As she spoke, I could feel her both wanting and not wanting to look into my eyes—my eyes like anyone else’s. I sat there within or behind myself, and listened to her speak.
After a little while I thought he’d forgotten about how much the zoo had upset him, and he started reading his Bible a bit more and he just loved Dr. Corbin, wanted to get to Sunday school early all the time … and it did make me glad to see him so moved by it all, but also—and I don’t know how to say it—he seemed a little … upset. He took it all so seriously. Everything seemed to hurt him. All of it, the whole world. Then he wouldn’t eat meat, not even fish or anything, then it was eggs and dairy—wouldn’t eat those either—and for a while he was even worried about the farmers. Well, there was hardly anything he would eat. He wanted to know who had grown and picked everything I tried to give him—and he got so thin. Fourteen, fifteen years old and smaller than a girl—I didn’t know what to do. I took him to doctors, a psychologist all the way up in the city—nothing would work. He was so frail but the hospital wouldn’t take him because I didn’t have the right insurance—imagine not helping a sick child because of some damn paperwork—and the other doctors just said he was being stubborn, that he’d grow out of it soon. Then Dr. Corbin was no help and anyway he’s not even a medical doctor … Sure, people call him doctor but he’s no doctor—probably wouldn’t know how to operate a Band-Aid. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do, and my brother said I was overreacting, said that me caring so much would just make it worse. But I couldn’t help it—I could see the bones in his face when I looked at him—like looking at his skeleton. Whose fault would it be if not mine? My son.
She sat there quietly, pressed her hands flat on the table, then slowly pulled them into her lap.
Well, he did get better, eventually, started eating a little more, though he still wouldn’t have meat and if I cooked any of it at home, he would try to have a conversation with it. One time he read a bunch of poems to a package of ground beef on the kitchen counter. Another time he told me he could hear the voices of the dead, people and animals, and they all spoke the same language. Well, I never did know what to say to that. Hearing voices of the dead … it didn’t even seem particularly Christian.
I felt sure then that I would understand Mrs. Columbus’s son and he would understand me and the only tragedy was that he was not here and would never be here again and I knew this was true from the way that sorrow had calcified on Mrs. Columbus. Some things a person cannot help but know.
But Johnny was always serious about his church, and even though I think it was Dr. Corbin who’d gotten Johnny onto being a vegetarian, he was no help with the mess it created for me. He still insists that Johnny chose that path on his own accord, that he never told him what to do. A few years went by, and it seemed Johnny had calmed down a little, so I started asking him about that time—the zoo, the starving, the worrying, speaking to meat. I asked him if he’d maybe been depressed or something, and he told me it was all something he’d received from Scripture. And he said, Ma, I don’t deserve anything, maybe others do, but I don’t, so I said, Johnny, I think you deserve things, but he said, No. Then he said all kinds of things I didn’t understand and at the end of it he said he didn’t think that Christians were special, that even the Bible had parts that drew lines between people, and now even the church didn’t mean anything to him, and he’d only kept going to appease me.
Mrs. Columbus was looking at the ceiling, shaking her head a little but holding her eyes still.
Well, that was a strange thing to hear as I thought he was the one who had been taking me to church—that I’d been going mostly for his benefit and not really my own. It’s true that I had noticed that Johnny hadn’t been sitting up at night to read the Bible and he’d stopped leading the prayer at supper and wasn’t singing during the church service anymore, but I hadn’t wanted to make anything of it. I just felt glad he hadn’t moved out after high school, that he wanted to stay close, that he didn’t join the military or go off somewhere like other boys did. Then, only a few days before he went away, Johnny kept telling me about how he didn’t believe in anyone being different from anyone else, and I told him, well, I agreed with that, that all of God’s children are equal and he said, no, not like that. He said it was larger and harder to believe, that he had begun to think you couldn’t even love just one person more than someone else, that you couldn’t prefer one community over another one, that you couldn’t believe in one country over another one, that you couldn’t even prefer your own by-blood family—that the family you were born into didn’t mean anything, that you couldn’t even have a name. You had to give it all up. You had to truly be nothing. He said that’s what Jesus was really teaching and all these people had it wrong. You had to be nothing. Nothing.
Mrs. Columbus quickly pressed a handkerchief to her face.
Not even a name. He wouldn’t even have his own name. She shook her head. It wasn’t easy, he told me, for him to believe all this, but he also said it was too late for him to not believe it. And when I looked at him, I could see it, too. He wasn’t there anymore. No one was there anymore.
She put the handkerchief back into her purse. She looked at me closely and slowly.
So. You can see why … when I heard about some young person being found in that other church I thought, well … maybe. But you’re not. I know you’re not him. I don’t know you at all.
She looked at me one last time and I looked at her and what she said was simply not true. We did know each other. Whatever we may have known before or since didn’t matter. Even as she said she didn’t know me, I could see this and I felt sure that she could, too. It didn’t matter what was said, not this time. A word is put down as a placeholder for something that cannot be communicated, no matter what anyone tries, no matter how many words accumulate, there is always that absence. I stayed silent.
Well, I stopped going to church and it’s true I may have said some cross things to Dr. Corbin since Johnny left, but he must know that he owes me my son. He must know that much.
Dr. Corbin had come back in and was standing near us. Mrs. Columbus stood and turned to look at him.
Everyone thinks that bad things only happen in a place like Almose County and nothing bad happens here, she said. But they’re wrong. They’re all wrong.
I listened to her steps retreating, away from us and never to come back. Dr. Corbin sat again. Someone brought over two blue plates heavy with stewed vegetables and we ate them, not even stopping to look at each other.
DR. CORBIN SLOWED THE TRUCK when he saw someone walking on the road ahead of us. The walking person wore a wide-brimmed hat and wasn’t carrying anything, their arms hanging as if only attached but otherwise unaffiliated with the rest of the body.
Where you headed? Dr. Corbin called out as we reached him.
Ain’t in any hurry to get there, the man said back.
Very good, Dr. Corbin said. Take care now, you hear?
Oh, you can bet I will.
We drove on.
The road we’d been following, thick green fields on either side, curved into another road and led us into a neighborhood of slight, stooped houses. A fire hydrant was spewing on one corner and several children jumped in and out of the stream, their clothes soaked and heavy on them.
It’s a special day, the day before the festival … with the kids out of school and all, you have to do something with them.
He parked the car in front of a small yellow house with no trees around it.
Suppose that’s part of the reason they sent you over here. Everyone over there is supposed to stay inside all day, to get ready, I suppose.
The air was heavy and warm. We walked into the house, not much cooler, but all the lights were off. Dr. Corbin was carrying a paper sack he set down on the edge of a couch.
We haven’t got a spare room, so you’ll have to sleep here if that’s all right. Well, even if it ain’t all right, that’s what we’ve got. He smiled. Hilda sent th
is bag of clothes with you—she said you might need a change of clothes. He shrugged and we went out the back door of the house to a yard where several people were gathered in white folding chairs around tables draped with bright blue cloths. A child ran up to me and grabbed my hand and led me to a small dogwood tree in the corner of the fenced yard. Three or four dogs were chasing one another and sniffing the ground in search of something.
Look! the child said, pointing at the tree. A doll was bent over a branch just out of reach, hair flung the wrong way over her head. She’s stuck up there, the child said seriously, then ran toward one of the dogs, singing as she went.
A familiar voice behind me—I figured a church would get you eventually. It was the woman from the gas station, the one that had given me milk and whiskey.
You go on and get yourself something to eat, you hear? Got to save up your energy this time of year, and the heat being like it is. You got to save up your resources.
She pointed toward a table covered in plates and large bowls and cakes caving into the spaces where slices had been cut. Someone was shouting at Dr. Corbin there, trying to force a small plate of something into his hands.
Nice to see your sweet face, baby, the woman from the gas station said. I never seen a face as sweet as yours. She looked in my eyes, calm and inspecting. You take care, now, bye-bye.
A part of the yard sloped down and there a long, narrow tarp had been laid down, and a hose was running water across it. Children flung themselves down it, one or two at once, on their bellies, face-first, screaming.
You going to give it a try? Dr. Corbin asked, appearing at my elbow. He handed me a piece of cake on a plate. These ladies won’t rest until you’ve had some cake, so you may as well go on and have it. No arguing with them. No, sir.
He and I sat in some chairs beneath a tree too sparse to give shade. People came up to talk to Dr. Corbin, sometimes to pray with him, sometimes just to tell him things. Mostly Dr. Corbin said little in reply. He listened, nodded, his mouth making small smiles that came and went. Sometimes someone would pat my shoulder or say something to me, too, and all the while I thought about the way that stained-glass light bleeds onto the ceiling in those first moments of a morning, spilled and soft. Hardly anyone ever sees it, I thought, and I wondered if Mrs. Columbus had ever seen it or whether Johnny or Dr. Corbin had.
Come here and let me look at you. Someone was standing near, someone large. I looked up, half-shielding my eyes from the sun’s glint—a bright red shirt and a patchy black beard.
This is Leonard, Dr. Corbin said to me.
OK, Leonard said, bending his knees with trouble to stoop at my chair. All right, here we go. He looked right at me with hardly a feeling to see in his face at all. You been here since Sunday?
Yes, Dr. Corbin said, though Leonard had only been looking at me. A woman was at Dr. Corbin’s side, discreetly crying and explaining something sad about someone she loved.
Hm, Leonard said. I imagine we were the last stop, were we? Hm. They had to send you over here because they didn’t know what to do with you? Or they got tired of doing it? That’s how it is? I see. I see how it is. That’s how they’re going to be—and this week on top of everything—today on top of everything. Well. I see how it is. I see.
The Reverend over at the church on Main Street called up and asked me to help out, Dr. Corbin said. And I said we didn’t mind—I don’t mind at least.
Suppose we don’t mind! Leonard said. On top of everything right now, we got to help them out whenever they ask, is that how it is?
The woman crying at Dr. Corbin’s side began to cry a little less discreetly, still whispering something to him through her tears as a mass of children across the lawn screamed in pleasure in the water in the heat.
And who was this kid staying with over there? Leonard asked.
The Bonner family.
And who’s the lady of that house?
Hilda Bonner.
Gladstone, though. She’s a Gladstone.
I don’t know anything about it, Dr. Corbin said.
You ought to though. It’s what I’d been hearing about from Maize. She said last Sunday this family came into her place after church last week because, you know, since last year all these white people come over to her place for their Sunday dinner now. I don’t know why. They must have all agreed about it. I don’t know. But Maize knows Hilda since she used to look after her when she was a little girl until she got word about who Mr. Gladstone was, then she quit real quick.
And so, what—what are you saying? Dr. Corbin asked.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t help someone who needs help. But to be honest I don’t quite know what to think about the whole thing only that it don’t sit right with me. Maize found out from her sister they found the kid sleeping in their church and they take it upon themselves to be the saviors, to take the kid in and try to figure something out on their own—don’t even alert child services or nothing, which I know because I know some people who work over there and I looked in on it—then they give up once it gets too complicated, that is, when half of them start saying maybe the kid’s not white or not white enough and then what happens, huh? What do they do then? They want to make it our problem. They think it’s time we did something about it. That or maybe Hilda’s daddy found out what she was up to and wasn’t having it—
Now, I don’t know about that, Dr. Corbin said. The weeping woman was no longer weeping, her eyes closed, one hand thumbing a beaded bracelet in the other.
I’m just calling it like I see it. It’s just all the timing of it the moment they pick to send him over here, you see?
He? the woman who had been crying asked in a tiny voice. I really—well, I thought—
He, she, or she or he—it don’t matter to me, Leonard said, louder now, I don’t care. It don’t make a bit of difference—
Y’all shush now, talking like that, all kinds of rude, a woman said, leaning toward Leonard as she stood near.
What am I going to say or not say in front of this kid? Leonard asked her.
We don’t know who this child is, that’s all. We shouldn’t be treating them like—
We sure don’t. Leonard’s voice flattened hers. And if he’d showed up on his own volition here, it would be one thing, but they got sent over here by a Gladstone.
A Gladstone? That Gladstone?
There ain’t any other Gladstone families except the one.
Oh, the woman said. Well, I don’t know anything about that.
Everybody knows who he is, Leonard said, seeming to speak to everyone. Everybody knows and nobody says. Isn’t that always the way? Everyone knowing and nobody saying.
The woman had turned to leave but looked over her shoulder to ask, Didn’t they put him away somewhere finally?
That’s what I heard, yes. And now his daughter sent this kid over here on this day of all the days. And no one sees any trouble with it.
You know as well as I do that the Gladstones did a lot for our community. Donated all sorts of—
But everybody knows what else he did and nobody says, Leonard said.
And he paid for Luella’s daughter’s wedding since she couldn’t, Dr. Corbin said. Paid for the whole thing out of his own pocket.
And you know what else he paid for—paid off the sheriff, that’s what. Everyone knows it’s true. Used to be anybody could get out of jail free if you’re on the right side of Mr. Gladstone. The sheriff still calls up Gladstone to ask him about this or that, is this guy all right or isn’t he, that kind of thing. I know somebody in the department is why I know. She hears all his phone calls and he underestimates her, that’s what—
Well, I don’t know anything about that, Dr. Corbin said.
Doesn’t seem anyone knows quite enough about it.
Dr. Corbin was turning a book over in his hands. The others fell quiet, then spoke among themselves for a while. Someone said something about personal fortitude and someone else said, Oh, here he goes with the person
al fortitude again. I don’t remember Leonard leaving, but he must have gone away, scattered with the others back into their homes, their lives. There was, it seemed, so much to look after.
The sky shifted and the light shifted. The dogs were all sleeping in the shade of the house. The hose had been turned off and the children all sat on the ground, eating or napping or making little mounds out of the mud. Dr. Corbin was carrying things back into the house, stopping now and then to wipe his forehead with a white bandanna.
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