Staggerford (13 page)

A
T
7
A. M
. M
ISS
M
C
G
EE
walked to church in the dark, tilting her umbrella into the small, cold rain. On Sundays she was the first to arrive at St. Isidore’s so that she might pray without distraction.

She switched on the light in the vestibule, shook out her umbrella, opened the swinging doors, and walked down the middle aisle toward the small red flame burning in the sanctuary. At the altar of the Blessed Virgin she felt for a book of matches and lit three candles. She dropped thirty cents into the metal box and she said a Hail Mary for the restoration of Miles’s faith.

By the light of the candles she found her accustomed pew and sat down to unpack her purse. She took out her rosary, her 1272-page missal, a leaflet containing the archbishop’s new prayer for religious vocations, and a Kleenex in case she sneezed. Then with her eyes on the red flame over the high altar, she went to her knees.

At seven thirty when Father Finn entered the church and turned on all the lights, Miss McGee picked up her thick missal and opened it to Prayers for the Dead, which with the passing of time had had to serve for more and more
departed souls. She prayed for her parents, who at the time of their deaths were considerably younger than Miss McGee was today; for her brother, taken by the flu of ’19; and for assorted relatives, teachers, schoolmates, colleagues, friends, and students who had passed from this life. “May they rest in peace,” she murmured. “May the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.” She had a pretty good idea who was in Heaven and who was in Purgatory, but she prayed with equal fervor for all of them. She hoped (though she knew better, particularly in the case of certain students) that no one was in Hell.

She turned then to Prayers for Good Health, for Peace, for a Happy Death, and for Seasonable Weather. By the time she finished these, the church was filling with people—their coats smelling of rain—and she went back to her rosary, an instrument that measured the advance of her prayers even when her mind wandered.

Three widows dressed alike in slacks and imitation-leather coats—the Pelletier sisters—took their places in the pew ahead of Miss McGee. She gave each of them a nod and half a smile. Bartholomew Druppers, mayor of Staggerford, scurried up the side aisle toward the sacristy; she noticed the bald spot on the back of his head. A little girl with a dime left her parents’ pew and lit a candle at the altar of St. Joseph; she stood for a moment looking up at the grandfatherly plaster face, then hitched up her leotards and returned to her place. Two high-spirited servers, forgetting to genuflect, readied the altar for mass and began a fencing duel with their candle lighters before they had quite disappeared into the sacristy. Then they came out again, allowed by Mayor Druppers, who wore the same black so we wore to meetings of the school board and the city Council and by Father Finn, who wore dazzling white robes and all Saints’ Day.

And Miles slipped into the pew beside Miss McGee.

She thought for a moment that she would topple over. She steadied herself by gripping his arm. “Your faith has been restored,” she said aloud, causing the Pelletier sisters to turn around.

He smiled at her and shrugged.

Father Finn, beginning the mass, said, “Let us call to mind our sins.”

Miles thought of his subconscious as a large and careless cleaning woman, a clumsy Amazon with calluses on her hands and tennis shoes on her feet who could not be held back from rearranging, as he slept, the furniture in his head. She was forever airing out the closets of his memory and failing to put all the heirlooms and junk back where they belonged. How else could he explain his disjointed dreams, his disorientation upon waking? Last night had been such a night. He had gone to sleep, dizzily, thinking about Enrico Fermi and the atomic bomb, he had dreamed for what seemed like hours about his high-school sweetheart, Carla Carpenter, and he had awakened this morning to the knowledge that it was All Saints’ Day.

Holy Days of Obligation were seldom on his mind anymore, and he had not been to mass on All Saints’ Day for at least ten years; yet today he sat up on both elbows in bed in order to get a better look at what the Amazon had left hanging from a hook in his memory: the liturgical calendar that his parents had kept, year after year, on a nail by the kitchen door. “The Feast of All Saints,” it said, in the first square of November.

It was much earlier than his normal time for Sunday rising. He felt a dull screwdriver ache in the left front quadrant of his brain. But trying to assimilate Enrico Fermi and Carla Carpenter and All Saints’ Day had brought him fully awake, and he got up. He dressed and shaved and picked Lyle Kite’s pants out of the bathtub, where he had left them to soak. Mrs. Oppegaard’s vomit was gone, but it had left patches of discoloration across the front of both legs. The seam in the seat was split. He dropped the pants back into the water and went to church.

“Glory to God in the highest,” said Father Finn and the congregation—all except Miss McGee and Miles. Miss McGee said, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.”

Mayor Druppers climbed into the pulpit and made Paul’s letter to the Colossians sound like a city ordinance. “We send thanks to the Father, who has made us worthy to share the lot of the saints in light,” he concluded. Miles looked up at the saints that the dawn was bringing to life in the stained-glass windows: Michael swooping like a falcon toward the earth; Peter flinging out a net; Marus pulling Placidus out of a pond; Isidore, patron of fanners, patron of this parish, resting in his labor, leaning on his plow. Isidore looked bilious. All the saints, for that matter, were sallow this morning, for the dawn was gray and rainy.

After the Gospel (the Beatitudes) and the sermon (the coming expense of winter fuel), everybody but Miles and Miss McGee said, “We believe in one God.” Miss McGee said, “Credo in unum Deum.”

“This is my body,” said Father Finn at the consecration, “this is my blood,” and for an unguarded moment Miles was his former self, believing that what the priest held in his hands had ceased to be bread and wine.

Then it was handshaking time, the silliest innovation of all, in Miss McGee’s opinion. The Pelletier sisters turned around. All three of them had underslung jaws and their coats of imitation leather crackled as they extended their hands. “Peace be with you,” they said.

“Peace be with you,” said Miles.

Miss McGee said, “Pax.”

Communion. While Miss McGee went up to the altar rail, Miles flipped through the pages of her missal. Half of its mass prayers were obsolete, but he knew she would rather be wrong half the time than give up these 1272 double-column pages of litanies, vigils, introits, and collects, with the Latin and English printed side by side—the frozen Latin looking as archaic and attractive on the page as it used to sound on the lips of the priest when he would turn his back on the congregation and raise his hands and his voice and implore the bronze figure over the high altar to come down again from the cross. Priests didn’t do that anymore. Now they faced the congregation and celebrated mass on what Miss McGee called the high picnic table.

On the way out of church Miles suggested breakfast at the Hub.

“But it’s so expensive,” said Miss McGee. “We can have eggs and sausage at home.”

“It’s the Feast of All Saints.”

“But it’s raining.”

“I brought my car.”

The Hub was busy. They sat at the table in the window. Miss McGee, polishing her silverware with a paper napkin, said, “Now tell me, Miles. Are you getting the faith back?”

“I wish you didn’t take such an interest in my spiritual life, Agatha. It’s really not all that interesting.”

“You went to mass. Your faith is being restored.”

“It’s not faith. I simply woke up with the desire to start the day at St. Isidore’s. When I was in grade school, the sisters—and you—marched us to mass every morning and told us that’s what gave meaning to the day. And it did.”

“And it does.”

“No. It did. But it doesn’t.”

“It does for me.”

“Of course. I’m not denying that. But it doesn’t for me. Not anymore. Although for a minute this morning I almost believed the bread was flesh.”

Their waitress was Beverly Bingham. She wore yesterday’s uniform, soiled. Her long hair, unwashed, hung in strings. She gave Miles a quick smile, but she was intimidated by the presence of Miss McGee and her visits to the table were brief, almost furtive.

Miss McGee said, “If you don’t believe, what were you doing in church?”

“It was a whim. I always liked the idea of a feast of all the saints. A great annual dinner party in the sky. A fiesta for everybody who died good.”

Beverly brought pancakes.

“Who is your patron saint?” asked Miss McGee. “I don’t believe I know a St. Miles.”

“There is no St. Miles, but how I wished, in the first
grade, that there were. My name was no end of trouble to my first-grade teacher.”

“Sister Odilia.”

“Yes, Sister Odilia. When she discovered no Miles in the roster of saints, she tried to assign me to St. Leonard because Leonard is my middle name; but while there were three Leonards to choose from, and my friends were enthusiastic about the one whose eyes were gouged out by heathens, I was ashamed of my middle name in those days, and I flatly refused patronage from anybody named Leonard. ‘Very well,’ said Sister Odilia, ‘it will have to be a saint with at least the first three letters of your first name,’ and she offered me St. Miltiades, a Negro pope of the fourth century. I said I didn’t want a black man. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘then it will be St. Mildred.’ Mildred! I had a tantrum and was sent to the cloakroom. Eventually she found me a patron I could live with—St. Mylor, who was famous for his piety and beheaded by his uncle.”

“St. Mylor,” said Miss McGee. “I don’t know him.” She took her missal from her purse and studied the calendar of saints.

“He’s probably been stricken from the rolls,” said Miles. “Everybody obscure was purged a few years ago.”

“Here he is. October first. That’s St. Remigius’s Day. Mylor has been overshadowed by Remigius.”

“Who’s Remigius?”

“In the fourth century St. Remigius converted the king of the Franks.”

“Your calendar is pre-Vatican Two, Agatha, like everything else in that missal of yours. How can you call yourself a Catholic when you haven’t retooled?”

“I was given this missal by the sixth grade of 1938.”

“You haven’t retooled, Agatha. Do you realize that with your litanies and novenas and Prayers at the Foot of the Altar you are no closer to being a Catholic today than I am? We’re both out of step with the church.”

“Anybody who believes that the bread turns to flesh is in step.”

“It was only for a moment I believed it. An unguarded moment.”

“Your faith is coming back.”

As Miles followed Miss McGee out of the restaurant, Beverly rushed up to him and said, “Are you going for a walk again this afternoon?”

He said he wasn’t.

“Oh, please. I have to talk to you.”

“It’s raining.”

“Well, how about driving out to Pike Park. I could meet you there. I’m off at three.”

“I’m afraid by then I’ll be asleep. I was up late.”

“Please, Mr. Pruitt. I have to see you.”

“It’s urgent?”

“Yes. Please.”

“All right. Three o’clock.”

By three o’clock the rain had become a splattering downpour. Miles got into his car and followed Highway 4 west to Pike Park, a clearing on the south bank of the Badbattle carpeted with pine needles and cluttered with picnic tables.

Pike Park was the smallest piece of ground in the National Park System, so small that since Lyle Kite’s death no ranger had been assigned to replace him. The park had been named after the explorer Zebulon Pike, who in 1806 met on this spot with the Sioux Chief Onji and conveyed to him President Jefferson’s warmest greetings. Pike and Onji met to discuss two nuisances, British trappers and drunken Indians. It was a cordial meeting. Pike promised Chief Onji that all British trappers (who couldn’t seem to get it through their heads that England had lost the war) would be driven from the territory. Chief Onji promised Pike that his people would lay off the firewater. Pike went next to Colorado, where he discovered a peak, leaving Onji to deal with greater nuisances to come: American trappers and Chippewa hunters.

Pike Park by day was a wayside rest for weary travelers and by night a refuge for teen-age lovers. Besides picnic tables it contained several stone fireplaces and a pump. At
the entrance to the park there had once been a large rock in which was embedded a bronze plaque commemorating the Pike-Onji meeting, but several years ago somebody rolled the rock down the steep bank and into the river. Near the pump a path led down to a thick stand of willows along the water’s edge—a good spot in the spring for fishing walleyes, and in the fall when the water was low for reading the bronze plaque.

It was ten after three when Miles drove into the park. He saw the Binghams’ black GMC pickup standing next to the pump. He pulled up beside it and almost before he came to a stop Beverly opened the door and got into the front seat with him. He thought at first that she had been crying, but what he took to be tears on her cheeks were raindrops. She kicked off her wet shoes and sat on her feet. She was dressed in yesterday’s clothes—the orange uniform, the worn wool jacket.

“I began to worry that you weren’t coming.” She hooked her wet hair behind her ears, then laid her left arm along the back of the seat and rested a finger on Miles’s right shoulder. “I don’t think I could bear sitting here in the rain waiting for you and then have you not show up. I think I’d die. I’ve gotten so dependent on seeing you every day that if you didn’t show up I don’t know what I’d do. God, you’ve got it hot in here.”

Miles turned off the ignition and, with it, the heater fan. He squirmed uncomfortably. Beverly’s finger weighed heavily on his shoulder.

“Why am I so dependent on seeing you every day? I never used to be like this. I mean I used to just go along living my life, but now if I can’t talk things over with you every day I feel all screwed up.”