AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stood up and slammed the record into its cardboard sheath. “How would you know?” she said. “You don’t know anything about romance.” Brushing past me, she returned the record and hurried out of the store. I caught up to her on the sidewalk. “Why do you have to make fun of everything,” she said bitterly. “Why can’t you take me seriously?”
“I do take you seriously,” I protested. “I loved ‘Tutti-Frutti.’ Maybe I’ll buy it.”
Dwayne came ambling up the sidewalk, pushing his bicycle. “That’s retarded,” he said and spit at Mary Sue’s feet.
“Dwaa-yenn,” she said, drawing out his name.
He uttered a choking laugh and moved on. When he was about fifteen feet away, he stopped and turned and watched us.
“He’s always around now,” I said.
Mary Sue wasn’t interested in Dwayne. “You always have to spoil everything by picking it apart,” she said. In her anger, she made her arms stick-like at her sides. “It’s ’cause you think you’re better than me. Even now.”
“Mary Sue! I can’t believe you said that.” I reached over and took her hand. “You’re my best friend.”
Her lower lip pushed out from her face and trembled slightly. “No, I’m not. Bunny’s your best friend.”
“She’s my mother.”
“Even still.”
We looked at each other for several seconds. Then she pulled her hand away and took a few steps down the sidewalk toward the square. “I’ve got to get home,” she said.
“Well, come this way.” I nodded up the street, the way we’d come.
“I’m in a hurry,” she said, backing away. “I’m going this way.”
“But that’s past the square.”
“I don’t care. I told Jimmy I’d call, so I’ve got to get home.” She gave me a stiff-armed wave. “Well, bye,” she said. She took another step back, then turned and hurried off down the sidewalk. I watched her go. She was moving at about half again her normal pace, and the effort made her body sway from side to side. She reached the end of the block, crossed against the light, and continued down the next block, without looking back.
Finally, I turned and started for the Vernons’ alone, going the long way around, away from the square. Dwayne followed the entire distance, always staying about half a block behind.
SIXTEEN
Bunny and I got permission to spend Sunday together, away from the Vernons’ house. She had agreed to take me to church, and then we were going on a picnic at Mason’s Farm. Bunny had arranged it all with Mrs. O’Brien. The idea was for us to spend time figuring out how we were going to pull ourselves together as a family.
On Sunday morning, Bunny was late, as usual. The church service starts at eleven, and it was already a few minutes after by the time I heard her Pontiac rattling down Oak Street. She had her excuse all ready. “I had to iron my skirt,” she said, after I’d run down the walk and hopped into the car. She was wearing her tight, black skirt and a white blouse with ruffles around the neck. She also had on high heels.
“Everything else was dirty,” she explained when she saw the disapproval in my eyes. “Besides, the Congo’s hardly like church.” She stepped on the accelerator, and the car zoomed past the KTD, heading toward the square. She didn’t ask me how I was or comment on my outfit. She was frowning, and I could see a muscle twitching in her jaw, as if her head had its own tiny heartbeat. After we’d driven a few blocks in silence, she started going on about how I was always criticizing her, how I didn’t treat her like my mother anymore. She’d obviously been thinking about it, and the words and ideas just tumbled out of her mouth, without any real order. Meanwhile, she had her foot planted on the accelerator, and she wasn’t paying attention to the street. We hit the railroad tracks and bounced so hard that I bumped my head on the top of the car. “Watch your head,” Bunny snapped.
The square was quiet, with everyone off at church. A couple of solitary hoods were hanging around the water fountain, smoking cigarettes. Bunny found a parking spot in front of the drugstore, and we hurried along the sidewalk to the Congregational Church on a side street a couple of blocks away. With its squat thick walls of red stone, the Congo suggests a fort more than a house of worship. Outside, the only religious sign is a small cross hanging above the main door. Inside, a big wooden cross stands behind the altar, and the high, white walls are broken by vaulted windows of stained glass. Over the years, the walls have become crisscrossed with dark, wandering cracks, like the veins in an old person’s hand.
The congregation was singing the first hymn when we arrived. There were only thirty or forty people, families gathered in bunches, and they were all scattered in the first six or seven pews. Bunny and I walked down the center aisle, past row after empty row, and slipped into a pew just behind everyone else. Reverend Vaughn stood in front at a pulpit
made of dull, brown wood. He saw us and smiled at me. I thought we’d entered quietly, but when the hymn ended and everyone sat again, several heads turned to see who’d arrived late.
In the rustling, I whispered to Bunny. “Isn’t he handsome?” Standing on the raised platform, draped in a billowy black robe, Reverend Vaughn was larger than life, even a bit frightening. The robe gave imaginary bulk to his body and exaggerated his height. He seemed all out of balance with the inside of the church, like a man standing in a rowboat. Too big, too controlling, he could rock and spill us all into the water.
Bunny just shrugged. She smoothed her skirt and folded her hands in her lap. Viewed sitting down, with her skirt and heels safely out of sight, she looked perfectly proper, perhaps even a little old-fashioned in her ruffled blouse. As Reverend Vaughn shuffled the papers in front of him and paused for the congregation to settle, his gaze flickered across the pews and rested for a moment on Bunny. I thought I saw a spot of pleasure in his face. I imagined he was surprised at Bunny’s radiance—she startles and stands out so when you’re not expecting her. I even thought that, in his eyes, a touch of her radiance might have passed to me.
The mimeographed programs that we’d picked up on the way in announced that the sermon was titled “Abundance Lake: The Life and Death of a Small Town.” Reverend Vaughn waited until the congregation had focused on him and then began, speaking in a tone that was confident and relaxed. “I need to start by making a couple of apologies,” he said, smiling out across his audience. “I think I’ve mentioned before that some sermons are twenty-hour efforts—that is, they represent twenty hours of research and writing over the previous week or so—and some are more in the nature of ninety-minute jobs. I’m sure you’ve learned to distinguish one from the other.” A smattering of laughter passed among the congregation. “Well, I’m afraid this sermon belongs in the ninety-minute category, as you’ll soon discover.” Again, a few people laughed. “In my defense, though, let me say that it’s not because I was panicked and preoccupied trying to cook a noodle casserole for the potluck dinner Friday, or tied down by any of the other crises that normally divert me. The fact of the matter is that I had trouble with this one, and I knew that no amount of research or reading could pull me out of it. So, although what you get today represents ninety minutes of writing and rewriting, there’s a good deal more undocumented thinking behind it. You’ll just have to take my word on that.” He leaned across the pulpit and wagged his head, luring laughs from the same few people who’d been amused all along.
“The second thing I want to apologize for,” he went on, “is oversimplifying. The issue that I’m going to deal with is very complicated, and it’s one that touches all of our lives. I realize that what I’m about to say lacks much of the nuance of the subject—and I’m well aware that many of you know far more about it than I do. Nonetheless, to make a point, you sometimes have to whittle down a large mass of facts. I guess it’s up to each of you to decide whether I’ve whittled the facts in this instance beyond recognition.”
He paused and looked down for a moment, then lifted his head solemnly. “Well, enough disclaimers. What I want to do today is tell a story. It’s not a story you’ll find in the Bible or in any other book. It’s not even a true story. It’s one I made up myself.
“Once, not long ago, in a certain country, there was a small town. The town was situated on a fertile plain that sat among a range of low, green mountains. A single stream of icy, clear water came down out of the mountains and ran through the town. Indeed, that stream was the lifeblood of the town. People came to the stream to get water to drink and to cook with, to give their animals, to use in the countless ways people use water in their daily lives. The stream was small, but it was steady: It didn’t have to be big, since this was, as I said, a small town. There were a few farms, a few stores, a cluster of houses, nothing more.
