At the far end of the hall was an alcove. A mint telephone was there, balanced on a thin copy of the Dovetail Cove phone directory.
She took a breath. There was no more energy. But she summoned more from somewhere. She slapped her hands down and dragged herself along the floor. Just a few more feet. Just a few more. She reached up and found purchase for her fingers on the directory. She flexed and pulled. The directory slid. And the phone toppled, hitting her shoulder with a clunk and then down to the hardwood with a clang of the bell inside.
She got the receiver to her ear and righted the base. Thank God there was a dial tone.
Out of breath and seeing heavy objects swimming in her vision, she called the Doc.
Four rings. Four endless rings before the click and a sleepy, “H-hullo?”
He must have rolled over to answer the phone five hundred times in the course of his career as the only doctor on this island. Countless had fallen down stairs, vomited in the night, or had their water break after eleven p.m. But she knew Doc was strained these last years. His age hadn’t worn well. And neither had the pressure of caring for Agnes.
“It’s me,” she said. “They took her, Doc. They goddamn took her. Snatched her out of the second-storey winda, for chrissakes.”
“Just back up, who? Who took her?”
“Father Frye. I don’t know if he had help. But he took Mary.”
Breathlessly, she looked around as if she was in a bottle at sea and would never find the help she needed to get home. Every part of her that had feeling throbbed with hurt.
“She’s gone Doc.”
10.
White noise bloomed in Bexy’s ears. The heavy weight of it throbbed up from nothingness and claimed all other sound. It grew and then became a steady buzz. She saw his lips moving as he hunched over the wheel of his Plymouth in the dark of night. But she only partially-heard what he was saying. Somewhere in the back of her head, she got some meaning. But it was sparse. There was only this...white sound.
He was telling her that there was a ladder left at the back of the Banatyne house. Aluminum and extended up to the second story window. Footsteps in the crunchy, frosted grass leading away to the alley and then disappearing. Two sets of footsteps. Likely climbed into a vehicle before driving off, he told her. And, even more likely, Mary had gone willingly. They’d either sent the cat in to lure her—what mentally disabled woman with the mind and sensibilities of a six-year old wouldn’t be enthralled with a cat?—or they’d taken advantage of the stray and, honestly, why wouldn’t Mary trust Father Frye? She’d been in the choir for months and probably saw him twice a week for the duration of that.
The noise in Bexy’s head blurred everything out. Still Doc talked. Still she tried not to listen and watched the fuzzy images of her neighbours’ homes skate by in the blackness. She couldn’t believe she’d lost the girl. She couldn’t believe it.
She started to cry. It hit her in less than a half-minute, amping up from a dribble to wracking sobs. Guilt, anger, frustration and loneliness welling up and pouring out of her.
Doc’s voice. Asking her if she was okay. Asking her if she could hold it together until they could get where they were going. Nothing from Bexy, no words, only the sounds of her crying.
Then: “We have to get her back, Doc. We have to.”
“I know it, Bex, I know it. But where? Frye’s house?”
“No,” Bexy said, falling to sniffles and hitched voice, like a small child’s. “The church—he—doesn’t think—we’d come there—doesn’t think we’d—confront him on—his turf. But—we will. I need to.”
“Fine,” Doc said. “Listen, Bex, I know you’re upset. I get it. I am too. This is...reprehensible. We should maybe...just back down, y’know?”
Bexy turned and looked at him. Her face was red and puffy. It was still wet. “Look into my face, Doc. Look. I’m not backing down. I have to help this girl. And this is it. This is the only way. Father Frye can go to hell.”
Doc looked off out the windshield. It had started to snow. Tiny white flecks hit the glass and turned to water on impact. “Look, I care for you, Bex. Immensely. But with Aggie and with everything, I can only go so far with you on this. I heard from my doctor friend. The specialist? The weather service cleared the ferry. He’s on his way.”
“All right then. We go to the church. We find Mary. When you need out, well, I guess you do what you have to. But, remember, you brought me into this.”
“I remember,” Doc said. He put the car back into drive, shoulder-checked and pulled back onto the main road.
In a few minutes, they reached St. Dom’s. Out front, a new billboard sat in the lawn. Black with bright yellow letters, it said, “The wages of sin is death. Quit before payday.”
Doc parked the car and the two of them exchanged a look over that before he got out and went to the trunk to retrieve Bexy’s wheelchair.
She’d gotten dressed in a hurry and pulled on her coat even faster. She realized that her buttons were mismatched but she didn’t bother fixing them, just glared straight ahead as Doc drove her chair up the front path to St. Dom’s main entry.
He yanked open the door and drove her through, sticking his leg out to brace the door from falling closed on them.
And that’s when they both heard it. Well, more specifically, Bexy heard it, first—her ears were better than Doc’s—but he saw the turn of her head and followed her gaze. It was a loud, boisterous throng of people. And they were crossing the generous front lawn of St. Dom’s at an angle. They started shouting when they saw Bexy and Doc. Even at this distance and in this bad light, the frontrunners in the mob could probably make out that one of these two people was in a wheelchair.
“Go,” Bexy said. “Go! Go!”
“Come on,” Doc said and took Bexy up the ramp and across the bright red carpet of the raised narthex. With a gentle squeak, he opened the second set of heavy wood doors, these leading into the main sanctuary. They had to outrun the mob.
Doc was flustered, but he got Bexy over the threshold and into the church. The door swooshed shut and slammed behind them. “Over there,” she said, out of breath and pointing at one of the flagpoles to either side of the foyer doors. Doc ambled over there. His face was red and he huffed with the effort, but he got the flag pole out of its copper canister and tipped it sideways. Without being told anything further, he knew what Bexy meant. He slid the sturdy flagpole through the old brass handles of the double doors. Then, without hesitation, he went over and pulled the matching flagpole on the other side down. He did the same thing with it, and the two poles nearly filled the openings of the door handles.
With no time to spare, the latches on the handles began to click. Hesitantly, at first, then faster and with more force. The door shook, but only a little. Muffled shouting bled through from the other side as the crowd tried to get through the doors.
But St. Dom’s was in lockdown. From behind them came Mary’s voice. “Missa Cloud?”
Doc turned. Bexy spun in her chair, wet wheels wowing on the hard floor.
Mary was in her choir uniform and standing alone on the choir risers. “Father Frye, he say he give me extra help with singing practice!” She said this with gusto, with a bit of fatigue—it was, after all, past ten p.m.—but she was content. And for that, Bexy was grateful. At least the priest hadn’t taken her against her will. “He wants me to get extra good for Sunday. Isn’t that the bestest?”
“That’s so wonderful, sweetie,” Bexy said, straining to put some glee in her voice, and also angling. “And where is the Father?”
“He’s in his office. He be right back. He tole me.”
“Okay, hon.” Turning to Doc, Bexy said, “Let’s go out the back way—‘fore His Holiness gets here. Can you go out a bit ahead and make sure that none of them from out front circle around and come in that way? I don’t think we should have another...run-in. Not tonight.”
Doc exhaled his exhaustion. He said. “Okay, okay, Bex. Let’s g
it home and all of us back to bed. Things’ll look a little brighter once we have some sleep under our belts.” He paused a moment. “This isn’t nearly as bad as you thought, is it? He probably just thought that if Mary was with him, we wouldn’t be able to bring the specialist in. At least not tonight. I hate to be an I-told-ya-so'er, but you really should hold your tongue. Keep from laying your cards on the table. Extreme thinkers like the priest’ll be less apt to jump the gun.” He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Bexy put her hand on his. She looked over at the door where the crowd was still fussing with the latch and trying to get in. “Not nearly as bad, you think. Is that so?” She put her tongue in her cheek and fought a grin.
They exchanged a smile of absurdity.
“Well,” he said. “I guess I’m sayin’ it could be a bit worse.” He strode down the aisle, his shoulders hunched with the weight of all this, but still upright. Still standing and still supporting Bex. He was a good man. Bexy truly felt that he was.
“Mary, honey,” he said as he headed for the pulpit. “We’re going to go home now. You stay back with Be—with Mrs. McLeod and I’ll lead us, okay? It’s cold out. Did you have a coat?”
“Naw,” Mary said. “No coat. I’m still in my jammies. I’m tired, Doc. Practice at night is kina weird, huh Missa Cloud?”
“It is, Mary. You’re right.”
The three pushed through the single door. Mary and Doc went down the steps into the activity room and Mary used the wheelchair ramp, covered in a long stretch of brown vinyl. Off to their left was the darkened kitchen. One light was on at the end of the big gym-like room. It was Father Frye’s office. His door was partly ajar.
But Father Frye wasn’t in his office. He stood quietly in the darkened kitchen, wearing his Sunday robes, the long officious whites of the church with red and gold patches adorning the collar and shoulders. Bexy caught sight of him from the corner of her eye as she drove down the ramp and skidded a bit before hitting the tile floor of the main room. She almost screamed but it came out in a gasp. Father took that as his cue to ascend from the shadows. “Rebekah McLeod, Lost child and sinner,” he said with a note of tut-tut-tut in his voice. He was still trying to shame her. Didn’t he realize Bexy McLeod was way past shame? That held no sway over her.
“Father Frye,” she said, curtly. To Mary, she said, “Go to Doc, honey.” Reluctantly, Mary did. Doc held out his arms like a father opening them to his baby daughter as she learned to walk without the aid of furniture or a wobbly walker.
Father held some papers in his hand. And a pen.
“You took her,” Bexy said. There was bite in her voice. Teeth too.
“I felt I did what had to be done,” he said, fluttering his eyelids once and looking down at his papers.
From behind Bexy, Doc said, “You know, Father, some might call that a kidnapping.” Then for good measure, he added. “Might'n it be interesting to get the police chief’s take?”
The priest let out a laugh as if none of this was bothering him in the slightest. “Oh, Doc, I don’t think Bexy would like to bring Birkhead into this. Not again.”
That tweaked Bexy. “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all,” Father Frye said. “Chief Birksy knows you have a history of, well, of taking on charitable projects—”
“Now, now,” Bexy said with rising voice. “There were no charges for me in that. No personal favours neither. Everyone agreed. Chief made it clear. The Smythes pocketed that money. It was supposed to build the new church and we asked for...investors. And that was my only part in it—gathering up the seed money to build another house of worship on this island—”
“Yes, right,” he interjected. “Another one.”
“That’s right. A little competition for the collection plate.”
Father Frye smiled again. “And I suppose you can’t help yourself. You need some sort of charity work. I wouldn’t mind at all if you spent your God-given time with Meals on Wheels or—”
It was Bexy’s turn to let out a diminishing laugh. “You’re skirting the fact that you took the girl.” She leaned forward in her chair and changed her tone to that of an indignant mother scolding a neighbour’s child on the down-low. “Out of her home. And in the middle of the night.”
“Call it what you will,” the priest said, raising his head and his eyes away from Bexy in a gesture of dismissal. “I prefer to think of it as, well, as a kind of intervention.”
He stepped forward. “You have this idea in your head. Well, let me tell you—such an idea, it’s not good for Mary. And it most certainly isn’t good for this island.”
He flapped the papers in his hands in a noisy whoosh.
“What do you have there?” Bexy said, her voice fluttering. She had spent time alone with this man, had let him console her when Oren passed and when she herself had found out she’d never walk again. He’d been a kind, gentle soul. Or at least she’d thought so. Now, she wasn’t sure. She had a strong sense that he did what he did to pull money into this church he’d built, to keep it alive, to keep it relevant. She had paid out so much of her money, and not just to the Catholic Church, but to the Zionist one too. And all of it, just to buy herself away from bad feelings. From guilt, from pain.
“It’s a document I’d like you to sign.”
“I don’t have custody,” Bexy said, meaning custody of Mary. “I can’t sign her over or anything like that. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Oh I know. This isn’t a legal document. This is a contract with God.”
Bexy almost scoffed. “A contract, y’say?”
“I do. Most certainly. This says that you will allow all the young people in your charge the courtesy, honour and right of life, so help you God. This says you enter into a covenant with our Lord and saviour, the almighty Jesus Christ, who art in heaven, that you will never, ever, sway from his teachings. And those teachings are this: that all life—all life, no matter how small or voiceless—is precious and necessary, that all life should be preserved. Each being is part of the Divine Plan, y’see. This says you will not harm a single living soul inside that plan—including the one growing inside young Mary Smithson.”
Bexy looked at Doc. Doc gave an almost invisible shrug. He’d never been heavy into the church. Agnes had been and Bexy suspected he came each Sunday now, more out of the memory of who Agnes used to be and that he wanted to honour that.
She looked back at Father Frye. She wanted to laugh. But she held it. If she could just get Mary out of here and back to the beat up Plymouth out front—before that throng, no doubt assembled by the priest, tried trudging through the January sludge to get to the back entry. Then they could be rid of this bit of drama without any more confrontation.
“If I sign this—this covenant—can Mary go home? To bed? She’s awful tired, Father. Exhausted. We all are.”
“Certainly, Mrs. McLeod. You are always free to go. This is a house of God.” He sounded like he’d add, “Not a prison,” but he didn’t.
He lay the papers on the kitchen counter and reached around to flick on the light. It brought instant fluorescent brightness spilling out onto Mary, Doc, and Bexy.
And the covenant.
Slowly, Bexy wheeled over to the counter. Father Frye set his pen down on the paper with a solitary clack.
“I sign this and that’s it. We head out of here. With Mary?”
He crossed his hands pleasantly at his crotch, lacing his fingers there in a gesture of non-confrontation. “You are free to leave,” he said, and then looked over at Mary standing an inch from Doc and looking confused. “And the dear girl is expecting. I can only imagine how tiring all activities are for a mother-to-be.”
Bexy inched up to the counter. It was high but she could reach the papers easily. She took the pen in her writing hand and held the sheets up to her eyes. “Don’t have my glasses,” she said quietly. “Just take me a minute.”
Father Frye smiled and blinked complacently. He didn’t move.
Bexy could hear Doc’s heavy breath somewhere behind her. Again, that noise of white threatened to flood her ears. This was all insane. She had to be missing something. It would not be this easy. She didn’t know the priest’s game plan but he had to be up to something. She scanned the document. It was a very rough mimeograph. Purple writing on white paper. Faded and ugly. Hard to read. There was a lot of rhetoric and vibrant bible speak, basically saying that she wouldn’t permit Mary Smithson to undergo an abortion—but it never used the word, abortion. Didn’t use the word, pregnant, either. Mary’s name was there. It was handwritten in a blank space. So was Bexy’s full name, both of them in blue ink. Calm, no shakiness in the writing. Father Frye thought he had this sewn up. And that made Bexy angry.
Her face grew red as she kept reading.
The room held a desperate quiet. No one tried to force their way in at the moment.
The white noise rose.
And then, mingled with it, she heard Father Frye speak again. “Of course...” he said, trailing off. More white noise. A steady drone of it, louder, then louder. “This document only carries a certain amount of trust. A member of our parish has generously offered to look after the girl until the baby’s born. Someone with a bit more...stature...in the community. A highly-regarded member of the church. She’s coming by tonight—”
Bexy heard her own voice peppering the white noise. The facade of loud blank hush crackled with words—her own. It forced her away from the simple, flat soundscape in her head. She tried to articulate an understanding of these words. She was saying, “Who?” and she was saying it over and over again. Finally, Father Frye answered.
“Why, it’s Gladys Troyer.”
—Of course it is—
“So Mary will live with her and her husband until the due date.”
—Of course she will—
“They don’t mind a bit.”
—Of course they don’t—
“They have a daughter about Mary’s age who comes by often as well—”
And the noise in Bexy’s head reached crescendo. Before she realized what she was doing, her arm sprang out. Her wheelchair leapt forward with her hand-heel guiding it.
Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976) (Dovetail Cove Series) Page 10