“Where’s Elaine?” he asked. “Isn’t she going to be here?”
The nun stared at the little boy for a moment, then shook her head.
“She can’t be here,” the nun said finally. “You mustn’t think about her anymore, or talk about her.”
“Why not?” the little boy asked.
“Never mind,” the nun admonished him. “Your sister was an evil child, and she has sinned. You mustn’t think about her.”
The funeral mass ended, and his parents were taken from the church. He watched them go, and wondered what had happened to them.
And what had happened to his sister.
And why he was by himself.
But, of course, he wasn’t by himself. He was in the convent, but no one would tell him why. He heard someone—one of the sisters—say: “Hell get over it. He’ll forget. It will be better that way.”
The little boy did not forget. Not while he was small, and not while he grew up. Always, he was aware that something had happened. Something had happened to his parents, and to his sister. And his sister had caused it to happen.
His sister was evil.
She had sinned.
He knew that God forgave sinners.
But who punishes them?
By the time he was ten, he had stopped asking. Nobody had ever told him the answer.
Peter Balsam trudged to the top of Cathedral Hill and stared up at the forbidding stone façade of the Church of St. Francis Xavier. The desert heat seemed to intensify, and Balsam could feel sweat pouring from his armpits, and forming rivulets as it coursed down his back. He sank down on the steps in front of the church, and stared at the vista below him.
The town was called Neilsville, and it lay shimmering in the heat of the Eastern Washington desert like some dying thing writhing in agony with each tortured breath, unable to end its misery.
There was an aura about Neilsville, an aura that Peter Balsam had felt the minute he had arrived but had not yet been able to define.
A word had flashed into his mind the moment he had gotten off the train two hours earlier. He had put it immediately out of his mind. It had kept coming back.
Evil
.
It covered the town like the stink of death, and Peter Balsam’s first impulse had been to run—to put himself and all his possessions on the next train east, and get away from Neilsville as fast as he could.
But the next train would not be until tomorrow, and so, reluctantly, he had gone to the apartment that had been rented for him. He had not unpacked his suitcases,
not put his name on the mailbox, not tried to order a phone, not done any of the other things that one normally does to settle into a new home.
Instead, he had tried to tell himself that the pervading sense of foreboding, of something desperately wrong in the town, was only in his imagination, and had set out to explore the place.
After two hours he had climbed Cathedral Hill, and now he was about to present himself to the man who had brought him to Neilsville.
He slipped into the gloom of the church, dipped his fingers into the holy water, made the sign of the cross as he genuflected, and slid into a pew. Peter Balsam began to pray.
He prayed the prayers the nuns had carefully taught him in the convent, the prayers that had always before brought him peace.
Today there was no peace. It was as if fingers were reaching out to him, grasping at him, trying to pull him into some strange morass that he could feel but not see.
Balsam concentrated on his prayers, repeating the familiar phrases over and over again, until the rhythms of the rosary overcame the fear within him.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners …”
In the study of the rectory next to the church, Monsignor Peto Vernon paced slowly back and forth. He had watched Balsam’s slow progress up Cathedral Hill, and had expected to hear the faint tinkling that would announce his visitor. Now he realized that Balsam must have stopped to catch his breath after the long climb.
The priest went back to the window, and stared out once more, taking in the familiar dry vista of Neilsville, then focusing on the five girls who were playing on the
tennis courts below him—four of them together, one alone. As he continued to stare down at them, each of them, in turn, glanced up at him as if they had felt his disapproving glare. One of them waved impudently, and the priest quickly stepped back from the window, embarrassed at having been discovered watching them, and angry at his own embarrassment.
He resented the girls, resented the way they acted so respectful in his presence, then sneered at him from a distance. When he had been a child, such impudence had not been tolerated. The nuns had demanded respect all the time, and the boys in the convent had given it, unquestioningly. But times had changed, and these girls didn’t live at St. Francis Xavier’s, didn’t have the constant supervision he himself had had at their age. This year, he told himself, things would be different. This year, with the help of Peter Balsam, he would take a stronger stand. This year, he would teach them respect, and humility. It was for this purpose that he had summoned Peter Balsam to Neilsville.
It had not been an easy thing to do. From its inception, the parish school had employed only nuns on the teaching staff, and they had resisted when Monsignor had told them he was bringing in a layman to teach psychology. Psychology, they had told him, had no place at St. Francis Xavier’s. It should be left to the public school. And as for a man—and not even a priest at that—teaching at St Francis Xavier’s, it was simply unheard of. Monsignor Vernon had explained to them: he had been unable to find anyone else who could teach both psychology and Latin. Then, when they still resisted, he had invoked his authority as their religious superior. They, like most others, had wilted under the brooding stare of the Monsignor. The priest had invited Peter Balsam to come to Neilsville.
Knowing Balsam’s background, Monsignor Vernon had felt it unlikely that his old friend would refuse. Balsam hadn’t.
Peter Balsam emerged from the church, recoiling from the hot blast that assaulted him as he stepped into the fierce sunglare. He told himself once again that the fear the town instilled in him was only in his mind. It was just that it was all so different from what he had grown up with, so dry and parched-looking.
He told himself that he should stay, should give Neilsville a chance. He had lived with fear too long, and this time he should overcome it As he walked to the rectory next to the church, he told himself that the discomfort he was feeling came only from his own imagination. But he didn’t believe it, for as he climbed the steps to the porch of the rectory, he again felt something pulling at him, something from outside himself. Something in Neilsville.
He glanced around for the doorbell as he crossed the porch. He was about to knock on the door when he saw a neatly lettered card taped to the inside of the glass panel in its center. “Please come in,” the card read. Balsam obediently tried the doorknob, and entered the foyer of the rectory. To his right stood a small table, and on the table rested a diver bell. Balsam picked up the bell, and shook it gently, sending a clear, tinkling sound through the house. A silent moment passed before he heard the click of a doorlatch somewhere down the hall and saw a figure emerge from a room. Then Pete Vernon was striding toward him, tall, purposeful, one hand stretched out in greeting.
“Peter Balsam,” he heard the priest’s voice boom. “How long has it been?” A moment later, even before he had a chance to say hello, Balsam found himself
being propelled down the hall and into the room from which the priest had appeared a few seconds earlier.
“Pete—” Balsam began tentatively, as Vernon dosed the door of what was apparently his study. Suddenly Balsam realized that he was even more nervous than he had thought. Something in his old friend had changed. He seemed taller, and more confident, and there was a brooding quality in his eyes, a darkness that Balsam found unnerving. “It’s been a long time,” he finished lamely. “Thirteen or fourteen years, I guess.”
“Sit down, sit down,” Vernon said. He indicated two large easy chairs that flanked a stone fireplace, and settled into one of them before Balsam had reached the other. As he sank slowly into his chair, Balsam became acutely aware that Pete Vernon was examining him closely.
“I’m afraid I’m a bit rumpled,” he said, grinning uncomfortably. “It’s quite a hill you have here.”
“You get used to it,” Vernon said. “At least I have. Welcome to Neilsville.”
The Monsignor saw Balsam’s grin fade, and his own brows furrowed slightly. “Is anything wrong? The apartment not satisfactory?”
Balsam shook his head. “The apartment’s fine. I’m not sure what it is. It’s hard to explain, but ever since I got off the train, I’ve had this strange feeling. I can’t really put my finger on it I keep telling myself it’s only my imagination, but I keep getting the feeling that something’s—” He broke off, trying to find the right word. He hesitated over using the word “evil,” though that was the word that kept coming to mind. “—that something’s not right here.”
He felt a sudden chill coming from the priest, and realized he’d said the wrong thing. Neilsville had been the Monsignor’s home for nearly fifteen years, and the
first thing Balsam had done was insult the place. He tried to recover from the blunder.
“But I’m sure I’ll get used to it,” he said quickly, and only then realized that he had committed himself to stay. The priest seemed to relax again, and smiled at
him.
“And your wife?” he asked smoothly. “Linda, isn’t it? When will she be joining you?”
“I’m afraid she won’t be joining me at all,” Balsam said carefully. “I’m afraid we’re separated. Sometimes things just don’t work out”
“I see,” Vernon said in a tone of voice that told Balsam he didn’t see at all. “Well, that’s most unfortunate.”
Balsam decided to try to make light of it. There was no point in trying to explain what had gone wrong and no sympathy in the priest’s steely gaze. “That depends on how you look at it,” he said, forcing a smile. “From our point of view—Linda’s and mine, that is—it was the marriage that was unfortunate, not the separation.”
Balsam’s smile faded as he watched Vernon stiffen. He had made another mistake: Pete Vernon was a priest, and a failed marriage was nothing to make light of.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said quickly. “Of course the whole thing has been very painful, and I’m afraid it will take time.” A lot of time, he thought to himself, but the priest seemed mollified.
“Of course,” Vernon said, his voice suddenly taking on a fatherly quality Balsam had never heard before. “If there’s anything I can do … “ He trailed off and then he suddenly shifted in his chair. When he spoke again, it was with annoyance.
“I wish you’d told me all this before,” he said. “Such things make a much bigger difference in towns like
Neilsville than they do in bigger cities. It isn’t going to make things easier for either of us.”
My God, Balsam thought, is he going to fire me before I even get a chance? Aloud he said, “I don’t really see why my marital status is anyone’s business but my own.”
Vernon smiled tolerantly at him. “I’m afraid you have a lot to learn about Neilsville. Here, such matters are everybody’s business. Well, I don’t really see that there’s anything to be done about the situation, I mean, here you are, and Linda isn’t here, and that’s that, isn’t it?”
Balsam hoped his sigh of relief wasn’t audible. “Pete,” he began, but broke off when the priest held up his hand.
“Since we’re talking about the less pleasant aspects of Neilsville, there are one or two more things I should tell you right now. First, while we’re old friends, and it’s perfectly natural for you to call me Pete, in this parish we tend to be a bit on the formal side. Everybody, and I mean everybody, calls me Monsignor. It may seem stiff to you, but there are reasons for it. So I’d suggest that you try to get into the habit of using my title yourself.” He smiled wryly at the look of stupefaction on Balsam’s face. “I wish it weren’t necessary,” he said, “but Pm afraid it is. If people overheard you calling me Pete instead of Monsignor, they’d take it as a sign of disrespect”
“I see,” Balsam said slowly, hoping he’d matched the tone that Vernon had achieved earlier with the same phrase. “Doesn’t that sort of thing tend to isolate you from everyone?”
Vernon shrugged helplessly. “What can I do? That’s the way things have always been done here, and that’s the way the people here like it We have a duty to our
flock, don’t we?” Before Balsam could reply, the priest stood up. “Suppose I take you on a little tour?” he suggested. “We might as well get you used to the lay of the land.” He smiled warmly, but Peter Balsam suddenly wondered just how much of that warmth was real.
Monsignor Vernon led Peter Balsam from the rectory across the tennis courts to the school building. The four girls who had been playing doubles stopped their game and stared at the two men. Peter Balsam grinned at them self-consciously, while the priest studiously ignored them.
The fifth girl, absorbed in trying to serve balls against the wall of a handball court, didn’t seem to notice them at all.
“They really gave me the once-over,” Balsam commented when the two men were inside the school building.
“It was me they were staring at,” Monsignor Vernon said stiffly. “They do it on purpose. They think it embarrasses me.”
“Does it?” Balsam asked mildly, and was surprised when the priest grasped his arm and turned to face him.
“No,” he said, his dark eyes boring into Peter’s. “It doesn’t bother me at all. Will it bother you?”
“Why should it?” Balsam asked in confusion, wondering why the priest was reacting so strongly.
The Monsignor dropped his arm as quickly as he’d grasped it. “No reason,” he said shortly. “No reason at all.”
But as they began their tour of the school, Peter Balsam was sure that there
was
a reason. He told himself it was nothing more than a function of their common background. Growing up in the convent, neither of them had ever learned how to deal with teen-age girls. And now, in their mid-thirties, it was probably too late
for either of them to learn. So, in their own ways, each of them coped with his discomfort—Balsam by grinning foolishly, and Vernon by ignoring them completely. As they began their tour of St Francis Xavier High School, Peter Balsam put the entire incident out of his mind.