The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish

by Allan Stratton

  A couple of shots in the spotless front parlour, and Doyle had them headed to other locations. Aunt Grace insisted on coming along to supervise. Throughout the shoot, she hid in the back seat, gnawing her bran muffins. Doyle was pleased for her company; she’d brought along Timmy’s leash. If the kid hadn’t been tied to the nearest tree, who knows what he’d have gotten up to.

  “So you’re from Kansas,” Doyle said, as they drove to the cemetery.

  “Wichita,” Timmy nodded.

  “I’m an American, too.”

  “Are you going to take me home?”

  “Not today.”

  Timmy frowned, then brightened. “My daddy has a gun. We shoot gophers. Daddy says if people come from the bank we’re going to shoot them, too.”

  “Your father said no such thing!” Aunt Grace exclaimed.

  “Did too. My job is to get them to stand in front of the kitchen window. Daddy says I’m a decoy. When I grow up I’m going to be a soldier.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Doyle teased. “Only one problem. Soldiers have girlfriends.”

  Timmy made a face.

  “It’s true. Soldiers have so many girlfriends, they can’t turn around without bumping into them. Isn’t that right Aunt Grace? Your little Wichita is going to be such a heartbreaker, he’ll be emptying out the convents.”

  Timmy’d had enough of girlfriend-talk. “Guess what?” he piped up. “There’s brain-guts on the God tent! Real brain-guts. No kidding. Outside of people’s heads. All stinky and everything.”

  Come four o’clock, Herr Director had what he needed. He snapped his fingers, declared the shoot wrapped, and bundled Mary Mabel back to the Twins. “Adios, Sister,” he said. “Me and the boys, we’re headin’ back Stateside. You’ll be coast to coast, top of the week.” He wiggled his ears and roared off.

  “He’s sweet on you,” Miss Tillie whispered as the dust settled.

  “He’s sweet on himself,” Mary Mabel replied.

  As for Floyd, he looked like a corpse with a second wind. He slipped off his jacket and vest, loosened his tie and collar, stretched, and collapsed onto the old Muskoka chair on the porch. His wet shirt slapped the wood. “We’re on our way,” he beamed, as the Twins mopped his brow with a pair of tea towels.

  The way he said it, to be “on our way” was to be in glory. However Mary Mabel had been on her way with her papa enough times to know that hope usually ends in despair. And if “on our way” meant constantly being insulted by the likes of Mr. Doyle, she’d rather have stayed put. At that very moment, she wanted nothing more than to remain in that yard, a garden so still the only sound was a blue jay ruffling its tail feathers in the birdbath. To be here, now, forever, amid brown-eyed susans, cosmos, and chrysanthemums — that would be happiness enough.

  It’s a strange thing, happiness, Mary Mabel thought. It sneaks in when you least expect it, filling you up like a helium balloon, flying you high above clouds of doubt; but the tiniest thing, and you’re back in a swamp of worry. That’s where she was now. After soaring in unaccountable bliss, a troubling question floated through her head and out of her mouth: “Why didn’t Brother Percy get interviewed?”

  “We didn’t want to scare anyone,” said Floyd, picking at a paint chip on the armrest.

  “I’d quite forgotten about that poor man,” Miss Tillie tutted, “and him all alone in his sick bed. We ought to invite him for supper.”

  “Nonsense,” said Floyd. “Brother Percy hates bother.”

  “We’re having pot roast. It’d be no bother at all.”

  “It would be for him. Nothing but chewing, chewing, and more chewing.”

  Miss Tillie’s eyes filled.

  “Mr. Cruickshank,” Mary Mabel asked, “is there a reason you want to keep us apart?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” he muttered darkly, and went indoors.

  In her heart of hearts, Mary Mabel knew the reason. From their first encounter in the trailer-cab, she was certain Brother Percy was deranged. Her opinion was confirmed at supper. The household had just sat down when there was a caterwauling at the front door.

  “God spare us,” cried the Twins, clutching their silverware to their bosoms.

  Floyd investigated with the carving knife and tongs. Lo and behold, they weren’t beset by thieves and murderers, but by God’s own prophet, squealing like a pig, having sprained his ankle on the doorknob.

  “For the love of Christ,” Floyd swore, and slipped outside.

  From her post in the parlour, Mary Mabel had a front-row seat to the reunion. Brother Percy flapped his arms so much she thought he’d take flight. With all the wires in his mouth, she didn’t know exactly what he said, but the gist was clear. He’d nabbed Doyle, heading from The Ceeps for the train home, and heard about the newsreel and their new lodgings. What kind of fast one were they trying to pull?

  “There’s no ‘fast one,’ Perce. The Yankees ambushed us with their movie cameras. Don’t worry. We sung your praises to the rafters.”

  A loud grunt. If Floyd had made him out to be so fine, why hadn’t Mr. Doyle so much as snapped his photograph?

  “Have you checked the mirror lately?”

  Brother Percy wept. He’d lost his chance to be in the pictures. His first and only chance. He was a nobody; he’d always be a nobody.

  “Buck up,” Floyd said. “You’ll be in newsreels galore, once your head’s shrunk. Why, we’re about to embark on the mother of all revivals with the Hearst press in our pocket. You’re going to be famous, Perce! Famous!” Spinning such dreams of tomorrow, he danced his partner down the block and out of sight.

  Shortly after, they returned carting Brother Percy’s suitcase. Mary Mabel and the Twins watched as he hobbled up the path, next to lame owing to his altercation with the door.

  “Should we offer him one of father’s canes?” asked Miss Tillie.

  “Has life taught you nothing?” Miss Millie gasped. “If they have to crawl, you have a better chance to escape.”

  Brother Percy tiptoed into the vestibule as if sin was lurking in the pantry. The Twins shook his hand, brought him to the table, and announced that after supper, they’d fix him up with a cot in the laundry room.

  “If you wake up feeling peckish,” said Miss Tillie, “you can treat yourself to the pickled preserves next door in the root cellar.”

  Percy was asked to say grace. From what they could make out, he began with the Lord’s Prayer, repeating the plea to be delivered from evil; proceeded to the Twenty-third Psalm, stressing how the Lord had prepared a table for him in the presence of his enemies; and concluded with a rousing admonition against the sin of gluttony.

  The Twins praised his oratory and passed the platters. Brother Percy was forlorn. Owing to his wired jaw, he could only suck food through a straw.

  “Poor thing,” Miss Tillie clucked, and scooted to the kitchen to fetch him “something special,” which turned out to be a thin purée of turnip and cauliflower. “It was a favourite of father’s, after he lost his teeth,” she said.

  “Very nutritious,” her sister agreed. “And good for the bowels.”

  Of that there was no question. Within minutes, Brother Percy became quite musical. His concert provided the excuse to leave the table. Floyd went to get some fresh air, while the Twins cleared the dishes. Mary Mabel was about to help, when Brother Percy fixed her with a hard look. “Ah af ma eye ah oo,” he whispered.

  “Well, take your eye off me or I’ll give it a poke,” she shot back.

  He fled the room with a shriek.

  Metrotone Presents

  Mary Mabel’s newsreel debut was a triumph, a feast of images and testimonials intercut by Metrotone editors to maximum effect. Goosing the pictures was K.O. Doyle’s commentary, a script of unapologetic hagiography, all the more effective when Metrotone brass overdubbed his pesky tenor with the uncredited baritone of Ronald Coleman — and underscored the lot with Beethoven’s Fourth.

  Timmy Beeford proved an audience favourite
, cute as a button in his Sunday suit, waving up at the camera with one hand while scratching his bum with the other. Gasps were heard when the camera pulled back to reveal him standing in a freshly dug grave; and a woman in Iowa fainted when he popped into a coffin, a prop recruited from the Blackstone Funeral Parlour in exchange for a shot of its homey facade.

  Tom and Betty Wertz likewise held appeal. Wholesome as freshly churned butter, they held hands as they testified to the miracle, their tale as guileless as a baby’s smile. These were no hucksters. These were Canadians for heaven’s sake, as down-to-earth as Tom’s plaid shirt.

  Lest Doubting Thomases remain, there followed the stern image of Aunt Grace and Uncle Albert, she holding a pan of bran muffins, he clutching the family Bible. Even the grumpiest curmudgeon had to admit that these rock-ribbed Presbyterians with the pinched cheeks and tight jaws lacked the imagination to entertain a con.

  Still none of the cast, neither child nor adult, came close to eclipsing the star of the show, the miracle worker herself, Sister Mary Mabel McTavish. Eyes electric, skin delicate, features strong, the camera loved her. From the opening close-up, that pale lustrous face, set against the rich backdrop of conservatory vegetation, appeared nothing less than an icon of purity and strength. And when the scene shifted to Aunt Grace’s front parlour, and Timmy flew into her arms, snuggling close for a teary embrace — a composition Doyle stole from The Kid — there wasn’t a dry eye from Baltimore to Pasadena.

  Emotions also ran high in the private screening room at San Simeon. Marion was weeping into a highball on the leather sofa under a pile of dachshunds, while the Chief gave an order to his secretary. “Willicombe, get King Features on the horn. That kid Doyle’s a comer. Give him a raise, and ship him back to Canada. This story has legs.”

  V

  MANUFACTURING DREAMS

  At the Roxy

  “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” Doyle puffed as he jogged down the street to the Roxy.

  It was hard not to. Last night, he’d seen the crowds who’d come to laugh at the Marx Brothers, weep buckets for Mary Mabel. It was a response replicated across the country, the girl’s connection to the audience confirmed by the call he’d received that afternoon from his editor at King Features. On instructions from the Chief, he was to head back to Canada tomorrow — to the girl’s hometown, Cedar Bend — there to scare up locals “who-knew-her-when.”

  Doyle grinned. In no time she’d be on tour. With the press syndicates hyping the tale in a race for readers, how could she fail? It didn’t matter if folks believed her; her status as sideshow curiosity would pack ’em in either way. Doyle pictured sold-out auditoriums, jacked-up ticket prices, and sacks bulging with freewill offerings. “Fifteen percent, fifteen percent,” he panted, legs trotting an ever-quickening pace as he calculated his cut of Holy Redemption revenues.

  Doyle needed the money. His mother wasn’t well. Most nights she sat by the window with her pipe, swaddled in an old housecoat, feet propped on a metal folding chair to relieve the water-pressure bruising puffed legs and ankles. He pretended he didn’t know about her nighttime accidents, but there was no getting around last week when he’d found her in the kitchen, flopping around on the linoleum. “Leave me alone!” she’d wept. “I’m not some beached fish!”

  Doyle was terrified. For now, Mr. Bradley from downstairs could check in, but he wasn’t up for round-the-clock care. And a paid nurse was impossible. That left a county home. Out of the question. Doyle had done exposés for Hearst. They were squalid holes staffed with brutes who beat their clients and stole the tuck money from their pockets.

  That the future should loom so bleak was especially cruel for a spirit as fiercely independent as his mother, Mrs. Bonnie “Ma” Rinker. The eldest of twelve children, she’d been a new bride, barely twenty, when her husband and parents died in the great Allentown train derailment. The state came calling with plans to place her brothers and sisters in foster homes, but the orphaned widow refused. “I’m all the mother and father they need,” she announced. To support the family, she’d rented their hundred acres to neighbouring farmers for meat and produce, and earned pin money by taking in sewing and selling eggs from a handful of scrawny chickens out back.

  Life was tough, but Ma was tougher. So tough that, once grown, the kids were determined to get as far away from her as they could. All except for the baby, Estelle, who only escaped at night, and then no further than the arms of old man Drummond, two farms down. By fifteen, she was pregnant. “If that old pervert comes near you again,” Ma raged, “I’ll cut off his balls with the pinking shears.” Three months later, she delivered the baby. Estelle never saw him. Her water’d burst on the buggy ride to town and she’d died of complications.

  It was expected that Ma would put the child up for adoption. Instead, she took him to St. Andrew’s to be christened. Father Rafferty declined. “I won’t profane the holy sacrament of baptism by conferring it on a bastard.” To which Ma snapped, “There’s only one bastard in this room, and I’m looking at him!” She never darkened a church door again.

  To protect the boy from gossip, Ma sold the farm and moved to Buffalo, where she presented herself as a widow with child. “Mrs. Bonnie Rinker,” she’d say, flashing her wedding ring. “This is my son, Lester.”

  Lester Rinker. Neither name stuck. “Lester” was for sissies and got the lad into any number of scraps until his knockouts earned him the nickname K.O. (As an adult, Doyle loved the double initials; they gave him literary credentials.) The name “Rinker” disappeared when former neighbours arrived in town. One night police showed up on the doorstep. Ma’s young delinquent had been caught breaking into the county archives. “The rumours are true!” he sobbed. “I never had a dad.”

  From then on, he went by the maiden name of both his mothers — Doyle. “I’m a bastard, sure as spit. Well, I’m gonna make them know I’m proud of it. So proud, they’ll never be able to make me ashamed again. Truth — only and always!”

  Ma wept with pride and worry. Young men with that sort of attitude either go far or die young. Usually both.

  Doyle’s passion for truth, that innocent faith in moral absolutes so charming in the young and appalling in the old, led him to a career in newspapers. But truth is a slippery beast, its pursuit neither for the faint nor pure of heart. The faint recoil from sniffing out dirty laundry. As for the pure, deceit is the surest path to candour. Doyle soon discovered that a reporter’s “honest day’s work” involved no end of corruption.

  This conundrum plagued him till he received the counsel of an elder scribe. The sot was revered by Doyle for his ability to hit the spittoon at the far side of his desk while blindfolded. “Villainy in the cause of virtue is no vice,” the rheumy veteran hacked, “and as truth is the greatest virtue of them all, there is no sin too vile to employ in its service. After all, what’s a little skulduggery when set beside the greater good — the public’s right to know?” With that, the great man reared back and horked another lunger into the pot.

  If pressed, Doyle would admit that the public’s right to know might best be defined as the public’s right to be titillated. Nonetheless, tales of love nests, cockfights, and speakeasies draw readers; and without readers there can be no free press; and without a free press there can be no democracy. In the words of his mentor: “Peddling sleaze helps save the world from tyranny.”

  The Roxy manager was a buddy, Larry Bundy, a crocodile of a man with glassy eyes, leathery skin, and a wall of yellow teeth. He’d saved a spot for Doyle in the back row, a good thing too as the joint was packed and humming. Folks were passing stories about the Miracle Maid, things they’d read in the paper, or heard on the radio, at the barbershop, the corner store, or over their neighbours’ verandahs.

  Doyle slipped into his seat as the houselights dimmed, and a fanfare of trumpets announced the Metrotone newsreel. The audience responded on cue with gasps, tears, and awe. After the show, Doyle slouched in his seat and listened to th
e crowd mingling giddily up the aisle. How could that girl’s improbable story transform grown adults into a pack of trained seals? Doyle shook his head in wonder: people said they didn’t believe what they read in the papers, but the power of the press to shape opinion spoke otherwise. To that, add the power of talkies, dreamlands in the dark luring spectators as a flame does moths.

  Doyle suspected that a good night’s sleep would bring more than a few to their senses. What of it? Controversy is publicity money can’t buy.

  He closed his eyes. Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent.

  “Want to come up to the booth for a nip?”

  Startled, Doyle looked up at Larry Bundy. They were alone. The audience had long since cleared out, and the young woman from the candy counter had finished her cleanup. “A nightcap? Sure.” He’d promised his mother he wouldn’t go to the bar, not that he wouldn’t have a drink.

  Bundy ushered Doyle into the lighting booth. It was his private sanctuary, a cramped room full of stacks of yellowed newspapers and the smell of cigarette butts, apple cores, and old bologna sandwiches. Aside from the projector and the beat-up card table where Bundy counted receipts and amused himself with crosswords and solitaire, everything was caked with a crust of dirt and stink.

  “Have a seat,” he offered, pulling mugs and a bottle of cheap Scotch from a filing cabinet. There was something fuzzy growing in the bottom of the cups. Bundy gave them a wipe with his shirttail, poured a couple of stiff shots, and plunked them on the table. Then his ritual. He started the projector, sound off. Most nights he drank here alone, the flickering stars keeping him company till dawn.