by Chris Bauer
“Make yourself comfortable in here, Wump. I have something to show you.”
She pulled me by the elbow into a sitting room, then left through another door. Discounting the nine-foot ceiling, the room looked and felt like the parlor car of an old steam train: paisley-patterned red sofa, highboy armchairs upholstered the same way, all with glossy black enameled armrests and legs, paintings and old family photographs on the walls and along the fireplace mantel. I’d been in here lots of times since I started doing chores for Mrs. V, so I pretty much knew if something was out of place. Today it was the Volkheimer’s leather-bound family Bible, open on the short table situated in front of the parlor’s middle window. It usually sat on a bookstand in the far corner.
Outside of Bibles owned by some Lutheran friends, I’d never seen one this big, and each time I stepped into Mrs. V’s parlor I’d read some of it. The family tree pages in the book’s front interested me most, all that big lettering in the same fancy gold writing you see on wedding invitations, except everything was in German. Page after page of family trees, back a few centuries. Never seen another book as beautiful as this. I heard the clip-clop-thump approaching, quick flipped the pages back to where the book was open before.
The clip-clopping sounded a little off. Mrs. V entered the parlor dragging a long, faded blue plank with her free hand, pulling it alongside as she walked. I hustled over to help her, and now I could see through the parlor archway, two full rooms back. Christ, there was a jagged scratch running from the kitchen linoleum across the hardwood dining room floor, doorway to doorway, ending at the archway to the parlor.
“See how the wood on this board is rotted, Wump? I snapped it right off the wall of the bridge yesterday. When do you think you can replace it?”
I took the board out of her hands and laid it on the parlor’s Persian rug. “Over the weekend, ma’am. But you could have showed it to me out back instead of taking it through your house.” And scratching two rooms of hardwood flooring, for Christ sake.
She looked behind her, saw the damage she’d done, and waved it off. “I hid it in the pantry so Horst wouldn’t see it. The man wants to fix everything. You’ve been good to me over the years, Wump. Repair work’s your job around here.”
“Thanks, ma’am. Your gardener don’t mean no harm, but thanks.” Her gardener was younger than me, and he knew a thing or two about plumbing and electrical and other general maintenance. Also knew I was slowing down some, so she was right, lately the guy had become a barracuda.
“Beautiful Bible, isn’t it?” she said. So much for pretending I hadn’t been in it. “It’s out so I can look it over before I give it to my daughter. It’s been handed down generation to generation, starting with the 1790s. Before any of the Volkheimers came to America. Here—let me show you something.”
She passed me her cane. Her hands fumbled with the back of the huge book, her arms not strong enough to flip the book over, so she turned its pages one withered handful at a time. I caught glimpses of scripture, all German, as she worked her way through. Tucked into pouches in the last few beat-up pages were small strips of dog-eared, brown-edged papers and cards, things I hadn’t seen before because I’d never looked in the back. She pulled a few of them out, handed them to me. Catholic Mass cards, obituaries, and other death announcements in different shapes and sizes, some of them made up like bookmarks. She saw how puzzled I looked. “How’s your German, son?”
“It’s in here somewhere, ma’am,” I said, tapping my temple. “Just not always easy finding it.”
Mrs. V had no accent left after eighty-five years, more than sixty in this country. She knew my schooling ended with the sixth grade, also knew about those four years I spent on a farm near Pittsburgh, where there weren’t a call for using Deutsche at all. I read well enough in English, mind you, long as the words weren’t too sophisticated; reading German was a chore.
“When I die,” she told me, “I’ll be the first person in the family to have two sets of Catholic obituary cards done, one in German, one in English. This way my grandkids will be able to read the damned thing.”
I could never talk about death as easy as she could. Took me till I was in my fifties to finally make out a will. “With all due respect, ma’am, being a pioneer in death announcements ain’t something I’d take all that much pride in. But I suppose your family will appreciate it at some point.” Her heirs included four daughters and twelve nephews and nieces. What was left of them all lived local, and the youngest of the nephews, in his late fifties, was Hugh Volkheimer. If he croaked tomorrow, it wouldn’t have been soon enough for me.
“Don’t be so tight-assed about dying, son. A person’s body gets so worn out, you welcome it. I’m just being practical. Here, take these. Light reading in your native tongue.” She grabbed all the old announcements and stuffed them into my shirt pocket. “Bring them back when you’re done with them. You’ll be by on Saturday, then?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll replace that plank on your bridge. And on Sunday I’ll stop in to buff out the new scratch you just put in your dining room floor.”
“Oh, pshaw,” she said, waving me toward the front door, then added, “I almost forgot. I met that nice new Father Duncan today. You be sure to help him out with those boys and their new ball field. He’s over at the fairgrounds now.”
“It’s my next stop, ma’am. But, Mrs. Volkheimer, about your bridge…”
We’d been over this before. I brought it up every time I did a repair on it. “You might want to think about knocking down the walls and the roof, maybe even the whole darn thing, then have it rebuilt. Most of them wall planks are like kindling, just like the one you brought in here. Are you sure you don’t want me to hire a carpenter and—”
“No. Not in my lifetime. My heirs can replace it when I’m gone.” She picked up her cane, left me looking at her hunched back as she made her way down the hall. “Until then, the bridge stays as is.”
4
Father Duncan had over two hundred acres of Volkheimer land to choose from, but I had a hunch where he’d be because I knew them fairgrounds pretty good. If you ruled out the hilly sections where the kids sled during winter, and the thirty overgrown acres in the back that wrapped around one corner of the tannery’s main building, you could pretty much figure the best place to play ball was on the ten or so flat grassy acres just over the first rise. I dropped the Willys into second gear, made a right turn off the paved road, onto the grass. I kept the truck in second, climbed the crest of the hill. Found them.
It gave a person a good feeling watching boys play baseball like this, on grass, not asphalt, their voices and whistles and laughter floating in the spring afternoon breeze, none of it coming back in the echoes that cement sidewalks and street corners gave you. I pulled the truck up next to a small school bus parked in close to where Father Duncan set up the baseball practice. It was the bus the orphanage used for outings. A few of the kids from the orphanage were on the school team.
Father Duncan tipped his school baseball cap to me, then hit another grounder to Our Lady’s little shortstop with the big arm, Sonny Goode, who scooped up the ball and hummed it over to Adam St. Jerome, an orphaned eighth-grader who played first base. Next to Father at home plate was Teddy Agarn, apparently no worse for wear from the restaurant hole incident. It looked like Father had made Teddy his catcher. A good choice, since the oafish Teddy was the biggest kid in the school. Teddy lived across the street from Viola and me; he and Sonny Goode were cousins on their mothers’ side.
A voice from behind me gave me a start. “Hi, Wump.”
“Jiminy Moses, Leo,” I said, collecting myself. “You near gave me a heart attack sneaking up like that.” He rolled his wheelchair-bound buddy Raymond up next to my truck window.
Scaring me apparently gave Leo a real charge, his head bobbing up and down with each snicker. “Me and Raymond came over on Sister Dimple’s bus. We rode lots of buses today. Went to the zoo in one, came back in one, got off and g
ot on another one, and came here.” An exciting day for them, Leo’s eyes were telling me.
Sister Dimple was Sister Dymphna, an administrator at St. Jerome’s orphanage who also taught fourth grade at Our Lady’s. Sister had a room at the convent and a room at the orphanage, spent overnight time in both. She’d chosen her nun’s name after St. Dymphna, patron saint of the mentally ill and disabled. Doing for these sick and forgotten kids, who oftentimes had no one else to pick up for them, most likely would become Sister’s legacy, except Sister was only forty years old, so talk about legacies wouldn’t be needed for some time.
And now she was out in right field hitting fly balls to the boys, her big white headpiece giving her trouble. A signature of the Sisters of St. Joseph, these stovepipe wimples were; something that made nuns look bigger than they really were. “Turns Mighty Joe Young into King Kong” was how one of her students once described the effect. It was a fair physical assessment in Sister’s case, because she was tall and bulky. But disposition-wise she was as gentle as a sparrow. Still, Sister was no slouch when it came to baseball. She’d coached these boys all by her lonesome last year.
She swung the bat, sent the ball soaring. Her hand went to her wimple headpiece and straightened it up. She picked up another ball, took another swing, then straightened out her wimple again. Her black-and-white high-top sneakers were her only concession to the game, visible from underneath her habit’s skirt each time she stopped a returned ball with her foot.
Something was out of place out here—something I couldn’t put my finger on. I looked back and forth a few times between Father and Sister. It still wasn’t coming to me.
“Look at all the new stuff they got, Wump.”
That was it. Damn if Leo hadn’t turned into a little mind reader lately. I twisted the door handle and got out of my truck, shielded my eyes from the late afternoon sun so I could get a better look.
How about that. Real canvas bases and a home plate. New balls, or at least they looked new because they were mostly white. And behind Father Duncan was a small pile of new bats. But the real clincher was every kid on the field had a baseball glove. This parish and its parishioners weren’t wealthy, the school baseball team not a priority. So now I wondered, where had the equipment come from?
“The new Father got it for them.”
“What? Christmas, Leo, you got to cut that out. You’re giving me the heebie-jeebies answering questions I ain’t even asked yet.”
“Sorry, Wump.”
His smile was gone. Viola was right; lately I’d been acting like I needed more bran in my diet. But that still didn’t change the fact that Leo had been figuring out things real quick of late, something he wasn’t able to do his whole young life. Right around when my son Harry died was when this all changed. Nowadays Leo would sometimes finish my sentences for me, and on occasion even tell me what I was thinking. Could be he’d been doing it before and I just hadn’t noticed, me preoccupied with Harry and how sick he was. Or could be maybe I was losing some air like most folks did when they got older, and with it a degree or two of sharpness, made up by small doses of paranoia and confusion.
“I’m sorry, Leo. I forgot my manners. Where did Father get the new equipment? It must have cost a fortune.”
“I dunno.” Leo looked at his sneakers.
“Leo…” Goodness, how could I have yelled at him? “I didn’t mean anything by what I said, son. If you know where the equipment came from, you can tell me. If you don’t know, or do know but don’t want to tell me, that’s okay, too.”
He raised his head, perked up again. “Father told Sister Dimple he got the bases and the balls from the Phillies ’cause he once played for them, and he meant the real Philadelphia Phillies, the ones we watch on TV on Sundays. The gloves and the bats came from somebody else.”
Father called everyone in, gathered the boys around, told them what a great job they did today, thanked them on behalf of him and Sister Dymphna, then closed the practice with a prayer.
The boys collected their gear while Father and Sister started gabbing. The getting-to-know-you talking was apparently already out of the way. I could see Sister’s face and she was serious about something.
“It might help if you did speak with her, Father,” Sister said. “Sister Magdalena’s not doing much of anything anymore. She stays in her room and prays the rosary. Isn’t eating; is ‘fasting,’ she says. She’s been like this for a week now.”
Sister Magdalena was from Venezuela. When she first arrived, she was real cheerful and sweet, with brown eyes large as a child’s on Christmas morning. That was more than fifteen years ago. Lately those wonderful smiling eyes were looking more like two coal lumps sunk into shadowy pits, all the joy in them gone.
“What does Monsignor say about this?” Father asked.
“He was in to see her a few days ago. The next day her sixth-graders had a new teacher. A permanent one, not another substitute. Then he had the Mother assign Sister’s church duties for Easter to someone else. He hasn’t said anything to us about what he thinks we should do next.”
“I’ll speak with Monsignor tonight,” Father Duncan said. “Tomorrow I’ll stop in to see Sister Magdalena.”
The boys began filing onto the bus, chunky Teddy Agarn looking real proud, the team’s new army-green canvas bag of baseball equipment strapped over his shoulder. Sonny Goode walked behind him with the three canvas bases piled one atop the other, his baseball glove riding the topmost, the bags resting like folded blankets on his outstretched arms. I heard Teddy’s voice above the rest.
“Father says he’s getting us shirts with the school name on the front. It won’t say ‘Three Stooges Parish’ on it, will it, Sonny?”
“Better not,” Sonny said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” This was Adam, one of the few kids at the orphanage with no disabilities, unless you counted a creepy outlook and a sharp tongue. Adam was almost fourteen, nearly two years older than Sonny and Teddy. With a long bony face and cassock-black hair, Adam was a dark, handsome kid and smarter than most at his age, but you couldn’t mention Adam without bringing up his sister, Ruthie, also a St. Jerome’s resident. What Adam had in the way of extra smarts came at the expense of his sister, a twin but not identical. Ruthie was a mute, although doctors said there weren’t no physical reason for it, was also as passive as they came. Plus she was a chronic overeater. Hell, that was being too nice. She was fat and in real need of a growth spurt, which now appeared to be kicking in, finally. This was the first year we’d seen a redistribution of her weight, moving south to north, turning her from a pudgy kid to a young lady. But she still ate the wrong foods and way too much of them. She watched her brother from a bus window, a strawberry-red licorice whip in her mouth.
“It won’t make any difference what they put on the shirts,” Adam said, resettling his baseball cap. “Three Stooges or Three Bridges. There’re still just as many defective people living around here.”
“Shut up, Adam.” This was Sonny, talking over his shoulder, and it was then I got a feeling about what would happen next, knowing Adam was just warming up. I needed to get between the two of them before it did.
“Just like when they repainted those bridges,” Adam said. “They look different, but they’re still just as stupid-looking as before, because they’re right next to each other. A new baseball shirt won’t make any difference on you, Teddy. Once a retard, always a retard.”
Too late.
Sonny shed the bases he’d been carrying and knocked Adam off his feet. Little Sonny was now on top of him, his knees pinning Adam’s shoulders to the grass, Sonny throwing punch after punch at Adam’s face and head, getting little resistance. I leaned down and dropped a hand onto Sonny, lifted him off by the back of his shirt; now he was swinging at air. Adam got to his feet with Father Duncan in front of him but made no attempt to retaliate, actually looked near proud of himself. Also looked like he hadn’t been touched. No bloody nose, no fat lip. Odd, since I seen Sonn
y connect bare knuckles to skull maybe five or six times, all over Adam’s face and head, but there wasn’t a mark on him. I checked Sonny out and, Jesus, his face looked like he’d kissed a swinging shovel. His nose was bleeding, his right eye puffy and his chin scraped. It didn’t make any sense. Adam never raised a hand to him.
Sonny was ready to declare war again through red-tinged spit and slobber. “Take it back, Adam! You take that back!”
“Will not. Teddy’s the same as the rest of the retards around here, new baseball shirt or not. Just another one of God’s rejects.”
“That’s enough, Adam,” Father Duncan said. “This ends right now.” Father put his heavy hands on Adam’s shoulders, spun him around, and marched him to the bus steps. Sister Dymphna told Adam to sit in the last seat, then ushered the rest of the kids onboard for their return trip to the schoolyard. Sonny was still steamed, his upper body tense as a wound up jack-in-the-box. I handed him my hanky; when his balled-up energy drained, I let him pull away from my loosened grip. He picked up his baseball glove from the grass. It was then I seen all of what was tucked into my shirt pocket had fallen out, into a little pile. My notepad, my pencil stub, them German death announcements, all of it coming from me bending over to stop the fight. Sonny had something to say to Father Duncan, so I was left picking up my things on my own.
“Teddy’s not retarded, Father. He’s just been, ah”—Sonny teared up, then got mad at himself for it—“hurt a lot.” He pushed his cousin away from the bus door. “Let’s go, Teddy. We’re walking home. Thank you for the new equipment, Father.”
Echoes of “thanks, Father Duncan” came from the bus windows as Sister Dymphna revved the old diesel engine through a coughing spell until it leveled off. Adam was in the last seat facing out the window at Father and me, his arm slung over the ledge, his sister Ruthie next to him and facing away from us. An impish look on Adam’s face turned serious. He raised his voice over the noise of the bus’s throbbing exhaust to shout one of them questions a person didn’t really want an answer to: “God can’t be so perfect if he creates retards, huh, Father?”