Out Of The Deep I Cry

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  Except where it counted. In her conscience. In her thoughts. In her heart.

  She realized she had been looking at Russ a little too long. She dropped her eyes and dug into her chili.

  “So, what’s with the dirt on your forehead?” he asked.

  “It’s not dirt. It’s penitential ashes.” She looked up to see him grinning. “Which you knew very well.”

  “And folks say we heathens are unwashed.” He swiped another of her onion rings. “Should you be calling attention to yourself like that? I mean, doesn’t the Bible say something about praying and fasting in secret, and not wearing the sack-cloth and ashes on the street corner?”

  “ ‘And your father who sees you in secret, shall reward you in secret.’ My goodness, I’m impressed. Have you been watching those TV preachers again?”

  He laughed. “Not hardly. I was a faithful, if unwilling, attendee at the Cossayuharie Methodist Church until I got too big for my mom to forcibly drag me there. I guess some of what I heard stuck.” He picked up the diner’s dessert menu, which was larger than the meal menu and fully illustrated with saliva-provoking photos. “What are you giving up for Lent? Chocolate? Beer?”

  “I’m not giving up food,” she said. “The whole giving-up-something-to-eat thing is a relic from times when we didn’t have a thousand food choices in every local supermarket. When you have an abundance-a superfluity-of something, giving up a little bit of it isn’t meaningful.”

  “Woo-hoo. Did I stumble into next Sunday’s sermon?”

  “Week after next,” she admitted.

  “So what are you doing? Anything?”

  “I figure the one thing we really have a scarcity of in our society is time. So I like to volunteer mine over the course of Lent. You wouldn’t believe how many not-for-profit organizations are swamped with money and assistance at Christmastime and begging for help in March.”

  “But you already volunteer for a ton of stuff. I know you help out at the soup kitchen, and the teen mothers’ back-to-school program. And there’s the outreach you do at the homeless shelter.”

  “Those are all sponsored by St. Alban’s. Showing up for the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter is part of my job.”

  He suppressed a smile. “So, it doesn’t count if you do a good deed while you’re on salary. It only counts if it’s a freebie.”

  “That’s not quite how I’d put it.” She scraped the last of the chili out of her bowl. “I’d like to help out at some place where I wouldn’t normally go. Some place that’s not associated with the church.”

  “How about the dog pound?”

  “Oh, Lord, no. I couldn’t. I’d wind up either adopting a bunch of strays I didn’t have time to care for or breaking my heart.”

  “The library.”

  “I’d have to clear up my overdue fines first. I’ve been dodging their reminder notices. I think next they send a big guy out to ‘talk’ with me.”

  “Have you thought about the Millers Kill Historical Society? They always need help cataloging the collection. It’s a big, boring job, stuck up in the top floor going through boxes of stuff. Hard for them to keep people interested in it.”

  She sat back. “That’s not a bad idea.” She thought of spending time with things, instead of people, for a change, up in a top floor all alone. It would be almost like going on a retreat. Monastic, even. “Where is the historical society?”

  “Do you know where the free clinic is? On Barkley Avenue?”

  “Yep.”

  “Right next door.”

  She crumpled her napkin and dropped it into her empty bowl. “I’ll swing by there tomorrow and see what they say.”

  “Believe me, if you walk in and commit to a forty-day stint, they’ll greet you with open arms and cries of joy.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  He smiled, pleased with himself. “I’m on the board of trustees.”

  She laughed. “You’re just full of surprises today.”

  “I don’t want to get too boring.”

  “Never that.”

  There was a pause. Then Russ jerked around to wave their waitress over, and Clare twisted away to search for her wallet.

  “It’s on me,” he said, plucking the slip from between the waitress’s fingers.

  “You paid last week. And the week before that.”

  “So what? I make more money than you do.”

  “That’s not the point. We agreed to share-”

  He stood up and pulled his billfold from his back pocket. “Make a donation to the historical society, then.” He laid down some money next to the ketchup bottle and waited while she struggled into her expedition-weight parka, a Christmas present from her concerned southern parents. Then he stood aside to let her go first to the door. On the way, he was greeted by two aldermen, and she said hello to one of her parishioners. It was all very open. Very aboveboard. Perfectly innocent.

  Remember that you are dust. Then, she had said the words. Now… now she really felt them.

  Chapter 3

  THEN

  Tuesday, May 23, 1950

  Norman Madsen put down the last of the legal-sized papers on his green felt blotter and looked up. He smiled tentatively across the expanse of his desk at the woman seated in the deep leather chair opposite him. She did not smile back.

  “Mrs. Ketchem,” he said, “I’m afraid I have to tell you, as your attorney-”

  “You’re not my attorney, young man,” she said. “My attorney is Mr. Niels Madsen. I assume the reason I’m talking with you instead of him is that he’s indisposed.”

  Norman propped up his smile by force of will. “I can hardly claim to be the equal of my father”-with the ink still wet on his Juris Doctor, that was certainly the truth-“but I hope I can continue to give you the excellent service you’ve come to expect from Madsen and Madsen.” This was the whopper. Of course, his dad and his uncle wanted to keep every one of their clients, no matter how unprofitable their business or how infrequent their need for legal service. They loved to gas on about the practice during the Great Depression, when they were paid, to hear them tell, exclusively in chickens and hogs. But in the here and now, the senior partners of Madsen and Madsen couldn’t afford to spend their billable hours on the steady stream of dairy farmers needing land titles or old ladies wanting to bequeath their homes to the Society for Indigent Cats. So it was left to the newest addition to the firm to handle the penny-ante clients. Norman’s small office continuously smelled faintly of manure and orange-blossom water. It was not the life he had envisioned back in the stately halls of Cornell University.

  “To continue: I’m sorry to say you’ll be unable to deed your late in-law’s property to Millers Kill. As you directed, we approached the board of aldermen quietly about your offer. Your generous offer,” he added, seeing the mulish look on her face. “While they appreciated the idea of”-he glanced down at the letter he was holding-“the Jonathon Ketchem Clinic for the town’s poor, they have to weigh the benefit against the likely detriments, namely, the loss to the town of the tax revenue currently generated by the house, and the cost to the town of maintenance, which, given the property’s age and size, cannot be inconsiderable.”

  Mrs. Ketchem folded her arms over her chest. “They certainly taught you well in law school, didn’t they? Never use one word when fifteen will do. You’re telling me the aldermen think taking the old heap off my hands will cost them more than it’s worth.”

  He flushed, but held himself to a mild “That’s correct” in response. He reminded himself-as his father and uncle were fond of doing-that the firm had seen a sharp decline in revenues after the Howland Paper Mill closed two years ago. Every client is a valuable client, the old coots would say. Of course, if they would listen to some of his suggestions to lift their Dickensian practice into the atomic age, they might realize more profit.

  Mrs. Ketchem was sitting silently, her gaze unfocused and her graying eyebrows bunched together as she
plotted God knew what. If he was honest with himself, which he prided himself on, he had to admit she made him uncomfortable. She was decked out like all the other ladies of her age-in an out-of-date floral frock, summer gloves and hat on his desk-and she spoke with the same clipped-off drawl that identified every farm family from the hills around Cossayuharie. But she wasn’t the same. He could always charm a smile out of the crankiest old lady or put a man at ease who had never worn a suit save for one borrowed for his wedding. Not Mrs. Ketchem. Meeting with her was like taking an oral exam from his stone-faced contracts professor. If his professor had been wearing a dress and sensible shoes.

  Norman waited. Finally she unfolded her arms and leaned forward. “I want you to go to the board and tell them, along with the Ketchem house, I’ll give them the farm in Cossayuharie. They can either run it as my in-laws did, as tenant property, or sell it outright. It’s a rich farm with a good herd, productive. It’ll generate more than enough money to pay for the roofing and painting and whatnot that the house in town will need year to year.”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. He winced as soon as the words tumbled from his mouth. The old bat would never take him seriously if he gawped like a runny-nosed schoolboy. “I mean,” he tried to salvage, “that’s a valuable piece of property. Shouldn’t you be saving it as a nest egg for your, ah, golden years?” Which were right around the corner. She was in her mid-fifties, only a few years older than his own mother, but she looked more like one of his grandmother’s generation: skinny and sharp-boned, with her coarse gray hair twisted into a bun atop her head.

  She snorted. “I got enough of a nest egg already. I want that house to go for a clinic. I want for no woman to ever have to go without medical care for her children.”

  He pulled the manila folder containing her history with the firm out of a red-well file beside his desk. He flopped it open. “Of course, I understand. And I admire your altruism.” He found the copy of the senior Ketchem’s will, flipped it over to the paragraph outlining the disposition of realty, and read it. He almost smiled in relief as he laid the document on his blotter and turned it so Mrs. Ketchem could see. “Unfortunately, you aren’t able to sell or deed the farm. As you can see, it’s been left equally to you or your heirs and to your brother-in-law or his heirs.”

  “I know that.” Her voice left no doubt that she thought him a fool. “David’s got no interest in running a farm. I’ll buy out his half.”

  Norman blinked. “You’ll… buy out his half?”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “Gosh.” Norman stalled. He knew the faded neighborhood where Jane Ketchem lived in her modest house; knew her thirteen-year-old car, most likely held together by spit and wire; had seen her at Greuling’s Grocery, carefully counting out coins from a snap purse to pay her grocery bill. “Well, we’d have to get a commercial Realtor out there, and an auctioneer to value the livestock, and another for the personalty-that’s the effects inside the house…” How could he phrase this so as not to wound her pride? “I’m no expert, but I think the farm might easily be worth twenty thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

  He waited warily for her face to sag in disappointment or tighten in frustrated anger, but it did neither. Instead, she said in her usual snap-to-it tone, “Very well then. Can I trust you to hire the Realtor and auctioneers? I don’t want to be robbed blind by a bunch of unnecessary fees.”

  “Mrs. Ketchem, that means buying out your brother-in-law’s half interest would cost ten thousand dollars. Or more.”

  “I can divide twenty by two, Norman Madsen.”

  “But-how can you afford that?”

  She leaned back into the leather chair, so that her eyes seemed sunk in shadows. “I told you I have a nest egg. I’ve invested well over the years.”

  He made one last effort to save her from her own folly. “Even so, if you deplete it to buy out David Ketchem’s share in the farm and then turn around and give it away to the town, you’ll be left with no other income stream but your Social Security. I have to point out that as a single woman-”

  “Widow,” she said. Her dark eyes beetled into his. He actually felt a narrow thread of sweat erupt on his upper lip. His father had stressed how important that title was to her. The fattest folder in the redwell contained the records of Madsen and Madsen’s efforts to have the maybe not-so-late but certainly run-off Jonathon Ketchem declared legally dead.

  “Of course,” he said. “Without your, ah, late husband’s support, you need to take even more care than usual for your old age.”

  She blinked her eyes slowly, as if acknowledging his rolling over and showing belly. “I don’t need much. If I buy out David’s half of the farm, there will still be enough to keep me until I’m a hundred. If it’s the good Lord’s judgment that I live so long.” Her voice didn’t sound as if great old age would be a blessing.

  “What about the current beneficiaries of your will? Your daughter, any grandchildren you might have, your church. You risk leaving them with a substantially reduced bequest. Your estate’s only assets will be your residence and your investments. There’s no telling how precipitately they could decline in value over the coming years.”

  She rolled her eyes, and he had the feeling he’d been using too many words again. “My daughter is well married to a man who can provide for her and any children she might have. And Lord knows there are people aplenty tossing money at St. Alban’s. Maybe I’ll leave all my money to the clinic.” She paused, frowned, and set the edges of her hands against her narrow lips. “No, I take that back. Whatever’s left over when I die I’ll put into trust. Let my daughter decide what to do with it. If she needs it, she can have it, and if she don’t, she can give it away.”

  “But is this what the Ketchems would have wanted for you? An old age of counting every penny? Surely they left you the Millers Kill house and the Cossayuharie farm as a means to ensure your comfort and happiness?”

  “My late husband’s parents have always been good to me. But they, more than anyone else, would understand. About this clinic. About how I want Jonathon’s name to be remembered.” She wrapped her long fingers over the turned posts of her chair’s armrests and shifted her gaze away from him, to the surface of his desk. “Does that file box of yours have anything about what happened to me and my family?”

  “Yes.” He swallowed. “Yes, it does.”

  “Let me tell you something about comfort and happiness, young man.” She looked at him head-on, trapping him with her gaze. “My husband and I both came from good families, successful families, and when we wed, we were hard-set on making a success of our own farm. We got fifty acres near the Sacandaga Vlaie that was cheap because it flooded every few years, and we worked. We sweated, we scrimped, we lived for the day after the day when we’d have everything we wanted for our comfort, everything we needed for our happiness.” Her face, with skin in sharp-edged folds over her bones, showed every one of her fifty-four years. But her eyes snapped with the fierce will of someone much younger. “And I never knew, that whole time we were so full of wanting, that the only happiness I would ever know in life was going on right there, on that farm with the soggy bottom acres, washing bucketloads of diapers and trying to stretch one chicken to feed a whole family for a half a week.” She lifted the paper off his green felt blotter without looking at it and handed it to him. “Take my offer to the aldermen. Get me my clinic, Mr. Madsen.”

  Chapter 4

  NOW

  Thursday, March 9

  There was a protestor blocking the sidewalk in front of the free clinic. Clare drove slowly past the three-storied Queen Anne, a grand old lady of a house awkwardly modernized by a lumber wheelchair ramp and a rickety-looking fire escape. A large sign with MILLERS KILL FREE CLINIC and the hours had been bolted next to the entryway, fine mahogany double doors whose original windows, probably etched glass, had been replaced with scratched Plexiglas.

  Blocking the sidewalk was probably an exaggeration, sinc
e the lone woman, placard over her shoulder, was striding back and forth between the edge of the walk and the foot of the clinic’s stairs. Clare pulled into the parking spot she had seen on her first pass down Barkley Avenue and turned off the car’s engine. She was going to have to run the gauntlet, no way around it. This was the only parking space anywhere near the historical society she could confidently get in and out of. Evidently recently vacated by a much bigger vehicle, it was practically dry. Her pretty little rebuilt Shelby Cobra, a dream car when she bought it last spring, was lousy in snow and slush. She had chosen it with her vanity, not her good sense, and she had been paying for it-literally, when its transmission gave out-all winter long. Pride’s painful, her grandmother Fergusson used to say, whenever she was twisting Clare’s straight hair into curlers.

  The storm had blown through last night, leaving a clear, bright morning behind. The wind, when she stepped out of the car, caught her with the shock of diving into cold water. She zipped her parka up to her chin-strategically covering her clerical collar-and pulled her knit cap low over her forehead. Maybe if she was nothing more than an anonymous figure in winter woolies she could escape without a harangue.

  She clambered over a rock-hard lump of brown-and-gray snow that covered the curb and crunched up the salt-crusted sidewalk toward the historical society. She kept her head down and her hands jammed in her pockets to avoid having any pamphlets thrust on her.

  Don’t notice me, don’t notice me, she chanted in her head, but as she was the only other person within two blocks of the clinic, it wasn’t surprising that her incantation didn’t work.