The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (2 page)

   “
You get many of
them—thunderstorms?”

   “
Sure do,” the
youth replied, a shy grin creasing his mouth. Earlier, when the boy
was hooking up the Ford to the winch, Father Walther had been too
preoccupied with his delay to pay much attention to his
surroundings. But with nothing but dark cornfields all around and
this country boy at the wheel, it seemed as if he had just stepped
out of the real world and onto a movie set. The Turnpike he had
ridden so many times without a thought for what occurred beyond its
well-patrolled macadam now seemed a right of way through a land
more foreign than he had ever imagined, an American autobahn
linking enclaves of civilization inhabiting the periphery of a vast
alien hinterland.

   “
You
from these parts?” the youngster asked after they had traveled the
next mile in silence. Father Walther gave the name of the town
where his parish was located. The young man had never heard of it.
“I could tell you’re from up that way, though. I’m pretty good at
figuring where people are from. Are you Jewish?” he asked, then
blushed so deeply at his indiscretion that the glow of his cheeks
was visible in the dashboard’s dim reflection. “I just heard
there’s a whole mess of them up to New York is why I asked.” They
road in silence for another half mile. Then, as if in apology for
his earlier gaff, the boy screwed up his face and said, “I had me a
black girlfriend once.”

   
Without
seeming to slow down, the truck veered into a service station that
appeared suddenly in the middle of a cornfield. The boy parked the
truck next to the men’s room at the side of the station, jumped
down from the cab and disappeared inside.

   
The
station’s mechanic was on his break. The tow driver professed
ignorance about how long repairs might take. His interest in his
customer seemed to have vanished once they had reached the garage.
He had retreated to the shadows of the hydraulic lift and a
heavily-thumbed porno magazine. A radio blared country music to the
cornfields.

   
The
closest Father Walther had ever come to his present predicament was
the occasional blowout, a mishap usually remedied with the help of
a passing motorist even before he had a chance to roll the spare
out of his trunk. If he were in his own parish now, or anywhere
near it, he would simply call Father George and ask for a lift,
leaving his disabled machine for the garage to tow away—probably
the same garage that had just given the Ford a clean bill of
health. But here he had no such recourse. He had no idea what
parish he was in—or what diocese, for that matter. Large tracts of
the U.S. were still “mission territory,” but he wasn’t sure if
southern New Jersey qualified as such. In any event, he hadn’t lit
out on his own sans roman collar only to yell for help at his first
brush with misfortune. But as he sat in the service station’s
office, watching the sky lighten above the cornfields, he resolved
never again to take for granted those Good Samaritans who were so
willing to come to his aid.

   
It was
half an hour before the mechanic showed up, picking his teeth with
a bent wire. He was even fatter than his apprentice, and wore the
same dungaree overalls. The two of them conferred for a while, then
the mechanic gave the priest a hostile glance as if he were a bill
collector or door-to-door salesman. He finally condescended to
disconnect the Ford from the tow truck but ignored the priest’s
attempts to explain what happened. He asked for the ignition key
and, with his assistant’s help, moved the car nearer the repair
shop. Then his head disappeared under the hood and Father Walther
was left to endure the loud country music.

   
A few
minutes later the mechanic told him the battery was run-down, but
Father Walther couldn’t tell if this was the cause or just a
symptom of the problem. It seemed inconceivable that a battery
could just up and die. He had had no difficulty starting the engine
after he stopped for coffee on the Turnpike, and there had been no
indication of a discharge.

   “
What
happens now?” he asked as the mechanic connected leads from the
battery to a charging machine.

   “
See if she
takes a charge. All we can do, mister.”

   
It was now six
a.m., two hours behind his original schedule. The sky was fully
light. Cornfields stretched for miles in every direction. Crows
glided lazily across them, looking huge and predatory. His body was
demanding sleep. Even if the car was repaired by seven, he didn’t
see how he would be able to drive for another three
hours.

   
He
decided to call his mother from the pay phone beside the road.
Traffic had begun to appear, sleepy men in ten-year-old cars off to
do a day’s work. His mother was too groggy herself to appreciate
his predicament. He told her he expected to be back on the road
shortly. She said not to worry about being late and generally
seemed unconcerned by his plight. Even though this was precisely
the attitude he had hoped to encourage in her, when she sounded
downright cheerful he felt irritated.

   
At
six-thirty the mechanic pronounced the battery dead. Father Walther
protested, again citing the absence of any sign of electrical
trouble. The mechanic was unmoved: the car needed a new
battery.

   “
How much will
it run me?”

   
The mechanic
stared up at the garage ceiling, pursing his lips as if the price
of a battery were something he hadn’t calculated for some
time.

   “
I could let you
have one for eighty.”

   “
Eighty
dollars?”

   
The man wiped
his hands on an already greasy rag.

   “
That’s if I had
one.”

   
Eighty dollars
was a large chunk of his vacation money.

   
He
followed the mechanic into the office and watched him sit down on a
low stool, his huge bottom spilling over it like blue pudding. He
pulled a telephone directory toward him and thumbed his way to a
page already blackened by other greasy thumbs. Then he reached for
the receiver and dialed with cretin-like precision.

   “
No
answer.” Until now the priest wasn’t even sure the call had
something to do with his Ford. It was as if the mechanic had
dismissed that matter and gone on to other business. “There’ll be
someone by and by,” the man said, finally showing some hint of
sympathy for his customer’s predicament. The priest smiled but
decided that once this episode was over he would write a letter of
protest to whatever state agency had charge of assigning tow
contracts for the New Jersey Turnpike.

   
A new
battery would not arrive before midday. A new battery
should
solve the
problem, the mechanic told him after they had shared some donuts
and day-old coffee. But there was no guarantee something else might
not also be on the fritz. They wouldn’t know until the new battery
was in stalled.

   
Meanwhile, the priest had to think about how he was to get
some sleep. The easiest way was to call a nearby parish and explain
his situation. But he wanted to rule out that option until he was
faced with an actual emergency. He could check into a motel for a
few hours, but that would mean using some of his meager funds, thus
curtailing his activities after his visit to Maryland—golf and
other R&R in the Cat skills. He decided to wait to see if the
battery arrived by noon.

   
It did,
but after the mechanic installed it he said there also seemed to be
a problem with the alternator and possibly with some other part of
the engine Father Walther had never even heard of. He had no way of
knowing if the man was telling the truth. He had come to expect a
certain amount of gulling by merchants even when he was wearing his
roman collar. But this was the first time he had felt as if he were
completely at someone’s mercy. He could take his chances with just
a new battery, but if the mechanic was not deceiving him, he might
only have to go through this rigmarole a few miles down the road.
Besides, he was too tired to drive.

   
The
mechanic said he would work on the alternator right after lunch
(since the battery arrived, two more breakdowns had been towed into
the station). As if to show good faith, he offered Father Walther
the use of his business phone to make any local calls he wanted.
But who would the priest call in this godforsaken part of the
world? He wasn’t even sure where he was, except that it was
somewhere south of Trenton. To pass the time and help keep awake he
opened one of the roadmaps in the office. As best he could tell, he
was stranded somewhere between Exits 4 and 5. But he wasn’t sure if
he was on the east or the west side of the Turnpike.

   
His eye
strayed toward the Atlantic coast. The town names were totally
unfamiliar until he reached a dark red line snaking north along the
eastern edge of the peninsula. Then he spotted Tom’s River,
Barnegat Bay and a number of other resort towns whose names rang
familiar. He had spent his adolescent summers water-skiing along
that stretch of mosquito-ridden beach. A classmate’s parents owned
a bungalow by the bay. Every weekend they drove seventy-five miles
(sometimes seventy-three, sometimes eighty; Frank Willet, Sr., kept
a close account of such things), fighting turnpike and parkway
traffic for a couple days relaxation. Half of his home town—but not
his own parents, who bought even their son’s school uniforms on
credit and owned a car already ten years old when they bought
it—owned property in that same development, concrete-slab,
single-story houses fronting on narrow lagoons. Most of his friends
at school knew he intended to become a priest, but the kids in
Ford’s Pointe, including an abundance of girls, did not. Maybe that
was why he recalled those summers with such warmth, he decided as
he refolded the map—not because of the girls, but because for the
last time in his life he seemed to be just like everyone
else.

   
When he
called his mother back she was perplexed by his delay but still had
no idea of the fix he was in. He could have used a little sympathy,
but at her age she didn’t need more worries than she already had.
As it was, half the tenants of the senior citizens project she
lived in looked to her when they were sick or depressed, which was
most of the time. His brother Ted had moved her into the project
after their father died. When Ted was subsequently transferred to
the west coast, Father Walther tried to get her to move back to New
Jersey into a similar development near him. But she insisted her
place was with those who needed her most.

   “
How
long did the mechanic say it would take?” she asked as he stood
baking in the roadside phone booth (he didn’t have the heart to
call her collect from the mechanic’s phone; she had even less
surplus income than he did).

   “
He couldn’t
say. Probably sometime this afternoon.”

   “
Oh, dear. I
hope it isn’t expensive. It isn’t the clutch, is it? Your father
was always afraid the clutch would go.”

   “
No, Mother,
it’s not the clutch. It’s electrical.”

   “
Well, that’s
not so bad. It could be just a loose wire. Maybe the nice man won’t
even charge for it, seeing how you’re a priest.”

   “
I wouldn’t
count on it.”

   “
Don’t be afraid
to speak up, Richard. Your father always said you have to let
people know you’re not a fool.”

   “
I will,
Mother.”

   “
Perhaps you
could offer to say a mass for his family.”

   “
I don’t think
he’s Catholic.”

   “
Really?”

   
His mother was
always surprised to find out someone wasn’t Catholic. It was as if
she had learned the person wore an artificial leg or had had a
liver transplant.

   
His
three minutes were up. He promised to call back when he was ready
to leave.

   
The
mechanic offered to take him into town for lunch. He hadn’t eaten
anything all morning but coffee and stale donuts, so he
accepted.

   
It was
so hot he found it hard to understand why the miles of corn they
were passing did not just wither and die. The mechanic’s face and
thick neck were bright red. He kept using a blue cowboy
handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his brow. A second
handkerchief was tied around his neck. He wore a white T-shirt
beneath his thick coveralls. Father Walther had on a print shirt
and black slacks. He too wore a T-shirt. He knew it wasn’t
fashionable to wear any thing beneath a sport shirt—especially a
Hawaiian print— but he would have felt half-naked without an
undershirt. He would no more think of going without one than he
would consider wearing a cassock without first putting on a pair of
pants.

   
They
were riding in an ancient Plymouth—early ‘70s. It was colorless,
had a hole in its muffler, and was missing the left front fender.
There were no seatbelts. There were scarcely any seats at all, if
those were raw springs beneath the old spread he was sitting on. It
was not a vehicle to inspire confidence in the professional who
drove it. He consoled himself with the thought that doctors’
children were supposed to be among the most medically neglected
members of the population.