When Hector got back to the orphanage in mid-morning, Reverend Tanner was conducting the Sunday service beneath the pavilion in the central yard; it was where everyone gathered and ate in the warm weather. He parked the Willys in its spot just inside the arched gate and walked in. They were singing a minor-key hymn and his heart sank in fear that they were doing so for Min, but then he spotted a pair of crutches at the end of the front row, Min sitting up straight and bright-faced, his mouth wide with song. His foot was heavily bandaged. Tanner’s wife sat next to him, focused intently on her husband at the head of the congregation, singing, too, with the enthusiasm of a preacher’s wife.
When they were done, Tanner addressed them. He was very much at ease and spoke Korean quite well, as he’d worked in Pusan the last year of the war. He had told them, as Hong had before, how he had come to oversee the orphanage as well as tour the many other church-affiliated orphanages around the country, to observe conditions and allocate resources as well as to teach classes, and also, of course, arrange for adoptions. But then he was humorous in recounting what had happened on coming back from the hospital, telling how Min somehow convinced the taxi driver to let him take the wheel for a little bit, which nearly led to their skidding off the road. There was a hearty laugh and Tanner prompted Min, who hopped up on his crutches, grinning and waving his hands, and then took a deep bow. There was rousing applause and shouting and anyone could see that Tanner had already begun to win them over. He continued, not with a Bible lesson but with a talk about his background as a physician and how he had come to his faith after his own miraculous recovery from an otherwise fatal blood poisoning.
“It happened soon after Mrs. Tanner and I were married.” He spoke to them as if in confidence, as though they were all his intimates and he was confessing to them. “Our life together was just beginning. But after I became deathly ill, I felt powerless and insignificant. I was afraid. I was no longer the arrogant doctor who had always believed in the boundless possibility and reach of the human mind. I realized my conceits and accepted at that moment not only death but the grace of an Almighty Spirit. I refused further treatment and bid my parents and my dear wife, Sylvie, goodbye. I was no longer fearful, only sad for leaving my beloved wife and parents and for being so willfully blind. I shut my eyes and fell into what all believed was my final sleep, but two days later I awoke, my fever broken. My limbs were weak, but gone were the terrible shaking and pain. But this was not what struck me. It was my mind, yes, but altogether recast, my thoughts suddenly as clear as the water of the deepest, purest spring. I knew then that I had been living only half a life, and thus not a life at all, that all of my worldly knowledge and expertise and efforts were useful and valuable but only as a living devotion to the mercy of God and His Eternal Love. I had been delivered, as I hope you will be delivered, into a glorious new life.”
As he spoke, Hector caught his wife’s eye a few times but she looked away whenever he did, her gaze returning straight to her husband as if to a beacon shining out from a dark shoreline. Tanner clearly was aware of him as well but didn’t break at all in his speaking or gestures, even after Hector turned to go to his room. He had been a vessel for plenty of religious talk throughout his life, and in recent months from Hong as well (the good reverend would come and share a whiskey with him and read the Gospels aloud), and although he was not yet a believer, he was becoming a willing subject himself, someone who had indeed begun ceding his life, too, if arranging a very different surrender.
For the first week, Hector steered clear of the new reverend and his wife; he worked on the immediate grounds in the early mornings and during congregations and meals, saving any fieldwork for when they might be about. He couldn’t help but pause, as everyone did, whenever he caught a glimpse of Sylvie Tanner, her hair as it fell against the grave paleness of her shoulders glowing as vibrantly as anything he had seen since being in this desolated country. She was near forty, the creases at her eyes and mouth just now insinuating themselves for good, the first white wisps ashing the hair at her temples. There was the tiniest downward lag at the corners of her eyes, which he thought gave her an almost Egyptian sadness. The children adored her, the girls especially, floating about her like hungry bees around a tall, straight flower. She had introduced herself briefly to him as he ate alone after everyone else had finished, but he felt Tanner’s obvious disdain and didn’t allow himself to approach or speak to her. She seemed too mature and complete and happy, and this easy perfection, besides her loveliness, made him all the more shy and grimy-feeling and compelled him to drive the Willys into Seoul each night and enact the depravities Tanner saw in him.
One morning Hector was scraping old paint from the side of the main dormitory to ready it for a new coat when Reverend Tanner suddenly appeared and surprised him, asking if he could help. Hector nodded and handed him a scraper and they worked together for an hour. Tanner had spoken to him several times about work projects and such but it was the first instance that they’d stood this close to each other for more than a brief moment. Tanner didn’t pretend that he was solely there to work, immediately asking Hector when he had arrived in Korea and where he had been during the war. He asked if he’d seen action and Hector told him only that he’d been in Graves Registration. Without prompting, Tanner spoke about himself, saying he was from Buffalo but had studied medicine and later divinity in Chicago and was now based in the Seattle offices of the Northwestern Synod of the Presbyterian Church. When he found out where Hector was from, his eyes lit up.
“I was actually near there once, as a boy. I swam with my cousins in the Erie Canal. When they opened a lock upstream we jumped off one of the bridges and rode the current down and then hitched a ride on whatever boat was heading back. You must have done that a thousand times.”
“I didn’t swim much,” Hector said. “I never liked the water.”
“I remember now. That was some of the foulest water I’ve ever seen. All sorts of things floating in it.”
“Yeah,” Hector said, seeing again the blackness inside his father’s gaping mouth. “That’s right.”
“Will you be going back?”
“To Ilion? No.”
“Then to somewhere else in the States?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must be having a time of it here in Korea,” Tanner said. “Like most of the servicemen.”
“I’m not in the service anymore.”
“Yes, I know that. I suppose I meant all you young men.”
Hector didn’t respond, keeping focused on the task. Tanner didn’t press him and they worked steadily with their scrapers on the long section of wall, working from opposite ends and moving toward the center. Soon enough flecks of white paint dusted them from head to toe, the two men looking as if they’d shoveled out an ash pit. Tanner took to the work with ease. He was still wearing his minister’s gray shirt and white collar and in the gaining heat he perspired heavily. But he wasn’t laboring. He was athletic and rangy and he clearly welcomed the renewed physical activity after his extended travels; back in Seattle he sculled his one-man shell every morning on Lake Union. He was twenty years older than Hector-some thinning showed in an otherwise full head of hair-but there was otherwise an animation and sturdiness about his constitution that was not unlike the younger man’s, though unlike Hector’s, Tanner’s was drawn as much from the force of his will as from an innate, brute vigor: his obviously steel self-belief primary still, despite the story of his miraculous recovery.
Tanner reached the midpoint of the wall even before Hector, whose efforts ticked by as always at a constant, unremitting meter. Tanner stepped back, removing his wire spectacles and wiping his brow with his sleeve.
“From your surname I assume your family is Catholic?”
“My dad. My mother was lapsed. They’re both gone now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah.”
“And what about you? Do you consider yourself Catholic?”
/>
“I’m nothing.”
“Surely you must have been christened.”
Hector nodded.
“I was just curious. It’s not important, but I suppose I was wondering how much time you’d spent in church.”
“Why’s that?”
“Again, it’s not material, but I want to ask if you would be able to construct a chapel for us. The outdoor pavilion is perfectly fine now, but I don’t see how it will be useful come winter. Had Reverend Hong any such plans, about what to do?”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me about them.”
“I’m glad we’re talking about it, then. I was thinking that perhaps you could build a small chapel, just one big enough to house all of us.”
“I doubt I could get the lumber to build anything but a shed.”
“What about converting a space?”
“There’s really nothing that would work, except maybe the main classroom.”
“No, that won’t do,” Tanner said. “I feel strongly that if possible we should have a chapel that’s just a chapel. Where we solely hold prayer services and read Scripture and sing our hymns. Nothing else, no classes or eating. It doesn’t have to look churchlike. A room with benches is all we would require. Nothing large. The closer we are, the better.”
Hector pictured the big Catholic church in Albany where they went for Easter, and then the one on West Street in Ilion where his father would regularly take him and his sisters on Sunday mornings, and sometimes for the Vigil on Saturday afternoons. It was massive and impressive to his boy’s eyes, built from blocks of granite and with a medieval-style tower, and within its soaring buttressed wooden ceiling above the nave, the supports and walls were clad in a limestone that shone brilliantly in the daytime from the light that streamed in through three high, narrow stained-glass windows over the main entrance. It was a very long structure with dozens of rows of burnished mahogany pews. On certain stifling summer days the air would be unbearable and his father would often doze off for a while, and if they were sitting toward the back Hector could slip beneath the pew in front and lie down on the cool stone floor until just before the sermon was over. There was a separate small chapel off the nave, devoted to the Annunciation, and Hector was surprised how well he could recall it now, the narrow space like a miniaturized chapel with its smaller altar and cross and off to the side a statue of a remarkably beautiful Irish-faced Mary, who could have been one of his wild sisters.
“There’s the vestibule between the girls’ and boys’ sleeping rooms,” he told Tanner. “I think it was open space between the buildings that was enclosed at some point. I wouldn’t have to do much except maybe install a woodstove, if I can find one. I suppose I could salvage enough boards from the base for some pews.”
“Yes, that sounds fine. That might just hold all of us.”
“Not me.”
“Have you not attended any of the services here?”
“No.”
“And Reverend Hong never minded?”
“I do jobs here. He knew that.”
“Well, you should know it’s likely he won’t be returning in three months. He’s done a good job and the Church will be asking him to go to Minnesota after his time in Seattle, to help begin a new ministry. He doesn’t know this yet. A good number of the children, from all our orphanages around Korea, will be adopted into families there.”
“Are you telling me I ought to get going? Because I’ll move on whenever you like.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that.” Tanner said. “Of course, it’s up to you. However, I would ask you to stay on for a while. There’s clearly much work to be done around the property before the weather turns. Reverend Hong went over it with me, particularly the refurbishing of the kitchen and the new septic tank, as well as patching the roofs of all the structures. And now this chapel. I’d ask you to see these projects through, if not for me, then for Reverend Hong. For the children.”
He looked directly into Hector’s eyes. “May I be frank with you? All right, then. Although I’ve only been here a week I will tell you directly that I think your presence otherwise is detrimental to the children. I took the liberty of interviewing some of the staff aunties. Please don’t blame them, but I was quite forceful in my queries. Again, I have nothing against you, personally. Your life is your own, and I didn’t come to Korea to mold your habits or your character. But I am certain that the children don’t need to see you return every morning after long nights in town. Or be so aware of your public drinking. Or your obvious indifference to our assembly and worship. So I disagree with Reverend Hong when he says that because the children are accustomed to you there should be no concern. They are rootless in every regard, and this may be their last chance for a new beginning, and so why would I wish any influences on them that weren’t wholly benevolent? Do you think I should?”
“No.”
“So you can understand. You agree.”
Hector didn’t disagree.
“Good. I want to say now, too, that in my view everything is conditional. My hope is that from this point on I’ll be persuaded otherwise. You’re a very young man, with your entire life ahead of you. I don’t know what happened to you before or during the war, or what you think this life now holds for you. But I would say you have the posture of someone awaiting the inevitable. Or even inviting it. I am sure that there is no worse sin than the one a man can perpetrate on himself.”
For the next few weeks Hector kept fast to his work. It wasn’t to try to impress Tanner or alter any of his views. He didn’t like the last thing the reverend had said about him, but there, too, he couldn’t quite do anything but agree: indeed, he was waiting for the inevitable. He was looking for something to befall him, to strike him down; he was a man clambering to the top of a hill in a lightning storm, waving an iron rod. But for Hector the skies blew always empty, broke open vast and blue. So he threw himself into the labor. He wanted the rack of heavy toil, not as discipline or punishment but as cover, a way to erase himself. He patched the older roofs in the afternoons. Only the small schoolhouse roof was solid and sturdy, having been constructed by an army ordinance battalion a year earlier, at the end of the war, but the rest of the buildings dated from the 1920s and were converted farming structures, rickety swaybacked buildings meant for housing livestock and chickens. He spent the hottest part of the day on the clay tiles, clearing everyone out from beneath the roof he was working on, in case of collapse. In the intense late-August heat the orphanage grounds were deserted, the rest of the populace staying inside for their studies, or else resting or doing chores under the tent or the meager tree shade on the edges of the compound. The sun was relentless, its rays like sheets of fiery glass cascading down to shred him, but he welcomed the burn on his shoulders and back as he stepped about on the creaky structure. He felt nimble and insignificant, an ant at labor, but an ant alone, drifted far off from its brethren.
At meals he took his bowl of rice and soup back to his quarters, drinking his PX whiskey in private as well. He had stopped going into Seoul. He mostly avoided the children. With the excuse of what had happened to Min he disbanded the firewood detail, doing the gathering himself. It was not that he felt chastised or shamed by what Tanner had said so much as alerted to an idea about himself that had begun to haunt him: that he was a bane on otherwise decent people, somehow instantly embodying the exact cast of their most profane weakness. He inspired only homely acts of Eros. Hadn’t it been that way with Patricia Cahill, voracious for his physicality as she was going mad over the lost corpse of her husband? And with his good-hearted but ever-needful father, Jackie, whose sodden drift down the Erie Canal found its source from the same? And so in regard to the children Tanner was of course right: there was no good reason to allow a figure like him within their view. Each one had surely witnessed enough depravity and death to last all their days. And while most of them were now gleeful and antic like any other children, kidding with him more easily than he did with them, he sensed
that a few of the quieter ones, like June, the girl who had followed him here from the road, could see through his surface to the potential disaster lodged in every cell of him.
At the army base he was able to find an old stove and collect enough boards and plywood to make four benches for the space between the dorm rooms. He would have to wait to make the four others they would need. It was too narrow for a middle aisle, so the benches would have to stretch almost to the side walls to be able to seat all the children. Unlike the roof work, it was more meticulous than strenuous, but he found himself drawn to it anyway, saving the very end of each day for the job. With a hacksaw he cut out from the plywood sheets that would form the ends, at first plain square supports for the long boards of the benches. But after the first one, he decided to cut a simple curve along the top edge; the squared-off ones, veneered in a light-hued pine, looked too much like the ends of little coffin boxes for his comfort. Because it was plywood it was difficult to plane the edge without badly splintering the sheet, so he used a sanding block instead to null the roughness. He would sit outside his quarters working the edges in the twilight, the smell of the wood a little miracle of freshness, of released former life, and he didn’t care if some of its dust drifted into his tin mug of whiskey. Even though all this was due to Reverend Tanner’s wishes, and he could never care in the least about anyone’s worship or God, Hector didn’t like the idea of the children having to sit outside in the cold during services, which were far lengthier with Tanner than with Reverend Hong. He knew the cold in Korea, at least in the mountains in the far north, how it seeped into you and then resided with an unrelenting grip so that you felt colder than even the frigid air of the foxhole or dugout, like a chunk of ice at the bottom. During a slow retreat the first winter of the war he had seen two girls curled up and nested by the side of the road, their unblemished faces and bare hands and feet the color of ash. No doubt someone had taken their shoes. He’d waved another GI from the Graves Unit over and they had to pry them up from the frozen mud with shovels, bearing them in one piece to a spot behind some sagebrush like museum workers moving a sculpture. But the ground was rock hard, and so instead of a burial they draped them with a blanket, the edges pinned with stones. Of course it was useless-the blanket would soon be taken, the bodies scavenged by birds and animals-but he thought they ought to be covered and allowed, at least for a while, to sleep a dignified measure in private, undisturbed.
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