The Wonder of All Things (17 page)

“Of course you do,” Reverend Brown said. “And so do I. And I’m trying to do right by him. He hangs upon my word. I’m everything to him. I’m all he has. All he ever does is try to do right by me, Sheriff. And do you want to know the worst thing about it all? Do you want to know what’s worse than having someone believe in you that much?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s having someone believe that you won’t help them because they must have done something wrong by you. Even when all they’ve ever done is make you proud. Sam thinks I’m angry with him, or ashamed of him, and that’s why I won’t help him.” Reverend Brown’s voice softened, like music being taken out of earshot. “I’ve done everything I can, Macon, and I haven’t helped him. And he blames himself for it.”

Macon considered the man before him. This was not the Reverend Brown that he had known: powerful, confident, intimidating. It was not the leader of one of the largest churches in the country. It was simply a man mourning the brother whom he had lost in a car crash all those years ago. It was a loss the reverend wept for daily, Macon thought to himself. Perhaps it was not too far removed from the feeling that Macon felt in the wake of Heather’s suicide.

“Okay,” Macon said.

* * *

Sam was brought into the house through the back, away from the reporters and the masses of people who were not as informed about Reverend Brown’s church. The reverend was in the study of the Andrews House. It was a large, sprawling room with a high ceiling and several large leather chairs placed strategically around the room. On the north wall was a map of the old world—a map made when it was still believed that there were coiling monsters in the lengths of the ocean. It was a map that told of the way things could be when a world was still inclined to imagine. Perhaps that was why Reverend Brown was drawn to it the way he was.

While in Stone Temple, he spent his quiet time, what little there was, sitting in front of the map, staring up at it from the leather chair. More than once, since he had come to the Andrews House, when he was supposed to be working—crafting the next sermon, keeping things organized within his church—he would lose himself in the map. There was both simplicity and complexity to it.

Reverend Brown was seated in a leather chair, looking up at the map and the large serpent breaching the water in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. And although Reverend Brown thought of it as a serpent—because of its long, slender body—he also thought of it as something else. Not quite a dragon, but something more primal, something older and not yet crafted into the mundane angles of iconography. It was a raw, visceral image. Unpolished and flawed in its beauty.

And that was something the man could not look away from.

When Sam was brought in, it had been several hours since the reverend’s visit with Macon, but the time was needed to be sure that there was little correlation between his visit to the sheriff and Sam’s release. He trusted that Macon would not disclose why he had arrested the man or who the man’s identity was.

“I’m sorry, Isaiah,” Sam said. He had been brought in by one of the reverend’s security men. The man was gentle with Sam, having helped him often over the years, and he left the room without a word. Sam stood by the door, looking down at the floor, with his hands at his waist, as though he could make himself small enough to disappear from the world. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Reverend Brown stood and walked to his brother and wrapped his arms around him and hugged him warmly and sighed into his ear. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s okay.”

“Really?” Sam replied sheepishly.

“Yes,” Reverend Brown said. “There was no harm done to anyone, and that’s all that matters.”

“But you told me not to bother her again. You told me to leave her alone and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“No more talk about any of that,” Reverend Brown said. He took a step back and held Sam’s face in his hands and, gently, he kissed his brother’s brow. “We don’t have time machines here, so it’s best to move forward. What have I always told you?”

“That you’ll always take care of me,” Sam said. Finally, he lifted his eyes from the floor.

“And what else?”

“That there isn’t anything you can’t fix.”

“That’s right,” Isaiah said. “There’s nothing I can’t or won’t fix for you, brother. And why is that?”

“Because we’re all we’ve got.”

“That’s right,” Reverend Brown said. Then he placed his arm around Sam and the two of them walked into the center of the library. Sam mumbled apologies, which Reverend Brown left unanswered. The man was always in a state of apology. It was simply his way.

“She really is wonderful,” Sam said when they had reached the leather chair where Reverend Brown had been sitting.

“Sit here,” Reverend Brown said, guiding him into the chair. “I’ll get you something to drink and then I want to take a look at you.”

Sam removed his jacket. “She’s nice,” he said. “And her father is nice, too. He didn’t mean to do this,” he said, pointing to the bruise on his lip. “I think he was just scared. Parents get scared sometimes.”

“So do little big brothers,” Reverend Brown said, returning with a carafe of water and a glass. He filled the glass and watched as Sam sipped it gingerly, wincing when the glass touched the bruise on his lip.

“And you’re my little big brother,” Sam said, grinning.

“Ad infinitum,” Reverend Brown said with a flourish of his hand. “Now, let me have a look at you.”

Sam removed his shirt. Apart from the wound on his lip, there was a large red mark on the back of his neck and his wrists were ringed with a bruise from when the handcuffs were placed there. But the skin was not broken and there was no indication of any serious injuries. “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?” Reverend Brown asked when the inspection was finished.

“The toughest,” Sam said, and for a moment his voice was that of his youth, when he was a football star with a splendid life sprawled out before him.

“Of course you are,” Reverend Brown said. He handed Sam back his shirt. The man dressed and sat again and looked at his brother. The moment of clarity, the moment of happiness that had brought back memories—for them both—of the way things had once been, passed.

“I wanted her to fix me,” Sam said slowly. “So you wouldn’t have to take care of me. So I could help you. So you wouldn’t be ashamed of me.”

“I’m not ashamed of you, Sam,” Reverend Brown replied, sitting in the chair across from his brother. Above them both, the map of the world persisted.

“I try,” Sam said. “I try to get things right.”

“I know,” Reverend Brown said. “I know you do. And she’ll help you. I know she will. I’ll see to it. Just be patient.” He patted Sam’s hand lightly. “But for the next couple of days, I’m going to have one of the security men stay with you. I’ll make sure it’s someone you like. Probably Gary. You like Gary, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Sam said gently. “Gary’s good. He’s nice, too.”

“Yeah,” Isaiah said. “He’s a good guy and he’s going to help make sure you’re safe for the next couple of days. Just until things settle down. He’s going to stay with you, and the two of you are going to hang out here at the house, okay?” He turned away and gazed up at the map.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said yet again, and his voice was more childlike than Isaiah Brown had ever heard before.

“You know I love you, don’t you, Sam?”

“I know,” Sam replied. “I know. And you know I try, don’t you, Isaiah?”

“I know,” Isaiah replied. “What do you think of this, Sam?” Reverend Brown asked. He pointed at the map.

Sam looked up at it. He thought for a moment. “It’s the world.”

“It is,” Reverend Brown said patiently. “But what do you think of it?”

Sam looked again, and considered the map more closely. “I like it,” he said. “But why is the dragon drowning?”

“What?”

Reverend Brown sat forward in his chair, then he stood and approached the map. It did, in fact, seem as though the dragon was not swimming the waters between continents, but drowning in them. The agape mouth—which, only seconds ago, had been one of power, ferocity and menace—was now somber and frightened, almost calling for help. Isaiah could almost hear the sound of the waters rising above the creature’s head, and he wondered how he had ever seen anything else when he looked at the image.

* * *

Tom and his son sat at the dinner table loading food into their mouths by the forkful and listening to the sound of the wind pushing through the pines outside beneath the moonlight. Now and again there was the clatter of silverware against the plate. The low scraping sound of a small hill of rice being corralled in one corner. The entire house smelled of sage and thyme and onions and crushed red pepper. There was a cast-iron heater in the living room with a fire burning gently inside, the flames flapping their wings. The smoke went up and out into the cool, autumn night, rose for a short distance, then flattened and crept out over the yard.

Tom was staying in the barn at the Johnsons’ place. For years the barn had housed horses and other animals, but when the farming became a more difficult means of making ends meet Robert Johnson got rid of the animals and, for many years, the barn remained empty—save for the occasional sick cow or horse stabled at the behest of some neighbor with no other place to put it. Then Robert’s wife had the idea of converting the barn into an apartment. “In case of company,” she said, even though the couple rarely entertained anyone. Robert resisted, citing better uses for the money and the couple’s scarcity of guests. But his wife wouldn’t be swayed and so the top portion of the barn, which once held hay and tools, was insulated and dry walled and painted and filled with all of the other amenities of the “civilized world”—as Robert’s wife had put it. The only niceties lacking were a television and internet—things the hidebound couple both felt weren’t particularly indicative of civilized people.

Fortune smiled on the Johnsons. They finished the renovations just two weeks before the air show tragedy in Stone Temple. All of a sudden the town was filled with people needing a place to stay, and all of them having good, old-fashioned money to spend. There were plenty of people they could have rented the apartment to but, when he was a younger man, Tom had helped Robert on more than a few occasions. And Stone Temple was still a place that favored familiar faces over well-heeled strangers. So when Tom called and asked if they could put him up, the Johnsons were more than happy to get him squared away. Now he and Wash were settled into the apartment together. It smelled of fresh paint and old horses. The smell was in the wood, cured into it after years of holding animals, but like so many things in life, it was a condition that was not so oppressive that it couldn’t be ignored.

Tom had been staying in the apartment for a week. Wash had come to join him two days ago.

“This ain’t so bad, is it?” Tom asked.

Wash finished the last of his food and placed his fork in the center of the plate. He rubbed his palms back and forth against his thighs. “No, sir.”

“We get along okay, don’t we?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom rose from the table, shaking his empty beer can. He got a full one from the refrigerator and leaned against the kitchen sink. “Tonight,” he said, taking a sip, “tonight was good. I’m glad Grandma finally changed her mind about this. Maybe she’s not quite as much of a hard old bird as I remember.”

Tom settled across the table and looked long and hard at his son. Wash sat with his hands in his lap and his eyes downward toward his dinner plate. Outside the breeze picked up and there was a light flapping sound in the ceiling as a few loose shingles caught in the chilly wind. Wash’s father listened to the sound of the shingles and to the slow popping of the fireplace in the other room. He heard the gentle hum of the refrigerator and the low roar of the wind, the rhythmic breathing of his son and the pale moon sweeping by above the world. He heard the impossible sound of everything and, as he listened, he fiddled with the top of his beer can and that tinny, metallic sound of his fingers playing against the metal was the only sound that he could hear.

He took a sip. “Did I ever tell you how your mother and me met?”

Your mother and I,
Wash wanted to say, but he only said, “No, sir.”

“We met at church,” Tom said, grinning nostalgically. “Not many folks would believe it, but I used to go. Anyway, we were very young. Around your age, maybe. I’m bad with dates and details and all that. But I wasn’t much bigger than you and neither was she. Your grandma and grandpa had come to visit our church. It was normal back then for people from one church to visit another. I guess folks still do that, don’t they?” He paused to reflect.

“Well, I kept noticing her all through the service. I don’t really know why I kept noticing her, not then I didn’t know, anyway. She wore this white dress—perfectly white. With little pink frills around the bottom and at the sleeves. She used to tell me that she hated that dress. She said it made her look like a doll.”

Tom laughed.

“It did. It was a little goofy, I guess. All puffy and frilly. She wore these white shoes with white socks. My God, it must have been horrible to wear something like that, a girl at her age.” He leaned back in his chair, laughing a little. “You wouldn’t know it about your grandmother now, but she used to love seeing your mama in dresses like that.” Tom took another sip of his beer. “It was years from the time I saw her in the church that day to our first date. Not until I moved here to work at the mill. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the two of us had grown up together. Maybe we would have been childhood friends. Maybe she wouldn’t have been willing to go out with me when I finally did ask her. I don’t know. Nobody can ever say what might have happened. ‘If this’ or ‘if that.’ Wondering about what might have been doesn’t do anybody a lick of good. That’s a fact.”

He paused reflectively.

“Can’t nothing be undone. It’s all just ashes and missed opportunities.”

Tom looked down at his hands, then glanced over the table at his son. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. He stood and cleared the table and, after drinking down his beer and getting another, he motioned for Wash to follow him as he started down the stairs.