Embracing Darkness (25 page)

Sister Ignatius protested, “Father Poole, I have never been surer in my life about anything than I am right now. We cannot allow this child to leave us. Just look at her. She’s happy here. She’s come to know and love us. How can you turn her away? Would Jesus turn his back on… ?”

Angry and frustrated, Father Poole erupted, “This has nothing to do with Jesus, Sister! It is out of love that I am doing this for the child. Anyone else would have abandoned her long ago.
We
cannot
keep
her!
” His last four words were slow and deliberate.

Sister Ignatius smiled at Father Poole and replied calmly, “We
can.
We don’t have to let anybody know she’s living here with us. We always get word from the diocese whenever they plan a visit. We’ll simply plan for Jessica not to be here when they come.”

“Oh really?” asked Father Poole. “And what are our parishioners going to think when they see her?”

The nun squatted down and hugged Jessica tightly while the child tried in vain to make her doll eat a piece of oatmeal-raisin cookie that Mrs. Keats had baked the night before. “What will they say, Father? Nothing. I know the people in this town a little better than you do, my tenure here having been longer.”

Father Poole sighed heavily, which interrupted Sister Ignatius just as effectively as words would have done. He drew nearer to Jessica, who was now getting crumbs all over the rug. “Have her ready to leave in ten minutes, Sister,” he said coldly.

Jessica was carried down the hill via the “The Path to Salvation” by Father Poole. As they descended together, he began to think,
The
Path
to
Salvation
leads
the
other
way,
doesn’t
it?
So
why
am
I
taking
this
child
in
the
opposite
direction?
An
orphanage
is
no
place
of
salvation
as
far
as
I’m
concerned
.

The weather was beginning to get very cold now, as late November was upon them. Father Poole observed how Sister Ignatius had been scrupulous in bundling Jessica up to insulate her. Behind Father Poole stood St. Andrew’s Church, the rectory, and the large maple tree.

They arrived in town at a little past eleven. Father Poole saw that Jessica was fidgeting and put her down. Taking her tiny hand in his, he steered her past Johnson’s Pawn Shop, Morgan’s Fish Store, Mason’s General Store, Callahan’s Five and Dime, and the town bank, which had been closed for the last few weeks ever since financier Lawrence Walsh had slit his wrists and bled to death in his bathtub. When Jessica started to tire, Father Poole picked her up again. Most people who saw him, whether they knew him or not, were surprised to see him with a child, and so stared at the cleric. Father Poole ignored them.

At that time of day the town’s streets were fairly busy, so Father Poole held Jessica close to him until she pounded on his shoulders to be put down. He let her walk about three feet ahead of him. The priest’s black suit and white collar were always an occasion for curiosity, so Father Poole had become used to people’s making a fuss about him. However, today was not a day he wished to be noticed. He didn’t want any questions from anyone because he knew the truth would be hard to explain.

The priest and little girl were almost at the orphanage, which was located in a deplorable section of Holly. Even Dolores Pennywhistle walked this part of town only under the escort of a policeman, for whose services she paid from her own pocket, being sure to leave the orphanage before dusk.

The eastern side of Kensington Street was a disgrace. It was home to Nick the Tramp who, when it came to soliciting money to fund his drinking every night at the local speakeasy, accosted more victims and was more insistent than Felix Adams in his tomato-hurling encounter with Sister Ignatius at Mason’s General Store.

Along with Nick the Tramp was Heathcliff Knight, a petty pickpocket. Inspired by Charles Dickens’s
Oliver
, which he had read at ten years old, he descended more and more into the character of Fagin but wanted to work alone. His first attempt at thievery came at age eleven when he confronted old Abigail Wallace, who he figured would be an easy target.

Confronting the elderly matron on Embry Street, young Heathcliff said, “Help you to get where you need to go, ma’am?” and anxiously grabbed her arm. This tactic all but gave away his motives, whereupon eighty-two-year-old Mrs. Wallace screamed, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOUNG MAN?” Still anxious to pull off his first heist, Heathcliff continued to tug at her arm. After octogenarian Abigail clubbed him in the ear with her cane, she nailed Heathcliff in the balls, causing him to fall to the ground in agony. She then calmly proceeded homeward.

Now thirty, Heathcliff was getting ready for another day of failure. Father Poole and little Jessica had just about reached the orphanage when a shape emerged from a back alley. He was slovenly dressed and filthy, stinking of whisky and body odor. He was in need of a shave, and his hair was shoulder-length and stringy. His name was Willy Black.

His father was Victor Black, one of the men awaiting trial back in 1902 when Ben Benson’s son Jonathan was delivering ice. Victor had been arrested eleven times: five for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, twice for assault and battery, once for committing a lewd act in public, and three for theft. The judicial system failed every time, however. Victor Black never once had to serve time in prison, not even for his first arrest in Mississippi, which was for beating his wife Madeline into a coma.

In 1905, still in New England, Victor was sent word from his cousin Robbie in Vicksburg that he could no longer care for fifteen-year-old Willy, who had turned into an apprentice criminal. The boy eventually migrated to his father’s motel outside Lowell, Massachusetts.

Willy’s antisocial behavior reflected that of his father, who was never around. Willy would sleep on the floor of his father’s motel room, sometimes all night, while his father was out gambling and getting drunk. Willy’s only reason for not falling into a bad crowd in this new setting was simply because there was no one around. The motel was on a state road with only a general store next to it. It was a three-mile walk to Lowell, heading south, and a ten-mile walk to the New Hampshire border, heading north.

At 8:00 on a Sunday morning, Victor arrived home. As soon as he closed the door, he stepped on his son, still asleep on the floor. Victor lost his already poor balance and fell onto the bed. “What you fixin’ to do, boy?” he yelled. “Kill yer pa?”

Willy, scared out of his skin from being stepped on, snapped back, “They been comin’ since Friday for the rent. They say you got till Wednesday, and that only bein’ cause you been here so long. They be willin’ to give you a break, the man say.”

Victor was silent, his face buried in a pillow. His son heard the muffled sound of snoring.

Willy shook his head and took a walk up and down Sewell Road, which he had dubbed “the road to no friggin’ where.” Willy thought he saw a dead rabbit at the side of the road. It appeared as if the animal had just died, possibly run over by a horse or the wheels of a buggy. Finding a long stick, he walked back to the dead rabbit, bent down, and firmly poked its torso. The stick penetrated the skin, quickly turning the fur red around the fresh wound. When Willy was finished with the rabbit’s remains, it looked like a bloody glob of guts and bones. Next to it were the animal’s heart, liver, stomach, and brain. Willy stood up, grinned maliciously, and walked away.

His next order of business was to find another animal to dissect. Willy walked for another half mile down Sewell Road, but, finding not so much as a dead worm, he retraced his steps to the motel. As he passed it, now heading north, he saw something move. He jerked his head to the left like a hungry predator that’s just spotted his prey. He ran off the road toward the woods. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he
knew
it was small, perhaps a squirrel, cat, or another rabbit.

Willy made his way past a few trees before deciding to turn back to the road. He didn’t want to go too deep into the forest and get lost, although he knew that his chances of finding another animal, either alive or dead, were greater the further into the woods he went. When he emerged behind the motel, he saw what he believed he had seen just a few minutes earlier. It was a black cat sitting on a pile of firewood and licking its paws. Willy walked slowly toward the animal, which stopped grooming itself once it noticed Willy’s presence.

“Shhh,” said Willy. “I just wanna petcha, little guy. That’s all I’m fixin’ to do.”

The cat sat there, bobbed its head up and down a few times to check the boy out, and allowed Willy to pick it up.

“That’a boy,” Willy said, and heard the animal meow as he tucked it under his left arm. With his right hand he began to stroke the cat’s head. The creature in turn began to purr loudly, and Willy could feel the vibration in the cat’s belly.

“You’re such a good cat, aren’t you? Yes, you are.” Willy’s voice then began to change, becoming almost a whisper: “Let’s just see how good you are!”

Willy then wrapped the fingers of his right hand completely around the cat’s throat and began to squeeze. The cat hissed and began swatting its two front legs. Its claws dug into Willy’s shirt, so he pulled the cat away from him, thus ripping out one of its nails by the root. The cat screamed as blood spurted from its paw. Tightening his grip around the animal’s neck, Willy held the cat away from him at arm’s length. He was now using both hands to complete his work, squeezing harder and harder.

When the cat went limp, Willy slowly turned the animal around so that he could see its face. The short red tongue was sticking halfway out, and its green eyes were bulging. The boy violently threw the carcass to the ground, grabbed a piece of firewood, and once more began his grisly dismemberment.

During the night Willy kept being awakened by a man’s voice outside calling, “PRUDENCE! PRUDENCE!”

Leaving his room in the morning, he was confronted by the man at the desk. “The rent. Tell your father I want it.”

“I told you yesterday I seen him an’ told him,” Willy said, sounding aggravated. “He come up yesterday mornin’.”

“I don’t come in till nine,” replied the clerk. “There’s no one at the desk till then.”

“So what more you want from me?”

Willy turned and was halfway out the door when the man at the desk asked, “Have you seen a black cat around here, son?”

Willy, who had avoided making eye contact with the man, looked down at his forearm, where he noticed that the night before Prudence the cat had scored one wound on its assailant. “No, I haven’t,” said Willy.

The man replied, “Yeah, he goes off on his own sometimes, but never for this long. He didn’t come in last night. Oh well, let me know if you see him. And tell your father I need the rent!”

Willy dissected another four animals that day: two birds, an already dead squirrel, and a raccoon that he had found sleeping in the garbage can out back. With each kill and with each dissection, he derived more and more enjoyment. He also kept thinking,
Who
the
hell
names
a
tomcat
“Prudence”?

It was Monday night when Willy collapsed onto his father’s bed, deciding he’d sleep there until his old man returned. He figured there was no point in sleeping on the floor and letting the bed go to waste. Even if he got hit upon his father’s return, Willy thought that it was better to be smacked in the face than to be stepped on by a workman’s boot with 200 pounds on top of it. He hadn’t seen his father since Sunday morning, which was unusual. As little as Victor Black showed his face around the motel, he’d always come back from the bars in Lowell to sleep.

When Tuesday morning came, Willy woke up to a distant cry. It sounded like the man who ran the front desk. Willy assumed that the clerk had found his mangled cat in the backyard. He smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

By Wednesday, when the rent was again due, Willy finally realized that his father wasn’t coming back. Perhaps if he had cared more, he would have been concerned. He picked up his few meager possessions and walked out of the motel, never to return.

With the motel behind him, Willy turned to his left, northbound leading to New Hampshire, and to his right, southbound leading to Lowell and beyond it Boston. Willy remembered arriving at the motel from the right when he’d come up from the train station in Lowell. Willy wanted a fresh start. He didn’t want to go back to any memory that included his father. He turned left and walked north to New Hampshire.

Finding himself in a strange new place didn’t matter much to Willy, as he’d never been used to anywhere that he could remember. He was happy with his mother, but he knew he couldn’t go back to her now. She had suffered such brain damage that she didn’t even recognize him when she’d awakened from her coma. There was nothing for him in Mississippi except pain. He’d start completely over without a father who didn’t care about him.

Willy Black entered New Hampshire in 1905 and made it his home. He found employment just outside Exeter working for VanLue’s, the local lumber supplier and rival of Horace Crosby, whose company had built St. Andrew’s Church back in the early 1890s. Willy’s job was to chop down trees. He loved the crackling sound the trees would make when they’d succumb to his sawing and then keel over. Willy was happy only when he was destroying life. For the next nine years he lived as a recluse, working but not fraternizing with anyone. People considered him an outsider because of the way he spoke and dressed. All the locals also hated how he used the word “Yankee” so freely.