Water Lessons (14 page)

The old man turned and walked back down the length of the deck until he disappeared around the corner. The steps faded away on the stairwell leading down toward the lawn. The scent of the pipe ebbed away with the breeze, but still Jim and Maureen stood, meditating in the dark and silence.

Jim felt solace that at that moment Maureen stood by his side. As the turbulent thoughts churned and billowed and burned through his imagination, he counted himself lucky she made him feel less alone. However cold and cutting and condescending she could be, he did have her support.

But was he erring in building a new life here? Or was Walter right, that he was meant to build a new life in New England?

Suddenly the face of Jim's own father reappeared in his mind. Jim imagined him at that very hour, standing on his back patio in Folsom, cradling a glass of bourbon. His father stared wistfully at the stars and silhouette of the tree line, then turned and stared at Jim with expectation.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The station wagon halted on the cobblestone street before the Henretty family's Beacon Hill brownstone, causing the three seat-belted occupants to lurch forward. Jim and Maureen woke to booming peals of mischievous laughter. Weary of her father's pranks, Maureen sighed and mumbled some indecipherable complaint.

"How'd ya like
that
rude awakening?!" Walter thundered. "That's what ya get, Jimmy boy, for sleepin' on duty. Ten lashes!"

"Oh, Dad," Maureen sighed.

The old man turned on his hazard lights. He and Jim both stepped around to the rear of the station wagon and opened the door.

Maureen slid out of her seat and joined them. She threw her arms around her father's shoulders. "Thanks for driving me up." She kissed him on the cheek. "And good luck keeping this boy in line."

"Good luck with work and all," Walter said. "I'll be calling to check in on you."

Jim grabbed the two suitcases and he and Maureen walked up the steps. Walter lowered the rear door shut and got in the car. The couple stopped on the top step.

"That's fine, James Scoresby. I can take it from here." She grabbed the suitcases.

"Sure?" Jim said.

"It wasn't such a bad weekend, eh, Jim? My boyfriend almost drowns and then is forced to run the gauntlet of a few rude guests."

"It was eventful, I'll say that."

Maureen stood on tiptoe and pulled him to her. She smacked a kiss onto his lips and then unlocked the door, smiling back at him as she stepped into the foyer. "Keep Dad in line, too. Get him to cut down on that pipe."

"I don't think that's possible."

"You'll like the surprise Dad's got in store for you. It'll be good for you, remember. Call tonight to tuck me in and tell me how it went." She winked, then shut the door and locked it.

"I've got a surprise for you, sonny," the Commodore said back in the car.

"So I hear! You've piqued my interest."

They wound around the black cast iron fence and massive oaks of Louisburg Square. On Charles Street, they cruised past the quaint coffeehouses, the shops and pubs, the corner bistros. They turned left on Beacon, passed the Boston Common on the right and the golden domed State House on the left. Jim nodded at the 54
th
Massachusetts Regiment memorial. Soon they were heading south on the interstate.

His thoughts returned to Maureen. It was she who had made the first intimate move those months ago. It was she, that night weeks before her twenty-third birthday, who had first laid hands on him. It had all begun as a small, ardent flame. Over the weeks it became a fierce conflagration, burning on out of control.
 

But after their first weeks together, she grew mostly avoidant of intimacy and warmth. Maureen seemed constantly ginned up by her own irritability and the stress of her daily life. She had seemed to seek refuge, release from it all in the privacy of their bedrooms back in Boston.

Now, it seemed, he had become addicted to the contact, but he remained frustrated, as she withheld herself from him more and more. Yet Jim was begrudging in secret, as he harbored some guilt over their lovemaking.

That morning in the Communion line in Osterville, Jim had realized he was tempted to daydream about sex more during Mass than at any other time. Jim wondered if it was the same for other people, or at least for young men. And he wondered as to the reason for this oddity.
 

Perhaps it was because deep inside he felt fear, during the liturgy, he would opt ultimately to forsake many of the physical riches of life, and Mass-time fantasizing was just the natural rebellion of his psyche against moral or behavioral constraint. His mother and father would have maintained it was the Devil, the Evil One, toying individually with him, aiming to draw him away from the Son.

Jim snickered. He still could not accept that idea.

Minutes later, Jim again sneaked a glance at the silent Walter, as the station wagon rolled into one neighborhood after the other, each borough poorer, slightly more unsettling in its gloom, than the one before. The old seafarer sported an inscrutable Mona Lisa-like smile as he gripped the steering wheel. Jim wondered where the old man was taking him.

The row houses and buildings increasingly reminded him of his home city. Two emotions collided within him: guilt over leaving behind a city with such poverty, and determination never to be immersed in such poverty again.

Then he inwardly chided himself. Was he being shallow, selfish? Surely he was lucky to have flourished after the storm, when so many suffered hardship, destruction. He must keep these thoughts secret.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Walter Henretty parked in the lot bordering the Mount Zion African Baptist Church. As the station wagon eased into its spot, Jim shuddered at all of the parked cars. He could only hope Walter was not putting him up to public speaking this Sunday.

Yet, Walter was not the Dorchester type. Jim had only been in Dorchester twice, or "Dotchesta" as many locals called it. Once was with friends on the way to the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. The other time, Jim had taken the wrong turn and he and Liam lost their way for about fifteen minutes. Jim only heard Dorchester mentioned when it coincided with the butt of a joke told by some Boston professional or in some story on NECN's nightly crime report.

"Dorchester Heights, site of one of Washington's biggest victories," Jim said as they exited the station wagon. "No public speaking involved in this surprise, Walter?"

"Public speaking? Nah. I wouldn't do that to ya, son."

As Walter led him up the steps to the entrance, Jim recognized the church. He had read about its storied history as the oldest surviving African-American house of worship in the Boston area. Its walls boasted a regimental flag, torn by minie balls and shrapnel, of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment, a photograph of the Reverend Dr. King's days in Boston as a theology student in the early fifties, as well as letters and photographs of jazz greats Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, and Duke Ellington.

Within, the choir sang a hymn with soaring exultation. Walter reached for the handle of the massive wooden door and pulled, ushering Jim before him.

Hundreds of standing and singing worshippers packed the old oak pews to capacity. The choir swayed and clapped to the organist beside the podium as their old spiritual coursed through the rafters and pews and reverberated throughout every possible cavity and cranny of the edifice.

Many of the congregants' faces were angled back toward him. They were not alarmed or irritated, but instead radiated amusement, curiosity, and warmth, as if they had expected him.

Jim's heart galloped. The old man grasped his shoulder. He motioned for Jim to look to his side.

A bespectacled young black man in a gray double-breasted suit smiled and motioned for them to follow. The usher led them around the right side aisle of the church to the second row, where he gestured for them to take their places. Just as they entered the pew, nearly the entire section turned and looked at them.

So many smiles and nods caused Jim's shoulders to relax slightly, for his breath to come easier. An old couple turned and waved. Jim recognized the blond wavy hair of a young man and woman. At the end of the pew sat Jack Spaulding and Natasha Boyle. Jim assumed his standing place beside Jack, who playfully punched his arm.

Again Jim considered what Walter had in wait for him. Jim looked sideways in his pew. The Commodore's eyes were riveted on the singer leading the choir.

This lone figure in the black pinstripe suit appeared to be no more than thirty. His face contorted with emotion as he belted out verse after verse. The man's right hand was held aloft as if reaching to the heavens for aid. His left was clenched into a fist, which he pumped vigorously, rhythmically to the beat of the drummer, who was positioned next to a bassist and guitarist at the opposite end of the stage. The singer's face was youthful and kind yet leonine, and like those in the choir, appeared weighed down with an agonizing yearning.

The choir swayed in unison back and forth like a sapling in the wind. All about soared the mighty notes of a church organ, an instrument which Jim could not see until he turned and spotted the army of pipes rising from the wooden loft above the front door.

Set in the walls were vast stained-glass windows, stretching perhaps twelve feet wide by twenty feet tall, depicting Old and New Testament scenes. Most of the figures portrayed were black. One scene featured a black Jesus, one a black Moses. Jim barely stifled a smile when he noticed that the Roman guards and centurions fell mostly within the Caucasian category.

The singer's final, ten-second note tore Jim's attention from the windows. The man held both hands aloft as if pouring all remaining strength into a final musical plea to heaven. The organ followed suit, sending a powerful blast through the rafters, while the sweaty drummer pounded out a crescendo and the lead guitarist worked his strings with building fervor. The singer brought both of his arms abruptly down to his sides.

The church was silent as a cavern. All eyes were locked onto the young man leading the service, who motioned for all to be seated.

The congregation sank to its seats, and Jim and Walter along with it. The singer approached and ascended the podium. His eyebrows raised, he looked out at the crowd, scanning it back and forth. After a brief pause, he spoke. From the authority of his voice to his diction to his ease before the congregation, Jim realized this young man was not merely the choir leader, but the pastor.

"Friends of Mount Zion African Baptist Church, how are y'all today?"

Hundreds of varied shouts and exclamations burst from all sides of the seated congregation.

"You should be, for today the Lord is risen over the earth. He is beaming down at us with all His love… a Lord who even allowed the great storm that afflicted New Orleans months ago, who allows earthquakes and other disasters, who allows some to go hungry and some of the wicked to go unpunished on this plain, but who has a mighty plan in store for us all indeed! For our guests here, who do not know me, I am Reverend Cordell Ward. I'd like to extend a hand of friendship to you all. And now, let's read from the Gospels. Please open the Bibles in your pews to Luke, chapter sixteen, verse nineteen."

All throughout the church sounded the fumbling and turning of pages. The Reverend began to read aloud.

There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.

And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'

But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.' And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.'

Then he said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.'

Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.'

And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'

"But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.'

The Reverend paused. "Beloved friends, Our Lord allowed for many interpretations here. But I will deal with one of them. Many of you are familiar with this powerful parable, whether having read it or heard it countless times, or," he extended his index finger, "you know this tale from having actually lived it, as a person of wealth, privilege or even financial stability who had needy souls turn to you in desperation. Or perhaps you were one who had to beg and plead for your supper at one point in your life like Lazarus. Most of us have been there, in one of the roles. A few have lived
both
roles."

A flurry of responses shot from the congregation, all in affirmation.

"Some of you have had the gate slammed in your face, like Lazarus experienced many times. And sadly, some of you who enjoyed wealth or financial comfort, despite the anguished pleas of the needy at your door, have done the slamming." With that, Reverend Ward shut his podium Bible with a loud bang.

A shiver shot up Jim's backbone and dispersed across his shoulders. Never before had Jim heard a speaker wield such dramatic effect.