by Rich Foster
“You mean I get nothing? All of those years paying our premiums and you owe us nothing?” The agent had heard the same disbelief in others before.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Leeds, but the answer is we have no liability. Are there any other questions I can help you with today?”
Grace hung up. What else was there to say.
A short time later there was a knock. She opened the door where Will Farron waited.
“May I come in?”
Grace released the hook on the screen door, “Sure Will, do you want some coffee?”
“No thank you. But I wanted to say that Jessica and I are sorry about Lester.”
Grace shrugged, “Thank you.” She pointed at the living room sofa. “Have a seat.” They sat down and Grace continued, “I left him you know. I wanted to be as far away from here as possible.”
“I figured that out when you weren’t around after he,” Farron paused, “well, after Lester died.”
“The funny thing was, it turned out it wasn’t Mason Forks I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away from myself.”
“We all get that way sometimes.”
“For me it has been a lifetime. I’ve sat through my life and let it happened. What a complete waste! For thirty years I let Lester make all of my life’s decisions. Do you know last week was the first time I was away from him for more than one night.”
“He loved you.”
“He despised me Will! He blamed me for not having kids, much less a son to carry on. I think he would have divorced me years ago if he wasn’t afraid of the board revolting.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, Grace.”
“No Will! Don’t try to lie to me. I have been sitting in that pew watching a bully on the stage and I never had the courage to stand up and say, No! I will not! I never stood up for myself.”
Will wished he had not come. He held no desire to lift the curtain and peer into someone else’s private life. He had enough fears, and disappointments of his own. Attempting to changed the subject, he said,
“What do you want to do for a service for Lester?”
Grace laughed. It seemed shrill. “Who would come?”
“He was the pastor for thirty years! He had friends,” countered Will.
“He was feared, not loved. Lester demanded his own way and he used God to get it.”
“You’re being too hard on him.”
“I don’t think so,” she bit the words off. Will never recalled Grace being so assertive. “Nobody wants to sit in a room and recall what happened that night. You, I… we were all just as frightened as Lester. The gun wasn’t pressed against our heads, but we were all hoping someone else would die.”
Will did not argue with her. There was truth in what she said. It was hard to argue you were not a coward when a child was dead. Was he relieved when Goodman had his five victims? Was he eager when he said they could go? He knew the answer. It was the same, as the answer to the question; “Do you want to see your children grow up?” He knew there were many reasons people stayed seated that night, but all of them entailed an element of fear; fear both of dying and of the hereafter.
Silence came between them. Dust motes danced in a ray of sunshine that stabbed through the window and fell across the floor.
“I am having a wake at Bailards. I’ve decided against having a service. I guess I’ll just say a prayer.”
Will rose from his seat. “Jessica and I will be there. I’ll see the word is passed to the church.”
She walked him to the door, where he broached the subject that actually brought him to her home.
“Do you have any plans for the future? I mean do you think you will want to stay in town?”
“I don’t know. Tell me Will, did the board ask you to kick me out of the house?”
Will’s eyes avoided her, instead studying an indistinct speck on the horizon. “A couple members called me. They are concerned about finding someone to be pastor. They’re afraid that with all that has happened the church might simply fall apart.”
Grace laughed easily. “Don’t worry, tell the board I won’t be in the way. I need a change. A new place to live will be a good start.”
*
Kevin Daniels was neither here nor there. Depression filled him like a pervasive fog. It sapped his days of color, leaving only dark pools of doubt. He wandered in an emotional salt flat, where emptiness stretched to the far horizons.
Two weeks prior his life had both a plan and purpose. Jenny and he would be missionaries; they would save the world, now he could not even save himself.
That night last night together, as Robert Goodman held the church hostage, the two of them whispered, agreeing to die, that they might save others. They were not starry-eyed devotees like members of a cult who were eager to see their lives cut short, but neither were they afraid of dying. They would meet again in heaven and have life eternal where there would be no tears.
Kevin, still, did not fear death, in fact he had repeated urges to rush out and embrace it. But instead of heaven he now looked forward to oblivion, where there were no tears because there were no eyes to shed them. Not eternal life but eternal nothingness. He longed for an existence that concluded with a period, not three continuing dots.
An eighth of an inch destroyed his faith. That was all the movement needed by Goodman’s gun for the 9mm bullet to have slammed home between Kevin’s eyes. He would have died a true believer. This would neither make his beliefs true nor false, but the question would be moot. Now, because of that eighth of an inch, he was alive to disbelieve.
His faith was like a romance gone bad, where one day a couple is madly in love and then something occurs that cuts so deeply, that in the next moment they know hate. Kevin shouted, there was no God, yet psychologically he desperately needed there to be one so he could have one to hate.
He spent whole days sitting on the sofa, not moving for hours. When he did rise he shuffled around the apartment between the forgotten boxes. Unnoticed by him, he walked on the torn photo lying on the floor, his heel grinding on the bits of Jenny’s face. He foraged for food in the refrigerator, but it was all as tasteless as cardboard. He would shuffle to the bathroom and back, not noticing his unshaven face. Then he would end up either sprawled on the bed or back on the sofa.
Mrs. Vincentia had not seen Kevin since the funeral. That was a week. His pick-up truck was not in the drive, although, she had seen a light in the apartment. She was annoyed. It was necessary for her to talk to him and it was most inconsiderate of him to not come around. His lease was up today. She wanted to know when he would finish moving out.
When Carlo, her husband, died the hospital costs consumed all of the life insurance money. Now she counted on the rent from the apartment to make ends meet. Her small social security check was insufficient.
She tried calling Kevin’s cell number a half-dozen times but he never answered. Mid-week she began to go up to his apartment to check, but on the third step she heard movement. Her hip was bad. She found it painful to climb the stairs, and so she decided to wait until he came down.
Now, irritation worked at her as she hobbled across the gravel drive with her cane. She put her foot on the first tread with a slight groan. Her arthritic hands grasped the rail to pull herself up. She winced as a needle-sharp pain prodded her hip. Slowly she climbed. Halfway to the landing she called out. There was no answer. “It’s most inconsiderate of him no matter what has happened,” she said aloud. Carmen Vincentia was sanguine about other people’s misfortunes.
At last she gained the upstairs landing. She rapped on the door causing the arthritis in her hand to ache. She tried the handle. It was locked. Silently she cursed the fates for forgetting to bring her extra key. Carmen put her face against the window glass. Through a narrow gap she saw the living room. What a mess, she thought. The boy hadn’t done a thing. It was a pigsty. Mrs. Vincentia’s anger rose with along with her blood pressure. Who was going to take care of the mess, she thought indignantl
y. She certainly wasn’t giving him the security deposit back. “Kevin, Kevin Daniels!” she spoke sharply, her Italian accent lingering in the short name. No one answered.
She wiggled the door handle, hoping it might miraculously fall open. She changed positions to see more of the room. Below and to the right she could see the lower half of someone’s leg and a bare foot. The leg did not move. She could also see part of the sofa near the door, what an ugly plaid they picked, Carmen thought. Then she noticed the gun clasped in a hand resting on the sofa arm. A gasp escaped her lips, followed by an exclamation of, “Holy Mother of God!”
Carmen’s angina flared up. She pressed a hand against her aching chest and with the other grasped the rail to descend. She hurried down the stairs and across the drive as fast as an eighty-year old woman with bad hips might be expected to do.
Home, in her kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water. With trembling hands she took her nitroglycerine pills. The pain in her chest subsided only to be replaced by a mild headache brought on by the pills.
What right did he have to kill himself in her apartment? Who would want to rent the room now? My God, a gun, she thought, I will have to pay to have the room painted. The thoughts and questions raced through her head. She tried to think of what to do. Not the police! The neighbors would talk. She had an old worldview that the police and those who needed them were trouble.
“Father Angelo!” she said, thinking of the young priest at her church in Red Lake. Mrs. Vincentia went in search of her reading glasses. After some minutes she discovered them dangling from their strap around her neck. It took more minutes to find the church’s telephone number. She dialed and to her good fortune Father Angelo, himself answered.
“Our Church of the Holy Virgin, Father Angelo speaking.”
“Good morning Father. This is Carmen Vincentia in Mason Forks.”
The young priest mentally ran through the faces of the many old women in his parish. He was fairly sure he had the right face with her name.
“Oh yes Mrs. Vincentia how are you?” They proceeded to make small talk for several minutes. Carmen was always polite when speaking to a priest. Finally, wondering if their conversation had a specific direction, the priest asked, “Is there something you needed?”
To his surprise she said, “I have a dead man at my house and I don’t know what to do.”
This momentarily nonplussed the priest. “I don’t understand. Someone has died?”
“My tenant has killed himself. I saw the gun!”
“Well you should call the police.”
“I can’t have the police to my house Father! What would the neighbors think?”
Father Angelo was accustomed to the demands of Italian mothers. “Very well, then I will come.” He sighed as he hung up the phone. He had hoped to play golf that afternoon.
Father Angelo decided to wait until he arrived at his parishioner’s house before he calling the police. It would be best if he were there first. Many of the elderly in his flock felt the same way as Carmen when it came to the police. He pulled his Chevy sedan up the gravel driveway. Mrs. Vincentia waited at the front door. He hurried to her.
“Come in Father. May I offer you some coffee?”
Always polite he thought. The old habits died hard.
“Perhaps I should see the body first?”
Carmen pulled her keys from her pocket. He’s in the apartment, over the garage. I am afraid my heart won’t permit me to go.”
Father Angelo was the exception among priests; he was young. Still harboring hopes of playing golf, he took the key and trotted across the drive. The stairs, which troubled Mrs. Vincentia so much, he easily took two at a time. He slipped the key in the lock and opened the door. The rank odor of sweat and rotting food wafted out at him.
In the room a young man sprawled on the sofa. And sure enough there was a pistol in his hands. The boy’s eyes were open and they stared, unseeing. But Angelo could see no blood. The eyes, though blank, still shone. They lacked the opaqueness of death.
Father Angelo reached over and grasped the gun. The fingers were cool, but the skin lacked the clammy softness of death. He pried the gun from the boy’s hand and then put his own fingers on the boy’s neck. The youth did not stir, but a steady pulse beat in the youth’s neck. Angelo spoke to the boy. There was no response. He lifted the arm that had held the gun. When he let go, rather than falling limp, it remained where it was, as if suspended by an invisible wire.
Father Angelo reached felt in his pocket for his cell phone but realized it was in his car. The priest looked around the room for a hard-line. There was not one but a cell phone lay on the kitchen table. He tied to dial 911, but the battery was dead.
He stepped out into the bright sunlight on the landing. Mrs. Vincentia waited at the bottom of the stairs, looking up, as if praying to the angles.
“Call 911. He’s not dead, he needs an ambulance.”
“What about my walls?” she whined. “Did he get blood on my walls?”
“No!” he replied, irritated with her singular focus on her own needs. “Now go!”
The priest went back into the apartment. The boy held his arm straight out. Father Angelo knew catatonics might not only remain motionless for hours but would sometimes stay in whatever position they were put. He tried pushing the arm down into the boy’s lap. Tentatively he let it go, the arm remained there. He lifted the other arm, when he released it; it stayed aloft, defying gravity. Father Angelo crossed himself and said a prayer; on the off chance this was some sort of deviltry.
Twelve minutes later the ambulance arrived. The men put Kevin onto a gurney and carried him downstairs. As they slid the boy into the ambulance Angelo noticed the boy’s eyes had not changed, they stared at some private demon that was invisible to everyone else. Angelo made the sign of the cross.
The ambulance door closed. The departing van’s dust swirled around him. A siren began piercing the air. He turned and trod slowly toward Mrs. Vincentia’s front door. She would need to talk. No matter, he thought, he no longer felt like playing golf.
*
Calley fell into a routine as July came to a close. She dropped the children off, went to work, picked them up, came home, and took Valium to cope until bedtime. She found it hard to focus on her children. Ruthie loomed large in her thoughts and those thoughts seemed to force out her other children. And constantly, hovering behind Ruthie was Robert Goodman.
Calley lay in bed at night, both exhausted and unsleeping. To pass the hours she wished him dead. She imagined horrible things she would do to him, if given the chance. The numbers on her digital clock changed, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. In the morning light she would still be staring at the ceiling, seeing Ruthie fall and hoping to watch Goodman die.
In the morning she would be ragged. Dark rings rimmed her eyes, but there were meals to fix, things to do and so she would drag herself out of bed and call out to her children, “time to get up.”
She would take a different pill to “pick her up.” It wasn’t a pill prescribed by a doctor, rather one she bought from an orderly at work. He promised it would get her through the twelve hours shifts.
People no longer talked to her. It had begun the year before, after Jason died. At first everyone was sympathetic. They would ask how she was doing. But after a few weeks they could not keep asking the same question. Her friends were embarrassed, yet there seemed nothing else to talk about.
Invitations to activities that were couple oriented stopped. Perhaps the other mothers thought a single woman was a threat to their marriage. Maybe it was because a single woman would always be the “odd man out” in a world of couples. She saw her friends who had kids, but mostly at play dates. Inevitably one or another of the other moms would begin talking about her husband either in praise or criticism. Then the conversation would fail, remembering that Jason was dead. Their embarrassment was awkward. Her friends discovered that by not calling, they easily avoided these social faux pas.
After Ruthie died, there was a resurgence of interest in Calley’s needs. But the emotional anxiety provoked by thinking about “child death” caused the other mothers to quickly stop reaching out. Subconsciously, they found excuses. They had other things they needed to do.
Each day, Mrs. Deitz attempted, and failed, to draw Calley into conversation. In the morning she had no time before work and in the afternoon she just wanted to get home, close the door and take a Valium.
“If you need anything, just ask,” Mrs. Deitz would say. Calley, as if saying a catechism, would respond, “Thank you I will,” and then she would hurry to the door.
Work filled her days and distracted her mind. It was a relief almost as great as those nights her restless thoughts found sleep. Then amongst the hustle and bustle of hospital life, she would come around a corner where co-workers were laughing about something harmless and seeing her, the flow of laughter stopped, like a tap being shut off. The silence brought vivid thoughts of Ruthie and Goodman.
The effervescence was dissipated from her personality like a soda gone flat. She would smile when socially expected but it never reached her eyes. When she talked, her words occasionally petered out. She would momentarily be lost in another world. Her co-workers understood. They pretended not to notice. However, it made them nervous.
In the hospital cafeteria, Calley’s tray of uneaten food was pushed aside. She took a pen from her pocket and began to write. Her mouth was grim. As her pen moved, a trace of a smile formed on her lips. Ten minutes later, glancing at her watch, she quickly pushed the paper into her smock’s pocket and returned to work.
Her shift ended. As she left the hospital, two deputies walked a prisoner in. The man shuffled by, his handcuffs and leg restraints clinking. She watched pensively. Instead of leaving she went into an office and asked for a phonebook. Calley ran her finger through the government listings.