Abide With Me

  Above him in the choir loft was a soft sound of motion. He stood, his heart pounding in the darkness. And then her voice, youthful: “Tyler?”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  She made her way down the stairs. When she emerged, he saw her tall outline in the soft funnel of light. Her hair was not pinned up; it fell to her shoulders in thin, grayish waves.

  “Are they here?” she asked.

  “No. No one. Are you all right?” He went to put his arm around her. “I’ve been worried, Connie.” An odor of something rank rose off her like a small, dense cloud. “Come and sit,” he said, and led her to the front pew, where he sat beside her. In the pale light, her face was almost unrecognizable. She seemed like an old woman; the skin from her cheeks hung from her high cheekbones, dropped beneath her mouth.

  “I. Am. Scared.” She said each word carefully.

  “Yes, of course you are.” He kept an arm around her.

  “Can they arrest me in a church?”

  “I think they can. But no one’s here. Do you need food?”

  She shook her head, and he saw there were tears glistening on her cheeks. He brought his handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her, then placed a hand on the back of her head, as though she were a child, or a lover.

  “What’m I going to do?” she asked.

  “We’ll figure it out. Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere. The Littlehales’ barn, the back kitchen of a restaurant in Daleville some nights. It’s easy enough to sneak into places. You’d be surprised.”

  “But you’re freezing cold, and you must be hungry.”

  “Mostly I’m scared and tired.”

  “Yes.” He rubbed her shoulder with his hand.

  “Can I sit here awhile with you?”

  “Of course.” He thought of that day, weeks ago, when he had walked into the kitchen and shown her his cuffs, the silly fear he had felt upon discovering his frayed cuffs, her calm encouragement to go buy a new shirt.

  Connie burrowed her head against his chest, and he rubbed her back, her hair. He felt the thrust of her shoulder blade through her coat. “Tyler.” Her voice was muffled, and she sat partway up, looking straight ahead. “It’s the strangest thing, Tyler. But I don’t know if I did it. Just my mind goes all funny, and I think, Now, did I really do that, or does it just seem like I did?”

  Her breath was so pungent it seemed like a decaying animal sat in front of her face. He had to work not to turn his own face away.

  “Do you have to tell them if they ask you what I said?”

  “No. You can talk to your minister in confidence.”

  “Even if I haven’t been to church?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She leaned back against his arm, shaking her head slowly. “The first time—oh, Tyler. I didn’t know it would work. Have you seen people in those places? Nobody ever came to see her. She couldn’t move. I’d change her diapers—” Connie began to shiver violently.

  “Connie, I’d like to get you some food and warm clothes.”

  “No, I’m just real tired. Let me stay here a minute. I want to tell you this story. I’ve never told anyone. But it’s a stupid story. I’m not bright, Tyler.”

  “I’d like to get you warmed up, and get a hot drink into you.”

  “Don’t leave,” she said, touching the top of his hand.

  “I won’t leave.”

  She took a deep breath and looked at him. He had to hold his own breath so as not to breathe her odor. In the darkness his eyes had adjusted, and he could see her eyes, their aliveness. “I don’t mean in love, but do you love me?” she asked.

  “I do. Yes. And I’ve worried about you.”

  She nodded, a small, knowledgeable gesture. “I love you, too. Can I tell you the story?”

  “Tell me the story. It won’t be a stupid story,” he added. “Nothing about you is stupid.”

  Connie tucked her elbows in toward her waist, her arms together, like a child who is hoping to still be held, and he kept his arm around her. “When Adrian came home from the war, he was different. Oh, I know—everybody was. He’d parachuted into Normandy and they expected to die, I think, even though nobody really expects to die, do they. And he brought home a Purple Heart for saving this man’s life.” She leaned forward as she spoke, and Tyler loosened his arm. “He didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t ask. Adrian was never one to talk. But it was years later when finally one night he said, ‘Connie, I’ve got to tell you.’ So he told me. He said, ‘I can’t describe to you what it was like,’ but he did a pretty good job describing it. I thought he was going to tell me how he’d killed somebody, but what he told me was how he loved somebody. And I don’t mean a French girl running out from a barn happy to be saved, or even some English girl in the pub in Berkshire.

  “He told me how he saved this man’s life, lugged him four miles into town as dawn broke, lugged him through cow pastures, and they kept resting, lying down, and he told me he loved this man. At first I didn’t know what he meant. But then I said, ‘Do you mean you had sex with him, did things like that?’ I didn’t want him to feel bad. People kill themselves because they’re fairies, you know, and I wanted to pretend I would be okay. And he said no, they didn’t do things like that—the guy was almost dead. And then I said, after a long while, watching Adrian look uncomfortable—he looked awful uncomfortable—I said, ‘But you wanted to have sex with him, right?’ And he looked away and said, ‘Well, yeah, Connie. I did. I wanted to. And it’s just been eating me up.’ So that was a shock, but he still sat there uncomfortable, and then I began to think, You know, this fellow he saved, he sends Christmas cards from the Midwest every year, he’s got a family and kids and the whole nine yards, but then I thought how Adrian would stare at the cards sometimes, and I said, ‘Ade, do you still feel that way about him?’ My mouth got dry—I remember that—asking him. And Adrian said, ‘Yeah, I do, Connie. I can’t get over him and it’s just eating me up.’ “

  Connie’s shoulders slumped forward, and she hung her head down, as though the telling of this had exhausted her. “Stupid,” she murmured.

  “What is?”

  “For me to care.”

  “Well, of course you care. But war does strange things to people, Connie. It’s—well, it’s intimate, saving a life, and it would make Adrian feel close to this fellow. But he feels a heck of a lot closer to you, or he’d never have told you.”

  “But why did he have to tell me? Why didn’t he keep it to himself?”

  “Like he said, Connie—it was eating him alive. And by not telling anyone, maybe it stopped feeling real—and that’s a feeling that can make you crazy, I think.”

  “Yes.” Connie looked at him. “I guess that’s a feeling that can make you crazy, all right.” She looked down at her lap. “But it changed things. Maybe it shouldn’t have. But it did. It got me lonely. And it was just after Jerry died he told me.” She nodded. “Changed things.”

  “It’s not too late. When you get this business straightened out . . .” Tyler waved his hand to indicate her present situation.

  “I’ve got to lie down,” she said, and she moved away, and lay on her back on the pew, her feet hanging over the edge.

  “Connie, you should probably see a doctor.”

  “Let me stay here awhile more.”

  “Here. Put your feet up on the pew—that’s right—just put them right up there.” She was wearing men’s boots.

  “I’m tired. Tyler?” She tilted her chin up, so she could see his face above hers. “I hate to think of myself as pathetic.”

  “Who’s pathetic, Connie? You’re just trying to do the best you can, like most of us. That’s not pathetic.”

  She sat up, and the movement brought with it another wave of the smell she carried with her. So quietly that he had to tilt his head to hear her, she said: “I was surprised with the first one that it worked. I still don’t know it was me. Strange thing. Kind of a little experiment, like when Je
rry and I would play in the woods. He had a jackknife once, oh, he was just a tiny tyke, maybe three or four years old, and it was just a small jackknife, and he said, ‘What’s the inside of that toad look like?’ and he sliced right in its soft belly. I remember that toad’s eyes staring at us, all bugged out while his belly was cut straight open, brown runny stuff coming out.” Connie sniffed hard, patted her eyes with Tyler’s handkerchief. “Poor toad. We didn’t know what we were doing. Why didn’t we know? Tyler? Could you tell God I’m sorry about that toad?”

  “God knows that, Connie.”

  “He knows everything?”

  Tyler nodded.

  “Oh, Jesus.” A shiver ran through Connie’s body, and he moved and put his arm once again around her shoulder. “She was pathetic, Tyler. Dorothy Aldercott. She was one of my feeders at first. You know what a feeder is? Paralyzed, so you have to feed them. I was in charge of the feeders. Six of them. Rolled into the kitchen on a gurney; that was the easiest way to do it—line them up. We’d crumble graham crackers in little Dixie cups, with milk. When it got smooshy, I had to spoon it into their mouths, and they’d lie there looking at me, but their eyes weren’t nice like the toad’s. They were horrible, and Dorothy Aldercott’d grown a beard. I don’t know why some old women do that—I hope I don’t, but I guess it doesn’t matter now—and somebody’d shave her once in a while, and when I fed her I’d have to wipe her face with a napkin, and I could feel the scratching of the stubble under the napkin. And she’d lie there and stare, and she got to me—that’s the truth of it. I felt pity—I really did. Couldn’t stand to think of her going on that way. No one ever came to see her; she couldn’t talk or complain—that’s how it was with the feeders. And Dorothy Aldercott had two daughters. I looked in her folder. Never came to see her. So that was a pathetic woman.”

  “The situation was pathetic,” Tyler said. “I don’t know that you could say she was.”

  Connie stared down at her foot; she had crossed one leg over the other and was bobbing the man’s boot. “One of the cooks said one day—he’d been there for years—he said they could be put out of their misery in two seconds just by overfeeding them. They can’t swallow well, so it goes down the wrong pipe and they drown, I guess, in graham-cracker mush. So I kept spooning it into her mouth one day, and she kept looking at me with those eyes, and I touched her face nicely, and said, “It’s okay, Dorothy,” because I loved her right then, Tyler. You say Adrian saving someone’s life is intimate. Well, it’s intimate the other way, too. And then—she was gone. The second one, Madge Lubeneaux, she struggled a bit, and that made me feel funny, so I never did it again.”

  Chills had spread over the left side of Tyler, his back, his thigh, his arm, as though a wave of tiny sea urchins had washed up on him. “Connie. Are you saying you killed these old women?”

  She nodded, looking at him in the near darkness with a kind of innocent, but puzzled, matter-of-factness.

  Again, the sensation of tiny sea urchins washing over him.

  “Do you think I was wrong?” she asked, as though the idea would surprise her.

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Why? If you could have seen them . . .”

  “I’ve seen things.”

  “Well, ’course you have,” she said tiredly.

  He could not stop the chills spreading over him. He took his arm from her shoulder.

  “I guess they’ll prove I did it on purpose, and then I’ll be gone for life.”

  “Connie, the police are after you for stealing.”

  “Stealing?” She looked at him like he’d said something insane. “I’ve never stolen anything in my life. Ginny Houseman did the stealing at that place. My God, I’m surprised they didn’t catch her. She took stuff from the patients as soon as they came in; she was in admissions, and she stole checks from the business office, too. We were friends for a while, but then I just didn’t like her. Tyler, I didn’t steal a thing.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Will they believe me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If they don’t know about those two feeders, should I tell them? It’s a crime, I suppose.”

  “It is a crime, Connie.”

  She moved away from him, turning to look at him full on. “You feel different about me now.”

  “Connie, you need some help.”

  “But I told you that day.”

  “Told me what?”

  “I told you about Becky, and how she got rid of the baby.”

  “Yes.” His heart was beating quickly.

  “And you said, Oh, we’re all sinners. Something like that.”

  “Yes, but, Connie—”

  “And now you think I’m a murderer and you see me different, even when I told you my sister did the same thing.”

  “It’s not the same thing, Connie.”

  “How come?”

  “Connie, look. Let’s go get you some help.”

  “Are you going to turn me in? Becky’s baby would’ve had a whole life. These women’s lives were over.”

  “But they weren’t over yet.”

  “You’ve got me all mixed up, Tyler. Are you going to turn me in?”

  “You can stay right here in the church until we figure out what to do.” He added, “You’re in shock.” But he was the one in shock. He stood up. “You need help. I’m going to go get Adrian.”

  She hung her head, weeping, and he sat back down. But he was really afraid of her. “Come with me,” he said. “I won’t repeat to anyone what you said, but come with me back to your home.”

  She shook her head.

  He sat, watching her. “This is what I’m going to do,” he finally said. “I’m going to go call Adrian to have him come get you. You can’t go on sleeping in churches and barns. And whatever conversation you have with him is your business. What you told me is privileged between a minister and his parishioner. I’ll leave that to you and Adrian—what to decide.”

  Across the dark parking lot she walked between the two men with her head down. Tyler helped her into the passenger seat of the truck. “Connie—”

  She looked at him and gave him a sad, tired smile.

  He stood back while the truck drove away.

  CHARLIE AUSTIN STOOD at the phone booth with fingers that were cold and trembling. He dialed the number. On the third ring, there was her voice—oh, her voice. Everything he had survived in life seemed to be so he could hear her voice, coming up through her body that he knew and adored. “It’s me,” he said.

  “Hi, me.”

  He cleared his throat. “How are you?”

  “Okay, good. How are you?”

  “Okay,” said Charlie. He pinched his nose, looked up at the dark sky. “I’ll see you soon, thank God.”

  “Listen, I need to tell you something. I’ve thought this through. And I’m not good for you.”

  A small dark space he stood in. The words like little wires around him.

  “And you’re not good for me. I slept better last night than I’ve slept in months, and that says it all, I think. That says a great deal. I’m glad to have come to the decision.”

  He said nothing, stood in the darkness, holding the phone.

  “We’re going to take a break in this.”

  “How long?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment. “Long, Charlie,” she finally said. “It’s just not good. It’s made me into a person I don’t like, and I blame myself, I do. But you’ve put pressure on me, and I can’t handle that.”

  He opened his mouth, but said nothing.

  “Pressure may not be the right word, and I do think it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gone so far with this.”

  The tiny dark space around him got darker; he was closed into a dark barrel. He was dying. “Can you tell me why?” He heard himself say this.

  “Sure,” she answered. And he sensed in his dimness that she was prepared, and strong. “It makes me feel like two people. One who wants you an
d one who—well, I can’t take the pressure. And we have to stop.”

  “Have you met someone else?” he said.

  “That’s not about this. I’m not having that talk with you, Charlie. I’m telling you this is not good for me, and it’s not good for you. It’s become unhealthy. And I can’t handle it. I feel you’re pressuring me all the time, and it’s not good for me. Or you. I can be your friend, if you need to talk sometime later. Right now we have to stop.”

  Friend.

  “We can’t be friends,” he said. His voice was low, weak.

  “Okay—I’m not having any more of this conversation. I’m sorry, Charlie. This has been my fault. Good-bye.”

  The final word was diminished as she hung up.

  He brought the cigarettes from his pocket and walked through the cold, smoking. Over and over in his stunned mind were the words “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” He walked and smoked. He walked past houses where lights were still on in the windows. He walked past houses where the lights were all off. He thought of his own home, and didn’t know how he would do it. Go back there. Stay there. Teach tomorrow. I don’t know what to do.

  EIGHT

  A light was on in the minister’s living room. Charlie drove by slowly, peering through the car window. He had smoked and walked for more than an hour after his dismissal at the pay phone, and now he turned the car around at the bottom of Stepping Stone Road, and drove past the minister’s house again, then backed the car up and left it near the end of the driveway, closing the door quietly, walking quietly through the cold. He had not thought the place would look so alone. Through the living-room window, he saw Tyler sitting in a rocking chair and, craning his neck above the porch railing, he saw that the man was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, his head slumped down. For a long time Charlie stood watching, his hands pushed into his coat pockets, his toes so cold they felt like hot stones in his shoes. Tyler did not move. Charlie wondered, without emotion, if the man was dead. He stepped up onto the porch, lit a cigarette, and coughed, dropped the match, and rubbed his boot over it, coughed again. In a moment the door opened, the minister looking out into the moon-lit darkness. “Charlie?”