The Book of Joby

by Ferrari, Mark J.

  “Saw your house,” Joby said, trying to flee the subject he had broached.

  “It’s a little crunched,” Rose said, smiling ruefully. “Our bedrooms are all in back, though. So that was good.”

  “I wish my office had been in back,” Tom said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “One of Tom’s many hats here is real-estate agent,” Mrs. Lindsay explained. “He works out of his home.”

  “Really out of my home now!” Tom laughed. “For a while, at least.”

  “Well, you know Bridget and I will be by to help tomorrow,” Drew assured him.

  “Thanks,” Tom said. “We’ve gotten offers all day, and I can’t tell you how much it means to us. I just hope the weather cooperates long enough to get it done quickly.”

  “So, what brought you to Taubolt, Joby?” Mrs. Connolly asked.

  “Father Crombie and I are friends,” Joby replied, having figured out by now that this was the simplest answer to that question. “He set me up here with Mrs. Lindsay.”

  Joby had just started to tell them about St. Albee’s when Father Crombie himself arrived bearing two small but handsomely wrapped packages.

  “Hello, everyone!” he said cheerfully. “Hope I haven’t kept you all waiting,”

  “You’re right on time,” said Mrs. Lindsay. “Joby was just talking about you.”

  “Well, I hope he hasn’t spilled too many of my secrets.” He gave Joby a conspiratorial wink, then handed one of his packages to Mrs. Lindsay. “Merry Christmas, Gladys.” To Joby’s surprise, he handed the other package to him. “And this is for you.”

  “Thank you,” Joby said as Father Crombie shrugged out of his coat. “I . . . didn’t expect this. . . . I—”

  “Should open it and refrain from silly protests.” Father Crombie grinned, handing his coat to Mrs. Lindsay who smiled and took it up the stairs with her present. “It’s a sneak attack, Joby. You’re only responsibility is to be surprised and delighted.”

  Joby removed the wrapping to find a richly bound anthology of American poetry.

  “You mentioned a degree in English at dinner last night.” Father Crombie smiled. “I hoped you might enjoy that. I own a well-read copy myself.”

  “Well, thank you so much,” Joby said again, then surprised himself by leaning forward to hug the old priest, who returned the gesture warmly.

  Mrs. Lindsay reappeared and ushered everyone toward the dining room, where the large, elegant table waited, alight with candles.

  Even having helped to prepare it, Joby was astonished at how good the meal was. The candlelight made everyone look youthful and merry. Mrs. Lindsay’s paying guests chastised her for spoiling them so badly, insisting they’d never be able to enjoy normal food again, while Rose began to quiz Joby about his tastes in music and what city girls were wearing these days. Soon they were talking and laughing as if there’d never been an awkward moment between them.

  “Father said you have a degree in English, Joby?” Bridget asked as soon as Rose gave her an opening.

  “Just a B.A.,” he replied. Hoping to avoid talk about his past, he turned quickly back to Rose, and asked, “Wasn’t that you down on the headlands this morning, around that tree with a bunch of other kids?”

  Suddenly uncomfortable again, Rose gave Joby a weighing look, then said, “We were praying for the tree that got hit by lightning last night.”

  “Praying for a tree?” Joby said. That seemed . . . a little weird.

  “That particular grove of trees is pretty special to us all,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “We have weddings down there, and memorial services, and all kinds of things. I can’t begin to guess how many marriage proposals have been made under those branches.”

  Joby saw Tom and Clara Connolly smile knowingly without looking up from their meals, and suspected their initials might be down there somewhere.

  “We pray a lot around here,” Jake said to Joby with an oddly pointed grin. “We’re too far from everywhere to get help any other way.”

  When everyone had gone, and Joby had finished helping Mrs. Lindsay with the cleanup, she had surprised him with another wrapped box pulled from far under her Christmas tree. It had contained an old-fashioned writing kit: stationery, quill pen, inkwell, even sealing wax and a stamp engraved to emboss the letter “J” in the blob of wax. “For writing home,” she’d told him, saying that the kit had been her son’s before he went away. When she saw Joby glance again at the monogram stamp, she said, “His name is Justin.”

  Now, up in his room, Joby sat flipping through the poetry anthology Father Crombie had given him, thinking about how generous everyone had been to him, and how strange it felt after . . . so much time.

  He still hadn’t called his parents. The memory of their frightened messages on his machine back in Berkeley stung his conscience. He should have called, especially on Christmas, but he still couldn’t face . . . what? Their fear? Their anger? . . . Their shame? . . . His own perhaps? Still, he couldn’t just leave them wondering if he was even alive. If they hadn’t learned of his sudden disappearance yet, they would soon. He was sure their names and address were on the rental papers somewhere. His landlord would probably be after them to get rid of all the stuff he’d left behind. He’d left a lot of details untended in his flight from Berkeley.

  Amidst these thoughts, he noticed a page corner that someone, Crombie, he supposed, had bent down. It marked a poem by Longfellow, and one stanza caught Joby’s attention immediately:

  I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

  Across the school boy’s brain;

  The song and the silence in the heart,

  That in part are prophecies and in part

  Are longings wild and vain,

  And the voice of that fitful song

  Sings on, and is never still:

  A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

  And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

  He stared at the page, then closed the book, thinking of the storybook Mary had returned to him, stuffed now in his duffel bag across the room. Taubolt already felt so much like the home he’d wanted for so long without knowing. He was already determined to belong here, whatever it took. But in part, he knew, it would take laying his past to rest somehow . . . or at least cleaning it up enough to move on. For writing home, Mrs. Lindsay had said. Could she know him that well already?

  A moment later he was seated at her son’s old pine desk, staring at a blank sheet of cream-colored stationery, dipping and redipping the old pen into the bottle of ink.

  “Dear Mom and Dad,” he wrote at last. “I’m sorry I never answered your messages last week. A lot has happened, but first let me say that I am very well.” His pen hung thoughtfully over the paper for a moment. “In fact, I’m better than I have been in years. You’ll never guess where I am living now. . . .”

  15

  ( Migration Season )

  “In the headlines this morning: five people were killed and seventeen injured in the bombing of an outdoor market in Belfast. No one has claimed credit for the attack, but members of Parliament were adamant in demanding harsher measures against such extreme elements.

  “Senate Republicans held a press conference outside the Capitol building in Washington this morning, calling again for tougher economic reforms, including a crackdown on abuse of the Federal Welfare system, and the elimination of capital gains taxes. Across the street, protesters branded Republicans ‘the party of punishment,’ accusing them of trying to divert responsibility for the nation’s current economic woes from America’s wealthy elite by penalizing the country’s poorest citizens instead.

  “In Los Angeles this morning, two teenage boys were gunned down outside a Tastee Freez in Pico Rivera. Police say the killing seems to have been gang-related, and that suspects are currently in custody for questioning. This latest instance of youth-related violence has spurred new calls in California’s Senate for legislation permitting youthful offenders to be tried and incarcerated a
s adults.

  “The Dow is up 257 points this morning, to 9435. The NASDAQ is up as well, 70 points to 2381. Analysts say there seems to be no end of good news in sight.”

  Agnes Hamilton got up from her breakfast to turn the radio off. Being reminded that the world was going to Hell on a bullet train did nothing good for her digestion.

  Getting rich had done little for it either. Two years after winning the California lottery, her life offered little more satisfaction than it ever had.

  She sat back down, wincing at the pain in her spine, and the wind in her stomach.

  Now she had a beautiful mansion in the Oakland Hills. Surrounded by lavish gardens it was a true estate. But this had only left her coping with swarms of annoying housekeepers, gardeners, and administrative assistants whom she kept having to fire for betraying details of her private life to solicitors or the press.

  The one thing she really had hoped for after her sudden rise to riches was influence. All her life she’d watched the world go to ruin around her while the nation’s rich and powerful seemed to pursue no greater purpose than keeping themselves comfortably entertained. This outrage had fostered a cold fury within her breast for so many years that she could no longer remember being without it. Then her numbers had come up, one after another on that fabulous, impossible evening, and she’d thought that, finally, she’d have the power to halt the disintegration of at least some small portion of her world.

  Since then, she’d sent sizable checks to an impressive array of politicos, attended countless fund-raising dinners and exclusive salons, even stooped to speaking up at public meetings. But all her ideas about restoring some semblance of decency to modern society were still ignored. Oh, for what she paid them any number of public officials were happy to sit there nodding for as long as she had breath to go on. But while her money, it seemed, interested them as much as anyone else’s, her thoughts on law and order did not.

  Memories of that disgraceful riot in Berkeley two months past resurfaced like putrid bubbles of marsh gas in her mind. To have put people through all that just days before Christmas! Should have shot them all, she thought crossly.

  Feeling weary, she pushed her plate away unfinished and stared out the window at her garden, suddenly imagining a quiet little village full of charming cottages where life went on graciously from day to day, as it had done in better times. Someplace at the edge of the world, where the urban madness encroaching on her here was still just a dim, unpleasant rumor.

  Vivid pictures bloomed in her mind: neatly trimmed lawns, a rose-covered arbor, a sunny table on a bluff top, tea laid out against a backdrop of blue summer sky and untroubled ocean bordered in clean white surf. Yes, she thought. Out on the coast there must still be any number of quiet, isolated little towns.

  Suddenly afire with dreams of escape, she left the remains of her breakfast for what’s-her-name, the latest housekeeper, and went upstairs to pack. It was a lovely day for January, and she’d still gone hardly anywhere in the sporty little car she’d bought that fall. A pleasant drive up the coast seemed made to order. Who knew? Perhaps she’d find her little Shangri-la, and leave this squalid city to collapse under the weight of its own depravity.

  “Thank you for making the time, Jake.”

  “My pleasure, Father Crombie.” Jake stomped as much of the mud and sawdust off his boots as he could, then wiped them thoroughly on the rectory’s broad straw mat before following the old man into his living room. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Well, it may not be a problem. It concerns Joby Peterson.”

  “Ah,” Jake said, seeming unsurprised.

  “What do you think of him?” Crombie asked.

  “Nice enough. A little unsure of himself. Spends a lot of time fixin’ things that aren’t broken, but good at heart, I think.” Jake paused, seeming to study Crombie before adding, “And maybe a Trojan horse?”

  “Yes, I was certain you would notice,” Crombie sighed.

  “Well, there was that little quake, and then that little storm, within hours of his arrival,” Jake drawled grimly. “You know something more specific, I take it?”

  As Crombie related his first encounter with a nine-year-old boy seeking advice about fighting the devil and asking questions about the Grail, Jake listened with quiet intensity. Crombie went on to describe Joby’s reference to a grandfather from Taubolt, and the other small fragments he’d gleaned of Joby’s more recent past during their occasional chats since Christmas. “Do you recognize the name?” Crombie asked at last. “Emery Emerson?”

  “I remember him,” Jake said. “Left here as a boy. Haven’t seen or heard of him since. So what are you suggesting, Father?”

  “That Joby may, in fact, be involved in some conflict with Hell of which he has become unconscious through the years and, therefore, may both need our help and pose a threat to our well-being.”

  “Interesting theory.” Jake smiled. “You’ve waited to tell me all this ’cause . . .?”

  “I’m not certain of these assertions,” Crombie shrugged, “and thought others here should have a chance to know the boy better before judging him.” He looked down and sighed. “I like him, Jake. I’ve liked him since the day we met, and I feared that, on the heels of that storm, he might not receive the fair hearing he deserved.” Crombie looked up expecting to see dissapproval on Jake’s face but found there a broad smile instead.

  “You’ve been smart to keep this to yourself,” Jake said. “Spread such tales, he’d get wind of it soon enough, and if he really doesn’t know such a thing about himself, there could be some damn good reasons he’s not supposed to.”

  “Then, should the Council know?”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not yet at least. It’s lucky you’ve got such a good line on the boy. Forewarned is forearmed and all. But you could be right about that fair hearin’. Folks are still pretty skittish after what went on here over Christmas. I say we just watch him like hawks until the evidence points to somethin’ clearer. In fact, we should keep him where he’d be visible to more people more of the time.”

  Crombie allowed himself a smile at last. “I’m relieved that you feel this way, Jake. It so happens I have a notion about what we might draw him into, if you think it safe to put him in closer contact with the children.”

  “Nothin’ more watched or better guarded ’round here than the children,” Jake said. “What’d you have in mind?”

  As he wheeled another load of newly split firewood toward the backyard, Joby couldn’t help feeling proud of how good the inn was looking. Mrs. Lindsay had kept him working hard, chopping and stacking wood, repairing her fence and gardens, hauling away storm wrack, fixing the eaves. Taubolt had recovered from the storm with amazing speed. The whole town had worked together, until there was hardly a reminder to be seen of the “hundred-year storm” as people were calling it.

  Joby was really getting into the whole country living thing. Jake had come around after Christmas with the load of wood that Joby was splitting now. He had taught Joby what a “cord” was—and the distinction in utility between softwoods and hardwoods—without once making Joby feel foolish for not knowing. He’d even shown him how to swing a maul, “so they won’t think you’re new,” he’d said with a wink.

  By far the strangest bit of rural lore Joby had encountered so far had come when Mrs. Lindsay sent him to the hardware store for “a bottle of lion piss.” Sure he must have heard wrong, he’d asked for clarification, and she’d explained that squirting it on her gardens kept the deer away. So Joby had headed for the hardware store apprehensive that this was some kind of joke played on newcomers. But Franklin Clark had handed him an eight-ounce squeeze bottle of mountain lion urine without cracking a smile, and Joby had chuckled all the way back, trying to imagine how they got mountain lions to piss into a bottle, and wondering if deer could really be dumb enough to think there were lions hiding in some little clump of geraniums.

  All in all, not an evening ha
d come since Joby’s arrival that he did not climb into bed feeling dazed with gratitude for the way his life had been so suddenly transformed.

  Nonetheless, he was aware of another, darker feeling that sometimes lurked behind his gratitude. He’d done his best to forget the strange experiences he’d had in church on Christmas morning, but in the rare, undistracted moment late at night or when he hadn’t anything to do, Joby still felt hunted . . . by what, he didn’t know. Nor, to be honest, did he want to. He just did his best to focus on the future and hoped that time would erase whatever strange discomfort was continuing to plague him.

  Shaking off these shadows yet again, he went back to the wheel barrow just as Mrs. Lindsay leaned out an upper-story window and called down that Bridget O’Reilly had just phoned to ask if Joby would mind coming up to see her at the high school.

  “Want me to finish up the wood first?” he asked.

  “There’s no hurry about that, dear. You’d best go see what she wants.”

  Perched just below the church on a hillside above the headlands north of town, Taubolt’s high school was a single, surprisingly modern building: square, with low white walls and high red-tiled roof, like a squat pyramid. A circle of teenagers stood in the pale winter sunshine on the small front lawn, deftly using their feet, knees, and foreheads to pass three small cloth balls through the air between them. A second group sat clustered in animated conversation near the school’s main doors; one wore a giant foam-rubber top hat, while a taller boy with large obsidian eyes and handsome, dusky features had wrapped his brown shirt turban-like around his head, like a young maharaja.

  Jaunty greetings forming in Joby’s head evaporated as the Hacky Sack balls fell to earth with quiet slaps and everyone turned to watch his arrival in silence.

  “Hey.” He smiled as he approached the group beside the doors.