The Stories of Richard Bausch (44 page)

The Reverend Tarmigian
was not well. You could see it in his face—a certain hollowness, a certain blueness in the skin. His eyes lacked luster and brightness. He had a persistent dry, deep cough; he’d lost a lot of weight. And yet on this fine, breezy October day he was out on the big lawn in front of his church, raking leaves. Father Russell watched him from the window of his study, and knew that if he didn’t walk over there and say something to him about it, this morning—like so many recent mornings—would be spent fretting and worrying about Tarmigian, seventy-two years old and out raking leaves in the windy sun. He had been planning to speak to the old man for weeks, but what could you say to a man like that? An institution in Point Royal, old Tarmigian had been pastor of the neighboring church—Faith Baptist, only a hundred or so yards away on the other side of Tallawaw Creek—for more than three decades. He referred to himself in conversation as the Reverend Fixture. He was a stooped, frail man with wrinkled blue eyes and fleecy blond hair that showed freckled scalp in the light; there were dimples in his cheeks. One of his favorite jokes—one of the many jokes he
was fond of repeating—was that he had the eyes of a clown built above the natural curve of a baby’s bottom. He’d touch the dimples and smile, saying a thing like that. And the truth was he tended to joke too much—even about the fact that he was apparently taxing himself beyond the dictates of good health for a man his age.

It seemed clear to Father Russell—who was all too often worried about his own health, though he was thirty years younger than Tarmigian—that something was driving the older man to these stunts of killing work: raking leaves all morning in the fall breezes; climbing on a ladder to clear drain-spouts; or, as he had done one day last week, lugging a bag of mulch across the road and up the hill to the little cemetery where his wife lay buried, as if there weren’t plenty of people within arm’s reach on any Sunday who would have done it gladly for him (and would have just as gladly stood by while he said his few quiet prayers over the grave). His wife had been dead twenty years, he had the reverential respect of the whole countryside, but something was driving the man and, withal, there was often a species of amused cheerfulness about him almost like elation, as though he were keeping some wonderful secret.

It was perplexing; it violated all the rules of respect for one’s own best interest. And today, watching him rake leaves, Father Russell determined that he would speak to him about it. He would simply confront him—broach the subject of health and express an opinion. Father Russell understood enough about himself to know that this concern would seem uncharacteristically personal on his part—it might even be misconstrued in some way—but as he put a jacket on and started out of his own church, it was with a small thrill of resolution. It was time to interfere, regardless of the age difference and regardless of the fact that it had been Father Russell’s wish to find ways of avoiding the company of the older man.

Tarmigian’s church was at the top of a long incline, across a stone bridge over Tallawaw Creek. It was a rigorous walk, even on a cool day, as this one was. The air was blue and cool in the mottled shade, and there were little patches of steam on the creek when the breezes were still. The Reverend Tarmigian stopped working, leaned on the handle of the rake and watched Father Russell cross the bridge.

“Well, just in time for coffee.”

“I’ll have tea,” Father Russell said, a little out of breath from the walk.

“You’re winded,” said Tarmigian. “And you’re white as a sheet.”

It was true. Poor Tarmigian’s cheeks were pale as death. There were two blotches on them, like bruises—caused, Father Russell was sure, by the blood vessels that were straining to break in the old man’s head. He indicated the trees all around, burnished-looking and still loaded with leaves, and even now dropping some of them, like part of an argument for the hopelessness of this task the old man had set for himself.

“Why don’t you at least wait until they’re finished?” Father Russell demanded.

“I admit, it’s like emptying the ocean with a spoon.” Tarmigian put his rake down and motioned for the other man to follow him. They went through the back door into the older man’s tidy little kitchen, where Father Russell watched him fuss and worry, preparing the tea. When it was ready, the two men went into the study to sit among the books and talk. It was the old man’s custom to take an hour every day in this book-lined room, though with this bad cold he’d contracted, he hadn’t been up to much of anything recently. It was hard to maintain his old fond habits, he said. He felt too tired, or too sick. It was just an end-of-summer cold, of course, and Tarmigian dismissed it with a wave of his hand. Yet Father Russell had observed the weight loss, the coughing; and the old man was willing to admit that lately his appetite had suffered.

“I can’t keep anything down,” he said. “Sort of keeps me discouraged from trying, you know? So I shed the pounds. I’m sure when I get over this flu—”

“Medical science is advancing,” said the priest, trying for sarcasm. “They have doctors now with their own offices and instruments. It’s all advanced to a sophisticated stage. You can even get medicine for the flu.”

“I’m fine. There’s no need for anyone to worry.”

Father Russell had seen denial before: indeed, he saw some version of it almost every day, and he had a rich understanding of the psychology of it. Yet Tarmigian’s statement caused a surprising little clot of anger to form in the back of his mind and left him feeling vaguely disoriented, as if the older man’s blithe neglect of himself were a kind of personal affront.

Yet he found, too, that he couldn’t come right out and say what he had come to believe: that the old man was jeopardizing his own health. The words
wouldn’t form on his lips. So he drank his tea and searched for an opening—a way of getting something across about learning to relax a bit, learning to take it easy. There wasn’t a lot to talk about beyond Tarmigian’s anecdotes and chatter. The two men were not particularly close: Father Russell had come to his own parish from Boston only a year ago, believing this small Virginia township to be the accidental equivalent of a demotion (the assignment, coming really like the drawing of a ticket out of a hat, was less than satisfactory). He had felt almost immediately that the overfriendly, elderly clergyman next door was a bit too southern for his taste—though Tarmigian was obviously a man of broad experience, having served in missions overseas as a young man, and it was true that he possessed a kind of simple, happy grace. So while the priest had spent a lot of time in the first days trying to avoid him for fear of hurting his feelings, he had learned finally that Tarmigian was unavoidable, and had come to accept him as one of the mild irritations of the place in which he now found himself. He had even considered that the man had a kind of charm, was amusing and generous. He would admit that diere had been times when he found himself surprised by a faint stir of gladness when the old man could be seen on the little crossing bridge, heading down to pay another of his casual visits as if there were nothing better to do than to sit in Father Russell’s parlor and make jokes about himself.

The trouble now, of course, was that everything about the old man, including his jokes, seemed tinged with the something terrible that the priest feared was happening to him. And here Father Russell was, watching him cough, watching him hold up one hand as if to ward off anything in the way of advice or concern about it. The cough took him deep, so that he had to gasp to get his breath back; but then he cleared his throat, sipped more of the tea and, looking almost frightfully white around the eyes, smiled and said, “I have a good one for you, Reverend Russell. I had a couple in my congregation—I won’t name them, of course—who came to me yesterday afternoon, claiming they were going to seek a divorce. You know how long they’ve been married? They’ve been married fifty-two years. Fifty-two years and they say they can’t stand each other. I mean can’t stand to be in the same room with each other.”

Father Russell was interested in spite of himself—and in spite of the fact that the old man had again called him “Reverend.” This would be another of
Tarmigian’s stories, or another of his jokes. The priest felt the need to head him off. “That cough,” he said.

Tarmigian looked at him as if he’d merely said a number or recited a day’s date.

“I think you should see a doctor about it.”

“It’s just a cold, Reverend.”

“I don’t mean to meddle,” said the priest.

“Yes, well. I was asking what you thought about a married couple can’t stand to be in the same room together after fifty-two years.”

Father Russell said, “I guess I’d have to say I have trouble believing that.”

“Well, believe it. And you know what I said to them? I said we’d talk about it for a while. Counseling, you know.”

Father Russell said nothing.

“Of course,” said Tarmigian, “as you know, we permit divorce. Something about an English king wanting one badly enough to start his own church. Oh, that was long ago, of course. But we do allow it when it seems called for.”

“Yes,” Father Russell said, feeling beaten.

“You know, I don’t think it’s a question of either one of them being interested in anybody else. There doesn’t seem to be any romance or anything—nobody’s swept anybody off anybody’s feet.”

The priest waited for him to go on.

“I can’t help feeling it’s a bit silly.” Tarmigian smiled, sipped the tea, then put the cup down and leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. “Fifty-two years of marriage, and they want to untie the knot. What do you say, shall I send them over to you?”

The priest couldn’t keep the sullen tone out of his voice. “I wouldn’t know what to say to them.”

“Well—you’d tell them to love one another. You’d tell them that love is the very breath of living or some such thing. Just as I did.”

Father Russell muttered, “That’s what I’d have to tell them, of course.”

Tarmigian smiled again. “We concur.”

“What was their answer?”

“They were going to think about it. Give themselves some time to think, really. That’s no joke, either.” Tarmigian laughed, coughing. Then it was just coughing.

“That’s a terrible cough,” said the priest, feeling futile and afraid and deeply irritable. His own words sounded to him like something learned by rote.

“You know what I think I’ll tell them if they come back?”

He waited.

“I think I’ll tell them to stick it out anyway, with each other.” Tarmigian looked at him and smiled. “Have you ever heard anything more absurd?”

Father Russell made a gesture, a wave of the hand, that he hoped the other took for agreement.

Tarmigian went on: “It’s probably exactly right—probably exactly what they should do, and yet such odd advice to think of giving two people who’ve been together fifty-two years. I mean, when do you think the phrase ‘sticking it out’ would stop being applicable?”

Father Russell shrugged and Tarmigian smiled, seemed to be awaiting some reaction.

“Very amusing,” said Father Russell.

But the older man was coughing again.

From the beginning there had been things Tarmigian said and did which unnerved the priest. Father Russell was a man who could be undone by certain kinds of boisterousness, and there were matters of casual discourse he simply would never understand. Yet often enough over the several months of their association, he had entertained the suspicion that Tarmigian was harboring a bitterness, and that his occasional mockery of himself was some sort of reaction to it, if it wasn’t in fact a way of releasing it.

Now Father Russell sipped his tea and looked away out the window. Leaves were flying in the wind. The road was in blue shade, and the shade moved. There were houses beyond the hill, but from here everything looked like a wilderness.

“Well,” Tarmigian said, gaining control of himself. “Do you know what my poor old couple say is their major complaint? Their major complaint is they don’t like the same TV programs. Now, can you imagine a thing like that?”

“Look,” the priest blurted out. “I see you from my study window—you’re—you don’t get enough rest. I think you should see a doctor about that cough.”

Tarmigian waved this away. “I’m fit as a fiddle, as they say. Really.”

“If it’s just a cold, you know,” said Father Russell, giving up. “Of course—” He could think of nothing else to say.

“You worry too much,” Tarmigian said. “You know, you’ve got bags under your eyes.”

True.

In the long nights Father Russell lay with a rosary tangled in his fingers and tried to pray, tried to stop his mind from playing tricks on him: the matter of greatest faith was and had been for a very long time now that every twist or turn of his body held a symptom, every change signified the onset of disease. It was all waiting to happen to him, and the anticipation of it sapped him, made him weak and sick at heart. He had begun to see that his own old propensity for morbid anxiety about his health was worsening, and the daylight hours required all his courage. Frequently he thought of Tarmigian as though the old man were in some strange way a reflection of his secretly held, worst fear. He recalled the lovely sunny mornings of his first summer as a curate, when he was twenty-seven and fresh and the future was made of slow time. This was not a healthy kind of thinking. It was middle age, he knew. It was a kind of spiritual dryness he had been taught to recognize and contend with. Yet each morning his dazed wakening—from whatever fitful sleep the night had yielded him—was greeted with the pall of knowing that the aging pastor of the next-door church would be out in the open, performing some strenuous task as if he were in the bloom of health. When the younger man looked out the window, the mere sight of the other building was enough to make him sick with anxiety.

On Friday Father
Russell went to Saint Celia Hospital to attend to the needs of one of his older parishioners, who had broken her hip in a fall, and while he was there a nurse walked in and asked that he administer the sacrament of extreme unction to a man in the emergency room. He followed her down the hall and the stairs to the first floor, and while they walked she told him the man had suffered a heart attack, that he was already beyond help. She said this almost matter-of-factly, and Father Russell looked at the delicate curve of her ears, thinking about design. This was, of course, an odd thing to be contemplating at such a somber time, yet he cultivated the thought, strove to concentrate on it, gazing at the intricacy of the nurse’s red-veined ear lobe.
Early in his priesthood, he had taught himself to make his mind settle on other things during moments requiring him to look upon sickness and death—he had worked to foster a healthy appreciation of, and attention to, insignificant things which were out of the province of questions of eternity and salvation and the common doom. It was what he had always managed as a protection against too clear a memory of certain daily horrors—images that could blow through him in the night like the very winds of fright and despair—and if over the years it had mostly worked, it had recently been in the process of failing him. Entering the crowded emergency room, he was concentrating on the whorls of a young woman’s ear as an instrument for hearing, when he saw Tarmigian sitting in one of the chairs near the television, his hand wrapped in a bandage, his pallid face sunk over the pages of a magazine.