“But traveling to Galop all alone—” Clara shook her head.
“Maggie’s a big girl,” Herbert concluded. “One night alone in Galop will do her no harm. And once she’s had the chance to talk to the Casters about her brother, she’ll return to Zenith in amazingly good spirits. You’ll see.”
Maggie didn’t return in good spirits. Neither Mr. Caster nor Mrs. Caster happened to be in Galop de Vache during the brief period of her stay. From one of the Casters’ forthcoming neighbors, Maggie discovered that her brother’s adoptive parents were 330 miles away in Madison, Wisconsin, attending a convention of the Midwestern Association of Cheese Purveyors.
Even worse: Maggie had come home to discover the following note stick-pinned to the kitchen Hoosier cabinet:
Maggie,
In your absence a terrible thing has happened. Talk to one of your sisters and they will tell you all about it. I have gone to look for Mr. Osborne and pray that I can find him.
Your mother
Maggie telephoned the Tabernacle offices and was told by Miss Colthurst’s assistant Miss Dowell that none of her friends would be coming in for choir rehearsal that day.
“Why?”
“You don’t know why?”
“If I knew why, would I ask you why? Where’s Miss Colthurst? May I speak with her?”
“Sister Vivian left not five minutes ago. She and Sister Lydia are on their way to Zenith General.”
“Who’s in the hospital?” asked Maggie, now thrown into a panic.
“I don’t know the young man. Someone is knocking on the door and I’m all alone this morning. Goodbye.”
As Maggie was hurrying to the door to catch the streetcar that would take her straight to Zenith General Hospital, the jingle of the telephone bell summoned her back to the instrument. Ruth was on the other end of the wire. “It’s Pat Harrison, Maggie. He’s badly hurt. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”
“My mother left me a note. She said she was out looking for Mr. Osborne.”
There was a brief silence. Then Ruth said, “She might start by checking the city jail.”
Maggie found her four sisters on the fifth floor of Zenith General Hospital in the “Family and Friends Waiting Room.” There was now someone else besides Carrie’s mother who had taken up residence on that floor. Pat had been brought in the night before with multiple broken bones, facial contusions, and internal hemorrhaging. The prognosis was dismal.
Carrie and Molly were blanch-faced and baggy-eyed, though both had been partially revived by carry-cups of coffee, which Ruth had brought up from Dunker’s, an around-the-clock luncheon across the street.
Ruth was sitting next to Jane, holding her hand. Jane looked nearly as haggard as Carrie and Molly. Her other hand—the one not clasped by Ruth—was shaking with an almost palsy-like tremor. Maggie looked over the young women in the room as one surveys a field of battle in its aftermath. She had never seen her sisters so broken and battered. Especially Jane. In moments of crisis, it was the oldest of We Five who usually stepped forward to take the reins. It was Jane Higgins who devised the best course of action, Jane who rallied the troops, Jane who annealed resilience through her emotional strength and her unwavering affection for her sisters.
But on this day it was a very different Jane who sat before Maggie. She was shell-shocked, frighteningly uncommunicative. Jane seemed to be locked inside her own head, running a terrible scene over and over again through the movie projector in her mind.
Carrie told Maggie what had happened to Pat. Ruth told Maggie what had happened to Jane.
Maggie was overwhelmed. She sat down. She put her hand to her mouth as if to hold back a scream.
Ruth got up and went to Maggie. “Where’s Molly’s father right now?” Maggie asked.
“Still at large. Everyone seems to be at large this morning, though we now have you back. And Cain. He’s the only one of that bunch to show up this morning.” Ruth added acidly, “Apparently, the other three can’t spare a single moment from their busy class schedules to look in on their dying friend.”
The phrase “dying friend” educed fresh tears from Molly, and Ruth found it necessary to offer a hurried apology for her callousness as Carrie descended upon Molly anew to deliver hugs and pats of sororal sympathy.
“Cain came,” said Jane, nodding. “I always knew he wasn’t like the others.”
Ruth was about to respond, but Molly preempted her: “Pat was good too. Is good. He isn’t like the others either!”
“Anyway, the two ‘good’ ones are down the hall in the men’s ward,” said Ruth. “Cain’s with Pat. He’s been with him since before I got here.”
Ruth took a deep breath preparatory to saying something that very much needed to be said. “Now that the five of us are all together, there’s something we have to talk about—something I need to tell you about our Aggie friends.” With the word “friends,” Ruth’s tone shifted from flat and reportorial to unambiguously contemptuous. “It wasn’t by coincidence they came after us the way they did. It was all planned. They planned it together.”
It was Molly and Jane who reacted the strongest to this statement. Jane, who had returned her gaze to her lap, now bolted up, her eyes flashing with sudden painful interest. Likewise, Molly, who’d always assumed her budding relationship with Pat to be engendered by nothing but the pure Ivory Soap attraction of their two hearts, tossed a hard and suspicious look in Ruth’s direction.
Ruth was ready to explain, but she was silenced by the sudden appearance of Vivian Colthurst and Sister Lydia DeLash Comfort, who had come to offer prayer and comfort to the young man who had been brutally defenestrated not four blocks from her beautiful, nearly completed Tabernacle of the Sanctified Spirit. Sister Lydia went straight to Molly. “I understand, Miss Osborne,” said the evangelist, “that you’re quite fond of Mr. Harrison and he’s quite fond of you.”
Molly nodded.
“Then by all means you must come along with me to the men’s ward. Together we shall offer up a fervent prayer of entreaty, that he will survive his injuries and live to love you even more than he does now.”
Molly wept. She nodded in full concert. Then she said falteringly, “But you need to know—you have to know, Sister Lydia—that it was my father who did this terrible thing to him.”
“Yes, I know that already, little darling,” Sister Lydia answered softly. “And I’ve been praying for your unfortunate father as well.”
Sister Lydia held out her hand for Molly to take.
“Please wait,” interposed Carrie.
Sister Lydia turned and smiled benignly at Carrie. “Don’t worry, child. We intend to visit your poor mother next.”
“That isn’t—thank you, Sister, but—Ruth—she was going to tell us something. It’s something I think we all need to hear. It’s something that, perhaps, you should hear too.”
Ruth confirmed this statement with a nod.
“It’s about those boys you were telling me about, isn’t it, Ruth?” asked Miss Colthurst.
Ruth nodded. And then Ruth told everything Cain had told her. She left out details particular to Cain’s unique status among his friends, but she didn’t hold herself back in describing each aspect of the game that was to have used We Five as pawns…or worse. Ruth couldn’t avoid including what had happened to Jane, even though in doing so Jane was forced to relive the vile memory.
After Ruth had finished, Sister Lydia placed a hand upon Ruth’s arm and said, “Thank you so much for sharing this with me. But it’s over now, thank God. These men can’t hurt any of you ever again now that their plans have been exposed.”
Sister Lydia was thinking, mulling the whole matter over in her head. Whenever Sister Lydia DeLash Comfort thought—especially when she worked on her sermons late into the night—she paced. We Five gave her a wide berth.
“No. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we can close the door on all this just yet. ‘Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord. But th
e Bible also tells us that the Lord helps those who help themselves. And not a one of you girls is helping yourself by walking away from men like this without making them come to terms with what they’ve done. I’m concerned, as well, about what happens in the future when they decide to play this filthy game again—this time with a different group of girls.”
Sister Lydia continued to pace as she cogitated.
“I know the president of the A&M. He’s one of my biggest financial supporters. And he’s a friend of your brother’s too, isn’t he, Sister Vivian?”
Miss Colthurst nodded.
“Then I see no reason these men shouldn’t be held to account for their actions and expelled from the college, and the sooner the better. This very afternoon, in fact. Monstrous behavior like this shouldn’t go unaddressed and unpunished.” Sister Lydia checked a smile. “I’m afraid my Old Testament is showing.”
“But you can’t mean Pat,” said Molly in a quiet but urgent voice.
“No, darling. We won’t expel your Mr. Harrison, of course not. Sister Ruth, I assume you’d like to make the same appeal on behalf of your Mr. Pardlow?”
Ruth nodded. “He can’t have that kind of blemish on his school record. You see, Cain’s decided to leave Zenith and enroll in the U. of W. in the fall.”
“I see,” said Sister Lydia, the suggestion of a sly grin now breaking through. “It seems that ‘Old Gang’ of theirs is breaking up six ways from Sunday. And it’s all for the best, girls. Now, Molly, let’s go see your Mr. Harrison. And as for the rest of my Quintet of Songful Seraphim, Sister Vivian has told me she can get along without you for the next couple of days. But then I need the five of you back among the angels. Our inaugural service, in which you will all play so vital a part, is only a few days away.”
As Sister Lydia began making her rounds (word of her impromptu appearance at Zenith General had now begun to circulate, and the renowned faith-healing evangelist simply could not, in good conscience, confine her bedside visits to only Pat Harrison and Sylvia Hale), Ruth Thrasher and Vivian Colthurst excused themselves from the company of Maggie, Carrie, and Jane, and went down to Dunker’s for doughnuts and coffee.
“There’s something I didn’t say upstairs that you should know, Vivian,” Ruth eventually worked herself up to saying.
“Yes?”
“Cain’s asked if I might move to Mohalis with him. He proposed that we attend the university together.”
Vivian nodded. “I’ve always wondered why a girl of your intelligence and with your obvious gift for words—why you never considered going to college.”
Ruth waited to answer until after the waitress had set down the plate of doughnuts and cups of coffee. Then she said, “I never thought there was much need for it. There are plenty of writers who’ve made important careers for themselves without an advanced education. But Cain said that given the opportunity, I should take it.”
“And this is that opportunity. Ruth, dear, do you love this man?”
“Not in the way I’m expected to. But he and I are becoming very good friends—close friends.”
Vivian Colthurst nodded as she dunked. She tapped the doughnut on the rim of her cup to keep it from dripping on its way to her mouth. She thought for a moment and then asked, “Won’t he be disappointed when he finds out you aren’t the kind of woman he thinks you are?”
Ruth smiled and shook her head. “He knows how I am. And I know how he is. It’s the kind of arrangement a lot of people like us are making these days. Society dictates that we must hide who we are, so if we find someone we’re fond of with whom to do our hiding, why shouldn’t we be with that person?” Ruth touched Vivian’s hand. There was nothing in the gesture that one might not see on any given day between two female friends. But the touch meant something very special for these two friends.
Vivian Colthurst spoke softly and without smiling. “Why shouldn’t you be with that person, you ask. Because you should be with this person—the person sitting right across from you.”
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t want a Boston marriage, Vivian. I want a Winnemac marriage. I think Cain does too, or he wouldn’t have asked me to go with him. Besides, Mohalis is only a short interurban ride from Zenith. You’ll continue to see me and I’ll continue to see you. And there will be a nice advantage to your seeing me there: we’ll be removed from the curious looks and the outright scowls of all those men and women of the ‘Sanctified Spirit,’ who are quick to judge in the name of their blessed Jesus.” Ruth laughed. “Good gracious God, Vivian, leave it to you to pick a profession which offers no romantic flexibility whatsoever. You might as well give up your job as choir director for Sister Lydia and, and join a convent!”
Vivian tried to hold back, but Ruth had gotten the better of her and she acknowledged the comical irony in her situation with a shrug and a grin. “Your Mr. Pardlow—” said Vivian when the feeling of merriment had somewhat subsided, “—he’s been sitting in that ward right next to his friend all this time?”
Ruth nodded. “He told me he thinks somebody should be there for those moments when Pat wakes up—so one of the nurses can be called to give him another shot of morphine to put him back to sleep again.”
“Is Pat talking? Does he say anything during those moments when he’s awake?”
“Not much. Cain says that once or twice he asked for his mother.”
“And where is his mother?”
“She’s dead. But in his delirium he doesn’t seem to know this.”
“And the boy’s father?”
“In Hollywood. He’s a carpenter. He works in pictures. But I don’t think anyone’s been able to reach him.”
“Then it’s good that Cain is there.”
Ruth nodded.
Cain had moved his chair away from the bed and put it against the wall to give Sister Lydia more room. She spoke a few words to Pat, who could not hear her; the latest dose of morphine having placed him into a deep, almost coma-like sleep. Then she knelt next to the bed and clasped her hands prayerfully. “Kneel with me, Molly,” she entreated. “You too,” she said to Cain, over her shoulder. The three knelt together as Sister Lydia DeLash Comfort prayed first for Pat’s speedy recovery and then for the redemption of his soul, should God decide instead to take him home. Molly nodded and amened as tears coursed down her cheeks. Next to her, Cain also nodded, his own eyes moist, his throat constricting as he fought the urge to blubber unmanfully in the presence of these two women and all the men bedded in the crowded ward.
That night Maggie and Molly telephoned all over Zenith in search of their missing parents. Molly was sure the two middle-aged lovers—one a fugitive and the other a very likely accessory after the fact—had found one another and were now hiding somewhere in town. Maggie wondered if they’d blown town altogether. She wondered this because Clara had failed to come home. When Maggie returned from the hospital that night, she found their house unchanged from the state it had been in earlier in the day. She also found no new hurriedly scrawled missive pinned to the Hoosier.
Nor had Molly’s father left his daughter a single word as to his whereabouts. Molly knew why. Once he surfaced, he’d be nabbed by the police right away, a hot warrant for his arrest having been issued shortly after the incident.
As Molly sat on the edge of Maggie’s bed, fighting sleep, Maggie made mention of her Uncle Whit’s cabin in the northern woods of Minnesota. “He doesn’t go there anymore, but he never sold it. He once told Mama and me we could use it whenever we liked.”
“You think that’s where they might have gone?” asked Molly, holding her white muslin nightgown bunched in her hand. She had quickly packed up this and a few other night things from the apartment she shared with her father, which now sat empty and tomb-like, the shattered window a jagged reminder of what had happened there, the concrete ledge outside still littered with splinters of broken glass.
Maggie nodded. “The police would have no knowledge of the place. Mama’s had hardly any contact wit
h Uncle Whit since his divorce from my aunt. It would be the perfect spot for the two of them to hide out.”
“But for how long?” asked Molly.
“Long enough for us to go there and help them figure out what they should do. If it were me, I’d leave the country altogether and go to Canada.”
Molly got up. Her look had turned dark and angry. “Why would I even want to help Dad after what he’s done? And your mother is nothing like the M-O-T-H-E-R in that disgustingly saccharine Eva Tanguay song.”
“Let’s respect a rule here, Molly. You may vilify your father and I may vilify my mother but we aren’t permitted to cross-vilify.”
Molly laughed sardonically. “Even though that’s all you’ve been doing since those two discovered they had feelings for one another?”
Maggie took the bait. “And how right I was. I knew your father wasn’t over his drinking. I just didn’t realize how dangerous he became when he got himself totally sozzled.”
Molly shot daggers at Maggie, and Maggie shot daggers back. “Do you want me to go?” Molly finally asked between clenched teeth.
“Only if you want to. Let it not be said I turned my back on you in your time of need.”
A silence passed. Then Molly began to think aloud. “I probably should go. I’m not a baby. I am quite capable of spending the night in my own apartment alone. Besides, if Dad’s going to be sitting in a jail cell for the next twenty or thirty years, I should probably start getting used to being by myself.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think they’d keep him in that jail cell for anywhere near that long.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Pat’s probably going to die, so your dad will more than likely get the noose.”
“I hate you so much right now, Maggie, I can’t even see straight.”
“Then by all means rid yourself of me by leaving. Don’t let me stop you.”