Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  There was a sudden jolt back to reality when she heard somebody calling her name and Leo’s from the grocery store downstairs. Viola stuck her head back into the bedroom and looked anxiously at Leo who motioned her to go take care of it. He was fearful of stirring Rose up again if he tried to leave her.

  Viola vanished for a time, but shortly thereafter, she was back.

  “You better come, Leo. It’s Father Paul.”

  “Ask him to come up here,” he suggested, and then nodded to Scotty and Mary Jean. “Father will be a blessing to Rose.”

  But Viola shook her head and her voice lowered several tones. “There’s some policemen with him.”

  Leo bobbed his head in understanding but seemed perplexed as to their presence. “I see. Do they want to talk to me? Or to Rose?”

  “The detective wants to talk to Rose and to anybody else who was there.” Viola’s usually soft and sweet voice was harsh and contentious. “Should we let them talk to Rose, do you think? I think she needs to talk to a doctor first. If I have anything to say about it.”

  Mary Jean was scowling and she spoke in a stage whisper. “I agree with Viola. Rose is in no condition to talk to anybody and besides, what on earth can she tell them about a murder? She doesn’t know anything about that.” She looked at Viola to back her up and then she turned back to Leo. “You go, Leo. And Scotty. You were both there and you know as much as she does. Just tell them Rose can’t see anybody until she sees her doctor.”

  Leo disengaged his hand from Rose’s and placed her hand in Mary Jean’s. Her sobs had turned into a steady quiet weeping by then, and she got off the bed and began to follow Leo out of the room. But Mary Jean tugged her back to the bed. “It’s the police, Rose, and you don’t have to talk to them.”

  Rose didn’t acknowledge her at all. She just pulled her hand free and walked out of the room. Mary Jean hurried after her and saw her disappear down the stairs that led to the grocery store. “Good grief, Viola, that girl must be out of her head. She mustn’t try to talk to those men in the state she’s in. They’ll get her all confused and from what I’ve heard about how the homicide department works, she’ll end up being the one they charge with the killings.”

  “Oh, good heavens no, Mary Jean! You don’t really believe that, do you?’ Officer Crimshaw is such a decent man.”

  “Crimshaw is just a cop on a beat, Viola.” Mary Jean’s expression was grim. “It’s the detectives from downtown who don’t care who they punch around. Just ask Scotty. He knows what I’m talking about.”

  But Scotty had already gone downstairs and Viola could only stand there staring at Mary Jean and wring her hands.

  “One of us has to stay with Cynthia,” Mary Jean was saying. “But I think one of us should be down there to protect Rose from those jerks.” She could see Viola cringe at the thought, so she nodded. “You stay here. I want to hear the story of what really happened anyway.” She patted Viola’s back consolingly on her way out the door. “Cynthia needs to be cuddled and petted. Maybe you can get her to talk about it.” And then she was gone, and Viola closed the door behind her and took a couple of deep breaths before she tackled her job as counselor.

  At first she couldn’t locate the child and feared she had slipped downstairs after her mother. But when she had given up the search and left the apartment—was at the top of the stairs—she heard a soft whimpering in the direction of Rose’s apartment, and there sat Cynthia, huddled on the floor against the door, her big sad eyes shining wet in the stark light from the single bulb high in the ceiling that lit the stairs and hallway.

  “My goodness, Sweetheart,” she said in a shaky voice, relief bringing back the tears. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?” And despondently, Viola acknowledged that she was a poor choice to help that baby unburden herself of the terrible memories of that afternoon because she could barely stand the thought of even hearing about them.

  “I want to go home.” Cynthia whispered between sobs. “I want my mama and I want to go home.”

  Rose had walked into the middle of a police grilling. There were a half dozen uniformed officers milling about the store like a herd of nervous cattle and two men in suits, neither of whom had removed their hats, were standing near the front door talking to Leo. Scotty stood a little ways off with his head down and fiddled with a button on his shirt while he waited for somebody to ask him something.

  At that particular moment Rose felt pretty good. For one thing, there was a kind of numbness moving along her spine and from there, down all her nerves, bringing with it a kind of forgetfulness. She thought she could probably forget any of this had ever happened. She thought she could wake up tomorrow believing that all of this was just a bad dream and if Mary Jean ever came running up the street with stories about Jack Nash, she would just walk away and pretend she had gone deaf and everything would go back to the way it was yesterday. She wouldn’t ever see him again, but that was all right because she’d know he was around somewhere doing something and being happy, and that was all she really needed to know.

  Rose turned back toward the exit door. If she never spoke the words, she thought, she could keep them from being true.

  “Rose. Rose, my dear child.” Father Paul, whom she hadn’t even noticed, moved toward her from her left, and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Do you feel like talking to anyone yet?” His kind eyes were compassionate and she could see genuine love and concern in them. She smiled and touched his chest with the palm of her hand. He was such a good man and he had been such a blessing to her all during those religious instructions. If she could talk to anybody it would be him, but she had made up her mind not to make any of today’s events real by saying it out loud. So she tried to let her eyes tell him how grateful she was and kept her mouth shut.

  “I know how worried you’ve been about Jack’s soul,” he said in a quiet voice. “So I must tell you he repented his sins Rose, and he received absolution before he died. I know you were right there and probably heard him, but I want to assure you he was saved. Jesus came to meet him. I’m certain of that.” Rose had begun to frown and that worried the priest. She ought to be pleased about what he was telling her. Perhaps she was not as resigned as she pretended. Perhaps she was on the verge of a breakdown. He’d seen that happen often enough and in situations a lot less traumatic than this one. “Rose my dear, Jack is with God. He asked forgiveness for his sins. Does that make his dying any easier for you to bear?”

  He had said it. The priest had spoken those awful words. She knew he meant to be kind and they had talked many times about her fears for Jack’s soul, so he was only trying to reassure her, but she didn’t want to hear he had died. If only the priest hadn’t said those words.

  So there went all her plans. She looked at Father Paul but she didn’t answer his question. Jack didn’t even know what absolution was or that such a thing existed. How could he do it if he didn’t know what it was? The priest’s hand moved off her shoulder to rest on her forearm and she was staring into his eyes. They were blue like Jack’s but color was the only thing they had in common. There was no laughter in these eyes. No teasing. There was no fire there. She sighed and gave up. This man wanted desperately to help her but he didn’t know Jack Nash. Jack didn’t believe anything was a sin. How could he be sorry when he didn’t even know he did it! Rose suddenly saw the whole thing as a ridiculous joke. A ritual forgiveness of sin for a man who loved sin. A man who ignored God and who never forgave anybody in his whole life.

  Rose flung the Father’s hand away and bolted up the aisle until she bumped into a little knot of policemen. “He’s dead, that’s all.” she told them, “and nothing is ever gonna make that easy.”

  She wondered why all the officers and the two gruff-talking detectives looked at her so strangely. They just stopped talking and stared at her. That was when she noticed Mary Jean standing close by. She hadn’t said anything, but it was plain she was keeping watch. It occurred to Rose that maybe they though
t she was crazy running around and hollering like she had about Jack being dead, but then she saw her reflection in the front window. It had darkened in the store once the sun slipped above mid-heaven, so Leo reached over and switched on the lights. She just happened to be standing near the window and turned in that direction to behold herself. There was something smeared all over her. Her face and her clothes. She looked down at her dress and picked at her skirt and realized the splotches were damp and sticky. That was when she saw her hands and was embarrassed to see they were so dirty and she wondered out loud “What in the world have I gotten into?”

  Nobody said anything and she moved a little closer to the light earnestly studying all the smears and streaks. The pretty blue gingham dress she’d put on with such joyful expectation that morning was ruined. “This morning?” she wondered absently. Was it still October the 11th—still Tuesday? Surely not! Surely weeks had passed since that glorious sunlit morning when she leaned out the window and sang her song to Scotty. And now that dress was soaked with something. The stuff was everywhere. Why hadn’t she noticed before what a mess she was? Why hadn’t somebody said something? Then suddenly she knew.

  “Jack’s blood,” she gasped.

  She looked up to see Leo coming toward her with tears in his eyes and then the room started spinning and she felt the floor rise up and slam the breath right out of her.

  Immediately, Doctor Miller was called to come have a look at her and he ordered something from the pharmacy to help her sleep. In the meantime, Claire Louise arrived to help her with her bath and wash her hair and put her to bed. Then she and Walter and JC stayed the night and soothed and comforted Cynthia until she fell asleep in Walter’s arms.

  Rose slept until after noon the next day and then one of the detectives returned and asked a lot of questions, but there wasn’t anything she could tell them that they didn’t already know. He treated her with respect though and even answered some of her questions. The one thing coming out of that conversation that disturbed her was something she picked up on her own. Detective Halverson mentioned that the consensus down at headquarters was that John Nash, they kept calling him John even though she corrected them a dozen times, had never been the intended victim. “I’m afraid he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the detective said. “Your husband just happened to get caught in the line of fire.”

  In some ways that made her feel better. Knowing he wasn’t one of those killer gangsters did ease her mind but at the same time it suggested the possibility that Jack wouldn’t have been in the line of fire if he had stayed down there by the car where he was when she called out to him. If he hadn’t walked out to the middle of the sidewalk to meet her … if he hadn’t put himself right there in front of the man they wanted to kill … the bullets would have gone right over his head or else farther up the street in front of him. Plainly, they wouldn’t have shot the man on the steps through the automobile Jack leaned against. And that was a thought Rose knew she just couldn’t live with … that her undying love for Jack Nash had been the cause of his dying. That she had abetted the murder of her beloved husband. O Sweet Jesus! What were the sins she had done to deserve such a terrible punishment?

  Since that notion horrified her, she kept it to herself. It was too awful to think that those who loved her, like Leo and Viola and Mary Jean and Walter might believe as she was beginning to, that she had been the instrument of Jack’s death. If they were to believe that, or even wonder about it, she could never look any of them in the eye again. And Cynthia! What if Cynthia were to find out!

  Everybody was so concerned with her mental state and her physical well-being. They were so compassionate and solicitous to her every need, they were making her feel guilty. But Rose couldn’t stop being helpless and weak. She was down in the bottom of a well and she didn’t have the strength to hold her head above the water anymore. Nor the will. Except when she looked at her daughter’s drawn little face. That was reason enough to fight her malaise, she decided. And for a little while she made the effort. Sooner or later, though, because the sound of Jack strangling on his own blood and the picture of his beautiful eyes fading to black had been ingrained on her mind like a scene from a movie playing over and over and over, and she was dragged down again to the bottom of the well where she jettisoned all her hope.

  That first morning after she’d slept so soundly with the aid of the sleeping potion and Claire Louise sitting beside her bed all night holding her hand and offering up prayers for her, Rose hadn’t felt too bad. She guessed her heart was still trying to pretend it had never happened and her brain was going along with the lie. Anyway, she thought everything was going to be okay. But then she was struck down with the truth of why Jack got shot. After that, she couldn’t do anything but pace the apartment and cry. And poor little Cynthia was so scared. She wouldn’t talk about what she had seen on the street that day. Not even to Walter or JC, whom she adored. “If only I hadn’t gone down there,” Rose kept thinking. “If only I had let well enough alone.”

  After supper that evening, Walter went back to the house on Grace Street but Claire and the boy stayed another night. Rose couldn’t sleep again and was wandering the house long after Claire had fallen asleep beside her. JC was put to bed on the divan and Cynthia slept fitfully on her cot in Rose’s bedroom. She whimpered and thrashed around but she didn’t wake up.

  The morning of the second day—

  Eventually, Rose lay down in her bed and closed her eyes. It was the hardest thing just to be still. She just couldn’t bear being still. But she must have fallen asleep because sometime in the wee hours before dawn, something awakened her. At first she thought Cynthia must have cried out but she appeared to be sleeping soundly. Rose turned from her daughter’s bed while her eyes searched the pre-dawn gloom for some sign of what had roused her. Claire was lying on her side facing away from her and there was no sign she had moved from that position all night. There didn’t seem to be anything out of place and yet something had broken into her sleep.

  Suddenly she heard it again.

  “Rose.” “Rose Sharon.”

  It was her fantasy come true, and her delight was such that she forgot she had watched him die a little more than 24 hours earlier.

  She flew across the bedroom and into the living room. The pre-dawn light was just bright enough to let her distinguish objects around her. JC, whom she had forgotten entirely, lay spread-eagled and uncovered on the couch with his blankets trailing onto the floor. She was on her way to cover him when a movement in front of the library table caught her eye and when she looked in that direction she saw him quite clearly. The first thing she noticed was that he was not dressed the same as he had been when she saw him in the street. Instead he was wearing a dark cotton work shirt with the sleeves rolled all the way up above his elbows to show his fine, hard-muscled arms. The sight of him like that, looking like he did when he’d ride Wild Honey down the field road to meet her on one of those sultry Mississippi summer evenings and then fly like the wind with her almost all the way to Dobbin and back again, made her knees weak and her heart pound. He wore his leather vest unbuttoned, as he did back then, and his work jeans and his boots. He was even holding his grandpa’s old gray Stetson in his hand and he was grinning at her … just exactly the way he did in the days when he loved her. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes in that gray gloom, but she could see the crinkles around them and the laugh lines at the edge of his pretty mouth.

  He reached out to her and joy rose in her like a bird taking flight. She could feel its wings fluttering against her ribs—tickling her throat—lifting her from all her sorrows right on up into heaven.

  “Jack,” she sang out to him. “I knew you’d come back to me!”

  She took those last few steps to his arms but when her arms closed around him … he vanished!

  Rose was too shocked to even try to understand what had happened. It was Jack and it wasn’t a dream. She heard his voice … loud enough to wake h
er from her sleep. She had seen him! Really seen him. And he was so solid he blocked the light from the window. She couldn’t see through him. He was no ghost.

  While Rose stood there bewildered, staring at the place Jack had been just seconds before, Claire Louise charged out the bedroom door seeking with dread her sister’s whereabouts. Glancing around the room, she saw nothing except Rose’s obvious confusion and so assumed she was suffering a nightmare. Tenderly and with a reassuring smile, Claire took her arm and tried to steer her back into the bedroom. Rose didn’t resist at first, she was still struggling with the notion of Jack’s presence and disappearance in so short a space of time. But in the middle of the doorway she put out her hands and held on to the jamb on either side refusing to be led any further.

  Claire, with a perplexed look in her eyes, let go and waited for her sister to explain.

  “Sister Claire?”

  “Yes, Rose Sharon?”

  “I just saw Jack Nash. He was standing right there in front of the window.” She nodded her head in that direction. “Right there, Claire.”

  Rose turned her head and stared back at that spot and in her mind’s eye she was seeing him again. “He was grinnin’ that same ole ornery grin just the way he used to. With his eyes all crinkled up.”

  Claire’s face sagged. It was evidently a lot worse than she’d thought, and she started shaking her head and tried again to ease Rose into the bedroom and back into bed. “Rose—oh, Rose.” She sighed sadly. But Rose ignored her.

  “He was his old self all right. Just so handsome it swelled my heart to look at him. And you know what else, Sister Claire? He wasn’t wearin’ those city clothes like he has to wear on that dumb ol’ job of his. He was dressed just the way he did down in Mississippi. He looked just like he was ready to jump on Wild Honey’s back and tear off down that ol’ field road.”