Jewelweed (45 page)

“I need to leave the church,” said Winnie, breaking the silence.

“Even Spinoza couldn't give up religion,” said Blake. “He was excommunicated from his own Jewish community, cast out like a diseased dog. Then he was renounced by the official Christian church. But not even Spinoza could stop worrying about the maddening mystery of spirit and matter. He couldn't stop trying to find a way to see the world as a good place, to find the sacred in the ordinary and live a decent life. The only way to really quit religion is never to have begun thinking about it. The only people who can walk away are those whose imaginations never embraced the idea that behind everything real is something more real, more alive, and more profoundly beautiful. Only people who never thought that way in the first place can be free from religion. People like you and me are doomed.”

“I forgot how much I enjoyed talking to you,” said Winnie, smiling as she reached for another grape. “You're right, of course. It isn't possible for me to leave my faith, though I admit that when I first thought about leaving the church, it seemed like the same thing. You're right. I just can't preach any longer.”

“Keep talking,” said Blake, drumming his fingers on the wooden tabletop.

“I'm tired of constantly defending what religion and faith are supposed to be. The ministry forces you to do that. Your success depends on mounting a strong defense, and then what you end up defending are often institutional practices, hierarchical ways of thinking, ceremonies and rituals that you don't even believe in yourself. I mean, maybe you believed in them at one time, but even after you grow out of them, you keep on defending them. Or at least it feels that way to me. The same institutions that first point us toward higher ground later prevent us from reaching it. Maybe other preachers don't have the same problems, but I keep finding myself doing things that embarrass me whenever I think about them.”

“Be specific.”

“I want the people who pay my salary to approve of me. I'll say things, do things, and even find myself thinking things that will please them. I also discover myself shading what I know to be true in order to conform to what they like to hear. It's not really lying, but it's not completely honest either. Isn't that pathetic?”

“No.”

“And worst of all, I find myself all too often doing conniving things—arranging a committee meeting in a particular way, for instance, including details that present me in a favorable light, or pretending I'm better than I am—in order to increase my hold over my congregation. I act in ways intended primarily to make me more secure, to bring me more power.”

“How much power can you possibly have in such a little church?” scoffed Blake.

“Power is power.”

“Do you still have your own private faith?”

“Of course, and I've been telling myself that for years. I still have my own private faith, but how much does that matter when so little of my time is spent with it? I mean, the life I always wanted to live is escaping me. I want to live in a more authentic way, to believe in nothing yet have faith in everything.”

“I see what you mean,” said Blake, standing and pacing back and forth between the refrigerator and table. “It's like prison. Everything about it
conditions you in exactly one way—to make you bitter, angry, and mean. It's part of the design. The police who bring you in, the warden, the guards, even the other prisoners and people on the outside—everyone expects you to be bitter, angry, and mean. And if you relax for even a minute, that's the shape you'll take. If you don't pay attention, don't fight back, that's exactly what will happen. The forces are constant, like gravity almost. The only way to be true to yourself in prison is to persist in remaining a decent and compassionate person. I failed many times, to be sure—but at least I was always aware of that.”

“I don't see how that's at all the same,” said Winnie.

“Well, it is,” said Blake, sitting down again and looking across at her with blazing eyes. “I don't know how to explain it, but it's the same.”

“Too much of my life is spent fighting that particular fight,” said Winnie.

“What else would you do?”

“I don't know. And my family does need the income.”

“I'll bet if you talk to Jacob about this, he'd tell you to quit. He'd want you to do whatever you think is right. He'd insist on it, actually. He loves you.”

“I know.”

“You could begin by living on grapes,” said Blake, opening the refrigerator and taking out a sack. “Here.”

“Thank you,” said Winnie, standing up from the table.

“I didn't mean to suggest that you leave.”

“I know, but I should be going.”

“Wait,” said Blake, “I'll walk you to your car.”

Blake grabbed his coat and waited for her by the door. Winnie had never taken off her coat, and she walked over toward him. They stood close together in the doorway. Their eyes found each other, and with an astonishment that didn't really astonish her, Winnie noticed a monstrous surge of energy. An organic gate snapped open and a path of passion appeared, filled with slippery events that would not have been possible before. A swelling physical sensation threatened to crowd out all her past. She could feel her face flushing, her heart beating faster.

Blake's face flushed as well and he reached out with both hands. Winnie put her hands into his and Blake drew her toward him.

“Mrs. Helm,” he said, “you've honored me with your visit. As long as I live, I'll never forget it.”

Then he walked her out to her car and Winnie drove back home. As she followed her headlights around darkened corners, she smiled upon recognizing that there clearly was a submerged part of her, beyond the control of her personality, that never slept. In fact, it was always planning new ways of engaging her. She drove faster, hoping to preserve the excitement aroused by the unexpected encounter in the doorway for later use with her husband.

Jacob was waiting up for her, reading a magazine.

“After Bible study, I went over to visit Blake,” she explained. “I wanted to thank him in person.”

“I thought that's probably where you were.”

“He was out riding his motorcycle, breaking his curfew.”

“I know. He's going to get in trouble. What's in the bag?”

“Grapes.”

A
fter work, Blake rode to Red Plain and waited in the cement plant's parking lot for Bee to come out. When she did, he asked if she had time to talk.

“I'd like that,” she said.

They walked several blocks and sat down on a bench along the sidewalk. Blake bought two cans of soda from a machine along the way, and they drank them overlooking the back of the feed mill and the front of a secondhand store. Light traffic moved slowly along Main Street, one block away. Occasionally a car or van would turn off and drive past them along the alleyway. Most of the drivers waved, and Bee waved back.

“Let me say right out, I'm not comfortable talking about this,” said Blake. “I'm not. But I have to, and I didn't know who else—”

“It's about time,” interrupted Bee, smiling uncomfortably and sipping from her can of cola. “How did it go?”

“How did what go?”

“You must have seen Danielle.”

“How did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess. How did it go?”

“Not very well,” said Blake.

“Maybe she just needs a little time to get used to the idea of seeing you again.”

“It seemed a lot worse than that. She knocked my bike over and stomped on the tank. I pulled out the dents and polished them down, but one left a crease. You can still see it, even with new paint. It looks terrible. I'll show you.”

Blake ran back to his motorcycle, rode it over next to her, and parked it.

“See?” he said, sitting back down on the bench.

“Sorry, I don't.”

“It's right there when the light's right. It's awful.”

“Maybe you should have called before you went over.”

“Then I wouldn't have seen her at all.”

“Did you meet Ivan?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Nice kid. He looks a lot like her.”

“Who else does he look like?”

Blake frowned and rubbed his hand through his hair.

“Look,” he said. “I need to tell you something, but I don't know how to say it. Prison does that to you. Those few good memories you carry in there, you think about them so much they become hard to talk about. They're like private rituals. But this is important, probably the most important thing in my life.”

“Okay,” said Bee, waiting.

Blake turned and looked directly at her. “I love Danielle,” he said, as if he were confessing that he had tuberculosis.

“I thought that might be true,” said Bee.

“You couldn't have,” he said. “I've never told anyone, not even her. I've never said those words out loud before, and I might never do it again. You couldn't have known.”

“I love your father,” said Bee. “So I'm at least a little familiar with the feeling.”

Blake's face went blank. What she just said had nothing whatsoever to do with what he was talking about. Absolutely nothing. The consuming passion he felt for Danielle could not possibly be associated with any love she might have for his father. The two were simply incompatible. The latter type of love was buoyant, friendly, cheerful, and familial; a comforting convenience, good for everyone involved. The former was a smoldering febrile disease, heavy, sorrowful, alienating, and cursed, the greatest suffering Blake could imagine. No one else had ever experienced it before, certainly not in the same way, and if they had they probably hadn't survived very
long. The word used to talk about the two feelings was the same, admittedly, but it referred to planets with completely different temperate zones.

“I don't care who she might have slept with,” he declared. “That means nothing to me. It means less than nothing. You have to understand. I love her, everything about her.”

“I always thought Ivan looked a little like you,” said Bee.

“What? Like me?” The blank stare returned. “No.”

“Yes he does.”

“No.”

An uncomfortable silence settled between them, as if thoughts were burning like old tires inside it.

Then the bones in Blake's face dissolved.

“God, I never thought of that,” he mumbled.

“This surprises me,” said Bee.

“What a fool I am,” he replied. The rest of the bones in his body softened and he sagged on the bench like an empty jacket and pair of pants.

He looked away from Bee. At ground level, life throbbed on a more manageable scale. A red ant hurriedly carried a yellow speck of something through a dense forest of grass blades, followed by another ant of the same color and size that wasn't carrying anything. They moved in a jiggling manner, lurching to the right and then the left, but generally heading toward the sidewalk. An identical third ant joined them, and they jiggled around briefly in a six-legged circle dance before moving off in a different direction, and disappearing into a patch of clover.

“Can I talk?” asked Bee.

“Please do.”

“When Dart came to work at Cement, I think it was her first real job after her sister committed suicide—”

“Stop right there,” said Blake. “Stop right there. I knew she had a sister, but I never heard anything about her sister offing herself.”

“You should have. You probably should have known a whole lot more about her than you did.”

“She never talked about herself.”

“You should have asked her, Blake.”

“Why did her sister kill herself?”

“I don't know for sure, and I'm not sure anyone else does either. She
dropped out of school, and people always said her stepfather had put her in a family way.”

“Surely not.”

“That's what people said.”

“Why didn't Danielle tell me?”

“She probably didn't trust you enough yet.”

“She should have.”

“Should, should, should.”

“What else?”

“After Danielle was hired they put her in the warehouse, where we keep the mix, stone, and sand. It's rough, dirty work. They also used her to clean tracks and inside the mixers—another job no one else wanted. She kept to herself, ate her lunch alone, hardly ever said a word for the first six or eight months.

“About a year later,” Bee continued, “the plant manager brought Danielle out of the warehouse and assigned her to work in the office with me. That's when I got to know her.”