Decatur (11 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN
Storm Clouds

The lunch rush on Saturdays at the Surrey was always lighter than the weekdays and pretty much petered out by one. There would be clusters of mothers and daughters out shopping at Carson Pirie Scott’s department store and the cute little boutique that Marilyn never allowed herself to go into, Three Blind Mice. The guys at the Bachman’s men’s store would be in along with the optometrist who kept Saturday hours and an assortment of farm families in for a city day in Decatur. The Saturday crowd was actually harder to wait on than the regulars because they didn’t know to order Amanda’s specials and would sometimes stray off into asking for things that would just make Walt curse, like poached eggs on toast for an upset stomach. They didn’t tip as much, either, as the regulars who knew that if they scratched Mona, Betty’s and Marilyn’s backs they would scratch theirs with extra butter pats, the freshest pot of coffee, and the biggest favor of all, putting aside thick slices of the day’s special pie including the always sold out banana and coconut cream for the very best customers. So when two p.m. came “the girls” were glad to hustle through the table wiping and ketchup marrying to get the Surrey closed as no dinner was served on Saturday nights, and enjoy their one-and-a-half days off.

Marilyn stepped out into what was left of the afternoon just after two-thirty. You could smell the ozone in the air as a big thunder cloud piled up like a puffy black monument in the prairie sky. The downtown streets weren’t busy, what with the movie matinee at the old Lincoln Theater already going on and most of the shoppers clearing out before what looked like a doozey of a spring storm came on. She hadn’t worn a raincoat or brought an umbrella as the morning had been warm and bright. Maybe she’d make it home in time, she thought. She hoped so. Rowley hated thunderstorms and would shake uncontrollably until they would pass. Sitting on the sofa with Marilyn was the best therapy for storms, better even than hiding under the bed.

She was just past the twin mansions when the first fat drops began to fall and a low menacing rumble came in from the east where the thundercloud now towered. A wind kicked up, spinning a whirlwind of grit, leaves, and torn flower petals down the street. Marilyn bit her lip out as another drop hit her chest. The light was turning greenish yellow and a ragged slash of lightning stabbed the sky. There were the porticos on the mansions, she could turn back and wait under there to stay out of the rain until the storm passed but then Rowley would be left at home alone. He would be shivering by now. Maybe she should just run for it. That’s when the guy on the bicycle named Gar she had met by the Stephen Decatur statue appeared. He came up over the curb of the street onto the weedy little grass patch before the sidewalk and leapt off.

“It’s gonna pour here in a minute, Marilyn,” Gar said, as a drop fell on the bridge of his nose and dripped down the side. He wiped it away unconcerned. “Remember me? I threw the ball to your dog.” Another growl of thunder and the smell of ozone sharpened in the air. Of course she remembered him: the sun-streaked hair, the big chest, the rope tied around the slim waist.

“I know. Rowley hates storms,” said Marilyn, feeling an odd jolt of anxiety. The storm was putting her nerves on edge.

“Come on then, let’s get you home.” Gar gestured to the bike.
This was good, so much better than the night before.

“
I can’t take your bike. I haven’t ridden a bike in years. What about you?” Another couple of drops fell and a flash of lightning lit up the darkening sky.

“Get on, I’ll keep up.” Gar rolled the bike next to Marilyn, holding it for her like she was a child. Marilyn closed her eyes for second and pictured Rowley cowering in his cardboard box of a bed. If she couldn’t give her dog much more than a meager home at least she could be there for him
.
She hiked up her waitress uniform skirt so she could swing her leg over the supporting bar for the seat and got on, very aware of the stranger’s hand on the vinyl seat steadying her. The bike was too tall for her and she barely made it.

“Let’s go,” Gar said and pushed the bike over the patch of grass, holding onto it they went over the curb with a thud. Marilyn, with a look back at the murderous looking thunder cloud, began to peddle, trying to outrun the storm. Gar felt his heart pounding as he held on to the seat of Father’s Troy’s bike with another couple of big splashy rain drops falling.
The source. So close now and needing him
. The muscles in his body were flowing in pure motion as he began to run, still holding easily onto the back of Father Troy’s bicycle as Marilyn peddled. There was no letting go now, he thought.

The rain drops began to fall with more vehemence but it was still holding off some. It began to stain the front of Marilyn’s bosom but she was too busy to notice, all of her attention on steering the bike and keeping her balance. It had been years, since she was a girl, that she had been on one and she was glad Gar was keeping up and able to maintain that steadying hand on the back of the bicycle. Another clap of thunder and the lightning streaked quicker behind it. New masses of dark clouds were moving across the sky to join the thunderous storm mountain looming behind them in the east. She stole another look back, thinking for no reason at all when she saw Gar’s face, wet with rain but ginning widely as he ran, of Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar salt when she looked back to Sodom. Marilyn shook her head, her hair damp and curling from the rain drops now beginning to fall faster
.
She had to get to Rowley. Only another block
.

Gar grinned at Marilyn when she looked over her shoulder at the storm and him running and holding onto her at the same time. Her eyes so big, dark, and sleepy, he could crawl inside them, he thought, and be infinitely happy. He wanted to howl at the storm to grow louder, stronger, let it pour and whip the trees to broken heaps. So that lightning would strike the roofs of the crummy little houses in Marilyn’s neighborhood and light them afire and smash their crumbling chimneys. Then the natural world would mirror his own fierceness and Marilyn would be forced to take shelter in him.

A giant crack and shriek of wind as the lightning flashed and the heavens opened up. Marilyn’s rayon uniform was soaked in an instant, clinging to every curve of her body, and her hair fell down in wet waves around her face as she braked with her feet in front of her clapboard duplex. Gar held the bike for her, wet to the skin, and she nearly fell as she tried to get down from the bike too tall for her and with the stupid rod that she had to swing her leg over, bound in her wet uniform skirt. The big stranger reached for her as the bike began to topple over and lifted her off like he might have lifted a sack of groceries. The bike fell beneath her onto the slope of wet weedy grass that led up from the sidewalk to her house. She was pressed into his muscular chest, his arms holding her easily on the big plain of his body.

It was only for a second. Just a moment, maybe even less than that. A grain of sand in the hourglass. The storm raging around them, but the electricity that jolted through both of their bodies was greater than the lightning flashing overhead. Gar nearly fell himself when he felt it, there, it was there, the invisible but throbbing web of her essence wrapped around and through her. Then she pushed away from him with a startled wary look on her face and dashed up the porch steps.

“You can wait here on the porch if you want. Rowley needs me,” she shouted over the thunder and rain. Inside she was burning hot as if she had just touched the electric ring on her stove turned high and she dug for her keys like her life depended on it.

Gar took a deep breath and before he knew it he had bounded onto the first doorstep.
Hold on
, he told himself,
he could take her now but then it would be over, and he wasn’t ready yet, it wasn’t perfect yet, he just wanted to keep her safe and protected for a little longer. What was the harm?

“I should ask you in but I don’t know you.” Her thoughts came out of her mouth without her meaning to voice them. “It’s crazy, a crazy storm, I mean.” She had gotten her house keys out of her shoulder bag and was unlocking the door. Rowley whined and barked from upstairs. It was like someone slapping her. What was she thinking? She didn’t know this guy at all.

Gar stepped back down when she opened the door. He smiled, forcing himself to be relaxed. “No you don’t. And it would be crazy. I don’t mind the rain, Marilyn. I got to get going anyway. But maybe you would.”

The rain seemed to slacken as Gar went over to pick up Father Troy’s bike. Marilyn hesitated in the doorway, torn between Rowley’s whines and wanting to thank the stranger for helping her home. “Would what?” she asked, her voice still loud in her own ears to compete with the storm.

“Want to get to know me. How about a walk and an ice cream cone tomorrow? With Rowley of course. I’ll come by at two, if you’re here on the steps we’ll go.” Without another word Gar got on the bike and, sucking deep calming breaths between his teeth while he forced himself to casually wave, as he bicycled away. He would get it right this time.

CHAPTER TWENTY
Father Troy’s Project

Tooley, the lone black agent in the Central Illinois district of the bureau, was assigned to the phone for the tip line for the Carnie Drug Murder case over the weekend. He came in Saturday morning with his crossword puzzle torn out from the Chicago Tribune and settled down to wait. At four he figured he could switch the answering machine on and head home for some yard work. Taking his thick black-rimmed glasses from their case he settled them on his nose and set to work on the puzzle. It amused him to work the puzzles mostly because it confounded white people that Alfred Tooley could do them, and so quickly, in ink. He was working on three across, a four-letter word, for which the clue was “arid”, which was already a four-letter word. The phone rang as the answer came to him, “sere”. He was scribbling it in as he picked up the receiver with his right hand. He was a lefty and it damn near KO’d his application to the feds but for once his skin color hadn’t been the obvious culprit and he had made it past; what with his IQ test and military service, there just wasn’t any way to disqualify him.

“Is this the tips line for that triple murder case?” The voice on the other end was adult, female and white.

“Yes it is ma’am.” Tooley pulled his notebook out and noted the time of the call. Noon-ish. Maybe she was on a lunch break.

“Who am I talking to?” The voice was a little suspicious sounding now. She must have figured out he was black from the deep molasses tones that made him the prized church soloist at Springfield’s First Zion Baptist, either that or she could see through telephone lines.

“FBI agent Tooley,” he said softly but in an even toned way.

“FBI? Really?” The voice now had a tremor of excitement. FBI did that to people.

“Could I get your name, please?” he asked.

“I thought this could be anonymous.” The voice had a sharpness to it. She might hang up.

“Sure it can be anonymous,” Tooley hastened to reassure the woman, picturing how Agent House would handle the news of a botched tips call if she aborted, “What do you want to report?”

“Those carnies were working at the St. Patrick’s School Carnival,” Mrs. Cleary said, savoring the moment. She was standing at the back of the dry-cleaning store using the wall-mounted phone next to the screen door. The big machine which soaked the clothes in perc, the chemical treatment they used, was its usual noisy self in the background so she was sure her husband at the counter couldn’t hear a word of her conversation.

“Yes.” Tooley’s tone was neutral. If this was all the tip was he might as well get back to his puzzle.

“Well there’s someone else you should know about.” Mrs. Cleary wasn’t going to breathe a word of her daughter’s involvement with the carnies. It was no-one else’s business, but Father Troy’s parish guest now that bore looking into. “Father Troy, one of the priests in the parish, has a way of getting involved in projects that are a little off the beaten track, for a priest especially.”

“What do you mean?” asked Agent Tooley, suddenly very alert.

“Why don’t you investigate Father Troy’s latest project? He worked the carnival too,” she asked, enjoying the conversation. “Suzanne”, she heard her husband call her name in his whiney way
. What now
? Still, if he caught her talking about the carnival it would be a mess. “I have to go.” She hung up the phone quickly, annoyed that she couldn’t go into it more. They’d have to figure it out by themselves. She would just have to sit back and watch. It might prove fun. Life at Cleary’s Dry-Cleaning could use a little dollop of excitement. Too much stain remover for too long, she thought as she turned towards the counter.

Father Troy always said the five o’clock Saturday mass, where he would play guitar. It was the closest thing he could get to a folk mass and for a group of St. Patrick’s parishioners, mostly teenagers and young marrieds, it was their kind of worship. Father Troy had been lobbying for months to expand it, add congas and even an electric guitar or bass with an amp but had gotten nowhere. A real folk mass with non-traditional hymns and big handmade banners with white doves on them, that’s what he had in mind, and now for the first time it looked like there might be a chance of introducing real change here at St. Pat’s, all because of Bishop Quincy. He didn’t want to think about the role the Monsignor played in that, as it was just too awful to contemplate that God made opportunities with catastrophe.

Father Troy stood outside on the stone steps of St. Pat’s in the post storm air, the late afternoon grey and windy with the dampness accentuating the smell of the processed soybeans. Father Troy had worn his favorite chasuble over his plain vestment that Saturday guitar mass, coarse green linen, with the matching stole that had a border of white lilies appliquéd on it. His hair was below his ears and he wore a big wooden cross and sandals. He felt like a man in full. Gar had slipped into a back pew at the last second before Father Troy had waved the missal at the congregation, saying proudly “This is our faith” as he began the mass. Now the hipster members of the parish along with the more ordinary ones that just liked sleeping in on Sunday mornings flowed out of the pews and down the steps as Father Troy nodded and smiled, deciding he would spill his game plan to the youth group that was scheduled to meet next week and get a Peace banner committee going. He imagined Gar would like that, maybe even help, and Father Weston would just have to go along. He was practically beaming as he saw in his mind’s eye the big doves dragging the word PEACE across a yellow felt background when a black man in a suit and tie came up to him. A black man in his mass, Father Troy was thrilled. That proves it, he thought, the new Church was winning out.

“Could I have a private word with you, Father?” Agent Tooley asked.

“Absolutely!” Father Troy eyes were sparkling behind his glasses. “You’re new, welcome, welcome to St. Patrick’s.”

Agent Tooley nodded and pulled his badge out of his suit coat with a tinge of regret. The young priest looked so happy to have him there. The priest’s face fell and he recoiled as he saw the big silver-and-bronze badge in Tooley’s leather holder.

Father Troy’s stomach felt like it had just slipped and fallen down three flights of stairs when he saw the badge. Agent Tooley, FBI. Father Weston’s warnings washed over him in a cold sweat. This wasn’t Father Troy’s kind of thing at all. He felt he might start shaking right here on the stone steps of the church
. Pull it together Mark
, he told himself,
Nothing’s wrong. Just be yourself. Gar needs you.
Those words steadied him.
Gar
. He pictured the wide forehead, strong nose, expressive eyes. He wouldn’t let anything hurt Gar.

“Sure, Agent Tooley. Do you want to go to the parish house?” asked Father Troy. “I guess this is about those carnies.” Father Troy was walking briskly towards the parish house, not wanting anyone to overhear them and make it worse. “We’ve talked to your colleagues already. I suppose you know that.”
Don’t volunteer too much,
a voice in his head cautioned him.

“Actually, this is about a project of yours, Father Troy.” Agent Tooley could feel the priest’s nervousness and felt sorry for him. The mass hadn’t been bad and at least the music had some gumption. The priest was treating him okay, too, Agent Tooley noticed, none of the typical bullshit he was used to getting when trying to do his job.

Father Troy’s hand just held onto the door handle for a moment
. A project of his
.
This couldn’t be happening
. “What?” he fluttered his eyes behind the wire rims, hoping to look innocent.

“We got us a tip that you have taken in a Vietnam vet, Father, maybe he’s homeless? It seems that he was helping the carnies that day. I just want to talk to him.” Agent Tooley spoke as gently as he could as Father Troy stood with his hand on the knob seemingly unable or unwilling to open the door to the parish house. “You going to let me in?”

Father Troy turned the knob and opened the door but stopped on the threshold and turned around to the black FBI agent. The agent was a little thick in the middle and wore his hair cropped very close to his head, and the whites in his dark eyes seemed to shine like headlights into Father Troy’s brain. “Listen,” Father Troy said, trying hard to connect with this man so that he would understand, “This is a fragile situation. Do you know how damaged these vets can be? No-one wants them. Please, please be gentle. His nickname is Gar, I don’t know his real name. Not that it matters to God, Agent Tooley.”

“I understand,” said Tooley, so softly Father Troy had to strain to hear him.

Gar had already spotted the man in the suit and figured he might be someone official so he wasn’t surprised when Father Troy called him in a shaking voice to come down from his attic room where Gar had been lying on his bed remembering how Marilyn really felt. He zipped back up his khakis and came down the steps, leaving his shirt out to hide the bulge in his pants.

“Hey bro,” he called out in greeting and nodded at Father Troy as if to say, be cool.

“We can sit in here,” Father Troy said, gesturing to the living room, wondering if he shouldn’t have chosen the parish office instead.
Where was Father Weston? He would know what to do with an FBI agent. Hadn’t he thrown one out of church on Friday for interrupting the sacrament of confession?

Gar jumped on the Monsignor’s recliner and put up his feet like he was watching a ball game on the TV. It was clear to Father Troy he didn’t have clue as to what was going on. Angels be kind, he thought. The FBI agent flashed his badge at Gar and softly said his name was Agent Tooley. Gar nodded sagely and the agent pulled up a chair and sat backwards in it next to him, as if they might be discussing the score. Father Troy’s project was over six-two and probably weighed one ninety soaking wet, and all of it looked to be pure muscle.

“So you were working the school carnival to help out the parish and you must have met the Big Top Entertainment carnies.” Tooley said in a relaxed way.

“I like to do what I can,” Gar said.

“You know they’ve been murdered.” Tooley looked somber but still very friendly.

“Everyone knows that!” Father Troy broke in sounding a little shrill.

“Fair enough, Father Troy. It’s standard to interview people who’ve met the victims. How’d you happen to come to Decatur?” Tooley asked.

“Hopping trains. Can’t seem to settle down. Ever since well you know, I bet, I can always tell a brother, some things won’t let go. But I never met those carnies before and never wanted to see them after. Just not my kind of people, just not tested.” Gar said slowly blinking his eyes like trying to keep some dark memory at bay.

Tooley heard the dim sound of choppers then and the simple living room of the rectory pulsed with flares of red.
He knew alright
. “Yeah, bro. When did you do the duffle bag drag and eat your bowl of cornflakes before going back to the land of the big PX?” Tooley asked, looking into the gold-flecked eyes of Gar, his own memory bank flashing.

“How would he know what that means?” Father Troy interjected anxiously.

“He knows, am I right? I got my papers out in ’67,” Tooley said, smiling reassuringly at Gar.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Gar said, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes.

“Deep shit?” asked Tooley, probing ever so gently.

“Deep serious shit, you know, bro?” Gar smiled a little but it was a broken smile and it tore at Father Troy’s heart.

“Yeah. 82
^nd
Airborne. It was one big BOHICA. Bend over here it comes again,” he translated in a hurried whisper for Father Troy who was pacing, plucking at the cross around his neck.

Gar closed his eyes and shook his head as pain lined his face as he repeated in a hoarse whisper, “One big BOHICA.”

Agent Tooley fought the memory of himself painted blue in a hut up river after his egg beater had crashed and he had to get the cherry that survived through the elephant grass alone. Even after six years he could feel it as real as if it was happening right now.
The way that kid’s face looked when the bouncing betty popped him just two damn miles from base
. Tooley’s black hand reached out and grabbed Gar’s tan one. They sat there in silence as tears slipped down both their cheeks.

Gar could feel the man’s anguish that was imprinted so deep that it would take multiple spiritual journeys to overcome its effect on the man’s core being and it just made him hungry for the source. He kept a grip on the man’s hand as he thought he might have gotten the faintest whiff of salt water, cherry tobacco and peat moss emanating from Agent Tooley’s pores. He couldn’t feel Tooley’s essence just by touching him, because people like Marilyn were the exception, but he knew it was there. Each soul was unique and Gar had a memory book of people’s essences but most of them were tinged with blood, broken bones, and burst organs that made his book not as beautiful as he would have liked. No, only someone like the source would be exquisite. Still, there was the split second before the light was finally extinguished in the eyes where you could, if you were lucky and quick, pull out the thing that survived death, the essence. This is what kept Gar going as he sought out the source.

Father Troy knelt down next to them and began to lead them in the “Our Father” in what he thought was the most beautiful rendition of the prayer he had ever heard. “Amen,” they said at the end, and Agent Tooley was on his feet.

“You keep up the good work, Father,” Agent Tooley said in a husky voice and then to Gar, “You keep on keeping on. I think I got what I needed.” He crumpled up the notebook page that had noted the tip from the anonymous woman, whoever she was. She hadn’t done her tour and Gar had, and that was more than good enough for Tooley.