Reinhart's Women (8 page)

Blaine stepped up to his father and stared defiantly at him. “These folks
are
very religious.
I
don’t make fun of them, though I might not agree in all respects.”

Reinhart glanced at the farmhouse. No one stirred there. “You’re an odd one, Blaine. I’d say this would be one of the last places to find you.”

Changes in those close to you are generally phases in a long and slow process, so that at any point the other person seems routine enough. But in his later adolescence Blaine had without warning, almost within a day, become what for simplicity’s sake was known, to anyone who was himself not one, as a “hippie.” It was hard to remember that when one looked at him today. Even on a Sunday afternoon in early spring he wore an orthodox shirt and a foulard necktie, a gray suit, and black shoes in the old-fashioned wing-tipped style. Like his father he had fair hair, but Reinhart’s now was actually longer and lighter, though at one time Blaine had bleached his hair and worn it shoulder-length. Once Reinhart had vengefully crept into his son’s room when Blaine was asleep and sheared away his golden locks just below the ears. They had both changed since those days.

“I know you think me the young fogy,” Blaine said now, “but you might be surprised to learn that my values have been more or less the same all my life.”

“Uh-huh.”

“For example,” Blaine went on, “I have always had the greatest respect for those with faith.”

“You have?” Reinhart asked incredulously.

“Mock me if you will,” said his son, staring in defiance, “but that was really what I was groping for in the Sixties, with so little help from you: faith in the essential goodness of humanity. Perhaps we were naïve, but at least we were searching.”

Reinhart indicated the porch of the farmhouse, which only now he noticed was sagging ever so slightly. “Shouldn’t we proceed with whatever we’ve come here for?”

Blaine shook his head. “I’m trying to prepare you. These people may have something of merit if you’ll just be patient.”

“O.K., O.K! Though it does nothing for my patience to stand here in this bleak parking lot.” Reinhart walked to the porch and mounted the steps.

Blaine hastened to overtake his father, who perhaps he feared might disgrace him even among down-at-the-heels religious zealots.

While they were still approaching the door it was opened from within by a small woman of indeterminate age, i.e., she might have been anywhere from prematurely seasoned forties to well-preserved sixties. She wore a workman’s outfit of blue-denim trousers and jacket and a shirt of chambray.

“High-dee-ho,” she said cheerily. “I’m Sister Muriel.”

Blaine quickly said: “This is my father, Carl Reinhart.”

“God loves you, Carl,” said Sister Muriel, but in a lackluster monotone that contrasted with the first phase of her greeting.

Reinhart nodded in neutral courtesy. Time was, he responded to everybody with classic Midwestern amiability, but somewhere along the line he recognized this as either hypocrisy or folly, an invitation to either bores or crooks, and he adopted his current style.

“If you’d like to make your contribution now,” said Sister Muriel, “then there won’t be any awkwardness inside.”

Blaine formed his lips in an
O
even before he patted his pockets.

Again, in the old days Reinhart would guiltily have whipped out his wallet, but now he showed more patience. “Contribution?” he asked. “For what?”

Sister Muriel sighed and looked at the ceiling of the porch. Meanwhile Blaine slipped inside the door. Reinhart then splayed his right hand.

“After you,” he said to Sister Muriel.

“Not without a contribution, brother!” she said with force.

But he could no longer so easily be lured into a cul-de-sac. “Heavens above!” he murmured, raising and lowering his hands and eyes, until he had dizzied her. Then he followed his son indoors.

The interior of the house was for some reason darker than it should have been in daytime—and with hardly any furniture, rugs, or curtains to absorb light. Reinhart followed Blaine through several small, dark, empty rooms until they reached the kitchen, which in old-farmhouse style was of a generous size. It was also, uniquely, furnished: a large wooden table and chairs occupied the center of the room, and along the walls were stove and fridge, sink and cabinets.

A few living souls, representing either sex and dressed much like Sister Muriel (who had remained behind as front-door Cerberus), were either in the kitchen proper or on the screened-in porch just beyond. The youngest seemed in late middle age and none was moving with purpose. They ignored the Reinharts.

Blaine went onto the porch, his father following. The old folks there were also oblivious to them, in the usual passive manner and not necessarily as a positive statement of scorn: they ignored one another in the same fashion.

Reinhart opened the screen door that led to the yard, and he and Blaine went out. The yard was a desolate place, as dusty as where they had parked the car, though, according to the indoor precedent, neat by reason of being devoid of objects.

Suddenly a door in the earth was flung open—half of a double-paneled entrance to a cellar, set almost horizontally against the house wall—and a tall, solemn person mounted deliberately to the upper world on the unseen, sunken steps. Whether or not he was being intentionally mythological—Pluto visiting the surface of the earth—it was a dramatic entrance, or, looking at it in another way, exit. That he was of the race called, according to the era, colored, Negro, or black was as always worthy of note as well as being conspicuous.

Not to mention that Reinhart thought he recognized him as the son of his old friend, now deceased, Splendor Mainwaring. When last seen, a decade earlier, Raymond had been involved with a militant group called the Black Assassins and had himself answered to the name Captain Storm. In ten years (if indeed it was he) he had got a bit thinner and his expression was no longer a fixed scowl. He too was dressed in blue denims.

“High-dee-ho,” he said to Blaine.

Once again Blaine introduced his father. “Dad, this is Brother Valentine.”

“God loves you, Carl,” said the black man, and he showed Reinhart a pious smirk. He was not quite so burnished-handsome as he had been when displaying ritualistic malevolence towards those deficient in melanin, but perhaps that was only an effect of age.

Reinhart asked: “Aren’t you Raymond Mainwaring?”

“I was once many things,” said Brother Valentine, his eyes disappearing behind his upper lids, “rapist, addict, hooligan, blasphemer, traitor, mocker of the right, defamer of the good.” His voice swelled with feeling, and for a moment it sounded as if he might produce an outright yodel. But suddenly he spoke in a quiet, level voice: “Praise
Gee-
zuz.”

“Well,” said Reinhart, at something of a loss for a response (whether to congratulate or commiserate). He decided to ignore the whole business. Instead he said: “I suppose you don’t remember me? I was a close friend of your father’s.”

Brother Valentine had not yet looked directly at Reinhart, and he did not do so at this moment: he stared between the white men, towards the empty yard, beyond which was an empty field. “I hope,” he said at last, “you are still a friend of your Father. For He is a friend to you.” He managed very clearly to represent the capital letters.

“I hope so,” said Reinhart, who had no wish to mock anyone’s faith, but “friendship” was hardly the word to characterize adequately his own association with divinity.

“Brother Valentine,” Blaine said, “I hope this was a convenient time to come. My father insisted.” Alas, Reinhart was too far away to kick him.

Valentine’s style seemed by now pretty well confirmed as being one that took as little note of others as it could get away with. Thus he made no answer, direct or implied, to Blaine’s false statement, which of course was no less than Blaine deserved.

“I was a fiend incarnate,” he cried, his voice swelling again, “a minion of Satan. I even befouled Old Glory. No vileness did I spurn.”

Reinhart nodded and walked near Blaine. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Brother Valentine,” Blaine said, leaving Reinhart’s vicinity, “is it not true that newcomers are welcome to your little flock?”

Valentine narrowed his eyes and dropped the subject of his own evil past. “We erect no artificial barriers. On the other hand, no one has a special privilege. Each must contribute what he can, in the spirit of Christian America. God bless you, brother.”

Ten years back, Raymond had been of the “burn, baby, burn” school, but then we all change from time to time according to our challenges and opportunities, and Reinhart did not find him ipso facto a rogue.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said. “This has been very interesting.” He was about to walk away, irrespective of Blaine, when Valentine at last displayed a squint of recognition.

“Brother Reinhart!” cried the black man. “Forgive me. Oh, God love you.” He spoke to Blaine: “I used to call this dear man Uncle Carl.”

This was utter fantasy. In truth Reinhart had seen nothing of Raymond’s father during those years when the boy would have been small enough to attract the avuncular. He had known Splendor just after World War II, and then not again until the man lay dying, twenty years later. At that time Raymond had been altogether hostile to any white man.

Blaine looked sharply at his wristwatch and then gave a too casual glance at his father. “I can see you’ve lots of old times to exchange. Why don’t I just run a couple of errands meanwhile and pick you up on the way back?”

But Reinhart blocked his route of escape. “I wouldn’t think of letting you work on the day of rest! Am I right, Brother Valentine?”

The latter gave him a look that was both knowing and wary. “Quite so, brother, quite so.”

Blaine whined sotto voce: “We’ve got people coming...”

Reinhart said to Valentine: “We can’t stay long, but since we’re here, would you like to give us the tour?”

“No,” surprisingly said Splendor’s son, “because if you’ve come through the house, you’ve seen as much as there is to see. Upstairs are the dormitories, and underneath is a cellar. We haven’t been here long enough to do much but clean the living quarters.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” said Reinhart. “I don’t quite grasp what it is you’re doing here.”

“This,” said Brother Valentine, “is Paradise Farm.” He spoke as if the name were familiar to all: if not, it would be the worst of taste to admit one’s ignorance of it.

Reinhart offered: “An experiment in communal living?”

Valentine gestured grandly towards the fields. He had a style that rose above the blue denims: ten years of age had given him more force of presence than he had displayed in the SS type of uniform favored by the Black Assassins.

“Waves of purple grain,” said he, “soon enough. God will provide an abundant harvest for His chosen people.”

Reinhart sucked a tooth. “You’re Jews?”

“Metaphorically,” said Brother Valentine, “in the sense of the Judaism that is the basis of judiciousness, which leads to good judgment.”

“Judge not, lest ye, and so on,” said Reinhart, giving back as good as he was being given: Raymond was mocking him now.

Brother Valentine suddenly understood this. “People of weak imagination and feeble drive must be given a mystique,” said he, “rather than a rationale that they are incapable of entertaining. Therefore we have certain slogans
and façons de parler.
You will despise them, but be tolerant: they are needed, I assure you.”

“Raymond—uh, Brother Valentine,” Reinhart said, “you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, but needed for what?”

“For God’s work,” said the black man. “We shall restore and revitalize this fallow farm, and in so doing bring some human souls back from the dead.”

Reinhart put his hands in the pockets of his blazer and kicked idly at the dust. “Those souls inside the house?”

“Oh, don’t they look like much?” Valentine asked this with sufficient self-righteousness to shame Reinhart.

“No, of course I don’t mean that. But aren’t they a bit too old to do heavy farm labor? I hasten to say that I would consider myself over the hill for something like that.”

“Brother Reinhart,” said Valentine, “the people you see in the kitchen at the moment are not my entire flock. The younger folk are out in the fields, at work. Your earlier concern for the day of rest was well voiced, insofar as it concerned the world of routine commerce and excess consumption. But here, at Paradise, we toil only for our daily bread.”

Reinhart still could not decide whether the man was sincere or a charlatan, but most enterprises since the Renaissance have necessarily partaken of both the honest and the bogus in equal amounts to preserve the balance known as modern civilization, and a project that managed to do no more than sway, without tipping, could survive at least for a while.

A certain void in the corner of the eye told Reinhart that his son had taken French leave. He excused himself. Trotting around the corner of the house, he saw that Blaine indeed was already behind the wheel of the Continental.

“No, you don’t!” He moved himself to block the projected backing-up. At length Blaine climbed out in disgruntlement.

“Stop pretending that I am trying to dump you here. Honestly, Dad.”

“Don’t worry about it, Blaine. You won’t succeed.”

Valentine appeared. “Might I urge you to stay for supper?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Reinhart, who regretted having to turn the invitation down: the food was certain to be interesting. “My son has an engagement.” He looked around. “I assume you have more sleeping accommodations in the barn?”

Brother Valentine inclined his head ever so slightly, perhaps in assent. “I was really hoping you could stay for a meal. We could dine a bit earlier than usual if that’s the problem.”

Reinhart remembered he had eaten nothing all day since his coffee and toast on arising. The thought of the poached eggs, now chilled, was attractive: he might even take the time to inundate them in aspic, postponing the meal until the shimmering amber jelly was firm, then plunging through it to pierce and release the yolks, a rich, cool, golden cream; this on a bed of Boston lettuce. Followed by what? A chop or cutlet? Hmm... Meanwhile he answered Valentine.