Embracing Darkness (10 page)

After Sister Ignatius had finished her supper, he had noticed the smell, and he had sensed it
before
then as well. What’s more, there
was
some extreme change in her demeanor between the time he snapped at her about how to get Mrs. Keats’s attention and the story about the fate of the dear woman’s husband. She had gone from quiet and unsociable to playfully talkative in the space of a minute.

She
must
have
had
the
stuff
in
her
lap
, the priest thought.
She
must
have
sneaked
a
whiff
while
I
had
my
eyes
fixed
on
Mrs.
Keats
. Now things were starting to make sense to Father Poole. “And is that the reason why her nose is so red?” asked the priest.

“In my opinion,” replied the old man, “that’s the reason why she is the way she is. Mean-spirited, cusses up a storm. Wooee, Father! You should hear some of the things that come outta that woman’s mouth! And her supposedly a religious woman. Je-ody!”

Then Father Poole remembered why he had come downstairs in the first place, besides getting ice for the bump on his forehead. “Where do… ?” began Father Poole, embarrassed that he needed to ask a neighbor, and a stranger at that, about sleeping arrangements within the confines of his own church. “Do you know where Sister Ignatius and Mrs. Keats sleep? We’ve got a problem if they sleep anywhere in the rectory. I can’t allow women… .”

Benson grunted and said matter-of-factly, “Your cook, I hear, sleeps in your kitchen, which is basically an extended room of your church. I believe your rectory is connected to the kitchen by a small hallway. It’s like Siamese twins. They’re connected but still different. Different roofs altogether, Father. And your Sister
Ig-nauseous
stays up in the bell tower!”

Father Poole looked at Ben Benson dumbfounded. Things seemed to be getting stranger and stranger.

“And she spies,” Benson added. “I can see her some nights at her window up in that tower, sometimes usin’ a handheld telescope to spy on me. Hell, she’d have even spied on Father Carroll if he had come outside. Once or twice I even saw the end of that telescope following A’gyle Hobbs as he went down the hill on some errands for the church. He brings up your goods from the general store and brings down your ga’bage. He usually brings stuff down on his way home and brings stuff up the next mornin’. Trust me, you’ll never have this place all to your lonesome. That nun only goes down into town when she feels like it, and I got a hunch it’s only for herself, not for your church. And your cook, I hear, is afraid of goin’ outta doors. Sort of a… phobee kinda thing.”

“I think you mean ‘phobia,’ Ben.”

Benson replied, “Yep! That’s what she got, alright.”

Phineas looked back toward the church and sighed. Then, under his breath so that the old man couldn’t hear him, he murmured: “Agoraphobia. Any wonder that she’s got it? Probably afraid her husband will come back for her.”

Ben Benson continued, “But she follows A’gyle Hobbs with that telescope o’ hers every chance she gets. Even as he walks down the hill at the end of the day to go home. She even spied on that Keats couple when they was married. Yep! Spying on them with that friggin’ telescope!”

The
final
piece
in
the
jigsaw
puzzle,
Father Poole thought. It wasn’t so much of a secret now how Sister Ignatius knew about the domestic abuse within the Keats’s residence.

“Yep,” Mr. Benson went on. “She ain’t too kindly toward me. Not that I care none. See, I’m alone and have been since 1919 when my grandson moved away. He’d been stayin’ with me. My son and his missus were killed in a train wreck outside Boston back in 1905 when my grandson was just two, maybe three. They died, but he made it out alive. He come to stay with me permanent. In 1919 he took himself a bride an’ up an’ left. Ain’t been back since.”

“Is he your only family?” Phineas asked.

“Yep! He’s all I got. He and his wife. Ain’t got no kids yet, though. But they’re both young, not yet twenty-five either o’ them. My wife died some time ago. When Johnny up an’ left, I was all alone.” He then leaned over the arm of his rocking chair, patted Father Poole’s thigh, and said, “You know, I’m eternally grateful for the company tonight, sonny. You don’t know what it means to a lonely old man.” Father Poole sympathetically put his hand on the old man’s. Then Benson sat back in his chair and continued, “Yep! I’d like to have a great-grandchild before I’m cold in the ground.”

Father Poole felt a bond with Mr. Benson almost immediately. He adjusted himself in the tiny chair, which by now had rendered his right buttock numb, to draw closer and said, “Mr. Benson?”

“Mmm?”

“You’ve been here since the construction of St. Andrew’s, correct?”

Ben Benson chuckled and said, “My boy, there ah’ people in that there town below that say I’m as old as this damn hill itself. I remember the day they came to lay the foundation for that there church o’ yours. It was back in ‘91, I believe. Covered what progress they’d made with a huge ta’p in late fall o’ that year an’ worked like the dickens on it the followin’ Ma’ch. It was finished later that year. Nice addition to the hill. A pretty-lookin’ church. Whitewashed panelin’ all around her. She shines in the sunlight, but not at all practical.” Then, sounding apologetic, he said, “Uh, no offense, Father.” He then sat back in his rocking chair and lip-rolled his cigarette. “Is it as pretty on the inside as on the outside, Father? I ain’t never been in it myself.”

Father Poole grinned widely. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Benson, neither have I.”

The two men remained silent for several seconds, gaping at one another before the old man broke down and roared with laughter. Father Poole soon joined in. Once their heavy laughter had died away, Father Poole, trying to catch his breath, inquired: “That’s just my point, Mr. Benson. Why on earth would they build a church up here?”

“Cheap land,” bluntly asserted the old man.

“But why such a large rectory? The church is an appropriate size for a small parish, but the rectory… .”

“It’s a goddamn eyesore, ain’t it?” said Ben Benson. “Excuse my French, Father. I don’t mean to blaspheme or nuttin’, but that rectory o’ yours tends to block my favorite thing on this hill when I’m not on my own property.” He lit another cigarette, but this time he didn’t inhale it.

“And what would that be, Ben?”

“My maple over yonder. You can barely make her out in the da’k, but she’s there. My granddaddy was one of the first white men to come up here. My kin came up here from Concord over a hunnert years ago, and that tree was gigantic even then. My daddy was just a babe himself when my family settled here. They were livin’ in town back then. This house wasn’t built until 1860. I helped my father raise the timbers.”

Father Poole said, “It’s a charming place, Mr. Benson. It has a lot of character.”

Benson overlooked the compliment. “At first my father wanted to cut down that beautiful tree and use the wood from its enormous trunk to help build the house. I protested, ‘No, daddy. Don’t kill my tree!’ I
do
feel a kindred spirit in that ol’ gal. I do, Father.”

The priest nodded slowly as Ben Benson continued his story. “Yep! That tree an’ me have been through a lot. I used to climb her when I was a boy and young man. Even on my weddin’ day I took off my suit and climbed her branches. Even used to take my boy up there every chance I got. It became our own little game, climbin’ up there. He grew to love that tree as I had. Oh, I know what you’re thinkin’, Father. ‘How the hell does anyone get up that tree? She’s enormous.’ Well, you cahn’t see it now, pitch black as the night is, but back when we first moved to Holly, down in the town I mean, I used to come up the hill to this ol’ tree an’ read to her.
Frankenstein
was my favorite as a boy. Even the
Portland
Daily
Chronicle
. An’ I swear to you, Father, when I read to her, she’d be happy. She’d flap her branches in the air. You’ll say it was just the wind doin’ it, an’ I’d be inclined to agree with ya that the wind did blow most of the time when her branches got to goin’. There always seemed to be a breeze to keep her stirr’n. That’s when a maple’s happy.”

Father Poole liked the story that Ben Benson was telling. The old man lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, and continued as smoke escaped from his mouth and nostrils while he spoke.

“One day me an’ my best friend at the time, Pearcy Morgan, dared each other to climb to the top of the maple. We teased one another about bein’ too sca’ed to do it, but then I remembered some rope my old man had in one o’ his drawers. It was long and thick. Don’t even know why he had it. Pearcy an’ I, we run down to my house, just a little two-bedroom flat above the bank, and took that rope before sta’ting back up the hill. Facin’ north, her lowest branch was about fifteen feet high. We made several attempts to get the rope to wrap around that branch, but Pearcy finally succeeded.”

Ben Benson snapped his fingers at Father Poole, who was grinning widely. “Then Pearcy and me tied a bunch o’ that rope into knots like a chain. This took a while, but when we were done we had a ladder. Rungs to put our feet in, an’ climb that mother we did. We climbed her so many times that we could climb blindfolded. But no matter how many times we scaled her branches, we never broke a one! We always respected the lady. We knew a broken branch would hurt her, much as a broken leg would hurt you or me. Once we thought we might build a tree house up there, but we knew that’d hurt her. We even thought to name her but then realized that would be silly. Names a’e for people an’ dogs an’ cats. We didn’t think it’d be fair to the maple to bring her too much into our world. So we let it be. But we
did
climb halfway to her top several times, an’ each time it got easier. She’s a maze o’ branches goin’ every which way
.
Why, still to this day I could go up there blindfolded, honest!”

Father Poole chuckled as if to say, “Of course you can, old man.”

“I tell ya, Father,” said Ben Benson. “You think the view from the top of this hill is magnificent. The view from the maple is beyond words! I’m even thinkin’, as I’m tellin’ ya this right now, that I’m gonna take you up there with me some time. You know what we even did once? We created a game called
“
Sheddin’.”

Father Poole was puzzled. “Sorry. ‘Shedding’?”

“Yep!” Ben Benson said. “Sheddin’. Pearcy an’ me, we’d always go up there an’ shed. One of us’d climb up our rope chain to her lowest branch, lock our legs, and hang upside down. Then the other would come up the chain, about three quarters of the way, grab onto the other’s hands, let go of the rope, and we’d swing together back and forth. It was like sheddin’ a tear, ya know? You know how a tear sta’ts? It pools in your eye and then slowly drips down. Well, that’s what Pearcy and me would do. Hangin’ slowly upside down, the tear forms and slowly drips. The other one climbs up, and we lock hands. The tear grows longer. We swing back an’ forth, back an’ forth, the tear just rollin’ down her cheek. We were that ol’ maple’s tears. An’ I swear to you that whenever we would go sheddin’ on the maple, she’d dance for us. We’d both seen it. Whether we were the one hangin’ upside down or hangin’ by the hands, we’d feel the wind in our hair. Pearcy an’ me, that tree was our spot. Good ol’ Pearcy. He went an’ got hisself killed at Gettysburg durin’ the Civil War at 23 years old. Shot right in the head. They said it seemed to be at close range. I’m confident some hillbilly rebel called him a no-good, goddamn Yankee before he done him in. Now you tell me, what’s so ‘civil’ about that?”

Father Poole noticed a small tear in the corner of Benson’s left eye. Meanwhile Ben blew his nose into a handkerchief, wiped his eye with his sleeve, lit another cigarette, and continued.

“Now gettin’ back to your question. That there rectory o’ yours was built for a purpose. I’m surprised that old priest—uh, what’s his name again?”

Father Poole answered, “Father Carroll.”

“Carroll! That’s the fella. He come two years or so after the church and rectory were completed. Now the fella before him, nice ol’ guy by the name o’ Ka’somethin’-ski. You know, one o’ them Pollock names. Well, he had the idear o’ openin’ some sort of halfway house for criminals. You know, help the poor and unfortunate, as if your church ain’t got enough problems of its own. Je-ody! Well, once Father fat-ass come… .”

Benson turned to Father Poole and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Father. Believe me, I ain’t a blasphemin’ the man.”

The priest shook his head, dismissing the old man’s rudeness as trivial.

Benson went on, “I ain’t got one ounce of disrespect to the Almighty ur nuthin.’ It’s just that I didn’t really see eye to eye with your Father Kimble.”

“Carroll,” Poole corrected the old man again.

“Yep!” exclaimed Ben Benson. “I jus’ don’t know how names come and go from my mind. Well now, let me see. I believe Carroll viewed the idear as ridiculous. I heard him say once to A’gyle Hobbs, ‘What would this hill look like with recently released criminals livin’ here? Workin’ down below durin’ the day and then comin’ back up here at night? Having them messin’ up my rooms, worried that they might rob the church!’ Of course he didn’t say it like that, him being a stutterer an’ all that, but that’s the gist of it. Yep! He put
that
idea to rest quick! I cahn’t say I blamed the fella. I wouldn’t want my hill corrupted with the likes o’ thieves, murderers, an’ preverts. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of an orphanage. Get some little ones up here. That’d be nice, but I suppose things changed. It’s been too long since the lahst idea for your rectory was proposed. I guess it’s just too late to change things that were set by those who have no use for fixin’ what ain’t broke. So, Father, enjoy all that space you got to yourself!”