Ordinary Grace

  I slid off the stool and left the drugstore. Gus came out behind me.

  “Wait, Frank.”

  “I’ll walk home,” I told him over my shoulder and kept going.

  He fell in step beside me on the sidewalk. “What did you want me to do, Frank? Your father asked me not to say anything.”

  “He could’ve told me.”

  “He doesn’t want you hurting any more than you already are.”

  We were passing the barbershop and through the open door came Herb Carneal’s voice on the radio calling a Twins game. “We’d all know sooner or later,” I said.

  “Maybe later is better, Frank. You’ve already had your share of bad news.”

  I didn’t agree with Gus. As bad as the knowledge might be I wanted the truth. And I was angry with my father for keeping it from me.

  “He should have told me,” I said.

  Gus stopped and because he did I did. I turned back and found him standing on my shadow on the concrete and looking at me sternly. He said, “You think your mother is ready to hear these things? Jesus, Frankie, use your head. Your old man is shouldering so much right now you really need to give him a break. Sure it hurts you. Think he’s not hurting? Christ,” Gus said with final disgust. “You want to walk home, go right ahead.”

  He turned back toward his motorcycle and I turned toward home. I shoved my hands into my pockets and in the long slant of the late afternoon sun I walked down Main Street which should have been familiar to me but didn’t feel so. I came to Cedar Street down which every weekday from September to June, Jake and I walked to school. And here was the intersection with Ash where the Guttenburgs’ house stood and where Jake and Danny O’Keefe and I had built a great snow fortress last winter with Skip Guttenburg and had battled the Bradley brothers across the street. And here was

  Sandstone Street and a block north was the parking lot of Rosie’s where Jake and I had smashed the lights of Morris Engdahl’s Deuce Coupe. These streets and their memories seemed to belong to a different time and even to a different person. I felt as if Ariel’s death had shoved me through a doorway into a world where I was a stranger. I wished that Gus had never brought me back from the country roads and I couldn’t remember ever feeling so lost or so alone.

  I heard the sound of the Indian Chief long before Gus pulled up beside me.

  “Hop in,” he said above the rumble of the engine and nodded toward the sidecar. “I’ll take you home.”

  I didn’t argue.

  • • •

  That night after Emil Brandt and my grandfather and Liz had all left and Jake was sleeping, I lay awake listening to the sound of the wind in the trees outside my window. It was a fierce wind and I heard anger in the way it shook the leaves and bent the branches. I thought that a storm might sweep in behind it but I heard no thunder and when I got up and went to the window and looked outside I found to my surprise that the sky was clear and full of stars and the moon was about to rise.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Warren Redstone. The weight of my guilt over letting him go was crushing me. I tried to pray but had no idea what to say except that I was sorrier than I’d been about anything ever. I kept seeing the sweep of Ariel’s hair in the river current and the flutter of her red dress and, on the trestle above, Redstone sneaking away. I balled my fists and pressed them into my eye sockets as if to push those images out of my head.

  The light was on in the hallway and I heard the heavy restless tread of my father descending the stairs. I left my room and saw that although it was late my parents’ bed was empty. I went to the landing. I couldn’t see much of the living room below but I could tell that it was dimly lit with the glow of a single lamp. I heard my father speak.

  “Would you like some company?”

  He received no response.

  “I should probably close the windows, Ruth. It feels like a storm.”

  “I like them this way.”

  “Would you mind if I sat here with you and read?”

  “Do whatever you like.”

  Things were quiet. Then my mother said, “The Bible?”

  “I find comfort in it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I won’t read aloud.”

  “If you must read that book read it somewhere else.”

  “Is it God you’re angry with, Ruth?”

  “Don’t use that tone with me.”

  “What tone?”

  “Like I’m one of your flock. Lost. I don’t need your help, Nathan. Not the kind of help you’re going to offer from that book.”

  “What kind of help would you like?”

  “I don’t know, Nathan. But not that.”

  “All right. I’ll just sit then.”

  A few moments of tense silence followed, then my mother said, “I’m going to bed.” She said it in a way that made me think she was irritated with my father, with his presence, though what he’d done to make her angry I didn’t know. I heard the floorboards yield under her weight and I went quickly to my bedroom and lay down with the door open. She came up the stairs and went into the bathroom and I heard water run in the sink and heard her brush her teeth and gargle briefly. She crossed the hallway and entered her bedroom and closed the door. My father didn’t follow her upstairs.

  I lay for a long time listening to the wind grab the trees and shake them. I was still wide awake when I heard the front door open and close. I swung my feet off the bed and hurried to the window and saw my father cross the street to the church. He went into the sanctuary and was lost to me in the darkness there.

  In my pajamas and barefoot I went downstairs and out the front door and followed where my father had gone. The night was warm and the wind against my face felt fevered. I climbed the steps to the church and saw that the door had not shut completely and the wind had pried it open just enough for me to slip inside without a sound. My eyes had already adjusted to the night and in the dark of the sanctuary which was far from total I saw the black shape of my father at the altar. His back was to me. He struck a match and put the flame to the wicks of the candles that flanked the altar cross on either side. He blew out the match and knelt before the altar and bent himself so low that his forehead touched the floor. He stayed that way a long time and was so silent I thought maybe he’d fainted.

  “Captain?”

  Gus stepped in from the doorway that led to the basement stairs. My father rocked back and came upright. “What is it, Gus?”

  “Nothing. Heard someone up here, thought it might be you. Thought maybe you’d like some company. Was I wrong?”

  “No, Gus. Come in.”

  I sank quickly to the floor and made myself small in the shadows near the front door. My father put his back against the altar and Gus joined him and leaned back too in a way that seemed familiar and relaxed.

  My father said, “I did come looking for company, Gus. I hoped God might have something to say to me.”

  “Like what, Captain?”

  My father was quiet and because the candles were on the altar behind him his face was in shadow and lost to me. Finally he said, “I’ve been asking the same questions of him over and over. Why Ariel? Why not me? The sins are mine. Why punish her? Or Ruth? This is killing her, Gus. And the boys, they don’t understand, they just hurt. And it’s my fault. All my fault.”

  Gus said, “You think God operates that way, Captain? Hell, that sure ain’t what you’ve been telling me all these years. And as for those sins of yours, I’m guessing you mean the war, and haven’t you always told me that you and me and the others we could be forgiven? You told me you believed it as surely as you believed the sun would rise every morning. And I’ve got to tell you, Captain, you seemed so certain that you got me believing it too.” Gus sat forward and looked at his hands which were wax-pale in the candlelight. “I can’t see any way that the God you’ve talked yourself blue to me and everyone else about would be responsible for what happened to Ariel. I can’t believe God would hurt that beautiful ch
ild in order to call you to account. No, sir, I don’t believe that for one moment.”

  This seemed odd to me coming from Gus because mostly what I’d always heard from him was a questioning of everything my father spoke for.

  “Seems to me you’re just kind of reeling here, Captain. Like from a punch in the face. When you come around you’ll see that you’ve been right all along. I know I give you a hard time about your religion but damned if I’m not grateful at heart that you believe it. Somebody’s got to. For all the rest of us, Captain, somebody’s got to.”

  Gus stopped talking and I became aware of an odd and disconcerting sound that was growing louder in the sanctuary. I didn’t understand at first what it was or its source, and then I realized that it was my father crying. Huge sobs erupted from him and boomed off the walls. He bent and wept into his hands and Gus leaned to him and held my father dearly.

  And as quietly as I could I crept outside into the night and the wind.

  24

  In light of Ariel’s death, the district superintendent had offered to see to the services in all the churches under my father’s charge that Sunday. My father agreed to this for the early service in Cadbury and the late service in Fosburg, but he insisted on leading the worship at Third Avenue Methodist in New Bremen himself.

  The wind that had raged the night before had blown away the humidity and cleaned the sky and the day was sunny and beautiful. I’m sure services at Cadbury and Fosburg were poorly attended because I saw so many members of those congregations filling the pews of Third Avenue to hear my father preach. Mrs. Klement was there with Peter and I was surprised to see her husband Travis dressed in a rumpled suit and looking ill at ease beside her. Like the others they were curious, I’m sure, what this suffering man could possibly say that was good about God. My mother and Jake had both refused to come and my father would never have forced them. But my grandfather and Liz, who were Lutheran, came with me, and Gus was there and we all sat together in the first pew up front. After forty years I still remember that service well. The processional hymn was A Mighty Fortress which was one of my favorites and although my mother wasn’t present to lead or to lend her clear soprano, the choir sounded lovely. Lorraine Griswold on the organ didn’t miss a note. The scripture lessons were taken from Ecclesiastes and Luke. Bud Sorenson, who was the lay reader and who often stumbled over the text, on that morning read perfectly. And I imagined that they were all so flawless because they wanted to do their best for my mother and my father and in memory of Ariel.

  When it came time for my father to deliver his sermon I was concerned because I hadn’t seen him prepare at all. He stepped up to the pulpit and for a moment simply looked out over the pews, every one of which was full. And then he began.

  “It isn’t Easter,” he said, “but this week has caused me to think a lot about the Easter story. Not the glorious resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday but the darkness that came before. I know of no darker moment in the Bible than the moment Jesus in his agony on the cross cries out, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ Darker even than his death not long after because in death Jesus at last gave himself over fully to the divine will of God. But in that moment of his bitter railing he must have felt betrayed and completely abandoned by his father, a father he’d always believed loved him deeply and absolutely. How terrible that must have been and how alone he must have felt. In dying all was revealed to him, but alive Jesus like us saw with mortal eyes, felt the pain of mortal flesh, and knew the confusion of imperfect mortal understanding.

  “I see with mortal eyes. My mortal heart this morning is breaking. And I do not understand.

  “I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ ”

  Here my father paused and I thought he could not continue. But after a long moment he seemed to gather himself and went on.

  “When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken?

  “I will tell you what’s left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them.

  “In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise that it will light your way.

  “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.

  “Jesus suffered the dark night and death and on the third day he rose again through the grace of his loving father. For each of us, the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice.

  “I invite you, my brothers and sisters, to rejoice with me in the divine grace of the Lord and in the beauty of this morning, which he has given us.”

  My father’s eyes swept over the congregants who filled the pews silent as dandelions with upturned faces. He smiled and said, “Amen.”

  And after a moment Gus beside me called out, “Amen.” Which was a most un-Methodist thing to do. And then I heard another voice echo, “Amen,” and I turned and saw that it was Travis Klement who had spoken and I watched as his wife laid her hand lovingly on his arm.

  I left the church that morning feeling, as I do to this day, that I had experienced a miracle, the one promised by my father who had spoken a truth profound and simple. I walked across the street to our house where my mother sat with Emil Brandt in the living room with the curtains drawn against the morning light. I went upstairs to my bedroom where Jake lay on his mattress, still in his pajamas.

  I sat down on my bed and said, “There’s something I haven’t told you. Something important.”

  “Yeah?” he replied with no interest at all.

  “You’re my best friend, Jake. You’re my best friend in the whole world. You always have been and you always will be.”

  I could hear outside the calls of the congregation one to another bidding good-bye and the sounds of doors slamming and of wheels crushing gravel as cars left the church parking lot. Jake had been staring up at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. He didn’t move. Finally the sounds from across the street died out completely and it was just Jake and me and silence.

  “I’m afraid you’ll die, too,” he finally said.

  “I won’t ever die, I promise.”

  His eyes slid from the ceiling to my face. “Everybody dies,” he said.

  “I won’t. I’ll be the first person who never died. And you’ll be the second.”

  I thought that at least he would smile but he didn’t. He looked serious and thoughtful and he said, “I won’t mind dying. I just don’t want you to die.”

  “Cross my heart, Jake, I’m not going to die. I’m not going to leave you ever.”

  He sat up slowly and swung his legs off the bed. “You better not,” he said. Then he said, “Everything feels wrong, Frank.”

  “Everything?”

  “The daytime. The nighttime. Eating. Just lying here thinking. Nothing feels right. I keep waiting for her to come up the stairs and poke her head into our room and, you know, goof around with
us.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  “What do we do, Frank?”

  “I think we just keep going on. We keep doing what we always do and someday it’ll feel right again.”

  “Will it? Really?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  He nodded. Then he said, “What do you want to do today?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, “but you might not like it.”

  • • •

  My grandfather and Liz had gone home after church. To rest awhile, Liz had told us. She’d promised they would be back later to fix supper. They’d been with us constantly since Ariel first disappeared and I realize now looking back that they must have been sucked dry by our need and must have been hurting too but they never said a word of complaint.

  Jake and I found them sitting in the shade of their long front porch. They were surprised to see us and looked concerned until I explained why we were there.

  “It’s the Sabbath,” my grandfather said. “A day of rest.”

  “Honest, it’ll be more restful than sitting home all day,” I told him.

  Jake and I set to the yard work that in a normal week would have been done the day before and while I worked I looked often toward the shaded porch. Ariel’s disappearance and death had given me a different picture of my grandfather and Liz. Liz I’d always liked but I liked her more now. My grandfather, I realized, I’d badly misjudged. I’d always seen him in light of my own understanding which was like a match flame in a huge dark. My grandfather had his faults. He was demanding. He was proud. He could be narrow-minded. He expected a big deal to be made over the things he gave as gifts. But he loved his family, that was clear.

  When we’d finished and had put away the yard things we went to the porch where Liz had a big pitcher set out with some glasses. She offered us lemonade.

  My grandfather looked at his lawn which was buttery green in the afternoon sun and smelled of freshly cut grass. He said, “I don’t know that I’ve ever told you boys how much I appreciate the job you do. I get comments all the time on how good this property of mine looks.”