The Many Change and Pass by R.P. Burnham
The Reverend John Covington came up to the counter at the Wentworth Library and smiled at Nellie Olson. It was almost noon, closing time for the library on Saturdays, and he was a bit breathless, having hurried through a morning of errands on this cloudy day in May. “Returning The Courage To Be, Nellie, a book I would have had if I hadn’t lent it to a fellow minister years ago.”
“I hope he didn’t steal it, Rev. Covington.”
She spoke facetiously, and John answered her in kind. “I think we can say it was a matter of forgetfulness, very convenient forgetfulness, no doubt.”
He was about to turn and leave when to his surprise Myron Seavey came out of the office and greeted him. Usually Annette Duval, the retired librarian, was on duty on Saturdays. “You don’t look a bit like Annette,” he said.
Myron went through the side door into the reading room and came out to the lobby. “She’s feeling poorly today, so I came in.”
“I was just talking to Barbara about you yesterday.”
He and Barbara Hallam were going to co-officiate at Myron and Becky’s wedding next month. Myron’s sigh indicated that he knew what the conversation was about. “I don’t know what else there is to talk about. The music’s been chosen, the vows are all set, the church is ready, the reception is organized and the food chosen, and yet people are still talking.”
John smiled. “Are you thinking it would be easier to just elope?”
“Not quite that extreme. Weddings, though, are for families more than the couple. Becky tells me that her mother calls several times a week with another idea about either the wedding or the reception. I feel uncomfortable with all this planning and would prefer a good dose of Quaker spontaneity—you know, no plans, everyone just shows up and does what the spirit moves them to do.”
“Your father was a Quaker, wasn’t he.”
Myron nodded. “My parents weren’t quite married like that, but they did keep it small. Two witnesses and their parents for guests. But,” he said, abruptly changing the subject, “did you find what you were looking for in The Courage To Be?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice. He started walking across the spacious lobby to where large double windows offered a view of the parking lot. Myron, understanding that he wanted a private conversation, followed.
“So what made you want to reread Tillich now?”
John watched a robin hopping across the asphalt surface and pausing to cock his head to listen, unaware that no worms slithered beneath his feet. “Now that’s a long story, but I think it begins with Adam Kaminski. I made a pastoral visit to his house a few weeks ago—I buried his wife five years ago and he’s technically a member of the congregation. We had a long conversation.”
“Did he tell you anything further about his temple?”
“No, he’s in a different place now, almost indifferent about the temple. Or maybe it’s too painful to think about. He’s not recovering from his stroke very well, you see. In fact, he’s had a couple more minor strokes. He thinks he’s on his deathbed.”
“Thinks?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. The mind plays a dominant role in these things, and if he thinks he is, he might be. But the doctor says there’s no immediate danger. One thing’s for sure—he’s depressed. He can’t use half his body and he feels useless.”
“I gather he’s not a Christian.”
“Yeah, only in name. He’s more like an ancient Stoic, that along with being a modern existentialist. He talked about coming to a place where billions have gone before. He said death used to be an abstraction to him and occasionally a chill of horror when he felt its reality. But now that he was facing it directly, it was different. He made an interesting observation too. He said it wasn’t the big moments in life that he remembered vividly—not weddings and births and so forth. It was quiet and unexpected memories that filled his mind, like seeing his wife in the backyard at sunset with a bunch of flowers in her hand and a halo from the setting sun lighting up her blond hair, or his two-year-old son staring in fascination at the first butterfly he had ever seen. Kaminski had come to believe that was what life was—those moments when time stands still and you remember why you love someone.”
“And this somehow led you to reread Tillich?”
“It was his existentialist faith, I suppose. That and his lack of belief in a personal God. I haven’t peeked into Tillich for over twenty years, and didn’t have the time or heart for Systematic Theology, so I settled on The Courage To Be for a refresher course.”
He spoke casually, but actually Tillich was his favorite theologian, though he also loved Luther’s works for their sparks of humanity and brilliance and respected (if not loved) Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Tillich spoke of faith in a world of doubt, the modern world. But how much of his thoughts and opinions should he share with Myron? How boldly should he speak of his doubts? A minister, according to the conventional view, was not supposed to be subject to such negative thoughts. There were not many people with whom he could do so, but he liked and respected Myron—and trusted him. They had known each other since John was on the search committee for a new head librarian; lately they had become personal friends. He and his wife Wendy had even gone cross-country skiing with Myron and Becky twice this past winter, and each had had the other couple over to dinner during the spring. Their friendship blossomed when John supported him during the Richard Nevins business in the fall. Barbara Hallam had asked him to sign a petition in support of Myron, and he had called him at the library to ask if there was anything further he could do. Then around Christmas when rumors had circulated about a strange temple Adam Kaminski had built in the woods upcountry, he had talked to Myron about it. He was doubtful, but Myron with his treasure-trove of knowledge had mentioned Facteur Chevel, the eccentric French postman who had single-handedly built a strange hybrid palace in the nineteenth century. Together they had visited the bedridden Kaminski and gotten permission to see his work. Myron had taken numerous digital photographs of the site and made a poster display where all the architectural details were explained, but lacking Mr. Kaminski’s permission to make it public, he had only shown it to John and a few others…
But his mind was wandering. He saw Myron was waiting for a further explanation. “I long ago discovered that faith wasn’t something you put in a bank vault. It is dynamic and continually tested. One thing Tillich understood was that faith implies doubt. You can’t tell that to a fundamentalist or to many conservative Catholics, but it is a fact. Tillich makes a great argument for this modern world of doubt. I mean the Protestant Principle.”
He could see Myron searching his memory and could further see that it was a good one. “You mean justification through faith.”
“And the existential leap. Never mind Pascal’s wager. Full hearted, full steam ahead.”
Myron nodded. “I remember that a lot of people thought he was agnostic and denied a personal God.”
“But he always insisted on the reality of the presence of the spirit of God in life.”
“A subtle concept, of course, just like Matthew Arnold’s definition—that stream of tendencies not ourselves that makes for righteousness. Of course many people would call such subtlety agnostic.”
John knew Myron was being facetious, but he retorted rather heatedly and rather too loudly, “Not necessarily.” He glanced across the spacious hall at Nellie. She was clearing her desk and getting ready to leave and didn’t seem to notice. In a lower tone he continued. “To me faith is an ongoing process. It needs constant testing.”
“Yes, I respect that attitude very much. It’s certainly more honest and human than the rigidity of the fundamentalists, that’s for sure.”
“Yes, it is. I had a parishioner once who—”
He was interrupted by a phone ringing, and it took a few seconds before he realized it was his cellphone. “Sorry,” he said. “I meant to turn it off when I came into the library. Obviously I forgot.”
“It’s okay. We’re just about
ready to close and the place is empty.”
John fumbled at his pocket before extracting the phone and turning it on. A frantic woman’s voice, speaking so rapidly and indistinctly that he couldn’t understand her, buzzed in his ear.
“Excuse me? I can’t understand you.”
He heard her take a deep breath. “This is Suzy Kimball. Do you remember me?”
He did. She was the mother of the boy poisoned by mercury. He had seen her at the hospital when he was on chaplain duty and had talked with her several times. At Christmas he had brought gifts that the congregation collected to her for her sick son. “Yes, of course. What’s the matter?”
“My husband is in trouble. Or he will be if he isn’t stopped.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a pause before she said hesitantly, “He’s started drinking, something he never did before. It’s because he’s so distressed about that Ridlon man.”
John watched Myron walk over to a shelf that displayed upcoming events as well as brochures and catalogs from publishers and start straight-ening things up. “But didn’t you win the suit? I thought you already got the money?”
“We did. It’s not that. It’s the way that man acted at the settlement. He was told by the judge to apologize. He did, but in a very bad way. He showed contempt. He was impolite. He wouldn’t shake hands. He made my husband feel awful, like he was a worm.”
“I see. But…?”
“But it’s worse. It’s my son Leighton. He ran away. He hates his father. He taunted him about country justice. See?”
“You mean physical violence?”
“Yes,” she wailed. “He’s got a gun.”
“Who’s got a gun?”
Myron, leafing through a catalog, looked up.
“My husband. He’s looking for Ridlon right now.”
“Shouldn’t the police—”
“No, I don’t want the police. I called my minister but he’s out of town at a meeting. I thought of you. He thinks God hates him.”
He had been wondering why she called him. But the explanation was strange. He couldn’t hide a note of incredulity when he asked, “Your husband thinks God hates him?”
“Yes, yes. Because when he was a little boy he was responsible for another boy drowning. It was an accident really, but he blames himself. He never spoke of it before. I didn’t know until today. He thinks Markie is sick because he’s payment for the drowned boy. But when he’s told it’s Ridlon’s fault, he gets confused.”
“Where is your husband now?”
“He drove off. My son Malcolm is looking for him too. He’s going to the Ridlon office. Could you also look?”
“You mean at Ridlon’s house?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, glad to be understood. “He’s got to be talked out of it.”
John caught Myron’s eye. “Myron, could you look up Ridlon’s home address?”
With a nod, Myron went into the reading room to consult the phone book while John got a description of Luke’s car and discussed some logistics before hanging up. He got her phone number at her in-laws’ farm and the cellphone number of Malcolm’s boss, who had lent him his phone.
Myron returned just as he hung up. “You heard that, didn’t you?”
“Enough to understand what was being said. It was Mrs. Kimball. Her husband has a gun and is looking for Ridlon and wants your help. Is that right?”
“Pretty much. That poor woman was spiritually naked and desperate. She told me things ordinarily left unsaid.”
“But you’re a minister…”
He nodded grimly. He felt very nervous and unsure of himself. Impulsively he asked, “Myron, can you help me? Can you come with me?”
“Of course,” he said without hesitation.
Quickly they prepared to leave. While Myron phoned Becky and filled Nellie in on the situation, John called Wendy and told her he had to help someone and would be home as soon as he could. Having been the one to give his cellphone number to Suzy Kimball, she already understood something was up. Myron got his briefcase from his office and asked Nellie to lock the place up. Within minutes they were pulling out of the parking lot in John’s late-model car.
“You’ve got the address?” he asked, suddenly feeling panicky.
Myron tapped his head. “Ridge Road, Bedford, number 123.”
“That’s near the river.” As he turned onto Elm Street on the way to Bedford, he began relating the details of the phone conversation.
Myron was silent for a while. He seemed to be weighing possibilities. “I haven’t met the Kimballs,” he said presently, “but I know they’re dirt poor and probably not well educated.”
“Suzy sounded intelligent to me,” John interrupted.
“I don’t doubt it. I just meant—well, I don’t know what I meant. I was trying to figure out if the man is really dangerous.”
John braked to allow an elderly lady to cross the street. Saturday traffic between the two towns was heavy and the going was slow. He remembered that when he spoke with the Kimballs at the hospital Suzy had done almost all of the talking. Luke had hung back, occasionally nodding, other times agreeing with a murmur. “I don’t think so. I think he lacks self-confidence. Poverty doesn’t do much for self-esteem, you know. He’s a homely fellow and awkward. I say that because Suzy is quite pretty—or could be if she wasn’t ground down by poverty.”
“Now they’re rich, though.”
“Yeah, but a lifetime of poverty has formed them.”
“You say a son taunted him about country justice?”
“And that he’s drunk. A bad combination. The son has been out of the picture for a long time. He ran away when he was sixteen.”
They were approaching Ridlon’s neighborhood. John slowed down, watching for street signs. He glanced at Myron, who appeared lost in thought.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking of the boy who drowned. That poor man has been carrying that load of guilt around his whole life.”
“But that’s a good sign,” John said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It shows he has a moral sense. I remember reading about some hunter who accidentally shot someone in the woods and then finished him off and buried him so that he wouldn’t be bothered. That man was amoral, evil, or very morally obtuse.”
“I see what you mean. The guilt humanizes Luke. We can hope that he’s not very dangerous—unless he’s very drunk.”
John turned onto Ridge Road and they began looking for 123. It was around the bend about a quarter of a mile down the road. The house was of the type some called Mcmansions, a large ostentatious affair with vinyl siding and shoddy construction which typically—for many a sturdy Congregationalist at his church inhabited such places—would be filled with everything money could buy except taste. It was surrounded by many others of the same genre. John recalled someone telling him that this area used to be heavily wooded before it fell into developers’ hands. Ridlon’s house had two large third-story dormers and a first-story wing that was supposed to be for plants and the like but which looked quite barren through the large windows. There were two cars in the driveway, but that didn’t necessarily mean anyone was at home—these people collected cars as others of a distant generation collected stamps.
He looked at Myron, who raised his eyebrows. “Now what are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. He’d be here if he left over an hour ago. Perhaps we should report in to Suzy Kimball.”
Just then John spotted a man working on his garden at the neighboring house. “We could ask that man if he’s seen Luke’s car.”
He got out of the car and walked over to the man. He was in his fifties with a sunburnt bald pate and a narrow face dominated by a large nose likewise sunburnt. He appeared nervous observing John’s approach.
“Excuse me. Have you seen a man in a late-model green car in the neighborhood?”
The man nodded and suddenly became
animated. He had a garden trowel in his hand, which he waved in the air as he spoke. “I was just talking about him to my wife. We were thinking of calling the cops. He was parked near where your car is until half an hour or so ago and was acting strangely.”
“How?”
“He was twitching, know what I mean? He couldn’t sit still. He was very nervous.”
“Is that all he did? I mean, did he get out of the car?”
“No. He seemed to be waiting for someone or looking for someone. He wasn’t very respectable looking either. He looked like a derelict. I’m pretty sure he was drunk too.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Is the man in trouble?’
“He has some personal difficulties,” John said in a way that cut off further questions. “Thanks for the information.”
Back at the car Myron already had Suzy on the line. “He’s at the temple,” he said, hanging up just as John got in the car.
“You mean Kaminski’s temple?”
“Yeah. A neighbor saw him drive to his house and head across the field in that direction. Her son is already heading that way. She still hopes you can talk to him.”
They retraced their route back to downtown Bedford but turned off immediately after crossing the Waska River. They would approach the temple from Kaminski’s house, which was on the other side of the woods from the Kimballs’ land. Earlier in the day clouds had threatened rain, but suddenly the sun came out and caused such a glare in the rear window of the car in front of them that John reached for his sunglasses. He looked up to see blue skies overtaking the retreating clouds. He should take this as a good omen, but he couldn’t kid himself about the unmistakable feeling of panic that rose before sinking to the bottom of his stomach whenever he thought about what he would say to Luke. He had counseled suicidal and desperate people before but never one who had a gun in his hand. It wasn’t fear for his personal safety; it was that he knew this meeting with Luke Kimball was going to be not just a test of his faith but also of his humanity.
He was glad Myron was quiet. It gave him some time to think. In telling him that his pastoral visit to Adam Kaminski had led him to reread Tillich, he had withheld the most disturbing information. He had quickly seen that Kaminski was not interested in any conventional pastoral advice. He was difficult, hostile, not in good spirits at all and didn’t want to see him. It was his housekeeper who had called John and urged him to try to reach the man. After fumbling about for a while trying to find a topic that would make him open up, he had started questioning him about the temple. At some point they started talking about the inscriptions, particularly, “Alles Vergängliche/ Ist nur ein Gleichnis.” John, who had minored in German at Yale, was familiar with Goethe’s Faust and knew the lines as a typically Romantic Neo-Platonic statement on the presence of spirit in life, but that wasn’t Kaminski’s take. The discussion started benignly enough with the sick man explaining that his wife, who was a music lover, took him to concerts where he had twice heard Mahler’s eighth symphony with its setting of the final scene from Faust. Then his mood suddenly darkened, and with a harsh laugh that turned into a snort of self-contempt, he explained how he had started reading literature and philosophy after his wife’s death and had come upon it again that way. But as quickly as it appeared, his scorn melted away and he became serious. He told John how after his wife Phoebe died he was possessed by an acute sense of loss. Simultaneously he was aware of Phoebe’s presence everywhere. But he was perfectly aware that that was because she lived in his memory. For a while he didn’t think past that conclusion, but one day long after he had started construction of the temple, unbidden the question insinuated itself into his mind: what happened when the people carrying the memories of the beloved departed also passed into eternity? In a thousand years who would remember Phoebe Kaminski, née Phoebe Brown? He had stared into space for a long moment, obviously thinking of his wife, then looked piercingly into John’s eyes. Eventually everything is swallowed up, he said, even memory. When the universe expands to cold atoms or collapses back into another cosmic atom, what then of human life? “No,” he said, “I realized with absolute certitude that somehow all the eternity I was ever going to face happened in time.” Even if everything was forgotten, even without witnesses, evidence, anything material, his life and Phoebe’s life happened. They were here. They lived. He loved her and she loved him.
“And that is why,” he said before turning his face to the wall to indicate he was through talking, “I now realize building the temple was a waste of time.”
John realized that there was no way he could comfort a man who turned a poetic statement about the presence of spirit in life into a bleakly existential absolute. The very idea of comforting this man seemed childish and ineffective. At the same time his rejection of the temple, made from uncounted hours of labor and a universe of love and carefully researched with a scholar’s passion for accuracy, was one of the saddest things he had ever heard a man utter.
It made him doubt everything, even exactly what it was he doubted—himself, God, goodness, or whatever. This rendezvous with Luke Kimball would be the first time since his meeting with Kaminski that he would be called upon to try to alleviate pain and suffering. He hoped the Protestant Principle and the presence of divine spirit would be with him, but it was only a hope. His confidence had deserted him.
Myron, who had maintained so respectful a silence that John almost forgot he was there, broke the silence when they were about a mile from Kaminski’s house by saying he was going to call Malcolm’s phone to make sure they were at the temple. But the cellphone was either turned off or ignored, for no one answered. “I don’t know if that’s a good or bad sign,” he said as he gave up and put the phone down.
“We’ll soon find out,” John said as he pulled off the road a few hundred feet from Kaminski’s house, where an old lumber road led to the temple. The sky was totally blue now and the sun had warmed the earth enough that one knew summer was fast approaching. There were NO TRESPASSING signs posted every fifty or so feet, but this was no time to stop and ask permission. The woods were very quiet. The air was perfectly still so that no branches or leaves rustled, and being early afternoon all the birds were silent. John, searching for landmarks they had seen last winter when they came down this road, was starting to get worried. Their Winterreise to the temple had been on a cold early January day after a brief thaw had melted all the snow and left the woods bleak and naked, but now with everything—ferns, bushes, and trees—all green the woods looked different. He was about to panic when Myron discovered the three birch trees growing close together that he remembered seeing in the winter. Cutting through the woods at that point, they soon came upon the back side of the temple. John remembered that in the winter it looked strangely out of place, but now it was stunningly beautiful and mysterious as its rich brown and gray earth tones were complemented by the varying shades of green from pine and poplar and oak, bright in places where shafts of light reached it, darker in shaded areas. It was not a waste of Adam Kaminski’s time, he thought, not unless…. But he let the thought stay unexpressed and unacknowledged.
Coming around the corner to the front of the edifice, they saw Malcolm first. He was standing with his back to them and looking down at his father, who was sitting on a large rock with the gun in his hand. The boy turned, but it was to the inanimate danger of the cold metal that John’s attention was drawn. He felt his pulse quicken before noticing that Luke held it lightly and his finger was not on the trigger. Then he saw Luke’s wizened face was slack, as if he hadn’t slept in a week, and the way he slouched made him look utterly exhausted and defeated. A wave of profound sorrow replaced the apprehension the gun had engendered and made John come to a sudden halt.
“He’s not dangerous,” Myron whispered. He too had seen that Luke was a beaten man.
John nodded. “Suicide…” he whispered and left that thought unfinished as well. He had seen that face before and knew it was the fa
ce of a man whose life was too painful to bear.
They stepped forward slowly so as not to alarm Luke. When they did, they saw the girl Mrs. Kimball had spoken of. She was about fifteen feet away, leaning against one of the Doric pillars of the temple. John could see that her face was twisted in empathetic pain for the broken and suffering man, and instantly he knew she was a good person who could be trusted.
She was relieved to see them. She rushed over to them, wiping her tear-rimmed eyes.
She was about to speak when Myron, his face lit up in recognition, said, “Hello there. I remember you. You were researching Van Gogh.”
She nodded, but it was John she spoke to. “It’s awful,” she whispered. “He’s thinking of suicide. Malcolm is trying to talk him out of it. He keeps talking about an eye for an eye and says the Lord is smiting him. He even uses the word ‘retribution’ and thinks he owes God his death because he was responsible for a friend drowning when he was a little boy. He thinks his death will save little Markie. He’s drunk too. Malcolm’s trying to tell him he’s wrong, but he doesn’t know enough about religion. Rev. Covington, you’ve got to help him.”
He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and turned. Walking towards the two males, he saw Luke cringe like a guilty little boy. The unconscious gesture reminded John of Jason Buckley, whom he counseled several years ago after he was sexually molested by a priest. He was at Juilliard in New York now and doing well. That thought emboldened him. Here was his calling, here the work at hand. There was no time for doubts in the face of suffering humanity.
Malcolm waited for him to come up to them before saying to his father, “Dad, this is Rev. Covington. He’ll be able to explain things to you.”
He spoke very gently and with deep feeling. John nodded to him in a way that communicated his respect for the young man. He watched the boy join the other two, then turned. “Luke, I’m John Covington, a minister of the lord. Your wife told me about that boy who drowned when you were a boy. I think we need to talk about him.”
He frowned, but a look of panic flashed in his eyes. “She shouldn’t have.”
“No, it was good she told me. Do you mind if I sit?’ When Luke shrugged, he sat at his side. This position would be better, for first it made them equals in a way that standing and looking down at him precluded, and secondly it would allow Luke to speak without having to look at him. He already understood that the man’s guilt, together with his low self-esteem, made him avoid eye contact.
“No, it was a good thing,” he repeated. “It’s the sort of thing that you can tell a minister.”
Luke grunted, expressing his doubts.
John glanced over at the other three grouped together and trying not to stare. Myron was saying something, and the two young people were listening respectfully. Above them he could see at the front of the portico PHOEBE VIVET and above it on the Mayan pyramid ALLES VERGÄNGLICHE IST NUR EIN GLEICHNIS. All that is passing is but an emblem flashed through his mind, followed by Shelley’s line, The One remains, the many change and pass, and suddenly his soul surged with confidence. He looked at the gun, still held loosely in Luke’s right hand, but this was not the right time to ask him to put it down.
“Luke, it’s no good blaming yourself for that boy’s death. You were a little boy then. You didn’t understand fully the risks.”
Again Luke grunted, but he was listening.
“I had a parishioner at the last church where I preached in Portsmouth. He had a son who was four or five. Do you know what he did? He backed his car over the little one and killed him accidentally. He blamed himself and his wife blamed herself. The phone had rung and she turned to answer it before deciding to wait. But in those three or four seconds her back was turned, the little boy ran into the driveway just as his father was backing out of the garage, Their driveway was a hill, so the man was used to gunning the engine to give the car the momentum to get up the hill. You see it was no one’s fault, just a terrible tragic accident?
Luke, listening to this with his head down, both elbows on his knees and his arms hanging between his legs with the gun in his right hand, stole an inquiring glance at John, but he said nothing.
John, deciding another tactic was needed, recalled the words he and Myron had exchanged about guilt and the moral sense. “Let me ask you something, Luke. Do you know what kind of people are bothered by these tragic accidents?”
Luke, looking steadily at the ground, said in a low voice, “Every-one.”
“But it isn’t everyone. It’s good people. I’ve heard of cases—and I bet you have too—where hunters have shot a person thinking it was a deer and instead of coming clean have tried to hide the evidence. And that Ridlon man. Everything I know about him tells me he didn’t care if someone was poisoned by his illegal dumping. He only cared that he was caught. But your feeling guilty tells me you are a good and moral man. You cared for your friend. His life was precious to you.”
“Yeah, but all I know is that my son ain’t right in the head and he’s clumsy, don’t have no balance.”
“Blame that on Ridlon. What we know, God knows. He won’t escape responsibility for his evil. More than the fine awaits him.”
Luke grunted, sounding doubtful. He gave John a troubled, perplexed look before instantly dropping his eyes. “I dared him to swim out. He didn’t want to.”
“Boys do such things. How old were you?”
He recollected for a moment. “Nine.”
“What do you know when you’re nine? You’re a boy. You haven’t learned about responsibilities. You wouldn’t expect Markie to be responsible for himself, would you?”
He made a gesture with his gun hand like shooing a fly away.
“No,” John said emphatically, watching the gun, “his parents have to do that. Now you’ve got the means to get the best help for him.”
He said nothing, and after waiting a few seconds, John shifted gears. “Let me ask you this. Why’d you fish in the pond?”
He frowned, then rubbed his fingers across his lower lip. “I always do, always have.” He spoke impatiently.
“But why? What was the purpose?”
He was silent for a long time and still seemed impatient, as if he was trying to figure the answer John wanted to humor him or make him stop bothering him. “I suppose you mean it was to feed my family.”
“Well, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“And it was because you weren’t working, wasn’t it? I mean your work is seasonal and there’s no call for a timberman in the winter.”
“No, there ain’t.”
“And you come from farm folk, I know. That’s what you learned to do.”
“Ayuh, that’s all I know. That and what to do with a chain saw.”
“And again farming doesn’t pay much.” John leaned forward and touched Luke’s shoulder. “Look, Luke, it isn’t your fault. God knows your heart, and it isn’t your fault. He knows you didn’t mean for your friend to drown, and he knows you were fishing to help your family. He also knows the things that make farming not pay are the results of decisions that were made in New York, Chicago and Washington. You had no control over any of that.”
He waited for a response, but as Luke was thinking and looked puzzled, John drew the conclusion for him. “See? It wasn’t your fault. You were doing the best you could for your family. You couldn’t have known someone was poisoning the fish. And think of the court case. The government agrees—they found Ridlon guilty. A lot of people think he should have gone to jail—I’m one of them—but the law didn’t quite go that far. So for him, we’ll have to have faith in God’s law.”
“I know what you’re talking about. It’s called retribution. You think God doesn’t want retribution for me?”
“You mean as if he was hurting your son because of that friend who drowned?”
Luke nodded and looked at him. This time his eyes lingered for a moment, and they looked clearer, as if he was sobering up.
“Not
a bit of it,” John said. “God knew what was in your heart just as you know it. You didn’t mean to harm anyone. God knows that. An eye for an eye is Old Testament thinking. Jesus teaches us that it is better to suffer evil than to inflict it. He also said let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We’re all sinners. We all make mistakes. God forgives us just as we are to forgive those who trespass against us.”
He gave Luke time to think and let the message sink in, then he took the next step. “Luke, I understand you haven’t spent any of that money from the trial yet. Can you tell me why?”
Luke looked across the open space to his son, regarding him with a strange longing, but he said nothing.
“I’m going to guess. It doesn’t seem right to you to be spending money because Markie is sick.”
He nodded.
“But the money is for him. I think you should get the best professional help for Markie and then build a nice house.”
Luke thought about the suggestion for a long time, and his answer was to lean forward and put the gun on the ground.
“What does Suzy want to do?”
“She wants what I want. She hasn’t asked me to spend the money, hasn’t said a word. She’s waitin’ for me.”
That was the most words he’d said. “You mean she’s respecting your feelings?”
“Ayuh.”
“She’s a good woman, isn’t she?”
He nodded.
“And a good mother. I’ve seen her concern for Markie. I know she loves all her children.”
A pained expression passed across his face, but now John knew his man. “Don’t think that, Luke. You do deserve her. You’re a good man too. Money or no money—it doesn’t make any difference. Doing what you can, that’s what counts. I think both of you have always done that. You’ve both been bigger than your poverty. I don’t know young Malcolm over there very well, but I can tell you’ve turned out a fine young man in him.”
For the first time Luke smiled—a smile of parental pride.
“Why should all those strangers build houses on old farmland when you, the people who tilled that land for centuries, don’t have a house? It’s only fair that on your family’s land you build a house, just as it’s only fair to use the money from Ridlon to nurse Markie back to health. Remember God sees all. He knows an accident when he sees one. Suzy wants the best for her little one. For her sake, for Markie’s sake, you should put that money to good use.”
“Do you think… Markie…?”
“Will get better? Well, I’m not a doctor, but I do know with intensive therapy there is a good chance he might get so much better you’ll forget he’s been sick. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.”
“It would,” he whispered.
John took a deep breath and relaxed. He knew his work was done and that he had been successful. He looked up again at the inscription on the temple: Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis. Below it he could see that the sweet girl who had had tears in her eyes for Luke’s suffering was looking at them hopefully. He knew Phoebe Kaminski must have been a wonderful woman to inspire this monument to her honor. He thought of his wife’s steady and loving support through all the years of his ministry and the strength it took a woman like Suzy to be a mother for her sick boy and a helpmeet for her damaged husband, and with a surge of joy he remembered the lines that followed and finished Goethe’s poem:
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
The Horizon
“I hope he didn’t steal it, Rev. Covington.”
She spoke facetiously, and John answered her in kind. “I think we can say it was a matter of forgetfulness, very convenient forgetfulness, no doubt.”
He was about to turn and leave when to his surprise Myron Seavey came out of the office and greeted him. Usually Annette Duval, the retired librarian, was on duty on Saturdays. “You don’t look a bit like Annette,” he said.
Myron went through the side door into the reading room and came out to the lobby. “She’s feeling poorly today, so I came in.”
“I was just talking to Barbara about you yesterday.”
He and Barbara Hallam were going to co-officiate at Myron and Becky’s wedding next month. Myron’s sigh indicated that he knew what the conversation was about. “I don’t know what else there is to talk about. The music’s been chosen, the vows are all set, the church is ready, the reception is organized and the food chosen, and yet people are still talking.”
John smiled. “Are you thinking it would be easier to just elope?”
“Not quite that extreme. Weddings, though, are for families more than the couple. Becky tells me that her mother calls several times a week with another idea about either the wedding or the reception. I feel uncomfortable with all this planning and would prefer a good dose of Quaker spontaneity—you know, no plans, everyone just shows up and does what the spirit moves them to do.”
“Your father was a Quaker, wasn’t he.”
Myron nodded. “My parents weren’t quite married like that, but they did keep it small. Two witnesses and their parents for guests. But,” he said, abruptly changing the subject, “did you find what you were looking for in The Courage To Be?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice. He started walking across the spacious lobby to where large double windows offered a view of the parking lot. Myron, understanding that he wanted a private conversation, followed.
“So what made you want to reread Tillich now?”
John watched a robin hopping across the asphalt surface and pausing to cock his head to listen, unaware that no worms slithered beneath his feet. “Now that’s a long story, but I think it begins with Adam Kaminski. I made a pastoral visit to his house a few weeks ago—I buried his wife five years ago and he’s technically a member of the congregation. We had a long conversation.”
“Did he tell you anything further about his temple?”
“No, he’s in a different place now, almost indifferent about the temple. Or maybe it’s too painful to think about. He’s not recovering from his stroke very well, you see. In fact, he’s had a couple more minor strokes. He thinks he’s on his deathbed.”
“Thinks?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. The mind plays a dominant role in these things, and if he thinks he is, he might be. But the doctor says there’s no immediate danger. One thing’s for sure—he’s depressed. He can’t use half his body and he feels useless.”
“I gather he’s not a Christian.”
“Yeah, only in name. He’s more like an ancient Stoic, that along with being a modern existentialist. He talked about coming to a place where billions have gone before. He said death used to be an abstraction to him and occasionally a chill of horror when he felt its reality. But now that he was facing it directly, it was different. He made an interesting observation too. He said it wasn’t the big moments in life that he remembered vividly—not weddings and births and so forth. It was quiet and unexpected memories that filled his mind, like seeing his wife in the backyard at sunset with a bunch of flowers in her hand and a halo from the setting sun lighting up her blond hair, or his two-year-old son staring in fascination at the first butterfly he had ever seen. Kaminski had come to believe that was what life was—those moments when time stands still and you remember why you love someone.”
“And this somehow led you to reread Tillich?”
“It was his existentialist faith, I suppose. That and his lack of belief in a personal God. I haven’t peeked into Tillich for over twenty years, and didn’t have the time or heart for Systematic Theology, so I settled on The Courage To Be for a refresher course.”
He spoke casually, but actually Tillich was his favorite theologian, though he also loved Luther’s works for their sparks of humanity and brilliance and respected (if not loved) Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Tillich spoke of faith in a world of doubt, the modern world. But how much of his thoughts and opinions should he share with Myron? How boldly should he speak of his doubts? A minister, according to the conventional view, was not supposed to be subject to such negative thoughts. There were not many people with whom he could do so, but he liked and respected Myron—and trusted him. They had known each other since John was on the search committee for a new head librarian; lately they had become personal friends. He and his wife Wendy had even gone cross-country skiing with Myron and Becky twice this past winter, and each had had the other couple over to dinner during the spring. Their friendship blossomed when John supported him during the Richard Nevins business in the fall. Barbara Hallam had asked him to sign a petition in support of Myron, and he had called him at the library to ask if there was anything further he could do. Then around Christmas when rumors had circulated about a strange temple Adam Kaminski had built in the woods upcountry, he had talked to Myron about it. He was doubtful, but Myron with his treasure-trove of knowledge had mentioned Facteur Chevel, the eccentric French postman who had single-handedly built a strange hybrid palace in the nineteenth century. Together they had visited the bedridden Kaminski and gotten permission to see his work. Myron had taken numerous digital photographs of the site and made a poster display where all the architectural details were explained, but lacking Mr. Kaminski’s permission to make it public, he had only shown it to John and a few others…
But his mind was wandering. He saw Myron was waiting for a further explanation. “I long ago discovered that faith wasn’t something you put in a bank vault. It is dynamic and continually tested. One thing Tillich understood was that faith implies doubt. You can’t tell that to a fundamentalist or to many conservative Catholics, but it is a fact. Tillich makes a great argument for this modern world of doubt. I mean the Protestant Principle.”
He could see Myron searching his memory and could further see that it was a good one. “You mean justification through faith.”
“And the existential leap. Never mind Pascal’s wager. Full hearted, full steam ahead.”
Myron nodded. “I remember that a lot of people thought he was agnostic and denied a personal God.”
“But he always insisted on the reality of the presence of the spirit of God in life.”
“A subtle concept, of course, just like Matthew Arnold’s definition—that stream of tendencies not ourselves that makes for righteousness. Of course many people would call such subtlety agnostic.”
John knew Myron was being facetious, but he retorted rather heatedly and rather too loudly, “Not necessarily.” He glanced across the spacious hall at Nellie. She was clearing her desk and getting ready to leave and didn’t seem to notice. In a lower tone he continued. “To me faith is an ongoing process. It needs constant testing.”
“Yes, I respect that attitude very much. It’s certainly more honest and human than the rigidity of the fundamentalists, that’s for sure.”
“Yes, it is. I had a parishioner once who—”
He was interrupted by a phone ringing, and it took a few seconds before he realized it was his cellphone. “Sorry,” he said. “I meant to turn it off when I came into the library. Obviously I forgot.”
“It’s okay. We’re just about
John fumbled at his pocket before extracting the phone and turning it on. A frantic woman’s voice, speaking so rapidly and indistinctly that he couldn’t understand her, buzzed in his ear.
“Excuse me? I can’t understand you.”
He heard her take a deep breath. “This is Suzy Kimball. Do you remember me?”
He did. She was the mother of the boy poisoned by mercury. He had seen her at the hospital when he was on chaplain duty and had talked with her several times. At Christmas he had brought gifts that the congregation collected to her for her sick son. “Yes, of course. What’s the matter?”
“My husband is in trouble. Or he will be if he isn’t stopped.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a pause before she said hesitantly, “He’s started drinking, something he never did before. It’s because he’s so distressed about that Ridlon man.”
John watched Myron walk over to a shelf that displayed upcoming events as well as brochures and catalogs from publishers and start straight-ening things up. “But didn’t you win the suit? I thought you already got the money?”
“We did. It’s not that. It’s the way that man acted at the settlement. He was told by the judge to apologize. He did, but in a very bad way. He showed contempt. He was impolite. He wouldn’t shake hands. He made my husband feel awful, like he was a worm.”
“I see. But…?”
“But it’s worse. It’s my son Leighton. He ran away. He hates his father. He taunted him about country justice. See?”
“You mean physical violence?”
“Yes,” she wailed. “He’s got a gun.”
“Who’s got a gun?”
Myron, leafing through a catalog, looked up.
“My husband. He’s looking for Ridlon right now.”
“Shouldn’t the police—”
“No, I don’t want the police. I called my minister but he’s out of town at a meeting. I thought of you. He thinks God hates him.”
He had been wondering why she called him. But the explanation was strange. He couldn’t hide a note of incredulity when he asked, “Your husband thinks God hates him?”
“Yes, yes. Because when he was a little boy he was responsible for another boy drowning. It was an accident really, but he blames himself. He never spoke of it before. I didn’t know until today. He thinks Markie is sick because he’s payment for the drowned boy. But when he’s told it’s Ridlon’s fault, he gets confused.”
“Where is your husband now?”
“He drove off. My son Malcolm is looking for him too. He’s going to the Ridlon office. Could you also look?”
“You mean at Ridlon’s house?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, glad to be understood. “He’s got to be talked out of it.”
John caught Myron’s eye. “Myron, could you look up Ridlon’s home address?”
With a nod, Myron went into the reading room to consult the phone book while John got a description of Luke’s car and discussed some logistics before hanging up. He got her phone number at her in-laws’ farm and the cellphone number of Malcolm’s boss, who had lent him his phone.
Myron returned just as he hung up. “You heard that, didn’t you?”
“Enough to understand what was being said. It was Mrs. Kimball. Her husband has a gun and is looking for Ridlon and wants your help. Is that right?”
“Pretty much. That poor woman was spiritually naked and desperate. She told me things ordinarily left unsaid.”
“But you’re a minister…”
He nodded grimly. He felt very nervous and unsure of himself. Impulsively he asked, “Myron, can you help me? Can you come with me?”
“Of course,” he said without hesitation.
Quickly they prepared to leave. While Myron phoned Becky and filled Nellie in on the situation, John called Wendy and told her he had to help someone and would be home as soon as he could. Having been the one to give his cellphone number to Suzy Kimball, she already understood something was up. Myron got his briefcase from his office and asked Nellie to lock the place up. Within minutes they were pulling out of the parking lot in John’s late-model car.
“You’ve got the address?” he asked, suddenly feeling panicky.
Myron tapped his head. “Ridge Road, Bedford, number 123.”
“That’s near the river.” As he turned onto Elm Street on the way to Bedford, he began relating the details of the phone conversation.
Myron was silent for a while. He seemed to be weighing possibilities. “I haven’t met the Kimballs,” he said presently, “but I know they’re dirt poor and probably not well educated.”
“Suzy sounded intelligent to me,” John interrupted.
“I don’t doubt it. I just meant—well, I don’t know what I meant. I was trying to figure out if the man is really dangerous.”
John braked to allow an elderly lady to cross the street. Saturday traffic between the two towns was heavy and the going was slow. He remembered that when he spoke with the Kimballs at the hospital Suzy had done almost all of the talking. Luke had hung back, occasionally nodding, other times agreeing with a murmur. “I don’t think so. I think he lacks self-confidence. Poverty doesn’t do much for self-esteem, you know. He’s a homely fellow and awkward. I say that because Suzy is quite pretty—or could be if she wasn’t ground down by poverty.”
“Now they’re rich, though.”
“Yeah, but a lifetime of poverty has formed them.”
“You say a son taunted him about country justice?”
“And that he’s drunk. A bad combination. The son has been out of the picture for a long time. He ran away when he was sixteen.”
They were approaching Ridlon’s neighborhood. John slowed down, watching for street signs. He glanced at Myron, who appeared lost in thought.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking of the boy who drowned. That poor man has been carrying that load of guilt around his whole life.”
“But that’s a good sign,” John said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It shows he has a moral sense. I remember reading about some hunter who accidentally shot someone in the woods and then finished him off and buried him so that he wouldn’t be bothered. That man was amoral, evil, or very morally obtuse.”
“I see what you mean. The guilt humanizes Luke. We can hope that he’s not very dangerous—unless he’s very drunk.”
John turned onto Ridge Road and they began looking for 123. It was around the bend about a quarter of a mile down the road. The house was of the type some called Mcmansions, a large ostentatious affair with vinyl siding and shoddy construction which typically—for many a sturdy Congregationalist at his church inhabited such places—would be filled with everything money could buy except taste. It was surrounded by many others of the same genre. John recalled someone telling him that this area used to be heavily wooded before it fell into developers’ hands. Ridlon’s house had two large third-story dormers and a first-story wing that was supposed to be for plants and the like but which looked quite barren through the large windows. There were two cars in the driveway, but that didn’t necessarily mean anyone was at home—these people collected cars as others of a distant generation collected stamps.
He looked at Myron, who raised his eyebrows. “Now what are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. He’d be here if he left over an hour ago. Perhaps we should report in to Suzy Kimball.”
Just then John spotted a man working on his garden at the neighboring house. “We could ask that man if he’s seen Luke’s car.”
He got out of the car and walked over to the man. He was in his fifties with a sunburnt bald pate and a narrow face dominated by a large nose likewise sunburnt. He appeared nervous observing John’s approach.
“Excuse me. Have you seen a man in a late-model green car in the neighborhood?”
The man nodded and suddenly became
“How?”
“He was twitching, know what I mean? He couldn’t sit still. He was very nervous.”
“Is that all he did? I mean, did he get out of the car?”
“No. He seemed to be waiting for someone or looking for someone. He wasn’t very respectable looking either. He looked like a derelict. I’m pretty sure he was drunk too.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Is the man in trouble?’
“He has some personal difficulties,” John said in a way that cut off further questions. “Thanks for the information.”
Back at the car Myron already had Suzy on the line. “He’s at the temple,” he said, hanging up just as John got in the car.
“You mean Kaminski’s temple?”
“Yeah. A neighbor saw him drive to his house and head across the field in that direction. Her son is already heading that way. She still hopes you can talk to him.”
They retraced their route back to downtown Bedford but turned off immediately after crossing the Waska River. They would approach the temple from Kaminski’s house, which was on the other side of the woods from the Kimballs’ land. Earlier in the day clouds had threatened rain, but suddenly the sun came out and caused such a glare in the rear window of the car in front of them that John reached for his sunglasses. He looked up to see blue skies overtaking the retreating clouds. He should take this as a good omen, but he couldn’t kid himself about the unmistakable feeling of panic that rose before sinking to the bottom of his stomach whenever he thought about what he would say to Luke. He had counseled suicidal and desperate people before but never one who had a gun in his hand. It wasn’t fear for his personal safety; it was that he knew this meeting with Luke Kimball was going to be not just a test of his faith but also of his humanity.
He was glad Myron was quiet. It gave him some time to think. In telling him that his pastoral visit to Adam Kaminski had led him to reread Tillich, he had withheld the most disturbing information. He had quickly seen that Kaminski was not interested in any conventional pastoral advice. He was difficult, hostile, not in good spirits at all and didn’t want to see him. It was his housekeeper who had called John and urged him to try to reach the man. After fumbling about for a while trying to find a topic that would make him open up, he had started questioning him about the temple. At some point they started talking about the inscriptions, particularly, “Alles Vergängliche/ Ist nur ein Gleichnis.” John, who had minored in German at Yale, was familiar with Goethe’s Faust and knew the lines as a typically Romantic Neo-Platonic statement on the presence of spirit in life, but that wasn’t Kaminski’s take. The discussion started benignly enough with the sick man explaining that his wife, who was a music lover, took him to concerts where he had twice heard Mahler’s eighth symphony with its setting of the final scene from Faust. Then his mood suddenly darkened, and with a harsh laugh that turned into a snort of self-contempt, he explained how he had started reading literature and philosophy after his wife’s death and had come upon it again that way. But as quickly as it appeared, his scorn melted away and he became serious. He told John how after his wife Phoebe died he was possessed by an acute sense of loss. Simultaneously he was aware of Phoebe’s presence everywhere. But he was perfectly aware that that was because she lived in his memory. For a while he didn’t think past that conclusion, but one day long after he had started construction of the temple, unbidden the question insinuated itself into his mind: what happened when the people carrying the memories of the beloved departed also passed into eternity? In a thousand years who would remember Phoebe Kaminski, née Phoebe Brown? He had stared into space for a long moment, obviously thinking of his wife, then looked piercingly into John’s eyes. Eventually everything is swallowed up, he said, even memory. When the universe expands to cold atoms or collapses back into another cosmic atom, what then of human life? “No,” he said, “I realized with absolute certitude that somehow all the eternity I was ever going to face happened in time.” Even if everything was forgotten, even without witnesses, evidence, anything material, his life and Phoebe’s life happened. They were here. They lived. He loved her and she loved him.
“And that is why,” he said before turning his face to the wall to indicate he was through talking, “I now realize building the temple was a waste of time.”
John realized that there was no way he could comfort a man who turned a poetic statement about the presence of spirit in life into a bleakly existential absolute. The very idea of comforting this man seemed childish and ineffective. At the same time his rejection of the temple, made from uncounted hours of labor and a universe of love and carefully researched with a scholar’s passion for accuracy, was one of the saddest things he had ever heard a man utter.
It made him doubt everything, even exactly what it was he doubted—himself, God, goodness, or whatever. This rendezvous with Luke Kimball would be the first time since his meeting with Kaminski that he would be called upon to try to alleviate pain and suffering. He hoped the Protestant Principle and the presence of divine spirit would be with him, but it was only a hope. His confidence had deserted him.
Myron, who had maintained so respectful a silence that John almost forgot he was there, broke the silence when they were about a mile from Kaminski’s house by saying he was going to call Malcolm’s phone to make sure they were at the temple. But the cellphone was either turned off or ignored, for no one answered. “I don’t know if that’s a good or bad sign,” he said as he gave up and put the phone down.
“We’ll soon find out,” John said as he pulled off the road a few hundred feet from Kaminski’s house, where an old lumber road led to the temple. The sky was totally blue now and the sun had warmed the earth enough that one knew summer was fast approaching. There were NO TRESPASSING signs posted every fifty or so feet, but this was no time to stop and ask permission. The woods were very quiet. The air was perfectly still so that no branches or leaves rustled, and being early afternoon all the birds were silent. John, searching for landmarks they had seen last winter when they came down this road, was starting to get worried. Their Winterreise to the temple had been on a cold early January day after a brief thaw had melted all the snow and left the woods bleak and naked, but now with everything—ferns, bushes, and trees—all green the woods looked different. He was about to panic when Myron discovered the three birch trees growing close together that he remembered seeing in the winter. Cutting through the woods at that point, they soon came upon the back side of the temple. John remembered that in the winter it looked strangely out of place, but now it was stunningly beautiful and mysterious as its rich brown and gray earth tones were complemented by the varying shades of green from pine and poplar and oak, bright in places where shafts of light reached it, darker in shaded areas. It was not a waste of Adam Kaminski’s time, he thought, not unless…. But he let the thought stay unexpressed and unacknowledged.
Coming around the corner to the front of the edifice, they saw Malcolm first. He was standing with his back to them and looking down at his father, who was sitting on a large rock with the gun in his hand. The boy turned, but it was to the inanimate danger of the cold metal that John’s attention was drawn. He felt his pulse quicken before noticing that Luke held it lightly and his finger was not on the trigger. Then he saw Luke’s wizened face was slack, as if he hadn’t slept in a week, and the way he slouched made him look utterly exhausted and defeated. A wave of profound sorrow replaced the apprehension the gun had engendered and made John come to a sudden halt.
“He’s not dangerous,” Myron whispered. He too had seen that Luke was a beaten man.
John nodded. “Suicide…” he whispered and left that thought unfinished as well. He had seen that face before and knew it was the fa
They stepped forward slowly so as not to alarm Luke. When they did, they saw the girl Mrs. Kimball had spoken of. She was about fifteen feet away, leaning against one of the Doric pillars of the temple. John could see that her face was twisted in empathetic pain for the broken and suffering man, and instantly he knew she was a good person who could be trusted.
She was relieved to see them. She rushed over to them, wiping her tear-rimmed eyes.
She was about to speak when Myron, his face lit up in recognition, said, “Hello there. I remember you. You were researching Van Gogh.”
She nodded, but it was John she spoke to. “It’s awful,” she whispered. “He’s thinking of suicide. Malcolm is trying to talk him out of it. He keeps talking about an eye for an eye and says the Lord is smiting him. He even uses the word ‘retribution’ and thinks he owes God his death because he was responsible for a friend drowning when he was a little boy. He thinks his death will save little Markie. He’s drunk too. Malcolm’s trying to tell him he’s wrong, but he doesn’t know enough about religion. Rev. Covington, you’ve got to help him.”
He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and turned. Walking towards the two males, he saw Luke cringe like a guilty little boy. The unconscious gesture reminded John of Jason Buckley, whom he counseled several years ago after he was sexually molested by a priest. He was at Juilliard in New York now and doing well. That thought emboldened him. Here was his calling, here the work at hand. There was no time for doubts in the face of suffering humanity.
Malcolm waited for him to come up to them before saying to his father, “Dad, this is Rev. Covington. He’ll be able to explain things to you.”
He spoke very gently and with deep feeling. John nodded to him in a way that communicated his respect for the young man. He watched the boy join the other two, then turned. “Luke, I’m John Covington, a minister of the lord. Your wife told me about that boy who drowned when you were a boy. I think we need to talk about him.”
He frowned, but a look of panic flashed in his eyes. “She shouldn’t have.”
“No, it was good she told me. Do you mind if I sit?’ When Luke shrugged, he sat at his side. This position would be better, for first it made them equals in a way that standing and looking down at him precluded, and secondly it would allow Luke to speak without having to look at him. He already understood that the man’s guilt, together with his low self-esteem, made him avoid eye contact.
“No, it was a good thing,” he repeated. “It’s the sort of thing that you can tell a minister.”
Luke grunted, expressing his doubts.
John glanced over at the other three grouped together and trying not to stare. Myron was saying something, and the two young people were listening respectfully. Above them he could see at the front of the portico PHOEBE VIVET and above it on the Mayan pyramid ALLES VERGÄNGLICHE IST NUR EIN GLEICHNIS. All that is passing is but an emblem flashed through his mind, followed by Shelley’s line, The One remains, the many change and pass, and suddenly his soul surged with confidence. He looked at the gun, still held loosely in Luke’s right hand, but this was not the right time to ask him to put it down.
“Luke, it’s no good blaming yourself for that boy’s death. You were a little boy then. You didn’t understand fully the risks.”
Again Luke grunted, but he was listening.
“I had a parishioner at the last church where I preached in Portsmouth. He had a son who was four or five. Do you know what he did? He backed his car over the little one and killed him accidentally. He blamed himself and his wife blamed herself. The phone had rung and she turned to answer it before deciding to wait. But in those three or four seconds her back was turned, the little boy ran into the driveway just as his father was backing out of the garage, Their driveway was a hill, so the man was used to gunning the engine to give the car the momentum to get up the hill. You see it was no one’s fault, just a terrible tragic accident?
Luke, listening to this with his head down, both elbows on his knees and his arms hanging between his legs with the gun in his right hand, stole an inquiring glance at John, but he said nothing.
John, deciding another tactic was needed, recalled the words he and Myron had exchanged about guilt and the moral sense. “Let me ask you something, Luke. Do you know what kind of people are bothered by these tragic accidents?”
Luke, looking steadily at the ground, said in a low voice, “Every-one.”
“But it isn’t everyone. It’s good people. I’ve heard of cases—and I bet you have too—where hunters have shot a person thinking it was a deer and instead of coming clean have tried to hide the evidence. And that Ridlon man. Everything I know about him tells me he didn’t care if someone was poisoned by his illegal dumping. He only cared that he was caught. But your feeling guilty tells me you are a good and moral man. You cared for your friend. His life was precious to you.”
“Yeah, but all I know is that my son ain’t right in the head and he’s clumsy, don’t have no balance.”
“Blame that on Ridlon. What we know, God knows. He won’t escape responsibility for his evil. More than the fine awaits him.”
Luke grunted, sounding doubtful. He gave John a troubled, perplexed look before instantly dropping his eyes. “I dared him to swim out. He didn’t want to.”
“Boys do such things. How old were you?”
He recollected for a moment. “Nine.”
“What do you know when you’re nine? You’re a boy. You haven’t learned about responsibilities. You wouldn’t expect Markie to be responsible for himself, would you?”
He made a gesture with his gun hand like shooing a fly away.
“No,” John said emphatically, watching the gun, “his parents have to do that. Now you’ve got the means to get the best help for him.”
He said nothing, and after waiting a few seconds, John shifted gears. “Let me ask you this. Why’d you fish in the pond?”
He frowned, then rubbed his fingers across his lower lip. “I always do, always have.” He spoke impatiently.
“But why? What was the purpose?”
He was silent for a long time and still seemed impatient, as if he was trying to figure the answer John wanted to humor him or make him stop bothering him. “I suppose you mean it was to feed my family.”
“Well, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“And it was because you weren’t working, wasn’t it? I mean your work is seasonal and there’s no call for a timberman in the winter.”
“No, there ain’t.”
“And you come from farm folk, I know. That’s what you learned to do.”
“Ayuh, that’s all I know. That and what to do with a chain saw.”
“And again farming doesn’t pay much.” John leaned forward and touched Luke’s shoulder. “Look, Luke, it isn’t your fault. God knows your heart, and it isn’t your fault. He knows you didn’t mean for your friend to drown, and he knows you were fishing to help your family. He also knows the things that make farming not pay are the results of decisions that were made in New York, Chicago and Washington. You had no control over any of that.”
He waited for a response, but as Luke was thinking and looked puzzled, John drew the conclusion for him. “See? It wasn’t your fault. You were doing the best you could for your family. You couldn’t have known someone was poisoning the fish. And think of the court case. The government agrees—they found Ridlon guilty. A lot of people think he should have gone to jail—I’m one of them—but the law didn’t quite go that far. So for him, we’ll have to have faith in God’s law.”
“I know what you’re talking about. It’s called retribution. You think God doesn’t want retribution for me?”
“You mean as if he was hurting your son because of that friend who drowned?”
Luke nodded and looked at him. This time his eyes lingered for a moment, and they looked clearer, as if he was sobering up.
“Not
He gave Luke time to think and let the message sink in, then he took the next step. “Luke, I understand you haven’t spent any of that money from the trial yet. Can you tell me why?”
Luke looked across the open space to his son, regarding him with a strange longing, but he said nothing.
“I’m going to guess. It doesn’t seem right to you to be spending money because Markie is sick.”
He nodded.
“But the money is for him. I think you should get the best professional help for Markie and then build a nice house.”
Luke thought about the suggestion for a long time, and his answer was to lean forward and put the gun on the ground.
“What does Suzy want to do?”
“She wants what I want. She hasn’t asked me to spend the money, hasn’t said a word. She’s waitin’ for me.”
That was the most words he’d said. “You mean she’s respecting your feelings?”
“Ayuh.”
“She’s a good woman, isn’t she?”
He nodded.
“And a good mother. I’ve seen her concern for Markie. I know she loves all her children.”
A pained expression passed across his face, but now John knew his man. “Don’t think that, Luke. You do deserve her. You’re a good man too. Money or no money—it doesn’t make any difference. Doing what you can, that’s what counts. I think both of you have always done that. You’ve both been bigger than your poverty. I don’t know young Malcolm over there very well, but I can tell you’ve turned out a fine young man in him.”
For the first time Luke smiled—a smile of parental pride.
“Why should all those strangers build houses on old farmland when you, the people who tilled that land for centuries, don’t have a house? It’s only fair that on your family’s land you build a house, just as it’s only fair to use the money from Ridlon to nurse Markie back to health. Remember God sees all. He knows an accident when he sees one. Suzy wants the best for her little one. For her sake, for Markie’s sake, you should put that money to good use.”
“Do you think… Markie…?”
“Will get better? Well, I’m not a doctor, but I do know with intensive therapy there is a good chance he might get so much better you’ll forget he’s been sick. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.”
“It would,” he whispered.
John took a deep breath and relaxed. He knew his work was done and that he had been successful. He looked up again at the inscription on the temple: Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis. Below it he could see that the sweet girl who had had tears in her eyes for Luke’s suffering was looking at them hopefully. He knew Phoebe Kaminski must have been a wonderful woman to inspire this monument to her honor. He thought of his wife’s steady and loving support through all the years of his ministry and the strength it took a woman like Suzy to be a mother for her sick boy and a helpmeet for her damaged husband, and with a surge of joy he remembered the lines that followed and finished Goethe’s poem:
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
The Horizon