Pastor John 4 страница

The sheriff looked at Emmett now.

—You understand me, Emmett?

—Yes, sir, I do.

—I gather from Ed Ransom you might be leaving town. . . .

—We’re headed out tomorrow.

—All right then. After we get you cleaned up, I’ll take a ride over to the Snyders’ and make sure they keep out of your way in the interim. While I’m at it, are there any other people who’ve been giving you trouble?

Emmett rolled down his window and tossed out the cigarette.

—Mostly, he said, what people have been giving me is advice.

Duchess

henever I come to a new town, I like to get my bearings. I want to understand the layout of the streets and the layout of the people. In some cities this can take you days to accomplish. In Boston, it can take you weeks. In New York, years. The great thing about Morgen, Nebraska, is it only took a few minutes.

The town was laid out in a geometric grid with the courthouse right in the middle. According to the mechanic who’d given me a lift in his tow truck, back in the 1880s the town elders spent a whole week deliberating how best to christen the streets before deciding—with an eye to the future—that the east-west streets would be named for presidents and the north-south streets for trees. As it turned out, they could have settled on seasons and suits because seventy-five years later the town was still only four blocks square.

—Howdy, I said to the two ladies coming in the opposite direction, neither of whom said howdy back.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a certain charm to a town like this. And there’s a certain kind of person who would rather live here than anywhere else—even in the twentieth century. Like a person who wants to make some sense of the world. Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a town this size, when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.

At any rate, Morgen was the sort of town where when something out of the ordinary happens, a crowd is likely to gather. And sure enough, when I came around the courthouse, there was a semicircle of citizens ready to prove the point. From fifty feet away I could tell they were a representative sample of the local electorate. There were hayseeds in hats, dowagers with handbags, and lads in dungarees. Fast approaching was even a mother with a stroller and a toddler at her side.

Tossing the rest of my ice cream cone in the trash, I walked over to get a closer look. And who did I find at center stage? None other than Emmett Watson—being taunted by some corn-fed kid with a corn-fed grievance.

The people who had gathered to watch seemed excited, at least in a midwestern sort of way. They weren’t shouting or grinning, but they were glad to have happened along at just the right moment. It would be something they could talk about in the barbershop and hair salon for weeks to come.

For his part, Emmett looked fantastic. He was standing with his eyes open and his arms at his sides, neither eager to be there nor in a hurry to leave. It was the taunter who looked anxious. He was shifting back and forth and sweating through his shirt, despite the fact that he’d brought along two cronies to back him up.

—Jake, I don’t want any trouble, Emmett was saying. I just want to get in my car and go home.

—I can’t let you do that, replied Jake, though it looked like that’s exactly what he wanted Emmett to do.

Then one of the wingmen—the tall one in the cowboy hat—tossed in his two cents.

—Seems like Jake here’s got some unfinished business with you, Watson.

I had never seen this cowboy before, but from the tilt of his hat and the smile on his face, I knew exactly who he was. He was the guy who’s started a thousand fights without ever throwing a punch.

So what did Emmett do? Did he let the cowboy unsettle him? Did he tell him to shut up and mind his own business? He didn’t even deign to respond. He just turned to Jake and said:

—If we’ve got unfinished business, let’s finish it.

Pow!

If we’ve got unfinished business, let’s finish it.

You could wait your whole life to say a sentence like that and not have the presence of mind to say it when the time comes. That sort of level-headedness isn’t the product of upbringing or practice. You’re either born with it or you’re not. And mostly, you’re not.

But here comes the best part.

It turned out that this Jake was the brother of the Snyder kid whom Emmett put out of commission back in 1952. I could tell because he started talking some nonsense about how Jimmy had been sucker-punched, as if Emmett Watson would ever stoop to hitting a man with his guard down.

When the prodding didn’t work, Mr. Fair Fight here looked off in the distance as if he were lost in thought, then, without any warning, hit Emmett in the face. After stumbling to his right, Emmett shook off the blow, straightened up, and started moving back in Jake’s direction.

Here we go is what everybody in the crowd was thinking. Because Emmett could clearly beat this guy to a pulp, even if he was ten pounds lighter and two inches shorter. But much to the crowd’s dismay, Emmett didn’t keep coming. He stopped on the very spot where he’d been standing the moment before.

Which really got to Jake. His face turned as red as his union suit, and he started yelling that Emmett should raise his fists. So Emmett raised them, more or less, and Jake took another crack at it. This time, he hit Emmett right in the kisser. Emmett stumbled again, but didn’t topple. Bleeding from the lip, he regained his footing and came back for another helping.

Meanwhile, the cowboy—who was still leaning dismissively on the door of Emmett’s car—shouted, You show him, Jake, as if Jake were about to teach Emmett a lesson. But the cowboy had it upside down. It was Emmett who was teaching the lesson.

Alan Ladd in Shane.

Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity.

Lee Marvin in The Wild One.

You know what these three have in common? They all took a beating. I don’t mean getting a pop in the nose or having the wind knocked out of them. I mean a beating. Where their ears rang, and their eyes watered, and they could taste the blood on their teeth. Ladd took his at Grafton’s Saloon from Ryker’s boys. Sinatra took his in the stockade from Sergeant Fatso. And Marvin, he took his at the hands of Marlon Brando in the street of a little American town just like this one, with another crowd of honest citizens gathered around to watch.

The willingness to take a beating: That’s how you can tell you’re dealing with a man of substance. A man like that doesn’t linger on the sidelines throwing gasoline on someone else’s fire; and he doesn’t go home unscathed. He presents himself front and center, undaunted, prepared to stand his ground until he can’t stand at all.

It was Emmett who was teaching the lesson, all right. And he wasn’t just teaching it to Jake. He was teaching it to the whole goddamn town.

Not that they understood what they were looking at. You could tell by the expressions on their faces that the whole point of the instruction was going right over their heads.

Jake, who was beginning to tremble, was probably thinking that he couldn’t keep it up much longer. So this time, he tried to make it count. Finally getting his aim and his anger into alignment, he let one loose that knocked Emmett clear off his feet.

The whole crowd gave a little gasp, Jake breathed a sigh of relief, and the cowboy let out a snicker of satisfaction, like he was the one who’d thrown the punch. Then Emmett started getting up again.

Man, I wish I’d had a camera. I could’ve taken a picture and sent it to Life magazine. They would’ve put it on the cover.

It was beautiful, I tell you. But it was too much for Jake. Looking like he might burst into tears, he stepped forward and began shouting at Emmett that he should not get up. That he should not get up, so help him God.

I don’t know if Emmett even heard him, given that his senses were probably rattled. Though whether he heard Jake or not didn’t make much difference. He was going to do the same thing either way. Stepping a little uncertainly, he moved back within range, stood to his full height, and raised his fists. Then the blood must have rushed from his head because he staggered and fell to the ground.

Seeing Emmett on his knees was an unwelcome sight, but it didn’t worry me. He just needed a moment to gather his wits so he could get up and return to the hitting spot. That he would do so was as certain as sunrise. But before he got the chance, the sheriff spoiled the show.

—That’s enough, he said, pushing his way through the gawkers. That’s enough.

At the sheriff’s instruction, a deputy began dispersing the crowd, waving his arms and telling everyone it was time to move along. But there was no need for the deputy to disperse the cowboy. Because the cowboy had dispersed himself. The second the authorities appeared on the scene, he had lowered the brim of his hat and started ambling around the courthouse like he was headed to the hardware store for a can of paint.

I ambled after him.

When the cowboy reached the other side of the building, he crossed one of the presidents and headed up a tree. So eager was he to put some distance between himself and his handiwork, he walked right past an old lady with a cane who was trying to put a grocery bag in the back of her Model T.

—Here you go, ma’am, I said.

—Thank you, young man.

By the time granny was climbing behind the wheel, the cowboy was half a block ahead of me. When he took a right down the alley beyond the movie theater, I actually had to run to catch up, despite the fact that running is something I generally avoid on principle.

• • •

Now, before I tell you what happened next, I think I should give you a little context by taking you back to when I was about nine and living in Lewis.

When my old man dropped me off at St. Nicholas’s Home for Boys, the nun in charge was a woman of certain opinions and uncertain age named Sister Agnes. It stands to reason that a strong-minded woman who finds herself in an evangelical profession with a captive audience would be likely to avail herself of every opportunity to share her point of view. But not Sister Agnes. Like a seasoned performer, she knew how to choose her moments. She could make an unobtrusive entrance, remain at the back of the stage, wait until everyone had delivered their lines, then steal the show with five minutes in the spotlight.

Her favorite time to impart her wisdom was just before bed. Coming into the dormitory, she would quietly watch as the other sisters scurried about in their habits instructing one kid to fold his clothes, another to wash his face, and everyone to say their prayers. Then when we had all climbed under the covers, Sister Agnes would pull up a chair and deliver her lesson. As you might imagine, Sister Agnes was partial to a biblical grammar, but she spoke with such a sympathetic inflection that her words would silence the intermittent chatter and linger in our ears long after the lights were out.

One of her favorite lessons was something she referred to as the Chains of Wrongdoing. Boys, she would begin in her motherly way, in your time you shall do wrong unto others and others shall do wrong unto you. And these opposing wrongs will become your chains. The wrongs you have done unto others will be bound to you in the form of guilt, and the wrongs that others have done unto you in the form of indignation. The teachings of Jesus Christ Our Savior are there to free you from both. To free you from your guilt through atonement and from your indignation through forgiveness. Only once you have freed yourself from both of these chains may you begin to live your life with love in your heart and serenity in your step.

At the time, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. I didn’t understand how your movements could be hampered by a little wrongdoing, since in my experience those who were prone to wrongdoing were always the first ones out the door. I didn’t understand why when someone had done wrong unto you, you had to carry a burden on their behalf. And I certainly didn’t understand what it meant to have serenity in your step. But as Sister Agnes also liked to say: What wisdom the Lord does not see fit to endow us with at birth, He provides through the gift of experience. And sure enough, as I grew older, experience began to make some sense of Sister Agnes’s sermon.

Like when I first arrived at Salina.

It was the month of August, when the air was warm, the days were long, and the first crop of potatoes had to be dug from the earth. Old Testament Ackerly would have us working from dawn till dusk, such that when dinner was over, the only thing we wanted was a good night’s sleep. And yet, once the lights were out, I would often find myself stewing over how I’d come to be at Salina in the first place, reviewing every bitter detail until the rooster crowed. On other nights, I would imagine being called to the warden’s office, where he would solemnly deliver the news of a car crash or a hotel fire in which my old man had lost his life. And while such visions would appease for the moment, they would badger me for the rest of the night with a sense of shameful remorse. So there they were: indignation and guilt. Two contradictory forces so sure to confound, I resigned myself to the possibility I might never sleep soundly again.

But when Warden Williams took over for Ackerly and initiated his era of reform, he instituted a program of afternoon classes designed to prepare us for lives of upright citizenship. To that end, he had a civics teacher come talk about the three branches of government. He had a selectman instruct us on the scourge of Communism and the importance of every man’s vote. Pretty soon, we were all wishing we could get back to the potato fields.

Then a few months ago, he arranged to have a certified public accountant explain the basics of personal finance. After describing the interplay between assets and liabilities, this CPA approached the chalkboard and in a few quick strokes demonstrated the balancing of accounts. And right then, while sitting in the back row of that hot little classroom, I finally understood what Sister Agnes had been talking about.

In the course of our lives, she had said, we may do wrong unto others and others may do wrong unto us, resulting in the aforementioned chains. But another way to express the same idea was that through our misdeeds we put ourselves in another person’s debt, just as through their misdeeds they put themselves in ours. And since it’s these debts—those we’ve incurred and those we’re owed—that keep us stirring and stewing in the early hours, the only way to get a good night’s sleep is to balance the accounts.

Emmett wasn’t much better than me at listening in class, but he didn’t need to pay heed to this particular lesson. He had learned it long before coming to Salina. He had learned it firsthand by growing up under the shadow of his father’s failure. That’s why he signed those foreclosure papers without a second thought. That’s why he wouldn’t accept the loan from Mr. Ransom or the china from the bottom of the cabinet. And that’s why he was perfectly happy to take the beating.

Just like the cowboy said, Jake and Emmett had some unfinished business. Regardless of who had been provoked by who, or whom by whom, when Emmett hit the Snyder kid at the county fair, he took on a debt just as surely as his father had when he had mortgaged the family farm. And from that day forward, it hung over Emmett’s head—keeping him up at night—until he satisfied the debt at the hands of his creditor and before the eyes of his fellow men.

But if Emmett had a debt to repay to Jake Snyder, he didn’t owe a goddamn thing to the cowboy. Not a shekel, not a drachma, not one red cent.

—Hey, Tex, I called as I jogged after him. Hold up!

The cowboy turned and looked me over.

—Do I know you?

—You know me not, sir.

—Then what do you want?

I held up my hand to catch my breath before I replied.

—Back there at the courthouse, you suggested that your friend Jake had some unfinished business with my friend Emmett. For what it’s worth, I think I could just as easily argue that it was Emmett who had unfinished business with Jake. But either way, whether Jake had the business with Emmett or Emmett had the business with Jake, I think we can both agree it was no business of yours.

—Buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I tried to be more clear.

—What I’m saying is that even though Jake may have had good reason to give Emmett a beating, and Emmett may have had good reason to take one, you had no cause for all that goading and gloating. Given time, I suspect you’ll come to regret the role you played in today’s events, and you’ll find yourself wishing you could make amends—for your own peace of mind. But since Emmett’s leaving town tomorrow, by then it’ll be too late.

—You know what I suspect, said the cowboy. I suspect you can go fuck yourself.

Then he turned and began walking away. Just like that. Without even saying goodbye.

I admit, I felt a little deflated. I mean, here I was trying to help a stranger understand a burden of his own making, and he gives me the back of his shirt. It’s the sort of reception that could turn you off charitable acts forever. But another of Sister Agnes’s lessons was that when one is doing the work of the Lord, one should be willing to have patience. For just as surely as the righteous will meet setbacks on the road to justice, the Lord will provide them the means to prevail.

And lo and behold, what suddenly appeareth before me but the movie theater’s dumpster filled to the brim with the previous night’s trash. And poking out from among the Coca-Cola bottles and popcorn boxes was a two-foot length of two-by-four.

—Hey! I called once more while skipping down the alley. Hold on a second!

The cowboy turned on his heels and from the look on his face I could tell that he had something priceless to say, something that was likely to bring smiles to the faces of all the boys at the bar. But I guess we’ll never know, because I hit him before he could speak.

The blow was a good crack along the left side of his head. His hat, which went lofting in the air, did a somersault before alighting on the other side of the alley. He dropped right where he’d been standing like a marionette whose strings have been cut.

Now, I had never hit anybody in my life. And to be perfectly honest, my first impression was how much it hurt. Shifting the two-by-four to my left hand, I looked at my right palm, where two bright-red lines had been left behind by the edges of the wood. Tossing it on the ground, I rubbed my palms together to take out the sting. Then I leaned over the cowboy to get a better look. His legs were folded under him and his left ear was split down the middle, but he was still conscious. Or conscious enough.

—Can you hear me, Tex? I asked.

Then I spoke a little louder to make sure he could.

—Consider your debt repaid in full.

As he looked back at me, his eyelashes fluttered for a moment. But then he gave a little smile, and I could tell from the way his eyelids closed that he was going to sleep like a baby.

Walking out of the alley, I became conscious not simply of a welling sense of moral satisfaction, but that my footfall felt a little lighter and my stride a little jauntier.

Well, what do you know, I thought to myself with a smile. There’s serenity in my step!

And it must have showed. Because when I emerged from the alley and said howdy to the two old men passing by, they both said howdy back. And though on the way into town, ten cars had passed me before the mechanic picked me up, on the way back to the Watsons’, the first car that came along pulled over to offer me a ride.

Woolly

he funny thing about a story, thought Woolly—while Emmett was in town, and Duchess was on a walk, and Billy was reading aloud from his big red book—the funny thing about a story is that it can be told in all sorts of lengths.

The first time Woolly heard The Count of Monte Cristo, he must have been younger than Billy. His family was spending the summer at the camp in the Adirondacks, and every night his sister Sarah would read him a chapter before he went to bed. But what his sister was reading from was the original book by Alexander Dumas, which was a thousand pages long.

The thing about hearing a story like The Count of Monte Cristo from the one-thousand-page version is that whenever you sense an exciting part is coming, you have to wait and wait and wait for it to actually arrive. In fact, sometimes you have to wait so long for it to arrive you forget that it’s coming altogether and let yourself drift off to sleep. But in Billy’s big red book, Professor Abernathe had chosen to tell the entire story over the course of eight pages. So in his version, when you sensed an exciting part was coming, it arrived lickety-split.

Like the part that Billy was reading now—the part when Edmond Dantè s, convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, is carted off to spend the rest of his life in the dreaded Châ teau d’If. Even as he is being led in chains through the prison’s formidable gates, you just know that Dantè s is bound to escape. But in Mr. Dumas’s telling, before he regains his freedom you have to listen to so many sentences spread across so many chapters that it begins to feel like you are the one who is in the Châ teau d’If! Not so with Professor Abernathe. In his telling, the hero’s arrival at the prison, his eight years of solitude, his friendship with the Abbé Faria, and his miraculous escape all occur on the very same page.

Woolly pointed at the solitary cloud that was passing overhead.

—That’s what I imagine the Châ teau d’If looked like.

Carefully marking his place with his finger, Billy looked up to where Woolly was pointing and readily agreed.

—With its straight rock walls.

—And the watchtower in the middle.

Woolly and Billy both smiled to see it, but then Billy’s expression grew rather more serious.

—Can I ask you a question, Woolly?

—Of course, of course.

—Was it hard to be at Salina?

As Woolly considered the question, far overhead the Châ teau d’If transformed itself into an ocean liner—with a giant smokestack where the watchtower once had been.

—No, said Woolly, it wasn’t so hard, Billy. Certainly not like the Châ teau d’If was for Edmond Dantè s. It’s just that. . . It’s just that every day at Salina was an every-day day.

—What’s an every-day day, Woolly?

Woolly took another moment to consider.

—When we were at Salina, every day we would get up at the same time and get dressed in the same clothes. Every day we had breakfast at the same table with the same people. And every day we did the same work in the same fields before going to sleep at the same hour in the same beds.

Though Billy was just a boy, or maybe because he was just a boy, he seemed to understand that while there is nothing wrong with waking up or getting dressed or having breakfast, per se, there is something fundamentally disconcerting about doing these things in the exact same fashion day in and day out, especially in the one-thousand-page version of one’s own life.

After nodding, Billy found his place and began to read again.

What Woolly did not have the heart to tell Billy was that while this was unquestionably the way of life at Salina, it was also the way of life in many other places. It was certainly the way of life at boarding school. And not simply at St. George’s, where Woolly had most recently been enrolled. At all three boarding schools that Woolly had attended, every day they would wake up at the same time, get dressed in the same clothes, and have breakfast at the same table with the same people before heading off to attend the same classes in the same classrooms.

Woolly had often wondered about that. Why did the heads of boarding schools choose to make every day an every-day day? After some reflection, he came to suspect that they did so because it made things easier to manage. By turning every day into an every-day day, the cook would always know when to cook breakfast, the history teacher when to teach history, and the hall monitor when to monitor the halls.

But then Woolly had an epiphany.

It was in the first semester of his second junior year (the one at St. Mark’s). On his way from physics down to the gymnasium, he happened to notice the dean of students getting out of a taxi in front of the schoolhouse. As soon as he saw the taxi, it occurred to Woolly what a pleasant surprise it would be were he to pay a visit to his sister, who had recently bought a big white house in Hastings-on-Hudson. So, jumping in the back of the cab, Woolly gave the address.

You mean in New York? the driver asked in surprise.

I mean in New York! Woolly confirmed, and off they went.

When he arrived a few hours later, Woolly found his sister in the kitchen on the verge of peeling a potato.

Hallo, Sis!

Were Woolly to pay a surprise visit to any other member of his family, they would probably have greeted him with an absolute slew of whos, whys, and whats (especially when he needed 150 dollars for the taxi driver, who was waiting outside). But after paying the driver, Sarah just put the kettle on the stove, some cookies on a plate, and the two of them had a grand old time—sitting at her table and discussing all the various topics that happened to pop into their heads.

But after an hour or so, Woolly’s brother-in-law, “Dennis, ” walked through the kitchen door. Woolly’s sister was seven years older than Woolly, and “Dennis” was seven years older than Sarah, so mathematically speaking “Dennis” had been thirty-two at the time. But “Dennis” was also seven years older than himself, which made him almost forty in spirit. That is why, no doubt, he was already a vice president at J. P. Morgan & Sons & Co.

When “Dennis” discovered Woolly at the kitchen table, he was a little upset on the grounds that Woolly was supposed to be someplace else. But he was even more upset when he discovered the half-peeled potato on the counter.

When is dinner? he asked Sarah.

I’m afraid I haven’t started preparing it yet.

But it’s half past seven.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dennis.

For a moment, “Dennis” looked at Sarah in disbelief, then he turned to Woolly and asked if he could speak to Sarah in private.

In Woolly’s experience, when someone asks if they can speak to someone else in private, it is difficult to know what to do with yourself. For one thing, they generally don’t tell you how long they’re going to be, so it’s hard to know how deeply you should involve yourself in some new endeavor. Should you take the opportunity to visit the washroom? Or start a jigsaw puzzle that depicts a sailboat race with fifty spinnakers? And how far should you go? You certainly need to go far enough so that you can’t hear them talking. That was the whole point of their asking you to leave in the first place. But it often sounds like they may want you to come back a bit later, so you need to be close enough to hear them when they call.

Doing his best to split the hair down the muddle, Woolly went into the living room, where he discovered an unplayed piano and some unread books and an unwound grandfather clock—which, come to think of it, was very aptly named since it once had belonged to their grandfather! But as it turned out, given how upset “Dennis” had become, the living room wasn’t far enough away, because Woolly could hear every word.

You were the one who wanted to move out of the city, “Dennis” was saying. But I’m the one who has to get up at the crack of dawn in order to catch the 6: 42 so that I can be at the bank in time for the investment committee meeting at 8: 00. For most of the next ten hours, while you’re here doing God knows what, I am working like a dog. Then, if I run to Grand Central and I’m lucky enough to catch the 6: 14, I just might make it home by half past seven. After a day like that, is it really so much to ask that you have dinner waiting on the table?

That’s the moment the epiphany came. Standing there before his grandfather’s clock listening to his brother-in-law, it suddenly occurred to Woolly that maybe, just maybe, St. George’s and St. Mark’s and St. Paul’s organized every day to be an every-day day not because it made things easier to manage, but because it was the best possible means by which to prepare the fine young men in their care to catch the 6: 42 so that they would always be on time for their meetings at 8: 00.

At the very moment that Woolly concluded the recollection of his epiphany, Billy reached the point in the story when Edmond Dantè s, having successfully escaped from prison, was standing in the secret cave on the isle of Monte Cristo before a magnificent pile of diamonds, pearls, rubies, and gold.

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