Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  In the rear seat of the Volvo wagon, after Mike Gilroy had backed out onto Miner’s Lane and turned to follow the curve of the harbour down to Mill Pond Road and the church, Parker took his wife’s hand in his and squeezed it, staring straight ahead and saying nothing while Mike discussed in great detail the problems he was having repairing the roof on his tool shed.

  June Leedale returned the squeeze but kept her head turned to the window, blinking fiercely, her other hand at her mouth.

  Compton, Massachusetts, lies at the elbow of Cape Cod, midway between the frantic tourist activity of Hyannis near the mainland and the artistic community of Provincetown on the outer tip of the Cape. The town has always considered itself distinct from other Cape communities, an attitude perceived as snobbishness by its neighbours. There are no shops promoting bargain souvenir T-shirts from roadside signs, and no drive-in fast food franchises are permitted within the town limits. Any gay citizens of Compton are prudent enough to remain in their cedar-lined closets rather than flagrantly parade their alternate lifestyles in public, as they did in “P-Town.”

  At the intersection of Miner’s Lane and Mill Pond Road, Mike Gilroy veered west to follow Mill Pond Road’s winding route into town. Slowing at the entrance to the parking lot of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, he touched the horn button just as a heavy red-faced man stepped from a vintage Mercedes sedan and waved to them in an exaggerated gesture of welcome. Inside the car a middle-aged woman with short dark hair struggled with the door handle, her face screwed into an expression of anger and frustration. She spoke sharply to the man, who erased his smile and hurried around the front of the car to seize the outer door handle.

  “Old Blake’s getting shit again,” Mike Gilroy laughed, cruising slowly past the Mercedes to park in the next marked space beyond it.

  Parker Leedale grunted. “Why doesn’t he just get the door fixed?”

  “I think he just likes to keep Ellie on edge,” Bunny Gilroy suggested. “Seems like those two people aren’t happy unless they’re snapping at each other.”

  “They call it honesty.” Mike Gilroy switched off the Volvo’s engine and looked around him. “Can you believe it?” he asked, inspecting the parking lot. Only one other car was in sight, a gray Plymouth parked three spaces away. “Looks like we’re the only ones here. Except for Reverend Willoughby.”

  “I still don’t know why Blake and Ellie were invited,” June Leedale said absently. “Cora never cared for either of them.”

  Parker Leedale stepped from the car and stretched, raising his arms high above his head. The starched white collar chafed his neck and one of his executive-length dark socks had collapsed around his ankle. He rested his foot on the bumper of the Volvo and pulled his sock up over his calf. Cora would’ve been just as happy if we had arrived in jeans and sweatshirts, linked arm in arm and singing old Pete Seeger songs, he thought.

  “Just get the damned thing fixed!” The woman’s voice was sharp and shrill, her command punctuated by the slamming of the Mercedes’s door. “God, you’d think I was asking for the moon.”

  “Nice to see you in the mood for a funeral, Ellie,” Mike Gilroy called across the hood of the car.

  “Well, Jesus, the thing’s been like that for months,” Ellie Stevenson replied in the same harsh voice. Her scowl faded, replaced by a smile that spread broadly beneath her pug nose and dark eyes, features that conflicted with the woman’s severe hair style. Her flowery print dress had puffed short sleeves and a wide flounce.

  “Waiting for the part to arrive from Germany.” Her husband Blake stood behind her, his massive hands thrust in the pockets of a camel-hair sports jacket that barely contained his bulk. He scanned the near-empty parking lot. His only reaction to his wife’s verbal attack had been a tight-lipped smile and an expression that said, Aren’t I the silly one, forgetting to fix the door of the car? “Anybody hear from her nephew yet?” he asked.

  “Not a word.” Parker Leedale stood next to his wife. “Guess he couldn’t make it. Or didn’t get the message.”

  “Or didn’t give a shit,” Ellie Stevenson said, and grinned. With mischief? With satisfaction? Parker Leedale could never tell. “You sure Cora wanted us here?” Ellie asked June Leedale. “You think maybe wishy-washy Willoughby might have screwed things up? Hell, the old broad never invited us into her house all the time we’ve been married.”

  “Reverend Willoughby said you were both on the list,” June Leedale replied. “He seemed pretty certain about it.”

  Ellie glanced up at St. Luke’s steeple clock, its brass hands shining against the black matte face and Roman numerals. “Well, we might as well go in, get this over with. You guys got some food ready when we’re finished here?” she asked, looking back at June Leedale.

  “I made a few things.”

  The three couples began walking along the flagstone path to the church steps, the Stevensons in the lead, the Leedales behind them, the Gilroys taking up the rear, Bunny seizing her husband’s hand and squeezing it with affection.

  “Good,” Ellie Stevenson said with a laugh. “Funerals always make me hungry. And now I won’t have to cook lunch for chubby cheeks here.” She nudged her husband, who turned his round face back to the others, raised his eyebrows high enough to crease his forehead and smiled in embarrassment.

  Reaching the summit of the stairs, Parker Leedale paused at the open door to take a final look toward Main Street, staring past the Compton Town Lodge, the Lobster Trap restaurant, Maitland’s Toggery Shop, the Greenery Groceteria and other midtown Compton businesses, all the buildings faithful reflections of Cape Cod architecture and social values: elegant, restrained, subdued and conforming.

  “He’s not coming,” June Leedale assured her husband, tugging gently at his sleeve as Mike and Bunny Gilroy slipped past to enter the darkened church. “Let’s go.”

  Just as the Leedales stepped inside, a large blue sedan pulled into the parking lot. The driver switched off the engine and sat staring at the church distractedly, the gentle features of his face creased with concern.

  Dr. Ivan Hayward made no effort to leave the car.

  He was waiting for someone to arrive. Someone with whom he could share his suspicions about Cora Godwin’s death.

  Chapter Five

  The Reverend James Willoughby pulled at an errant thread on his Episcopalian gown while discussing carpentry with Jerome Harper, the pimply-faced organist from Harwich.

  “Notching it, there’s the challenge,” Reverend Willoughby muttered, staring at the thread as he yanked it from the seam like a fisherman testing the strength of his line. His head was down, his chin almost on his chest, causing the skin of his neck to fold and wrinkle like free-hanging fabric. “You ever notch a drawer front like that? Don’t have a pair of scissors, do you?”

  “In my car.” Jerome Harper’s hands meandered along the keyboard, his fingers silently confirming the notes of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Minor. “Want me to get them, Reverend?”

  The outer door of the church swung open and the sounds of footsteps and hushed whispers drifted in from the lower alcove.

  “Never mind.” Willoughby smoothed the front of his vestments with pink-skinned and blue-veined hands, and drew his shoulders back. “I believe we may be having a service after all.”

  Beneath its soaring white spire, St. Luke’s had ministered to the spiritual needs of Compton-area Episcopalians for almost two centuries, and, if the impact of its neo-Gothic magnificence had been diluted over the years by newer, more dramatic churches in Hyannis and Falmouth, the integrity of the building remained as virtuous as ever.

  Set atop a gentle hill where Mill Pond Road met Main Street, St. Luke’s steeple boasted a mammoth-faced clock whose gilt-painted Roman numerals could be read from several blocks away. In contrast with the church’s classic and inspirational exterior lines, St. Luke’s interior decor was almost humble: old polished
oak and weathered pine were its most dominant building materials, and the Gothic windows, while perfectly proportioned, shone clear and devoid of elaborate stained-glass scenes.

  Passing through the church’s oversized outer doors, the three couples—Ellie Stevenson hissing at her husband, Parker and June Leedale with their hands thrust in their topcoat pockets, Bunny and Mike Gilroy hand in hand like high school lovers—entered an alcove stretching almost the width of the building.

  Warped wooden stairs descended from the near end of the alcove to basement meeting rooms. At the far end of the alcove, a windowed door led to the minister’s private office. To the right rose seven oak steps ending at three sets of highly polished oak doors which led into the church proper. The architect’s goal was transparent and successfully achieved: entering the building from the outside world, worshipers arrived in the darkened alcove, a quiet and sparsely decorated midpoint, before proceeding to the inner chamber up the steeply angled stairs to emerge into the elevated and brightly lit place of worship.

  Cresting the stairs and swinging open the doors, the three couples paused for a moment and blinked at the magically subdued light flooding through windows whose lower portions had been swung open to admit the cleansing autumn air. Pristine white-painted walls and ceiling reflected the sunshine throughout the interior, casting a soft, beneficent glow.

  Sixteen empty rows of pews, finished in the same honey oak as the alcove doors, stretched to the altar, the rows separated by two wide aisles.

  In front of the centre row of pews, an antique brass music stand displayed a framed photograph of Cora Meriwether Godwin, nee McGuire, retrieved from her home by June Leedale. The photo had been taken thirty years earlier, when the mischief of a carefree youth began yielding to the respectability of scarred middle age.

  Reverend Willoughby beamed his warmest smile at the six mourners, spread his arms with palms up in a gesture of welcome and blessing and indicated the front pews. The organist segued smoothly from Bach to Handel.

  “Sure, right in front where we’re trapped the whole bloody time,” Ellie Stevenson muttered before laughing nervously. There was much whispering between the couples as they arranged themselves in the centre of the front pew.

  From the open windows a light autumn breeze stirred the air of the church, bringing with it a welcome sense of life and normality. Somewhere out on Mill Pond Road a dog barked, and birds chattered beneath the eaves of the church.

  Reverend Willoughby smiled and nodded at each in turn, his lips compressed. “I am afraid we represent the totality of the mourners here to mark the passing of Mrs. Godwin, our dear, departed sister,” he said in his melodic voice. There was no sorrow in its tone. Nor in his expression, as he scanned the faces of the six men and women seated directly beneath him; the smile continued to beam, resting perhaps a beat longer on Bunny Gilroy than the others.

  Clasping his hands together, he brought them to his chest before turning to Jerome Harper and nodding like a conspirator. Then he swiveled his narrow gray-haired head back to the small group in the pews and opened his prayer book.

  A single high note, airy and delicate as a ribbon riding the wind, rose from the organ and hovered among the Gothic rafters, beginning the final ritual in the life of Cora Godwin, a life that had rejected rituals as empty gestures, demanding action and deeds instead.

  The single note was followed by an introductory chord played by the organist’s left hand. Both were smothered almost immediately by the roar of a massive diesel truck pulling in next to the church just beyond the open window, the clatter accompanied by the crunch of gravel and the squeal of badly tended brakes. The tip of the truck’s vertical exhaust pipe extended above the level of the open windows and all eight sets of eyes in the church turned to stare as the black smoke from the exhaust stack began to drift inside on the autumn breeze.

  Jerome Harper glanced at Reverend Willoughby, who frowned at the intrusion before lowering his head as though to begin his reading. But before he could speak, the restive grumble of the truck’s diesel erupted into an even thicker, blacker cloud of carbon and fumes. With an angry growl, the vehicle accelerated and roared away, its tires grinding on the gravel and various heavy pieces of metal on the truck clapping against themselves in broken rhythm.

  Reverend Willoughby shook his head slowly, his smile broader than ever. A temporal irritation, his expression said, to focus our attention more intently on the eternal . . .

  His head snapped up. Someone had entered the alcove through the outer doors. A series of quick, sharp footsteps echoed across the bare floor and began climbing the seven stairs to the main level.

  Jerome Harper lifted his right hand from the keyboard once again and the sound of the single soft note decayed among the white-painted rafters.

  The footsteps paused after the seventh step, as though the intruder were reconsidering his entry into the church. Then the door swung open to reveal a stocky middle-aged man, his tanned skin the colour of St. Luke’s oak pews and his unkempt hair a blend of pale brown and shimmering silver, reminiscent of pulled taffy.

  The man removed his sunglasses and scanned the interior, his narrow, deep-set eyes alighting one by one on the others who stared back at him with expressions ranging from curiosity to hostility. He wore a lightweight green cotton jacket over a white cotton pullover and gray trousers. His feet were clad in soft tan leather shoes styled like sneakers, and a cheap canvas luggage bag hung from one shoulder. The line of an old and badly healed scar, almost white against his tan, angled across his upper lip to the corner of his nose. He held a bouquet of wilting red roses in his hands.

  “My God, it’s him,” Ellie Stevenson whispered. She turned to Parker Leedale. “Is that him?”

  McGuire shifted the canvas bag to his other shoulder and began walking up the aisle toward the altar.

  “Is it?” June Leedale asked her husband.

  “I think so,” he replied.

  Acknowledging the mourners with a casual nod, McGuire strode directly to the brass music stand, laid the roses carefully on the ledge in front of Cora’s photograph and stood for a moment with head bowed and one hand resting on the cherrywood picture frame, the fingertips moving back and forth as though to caress the wooden frame, or perhaps the woman pictured within it.

  Then, turning and avoiding the eyes of the others, he entered the third row of pews, where he sat and stared ahead at the blank wall behind the altar, lost in thought.

  “It’s him,” Parker Leedale whispered with more certainty. “That’s her nephew.”

  “Makes a hell of an entrance, doesn’t he?” Ellie said in a stage whisper, just as Jerome Harper began, for the second time, the baroque fugue chosen for the occasion.

  “Friends of our sister, Cora Godwin,” the Reverend Willoughby said in his strong New England voice, the vowels flat but the tone like sawgrass, rough and reedy, “we are gathered to mark her departure from the cares of this world and into the hands of God, our Redeemer.”

  As Willoughby spoke, yet another figure entered the church and slipped quietly into a rear pew. June Leedale turned to see the angular man sitting relaxed and upright, his long legs folded so tightly in the cramped space that his bony knees almost protruded through the tweed fabric of his trousers.

  “It’s the doctor,” June Leedale whispered in her husband’s ear. “Dr. Hayward. What in heaven’s name is he doing here?”

  Parker Leedale glanced quickly behind him, along with the others, and shrugged. Bunny Gilroy bit her lip as her husband and Blake Stevenson exchanged glances.

  Reverend Willoughby acknowledged the doctor’s arrival with a nod, then scanned a sheet of writing paper on the pulpit in front of him. He began reading from it. “The present proceedings of life are not to be performed in private. For they are neither filled with passion nor satiated with sin. . . .”

  McGuire, lost in memories of his aunt and
the pleasant summers he had spent at her Cape Cod home, was unaware of the doctor’s presence. He leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling. He was never comfortable with the rituals of religion, the singing of hymns, the recitation of homilies, the vestments of the ministers and choir members. Yet on the rare occasions he entered a church, he felt himself relax as though he were temporarily safe from some undefined menace. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes.

  Willoughby’s voice droned on. “. . . and not in reality but in parables do we speak, finding the truth as foreboding as it may be, in tales often told and tales concealed, hidden within the unbending folds of love . . .”

  Hearing “the folds of love,” McGuire thought again of Barbara, why she wasn’t here with him, why he wasn’t with her, walking on the beach, sitting in the shade, peeling remnants of sunburned skin from her nose and hearing her laugh, softly, coyly. . . .

  “. . . as in the tale of the three young men and the black sheep, their paths crossing, footprints in sand, confused in alarms of trouble and flight . . .”

  McGuire’s eyes opened. Black sheep? Three young men?

  Willoughby faltered. He frowned at the words on the paper in front of him and began speaking again.

  “For who we are and who we wish to be are never one and the same unless we accept the truth, both painful and pleasurable. It is through the eyes of the Samaritan that truth will be finally perceived and justice delivered.”

  Doesn’t make any sense, McGuire thought. No sense at all. He sat back, his arms stretched across the back of the pew.

  Willoughby’s voice droned on, talking of the Samaritan gathered among them and fearing the face in the shadow, while McGuire permitted his mind to drift away to memories of Cora and his cousin Terry and of picnics near the Compton lighthouse overlooking the offshore sandbar. The few summers he had spent with the Godwin family would be forever golden to him, and McGuire recalled the melancholy mood that would envelop him when his visits ended and he had to board the bus back home to Boston, back to the grime and indifference of his life.