John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  When the phone rang she answered it reluctantly and cautiously.

  "Miss Pennymark? Albritton here. I won't be able to provide a car, either rental or from our pool. I'm sorry."

  "I'll give it a try."

  "I thought you would," she said, and hung up.

  There were four rental agencies. Delegates from the Congress of Christian Leadership, a thousand strong, were due to arrive late that afternoon, and the Hertz, Avis, Budget and Dollar agencies in Lakemore said they were completely out of cars of any kind.

  She phoned the County Line Motel and a woman with a southern accent rang Roy Owen's room. When he answered, Carolyn said, "I don't want to stay on the phone too long because the lightning is scaring me witless. I never saw lightning like this anywhere. I'm a friend of Lindy's from the magazine down here to do a story on the investigation. I'm Carolyn Pennymark. I was going to get a car and come out there, but I can't rent one or borrow one. I'm at the Meadows Center Motor House, number two-four-two. If you're not too busy, and if you have a car, can you come in and talk?"

  It was almost an hour before he arrived. She had finished the club sandwich and coffee she'd asked them to send up to the suite. She was brushing her hair when they rang up to tell her a Mr. Owen was there. She told them to send him up, and she unchained her door and left it ajar.

  He was of the stature she expected, as Lindy had told her about Roy, but the mustache surprised her. Lindy hadn't mentioned that. But she should have expected it, she thought.

  It was a cliche among urban men, especially those in stocks and banking.

  He apologized for taking so long, telling her of the floods in the road and going the long way around. He apologized for how his raincoat was dripping on her rug.

  She gave him her warmest smile and said, "Lindy was very dear to me, Roy. I miss her terribly. We worked together many times and she was marvelous to work with. I know you've been staying here, trying to find out what happened. I wonder if you'd save me some precious time by telling me what you've done and what you think?"

  It took him an hour. She had to ask very few questions. He had an orderly mind, and a better gift for description of people and their attitudes than she had expected from a stocks and bonds person. It did not bother him when she scribbled the occasional note.

  "Would you have gone at it like she did?" he asked her.

  "I suppose it would depend on what I was looking for."

  "Scandal in high places. Sex, misuse of funds, whatever."

  She shrugged.

  "I wouldn't lurk. Not my style. I go after people with questions. Hard questions. Lots of people. And pretty soon the answers don't fit as well as they did in the beginning. So I keep at them until somebody rats on the others."

  "I wish she'd tried it your way, Miss Pennymark."

  "You going to stop calling me Carrie, Roy?"

  "Sorry. Maybe you could use your system to find out what happened to Lindy."

  "When everybody says they don't know, my system doesn't work. I run out of questions too fast. You've been around here a while, Roy. I've read their handouts. I'm beginning to get some ideas about the whole operation, but I'd like to hear yours. I mean, is this whole Center a Good Thing, in caps?"

  He frowned and got up and wandered over to look out at the rain, hands locked behind him.

  "Compared to what?"

  "Now there's a direct answer if I ever heard one."

  He turned, smiling.

  "I'm by nature a measurer. I measure things against things, ideas against ideas. When the weather changes and you can walk around out there with the pilgrims and go to services, you get the feeling you see a lot of very happy and relaxed faces. They smile at one another and nod and speak. They are emotional. They cry easily. They seem to be... opened up. There is kind of a temptation to be carried along with them into whatever it is that makes them feel so... so secure and so loved."

  "Compared to what?"

  zoz He shrugged.

  "Compared to any city street, I guess. Or compared to the congregation in the Lutheran church my family attended when I was a boy. That seemed dim and remote and rigid compared to this."

  "And there are religions where people whip each other and kill the infidels and so on. It can get pretty gummy, right?"

  "I suppose."

  "These national congregations are something brand-new under the sun, Roy. They have one hell of a lot of clout. I was listening to some of the sermons that get broadcast from satellites before I came down here. They are strong and they contain a lot of nonsense. Right to life. Abortion is murder. I got over any chance I ever had to fall for that syrup when I did a story on the way little kids have to be warehoused in the big cities. Unwanted and unloved. They're brought into the world and there are not enough people to hold them, walk them, talk to them, bounce them up and down. That's the way babies learn, you know. So what happens? Those kids don't learn to talk until they are between two and three. Most of them don't learn to walk before they are two because they get no training, no chance, no practice. They are warehoused in cribs where all the attendants can do is work from one end of the huge rooms to the other feeding and changing them and ignoring them.

  Know what I would like to do if I was queen of the world? I would take a couple of platoons of those big elegant steely eyed broads who think babies are too dandy to be aborted, and make them work the warehouses for a year, telling them that their job would be to turn those infants into human beings, people who would not have stunted minds and stunted emotions, and who would not go out on the streets like animals to rob and kill the helpless."

  She noticed the way he was staring at her.

  "Hey, I'm sorry. It made a big impression on me, and I keep on unloading every chance I get. Aside from that, the electronic preachers have a lot of other brands of shit. Amurrica for Amurricans. Everybody who really wants a job can find one. Let's drop the big one on the dirty red Commie menace. Keep that Jap junk off our highways. Help our poor hardworking millionaire farmers. Let's stop the press from destroying Amurrica by shaking the people's faith in their institutions. They don't miss a chance, Roy. They say the things they know will feed ignorance and hate and superstition because the listeners express their approval in money, and money buys more air time."

  "Is all that in the handouts?" he asked.

  "All carefully and delicately and persuasively said. But it's there if you look for it."

  "People always find what they look for, Carrie."

  "Excuse me all to hell, friend. Did I step on your toes?"

  "No. Nothing like that. In my line of work you get suspicious of simplistic analyses. I get the impression they tell their congregations some good things too."

  She slung her legs over the arm of the chair.

  "Okay, okay. I come from the grubby streets of the naked city. In my line of work you look for the worst and you find it all the time. So you get conditioned. They tell me I can go talk to anybody I want except old Matthew Meadows. Jenny Whatever told me he's too far gone. So I can talk to John the Tinker, and fat sister and anybody else. But that won't have anything to do with Lindy, will it?"

  "Nothing at all."

  "Thanks a lot for your help, Roy."

  "I remember Lindy mentioning you. You say you went on assignments with her?"

  "That's right."

  "I hate to say this. I was married to her and I never really felt as if I knew her. She was such a private person. And I was wondering how... I mean, if she was... well, when you were out of town with her if..."

  "Why, practically every night Lindy and me, we'd go to a cocktail lounge or a disco and pick us up a couple of Travoltatype kids and bring them back to the room and purely bang them out of their little wits."

  For a moment he looked startled, and then he laughed.

  "Okay. Okay. It isn't exactly what I was going to ask. I think I wanted to ask you if you ever got to know her. If you and she ever talked about me or being married, or if she was h
appy."

  "Roy, believe me. I never got to know her. I thought she was just about the most repressed woman I ever came in contact with. She could rattle on for an hour about how Tuchman researched the fourteenth century, but if you told her she had pretty legs and a nice bod, she'd look at you as though you did something nasty on the rug. You know what? I couldn't believe she'd given birth to a kid because I could never quite imagine her screwing anybody. I think something messed her up when she was little."

  "I've wondered about that."

  She studied him, head tilted.

  "Make for a pretty tough kind of marriage, huh?"

  "We managed."

  "Sure. Look, I think if I get somewhere among the holy, they can get me back here somehow. How about you drop me off at the Manse? Can you do that?"

  "They won't let me drive through the gate. You'll get wet going from the gate to the entrance."

  "Maybe there will be a Christian with an umbrella."

  It was three-thirty when he dropped her off at the guard cubicle, and after she showed her credentials, a man took her inside and apparently phoned the Manse, because minutes later a man came trotting out of the Manse and opened an umbrella before coming to get Carolyn. When Roy saw that, he headed back toward the County Line Motel, hoping he could get through.

  The Reverend Sister Mary Margaret Meadows had come down to the lounge and taken Carolyn Pennymark back up to her third-floor suite. As they talked generalities, Carolyn was trying to devise a way to describe this woman in this setting. A large woman. A very large woman. A very large pink woman with golden hair and a lovely smile and a contralto voice which could probably shatter beer mugs if she gave it a good try.

  "Many many times," Mary Margaret said, 'we get discouraged, but there would be no point at all in denying you people a chance to talk to us, would there?"

  "Just what are "you people"?"

  "From the media, dear. We try our best to explain but then they go away and what they do... there's an expression you would know... oh yes, they take a cheap shot. That is to say, they take some very minor thing and make it sound as if we were rural barbarians down here. I think it is because of how quickly this all grew from practically nothing."

  "May I take notes?"

  "Of course, my dear. They don't ever stop to realize that maybe the Eternal Church of the Believer grew so fast from its small beginnings when my father was the only pastor because it said something to people they badly needed to hear. It gave them some simple rules which make life simpler in a terribly confusing era."

  "And you agree with all those rules, Sister?"

  "In essence, yes."

  "In other words, you've sought no medical help for your father?"

  Mary Margaret turned red with anger and visibly brought it under control. She smiled and said, "What was that phrase again? Cheap shot. You can take cheap shots and there is no way to stop you except by ordering you out, and I am not going to do that. I want to make you understand. Years and years ago Matthew Meadows had an older brother he worshipped.

  That brother went into the hospital with a fever. They said he would be out in a few days, but he died there, suddenly. A friend who stayed home with the same symptoms recovered quickly. I am not talking about logic now. Where the mind and the body are so interrelated, nobody really knows how much the mind has to do with curing the illnesses of the body. We do know, from independent surveys, that the Church membership is, on the whole, a healthier and longer-lived group than the public at large."

  "There could be other variables."

  "Of course. We know that. But we are slowly, slowly relaxing our stipulations about seeking medical help. It used to be you went to a doctor with an open wound or a broken bone.

  We are adding a little bit at a time. A sore that won't heal. A sudden weight loss. Great thirst combined with weariness. My father would never've let that happen but he... has not been in touch with these things lately."

  "What about not voting, not belonging to clubs or political parties?"

  "What about it? The world is very diverse. A willing and suggestible person can be talked into diffusing his energies in a dozen pointless directions. Most people would love a good reason to say no to solicitations, and we provide the reason.

  The Church is all the organization people really need, outside the home."

  This is a very elegant place to live."

  "Is that a question? I would agree. Yes, it is. I find it quite pleasant. But not necessary to my spiritual health."

  "How much money does the Church take in in a year?"

  "I think that probably Mr. Efflander knows, and my brother, and Reverend Deets. But I pay very little attention to that. It's fair to tell you that if I did know, I wouldn't tell you."

  "Why not?"

  "I would tell you only if I could also tell you how much the Church spends each year in good works, and you would promise to publish both figures."

  "Fair enough, I guess. Do you have any comment to make about the death of Linda Rooney Owen?"

  Her eyes widened.

  "Did they find her body?"

  "Not yet."

  "Then legally it is a disappearance, isn't it?"

  "Legally, yes."

  "We live in strange times, Miss Pennymark. People find their lives so difficult, with so many demands for so few rewards, that they often just merely... walk away from their life and never return."

  "Lindy was content with her life and her work. Would you have any idea why she came down here?"

  "I must say I don't like people coming down here and pretending to be somebody they are not. It would indicate to me that they are after some kind of scandal that doesn't exist."

  "Now just a minute, Sister. Are you trying to tell me that with that whole band of fifty golden Angels you keep on tap, young healthy and beautiful girls, and all the staff men around here and the students and visiting clergy and the guys from the stores and working in security, you never have any kind of trouble?"

  "Of course there's problems from time to time. Human nature is a problem, Miss Pennymark, as you may have noticed in your travels. The more mature people are, the better they are able to manage their lives. But the problems of young people adjusting to life wasn't the reason Mrs. Owen came down here, was it?"

  "I wouldn't think so. I don't know why she came."

  "Are you happy in your work?"

  "What? Well... sure."

  "And you feel fulfilled by it?"

  Z07

  "Sister, I do what I do, and I do it better than most, and I take some satisfaction in that. I am like a very dependable dog.

  They throw a stick into a jungle and I can go in there and bring it back. Fulfilled has the sound of home and kiddies. The guys I work with, I can't see them in that context either."

  "You like being your own person."

  "Exactly."

  "Is there room in your life for God?"

  "Sister, I had eight little pins fastened together that dangled from here to here, celebrating perfect attendance at the Sunday School of the Salvation Baptist Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. I was the next to the youngest one of four girls, and we all wore all those pins, and they got married and I didn't. They go to church and I don't. And I go visit lots and lots of nephews and nieces and get along with them fine. I try to do unto others the way I always wish they would do unto me. All except the fawners and the fakers and the political animals. I show them no mercy. Do you believe?"

  Mary Margaret looked startled.

  "What do you mean? Of course I believe!"

  "Really, really, really? Way down in the bottom of your heart, you know the truth?"

  Mary Margaret leaned toward her.

  "I believe in life everlasting, in God and Jesus Christ and the teachings in the Bible. I live according to what I believe in, and conduct myself accordingly. I have absolute confidence God is watching over me and that when I pray He is there to listen."

  Carolyn looked down at her pad
. There was nothing to take any notes about, not in that profession of faith. She had talked to very plausible scoundrels over the years, and to the most skilled and practiced liars. This giant woman had a total sincerity, an almost childish confidence in her faith and in an ultimate justice.

  Then I can ask you something that bothers me?"

  "Of course."

  "Lots of money comes in here from hundreds of thousands of donors. It comes pouring in. It's a flood. Okay. I don't think I'm being a cynic when I say that it's a good bet that little dribbles of it are being diverted into the wrong pockets. Not stealing, exactly. Bad judgment mostly. But it is happening.