Mercy (19 page)

August nods as though bowing, chin to chest. The message is clear—the body tormented, the spirit set blissfully free. He opens his eyes to find Castor toppled over on his side, the bottle somehow still upright in his clutching fist. After a moment’s alarm August registers the relaxed eyelids, the even breath of sleep. The fire is dying, but the night is mild—surely not the first the poor man’s spent alone outdoors. August rises joyfully and sets off, dead certain of the direction in which St. Mary’s lies.

My God
, Christ lamented on the Cross,
my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
August grins, fairly skipping through the shadows. God hadn’t, of course. Nor had He forsaken Saint Agatha, nor any other who had the courage to be martyred in His name. This is what August has forgotten. Earthly suffering is not merely to be weathered. It is to be welcomed, celebrated even, proof positive of the special attention of the Lord.

He can feel himself mending, each step the setting of some tiny but indispensable bone. When the switches strike him, he finds they have no sting. Untouchable now, he takes in a lungful of spring, pictures himself drawing back every curtain at the rectory, throwing every window open wide.

Deeply grateful for the new lease on his spiritual life, August goes about setting things to rights. After thankfully forcing down every scrap Mrs. Stitchen’s set out for him, he carries his breakfast plate and teacup in to the sink. She looks up shocked from the far counter, the rolling pin stalled in her floury hands.

“I’m off on my rounds, Mrs. Stitchen,” he announces, feeling his shrunken stomach buck. “Thought it best to get an early start, I’m terribly overdue.”

She nods speechlessly.

“I’m looking forward to visiting the Chartrands. Those children are such—” He gags a little. “—such a joy.”

“Yes, Father.”

He smiles tightly. “Tell me, Mrs. Stitchen, have you any family of your own?”

Caught off guard, she betrays herself, her eyes leaving him to fix on her ragged circle of dough. “Mr. Stitchen passed away young,” she says softly, “not two months after we were married.”

August feels his heart swell. He takes three jerking steps and curves a skeletal hand over hers. “There now,” he says, “you’re a member of Christ’s family, aren’t you?” She nods, looking up at him. “Remember,” he murmurs, “no one is alone who knows God.”

The sentence acts like a tonic, its effect instantly evident in her eyes. He carries this small triumph like a trophy around the parish, repeating the winning words at some opportune moment during each of his stops. Only after the last visit, when he’s back in his office making notes, does he recall the question that first necessitated his fine pronouncement.
Have you any family of your own?

And now, as though the old desk were suddenly made of glass, August looks down through three drawers to the little pile of letters he’s stuffed away.

Why hast Thou forsaken me?

He draws the bottom drawer open slowly, shutting his eyes to reach inside, as a child shuts his eyes to enter a darkened room. There are four in all, about one every other month since he put the first away. He arranges the letters by date stamp—peach sent in late October, powder blue in January, mint in March. The latest arrived a week ago, stamped two weeks before that. He turns it gently, petal pink in his hands.

No. Begin at the beginning. He’ll answer every one of them line for line and mail the whole thing off in one of those cards that reads,
Sorry I haven’t written in so long
.

Waving the oldest letter under his nose, he finds its fragrance distinctly changed—old-womanly rather than womanly—having taken on the back-corner mustiness of the drawer. He slits the top edge with Father Rock’s opener, a small tarnished sword.

August breathes hard, but the air is suddenly thin. He reaches for the blue letter with rattling hands.

Dark balls of sweat fall one after the other from August’s brow, spotting the third envelope forest green.

He’s dizzy now, his gut cramping, the final letter wilting in his slippery hands. He forgets the little sword and rips the envelope with his fingers, tearing it open in an unholy mess.

August palms his eyes, pressing hard on the balls so they spread in their sockets. He feels a knocking in his chest cavity, his skull and finally his ears, where he recognizes the
sound of knuckles at the office door.

“Father?” Mrs. Stitchen asks in a quiet, troubled voice. “Are you in there, Father Day?”

He lowers his hands. “Hmm.”

Mrs. Stitchen’s face, gentle as a cow’s, in the crack of the door. Her wide-set, curious eyes. “Here you are. I thought you’d’ve been in for your supper by now. I’ve been calling all over town—”

“What is it?” he asks hollowly.

“Oh, Father, I’m so sorry. A Father Felix telephoned—”

Whatever else she has to report, whatever details she may know, it’s all lost in the howl that escapes August’s mouth. He leaps from behind the desk as though caught in a criminal act, pushes past her and tears away down the hall.

T
he first contraction peals like a warning through Mathilda’s lower back, its echo a dreaded question.
What if it looks like him?
She’s a definite redhead, Thomas a dirty blond. What if its head comes out plastered with black hair? What if it has rings in its eyes? The Catholic Church skivvy with a kid the spitting image of the priest. Thomas will stand brokenly by her, Father Day will be sent away, and she’ll be saddled with a little replica to tug at what’s left of her heart.

After a time, another contraction. She says nothing of them when Thomas appears in the doorway with a steaming kidney pie.

“I’m tired,” she tells him. “Let me sleep.”

He bows a little, like a footman. Sets the pie down and backs out quietly, leaving the door ajar.

“Close it, please.”

“But what if you need me?”

“You think I can’t make myself heard through a door?”

“Okay, honey. Sweet dreams.” He pulls the door shut, squeezing out his face, narrowing the hallway light to an eerie line.

For the first time in months Mathilda sits up in answer to something other than her bladder or bowels. Her feet are sacks of sand, but she stands on them all the same. Somewhere else, she thinks feverishly, have it somewhere else. Then what? See what it looks like? Give it away? It doesn’t matter. The words revolve like a rosary in her skull
—somewhere-else-somewhere-else-somewhere-else
.

She unhooks the fly screen from the window and lifts it out. Looking down, she finds the Virginia creeper has already made it to the second storey. Hooked a leaf up over the sill like a hand.

The parlour sofa wasn’t built for so substantial a man. Nonetheless, Thomas has been exiled to it for the past two weeks, Mathilda huge under the sheet, complaining of the heat his body gives off, his incessant snoring and overpowering smell. She’s delicate, he tells himself. Besides, she’s softening toward him, needing him more every day.

He sits up to unkink his massive back. He can’t sleep, and it’s been far too long since he dismantled that slicer and gave it a proper going-over. Truth be known, the shop’s not half so clean as it was when Thomas was on his own. Stealing downstairs, he smiles to himself. Who cares? He’s got better things to do, now he’s practically a family man.

Amid the clatter of parts, he hears nothing of Mathilda’s escape. Not her desperate clambering through the window, not even her lumbering descent—swollen feet and hands
grappling down the lattice, tearing the glossy vine. There’s no sound of a motor. Even with all her wits about her, Mathilda wouldn’t know how to start Thomas’s truck, let alone clunk it into gear. Which leaves the old bicycle the butcher Ross left behind.

Thomas is deaf to his wife’s fat, gravel-spitting tires, the squeak of her seat springs as she pedals insanely away.

The slicer’s blade shines like an eye. He’s gone on to organize and wipe out the fridges, polish the display case, scrub down the blocks and mop the checkered floor. Instead of tiring him, the work has filled him with beans. It’s in the name of preparation, after all, everything just so for the arrival. The idea of the baby halts the white cloth in his hand. He secretly hopes not for a son but for a little Mathilda, gazing out at him through blue-black eyes.

A gift
. The baby should have a gift from its father, something to welcome it into the world. Sure, there’s the sheepskin, but he needs something more solid than that, something the child can hold.

Of course. He brings an open hand down on his knee. The rabbits.

One minute Castor’s wailing one of his daddy’s shanties, the next he hoists his bottle and the wandering eye has its way. The curtain goes up on a bloody scene. He looks out from a stethoscope’s silver plate, dangling like a medallion from Doctor Albright’s neck. Before him a woman’s
straining thighs, her sex a yellow-bearded face beaten to a pulp and bellowing. Castor swings in close then back, settling against the doctor’s lambswool chest.

Who?
Castor runs down a list of Mercy’s natural blondes, looking for one with strong, heavily fleshed legs. Elsa. But it can’t be—Renny would’ve told him, even with things the way they are. Surely he would’ve told the uncle-to-be.

Doctor Albright stands, and for a moment Castor glimpses the head of the bed. The woman’s face is turned aside, but the braid gives it away. It’s long, impossibly glossy and thick, twitching bluntly on the pillow like a cut snake.

Castor comes back to himself as though falling down a hole. That blasted braid. It was what got her Renny in the first place, he’s sure of it. That and the berry-spattered cleavage she made sure the poor sucker caught sight of whenever she stopped by the station on her way home from work. Castor should’ve scented trouble the day Renny came home smelling of preserves. Still, she’s having his brother’s baby. Things are bound to be different now.

Castor staggers to his feet, stuffs the bottle down his pants, licks his palms to smooth the greasy black pelt of his hair.

Mathilda’s water breaks several miles up the north road out of town, soaking the seat, running warmly down her thick, pumping thighs. She gasps at its fluid tickle, then pedals backwards hard to brake, planting her feet and bracing herself for another wave of pain. Even through the steamy
jungle of her mind the contractions are getting harder to ignore. This one doubles her up over the handlebars, bringing her nose to nose with the black rubber bulb of the horn.

Her face would be ashen if the moon weren’t buried so deep in cloud. She can scarcely tell road from shoulder, shoulder from knobby-topped trees. All the same, the moment the pain subsides, she remounts and wobbles on.

One thick-ankled foot after the other, Mathilda shoves the pedals down. The road shifts and rears beneath her until, countless contractions later, she finds herself at the mouth of a rutted track. Away down its tail end there’s a twinkle of light. She’s got just enough sense to take the turn.

The glimmer leads her on to an enormous stony-faced house. She’s close enough to make out the carved lilies on its doors when the bicycle betrays her. Feeling it slide out from beneath her, she gives vent to a terrible scream.