Keeper of the Doves (10 page)

Papa nodded.

“Mr. Tom is injured?” Now she got up purposefully. “You must bring him here to the house. Birdie!”

Birdie was still standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her apron twisted out of recognition.

Papa shook his head. “It's too late.”

“Dead?” Mama sank back into her chair. “Oh, no. No!”

Papa said nothing.

“I'm trying to remember the last time I saw him alive,” Mama said.

I didn't have to try to remember. I had seen him last night turning away from those hurtful words,
Mr. Tominski is a murderer!
a shadow in the moonlight, going home. I thought he had been heading toward his doves, but now I knew he had been heading away from us forever.

Aunt Pauline broke the silence. She said, “I trust you all remember that I dreamed of a graveyard. I knew someone would die. I'm just glad it wasn't one of—”

“Pauline, please!” Mama said.

“—us!”

Papa sighed. “The sheriff's waiting for me. I'm going into town. I don't know when I'll be home.”

Uncle William rose. “I'll go with you, Albert.”

“I'd be grateful for your company,” Papa said.

He crossed the room, kissed Mama's cheek, and then he and Uncle William departed.

I glanced across the table to where the Bellas sat, side by side. They seemed deflated. Their faces showed none of the satisfaction I had expected, instead a sort of disappointment, as if they had been cheated of their revenge. Perhaps they felt they had had no active part in a train accident.

I would not be the one to tell them that they had.

X
marks the spot.

I lay in bed, overcome with an emotion I could not name. There was probably a word for the way I felt, but feelings were the hardest things to find a word for.

As I lay there, The Willows took the form of a giant map, covered with Xs.

X
—the spot where Mr. Tom got off the train years ago.

X
—where he found my wounded father and carried him to safety.

X
—his home in the chapel where he lived for twenty-five years.

X
—the stump where he sat, laughing, while the doves flew over his head.

X
—the bench in the cemetery, where he sat grinning his gap-toothed smile, and I took his photograph.

X
—where my sisters and I lay under the stars and Mr. Tom heard himself called a murderer.

And the final
X
—his grave, where we had his funeral this afternoon.

“Surely,
surely
,” Aunt Pauline had said, “you are not going to bury him in the family cemetery!”

Papa said, “I am.”

“But that is for family.”

“Mr. Tom is family. Those were our father's exact words. ‘Mr. Tom is family.' Our father didn't say, ‘Mr. Tom is like family.' ”

“I never heard Father say that. And I, for one, could not rest easy in my grave, knowing that that man lay in the same sacred place.”

“Then I am sorry to tell you, dear sister, that you will not rest easy,” Papa said.

It was Papa who led the brief ceremony. He wore his white linen suit. He held his hands behind his back, the fingers so tightly clasped that his knuckles were whiter than his suit. His head was bowed.

Aunt Pauline and Mama sat on the bench. Aunt Pauline was stern and indignant. Mama was tearful, but I thought perhaps her tears were not so much for Mr. Tominski as for her suffering and inconsolable husband.

The Bellas did not attend. Grandmama and Uncle William had taken them into town.

Abigail and Augusta began the service with a song, for once in perfect harmony.

My thoughts drifted back to the last time I had heard my sisters sing, the time I had seen Mr. Tominski's smiling face at the window. I was saddened by the thought of my needless fears.

“Greater love,” Papa began, “hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”

Papa then spoke about how Mr. Tom, a fugitive from justice, had risked capture to save him. This was the first time I had heard Mr. Tom was a fugitive, and I was still wondering about that when Papa said, “I believe Amie has a poem she would like to read.”

I unrolled my sheet of paper. The air around me seemed changed, hard to breath. At that moment we heard the mournful sound of the train. Ever since Mr. Tominski's accident, the engineer had been blowing his whistle from twenty miles away, clearing the tracks, trying to prevent another tragedy.

I took a deep breath. All the graves bore flowers for the occasion, but on this sad day even the flowers seemed to scent the air with unhappiness.

“Amie,” Papa prompted.

I read.

Papa nodded to Abigail and Augusta, and they began a final hymn.

Papa began to weep. He put his hands over his face and his shoulders shook.

So, I thought, there are two times in a man's life when he cries—when he gains a son and when he loses a friend.

The last verse brought tears to all our eyes.

When the song ended, the women and children went back into the house. We moved through the empty rooms in silence, listening to the clumps of earth being shoveled into Mr. Tominski's grave.

“Y
our poem was fine, Amie.”

“I wish it could have been better.”

“It was fine.”

“Papa, I've been thinking about what you said at the funeral. Can I ask you a question?”

“You ask too many questions, Amie.”

“How else can I learn, Papa?”

We were back behind the chapel, where the doves cooed in their cages. The way the limbs of the trees arched over our heads made it seem like an outdoor chapel. Behind us, Mr. Tom's chapel had been closed, the door and windows nailed shut.

“At the funeral you said Mr. Tom was a fugitive.”

“Yes.”

“A fugitive from what?”

“I don't mind telling you now, Amen, but I wouldn't want it to go any further.”

“It won't.”

“Well, like a lot of young Polish immigrants, Mr. Tom came to this country to work in the Kentucky coal mines. There was a murder—I don't know the details—but Mr. Tom was the lead suspect. He escaped before he could be arrested.”

“Did the police come after him?”

“They didn't track him to The Willows, if that's what you mean, but all his life he was afraid they would. He would never go into town. He hid from visitors. He relied on me for everything.”

Papa put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. “I think that night when, as you told me, he must have heard the twins call him a murderer, all he could think of was what had happened in Kentucky.”

“And he was afraid all over again.”

“He was a very simple man, Amen, and his mind in many ways was like a child's.”

“Do you think he did kill Scout?”

“Maybe he kicked the dog. I don't know. The night he escaped, there were dogs after him, tracking him, and I don't think he had much love for dogs after that.”

“Anyway, Papa, I'm very, very glad he saved your life.”

“I am too, Amie.”

After a minute I said, “So that's another thing he was—a fugitive. How many things can one man be? Aunt Pauline said he was a drifter, a hobo. Mama called him a harmless old man. Grandmama called him a dove magician. You said he was a friend. I think he was a hero for saving your life. Can a man be so many things?”

“So many things—and more.”

He stepped back to the dove cage and opened it. The doves flew out and landed in the trees. They waited, their heads cocked to one side. I think they hoped that Mr. Tominski would come out and call them into action.

“He's not coming,” Papa said to the doves. “Go back to the woods.” He made a shooing motion with both hands.

“Will they be all right, Papa?”

“Mr. Tom got them from the woods. He made little traps and brought them here. Now they're just going home.”

We waited for a while, watching the doves' confusion, and then one of them flew to a nearby tree. Another followed.

“You know what I was going to do that day, the day Mr. Tom saved my life?”

“No, Papa.”

“I was going dove hunting.” Both of us smiled at the thought.

When all the doves had disappeared in the forest, Papa brushed his hands together.

He said, “Well, it's all over now.” And, taking my hand, he started toward home.

A shadow fell across our path as a cloud hid the sun. I thought it was a warning that a storm was coming. I looked up. The rest of the sky was blue. Our storm had come and gone.

I said, “Papa, somehow I don't feel as young as I felt a few days ago.”

“Nor do I,” said Papa. “Nor do I.”

Z
zzzzzzzzz
. Hear that, Adam? That means there is a bee inside that flower. Listen.”

Zzzzzzzzzzzz
.

“When you hear
zzzzzz
, Adam, you don't pick that flower. You don't even smell that flower.”

I held Adam's small hand as we watched the flower, waiting for the bee to exit.

It had been two years since Mr. Tominski's funeral. Many things had happened in that two years. We had moved into a new century. The Willows now had electricity, and Papa was talking of a motor car.

The Bellas had gone to live with Grandmama, where they attended something called Miss Bridges Finishing School, though the few times they had been home, Papa said they didn't seem quite finished.