Scars on the Face of God

by Chris Bauer

  “Hmm. My father-in-law. It was a big family. Let me think.” There was noise outside coming from under the kitchen window, Sonny calling to his mother.

  “Okay,” she said, ignoring him. “I think this is right. He had six older brothers and two older sisters.” Her finger tapped her lips. “Wait…”

  More noise from the back yard. “Mom!”

  “I hear you, Sonny,” she called at the open window. Her nose crinkled. “Now I remember. It was eight brothers. Six were older, making Gramps lucky number seven, then there was an eighth. Two of them died young—the first and the last—the first one, I recall him mentioning, born the day President Garfield was shot. Only three of the family’s ten children are still alive, Gramps and his two sisters, who all live in Conshohocken.”

  “MOMMY!”

  “Pipe down, Sonny. Dinner’s ready,” she called out the side of her mouth. “Get in here, and bring your father with you.”

  “It’s not Daddy, Mom,” Sonny said in a cracked, little boy’s voice. “It’s Uncle Dwayne.”

  Mrs. Goode slammed her wooden spoon on the counter, pulled open a closet door and grabbed a straw broom. “Not up for any of his antics this afternoon,” she said. “Sonny’s uncle got pink-slipped from the tannery. Now he’s drinking all day.” She hustled down the steps to the basement and out the back door, me on her tail.

  Dwayne Agarn had his large son Teddy by the scruff of his neck, hauling him out of the Goodes’ driveway, baseball cards slipping from the boy’s hands. Teddy was the same age as Sonny but size-wise towered over him. Teddy was also maybe an inch taller than his old man. Heavier, too.

  “He’s eating with us tonight, Dwayne,” Mrs. Goode said. “I already cleared it with his grammy. Let him go.”

  “You’ll be needing to clear things with me, not his grandmother, from here on in,” Dwayne said, slobbering some. “The boy’s got chores. I said let’s go, Teddy, you lummox, you.”

  Little Sonny ran up next to his cousin and tried to slip Teddy’s baseball cards into his chubby hand. His uncle wheeled and clamped onto his nephew’s wrist. “Get lost, Sonny. Go eat your momma’s dinner.”

  Sonny ignored him, moved the cards from one hand to the other, strained while trying a second time to pass them to Teddy, and now the three of them were moving in fits and starts in a circle, looking like a dog chasing its tail. Then Sonny’s knees buckled. Dwayne was applying more pressure to his wrist.

  “Owww, Uncle Dwayne. Teddy’s cards…!”

  Enough of this bullshit; someone was going to get hurt. Mrs. Goode and I reacted at the same time, quick-stepping toward them. Little Sonny dropped to one knee, cards slipping through his fingers. Mrs. Goode closed in with her broom as Dwayne hovered over her son. Sonny stretched his reach, a few cards still in his hand; more pressure to his wrist. He squirmed, then suddenly—

  Dwayne’s arm was whipped behind his back and bent upward, toward his shoulder; he squealed like a woman in labor. The oafish Teddy closed his big chubby hand around his father’s fingers, pushed them and his arm in a direction they shouldn’t go, up into the shoulder blade.

  “No hurting Sonny, Daddy,” Teddy said grimly. Dwayne’s face started losing its color.

  Sonny got to his feet, quickly collected the scattered baseball cards. Teddy released his father’s arm, and Dwayne cradled it up near his shoulder, doubling over some at the waist, trying to catch his breath. He coughed then spit onto the alleyway cement. When he straightened up, his eyes were wide and round and terrified, like a nightmare had spooked him. The expression on Teddy’s face was near the same; the crotch of Teddy’s tan chinos darkened. Sonny handed him his cards. Teddy disappeared in a hefty trot up the alleyway, around the house at the end of block.

  “Just so you know, Agarn,” I said, the boy’s father still recovering, “I taught him that move. Wasn’t none of your son’s doing. It came from me and me only. Taught him it just so he could handle them school bullies who been picking on him. You get a burr in your saddle about this, you see me, not him, understand?”

  Dwayne Agarn was still coughing, the back of his hand swiping at his lips to clear them of spit, his other arm limp at his side. He steadied himself on feet spread for balance.

  “Stay the fuck away from him, Hozer,” he said through a raspy breath. “You’re as loony as he is, teaching him all that senile old John L. Sullivan–boxing bullshit. You stay away from him, you hear?” Agarn staggered away, down the alleyway, same direction as his son.

  It weren’t from no boxing lesson was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Pure Saturday afternoon Gorgeous George wrestling was all it was, something Teddy must have picked up from the TV. But it was better for Teddy that his father thought I taught it to him. Much better, for the both of them.

  Mrs. Goode checked out her son’s wrist then nudged him in the direction of the back door. “I’ve got to get back to my dinner. What I told you about Sonny’s grandfather’s brothers—is this what the cemetery records show?”

  I fumbled inside my pocket for the list from Father Duncan and made a quick sweep of the names. “Yeah, I think that’s right. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Goode.”

  I’d lied to her. President Garfield was shot in 1881. We just got through hearing all about him and President Lincoln again this past November when our beloved John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Father Duncan’s list showed a grave marker for the last of the Goode brothers, the one who died in 1899, but nothing in 1881 for what would have been the firstborn.

  Hell, there it was again. 1899. The last Goode boy was born the same year as me. And the same year the orphanage was rededicated, according to that old photograph of Sister Irene and Rolf Volkheimer and his wife.

  Hold on.

  I stopped in the middle of the block, dug deep into my workpants pocket to pull out Father’s list of grave-marker names, snaked it out without losing any screws or nuts or hardware receipts. The wind kicked up a notch, a summer-like gust from the warming trend Viola told me was coming; made me hold the loose-leaf paper with both hands.

  Mrs. Volkheimer was pregnant with her first child in that old photograph. Born in 1899, died the same day according to them German death announcements she kept with her family Bible. But her baby’s name wasn’t on this list, which meant there was no grave marker in the cemetery for him, either.

  Jesus. Two firstborns, from two very Catholic families, neither buried in the parish cemetery. Wait—make that three. The Zerhoffer infant. Had he lived, he would have been the older brother to the boy with frostbite who Sister Irene and me rescued. No marker for him either.

  Viola would have to put my dinner in the fridge tonight. I needed another visit with Mrs. V.

  20

  Daylight saving time changeover was Sunday after next; we’d be springing forward. Even now the afternoons were getting a little longer, the sun not setting until six o’clock, near what it was now. I pulled my truck into the circular front driveway. A burst of orange sunlight greeted me from behind Mrs. V’s turreted Victorian roof. It set off the house in a jagged silhouette, like it was pushing the old place at me.

  Her cook opened the front door but didn’t offer to let me in, instead kept a full three feet away from me, the screen door between us. I wasn’t sure if she was sizing me up or was afraid of me. I never done nothing to her, yet still she acted this way.

  Who was I kidding? It was me who croaked her employer’s husband. That was plenty.

  “She’s not here,” she said, her round cheeks full of food. She swallowed most of it. “She was taken to Nazarene Hospital this afternoon.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “For what?”

  Her face softened; the screen door opened and I stepped inside. “Heart palpitations,” she said, her tone more even now. “She’s not in any immediate danger. Just can’t get excited. All this rigmarole about finding her husband’s body is what did it. They want her to rest in the hospital a few days. No visitors.”

  Horst her gardener hus
band joined us in the hall, wiped his mouth with a napkin. I thanked his wife for the information and turned to leave. Then I turned back.

  “Look,” I said to them, “you two and me didn’t get off on the right foot those many years ago. Not sure why, and not sure what I can do to change it, but please, just get a message to Mrs. Volkheimer and her family to let them know I’m thinking about her.”

  I made for the screen door, was surprised when Horst offered his hand while leaning past me to open it. “We’re thinking about her, too,” he said, his long face showing its age, his forehead a washboard of worry lines. “We’ll deliver the message.”

  His shake was firm and honest. Mrs. Volkheimer had touched a lot of people during her lifetime. Old folks felt a kinship at times like this, watching other old folks get closer to death. It didn’t make sense to hold grudges, for real or imagined slights. Maybe this was what turned these two around. Either way, I was touched by it.

  If I located more families on this list, I figured to get the same answer but not with any of them knowing they had this in common: firstborn infant sons dying at the hands of their parents. Real biblical-obedience bullshit, courtesy of the nineteenth-century Catholic Church.

  Biblical. Now there’s a word I hadn’t used lately for sure.

  I decided I would call Father Duncan in the morning. Figured me and him maybe ought to stop by the orphanage to do some thirteenth-century Bible reading.

  It was about eight a.m. I didn’t get an answer when I phoned the rectory looking for the father, so I decided to take a walk.

  It was supposed to be warm again today, in the low eighties. Tomorrow, Good Friday, it could reach ninety. Light-jacket weather now, short sleeves later. Hadn’t seen an April this warm around here since I was a kid.

  Something told me Father knew all about them families already, the Goodes and the Schmidts and the rest of them, and their nineteenth-century babies, too. Something told me he already knew what I’d learned yesterday, which was those infant boys in the sewers were all firstborns. Probably had a hunch about it, but wanted me to chase the information down anyway. Something told me all this because he never said nothing yesterday about visiting the orphanage this morning, yet here I was walking half a block behind him, which he hadn’t noticed, the both of us headed to the same place.

  Hell. Could be he was here on some other priest business, not to do any reading from a devil bible. Maybe I was just overreacting.

  I’d picked up two escorts this last leg, Raymond in his wheelchair and Leo pushing him, on their way back from a grocery store errand, a brown Food Fair bag sticking out of the wire basket beneath Raymond’s seat. The three of us left the sidewalk and cut across the orphanage’s front lawn. The wheelchair shook and hitched as Leo pushed it over the uneven grass until we got to the side of the property, onto a hardened clay footpath, the ride finally smoothing out. We followed the bellied path around to the kitchen door in back. Leo stopped at the tip of the special wooden wheelchair ramp I built for the orphanage’s disabled kids; he resettled the red baseball cap on Raymond’s blond head. Raymond’s feet, snug inside a pair of beat-up red high-topped PF Flyers, dangled off the sides of their stainless-steel footrests, their canvas tops frayed white and torn in spots, a few of the silver eyelets missing. The tread on these sneakers hadn’t suffered near as much abuse, looked close to new and always would, long as Raymond was the one wearing them. Leo resettled Raymond’s feet inside the footrests and retied the laces.

  He checked the leather straps across his buddy’s chest and legs, making sure they were tight enough for the short trip up the incline. I grabbed one handle and Leo grabbed the other; we pushed the wheelchair up the ramp together. I brushed past them to get at the door, aware of Raymond’s open, sightless eyes. They blinked a few times.

  you’re not overreacting

  This thought stopped me. Except it wasn’t a thought; it was a voice. I took my hand off the door handle. “You say something, Leo?”

  “Nope. Wasn’t me.”

  “What do you mean it wasn’t you? Who else, then?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it was God. Or Raymond.”

  I let that pass. “But you heard it?”

  “Yeah. Kinda.”

  “Kinda? Explain ‘kinda.’”

  “Kinda with my mind I heard it.” He was studying me and smiling a small, goofy smile, one that hung around longer than it should have, betraying he was worried about my reaction.

  Jeez-o-man, stay calm, I told myself. “Tell me what you heard, son.”

  “I heard someone telling you you’re not overacting, something like that. Sounded like it was Raymond.”

  “Like Raymond? Really, now.”

  “Yep. Sometimes I watch him while he’s doing it. His lips don’t move and nothing comes out of his mouth, but I can hear him in my head anyway. Sounds like he’s talking from inside a big seashell, next to the ocean.” Leo’s head bobbed up and down, looking for my approval. My squinty expression betrayed me.

  His eyebrows drooped. “You don’t believe me.”

  I placed my hand on his bushy noggin to pat his wild sandy hair, then I caught myself doing it and stopped. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, son. What you said doesn’t make much sense to me.”

  “Raymond says I can talk that way, too.”

  Leo looked at me like he was about to say Hey, it’s really true, and boy-o-boy, did it surprise me, too.

  hey it’s really true and boy-o-boy…

  The echo. It wasn’t me. It was Leo’s voice, but his lips—his mouth—nothing moved.

  “Leo? How in God’s name—?”

  I was feeling real uneasy, staring first at him then at Raymond, slowly looking Raymond over in his wheelchair, head to toe and back, settling on his narrow, emotionless face, his lollygag head tilted to one side, his left cheek leaning on his shoulder.

  I was sixty-five friggin’ years old, for God’s sake. Old soldiers like me had enough crap tricking their minds every day. I didn’t need stuff like this making me doubt my sanity. “Forget it, I don’t want to know. Just stop it, whoever it was.”

  we’re sorry, Wump

  “Raymond this time,” Leo said. “He started talking this way a coupla months ago. Tells me not to be afraid even though he’s getting sick. He’s my best friend, Wump. Please don’t make him stop.”

  Leo’s eyes moistened up, and I nodded an okay, told him to ignore what I’d said. “You boys talk anyway you need to. Just do your best to keep this old man out of it.” I put my hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Let’s get inside. Your school bus will be along soon.”

  The orphanage kitchen was cluttered from breakfast dishes and bowls and mugs piled high in the large sinks and on the counters next to them, all ready for sudsing and rinsing then drying and reshelving by the nuns, except no one was here, at least not in the kitchen. Leo left Raymond under the arch to the hallway, turned the grocery bag on its side on an empty part of the counter, and let the contents roll out. Some fruit, a few small spice jars, and an institutional-size can of Crisco. He folded the bag, stood everything up for the nuns to put away, then threw open the door to the Frigidaire. Out came a quart-size glass bottle of soda. He shook it hard with both hands then put it on the table; he carefully unscrewed the top. The excess pressure escaped little by little until most of it was gone.

  Leo eyed me eyeing him. “It’s okay,” he said, grabbing a jelly-jar glass from a cabinet. “The sisters said it doesn’t much matter if Raymond has soda this early in the morning. He likes Black Cherry Wishniak but only if there’s no fizz. Not as much burping.” He pulled a paper straw out of a drawer, carried it and the glass of soda over to his friend. Leo held the glass and straw steady while Raymond eagerly sipped. The straw circled the bottom, searched and found the last few drops.

  Leo pushed Raymond down the hallway and left him outside the library. A few cranky doorknobs turned, the last one the knob to the orphanage’s front door. Leo squeezed himself outside with
a book bag slung over one shoulder, then pulled the door shut behind him. Now it was real quiet, like on those early mornings when I lived here. Maybe quieter. Midnight quiet.

  I heard Raymond in the library. No, it couldn’t be, because what I was hearing were voices. They were down the hallway and across from the library, in the parlor. Children’s voices. As I got closer, I heard a woman’s voice, too.

  “Don’t you look handsome in those knickers, young man. Handsome indeed.

  “Here’s a new bonnet for you, child. Oh, aren’t you a beautiful sight this morning. You’ll be the prettiest young lady at the Schuetten town fair.”

  The town hadn’t been called Schuetten for more than fifty years; what the Christ was going on? “Hello, Sister?” I called down the hall. “Who’s there? Hello?”

  “Don’t be raising your voice inside, Johnny. Go wash up. And your potato sack better be out back, not inside. I don’t want to be smelling it in here.”

  I hustled to the end of the hall and whipped around the foot of the stairs to face the parlor. “Now see here, Sister, what’s all this talk about—”

  I was talking to no one; the parlor was empty.

  Raymond—where was he? “Where’d you get off to, son? Raymond?”

  More noise, coming from behind me, across the hall, on the other side of the library’s closed pocket doors. A clap-a-tap rapping that sounded like wood against wood. It started out slow and soft, but now it was louder and faster. I felt a rush of air blow against me. It pushed me back a step, away from the library, where from behind the doors it now sounded bad as a Midwestern twister ripping into a cluttered soup kitchen, with so much knocking and banging that the pocket doors shook and snapped their edges against each other but somehow stayed closed.

  My ears popped; the chaos got louder. They popped again; louder.