A New Song (39 page)

He wasn’t eager to disturb his neighbor, no, indeed, but what could he do? He stood up and let it fly.
“Barnabas! ”

“Is that you again?” Morris Love shouted from an upstairs window.

“Yes, dadgummit, Mr. Love, it is.”

“Out!
Out!
”

Please, no more of that drivel. “I can’t go out ’til I find my dog. My
dog,
Mr. Love! I’m sorry, for heaven’s sake.” He stomped through the undergrowth at the side of the house, where he thought he heard a commotion.

“Barnabas!
Come!
” Now there was furious barking at what could be the rear of the house. He suddenly felt the insects chewing on his legs, and if that weren’t enough, it was steaming in here. Until he came over the wall, he hadn’t noticed the humidity, nor had he realized his desperate thirst.

“Your dog has treed a squirrel off the west side!” Morris Love’s hoarse announcement was matter-of-fact.

Father Tim darted into grass that grew to his waist; Lord only knows what was lurking on the ground. He needed a machete, a sling, a hay baler, to get through this stuff. Slogging to the rear of the house, he stumbled over a pile of bricks that had toppled from a chimney and lay hidden in the grass. He fell onto a jagged piece of mortar and hauled himself up. Stubbed toes, skinned knees, cut hands, chewed legs . . . he was biting his tongue.

He forged along the endless rear of the house and rounded the corner, dripping with sweat. Aha, by George, there he was, the impudent beast, sitting on his rear end at the foot of a tree and gazing heavenward as if in prayer.

His dog turned his head and gave him the sort of look that precedes the guillotine.

Speechless, his master pointed to his feet, shod in running shoes. Barnabas thoughtfully considered this gesture for some moments, then arose slowly and, head down, walked toward his master and sat a couple of yards away. Father Tim made the pointing gesture again. Barnabas arose, plodded over, and sat by his master’s right foot.

He reached down and plucked the leash from the grass.

“Forgiveness,” he said aloud to his dog, “is giving up my right to hurt you because you have hurt me.” He didn’t know where that particular wisdom had come from, but there it was.

Barnabas sat, looking stoic.

He put his hand through the loop and wrapped the leash around his arm twice. Then, giving his eaten legs a vigorous, overall slapping, he turned to get the heck out of here.

He heard Morris Love laughing behind one of the many shuttered windows on the second floor. It was an odd laughter, to say the least, composed of short explosions of sound.

“Mr. Love,” he yelled. “I hope we’re entertaining you sufficiently.”

“More than sufficiently.” Morris Love quit laughing, and the coldness in his voice returned. “You know the way out, Father.”

“Yes, indeed, it’s becoming all too familiar.” His own tone of voice wasn’t exactly the one used in greeting people at the church door.

Blast. That high wall ahead must be the back of another wing, though there were no windows. Or perhaps it was the rear of the loggia he’d glimpsed earlier. From the look of things, this meant a longer distance to the front, through a deeper, yet denser thicket.

He had stumbled into some kind of brier patch, or tangle of vines that scratched like a cat. Extracting himself from the snare of this blasted stuff was no easy job. Maybe he shouldn’t forge ahead, but retrace his steps. This was maddening, alarming. He felt a moment of panic.

“Go back the way you came.” Morris Love was speaking directly above his head.

He tore himself from the vines that snarled about his clothes and stomped back the way he’d come.

Fleas.
Emma’s suspicion was being confirmed. He yanked up his pants legs and was relieved to find they weren’t fleas after all, though something probably worse. He went at a trot, trying to avoid the pile of rubble, and finally made it to the driveway, where he stood and wiped his dripping face with the tail of his T-shirt.

“There’s water in the faucet behind you.”

Water! He turned and saw the spigot attached to a pipe standing about knee level. He cranked open the tap, letting the sediment flow out, then washed the cut on his hand and splashed his face and head. Cupping his hands, he drank deeply and let Barnabas drink, then drew off his shirt and dried himself and slipped it on again. Good Lord, what a refreshment. He was revived, restored; holy water, indeed!

“God bless you!” he shouted, spontaneous and thankful.

“I don’t believe in God.” Morris Love’s voice contained a positive snarl.

“God believes in you!”

“Then why did He give me such a body?”

“Why did He give you such musical genius?”

“I assure you I think very little of answering a question with a question.”

“Sometimes a question is the only answer I have, Mr. Love.”

He saw a rusted ornamental lawn chair a few feet to his right, just below the upstairs window where he presumed Morris Love to be standing. He hadn’t noticed the chair on his previous safari, nor had he been aware, until now, of his extreme weariness.

He walked to the chair and sat, glad for the chance to catch his breath. What could the lord of the manor do to him anyway—dump a flowerpot on his head?

“I’m sitting down for a moment,” he announced, too spent to shout. “I hope you don’t object.”

He gazed at the view before him, the way the light slanted into the dense tangle of trees and was lost in the foliage. A jungle, indeed. Yet this place had surely been beautiful once, a tropical island within an island, so exotic and unfamiliar that the thought of busy lives just over the wall seemed preposterous.

“Let me ask you, Father, how do you find the conscience to go about practicing the sham of belief ?”

He was stunned by the question.

“I don’t get your meaning,” he said, and he didn’t.

“The meaning seems clear enough. You wear a collar, you recite a creed, you speak of God, and yet, as a man whom I presume to be more than nominally intelligent, you cannot possibly believe there is a loving God, or any God at all.”

“Quite the contrary, Mr. Love. I find it impossible not to believe in a loving God.”

“I see it is useless to discuss a high truth with you.”

“Then you see blindly.” Though he didn’t wish to be harsh, he had every desire to be plain.

“Blindness, you may be certain, has never been one of my handicaps.”

“Do you consider your physical condition a handicap?”

“You speak as a fool. Of course I do.”

“Many do not, Mr. Love. For example, there are currently several practicing and highly successful physicians with your precise physical condition.”

“Not my precise condition at all. You deceive yourself grossly, Father, by presuming to know me. You do not know me now, nor will you ever.”

“We’re both being presumptuous, Mr. Love. You presume me to be covertly faithless, I presume you to be more physically proficient than you think you’re able to be. Tit for tat, as my grandmother used to say. Now let’s be done with it, shall we?”

“Out!
Out!
” bellowed Morris Love.

“Yes, indeed, and thank you for your hospitality.” He set off at a trot down the driveway, his dog loping ahead on the leash.

The shouting continued in his wake. “Out!
Out!
”

“Out and away, and never to return!” he muttered, breaking into a run as he neared the gate.

 

In the last couple of days, the air had been miraculously devoid of humidity, and was instead filled with snap and sparkle. Light slanted, sound intensified, clouds vanished from a sky so cerulean it appeared enameled.

He was on his knees, weeding and adding fresh pine straw to the beds, glad to feel his hands in the dirt.

He couldn’t, however, ignore the sense of conflict in his spirit—of loving the new season and at the same time feeling the sorrow it brought. It had taken years to name the sorrow and, at last, to face it down.

His father had died on October twelfth, more than forty years ago, and every autumn the heaviness surfaced again. During that dark time in the cave, he’d been able to forgive his father once and for all, which had worked wonders in his spirit, in his whole outlook. Yet something of the suffering remained, like a tea stain on linen, and returned each autumn in the changing light, to remind him.

The conflicting feelings experienced at his father’s death were so intricately entwined that he’d never been able to disentangle them, and saw no useful purpose in trying again.

Indeed, perhaps it was time to forgive himself—for having felt relief at his father’s passing, for anguishing, even now, over never having pleased him, for continuing to wonder, when he could not know, about his father’s soul. Oh, how he’d longed to lead Matthew Kavanagh to Christ, to see the hellish torment of his father’s spirit transformed by peace and certainty. But it hadn’t happened; it was as if his father, in a last effort to thwart his son, had determined to hold himself away from God for all eternity.

Yes! he thought, thrusting the trowel into the dirt. It’s time to let go of it, all of it. . . .

He would surrender this thing right now, completely, though he may be tempted again and again to snatch it back.

He sat in the grass like a child, his legs in a V in front of him, and prayed.

When he lifted his head, he knew at once that he was being watched. He looked through the pickets to Morris Love’s hedge and, without thinking, threw up his hand and waved.

 

He’d broken a few lacy tendrils from the sweet autumn clematis, and was coming into the kitchen to wash up and find a vase when he saw Cynthia in the window seat. She was joggling Jonathan on her knee, as the boy laughed and clapped his hands. Seeing the look on her face, he felt a stab of something he couldn’t name.

“Hello, darling!” said his wife.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On his way home from a visit with Janette, he stopped by Ernie’s.

Roger looked up and nodded, absorbed in burning the speculum feathers of his duck. Roanoke hoisted a forefinger.

“Junior’s got good news!” said Ernie. “He got that letter said she wouldn’t go out with ’im, but said she was comin’ with her sister to see a girlfriend that lives here, an’ she’s goin’ to drop by and say hello. October twenty-second!” Ernie announced the date as if it were right up there with the day the English landed on Whitecap.

“Said she’n her sister would meet Junior for coffee somewhere, so he wrote back and said Mona’s, nine-thirty!”

“Bingo!” Father Tim exclaimed, pulling up a chair. “I’m glad to hear it.” He liked the smell of Roger’s burning wood, it made the place seem positively cozy.

“Junior’s goin’ to quit drinkin’ beer ’til then, see if he can drop ten pounds.”

“Aha.”

“Yeah, an’ goin’ to massage his scalp, try to grow some hair,” said Roanoke. “But there ain’t no way that’s goin’ to happen.”

“If it works, let me know,” said Father Tim.

“Plus,” said Ernie, “
plus
I sold Elmo’s bed—lock, stock, and barrel.”

“The Zane Greys?”

“Th’ whole shootin’ match. Man come in yesterday, bought a couple sinkers, wandered off in there, come back with th’ box in his hands. He said how much, I said fifty bucks, he said I’ll take it.”

“Where did Elmo wind up sleeping last night?” he asked.

“A box of mixed westerns is where I found ’im this mornin’.”

Roger didn’t look up from his work. “Tell him about
The Last of the Plainsmen
.”

“Fella gave me cash, sat down right over yonder, went through th’ whole box one by one, an’ found it—a signed hardback first edition! Didn’t even know it was there. Worth a fortune, prob’ly two hundred, easy. He said I ain’t payin’ any more for this, I said I ain’t askin’ any more, a deal is a deal. But I got to tell you, it broke my heart. Two hundred
bucks
!”

“It’d bring a tear to a glass eye,” said Roanoke, tapping a Marlboro from the pack.

Elmo appeared at the door of the book room, looking frazzled and disgusted.

“So, Elmo,” said Father Tim, “how are you liking mixed westerns?”

 

He didn’t go home from the office; he went to the beach.

At the bottom of the dune, he took off his socks and stuffed them into his shoes, then rolled up his pants legs and started to walk. No wife, no toddler, no dog, no nothing.

There was a fierceness in him that he didn’t completely understand. Maybe he could walk it off, walk it out; maybe it would vaporize over the ocean and descend on Argentina as a minor typhoon. He felt angry at a lot of people for a lot of reasons—at Jeffrey Tolson for being cruel, at Janette Tolson for being passive, at Cynthia Kavanagh for losing her heart to someone else’s child, at Morris Love for being imprisoned when he might be free. He was even angry with himself, but for what?