Jacobs looked surprised and a tiny bit uneasy. "I suppose I couldn't think how it connected to a Christian lesson. Until Jamie came to see me today, I was thinking of trying it out on Al Knowles. His unfortunate accident?"
We all nodded. The fingers lost in the potato grader.
"He still feels the fingers that aren't there, and says they hurt. Also, he's lost a good deal of his ability to move that hand because of nerve damage. As I said, I've known for years that electricity can help in matters like those. Now it looks like you'll be my guinea pig, Con."
"So having that handy was just a lucky break?" Claire asked. I couldn't see why it mattered, but it seemed to. To her, at least.
Jacobs looked at her reproachfully and said, "Coincidence and lucky break are words people with little faith use to describe the will of God, Claire."
She flushed at that, and looked down at her sneakers. Con, meanwhile, was scribbling on his pad. He held it up. WILL IT HURT?
"I don't think so," Jacobs said. "The current is very low. Minuscule, really. I've tried it on my arm--like a blood-pressure cuff--and felt no more than the tingle you get when your arm or leg has been asleep and is just beginning to wake up. If there is pain, raise your hands and I'll kill the current right away. I'm going to put this thing on now. It will be snug, but not tight. You'll be able to breathe just fine. The buckles are nylon. Can't use metal on a thing like this."
He put the belt around Con's neck. It looked like a bulky winter scarf. Con's eyes were wide and scared, but when Jacobs asked if he was ready, he nodded. I felt Claire's fingers close over mine. They were cold. I thought Jacobs might get to the prayer then, asking for success. In a way, I suppose he did. He bent down so he could look Con directly in the eyes and said, "Expect a miracle."
Con nodded. I saw the cloth around his throat rise and fall as he swallowed hard.
"All right. Here we go."
When Reverend Jacobs slid the switch on top of the control box, I heard a faint humming sound. Con's head jerked. His mouth twitched first at one corner, then at the other. His fingers began to flutter rapidly and his arms jerked.
"Does it hurt?" Jacobs asked. His index finger was hovering over the switch, ready to turn it off. "If it hurts, hold out your hands."
Con shook his head. Then, in a voice that sounded as if it were coming through a mouthful of gravel, he said: "Doesn't . . . hurt. Warm."
Claire and I exchanged a wild glance, a thought as strong as telepathy flowing between us: Did I hear that? She was now squeezing my hand hard enough to hurt, but I didn't care. When we looked back at Jacobs, he was smiling.
"Don't try to talk. Not yet. I'm going to run the belt for two minutes by my watch. Unless it starts to hurt. If that happens, hold out your hands and I'll turn it off at once."
Con didn't hold out his hands, although his fingers continued to move up and down, as if he were playing an invisible piano. His upper lip lifted a few times in an involuntary snarl, and his eyes went through spasms of fluttering. Once, still in that grating, gravelly voice, he said, "I . . . can . . . talk again!"
"Hush!" Jacobs said sternly. His index finger hovered over the switch, ready to kill the current, his eyes on the moving second hand of his watch. After what seemed like an eternity, he pushed the switch and that faint hum died. He unloosed the buckles and pulled the belt over my brother's head. Con's hands went immediately to his neck. The skin there was a little flushed, but I don't think that was from the electric current. It was from the pressure of the belt.
"Now, Con--I want you to say, 'My dog has fleas, they bite his knees.' But if your throat starts to hurt, stop at once."
"My dog has fleas," Con said in his strange grating voice. "They bite his knees." Then: "I have to spit."
"Does your throat hurt?"
"No, just have to spit."
Claire opened the shed door. Con leaned out, cleared his throat (which produced an unpleasantly metallic sound like rusty hinges), and hocked a loogie that to me looked almost as big as a doorknob. He turned back to us, massaging his throat with one hand.
"My dog has fleas." He still didn't sound like the Con I remembered, but the words were clearer now, and more human. Tears rose in his eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. "They bite his knees."
"That's enough for now," Jacobs said. "We'll go in the house, and you'll drink a glass of water. A big one. You must drink a lot of water. Tonight and tomorrow. Until your voice sounds normal again. Will you do that?"
"Yes."
"When you get home, you may tell your mother and father hello. Then I want you to go into your room and get down on your knees and thank God for bringing your voice back. Will you do that?"
Con nodded vehemently. He was crying harder than ever, and he wasn't alone. Claire and I were crying, too. Only Reverend Jacobs was dry-eyed. I think he was too amazed to cry.
Patsy was the only one not surprised. When we went into the house, she squeezed Con's arm and said in a matter-of-fact voice, "That's a good boy."
Morrie hugged my brother and my brother hugged him back hard enough to make the little boy's eyes bug out. Patsy drew a glass of water from the kitchen tap and Con drank all of it. When he thanked her, it was almost in his own voice.
"You're very welcome, Con. Now it's well past Morrie's bedtime, and time for you kids to go home." Leading Morrie to the stairs by the hand, but not turning around, she added: "I think your parents are going to be very happy."
That was the understatement of the century.
*
They were in the living room, watching The Virginian, and still not talking. Even in my joy and excitement, I could feel the freeze between them. Andy and Terry were thumping around upstairs, grousing at each other about something--business as usual, in other words. Mom had an afghan square in her lap, and was bending over to unsnarl the yarn in her basket when Con said, "Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad."
Dad stared at him, mouth open. Mom froze, one hand in the basket and the other holding her needles. She looked up, very slowly. She said, "What--?"
"Hello," Con said again.
She screamed and flew out of her chair, kicking the knitting basket over, and grabbed him the way she sometimes had when we were little, and meant to give one of us a shaking for something we had done wrong. There was no shaking that night. She swept Con into her arms, weeping. I could hear Terry and Andy stampeding down from the second floor to see what was going on.
"Say something else!" she cried. "Say something else so I don't think I just dreamed it!"
"He's not supposed to--" Claire began, but Con interrupted her. Because now he could.
"I love you, Mom," he said. "I love you, Dad."
Dad took Con by the shoulders and looked closely at his throat, but there was now nothing to see; the red mark had faded. "Thank God," he said. "Thank God, Son."
Claire and I looked at each other, and once more the thought didn't need to be spoken: Reverend Jacobs deserved some thanks, too.
We explained about how Con was supposed to use his voice sparingly to start with, and when we told about the water, Andy went out to the kitchen and came back with Dad's oversize joke coffee cup (printed on the side was the Canadian flag and ONE IMPERIAL GALLON OF CAFFEINE), filled with water. While he drank it, Claire and I took turns recounting what had happened, with Con chipping in once or twice, telling about the tingling sensation he'd felt when the belt was turned on. Each time he interrupted, Claire scolded him for talking.
"I don't believe it." Mom said this several times. She couldn't seem to take her eyes off Con. Several times she grabbed him and hugged him, as if she was afraid he might sprout wings, turn into an angel, and fly away.
"If the church didn't pay for his heating oil," Dad said when the tale was finished, "Reverend Jacobs would never have to pay for another gallon."
"We'll think of something," Mom said distractedly. "Right now we're going to celebrate. Terry, fetch the ice cream we were saving for Claire's birthday from the fre
ezer. It will be good for Con's throat. You and Andy put it out on the table. We'll have all of it, so use the big bowls. You don't mind, do you, Claire?"
She shook her head. "This is better than a birthday party."
"I have to go to the bathroom," Connie said. "All that water. Then I'm supposed to pray. Reverend said so. The rest of you stay out while I do it."
He went upstairs. Andy and Terry went into the kitchen to serve out the Neapolitan (which we called van-choc-straw . . . funny how it all comes back). My mother and father subsided into their chairs, staring at the TV without seeing it. I saw Mom grope out with one hand, and saw Dad take it without looking, as if he knew it was there. That made me happy and relieved.
I felt a tug on my own hand. It was Claire. She led me through the kitchen, where Andy and Terry were squabbling over the relative size of the portions, and into the mudroom. Her eyes when she looked at me were wide and bright.
"Did you see him?" she asked. No--demanded.
"Who?"
"Reverend Jacobs, stupid! Did you see him when I asked why he never showed us that electric belt in MYF?"
"Well . . . yeah . . ."
"He said he'd been working on it for a year, but if that was true, he would have showed it off. He shows off everything he makes!"
I remembered how surprised he had looked, as if Claire had caught him out (I had on more than one occasion felt the same expression on my own face when I had been caught out), but . . .
"Are you saying he was lying?"
She nodded vigorously. "Yes! He was! And his wife? She knew it! Do you know what I think? I think he started right after you were there. Maybe he already had the idea--I think he has thousands of ideas for electrical inventions; they must pop around in his head like corn--but he hadn't done anything at all on this one until today."
"Gee, Claire, I don't think--"
She was still holding my hand, and now she gave it a hard and impatient yank, as if I were stuck in the mud and needed help to get free. "Did you see their kitchen table? There was one place still set, with nothing on the plate and nothing in the glass! He skipped his supper so he could keep working. Working like a demon, I'd guess from the look of his hands. They were all red, and there were blisters on two of his fingers."
"He did all that for Con?"
"I don't think so," she said. Her eyes never left mine.
"Claire! Jamie!" Mom called. "Come for ice cream!"
Claire didn't even look toward the kitchen. "Of all the kids in MYF, you're the one he met first, and you're the one he likes the best. He did it for you, Jamie. He did it for you."
Then she went into the kitchen, leaving me to stand by the woodpile, feeling stunned. If Claire had stayed a little longer and I'd had a chance to get over my surprise, I might have told her my own intuition: Reverend Jacobs had been as surprised as we were.
He hadn't expected it to work.
III
The Accident. My Mother's Story. The Terrible Sermon. Goodbye.
On a warm and cloudless midweek day in October of 1965, Patricia Jacobs popped Tag-Along-Morrie into the front seat of the Plymouth Belvedere that had been a wedding present from her parents and set out for the Red & White Market in Gates Falls--"She gone groceryin," the Yankees at that time would have said.
Three miles away, a farmer named George Barton--a lifelong bachelor known in town as Lonesome George--pulled out of his driveway with a potato digger attached to the back of his Ford F-100 pickup. His plan was to drive it a mile or so down Route 9 to his south field. The best speed he could manage with the digger attached was ten miles an hour, so he kept to the soft shoulder, thereby allowing any southbound traffic to pass safely. Lonesome George was considerate of others. He was a fine farmer. He was a good neighbor, a member of the school board, and a deacon of our church. He was also, as he would tell people almost proudly, "a pepileptic." Although, he was quick to add, Dr. Renault had prescribed some pills that controlled the seizures "just about perfect." Maybe so, but he had one behind the wheel of his truck that day.
"Probably shouldn't have been driving at all, except maybe in the fields," Dr. Renault said later, "but how can you ask a man in George's line of work to give up his license? It's not as if he has a wife or any grown kids he can put behind the wheel. Take away his driving ticket, you might as well ask him to put his farm up for sale to the highest bidder."
Not long after Patsy and Morrie set out for the Red & White, Mrs. Adele Parker came down Sirois Hill, a tight and treacherous curve where there had been many wrecks over the years. She was creeping along, and so had time to stop--barely--before striking the woman staggering and weaving up the middle of the highway. The woman had a dripping bundle clasped to her breast with one arm. One arm was all Patsy Jacobs could use, because the other had been torn off at the elbow. Blood was pouring down her face. A piece of her scalp hung beside her shoulder, bloody locks of hair blowing in the mild autumn breeze. Her right eye was on her cheek. All her beauty had been torn away in an instant. It's fragile, beauty.
"Help my baby!" Patsy cried when Mrs. Parker stopped her old Studebaker and got out. Beyond the bloody woman with the dripping bundle, Mrs. Parker could see the Belvedere, on its roof and burning. The stove-in front end of Lonesome George's truck was pushed against it. George himself was slumped over the wheel. Behind his truck, the overturned potato digger was blocking Route 9.
"Help my baby!" Patsy held the bundle out, and when Adele Parker saw what it was--not a baby but a little boy with his face torn off--she covered her eyes and began to scream. When she looked again, Patsy had gone to her knees, as if to pray.
Another pickup truck came around Sirois Hill and almost slammed into the back of Mrs. Parker's Studebaker. It was Fernald DeWitt, who had promised to help George with the digging that day. He jumped from the cab, ran to Mrs. Parker, and looked at the woman kneeling in the road. Then he ran on toward the site of the collision.
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Parker screamed. "Help her! Help this woman!"
Fernald, who had fought with the Marines in the Pacific and seen terrible sights there, did not pause, but he did call back over his shoulder, "She and the kid are gone. George might not be."
Nor was he wrong. Patsy was dead long before the ambulance arrived from Castle Rock, but Lonesome George Barton lived into his eighties. And never got behind the wheel of a motor vehicle again.
You say, "How could you know all that, Jamie Morton? You were only nine years old."
But I do know it.
*
In 1976, when my mother was still a relatively young woman, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I was attending the University of Maine at the time, but took the second semester of my sophomore year off, so I could be with her at the end. Although the Morton children were children no more (Con was all the way over the horizon in Hawaii, doing pulsar research at the Mauna Kea Observatories), we all came home to be with Mom, and to support Dad, who was too heartbroken to be useful; he simply wandered around the house or took long walks in the woods.
Mom wanted to spend her final days at home, she was very clear about that, and we took turns feeding her, giving her her medicine, or just sitting with her. She was little more than a skeleton by then, and on morphine for the pain. Morphine's funny stuff. It has a way of eroding barriers--that famous Yankee reticence--which would otherwise be impregnable. It was my turn to sit with her on a February afternoon a week or so before she died. It was a day of snow flurries and bitter cold, with a north wind that shook the house and screamed beneath the eaves, but the house was warm. Hot, really. My father was in the heating oil business, remember, and after that one scary year in the mid-sixties when he looked bankruptcy in the face, he became not just successful but moderately wealthy.
"Push down my blankets, Terence," my mother said. "Why are there so many? I'm burning up."
"It's Jamie, Mom. Terry's out in the garage with Dad." I turned down the single blanket, exposing a hideously gay pink night
gown that seemed to have nothing inside it. Her hair (all white by the time the cancer struck) had thinned to almost nothing; her lips had fallen away from her teeth, making them look too big, and somehow equine; only her eyes were the same. They were still young, and full of hurt curiosity: What's happening to me?
"Jamie, Jamie, that's what I said. Can I have a pill? The pain is awful today. I've never been in such a hole as this one."
"In fifteen minutes, Mom." It was supposed to be two hours, but I couldn't see what difference it made at that point. Claire had suggested giving her all of them, which shocked Andy; he was the only one of us who had remained true to our fairly strict religious upbringing.
"Do you want to send her to hell?" he had asked.
"She wouldn't go to hell if we gave them to her," Claire said--quite reasonably, I thought. "It isn't as if she'd know." And then, nearly breaking my heart because it was one of our mother's favorite sayings: "She doesn't know if she's afoot or on horseback. Not anymore."
"You'll do no such thing," Andy said.
"No," Claire sighed. She was closing in on thirty by then, and was more beautiful than ever. Because she was finally in love? If so, what a bitter irony. "I don't have that kind of courage. I only have the courage to let her suffer."
"When she's in heaven, her suffering will only be a shadow," Andy said, as if this ended the matter. For him I suppose it did.
*
The wind howled, the old panes of glass in the bedroom's single window rattled, and my mother said, "I'm so thin, so thin now. I was a pretty bride, everyone said so, but now Laura Mackenzie is so thin." Her mouth drew down in a clown-moue of sorrow and pain.
I had three more hours in the room with her before Terry was due to spell me. She might sleep some of that time, but she wasn't sleeping now, and I was desperate to distract her from the way her body was cannibalizing itself. I might have seized on anything. It just happened to be Charles Jacobs. I asked if she had any idea where he'd gone after he left Harlow.
"Oh, that was a terrible time," she said. "A terrible thing that happened to his wife and little boy."
"Yes," I said. "I know."
My dying mother looked at me with stoned contempt. "You don't know. You don't understand. It was terrible because it was no one's fault. Certainly not George Barton's. He simply had a seizure."