Esther looked at him with sharp fear. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right! MacDonald is getting worse all the time. It’s—quickening—now. You know he never went in for all that radical business until he met Somer. Somer brought him to that; Somer directs what he does with his papers! How do I know? I don’t have any real proof, but there is always something vicious and inciting in his editorials after he’s had a session with Somer. No, neither one of them is a Communist. Somer’s an opportunist, and MacDonald thinks he’s God.”
She stood up, in her fear. “Al, MacDonald never speaks of his mother. Did you know her?”
“Why, yes, I did. A real nice girl, Esther. A healthy, witty girl. She used to think Mac’s father a pompous, pretentious fool, in a nice affectionate way. She died when Mac was about thirteen, I think. They’d already left here.” The doctor scowled, concentrating. “It was an accident. They’d just bought a big house in Philadelphia, and Evelyn was helping the servants get the house ready. It was a long time ago. She fell from the third floor, right down to the marble first floor. It was in the newspapers. They said she had been leaning over the balustrade, dusting off the big bright chandelier they’d just imported, and lost her balance.”
The old doctor stood up suddenly, and took Esther by the arm. She stared at him with a kind of still terror. “What is it?” he demanded, in a hushed voice. She replied faintly, “I don’t know. It’s just—well, for a long time MacDonald’s been muttering about his mother in his sleep. I think he hated her.”
The doctor shook her. “Esther! Don’t you get ideas now! Stop it, you hear? Stop it!”
She whispered, “Al, once I overheard MacDonald and Somer talking about Mrs. Summerfield. They were in MacDonald’s study. I just caught one word: ‘guilt.’ Al, I’m afraid.”
The doctor tried to laugh. “I know what Granger was up to. He was trying to convince Mac that he felt guilty for hating his mother, and maybe wishing she would die, or something, and then the accident happened, and he kept it in his mind, which hasn’t really grown up yet, that his wish about his mother had something to do with her death. I wonder,” he added, “how much Somer hated his own mother?”
Esther sighed. “Frankly, I think the whole world’s losing its collective mind. Either the war caused that, or it caused the war. Sometimes I have nightmares, wondering what the world will be like when governments go insane—like the Russian government. What will happen to the rest of us?”
“Oh, they’ll think up a whole series of wars then. And when they find clumps of sane people huddling together, they’ll murder them. They always have. But, somehow, a few sane people manage to survive.”
They moved together toward the shut door. Esther said, “Al, your minister’s in danger, and his children, too. MacDonald will never let up on him. He looks and acts demented whenever his name is mentioned. MacDonald’s ruined other men before, you know. Who will protect your minister?”
“Why,” said the doctor with a saturnine smile, “God will. That’s what the parson says. Hope he’s right.”
21
The children listened with the deepest interest to Johnny’s story about Thanksgiving. But after he had finished they sat in silence, puzzled. This was not exactly the reaction Johnny had expected. He had bought the children a large book on the subject, filled with colored pictures of Indians and Pilgrims and snow and turkeys and wigwams and log cabins. Jean held it on his knee now and thoughtfully pulled at his pale lip. The other children craned around his chair to watch the pictures go by slowly. “Well,” said Johnny, nonplused, “isn’t it a wonderful story?”
“I think the Indians were stupid,” said Jean.
“Stupid?”
“Or, Papa, perhaps not stupid.” Jean gave him that wise old smile of his. “They were like you, perhaps? They forgave men who injured them, yes? The white men came to this country, the country of the Indians, and cut down the forests to build their houses, on the land of the Indians, and made the Indians help them whether they wanted to or not, and though you did not say, I believe they thought the Indians not so good as they. Yes? I have been reading books Miss Coogan brings me, about Indian wars, and I have been thinking, and I do not find the white man—heroic—is that the word? I find him very wicked, and always very wicked, and very much more wicked in the way he stole the country of the Indians from the Indians. And that was not enough for the white man, all the land and the mountains and the lakes and the fish and the game. He must make slaves of the Indians, and kill them, when they try to keep the land which Our Lord gave to them.”
“You have a point there,” said Johnny, thinking of India and China and all the lands of the exploited, oppressed East, where the white man had set up his colonies and had treated the natives as less than men. There was something brewing in Asia now, something explosive and terrible, and very ominous.
Jean sighed. He ran a thin finger gently over the noble picture of an Indian chief depicted as humbly offering a basket of fruit to a very haughty Pilgrim and his purse-lipped wife. “See,” said Jean. “The chief gives the fruit of his land to a man who should be on his knees to receive it, for he is a thief, and should beg for forgiveness. The chief has permitted him to keep the land he has stolen or taken in blood, and has forgiven him.”
“He is very beautiful,” said Kathy. “His skin is prettier than the Pilgrim’s. He is like a bird. The Pilgrim is very ugly.”
“Why didn’t the Indians drive off the white man who stole their country?” asked Pietro.
Johnny said grimly, “The white man had guns. He always has. And now he has the atomic bomb. That makes him even more superior.”
Max was very grave. “Who told him the white man is better?” he asked in his low, uncertain voice.
“He did,” said Johnny. He had almost decided that his Thanksgiving story was a failure, or that, at the very least, it had holes of some dimensions in it. “You can’t go too deep into things,” he added, without much conviction.
Pietro flashed him one of his sharp white smiles. “Why not?” he demanded. Why not, indeed? Johnny asked himself. “Well, anyway,” he said, “I suppose we should thank God that He permitted us to stay here, in the country we stole from the Indians. It’s a beautiful country.”
Kathy looked smug. “Miss Coogan says the Pilgrims didn’t like people who didn’t believe what they believed. They made others leave the colonies—and other places too—when these men wanted to love God like Jean and Pietro do. Out into the cold and the forests, the Pilgrims sent them. The Pilgrims,” added Kathy, “were very bad men, and I don’t love them at all, and I don’t think I care about their Thanksgiving.”
Pietro had picked up considerable American slang from the children in his catechism classes. “It is a fake,” he said.
Johnny was holding Emilie in his arms, and smoothing her long curls as she half dozed, in content. He looked at the triumphant children; their eyes were a little accusing, as if he had offered them something bogus. He was not quite sure that he hadn’t. He said, “Well, it’s become a different story now in our country. We thank God that He’s had mercy on us, and kept us—well, safe, shall I say?—and that we have friends and families to love us, and food to eat. It’s a general Thanksgiving, to God.”
“Just once a year?” asked Pietro with false demureness. “We should thank God just once a year? He should be pleased with that?”
“Now look, kids,” said Johnny, with some sternness. “You know that isn’t what I mean. Don’t we thank God for every meal we eat, at this very table? And as often as possible, in church, and before we go to bed? Can’t we make a special day of thanksgiving too? Any law against it? Look at us. Here we sit in a warm dining room, after a good dinner, and we love each other, and you know how much I love you, and there’s Mrs. Burnsdale in the kitchen, and beds upstairs, and heat, and you’ve got good clothes, and hundreds of other things. Can’t we make a real special occasion of thanking Our Lord, on a very special day, without all these arguments? You k
ids argue about every infernal thing. I don’t know where you pick it up.”
“Okay,” said Pietro, coming around to Johnny’s chair and giving him a warm kiss. “We make a special time to thank God. If that pleases Papa.”
“Pleasing me has nothing to do with it,” said Johnny helplessly. He continued with some reproach, “I’m not so sure that Father John Kanty is doing the right thing, Pietro, in making you one of his altar boys. You don’t have the proper attitude.”
The dramatic Pietro folded his hands together, rolled up his eyes, and said meekly, “Okay, okay. I have the proper attitude.”
Kathy came to Johnny’s rescue in her efficient way. “It is your turn, Pietro, to wipe the dishes, so go into the kitchen. Max, you must take the pie plates away, and all the silver. Come, come, you lazy boys.”
Max and Pietro obeyed Kathy as they did not always obey Mrs. Burnsdale. They were often mutinous and impatient, and raucous in their demands and protests. For this Johnny was deeply grateful. He would especially rejoice in himself when Max complained of being given too large a share of the household chores; sometimes Max would even slam a door, and stamp off. No day passed but the children became increasingly more normal, and more like children. Jean, older, wiser, and with a longer memory, kept too much of his reserve, and thought too much.
Only Jean, Johnny, and the sleeping child remained in the dining room. Johnny said gently, “Jean, son, sometimes it isn’t the best thing to ask too many questions in front of the younger children. Besides, a lot of them are questions for which there aren’t any answers. Do you understand?”
Jean considered this. He looked at Johnny with his light eyes, always so inscrutable, yet sometimes tender, as they were now. “It’s best, sometimes, to get busy, like Kathy?”
“Well, yes,” said Johnny. He thought of Martha, who was “busy with many things.” He often believed that poor Martha had not been sufficiently appreciated by the clergy.
Jean folded his hands with that strange quietness of his, and rested them on the book. He studied Johnny for a long moment or two, and again his face was the face of a man who had known too much pain and too much sorrow. Yet it was a still face, grave and thoughtful. It was not the face of the wild and savage “wolf child” of a year ago.
Johnny waited. Jean said softly, “I often dream of my statue which my mother sent me. I often dream of the Lady whose image it is. The word is image, isn’t it? You see how well I know my English now.” He smiled.
“It’s really remarkable. You kids study all the time,” said Johnny.
“I love the Lady very much,” said Jean. “Miss Coogan brings me books about her. God knew He was God, but Mary knew He was her baby, her child, her son. Perhaps she thought more of Him that way than she thought of Him as God. It is like a mother?”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “It’s like all mothers, I think.”
Jean repeated, “I love her very much. I think of her when Dr. McManus sends his car for me and Pietro, on Sundays, to go to Mass. And so at Mass I think of the Lady.” He paused. “I want to be a priest. I have spoken to Father John Kanty. He thinks I am older than twelve, though I don’t know, and I don’t have a birthday, except the one you gave me when I came home from the hospital.”
Johnny had given all the children birthdays, to give each a day of his own, and to add to the festivities. He said, “I don’t think you’re much older than twelve, Jean. But you were talking about becoming a priest. What does Father John Kanty say about it?”
“He thinks I have a vocation. Papa, you think so too?”
Johnny said silent. He looked into Jean’s eyes, at his still hands. Then he said, “Yes, I think so.”
“You aren’t sorry?”
“No,” said Johnny, greatly moved. “I’m very happy. If you’re sure, Jean.”
“I’m sure,” said the boy. And now he was indeed a boy again, and his thin face lighted up mischievously. “And so,” he said, “we’ll have our Thanksgiving tomorrow, and we won’t ask you too many questions, Papa.”
Johnny carried Emilie up to bed. It seemed to him that she was gaining a little weight, and that there was some color in the small, translucent face.
Thanksgiving Day, after all the rain, was a day forged out of gold and distilled from light. The golden mountains leaned against the brilliant pale-amethyst sky, and the valley in which Barryfield lay, not smudged now with “smog,” cradled the light in pure clarity. There was a radiant, ringing sound in the streets, created by children’s voices, footsteps, horns, and the murmur of automobiles; there had been a heavy frost early in the morning. Its sequin glitter rebounded from the edges of windows, from the gray boughs of the trees, from every blade of grass, from the sides of buildings. It was indeed a day to give thanks for.
Johnny had not expected many to attend the service in the morning, for there were too many turkeys to be stuffed, too many last pies to be baked, too many houses to be given a last polish and dusting. But he found to his pleasure that every pew was filled, tightly. He walked to the altar buoyantly, in the shimmer and waves of candlelight. He smiled at his people, and they smiled back at him, not decorously, but with friendship.
“A man who observes Thanksgiving, or pays it lip service on just one day of the year, does not give thanks at all,” he said. The church was cold, but the people listened to Johnny’s deep and sonorous voice with unaffected attention. Dr. McManus was there. He sat huddled in the most bulky and most untidy brown overcoat Johnny had ever seen; it was impossible not to avoid the unreadable stare of his eyes, as he sat in his usual place in the first pew. Sometimes that stare disconcerted Johnny, and it did today, as he delivered his sermon. He looked beyond Dr. McManus.
“The Jewish people, at Passover,” he said, “declare that if God had just rescued them from Egypt, that would be enough, that would be enough for thanksgiving. If He had only rescued them from Egypt and brought them safely through the Red Sea, that would have been more than enough for their reverent gratitude. If He had rescued them from Egypt and brought them through the Red Sea and had fed them with manna in the desert, that would have been boundlessly enough for them to give Him praise and worship. To all these He had added much more, without request, and only from His hand, which is never emptied of His love.
“And I say to you,” continued Johnny, his voice rising in jubilation, “that if God had permitted us to live only one day, to know that He is, that would have been enough for us. If He had permitted us to live only one day and to know that He is, and had allowed us to see one sunrise or one sunset, that would have been more than enough. If, in addition, He has granted us one hour of loving, and being loved, how greatly has He blessed us!
“But, out of His endless bounty, He has given us thousands of days to know that He is, and to see the sunrises and the sunsets, and to love, and be loved. So now, indeed, we should say, ‘It is enough, it is more than enough, it is bounty overflowing and running over! There is no need for more.’
“But He gave us still more. He gave us an eternity of beauty and love and knowledge of Him, not for an hour, a day, a year, or a thousand years. But forever. By no merit of our own, but only by His merit. Still, this was not enough love for God to give us. He must give us the ultimate. He must walk among us as a man, in order to show us the way through our self-willed darkness and agony and terror—the way to Him. He must die for us, and lift up His cross like a blazing light on the black hills of our sins.
“Not by our merit,” said Johnny, his voice dropping into profound meditation, “but only by His most blessed merit, only by His love, which we do not deserve and can never deserve. For that love of God for us let us give thanksgiving. All else is as nothing compared with that, for it contains all we have, and all the gifts heaped about us. It is not possible, for these stupdendous joys, to thank God adequately. But we can try.”
The doors of the church were opened wide after the service, and it seemed to many that they were seeing the sunlight for the first time in
years. They looked at the sky, lifting up their tired, earth-bound eyes, their weary hearts, their filtering faith, their faded hopes. It is enough, they said to themselves, many of the exhausted middle-aged, that I can see the mountains today, the mountains that were always there but which I hadn’t seen for a long time. The younger folk hurried home, saying in their hearts, it is enough that I have a little warm house, and the children are waiting, and there is a turkey in the oven. And they all said to themselves, it is more than enough to know that God loves me and cares for me.
“Well,” said Johnny later, going into the kitchen, “how was the sermon?”
Mrs. Burnsdale’s eyes were slightly red. “Wonderful,” she answered. “So short, too.”
Johnny burst out laughing. “Is that your measure of a sermon?” he asked.
“Now you know that isn’t so,” she replied crossly. “You know, Mr. Fletcher, you’re too good for this town and this church. You should have one of them cathedrals they’ve got in New York, on Riverside Drive, with bells that play hymns, right over the Hudson.”
“Near Grant’s Tomb,” said Johnny. He looked at the oven. “How’s the turkey coming along?” The kitchen was filled with celestial perfumes. Mrs. Burnsdale, with quiet ostentation, opened the oven door and gave Johnny a delightful glimpse of a turkey sizzling richly in a wet patina of golden butter. “Ah,” said the young minister, “you know, even this would be enough.”
He looked with pleasure at the rack of pumpkin and mince pies, at the peeled and waiting potatoes, the cranberry sauce. “To think I’m having a Thanksgiving in my own home,” he said. “And with my own family. It’s something to think about.”
A Tender Victory Page 37
