Elders

by Ryan McIlvain

  “I’m Josefina,” the woman said. “ ‘Ma’am’ is my grandmother.”

  “Ah, yes.” Passos lowered his eyes a moment, raised them again. “Josefina, we’ve come here today with a message about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. About how families can be together forever. About peace and love and hope. The message takes about twenty minutes. May we share it with you?”

  Josefina bent forward a little and peered at the missionaries’ name tags, first Passos’s, then McLeod’s. She tilted her head. “ ‘Elder’? How come both of you are named Elder?”

  “ ‘Elder’ is a title,” McLeod came in, putting on his brightest tone, his best accent.

  “Are you German?” Josefina asked him.

  “American.”

  “Really?” She looked from McLeod to Passos. “How old are you two?”

  “We’re both twenty,” Passos said. “Would you and your family like to hear our message?”

  “And what are they paying you to do this?”

  “We pay our own way,” Passos said.

  “Really. And where are you from?”

  “Recife.”

  “Is that how you do it then? A Brazilian and an American?”

  “Not always.”

  Josefina nodded. “I’ve seen you guys around before, the pairs of you—white dress shirts and black pants, in this heat. But I never knew.” She looked back and forth between Passos and McLeod, a wry, deliberating curl to her lips. “A northeasterner and an American come all the way down here to preach to me, huh?” Her smile broadened, her eyes narrowed. After a long silence Passos said, “Josefina?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  McLeod perked up. “You want to hear our message?”

  “Sure,” Josefina said, “why not? We could use a little gospel around here. My husband especially.” Josefina winked at the elders. McLeod felt a sudden blush rise up in his cheeks. He looked to Passos. The sight of him hesitating on the doorstep. Josefina said, “Oh, did you want to do it now? My husband’s not here right now.”

  Elder Passos asked if he would be back soon. Could they come back later that night?

  Josefina scrunched up her face as if tasting something sour. Then she shrugged. “Well, Leandro’s on a construction job today, but what that really means is that he and the rest of his crew are holed up in a bar somewhere watching the first round of the Latin Championships. I might not see him until late, to be honest. He does have work, though. I thank God for that.”

  Passos said he was glad to hear it—on both counts. He removed from his breast pocket his foldout daily planner. They actually preferred to teach couples together, he said, so this would be ideal. Could they come by tomorrow?

  “Better do it after six,” Josefina said. “They’re day games. How’s seven o’clock?”

  “It’s perfect,” Passos said, looking from Josefina to McLeod in one fluid motion. “Right, Elder?”

  McLeod smiled.

  Then it was night, and cool, at last. McLeod sat at his rolltop desk in the apartment’s entryway that doubled, as he had described it in a letter home, as “a very, very ‘cozy’ living room.” The light from a bare bulb overhead slanted sharply, casting shadows onto McLeod’s desk and under the windowsill to the right of it, making the room appear to float in a void, the darkness outside that much darker. The open window looked out on a corner of the little cement courtyard where the elders hung laundry, where they sometimes held P-Day barbecues, and where McLeod tonight had pinned up his graying dress pants in preparation for the burning. If he leaned forward, McLeod could see the garment now. It hung like a half scarecrow, looking ominous as it silhouetted against the dull orange haze of light above their outer wall: streetlamps mostly, the occasional porch light, and the blue cathode flashing of a TV in a second-story window across the street. Second stories stuck out in the elders’ neighborhood, which spread horizontally, a wide belly in the night. If he leaned a little farther forward, McLeod could look up into the sky and see stars he never knew existed. The Southern Hemisphere. A world at the bottom of the world.

  Elder McLeod brought his gaze back down to earth and to the unframed picture leaning against the back of his desk, a recent black-and-white group photo of his family: his mother and sister smiling warmly, simply, his father doing his best Sean Connery, brows askew, and his dog, Buddy. A happy family. His family. He’d gotten the picture in the mail last week, on transfer day, and he’d opened it at his desk as Passos had unpacked, arranged his things, taped up pictures of Jesus to the walls. At first McLeod had laughed at his father in the picture, but then it was all he could do not to cry in front of his new companion.

  Passos sat at his desk now, too, which pressed up against the wall on the other side of the window, three or four feet from McLeod’s desk. Passos had an English grammar book open in front of him, though he appeared to be staring through it. Neither McLeod nor his senior companion spoke, but their silence was easy, light as the air through the window.

  A banging came at the outer door, followed by Sweeney’s loud “Hey-oohhh!” and Kimball’s bright staccato laugh.

  McLeod scraped back his chair, smiling, and looked to his companion. “You know where we’ll be if you change your mind.”

  Passos tipped his face up: a smile of his own, thinly forbearing.

  Outside, McLeod greeted his friends at the door, in English, and with unself-conscious hugs. He said their names out loud, feeling suddenly, rapturously happy. A nearby streetlamp ringed Sweeney’s hair, and Kimball’s too, in a sort of dirty halo.

  “Come in, come in!” McLeod said. “What’d you guys do with your fancy new juniors?”

  McLeod led them into the courtyard as Sweeney explained how they’d sloughed their companions off on each other, both newbie Brazilians, at Kimball’s apartment. “Let them play soccer together, or play swords—whatever the natives do when they’re alone.”

  Kimball let out a laugh-groan. “Come on, man.”

  “What?” Sweeney said. “I’m a little curious myself. A lot of these guys are uncircumcised, you know.” He pulled up his dress collar and dipped his head. “Little sleevies.”

  McLeod turned to Sweeney, smiling, but with a finger at his lips. “Can you be insane a little quieter, please?” He pointed to the open window a few yards away.

  “He knows English?” Sweeney whispered back.

  “He must know some. I see him studying it all the time.”

  Sweeney lowered his voice even more. “Ah, His Highness the Zone Leader. How’s that working out so far?”

  “It’s all right. Pictures of Jesus everywhere, even in the bathroom, but he’s not as bad as you hear. I’ll tell you more later.”

  McLeod retrieved two plastic clothespins from the far end of the line as Sweeney and Kimball pulled pairs of battered pants from their shoulder bags. They pinned the pants up beside McLeod’s, then stood back to admire them. The open window was a sharp rectangle of yellow light that stretched out onto the courtyard in a long narrow corridor, some of it catching the left leg of McLeod’s pants.

  McLeod went to the clothesline and moved the pants out of the light—for better contrast. He took a matchbook from his pocket, lighting each pant leg in turn. The flames blackened the hems, curled them, then rolled them in a way that made the legs seem sentient, as if they were trying to outrun their death. Sweeney took a picture of McLeod standing beside the flaming legs, then he hurried over to the clothesline himself. He lit his pants, posed for his picture. After Kimball had done the same they stepped back, all three of them, and watched the flaming eddying M’s float on the darkness like supernatural phenomena. “Look at it, look,” Sweeney said, his voice wondrous. The orange pants legs began to turn liquid, iridescent, detaching from the crotches of the pants one by one, collapsing into bluish pools of flame on the cement.

  After a time Sweeney said, “Should we say a few words? A toast, if you will?”

  Kimball gave another laugh-groan.

  McLeod sai
d, “One second,” and ran into the apartment. He retrieved from the kitchen fridge three cans of Guaraná; he made a point to stock a case of it at all times. On his way back through the entryway/living room he held up the sodas for Passos to see, a little pyramid of them. His companion smiled and nodded from his desk as McLeod slowed down, hitched his step, wondering if Passos had noticed the soda on his side of the fridge, and was that the key—observation married to action? He got out to the courtyard as the fabric fires were drawing down to small, spiky flames. McLeod passed out the cans to Sweeney and Kimball. They all popped the tabs and held the cans aloft.

  Sweeney went first. “To eighteen months of good people, good times. And of course to Tiff. Seven months to the wedding. You can quote me.”

  They drank to that. And to Kimball’s hope that they could all finish strong, and that he could manage to get his band back together post-mission, and get back to his sweet Blondie, of course. His guitar. McLeod remembered the glary Polaroid of a big blondwood Stratocaster that Kimball kept on his desk in the Missionary Training Center. He stared at the picture often, sometimes kissed it, sighed at it. These latter gestures were for Sweeney’s sake, a running joke on the real shrine Sweeney really did sigh at, a whole desk full of pictures of his girlfriend Tiffany. Tiffany in a red track uniform, her long white legs in mid-stride, one straight, one bent, her dark ponytail held back as if by wires. Tiffany on horseback in a giant cowboy hat, only her chin sticking out from underneath the brim’s shadow. The framed photo of Tiffany and Sweeney in formal wear, smiling, clasping hands across a giant oak trunk with a fresh carving: TL + AS.

  McLeod’s own desk at the MTC had contained a small picture of his family, and an even smaller one of his pre-mission girlfriend, Jen, but after a month in São Paulo without a letter from her, he left off the pretense and threw the photo away. The real objects of desire on his desk were books: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the Doctrine and Covenants, all of them annotated and combined into one quadruple volume, and the Missionary Classics Paperback Library: Jesus the Christ, The Great Apostasy, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder … McLeod read at night after long days of language classes, doctrinal classes, workshops on tracting and preaching. He remembered the sharp pool of yellow light from the desk lamp that made his books look like specimens under a sun-bright magnifying glass. He remembered Sweeney groaning from his bunk, “Give it a rest, Monk Boy, come on, go to sleep.” But McLeod knew so little, he believed so little, and he wanted to know everything, believe everything, now. He felt speared on the hurtling tip of that “now,” felt utterly panicked and alive, but now, in this now, a year and a half later, McLeod felt almost nothing.

  He raised his can of soda. “To the homestretch. Here’s to getting to the end of this thing in one piece. And soon.”

  Sweeney and Kimball hovered their cans midair.

  “Very rousing,” Sweeney finally said. He gave Kimball a knowing look, a little nod.

  Kimball cleared his throat. “About that recent optimism of yours …” He laughed, a sharp, uncomfortable little laugh, more like a hiccup. “Well, no, look, seriously. Me and Sweeney here were talking and, you know, we’re just a little worried about you.”

  “Don’t be,” McLeod said. “I’ll survive.”

  “No, not like that,” Sweeney came in. “Or yes, actually, just like that. It’s this survival mode of yours, this watch-the-pot-till-it-boils mode. It’s depressing to be around. And it doesn’t work either. The days that have flown by the most for me, the months even, have been the busiest, the months I was working the hardest, really trying. Those were the months I grew my testimony the most, too. Knowing through doing, right? You taught me that, McLeod. ‘Experimenting on the word,’ ‘Saint John’s litmus test,’ ‘faith as a principle of action’—I still remember it all because you talked about it so much. You and your ten-dollar ideas, your nerdy enthusiasms. I think that McLeod ought to come back and tell the new McLeod a thing or two. If you’re still serious about trying to believe, I mean. And if you’re not, why the hell stay out here?” Sweeney paused, trying to make eye contact with McLeod. McLeod avoided the gaze. “Look, I’m just saying—we’re just saying—that we sort of miss the old McLeod, you know? Mr. Monk? Mr. Ass-in-a-chair-all-night-reading?”

  “Bible,” McLeod said automatically, not looking up. “Keep it Bible.”

  “I thought we decided ‘ass’ was on the approved list,” Kimball said, an attempt at lightness in his voice.

  “Well, anyway,” Sweeney said, “that’s our piece. Take it for what it’s worth.”

  The three of them inched closer to the last of the fires, the flames spreading out over the embers, squirming, all the jagged little spikes of element settled down into a strange, glowing sauce. McLeod felt the warmth of it against his shins. A slow heat in his face, too.

  “Man,” he said, “this senior-companion stuff has really gone to your heads, hasn’t it?”

  Sweeney pushed an envelope of air through his teeth, a sharp, disgusted sound.

  Kimball said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  After a silence Sweeney walked over to the long rectangle of light and leaned his watch into it. Quarter to ten, he said. They’d better get going.

  “You guys keep curfew now too?” McLeod said.

  “We have for a while,” Sweeney said. “The mission makes for a lousy vacation, McLeod. That’s what we’re saying.”

  At the outer door they all shook hands and made tentative plans to meet up on their next P-Day. McLeod watched his friends move away down the street: they passed under a lamppost, bright ghosts in their white dress shirts, and then passed out from under it and disappeared behind the glare.

  Elder McLeod went back into the courtyard and absently pushed at the pile of embers with his shoe. Ashes now. He kept away from the light of the window; his thoughts fit better into the privacy of darkness. He remembered the blessing his father had given him in the car at Logan Airport eighteen months earlier, just an hour before he boarded a plane bound for São Paulo. “I bless you to be strong,” his father said, reaching into the backseat to lay hands on McLeod’s head. “I bless you with the gift of unusual strength, both spiritual and emotional.” McLeod heard the quaver in his father’s voice, felt the warm weight, the tremor, of his blessing hands. “I bless you to finally learn the truth of the things you have been taught since your early youth. I bless you to be protected …” He paused. The pause stretching out into a long silence, the silence rising like a flood. In a moment his father’s voice came up again, but quieter, huskier. “Please, God, protect our boy … your willing servant … May he know how much we love him. May he do wondrous, wondrous things … In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

  “Amen,” McLeod managed to say.

  His mother kept silent in the passenger seat. McLeod glanced into the rearview mirror and noticed her posture: she sat hunched forward, head downcast more than bowed, as dark mascara tears ran the length of her face, the gray liquid streaks reminding McLeod, inappropriately, of snail trails. His father had angled his head away from the both of them, studying the car door handle to his left. McLeod felt suddenly so bereft, so alone, even in the midst of such obvious love (or no: he felt alone because of it, because of his imminent leave-taking from it), that he had to squint back tears of his own.

  “What if I can’t do it?” he said. “What if I get too homesick. What if … I mean … I could come home, right? If things got really bad? I could come home early and you wouldn’t be ashamed of me, right?”

  “Oh sweetie,” his mother said.

  His father cleared his throat. “You’re better than that, Seth. You wouldn’t be doing this if you weren’t going to do it well. That’s one of the things I most admire about you.”

  “I know that, but I mean—”

  “We know you’ll do well, Seth. Elder McLeod, I should call you. You’re an elder of the church now.”

  Elder McLeod came to in the courtyard as a tal
l lanky shadow suddenly dissected the rectangle of light on the cement. The shadow disappeared, and the light with it a few seconds later, and for a moment the darkness was total. McLeod heard Passos call out, “Sorry, hold on.” The light came on through the bedroom window and another bright yellow rectangle leapt out into the courtyard, enveloping McLeod like a spotlight.

  Elder Passos woke the next morning to the sounds of sweeping—brisk, purposeful strokes. They seemed to come from the courtyard outside. Who was sweeping at—what time was it? Passos strained at his bedside clock: 6:09. His alarm wouldn’t sound for another twenty minutes. He slew his eyes across the room: an empty bed, and neatly made. The yolk-colored sheets hugged the mattress with military tightness, but that wasn’t surprising in itself. Passos had noted well McLeod’s tidiness, his zeal for symmetry. The two beds sat precisely equidistant from the window, the two stand-alone dressers, like upright coffins, equally spaced from the foot of the two beds. What surprised Elder Passos was the apparent fact of McLeod’s having risen on time, early even, some twenty minutes at least. In the week they had worked together McLeod had gotten out of bed each morning around eight, sometimes later, never uttering a word of explanation or excuse as he scudded across the hallway to the bathroom.

  The sounds from outside stopped for a moment. Passos thought he heard metal on cement. A dustpan? He rolled back his head on the pillow with effort, emitting a glottal, bullfrog moan, but through the bedroom window he saw only sky, a gray wash. The sun hadn’t even crested the property wall.

  On his way to the bathroom it occurred to Elder Passos to wonder again what had happened last night. He hadn’t actually asked his companion. He hadn’t dared to. McLeod had come in from his little party looking not refreshed but funereal, his eyes raw-rimmed, heavy, his mouth drawn. At his bedside he’d knelt for ten minutes at least, offering by far the longest prayer Passos had seen from him, and the first personal prayer. Then he’d climbed into bed and faced the wall.

  Passos heard the sweeping again as he came out of the bathroom. He crossed into the entryway, his bare feet slapping the green linoleum as he went. Through the open front door he could see McLeod, sure enough, working a broom over the remnants of last night’s fire, head down, already in his proselytizing clothes. McLeod finally looked up at the sound of Passos’s laughter.