Heart of Stone (9 page)

“You should steer clear of those fellows. They look like a rough bunch.”

“No, they're all bark and no bite,” said Isaac. “Do you see the skinny kid standing in the back?”

I located the object of Isaac's interest: a bleak, gaunt sluggard in a tattered Mickey Mouse Club T-shirt and brown corduroy slacks. (In this heat?) He stood rooted in place, like a timid dog who'd been ordered to sit. His head hung several degrees below the perpendicular as he peered dully from beneath a Neanderthal brow.

“See him?” Isaac asked again.

“The one who looks like a gargoyle fetus? What about him?”

“That's Waldo Coons. He does odd jobs for us at Arcadia.”

“Shrinking heads?” I asked.

Isaac chuckled but didn't answer. “Last year, the other lodgers wanted to get rid of him, but my father said he was harmless. As a matter of fact, he'll be helping out at the supper we're hosting tonight. Come on. I'll introduce you.”

We approached the John Birch table, causing a minor seism among the pamphleteers. They didn't quite know how to react to interest in their cause. The first man, seated at the table, jumped to his feet and turned to his comrades, who were standing behind him, signaling furiously that they should close ranks with him. I picked up a pamphlet, the
Communist Next Door
, and examined it with feigned interest. Isaac waved to Waldo Coons, who stared blankly at him for several seconds as if he'd been anesthetized by the whack of a shovel to the back of the head. Finally the penny dropped, and he moved his hand in some kind of primate greeting.

“How are you, Waldo?” asked Isaac once we had initiated a palaver behind the pamphlet table.

“Okay,” he said.

“This is a friend of mine. Ellie.”

I said hello. Waldo didn't speak. He gaped at me and shuffled on the grass, raking his gnawed-off fingernails over his scabby arms.

“Well, just wanted to say hello,” said Isaac. “We'll be going now.”

“Nice chatting with you,” I said, and we moved away.

About twenty yards past the John Birch table, a large group of men, women, and children dressed in their Sunday finest were handing out pamphlets of their own. There were three skirted card tables, manned by unsmiling, middle-aged ladies. Above each table, a different banner announced the good news: “The Tommy Grierson Crusade” with smaller slogans trailing underneath: “Jesus is the Way!” and “Jesus Died for Us. Let Us Live for Him,” and “There Are No Reds on the Green of Palmer Square!”

We stopped a short distance away to observe. A tall, thin man of about forty, dressed in a rumpled white suit, shuttled from one end of the three tables to the other, whispering instructions or admonishment—it was hard to tell for sure which—to his charges. He was handsome, with a long, thin face and a mane of prematurely silvering hair. Quite dramatic looking. The ladies nodded at him, all serious, lips pursed, as if poised to defend all Christendom from invading hordes of Red infidels. A little old lady with bluish hair asked one of them for a pamphlet. Then an old man in coveralls approached and read the banner for a long minute without saying a word. He looked more a lonely soul than a lost one. Several children milled about near the tables, some picking their noses, others scratching their rear ends. None was saved that day.

“Look at that girl,” I whispered to Isaac. “The one sitting behind the tables near Billy Graham, there,” I said, referring to the man in white.

“Where?” he asked, scanning the group. Then he spotted her. “She's pretty. And quite bored. Bored to tears, I'd say.”

I shook my head. “That's not boredom. She's been crying, poor thing. I wonder what happened.”

“I still say she's bored. I'd weep too if I had to sit in the sun all day peddling religious pamphlets to lonesome old farmers.”

“I'm going to talk to her,” I said and started toward the tables.

Isaac caught my arm and asked if I was really serious. “Let's go down to the dock and have a swim instead.”

“This won't take a minute,” I said, well aware that it was going to take much longer.

I approached the tables casually and was set upon as if by a swarm of starved mosquitoes, only these blood-suckers attacked with outstretched arms and mimeographed pamphlets. I excused myself, pushed past them all, and arrived face-to-face with a girl of about fifteen or sixteen. She was dressed in a gray skirt and white blouse, buttoned up to her neck. Her light-brown hair was tied back in a low ponytail with a piece of yarn.

“Hi,” I said, smiling. She stared off into space. “I'd like some information about Jesus.”

She continued to gaze, catatonic, at nothing in particular. I waved my hand before her eyes, and she turned to look at me.

“That's rude,” she said.

“Sorry about that,” I offered. “I wanted to ask you a question, and you seemed distracted.”

“Yes, well, not a good day,” she said. “I'd like to be left alone, if you don't mind.”

“Of course. I just thought you looked like you wanted to tell someone your troubles. I'll push off and leave you to yourself.” I didn't push off.

She looked up at me from her seat, squinting into the bright sunlight of the day. Her hair was sun-bleached, her nose sunburned. And her eyes were red.

“You're not with us. I can tell,” she said. “I've never seen you before.”

“I saw you and thought you might like a friendly ear.”

“Really? You'd actually listen to me?” she asked, her eyes darting from side to side, gauging the scrutiny of her fellow crusaders. I nodded. “I can't talk here,” she said. “Will you meet me at the ice cream parlor in twenty minutes?”

I ditched Isaac, promising to see him later that evening at Arcadia. He didn't understand why I needed to talk to that girl, but, in the end, he shrugged and wished me luck.

The girl was sitting alone at the last table inside Harvey's Double-Dip ice cream parlor, staring miserably at the floor. I slid into the chair opposite her and noticed her left hand, resting languidly on the white-and-gold Textolite tabletop. She was wearing a friendship ring on her ring finger.

“My name's Ellie,” I said. “What's yours?”

“Emily,” she mumbled. “Emily Grierson from Youngstown, Ohio.”

“Any relation to Tommy Grierson?”

“My father,” she said, as if a little embarrassed.

A round lady of a certain age, wearing a colorful apron, appeared and asked what we'd have. Emily said nothing for her, and the waitress's face pinched. I ordered a scoop of butter pecan for me and a Coke for Emily.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I'm not allowed to drink cola.”

She settled on lemonade instead.

“I'm not allowed to speak to strangers either,” she said. “But I just can't keep this to myself any longer.”

She snatched a paper napkin from the tabletop dispenser and wiped her eyes. Then she scanned the room, presumably looking for anyone she might know. I waited. The worst way to get someone to talk is to talk yourself.

“My father won't let me breathe,” she whispered across the table. “He won't let me see my friends, boys, nothing.”

“That's tough,” I said. Not much more I could contribute at that point.

“And now Jerry doesn't want to see me anymore.”

I froze. Jerry. It couldn't be.

“I'm sure it's because of my father,” she continued. “It's awful. He keeps me on a leash. I have to sneak out to meet Jerry. It's just not fair.”

“Jerry doesn't want to see you anymore?” I asked, fearing her answer. “Are you sure?”

She shrugged and looked down. “We always meet just before sunrise. He said it was kind of like Romeo and Juliet, only the opposite. You know.”

“You meet. You don't part at dawn.”

“Right. So he didn't come today as he promised. I waited and waited, but he never showed up.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “You're not in trouble, are you?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed. “And please don't take the Lord's name in vain. Are you a Christian?”

The waitress reappeared and set down Emily's lemonade and my ice cream. My appetite was gone.

“When did you last see him?” I asked.

“Early yesterday morning. We spent an hour together. There's a place halfway between our camps where we meet. It's in the woods above the lake where no one can see us. Then he had to rush back to camp at seven like always.”

“Did he seem upset? Give you any reason to think he wanted to break it off with you?”

“No. We had a nice time. He did say he was scared of my father, but he says that every time we meet there. He doesn't like the sneaking around.”

“What does Jerry look like?”

“Handsome, athletic. Nice curly brown hair and sweet eyes.”

“Does he play the violin?” I asked, closing my eyes in silent dread.

“Why, yes, he does. How did you know that?”

The round waitress escorted us to the back room where Emily dissolved into a flood of tears. I tried to comfort her, but the only thing I could manage was to hold her tight and let her sob. She wept until she started hiccoughing, gently at first, then violently for several minutes, and I thought she might injure herself. We tried salt and lemon to stop the attack, but nothing worked. I have my own remedy that I'd learned from a bartender, but Harvey's Double-Dip had no aromatic bitters handy.

After about twenty minutes, she'd worn herself out and the hiccoughs slowed and weakened. She blotted her eyes on the sleeve of my dress, mumbling to her lost beloved. I stroked her hair and let her mumble, wondering if I'd done the right thing in telling her. I certainly hadn't wanted to break the terrible news to her, but I couldn't take the coward's way out either. She would have learned of Jerry's death anyway, probably later that same day, as it was sure to be the talk of the village. Still, young minds are fragile, and I hoped I hadn't made the wrong choice.

She wanted to know how it had happened, but I shook my head. “There's no use going over it,” I said. “It was an accident. And now you see that he didn't want to leave you. You see that, don't you?”

She nodded, and more tears fell. Then the door burst open, and the tall, thin man in the rumpled white linen suit entered the room.

“Emily!” he barked at her. “What are you doing here? I've been looking all over the village for you.” Then, noticing her tear-streaked face and swollen red eyes, he took a step closer. “Who are you?” he asked me. “And what's happened to my daughter?”

I told him my name and urged him to lower his voice. He didn't like my suggestion and demanded to know what was going on.

“Your daughter has had a shock,” I said.

“What kind of shock?” he asked.

I let go of Emily and invited her father to join me across the small room for a private talk. There, I explained that a friend of hers had fallen to his death from Baxter's Rock the day before.

“A friend?” he nearly shouted. “I heard that a man and teenage boy died there yesterday. Surely neither of them was a friend of Emily's.”

I looked him squarely in the eye, and he softened just a touch. I could see that he wanted to discipline his daughter, tear off his belt perhaps and beat some Jesus into her, but he wasn't so hard a man after all. He glanced over his shoulder at Emily, who was weeping softly on her chair, her arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders as if to console herself.

“Who was this boy?” her father asked me in a low voice.

“A young man named Jerrold Kaufman. He was from the Orpheus music camp.”

“Kaufman,” he repeated slowly. “A Jewish boy?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

He shook his head and made his way over to Emily. He reached out a hand and told her to come. She looked up at him, fat tears rolling down her chapped cheeks. And she rose to her feet.

“Forgive me, Father,” she sobbed.