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A very tall man, dressed in a dark suit and tie, was standing at the window, staring out at the rain-soaked backyard. He turned quickly when he heard our footsteps. It was Reverend Vaughn from the Congregational Church.
“I hope you don’t mind me butting in like this,” he said. “I don’t usually go where I’m not invited, but Mrs. O’Brien said there was a bit of a crisis.”
“Oh.” Why hadn’t she warned me he’d be coming today?
“She thought you might like to talk.” I didn’t say anything, and he uttered a high, nervous laugh. “Of course, you don’t have to,” he added quickly. “It’s up to you. It’s such a personal thing—who you can talk to.” He had thinning blond hair and pale skin. A pink blush appeared on his neck, just above his carefully knotted tie, and spread up under his chin. For once, someone was tall enough to give me a view under the chin.
“Would you like some tea? Or would you two rather be alone?” asked Mrs. Vernon, sounding as if she were trying to arrange a romance.
“Nothing for me, thanks,” said Reverend Vaughn.
I shook my head. Silence tortured the three of us for a few seconds. Then the minister said, “The rain’s let up for the moment. Would you like to take a walk?”
“Okay.” I grabbed a jacket, and he ushered me out of the house. When he walked, his long body moved in sections, all elbows and knees and angles. I thought of Ichabod Crane.
We started left toward the square, then turned up Prosperity Street, crossing to the other side to put a little distance between us and the commotion of the KTD. “It’s so sad,” he said, gesturing toward the factory. “What’ll Katydid do if it shuts down?”
“Mrs. Vernon was wondering the same thing.”
He stopped for a moment and stared at the side of the building, a plain brick wall, lifeless except for an occasional grime-encrusted window. The machine noises, so comforting at night from a few blocks away, were a bit too insistent this close. “When I first moved here,” he said, “I thought it was funny to find this factory, a huge factory, right in the middle of town. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t build it outside someplace, where it wouldn’t be so close to so many homes. But then I asked someone about it and he showed me how stupid I was being. When they built the factory, it was outside of town. The houses came later, when people moved here to be close to the place they worked.”
“That must have been a long time ago.” It was hard to imagine the neighborhood as ever being new. It had nothing of the flat, cleared look of, say, Pine Tree Manor, the subdivision they put in west of town a few years ago.
“Oh, the place was built half a century ago, long before you were around,” Reverend Vaughn said. “Your mother’s parents might remember.”
“My mother’s not from around here. She’s from Wisconsin. She only moved here when she was seventeen.”
“Really?” He started walking again. “Why’d she come?”
“It had something to do with a man,” I said—and wished immediately that I hadn’t. Bunny deserved more privacy from me than that.
“I guess that’s as good a reason as any.”
We turned off Prosperity and walked down Sylvan Street. Though the sky had lifted somewhat, rain had been falling, off and on, for the last few hours, and we had to dodge puddles on the sidewalk. A few other people were starting to venture out—a woman dragging an empty, wire cart down to the Piggly Wiggly; Janie Wilson and a friend, probably on their way to Osgood’s Store to buy candy; Jack the mailman, a deflated mail pouch over his shoulder. He nodded respect-fully when he saw the minister.
Reverend Vaughn started asking questions—nothing serious, questions about school and friends, about books I enjoyed and movies I liked. He was gentle and shy, as Mrs. O’Brien had said. When our eyes happened to meet, his gaze would dart away. He seemed boyish to me, and he listened to me with a kind of boyish enthusiasm, getting excited when I mentioned something he cared about. At least he seemed to be excited—I guess you can’t really know. At any rate, I liked him. Walking beside him on the sidewalk, I had a strange sense of my own presence. I couldn’t stay out of the way. We kept bumping together. I’m so clumsy sometimes, so big. He’s much taller than I, and yet I seemed to be occupying more space than ever. A breeze brushed by, lifting my hair, and for a moment, I was afraid the odor of chlorine, picked up in my morning swim, was floating off me, like bad perfume.
After a while, a sprinkle opened up again, and we ducked into the little park behind Sylvan Street Elementary School. The playground equipment was glistening with raindrops, but there was a small shelter there, just a roof supported by four thick wooden shafts. We sat at the picnic table underneath. Someone had carved “Elvis” in big, fresh letters in the tabletop.
“Do you like him?” Reverend Vaughn asked, pointing to the name.
“He’s all right. I kind of like his voice. It’s so deep.”
“He’s not too loud?”
“Maybe a little, but you get used to that.”
“And the wiggling?”
“I’ve never seen him. I just hear him on the radio.”
“He’s supposed to be on Ed Sullivan this fall.”
“I know. I’ll try to watch.”
The minister’s legs didn’t fit easily under the picnic table, so he stretched them out to the side. Drops of rain dripped off the end of the roof and splattered on his polished black shoes. “I don’t know about Elvis,” he said. “He has an effect on people. He does something.”
“He’s a fad,” I said.
