The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  No peace.

  Father Russell had entered the priesthood without the sort of fervent sense of vocation he believed others had. In fact, he’d entertained serious doubts about it right up to the last year of seminary—doubts that, in spite of his confessor’s reassurances to the contrary, he felt were more than the normal upsets of seminary life. In the first place, he had come to it against the wishes of his father, who had entertained dreams of a career in law for him; and while his mother applauded the decision, her own dream of grandchildren was visibly languishing in her eyes as the time for his final vows approached. Both parents had died within a month of each other during his last year of studies, and so there had been times when he’d had to contend with the added problem of an apprehension that he might unconsciously be learning to use his vocation as a form of refuge. But finally, nearing the end of his training, seeing the completion of the journey, something in him rejoiced, and he came to believe that this was what having a true vocation was: no extremes of emotion, no real perception of a break with the world, though the terms of his faith and the ancient ceremony that his training had prepared him to celebrate spoke of just that. He was even-tempered and confident, and when he was ordained, he set about the business of being a parish priest. There were matters to involve himself in, and he found that he could be energetic and enthusiastic about most of them. The life was satisfying in ways he hadn’t expected, and if in his less confident moments some part of him entertained the suspicion that he was not progressing spiritually, he was also not the sort of man to go very deeply into such questions: there were things to do. He was not a contemplative. Or he hadn’t been.

  Something was shifting in his soul.

  Nights were terrible. He couldn’t even pray now. He stood at his rectory window and looked at the light in the old man’s window, and his imagination presented him with the belief that he could hear the faint rattle of the deep cough, though he knew it was impossible across that distance. When he said the morning mass, he leaned down over the host and had to work to remember the words. The stolid, calm faces of his parishioners were almost ugly in their absurd confidence in him, their smiles of happy expectation and welcome. He took their hospitality and their care of him as his due, and felt waves of despair at the ease of it, the habitual taste and lure of it, while all the time his body was aching in ways that filled him with dread and reminded him of Tarmigian’s ravaged features.

  Sunday morning early, it began to rain. Someone called, then hung up before he could answer. He had been asleep; the loud ring at that hour had frightened him, changed his heartbeat. He took his own pulse, then stood at his window and gazed at the darkened shape of Tarmigian’s church. That morning after the second mass, exhausted, miserable, filled with apprehension, he crossed the bridge in the rain, made his way up the hill and knocked on the old man’s door. There wasn’t any answer. He peered through the window on the porch and saw that there were dishes on the table in the kitchen, which was visible through the arched hallway off the living room. Tarmigian’s Bible lay open on the arm of the easy chair. Father Russell knocked loudly and then walked around the building, into the church itself. It was quiet. The wind stirred outside and sounded like traffic whooshing by. Father Russell could feel his own heartbeat in the pit of his stomach. He sat down in the last pew of Tarmigian’s church and tried to calm himself. Perhaps ten minutes went by, and then he heard voices. The old man was coming up the walk outside, talking to someone. Father Russell stood, thought absurdly of trying to hide, but then the door was opened and Tarmigian walked in, accompanied by an old woman in a white woolen shawl. Tarmigian had a big umbrella, which he shook down and folded, breathing heavily from the walk and looking, as always, even in the pall of his decline, amused by something. He hadn’t seen Father Russell yet, though the old woman had. She nodded and smiled broadly, her hands folded neatly over a small black purse.

  “Well,” Tarmigian said. “To what do we owe this honor, Reverend?”

  It struck Father Russell that they might be laughing at him. He dismissed this thought and, clearing his throat, said, “I—I wanted to see you.” His own voice sounded stiffly formal and somehow foolish to him. He cleared his throat again.

  “This is Father Russell,” Tarmigian said loudly to the old woman. Then he touched her shoulder and looked at the priest. “Mrs. Aldenberry.”

  “God bless you,” Mrs. Aldenberry said.

  “Mrs. Aldenberry wants a divorce,” Tarmigian murmured.

  “Eh?” she said. Then, turning to Father Russell, “I’m hard of hearing.”

  “She wants her own television set,” Tarmigian whispered.

  “Pardon me?” “And her own room.”

  “I’m hard of hearing,” she said cheerfully to the priest. “I’m deaf as a post.”

  “Irritates her husband,” Tarmigian said.

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman, “I can’t hear a thing.”

  Tarmigian guided her to the last row of seats, and she sat down there, folded her hands in her lap. She seemed quite content, quite trustful, and the old minister, beginning to stutter into a deep cough, winked at Father Russell—as if to say this was all very entertaining. “Now,” he said, taking the priest by the elbow, “Let’s get to the flattering part of all this—you walking over here getting yourself all wet because you’re worried about me.”

  “I just wanted to stop by,” Father Russell said. He was almost pleading. The old man’s face, in the dim light, looked appallingly bony and pale.

  “Look at you,” said Tarmigian. “You’re shaking.”

  Father Russell could not speak.

  “Are you all right?”

  The priest was assailed by the feeling that the older man found him somehow ridiculous—and he remembered the initial sense he’d had, when Tarmigian and Mrs. Aldenberry had entered, that he was being laughed at. “I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said.

  “I’m a little under the weather,” Tarmigian said, smiling.

  And it dawned on Father Russell, with the force of a physical blow, that the old man knew quite well he was dying.

  Tarmigian indicated Mrs. Aldenberry with a nod of his head. “Now I have to attend to the depths of this lady’s sorrow. You know, she says she should’ve listened to her mother and not married Mr. Aldenberry fifty-two years ago. She’s revising her own history; she can’t remember being happy in all that time, not now, not after what’s happened. Now you think about that a bit. Imagine her standing in a room slapping her forehead and saying ‘What a mistake!’ Fifty-two years. Oops. A mistake. She’s glad she woke up in time. Think of it! And I’ll tell you, Reverend, I think she feels lucky.”

  Mrs. Aldenberry made a prim, throat-clearing sound, then stirred in her seat, looking at them.

  “Well,” Tarmigian said, straightening, wiping the smile from his face. He offered his hand to the priest. “Shake hands. No. Let’s embrace. Let’s give this poor woman an ecumenical thrill.”

  Father Russell shook hands, then walked into the old man’s extended arms. It felt like a kind of collapse. He was breathing the odor of bay rum and talcum and something else, too, something indefinable and dark, and to his astonishment he found himself fighting back tears. The two men stood there while Mrs. Aldenberry watched, and Father Russell was unable to control the sputtering and trembling that took hold of him. When Tarmigian broke the embrace, the priest turned away, trying to compose himself. Tarmigian was coughing again.

  “Excuse me,” said Mrs. Aldenberry. She seemed quite tentative and upset.

  Tarmigian held up one hand, still coughing, and his eyes had grown wide with the effort to breathe.

  “Hot honey with a touch of lemon and whiskey,” she said, to no one in particular. “Works like a charm.”

  Father Russell thought about how someone her age would indeed learn to feel that humble folk remedies were effective in stopping illness. It was logical and reasonable, and he was surprised by the force of his own resentm
ent of her for it. He stood there wiping his eyes and felt his heart constrict with bitterness.

  “Well,” Tarmigian said, getting his breath back.

  “Hot toddy,” said Mrs. Aldenberry. “Never knew it to fail.” She was looking from one to the other of the two men, her expression taking on something of the look of tolerance. “Fix you up like new,” she said, turning her attention to the priest, who could not stop blubbering. “What’s—what’s going on here?”

  Father Russell had a moment of sensing that everything Tarmigian had done or said over the past year was somehow freighted with this one moment, and it took him a few seconds to recognize the implausibility of such a thing: no one could have planned it, or anticipated it, this one seemingly aimless gesture of humor—out of a habit of humorous gestures, and from a brave old man sick to death—that could feel so much like health, like the breath of new life.

  He couldn’t stop crying. He brought out a handkerchief and covered his face with it, then wiped his forehead. It had grown quiet. The other two were gazing at him. He straightened, caught his breath. “Excuse me.”

  “No excuse needed,” Tarmigian said, looking down. His smile seemed vaguely uncertain now, and sad. Even a little afraid.

  “What is going on here?” the old woman wanted to know.

  “Why, nothing at all out of the ordinary,” Tarmigian said, shifting the small weight of his skeletal body, clearing his throat, managing to speak very loudly, very gently, so as to reassure her, but making certain, too, that she could hear him.

  THE FIREMAN’S WIFE

  Jane’s husband, Martin, works for the fire department. He’s on four days, off three; on three, off four. It’s the kind of shift work that allows plenty of time for sustained recreation, and during the off times Martin likes to do a lot of socializing with his two shift mates, Wally Harmon and Teddy Lynch. The three of them are like brothers: they bicker and squabble and compete in a friendly way about everything, including their common hobby, which is the making and flying of model airplanes. Martin is fanatical about it—spends way too much money on the two planes he owns, which are on the workable in the garage, and which seem to require as much maintenance as the real article. Among the arguments between Jane and her husband—about money, lack of time alone together, and housework—there have been some about the model planes, but Jane can’t say or do much without sounding like a poor sport: Wally’s wife, Milly, loves watching the boys, as she calls them, fly their planes, and Teddy Lynch’s ex-wife, before they were divorced, had loved the model planes too. In a way, Jane is the outsider here: Milly Harmon has known Martin most of his life, and Teddy Lynch was once point guard to Martin’s power forward on their high school basketball team. Jane is relatively new, having come to Illinois from Virginia only two years ago, when Martin brought her back with him from his reserve training there.

  This evening, a hot September twilight, they’re sitting on lawn chairs in the dim light of the coals in Martin’s portable grill, talking about games. Martin and Teddy want to play Risk, though they’re already arguing about the rules. Teddy says that a European version of the game contains a wrinkle that makes it more interesting, and Martin is arguing that the game itself was derived from some French game.

  “Well, go get it,” Teddy says, “and I’ll show you. I’ll bet it’s in the instructions.”

  “Don’t get that out now,” Jane says to Martin.

  “It’s too long,” Wally Harmon says.

  “What if we play cards,” Martin says.

  “Martin doesn’t want to lose his bet,” Teddy says.

  “We don’t have any bets, Teddy.”

  “Okay, so let’s bet.”

  “Let’s play cards,” Martin says. “Wally’s right. Risk takes too long.”

  “I feel like conquering the world,” Teddy says.

  “Oh, Teddy,” Milly Harmon says. “Please shut up.”

  She’s expecting. She sits with her legs out, holding her belly as though it were unattached, separate from her. The child will be her first, and she’s excited and happy; she glows, as if she knows everyone’s admiring her.

  Jane thinks Milly is spreading it on a little thick at times: lately all she wants to talk about is her body and what it’s doing.

  “I had a dream last night,” Milly says now. “I dreamed that I was pregnant. Big as a house. And I woke up and I was. What I want to know is, was that a nightmare?”

  “How did you feel in the dream?” Teddy asks her.

  “I said. Big as a house.”

  “Right, but was it bad or good?”

  “How would you feel if you were big as a house?”

  “Well, that would depend on what the situation was.”

  “The situation is, you’re big as a house.”

  “Yeah, but what if somebody was chasing me? I’d want to be big, right?”

  “Oh, Teddy, please shut up.”

  “I had a dream,” Wally says. “A bad dream. I dreamed I died. I mean, you know, I was dead—and what was weird was that I was also the one who had to call Milly to tell her about it.”

  “Oh, God,” Milly says. “Don’t talk about this.”

  “It was weird. I got killed out at sea or something. Drowned, I guess. I remember I was standing on the deck of this ship talking to somebody about how it went down. And then I was calling Milly to tell her. And the thing is, I talked like a stranger would—you know, ‘I’m sorry to inform you that your husband went down at sea.’ It was weird.”

  “How did you feel when you woke up?” Martin says.

  “I was scared. I didn’t know who I was for a couple of seconds.”

  “Look,” Milly says, “I don’t want to talk about dreams.”

  “Let’s talk about good dreams,” Jane says. “I had a good dream. I was fishing with my father out at a creek—some creek that felt like a real place. Like if I ever really did go fishing with my father, this is where we would have fished when I was small.”

  “What?” Martin says after a pause, and everyone laughs.

  “Well,” Jane says, feeling the blood rise in her cheeks, “I never—my father died when I was just a baby.”

  “I dreamed I got shot once,” Teddy says. “Guy shot me with a forty-five automatic as I was running downstairs. I fell and hit bottom, too. I could feel the cold concrete on the side of my face before I woke up.”

  Milly Harmon sits forward a little and says to Wally, “Honey, why did you have to tell about having a dream like that? Now I’m going to dream about it, I just know it.”

  “I think we all ought to call it a night,” Jane says. “You guys have to get up at six o’clock in the morning.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Martin says. “We’re going to play cards, aren’t we?”

  “I thought we were going to play Risk,” Teddy says.

  “All right,” Martin says, getting out of his chair. “Risk it is.”

  Milly groans, and Jane gets up and follows Martin into the house. “Honey,” she says. “Not Risk. Come on. We’d need four hours at least.”

  He says over his shoulder, “So then we need four hours.”

  “Martin, I’m tired.”

  He’s leaning up into the hall closet, where the games are stacked. He brings the Risk game down and turns, holding it in both hands like a tray. “Look, where do you get off, telling everybody to go home the way you did?”

  She stands there staring at him.

  “These people are our friends, Jane.”

  “I just said I thought we ought to call it a night.”

  “Well don’t say—all right? It’s embarrassing.”

  He goes around her and back out to the patio. The screen door slaps twice in the jamb. She waits a moment and then moves through the house to the bedroom. She brushes her hair, thinks about getting out of her clothes. Martin’s uniforms are lying across the foot of the bed. She picks them up, walks into the living room with them and drapes them over the back of the easy chair.r />
  “Jane,” Martin calls from the patio. “Are you playing or not?”

  “Come on, Jane,” Milly says. “Don’t leave me alone out here.”

  “What color armies do you want?” Martin asks.

  She goes to the patio door and looks out at them. Martin has lighted the tiki lamps; everyone’s sitting at the picnic table in the moving firelight. “Come on,” Martin says, barely concealing his irritation. She can hear it, and she wants to react to it—wants to let him know that she is hurt. But they’re all waiting for her, so she steps out and takes her place at the table. She chooses green for her armies, and she plays the game to lose, attacking in all directions until her forces are so badly depleted that when Wally begins to make his own move she’s the first to lose all her armies. This takes more than an hour. When she’s out of the game, she sits for a while, cheering Teddy on against Martin, who is clearly going to win; finally she excuses herself and goes back into the house. The glow from the tiki lamps makes weird patterns on the kitchen wall. She pours herself a glass of water and drinks it down; then she pours more and swallows some aspirin. Teddy sees this as he comes in for more beer, and he grasps her by the elbow and asks if she wants something a little better than aspirin for a headache.

  “Like what?” she says, smiling at him. She’s decided a smile is what one offers under such circumstances; one laughs things off, pretends not to notice the glazed look in the other person’s eyes.

  Teddy is staring at her, not quite smiling. Finally he puts his hands on her shoulders and says, “What’s the matter, lady?”

  “Nothing,” she says. “I have a headache. I took some aspirin.”

  “I’ve got some stuff,” he says. “It makes America beautiful. Want some?”

  She says, “Teddy.”

  “No problem,” he says. He holds both hands up and backs away from her. Then he turns and is gone. She hears him begin to tease Martin about the French rules of the game. Martin is winning. He wants Wally Harmon to keep playing, and Wally wants to quit. Milly and Teddy are talking about flying the model airplanes. They know about an air show in Danville on Saturday. They all keep playing and talking, and for a long time Jane watches them from the screen door. She smokes half a pack of cigarettes, and she paces a little. She drinks three glasses of orange juice, and finally she walks into the bedroom and lies down with her face in her hands. Her forehead feels hot. She’s thinking about the next four days, when Martin will be gone and she can have the house to herself. She hasn’t been married even two years, and she feels crowded; she’s depressed and tired every day. She never has enough time to herself. And yet when she’s alone, she feels weak and afraid. Now she hears someone in the hallway and she sits up, smoothes her hair back from her face. Milly Harmon comes in with her hands cradling her belly.