realize when I’m doing it anymore.”
“Well?”
“I used to bite Olivia’s fingers.”
“Excuse me?”
He laughed again. “Whenever we were sitting around the house, or driving in the car, or anything else, really, we’d always hold hands.”
“Yeah, I reckon that’s pretty normal for two lovers to do. I don’t know about this biting thing, though.”
“I know, I know. For some reason I used to like nibbling at her fingers. It was just a stupid habit. I guess I started doing it to my own fingers some years back.”
“Like you’re a dog or somethin’?” I asked with a hoot.
“Actually, Olivia used to joke that I was part-Sam.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
The dog lying next to us wagged his tail at hearing his name. I made a move in the game but my mind was muddled. Sam couldn’t have been much older than six or seven.
“Ah, Walt?”
“Yeah?” he asked as he surveyed the board.
“How is it that Sam … ah …”
“Oh, right. Sorry. We had a dog named Sam when we were married, a yellow lab, like this guy here. He died about eight years after Olivia passed, so I went out and got another yellow lab, and for some reason, it felt wrong not to call him Sam.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve been doing this for a while now. This here is Sam the Third. Hopefully he’ll be around until the end.”
“The end?”
“Yeah, till I go see Olivia.”
I looked down at Sam, who seemed to know he was being talked about. “What will you do with him when that happens?”
He looked at Sam, then back at me. “He seems to like you.”
We played for a little bit longer, finishing our second game and getting into our traditional third and final game of the night. It was in the midst of that third game that Walt suddenly blurted out the answer to the question I’d been wondering about for years.
“Olivia died in childbirth.”
I looked up at him, but he kept his eyes on the board. His face appeared as if he had said nothing at all, which had me wondering if it was only my imagination I had heard. “What’s that, ya’ say?”
“She died giving birth to our child. That’s why she passed when she was so young.”
“Oh.” I leaned back in my chair. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not why I told you. Sympathy doesn’t do much almost half a century later.”
He still hadn’t taken his vision off the checker board.
“I’s just being polite.”
“I know.”
“Then why’d you tell me?”
“I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t have.”
Walt made a quick move and sat back in his chair. He turned toward the sandy dunes and dark saltwater.
“No, no. If you want to say something, then say it. You ain’t got to play tough with me.”
“I just felt like telling you. I know you were wondering about it, and I respect that you never asked me after all this time. I’ve almost told you about twenty times, but something else always held me back.”
I made a move and took one of his men, which made me feel guilty considering the circumstances. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder about it.”
Walt stared off into the distance of the waters, as if he had no intention of finishing the game.
“Walt?”
“Yeah?”
“You want to call this one quits.”
“No,” he said, leaning back up to the board. “Course not.”
He made a move.
“So, what happened to the child?”
“That was the thing that held me back from telling you.”
“Pardon?”
I moved one of my men but I could tell neither of us was paying much attention to the game anymore.
“I guess I’ve already opened up enough to you.” Walt stood up and walked over to the edge of the porch, where he sat with his back to me. “A couple months before Olivia was due, the doctor told us there were some problems. It didn’t really surprise us ’cause she’d already had two miscarriages, but this time the Doc told us that Olivia might be in danger. I didn’t much understand what he was saying, nor did she. But all I heard was that giving birth to our child might put her life in jeopardy. I’m sure modern medicine could’ve helped the issue nowadays, but back then there weren’t as many options and we didn’t know what to do. Abortion wasn’t legal yet, but there were places you could get it done, back ally clinic type places. I wasn’t one for killing my child, but I thought it should at least be discussed. You know what I’m sayin’, right?”
“Sure, ‘course I do.”
“But it was Olivia’s baby and she wouldn’t do it. She was having that child no matter what. We fought about it for weeks. I screamed at her, telling her we should just get rid of the baby and try again to get pregnant. We could have more kids if she was around, but we sure couldn’t if anything happened to her. That’s the way I saw it. I ended up moving out for a bit, and when I moved back in I screamed at her some more. Heck, I nearly,” he took a deep breath, “I nearly hit her one night I was so angry. But it was all about her safety,” he pleaded as he turned back to face me. “I was so worried about her it drove me crazy.”
“I probably would’ve felt the same as you,” I assured him.
He turned back toward the beach. “Turns out the doctor was right. Half way through the delivery something went wrong. They made me leave the room; told me I couldn’t be there. An hour later they came and told me …. they told me …”
He couldn’t finish, so I stood up and joined him on the steps.
“They were surprised when the baby lived,” he went on after collecting himself. “I had a little boy, they told me, as healthy as could be. They asked if I wanted to see him. I thought they were kidding. I was sure if I saw that kid I’d murder him right then and there.”
“You wouldn’t have done that,” I objected.
“You never know what a grieving man will do, Buck. Sure, I knew it wasn’t my boy’s fault, but at the time that didn’t matter. I told ’em I didn’t want the kid and to keep him out of my sight. They asked about family who could care for him, but both my parents were dead and my brother had died in the war. Olivia never knew her dad, and her mom was already in a nursing home at the age of fifty-five, senile from some disease. Olivia had a sister but she lived up north and we never saw her; I wasn’t about to burden her with a kid. So I left the hospital despite the nurses physically trying to keep me there, begging that I take my son home with me. God Bless ’em, they tried to talk sense into me. But I left and drank straight through for eight days until I woke up in a street gutter one morning. Not much after that I moved down to Edisto.”
“So you don’t know what happened to your boy?”
Walt wiped at his eyes before answering. “About twenty some years ago, when my boy would’ve been around ten years-old, I worked up the courage to try to track down his whereabouts. I went back to the hospital and they sent me to the local orphanage where they said he would’ve been sent. I even went to an adoption agency in the area. But it was pointless. All I had was his birthday and the hospital where he was born, and those get lost in the shuffle with things like this. It would have helped if I’d taken the time to name him or sign some official paperwork turning him over to the State, but I think that was God’s way of punishing me. Obviously he would’ve gotten a new last name if he was adopted, but it would’ve helped in looking back at the hospital and orphanage records. I was in such a hurry to push my boy away I didn’t even give him the courtesy of a name. Some government worker probably had the honor of naming my child. How do ya’ like that? And you know the worst part of it all? Going back and seeing the orphanage where he most likely grew up only made my guilt even worse. I wish I’d never gone at all. It was such a ghastly place. I don’t mean any harm to the people running it, ’cause they just didn’t have the resources and wherewithal to take care of so many kids. But the thought of my son being raised in such a place gives me nightmares.”
“Are you sure they can’t track him down?” I pleaded. “It seems like it’d be possible; technology’s a lot better now than it was in the fifties and sixties.”
“All the technology in the world can’t make a miracle happen. I met a lot of nice people who tried to help me, but it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. Like I said, I don’t have a name. I don’t know what he looks like. I don’t know for sure where they sent him or if a family ever adopted him. I don’t know anything about him, other than his birth date, of course.”
“And when’s that?”
“September fifth, nineteen fifty-four. But the poor kid, or man, I guess I should say, probably doesn’t even know that’s his true birthday. One of the ladies at the orphanage told me some of the kids back then didn’t ever know where and when they were born. Probably would nowadays, with stricter laws and more detailed reporting methods, but not in the fifties. Back then they just shuffled the orphans around to different places. It was a struggle just to keep them alive, much less track all their personal histories. Gosh, can you even imagine not knowing when your true birthday was, Buck? I know that’s something trivial in the grand scheme of things, but that chokes me up every time I think about my boy.”
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