Good and Dead

by Jane Langton

  Homer glanced across his wife and Joan Sawyer, and marveled at the way the morning sunshine had picked out Joan’s husband for its full attention this morning. He had noticed it before, the sun’s personal interest in the còngregation, its habit of choosing one and then another to bathe in light. At this moment its warm slanting rays glowed lovingly upon Howie Sawyer’s bald head, penetrating the freckled skin a fraction of an inch, illuminating the gray hairs that fluffed around the dome, turning the brown fibers of his polyester jacket into rainbows. Against the brilliance, Howie’s face was nearly invisible. His glasses flashed at Homer. He was leaning heavily over his wife, describing an encounter with a traffic cop.

  “I told the man, it’s not my fault. And he said, whose fault is it? Ha-ha! So I said, the other guy’s, right? So he said, listen, you want a citation? Me, he was going to give me a citation. So I said to him, listen, I said …”

  Homer slumped on the bench and made an occasional low rumbling noise that spurred Howie to further meandering recollection, while the sun lit up his ears like the handles of an alabaster jar. Between them, crushed against Howie’s wife, Mary Kelly could feel Joan Sawyer’s mortification. Joan was a large-boned, sober young woman, far younger and cleverer than Howie. Why had she married the man at all? Now in the tight grip of Joan’s hands in her lap, in the rigidity of her crossed knees, her chagrin was manifest.

  Diagonally across the church, in the first box pew on the north side, Eleanor Bell sat alone. Now and then she glanced back at the two doors to the vestibule, hoping to see Bo Harris. But Mr. and Mrs. Harris had been helping out downstairs in the common room. When they came upstairs at last and hurried up the aisle, Bo was not trailing behind them, scowling gravely the way he always did in church.

  Eleanor was crushed. Drooping forward, she stared at her homemade skirt, and poked her finger in an open place along the seam where the sewing machine had run off the edge. But then she stiffened her back and listened. Mr. and Mrs. Harris had settled into the pew directly behind her, and Mrs. Harris was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Palmer about Bo.

  “He’s got this new car,” said Mrs. Harris. “It’s the worst wreck you ever saw. He wants to work on it in the driveway. Can you imagine? An old heap like that? So of course I said no. So the poor boy is furious with me. So is Fred.”

  Eleanor could hear Mr. Harris make a demurring sound.

  “Poor old Bo,” Mrs. Harris went on. “He should have asked me before he bought the car. Nobody asked me. ”

  Halfway between the front of the church and the back, Arlene Pott sat in her customary pew, unaccompanied by her husband, Wally. Arlene touched her cheek, hoping the red mark didn’t show. She had powdered it with peach face powder. Now she looked down at her new suit, and decided she had chosen badly. She should have worn her pink. The new minister wouldn’t even notice her. Just another old lady, he would think, and then he would look past her at young Eleanor Bell or at Maud Starr with her big bust. It was lonesome coming to church without Wally. Arlene’s peŕpetual sense of grievance enveloped her as she stared at her plump crossed ankles. “I am fifty-seven years old,” she said to herself. It was a fact that haunted her every hour of the day. Then her heavy self-consciousness lightened as she remembered the peas she had planted yesterday in her vegetable garden. The peas would be up soon, their little pairs of leaves unfolding in the cold soil. The germination of the peas seemed mysterious and wonderful to Arlene. She was here in church this morning partly because she was curious to see the new minister, but also because of the peas. It was hard to understand exactly what they had to do with the minister and the Bible and religion, but there was some connection, Arlene was sure of it.

  Betsy Bucky had no trouble knowing why she came to church. The Old West Church was the theater where Betsy displayed her talents, at after-church coffee hours, at church suppers and bake sales and noonings. Social events like these were the realms in which Betsy held sway, the stage where she won applause for her sausage fritters, her Sunshine cake, her Blackbottom pie. At the Christmas Fair everyone exclaimed at Betsy’s aprons and afghans and potholders. But of course the cooking and sewing were only part of it. There were deeper reasons, really religious reasons, why Betsy came to church every single Sunday, why she never missed a service. As soon as Betsy sat down in her pew beside Carl, her thoughts soared up and out, romping in the blue sky among hosts of fluffy clouds, frolicking with angels and the Virgin Mary, and the Virgin always said to her, “Betsy Bucky, you’re the cutest little, woman! Oh, you’re special, Betsy Bucky, really special!” Of course Betsy knew you weren’t supposed to pray to the Virgin in Old West Church, but she thought that was silly. The Virgin was in the Bible, wasn’t she? Jesus had a mother, didn’t he?

  Beside Betsy, her husband, Carl, sat sullenly, his feet wide apart on the floor, his belly tight against the button of his blazer, his face wadded and pale. The pain in his chest had come back. Carl thought of nudging Betsy to say he wanted to go home and lie down, but he knew she would only scold him in a fierce whisper and tell him to keep still. So he went on sitting quietly, one hand spread wide over his chest under his coat.

  “Look, Carl,” whispered Betsy, pinching his arm, “new people.”

  It was the Gibbys, Jerry and Imogene. While Betsy Bucky watched eagerly, they hurried up the aisle after Charlie Fenster to one of the pews at the front of the church. The three chubby boys walked in front, then Imogene came tripping gaily in her yellow dress, the frills catching every little breeze, and Jerry followed in the rear, his bald forehead gleaming, his sallow jowls glistening, his teeth showing in an anxious smile. Jerry felt like an interloper in this Anglo-Saxon Protestant church, but he was not troubled by any sense that he was betraying his Catholic boyhood. God was God, after all, and a tricky bastard, wherever you found him at Home.

  Taking his seat, Jerry was stunned to find himself in the pew next to Parker W. Upshaw’s. Good God, Parker Upshaw, the big wheel in the upper echelons of General Grocery! Thank God; Upshaw was in some other department. He wasn’t in charge of franchise holders like Jerry. The guy was a cold fish with a reputation for nosy interference. Uneasily, Jerry nodded at Parker W. Upshaw and yanked at his trousers, which were tight in the crotch. Then he focused his attention on the words printed on the front of the order of service. They were from the prophet Isaiah:

  And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord … these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

  Foreigners, thought Jerry, that’s us. We’re foreigners. Well, okay, go ahead, you Protestants, make us joyful. Bring on the new minister. What’s his name? Bold? Joseph Bold.

  Jerry and Imogene Gibby had heard no rumors about the minister’s wife. Therefore they were the only ones who did not guess that the woman entering from the door beside the pulpit, limping into the chamber on the arm of Lorraine Bell, was Claire Bold. A tremor ran through the crowded rows of pews. In her customary place at the back of the church, Rosemary Hill winced with shocked compassion. The face of the minister’s wife was a mask of skin and bone. Her arms and legs were bony sticks. Rosemary stopped staring and lowered her head. So that was the truth about Mrs. Joseph Bold. She was going to die! Then Rosemary felt a sympathetic pang beneath the belt of her skirt, and reminded herself to make an appointment with the doctor. She mustn’t wait any longer. She had waited too long already.

  From his front pew, Parker Upshaw looked inquisitively around the room to see how they were all taking it. He wanted to stand up and say, It’s not my fault. I told the other members of the selection committee to pick another candidate. That guy from Pennsylvania, he had a wife with a doctor’s degree in church-school administration, and the Chicago man’s wife was a Harvard overseer, for God’s sake. But Parker’s intelligent suggestions had been overlooked. The rest of the committee had fallen for Joseph Bold in spite of Claire’s desperate physical condition. Ed Bell had talked them into it. Parker raised his eyes and stared at Claire Bold as she
faltered into her pew. Look at the woman. She can barely stand up.

  Mary Kelly, too, was astounded by her first glimpse of the minister’s wife, but for a different reason. “Homer,” she murmured, “I know her. It’s Claire Macaulay. She was my roommate freshman year. Oh, Homer, she used to be so—” Mary clutched Homer’s arm, overcome with helpless pity, as the choir stood up in the balcony to begin their anthem of welcome. The tenors exulted, the sopranos caroled jauntily, the altos droned on one note, the basses leaped with heavy agility from octave to octave. The music flooded the sunlit chamber as the door beside the pulpit opened a crack, then closed again, then opened wide to admit the new pastor into the presence of his congregation.

  6

  The Ministry is a Signal Blessing … one of those Royal Gifts which our exalted Lord Jesus gave to his Church, when he rode in Triumph into Heaven.

  Reverend Joseph Estabrook

  Concord, 1705

  Joseph Bold had practiced going up and down the steps of the pulpit, but this morning, approaching them in the company of Ed Bell, he paused on the first step in flabbergasted surprise. It was as if a volcano had erupted in front of him. Someone should have warned him about the way the light rebounded from the windshields of the cars on the street and rocketed through the windows of the church to land on the pulpit wall in watery images of the old panes of glass. Pulling himself together, he mounted the top step and sat down beside Ed in one of the pulpit chairs.

  Ed glanced at his protégé, and grinned encouragement. The man seemed rattled. Joe smiled wanly in reply.

  The two of them were nearly hidden behind the pulpit. Deprived, the congregation stared at the top of Joe’s head, eager to get another look. Their new pastor seemed plausible enough. He was tall and gaunt. His receding hair fell limply forward over his face, which was pensive, a little sad. The sadness was reasonable, everyone decided, considering the illness of his wife. Homer Kelly was reminded of Hawthorne’s minister, the one who wore a black veil to conceal his private woe.

  Maud Starr was particularly pleased. She quivered with curiosity, quite taken with Joseph Bold. Her first glimpse of his ailing wife had whetted her vulturish appetite. It was obvious that Claire Bold was not long for this world. Carrion, thought Maud, not forming the word in her mind, only the image of what it meant. Shrugging off her black coat, she pulled her sweater tight.

  Round balls, thought Joe Bold, looking out left and right at the visible portions of his new congregation. Round balls on stalks, the heads of his new parishioners. To Joe’s nearsighted vision they were vague and out of focus. Soon they would become separate people with names of their own, eager for salvation of one kind or another. They were important people, Parker Upshaw had said, doctors and lawyers, professors and bank presidents, board chairmen and administrators. They certainly looked prosperous. In this church the problems of urban poverty were seventeen miles away in the city of Boston, although, according to Ed Bell, the outreach committees were stretching their arms north, south, east, and west, like the missionary societies of old who had spread their kindly interest far and wide, sewing for the remote populations of Africa, converting the heathen Chinee.

  Joe tried to control his alarm. To his fuzzy vision the men and women sitting in the pews around him’ looked calm and undisturbed by trouble, as if they had solved all of life’s problems. There were a great many gray heads among them. The congregation was more elderly than he had expected. What could he possibly say to them, when his own soul was clenched in despair? What did they want of him? Why were they all here, surrounded by the paraphernalia of Sunday morning, the fresh flowers, the red carpets, the old hand-planed pews, the pewter collection, plates, the organ with its sacred measures, the high notes of the sopranos, the low notes of the baritones, the hymns and prayers? Didn’t they know how shaky the whole apparatus was? Glancing up at the ceiling, Joe saw it full of holes, bare to the sky between ruined walls, smashed by sledgehammer blows. In the last century the corner posts had been buckled by Charles Darwin, and the shuddering vibrations were still cracking the plaster, rotting the joists and sills, unsettling the foundation. Why had the world been made two ways at once, so beautiful and so terrible, both at the same time? Joe glanced at the sermon in his hand, an outline on a single page. Then, dropping his gaze, he studied his polished shoes. His sermon was ready, his shoes were ready, he had cleaned his fingernails. For what? All at once Joe felt unequal to the task of giving meaning to the accoutrements of piety. He had an impulse to run down the pulpit steps and snatch up Claire and run away.

  Ed Bell was rising to welcome him. The moment had passed. The service had begun.

  Ed performed his task with easy grace. He was the benevolent spirit of the morning, the jocular intermediary between pastor and congregation. With comfortable affection and kindly jokes, he expressed the selection committee’s pride in its choice. Then he called on the members of the committee to rise in the congregation and read their separate welcomes, the ones Ed had written for them in the middle of the night. When the readings were over, he clapped Joe Bold on the shoulder and shook his hand and sat down.

  It was Joe’s turn. Standing up, gripping the reading desk, he thanked Ed Bell, he thanked the committee. His melancholy face grew animated as he began to speak. To the congregation his voice was surprising. It wasn’t strong and vibrant and oratorical. The Reverend Bold had apparently never learned to summon great drafts of air from his lungs. Only a trickle worked its way past his larynx. His speech came out cracked, a little absurd, with broken edges, as though he were merely talking, not declaiming from a pulpit. Impulsively he called for the first hymn as if the notion had just occurred to him.

  Charmed, the parishioners rose to sing. At the organ in the balcony, Augusta Gill turned to her keyboard and congratulated herself on her new freedom to choose the hymns. Joe Bold had confessed to her his total ignorance, his helplessness in the face of printed music. “Oh, that’s okay,” Augusta had said, privately delighted. No longer would the congregation be forced to struggle with unsingable horrors chosen for their aptness of thought, no longer would the service be cluttered with ghastly musical frights that looped up and down the scale with frisky eighth-note runs and idiotic dotted rhythms. From now on she would have a free hand to choose the best and nothing but. Terrific. Augusta pulled out the stops for a majestic run-through of Old Hundredth, a hymn recommended for the beginning of worship. It had sixteenth-century words and music. You couldn’t get older or better than that.

  All people that on earth do dwell,

  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;

  Him serve with fear, his praise forth tell,

  Come ye before him and rejoice.

  Then the covenant was spoken. The minister recited it with the rest of them, reading it respectfully from the order of service as though he knew the words were still theirs, as though he hadn’t earned the right to them yet. The Lord’s Prayer was repeated, the collection was taken, another anthem was sung by the choir.

  Joe watched the choir stand up in the balcony in their black robes like dark columns. They were opening and closing their mouths, gazing intently at their music, their eyes flicking up now and then to glance at Augusta. Joe was envious of the way they stood so steadily, charged with life and vitality, while Claire in the front pew was huddled against Lorraine Bell, her sturdy health destroyed. Joe folded his arms and listened as Ed Bell rose to read the lesson.

  “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint.”

  It was time for the sermon. The congregation braced itself. It was now or never. Would the man pass muster? Politely they settled themselves to listen, their critical faculties astir as their new minister stood up once more and put on his glasses.

  But as he cleared his throat and stared at his page of notes, there was a disturbance in the last of the box pews on the south side of the church. J
oe Bold glanced up in surprise to see a large man in a brown suit throw himself against the door of the pew, snap the latch, and blunder up the aisle, shouting.

  It was Howie Sawyer. Homer Kelly lunged after Howie and caught him just as he turned to the side and tried to wrench open the door of the pew where Charlie Fenster and his wife were sitting beside Carl and Betsy Bucky. The congregation sat transfixed, craning their necks, staring in horror as Homer and Charlie dragged Howie back along the aisle and through the vestibule and down the steps outside. Joan Sawyer followed them, her face blank with despair. So did Arthur Spinney, the local medical man. Ed Bell walked quickly down the pulpit steps and hurried out after them.

  Soon Howie’s meaningless cries faded. A shocked silence settled on the congregation, broken by a fit of coughing from George Tarkington, who suffered from emphysema. George got up too, and hurried out-of-doors.

  It was an appalling interruption. Shaken, the members of Old West Church tried to calm themselves. As their minister gathered his wits and looked once again at the notes for his sermon, Homer Kelly came back in, pushed open the broken door of his pew, and sat down beside his wife. Charlie Fenster came in top, and took his place. As Joe cleared his throat, Ed Bell walked softly up the aisle to the pew where his daughter and his wife were sitting with Claire Bold.

  Hunched over the pulpit, gripping it tightly, Joe began his sermon. He did not smile or make jokes. He was not learned like old Mr. Jennings. His sermon was not stuffed with quotations like raisins in a pudding. It was a homily upon the return of moral courage in a time of trouble, on the sources of renewal in moments of fear and doubt. As he finished and called for the last hymn, Joe wondered in what period of ebullience he had delivered the sermon for the first time, in which year of his Pittsburgh ministry? Yesterday he had picked it out of his file for only one reason.