A Stranger in the Kingdom (52 page)

“I did, too,” I said. “And when people used to call Dad ‘the press, like when old Hefty Hefner would shoot him a dirty look and say, ‘Shhh! The press will have this all over town'—well, I thought they meant that bloody old Whitlock press of Dad's. For years I wondered how it could get out the door and all over town.”

My father nodded, seeing the logic behind my childhood assumption without really appreciating the humor; but my mother laughed out loud. When she laughed, I saw the wrinkles around her eyes deepen, and then to my great surprise I noticed for the first time that her blond hair had a few streaks of gray in it. I felt a pang of guilt. Somehow, I had been so caught up in the events of the summer and fall and in my own changing life that I had neglected to see this change in her. Although I couldn't remember a time when Dad had not had gray at his temples, it came as a shock to see that Mom, too, was getting older.

Charlie looked at Mom and Athena. Then he looked at me. “Jim, that story you told about the printing press. What was it you called it?”

“The Whitlock?”

“Yeah, the Whitlock. But you used a word to describe it. You called it ‘that
bloody
old Whitlock.' Where'd you pick up that expression?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Some book, probably.”

“What book?”

Charlie had slid out of Elijah's seat and was looking at me intently.

“I don't know what book.
Kidnapped
, maybe. Plus I've heard Nat and his dad use it. They say it all the time. That and ‘blooming.' I got used to hearing it, ‘bloody' this, ‘blooming' that. That's what Resolvèd said in court today, right? That when he looked in the window he heard the minister tell Claire, ‘Shut off that bloody light'?”

Now my father and Charlie and Athena and Mom were
all
staring at me.

“What'd I say? What is it?”

“I'll tell you what it is, mister,” my father said. “I never once heard Walt Andrews use the expression ‘bloody.' ‘Blooming,' yes. ‘Bloody,' no.”

“That globe you and your father were talking about?” Charlie said to me. “It's looking more and more like a box.”

“A box?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said grimly. “Pandora's.”

Still I did not understand.

“Jimmy,” Charlie said quietly, “have you got Nathan's phone number in Montreal?”

“At home,” I said, suddenly remembering that I had intended to call Nat after the first day of the trial.

My brother was already on his way to the door. “In the eloquent words of a certain ex-client of mine, Jim, let's shag ass. I need that phone number and we need Nathan Andrews in Kingdom County—pronto!”

As I hurriedly struggled into my hunting jacket, the phone began to ring. The last thing I heard when I went out the door behind Charlie was my fathers voice saying “Hello. Hello? Damn, Ruth! It's that crank caller again. If I could find out who's doing that and were ten years younger . . .”

 

The next few hours rushed by in a flurry of phone calls, a trip to the train station to check schedules and timetables, and hurried consultations at the Monitor.

As soon as Charlie and I got to the farmhouse, I called Nat and told him that the first day of his dad's trial had gone as well as could be expected. But when he impatiently demanded a specific account of the proceedings, as of course I knew he would, I put Charlie on.

“Hi, buddy,” my brother said in his loud, harsh voice, as though he was talking to somebody at the far end of the farmhouse. “Listen up. The trial's going fine so far, okay? But the time has
definitely
—
definitely
, understand?—come when I need you here. I'll tell you right now that you're very probably going to have to testify in order to help clear your dad. What? No, I don't want you to call him. He'd just order you to stay put. Don't even think of calling. Just get on the train and come, okay? You still willing to do that? Good. No, we'll call you back with the details in half an hour or so.”

We made a flying trip back to the village in Charlie's woody, stopped at the railroad station for a train schedule, and were back at the
Monitor
no more than twenty minutes after we'd rushed out the door to call Nat.

“Mister Baby Johnson! Did you speak with his grandmother? She isn't going to let him come back down here and get caught up in this mess,” Dad said when we told him the news. “If that happens, you'll have to get a subpoena from Forrest Allen. Hell, you'll have to get
extradition
papers to get him out of Canada.”

“Maybe not,” Mom said. “Why don't
I
call Nat's grandmother? I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she is completely understanding.”

I can't recall everything Mom said in her conversation with Nat's grandmother, but in her serene way, while my father paced back and forth across the room like Vermont's legendary last mountain lion, she explained that Reverend Andrews was now in deeply serious trouble and we had reason to believe that Nat's testimony might be able to help him.

Mom listened to the voice of Nat's grandmother in Montreal. After perhaps half a minute she gave Charlie a sudden smile.

“He's coming!” she mouthed silently, and after thanking the grandmother she handed the phone back to Charlie to give Nat the departure time of the Early Bird Special from Montreal

“Ruthie, you did it,” Charlie said when he hung up. And he picked Mom right up off the floor and hugged her and swung her around like a square dance partner.

“For heaven's sake, put her down before she has a stroke,” my father said. “And quit calling her Ruthie!”

For all Dad's concern for my “finely tuned” mother, he seemed impressed by her persuasiveness.

As for me, I was still in the dark concerning the reason for these phone calls and the urgent need for Nat to return and appear in court. All I knew for certain as I trudged upstairs to my loft chamber an hour later, dog-tired, more tired than I could ever remember being, was that I was very relieved that my friend was coming back to the Kingdom, however temporarily, and for whatever purpose.

It was going to be another fine day, with the splendid fall foliage at its peak, glowing with an intense internal light of its own, though today the morning haze, rather than muting the colors, caused them to burn with a fierce vehemence I found disconcerting. Mom and I were to meet the Early Bird at the train station, while Charlie and Dad met with the minister at the courthouse to break the news of Nat's imminent arrival. This was a good arrangement. Of all us Kinnesons, Mom was the one Nat trusted the most, and since Dad was the minister's best friend in all Kingdom County, he could talk him into cooperating with Charlie's plan for Nat to testify if anyone could. That was essential now since just before Mom and I had left the shop the night before, Charlie had said that he'd decided to put both Reverend Andrews and Nat on the stand today.

The pink Scotch granite blocks of the courthouse and Academy sparkled softly in the hazy sunshine, suffusing the Common with a rosy light as Mom and I headed down the sidewalk toward the train station. The clock on the courthouse tower said 7:02. The Early Bird hooted at the trestle north of town, followed immediately by the rumble and the single bright headlamp—almost brighter by day, it seemed, than by night—of the blue and yellow and silver engine pulling eight passenger cars, a mail coach and a caboose. My mother surreptitiously took out her compact, frowned, then hastily shoved it back into her pocketbook.

The platform vibrated under my shoes with the train's approach, and the engine screeched and hissed into the station. Inside the cars, passengers were reading or tilted back asleep or looking incuriously out the windows. For perhaps thirty seconds nothing happened. The big diesel locomotive throbbed powerfully, the platform vibrated sympathetically, the passengers continued to read or sleep or look with bored expressions out the windows. A horrible thought crossed my mind. What if Nat hadn't come, after all?

Then the door of the third car opened and my friend stepped out onto the platform.

He was thinner than I remembered him. And he looked older, too, maybe because he was wearing a necktie and his blue school jacket with the school crest. He was carrying a leather overnight bag with wide straps and tarnished gold-colored buckles, and as he walked toward us across the platform he looked as tired as I felt.

I was tongue-tied and didn't know what to say or do. But my mother went right up to Nat and gave him a big hug and a kiss, just as though she were welcoming Charlie or me back from a long absence. “Welcome back, Nathan,” she said. “We're all so glad you came.”

Nat smiled wearily. “How about my father, Mrs. Kinneson? Does he know I'm here?”

“He will in a few minutes if he doesn't already,” Mom said. “He'll be delighted, too.”

“I hope so,” Nat said, and turned to me. “So how are you, Kinneson? I see congratulations are in order.”

“Congratulations?”

“You've grown three inches since I saw you. Your big brother better watch out. If this keeps up, you're going to break all his athletic records at the school, eh?”

Nat gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder, and I laughed and jabbed him back, relieved that the tension had been broken. At the same time I was filled with admiration for a friend who, like his father, could extract a gracious sentiment out of all the fatigue and anger and uncertainty he must have felt. Then and always, there was a genuine dignity about both the Andrewses, father and son, a determination not to be abashed by anything, however unpleasant or unfair, that our town could deal out to them. I could not have named the quality at the time. But certainly it was human dignity, founded on decent human conduct.

The Early Bird was pulling out of the station. It gave a long, alluring hoot as it tumbled through the lumberyard of the American Heritage Mill, but for once I didn't wish myself aboard it. And although I knew that the hard part of the day had not yet begun, I was very happy to be with my friend Nat Andrews again.

Charlie and Dad were meeting with Reverend Andrews in the sheriff's office on the first floor of the courthouse, and Sheriff White was sitting in a straight-back chair, on guard just outside the closed office door. When he saw Mom and Nat and me, he broke into a big horse-toothed smile. “Well, if it isn't young Andrews!” he said, jumping to his feet and thrusting out his hand as though he and Nat had been good friends over the years. “Good to see you, son! Dad Andrews is expecting you.”

Even then I suppose Sheriff White was currying our goodwill just in case something went haywire with the prosecution of Reverend Andrews. Nat never so much as glanced at the sheriff, now making some sort of weird herky-jerky gestures to me. He was pointing first to one ankle, then to the other, bent over and flapping his long arms around his lower legs, tying himself all up in knots and silently mouthing something. For a moment I thought the man had gone completely off his rocker. Then Nat was through the door like a shot, with Mom and me right behind him.

Reverend Andrews was sitting next to a low radiator in front of the window overlooking the common. Dad was standing at the opposite side of the room and Charlie was sitting in the sheriff's swivel desk chair with his feet propped on the corner of the desk. Nat had stopped short just inside the door. He was staring at his father, who for the first time since the trial had started, and probably since he was arrested on the steps of his church, was smiling a genuinely happy smile.

“Nathan,” he said, half rising. “Nathan!”

In an odd, awkward motion, Reverend Andrews stood up. As he did so, he accidentally knocked over his chair. Incongruously, it occurred to me that this was the very first uncoordinated movement I had ever seen him make. And although he was not an openly emotional man and had always maintained a sort of affectionate aloofness, even in his bearing toward his own son, he now said Nathan's name again, and with unmistakable love and feeling in his expressive voice. He took half a step toward Nat. Again he appeared uncharacteristically awkward, as though fighting back great emotion. Then he was grinning that same amused, friendly, yet slightly detached and ironical grin I knew so well. “I'd come over and give you a hug, son,” he said. “But I'm afraid I can't.”

“Jesus!” Nat said suddenly. “Jesus Christ, Dad! The bastards have got you chained like a bloody slave!”

Then he was across the room and sobbing in his father's arms, and Reverend Andrews was standing awkwardly, holding Nat and patting his shaking shoulders.

“Let's get the hell out of here and give them a minute alone together,” my father said, and he and Charlie started for the door.

For a moment, though, all I could do was stare with horror at the heavy iron ring around Reverend Andrews' leg and the short chain manacling him tight to the radiator as he tried to comfort his son.

 

“Sir, would you please state your full name and profession?”

“Reverend Walter Andrews. I'm a Presbyterian minister.”

“Let's begin right at the beginning, Reverend Andrews. Where and when were you born?”

“Toronto, Canada, on January twenty-third, 1912.”

“Would you please summarize your education?”

“I attended grammar school and secondary school at St. Gilbert-on-the-Lake. St. Gilbert is a private Presbyterian Academy about twenty miles from Toronto. I took undergraduate studies in history and literature at the University of Toronto and received my divinity degree from the Presbyterian seminary affiliated with that university.”

Step by step, my brother led the minister through his career as an RCAF chaplain, his service in France during World War II, his medals for bravery, his most recent tour of duty with the United Nations forces in Korea.