“What kind?” the man demanded. “Is it white? Is it white cake with white frosting? Don’t tell me brown. I do not eat brown cake.”
Ollie had seen enough. He tried to let himself out but the door had one of those antique latches you have to pull and push and lift all at once. Turning back in gathering panic, Ollie saw a young man and young woman descending the stairs with matched expressions of dwindling patience for this indulgent domestic inanity. Ollie had heard fifteen was the birthday boy’s age, but this kid looked much older than Ollie, with broad shoulders, stubble, and a discernible furrow down one cheek that imparted wry uplift to his mouth when he said, “Can we get this over with, please?”
A woman’s voice called from the kitchen. “Turn out the lights! I’m bringing it in.”
As Brendan and Araby moved through the foyer into the parlor, Ollie caught a whiff of serious perfume. She was affecting a black-clad French-poet look that a faction of girls wore at Ollie’s prep school, the ones doing theater and engineering.
A flickery firelight shone through the kitchen doorway. Del and Johnwayne’s mother entered bearing a cake lit with fifteen candles. Others joined in as she began singing “Happy Birthday.”
“Lord,” Brendan said, embarrassed. Anna had moved near him, as if magnetized. Ollie saw her touch Brendan’s shoulder, then the side of his face. They embraced. Ollie’s eyes met Araby’s where she stood at Brendan’s far side, he and she sharing a like exclusion from this deeper, wordless reunion.
Mrs. Locke had set the cake on the dining room table. “Where’s the boy? The candles are burning down fast!”
“Tell me about it,” Matthew joked.
“Hey,” Del chided him, his hand squeezing Matthew’s. “None of that talk.”
“What color is the damn cake?” Mr. Winston asked. “It is white or is it brown?”
“Brendan! Get over here and make a wish.”
“First a prayer,” Robby said. “We gotta say a prayer.”
Matthew groaned. “Robby, give us a break.”
“It’s okay,” Brendan said. “Just nothin’ heavy.” He went to the head of the table and leaned over the blazing cake. The others moved from the parlor to a narrow archway leading into the dining room. Ollie, invisible in the foyer shadows, observed from a distance.
Anna lingered to one side; her pulse still raced from seeing Brendan, and in him, his father. She hadn’t yet decompressed. Ten months’ retreat at Our Lady of Grace had ended when her eyes opened one morning and hadn’t wanted to close again. She’d waited all winter for something more than a smashed psyche to call her to the cloister. She’d never heard from God, however, so had decided to look for Him where she’d lost Him, here on Penscot Island.
Robby did have an evangelic knack. His somber twang as he gave thanks for the cake and called for God’s grace on those fixing to eat it put his audience almost against its will into a spiritual frame of mind. “Lastly,” he said, “we ask for Your mercy on my brother Jerome and on the family and soul of Timothy Burrows . . . ”
Timothy Burrows. Ollie blinked a moment as the name sank in. Timothy Burrows. Tim. Dead Tim. Ollie lost air for a moment as he realized that this daffy preacher was Tim’s killer, Robby Cochran. He wanted to scream to the room that this man is a goddamn criminal! But then it struck him that he himself barely had recalled Tim since when, at Ollie’s insistence, they’d gone to rob lobster traps last year. Perhaps he’d been too young to reflect on it, too enthralled with his own immortality — suddenly decades older, he remembered Tim’s mother embracing him after their lunch together, half giggling, half bawling in the clenched hysteria of someone bereft, beaten, someone whose child had been killed. Robby ended his prayer with all praise to the Lord. Ollie grabbed his backpack, yanked open the door, and got the hell out of this place.
The night air brought him up short. At the end of the front walk he looked right and left in confusion. For an instant he thought of retreat, of running back to those people, to their prayers and cake. He glimpsed in the window the lively gold candlelight and felt moved by its loveliness. Then the window went dark as Brendan blew out the candles, his wish made and sent on its way. The darkened house looked like any house now. Ollie headed left toward the glittering lights of the waterfront.
As he walked, he remembered the morning last year when he’d left Lois asleep in his bed and gone to catch the departing ferry. A stately joy, an awareness of leaving as the first step to arrival, had swept him down the cobblestones like trade winds propelling a ship. The same feeling came to him now — though this time he wasn’t going anywhere. He had roots here, pivotal history like family bones embedded in the ground. For the minor eternity of his lifespan and this island’s, Penscot would always be home.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Robert H. Patton
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-3199-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Life Between Wars Page 27
