Two Statues

by Kevin Kennelly

  “You’re that priest,” I interrupted. “One of those priests who came down here during the time of the heated statue.”

  “I am. I’m surprised you remember me.”

  “Are you kiddin’? That story has become a legend around here. You’ve got to know slow towns love their ghost stories. I think it was your beard that threw me off.” He rubbed and scratched at the brown fuzz gripping his face. “So I guess you did leave the priesthood, huh?” I asked, remembering what Walt had told me as I noticed Peter was not wearing his black suit and white collar.

  “Not entirely,” he answered. “I’m on sabbatical right now.”

  “What’s that exactly mean for you?”

  He chuckled. “I don’t even know. That’s just a word, really, but I guess you could say I’m taking a break of sorts. My vows are still intact and I’m technically still a priest, but I’ve been traveling, working a part-time job and doing some other things, trying to make sense of my life.”

  I recalled how Walt had lectured him and wondered if any of it had stuck. “Any sense been found?”

  “Not sure.” He stopped, dropped his head to the porch floor briefly before lifting it back up a second later. “I guess Walt told you what we talked about on your back porch if you knew I was thinking of leaving the priesthood.”

  “He told me some of it.”

  “I guess that’s kind of why I’m here. I didn’t handle that situation right. I was rude to Walt, even when he was trying to help me.”

  “Did he help you?”

  Peter seemed surprised by the question, like it was the first time he had considered it. “Yes, I think he did. He had a simple way of explaining things that put it all in perspective. And I really admired him for taking the time to speak with me. He didn’t have to do that. I was just a stranger.”

  “That’s Walt,” I replied, a hint of pride in my voice for being his friend. “So what have you been doing since you began this break of yours?”

  “All types of things,” Peter answered as he rose from his rocker and walked to the edge of the porch. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and studied the ocean horizon. “I’ve worked a part-time job at a port in New York City, but mostly I’ve been going to a lot of seminars and workshops meant to help priests struggling with their calling. I’ve also taken some religious theology classes and studied things, trying to rediscover why I originally became a priest. I’ll have to admit, it’s been a nice break.”

  “When is this little break of yours over?”

  “This coming weekend,” he answered. “If I don’t report back to Worcester by Monday, I have to leave the priesthood for good.”

  “I take it since you’re saying ‘if’, you hadn’t decided yet.” Peter didn’t respond or turn around. I decided to get up and join him as he watched the crashing waves. “So, did you come all the way down here from New York City just to see Walt?”

  “No, not quite. I signed myself up for a workshop being given down the road in Charleston. It has an interesting speaker I’ve been wanting to hear.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle, which brought his gaze to me for the first time in minutes.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Charleston is an hour down the road, Peter. That’s too far for a casual stop-off in Edisto. You sure there’s not another reason you’re here?”

  Peter shrugged. “I’m not really sure why I’m here, Buck, if I’m being honest. But I’ll admit I did go out of my way to find a reason to come down here. This break has helped a lot, but I’ve been getting pretty antsy about going back to the life I left. I’m not really as confident as I’d like to be about returning.”

  Sam got up from his spot on the dusty, porch floor and nudged at Peter’s hand as it rested inside his pocket, much like he did to Walt when he wanted attention. Peter bent down and rubbed the dog’s belly.

  “I guess I maybe came out here to thank Walt,” Peter said, standing back up and refocusing his attention on me, “for taking an interest in my life. I know he probably hasn’t thought much about me since that day I left Edisto, but there were a few things he said that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, one in particular more than the others.”

  “What’s that?”

  Peter hesitated. “Walt mentioned this little girl in Costa Rica he helped out, or sponsored, I guess I should say, through his church.”

  “Sure. I remember him talking about her. What’s got your interest about her?”

  “I didn’t tell Walt this, but last year I went to Costa Rica myself and met an orphaned girl there who melted my heart. She had the saddest story, but I felt so helpless because there was nothing I could do to help her. It was actually seeing her that brought back a lot of things from my past, things I thought I had buried.”

  “Walt said he felt helpless, too, when he spoke about his little girl; said he felt like his letters and the small amount of money he sent down there didn’t do enough. But I’m afraid I still don’t get why you’re bringing up these two little girls.”

  “Well, I guess I’m wondering if it’s only one little girl.”

  It took me a second to piece together what Peter was trying to say. “You think the one you met is the same one Walt’s been helping?”

  “Sounds crazy when you say it out loud, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure does. That’s a decent sized country down there with a lot of little girls.” Peter’s face dropped. “But that sure as heck doesn’t mean what you wonderin’ can’t be true. It could be the same child.”

  “Thanks, Buck. I don’t know; I was just trying to make sense of that whole phenomenon with the statues. That little girl was the only connection I could find, with me meeting her and thinking so much about her, and then Walt mentioning her.”

  A breeze floated by and rattled the gutters of Walt’s back porch. At the same moment, something rattled loose in my brain.

  “Wait a minute! Would you recognize her if you saw her?”

  “Sure,” Peter responded, surprised by my question. “I think so.”

  “Walt had a picture of her. It used to sit on a table in his den.”

  We were both unable to move, until Sam barked and startled us into action. I pulled Walt’s screen door open and raced inside. Peter followed with nervous footsteps while Sam galloped in behind him. I had packed up most of Walt’s things in the last week, leaving the house empty save for a few boxes. In the back bedroom I began to plunge through the array of boxes while Peter and Sam paced behind me. It seemed no one would say anything until we had settled this matter. Finally, I found the one I was looking for. I ripped open the box labeled “Photos” and sifted through it as fast as I could. One of the pictures near the top was a framed snapshot of Olivia.

  “Who is that?” Peter asked.

  “That was Walt’s wife. She died a long time ago. I think this was taken just before she passed away.”

  “Can I see it?” I handed it to Peter and was surprised by the way his eyes fell into the picture. “She was beautiful,” he said as he handed the framed picture back to me.

  I went back to digging through the box. “Here it is!” I shouted. When I handed it to Peter and saw his reaction, I already knew. “It’s her, isn’t it? That’s the one you met.”

  Peter lifted his hand to his mouth, stumbled forward and sat down next to me on the creaking floorboards.

  “This is amazing,” I said.

  “But what does it all mean? How are we supposed to make sense of this?” I shrugged. “Were the heated statues all about this little girl?”

  “I suppose they were,” I agreed, though I truly had no idea. “Maybe you’re meant to go back and find her.”

  “But it seems there should be more to this. I understand God wanting to help a poor, orphaned child, but why me and Walt? What’s the connection between us?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I had an answer, Peter. I really do.”

  I heaved the box of pictures onto my lap and began flipp
ing through the rest of them, mainly to relieve my nervous energy. My face warmed with pleasant memories as I saw a few of Walt and me.

  Suddenly, Peter grabbed my wrist.

  “Let me see that picture!”

  He startled me terribly, but I handed him another framed picture as he set the one of the little girl down on the floor. He stared at the new picture for what felt like an eternity.

  “How does Walt know her?”

  I fumbled a question in return. “How do you know her?”

  “Just answer me. How does he know Sister Marie? Why does Walt have a framed picture of her?”

  My thoughts raced back through the weekend trip I had taken to Atlanta. “Well, I gave him this picture, actually. A while back I went to a children’s home outside Atlanta and met her, met that nun. I was attempting to track down Walt’s son. See, it’s a long story, Peter, but Walt had a son he gave up a long time ago. I’d be happy to tell you about it, but—”

  “I grew up at that orphanage,” Peter interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Sister Marie was like a mother to me. She raised me at this orphanage for the first ten years of my life.”

  Neither of us could speak or move. Then suddenly, Sam barked again.

  I could say with great certainty that Walt had left me about four days ago, even though his worn body still lay on a white, hospital bed. He told me in a weary voice about a dream he had some nights ago. It was a strange dream, one that had me thinking Walt had lost his wits for good. At the time, I felt sorry for him.

  Now, I could only admire his faith.

  Before climbing in my car to head to the hospital, Peter and I spent almost an hour exchanging stories. He told me about growing up at the orphanage with Sister Marie and the abusive parents who’d adopted him after his tenth birthday. I told him about Olivia dying in childbirth and the guilt Walt felt for walking out of that hospital without his son. I also told Peter about Walt’s morning ritual, and what he prayed for each day after he finished playing his violin. After that, Peter cried, and I held him.

  Most of the nurses and doctors on Walt’s floor had come to know me. They called me by name as we passed, but they didn’t know the bearded man by my side. “Why don’t you let me go in first,” I said to Peter. I put my arm around his trembling shoulders. “You okay with that?”

  He nodded.

  I slowly opened Walt’s door and walked into the room. The cloth chair that had been my companion for the last few weeks was still perched to the left of the bed, with my favorite quilt laid on top of it, one my mother had sewed for me when I was a child. Tubes, charts, machines, and monitors surrounded Walt, all doing their best to prolong his life. I once heard a friend of mine say that he never understood why we spent so much time and money to keep elderly people alive for as long as we could. “What’s the point?” he used to say. When he said this, my instinct was to tell him that it was our duty to protect human life as much as we could, and from there, it was in God’s hands. In seeing how Walt’s life had unfolded, I discovered I was right. Walt’s destiny was to make it through these last few days. Only now did I understand why.

  “Walt?”

  I gently grabbed his hand. His skin was tough, like a rock worn down by the wind and the earth’s soil. He groaned but didn’t open his eyes. “I know you can hear me, buddy, so I’m going to tell you something now.”

  I gathered myself.

  “I hope you still remember that dream you had the other night, the one where that beautiful angel came to you. She delivered you a message on that golden beach with the purple sea, said you’d meet your son before meeting your wife again. You remember that?”

  Walt tilted his head over on his pillow and opened his eyelids just slightly. I could tell lifting them was as painful as anything he’d ever been through. “I didn’t know what to think of that dream at the time,” I continued, “and frankly, I had forgotten about it. But, well, there’s someone here to see you, Walt.” I turned around and waved to Peter, who stood outside the glass door like a child about to enter a mysterious dream. He walked into the room as I backed away from the bed.

  “Walt, this is—”

  “My son.”

  It was as clear as Walt’s voice had been in weeks.

  “Come Peter, please.” Walt motioned Peter over to the bed. He took several heavy footsteps forward, sat in the chair and grabbed the metal railing bracing the bed.

  “Have you,” Walt began before having to stop and cough, “have you learned about your mother? And what happened when …”

  Peter stopped him. “Buck told me. I know what happened the day I was born.”

  Walt closed his eyes and licked his cracked lips before responding. “Your mother loved you, boy. She loved you so much she gave up her life for you. Before she’d even laid her hazel eyes upon your tiny face, she was willing to take the risk to give you life. That’s the kind of love only a mother knows. She was a good woman, Peter.”

  Peter gripped the railing tightly. “I understand. I wish I could have met her. I wish I hadn’t …. I wish I hadn’t done what I did to her.”

  Walt immediately waved his hand in Peter’s face, but couldn’t respond before spitting up blood and mucus into a white bowl by his bed. “That’s not for you to say,” Walt said after collecting himself. “Only one sin occurred in our family that day. There’s nothin’ I can say to atone for what I did, but I need to look you in the eye and tell you how sorry I am for abandoning you.”

  Peter’s head fell toward the floor.

  “I lived everyday in devotion to praying for you,” Walt went on, “trying to make up for my sins. But selfishly, I prayed mostly that this day would eventually come, the day where I could see you. There’s nothing I can do for you now, and I’ve accepted that. But I hope you see that your suffering wasn’t God’s doing. It was caused by this man right here. Me. God didn’t cause it. He fixed it. He found a way to lead you to a better life, and he gave me the blessing of seeing how fine you turned out despite the decision I made.”

  He paused for a breath and energy before continuing. “Our lives played out this way for a reason.” Walt coughed again and lunged forward. Peter grabbed him and patted his back, trying to beat out the illness destroying his father’s insides. Once Walt had recovered, he grabbed Peter’s hand. “Somehow, those two statues brought us together. We didn’t know at the time what we were to each other, but the Good Lord had us taken care of all along. Life’s like that. We never see a blessing in the present, only when we look back on our past.”

  “But I doubted,” Peter said with watery eyes. “I doubted everything. Why do I deserve to be a part of this, to see this miracle? How could I possibly deserve to stand before God?”

  Walt shook his head and reached up to the oxygen tubes in his nose. Peter and I tried to stop him, but Walt had somehow regained his strength for a brief instant. He pushed us away with the power of a young man and motioned to let him be as he pulled out the tubes. Peter sat back down in the chair as I returned to my place at the foot of the bed.

  “God works on us all in different ways,” Walt said after a long pause, “don’t continue to drift away because of shame, son. You felt cursed all this time, I know, and you were frustrated with God. But sometimes it’s those of us who suffer the most who are closest to Him. Please see now that you were actually blessed. God chose you for this miracle. He must want to use you in some way. God always has a purpose, even if that purpose takes a lifetime to show itself. You must go live your life, Peter, and please forgive me, so that I can let go of mine.”

  Peter tried to speak, but faltered. I think in a way, he didn’t fully comprehend what was happening. The only reason Walt understood everything so clearly was because he had begun to pass into another life, a life that takes away your physical abilities, but somehow gives you the capability to see the world the way God intends us to see it.

  I wanted so badly for Peter to forgive his father, for Walt to hear the
words he had waited to hear for almost forty years. But still, Peter remained silent. His eyes stayed drawn to the floor. Perhaps his silence came from shame at what he had doubted; perhaps from anger toward Walt; perhaps from the overwhelming feeling of meeting his father for the first time. But whatever the reason, several deep breaths were all he could manage. Walt eventually broke the silence.

  “Buck?”

  “Yeah,” I said, approaching his bedside.

  “I’ve said my piece, and I thank God that Peter’s heard it. But this isn’t where I want to go. I want to be as close to her as possible.”

  I nodded. I went and spoke with the doctors and nurses, doing my best to convince them that they needed to look past their rules and regulations this one time. Walt knew his end was here, and they had no chance in stopping that. Didn’t much matter anyway; I intended to take Walt home no matter what they said.

  Peter and I lifted him from the bed as gently as we could. His body was feeble, his bones as soft as tissue paper and his hair all but gone. We placed him in a wheel chair and pushed him to my car. There wasn’t much said between the three of us on the drive home. I knew Walt wanted to say goodbye to Edisto as we drove through the quiet streets and past the grand oaks. This place had become his refuge in the last thirty some years. The glorious sunrises, gentle sea breezes, and sandy beaches of Edisto were all dear friends who had helped Walt live with the pain of his past decisions.

  When we reached Walt’s home, I pulled into the gravel driveway. Peter and I braced Walt as best we could as he got out of the passenger seat. His body was fading with each passing second. The three of us walked around the house, over the sand and grass. Peter held onto Walt’s right arm, and I the left. I wondered where Sam was, knowing Walt would want to see him, but he was already sitting on the beach, waiting on his master with a wagging tail.

  All those mornings Walt sat on this beach as the sun rose from beyond the water, but on that day the sun was setting behind us, tinting the sky with shades of orange and violet. A pack of pelicans flew by above us in a perfect V-shape, gliding peacefully with a wind gust that took them out to sea.