Mercy Among the Children

by David Adams Richards

  I didn’t answer.

  “I know what you might think of me, but I will swear on a Bible to my innocence,” she said.

  “A shitload of good that will do. My mother swore on a Bible in court — so did my father — and the whole river turned against them. You didn’t believe in the worth of Bibles then. Nor did Mom and Dad have the comfort of keeping it out of the paper. You gave them a picture of Autumn so everyone would think the worst about us — if you know what I mean.”

  “I never wanted a child’s picture in the paper!”

  “Well it got in nonetheless.”

  “But couldn’t you see how we would think — I mean how certain people might think? And then I believed you were being abused — how could I not think that —?”

  But her own words confirmed the irony. I have always felt sad for women caught. Much more than men. Her private world — the world where she dreamed at night alone, of drowning in women’s kisses — was now drowning her. Now Diedre needed our help, and the worst of it was, I wished I could help her.

  Diedre stroked old Scupper Pit’s hair, then brought her hand up with her fist closed and looked at me as if she had just thought of something that was agony to think.

  “I’m not a bigot or a racist — but the new woman they have here is implying — because Cheryl’s mother was Micmac — that I used them as easy targets — well, you know how they think,” she said.

  “I know that!” I yelled, tears brimming in my eyes. “I know that — but what in fuck does that matter now? Look at my muscles — why have I worked out for five years? Why? Why can I punch like a mule and yet why am I afraid? Why can I throw a man twice as big as me on his back in three seconds and why am I afraid? Why — why am I afraid! Why do I sleep with a knife? Why?” I paused and shrugged.

  “I can take it, but it wasn’t fair — not for Mommie,” I said, almost like a child, “not for Autumn and Percy.”

  She smiled tenderly and reached out and took my hand. More than ever I felt her sadness and wanted to alleviate it. So would Autumn, that child who once smelled of poverty and icy silence and spruce and gave the world a crinkly hopeful smile it rarely gave her, who now, finally in her last year of high school, seemed no longer to be orphaned by the world but somehow striding above it.

  “Take this,” I said, and got from a drawer Isabel Young’s card, and placed it on the table. “She is the best lawyer I know and the kindest person to ever deal with us — because that’s all any of us want, Ms. Whyne — not revolution or doctrine but only kindness.” I felt smug saying this, but I did not take it back.

  She took the card and placed it in her purse.

  I felt looking at her leaving that the old world was disappearing under our feet and another one was being born on the molten lava that our enemies’ corpses created. Suddenly, quite unexpectedly and for the first time, I was beholden to no one in the world.

  There is a moment in young people’s lives when a fire erupts in the belly and a self-knowledge casts other knowledge aside. They strut like archangels though the caverns of both heaven and hell, yelling bons mots to each other from glittering tavern windows in the night. But even in my laughter I knew that revenge was futile and did nothing for the soul.

  I looked at Autumn the next morning as she ate her cereal. For the first time I saw in her the epitomized elements of generous wit and kindness over adversity. The kind my father had prayed for me had been borne high in her — she was the dauntless Roof Beam Carpenter, the humorous undefeated champion of all our lives.

  Constable Delano came to the house two days later. He had come down to look at the bullet hole, something that I thought everyone had forgotten. He paced out the area, and came back into the house and went over to the bookshelves. He picked up a book or two and mused over them, and then he said:

  “What do people like Mathew ever get? He’s got nothing. At this moment I guarantee you could start your life completely over. No more Mathew or Connie Devlin — or Constable Morris — or anyone. But it takes strength of character to just walk away. You feel you can’t go into your future until you take care of the past. But, son, the past — and everything in the past — is gone. It is what Autumn knows — I spoke to her as well.”

  He then did something strange. He went to his car and brought back a small part of a hockey stick, tied a rag to it, dipped it in some gasoline, and handed it to me.

  “Like this?” he asked.

  I never spoke. I suppose I acted like my father had in front of Morris. Except he was innocent.

  “Do you know how much currency you have?” he said, putting the stick down.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean things suddenly and unexpectedly change in your life. You are no longer the son of an outcast. I promise if I have a breath in my body, your father will never be an outcast again. And those who hated you? Well, all of them, including Diedre Whyne, are having their difficulties now. The truth does matter. There was a time I did not think it. All of a sudden falsehood just goes away.”

  Delano read a book for a moment and then put it back on the shelf.

  “If you become involved, you won’t get anything from it. Whatever it is will backfire. At the most critical moment he will turn against you, or you against him. It will backfire. When it happens you will remember I asked you to be careful.”

  With that he took his leave.

  TWELVE

  That night I went to the church because I had promised Mom I would register Percy for his First Communion. It was the first time I was near the church in years. The church was bare, if not barren. There were some faint flickering candles under the picture of Madonna and Child. I walked into the rectory and saw the chalice in the exact spot I had taken it from a few years before.

  Porier was still here reading the paper. The church had the familiar smell of oak and wax. The wind blew outside.

  I coughed gently and Porier took off his reading glasses and squinted at me. He was an old man now.

  “You’re the Henderson boy?” he said, peering forward so his wavy white hair fell over his forehead.

  “Yes, I am.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “You have come to know when the mass is. Next Monday night at six o’clock,” he said.

  “What mass?”

  “The mass Autumn and Percy have asked for your mother — look.” He took out an envelope. It was Percy’s envelope — I would not mistake it. It had fifteen dollars in it, saved by Percy for his guitar. He had given it away, like that. Neither Autumn nor he had told me.

  “I didn’t know they asked for a mass,” I whispered.

  He sat in front of me like an old gnome, with a paunch, and his pants hiked up over his ankles made his legs look withered. I told him that I had come to register Percy for First Communion. Then I said:

  “I have to know what happened at the mill. My mind won’t rest until I find this out — you must tell me.”

  I felt a strange peace after I spoke those words. The old man took out a cigarette and lighted it.

  “It wasn’t your grandfather,” he said. “I am telling you this and no one else —”

  “When did you know about my grandfather?” I asked.

  “What is said to me in confession is said to me in confession. But your family is responsible for nothing. The papers have said as much now. I think I knew this for a while. But who can be sure? Anyway, those really responsible for the boy’s death are facing long prison terms.”

  He had not flicked the ashes from his cigarette yet. It was another cold night and the corners of the church were dark.

  “You are very loved,” he said, “each one of you.”

  “By who?” I said.

  “By God,” he said.

  This rather deflated me. I thought he might say by the head of the Human Rights Commission, Dr. David Scone, who has now heard about your case and is ready to instigate a lawsuit on your behalf. I too wanted to be heard by some commission
somewhere. For some terrible ego I wanted Dr. David Scone to know of my father’s innocence and his suffering.

  But he could only say I was loved by God. I looked at Percy’s small worn envelope, with the word “Getir” still legible in pencil. Then he told me my mother was loved.

  “By who?” I said.

  “Well, by everyone,” he said. “By you, firstly — and of course by Autumn and Percy, and by your father, and by Hanny Brown, and by Jay Beard, and by many other people, especially her sisters. I know she is loved — since she was a little girl and adopted, just like her sisters were adopted — well, it was that age — they all were brought to the Orphanage of the Sisters of Charity. I carried them in my arms. We could not leave them where they were — there was no life for them way over there. I made a deal with Elly’s mother. Maybe I owe you an apology. Your mom’s sisters were adopted before she was — they were infants, and it was easier — but then she was adopted too — I saw to it — by Hanny Brown’s father and mother, who, though they had eight children, took one more. I don’t even remember who was older or younger — yer mom or her sisters — I have a difficult time remembering that.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you are saying,” I said. But a cold chill had come up my spine. I sat rigid like a man might who is tied to a chair and about to be shot.

  Father Porier looked at me with tired red eyes.

  “I thought you knew now. Everyone else on the river knows. It has all come out in the last few days. Isabel Young discovered it. Since she met your mother six years ago she has been trying to get information for her. First it was just on your mother’s background — and on your mother’s behalf. She was hoping she could get something/or her. Then she discovered your mother was adopted by a poor man who owned a small fishing boat. But that her two sisters grew up in very different backgrounds, much better off. Private school. Both of them met at university without knowing who the other was. Both attended peace marches, both set out to help the world, and ran headlong into their sister, your mother, without knowing who she was. Isabel found out — and broke her silence three weeks ago — I was sure — I mean — you don’t know? Diedre Whyne and Isabel Young are your mother’s sisters. You must know that. They are McVicer’s children.”

  I began to laugh so hard, tears blurred my fuckin’ eyes.

  THIRTEEN

  I left the church, my hands thrust into my pockets, and through the glazed dark I saw another person going, I thought, away from me — but then I realized she was coming my way.

  Autumn was wearing her white coat and boots. She wore no makeup, she had no contacts. She was like the little albino girl of six or seven, when we went to the church and she had won the flower for Dad at the fish tank.

  “I have been trying to find you,” she said. “I left Percy waiting for me. You have to come now,” she whispered, tears sparkling in her eyes, “to say goodbye to our mommie.”

  She grabbed my arm to make me hurry as if we were going to catch a train and we started to run. As if it was all preordained, Father Porier drove by us and stopped his Pontiac at our lane. When we got to the car, Percy was already in the back seat wearing a safety belt that looked charmingly pessimistic on such a tiny child.

  I can still smell after all these years the faint scent of holy water Autumn wore in this fall night. I wondered where she had gotten it, and wondered if she knew it labelled us rural Catholic of the worst order. Yet I also embraced it as authentically her. I recognized it again, like I did that night when Jay Beard drove us home from the picnic. To me it had the smell of diluted vinegar and made the clothes yellow.

  Percy looked at me without speaking, as if my entering the car was a fact long known by him. His shirt was buttoned, but his bow tie was missing, and there was a brown spot on the collar. His shoes, though on the wrong feet, were carefully tied. He held in his hand a ribbon and a silver button. He never spoke to me, and he never cried. His eyes simply stared in front of him, the huge seatbelt like some grand inquisitor’s cable that would stop his soul from rushing away to where it wanted to go; and maybe wanted to torture the child just a sweet while longer.

  For the last three weeks he had sat beside Mom or stayed at home, or taken Scupper Pit in his wagon up the road to wait for his father. I had neglected him while every night he sat until dark waiting for her or Dad to come back. And as Mom’s condition deteriorated he kept believing that every slip in her condition was temporary and that the doctors would perform a new treatment and she would recover. And he would haul Scupper Pit down to the church. And sometimes thoughtless people would brush by him as they came out of church and ran off to their cars in the blowing snow. Once he was knocked down by some callow children running with a ball and Scupper started barking.

  He did not understand that doctors could not help, no matter how much they wanted to, because something, time, intelligence, or the muddle of our lost millennium had stayed their hand.

  When the car stopped, he waited for the seatbelt to be unsnapped, as if this was part of a ceremony. Autumn and I took his hand. Going up the steps he stumbled once, and said, “Excuse me,” with grave solemnity, that sounded graver in the half-lighted hospital foyer. When we came into the foyer there was an unfortunate drunk at the door who was wailing. The drunk turned, looked at Percy with some hidden sullen hatred in his heart.

  Percy stopped as if he recognized the fellow. Then he handed him his ribbon. The man took it, and held it in dumbfounded silence.

  Percy clutched our hands tighter and looked at us both. We continued to walk, around the corner along the lighted hallways, while the drunk feebly called after him, the walls faint with the smell of sadness, urine, and love.

  “She will wait for Dad,” Percy said.

  But Mom was unconscious. She had been for almost a week. Percy expected her to be awake now, and when we came in, he looked at us as if he had let us down, as if all his childlike optimism was proven wrong.

  What had never happened in my mother’s life happened at her death. The reunion of the sisters. Isabel was there when we came in. She stood and kissed me, and bending close kissed Autumn’s white cheek and hugged Percy. A moment later, Diedre came to the door, which was half-closed, the room itself having the appearance of grey evening. She was all in a rush of purse and skirt and coat but stopped up, looked at us, at Mom, and hesitatingly came forward. She bent down and kissed her sister’s pale forehead, and kissed it again, then rose up and smiled at us in a tragic way.

  “She has suffered so much,” she whispered to no one. Isabel quickly hugged her.

  Father Porier performed the last rites. He gave Autumn communion, and then six months before he was supposed to, he gave Percy communion for the first time. I did not take it. I had no reason to.

  As usual there were many little things that seemed of no consequence. Mom’s notes for Percy’s first grade she had written clumsily weeks before, reminding Autumn that she had provided money for his lunches, and to pick up a scribbler for him. (She did not know that Jay Beard had paid for these lunches and the scribbler because her money as usual was not nearly enough.) The phone number of Darren Voteur, the boy she had arranged to sit with Percy.

  There was a folded note with Sydney scratched on the outside. There was a card from the Orphanage of the Sisters of Charity and two unopened letters from the Office of Mother Superior.

  There were some other things: a pair of bedroom slippers I had bought her. And the basket of fruit brought to her by Hanny Brown, still under its plastic cover, and some new soap Autumn got her in Chatham. It was still wrapped in its decorative paper, sitting on the table, with the card. She died at 9:17 on the seventeenth of November 1989, thirty-nine years of age, leaving three children between the ages of eighteen and five, and a husband she had not seen in almost three years. She left her two dresses to Autumn, and five dollars to Percy. She left me the pure white stone Dad had thrown into her room the night he told her of his love.

  Over the next couple of hours D
iedre did nothing but speak to us about our trouble and how it was now all past. That we were the most recognized and suddenly loved family on the river. (Absurd as it was.) When she hugged me, her body felt like Mom’s, and tears — goddamn tears — came to my eyes.

  Autumn’s face grew pensive and she took off the ring that I had given her when I told her no one would bother her ever again. She handed it to me.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

  “Please take it —”

  “Why —?”

  She looked at the ring. “I remember once Elly was trying to tell me a story — it was a story about Vincent Van Gogh — that Dad had told her, but she had no idea who he was. I was in a school play about a painter. That’s why she wanted to tell it. Dad was not home and she felt it her duty. She kept getting more and more mixed up trying to tell it just like Dad. Let me tell you how she told this story.”

  “She sat with her hands on her lap,” I said, “and smoothed her dress.”

  “Yes — exactly — and she tried to talk very sophisticated about him and his paintings. But she became more and more confused, and Dad wasn’t at home to help her, and she seemed to look about the room for him. I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. I know I hurt her feelings. She had worked her gumption up to tell me a story like Dad might, but she didn’t remember the details — and I had laughed at her. So she stopped talking, and tried to remember something else about him, and couldn’t But I had hurt her heart, Lyle — I had hurt her tender heart. And do you know what it showed me?”

  “What?”

  “It showed me her incalculable beauty — I laughed at someone Van Gogh would have loved more than all the art dealers in the world, and I have yet to forgive myself. You see, she never in her life thought it necessary to laugh at me,” Autumn said.