“That’s the beautiful thing about America,” my father always scoffed. “If the promises of one church don’t suit you, just start up your own and make it the way you want.”
Our neighbors’ house became a meeting place for the members of their seedling sect. In the evenings, their scant flock would meet for prayer, or for a lesson given by the headman himself. It was humble to begin with. Small and quiet. But by and by their belief began to get its hooks into more people, and so the meetings grew bigger, the sermons a little louder, until we could hear the preacher’s voice booming out their windows and in through our own.
This had an unsettling effect on my parents.
As the zealots rose up in chorus, their hymn songs blowing our direction, my pa would work himself into a fit.
“Goddamn it!” he’d curse and holler their direction. “You got no right to force your beliefs on us!”
But of course, the church people couldn’t hear his tirade over their organ music.
My mother – the calmer and more collected counterpart to my father – knew just how to soothe his ire. She’d smile real sly and start to peeling off her clothes, right there in front of him as he stomped back and forth across the floor.
“Damn me!” he’d mutter. “Goddamn me!”
But soon enough his voice would change, as all the fury drained out of him and was replaced with something else entirely – Animal Desire.
Sometimes it was in the kitchen, at other times in the salon or storeroom, but eventually my ma would have herself stripped completely naked. My pa could never resist her sensual charms, and he’d pounce on her the way a buck in rut pounces on a wild doe.
It was only later that I realized this was not the usual way for civilized parents to act in front of their children. In our house, such open-aired copulation was as common as sharing a noonday meal. Of course, being just a youngster, I was outside their escapades, but I was in no way shielded from them. Their belief system was such that they felt I should know about sexual pleasure, and I ought to just as well learn it from them as somewhere else.
Nevertheless, it always made me uncomfortable. Their moaning and laughing and carrying on. It filled up the house to where there was no room to hide. So, I’d slip outside to get away.
A ditch separated our plot of land from the neighbors’, along with a three-rail fence. One evening – I remember it was springtime – I went down to the ditch to hide away. There were shiner minnows swimming in the pooled water there, and sometimes I’d try to catch them in my hands. The church noises were coming at me from one side, and whether I was imagining it or not, I could hear my parents going at it on the other. I was doing my best to block it all out of my head, poking a willow switch into the soft mud, when I heard a voice.
“What are you doing, Adamiah?”
When I looked up, I saw the neighbor girl sitting on top of the fence gazing down at me. A flock of blackbirds passed behind her in the evening sky.
“My name’s not Adamiah,” I said. “It’s Thaddeus.”
“No,” she said, and shook her head. “It’s Adamiah all right. God told me so in a dream.”
I couldn’t make myself argue with her. What she said struck me as so mysterious and wonderful that I wanted it to be true. I had only a vague notion of who God was – some inborn idea – but that He had taken the time to tell this girl my name was Adamiah – well, who was I to disagree with that?
She seemed to know what I was up to without me ever telling. “Sometimes it gets kind of loud, doesn’t it?”
I nodded.
She put her hands over her ears. “It makes my head hurt.”
I imagined she could hear my parents, too, and not just her own side singing and praying.
“What else did God say?”
“God told me I should come out here and meet you because if we’re both real careful and good and don’t do no sinning, you and me are going to be married up someday, and reside in paradise forevermore.”
Like God, my notion of Sin seemed to be something I was born with. I could feel it twisting inside me when she mentioned the word. I only half understood what she was telling me, but I also knew – for all my sudden worries about being sinful – that I had never felt so hopeful.
I couldn’t help but smile at her.
She smiled down at me too, the first stars coming out in the sky behind her, like some little angel sitting on a fence.
*****
After that, we met regularly any time our groups were practicing their religion, or, in the case of my side, their lack thereof.
We’d catch frogs or minnows in the summer and slip around on the frozen ditch in the winter months. She gave me a wooden puppet toy one snowy day – the kind that hangs on a string from a stick and you bounce it up and down on a table to make the little figure do a dance. I’d never gotten a Christmas present before.
Sometimes she’d tell me more about us getting married, and I’d sit and listen and try to imagine it the way she painted it out for me.
“We’ll most likely have children,” she told me. “And we’ll go to church of a Sunday morning. You’ll be the church preacher.”
Becoming a preacher seemed about as easy for me as learning to fly, but I didn’t argue with her. She was my secret friend. I liked the idea of us being together forever.
*****
Her father’s following grew bigger. They added a room to the side of their house to accommodate the growing congregation. Which is not to say it was a completely successful venture. It had its problems, the foremost of these being the resistance it was meeting with by the older church it had sprung off from. They didn’t appreciate someone coming along and bending their doctrine, and so pretty soon there got be a rumor going around that this new church wasn’t sanctified by God and was in fact a diversion created by none other than the Devil himself. Of course, that just made them dig in all the deeper, but still, it wasn’t long until the girl told me that her pa was thinking about finding a new place where they could practice their religious freedom.
“We might go out west,” she told me. “There’s lots of space out there, and heathens who need to hear the Word.”
I just nodded, praying in my own awkward way that she wouldn’t be leaving before we could get ourselves married.
*****
My parents’ answer to the neighbors’ growing success was to up their own efforts at hedonistic excess. It was as if they felt they needed to balance the holiness on the other side of the ditch with a counterforce of unholiness on ours.
Opium. Liquor. And prostitutes.
Our house became a den of orgies and drunkenness.
Sometimes I’d have to step over the tangled bodies strewn about on the couch and rugs just to get across the room. The air always smelled heavy of perfume and fornication.
I had grown in recent years and was coming into the first days of my own young manhood, so the longings I was feeling at being surrounded by these carnal opportunities was confusing. More than once some painted-up lady invited me to take a roll with her on the floor. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. And I can’t say that it didn’t play out in my dreams at night. But I had built up such a sturdy resolve in myself. The girl next door made me strong. I was sure this other way was just a cheap and fleeting pleasure compared to the eternal bliss I would have if I could keep my nose clean.
*****
One morning I heard a knock at our back door. I tiptoed toward it, expecting one of my parents’ friends coming around late for the party, or someone who had stumbled out drunk in the night and was now wanting back inside to sleep it off with the others. But when I opened the door, there before me was the neighbor girl’s ma.
“Good morning.” She smiled at me. “You must be Adamiah.”
I couldn’t answer.
The woman wore her hair held tight to her head with combs. She smoothed the front of her gingham dress and looked past me into the kitchen. “Is your mother home?”
; I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I was too horrified at the thought of this woman – my future mother-in-law – ever meeting my own mother on a morning such as this.
“Who is it, Thad?”
I gulped.
“Who’s there?”
Of all things, my ma came into the room behind me. Her voice was hoarse with waking. She opened the door wide and stood beside me, rubbing her eyes and pulling at her messed hair.
“It’s only me,” said the woman. “I’m Wilhelmina. I live next door. I can’t believe our paths have never crossed before.”
The woman offered her free hand and my ma shook it.
I was staggered. My mother wasn’t wearing a stitch, her breasts and private parts all hanging out for the world to see.
“Oh,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Wilhelmina. I’m Zena. We hear you all singing over there of an evening.”
“Oh, yes, well.” The woman seemed apologetic.
Then the two of them just stood there politely regarding one another while I squirmed like a fish on a hook.
She held out a cup. “I was wondering if I might trouble you this morning for some sugar.”
“Of course you may,” said my ma. She took the cup and handed it to me. “Go and fill that up for her, will you, Thad?”
I nodded. I felt hot all over, and icy cold too. I thought I might get sick right there on the floor. I went about doing what was asked of me, but it was like I was in a dream, just floating through the movements.
When I came back with the sugar, my mother and this Wilhelmina woman were both just standing there together. I was taken by how much they looked alike, considering the obvious differences between them. They were holding hands and gazing into one another’s eyes, and although no sounds were coming out of them, it was just like they were having a secret conversation about something that didn’t need any words to say.
I cleared my throat and handed her the cup of sugar. “Here you go, ma’am.”
They broke out of their trance, let go of one another’s fingers, and then the woman said goodbye, telling my ma she’d love to have her over sometime for tea.
I stood beside my mother in the doorway, watching the woman work her way across the yard, over the footbridge at the ditch, and through a gate in the fence.
“I don’t know, Thaddeus.” My ma rested her hand atop my head and tousled my hair. “Maybe we got it all wrong after all.”
I blinked to hold back the tears. But it wasn’t any good. I don’t know why I felt like crying. It was like something down inside of me knew something that I didn’t know up above. But anyway, the whole world went blurry before my eyes. My ma’s hand felt warm on my head.
It was only a few days later that my ma tied a big stone to her waist and threw herself into the river.
*****
I met with the girl one last time before her and her family moved away. We had both considerably grown up some since we first met. The first signs of how she would look as a woman were starting to show in her face and figure. She was more beautiful to me than anyone I ever knew.
We each one stood on our own side of the ditch, the stream winding like a snake between us.
“Well, Adamiah,” she said. “You stay careful now. Don’t do no sinning.”
I nodded. I could hardly speak for the sadness swelling up in my heart. I couldn’t meet her eyes, so I looked down in the water. I remember seeing a fat little shiner weaving back and forth under the ripples. I wondered what his simple life might be like compared to my own.
When I looked back up, her blue eyes were brimming with tears. I wanted to walk right across that water and take her in my arms and squeeze her. But I didn’t know how. It wouldn’t have done any good. We both knew it was all over with for now.
I didn’t want that moment to end, but I couldn’t stand it lasting either.
Finally, she sighed real big and turned.
“God bless,” she said, her voice mixing up with the water sound of the stream.
And then she walked away.
That was the last time I saw her.
*****
My pa continued his ways, but he was changed. The spunk was all wrung out of him since my ma died. He’d bring a bottle and a woman home of an evening, but just as soon he’d kick her out the door before they ever got to carrying on. Then he’d just sit there in a chair with his bottle, the night coming over the empty house and him never saying a word, or moving, except to take a drink.
I couldn’t stand to be with him like that, so I’d go out walking. A new family had moved in next door, and in the darkness, I could watch through their lighted windows without them ever knowing it. They sat at their dinner table and laughed and talked while I peeped in on them. I knew it was wrongheaded of me, but I was curious how other folks lived. About other families. I’d watch them read books or play games. After a while they’d all go off to bed, and then the house would go dark. I’d sneak away and let them sleep.
I never wanted to go home to my pa them times, so then I’d walk to the river where my ma had jumped in. The dark water sloshed and swirled over the deep eddies. I told myself it wasn’t as cold and awful as it looked. I imagined that a whole other world was down there, and that my ma was not really dead, but just living a different kind of life. Maybe she was even happy. Maybe it was the underwater life she had always wanted. They were foolish thoughts I was having. But my sleepiness always made me hopeful.
I’d sit and yawn and listen to the water and think about my ma.
And then toward daybreak, I’d wander home.
*****
One predawn I saw a bright red glow in the darkness. Sure enough, when I got closer I could see that it was our house on fire. Sparks and smoke floated up into the heavens as hot flames blasted through the roof. It was terrible to see. And beautiful too.
The fire brigade was trying to put it out, but they couldn’t get close on account of the heat. People dipped buckets into the ditch and then just stood around in a circle watching the show. I knew my pa was in there burning up. What I never did know for sure though was if he meant to be.
*****
Before those last blackened boards ever stopped smoking, I was on my way.
There was nothing for me but to go.
I didn’t have any means to speak of. Just the shirt on my back. I probably could have got myself a lawyer and sold our little plot of land, but the truth was, I didn’t want no part of that place. It was nothing but a pile of hard memories that I’d just as soon forget. I headed out of town generally west, not really knowing what I was up to, just following my compass, which, to be honest, seemed to be all broke and fuddled up.
Those first days was rough. I nearly starved. But then I got a job for a company loading freight on the barges that worked up and down the river system. They let me sleep on the flatboats. And they fed me. And even though I was little more than a slave, I got to where I could survive. It was good to be in a different place every day. After a time, I quit the river and moved farther west. I cut trees for a mill for a while. I worked with a crew building roads between the new towns springing up. I took just about any work that Chance put in my way. All of it hard and none of it much paying. The years passed by. Nowhere was home for me, or wherever I happened to wake up.
*****
Over time, all my memories were drowned out with the past. They just sank deeper and deeper in my mind. I didn’t think of my ma and pa. I didn’t think of the neighbor girl. I didn’t think of nothing that had ever happened to me. I learned only to see the day I was living in.
And yet, the peculiar thing of it all was that I stayed pure of heart and deed. It had become a habit, I suppose, since I had met the neighbor girl that first day out by the back ditch. She had replaced any lessons in life that my parents had ever taught me otherwise. She had shaped who I was with her words – if we don’t do no sinning.
Somehow that idea got stuck inside me. It was directing my compass away from the des
tiny of Thaddeus to that of Adamiah – the name she had gave me long ago, and the name I had went by ever since. Sure, I had plenty of chances to go astray. There was no end of shady schemes to get involved with in the new land. Most men lived without any scruples at all out there in the west. And there were times I was so lonely that I almost went with loose women. But I never could make myself do it. I remember thinking I might die before I ever laid down with a female.
But then, I asked myself, would that be so terrible?
*****
By and by, I found myself in California at an opportune moment in history. The rush was on, and everyone was going crazy looking for gold. I had no ambitions for it myself. I had been poor for years and never expected anything else. All those fellows groveling so desperately for filthy lucre struck me as a sorry spectacle. Instead of hunting for gold, I got myself a job packing goods over the hills with a string of mules. Pick axes and shovels and the like. The mercantile I worked for saw an opportunity in getting the goods to the miners because they none of them ever wanted to stop digging long enough if something broke. I’d travel around to the camps and sell the sorry prospectors tools at a price ten times what they could get them in town. They would curse me first, and then, with dumb hope driving them on, they’d pay up every time.
One day I was heading back for another load of tools. I was deep in the mountains in a place I hadn’t been before. The route on the map showed the trail going around that part of the range, since it was too jagged and hard to travel up and over the rocky snow-topped peaks. I don’t know what came over me. There was just something about the light that day. It shined on the steep hillsides of a little canyon cutting like a wound in the earth. A clear stream tumbled out of the canyon. I watched it. I listened. That was the first time I had ever thought about the ditch that ran behind our house when I was a kid. Somehow, even over all these miles and years, that stream was speaking in the same water voice as that ditch back in Ohio.
Fortuna and the Scapegrace Page 8
