“So when it was very cold, and there was snow on the mountains, the Romans told Mary’s people that they would have to go to the nearest city and pay out more money. And they were so poor. So Mary, and her husband, had to go to a place called Bethlehem, not only to pay out their little piece of money, but to be counted, too.”
“Every night,” murmured Jean, looking into space, “they counted—”
“Yes, yes,” said Johnny. “You understand. But when Mary, who was riding a little horse, and Joseph, her husband, got to Bethlehem, they found there wasn’t any place they could stay. All the hotels and houses were filled up with the rest of their people, who had been forced to go to Bethlehem, to be counted by the Romans and to give their money. It was terribly cold and it was snowing, and Mary and Joseph were very tired and hungry, and the only place they could find to stay was an old barn”
“With barbed wire around it?” asked Jean. He leaned toward Johnny, his eyelids twitching.
In a way, a symbolical way, thought Johnny. But these children were not yet ready to hear about symbols, or understand them. However—“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure it had barbed wire, or a fence, around it.” Kathy was leaning toward him now, keeping tight hold of little Emilie. “I know,” she said. “There’s always barbed wire around them. Sharp.”
Johnny sighed. “They let Mary and Joseph into the bam. There were cows in the barn; the breath of the cows, and their bodies, made it a little less cold than outside. It was night and there was a moon, shining like ice, and there was nothing to sleep on except straw. So Mary and Joseph lay down in the straw to sleep.”
“I remember,” said Jean, almost inaudibly. “I was there.”
“Yes,” said Johnny, and he looked at all the children. “You were there. You always were. All down through the ages.” His heart beat heavily, and with sickness.
The children regarded him gravely. How much do they understand? he wondered. He had the mystical conviction that they were comprehending even more than he was telling.
“And so,” he went on, “while poor little Mary, that young girl, lay on the straw in the cold, covered with her husband’s patched coat, God was born to her, a little Child, a Baby.”
The children turned their heads to look at the plaster Child in Mary’s arms. It was only a trick of the dusk, of course, and the sudden flare of the candlelight, which made the plaster face take on the radiance and compassion of flesh, which made it shine upon the children in the pew. “See,” said Kathy, “He hears Papa telling us about Him.”
“He was just a Baby,” said Johnny. “Just as you were. Even younger than Emilie here. He couldn’t walk or talk. He just had his little Mother. And she didn’t have a bed for Him. So she tore up part of her dress to cover Him from the cold, and she found a manger—that’s a box where they put straw for cattle to eat—and she laid the Baby in the manger, on the straw.”
Jean lifted clenched hands, and all his face was trembling. “I know! I saw it, Papa! There was a baby, and the girls and women were afraid the soldiers would kill the baby, and the mother put the baby in a box full of straw, and hid it under some things—I saw it, Papa!”
“Of course you did,” said Johnny, and pressed his hands over his eyes. “Of course you did, Jean.”
“I won’t let the soldiers see Emilie!” said Kathy with fierceness, clutching the little girl tightly to her. The boys growled in affirmation.
Won’t you? thought Johnny. And who is going to protect all the mothers—in the future? Where are the mothers, now, holding their children, not knowing that tomorrow, perhaps, their children will die in their arms? Where are the “nice, good people,” that they aren’t working to prevent it? The nice, good people who are sure that “everything is really all right, it just takes a little time!” Time, time!
Johnny went on, “Only a few people knew that God had been born in that barn, in the manger. They were very poor men, Mary’s people, who took care of sheep on the cold mountains. And an angel suddenly stood there among them, with a wonderful light all about him, and the shepherds were very much afraid. But the angel said, ‘Do not be frightened, children, because I have wonderful things to tell you. God has been born this hour to save you, and He lies in a manger in the city of Bethlehem.’ And the angel pointed to a great Star suddenly shining in the sky, which was the sign. And while the light shone on the poor shepherds’ faces, and the sheep crowded around them, the angel said, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace—’”
His voice broke, and he bent his head.
It was some long moments before he realized that the children were very still, and then he saw that their eyes were filled with a strange brightness. And they were looking at the crucifix on the great altar in the distance. Johnny went on, “Well, the bad king, and the Romans, heard what the shepherds had told the people about seeing God in His manger, and the king was afraid that the Baby had come to take away the country from him, for that had been told many years before. So he gave out an order that the Baby was to be found, and killed.”
“Yes,” murmured the children, but they still looked at the crucified Man, and not at the infant in His Mother’s arms. Was it possible that they had understood something in one mystic moment?
“So Mary and Joseph left the barn very quickly, with the Baby, and the Mother and the Child were carried on the little horse, which is called a donkey, and they ran to another country so that the soldiers couldn’t find them and kill them. And the name of the country where they lived for a long time was Egypt.”
Max said in his low, dreaming voice, “I was in Egypt too.”
“Yes,” Johnny answered, “you were, Max.”
He continued, “The little Family were very poor in Egypt, and no one wanted them, for they were strangers in a strange land. But they were happy together, and they loved each other, for, you see, where love is, God is also. Joseph worked as a carpenter, and the Boy, who was named Jesus, worked with him, and they made tables and chairs for people who would buy them. Often they went to bed hungry, and they lived in a very poor house, and Mary was often afraid because the people about them did not like them, and the other boys were cruel to her Boy.”
Kathy interrupted, “But He was God! Why did God let Himself be hungry and hurt?”
Johnny put his arm about her. “Because, dear, He loved the world, terrible and bad though it is, and He wanted to show people that He understood what they suffered, and that He knew what it was to be homeless and lonely and hated. He wanted to show them that He knew what it was to be a man. He never spared Himself.” Johnny waited a moment or two, and then said, “No matter what anyone has suffered, God, too, suffered it, and God understands.”
He waited. The children sat in silence, each with his own wounds and his own confused remembrance. Max looked dimly at his hands; Jean bit his lip; Pietro’s small face gleamed. And Kathy wept, bending her head over little Emilie, who had fallen asleep in her arms.
Johnny drew a deep breath. “If you’re ever tired again, children, or hungry, or hated, or homeless, you must never forget that God suffered that, long before you did. God was there, first.”
Jean looked long at the crucifix, and he sighed. Then he turned to Johnny and smiled, and it was the smile of a man and not a child. The young minister returned the smile sadly, and said, “I’ve told you the story of God when He was young like you, and tonight I’ll tell you more about Him when He was a man, and home again in His own country.”
He stood up, and the children rose with him.
He led them back up the aisle, toward the open doors through which the sunlight streamed. As they passed the pew where they had sat, Johnny started. The old priest was sitting there, smiling faintly. He said, as Johnny paused in disbelief, “You told the story well, my son.”
“Thank you, Father,” Johnny murmured in confusion. He bowed and went on with his flock. When he reached the door he glanced back, but the old priest had disappeared. There were only the altar, the statu
es, the candlelight, and the shadows in the arches, and the brilliant windows. Johnny said aloud and with firmness, “I do not believe in ghosts!”
“What?” asked Pietro.
“Besides,” Johnny added, “his name was McCloskey, and who ever heard of a ghost by that name?”
They stood on the steps of the church, looking down at the roaring and dazzling street. “Look!” cried Jean, pointing downward. “People, people!”
“People!” the others chorused with delight.
Johnny put his hand in his pocket for his handkerchief. His fingers encountered something hard and round. It was Mrs. Grant’s compact. The street below him melted into one wave of hot color.
Dr. Stevens was silent for a long time after Johnny had spoken. The children were in bed, sleeping soundlessly, in the new night clothes Johnny had bought them that day. They had eaten their dinner almost normally, but toward the end of it their eyelids had drooped and they had been glad to stumble after Johnny and Mrs. Burnsdale to their beds. It had been a long, hard day.
The old minister sighed. He had removed his vest, and he sat in his shirt sleeves, his collar unfastened. He smiled at the younger man. “I have a feeling they aren’t going to cry or dream tonight, Johnny. Do you know, if I were a Catholic, I’d say you were a saint.” He sighed again. “Never mind, don’t look so embarrassed. But you’re going to have yourself quite a time, you know, if you carry out your ideas. You’re convinced that Jean and Pietro are Catholic boys, and Max is a Jew; and Kathy, and probably the smaller girl, Protestants. So you intend to bring them up in their respective religions!” He shook his head. “Haven’t they been confused enough without your adding to it? Even if they had been children with average backgrounds, American children, it would be appalling enough, in one household, in a strange city! You would have had, even under the best of circumstances, quite a time explaining tolerance to youngsters of different faiths and trying to get them to live peaceably together. Think, Johnny!”
“I’ve thought, sir. And I’ve also thought that each of those children has a right to his inheritance, and a right to understand that inheritance, a right to his roots. As the years pass they’ll have a frame of reference. The past won’t be formless and empty to them. There’ll be continuity to it, even if they don’t remember it, before the concentration camps.”
He sat on the edge of his chair, and his eyes were extremely blue in his dark face. “Tolerance! Where better to learn it than in one household, among one’s brothers and sisters? Why, those kids will go out into the world and when they see intolerance they’ll remember what they themselves suffered from it, and they’ll know what monstrous ugliness it is, and why it should be driven from their world. They’ll know it’s marked in red letters on the gates of hell. They’ll know it’s caused all the wars, the concentration camps, the massacres, the deaths of their parents, the pain and homelessness they endured, and the very wounds they carry in their bodies. And they’ll understand what the Lord said when He prophesied, ‘One Fold, One Shepherd.’ Why, they’ve got a wonderful advantage over every kid in this country, every sheltered kid everywhere!”
Dr. Stevens shook his head again. “All right, Johnny. Never mind. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you a better place than Barryfield, right in the midst of the coal region. But it’s also in the Poconos, and you can always look up at the mountains.”
“I’m not sorry, Dr. Stevens. I’m glad. You see, I couldn’t have stayed here even if this congregation had wanted me. I can’t be minister to people who want their religion comfortable, a kind of dessert at the end of a week’s pleasant dinner. You know, I’ve always been sorry for the Pharisees—they’re such cowards. And I can’t condone cowardice, and pretend with any congregation that religion’s a soothing thing. It isn’t. It’s a call to the spirit to struggle against the flesh, and against all evil.”
He stood up and pushed his hands deep in his pockets, and his eyes flashed. “So they want a pastor who’ll lie to them, and tell them what they want to hear. I’m not their man, sir.”
“No, Johnny,” said Dr. Stevens, and smiled. “You’re not their man.”
5
The hot yellow sunset flowed through the library window and appeared to enfold Johnny in it, as he stood before Jean and Kathy. It was too important an occasion for anyone to sit. Jean and Kathy were very still as they listened to their foster father, Jean’s wise and narrow face serious and intent, his pale eyes alert, his shock of light-brown hair neatly combed—for the first time—by Mrs. Burnsdale. Kathy was as serious as he. In her new “American” clothes she looked like a very mature older daughter of the family, responsible for the less responsible and younger members. Mrs. Burnsdale had persuaded her to part with the long queue braid, and her soft yellow hair lay in smooth folds on her shoulders. Her blue eyes no longer shifted; they were steady. Her mouth was set in womanly curves, oddly touching in a child her age. Her plump hands were clasped before her in an old-fashioned gesture of obedient listening.
“I need your help,” said Johnny simply. He puffed at his pipe. “Mrs. Burnsdale is going with us to that town, Barryfield. But all she can do is to keep you kids clean, and feed all of us, and take care of our new house. I want to tell you about Barryfield first, though. It isn’t like New York. They mine coal there. But it’s in the mountains, the blue mountains, called the Poconos. I’ve seen them. We can always look up out of the dust and noise of the town and see the mountains. It’s very important for people to see the mountains, out of the tiredness of daily work, and the worry and the dirt. Do you understand, kids?”
They nodded their heads, but did not speak.
He studied Jean and Kathy earnestly. Jean must have known what he was thinking, for he smiled his secret smile. “We understand,” he said. Kathy nodded. “Papa is like mountains, too,” she said. “But not like Alps.” “Not,” said Jean, and his jaw was determined, “like Alps.”
Johnny sighed, but even in his sadness he was grateful. They understood. “Thanks, kids,” he said. “I’m not much of a mountain, though. If I had been, and all the other parsons and ministers, too, what happened to you wouldn’t have happened.”
They became very serious again. “We’re not going to have an easy time in Barryfield,” said Johnny. “That’s the most important thing you’ve got to understand right now. I won’t have much money. I haven’t even got much of a church, from what I’ve heard, and the house won’t be like this one. It’s small, and we’re not going to have much room. I’ll have a ‘ parish—lots of people to take care of. I can’t be with you kids all the time, and maybe not much of the time, except at night. So you, Jean, and you, Kathy, have to know just exactly what we’re getting into. See?”
Jean said, “Yes. We see. But it is America, no?”
Johnny said glumly, “Yes, it’s America. And now I come to the most important part. I’ve told you what America means—freedom from fear, freedom from state police, freedom from concentration camps, freedom from the terror of having your door knocked on at night, freedom from violent death at any time from anybody. Freedom protected by law. Nobody can do to you what was done to you in Europe. Nobody is going to drag me from you, and kill me. Nobody is going to put barbed wire around any of us. Nobody is going to tell me, or you, what to say, or what to do—any time. We’ve got something we call the Constitution, and that keeps Americans from killing other Americans, or taking their property from them, or burning their homes, or injuring children.”
“So?” said Jean. “Why then is Papa afraid? What else is there to fear if Americans have all that? Yes?”
“We have all that,” said Kathy in her prim, rather rebuking voice. “What else needed, Papa?”
“Plenty,” said Johnny. “Look, kids, I want you to know the worst. Americans aren’t any different from the people in Europe.” He paused. Jean’s pale eyes sharpened brilliantly; Kathy stepped back in fear. “Wait a minute,” said Johnny. “There’s just one thing that is different. The law here. I tol
d you that.”
“But—if there comes no law?” said Jean tensely. “Like there came no law in Europe?”
You’ve got a good point there, thought Johnny somberly. Why do you suppose, kids, that I lie awake nights, thinking? He tried to smile reassuringly. “There will always be the law, no matter what the people are. And, you know what? The people respect the law, most of them. They’ve seen what happened in Europe when they got rid of law, and they don’t want it to happen here. And we’ve got millions—millions!—of good people working all the time, explaining the law, explaining it to children in the schools, making it work in the courts. You know what courts are? Police. Wait. Not police like in Europe. No. Police who protect the people from lawbreakers. One of these days I’ll read the Bill of Rights to you, and you’ll learn about it in school yourselves. Then you’ll know.”
The children thought this over, various strong emotions flitting over their faces like shadows. It is not so simple, then, Johnny could almost hear them think. We are not so safe then. There are always people.
“God, and the law, are our protection,” said Johnny. “No matter what else happens, they are our protection. And they’ll be right with us every minute. That’s the important thing you’ve got to remember. And that’s why I need your help with Max and Pietro and Emilie. They won’t understand as well as you do. You’ll be with them all the time, taking care of them, for me. If you don’t, we’ll all fail. I mean, there won’t be anything for any of us. See?”
A Tender Victory Page 8