A puzzled pause, then a roar of laughter louder than the rain on the roof. Johnny Faye doubled over, gasping, until he finally came up for air. Then he seized Flavian around the chest with one arm and pulled him up till he was half-standing and made a show of inspecting the back of his head. “Boy, you are really wet behind the ears.”
Flavian struggled free, stood, and edged toward the door. “I was just asking a question. A pretty logical one, if you ask me.”
Johnny Faye upended an empty milk crate, grabbed Flavian’s shoulder, and plunked him down. “Come on, sit. Here, take your drink. First rule. You can never have too much ice. Second rule. Drink water on the side, helps your liver out, keeps the hangover in your bed. Third rule. Stay away from that frou-frou shit—you know, strawberry frozen sunrise banana rum mush. Unless hangovers bring you closer to God. Support the local product. Stick with bourbon.”
Flavian had taken his seat well into the party, and the others were already far down the slope that leads to the valley of cheerful drunkenness and beyond to the dark wood of despond. The whiskey went quickly to his head, but where others grew loud and bright he grew introspective, a dufus grin on his face but with his soul’s lips sealed shut. Sitting with his brother monks, he realized he had never sat with his brother monks. He had always been an outsider, the watcher in the tree limbs looking down as the world passed by. He saw how the men told stories—the ritual that they knew and practiced without it having been taught. The floor was a battleground and the storyteller’s job was to defend his territory. The storyteller worked his way through the story, interrupting himself now and then to offer comment, pausing for breath long enough to allow the others to interject smart remarks but never yielding the high ground, always returning to the story before the upstart could take the floor. And so the story built to its climax, but as the teller neared its end one of the members of his audience would be designated his successor—whoever had made the most biting aside or had brought out the most laughter with a jibe. And when the story reached its climax, amid shouts and signs the storyteller would be dethroned and the story would begin again, now with the upstart as the new king to be challenged in his turn.
And so the evening wore on and all their stories became one long continuing story: how Father Peter lost his turkeys became how Johnny Faye rode Hoover DeWitt’s dead body around town in an open jeep wearing a suit he’d eased out of the bank director’s bedroom closet because Hoover had never in his lifetime known what it was to wear a tie, became how Freeman Frank shot the Yankee reporter and got off with manslaughter with time off for good behavior. Then the tone turned darker, as Cyril told how a local policeman’s wife came to him time and again fleeing her violent husband and how she always went back to him for the sake of their child and Cyril had no idea what she did with the money he gave her so that she might take her child and leave.
And finally the storm wore itself out, the gods and goddesses retreated to the hills to lick their chops and the rain diminished from a fierce thrumming to a gentle pattering on the roof and they, all of them Cassian, Bede, Cyril, José, Aelred, Cyprian, Denis, and Johnny Faye, were slipping into the sweet nodding that is the fate of the cheerful drunk. A pause came that ought to have signaled the evening’s end, but Flavian was not tuned into that nuance of late-stage cow barn society and so he began a story of his own. “This was in the days before I became a monk.”
“No! Never! You were born tonsured! Your mama never had to change your monkly diapers!”
“I was driving—”
“Go on. The boy is old enough to drive? Let me see the license.”
“Hush. You let him tell it.”
“—I was driving, a big old black Chrysler New Yorker, I can feel the wheel under my hands—it was my father’s car and he let me have it for my last year of college. The back seat was big enough—”
“for you and two sheep”
“—big enough to sleep in and I set out across the country, just driving, trying to figure out where I was going, what I was going to do when I graduated because if I did nothing I’d be in Uncle Sam’s Army before I had my cap and gown returned to the professor I’d borrowed it from. And I was driving through the desert—the mountains, really, but it was New Mexico, no, Arizona, and there was no tree taller than a man and only those funny cactus that are taller than a man and look like they’re waving hello. Or good-bye.”
“Saguaros.”
“Thank you. And I’m cruising at seventy miles an hour—you can do that in the West, the road is straight and flat and comes to a point on the horizon—and on either side are cactus bigger than men and big purple mountains and not a tree in sight or memory when Bam! my windshield shatters. It must already have been replaced once because that old Chrysler would never have had safety glass, but this glass shattered but didn’t break, you know, just had that spider-webbing effect that makes it go all opaque and I couldn’t see a thing. And I slammed on the brakes—good thing nobody was behind me—and got out of the car in that hellish heat and sure enough there was a six-foot rattlesnake—”
“No! No way! Not possible!”
“—a six-foot rattlesnake that had managed to crawl from the windshield to the roof of the car and there it was. Dead, as in deceased.”
“Manna from heaven! Snake from the sky!”
“So I looked around—nothing—you tell me, but my best theory is that a hawk or an eagle had caught it and either the snake had twisted free of its claws or maybe the bird meant to drop the snake as a way of killing it, you know, the bird saw the hard flat surface of the pavement as a target and let go, only I and my seventy-mile-an-hour windshield got in the way. And I looked at that dead snake and up at the clear hot blue sky with no sign of a bird, no sign of anything except the road shimmering in the heat, and I raised my hands to the sky and said: ‘I guess I’ll be a monk.’”
A long pause after this story and then fat Brother Bede rose and stood before Flavian and then he was down on one knee—he had to help himself down, placing one plump hand on Flavian’s head to steady himself until he was low enough to drop one knee to the cement floor, then following with the other knee, and then he was touching his forehead to the floor in a salaam. “O Flavian, seer and prophet!”
And then Flavian was helping Bede to his feet and Bede threw his arm around Flavian’s neck to haul up his bulk and then Johnny Faye had his arm around Bede’s neck and Cyril around Johnny Faye’s and on down the drunken line until they were all on their feet and dancing, slowly, gravely, to a shared but unheard beat, to their left and then their right in a circle, each with his arms over others’ shoulders and this is what they sang:
Pange lingua, gloriosi
Corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi
Quem in mundi pretium
Fructus ventris generosi
Rex effudit Gentium.
At one point the KC Hall had been designated a bomb shelter, and the government had stockpiled barrels of drinking water and battery-powered lamps guaranteed to last for the several years the townspeople would require before they could emerge to inspect the radioactive ashes of their lives. Now Harry Vetch hauled the lanterns out but no one had checked the batteries in years and none worked. Then someone remembered that acts of God had preceded acts of man as the likely cause of such disruptions, and that tornado shelter supplies were stored in a different part of the basement, and before long everyone was carrying a candle. The KC Hall looked like the church at Easter midnight mass, with men’s and women’s faces lit from the candlelight cupped in their hands, the men trying to get their candles to stand upright in empty highball glasses and the women taking care to keep the dripping wax away from their dresses. Harry Vetch wandered through the crowd, apologizing for the storm and noting that the dead lanterns were one more indication, if any was needed, of the dire straits of the county infrastructure.
In the darkness Meena turned to the window, to look at the sheets of rain falling on pavement. “
And so arrives the monsoon, maha Bengal,” she murmured.
“What is Bingle?” Rosalee asked.
“Bengal was my homeland, the place where I came from. A country of more water than land. Now it is divided between India and a part that has become its own country called Bangladesh. I grew up in what is now Bangladesh but I came to the States from India—that part of Bengal that belongs to India. If you think of the world as an orange, then Bengal is precisely the opposite side from where we are standing now.”
“You mean, you couldn’t come from any further away.”
“Any farther and the traveler begins to return home—that is, assuming that she has a home to which she may return.”
“Bingle,” Rosalee said, then corrected herself. “Ben-gal.”
Gradually the rain slackened and the cries and shouts grew bolder. Now the crowd was seriously drunk—when the building lost power, the bartender had opened all the bottles and left them out for all to help themselves. In the dim light Meena could see Father Poppelreiter at the bar between two candles fixed in beer bottles—with their light flickering over his ruddy face, he might have been standing at an altar saying mass.
“You ladies OK?” Harry Vetch passed by, a candle clutched in his hand, its wavering light playing over his smooth features. “We have got to put a stop to that man,” he muttered before moving into the crowd.
“What man is he referring to?” Meena asked.
A small laugh from Rosalee Smith. “Oh, Johnny Faye, for sure. This stunt has Johnny Faye written all over it. I mean the slide show. But I wouldn’t put it past Johnny Faye to cut the power, too.”
“I might have guessed. I believe I know the man. A farmer.”
“You could say that.” A rich silence. “You met Johnny Faye?”
“Yes, he came to my office shortly after I arrived.”
“I have a hard time picturing Johnny Faye in a doctor’s office, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“I recall the name. I would have thought it a woman’s name.”
“Sometimes it is, sometimes it aint.” Rosalee lowered her voice. “But I aint pestering you to talk about Johnny Faye. I want to talk about my Matthew Mark. He’s doing OK thanks to you. But that’s what I want to talk about. I mean, it hadn’t ever got this bad but I can see that with that boy growing older and his asthma getting worse—I’ve done all I know to do—give up smoking, keep the cat outside, whatever. I know you’ve done what you can but I’m hoping and praying that you can do more. I beg your pardon if I’m a pest but I knowed I had to ask. Knock and it shall be answered.”
“Dear Mrs. Smith. Rosalee,” Meena said gently. “Asthma surely complicated your son’s situation but it was not the precipitating cause.”
And then they were not alone. The doctor could not see who had joined them but she smelled his aftershave, more powerful than the scent of the early summer rain, its overwhelming cloyness a kind of threat. He was trying to light a cigarette—she heard the scratch of match against sandpaper once, twice, but the air was damp and his matches slow. Finally the match flared, and in its sudden light she saw that Rosalee had stilled her face and she understood that the man behind her back was her husband, the boy’s father, Officer Smith.
In some fashion, in some way that he might not even be aware of but could accomplish easily enough, he possessed the power to send Meena back where she came from. With one telephone call or one word at one meeting with one person in one office he could undo her years of work.
Between this man and this woman, with the streets and the KC Hall dark, where they were surrounded by the laughter and cries of the partygoers’ search for light, here in this place where everyone knew that this man beat his child and probably his wife and no one would act—Meena knew this place. This was the place where she had come from, a half a world removed and everything had changed and nothing had changed. She was still in the power of men, they were all in the power of anyone who saw the ends as more important than the means, who lived to seek power, and if anything could be known about the world it was that this man would use whatever power he had in whatever way he could. Meena was not likely to change this by drawing attention to what he had done.
But where would that leave the boy? There was always the boy or someone like him, grist for the mill of fate, the children and women and men, once her friends and neighbors and relatives, murdered or raped and left for dead. Meena felt all the massed and indifferent power of the law standing behind her, in the person of Officer Smith.
Meena took Rosalee’s hand, hoping that a human touch might ease what she had to say. “I cannot offer extraordinary promises at this particular moment. I am a doctor of the flesh, not the spirit.”
“That’s right.” The man was at Rosalee’s side, his badge gleaming in the candlelight.
She held out her hand. “Doctor Chatterjee. And you are—”
“Officer Smith.”
“Why, yes, of course. You are the father of the brave little boy whom your wife brought to my office.”
A pause.
“Of course I saw him in the hospital,” Meena said, “but then he recovered so quickly and he was gone before I knew it. I took my day off, and then I returned to find the floor doctor had discharged him—I came back and an elderly woman was occupying his room. Imagine my surprise. I am pleased to have the opportunity to meet.”
He gave her hand a perfunctory shake and turned to his wife. “We got to go, now.”
“Before you go,” Meena said. “Perhaps we could make an appointment.”
“Nothing wrong with me. I suggest you drum up your business somewhere else.”
“I do not wish to speak about your health but the health of your son.”
He stood back so that his face was in shadow. “I’ll raise that boy as I see fit. Then maybe he’ll find what he needs among his own people instead of going halfway around the world where he’s not—”
Rosalee touched his arm. “Honey. Please.”
At that moment the porch light and the building lights blinked on and Meena was grateful for the blinding moment of confusion to gather her wits. She turned to look Officer Smith in the face—his blank, chinless face with its prematurely sagging eyes. Though he was clean-shaven he had heavy stubble, and in this bright light it emphasized what lay beneath, the tension in the cords of his jaws and neck.
Meena laughed a bright laugh she had learned from her grandmother as a means of concealing what had to be hidden in what demanded to be said. “How pleasant to be living across the street! But I wouldn’t think of causing you the trouble of entertaining me. Remember though that in my country to work near the jungle was to risk a leopard’s attack, and so I learned as a child to walk with the eyes and ears of a leopard. It is my duty to use all my skills in service to my patients. And your son is my patient.”
Suddenly the county attorney was at her side. “Glad I caught you before you left. I just wanted to finish up our conversation. You don’t mind if I phone you up?”
Meena looked not at Vetch but at Officer Smith. “Of course you may ring me at any time. I shall look forward to improving our acquaintance.”
And then Officer Smith left, pulling his wife and son after him.
“Sorry if I was interrupting your conversation,” Vetch said. “But you looked like you needed—well, rescuing.”
“You are so kind to be concerned. In fact your timing was very good.”
“I’ll be giving you a call,” he said, but already she was at the door.
Seen from inside the KC Hall, the falling rain had recalled the warm monsoons of her childhood, but the short walk to her office reminded Meena that these were the rains of the north—chilly even in summer. By the time she reached her office she was shivering.
Bede snuffed out the kerosene lamp while Cyril used a flashlight to lead them through the stanchions and milking machine hoses. A weirdly animated light flickered at the barn windows, then Flavian heard a click and buzz. Through a window h
e watched a mercury vapor lamp stutter to life. The power had returned and with it the various proofs it offered that men, not nature, control the world.
Bringing up the rear of the crowd of snickering, whispering, cheerful, holy drunks, Flavian glanced back to realize that the light switch was still turned on—when they’d left the room, they’d had no light to remind them to flip it off. He turned back. Inside the office he found several plastic cups half-filled with whiskey, overlooked in their darkened departure. “Good thing somebody’s paying attention,” he muttered. He poured their contents down the sink, then let the water run for a few seconds to wash away the heady smell. A last check around the room, then he flipped the light switch off and guided himself out by the eerie glow from the windows.
Outside: A million brilliant stars overhead, though the eastern horizon still flashed and grumbled from the retreating storm. For a moment Flavian stood in the barn door, captivated by the source of the glow at the windows: the lightning-split oak that had driven Flavian into the cow barn and into the arms of his brothers in service to the Lord. The oak’s limbs lay shattered on the wet earth, but the great trunk smoldered with smoke and flame. Flavian stood transfixed until he felt a presence at his side. “Thanks for the evening,” Flavian said. “I doubt I’d have stuck around except that you roped me in.”
“I have a reputation for that,” Johnny Faye said. “They’re good guys, this crowd anyway. Watch out for them priests, though. They got a hand in the honey pot, they’re in it for the power and they’ll rat on you in a heartbeat if they think it’ll make them look good with the boss.”
“Maybe some are like that, but these are lay monks. There was a time when I worked with them side by side and I hope they know I won’t run tattling to the management. But I don’t know that I could have gotten comfortable with them, or they with me, without your greasing the wheels.”
“It’s the whiskey that greased the wheels but I thank you kindly.”
The Man Who Loved Birds Page 13