The Unspeakable

by Charles L. Calia

  “Just curious, Marbury. I’m having trouble placing your town.”

  He leaned over and tilted his head next to mine. The map was of the highest detail. And yet each time I looked through the jumble of towns and state forests, rivers, and reservoirs, I couldn’t find it. No mysterious Wheelersburg anywhere.

  “It’s there. Look harder,” he said.

  “I am looking.”

  He pointed. “Try over there.”

  I looked but found nothing.

  “You’re sure of the name.”

  “What am I, an idiot?”

  “You might have been confused, that’s all. Maybe you still are.”

  Marbury’s eyes burned through me. “Damn maps anyway.”

  And with that Marbury stood up and stretched his body. I folded up the map, proving my point, since all along I knew of no town like the one Marbury had described. Although I couldn’t jettison his story entirely. On the days that he was gone, that first week of December, snow did hit parts of Pennsylvania, though not in the amounts that he said. A few towns admitted to a few inches, others as much as half a foot or more. Still others recorded only sunshine that week, throwing everything out of whack. Nobody could agree.

  When I mentioned this to Marbury, he didn’t seem surprised.

  “Who can predict mountains? Snow on one side, rain on the other.”

  In Pittsburgh, the Post-Gazette mentioned exactly that. Parts of the city had freezing rain, while other parts had snow wet enough to drop power lines and cause disruptions. One man, on the front page of the December 4 edition, had a snowman built in his yard by neighborhood kids, though only ten or so miles away, people complained of sewers icing up in the rain. But this wasn’t so unusual. Snow was notorious for spreading itself out unevenly, especially when crossing large bodies of water or the mountains. A sudden squall could have hit Wheelersburg or whatever town Marbury claimed to have actually been in, paralyzed it even, it was possible, except that I had no record of it.

  I had no record of anything.

  Marbury sensed my dilemma. “Try the local paper.”

  “If they’re not on a map, I don’t think they’ll have a newspaper.”

  “They had a hospital.”

  “Which is odd. A town not on the map with a hospital.”

  “You make this sound like Atlantis or something.”

  I just smiled.

  “Well, then try the operator,” said Marbury. “Chamber of Commerce.”

  Again, I already had.

  “Give me the phone. I’ll call.”

  I detected more than a hint of irony in Marbury’s words, the delicious way that he stretched them out, stringing finger to hand one by one. A part of me, indeed a perverse part, wanted to oblige him and hand him a telephone just to gauge his reaction. But I didn’t. Marbury was silent and he kept it that way, despite the strain his silence must have caused. He never deviated from his role. I spoke, and he replied in sign language. Nothing came out of his mouth. Not even a grunt. So total was his discipline that I began to feel that he had been silent all of his life, born that way, brought up that way. Except for one thing.

  I knew that it wasn’t so.

  The Marbury that I remembered hated silence. He went to great lengths to avoid it, playing music, reading aloud, or surrounding himself with conversation. He was one of those individuals who couldn’t walk into a room without turning on a television or radio. There was always a background of static to him, music blasting or other such diversion, which only made this current rendition of Marbury all the more puzzling. Somehow he rearranged his entire past and turned it upside down. A fact that wasn’t lost on him.

  “Maybe that’s why it happened,” he said. “God wanted to shut me up.”

  Silence, like the Trappist monks. Only this silence, Marbury insisted, wasn’t self-imposed but delivered to him. He came back from Pennsylvania with only a fragment of his voice left. He could whisper at least, barely audible but a whisper nonetheless. The doctors, believing this voice loss to be an extreme form of laryngitis, thought the problem would solve itself. But it didn’t. Failing like an old car battery, Marbury’s vocal cords became weaker and weaker. He tried cutting back on his conversations, the few that he had, and started to horde his remaining words, like a miser his gold, but something always came out. A mistaken “I feel fine” or other such inanity, comments that ordinary people wouldn’t think twice about, but with each slip there was one less word for Marbury to utter.

  Then one morning, inexplicably, Marbury woke up with almost full command of his voice again. He didn’t say anything to the doctors, and hardly even acknowledged it to himself. He just sat and watched television, wondering when to speak. The TV room of the hospital where he was staying was cramped, and nobody hung out there. Except for Marbury, who got tired of his own room and wanted to ambulate. This particular day it was full of people, some in wheelchairs, others just pushing around IVs, and maybe that threw him off. Somebody asked about the Vikings score and Marbury, without thinking twice, said only two words. They won. Clear as a bell those words except that they were the last he ever spoke.

  That was five months ago.

  He said, “You can’t imagine it, Peter. It’s like swimming in mud. I kick my feet, move my arms, but I’m not going anywhere.”

  The doctors who reexamined him, which included specialists from the Mayo Clinic, were all stumped. More tests were run and repeated again to determine this sudden outburst, but they turned up inconclusive. Of course nothing was ruled out. Throat specialists and oncologists were consulted about tumors and cancerous lesions that might have attached themselves to his vocal cords, even neurologists were called in to examine Marbury’s brain. Again, nothing. Marbury appeared as normal, except that he wasn’t. When he opened his mouth, nothing came out but a faint gasp. No words, not even a growling of tonsils against tissue.

  The doctors started to give up after that. Or rather, they handed his case off to other specialists, psychiatrists mostly, and language therapists who worked on strengthening Marbury’s use of sign language, which he discovered after abandoning the cumbersome tablets and chalkboards he used at first. But in the end, everyone was at a loss. That Marbury didn’t speak was obvious, and the psychiatrists, searching for some explanation other than a mystical one, offered the best diagnosis they could.

  Unexplained sensory deficit due to trauma.

  “I explained it,” said Marbury. “They just didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Maybe it was you who didn’t want to believe. They’re doctors, Marbury.”

  “Well, it’s not unexplained.”

  “Some folks consider God a poor explanation.”

  Despite the fact that I couldn’t locate Wheelersburg, or even locate snow in the amounts that Marbury had described, snow was still dominating his story. Already there was a foot on the ground, and Marbury could see that he was stuck, along with the rest of the hospital staff. He had little hope of being plowed out, at least until the snow stopped, and he tried to make the best of a bad situation.

  “Why didn’t you call?” I asked. “You could have notified someone.”

  “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think I’d be missed.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Marbury.”

  “Then maybe I wanted to be missing. Ask your shrinks.”

  Marbury took another sip from his coffee and turned away from me. I could have written more into this than just what he said. But I didn’t. I knew the pressure he was under at the shelter, always looking for money, the entire operation resting on his shoulders. It was a normal reaction, rebellion. And I gave him that leeway.

  “What ever happened to the little girl? Was she all right?”

  He turned to me and smiled. “Depends on how you look at it.”

  Marbury said that he left Barris asleep in a chair in Helen’s room. It was just about then that he thought about the little girl himself, replaying in his mind what happened at the accid
ent scene, or what didn’t happen. Helen was now worse than ever, being kept alive only by machines. Her chances for a full recovery were dwindling with the hours, and Marbury began to feel for the little girl, a child on the verge of losing her mother.

  A janitor outside the door was sweeping when Marbury walked out. Marbury told him about the girl, describing her as best he could given the few minutes that he spent with her. But the janitor just stopped him.

  He said, “You’re talking about Miss Lucy.”

  “Then you know her?”

  “Sure. She’s a re-pat. Repeat patient. Shoot, I’ll bet you she’s been here twenty times if she’s been here once. Down in her same room, she is.”

  And he directed Marbury down the hall.

  Marbury walked up to a nurse’s station and glanced over the desk. Nobody was there, and the files on all the admitted patients had been left unguarded. He was halfway through the pile when a woman’s voice interrupted him.

  She said, “I’d call security but they’re out shoveling. So I guess you’re left with me.”

  He turned to find a nurse standing there. She held up her arms like a boxer, except a boxer in pink surgical scrubs.

  “I took karate at the Y, mister.”

  Marbury surrendered and took a step back.

  He said, “No, I’m looking for someone. Lucy Barris. I was told—”

  “Franklin. Her name is Franklin.”

  “I found her at the accident.”

  Her arms went down, replaced by a smile.

  “You must be the priest. Sorry, Father, we get all kinds. I’m Abigail.”

  Marbury shook her hand and introduced himself formally. He told her all about his trip, leaving from Minnesota, and about the snow starting, and how he found Lucy and her mother on the road.

  “Lucky someone found them,” she said. “The police didn’t always shut down those roads, you know. But they started after a guy ran off the mountain a few years back. Same place. It’s weird.”

  “Well, they were lucky not to be killed.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call it luck. Lucy especially. In all my years of working here, Father, she takes the cake.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t explain it. I don’t think anybody can. She’s been in here for injuries that I wouldn’t wish on a four-year-old. Broken arms, facial lacerations, bruised kidneys. Horrible stuff. Her homelife isn’t what it could be.”

  “You’re suggesting—?”

  “Nobody knows. They’ve talked to the stepfather but—”

  Her voice trailed away.

  “—it’s a small town, Father.”

  “No town should be that small,” said Marbury.

  “This one is. Anyway, the injuries are only half the story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t stay very long. Doesn’t have to. I saw Lucy with a broken collarbone once. Two days later she was healed. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t see the X rays. But it’s happened before. Cuts that seal overnight, you name it.”

  She picked up the file on Lucy and opened it.

  “Headfirst into a guardrail and nothing. It isn’t right, I tell you.”

  “Nothing about this is right. I suppose you’ve heard about the mother.”

  Abigail nodded. “She isn’t doing well.”

  “Will she make it?”

  “I doubt it. But the girl—”

  “I think it’s a coincidence, Abigail. Plain and simple coincidence.”

  “Coincidence doesn’t heal broken bones, Father. Only God does that.”

  Chapter 3

  I caught up with my notes right as Marbury was taking a break. He stood up again and walked past me over to a window, which he cracked. The fresh spring air crept in, a bit cool for me but Marbury liked it.

  He just stood there, taking it all in. This was his first Easter at this church, his first Easter at any congregation in more than eight years. At the shelter they celebrated of course, with a meal that Marbury helped cook himself and a few readings from the Bible. But this was the first time in years that he had the opportunity to experience it with people in their own homes.

  “I’ve been invited to six houses for Easter dinner. Six, imagine that.”

  “And how will you choose?” I asked him.

  “Oh, I won’t. I mean, I couldn’t.”

  “You should go somewhere, Marbury. Not all of us are so lucky.”

  He looked at me and frowned. “What about your mother’s?”

  “I’m afraid she died last year.”

  “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

  I just shrugged. “She wasn’t the same after Dad passed. Nobody was. Anyway, I have my work.”

  Marbury peered at me with a suspicious eye.

  He said, “Damn thing to work on Easter. Especially your job.”

  “Well, you could make it easier on me. Stop your shenanigans.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly. No more healing. No more sign language.”

  “I see. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. You’ll have to leave here for good.”

  Marbury closed the window with a slam.

  He said, “I can’t leave. I belong here.”

  “Then you risk it all, Marbury.”

  Marbury walked back to where I had my notes and sat down. He picked up a couple of letters and started reading what I had. I could have stopped him, pulled them away from him, but I didn’t.

  He stopped himself instead. “Have you ever felt blessed?”

  “I can’t really distinguish blessing from blind fortune. I’m sorry.”

  “Too bad. Then you’ll never know.”

  Marbury handed me back the pile of letters and smiled.

  He said, “I’ve risked it all before, Peter. I guess I’ll have to again.”

  It was quiet after that.

  Marbury, who was now obviously intent on my cornering him, finding out the exact thing that I would be forced to use against him, just sat there. He didn’t seem worried or even angry, unlike me. All I could imagine was anger. Anger that I was assigned to this job, anger that Marbury wouldn’t listen to me or talk like a reasonable man. And I hated him for it.

  But I tried not to show it. Instead I rearranged my notes, working backwards from the story in Wheelersburg. Marbury just watched me, with some delight I might add, even picking up the notes that fell on the floor.

  Finally he broke the silence.

  “I lost family too, you know. My brother.”

  “What brother?”

  “Rick, he died in Vietnam. Not a day goes by without me thinking of him.”

  “I thought you were an only child. You told me that.”

  “I told you a lot of things. I had to.”

  “You mean you told me bullshit,” I said.

  “I couldn’t tell you the truth, Peter. It might have landed me in jail.”

  “For what? Lying?”

  “You don’t remember the letters, do you?”

  I sat there for a moment like an idiot. The letters.

  “—from prison.”

  And then it started to come back to me. His correspondence.

  In seminary, Marbury was always getting these strange letters. They were postmarked from a correctional facility located somewhere in upstate New York, as I recall. I had always assumed back then that Marbury was corresponding with some anonymous inmate, as a form of prison ministry, and he did nothing to dissuade me from thinking that way.

  I said, “You mean, your prisoner friend.”

  Marbury nodded. “The man in those letters knew my father.”

  “He knew him? How?”

  “They shared a cell together for almost a year.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A prison cell, Peter. My father was in prison.”

  The shock must have been etched on my face, for Marbury smiled.

  “See, I could
n’t tell you.”

  The sound of my stammering.

  “Your own father? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was ashamed. Ashamed of myself really.”

  I just shook my head, not knowing what to say. What could one say? We had our stories about Marbury in seminary but nothing like this.

  “What—?”

  “What was he in for? It’s OK. People should be curious. Man-slaughter, he was in for manslaughter. But cancer got him before he could get paroled.”

  I tapped my pen against the leather of my briefcase several times, creating this rhythm for me to think. Manslaughter. A nicer word for murder perhaps, though just as deadly.

  “And how do I know you’re telling me the truth now?” I asked.

  “I have nothing to lie about anymore. Check it out, you’ll see.”

  Marbury leaned back and glanced away from me. He seemed embarrassed, not just about his father but about steering me toward the awful truth. Prison life. I couldn’t imagine my own father there, or any father of the men that I went to seminary with. Our lives were all so ordinary compared to this, and I told that to Marbury.

  “Another reason I said nothing. I sound like a Dickens novel.”

  I nodded, thinking about all those days of incarceration. It must be horrible to be trapped with nothing but time and memories, and I told him that.

  Marbury agreed. “But that’s not the worst of it,” he said. “My father was innocent.”

  “You know this for certain?”

  “Of course.”

  “But to know for sure—”

  “I would have to have been there, yes.”

  Somebody walked into the church at that moment, interrupting us. I tended to my cold coffee and thought about what Marbury was telling me, strange stories from both ends of our history together. Then and now. The thought of Marbury concealing that story about his father and then lying about it actually disturbed me. I considered us close at one time, and I shared with him many of my intimate dreams and fears. And I thought he’d done the same.

  I had more questions about the incident but I could see that Marbury was busy. It was late and I started to pack up, my intrusion here being apparent. Marbury didn’t notice. He was talking to a young woman at the front of the church who was obviously deaf and quite shaken. I could see her hands moving but I could only make out half of what she was saying.