Rose had seen him first, sitting alone in the back of the cathedral. She nudged Wolfgang and nodded in the boy’s direction. He appeared to be about sixteen years old. Wolfgang returned his focus to the pulpit and the reading. Rose had only been out of Waverly for less than a week, and Wolfgang was intent on thanking the Lord for her recovery. She was thinner than she had been before she’d gotten sick, and the other people in church had stared at her. Once a Waverly patient, always a Waverly patient.
She nudged him again. “Wolf, look at him.”
“I did,” he whispered, knowing that he’d seen the boy before but not certain as to where.
The boy had brown hair with curls that covered his ears and most of his neck. His chin was awkwardly narrow, disproportionate to his eyes and cheekbones. He was tall too, well over six feet, his legs folded inside the pew. His arms were thin, but his wrists were even thinner.
“Look at his fingers,” Rose whispered. Certainly she wasn’t making fun. It was just Rose’s nature to find the differences in people and migrate toward them.
They were the longest fingers Wolfgang had ever seen. They watched the boy return to his seat from communion with a slight limp, as if his feet hurt. His lanky arms swayed, his fingers reaching past his knees. His index fingers had abnormally long nails and they were pointed like daggers. The rest of his nails appeared clipped. His fingertips were stained with color, some fingers marked by one distinct color and others smudged with mixtures of all.
Rose wasted no time confronting him after church. “Excuse me…”
He turned toward her voice, his eyes to the ground.
“I think you’ve got beautiful hands,” Rose told him.
He lifted his chin and met her eyes. He felt comfortable with her. Rose had that gift of making anyone feel special. She lifted his hands. “What is your name?”
“Jonah.” His voice was low and distorted. The boy had a speech impediment, probably caused by the deformation of his palate, Wolfgang realized. Then it hit him. He remembered where he’d seen the boy before. Inside the Baroque, where Charles Pike used to go drinking. On Wolfgang’s post-polio walks he’d peeked inside the Baroque on many occasions. The boy had been painting at a table next to the window one evening.
“What do you do with these hands?” Rose asked.
Jonah smiled. “P-p-paint.”
“With your fingers?”
Jonah nodded.
Rose touched the sharp index fingernails. “And these?”
“F-f-f-for detail.” Jonah looked at Wolfgang as if for permission before reaching for Rose’s right hand. He turned it over so her palm faced upward. With his right index finger he began to trace letters onto her open palm, softly. Those letters formed words, and when he lifted his hand Rose was blushing.
“What did he spell?” Wolfgang asked.
Rose touched her cheek. “He wants to paint me.”
A few days later, Rose and Wolfgang were in the loft of Jonah’s barn, which was tall enough to allow a glimpse of the cornfields along West Market Street and the downtown Louisville buildings over the horizon. The boy’s long fingers dipped into the paint and touched the canvas with a technique Wolfgang had never seen before, while Rose sat patiently and with ease on a stool, her face partially bathed in the sunlight that bled into the muggy loft. Jonah worked in a brown cloak and sandals. His fingers maneuvered effortlessly on the canvas. He was particular in the way Rose sat on the stool. He’d lift her chin one way, tuck the rose in her hair that way, and turn her face ever so slightly away from the light. He slouched, he knelt, he squinted, and he stepped back and viewed from his wooden chair, where he would sit loosely with one leg tucked beneath the seat and the other stretched out in front in the style of Caesar. He paced periodically with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, a Babe Ruth bat he’d given Wolfgang along with the painting when they’d left.
Jonah had often been at the Baroque because his father played the piano there, but before playing, he’d spun wood making bats at the bat factory. Jonah claimed that their house was full of bats. But it had been the portraits on the wall of the Baroque that had inspired him to paint.
He carved detail and grooves in the paint with his fingernails, scraping and lining like a sculptor, a master. Wolfgang would never forget watching him work and how fulfilled Rose appeared posing for him. Such a unique and special talent—a boy stricken with the worst Marfan syndrome Wolfgang had ever seen, a connective tissue disorder that affected the skeletal system, cardiovascular system, the skin, and the eyes. The gene defect caused too much growth in the bones and resulted in abnormally long arms and legs. Wolfgang watched him paint with his fingers and was convinced that God touched everyone in some way.
***
Lincoln was moving around inside the cottage when Wolfgang awoke. He was in bed, naked, covered with a blanket.
Lincoln stared at him. He was gathering up the broken pieces of the records Wolfgang had thrown across the room. “We thought you’d died, Wolf.”
Wolfgang sat up.
“How long have I been in here?”
“Too long,” Lincoln said. “Valentine’s Day is tomorrow.”
“Our concert.”
Lincoln helped Wolfgang to his feet and walked him over to the couch. He returned a few minutes later with a glass of water and a wet rag. “McVain has been asking for you.”
Wolfgang looked over toward the front door. The knob was broken.
Lincoln shrugged. “I’ll get it fixed. McVain said to do whatever it took to get you out of here.”
“Why, how’s his health?”
“He said he has a confession to make.”
***
Wolfgang took a bath, shaved, and trimmed his beard while the aroma of coffee wafted in from the kitchen. By the time he dressed, Lincoln had already cleaned out the wine bottles and wiped up Wolfgang’s mess. The busted front door moved in the breeze, allowing sunny glimpses of the cottage floor. Lincoln had left, his job done.
Wolfgang hurried up the hillside alone. It wasn’t the same without Susannah. All that day, the cassock he wore felt like a badge of deceit, but he still heard confessions, calmed the patients’ fears, and listened to their stories. He played songs for several patients, ate lunch alone, and kept busy during the afternoon. In his mind, he rehearsed tomorrow night’s performance. He ran through the pieces they would play, making last-minute adjustments to the choir. He’d already decided Herman would have a solo, as would each of the original instrumental musicians. He met briefly with Dr. Barker, and without going into the details of Ray’s confession itself, he was able to convince him the KKK threat was over and the culprits had been escorted by Lincoln down the Death Tunnel. It would be safe for Rufus to return up the hillside for the concert.
Thoughts of the program fueled Wolfgang through the day. At every sneeze and cough, he thought of the performance. When a patient spat on the floor or screamed of a high fever, he thought of Herman’s voice or Josef’s violin. He thought of how far the music would carry from the rooftop. It was the only way to get his mind off of Susannah resting on the solarium porch; in fact, he managed to avoid her floor all day until after dinner, when he finally went upstairs, catching sight of her bed several rooms down.
He stood in the shadows so she wouldn’t spot him right away. Abel sat in a chair beside Susannah’s bed, reading a book. They seemed to be happy together. He badly wanted to join them, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Of all things, he realized, he was mad at her. She’d enticed emotions out of him that he’d thought he’d had under control ever since he’d recommitted his life to serving the Lord. And he was mad at her, because under the laws and oaths to which he would ultimately be sworn upon entering the priesthood, he simply could not have her.
Wolfgang was furious.
Maybe going away
was
the best solution—to find himself at the abbey at Saint Meinrad and devote all of his thoughts to being a servant of the Lord, a true servant, as he had planned after Rose’s death.
His fury began to subside. He closed his eyes and envisioned the peaceful trees and grassy hills of the abbey. He could hear the monks chanting and birds singing from the church transepts.
Wolfgang tended to a few other patients nearby. Then he ducked back into the stairwell and sought out McVain.
***
The days had grown progressively longer, the sun hovering a few extra minutes at dusk each day into February, and the sunset now was orange over the treetops. Tiny buds of green dotted many of the branches.
McVain seemed not to see Wolfgang until he was right next to his bed. “You’re smiling.”
McVain looked up. “That a crime?”
“No, not a crime,” said Wolfgang. “Just odd, for you.”
Three members of the choir had arrived early for evening rehearsal. They stood in a cluster next to the porch screen, staring toward the woods, leaving McVain and Wolfgang to talk.
“I wrote back,” McVain said. “To Amelie. Told her about the concert.”
“Think she’ll come?”
He shrugged and then looked out toward the trees. “I’m sorry about Susannah.”
“Thank you.”
“Thought you might have killed yourself.”
“I think I may have tried,” said Wolfgang. “It’s all kind of fuzzy still.”
Wolfgang looked up past McVain’s bed and saw Frederick—Frederick!—in a wheelchair, slowly spinning himself toward the gathering choir. Wolfgang’s smile was instant, warming his body, which still felt badly sick. “Frederick?”
“Hi, Doctor.” Frederick was pale, hunched inside the chair. His white shirt couldn’t hide that the left side of his chest was still sunken from the invasive procedures. But in his eyes Wolfgang saw the first sign of fight since Mary Sue had been released. “Can I sit in on the rehearsal?”
“Of course, Frederick.” Wolfgang touched Frederick’s shoulder. “Join in if you feel the strength to do so.”
Frederick rested his head back and watched as the choir arrived to take their positions.
McVain’s skin looked paler than ever. His eyes were swimming in dark pockets. Wolfgang leaned close. “Lincoln said you had a confession.”
“Tonight. When we’re alone.”
Wolfgang started toward the piano. McVain caught Wolfgang’s sleeve. “Still believe in heaven?”
“I believe there is a God, and for now that’s enough.”
“Do you have to be a believer to repent?”
“Not on my hillside,” said Wolfgang. “Just a conscience and a heart.”
“Will you listen to my sins so that I can die?”
Wolfgang patted his arm. “No, McVain. I’ll listen to your sins so that you can live.”
***
During rehearsal, Wolfgang caught Susannah watching him. His eyes quickly moved away each time, as if nothing had bothered him. She appeared tired, and he felt guilty for keeping the secret of his departure from her. He couldn’t stop his eyes from straying to McVain’s bed, though, where he was still beneath the covers. He had to make it through tomorrow night. He’d be too sick to play the piano, but Wolfgang wanted him alive to witness it. Wolfgang would have to play the piano and conduct from the bench. Somehow he’d work it out. They were ready.
He hoped the weather the next evening would be as pleasant as tonight—mid-fifties and clear. Dr. Barker had publicized the event. A local church had donated five hundred chairs for the front lawn. It was all coming together. Wolfgang finally dismissed rehearsal, his confidence brewing beneath the surface. He slapped several choir members on the back as they said good night and returned to their floors. He watched them go and pretended not to see Susannah several feet away, waiting with her arms folded.
“Wolfgang?”
Wolfgang spun toward her, acting surprised. “Oh, yes?”
“Why are you ignoring me?”
Wolfgang stood silent, heart racing.
“Is it because of the disease?”
“You know that’s not it.”
“Then why don’t you talk to me?”
Wolfgang looked down. “I don’t know.” He looked back up only when he heard her departing footsteps.
McVain’s voice called to him. “You know we’ll have to move it up there.”
“What?”
“The piano,” McVain said. “How are we going to get it to the rooftop without Big Fifteen?”
Wolfgang turned toward McVain. “Lincoln and a few others are on their way now. One more floor shouldn’t kill us.” And it didn’t, not with the six helpers Lincoln had gathered—three cooks and three men from the maintenance staff—knowing from experience they’d need them. Wolfgang spent an hour positioning the chairs for the choir along the rooftop, close enough to the edge to be seen when they stood, but not so close to be in danger of falling.
Afterwards, Wolfgang stood alone, taking in the cool air, welcoming the stiff wind on his face. Eventually he made his way back to the fourth-floor solarium, where his chair awaited beside McVain’s bed. The requiem rested in his lap.
“Put that away, McVain.” Wolfgang lifted the music from McVain’s grip and slid it under the bed. “You need rest.”
McVain stared. “I’ll know soon enough.”
“Know what?”
“Where we go when we die,” McVain said. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to know?”
Wolfgang gave him a warm smile. “We’ve got more music to play.”
McVain wiped his runny nose on the back of his hand. “I’m a murderer.”
“War,” Wolfgang told him. “Kill or be killed. It’s not the same as murder.”
“Are you going to hear my confession or not?”
“Sorry. Of course. Tell me.”
“Fate.” McVain played with the sheets while he spoke. “I told you I didn’t believe in fate until I met you.”
“Fate brought
all
of us together,” Wolfgang said.
“More than the music.”
“What then?”
“I was a different man after I returned home from the war,” said McVain. “I was full of hate. I blamed God for…” He looked at his fingers and then closed his eyes. “Before the war, I never had violent notions. But my wife noticed the change right away. Said she noticed it the moment I walked off that train in downtown Chicago. She left me four months later.
“I moved back to Louisville when Chicago was starting to get the squeeze,” said McVain. “Started bootlegging here. I lost all my money betting on bangtails at Churchill Downs. I was in debt. Then I started getting sick.”