The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories (64 page)

Reverend Hoyt knew immediately what Natalie wanted. His assistant pastor knocked
on the half-open door of his study and then sailed in, dragging Esau by one hand behind her. The triumphant smile on her face was proof enough of what she was going to say.

“Reverend Hoyt, Esau has something he wants to tell you.” She turned to the orangutan. He was standing up straight, something Reverend Hoyt knew was hard for him to do. He came almost to Natalie’s shoulder. His thick, squat
body was covered almost entirely with long, neatly brushed auburn hair. He had only a little hair on top of his head. He had slicked it down with water. His wide face, inset and shadowed by his cheek flaps, was as impassive as ever.

Natalie signed something to him. He stood silent, his long arms hanging limply at his sides. She turned back to Reverend Hoyt. “He wants to be baptized! Isn’t that
wonderful? Tell him, Esau.”

He had seen it coming. The Reverend Natalie Abreu, twenty-two and only one year out of Princeton, was one enthusiasm after another. She had revamped the Sunday school, taken over the grief counseling department, and initiated a standard of priestly attire that outraged Reverend Hoyt’s Presbyterian soul. Today she had on a trailing cassock with a red-and-gold-embroidered
stole edged with fringe. It must be Pentecost. She was short and had close-cropped brown hair. She flew about her official duties like a misplaced choirboy in her ridiculous robes and surplices and chasubles. She had taken over Esau, too.

She had
not known how to use American Sign Language when she came. Reverend Hoyt knew only the bare minimum of signs himself, “yes” and “no” and “come here.”
The jobs he wanted Esau to do he had acted out mostly in pantomime. He had asked Natalie to learn a basic vocabulary so they could communicate better with the orang. She had memorized the entire Ameslan handbook. She rattled on to Esau for hours at a time, her fingers flying, telling him Bible stories and helping him with his reading.

“How do you know he wants to be baptized?”

“He told me. You
know how we had the confirmation class last Sunday and he asked me all about confirmation and I said, ‘Now they are God’s children, members of God’s family’ And Esau said, ‘I would like very much to be God’s beloved child, too.’”

It was always disconcerting to hear Natalie translate what Esau said. She changed what was obviously labored and fragmented language into rhapsodies of adjectives, clauses,
and modifiers. It was like watching one of those foreign films in which the actor rattled on for a paragraph and the subtitle only printed a cryptic, “That is so.” This was reversed, of course. Esau had signed something like, “Me like be child God,” if that, and Natalie had transformed it into something a seminary professor would say. It was impossible to have any real communication with Esau
this way, but it was better than pantomime.

“Esau,” he began resignedly, “do you love God?”

“Of course he loves God,” Natalie said. “He’d hardly want to be baptized if he didn’t, would he?”

“Natalie,” he said patiently, “I need to talk to Esau. Please ask him, ‘Do you love God?’”

She looked disgusted but signed out the question. Reverend Hoyt winced. The sign for God was dreadful. It looked
like a sideways salute. How could you ask someone if they loved a salute?

Esau nodded. He looked terribly uncomfortable standing there. It infuriated Reverend Hoyt that Natalie insisted on his standing up. His backbone simply wasn’t made for it. She had tried to get him to wear clothes, too. She had bought him a workman’s uniform of coveralls and a cap and shoes. Reverend Hoyt had not even been
patient with her that time. “Why on earth would we put shoes on him?” he had said. “He was hired because he has feet he can use like hands. He needs them both if he’s going to get up among the beams. Besides which, he is already clothed. His hair covers him far more appropriately than those ridiculous robes you wear cover you!” After that Natalie had worn some dreadful Benedictine thing made of
horsehair and rope until Reverend Hoyt apologized. He had not given in on the matter of clothes for Esau, however.

“Tell
Esau to sit down in the chair,” he said. He smiled at the orangutan as he said it. He sat down also. Natalie remained standing. The orangutan climbed into the chair frontwards, then turned around. His short legs stuck out straight in front of him. His body hunched forward.
He wrapped his long arms around himself, then glanced up at Natalie, and hastily let them hang at his sides. Natalie looked profoundly embarrassed.

“Esau,” he began again, motioning to Natalie to translate “baptism is a serious matter. It means that you love God and want to serve him. Do you know what serve means?”

Esau nodded slowly, then made a peculiar sign, tapping the side of his head with
the flat of his hand.

“What did he say, Natalie? And no embellishments, please. Just translate.”

“It’s a sign I taught him,” she said stiffly. “In Sunday school. The word wasn’t in the book. It means talents. He means—”

“Do you know the story of the ten talents, Esau?”

She translated. Again he nodded.

“And would you serve God with your talents?”

This whole conversation was insane. He could
not discuss Christian service with an orangutan. It made no sense. They were not free agents. They belonged to the Cheyenne Mountain Primate Research facility at what had been the old zoo. It was there that the first orangs had signed to each other. A young one raised until the age of three with humans, had lost both human parents in an accident and had been returned to the Center. He had a vocabulary
of over twenty words in American Sign Language and could make simple commands. Before the end of the year, the entire colony of orangs had the same vocabulary and could form declarative sentences. Cheyenne Mountain did its best to educate their orangs and find them useful jobs out in society, but they still owned them. They came to get Esau once a month to breed him with females at the Center.
He didn’t blame them. Orangs were now extinct in the wild. Cheyenne Mountain was doing the best they could to keep the species alive and they were not unkind to them, but he felt sorry for Esau, who would always serve.

He tried
something else. “Do you love God, Esau?” he asked again. He made the sign for “love” himself.

Esau nodded. He made the sign for “love.”

“And do you know that God loves
you?”

He hesitated. He looked at Reverend Hoyt solemnly with his round brown eyes and blinked. His eyelids were lighter than the rest of his face, a sandy color. He made his right hand into a fist and faced it out toward Reverend Hoyt. He put the short thumb outside and across the fingers, then moved it straight up, then tucked it inside, all very methodically.

“S-A-M-” Natalie spelled. “Oh,
he means the good Samaritan, that was our Bible story last week. He has forgotten the sign we made for it.” She turned to Esau and dropped her flat hand to her open palm. “Good, Esau. Good Samaritan.” She made the S fist and tapped her waist with it twice. “Good Samaritan. Remember?”

Esau looked at her. He put his fist up again and out toward Reverend Hoyt. “S-” he repeated, “A-M-A-R-” He spelled
it all the way through.

Natalie was upset. She signed rapidly at Esau. “Don’t you remember, Esau? Good Samaritan. He remembers the story. You can see that. He’s just forgotten the sign for it, that’s all.” She took his hands and tried to force them into the flattened positions for “good.” He resisted.

“No,” Reverend Hoyt said, “I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about.”

Natalie was nearly
in tears. “He knows all his Bible stories. And he can read. He’s read almost all of the New Testament by himself.”

“I know, Natalie,” Reverend Hoyt said patiently.

“Well, are you going to baptize him?”

He looked at the orang sitting hunched in the chair before him. “I’ll have to give the matter some thought.”

She looked stubborn. “Why? He only wants to be baptized. The Ecumenical Church baptizes
people, doesn’t it? We baptized fourteen people last Sunday. All he wants is to be baptized.”

“I will have to give the matter some thought.”

She looked
as if she wanted to say something. “Come on, Esau,” she said, signing to the ape to follow her.

He got out of the chair clumsily, trying to face forward while he did. Trying to please Natalie, Reverend Hoyt thought. Is that why he wants to be
baptized, too, to please Natalie?

Reverend Hoyt sat at his desk for some time. Then he walked down the endless hall from his office to the sanctuary. He stood at the side door and looked into the vast sunlit chamber. The church was one of the first great Ecumenical cathedrals, built before the Rapture. It was nearly four stories high, vaulted with great open pine beams from the Colorado mountains.
The famous Lazetti window reached the full four stories and was made of stained glass set in strips of steel.

The first floor, behind the pulpit and the choir loft, was in shadow, dark browns and greens rising to a few slender palm trees. Above that was the sunset. Powerful orange, rich rose, deep mauve dimmed to delicate peach and cream and lavender far over the heads of the congregation. At
about the third-floor level the windows changed imperceptibly from pastel-tinted to clear window glass. In the evenings the Denver sunset, rising above the smog, blended with the clouds of the window. Real stars came out behind the single inset star of beveled glass near the peak of the window.

Esau was up among the beams. He swung arm over arm, one hand trailing a white dusting cloth. His long
hairy arms moved surely among the crosspieces as he worked. They had tried ladders before Esau came, but they scratched the wood of the beams and come crashing down within inches of the Lazetti

Reverend Hoyt decided to say nothing until he had made up his mind on the matter. To Natalie’s insistent questions, he gave the same patient answer. “I have not decided.” On Sunday he preached the sermon
on humility he had already planned.

Reading the final scripture, however, he suddenly caught sight of Esau huddled on one of the pine crosspieces, his arms wrapped around a buttress for support, watching him as he read. “‘But almost stumbled, my steps had well-nigh slipped. I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a beast toward thee.’”

He looked
out over his congregation. They looked satisfied
with themselves, smug. He looked at Esau.

“‘Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou dost hold my hand. Afterward thou wilt receive me to glory. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” ‘He banged the Bible shut. “I have not said everything I intend to say on the subject of humility, a subject very few of you know anything about.” The congregation
looked surprised. Natalie, in a bright red robe with a yellow silk chasuble over it, beamed.

He made Natalie shout the benediction over the uproar afterwards and went out the organist’s door and back to the parsonage. He turned down the bell on the telephone to almost nothing. An hour later Natalie arrived with Esau in tow. She was excited. Her cheeks were as red as her robe. “Oh, I’m so glad
you decided to say something after all. I was hoping you would. You’ll see, they’ll all think it’s a wonderful idea! I wish you’d baptized him, though. Just think how surprised everyone would have been! The first baptism ever, and in our church! Oh, Esau, aren’t you excited! You’re going to be baptized!”

“I haven’t decided yet, Natalie. I told the congregation the matter had come up, that’s all.”

“But you’ll see, they’ll think it’s a wonderful idea.”

He sent her home, telling her not to accept any calls or talk to any reporters, an edict he knew she would ignore completely. He kept Esau with him, fixing a nice supper for them both and turning the television on to a baseball game. Esau picked up Reverend Hoyt’s cat, an old tom that allowed people in the parsonage only on sufferance, and
carried him over to his chair in front of the TV. Reverend Hoyt expected an explosion of claws and hurt feelings, but tom settled down quite happily in Esau’s lap.

When bedtime came, Esau set him down gently on the end of the guest bed and stroked him twice. Then he crawled into the bed forwards, which always embarrassed Natalie so. Reverend Hoyt tucked him in. It was a foolish thing to do. Esau
was fully grown. He lived alone and took care of himself. Still, it seemed the thing to do.

Esau lay there looking up at him. He raised up on one arm to see if the cat was still there, and turned over on his side, wrapping his arms around his neck. Reverend Hoyt turned off the light. He didn’t know the sign for “good night,” so he just waved, a tentative little wave, from the door. Esau waved
back.

Esau ate
breakfast with the cat in his lap. Reverend Hoyt had turned the phone back up, and it rang insistently. He motioned to Esau that it was time to go over to the church. Esau signed something, pointing to the cat. He clearly wanted to take it with him. Reverend Hoyt signed one rather gentle “no” at him, pinching his first two fingers and thumb together, but smiling so Esau would not
think he was angry.

Esau put the cat down on the chair. Together they walked to the church. Reverend Hoyt wished there were some way he could tell him it was not necessary for him to walk upright all the time. At the door of Reverend Hoyt’s study Esau signed, “Work?” Reverend Hoyt nodded and tried to push his door open. Letters shoved under the door had wedged it shut. He knelt and pulled a handful
free. The door swung open, and he picked up another handful from the floor and put them on his desk. Esau peeked in the door and waved at him. Reverend Hoyt waved back, and Esau shambled off to the sanctuary. Reverend Hoyt shut the door.