Bright and Distant Shores (53 page)

On Pentecost Sunday Argus thought he saw the Archbishop of Chicago standing before the rooftop lagoon, a man in a dark suit and somber hat. In the dazzling light, it was hard to see his features, but Argus recognized him from the portrait in Holy Name Cathedral—the Irishman's kindly eyes, the gray hair that touched his collar, the high-bridged nose. Had he come to respond to the letter in person? The hat obscured part of his face with shadow. It was absurd to think it was him, especially on a holy feast day, but there was something ecumenical in the man's posture and bearing, the pale, soft hands, the pious regard.

Argus went about his business, flinting a fire from coconut husks. If nothing else, he wanted to appear hardworking. Adelaide and Owen had come to lend moral support amid the sparse crowds, more for the siblings than for the building, and, like the other sightseers, felt coy being there, as if arriving at a slighted party. Owen had been working on the new house sixteen hours a day and had flakes of bottle-green paint under his fingernails. The wedding was only a few weeks away and Argus thought they looked very happy together. He wanted to go and talk with Miss Cummings about books and shake Owen's hand, but instead he had to stack yams into the hot oven. His fingertips were scorched from days of stocking the hearth. He hadn't had a conversation of substance in weeks. The desiccating winds and the glare of the sun made him thirsty all day long and he was forbidden from wearing a hat.

Hunched over the hearth, he watched the man in the somber hat enjoy some chilled coconut milk. Argus could tell he was a priest of the people, just from the way he chatted freely with those around him. Perhaps he took in the city after Mass on Sundays, walked among his flock. And today, fifty days after Jesus had been offered on the cross, each year and eternal, was surely an occasion for fellowship. Argus recalled that the Whitsundays and Pentecost Island had been dear to his very own Reverend Mister, being namesakes for the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, Whitsun being Old English for White Sunday. The islands were named for this exact feast by the Quaker explorer Cook, Argus remembered, who'd gathered coral atolls and volcanic shores for the British crown like so many loose stones. What an auspicious plan if—beyond all hope—his new master had chosen this day to begin Argus's period of service. It was a sham to think so. Vanity at its worst, that a gentleman of such religious rank would seek him out. Looking at the elegant man, Argus remembered the Pentecostal sermons of the Reverend Underwood, the way he recounted St. Peter's famous sermon within his own each
year, a lacquered box of jewels, the reverend would say, within his own tattered trunk of Glaswegian brimstone. He could laugh at himself, the reverend, remained humbled by the task of converting wild souls from the bamboo pulpit, of handing out cigarettes from the back verandah after each service.

On their lunch hour, a trio of clerks came larking up from Underwriting, bored and listless. They played cards at a picnic table and surreptitiously peered up the skirts of a young woman being helped into the captive balloon basket. They made bets on whether her underwear was black, gray, or white, loud enough to earn the contempt of several bystanders. A policy salesman guffawed and the girl in the balloon became mortified as she ascended above them. The clerks waved and bowed to her, the victor holding a dollar bill in his hand, saying
white is right
. Argus looked out into the small gathering, sun-dazed, hoping that Owen would correct the situation. But he and Miss Cummings were taking a turn on the observation platform—everyone wanted to see with the binoculars the newly aviating falcons. Then the clerks turned their attention to Malini, leering at her as she bent to her shell work. One of them called, “What's for supper, wifey?” and another said, “How 'bout a stroll on Halsted after quittin time?” Before Argus knew it he was standing on the edge of the sandy spit, a yam in hand, telling them to be quiet. What he actually said was: “Would you mind stopping that?”

Which was met with quizzical tilts of the head, then murmurs, in the crowd of twenty.

“Looks like darkie knows some English,” said one of the clerks.

Argus fell back and exchanged a look with his sister.

In Poumetan she said,
They smell like pigshit
. The clerks knew the sound of derision in any tongue and one of them plucked back with,
Maybe they're not brother and sis after all, in which case we might see a savage baby up here one of these days
.
I'd pay good money to watch her suckle a baby born in captivity!
Argus
had no idea how to respond to this but the trio looked satisfied with the fallout of the comment and turned for the elevators. A gong announced the end of the first lunch shift but it dispersed even the nonemployees. The onlookers moved away, including the candidate for archbishop. Argus was painfully aware of his naked chest, of the sun in his eyes, of the humiliation scouring his insides. He reached for a piece of broken yam, about the size of an apple core, and when he thought no one was watching, hurled it after the clerks, pelting one in the middle of the back. A turmeric-colored smear appeared on the back of a jacket. They turned in unison, grim-faced, and Argus saw that he'd found the correct target. He put his hands on his hips and the pelted clerk charged the lagoon, swinging his jacket in the air, trying to get one shoe off at a time, blaspheming, fists balled, wading in with a splash. He stalled out about halfway across and fell face-first into the shallow, indigo water. An outbreak of laughter and
Oh dears
got Owen and Adelaide's attention and they crossed from the platform. The clerk was up again, wild with rage, swinging, trying to get purchase and make the sandy bank. Fifty feet above, the girl in the balloon applauded for his misfortune. Argus took Malini by the arm and retreated to the bamboo hut. Within seconds, one of the guards was stomping into the water. He grabbed the clerk by the collar, trawling him back to pant and swear among the excited spectators. It was the first thing of note to happen all day. The clerk was taken away to cool off.

Argus saw the archbishop turn away and head for the elevators. Had His Excellency been witness to a clerk's petulant display of anger and then to a mission houseboy's cheap, vegetable revenge? The bishop would never have such a servant in his house, let alone an aspiring seminarian. There would be consequences for the tossed yam but standing on the leaning bamboo porch Argus felt prepared to meet whatever came. The voyage and the job were simply the means to a divine end, and if he'd dashed his one chance of serving the bishop then he would find
another Eminence. With the binoculars, he'd counted over a hundred church steeples in the city below. But then the man turned while waiting for the elevator and Argus saw a smile on his face. He was grinning to himself, evidently amused by the whole episode. He willed the man to turn back, closed his eyes, prayed. The elevator bell rang and Benny Boy held open the doors. Argus wanted to shout
wait!
His future was about to descend in an elevator. His throat was scorched and he couldn't swallow. The sun caught in the thread of the man's fine suit, his back turning again in a corona of daylight. Argus knew it was the Holy Ghost burning like pitch in his throat. From the top step of the hut, he recalled the words from the second chapter of the Book of Acts; it was all there, every passage, ingrained from years of sermonic repetition, the reverend orating around the mission house while Argus and the cat, Mr. Nibbles, provided him with an audience. Sitting Argus in the front pew every Sunday, had the Reverend Mister prophesied this exact day?

Argus drew breath and aimed his voice for the elevators: “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place . . . ” It was a preacher's full-rafter voice.

The man stepped closer to the elevator, though Benny Boy directed his scrutiny into the new commotion.

Argus came forward. “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven . . . as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting . . . ”

He raised his hands in the air, palms out, and stood at the water's edge. “Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance . . . ”

The man stepped back from the elevator, compelled by the look on Benny Boy's face and the small crowd closing in on the lagoon.

Argus could hear Malini from behind him, in the hut, telling
him that he had ruined everything but that she was anyway ready to go home. He could see the startled look on Owen's face, his own future suddenly in doubt, and the wry smile on Adelaide's.

He skipped ahead in the sermon, to the dramatic part where the apostle Peter cited the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”

The entire rooftop looked on with rapt amazement. Argus now had the man's full attention. He looked directly at His Eminence. “I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved . . . ”

It being Sunday, Argus's sermon roused the churchgoing spirit in many of the sightseers. They were lapsed most of them, Irish Catholics and Protestants on the lam, but the vision of a native boy waxing holy was strange all right, hallowed and out of place in the noonday sun. A few closed their eyes in prayer while others laid out coins as if he were a blind curbstone preacher, one of the State Street oracles humming and lurching outside a department store. Just as the Holy Ghost had descended on the apostles and the believers that seventh Sunday after Easter, converting their native languages to God's own tongue, a brotherhood of understanding, so too, they saw, the native boy had undergone his own conversion, invoking the sermon in a language he did not himself speak. God had given him the gift of English.

Softer now, filled with his own strange power, Argus said: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

An elderly woman knelt before the lagoon, hands raised, apparently awaiting her baptism.

Argus clasped his hands in prayer. “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation . . . ”

A hush fell on the crowd and the archbishop removed his hat. Whether it was in devotion or not, Argus couldn't say, but in the hard light he saw that the man was an imposter. His nose and forehead were all wrong. The shame and vanity, coupled with the sun and a burning thirst, made Argus feel suddenly weak. He staggered back, fell to one knee in the sand.

To the believers on the other side of the small lagoon this was further proof that the savage boy was a vessel lain to waste, a receptacle of God's enduring promise. They left the building, awed and moved, and proceeded to tell everyone they encountered about what they had witnessed. By the next morning half the city knew what had happened. And the other half found out when a reporter at the
Chicago Tribune,
the same reporter who'd had his story of the natives' big day out banished to the back page, was sent to investigate. Monday's edition carried a frontpage article, right beside an update on the war against Spain. The headline read, CHICAGO'S PROPHET OF THE SKYLINE. By that afternoon, the First Equitable's lobby and elevators were full of zealots, patriots, the devout, the curious, the bored, and, to Hale's delight, legions of the uninsured. Instead of closing down the whole spectacle—which had been his cost-cutting plan for the new week—he extended the hours and changed the cafeteria lunch special from the
Commodore Dewey Sandwich
to the
Savage Sibling Sandwich,
complete with a free side of fried yams.

T
he arthritic and gallstoned came to the rooftop, hoping for a blessing, to be bathed in the indigo waters as if they flowed from Lourdes. Argus, now dressed in a suit and derby hat, recited one of five sermons he knew by rote, sang Presbyterian hymns, prayed aloud. People gave him money and the insurance company let him keep it. When no baptisms were offered—Argus knew he was unsanctioned to perform such a task—the infirm and the dashed sometimes took out a life insurance policy. More often, though, they drank coconut milk from the shell, took in the view, forgot their troubles for fifteen minutes. Malini, like her brother, wore Western clothes, but refused to go back and sleep in the corner office where only sheets of newspaper kept her from staring down into the void. From the hut on the rooftop she could see the distant horizon but none of the chasm that made her weak-kneed. With a night watchman posted, she continued to sleep on her grass mat and woke to see the sun rising over the city's private ocean each morning.

At the first lunchtime gong, they took their midday meal in the cafeteria, at a designated table. A rotation of clerks and secretaries brought them their namesake sandwich or the daily special. Underwriting was up at the First Equitable and many of the employees suspected it was because of the native preacher. He may have saved their skins. To show their appreciation they proffered cake, soup, sandwiches. They came up to the roof on their breaks. A cafeteria worker, Alice Binns, a devout West Indian girl by way of Brooklyn, took a liking to Argus and on several
occasions brought him up a piece of cake so he could replenish himself between sermons. Argus could tell by the way she looked at him that she had felt the Holy Spirit move inside her chest. It was personal with Alice Binns.