Songs in Ordinary Time (71 page)

He’d never go to the police. He couldn’t confide in Alice or Norm because they’d tell their mother, and she was the one person who could not know.

He’d do anything to ensure her happiness, because only then could they be safe. Each clash between Norm and Omar stripped away another layer.

He was afraid that soon there’d be nothing left. This would be his only chance. Days might go by before he saw Omar again or could be alone with him.

He touched Omar’s shoulder. It felt warm and damp and bonelessly soft.

Omar turned with a grunt, then sat up suddenly, feet flat on the floor, his head jerking back and forth as he struggled to focus through the darkness.

“What is it?” he demanded in a frightened voice.

“It’s me, Omar. Benjy. I have to tell you something,” he whispered.

“What? What do you have to tell me?” he sighed, leaning his head back on the couch. “What did you have, a bad dream or something?” he asked, yawning when Benjy did not immediately answer. “Your mother said you SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 345

had another bad dream last night. Everything’s okay, so why don’t you just go back up to bed now.”

He’d been trying to speak, but it wasn’t words he needed to express as much as the wrenching force of this skirmish between his heart and his head.

“I’m beat, Benjy. Really, really beat.” He started to lie down.

“Omar! I was there that day,” he whispered, stepping closer now. “I saw you. I saw you and that Earlie fighting. He chased you, and then you were, I think, wrestling, and then there was this sharp thing, shiny like a knife, in both your hands. And he looked up, and I think he saw me, because he kind of stopped a minute. And you took off then. He ran after you. And I ran home.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“My Lord,” Omar sighed, stretching his arms back behind his head. “So someone does know the truth I speak. This comes as a great relief to me, Benjy, a great, great relief. That young man you saw didn’t just rob me of my money. He took away my goodwill, and my trust in my fellowman, and my self-confidence. I’ll tell you, if it weren’t for your mother, I don’t know, I hate to think where I’d be right now.” He slapped his knee. “Well, be that as it may, you need your sleep more’n you need any more of my moaning and groaning. I just hope to God Earlie doesn’t harm anyone else like he did me.”

“Omar! He’s dead. His body’s right out there in those woods. I saw it.

Klubocks’ dog kept bringing back pieces of his clothes. He’s all swollen up, and there’s a knife in his chest. A knife with a snakeskin handle.”

Omar buried his face in his hands. “Oh my God,” he groaned. “This can’t be. That poor, misguided creature. I wonder what happened?”

“You killed him,” Benjy said, as if the question needed answering.

Omar’s head shot up. “Tell me you’re pranking me, Benjy. Please tell me.”

“You did. I know you did, but—”

“You know what? Oh my God, your mother’s right to be worried about your state of mind. Now you listen to me.” He was stepping into his pants, his shoes, reaching for his shirt. “We have to talk, and we can’t be waking everyone up, so you come outside with me.”

“No.”

Dressed, Omar filled the room, the night with whiteness. “What? You’re not afraid of me now, are you?”

“No.” And he knew he wasn’t. He was afraid that one of these times Omar might do to Norm what he had done to Earlie. And he was afraid that if Omar left them, it would be the end for his mother. But he wasn’t afraid that Omar would hurt him. Whatever had happened that day had been done in panic, in fear, in anger. Of that he had no doubt.

“Come with me. We have to talk.” Omar opened the door. “We’ll stay on the street.”

As they headed toward Main Street he kept hobbling with the little stones 346 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

underfoot. Omar was quiet. Benjy was amazed to hear himself talk so much.

The words had been lodged in him for too long. All he really wanted, he tried to explain, was his mother’s happiness. Nothing else was as important as that.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Omar said.

“She likes you,” he said before Omar could say more. “Sometimes she cries when you don’t come.”

Omar sighed. “It hurts to hear that. And it’s far more devotion than I deserve. Tell me, Benjy.” He stopped walking. They were almost at the corner. “Who else knows this about poor Earlie?”

“Nobody.”

“Not Norm or Alice?”

Benjy shook his head.

“And not your mother?”

“No.”

“Why? Why not tell someone? That’s a terrible burden to bear alone.”

He tried to explain that the more terrible burden was his mother’s pain.

Earlie was dead, and nothing and no one could change that now. He couldn’t adequately express what he felt, but he tried. Somehow in the midst of all this chaos there had to be room for love. Yes, Earlie was dead, but he couldn’t let that death destroy his mother as well. Evil might be a force here, but then so was love, because without it, nothing made sense or would survive.

Just as he couldn’t hate his father for his affliction and the pain it caused, so was he incapable of condemning Omar for Earlie’s death.

“But I didn’t kill him! He must’ve fallen on his knife.”

“They said it was your knife.” He reminded Omar that he had sent him to talk to the two men.

“Liars, the two of them, armed to the teeth with knives and pistols every minute I knew them. What else did they say?”

“I can’t remember,” he said as they started back. He would not mention the silver money clip thick with bills. There seemed no point to it. Not now, anyway. Omar was right. It had been a terrible burden, and now with it shifted to Omar, he felt relieved. If Omar chose to, he could call the police and tell his side of it. What mattered most was that everything work out between his mother and Omar. And now he knew Norm would be safe with the line—the secret of Earlie’s body—too broadly and plainly drawn for Omar to breach.

“But you see we can’t believe everything we’re told,” Omar said as they walked along. “Nothing’s the way it seems anymore. The world’s too full of cruelty. People lie! They say terrible things! Sometimes the only truth we can know is what we feel in here,” he said, touching his chest. “Benjy, you have to believe me,” Omar whispered, pausing in front of the house. “I did not kill Earlie!”

When he didn’t respond, Omar clamped his hand over his shoulder. “If that’s what you think, then I can’t go back in there. I’ll just leave. I’ll go now, SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 347

tonight. And in the morning you can tell your mother.” Omar stared at him for a long expectant moment, and then he turned.

Benjy watched him grow shapeless and blurred in the distant streetlight before he ran after him, calling softly, “Wait, wait! I’m not going to tell my mother. I don’t want her to know!”

“Then you have to believe me!” Omar cried. “You have to! It’s the only way I can stay, don’t you see?”

Benjy nodded, confused by the sudden parry, the shifting ground, the trembling underfoot. He was just a boy. He was only twelve. There was so much he did not know.

“I’ll tell you what killed Earlie Jones. It was avarice and lust! Selfishness and dishonesty! Treachery! That’s what killed Earlie Jones, not me! Do you understand? Don’t you know what must’ve happened? He took my money, and he started to run. He was trying to get back to the other two, who were waiting for him with my car, my clothes, my goods, all my possessions, and so he’s running and huffing and puffing when all of a sudden his foot gets snagged in something. Who knows, maybe a vine or a tree root, or maybe he just trips, but down he goes, flat on his face, and the knife, the blade he still carried against me, jams up into his heart.” Omar sighed. Eyes closed, he shook his head. “I just hope he went quickly, that’s all.”

“Yah,” Benjy said, as oddly breathless as if he’d just been sprinting through those spring woods. “I hope so, too.”

They went inside, quickly, quietly, feeling their way through the dark, each bound by the other’s vision.

A
rainstorm broke over the mountains, the sudden downpour swelling rivulets into foamy gushing brooks. Gusts of wind lashed spindly trees back and forth, bending them to the ground.

On the third floor of Atkinson Hospital, Nurse Annmarie Simros moved quickly through the sleeping ward. There were eight patients, all men, and most of these were elderly. She had three more meds to administer before her break. The windows flashed with the brilliance of the lightning. The thunderclaps seemed to come every few seconds now. It was amazing how soundly everyone slept through the storm, especially the older men, who usually tossed and turned all night with insomnia. This was a phenomenon she’d noticed before.

“Mr. Seldon,” she whispered, bending over the old popcorn vendor, whose head was still bandaged. Tomorrow his sutures would be removed.

The blow had fractured his skull and for three days he’d lain in a coma.

Sonny Stoner had visited every day. A distant cousin had driven down from Burlington to find a nursing home that would care for him when (and
if
, his doctor interjected) he was released. But Joey Seldon had come out of the coma. He insisted he was going home and, as soon as he could, back to his stand. “Mr. Seldon,” Nurse Simros whispered, the graze of her fingertips on his shoulder surely icy, she thought, as his eyes opened with alarm. “I have your pills here,” she said, lifting him and bringing the cup to his lips.

348 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

He swallowed, his sightless eyes locked on hers, even now as she eased him back onto the pillow. “Good night,” she whispered, then turned to go. She glanced back. A bolt of lightning filled the ward with light and Joey Seldon’s eyes flew from window to window. It was the brightness, she told herself.

That was all, just the sudden intensity.

A
lmost a mile away in his apartment over the Holy Articles Shoppe, Howard Menka was wide awake. Usually, storms like this frightened him, but he was so excited over tomorrow’s trip that he could think of little else. First thing in the morning he and his landlady, Lucille, were leaving on the bus to see Cousin Perda. He’d packed their lunch, four liverwurst-and-tomato sandwiches, two hard-boiled eggs, two Devil Dogs, and a thermos of cherry Kool-Aid. He turned on the light next to his bed once again to admire the gifts he had bought for Perda and the other patients.

There were two red-and-black Japanese fans, a magnifying glass, a box of gold stars, six tiny plastic infants swaddled in bits of pink and blue flannel, and his favorite, the tumbling man in the squeeze bars. He squeezed the bright green sticks, smiling as the little figure spun and turned up and over the sticks, then down again. He couldn’t wait to show Lucille how to work it. Maybe it would make her laugh. It was hard to make Lucille laugh.

Lucille was bringing holy cards. She’d wanted to give each patient a patron saint card, but the only name he could remember was his cousin’s, and Lucille said there was no such saint as Perda, so she decided on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Good idea, he said, but the truth was that the image of Jesus holding his bleeding heart always made him sick to his stomach and dizzy because of the way he couldn’t stop thinking about that soft warm heart still beating as it bled in the palm of your hand, and the whole time, like now that he’d let it into his thoughts, he’d be trying to click it off, think of something else, come on now, he’d tell himself, anything but that, even though Jozia said it wasn’t like a human heart, of course: a human heart would die outside the body, but Jesus’ heart was eternal, didn’t need a cord or any connecting thing to keep him alive, just love, she said, that was it, love, think of love, just love, love, love, and Lucille, whom he loved, loved, loved, but dared not tell because of the man who came sometimes. He was older, short and plump, with gray sideburns. He always brought her apples and pears. The last time, after he left, Howard heard Lucille singing through the heat register on the floor, where he’d been lying and listening the whole time. Tomorrow, after the trip to see Perda, he was going to tell her, maybe even on the way home in the dark bus, when they’d both be tired and feeling good about themselves and lucky the way he and Jozia used to feel in their realization not only of all they had, but that they had each other. Of course now that his sister was under the spell of Grondine Carson she considered the trip to see Perda “nothing but a waste of time and money,” but not Lucille. She had said yes the minute he asked her.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 349

A
ll through the storm Chief Stoner had been dozing in the chair by his wife’s bed. He woke up now, startled by the sudden quiet, the wet stillness, and the close scent of flowers in the room. He listened. When he heard her breathing, he gripped the arms of the chair and started to get up.

“Sonny?” Carol said. “Where you going?”

“Nowhere,” he lied. The flowers on the dresser were from Eunice. She sent dinner over every night, and on Sundays when the nurse was off, she bathed Carol and spent the day with her. Sonny made it a point to be away from here on Sundays. On the night of Joey Seldon’s attack he’d vowed to stop seeing Eunice. He’d called his sister in Rhode Island and asked if Lester could spend a few weeks with her. She had six kids, all athletes, but Lester had refused to go, preferring to spend his nights down in the kitchen monitoring police calls. He’d given up suggesting he call Alice Fermoyle. Lester said the world was becoming an evil place.

“Lay down with me,” Carol said. “Please?”

“But I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“Nothing hurts anymore,” she sighed through the swoon of her medication.

Buckles, badges, and key chains clinking, he lay on his side facing her, cringing to keep every pore, every bone, hair, and muscle from touching her. They hadn’t been this close in months. “How’s that?” he whispered, and when she didn’t answer he asked again. He hardly knew what to say anymore.

“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” she said.

“You sleep so much during the day, it’s hard at night,” he said.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, and he realized she was crying.