Pastor John 1 страница

Duchess

ou should have seen the look on Emmett’s face when he realized who was standing in the door. From his expression, you would’ve thought we’d popped out of thin air.

Back in the early forties, there was an escape artist who went by the name of Kazantikis. Some of the wisecrackers on the circuit liked to call him the half-wit Houdini from Hackensack, but that wasn’t totally fair. While the front half of his act was a little shaky, the finale was a gem. Right before your eyes, he’d get bound up in chains, locked in a trunk, and sunk to the bottom of a big glass tank. A good-looking blonde would wheel out a giant clock as the emcee reminded the audience that the average human being can only hold his breath for two minutes, that deprived of oxygen most grow dizzy after four and unconscious after six. Two officers of the Pinkerton Detective Agency were present to ensure that the padlock on the trunk was secure, and a priest from the Greek Orthodox Church—complete with a long black cassock and long white beard—was on hand should it prove necessary to administer the last rites. Down into the water the trunk would go and the blonde would start the clock. At two minutes, the members of the audience would whistle and jeer. At five minutes, they would ooh and aah. But at eight minutes, the Pinkertons would exchange worried glances. At ten, the priest would cross himself and recite an indecipherable prayer. At the twelfth minute, as the blonde burst into tears, two stagehands would rush from behind the curtains to help the Pinkertons hoist the trunk from the tank. It would be dropped to the stage with a thump as water gushed across the footlights and into the orchestra pit. When one of the Pinkertons fumbled with his keys, the other would brush him aside, draw his pistol, and shoot off the lock. He would rip open the lid and tip over the trunk, only to discover. . . it was empty. At which point, the orthodox priest would pluck off his beard revealing that he was none other than Kazantikis, his hair still wet, as every single member of the audience looked on in holy amazement. That’s how Emmett Watson looked when he realized who was standing in the door. Of all the people in the world, he just couldn’t believe it was us.

—Duchess?

—In the flesh. And Woolly too.

He still looked dumbfounded.

—But how. . . ?

I laughed.

—That’s the question, right?

I put a hand to the side of my mouth and lowered my voice.

—We hitched a ride with the warden. While he was signing you out, we slipped into the trunk of his car.

—You can’t be serious.

—I know. It’s not what you’d call first-class travel. What with it being a hundred degrees in there and Woolly complaining every ten minutes about having to go to the bathroom. And when we crossed into Nebraska? I thought I was going to get a concussion from the divots in the road. Someone should write a letter to the governor!

—Hey, Emmett, said Woolly, like he’d just joined the party.

You’ve got to love that about Woolly. He’s always running about five minutes late, showing up on the wrong platform with the wrong luggage just as the conversation is pulling out of the station. Some might find the trait a little exasperating, but I’d take a guy who runs five minutes late over a guy who runs five minutes early, any day of the week.

Out of the corner of my eye I had been watching as the kid, who’d been sitting on a hay bale, began edging his way in our direction. When I pointed, he froze like a squirrel on the grass.

—Billy, right? Your brother says you’re as sharp as a tack. Is that true?

The kid smiled and edged a little closer until he was standing at Emmett’s side. He looked up at his brother.

—Are these your friends, Emmett?

—Of course we’re his friends!

—They’re from Salina, Emmett explained.

I was about to elaborate when I noticed the car. I’d been so focused on the charms of the reunion that I hadn’t seen it hiding behind the heavy equipment.

—Is that the Studebaker, Emmett? What do they call that? Baby blue?

Objectively speaking, it looked a little like a car that your dentist’s wife would drive to bingo, but I gave it a whistle anyway. Then I turned to Billy.

—Some of the boys in Salina would pin a picture of their girl back home on the bottom of the upper bunk so they could stare at it before lights out. Some of them had a photo of Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe. But your brother, he pinned up an advertisement torn from an old magazine with a full-color picture of his car. I’ll be honest with you, Billy. We gave your brother a lot of grief about that. Getting all moon-eyed over an automobile. But now that I see her up close. . .

I shook my head in a show of appreciation.

—Hey, I said, turning to Emmett. Can we take her for a spin?

Emmett didn’t answer because he was looking at Woolly—who was looking at a spider web without a spider.

—How are you doing, Woolly? he asked.

Turning, Woolly thought about it for a moment.

—I’m all right, Emmett.

—When was the last time you had something to eat?

—Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was before we got in the warden’s car. Isn’t that right, Duchess?

Emmett turned to his brother.

—Billy, you remember what Sally said about supper?

—She said to cook it at 350° for forty-five minutes.

—Why don’t you take Woolly back to the house, put the dish in the oven, and set the table. I need to show Duchess something, but we’ll be right behind you.

—Okay, Emmett.

As we were watching Billy and Woolly walk back toward the house, I wondered what Emmett wanted to show me. But when he turned in my direction, he didn’t look himself. As a matter of fact, he seemed out of sorts. I guess some people are like that when it comes to surprises. Me, I love surprises. I love it when life pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Like when the blue-plate special is turkey and stuffing in the middle of May. But some people just don’t like being caught off guard—even by good news.

—Duchess, what are you doing here?

Now it was me who looked surprised.

—What are we doing here? Why, we’ve come to see you, Emmett. And the farm. You know how it is. You hear enough stories from a buddy about his life back home and eventually you want to see it for yourself.

To make my point, I gestured toward the tractor and the hay bale and the great American prairie that was waiting right outside the door, trying its best to convince us that the world was flat, after all.

Emmett followed my gaze, then turned back.

—I’ll tell you what, he said. Let’s go have something to eat, I’ll give you and Woolly a quick tour, we’ll get a good night’s sleep, then in the morning, I’ll drive you back to Salina.

I gave a wave of my hand.

—You don’t need to drive us back to Salina, Emmett. You just got home yourself. Besides, I don’t think we’re going back. At least not yet.

Emmett closed his eyes for a moment.

—How many months do you have left on your sentences? Five or six? You’re both practically out.

—That’s true, I agreed. That’s perfectly true. But when Warden Williams took over for Ackerly, he fired that nurse from New Orleans. The one who used to help Woolly get his medicine. Now he’s down to his last few bottles, and you know how bluesy he gets without his medicine. . . .

—It’s not his medicine.

I shook my head in agreement.

—One man’s toxin is another man’s tonic, right?

—Duchess, I shouldn’t have to spell this out for you, of all people. But the longer you two are AWOL and the farther you get from Salina, the worse the consequences are going to be. And you both turned eighteen this winter. So if they catch you across state lines, they may not send you back to Salina. They may send you to Topeka.

Let’s face it: Most people need a ladder and a telescope to make sense of two plus two. That’s why it’s usually more trouble than it’s worth to explain yourself. But not Emmett Watson. He’s the type of guy who can see the whole picture right from the word go—the grander scheme and all the little details. I put up both of my hands in surrender.

—I’m with you one hundred percent, Emmett. In fact, I tried to tell Woolly the very same thing in the very same words. But he wouldn’t listen. He was dead set on jumping the fence. He had a whole plan. He was going to split on a Saturday night, hightail it into town, and steal a car. He even pilfered a knife when he was on kitchen duty. Not a paring knife, Emmett. I’m talking about a butcher knife. Not that Woolly would ever hurt a soul. You and I know that. But the cops don’t know it. They see a fidgety stranger with a drifty look in his eye and a butcher knife in his hand, and they’ll put him down like a dog. So I told him if he put the knife back where he’d found it, I’d help him get out of Salina safe and sound. He put back the knife, we slipped into the trunk, presto chango, here we are.

And all of this was true.

Except the part about the knife.

That’s what you’d call an embellishment—a harmless little exaggeration in the service of emphasis. Sort of like the giant clock in Kazantikis’s act, or the shooting of the padlock by the Pinkerton. Those little elements that on the surface seem unnecessary but that somehow bring the whole performance home.

—Look, Emmett, you know me. I could have done my stretch and then done Woolly’s. Five months or five years, what’s the difference. But given Woolly’s state of mind, I don’t think he could have done five more days.

Emmett looked off in the direction that Woolly had walked.

We both knew that his problem was one of plenty. Raised in one of those doorman buildings on the Upper East Side, Woolly had a house in the country, a driver in the car, and a cook in the kitchen. His grandfather was friends with Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and his father was a hero in the Second World War. But there’s something about all that good fortune that can become too much. There’s a tender sort of soul who, in the face of such abundance, feels a sense of looming trepidation, like the whole pile of houses and cars and Roosevelts is going to come tumbling down on top of him. The very thought of it starts to spoil his appetite and unsettle his nerves. It becomes hard for him to concentrate, which affects his reading, writing, and arithmetic. Having been asked to leave one boarding school, he gets sent to another. Then maybe another. Eventually, a guy like that is going to need something to hold the world at bay. And who can blame him? I’d be the first to tell you that rich people don’t deserve two minutes of your sympathy. But a bighearted guy like Woolly? That’s a different story altogether.

I could see from Emmett’s expression that he was going through a similar sort of calculus, thinking about Woolly’s sensitive nature and wondering if we should send him back to Salina or help him safely on his way. As a quandary it was pretty hard to parse. But then I guess that’s why they call it a quandary.

—It’s been a long day, I said, putting a hand on Emmett’s shoulder. What say we go back to the house and break bread? Once we’ve had something to eat, we’ll all be in a better frame of mind to weigh the whys and wherefores.

Country cooking. . .

You hear a lot about it back East. It’s one of those things that people revere even when they’ve never had any firsthand experience with it. Like justice and Jesus. But unlike most things that people admire from afar, country cooking deserves the admiration. It’s twice as tasty as anything you’d find at Delmonico’s and without all the folderol. Maybe it’s because they’re using the recipes their great-great-grandmas perfected on the wagon trail. Or maybe it’s all those hours they’ve spent in the company of pigs and potatoes. Whatever the reason, I didn’t push back my plate until after the third helping.

—That was some meal.

I turned to the kid—whose head wasn’t too far over the tabletop.

—What’s the name of that pretty brunette, Billy? The one in the flowery dress and work boots whom we have to thank for this delectable dish?

—Sally Ransom, he said. It’s a chicken casserole. Made from one of her own chickens.

—One of her own chickens! Hey, Emmett, what’s that folksy saying? The one about the fastest way to a young man’s heart?

—She’s a neighbor, said Emmett.

—Maybe so, I conceded. But I’ve had a lifetime supply of neighbors, and I’ve never had one who brought me a casserole. How about you, Woolly?

Woolly was making a spiral in his gravy with the tines of his fork.

—What’s that?

—Have you ever had a neighbor bring you a casserole? I asked a little louder.

He thought about it for a second.

—I’ve never had a casserole.

I smiled and raised my eyebrows at the kid. He smiled and raised his eyebrows back.

Casserole or no casserole, Woolly suddenly looked up like he’d had a timely thought.

—Hey, Duchess. Did you get a chance to ask Emmett about the escapade?

—The escapade? asked Billy, poking his head a little higher over the table.

—That’s the other reason we came here, Billy. We’re about to set off on a little escapade and we were hoping your brother would come along.

—An escapade. . . , said Emmett.

—We’ve been calling it that for lack of a better word, I said. But it’s a good deed, really. A sort of mitzvah. In fact, it’s the fulfillment of a dying man’s wish.

As I began to explain, I looked from Emmett to Billy and back again since the two seemed equally intrigued.

—When Woolly’s grandfather died, he left some money for Woolly in what they call a trust fund. Isn’t that right, Woolly?

Woolly nodded.

—Now, a trust fund is a special investment account that’s set up for the benefit of a minor with a trustee who makes all the decisions until the minor comes of age, at which point the minor can do with the money as he sees fit. But when Woolly turned eighteen, thanks to a little bit of fancy jurisprudence, the trustee—who happens to be Woolly’s brother-in-law—had Woolly declared temperamentally unfit. Wasn’t that the term, Woolly?

—Temperamentally unfit, Woolly confirmed with an apologetic smile.

—And in so doing, his brother-in-law extended his authority over the trust until such a time as Woolly should improve his temperament, or in perpetuity, whichever comes first.

I shook my head.

—And they call that a trust fund?

—That sounds like Woolly’s business, Duchess. What does it have to do with you?

—With us, Emmett. What does it have to do with us.

I pulled my chair a little closer to the table.

—Woolly and his family have a house in upstate New York—

—A camp, said Woolly.

—A camp, I amended, where the family gathers from time to time. Well, during the Depression, when the banks began failing, Woolly’s great-grandfather decided he could never entirely trust the American banking system again. So, just in case, he put a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash in a wall safe at the camp. But what’s particularly interesting here—even fateful, you might say—is that the value of Woolly’s trust today is almost exactly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I paused to let that sink in. Then I looked at Emmett directly.

—And because Woolly’s a man who’s big of heart and modest of needs, he has proposed that if you and I accompany him to the Adirondacks to help him claim what is rightfully his, he will divvy up the proceeds in three equal parts.

—One hundred and fifty thousand dollars divided by three is fifty thousand dollars, said Billy.

—Exactly, I said.

—All for one and one for all, said Woolly.

As I leaned back in my chair, Emmett stared at me for a moment. Then he turned to Woolly.

—This was your idea?

—It was my idea, Woolly acknowledged.

—And you’re not going back to Salina?

Woolly put his hands in his lap and shook his head.

—No, Emmett. I’m not going back to Salina.

Emmett gave Woolly a searching look, as if he were trying to formulate one more question. But Woolly, who was naturally disinclined to the answering of questions and who’d had plenty of practice in avoiding them, began clearing the plates.

In a state of hesitation, Emmett drew a hand across his mouth. I leaned across the table.

—The one hitch is that the camp always gets opened up for the last weekend in June, which doesn’t give us a lot of time. I’ve got to make a quick stop in New York to see my old man, but then we’re heading straight for the Adirondacks. We should have you back in Morgen by Friday—a little road weary, maybe, but on the sunny side of fifty grand. Think about that for a second, Emmett. . . . I mean, what could you do with fifty grand? What would you do with fifty grand?

There is nothing so enigmatic as the human will—or so the headshrinkers would have you believe. According to them, the motivations of a man are a castle without a key. They form a multilayered labyrinth from which individual actions often emerge without a readily discernible rhyme or reason. But it’s really not so complicated. If you want to understand a man’s motivations, all you have to do is ask him: What would you do with fifty thousand dollars?

When you ask most people this question, they need a few minutes to think about it, to sort through the possibilities and consider their options. And that tells you everything you need to know about them. But when you pose the question to a man of substance, a man who merits your consideration, he will answer in a heartbeat—and with specifics. Because he’s already thought about what he would do with fifty grand. He’s thought about it while he’s been digging ditches, or pushing paper, or slinging hash. He’s thought about it while listening to his wife, or tucking in the kids, or staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night. In a way, he’s been thinking about it all his life.

When I put the question to Emmett, he didn’t respond, but that wasn’t because he didn’t have an answer. I could see from the expression on his face that he knew exactly what he’d do with fifty thousand dollars, nickel for nickel and dime for dime.

As we sat there silently, Billy looked from me to his brother and back again; but Emmett, he looked straight across the table like he and I were suddenly the only people in the room.

—Maybe this was Woolly’s idea and maybe it wasn’t, Duchess. Either way, I don’t want any part of it. Not the stop in the city, not the trip to the Adirondacks, not the fifty thousand dollars. Tomorrow, I need to take care of a few things in town. But on Monday morning, first thing, Billy and I are going to drive you and Woolly to the Greyhound station in Omaha. From there you can catch a bus to Manhattan or the Adirondacks or anywhere you like. Then Billy and I will get back in the Studebaker and go on about our business.

Emmett was serious as he delivered this little speech. In fact, I’ve never seen a guy so serious. He didn’t raise his voice, and he didn’t take his eyes off me once—not even to glance at Billy, who was listening to every word with a look of wide-eyed wonder.

And that’s when it hit me. The blunder I’d made. I had laid out all the specifics right in front of the kid.

Like I said before, Emmett Watson understands the whole picture better than most. He understands that a man can be patient, but only up to a point; that it’s occasionally necessary for him to toss a monkey wrench in the workings of the world in order to get his God-given due. But Billy? At the age of eight, he probably hadn’t set foot out of the state of Nebraska. So you couldn’t expect him to understand all the intricacies of modern life, all the subtleties of what was and wasn’t fair. In fact, you wouldn’t want him to understand it. And as the kid’s older brother, as his guardian and sole protector, it was Emmett’s job to spare Billy from such vicissitudes for as long as he possibly could.

I leaned back in my chair and gave the nod of common understanding.

—Say no more, Emmett. I read you loud and clear.

After supper, Emmett announced that he was walking over to the Ransoms to see if his neighbor would come jump his car. As the house was a mile away, I offered to keep him company, but he thought it best that Woolly and I stay out of sight. So I remained at the kitchen table, chatting with Billy while Woolly did the dishes.

Given what I’ve already told you about Woolly, you’d probably think he wasn’t cut out for doing dishes—that his eyes would glaze over and his mind would wander and he’d generally go about the business in a slipshod fashion. But Woolly, he washed those dishes like his life depended on it. With his head bent at a forty-five-degree angle and the tip of his tongue poking between his teeth, he circled the sponge over the surface of the plates with a tireless intention, removing some spots that had been there for years and others that weren’t there at all.

It was a wonder to observe. But like I said, I love surprises.

When I turned my attention back to Billy, he was unwrapping a little package of tinfoil that he’d taken from his knapsack. From inside the tinfoil he carefully withdrew four cookies and put them on the table—one cookie in front of each chair.

—Well, well, well, I said. What do we have here?

—Chocolate chip cookies, said Billy. Sally made them.

While we chewed in silence, I noticed that Billy was staring rather shyly at the top of the table, as if he had something he wanted to ask.

—What’s on your mind, Billy?

—All for one and one for all, he said a little tentatively. That’s from The Three Musketeers, isn’t it?

—Exactly, mon ami.

Having successfully identified the source of the quotation, you might have imagined the kid would be pleased as punch, but he looked despondent. Positively despondent. And that’s despite the fact that the mere mention of The Three Musketeers usually puts a smile on a young boy’s face. So Billy’s disappointment rather mystified me. That is until I was about to take another bite, and I recalled the all-for-one-and-one-for-all arrangement of the cookies on the table.

I put my cookie down.

—Have you seen The Three Musketeers, Billy?

—No, he admitted, with a hint of the same despondency. But I have read it.

—Then you should know better than most just how misleading a title can be.

Billy looked up from the table.

—Why is that, Duchess?

—Because, in point of fact, The Three Musketeers is a story about four musketeers. Yes, it opens with the delightful camaraderie of Orthos and Pathos and Artemis.

—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis?

—Exactly. But the central business of the tale is the means by which the young adventurer. . .

—D’Artagnan.

—. . . by which D’Artagnan joins the ranks of the swashbuckling threesome. And by saving the honor of the queen, no less.

—That’s true, said Billy, sitting up in his chair. In point of fact, it is a story about four musketeers.

In honor of a job well done, I popped the rest of my cookie in my mouth and brushed the crumbs from my fingers. But Billy was staring at me with a new intensity.

—I sense that something else is on your mind, young William.

He leaned as far forward as the table would allow and spoke a little under his breath.

—Do you want to hear what I would do with fifty thousand dollars?

I leaned forward and spoke under my breath too.

—I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

—I would build a house in San Francisco, California. It would be a white house just like this one with a little porch and a kitchen and a front room. And upstairs, there would be three bedrooms. Only instead of a barn for the tractor, there would be a garage for Emmett’s car.

—I love it, Billy. But why San Francisco?

—Because that’s where our mother is.

I sat back in my chair.

—You don’t say.

Back at Salina, whenever Emmett mentioned his mother—which wasn’t very often, to be sure—he invariably used the past tense. But he didn’t use it in a manner suggesting that his mother had gone to California. He used it in a manner suggesting that she had gone to the great beyond.

—We’re leaving right after we take you and Woolly to the bus station, added Billy.

—Just like that, you’re going to pack up the house and move to California.

—No. We’re not going to pack up the house, Duchess. We’re going to take what little we can fit in a kit bag.

—Why would you do that?

—Because Emmett and Professor Abernathe agree that’s the best way to make a fresh start. We’re going to drive to San Francisco on the Lincoln Highway, and once we get there, we’ll find our mother and build our house.

I didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that if his mother didn’t want to live in a little white house in Nebraska, she wasn’t going to want to live in a little white house in California. But setting the vagaries of motherhood aside, I figured the kid’s dream was about forty thousand dollars under budget.

—I love your plan, Billy. It’s got the sort of specificity that a heartfelt scheme deserves. But are you sure you’re dreaming big enough? I mean, with fifty thousand dollars you could go a hell of a lot further. You could have a pool and a butler. You could have a four-car garage.

Billy shook his head with a serious look on his face.

—No, he said. I don’t think we will need a pool and a butler, Duchess.

I was about to gently suggest that the kid shouldn’t jump to conclusions, that pools and butlers weren’t so easy to come by, and those who came by them were generally loath to give them up, when suddenly Woolly was standing at the table with a plate in one hand and a sponge in the other.

—No one needs a pool or a butler, Billy.

You never know what’s going to catch Woolly’s attention. It could be a bird that settles on a branch. Or the shape of a footprint in the snow. Or something someone said on the previous afternoon. But whatever gets Woolly thinking, it’s always worth the wait. So as he took the seat next to Billy, I quickly went to the sink, turned off the water, and returned to my chair, all ears.

—No one needs a four-car garage, Woolly continued. But I think what you will need is a few more bedrooms.

—Why is that, Woolly?

—So that friends and family can come visit for the holidays.

Billy nodded in acknowledgment of Woolly’s good sense, so Woolly continued making suggestions, warming to his subject as he went along.

—You should have a porch with an overhanging roof so that you can sit under it on rainy afternoons, or lie on top of it on warm summer nights. And downstairs there should be a study, and a great room with a fireplace big enough so that everyone can gather around it when it snows. And you should have a secret hiding place under the staircase, and a special spot in the corner for the Christmas tree.

There was no stopping Woolly now. Asking for paper and pencil, he swung his chair around next to Billy’s and began drawing a floor plan in perfect detail. And this wasn’t some back-of-the-napkin sort of sketch. As it turned out, Woolly drew floor plans like he washed dishes. The rooms were rendered to scale with walls that were parallel and corners at perfect right angles. It gave you a zing just to see it.

Setting aside the merits of a covered porch versus a four-car garage, you had to give Woolly credit on the dreaming front. The place he imagined on Billy’s behalf was three times the size of the one the kid had imagined on his own, and it must have struck a chord. Because when Woolly was done with the picture, Billy asked him to add an arrow pointing north and a big red star to mark the spot where the Christmas tree should go. And when Woolly had done that, the kid carefully folded the floor plan and stowed it away in his pack.

Woolly looked satisfied too. Although, when Billy had cinched the straps nice and tight and returned to his chair, Woolly gave him his sad sort of smile.

—I wish I didn’t know where my mother is, he said.

—Why is that, Woolly?

—So that I could go and look for her just like you.

Once the dishes were clean and Billy had taken Woolly upstairs to show him where he could shower, I did some poking around.

It was no secret that Emmett’s old man had gone bust. But all you had to take was one look around the place to know it wasn’t from drinking. When the man of the house is a drunk, you can tell. You can tell from the look of the furniture and the look of the front yard. You can tell from the look on the faces of the kids. But even if Emmett’s old man was a teetotaler, I figured there had to be a drink of something somewhere—like maybe a bottle of apple brandy or peppermint schnapps tucked away for special occasions. In this part of the country, there usually was.

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