Handling Sin

by Malone, Michael

  Across the street at the outdoor French Market, Raleigh had a cup of coffee so he could use the facilities. Then he had two more cups because it was the best coffee he’d ever tasted. Then he ordered breakfast, and sat for more than an hour watching people go by. New Orleans, wide awake, was a slow-strolling, easygoing, quick-laughing, soft-spoken—and to Raleigh, very foreign—place. He liked it. Finally, he climbed the steps to Jackson Square, where the warrior Old Hickory proudly sat his bronze rearing horse, and urged everybody on to victory. No one seemed in a hurry to follow him. Under palms and magnolias, people sat reading papers, as if they’d been headed for work, but decided to take a break on the way. Children stalked pigeons. A derelict rummaged through trashcans for empty drink cans and bottles. “Two cents,” Raleigh heard his uncle Hackney call, holding out the green Coca-Cola bottle. These days, Raleigh’s garage was stacked with bags of empties. Caroline and Holly couldn’t be bothered to return them for the deposits.

  At the far end of the square, there rose like hats on medieval ladies the three cone spires of St. Louis Cathedral. Facing it, Raleigh sat down on a bench beside a woman who looked at him sympathetically, then returned to her paperback. For a long time, he watched people pass in and out of the ornate Spanish portal. Twelve o’clock, his father had said, twelve o’clock, March 31, St. Louis Cathedral. Not that time meant a thing to the man. There was no sense in waiting there for him an hour, or for that matter, a day, maybe a week. Raleigh was grimy, wrinkled, unkempt, and unshaven. The sensible thing would be to go to the hotel. Instead, he walked over to the church, and then went inside. A flyer on the pew rack invited him to a Maundy Thursday potluck supper tonight. He sat in the cool hush among the kerchiefed women, the sleeping vagrant, the whispering tourists, the unhappy businessman who rolled his forehead back and forth over his folded arms. He watched the skirted priests glide silently by in front of the altar, bowing at the crucifix when they passed, as if nodding to an acquaintance on the street. Raleigh heard the eight-year-old voice of his cousin Jimmy Clay: “Hey, Raleigh the Robot, how come your daddy wears that funny skirt like a girl?”

  One rainy winter Sunday long long ago, in the little Thermopylae church, Raleigh saw his father seated alone in shadows on the floor of the nave, leaning back against the altar, his arms wrapped around the knees of his black skirt. The nine-year-old had been sent to find him for supper, but the man looked so worried, his eyes so bright and wet, that the boy was afraid to bother him. Finally, Earley Hayes looked up and said hoarsely, “Hello, Little Fellow.”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Come on and sit down here with me. Mind if I give you a hug? I’m feeling pretty sad. It’s kind of a sad rainy day, isn’t it? Doesn’t it look like everybody up in Heaven has got the blues today and can’t stop crying?”

  “I guess.” Raleigh scooted over beside his father. He could feel the chill of the floor through his corduroy pants, but Earley’s arm was warm around his neck and shoulder. His father smelled like the fall, like trees and smoke and apples.

  “…Are you sad because Grandpa died?”

  “Yes, Specs.”

  “Mama’s sad too. She says she has to go away and think again.”

  “I know.…It’s my fault she’s sad, Raleigh. You know how if you hurt somebody you love, your heart feels all squeezed in a knot?”

  They sat silently a long time in the darkening stillness. Then Raleigh pushed on his new glasses. “Is Grandpa’s body really in the ground back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought we were supposed to believe people can rise from the dead. Like Jesus. Do you think Jesus really did? Rise up? It’s hard to believe.”

  Earley rubbed his eyes. “Well, Specs, His disciples sure didn’t believe it either at first. They ran like crazy when the women told them. And then, you know, He joined them and had a fish fry on the beach, and those morons still didn’t know Him from Adam. It was the women who had the guts to go in the tomb. It was the women that kept the faith. The best luck in life, Specs, is to keep a woman’s love.”

  Raleigh wasn’t at all interested in women’s love. “But do you think Grandpa can rise from the dead? Flonnie says, no grave can hold him down. But I don’t see how he’s going to be able to get the coffin open when there’s so much dirt on top, and he couldn’t even move his arms anyhow, I mean, you know how they kind of flopped? So how can he get out?”

  Raleigh felt himself pulled closer into the warm black scratchy wool, as his father said, “Well…well, I don’t know the answer.”

  “You don’t?”

  “But my guess is, maybe you don’t need your arms to climb out of the grave. You just need enough people to have loved you. And I figure Grandpa has enough of those….” The priest leaned forward to tie his son’s shoelace.

  Raleigh shook his head. “But he’ll still be dead. I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I, Specs. It’s one of God’s dumber-ass roundabout notions, everybody’s dying so then maybe they can go to Heaven. This dying is a crappy plan.”

  Excited by the profanity, Raleigh wriggled his cold back and buttocks. “In Sunday school, Mrs. Jimson told us we had to die because Eve ate this apple that the Devil told her if she ate it, she’d be as smart as God.”

  Earley nodded. “Well, actually he said, if you eat it, you’ll know the difference between good and evil, which is what God knows. And so, what Satan told her was really true. Here, come over here.” He took the boy’s hand and led him up into the carved wood pulpit, where he switched on a light and opened a large Bible at the beginning. “Can you read that?”

  Raleigh nodded; he liked to display his reading skill. His father lifted him and set him down on the lectern itself. “Start right there. That word’s ‘behold.’ ”

  “I know, I know. ‘God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil, and now, lest. . .’?”

  “ ‘On the chance that…’ ”

  “ ‘…He put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden…’ ”

  “Boy, you’re some reader.”

  “Well, I think God stinks. His rules aren’t fair. Mrs. Jimson wrote all these sins on the blackboard? And she says if we do any of them, we have to go to Hell, even if we aren’t even grown-ups.”

  “Mrs. Jimson is a horse’s ass.”

  “Cursing’s one of the sins.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Raleigh flushed with excitement. He looked at his father’s face, only inches away. Tiny blond hairs bristled out of holes in the skin. He could see his own face in the dark center of the blue eye.

  “Specs, remember when Christ said there were really only two commandments…Love…”

  “I already know. Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

  “Right.” Earley rubbed the boy’s corduroy knee. “Well, there’s only one sin.…What do you think it is?”

  Raleigh looked in the eyes for a clue to the answer. He didn’t like to be wrong. “…Not loving them?”

  “Right.”

  Raleigh thought. “Well, I don’t love everybody. Do you? Do you love Mrs. Jimson even if she’s a…she’s a bullshit?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither.”

  Earley Hayes flicked off the light, and the two stayed there in the pulpit as darkness moved along the church wall. Then Earley laughed. “Nope. I don’t have the guts. Christ was a tough little bastard, Raleigh.…’Course, He never said it’d be easy to take His two bits of advice. All He said was, you’d be in Heaven if you did.…” The priest picked up his son in his arms and carried him down the aisle. “Come on, let’s go walk to the drugstore and get some ice cream for after supper.”

  “What kind? Mama likes strawberry, but I like chocolate.” “Well, hell, let’s get both.”

  As they walked down East Main’s sidewalk, under one umbrella, clumsily knocking into each other, E
arley Hayes took from the pocket of his black cassock his silver trumpet mouthpiece, and began whistling through it, “Pennies from Heaven.”

  Outside St. Louis Cathedral, the morning brightness blinded Raleigh. He shielded his eyes with the back of his hand. His arm raised, he started down the steps. It was then that he heard the music, the whisk slapping the snare drum and cymbal, the sharp clean trumpet melody floating around a woman’s voice as she sang, “So wrap your troubles in dreams, and dream your troubles away.” Raleigh listened some more, his arm raised. The trumpet was playing alone; it swooped down and came back with a new melody. The voice joined it. “If I should take a notion to jump into the ocean…Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”

  Raleigh lowered his arm and slowly turned his head to the square. In the middle, in front of a small fountain, he saw a black man seated on a stool surrounded by glittering drums. He saw a young black girl in a white dress. Sunlight was so dazzling on the gold trumpet raised to the sky that he had to cup his hands around his eyes to see his father.

  “Hi, Daddy,” said Raleigh when the song ended, and the few bystanders clapped.

  “You’re early.” His father grinned.

  Raleigh took a deep breath, and then he said, “No, I’m Raleigh. You’re Earley.” This had been his first joke, planned at age five and delivered on the first suitable occasion—for which he had eagerly watched and waited. It was a great success and had gone into the family story as “Raleigh’s joke.”

  “Right.” His father held out his arms, and Raleigh, despite all his intentions, walked into them.

  Fear turned his hands cold when he felt the sharp shoulder blades. Earley Hayes was smaller than Holly or Caroline. His head scarcely reached his son’s shoulder, and the back Raleigh remembered as so sturdily fleshed was bone-thin, frail as a child’s. How could the man have shrunk and faded so in only two weeks? Or had Raleigh just not noticed before how insubstantial he had become? His white hair was dry and flat. His dirty blue seersucker pants bagged beneath the tightly belted waist. The blue short sleeves of his shirt gaped flapping around his arms. Only the eyes were the same, blue as the sky.

  Raleigh stepped back. “Well, here I am.”

  “Here you are.” The old man nodded up at his tall, wrinkled, unshaved son. “You did just fine, Specs.”

  “I couldn’t make Jubal come. I brought Gates.”

  “You did fine.”

  Raleigh held up his fingers. “I brought your trumpet, your Bible, PeeWee’s stupid bust, the deed to his crummy cabin, and Grandma Tiny’s goddamn trunk.”

  “I figured you would. Give me another hug, Specs. You’re a beautiful sight.”

  “I bet.” Raleigh crossed his arms. “I’m a wreck. I’ve lost six pounds. I’ve been through royal hell and back.”

  Earley shook saliva from his trumpet. “Well, that’s some trip. Least you had a lot of fun, Aura said.”

  “Ha ha. Where’s Aunt Vicky? Did you know she’s down here looking for you?”

  “She’s shopping. Come on over here….”

  “Shopping? What do you mean, shopping?” Raleigh kept talking as his father pulled him along. “I presume you’re now going to explain what this is all about.”

  “Music, sort of,” said Earley with a curiously shy smile.

  “Daddy, I’m serious. Aunt Vicky calls me in Atlanta; she doesn’t sound like herself at all. She asks all about Jubal Rogers and then she takes off down here after you—”

  “She told me to let her talk to you herself first. She thought you’d get here a couple of days ago.”

  “Well, sorry. Gates had to go to the hospital to get his, ha ha, head examined, okay? Dammit, Daddy!”

  “Where is Gates? And you really got him to come!”

  “He’s back at the hotel. He’s supposed to check by here at twelve. Three, ah, friends of mine…Mingo Sheffield and two, ah, people I sort of met on the way are down here with us.”

  “Brought your friends with you? Well, that’s wonderful. I’m just sorry about Jubal. I don’t blame him, but I’m just sorry. I want you to meet some folks now.” He looped his arm through Raleigh’s and walked back to the middle of the square. “…This is Allen Thornhill. Allen, this is my oldest boy, Raleigh.” The drummer, a bald pudgy black man about forty years old, leaned across the cymbals to shake hands. He wore a striped tie and a button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled.

  “Allen played in the band back in Hillston College when I was teaching, we won’t say how long ago.”

  “Let’s don’t,” nodded Thornhill. “But I seem to recall I had a head of hair.”

  “And now he teaches theory at the university here, so he just came in to do an old geezer a favor. Right? Excuse us a second, Allen?”

  Thornhill slapped the cymbal with his whisk by way of reply.

  Earley then walked Raleigh over to the fountain on whose concrete rim the young black girl had seated herself with a book of sheet music. She did not have a blond wig or purple eyeshadow or an overnight case full of money. She was a dark, small-boned, slender teenager in a soiled plain white dress that looked like a Mexican shirt. Her cloth sandals laced around her ankles, and she wore several bright bracelets on each wrist. Her crimped black hair was dramatically long and electric, but her eyes were soft, tentative, like a deer’s eyes. She stood up and Earley put his arm around her; they were the same height. “This is Raleigh,” he told her.

  “Hi.” She looked as if she might be going to ask something, but instead she turned to Earley.

  “This is Billie Rogers, Raleigh. She and I have come a long way together. Haven’t we, Billie? Long, tough way?” He hugged her shoulder, then took his arm away. “Been looking for some folks we couldn’t find, and finding some folks we weren’t looking for, and generally trying to get our act together. Right?”

  She smiled in just the tolerant bemused way with which Holly and Caroline responded to adult efforts to speak their language.

  “Billie’s some singer.”

  Raleigh was confused. “…Ah, yes, I heard you. Yes….” He didn’t know whether to speak in front of the girl or not. “Billie Rogers?”

  “That’s right,” Earley nodded. “Jubal’s granddaughter.”

  “Jubal’s granddaughter? Did you…? Was she…? Did you two meet in the hospital in Thermopylae?”

  “Meet?! I tell you, Raleigh, it knocked me over, too. This child has got more guts than…than…” He pointed at the giant statue behind them. “Than General Andrew Jackson ever dreamed of. Well, Billie, yes, you do, too. This child.” He squeezed her hand. “There she is, Fullerton, California, nineteen years old, she loses her mother. Poor Josh died when she was a baby.”

  So, Raleigh had been right: this whole wild goose chase had started over the strange angry man in Charleston. “Jubal’s son was Joshua Rogers?”

  “Yes. Billie’s dad. She loses her mother, and she thinks there’s nobody else. Well, she thought there was maybe an aunt in Memphis, but it turned out she’d passed away. I want you to know, Billie here…” Earley Hayes kept nodding at the girl and patting her shoulder and shaking his head to convey amazement to Raleigh, who stood there, looking from one to the other.

  Billie Rogers just stood there, too, with a look half indulgent, half embarrassed. Back in the middle of the square, Allen Thornhill busied himself adjusting his drums.

  “I want you to know, Raleigh, Billie here, nineteen years old, gets on a Trailways bus all the way from California to Thermopylae.” Earley took a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Some shithead steals her bag and her purse, but she just keeps on, and she by fuck gets to Thermopylae. And hasn’t eaten in about two days, and faints in the bus station, right, Billie?”

  “I guess so. I was pretty weirded out. It was no big deal.”

  “No big deal?! Honey, don’t call my miracle no big deal!” Earley bent over, coughing.

  “Daddy, are you okay?” Raleigh pulled the cigarette from his father’s fingers.

  Straigh
tening up, the old man wiped his eyes and mouth. “Fine. I’m fine.…Billie passes out in the bus station, and that asshole police chief of ours hauls her in on vagrancy, and whips her over to the hospital like she’s a mental case! So in she comes to that hospital, I swear on the wings of a dove, and saves my goddamn life.”

  The girl smiled. “Listen, okay?, stop saying that. That’s pretty heavy.” She rubbed the front of the music book. “This whole thing has been pretty heavy. I sure didn’t expect—”

  Raleigh said, “I can imagine. So, Daddy, you took Billie out of the hospital?”

  “I’m sneaking down the hall to Reba’s room—see how she’s doing— and I hear Billie at the nurses’ station trying to explain to those fucks she knew who she was. They’re acting like the dumb shits they are. Five minutes, Raleigh, five minutes sooner or later, and I would have missed her. That’s the kind of squeeze-play chance that joker God gives you. If I’d stopped to pee, I would have missed her.”

  The girl turned to Raleigh. “Earley says you found Jubal in Charleston. My grandfather? Listen, thanks, okay? I don’t know, I guess maybe he’s not gonna show, right? But you talked to him? Jubal Rogers?”

  Raleigh stared from one to the other. “Ah…I’m not sure. Ah, I don’t know if he’s coming here or not. I asked him to.”

  Billie nodded. “Well, thanks anyhow, okay?” She sat down by the fountain again, and ran her hand through the water. “Anyhow, I guess he’d never heard of me, had he?…Is he, like, you know, a, you know, a real musician? I mean, good? But you probably just talked to him on the phone or something, hunh?”

  Sitting down beside the girl, Earley rested his trumpet on his knees; there was a hole worn in one pants leg. He looked up at his son.

  Raleigh cleared his throat. “Yes, I did hear him. He plays the clarinet in a very nice nightclub there in Charleston. Yes, he’s very good.”

  She nodded slowly. “I thought he had to be.…Well, thanks again, okay? For going to all that trouble. Now I can, you know, write him. When he wasn’t in Thermopylae, and then he wasn’t in New Orleans, I figured that was, you know—it.…We going to rehearse some more?” She held up the music book.