Some People Talk with God

by John Enright

  For Vernon there was the added spice of being a fan. He had his cast of heroes and villains. The players had nicknames and personalities. There was history, context—background details and statistics, anecdotes and standings, rivalries and superstitions—and there were his decades of dedicated devotion to his team, whose fate somehow colored his life. Their down years were not worth remembering, but the year that Sissy was born, for instance, they had won the pennant (then lost the Series in six). Every game was personal and real for Vernon in a way it would never be for Dominick, for whom each game was just a passing event to be enjoyed or not and quickly forgotten. Dominick’s life was in no way linked to the Yankees or any other team. He was a bystander not a participant, someone who just watched the parade from the back of the crowd but would never dream of marching, of sporting any team’s colors.

  There was a shot on the screen of two truly fanatic fans in the stands dressed in Yankee pinstripes, one of whom had his bald head and face painted like a baseball.

  “It’s almost like a religion for some, isn’t it?” Dominick said.

  “What? Being a half-wit?”

  “Being a baseball fan, a sports fan. Going to games like going to church.”

  “Are folks dressing up like clowns to go to church these days?” Vernon went to the kitchen to get two fresh ales. “I haven’t been for a while,” he said from the refrigerator, “either to church or a ball game.”

  “No, I meant that level of allegiance, the identification with an organization.”

  Vernon came back with their ales. “Well, first off, most religions believe in some god, and there is no god in baseball, unless it’s money; and secondly most people think the Yankees are aligned with the devil.”

  “What do you mean, no gods? What about Ruth, Robinson, Gehrig, DiMaggio? That Vatican over in Cooperstown?”

  “Jackie wasn’t a Yankee, and those guys were heroes not saints, Ruth especially so. You don’t need a church to have heroes.”

  “But there is belief, that leap of faith—maybe next year.”

  “Okay, in Chicago maybe it approaches being a cult, but it’s not a religion for me. It’s a pastime. Did you see that?” An outfielder had run to the wall and leapt just in time to snatch away a home run. “That new kid is good,” Vernon said. “He could be another Mays.”

  They were shown the catch several more times in slow-motion instant replays from different camera angles. The slow-mo sports replay highlight, Dominick thought, the modern equivalent of miracle plays. “Did you ever play ball, Vernon?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding me? A poor black kid from the sticks? Not a chance. I’ll give you that, though—ball players were mythic figures when I was a kid, like creatures from some Olympus. Only I didn’t worship them, I envied them.”

  ***

  Denise brought the paper home, Wednesday’s Register Star with Sissy’s article in it. She brought it right up to Amanda’s room, as a matter of fact, as soon as she got home. She pounded on Amanda’s locked door, and when Amanda opened it Denise shoved the paper, opened to Sissy’s feature-page article, into Amanda’s face.

  “I can only assume you are responsible for this,” Denise said, “and that you also pounded this into the middle of the driveway.” In her other hand she was holding up a crudely nailed wooden cross on a pointed stake. “You have cooked your Christian goose now!” she said as she turned and stomped off, leaving Amanda holding the newspaper.

  Sissy’s article was topped by a black-and-white photo of the house taken from down by the road, resembling nothing more than the house on the hill in Psycho, and the article was headlined “Historic Reverend’s House Now a Church for Witches.” Amanda closed and relocked her door. She sat on the bed to read the article. The lead-in made a lame attempt to tie what followed to the Fourth of July. There were several paragraphs of sketchy but not inaccurate history about the house, followed by a lament that so few of the old family estates in the region still remained and that the Van Houten house like other survivors was unprotected by historic preservation provisions. The final third of the article was about the house’s current manifestation as a “tax-exempt resident center for the Wicca religion,” and for those readers unfamiliar with the term, Wicca was glossed as “the practice of pre-Christian pagan rites overseen by witches and warlocks.” At the very end it was mentioned that the current owners of the property—unnamed “outside developers”—planned to renovate the place. It said nothing about the Wiccans being evicted, leaving the impression that it was to be restored as a Wiccan church.

  For a while Amanda just sat and stared out the window. It was that hour before sunset when the birds all seemed to wake up before going back to sleep. The window was open. She could hear them exchanging the evening news. She could watch them flitting about or flying off, going somewhere else for the night. She had grown up with these birds, just east of here over in Vermont. She knew all their names—waxwing and nuthatch, catbird and warbler, junco and bobolink. Grandpa Joe had taught her their names and their songs as well. That had seemed such common knowledge that Amanda was surprised later in life to discover that not everyone knew the birds by their calls. They were so distinctive, as simple as naming flowers in a garden. She ignored the knocking at her door as long as she could, then she yelled out “Go away,” and it stopped. So simple. Amanda liked things simple. They so seldom were.

  ***

  Vernon said he thought the initials stood for digital video disc. He showed Dominick how to put one in to play and get the video up on the TV screen. There were a lot of different buttons involved. Dominick had him run through it a second time so he could write down the sequence. Vernon said that he could also do it with the remote controls, but Dominick passed. He would just push the buttons on the consoles like Vernon showed him. There was something about even the concept of remote control that he found creepy. The DVDs involved were a boxed set that Dominick had found amongst many others on a shelf beside Vernon’s big-screen TV. The title had just jumped out at him—The Civil War. There were six discs in the set. Eleven hours, Vernon said. They had been made for TV.

  It was lunchtime, Dominick’s second day at Vernon’s. Vernon had brought home some sub sandwiches for lunch, and Dominick had asked him about the DVDs. He started watching them that afternoon, after Vernon went back to work. Dominick had never watched much TV. He had not known this documentary series existed. He could only sit up and watch it for an hour or so at a time, partly because of his ribs and partly because there was a lot to absorb and think about, an overload of visual images. But it gave him something to do, something to look forward to. By the end of his second day of watching he was beginning to find fault with what was being left out. And wasn’t it interesting how history, to be made palatable as entertainment, had to be sentimentalized? There was one Southern commentator who was a master at that. Dominick found the soundtrack music especially cloying. At least there were no commercials.

  The third day that Dominick was there—it would have been a Wednesday—Vernon came home with the morning’s Hudson Register Star. “Sissy did a write-up of your place over there in Diligence,” he said, tossing the paper onto the bed where Dominick was curled up on his good side. “Got some barbeque ribs for supper tonight, if that’s not too personal,” Vernon said as he left.

  Sissy’s article was not very good—sketchy unsourced history peppered with phrases like “it is believed that” and “reportedly.” It was unnecessarily nostalgic for an imagined past. With tabloidesque clumsiness it mentioned witches in its title and ended with a tsk-tsk description of the house’s recent manifestation as a home for Wiccan women. There was no input from Morgan or Amanda about their hopes for the restored—and reclaimed from Satan—manse. Of course, Amanda had pretty much thrown Sissy out of the house, but still. All in all, it was not a friendly piece. The writer was unhappy about something but never came out to say what.

  Dominick got up from bed and took the paper into the kitchen, but Vernon
wasn’t there. He was sitting on the bench outside the kitchen door with a can of ale, poking at a charcoal fire he had started in a low hibachi. “Friend of mine in town fixes these ribs—parboils them, bakes them, spices them up and all, but you still have to grill them a bit at the end to get them right,” Vernon said.

  “I’ll pay you for them,” Dominick said, lowering himself carefully to the bench beside Vernon.

  “Don’t worry. They’re already on your bill.” Vernon nodded to the newspaper Dominick was still holding. “Funny, Sissy didn’t say anything about her great-aunt who once lived out there.”

  “You ever tell Sissy about her?”

  “Probably not. Need never arose, I guess.”

  “Then how would she know? If it’s not passed on, it can’t be history.”

  “That true what Sissy says about the witches out there? I didn’t see any witches when we stopped by that time, just a nice looking blond-haired lady.”

  “That was no witch; that was my sister Amanda. But I’m afraid you would be disappointed looking for witches out there. Witches have changed with the times. Now they all look just like your normal working girls. Come to think of it, they probably always did.”

  “But it’s like a regular church and all?” Vernon poked at the coals.

  “They have services, rituals, prayers, the normal stuff. What makes a church?”

  “That’s all harmless enough. Do they do sacrifices and stuff like that too?”

  “Vernon, it’s a house full of women, only women. I don’t think you or I should even try to understand it.”

  Vernon flattened out the coals with his stick and dropped the grill on above them. “Being pagan and all, I guess they don’t go around spouting Bible verses to justify everything. That would be a plus.” He stared at the grill. “That’s got to get hot. You heard from Sissy?”

  “No. How would I?”

  “She knows the number here. I haven’t heard from her either.”

  Vernon fetched the ribs from the kitchen and flopped them onto the grill for just three or four minutes a side. They were delicious, with just macaroni salad and some sliced white bread. The Yankees were playing a night game in Detroit. They ate in the living room, watching the game. At one point Vernon said, “Tomorrow’s the Fourth, you know, everybody’s holiday but not mine. I’ll be working overtime through the weekend, driving drunks around. Will you be alright here without your car? It’s still parked over in Sissy’s driveway, I guess.”

  “I’ll have to be alright without it. I’m not ready to drive yet, Vernon, not unless I get all pain-pilled up, which probably isn’t a good idea. I’ll just be stuck here. Check in on me every now and then, though.”

  “Oh, I’ll be around. Got to sleep, got to eat. Can’t put in them really long hours like I once did, don’t see the need.”

  It was dark now, and in the distance Dominick could hear the soft explosions of fireworks going off.

  “Some of my neighbors out here like to get a head start on blowing things up,” Vernon said. “They are real patriots.”

  ***

  It was good to be back in her own bed, but Amanda still had to get up and take one of her sleeping pills before she could get to sleep. The voice in her head, her mother’s voice this time, would not shut up. It spoke in whatever ear she had pressed to the pillow. It was full of advice, none of which she wanted to hear.

  Who knows how long the noise outside had been going on before it woke her up. There was the sound of a car horn honking and people yelling. A male voice, young and cocky and probably drunk, called out, “Hey, witches, come on out.” The horn honked again. “Hey, witches, got a young one here for you, says she’d rather be a witch than my bitch.” Background laughter and hooting. “Hey, witches, how’s about a blow job?”

  A voice—Denise’s voice—called out from one of the other upstairs windows, “I’ll give you a blow job,” followed by the explosive blast of what sounded like a shotgun.

  “Holy shit, man, they’re armed,” someone down in the driveway yelled. “Jesse, Jesse, you alright?”

  “I’m alright. The bitch missed. Go! Go!”

  There was the sound of engines and of tires spewing gravel as at least two cars headed back out the driveway toward the road. A cheer went up from other upstairs rooms. Amanda was wearing just a T-shirt and panties, but she went out into the hallway with everyone else, the girls each dressed in her version of hot weather sleepwear, a few in just robes over nothing at all. They were all high-fiving one another. Denise was in a sarong knotted over her ample breasts, a double-barrel shotgun tucked under one arm.

  “My god, Denise, you fired at him,” Amanda said, wondering where Denise had suddenly come up with a shotgun.

  “I couldn’t see him. I shot over his head, just a warning shot.” Denise was very pleased with herself. She started giving orders to the girls, stationing them as lookouts around the house. “They’ll be back, or more like them. Thanks to that article, we’re a target now. This is war. If you see anything move out there, just give a yell, and me and Betsy will be there.” The girls all went off in pairs in different directions. “Well, Amanda, it looks like you are in this with us. Unless, of course, you want to leave now, go over to the other side.”

  “I was not responsible for that newspaper article, Denise. I threw that woman reporter out of the house, twice. I did not put that cross in the driveway. Someone else did after I got home. And this is still my house, not yours, and I am staying. Is that your only gun?”

  “Unless you or Morgan has one. Well, war makes for strange bedfellows,” Denise said, breaking the shotgun open to remove the spent shell casing.

  “I am not your bedfellow,” Amanda said, looking at Denise’s cellulite-clotted and varicose-veined lower legs, “but we are in this together until you all move out, which I hope now will be ASAP.”

  “I’m not defending this sanctuary just to desert it later, sweetheart,” Denise said walking away toward her room. “I have no intention of leaving here, unless it is feet first.”

  Amanda went back to bed and back to sleep, thanks to another pill. In the morning she discovered that the trunk and roof and rear window of her shiny new Camry were stippled with buckshot nicks and craters. None of the other cars seemed to be damaged.

  Chapter 20

  Dominick’s second favorite fact about the Fourth of July was that three of the first five presidents—Jefferson, Adams, and Monroe—all eventually died on that date. His first favorite fact was that the identities of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had been kept secret for more that six months after the signing, as the fifty-six founding patriots hedged their bets about this revolution thing actually working out. Oh, brave founding fathers. The Fourth of July was an anomalous, secular holiday, unattached to any seasonal event or ancient rite of passage whence all the other holidays evolved. What is more secular than politics? A day to commemorate a revolt against paying taxes. God and nature had nothing to do with it.

  Dominick watched more of the Civil War documentary. The slaughter and suffering truly had been catastrophic. And really God had nothing to do with that war either. All Christians there. All the martyrs—the supposed souls of those twisted and bloated bodies of boys in the ditches and fields—went to the same English-speaking imaginary heaven. Over 625,000 dead in that misunderstanding, twenty-five times the number of men who had given their lives in the Revolutionary War in order to secure for these kids the inalienable freedom to kill one another. Such a country, capable of jury-rigging a style of temporary greatness out of so many flagrant flaws.

  There was nothing uplifting about the Civil War. Dominick took two more pain pills, filled a mug with apple juice, ice, and vodka, and went for a walk. Standing up was more comfortable than sitting down. The old hound dog Mustang decided to come with him. It was a suitably toasty Fourth of July, cloudless and without a breeze. From behind the shed a trail of sorts went into the woods. Mustang led the way. Dominick stopped to lig
ht a cigar. The further they walked into the forest shadow the cooler it got. Mustang would wander purposively away then wander back onto the trail. “Where are we going, Mustang old scout?” Dominick said. The pills were kicking in nicely. Mustang didn’t answer.

  The cabin was old and low and mostly covered in vines, berry bushes, and poison ivy. Its walls were hand-hewn logs. Its door and windows were long gone and its roof was just a few splintered crossbeams. It sat in its own little clearing where the sun filtered down through a break in the forest canopy. Mustang went up and plopped down on the wide flat slab of slate that formed the front door stoop. Dominick found a tree to lean against. “So, what is this, Mustang? The original Uncle Tom’s cabin?” Mustang just gave Dominick one of those dog looks that said I am not going to honor that question with a response and went about giving himself a good lick-down.

  Aside from the structure itself—its native materials returning to nature—there was nothing man-made there. No glints of shattered window glass or rusting hinges, not a stick of furniture or shard of broken pottery inside. There was a weathered bareness, a purity to the place that demanded to be left in peace. I am a memory, it said, you cannot change me. The now nameless people who made me, warmed me, ate and slept and snored inside me have been gone for hundreds of winters. Do not dare to think you could ever replace them.

  “Yes, it was another time entirely,” Dominick answered. “I can’t even imagine.” He suddenly felt very tired. His cigar, his mug, he himself seemed wholly out of place there, caustic intruders, profaners, shameless voyeurs. “I’m heading back, Mustang. You can stay. You look at home here.”

  And Mustang did stay there, snoozing on the slate slab threshold. The walk back to the house was uphill and seemed much longer. Dominick wished he had brought his cane. When he got back he had to lie down. He was as exhausted as if he had just walked a very great distance into the past and back. Was this what getting old would be like? The aches, the heaviness, the slowness? He found his least painful position with the pillows on Sissy’s old bed, and his last thoughts before sleep were of her. He sure missed her smile.