We Five

by Mark Dunn

“If I ever find the Cross, I’m going to toss it out again. Jane was wrong to hold on to it. Look, it would have been something else if I’d walked in on the two of them—if I’d caught him in the act of hurting her and I struck out at him. But I didn’t. I went looking for him. The same way I hunted down German stragglers in the Argonne and picked them off like field rabbits.”

  Through the heating vent came the sound of the tabernacle organ (compromised somewhat by its five missing pipes) playing the anthem “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” The anthem would serve as prelude to the procession of Sister Lydia and her large company of choir members, musicians, and various spiritual adjutants into the auditorium.

  “You should go,” said Lyle, taking his hands from Carrie’s shoulders.

  “What about us, Lyle?”

  “I don’t know about us. I only know that I can’t keep running forever. At least if they decide not to hang me, you can always come visit me in prison.”

  Carrie glanced at the open door, but she didn’t make a move for it.

  Lyle nudged her gently. “Hurry up. They’re waiting for you.”

  Carrie nodded. She leaned in and stood on her tiptoes to kiss Lyle on the cheek. “My love for you, Lyle—it’s very irregular, I know.” She laughed. “But in the words of Miss Colthurst, ‘What is regular in a world that’s spinning off its axis?’”

  Sister Lydia had chosen “Roses” as the theme for the first service to be held in her newly constructed (or rather, very nearly constructed) temple. Roses had always played a big part in her ministry. There were many photographs in the rotogravure pages of the country’s Sunday editions of the smiling evangelist, dressed in her simple white muslin “nurse’s uniform,” a dark serge cape draped over her shoulders, stepping from trains while holding large bouquets of long-stemmed roses, which had just been placed in the crook of her arm by local welcoming committees.

  The auditorium was filled with roses. They were spread around the stage as if it had been besieged by a hundred wedding-ceremony flower girls dropping petals and stems wherever their little fingers sought to release them.

  The dress rehearsal went well. There were only a couple of minor problems, both having to do with lights that did not come on when they were supposed to, as if there were still shorts in the electric circuits that needed to be addressed.

  While the orchestra played a piece especially written for the celebration, the ushers took their places at the top and bottom of the three steeply raked aisles and along the walls of the mezzanine and balcony. Each of the twenty-five women wore crimson sashes appropriate for the rose theme of the day. Once they’d found their spots, a dozen male volunteers wearing their best Sunday suits filed in and took seats upon a riser along the upstage wall. These men represented the pastors of Zenith’s various religious denominations, who had promised to attend to show their support for the launch of their colleague’s permanent ministry.

  The choir entered next, all twenty women mantled in deep burgundy velveteen robes. Once inside the choir box, each went to kneel before her chair. It was through this expression of reverent genuflection that the choir members acknowledged the arrival of Sister Lydia, who came gusting down the center aisle, her cape flapping behind her. As she mounted the stage and crossed to her podium upon a path of broken roses, the orchestra played “Sweet Hour of Prayer.”

  Sister Lydia knelt next to the podium and waited for the orchestra to finish. When she finally stood up, the choir stood up along with her, and under Vivian Colthurst’s direction, they sang a brand-new song in the hymnological canon (written just the year before), but one well suited for Sister Lydia’s purpose:

  Jesus, Rose of Sharon, bloom within my heart;

  Beauties of Thy truth and holiness impart,

  That where’er I go my life may shed abroad

  Fragrance of the knowledge of the love of God.

  When the song was finished, Sister Lydia addressed the four thousand empty seats in front of her, pretending that each was occupied by someone eager to hear her words of happy salutation. “A warm welcome to each and every one of you here today. May God’s grace live within your heart and His love anoint your abiding spirit.”

  Will Holborne had been to see Minerva Quintane twice before. The first trip was made early in his college career when he motored out from Zenith with Jerry and Tom and Pat, each of the four woefully under-versed in the ways of love—even the kind of love that is obtained for a sawbuck (or a shiny Indian Head eagle if one wishes to impress). It was a longstanding rite of passage for the Winnemac Aggie to pay at least one visit to Minerva and her “girls” at some point during his four years at the A&M. Aggies mounted the stairs of Miss Minerva’s storied gingerbread Victorian on the outskirts of town as boys, and, it was said, descended those same stairs fifteen to twenty minutes later as men.

  The second time Will went to see Minerva he was alone. She didn’t remember him from the time before (“Far too many of you panting-mouthed puppies for poor Miss Minerva to keep track of”) but got to know him over ersatz Brandy Daisies in her front piano parlor, which was where she preferred to conduct all her interviews—those little booze-lubricated tête-à-têtes that helped the madam pick just the right girl for every taste. Will, as Minerva quickly discovered, liked big-boned, flaxen-haired Swedish farm girls, of which Minerva had at least two in residence. (Strong, big-boned farm girls, Minerva confided, also came in handy around the place on Monday chore days.)

  Today, Will Holborne was making his third visit. This time Minerva did remember him. She recalled that he liked girls with an ethnic heritage similar to his own. But today Will didn’t want Katrin or Helfrida. He had a very different type in mind.

  “Do you have any girls staying here that maybe don’t seem to have much use for men?”

  “Don’t have much use for men?” Minerva clucked like an old hen. “That’s like asking do I keep any dairy cows out in the barn that don’t give milk. What a silly question!”

  Will’s serious expression remained fixed. It told Minerva that he didn’t think the question silly at all.

  Minerva stopped smiling. She chewed her lower lip for a moment. “Do you happen to know a girl who’s that way? Did she break your heart, slugger?”

  Will didn’t answer right away. He took a drink first. “She didn’t break my heart,” he finally disclosed. “But she was bad news.”

  Minerva nodded, slowly comprehending. “Sounds to me like it was one particular man she didn’t have much use for.”

  Will shook his head. “No, Miss Quintane. It was men in general. There are girls like that. You must know a few. I knew a man who was like that, but the other way around.”

  “And if I find you a girl like that, what are you going to do, Will?”

  “I’ll make her do what nature intended. Whether she likes it or not.”

  Minerva laughed. “But of course she wouldn’t like it—wouldn’t like it at all, would she? Will, honey, I don’t think you have any business punishing any girl—mine or any other—for what some other girl did to you. There is no amount of money that can get me to arrange something like that.”

  Then Minerva grinned enigmatically.

  “But maybe there is a way I can be of service. But only if you promise to be a good boy and play by the rules. Rose. She has a special gift. She can pretend to be anybody you like.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “She’s quite pretty. She is a little Rubenesque.”

  “I don’t know what that word means.”

  “She’s ample, darling. She’s well-rounded, in the physical sense.”

  “That’s good. I like that. That works.”

  Minerva set her glass down and rose from her chair. “You intrigue me, Mr. Holborne. You’re quite a closed book. But then, what man isn’t?”

  Sister Lydia now spread her arms out to the sides and lifted her eyes to the stained-glass skylights in the dome above her. “I thank You, my loving God, for Your divine presence in the lives of
all Your children who’ve gathered here today. So very grateful are we for the wondrous blessings You’ve bestowed upon us.”

  Sister Lydia lowered her arms and re-engaged her imagined audience with a look of fevered passion. She stepped to the side of the rose-covered pulpit and sniffed. “Do you smell it, brothers and sisters? Do you smell that sweet attar of roses in the air? Is there any flower more fragrant? Any flower more delicate in its construction? What is the rose but the embodiment of beauty upon this earth?”

  Sister Lydia held out a rose as if she were admiring herself in a hand mirror. “But a thing so beautiful, so ambrosially fragrant can only be appreciated in contrast to those things which cannot be thought beautiful or fragrant or caressing of the human spirit. My children, the rose has thorns for a very good reason. As we embrace the Rose of Sharon that is our loving, merciful Jesus Christ, we must realize that faith is a thing to be earned through triumph over adversity, through the endurance of all the pain of life’s trials and tribulations. It is a gift, yea, it is a gift, brothers and sisters, of most divine purpose, but we must make the journey that will place us in the garden to receive it. God helps us in our struggles by setting our sights upon the garden, upon the rose that dwells within. There are thorns along that path, children, nettles and briars, and spines and needles of the thirsty desert, but we persevere for the love and grace that waits for us at journey’s end.

  “Our blood is red for a reason, brothers and sisters. It is red to match the blood of Christ in his sufferings upon the Golgotha cross, and it is red to match the exquisite color of that Rose of Sharon which is the floral incarnation of our dear and loving Lord.”

  Now the choir members rose to their feet and sang out:

  Just as I am—without one plea,

  But that Thy blood was shed for me,

  And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,

  O Lamb of God, I come.

  I come.

  ___________

  Rose looked nothing like Ruth, but Will drew the similarity in his mind’s eye.

  And Rose was good. She was very good.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked unsmilingly. “Men aren’t allowed in this room.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” said Will, closing the door behind him.

  The two stood for a moment, staring at one another in silence. Then Will began his advance. Each step forward elicited a corresponding step of retreat from Rose, until she was halted by the wall behind her. With no place else for her to go, Will stood before her, his muscular arms hanging at his sides like slaughterhouse slabs of beef, the veins of his thick and corded neck prominent and pulsing. He was breathing deeply, perspiring heavily at the temples. He was regarding Rose with menacing contempt—the jungle predator taking the measure of his cornered prey.

  Rose responded. She demanded that he leave at once, hissing the words at him with requisite venom. She was playing the game—just as Minerva had instructed her—but it was all she could do to tamp down the genuine fear she was feeling at this moment—a fear which, left unchecked, could only undermine her performance.

  Yet there was no performance so far as Will was concerned. What Will saw standing in defiance before him was a woman who could very well have been Ruth—a woman who could have gotten along quite well without Will, without any man for that matter.

  And how does man subdue, subjugate, subordinate woman if woman is going to muck up the works with all this ridiculous ramping and resisting?

  Will would see to it that at least this one woman knew her role, knew her place and did not depart from it.

  No matter what it took.

  ___________

  The rehearsal ended after more stirring words from Sister Lydia, performances from several singers—a trio of young men in A.E.F. uniforms who sang “Soldiers of Christ, Arise,” a quartet of older women from the choir who sang softly and tenderly the old hymn “Softly and Tenderly,” two eight-year-old twin girls in ribbons and pigtails who earnestly belted out “The Church in the Wildwood,” with one of the two mostly singing the lyrics and the other mostly doing the “come, come, come”s. Finally, a stout Negro woman from the largest of the city’s A.M.E. churches walked out on the stage to astonished gasps from the ushers (who hadn’t been apprised of her participation), half of whom were touched by her willingness to contribute her beautiful voice to the day’s celebration and half of whom either didn’t know or had forgotten the fact that Sister Lydia was fond of Negroes and hoped to make her tabernacle services as racially integrated as her tent revivals had been.

  The woman sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” and three of We Five wept: Molly, who was reminded each time Sister Lydia spoke the words “our Heavenly Father” that the fate of her own earthly father still remained in question; Carrie, who deeply missed her late mother, herself a woman of strong religious faith; and Ruth, who recalled that this very song was sung by a member of her aunt and uncle’s own racially integrated church at a memorial service for the woman’s nephew who was lynched by members of the Indiana Klan.

  It wasn’t the clean uppercut which brought Will down, or even the not-so-clean-but-powerfully-delivered left hook. It was the liver punch. It left Will on his knees, cradling his gut in agony, as if all of his insides had been violently rearranged. He was left there on the floor by Big Jim, the Negro ex-boxer whom Minerva employed for the purpose of rescuing her girls from the violent drunks, from the all-around women-haters, from the odd ducks like Will Holborne who were either unwilling or unable to take revenge upon the true objects of their wrathful discontent but must seek a paid surrogate to abuse in their stead.

  And Rose Sowell was much abused. In the time it took Big Jim to hear her cry for help and then race up the stairs to her room (with Minerva following close behind), Will had taken the opportunity to clabber up the girl’s painted face with his pummeling fist and to change the hue of various parts of her pink chubby flesh to red and black and a species of blue-green not often seen imprinted upon human epidermis.

  Under his threat of tossing Will down the stairs, Big Jim kept Will on ice until the cops arrived—specifically the two cops with whom Minerva had a special relationship. (They were both on the take.)

  “I’m afraid that things got just a little out of hand,” said Rose in answer to one of the officers’ questions. Ordinarily this particular officer liked to conduct his interview with one of his hands roving absently about the female victim’s smooth, conveniently exposed thighs, but for this interview, in deference to the severity of Rose’s injuries, he kept his paws to himself.

  “I worried that things might go in this direction,” said Minerva, tossing a regretful look at Will, who was now sitting handcuffed and wild-eyed upon Rose’s quilted vanity chair in the corner of the room.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rose painfully groaned.

  “Oh, I really should have. Here, darling. Take another aspirin.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  London, England, October 1940

  “Is the professor sick?” asked Molly, sawing a piece of her stewed steak.

  “Not sick, really,” replied Bella. “Just a little knocked up.” Bella, playing to the hilt the role of hostess to her six impromptu dinner guests, passed a serving plate of currant rolls to Maggie, who was seated next to her. “I barbitoned him, you see. The poor thing hasn’t slept for the last two nights, so I thought I’d give him a few good winks before the sirens go off again.”

  Ruth spooned up more new potatoes for her plate. “You take very good care of your new husband. You’re taking good care of us, as well. Bella, you’ve become quite the mother hen in your premature old age.”

  Bella laughed. “I get lots of help. Mrs. Hood from next door cooked most of this feast. I wanted to give all of you one thumping good meal before you head off to points unknown. Of course they’re known to you, but I’d rather you not tell me in case the police drop by and start asking questions. I can certainly lie if I have to, but it’s so muc
h nicer if I don’t have to.”

  Jane cocked her head, listening. “He’s snoring.”

  “I’m so glad,” replied Bella. “My poor sweet Reggie. He’s thinking about taking a leave of absence from the college. Since the physics lab copped it last month, he’s had to teach out of the gardener’s potting shed. Not that he’s got that many students these days—so many have dropped out to enlist—but he says it’s still hard to do anything on the two or three hours of sleep he gets at night and with groundskeepers and gardeners popping in and out during his lectures and rattling pots.”

  Carrie reached across the table and touched the hand of her friend and former next-door neighbour. “Considering what the professor’s been going through, you’re both very kind to let us stay here tonight.”

  “You’re most welcome. But I seriously doubt you’ll get to spend the whole night here. Since there isn’t room for all of us in the shelter out back, I’m afraid that once that siren starts screaming, I’ll have to send the whole lot of you off to the tube station.” Bella smiled. “Although…there have been some interesting rumours flying about lately—that the Nazis are deliberately avoiding this neighbourhood on Hitler’s special instructions. They say he adores Du Cane Court and wants to use that whole block to house his SS officers after the inva—”

  The words of Bella’s explanation trailed off because Carrie had turned away from her in the middle of them. Bella bit her lip.

  “I’m so sorry, love. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Carrie spoke without looking at Bella. “Or maybe you just thought the incendiary that ended my mother’s life was a Nazi mistake.”

  “That isn’t what I—all I’m saying is that some of our neighbours here in Elmfield Road do believe this, and so they don’t bother to take shelter. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Carrie nodded. She turned back to her friend and said, softening, “I know you meant no harm.” She tried to smile. “Maybe it isn’t Art Deco Hitler likes. Maybe it’s all those music hall singers and dancers who live there. Sometimes I walk along the High Road and I can hear them carrying on inside. I know what it’s like to lose oneself in music—to forget there’s even a war going on. To forget everything that eats you up from the inside.”