When We Were Saints (3 page)

It was early April and not yet the high tourist season there in town, so Archie had hoped that she would be easier to find, but although there were a number of tall, slender girls with soft voices, none of them seemed right to him.
He either knew the girls already, or if not, they didn't show the least bit of interest in him. The girl at the cemetery had known his name. He figured if he spotted her, she would startle or draw in her breath or in some other way show him some bit of recognition.

The girl and the card with its unusual message weren't the only things on his mind. Archie felt that his grandfather haunted him as well. He had written an e-mail message to Armory about it, but Archie decided something had to be wrong; his best friend hadn't written him back in over a week, and they had promised to e-mail each other every day. Archie decided to call Armory, and after getting permission from his grandmother he did.

Armory answered the phone laughing, and Archie felt so happy to hear his friend's deep voice on the other end, he laughed, too.

"Hey, it's me, Cas. How are you? I've been e-mailing you like we promised, but I haven't heard back from you. Everything okay?"

Archie heard Armory whisper something to someone and then Armory said, "Cool!"

"Huh?"

"Oh, sorry, Cas. What did you say?"

"Are you okay?" Archie spoke louder as if Armory had trouble hearing him.

"Yeah, sure, great. Well, you know how it is, getting used to a new school and all. Oh, wait." Armory laughed. "Sorry, I guess you don't, being
home
-schooled all your life. How's that going, anyway? Your grandfather giving it to you as usual? Still trying to convince you the South won the Civil War? Man, I'm glad to be out of Hicksville."

Who is he talking to?
Archie wondered. It sounded as if Armory was saying everything for someone else's benefit. As if he was putting on a show for someone. And what had happened to his voice? He sounded like a Yankee.

Archie took a deep breath, feeling irritation rising in him. "Armory, I wrote you—he died. I told you that. You wrote back, remember? You said, 'Cool!' Remember?"

"Oh yeah. Oh yeah? So what's that like, having the old buzzard out of the way? Are you, like, going wild, or what?"

Archie heard his friend whisper again and then laugh. The conversation was going about as well as the e-mails. "Who's there with you?" he asked.

"No one—anymore," Armory said. "So go on; what were you saying?"

Archie took another deep breath and pushed on. "I think my granddaddy is haunting me."

"Cool! Like a ghost or something?"

"No. His words, his last words keep bugging me. I looked up 'saints' on the Internet and read this article that said that they used to throw saints to the lions or stone them to death, or they cut their heads off just because of their beliefs. Ever since I read that, I've been having all kinds of nightmares. You think Granddaddy Silas wants me stoned to death? Saints are Catholic, right? You know how Granddaddy never did abide by anything Catholic. You know what he was like. There was only one religion—his. He meant to insult me, take one last jab at me, right? Make me feel guilty for what we did?"

"Clyde's Catholic, isn't he?" Armory asked. "Old Silas liked him enough to let him run the farm."

"That's different. He was like a second son to Granddaddy. He knew Clyde since Clyde was two."

"Well, I think it's cool dreaming about getting your head cut off. Chop, chop. You get all the luck, man."

"Yeah, thanks. I don't feel so lucky. Remember I wrote you how when Granddaddy died, he poked me in the stomach when he spoke those words? Remember I said he dug his fingernail into my stomach?"

"Uh—well—okay."

Archie could hear him snickering, as if what he was saying was so funny. Archie didn't know what to do but continue. Armory was his best friend, after all—or he had been. Archie said, "It's weird, I know, but I can still feel my granddaddy's poke." He rubbed his stomach. "It's like this dull pressure just above my belly button. It's here all the time, like a warning or something."

Archie heard someone giggling. There was someone on the other line. It sounded like a girl. Then the giggling turned to laughter and the girl spoke. "Who is this clown talking? Armory, do you hear him drawl? What a hick. I can't believe you used to know this dude."

Archie said, "Who is this? Armory? What's going on?"

Then he heard Armory's deep laughter along with the girl's. "Cas, meet Darcy, my girlfriend. I said she could listen in on the other line. She wanted to hear you talk with your accent."

"What accent?" Archie asked. "You know I don't have much of an accent."

"'Whut ac-see-nt?'" the girl said, imitating him. "You sound so corny."

"Told you," Armory said.

Archie didn't know what was going on, but he'd had enough. Without making a sound he hung up the phone and then sat staring at it for several minutes. He didn't know what to think about what had just happened. How could Armory have humiliated him like that? He felt he had just lost his best friend, and he didn't know what to do about it. He wanted to talk to someone, but who could he talk to? He and his grandmother never talked about those kinds of things, and Clyde was busy on the farm. Archie should have been, too, but Clyde had told him to take some time off from work because he had been too distracted lately, and that made him dangerous around all the machinery. It felt like nobody wanted him around.

Archie headed outside and aimlessly roamed the farm. His grandparents owned more than two hundred acres of fields and pasture and woods, two large ponds, a stream, and behind their home, a mountain: Caswells' Mountain.

He walked into the woods and through the fields, past the grazing sheep and cows. He pitched rocks into the stream that ran down the steep slope of the mountain, then climbed to the top of the mountain. He lifted his head to the sky and spoke to his grandfather asking him, "Have you blessed me or cursed me, Granddaddy?" Archie's answer was a dull pressing sensation just above his belly button. That night he returned home and went to bed without dinner.

The next day he woke up feeling strangely calm and still dreamy after a night of dreams he couldn't remember but he knew they had been pleasant for a change. He awoke early and again climbed to the top of the mountain. He sat down on a boulder and sucked on a lemon he'd carried in his pocket. He watched the cows grazing in a field below him. He watched them a long time.

The day had started out cool and sunny and calm, a day Archie had called a blue day. Every day, he believed, held a color; every day had a certain cast to it, blue or green or gold or pink. That day Archie had called blue, but after sitting for a couple of hours staring out at the fields, the light changed, deepening the colors about him to purple, and the wind began to blow. Right from the start the wind had felt uncommon, as if it had swept up from beneath him.

Archie tossed his lemon away and looked about. The cows that he had been gazing at only moments before seemed closer clearer as though he were looking at them through a telescope, and each hair on their brown-and-white bodies stood out in detail, perfect and alive. Everything, he realized, looked that way: the rocks, the patches of spring snow, the grass, the trees; everything was filled with a spirit and an energy that radiated out toward him. The wind blew harder and Archie's hair stood up on his head. He ran his tongue over his front teeth, licking the sourness off them. He saw the pines, a cluster of them bending in the breeze, bowing, beckoning.

Archie stood up and experienced a strange sensation of weightlessness. He could not feel himself. He could not sense where his legs and feet ended and the ground began. His whole body had no beginning and no end. The sky, the air the sun, the earth, and the trees belonged as much to his body as his skin and bones. He walked toward the trees. He felt light and transparent. The pines swayed and bent, speaking with the creaking of their branches, the bristling of their needles, the thump of their cones as they fell to the ground. Archie listened, but it was like the speech of his grandfather when he spoke in tongues—foreign, and powerful. He felt the power and the energy of the trees course through his body. They were alive as he was alive, full of spirit and consciousness. He dropped to his knees and cried. Tears of joy and of worship flowed from his eyes. His heart, his whole being, filled with joy.

Archie stayed with the trees until the light faded and the wind died down and the voices around him grew silent. He did not know what had happened to him, or why, but as he descended the mountain, following the stream in the dark, he remembered the words on the card the girl had handed to him:

Who are you, Almighty God of goodness and wisdom,
that you should visit me and judge me worthy,
I who am lower than the worms in the soil,
and most despicable?

He had read the card over many times since the day of the funeral, but it was only then that he understood its meaning, and he wondered how the girl had known this would happen to him—and that the words would speak to his feelings exactly.

A
RCHIE DIDN'T TELL
anyone what had happened to him, but he wanted to. He wanted to know why it had happened. Why him, the lowliest of worms, as the card said? He had spent his life bedeviling his grandfather every chance he got, and in the end he vomited on him and caused him to have a liver attack and die. He knew he didn't deserve to feel so wonderful, so holy, so—so like a saint for that little while up on the mountain. Still, he tried to recapture the feeling again, that spiritual unity with all things, but it didn't happen. Each time he climbed the mountain and stared out over the fields and forest, the cows just looked like cows grazing in a distant field. The rocks and stones lay about him, hard and gray. The trees did not speak, and the wind and sky did not pass through him. Everything was as it had always been.

A few days after his experience on the mountain, Archie's grandmother caught him talking to the maple tree that stood outside their kitchen window, and later that same day she saw him talking to the rocks he held in his hands, and she stepped out onto the farmhouse porch and asked, "Archibald, sugar are you feeling all right?"

Archie looked up, startled, and dropped the rocks. He opened his mouth to speak, thinking to tell her about his strange experience, but then he caught the look in her eyes, a look that said, "I can't cope with your problems right now, so please say you're all right." Archie knew she had thoughts of her own to dwell on, thoughts that caused the creases between her brows to deepen and that had made her burn the roux she was stirring on the stove a few nights before, so he nodded and said, "I'm fine, Grandmama. I was just studying those rocks and thinking out loud."

His grandmother nodded, a look of relief spreading across her face. "Well, that's all right then." She hesitated a moment and continued, "I just got a call from Lenice Oates down at the library. She says a book you wanted came in. I have some—some errands I'd like to get done, and Clyde is busy, so I thought you might drive me to town and pick up your book at the same time."

Archie looked at his grandmother: A pink flush rose up her neck, and her glance strayed from Archie's face to some distant something off to the left of her,

Was his grandmother uncomfortable about asking him to drive? He had been driving since he was twelve. All of the kids on the local farms learned to drive early, so he didn't think much of it, but he knew his grandmother believed in obeying the law, and he was driving into town, not just on the farm the way he had done before his grandfather died.

Archie was eager to get a look at the saints book he'd ordered, so he ignored his grandmother's behavior and told her he would run get the truck.

On the way into town, Archie's grandmother sat beside him, unsnapping and snapping her purse. Archie glanced at her and decided something other than his driving her to town was upsetting her but he didn't say anything. She stopped fiddling with the purse and fussed with her dress instead, tugging at it and brushing her lap over and over again. Then when Archie pulled up in front of the grocery store, his grandmother told him to move on down the road a bit to the bakery shop. Archie did as he was told, and his grandmother climbed out of the truck and told him to pick her up in two hours. Archie blinked, surprised. What could take so long at the bakery? He looked at the other shops that lined the street—The Beanery, The Natural World, Century 21, a law office, and two art galleries. Maybe his grandmother was going to change her will.

Archie didn't say anything. He only nodded and waved good-bye. Then he drove on to the library, parked, jumped out of the truck, and ran up the steps, eager to see the book about saints that he had discovered on the Internet. He had read that the book had three hundred and thirty-two beautiful illustrations. The Web page he had found only showed four but that was enough. Archie felt he just had to see the whole book. He had a passion for all art, even though he had enjoyed goading his grandfather with his love of comics, saying to him once when his grandfather tore up one of his drawings of Mountain Mike and called his art a waste of good time, "Why shouldn't I love drawing comics? After all, I'm named after a comic strip character aren't I?" His grandfather had been livid. Archie had been named after Silas's own father a war hero, and not the redheaded doofus in the comics.

When Archie reached the top of the steps, he yanked open the library door then tried to act nonchalant as he walked toward the counter—no need to look too eager over a book about saints.

Mrs. Oates saw him coming, pulled out a thick blue book from beneath the counter and handed it to him. She smiled. "Is this for art or religion this time, Archibald?" she asked. Archie knew after his recent experience up on the mountain that it was for both, but he lied and said, "Just the art." Then he blushed, and he knew he had given himself away. He felt bad about the lie. Mrs. Oates was the only one who really knew and understood the depth of his passion for art. She was the one who told him about the interlibrary loan system, which made it possible for him to get hold of almost any art book he wanted, and who introduced him to El Greco and van Gogh and his other favorite artists, but still he couldn't admit to her something he could barely admit to himself: that he was interested in anything religious. That had always been his grandfather's territory, not his.