As a Thief in the Night (11 page)

He no longer treated church services with indifference as he had in Walpurgis. The duties that Father Paul gave him were performed with a sense of solemnity that congregation members appreciated. He walked slowly along with the organ music and held the cross with a great air of responsibility during procession and recession. During ceremonies that required the spreading of incense he took extra care to make sure the smoke was distributed evenly among the pews. The books he was reading were put aside and he made a serious attempt to read the New Testament. Ezra filled his heart with the belief that God was speaking to him through his circumstances and through all the unseen sufferings with which he was afflicted. It was this egotism that allowed him to press on, to dismiss the validity of the faces and days that passed him by without a look, and even, occasionally, to smile in the desert in which he saw himself stranded.

The football team both Ezra and Layne played for, and that Gord coached, practiced out of a small county outside of Belle River called Woodslee.  It took them about fifteen minutes, by car, to get there each night. Both boys had been nervous going to the first practice but were less so when they discovered only one other boy had shown up. This was not a good sign. After Gord and Elise had gone out with the team's general manager, a man named Al who was a retired police captain, to boost registration, another fourteen had trickled in over the next couple of weeks. They were named the Woodslee Warriors, and for all the connotations that that name holds, they could not have fought their way out of a wet paper bag. The boys on the team made up for their lack of size with an even more complete lack of speed and experience. But they were good kids, and Gord enjoyed coaching them, as well as the time he was spending with Ezra and Layne.  Ezra was their fastest player and played tailback and free safety. Layne was the youngest boy on the team, but he was big for his age and quick for his size and played nose guard. Most afternoons Ezra left the field with bruises and cuts, and twice he had to be taken to the hospital for x-rays. He often ended up having to chase down ball carriers from opposing teams after they had made huge gains. The kid carrying the ball would run through the defensive line and linebackers like a hot knife through butter, break into the open field, and cut towards one sideline or the other. Ezra would try to take a smart angle to cut him off, and the parents on the sideline, with the touchdown now within reach, would begin to scream. But Ezra was able to run down most of them.

They finished the season 0-9, zero wins, nine losses. Gord was a good coach and knew the game well, but could not make chicken soup out of chicken shit.

They returned to Walpurgis for the vintage. Things were almost exactly as they had left them.
  Perhaps, Elsie thought a little grudgingly, even better. Olyvia had done excellent work. The vines were strong and healthy and the grapes had come along well. House and vineyard looked well ordered and beautiful. Olyvia and Ted had made a few small changes to the house to suit their tastes but none of them were permanent ones. Ted had framed and hung up some of the more accomplished costumes that Olyvia had created for various productions at the theatre. They seemed to be getting along very well.  Ted had just accepted a new position as one of six directors at Stratford and would begin in the New Year. The production he would begin with would be one of Euripedes' tragedies, they had not yet told him which one. Olyvia was of course very envious of this and would have died to sink her teeth into work of that nature. Stratford was not very far and he would be able to commute.

Ezra called up his old friend K.J. Kalafati who came and slept over the first weekend they were there. He was glad to see his friend and lied to him about the new friends he had made in Belle River. K.J. told Ezra about all the trouble his old classmates were getting into. He told him who had been doing drugs, who had been in fights, who had had sex with whom.
  They stayed up late watching movies, and Ezra felt comfortable and easy again. He asked K.J. if he would like to stay the next night too, but he could not because his father was taking him and his older brother camping for the weekend.

In the mornings Ezra and Layne helped their aunts with the vintage work. Elsie had always picked the grapes late and had in some years, for the sake of experimentation, waited for noble rot to set in. Because the land the grapes grew on was a relatively small area, the women had always taken the time to pick bunches of grapes separate from one another, each at the correct moment of ripeness. This requires several passes through the vineyard, and all three aunts instructed their husbands and the children in this. Ezra and Layne were also given the job of spreading the left over debris from the final pressing of grapes back over the soil as fertilizer.

One morning, at the base of one of the vines, the boys found a small nest of snake eggs.  Layne had always been deathly afraid of snakes, so Ezra very carefully picked up the nest and moved it away from the vines and under some trees to the side of the property. Saving them seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Elsie, Sarah, and Olyvia stepped into the lagar together and did the hard work of crushing the grapes for the first few bottles of wine by foot and lent the heat of their bodies to the beginning of the fermentation process. In the days when this was how grapes were crushed, European vineyard owners would pay high wages to accordion players who played for the entire night. But here, in Walpurgis, Ontario, old speakers are placed in the old schoolhouse's windows, and on this particular year John Coltrane and Miles Davis records were played as the grapes were tread. 

One afternoon, while everyone was napping or reading, Ezra sat on the end of the long porch and worked on the small project he had begun. He had found two sticks and carved them with the Swiss Army Knife Gord had given him for his birthday until they were smooth and white. His idea was to make a cross with his mother's name carved into it. When he got home he would hang it on his bedroom wall. He carefully dug her name into the piece of wood that would be the vertical part of the cross. When he was done he found some dark green yarn to tie the two pieces together. But each time he tried to tie it the pieces ended up on top of one another, or crooked. Too preoccupied to notice, he struggled with it as Olyvia came up behind him.

"Hi," he said, still focused on what he was doing.

She put her hand on his shoulder. "What is it that you've been working so hard on?"

He held the two pieces of pale wood together with his fingers and showed her. "It's supposed to be a cross."

"Oh, a cross..." She saw the little letters carved into the wood. "Can I see it?"
  She held out her hand. Her long fingers had purple wine stains on them. Ezra passed her both pieces and she carefully looked them over. "Is this for your mom?"

"Yeah. But I can't get the string tied around the two pieces. It keeps coming apart."

Olyvia stood quietly beside him staring at the crooked letters. Then she sat down on the end of the porch beside him. "You know," she said, "I'm pretty good with string and thread. I use them all the time for my job."

"I know, you make costumes," he answered slowly. " Maybe you can help me."

"I think I might be able to. Let me see the string you have there."

He gave it to her and she held the two sticks together for him to look at. "Is this the way you want it?"

"Yeah."

She took the yarn and wrapped it slowly around the cross. Then she brought it across the front and back again making neat, tight Xs on both sides. "Would you like me to tie it, or would you like to burn the string together?"

"Um...maybe burn it."

"I'll get some matches and a candle."

Olyvia brought them, lit the wick, and pulled the yarn tight. Then she tilted the candle, poured some of the wax on the back of the cross, set the loose end of the yarn into it, and let it cool and harden. Satisfied, she held it out to him. "There you go."

"Thanks, Olyvia."

"You're welcome."

She was quiet for a second. Then, as if she had just remembered something, she looked back at the front door. "Hey, are you and Layne going to help us with the bottling later?"

"Yeah."

"Good," she said, patting him lightly on the knee. "Everyone will be up soon."

She got up, walked out to the side of the front lawn and sat down on one of the swings with her back to him. Looking at the ground in front of her, her long black hair fell loosely on either side of her face, as if she were trying to hide it. Ezra watched her and thought about how hiding underneath long hair must be like hiding behind a waterfall. Pleased, he held up the cross to examine it. There were spots of grape juice on it from the stains on Olyvia's hands. He brought the blade of his knife up to the wood to carve them off. No, he reconsidered, his mother would not mind.

It was the Bird Man who came on the wings of spring and saved Ezra from his isolation, set his fate on its course, and spoke in strange tongues. Everyone called Michael Mulligan the Bird Man because of his huge nose and stork-like, lanky walk. Pimples covered his face and he was skinny and awkward. The name suited him and he didn't seem to mind it. He was neither popular nor athletic, but the other students accepted and even admired him, for one very important reason: Michael Mulligan was perhaps the best young illustrator in the province of Ontario. 

Each afternoon their bus stopped at the public high school and waited for a group of French Immersion students to transfer. Ezra, Mulligan, and ten or eleven other students from St. Anne's would wait on the nearly empty bus and talk amongst themselves, and this was how Ezra first met the Bird Man. Comics were something he knew about. They talked about Marvel team- ups, the Secret Wars series, and about new super hero movies and television shows rumored to be in production. One afternoon towards the end of November the Bird Man asked Ezra if he would like to walk home instead of taking the bus. Mulligan slapped Ezra on the shoulder after they had started walking and asked, "You ever watch the Bad Boys play?"
 

"Who?"

"The Pistons."

"Yeah, sometimes. My uncle and I watch."

"Who's your favorite player?"

Ezra thought for a moment. "I don't know. I guess I don't watch enough to have one. I play football, so I watch that a lot more."

"My favorite player is Isaiah Thomas!"  The Bird Man stepped ahead, placed one foot beside the other, looked off into some imaginary distance, and took a horrible looking jump shot. Ezra smiled. He liked the Bird Man and felt comfortable around him.

"Hey, do you play basketball?"

"I played guard for my eighth grade team."

"Were you good?"

"I won 'Athlete of the Year'."

"Really?" Mulligan flayed his lanky arms around as he was in the habit of doing when he got excited. "You should come out and play with my church group on Friday nights."

Ezra was a little surprised. "I'll come. Where do you guys play?"

"Just down the road from here, at the grade school." He pointed down the roughly paved street. "We play basketball and games and stuff and then go to the Charcoal Pit for fries afterward."

There was something in the Bird Man's voice that made Ezra suspicious. "And it's your church group?  You mean you don't have to go to your church to go?"

"Nah. Anyone can come."

"So you just play basketball, and that's it?"

"Yeah, that's it. You'd probably like it; there's some really good players there."

"Alright, I'll ask my parents."

The Bird Man pumped his fist, "Cool.
  Hey, do you know who Isaiah Thomas said the most intimidating player he ever played against was?"

"No, who?"

"Larry Bird. The Bird Man! Get it? Isaiah said that when he played against him in his first year Bird yapped in his ear the whole game. He said that Bird would tell him what he was going to do to him and then he would go down the court and do exactly what he said he was going to do!"

"Huh..." Ezra admired the idea in silence for a minute and thought about doing the same thing to his opponents on the football field. His confidence moved in extremes that at one moment could accommodate this kind of arrogant passion for his use, and at others made him the victim of its merciless condemnation and judgments.

"Hey," Bird Man said breaking the silence and reverie, "you said Moon Knight was your favorite comic, right?"

"Yeah. I haven't read it for maybe a year or so though. I'm pretty far behind on what's going on."

The Bird Man slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other. "Well, last night I was going through my collection and found a few old issues."

"Which ones?"

"Old ones. Anyway, I did this drawing from one of them for you."  The Bird Man stopped, slipped his backpack off, and pulled a drawing out of his sketch pad. He had copied, in pencil with shading, the entire first page from one of the comics, complete with narration. Its clarity and depiction of depth improved upon the original.

"You drew this?" Ezra asked, astonished.

"Yeah, last night."

"For me?"

"Sure," Mulligan said, raising his arms as if ownership was beside the point. Closer to home the two of them parted and headed in different directions. Ezra could always smell the lake from down the street as he approached his house. It smelled different in autumn than it had that summer. When the Bird Man was out of sight Ezra pulled the drawing out of his bag and looked it over more closely. Moon Knight was standing on the edge of the ocean with one arm across his body bracing the elbow of the other, his downcast face rested in his hand. The moon, not yet full but approaching it, lit up the water. In the sea below, broken by its ripples, sat the reflection of each one of his three identities, his three faces and masks. There was no dialogue and only a single large narration box that ran across the top of the page. Inside it were the words: