by Ann Pancake
Peggy nodded. “Yes, she’s made a real contribution. She certainly has. Why, Bygone Days itself might not even happen if she wasn’t on the steering committee. Are you gonna get to the knighting this evening?”
Nonie shook her head, tipping her eyes towards Petie. “No, but we’re gonna try to make the parade this afternoon.”
From a great distance, Calvin Bergdoll sensed his legs unfolding. His joints as stiff as crusted sugar, his hands the temperature of freezer trays. His plastic plate slid to the carport floor with a spin and a ring. Picky vaulted from Nonie’s lap to snuffle up bread crumbs and tuna seepage while Calvin’s feet floundered off concrete and onto a softer green substance, Blackie now looming larger and larger before him.
“Leaving Cal?” Peggy called after him.
Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker. Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker. How could they, how could anyone, how could—her not over sixty years old and having moved to Berker County only thirty years ago when his genes had been here for generations and his body for sixty-eight years, Helen Smithster, who talked like her tongue lived in her nose, how could someone with an accent be Knight of Olde Berker? A Frozen Child . . . what was that phrase in the published diary of local Civil War hero Lt. Samuel White regarding an enemy he’d encountered during a watch? “A Frozen Child of the North,” yes, that was it exactly, A Frozen Child of the North and a Republican as Knight of Olde Berker, Calvin Bergdoll visioned the surface of Indian Bluff cemetery ripple like an earthquake and his late mother and departed father each thrust an arm through their respective coffins and clasp hands in grief.
Now Blackie was cruising the streets of Berker at a pointed fifteen miles an hour, Calvin reveling in the frustration of the tailgaters, gunning the engine and spurting ahead when one tried to pass him on Bluebonnet Lane. Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? He aimed Blackie’s right front tire at an errant balloon and its explosion startled a family of four back to the curb like a covey of quail. He crept onto Main Street, its banners and its craft booths, its overpriced food stalls, nothing for him, stray reenactors comparing rifles and facial hair, and there was the spitting image of Floodie parked at the Moose, but that could not be, not this early in the day and with grass to be cut and hedges to be weeded. Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker. Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker. Blackie leaked a few more staples, and more fabric swagged down on Cal’s Almost Heaven cap; he swiped it away, it drooped back, he swiped it away. He was an old man, it was true, with less energy now for civic contributions, yet he still cared for Theodore Munney and other county less fortunates, he still visited shut-ins, he was just coming from one now. Fifty-five years old. I bet she’s not yet fifty-five years old. Gawkers choked the sidewalks, and this a Friday afternoon, where did out-of-staters get their money and time anyway, was West Virginia the only state that had to work?
He found himself steering towards the community building where his wife tended the Fine Arts Room instead of him. He would slip in and surprise her, reap a little relief from picking at her, just a bit, her anger and resentment better than nothing. Actually, better than a whole lot of things, plus they sometimes had little eats at such exhibits. But now he saw that the community building parking lot had been converted into a full-blown food court, every space occupied with some prohibitively expensive delectable, kettle corn, apple dumplings, Italian sausage sandwiches. A car that had been stalled behind Blackie roared past on Calvin’s right, trying to teach him a lesson with his muffler, but Calvin did not care because he’d taught his lesson first.
And then Blackie must have taken the helm because before Calvin could plan it, they swung into the library’s small parking lot where Calvin took the single spot left, handicapped, well, he’d earned it. He reeled through the automatic doors and into the reference section where, to his bewilderment and then his fury, he discovered an interloping antique exhibit a-crawl with even more gawkers, this, this, what Berker was coming to, not even the library a place of peace, and he charged on, ignoring the two or three antique fans who greeted him, and into the empty preschoolers’ section. There in a darkish back corner Calvin Bergdoll collapsed across three beanbag chairs.
HE WAS AWAKENED by the whispers of children.
“Is he dead?”
Under his lowered Almost Heaven bill, Calvin raised his eyelids just enough that he could see through his lashes but no one could see through them.
“I don’t know. Is his chest moving?”
A head dropped down towards Cal’s plaid torso, the hair in a peculiar patches. Shingles. The boy he’d seen only a few hours ago at single-mother apartments.
“I don’t think so,” he whispered.
The other child waved in front of Calvin’s face a damp palm creased with black, the tiny nails on the back of that palm a chipped purple. When she stepped back, Calvin saw that she was even younger than the shingle-headed boy.
“Let’s see what’s in his pockets!”
The boy, beyond Calvin’s view, mumbled, “Uhhh. I don’t . . .”
“C’mon, Aiven! Funnel cakes!”
Calvin held his breath, commanded every muscle still. This was the future of Berker County, this the fallout of a Frozen Child of the North as Knight of Olde Berker—child pickpockets in public libraries, along with dollar-twenty-nine sausage biscuits and nobody capable of cutting grass, and limp across his beanbags Calvin played long-suffering possum, sacrificing himself for the confirmation of ruin.
The girl knelt beside him; he could smell the vinegary scent of her child sweat, as the little chip-polished hand began tickling towards his hip pocket. Suddenly, the boy’s hiss. “Raven!” Then the scuffling of tennis shoes across wall-to-wall carpet.
“What are you all doing back in here?” It was Kathy Taylor, librarian.
The girl genius Raven answered. “Aiven’s looking for something to do his book report on.”
Through the veil of his lashes, Calvin watched Kathy Taylor’s green pants cuffs as she paused over his body before turning back to the children. “You know the parade’s almost here?” The tennis shoes wheeled and pounded away.
Calvin waited until he heard Kathy Taylor talking quietly behind the circulation desk before he launched his struggle out of the beanbags. Except for Kathy’s one-sided phone conversation, the library was finally silent. As it should be. Cal braced himself with a hand on a bookcase, a teddy bear leering at him from the shelf. The “as it should be” had sounded puny and neutral, as though the righteous-oriented personality cylinders were shooting blanks. And in truth, Calvin did feel peculiarly vacant inside. Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde . . . the curse tapered out in a muffle.
He’d had a shock. I’ve had a shock. Cal cradled his belly. Must get . . . The refrig . . . .
Calvin lurched away from the bookcase and out of the children’s section, tottering towards the front door with both hands frankensteined before himself in case he took a sudden spill. He spied through the glass front of the library an ATV pulling a cart advertising a computer repair service. The Bygone Days parade had indeed gotten there. Knowing from experience that if he took the library side door he’d detonate an alarm, Calvin had no choice but to take the front one.
An avalanche of noise. Retina-searing light. Butt-to-butt lawn chairs lining the curb, other spectators on their feet and craning forward, arms windmilling, to better see and shout and wave, everyone watching the parade knowing everyone in it and vice versa, and kids and more than a few adults with their plastic Rite Aid and County Pride bags sprinting into the street after cascades of Smarties and Tootsie Rolls, their faces focus-frozen on their quarry, then bursting into triumph, focus-frozen, then bursting into triumph. A Dum-Dum glanced across Cal’s shoulder, he ducked and threw up his hands, Calvin charged on, head tucked, towards the refuge of Blackie, and now the high school band bore down in arrhythmic drum roar, march
ers in mismatched blue pants and white shirts to publicize their eternal uniform fund-raising drive, and Calvin slammed Blackie’s door behind him, muting the drum section by four decibels. Not until he’d gathered enough wit to get the key in the ignition and then throw Blackie into reverse did Calvin see: the leaning and darting parade oglers, the bulging lawn chairs, the parade itself—Blackie was triply blocked in.
And what was he supposed to do?—the band now blattering into the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” his blood pressure high enough to accelerate hair growth—sit out the parade with nothing to eat while sugar showered the streets? Ronald McDonald deliberately dropped his juggling pins for a laugh, but slow-headed Clancy Myers and a little girl rushed out to his aid. Calvin grabbed the Little Chug, knew at first sniff it was too far gone even for his digestive system, and then he recalled the baggie Theodore Munney had found and punched open the glove box, devouring the bag’s innards though they were but crust. What was he supposed to do, sit here and wait while the Knight nominees tooled by on their anointed fire engine, smirking and waving dismissively?
Blackie’s door swung open. Calvin tumbled back into the parking lot. He wobbled there a moment, and then Cal was forging up the narrow sidewalk lane between booths and parade watchers. His legs churning along independent of his volition, Calvin even clapped a hand on his Almost Heaven cap to prevent its spinning off in his wake, it was as though his body were being hauled by a rope embedded in his chest and no telling what held the other end. And then, Calvin glimpsed the reenactors, and he could not resist, he turned his head and pedaled in place. The reenactors had little more spring in their step than they’d had yesterday during their dress rehearsal, post-traumatized, trench-mouthed, jungle-rot-footed, Calvin knew not which. And there—Calvin continued to step in place, pulling against the rope—zigzagging alongside the rear row, making it the only one with seven members instead of six, un-uniformed and unarmed and not yet bearded: Theodore Munney.
At that moment, Calvin was plucked off Main Street and tossed down Shute Place. He flew past the post office and Rita’s, both deserted, he coasted along the meticulously landscaped lawn of the lawyer with the penile implant, he ran the stop sign and crossed Bluebonnet Lane. And there, under a pair of pin oak trees, Calvin halted. And found himself, hat in hand, gazing up at the brick front of the First Presbyterian Church.
His own church. The church his family had attended for generations. The church where his parents had been married, his head had been baptized, where he’d served through the years as Sunday School teacher, lay reader, usher, deacon, elder. And then Calvin Bergdoll knew why he’d been pulled and by Whom.
What he needed was in the basement. He’d replace it tomorrow.
The only unlocked door would be the sanctuary’s, available to those prayer-famished and otherwise. Calvin leaned heavily on the metal rail as he mounted the steps. At the top, he straightened and thumbed the clasp on the ornate handle of one double door, terrified for a second that it’d be locked after all. It was not. As he slipped into the vestibule, the heavy doors clocked into place behind him, obliterating every trace of Bygone Days pandemonium.
Calvin wheezed several mock-emphysemic breaths: Here I am. I’m still here. I’m still here. He stepped into the rear of the sanctuary.
The stained glass gentled the clamorous afternoon light. Soothed by the hymnals snuggled up in their racks, by the chart on the front wall announcing last week’s attendance and offering amount, by the trunk-sized Bible on the pulpit, Cal’s sugar began creeping back into the runnels where it was supposed to run. He gripped the top of the nearest dark walnut pew, and through that hand, his back felt the back of the bench, contoured exactly opposite a human spine. Little time to linger here. God understood. On Calvin processed down the aisle, overtaking the baptismal font, the pulpit, the organ, and finally the door into the choir room.
Here he nodded to a thicket of hanging robes and was momentarily startled by an old man in plaid before he registered the mirror. Then yet another door and into the warren of Sunday School rooms. Their weeklong shut-up scents, he could have traced his way with eyes closed, the old ladies class, a warple of artificial rose perfume, the nursery, pee muffled with milk. When he finally reached the stairs to the basement, he stopped to mentally prepare himself. Behind his eyes crossed a vision of the Miss Dola Wysapple’s Mississippi Mud Pie. Calvin took the bannister and descended one stair at a time, a pace at once dignified and safety-conscious.
From the fellowship hall, dimly lit by ground-level windows, Cal could see that the kitchen’s serving window had been rolled down shut, and when he stepped through the kitchen door, he floundered around the wall for some time before landing on a light switch. In the startle of fluorescent blaze, the refrigerator showed itself first.
Calvin set his cap on a metal table and smoothed what was left of his hair. He whispered a thanksgiving prayer. Under his respectful clasp, the door’s seal unsucked with a smuck more refined than his refrigerator’s at home. Its light shone more boldly. Calvin tipped forward, head bowed. At first survey, he saw that the refrigerator sheltered six half-gallon jugs of Welch’s grape juice. On second survey, he saw the refrigerator sheltered little else. He stooped into the sanctum, almost losing his footing, and trained his explorer’s eye over every nook, including the vegetable crispers and the drawer meant for baloney and cheese. The search yielded one tiny jar of Miracle Whip.
Calvin Bergdoll was not rattled. He withdrew a single juice jug and set it on the counter. Then he closed the refrigerator, pressing his hand on its front for a moment in a gesture of thank-you-anyway before reaching up and opening a cupboard door. He found the bread, two loaves, in the second one he checked. He kept going. The third cupboard empty, the fourth. Calvin kept going. The fifth, now the drawers, going and going, the lower cupboards, faster, frantic, until, no telling how much time had passed, Cal spun in a circle and could find nothing else shut, and he had unearthed only three partially full cans of Maxwell House and a cottage cheese container crammed with little sugar packets.
Calvin did not flinch. In one hand he gripped the twisted ends of the bread bags and in the other he carried the juice. He placed them at the end of a long table in the fellowship hall and unfolded a metal chair.
The loaves were Stroehmann’s whitest. Into his brain spurted his daughter’s warning about the conversion of bread into sugar. Well, the body of Christ was not whole wheat. Calvin folded his hands, bowed his head, and said the blessing.
Soft as it was, especially after his recent encounters with old Italian bread and glove box crusts, the slice nearly melted on Cal’s tongue. He tilted his chin in rapture. At the third slice, he dispensed with ceremony and devoured it in three bites. Midway through the loaf, his stomach finally began filling. But as Cal’s cavity topped up, the personality cylinders, silent since the library nap, rumbled. The brain sediment heaved.
Calvin swept his eyes over the whole fellowship hall. All the wedding receptions he’d attended here, with their mints and nuts and white-iced cakes, all the covered-dish dinners, their deviled eggs and fried chicken, scalloped potatoes and bacon-grease-delectable green beans. The hymn sings, the missionary slideshows, hot chocolate and cookies after trick-or-treating for UNICEF. The meetings of the Lions.
Calvin stiffened.
He crammed down the next slice in two bites. It didn’t help. His eyes fixed on a cross in a corner, nailed off-kilter to a base like a Christmas tree stand. Helen Smithster, Knight—still it came. Cal wrinkled up his eyes, Helen Smith—, he flapped his head to rattle out his brain, Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker. Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde—
And he saw Main Street again, the candy chaos, fire trucks from a five-county area, perspiring politicians on foot regardless of obesity to illustrate their everyman-ness. Helen Smithster’s broad monobreast—Calvin shoved the second bread loaf out of his immediate view—straining against her butterfly-print blouse, her teeth bared in that domineering smil
e that had spellbound the unbright of Berker. Cal’s hands were shuddering now, or maybe they had them in convertibles this year, some years Johnny Bell and Hal McCauley and Reed Johnson drove their convertibles, the incipient knights perched on top the backseats, their hands turning in slow waves, Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker, Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker, and Calvin grabbed the juice jug, tipped it, and the glass slipped in his hand. Grape juice splashed over his plaid front and into his khaki lap.
Calvin looked down. Across his pants spread a stain the color of deer blood.
Calvin stared.
Or royal blood.
Calvin fluttered his eyelids.
Purple vestments.
“King.” Calvin Bergdoll said it out loud. He swept his eyes across the room, pausing again on the cross. “Lord.” Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He dropped to the wooden X at the cross’s base, then trolled his gaze over the checkerboard tile of the floor. King. Queen, Bishop, Rook. And the least of these is the Knight.
“King. Emperor.” And the least of these. “Your Majesty Monarch Highest Highness Sovereign Sultan—”
Czar.
Czar?
Czar.
“Calvin Bergdoll.” Cal moistened his mouth with his tongue. He placed his hand on his belly to support his diaphragm.
“Czar of Olde Berker.”
The title thundered across the long bare tables, the racks of folded chairs, the gaping cupboards and cockeyed drawers, the flags of the United States and West Virginia. “Calvin Bergdoll. Czar of Olde Berker.” And the Knight is the least of these.
“CAL-vin BERG-doll, CZAR of Olde BERK-ERRRR,” he roared the last “r.” CAL-vin BERG-doll, CZAR of Olde BERK-ERRRR,” the appellation pealed past the room, resounded through every Presbyterian Church reach. “CAL-vin BERG-doll, CZAR of Olde BERK-ER,” it bombinated beyond the windows, it boomed into the streets where the Knight nominees twitched at a vibration in each ear. “CAL-vin BERG-doll, CZAR of Olde BERK-ERR,” and Cal’s insides filled, his outsides swelled, he was already bigger than his seat, his shoulders as broad as the Winter Palace, his hips could straddle the Baltic Sea.