“Greetings, Margaret,” he says as I get out of the car. I have to walk around and open the door for Cage.
“Come on, son.” I tug at his sleeve. “Smell the fresh country air.”
Father David is halfway down the walk by the time Cage has gotten out of the car. “Hello, Cage. Welcome.”
“Hey, Father.” He squints in the bright light. I put my arm through his and walk him up the sidewalk.
“You’re looking better.” Father David engulfs him with his big arms and the folds of his habit. “Your eyes are clearer.”
Cage looks up at the old monk’s face with his brow furrowed.
“I think I’ll walk to the pond, see if the water lilies are in bloom,” I say. “I’ll come back in forty-five minutes or so.”
“You don’t want to take communion?” Father David asks.
“No thank you. It’s just so beautiful out in the woods today. The dogwood just makes my spirit soar. You two go ahead without me.”
“The doctor told me that I must wear these outside all the time now, especially as I am going back to Africa.” Father David puts on those big, square sunglasses that eye clinics give you and leads me around the house to the garden, with his arm around my shoulder.
A raven is watching me from an elm tree. Father David sees me trapped by its eyes and says, “He comes here every day about now. He scares the other birds away from the feeder. A greedy fellow but not a demon.” He leads me to a wrought-iron patio chair. “Is that what you were thinking?”
I nod, sitting down on the edge of a seat.
Father David pulls the sides of his robe, settles in the chair opposite. “St. Anthony was the first Christian hermit, a wealthy young man who took Christ literally. ‘Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’ He gave it all away and went off to scrabble in the desert. His disciples saw the bruises from the nights he wrestled demons.”
“You have to admit that sounds depressingly like a bunch of Deadheads on acid freaking out in the Mojave,” some part of my brain says, then I hear myself half laugh.
Father David doesn’t smile. “Well, I don’t know about any Deadheads, but St. Anthony was also a guerrilla in Alexandria who defended Christians persecuted by Emperor Maximinus. Are Deadheads some variety of hippie?”
I clear my dry throat. “Yes. Sort of.”
“Well, back in the sixties, when I first read about the communes, the orgies, LSD, I thought there were demons at work. Why can’t a demon take the shape of a little pill? Demons are archetypes. They reside in everyone. Perhaps St. Anthony’s bruises were psychosomatic or self-inflicted as he was flung about by his inner demons. The point is that demons exist in some form.”
“Can you perform an exorcism, Father?”
“I could, but I don’t think it would work on your particular demons. No, I think a confession and reconciliation would be more effective.” His big fingers make a little steeple over his chest. I wish I could see his eyes. Red coals glow through the dark plastic for a second, then I tell myself, No, it’s just Father David. You’ve known him since you were a boy. He used to stop by the house in Virginia. “Cage, is there something that you’ve been keeping back that’s burning in your conscience? A sin for which you have not forgiven yourself? Perhaps that is your demon.”
He leans forward, takes off his glasses, and holds my eyes for a long time, as if his eyes were searching my soul for the dark secret I have carried with me for three years. He knows it’s there, something I’ve never told a soul. He can see its shadow in my eyes. The proof of my wickedness, the sin that shall damn me forever unforgivably.
I open my mouth. “I . . .”
“Yes.” His eyes do not blink. He smiles and reaches his long hand across and pats my knee, then makes the steeple on his chest, leaning back in his chair but holding my eyes.
“I . . .” I can’t reveal the degenerate act. “I confessed to you last time, Father.”
“You confessed everything?” He smiles and raises his arms in the sunshine. “Doesn’t spring smell wonderful, all the new life, the rebirth and regeneration?”
The sky and trees, everything is black and white. I glance across the flagstones at the crosses he has fashioned from wood he found rotting on the forest floor. Not symbols of resurrection, but the idle amusement of an old fool. I don’t want to share this secret with him. It won’t change anything. Maybe he will report it to the Order. More evidence to condemn me.
“Ah, look,” Father David whispers. A chipmunk pauses in a ray of sunlight across the garden, just basking for a few moments, hawk food. “It is a shame that you can take no pleasure in the light, the coming of spring. Must be hell to walk through life with no joy, only sorrow and regret.”
“I feel like Munch’s guy etched in the eternal howl in
The Scream
, fixed in a landscape of horror.”
“Poor soul.” Father David shakes his head. “Did you share everything with Nick?”
How does the monk sense that Nick has been coming to me while I sleep, not to comfort, but to accuse?
“What are you thinking about, Cage? What was that strange expression?” Father David shakes my leg.
“A dream.” I try to relax my face.
“What sin is troubling you, dear boy? You can be absolved.”
I start at a noise in the woods, twist around.
“It was only a deer.” Father David hands me a small leather-bound Book of Common Prayer and stands up. “The rite of reconciliation, shall we begin?”
I open to a page marked with a ribbon attached to the spine.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness,” he begins, and I join him, my voice halting at first but then starting to flow. “Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions only too well, and my sin is ever before me.”
“Pray for me, a sinner,” I read.
“May God in his love enlighten your heart, that you may remember in truth all your sins and his unfailing mercy,” Father David says, watching me.
“Amen,” I stutter.
“Now in the presence of Christ, and of me, his minister, confess your sins with a humble and obedient heart to Almighty God, our Creator and our Redeemer.” He sits down in his chair and I kneel a few feet away on the slate flagstones.
I find my place on my page, begin, my voice shaking more as I go along. “But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.” I catch my breath. “Especially I confess to you . . .”
I glance up. The old monk’s kind eyes catch mine, plead for me to tell the truth. “Especially I confess . . . I killed Nick.”
“No, Cage.” Father David leans forward. “Nick was hit by a drunk driver. You were on the other side of the country.”
“This isn’t a delusion. I’m not saying that I was there. I talked to him the night he died. He was a mess. Monica, the girl that he’d been living with, had just moved out. He was heartbroken. Wrecked. He kept going on about how good she was. I was trying to make him feel better. I told him that he would find someone better. He was better off without her. She wasn’t perfect. I told him that she had slept once with me when we were both drunk. I knew as soon as I said it that I was killing him. Nick went dead quiet. Then he told me I would pay and hung up. That was the last time that I spoke to him. He wouldn’t have been on the bridge driving at four in the morning if—”
“That’s not true, Cage.” Father David puts his hands on my shoulders. “If he was heartbroken, he was upset and restless and could have been anywhere. A drunk could have hit him anywhere. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t your fault.” He shakes me gently. “Believe me.” He nods toward the book in my hand. “Your only sin was fornication.”
“Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance.” My voice wavers. “Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Father David stands, says, “Do you then forgive those who have sinned against you?”
“I forgive them.”
Father David places his hand on my head. “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, forgive you all your offenses.” He makes the sign of the cross on my forehead. “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I absolve you from all your sins. Go in peace. The Lord has put away your sins.”
“Thanks be to God.” I feel my forehead. It tingles where the monk touched it as if he had rubbed Tiger Balm on my third eye. The tension gripping my body floods away all at once. I look around the woods and realize that I am no longer afraid. It’s just the Haldol and the placebo effect of the confession, I think, just the irrational rapture that any other yokel feels when he’s baptized and born again. It won’t last. I stand up and smile. I laugh and hug the big old monk. I am forgiven.
A
s I walk through the blooming dogwood and laurel onto the lawn of the hermitage and see Cage standing tall, his hands on his hips, smiling, some maternal instinct makes my heart leap, telling me that he’s come to a turning point. I’d begun to abandon hope and imagine that he would spend the rest of his life in an institution. Now, suddenly, his old self’s returned, my son, the boy I bore into this world, the son who exasperated me the worst but made me laugh the hardest. There he is. Reborn. Born again in Christ, if it’s Father David’s work. The miracle that I have been praying for, that churches across the South have been praying for every Sunday for so many months. Cage is back. I can feel it from fifty feet. I want to dance a jig.
Drawing closer, I see him laugh from deep down, the way he used to, his head tilted back.
“Hello, pilgrims,” I call out, carrying branches of dogwood dripping white flowers that I have clipped for a centerpiece on the dining room table. They turn and watch me approach, both of them smiling. “Cage, I haven’t heard that delightful sound for such a long, dry spell.”
“Ol’ Father David is a shaman,” Cage says. “He’s got the cure for evil.”
“After all those years in Africa.” Father David smiles slyly. “Where man was born.”
We all laugh. I look at the joy on Cage’s face and it’s hard to believe the transformation. It’s as if he’s shed an old, dry skin and come out in color. The muscles in his face have relaxed and there is light in his eyes, which were caves of despair. Dear God, I pray silently, thank You. Please give us the strength and wisdom to help him heal and carry on. We are grateful and we thank You from the depths of our souls.
Father David pulls back the sleeve of his habit and looks at his cheap black digital watch. “I have another visitor arriving shortly. See y’all soon.”
T
he day after my confession I borrow Mom’s car and drive myself over to a shopping center to get a haircut. It’s the first time I’ve driven since Baton Rouge in December, five months ago, the first haircut I’ve gotten since leaving Taunton six weeks before that. I drive farther downtown to Dr. Fielding’s office. He decides to reduce the antipsychotics by three-quarters and keep the lithium level steady. He asks about the side effects. I tell him my hands still tremble. He tells me that will go away eventually. After the appointment I walk out to the wide brown river gathering America’s water from the Appalachians to the Rockies. Harper is down on the mouth of the delta. I picture Dad and his brother Uncle Ned across the river in Arkansas in the fifties, home from college, working on Granddad Rutledge’s sawmill, Dad dreaming of going out West halfway through the summer to become a smoke jumper in Montana, Uncle Ned, hungover, dreaming of the country girl he met the night before in a bar. Farther west, Nick’s soul left us at the edge of the continent.
There are only a few new towers on the skyline: Morgan Keegan, First Tennessee, National Bank of Commerce. The rest, the tallest, built in the Roaring Twenties, look like prewar buildings in New York. Some are empty, others under renovation. Track is being laid for a new trolley line to go down Main Street, a wide brick boulevard, a twenties look, nostalgia for the country folk come to the big city from Mississippi and Arkansas. On the southern tip of Mud Island, which is really a peninsula hooking out into the river, there’s an amphitheater and the World War II B-17 bomber,
The Memphis Belle
. Farther north on the peninsula is a new zero-lot-line neighborhood of skinny Mark Twain two-stories with a lot of scroll trim mixed in with wider Cape Cod-esque clapboards. I laugh aloud and say to myself, “You’ll fit right in.”
In the want ads I circle jobs in sales—everyone keeps reminding me how personable I am but it’s hard to remember—and construction management, which I’m conversant in, following Dad’s advice to get out of carpentry and use my mind, to get something with security and benefits. He offers to cosign a loan for a car as soon as I find a job. I wonder what to say to prospective employers about being just a semester short of a Vanderbilt law degree
and
an M.B.A. I decide to tell them that I was crushed by student debt and plan on going back but not for two years. Just the thought of the fumes from those marking pens gives me a headache. Typing my résumé out on Dad’s old manual, I laugh to myself at the idea of listing Bridgewater and Taunton.
On Sundays I start going to church with Mom. The first couple of times, I leave before the coffee hour after the service, let Mom ride home with Dad, then I begin to stay and mingle. In the parish hall of the cathedral, which is furnished like a living room with great Oriental rugs across the floor, plump sofas, and wingback chairs, the walls are lined with oil portraits of bishops, back to before the war, one of a Confederate general. Back then they all knew Latin and classical Greek, as Dad does still. It’s easier than I thought to play the role of bishop’s son, exchange pleasantries with the businessmen, make the old ladies laugh, to engage the attention of the single white female Episcopalian.
“My, Mrs. Crawford,” I say to a woman in her late seventies in a floral print dress, her steel-gray hair cut in oval tufts like a poodle’s. “Don’t you look ravishing today?”