Authors: Karl Iagnemma
The minister was a plump, avuncular fellow with a bald pate encircled by silvery curls. At eight o’clock precisely he said an invocation then led the congregation through a lined-out recitation of “Raise Him Up on High,” followed by readings from Mark and John. Then he slowly ascended to the pulpit and surveyed the assembly with a lugubrious scowl.
“Religion is not a theory, but a
desire
. We contemplate God and faith, and we reach various conclusions—and this constitutes our
theory of religion
. Yet men are religious because they possess
religious natures,
just as they are moral because they possess
moral natures
. From Psalms, verse seventeen: ‘As the hart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!’”
A cough echoed through the meetinghouse; then a rustle of crinoline and a pew’s wooden creak. The minister spread his arms wide. “No man feels the
desire
for religion at all times; many feel it only when low, or disheartened. Just so with the desire for food: we eat only when hungry. This is one of faith’s
great challenges:
man is not drawn to religion by his knowledge of its
value,
but only by his
desire
for it, and the uneasiness this feeling creates.”
He leaned forward over the pulpit, his eyes squeezed shut. “The spring of
all human activity
is the
unease
that accompanies
desire
!”
A frustrated thespian, Reverend Stone thought, an actor without wig or greasepaint. He imagined the man recounting the parable of the sower in a winking singsong, the story of Exodus in a gaslight pantomime. Rolling baritone for Moses, reedy quaver for Pharaoh. Reverend Stone frowned distastefully. The pews, he noted, were full to capacity.
“Not all human desires reside on the surface. Indeed, the very
definition
of
progress
is the awakening of new and higher desires! The desire of religion is the highest desire of our nature—yet before it can be experienced the soul must be
awakened,
through self-inspection, self-activity and self-culture, but most directly through God’s
divine
and
loving
aid. Again from Psalms: ‘My soul
thirsteth
for God, for the
living God
.’ All of us, every one of us in this meetinghouse, must strive to maintain this thirst.”
The pipe organ drew a raspy breath and the congregation began “Voices Raised to God.” Reverend Stone sang, “We raise our voices to you, O Lord….” His gaze moved from the choir loft’s scoured benches to the treadworn aisle runner, the thickly varnished candle-holders, the cobwebs like exquisite moldings in the corners. The tall, bright windows ribboned with rain. How odd, he thought, to be sitting in a pew among strangers, unburdened by responsibility. With only music and sunlight and the Word. How beautifully odd.
He began the next hymn feeling weightless: like sunlight, like music. He was filled with grace—the understanding pierced him, so that he momentarily lost the music’s rhythm.
This land of holy people…
Reverend Stone sensed doubts gathering but he raised his voice to quell them. A flutter began in his stomach that mimicked the organ’s tremulous notes. Each chord vibrated with pleasure.
The hymn ended and the minister led the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer, then said a brief benediction. The pipe organ drew another breath. Reverend Stone proceeded up the aisle as if in a waking dream. I am near it, he marveled. I am within it. Bright husky chords surrounded him.
He opened the door and stepped into the warm morning, and waited for the congregation to follow him.
The minister’s name was Howell, a Maryland native come west ten years earlier to be clear of the Catholics of that state. Reverend Stone sat across from him at a small Chippendale table in the parsonage, cups of sassafras tea and a plate of sweet cherries between them, the room’s air musty and close. The man’s eyes were jaundiced, the whites tinted yolk yellow. With a sigh he unfastened the top button of his trousers.
“You have a superior congregation,” Reverend Stone said. “Very upright and quick-seeming. I noted their attentiveness to your excellent sermon.”
“We are commonly regarded as the city’s cream,” Howell said. “Though of course it’s a struggle to convince them to tithe. We sponsor an idiots’ asylum and a Magdalene society, to reclaim prostitutes to virtue. We recently purchased a five-hundred-pipe Stansfield organ, which you were graced by this morning.”
“In Newell there is severe competition from Baptists. We’ve lost near thirty souls in the past year alone.”
Howell wheezed out a laugh, rubbing his gleaming scalp. “Oh, it is everywhere the same! Baptists. Lutherans. Universalists. Catholics. Friends. Moravians. Millerites, for mercy’s sake. You can’t swing a stick in this city without walloping a Millerite.”
“So I’ve found.” Reverend Stone nodded vigorously. “You are doing superior work. It’s clear to even a casual observer.”
Howell’s laughter faded to a prim smile. The expression seemed calculated to express both pleasure and irritation. In the room’s corner, a massive clock stood with its hands frozen at noon and three, its face painted with a side-wheel steamer trailing smoke and greenish spray. Beside it hung an oil portrait of a man with reddish curls winding like grapevines over his lapels. The man’s eyes were colored expertly, lustrous white pools softened by patience and compassion. With a start Reverend Stone recognized it as Howell as a young man.
“I am curious,” Howell said. “What has brought you to this stimulating city?”
“As you said so incisively this morning: the spring of all human activity is the unease that accompanies desire. Lately I’ve felt uneasy.”
Howell said nothing as he unfolded a clasp knife and speared a cherry. Reverend Stone continued, “I am on an urgent errand to locate my son, Elisha—he’s joined a scientifical expedition to the northern peninsula.”
“The northern peninsula is enormous! You are more likely to encounter a howling red savage than you are your boy.” Howell chewed wetly. “I have heard news that the Catholics are busy infesting the territory with missionaries, sent direct from Rome. Their tactic is to pour poison into the ears of dying savages, promise them everlasting bliss if they agree to be baptized.” He spit a pit over his shoulder. “Apparently the technique is ineffective. Even savages are too clear-thinking to fall sway to popery.”
Reverend Stone edged forward in his chair. “I have an opportunity to obtain a map of my son’s route. And I aim to hire a guide when I reach Sault Ste. Marie—I’m no woodsman, but I imagine an experienced Native or half-breed could locate the boy’s party with little difficulty.”
Howell shrugged. “Still. Seems a fool’s errand.”
“But a necessary one.” Reverend Stone rubbed his chin, and with a shock of embarrassment felt a bristle of stubble. He had forgotten to shave. “There is a matter I had hoped we might discuss. The matter of a loan.”
“We are a poor congregation.”
“Of course. Yes.” Reverend Stone felt the beginnings of a cough tickle his throat. “I was robbed on the Buffalo train. A thief took my clothes and valise and nearly all of my money. It has been only through severe hardship that I have sustained myself thus far. However I have not enough to continue my journey.”
“Your journey,” Howell said wearily. “It seems that everyone is on a journey. I don’t mean to wax metaphorical—I mean that in the literal. One day a fellow is your neighbor and the next he’s a dust cloud on the Toledo road. It’s the nature of the country, I suppose.” He stared at Reverend Stone. “How old is your son?”
“Sixteen. Born twentieth of November.”
“Sixteen is a significant age. I expect your son will have changed in ways you cannot imagine. Perhaps you mightn’t even recognize the boy.”
Reverend Stone had contemplated the thought many times, but it irritated him to hear the possibility raised by a stranger. He began to speak but Howell said, “I recall my own sixteenth year, my first year in Baltimore. First year away from my father’s farm. When I closed my eyes at night I could still smell the privy.” Howell smiled into his teacup. “Many nights I wanted to rise from that boardinghouse bed and run clear to Catonsville, with only the shirt on my back. I never did.”
“I suspect Elisha has felt a similar urge—to return to Newell. To return home. But he yet hasn’t.”
“No. Of course he hasn’t.”
Silence stretched between the men, punctuated by an apple vendor’s muted shout; then they raised their teacups and drank. Reverend Stone studied Howell’s face: the flaccid eyelids and pitted nose, the cheeks dragged down to jowls. The youth of the portrait had vanished, replaced by his weary father. It must have been painted at seminary, Reverend Stone thought, when he was still a homesick farm boy, full of earnest passion. The minister imagined Howell to be near his own age, and he wondered if the man was married or widowed, if there were children nearby. If he still entered the meetinghouse with cool excitement, a feeling of returning to a lover’s room. We might be brothers, he thought mawkishly. He sipped the cold tea.
“Have you considered petitioning the governor?” Howell said. “He would doubtless make special provision for your circumstance. Help you locate your map, et cetera.”
“That would take months. This is a matter of weeks. Of days.”
“Or you might consider inquiring at one of the city’s benevolent societies. I could refer you. Some support could be quickly arranged.”
Reverend Stone leaned forward. “Of course I would not be troubling you if less burdensome methods existed. I would hire out as a day laborer but I seem to lack useful skills. Our training leaves us ill equipped for matters financial.”
The minister’s throat tingled and he reached for the teacup; then he stayed his hand and let the cough rise. His chest convulsed, the jag bending him double, his eyes straining as if to burst. He turned away from Howell and covered his face. When the spell faded Reverend Stone dried his eyes and looked up at the man. His throat felt scraped, raw. His mouth tasted of blood. “Please,” he said. “I beg of you.”
“There is no need to beg,” Howell said miserably. He rose and unlocked the clock case, withdrew a worn leather purse and untied the strap. He poked through the purse’s contents and fingered out a coin, then another.
“‘Let none admire that riches grow in hell; that soil may best deserve the precious bane.’”
The man stopped counting and stared at Reverend Stone.
“
Paradise Lost,
” the minister said. “Volume one.”
Howell resumed counting, his mouth pinched in a line.
“I shall repay you the moment I return to Newell. I’ll send banknotes by post with appropriate interest—I pray that is acceptable.”
The man set the coins in the table’s center then wiped his hands on his waistcoat. He stared past the minister, out the fogged window.
“You are blessed,” Reverend Stone said. “Thank you.”
“Yes,” Howell said. “Now go.”
He wove down Beaubien Street among the pedestrians and sidewalk window-gazers, the coins like lead shot in his pocket. At the druggist on Larned Street Reverend Stone purchased six tins of toothache medication, and as he exited the shop placed three tablets under his tongue.
Relief trickled through him as he hurried toward the river. He wanted to shout with joy. The sun was shielded by flat-bottomed clouds, but as Reverend Stone passed the Confidence Bank the clouds nudged eastward and the day brightened. Carriages and dray horses and hotel drummers and news vendors were shadowed in flat, hard light. The city swarmed around him.
He had come to admire Detroit: its vitality and haste, its blunt edge of menace. Surely anything was possible here—the city seemed the antithesis of Newell, of New England. A trio of French boatmen stamped past singing a coarse chanson, then fell silent as they approached St. Anne’s. An elderly charwoman squatted at the gutter, poking through heaped-up trash with a walking stick. It was the sense of rebelliousness, he realized, the lack of concern with meeting windy ideas of civilization. A pleasant restiveness grew in Reverend Stone: he was a man in a strange city with a pocketful of coins. He wandered from Larned over to Randolph Street, and as he passed the Excelsior Hotel he heard his wife’s voice.
Reverend Stone froze. A door slammed, then a cat yowled in the distance. He drew a breath, his chest feeling as though it was burdened by stones. He strained toward his memory of the sound.
He had heard Ellen’s voice often in Newell, a rising inflection in the bank or crowded meetinghouse, on an empty sidewalk. It was easy to explain away—a misheard snatch of conversation, wind hissing through bare December branches—but logic did nothing to thaw the freezing shock. Then the wash of murderous grief, of guilt. The back of his neck gone damp with sweat. Reverend Stone wondered if his wife’s voice was meant to be punishment or a small, fleeting reward. Usually it seemed equal parts of both.
Now he sat against an awning post and stared blankly at the buggies rolling past. He smelled lilac and rain-wet leaves. They were in a buggy and Ellen was singing,
Home, O home, O happy hillside home.
It was October, the maples like orange torches along the roadside. Elisha’s voice braided with his mother’s:
Home, O home, O cozy sweet refuge.
Reverend Stone luxuriated in the memory, wondering all the while if it was merely a hopeful dream: his wife singing, his son beside him on the driver’s bench, the wide endless road, the maples. No. Of course it was not merely a dream. His heart churned, a thick pumping that finally settled to nothing. At last he rose and dusted off his trousers.
The public land office was closed when he arrived. He stepped into the street and peered up at the second story: Charles Noble’s window was shut, the draperies drawn. Reverend Stone rapped on the broad door and listened for answering footsteps. Then he remembered that it was Sunday—the office would not be open until morning. He knocked again and pressed his ear to the polished wood.