Embracing Darkness (46 page)

He shook the table again, this time by accident as he pushed his seat in, and some of his coffee spilled onto the tablecloth. He waited to hear Ellen scream, “CHRIST, PHINEAS! YOU’RE LIKE A BULL IN A CHINA SHOP!” But, again, nothing. Phineas thus read out loud the article about Rex Gunther’s death in the local paper, which had reprinted the story it had gotten from the reputable
Biloxi
Daily
Bugle
.

Biloxi, Mississippi: An eighteen-year-old Private was found dead in his barracks on the morning of February 20. A preliminary investigation indicated that he may have been the victim of foul play, but after a two-day inquiry officials have concluded that it was a suicide.

The deceased, Rex Gunther of Holly, New Hampshire, was found last Friday by three fellow Privates who live in the same barracks.

There are, as of now, unsubstantiated reports that the dead Private was an hermaphrodite, which at first led to speculation that this was a hate-driven crime. Yet the Army is withholding a statement of cause of death, stating that it is too graphic to print. A source does say, however, that the cause of death was brutal self-mutilation.

U.S. Army Major Stanley Zabrisky, interviewed yesterday afternoon, said, “Our hearts go out to that young man’s family. This was a tragic event for all involved, including the brave young cadets who found him in the barracks.”

Private Owen Anderson, one of the three cadets who found Gunther on Friday morning, was still visibly shaken. He had this to say: “He was okay. Quiet and to himself. You know how it is with some people. We all wanted to be friends with him. I guess he just had issues. I said that to my buddy Zach, who was with me when we found him just lying there. He said that we should have done more.”

The two other Privates who found Gunther were not available for comment, and the Army has not released their names.

Suddenly Sister Ignatius remarked, “That boy didn’t commit suicide, Phineas, and you know it.”

The priest put his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him with careworn eyes, and they both got up from the table. As they made their way back to the rectory, Sister Ignatius thought of all the times she had called their ward “Two-Sex Rex” and how guilty she now felt.

“There’s nothing we can do to bring back the dead,” she said to Phineas as they reached the halfway point to the Benson house. “And it makes things so much harder when you have as much regret as I do. I was mean to that kid, more than he deserved.”

Phineas took Ellen’s hand and rubbed as if warming it up after a long snowball fight. “How can you say that?” he said. “You loved Rex.”

“I said things to him,” she replied.

“He forgives you.”

“He’s dead, Phineas. HE’S DEAD!”

“I know that, darling.”

“So stop talking about him as if he’s still in the land of the living! He’s gone, and neither you nor I can ever change that!” She snatched her hand away from his and ran the rest of the way to the Benson house. Even when she’d reached the farthest point from him, Father Poole could hear her sobbing.

“Stop that!” Jessie shouted to Billy Norwin, who was watching her get dressed in the rectory’s upstairs bathroom. “FATHER FIN! SISTER!” she shouted.

“I’m not lookin’ at you,” Billy protested. “I mean, hell! There ain’t nuttin’ much to look at! Just a couple of tiny lumps.”

Jessie liked Billy a lot, though he was nearly five months younger but seemed at least two years older. He was tall with wavy blond hair and green eyes. Although she didn’t want to admit it, Jessie knew that her best friend, Sue Ellen, also liked Billy.

Jessie had told Father Fin and Sister once or twice that she envied the two of them. Although they seemed like two lonely sorts, the two still shared the same birthday. “You both at least have
that
in common,” Jessie told them on her twelfth birthday. “I have no common blood.”

What she meant by “common blood” Phineas and Sister Ignatius didn’t know and didn’t ask. They were content with the way things were, and Jessie was happy living with them on Holly Hill along with her ever-changing cohort of siblings. Yet Jessie always reminded Father Poole and Sister Ignatius that she had no delusions about them being her parents. She knew who her parents were, and she had kept a picture of them over her bed ever since she was a little girl. That had been Sister’s idea.

Jessie kissed the image every night before going to bed, saying “Goodnight, Mom and Dad. I love you both.” On her birthday every year since she was seven, she’d add, “Tonight, when I blew out my candles, I wished that you two were alive again.” This she said every June 5th.

She also repeated it on her fifteenth birthday. She had been playing stickball behind the rectory, and as Jessie slid home her shirt tore. She went inside to change. Billy went in too, wanting to urinate. As they raced each other up the stairs, Jessie made it into the second-floor bathroom first.

After washing her face, Jessie thought that she would have been better off wearing mittens and a coat. Maybe then Billy Norwin wouldn’t have noticed her small breasts. And just maybe she wouldn’t have an ugly cut on her face that might make Billy Norwin look at Sue Ellen instead of her.

When she swung the door open, Billy was standing there, steadily observing her. She said nothing to him but raised her chin and walked grandly past him.

Swell was back on the hill by 3:30. She had made her way from Wheelwright Academy to the front door of the rectory in eighteen minutes. She brought two things with her, a gift for Jessie’s fifteenth birthday and news that she was in love.

At the rectory Father Poole smiled as he greeted her.

“Hi, Father Fin,” said Swell. “Is Jessie here?”

“She’s out back with the boys.”

“Okay. Thanks!”

“What have you got there?” asked the cleric.

“It’s a present for Jessie.”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you, Sue Ellen.”

It was a small box wrapped in colorful red paper, with a green bow on it. As he closed the front door, Father Poole thought that it might have been Christmas wrapping paper and a bow left over from the holidays.

Swell headed to the back of the rectory, where she heard screams and laughter. As she rounded the building’s corner, she saw movement in the bushes. She stopped for a closer look. It was little Ziggy, who jumped out at her and roared as best he could.

“I’m the troll of this bridge,” he said, “and you’ll have to pay me to cross it!”

She laughed heartily and mussed the top of his hair. “Sure, kid. You’re a troll, and I’m carrying the Hope Diamond in here.” She showed Ziggy the box that bore Jessie’s birthday present.

Ziggy paid the gift no mind. “Does your toilet go up?” he asked innocently. Sue Ellen acted as though she didn’t hear the question and walked over to the others who were busy with their stickball game.

The stick they used was the splintered wooden pole with which Sister Ignatius beat the Bensons’ hallway rug outside on the line. She once had threatened Joey and Jonas that, if they didn’t stop using it for their stickball games, she’d take the stick to them. She never did.

Swell came up behind Lou Conner, who was at bat. Jordan St. James yelled, “Hi, Swell!” as he pitched the ball. Lou swung the stick back and knocked the little box clear out of Swell’s hands.

Swell gasped at the pain. “YOU IDIOT!” she cried to Lou, who was still trying to make sense of what had just happened. Jessie came running over from her position in left field near the maple.

“Gee. S-sorry, Swell!” Lou said, racked with guilt.

Jessie grabbed Swell’s fingers and rubbed them. “There, there,” she commented. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Can’t be that bad?” Swell cried. “I think they’re broken!”

“No, I don’t think so,” answered Jessie. “But I
do
think they’re gonna be singing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ tomorrow.”

“Just be glad it didn’t happen to
you
on your birthday,” replied Swell.

We boys all decided to call it quits. The game had been tied two to two for the last three innings, and none of us had any desire to continue, especially after Swell’s accident. Billy Norwin called us over to the back of the rectory and said, “Last one up the maple’s a big girl’s blouse!”

Swell and Jessie turned to watch Billy run well ahead of everyone else, with little Ziggy and General Lee bringing up the rear. Had it been two years earlier, the dog would have been at the front of the race, but the General was getting older now and slowing down.

Seeing Ziggy hopping up and down at the base of the maple, Jessie felt sorry for him. She left Swell alone for a minute and ran over to the tree. Lifting Ziggy up into her arms, she kissed his neck. “Don’t you wanna stay with me and Swell?” she asked.

The little boy pushed Jessie’s face away from his. “Yuck!” he answered.

Ziggy laughed hysterically as Jessie held him upside down and buried her face in the back of his neck. Just then an object caught Jessie’s eye as it fell out of Ziggy’s back pocket. It was a magnifying glass with a rather large lens. Jessie let Ziggy down and retrieved the object.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s a magnifying glass,” replied Ziggy, stretching his arms up as high as he could to get it back.

“Yeah, I know what it is,” continued Jessie, “but why do you have it?” She put the glass up to her eye. “What do you do with it? Play Sherlock Holmes?”

“We burn things,” said Ziggy innocently.

“What sort of things?” asked Jessie in a disapproving tone.

“All sorts of stuff. Ants, caterpillars, spiders.” Shrugging, he asked Jessie for the magnifying glass.

“Absolutely not. This is not a toy. Where did you get it?”

Ziggy had gotten it from me. I had lifted it from Father Fin’s desk one day when I was looking for his deck of playing cards. I didn’t volunteer the information to Jessie, and Ziggy didn’t rat me out to her. At least he didn’t have time to do so. Within a few seconds Jessie and Ziggy saw Billy climb down the tree with astonishing speed.

“What was in that box anyway?” Jessie asked Swell, shoving the magnifying glass into her back pocket. She assumed that it belonged to Father Fin and planned to return it to his desk before he found out that it was missing.

“THE BOX!” she screamed. “OH, MY GOD!” She ran over to the vicinity where it had fallen, and Jessie helped her to look for it.

“LOSE SOMETHING?” I yelled from atop the maple. The boys all laughed with me. The girls were so caught up in trying to find the box that they paid us no mind.

Below the tree Ziggy was still doing the little dance he always did when he wanted one of us to come down and take him up. By this time Billy was almost to the bottom. “I gotcha, little man,” Billy said as he hopped to the ground. He swung little Ziggy onto his back and joined the child’s hands around his neck, as if he were wearing Ziggy as a necklace with the clasp in front. Soon they were halfway up to where the rest of us were perched.

“Why don’t we build a tree house up here?” Charlie Ryder asked.

“Because Father Fin said we couldn’t,” I said. “Besides, he said that the maple would never let any of us fall, so we don’t need one.”

“Still,” said Lou, “it’d be more comfortable. We could sit on a floor instead of balancing on a branch.”

“Get it outta your heads,” I told Lou and Charlie. “It’s not gonna happen.”

“Yeah,” Gabe Sparks added. “Father Fin told us that once, while he was teaching a kid to climb up, the kid slipped or lost his grip or something. And he almost fell all the way down but got saved by a branch. I think the tree was looking out for him.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Jordan said. “There ain’t no such thing as thinking trees. Trees can’t think, and they can’t feel love or hate or anything like that.”

“There are
too
thinking trees,” Gabe snapped.

“What’s this all about?” Billy asked authoritatively.

“These dandies are tryin’ to tell me that this tree’s alive,” Jordan said.

“It
is
alive,” Billy said.

Jordan realized that he had spoken prematurely. “You know what I mean, Billy. I mean alive like we are, alive like being able to think. The tree’s a plant, a vegetable. Who ever heard of potatoes thinking anyway? This tree’s no more alive than the shoes I’m wearing or the stitching in my bloomers!”

“Potatoes have eyes,” Charlie offered, “so they must have brains too. And if a potato had brains, oughtn’t a tree?”

“Oh, bullshit, you guys,” Jordan replied, visibly fed up with all of us.

Just then a branch swung forward and whacked Jordan square in the face. He fell backwards, landing on the next branch below, about two feet down from where he’d been sitting.

None of us said a word. He glanced up at us, perplexed and visibly shaken.

Jordan never did say another negative thing about the maple, and none of us confessed to him that it was I who had pulled the branch back, letting it go to whack Jordan in the face.

A few minutes later the tension among us in the maple was still there. Jordan was holding his mouth and rocking back and forth. Someone had to break the spell, and I guessed I was as good a person to do it as anyone.

“Hey, you guys,” I said. “I wrote another story.”

“You gonna tell us what it’s about?” asked Lou.

“Nah, man,” protested Theo. “I wanna hear the thtory. Can you tell it to uth?”

I didn’t want to at first and just lowered my head. I needed to take everyone’s mind off Jordan. That’s what my announcement of a new story was really about, just something to change the atmosphere.

I had begun writing a few years before this time. Perhaps it all started when my mother’s live-in lover started beating me. On one occasion he clamped my hands to the hot concrete in the middle of August after I’d accidentally knocked over his half-consumed bottle of gin. On another occasion he took a lit cigarette and came at my eye with it. I closed it in time so that only my eyelid was burned. I wrote about all this and more in the back pages of my school notepad, and I began to get pretty good at writing for long stretches of time.