A raven is watching me from an elm tree. Father David sees me trapped by its eyes and says, “He comes here every day about now. He scares the other birds away from the feeder. A greedy fellow but not a demon.” He leads me to a wrought-iron patio chair. “Is that what you were thinking?”
I nod, sitting down on the edge of a seat.
Father David pulls the sides of his robe, settles in the chair opposite. “St. Anthony was the first Christian hermit, a wealthy young man who took Christ literally. ‘Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’ He gave it all away and went off to scrabble in the desert. His disciples saw the bruises from the nights he wrestled demons.”
“You have to admit that sounds depressingly like a bunch of Deadheads on acid freaking out in the Mojave,” some part of my brain says, then I hear myself half laugh.
Father David doesn’t smile. “Well, I don’t know about any Deadheads, but St. Anthony was also a guerrilla in Alexandria who defended Christians persecuted by Emperor Maximinus. Are Deadheads some variety of hippie?”
I clear my dry throat. “Yes. Sort of.”
“Well, back in the sixties, when I first read about the communes, the orgies, LSD, I thought there were demons at work. Why can’t a demon take the shape of a little pill? Demons are archetypes. They reside in everyone. Perhaps St. Anthony’s bruises were psychosomatic or self-inflicted as he was flung about by his inner demons. The point is that demons exist in some form.”
“Can you perform an exorcism, Father?”
“I could, but I don’t think it would work on your particular demons. No, I think a confession and reconciliation would be more effective.” His big fingers make a little steeple over his chest. I wish I could see his eyes. Red coals glow through the dark plastic for a second, then I tell myself, No, it’s just Father David. You’ve known him since you were a boy. He used to stop by the house in Virginia. “Cage, is there something that you’ve been keeping back that’s burning in your conscience? A sin for which you have not forgiven yourself? Perhaps that is your demon.”
He leans forward, takes off his glasses, and holds my eyes for a long time, as if his eyes were searching my soul for the dark secret I have carried with me for three years. He knows it’s there, something I’ve never told a soul. He can see its shadow in my eyes. The proof of my wickedness, the sin that shall damn me forever unforgivably.
I open my mouth. “I . . .”
“Yes.” His eyes do not blink. He smiles and reaches his long hand across and pats my knee, then makes the steeple on his chest, leaning back in his chair but holding my eyes.
“I . . .” I can’t reveal the degenerate act. “I confessed to you last time, Father.”
“You confessed everything?” He smiles and raises his arms in the sunshine. “Doesn’t spring smell wonderful, all the new life, the rebirth and regeneration?”
The sky and trees, everything is black and white. I glance across the flagstones at the crosses he has fashioned from wood he found rotting on the forest floor. Not symbols of resurrection, but the idle amusement of an old fool. I don’t want to share this secret with him. It won’t change anything. Maybe he will report it to the Order. More evidence to condemn me.
“Ah, look,” Father David whispers. A chipmunk pauses in a ray of sunlight across the garden, just basking for a few moments, hawk food. “It is a shame that you can take no pleasure in the light, the coming of spring. Must be hell to walk through life with no joy, only sorrow and regret.”
“I feel like Munch’s guy etched in the eternal howl in The Scream, fixed in a landscape of horror.”
“Poor soul.” Father David shakes his head. “Did you share everything with Nick?”
How does the monk sense that Nick has been coming to me while I sleep, not to comfort, but to accuse?
“What are you thinking about, Cage? What was that strange expression?” Father David shakes my leg.
“A dream.” I try to relax my face.
“What sin is troubling you, dear boy? You can be absolved.”
I start at a noise in the woods, twist around.
“It was only a deer.” Father David hands me a small leather-bound Book of Common Prayer and stands up. “The rite of reconciliation, shall we begin?”
I open to a page marked with a ribbon attached to the spine.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness,” he begins, and I join him, my voice halting at first but then starting to flow. “Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions only too well, and my sin is ever before me.”
“Pray for me, a sinner,” I read.
“May God in his love enlighten your heart, that you may remember in truth all your sins and his unfailing mercy,” Father David says, watching me.
“Amen,” I stutter.
“Now in the presence of Christ, and of me, his minister, confess your sins with a humble and obedient heart to Almighty God, our Creator and our Redeemer.” He sits down in his chair and I kneel a few feet away on the slate flagstones.
I find my place on my page, begin, my voice shaking more as I go along. “But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.” I catch my breath. “Especially I confess to you . . .”
I glance up. The old monk’s kind eyes catch mine, plead for me to tell the truth. “Especially I confess . . . I killed Nick.”
“No, Cage.” Father David leans forward. “Nick was hit by a drunk driver. You were on the other side of the country.”
“This isn’t a delusion. I’m not saying that I was there. I talked to him the night he died. He was a mess. Monica, the girl that he’d been living with, had just moved out. He was heartbroken. Wrecked. He kept going on about how good she was. I was trying to make him feel better. I told him that he would find someone better. He was better off without her. She wasn’t perfect. I told him that she had slept once with me when we were both drunk. I knew as soon as I said it that I was killing him. Nick went dead quiet. Then he told me I would pay and hung up. That was the last time that I spoke to him. He wouldn’t have been on the bridge driving at four in the morning if—”
“That’s not true, Cage.” Father David puts his hands on my shoulders. “If he was heartbroken, he was upset and restless and could have been anywhere. A drunk could have hit him anywhere. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t your fault.” He shakes me gently. “Believe me.” He nods toward the book in my hand. “Your only sin was fornication.”
“Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance.” My voice wavers. “Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Father David stands, says, “Do you then forgive those who have sinned against you?”
“I forgive them.”
Father David places his hand on my head. “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, forgive you all your offenses.” He makes the sign of the cross on my forehead. “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I absolve you from all your sins. Go in peace. The Lord has put away your sins.”
“Thanks be to God.” I feel my forehead. It tingles where the monk touched it as if he had rubbed Tiger Balm on my third eye. The tension gripping my body floods away all at once. I look around the woods and realize that I am no longer afraid. It’s just the Haldol and the placebo effect of the confession, I think, just the irrational rapture that any other yokel feels when he’s baptized and born again. It won’t last. I stand up and smile. I laugh and hug the big old monk. I am forgiven.
Margaret
As I walk through the blooming dogwood and laurel onto the lawn of the hermitage and see Cage standing tall, his hands on hi
s hips, smiling, some maternal instinct makes my heart leap, telling me that he’s come to a turning point. I’d begun to abandon hope and imagine that he would spend the rest of his life in an institution. Now, suddenly, his old self’s returned, my son, the boy I bore into this world, the son who exasperated me the worst but made me laugh the hardest. There he is. Reborn. Born again in Christ, if it’s Father David’s work. The miracle that I have been praying for, that churches across the South have been praying for every Sunday for so many months. Cage is back. I can feel it from fifty feet. I want to dance a jig.
Drawing closer, I see him laugh from deep down, the way he used to, his head tilted back.
“Hello, pilgrims,” I call out, carrying branches of dogwood dripping white flowers that I have clipped for a centerpiece on the dining room table. They turn and watch me approach, both of them smiling. “Cage, I haven’t heard that delightful sound for such a long, dry spell.”
“Ol’ Father David is a shaman,” Cage says. “He’s got the cure for evil.”
“After all those years in Africa.” Father David smiles slyly. “Where man was born.”
We all laugh. I look at the joy on Cage’s face and it’s hard to believe the transformation. It’s as if he’s shed an old, dry skin and come out in color. The muscles in his face have relaxed and there is light in his eyes, which were caves of despair. Dear God, I pray silently, thank You. Please give us the strength and wisdom to help him heal and carry on. We are grateful and we thank You from the depths of our souls.
Father David pulls back the sleeve of his habit and looks at his cheap black digital watch. “I have another visitor arriving shortly. See y’all soon.”
Cage
The day after my confession I borrow Mom’s car and drive myself over to a shopping center to get a haircut. It’s the first time I’ve driven since Baton Rouge in December, five months ago, the first haircut I’ve gotten since leaving Taunton six weeks before that. I drive farther downtown to Dr. Fielding’s office. He decides to reduce the antipsychotics by three-quarters and keep the lithium level steady. He asks about the side effects. I tell him my hands still tremble. He tells me that will go away eventually. After the appointment I walk out to the wide brown river gathering America’s water from the Appalachians to the Rockies. Harper is down on the mouth of the delta. I picture Dad and his brother Uncle Ned across the river in Arkansas in the fifties, home from college, working on Granddad Rutledge’s sawmill, Dad dreaming of going out West halfway through the summer to become a smoke jumper in Montana, Uncle Ned, hungover, dreaming of the country girl he met the night before in a bar. Farther west, Nick’s soul left us at the edge of the continent.
There are only a few new towers on the skyline: Morgan Keegan, First Tennessee, National Bank of Commerce. The rest, the tallest, built in the Roaring Twenties, look like prewar buildings in New York. Some are empty, others under renovation. Track is being laid for a new trolley line to go down Main Street, a wide brick boulevard, a twenties look, nostalgia for the country folk come to the big city from Mississippi and Arkansas. On the southern tip of Mud Island, which is really a peninsula hooking out into the river, there’s an amphitheater and the World War II B-17 bomber, The Memphis Belle. Farther north on the peninsula is a new zero-lot-line neighborhood of skinny Mark Twain two-stories with a lot of scroll trim mixed in with wider Cape Cod-esque clapboards. I laugh aloud and say to myself, “You’ll fit right in.”
In the want ads I circle jobs in sales—everyone keeps reminding me how personable I am but it’s hard to remember—and construction management, which I’m conversant in, following Dad’s advice to get out of carpentry and use my mind, to get something with security and benefits. He offers to cosign a loan for a car as soon as I find a job. I wonder what to say to prospective employers about being just a semester short of a Vanderbilt law degree and an M.B.A. I decide to tell them that I was crushed by student debt and plan on going back but not for two years. Just the thought of the fumes from those marking pens gives me a headache. Typing my résumé out on Dad’s old manual, I laugh to myself at the idea of listing Bridgewater and Taunton.
On Sundays I start going to church with Mom. The first couple of times, I leave before the coffee hour after the service, let Mom ride home with Dad, then I begin to stay and mingle. In the parish hall of the cathedral, which is furnished like a living room with great Oriental rugs across the floor, plump sofas, and wingback chairs, the walls are lined with oil portraits of bishops, back to before the war, one of a Confederate general. Back then they all knew Latin and classical Greek, as Dad does still. It’s easier than I thought to play the role of bishop’s son, exchange pleasantries with the businessmen, make the old ladies laugh, to engage the attention of the single white female Episcopalian.
“My, Mrs. Crawford,” I say to a woman in her late seventies in a floral print dress, her steel-gray hair cut in oval tufts like a poodle’s. “Don’t you look ravishing today?”
“Thank you. That means something coming from a handsome young man. Still, no reason to break the commandment ‘I shalt not lie.’ I know I look an old fright.” Her laugh sounds older than her voice. “How are you settling in Memphis?” She pretends that I have just arrived a few weeks ago, dismissing the months of cowering in my parents’ converted attic.
“I like Memphis. I always liked coming here to visit Dad’s parents and the cousin about my age, Rut Jordan. Do you know his family?”
“That devil. He’s a charmer.” She fixes me in the eyes. “Last I heard he went off to Africa with his tail between his legs after stepping out on that lovely Demange girl.”
I smiled. “Yes, ma’am, he’s in the Peace Corps now, in Tanzania.”
“I would no more set foot in Africa. All the AIDS—those people ought to keep their diseases to themselves.”
“That’s not fair, Mrs. Crawford.” I’m not sure if she’s joking. “Well, I’m dying to go. Next time I get the urge to wander I’m going to see the Serengeti.”
“You just stay put and watch those wildlife programs on the TV. You’ve done enough wandering for a while.” She pinches my cheek with her little diamond-studded claw. “You’re a fine young man.”
Mrs. Crawford hobbles off and I see Katherine Horn talking to my father and a middle-aged couple. Katherine’s a single accountant and aerobics instructor about my age. I angle to the coffee table in the middle of the hall, pour a cup, then stand around smiling. Mom waves and smiles from across the room.
“The prodigal son,” says a hoarse voice.
“Hey, Katherine.” I turn and smile. “What did you think of Dad’s sermon?”
“Very inspiring.” Her brown hair is cut at her square jaw, parted on the side. She has alert, shrewd eyes. She’s handsome, not pretty, definitely sexy. You imagine she has a real no-nonsense manner in the office . . . or in bed.
“I thought it was sort of lame.” I laugh. “I’m sure I’ve heard it before as a kid.”
Katherine laughs and touches my sleeve for a moment. “What are you doing for fun now that you’ve come out in society?”
“I’m not allowed out after dark.” I frown in a mock pout.
Katherine laughs again. “You look like a picture of health to me.”
“They all know, don’t they?”
Katherine just barely nods.
“They all know that I’ve gone crazy and back.”
She rests her hand on my sleeve. “Most of them know that you were having a rough time for a while.”
“They don’t have a clue.” I chuckle uncomfortably. “But of course they couldn’t.”
“All of them are pulling for you to prosper now.”
“I want what they have,” I say.
“What’s that?” She takes her arm off my sleeve.
“What they have?” Please put your hand back, I think. “The goodness of God, going to church, the joy of living in the suburbs, cooking out, coming home in the twilight sky, having three stiff cocktails, and assaulting
your wife in the armchair.”
Katherine laughs and touches my sleeve again. “You crack me up.”
“No, I’m the one who cracked up.” I sweep my arm around the hall. “Young and old, upper and lower middle class, a smattering of blacks, they all look content, like they know their place, where they came from, where they’re going.”
“Yes,” Katherine says. “I see that. But I see Mrs. Crosby, who has cancer. And Mr. Nichols, who just lost his wife. Old Mrs. Rathburn, who sits alone at home all day. I see a lot of suffering in that crowd.”
“No doubt.” I nod earnestly. “But they belong.”
“That they do,” Katherine says. “And so do you. Want to go to a movie tonight? I want to see Pretty Woman.”
Construction manager. Twenty-four thousand bucks a year. I made more as a carpenter on Nantucket but the DA told me never to go back there, so it’s not exactly an option. William George, a heavyset guy in his fifties who’s building five faux Victorians on Mud Island, hires me to do his legwork, save him from hanging around the sites all day so he can go fishing. Mom gives me her credit card to go buy khakis at the Gap, rugged button-downs at Patagonia, dress the part. Dad drives me in his new LeSabre with a car phone, a far cry from the sedans he would drive into the ground the first thirty years of his ministry, out east to the Buick dealer who gives the diocese a break on the clergy’s cars. We pick out an ’87 Jeep Cherokee, three years old, thirty thousand miles, clean. They let me drive it off the lot on Dad’s word that he’ll organize a loan with First Tennessee the next day. I’m ready to go to work. Instant yuppie.
The main crew is three first-rate trim carpenters a few years older than me: Steve Sullivan, Garland Webb, Lane Edge, graduates of the Memphis College of Art, who paint and sculpt on the side. At the end of the first week Garland invites me on a river trip. We meet at the yacht club, three roofed docks with about forty boats on Mud Island. People are drinking and picnicking on the decks of the houseboats, which look like floating trailers. Garland and his wife, Carol, who works at a real estate agency downtown, take me upriver in their ski boat to an island near the Arkansas bank. We collect shells and interesting bits of driftwood. Smoking a joint, they offer me a toke. I’d like to take a hit. I’d like to feel completely alive. The meds seem to level off my emotions, no pain, but no real joy. I miss the magic, the wonder of the river and the wide horizon, the lust for life. I feel like I’m not really here. I reach for the spliff, and the AA groups at Taunton, at Bridgewater, the doctors driving in the idea that drugs, even grass, can trigger a manic episode, all comes flashing back and I just say, “Nah, thanks.”
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