Works and Days

The Works of Our Hands

3

Russell burst into Chayne’s house so quickly the older man didn’t have time to say hello, and so continued typing at the computer. Russell threw down the book bag and swung back into the living room.

“Chayne?”

“Yes?” Chayne turned from his work to the excited boy.

“I’ve decided.”

“Yes?”

“I want to be Confirmed.”

    

That Friday night, Chuck Shrader was sitting back precariously on the last two legs of his chair and stroking his chin because he needed to shave. Mickey Wynn and Edmund Prince, were playing blackjack and their cousin, Chayne, was revising a poem, crossing and crossing out lines till there seemed more left out than left in. Russell was picking notes on his guitar and attempting to put a song together and Nick Ballantine, who hadn’t come to the house for some time, was sipping coffee and paying only a very little attention to the notebook he had been writing in.

Chayne, for his part, had not been able to keep silent. He had said before Christmas, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Patti.”

“No, no,” Chuck said, looking very wise, and making Chayne glad to know him, “it worked the way it could, and she was the first woman I got to love since my wife. That is a privilege, not a regret.”

Russell had wanted to say much the same thing, and Chayne felt that when he repeated these words, some of the boy’s unease around the teacher would fade. What faded now was the notes of the music, and Russell finished playing.          

“Good song,” Ted Weirbach said, and Russell nodded and murmured thanks. while Nicky said he agreed.

“Where’s Elaine?” Ann Ford wondered, entering the house, followed by Diggs.

“She hasn’t come... In weeks I think,” Chuck said.

“We should have known,” Diggs joked, sitting in a chair beside Chayne, “Evervirgin people!”

“Why is it called Evervirgin, anyway?” Nicky asked, sitting up.

“I thought you went there.” Chayne said.

“No. My family goes to Evervirgin.”

“Well, it’s called Evervirgin because of the statue of Mary.” Chayne told him.

“Have you ever seen it?” asked  Chuck. “It’s beautiful.”

“It used to belong to us,” Ann said.

“Huh?” Chuck looked up.

“The Evervirgin came from France with the people who founded Saint Adjeanet’s. We gave it to Evervirgin years ago.”

“We should get it back!” Diggs slapped his knee.

“Yeah!” Ted looked excited.

“Ted—I was joking.”

“No,” Ted stood up. “We should STEAL IT BACK.”

They all looked at Ted Weirbach, the storky, blond, bespectacled man, smiling in amazement over his idea.

“Ya’ll…” Mickey started, piecing the unbelievable together, “wanna steal a statue?”

“Yeah!” Ted nodded.

“No!” Diggs looked at his friend as if he’d lost his mind. “Chayne, tell him—”

“No,” Chayne said, and as Ted’s eyes locked with his, a lust to do something wicked infused them both, and it was all they could do to not leap on each other right then and right there.

“It’s a great idea, Baby. Steal the Evervirgin. I like it. I really like it.”

 

 

 

“Oh, Kathleen, you’re delightful!” cried Mason, lifting his wine glass.

“With or without the British accent.”

“Thank you daw—” Kathleen cleared her throat. “Thank you. And it’s nice to go out with a man of true respectability and culture.”

“I give Geschichte Falls what I can,” Mason said. “It’s a good place, and there are far too many artists who live around here and don’t have an outlet for their work or a place to display it.”

Kathleen nodded. “The Geschichte Falls Arts Council was a brilliant idea.”

“Oh, it wasn’t mine. It was all Abby’s Mom. Irene was from New York and when she moved out here she thought there would be no art at all, but then she found that it was a great deal of art and culture just waiting to be shown. Irene was responsible for raising the money to put the Arts Council together, sort of putting Geschichte Falls on the artistic map, even if it has a very small place on that map.”

“But she died?”

“Yes,” Mason nodded. “About a decade ago. You would have liked her. Except she used a French accent.”

“Now you’re putting me on.”

“No,” Mason shook his head. “And she used to drape herself across the couch and complain of ennui. Abby’s got a lot of her mother in her. Are you… widowed?”

“I don’t know,” Kathleen said. “I might be by now.”

Mason laughed and Kathleen explained.

“My childhood sweetheart was this worthless Scots-Irish boy--Protestant. Russell Logan Fennian Lewis, though some called him R.L, and others called him… well... other names. I always had a soft spot in my heart for him, and he did for me, but he was shiftless. And then when his father was taken to jail, R.L. became even more shiftless..

“As long as I had my brother around—and it was my brother who raised me—R.L stayed away and sense stayed in my head. But then my brother got a factory job here, on the river. I said I would finish up high school and go to college, so my brother let me stay down south with cousins. The next thing I knew, me and R.L. were having a shotgun wedding and Kristin, my oldest, was born a little later.

“It wasn’t a great marriage, but I suppose R.L. and I loved each other. He was around for fourteen years. He’d disappear a lot, and his brothers and sister would find him passed out in gulches, near rivers, wherever.

“The last time he disappeared, I was pregnant with Finn. So that was over twenty-five years ago. His brothers went looking for him. No one could find him, and finally my brother told me to just come up here and live with him. So I brought the kids here. Finn was born in the winter of ’72, and the rest is history.”

Mason sat back, “Sounds like a miniseries.”

“Actually, if you’d known the Lewises—I mean the real Lewises, not my children, it would sound like a Loretta Lynn album.

“My God,” Kathleen shook her head and put a shellacked finger to her nose, “that all seems a world away. That life. It wasn’t a bad one, but it was a strange one.”

“I can’t imagine,” Mason began, “you, running around in the Appalachian Mountains with a drunken husband and three babies.”

“We didn’t even have plumbing,” Kathleen remembered. “I came here. Worked in the factory. Then became a secretary. I went to school, got my degree—eventually. It was a long, long time ago.”

Mason touched Kathleen’s hand.

“Kathleen O’Donnell, you are an amazing woman.”

Kathleen, her bright eyes laughing, smiled and nodded.

“Yes,” she said in a tone of discovery. “Yes, I am. Thank you. Sometimes an amazing woman needs an amazing man to remind her of who she is.”

 

After they’d fucked loudly and Ted had come, he lay on his back, hands behind his head and said, “We’re gonna be thieves.”

“Ted!” even Chayne was surprised.

“Goddamn,” Ted said, not so much like someone swearing as someone trying out a word.

He said it again.

“Goddamn!”

“Ted!”

What the fuck have I made? Chayne wondered, looking at the quiet man who was more a friend than a lover and more like an old husband than an exciting boyfriend.

Ted grinned at him, looking very handsome, looking a little bit like Paul Newman, and when Ted kissed him again, Chayne was in love with him.

They woke early the next morning to cross town and see how they might steal the Evervirgin: Chayne and Ted were accompanied by Jackie, Mickey, Edmund, young Nicky Ballantine, Russell,  and a now reluctant Jason Dygulski.

The Church of Saint Mary the Evervirgin was huge and brick and double towered with a great rondo of the Annunciation over the enormous portico, and bells ringing out three o’clock from the carillons that boomed down on Chayne, Russell, Jackie and Diggs as they drove around the massive red brick nemesis of Saint Adjeanet’s, and parked at the back, in the alley, not in the parking lot which lay to the left of the church between it and its newly renovated school.

“It seems that whenever we come here, it’s to steal,” Russell noted as they moved through the trees and the little walkway between the rectory and the church.

“Shush,” said Chayne as he came into the church through the side door.

Evervirgin was always open, ever ready to display her wealth, her gorgeous German lancet windows inscribed with innumerable stories and improbable saints. The church was filled with a golden light from the rondo that sat above the large choir loft and shone over the rows of shiny pews.

“There she is,” Ted marveled.

To the right of the altar, on her own little altar above the blue votive candles, she stood with her arms out, welcoming them to steal her.

“I don’t know if we should even think about doing this,” Nicky whispered, stepping behind the older men and walking beside Russell. “I mean, she looks... holy.”

“She’s the Mother of God,” Diggs said.

The candlelight flickered on her open hands, the darkness of her smooth and ancient face, the eyes that looked out at them, the white veil over her head.

“Don’t worry,” Chayne whispered. “I think she can take a joke. Look at that smile!”

But something even in Chayne lurched at the idea of stealing an image of the Blessed Mother as a joke. Somehow, it would have been easier if it was Jesus Himself. Chayne, however, went toward the statue thinking it was best to do a thing wholeheartedly and put silly fears out of his head. He played with one end of the base and Mickey with the other.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be heavy at all,” Mickey reported. “I thought it would be bolted or something.”

“So did I,” Chayne whispered to his cousin. “When we come back, it’ll only take me and you and Edmund to lift it—”

They all heard a noise. The west door opened. Everyone, Protestants included dropped to their knees, closing their eyes and folding their hands in not entirely feigned prayer.