There were nods, and several people turned to look at her.
“Well, now they tell me he’s been killed,” she said.
Soft sounds of dismay traveled down the rows.
“Tell me he got killed jumping out of a plane,” she said. “You know he was a paratrooper.”
More nods.
“Monday night these two soldiers came, all dressed up.”
“Ah, no,” they said.
“I told them I had thought he’d be safe. I said he’d been jumping so long now, looked to me like he’d learned how to stay alive up there. Soldier says, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says. ‘These things happen,’ he says. Says Chuckie was a, what do you call, fluke accident. Forgot to put his parachute on.”
Ian blinked.
“Forgot!” his neighbor marveled in a voice like a dove.
“ ‘Forgot!’ I said. ‘How could that be?’ This soldier tells me, it’s the army’s considered opinion that Chuckie had just jumped so often, he’d stopped thinking about it. So up he comes to that whatever, that door where they jump out of, the whole time making smart remarks so everybody’s laughing—you remember what a card he was—and gives a little kind of like salute and steps into empty air. It’s not till then the fellow behind him says, ‘Wait!’ Says, ‘Wait, you forgot your—’ ”
“Parachute,” Ian’s neighbor finished sadly.
“So I don’t ask your prayers for Chuckie after this; I ask for me,” the woman said. For the first time, her voice was unsteady. “I’m just about sick with grief, I tell you. Pray for me to find some deliverance.”
She sat down, fumbling behind her for her purse. The minister lifted his palms and the room fell silent.
Could you really forget your parachute?
Well, maybe so. Ian could see how it might have come about. A man to whom jumping was habit might imagine that floating in space was all his own doing, like flying. Maybe it had slipped his mind he couldn’t fly, so in the first startled instant of his descent he supposed he had simply forgotten how. He may have felt insulted, betrayed by all he’d taken for granted. What’s the big idea here? he must have asked.
Ian pictured one of those animated films where a character strolls off a cliff without noticing and continues strolling in midair, perfectly safe until he happens to look down and then his legs start wheeling madly and he plummets.
He gave a short bark of laughter.
The congregation swiveled and stared at him.
He bowed his head, cheeks burning. The minister said, “For our sister Lula.”
“Amen,” the others said, mercifully facing forward again.
“Any other prayers, any other prayers …”
Ian studied the sprigged skirt while shame slammed into him in waves. He had said and done heedless things before but this was something new: to laugh out loud at a mother’s bereavement. He wished he could disappear. He wanted to perform some violent and decisive act, like leaping into space himself.
“No prayer is unworthy in the eyes of our Creator.”
He stood up.
Heads swiveled once again.
“I used to be—” he said.
Frog in his throat. He gave a dry, fake-sounding cough.
“I used to be good,” he said. “Or I used to be not bad, at least. Not evil. I just assumed I wasn’t evil, but lately, I don’t know what’s happened. Everything I touch goes wrong. I didn’t mean to laugh just now. I’m sorry I laughed, Mrs.…”
He looked over at the woman. Her face was lowered and she seemed unaware of him. But the others were watching closely. He had the sense they were weighing his words; they were taking him seriously.
“Pray for me to be good again,” he told them. “Pray for me to be forgiven.”
He sat down.
The minister raised his palms.
The silence that followed was so deep that Ian felt bathed in it. He unfolded in it; he gave in to it. He floated on a fluid rush of prayers, and all the prayers were for his pardon. How could God not listen, then?
When Ian was three or four years old, his mother had read him a Bible story for children. The illustration had showed a Roman soldier in full armor accosting a bearded old man. “Is that God?” Ian had asked, pointing to the soldier; for he associated God with power. But his mother had said, “No, no,” and continued reading. What Ian had gathered from this was that God was the other figure, therefore—the bearded old man. Even after he knew better, he couldn’t shake that notion, and now he imagined the congregation’s prayers streaming toward someone with long gray hair and a floor-length, Swedish-blue robe and sturdy bare feet in leather sandals. He felt a flood of gratitude to this man, as if God were, in literal truth, his father.
“For our guest,” the minister said.
“Amen.”
It was over too suddenly. It hadn’t lasted long enough. Already the minister was saying, “Any other prayers, any other prayers …”
There weren’t any.
“Hymn sixteen, then,” the minister said, and everyone stirred and rustled pages and stood up. They were so matter-of-fact; they were smoothing skirts, patting hairdos. Ian’s neighbor, a stocky, round-faced woman, beamed at him and tilted her hymnal in his direction. The hymn was “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” The minister started it off in his soaring tenor:
“What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms …”
This time Ian sang too, although really it was more of a drone.
When the hymn was finished, the minister raised his palms again and recited a benediction. “Go ye now into the world and bear witness to His teachings,” he said. “In Jesus’ name, amen.”
“Amen,” the others echoed.
Was that if?
They started collecting coats and purses, buttoning buttons, winding scarves. “Welcome!” Ian’s neighbor told him. “How did you find out about us?”
“Oh, I was just walking by …”
“So many young people nowadays don’t give half enough thought to their spiritual salvation.”
“No, I guess not,” Ian said.
All at once he felt he was traveling under false pretense. Spiritual salvation! The language these places used made him itch with embarrassment. (Blood of the Lamb, Died for Your Sins …) He looked yearningly behind him, where the first people to leave were already sending a slap of cold air into the room. But his neighbor was waving to the minister. “Yoo-hoo! Reverend Emmett! Come and meet our young person!”
The minister, already choosing a path between the knots of worshipers, seemed disconcertingly jubilant. His smile was so wide that his teeth looked too big for his mouth. He arrived in front of Ian and shook his hand over and over. “Wonderful to have you!” he said. (His long, bony fingers felt like dried beanpods.) “I’m Reverend Emmett. This is Sister Nell, have you introduced yourselves?”
“How do you do,” Ian said, and the other two waited so expectantly that he had to add, “I’m Ian Bedloe.”
“We use only first names in our place of worship,” Reverend Emmett told him. “Last names remind us of the superficial—the world of wealth and connections and who came over on the Mayflower.”
“Really,” Ian said. “Ah. Okay.”
His neighbor laid a hand on his arm and said, “Reverend Emmett will tell you all about it. Nice meeting you, Brother Ian. Good night, Reverend Emmett.”
“Night,” Reverend Emmett said. He watched as she swirled a navy cape around her shoulders (so she was, after all, a nurse) and sidled out the other end of the row. Then he turned back to Ian and said, “I hope your prayer was answered this evening.”
“Thanks,” Ian said. “It was a really … interesting service.”
Reverend Emmett studied him. (His skin was an unhealthy shade of white, although that could have been the fluorescent lighting.) “But your prayer,” he said finally. “Was there any response?”
“Response?”
“Did you get a reply??
??
“Well, not exactly.”
“I see,” Reverend Emmett said. He watched an aged couple assist each other through the door—the very last to leave. Then he said, “What was it that you needed forgiven?”
Ian couldn’t believe his ears. Was this even legal, inquiring into a person’s private prayers? He ought to spin on his heel and walk out. But instead his heart began hammering as if he were about to do something brave. In a voice not quite his own, he said, “I caused my brother to, um, kill himself.”
Reverend Emmett gazed at him thoughtfully.
“I told him his wife was cheating on him,” Ian said in a rush, “and now I’m not even sure she was. I mean I’m pretty sure she did in the past, I know I wasn’t totally wrong, but … So he drove into a wall. And then his wife died of sleeping pills and I guess you could say I caused that too, more or less …”
He paused, because Reverend Emmett might want to disagree here. (Really Lucy’s death was just indirectly caused by Ian, and maybe not even that. It might have been accidental.) But Reverend Emmett only rocked from heel to toe.
“So it looks as if my parents are going to have to raise the children,” Ian said. Had he mentioned there were children? “Everything’s been dumped on my mom and I don’t think she’s up to it—her or my dad, either one. I don’t think they’ll ever be the same, after this. And my sister’s busy with her own kids and I’m away at college most of the time …”
In the light of Reverend Emmett’s blue eyes—which had the clean transparency of those marbles that Ian used to call ginger-ales—he began to relax. “So anyhow,” he said, “that’s why I asked for that prayer. And I honestly believe it might have worked. Oh, it’s not like I got an answer in plain English, of course, but … don’t you think? Don’t you think I’m forgiven?”
“Goodness, no,” Reverend Emmett said briskly.
Ian’s mouth fell open. He wondered if he’d misunderstood. He said, “I’m not forgiven?”
“Oh, no.”
“But … I thought that was kind of the point,” Ian said. “I thought God forgives everything.”
“He does,” Reverend Emmett said. “But you can’t just say, ‘I’m sorry, God.’ Why, anyone could do that much! You have to offer reparation—concrete, practical reparation, according to the rules of our church.”
“But what if there isn’t any reparation? What if it’s something nothing will fix?”
“Well, that’s where Jesus comes in, of course.”
Another itchy word: Jesus. Ian averted his eyes.
“Jesus remembers how difficult life on earth can be,” Reverend Emmett told him. “He helps with what you can’t undo. But only after you’ve tried to undo it.”
“Tried? Tried how?” Ian asked. “What would it take?”
Reverend Emmett started collecting hymnals from the chair seats. Apparently he was so certain of the answer, he didn’t even have to think about it. “Well, first you’ll need to see to those children,” he said.
“Okay. But … see to them in what way, exactly?”
“Why, raise them, I suppose.”
“Huh?” Ian said. “But I’m only a freshman!”
Reverend Emmett turned to face him, hugging the stack of hymnals against his concave shirt front.
“I’m away in Pennsylvania most of the time!” Ian told him.
“Then maybe you should drop out.”
“Drop out?”
“Right.”
“Drop out of college?”
“Right.”
Ian stared at him.
“This is some kind of test, isn’t it?” he said finally.
Reverend Emmett nodded, smiling. Ian sagged with relief.
“It’s God’s test,” Reverend Emmett told him.
“So …”
“God wants to know how far you’ll go to undo the harm you’ve done.”
“But He wouldn’t really make me follow through with it,” Ian said.
“How else would He know, then?”
“Wait,” Ian said. “You’re saying God would want me to give up my education. Change all my parents’ plans for me and give up my education.”
“Yes, if that’s what’s required,” Reverend Emmett said.
“But that’s crazy! I’d have to be crazy!”
“ ‘Let us not love in word, neither in tongue,’ ” Reverend Emmett said, “ ‘but in deed and in truth.’ First John three, eighteen.”
“I can’t take on a bunch of kids! Who do you think I am? I’m nineteen years old!” Ian said. “What kind of a cockeyed religion is this?”
“It’s the religion of atonement and complete forgiveness,” Reverend Emmett said. “It’s the religion of the Second Chance.”
Then he set the hymnals on the counter and turned to offer Ian a beatific smile. Ian thought he had never seen anyone so absolutely at peace.
“I don’t understand,” his mother said.
“What’s to understand? It’s simple,” Ian told her. “What you mean is, you don’t approve.”
“Well, of course she doesn’t approve,” his father said. “Neither one of us approves. No one in his right mind would approve. Here you are, attending a perfectly decent college which you barely got into by the skin of your teeth, incidentally; you’ve had no complaints about the place that your mother or I are aware of; you’re due back this Sunday evening to begin your second semester and what do you up and tell us? You’re dropping out.”
“I’m taking a leave of absence,” Ian said.
They were sitting in the dining room late Friday night—much too late to have only then finished supper, but Daphne had developed an earache and what with one thing and another it had somehow got to be nine P.M. before they’d put the children in bed. Now Bee, having risen to clear the table, sank back into her chair. Doug shoved his plate away and leaned his elbows on the table. “Just tell me this,” he said to Ian. “How long do you expect this leave of absence to last?”
“Oh, maybe till Daphne’s in first grade. Or kindergarten, at least,” Ian said.
“Daphne? What’s Daphne got to do with it?”
“The reason I’m taking a leave is to help Mom raise the kids.”
“Me?” his mother cried. “I’m not raising those children! We’re looking for a guardian! First we’ll find Lucy’s people and then I know there’ll be someone, some young couple maybe who would just love to—”
“Mom,” Ian said. “You know the chances of that are getting slimmer all the time.”
“I know nothing of the sort! Or an aunt, maybe, or—”
Doug said, “Well, he’s got a point, Bee. You’ve been running yourself ragged with those kids.”
Contrarily, Ian felt a pinch of alarm. Would his father really let him go through with this?
His mother said, “And anyway, how about the draft? You’ll be drafted the minute you leave school.”
“If I am, I am,” Ian told her, “but I don’t think I will be. I think God will take care of that.”
“Who?”
“And I do plan to pay my own way,” he said. “I’ve already found a job.”
“Doing what?” his father asked. “Moving poor folks’ furniture?”
“Building furniture.”
They peered at him.
“I’ve made arrangements with this cabinetmaker,” Ian said. “I’ve seen him at work and I asked if I could be his apprentice.”
Student, was the way he’d finally put it. Having sought out the cabinetmaker in that apartment full of china crates and mothballs, he had plunged into the subject of apprenticeship only to be met with a baffled stare. The man had sat back on his heels and studied Ian’s lips. “Apprentice,” Ian had repeated, enunciating carefully. “Pupil.”
“People?” the man had asked. Two furrows stitched themselves across his leathery forehead.
“I already have some experience,” Ian said. “I used to help my father in the basement. I know I could build a kitchen cabinet
.”
“I dislike kitchens,” the man said harshly.
For a moment, Ian thought he still hadn’t made himself clear. But the man went on: “They’re junk. See this hinge.” He pointed to it—an ornately curlicued piece of black metal, dimpled all over with artificial hammer marks. “My real work is furniture,” he said.
“Fine,” Ian told him. What did he care? Kitchen cabinets, furniture, it was all the same to him: inanimate objects. Something he could deal with that he couldn’t mess up. Or if he did mess up, it was possible to repair the damage.
“I have a workshop. I make things I like,” the man said. He spoke like anyone else except for a certain insistence of tone, a thickness in the consonants, as if he had a cold. “These kitchens, they’re just for the money.”
“That’s okay! That’s fine! And as for money,” Ian said, “you could pay me minimum wage. Or lower, to start with, because I’m just an apprentice. Student,” he added, for he saw now that it was the uncommon word “apprentice” that had given him trouble. “And any time you have to do a kitchen, you could send me instead.”
He knew he had a hope, then. He could tell by the wistful, visionary look that slowly dawned in the man’s gray eyes.
But were his parents impressed with Ian’s initiative? No. They just sat there blankly. “It’s not brute labor, after all,” he told them. “It’s a craft! It’s like an art.”
“Ian,” his father said, “if you’re busy learning this … art, how will you help with the kids?”
“I’ll work out a schedule with my boss,” Ian said. “Also there’s this church that’s going to pitch in.”
“This what?”
“Church.”
They tilted their heads.
“There’s this … it’s kind of hard to explain,” he said. “This church sort of place on York Road, see, that believes you have to really do something practical to atone for your, shall we call them, sins. And if you agree to that, they’ll pitch in. You can sign up on a bulletin board—the hours you need help, the hours you’ve got free to help others—”
“What in the name of God …?” Bee asked.
“Well, that’s just it,” Ian said. “I mean, I don’t want to sound corny or anything but it is in the name of God. ‘Let us not love in—’ what—‘in just words or in tongue, but in—’ ”