John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  He kissed her again, and smiled at her.

  "Trust me. If we can show a little character, our relationship will be that much stronger. Believe me."

  "Well, okay. But it just' "Run along, Doric. Have a good day."

  And then she was gone, down the graded road and out of sight around a curve beyond the trees. He leaned against the tree and looked down toward where he could see, through a gap in a tall hedgerow, a small segment of the paved asphalt road that led down to the Settlements and. the rest of the complex beyond. He could see the white roofs of a few of the Settlement houses, and a cemetery slope off to the left of them where, at noon, he would have to attend the funeral of Molly Wintergarten.

  He estimated that it was time for Doreen to appear, and a moment later, there she was, moving very swiftly, pedaling on the downslope. He imagined that the hot morning wind was drying her tears. He belched orange-flavored gas and had a moment of nausea which passed quickly.

  He felt obscurely pleased with himself for having begun the process of giving her up. When he thought of praying for the strength to end the affair, he was sadly amused at himself. It is ever thus. When each of them begins to seem increasingly fleshy, brimful of her hot juices, huffing and grinding and moaning, then I begin to be offended by her, and to ease whatever conscience I have left, I pretend to find strength in prayer, strength to relinquish her. And when I have cut her free, with as little pain to her as I can manage, then I must rest for a time and go a-hunting again hunting for shyness, fright, reserve, reluctance, timidity, and the long delicious process of turning all that into the avidity which in time must turn me off.

  But now there have been these two odd episodes, once with Annalee Purves, once back by the creek when I was thinking of Annalee, that image of a curtain opening quickly and closing again, giving me a glimpse of something I cannot describe a holy light, a revelation that would make me into the person I thought I once could become a promise of childhood coming true. I need instruction in this. I need to talk to some man of God who can tell me what it could mean, and how I might be able to open the curtain wide enough to see what is beyond.

  Who is there to go to ? Not one of the instant pastors created in the same way I was. Certainly not John Tinker Meadows, who exists only in some technical audiovisual sense. Not Mary Margaret, who despises me because I represent what she fears the most. And not Walter Macy, who would not be able to understand any part of what I say.

  And suddenly he thought of Annalee Purves. What if they prayed together for the soul of Joseph Deets? What if, with her, he could pray with that same simple and honest heart she had displayed in the motel? Perhaps if she could visit her daughter again, and he could talk to her, and this time tell her the complete, dreary, self-serving life of Joe Deets. Beg her forgiveness. And the Lord's.

  Because he had no morning classes on Wednesdays during the short summer session, Professor F. Vernon Laird was on his hands and knees in his small front yard in the Settlements, digging out clumps of crabgrass with a small red trowel in the relative cool of early morning, when Joe Deets came coasting slowly down the hill on his bicycle. Laird returned his half wave, and looked at his watch. This time there was a seventeen-minute hiatus between the high-speed passage of the pretty little Purves girl and the slow descent of Deets. Usually it was a shorter interval. He told himself it would be wise to put all such thoughts out of his mind. He had lost his tenure at a famed university over a very ugly scandal involving a freshman girl, and he considered himself fortunate to have found this post, even though he served in a department staffed with misfits and incompetents, and was forced to use course materials that had been out of date in 1903.

  He stabbed at the next clump with such force that he hurt his wrist. His wife came around the side of the house and said, "Vern? Don't you think it's getting a little too hot for that kind of work?"

  He put one palm on his knee and levered himself up to his feet. He turned and as he smiled at her, he thought briefly of sticking the red trowel into her wide white throat.

  "I guess it is, my dear."

  "There's iced tea in the fridge."

  "Thank you, my dear."

  By decree issued by John Tinker Meadows, a half day of mourning began at noon on Wednesday, August twenty fourth with all work suspended at Administration and Communications, with afternoon classes at the summer session canceled. The funeral services were at noon at the small cemetery chapel, and the memorial service was scheduled for seven in the evening at the Tabernacle.

  The maximum capacity of the chapel was forty persons, five rows with four persons on either side of the center aisle. Behind the altar was a glass wall which looked into the cemetery greenhouse, but in the hot months the effect was spoiled by the condensation caused by the chapel air conditioning. The first two rows on the right-hand side as one faced the altar were reserved for the immediate family, Rolf and his sister, Molly's elder brother and his wife, down from Boston, with Molly's father and her uncle. In the other two rows on the right were some friends of the Wintergartens from the Lakemore Tennis Club.

  The left side of the chapel was occupied by key personnel of the Meadows Center: the Reverend Sister Mary Margaret Meadows, the Reverend Doctor John Tinker Meadows, the Reverend and Mrs. Walter Macy, the Winchester brothers, Joseph Deets, Walker McGaw, Spencer McKay, Dennis Jorgland, Ben Harvey, Dr. Hallowell, Jenny Albritton, Harold Sherman Efflander's replacement and Jenny MacBeth, along with two motel managers and a couple of people from Planning and Development.

  A woman from the music department at the University noodled along at a small organ off to the right of the altar.

  The metallic casket gleamed in front of the altar, standing there on a wheeled cart with a spray of long-stemmed roses atop it.

  As the Tabernacle chimes struck the hour, Mary Margaret arose from her seat in the first pew on the left and walked up the steps and took her position behind the rostrum. She was clad all in white, the rope of braided hair fashioned into a gleaming tiara. She looked half again life size She waited until the last echoes of the chimes died, and said, "I take the text from the Book of Wisdom, beginning with the twenty-third verse.

  "Yet God did make man imperishable, He made him in the image of His own nature;

  it was the devil's envy that brought death into the world, as those who are his partners will discover."

  Before she could continue, Walter Macy emitted a loud, coughing sob, and buried his face in his hands. Alberta Macy turned her head sharply and stared at him in astonishment with a feeling of nervous apprehension. Walter was a known quantity, not very emotional at any time. This was a reaction so untypical it made her feel insecure. When the faint muttering and stirring ceased, Mary Margaret continued.

  "But the souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God, no torment shall ever touch them.

  In the eyes of the unwise they did appear to die, their going looked like a disaster, their leaving us, like annihilation;

  but they are in peace.

  If they experienced punishment as men see it, their hope was rich with immortality;

  slight was their affliction, great will their blessing be.

  God has put them to the test and proved them worthy to be with Him;

  He has tested them like gold in a furnace, and accepted them as a holocaust.

  When the time comes for His visitation they will shine out;

  as sparks run through the stubble so will they.

  They who trust in Him will understand the truth, those who are faithful will live with Him in love;

  for grace and mercy await those He has chosen."

  She looked at the small audience, and she gave the impression of strength and calmness.

  "It is not our custom to give a eulogy for our departed sister. It is a dreadful shock to our small community whenever we lose one of those we have seen, day by day, among us as we go about our holy work. It is a greater shock to lose one so young, so vital, so full of life. It is a pity that s
he has been lost to us before we learned to know her as much as we wished to. But though her leaving looked like disaster, she is in peace, rich with immortality. Let us pray."

  Walter Macy squeezed his eyes so tightly shut that starry skies blinked and stuttered in the blackness of his vision. The sob had so torn his throat that when he swallowed there was pain.

  The same dream had come back last night, changed this time in only one particular from the memory that would never die.

  She was beside him again, so fragrant, so remote, so skeptical her eyes like wet gems in the glow of the dash lights turned high, and she had told him to stop the tape, but he had wanted her to hear that part that would make her want to have the magazine destroy John and Molly forever. He had turned on the dome light to show her the photographs and she had asked him what made him think Out Front used filth like that.

  Hadn't he ever read it? Who did he think she was? What did he think she was down here to research? She reached to turn the tape off when he wouldn't, and he stayed her hand, and then the tape got to that terrible part, that clattery, rumpety, thudding, banging, with her yelling those words that had never passed his lips and never would.

  But in the dream as in memory, she wrenched away from him and opened his car door on her side and scrambled out. He got out on the driver's side and ran back. She was parked behind him. She tried to come between the cars to get to the driver's door on her rented car, but he was there in time to block her. She turned and ran away from him. He was enraged.

  What made that city slut think she was so high and mighty in her silken clothing and her gold chains? Why was she pretending to be offended? Her life, not his, was just like that tape. She was here as the Antichrist, to destroy the faith of the humble and hardworking. When she turned to dart back, to elude his chase, he stumbled and fell, but as he did so, he reached out and caught one slender ankle and brought her sprawling down.

  From then on there was no clear memory at all, just the writhing, struggling strength of her, her yelpings, pinning the narrow wrists, and the kneeing, tearing and the deep quiverous heats of her invaded depths, then explosions, silence, heaviness, the whistle of his breathing, a nearby sound of crickets as well, the slow awareness of the slackness of the wrists he held in his right hand, of the utter stillness under the weight of him.

  He had scrambled up, knowing that the whole weight of his upper body had been on his right forearm and that the screaming had stopped under that weight across her throat.

  No entreaties, no shaking, no breathing into her lungs, compressing her chest, could bring her back to motion and life.

  He wept over her and talked to her and told her he didn't mean it. He told her it was her fault. Then he wondered if anyone could hear his sobbing voice in the night, and he became as ice with sudden fear. He got up again and trotted to his car and turned off the dash lights and the dome lights, and sat there in darkness, sweating despite the coolness of the night, wondering what he should do. He planned it step by step before he took the first step, because he knew that after that first step, he would have to go through with all the others, as quickly as possible.

  In the dream as in the prior reality, she seemed so dreadfully loose. He stood her up and got his shoulder into her belly and let her fall across his back. In the dream as in the reality, when he stood up with her there was that dreadful squawk of gases being expelled from the dead body by the weight of her against his shoulder, a sound so startling he nearly flung her away from him. He walked her to the well and dropped her in. In the reality he heard a crashing of brush and then a sickening thump. In the dream last night he heard nothing. He was trying to look down the well and he saw something coming up, a paleness floating up toward him, and he fell back. In the dream there was no roof over the well, and she floated up into starlight, wearing the familiar naked body of Molly in the photographs he had stared at so many, many times, and she was wearing as well Molly's wide and lascivious grin, her tongue licking her underlip. But she still wore the gold chain, and she floated above him and toward him, and he spun in terror and ran off the edge of the earth and awakened an instant before he landed on the red-hot stones of hell.

  The prayer was over. Alberta nudged him and he straightened up to see that the prayer had ended, and the organ was playing a different sort of melody, and the pallbearers were wheeling the casket out the side door onto the concrete path that wound between the grave sites. They all followed along, with Mary Margaret in the rear. When Walter saw them place the casket on the contraption which would lower it into the grave, his legs weakened and he staggered against Alberta. She gave him a strong, angry push away from her and whispered, "What on earth is wrong with you? What's the matter with you?"

  He did not answer. Nothing at all is wrong, he thought.

  Except that this is it all over again. The hole in the ground. And it is the Owen slut in the box, not Molly Wintergarten. They're all mixed up in my head, ever since Molly was killed. Nothing is wrong except that I have seen with my own eyes the red-hot stones of hell down there waiting for me. There is no escape.

  There is no possible act of contrition enormous enough to wipe it out. I have destroyed every picture of them, but I can see each picture clearly and in color as though printed on the inside of my eyelids. I crushed and burned the tapes along with the pictures, but in any random sound, as in running water or people talking, or traffic noises, I can hear as well the sounds of the tapes, of their obscenities and their shouts of fulfillment. I do not even dare pray anymore for fear God will notice me.

  Roy Owen and Peggy Moon took their last long morning walk on Thursday. He had delayed his departure, and had lied to her about a flight being canceled. They walked south on a road where they had walked before, but this time took the right fork instead of the left. A mile further they came up on a small grove of peach trees so old that they could bear nothing but bitter fruit. Beyond the wild orchard were some live oak trees shading a small cemetery. The stones were crooked and some were toppled. They could see a deserted farmhouse a hundred yards away, windows broken, roof sagging almost to the ground on one side.

  The largest monument was in the center of the small cemetery, and the name on it was Berrencourt. He noticed that z88 most of the stones had that same name, or the name Hotchkiss.

  "Those were big names around here long ago," Peggy said.

  "Some died and some moved away. I never knew this was where any of them lived."

  They stepped over the place where the iron fence around the cemetery had rusted away and read the names and dates. The old marble was so weathered the inscriptions were difficult to make out.

  He read one to her, slowly.

  "Edith Anna Berrencourt January 10, 1821 July 30, 1837 Died of Fevers God rest her gentle loving heart."

  His voice had started to break on the last two words. He went over and sat on the raised base of the central family monument. She sat at his right, so close their shoulders touched.

  "Just sixteen," she said.

  "Poor Edith Anna. Don't you wonder sometimes if anything at all makes any sense?"

  "I wonder a lot lately."

  "Of course. That was a fool question."

  "Look, the question was okay. I just gave a kind of dumb flip answer. Nobody could have been better company in... in this whole mess, Peg. I'm very grateful."

  "All I've done is hang around."

  "For which I am grateful. So there she is, back in your unit number sixteen, in a chubby little bronze pot with a screw top, fastened on with wire and red wax, and around the belly of the fat pot is a whole parade of elephants, little elephants each holding the one in front of him by the tail. I ask you, what the hell have elephants got to do with anything?"

  "Maybe they buy the urns in India or someplace like that."

  "Sensible guess. She was scared of elephants. She was scared of a lot of things. She was scared of growing old and scared of dying, and scared of not doing her job better than anybody else in the w
orld could do it. So coming down here to die makes as much sense as having elephants on the urn. But the standard response, of course, is to say that she died as a tiny part of some vast plan so complex that our little earthbound souls can never understand any part of it. Which is cop-out or comfort, I don't know which."

  "I guess she was some kind of perfectionist."

  "About a lot of things." He looked at her and at her rueful smile. That smile and that mildly weathered face, and that obscurely simian look of her had become more dear to him than he had dared tell her. She had made no demands at all. She had been the handy wailing wall. And he had said things to her about his life and his thoughts he had never expressed to anyone before, and did not even know in their full dimension until he said them aloud to her. She had the knack of teaching him who he was without ever saying a word.

  "Got to tell you something," he said.

  "Don't be mad."

  "Mad?"