Eva

The chapel was personal. You could say it was church. Church without the people. To hell with the choir. The preacher. The people.

 
Eva had eyes. Eva had eyes to see. Along the fence where the Bidwells tend their cattle, along the path that runs from the depot and across the field and onward, through the woods (invisible now in the dark) to the edge of town, along the thread of the track the cattle travel, a single figure made its way.

There was no mistaking the walk. Maggie wasn’t drunk. Eva Bidwell had never seen her drunk, unless you count that tipple of hers a type of drunkenness. Depravity, that would be the word. Hitch of the step as good a excuse as any to waggle the fanny, waggle as if she didn’t know full well what she was doing, as if any man would ever mount—a flush went through her at the thought of Maggie pitched up onto the flanks of a, somebody’s husband, no doubt, signalman or yardman where the clatter of the boxcars cover the sound of their (from the book in the parlor, the buccaneer on the cover) animal passion.

She could just see it now: from out of all the boys at the depot, the stud with the shock of hair across the brow, that’s the one Maggie would choose, the roué, that’s what they call them in France, the roué with a shake of the… tousled, right? Tousled lock, like a tangle of sheets, to shake it with a toss that gives the whole of him a shiver, him with the hum in the voice and the T-square of the shoulders, the twist of the hips when he—

Maggie moved by increments. One step at a time, like a peg in a board of cribbage, she advanced across the damp apron of dirt at the foot of the Bidwell’s drive, swayed as she picked her way between the potholes and the cow patties, lifted her skirt to clear the fist of sandspurs at the hinge of the gate. She paused to catch her breath, gathered her hair up into a knot and then—with a lean on the rail of the fence—pinned it to the top of her head.

Maggie wondered if it had been a mistake to bend the errand for another visit to the chapel. Long enough the walk without a stop for—what would be the word? —private satisfaction. If she’d simply bribed the baker’s boy and bought the flour and headed home, she’d already be home. Home in a hot bath. But the flour was business. The chapel was personal. You could say it was church. Church without the people. To hell with the choir. The preacher. The people. God’s the one gotta answer. In the flesh. They got it right, the Catholics. On the money. They got the trophy. They got Him pinned. In the flesh. So’s He can’t evaporate, see? Gotta answer, face to face, gotta answer for what He done.

Best of all, it was life-size, the crucifix. The size of life. And reliable. The reliable enemy. And He’d be there, there He’d be, like always, in the chapel. That was where, when you have a piece to say, you say it. When you got a thing to do, you do it.

Eva backed away from the window.

Shameless, that woman.

From her lookout in the shade of the pie-safe she tilted, ever so slightly, to center Maggie in the frame of the glass. There was no telling. One could only imagine. Outside under the naked stars like a beast of the field. A woman like that. And one man as good as another to her. And whoever the him it was, him there with his hands, and into the ark, two by two, the male and the female He bade them come. The animals. Animals. But how could you, where would you, the pair of them pinned to the rough of the shed like that, the shoes on but the clothes all—tousled, that would be the word, Lordy the splinters (or imagine it, Jesus, imagine it barefoot!): cinders, chiggers, gunpowder in the lungs, hornets in the rafters…

Maggie turned with both hands to grasp the top of the fence, then took a step backward, one foot and then the other, as if to square off with a partner. With her hands anchored now, she straightened her legs and bent forward at the waist, stretched her arms and shoulders and then, side to side, the small of her back. To lean into it. That’s the only way you loosen the pain.

 Firm against the frame of the door in the dark of the kitchen, Eva shut her eyes, shut them on the picture that rode the ripple of glass, the woman, that woman, and wondered how would it be, of which of the men, of all of the men, how much better it would be to choose the fella in the ticket master’s office, the cedar floor where they sweep and the glow of the green of the lamp across the mahogany counter, and such a freshling, such a dapper little flirt of a man, cocked up into the frame of the window as if the docket were the strings of a musical instrument, the stops and the frets for the fingers to play, the slender fingers he folded, clasped together, the one hand to the other when he spoke, when his eyes wandered up the slope of her shoulder, gathered in the skin above the cut of her blouse and she pictured the play of his hand on the curve of her flesh when she looked away, and allowed herself to be seen, and surrendered, and pictured the soft of the cotton duvet at the foot of the cot (tucked under the bench for—a whisper and a wicked smile—emergencies he told her), how it would be, the heat, the hideaway, and thin as a whisper in the din the sound of the radio, the Grand Ole Opry: 

A maiden fair to see

the pearl of minstrelsy

a bud of blushing beauty be

He would be, to be sure, the one, the him with the scarlet handkerchief in the palm of the hand, that like a flame as he (such clean nails!) folds it, pats the heat from his brow, jams it down his pocket, the brute, the curve of the pocket at the butt of the jeans. He would be the one to gaff the skirt up over the hips—

Oh.

—take her from behind—

My.

—lift her off her feet with a single thrust of his—

Goodness.

As if to meet with more than the air alone, she moved, Eva, Eva Bidwell, Mrs. Bidwell, beneath the fabric of the nightie with the print of the flamingo. Skin the tinder. Finger the flame.

Out across the dark Maggie launched herself again. Followed the eggshell white of the fence to the split in the timber ahead. The print of a hoof, hard as a cobble, tripped her, but here the ground was dry, here you follow, not the easement and the trodden bed, but the plash of sand in the afterlight of the moon, single the figure, single the walk, the spill of the milk that marks the border of the trail.

She took a special delight in the spectacle of God—the God of the cosmos, omniscient as air, the god of the glacier and the breaker and the galaxy—cut down to a size you hold in the hand.

The steeple glowed at the fringe of the wood. The moonlight struck the bell as they neared the chapel.

Eva bid them wait. So not to make a scene, that was the plan, so not to, as it were, catch them in the act, no, but to capture the act and, in the afterwards, in the telling, multiply the moment over and over again. And who better than Eva to bear witness? Eva the one to see—as in a vision—the sin. Eva the one to hear, from miles away, the thump-thump-thump of the flesh.

You keep a lookout is what you do, said Eva. Nothing magical about it. Send a boy to mark the to and the fro, the when and the where. For the price of a nickel a season of gossip. And so she knew, of a certain, the time. Every second Thursday—or so the boy told her—Maggie’d make the trek. Through the woods, up the bank to the bed of the railway and over the bridge to Gotha. In person Maggie’d pay the baker’s boy—off the books, a sleight-of-hand, half the price for a pallet of flour—and then, but for the one detour, back the way she came.

In the shade of the pine the clapboard smoldered a chalky white. Through the gap in the hedge the trio peered.

Shhh.

The sack of flour Maggie shifted. Off her shoulder rolled it—thump—into the bed of pine needles at the foot of the tree. She felt lighter for a second or so, but then—there you go. Here it comes. The pull of the earth. Down the embankment she limped. At the door of the chapel she paused. Pressed, with her back to the doorpost, the blade of her shoulder into the curve of the stone. That’s the spot. There. The cord of muscle loosened. The pain softened to an ache as she applied the pressure. A genuflection’s what it was, the ritual at the door. An affirmation of the flesh.

She jimmied the door with a knife. Stepped inside. Let the service begin. The only congregate in the church of Maggie? Maggie. The floorboards carried the sound of her entry, a tremor up the aisle and into the dark at the far end of the chapel. The ribs of wood rose to a hollow overhead. A private sky.

She thought about the day the polio clipped her, the look on his face when he told her that—considering the circumstances, he said—the wedding was off. She told herself animal spirits is what it was, is all it was, that made her so keen to be near him, GB, but she knew it wasn’t true. She had a will. God gave her a will, and somehow, in some way unknowable to herself, she’d willed herself into loving him.

A hateful thing, this notion of love. Better to be a dog. A doer. That’s what a dog is. Deep in the blood the voice of the Maker whispers, in the vitals the Maker moves, and the dog hears, and the dog does. Happy dog. Happy the dog. Dumb the dog, innocent of what it means to be a thing apart from the hand of the Maker. When the bird sings or the gator bites or the Typhus nibbles, they’re doing what the Maker decreed. Obedient to their nature’s what they are. Innocent of sin.

Not the person, no. Not us. We got us a commandment. Gotta master the nature the maker gave us—bludgeon the lust, temper the rage, bully the beast within. You gotta be good say the godly. Gotta want the good of the one you love. Kiss the bride. Throw the rice. Celebrate the traitor. Simple, right? Live the whole of your life at odds with the temper you got, and in the end you get what? What do you get? What’s the verdict? From the squall at the snip of the umbilicus to the rattle at the last of all the rites—guilty.

But it’s only fair, he says, God says, the bastard. Fair? How fair would it be to ask of any dog or horse or bird or beast? You tell a fella mind your manners, take your hands offa that girl. Or the gal with the poison in the dropper, you tell her by the love of God, don’t. You say to the kid with the beetle in the palm of the hand gentle, gentle, but how gentle is the Maker who made the people in the first place? Made ‘em all vengeful and horny and idiot with the urge to crush, in that little godlet of a fist, the weak. Ain’t he the one got to answer for what he done?

From wires anchored to a crossbeam hidden in the dark of the vault overhead, the crucifix hung. In the space above the altar hovered.

She’d had her fill of words. To hell with confession. Let Him of His own accord augur out the shape of that heart of hers, in the dark like a diver, feel for it, here, deep under the lip of the reef read, with his finger, the crust, the crest, the rubble. From out the unseeable conjure the shape of a soul.

Have at it. She didn’t say it but she thought it. Do your best. She carried within her a hatred hardy as a burl, and so close to the heart she could hardly tell what part of it she toted like a parcel and what, of all the parts—like a limb or a bone or a vital—was a part of her.

So be it. So be it. The whole of a life to go, and He would leave his mark, and she would leave hers, same as any other soul in the shipwreck of the season, herself the print of what she had to say. How she would move. What she would do. The mark she would make. Take the sound of ice when off the glacier it calves. The report they call it. Report without a word. The thing itself. True as true can be. Even the dead. The dead got a voice. Pompeii got a voice. Under the crust a print of the people who been there. The shape of what happened. The hollow where the body says Here’s what I got to say for myself, the whole it, here. 

She took a knee—the one good knee—on the red plush of the altar rail. It was a comfort to her to see him so. She took a special delight in the spectacle of God—the God of the cosmos, omniscient as air, the god of the glacier and the breaker and the galaxy—cut down to a size you hold in the hand. A figure in the flesh.

Maggie the hammer. Every hammer needs an anvil, no?

Long before she said it to herself as a matter of faith, Eva had a feeling about it—the confessional box, the mumbley-peg of the Holy Host, frock the color of soot.

“Shush.” Eva bid them wait. Into the litter of leaf along the flank of the chapel she—gently, so’s not to stir the air—made her way. At the window she found a gap, a crack where the casing, swollen with a season of rain, crowbarred up at the window itself. A slit. A finger of air. Turpentine the smell, and lichen, and polder, but the view? Primo. Like peering through the slats of a venetian blind.

There she was. Maggie. Squared off at the foot of the altar. Slo-mo the Zippo lighter tumbled, as if Maggie were polishing it in the palm of her hand. On either side of the altar a candle glowed.

Eva straightened. Leaned backwards. The chapel door—dark. No sign of movement. Where was the priest? Above her, in the stained glass, behold: the hand of God pitching the earth, like you pitch a bocce ball, up into a heaven of spangles. Something stirred in Eva. A shock at the brass of it all, the thought of a coupling here, in the place of prayer, but shot through with a shiver of, was it delight? The very thought of it. In the candle light—in the cross-hatchery of shadow that quivers in the high pitch of the rafter and the steeple and the bell—to be taken, to be shaken, to be ravished by a savage. How—what would be the word? —delicious.

And by, of all people, a priest. Them Catholics and their starchy collars. But it figures. You gotta chain him, no? The dog with the streak of the wild? Long before she said it to herself as a matter of faith, Eva had a feeling about it—the confessional box, the mumbley-peg of the Holy Host, frock the color of soot. And the pepper-shaker vicar, bobble-head bishop, pope up there with the trembly mitts and the marzipan topper. And the nuns. Such a loss. Pluck ‘em in the pink, that’s what they do. Stuff ‘em in a habit. In black they bury the body, and snuff the hair and hide the head, the whole of it—all but the cupcake of the face. The thought of it. The very thought. To hide the happy flesh, dress like a funeral, bury the broad of the shoulder, slope of the bosom, the slim of the hip and the leg and the saddle. A sin is what it was. A scandal.

Below the crucifix an old-timey lamp—brazier with a wick. Maggie snapped the lighter open. Ruddy the flame. She looked up at the figure, the man up there, pitched up with his arms outspread.

“You coulda fixed it,” she whispered. “You coulda done something.”

Down the aisle she limped. Stopped. Turned. “Look at you. You happy now?”

In the light of the torch it simmered, the face of the Christ.

“Is this what it takes to make you happy?” She limped again. Exaggerated this time. “This?” Onward she rolled in a broken pirouette. 

“You walk on the water.” Her voice rebounded off the walls. “You raise the dead. You wave a finger and the mountain falls. And all for nothing. Nothing!”

Eva shifted her hands on the sill. What sort of prayer was this? And where was the priest?

Maggie circled back round to the crucifix. In pictures, mostly, is how Eva reckoned. Not but a nickel’s worth of vista in that nickelodeon brain of hers, but she knew what she knew. She could see it. Nobody wants to see a naked fella (Okay. It’s God. Okay. But really now) pinned up top the place of prayer like a side of beef in a butcher’s—mercy. God have mercy. And God have mercy on the regular folk who steam the dress, iron the shirt, hitch up the stocking and slap on the Aqua Velva and all for the sake of a gibbet, a cadavery, a spectacle of flesh. Bloody Catholics.

She pictured herself with a fire hose. Ka-blam. It blows up onto the altar, blasts away at the trappery, scrubs the flesh clean offa the cross. There you go. The simple and the true, blunt as a branding iron. Here you are. You are here. “X” marks the spot.

And is that too much? Is that too much to ask? Keep the blood on the inside, right? On the inside. Where it belongs.

Maggie stood with her boots on the silk red of the kneeling rail. Out over the altar she leaned, close enough to cast a breath across the broken feet, the spike of iron, the blacken timber. “You should be ashamed,” she whispered.

One-two, she snuffed out the candles with a clap of the hands. Snatched up the lamp. Cocked the arm as if to pitch it, flame and all, up at the pulpit, or out the window, or smash at the cedar ribbing that holds the roof. Made as if to speak but—no. She let the arm drop. Blew out the flame. In the dark, careful-like, blind, step by step, she made her way to the door. A pause. A parting shot.

“Do me a favor, pal. Don’t be looking for pity from me.”

Eva gripped the raw wood of the sill. She drew a breath and held—like you hold a thing to weigh it—the scent of wax and wick and lacquer. What would she tell the girls? She tried to picture the scene, picture how she would picture it to them. Maggie in a wrangle with the—ridiculous is what it was. And brazen. An insult. A betrayal is what it was, to the faith, to the followers everywhere, especially Eva and the girls who followed, who braved the damp air, the dark wood, followed over hill and dale her every move. You would think a woman in her position would be grateful to God for whatever blessing—a roof, a meal, a deputation of regular folk to shepherd her home, but no. Not for Maggie, no. Not good enough for her. She should be grateful it was Eva come along and not Sally the tattler or Bev with the tongue of the rapier, but would she? Be grateful?

So what now, Eva? She could tell them nothing. All for nothing, the two-mile trek in the moonlight, up the gravel path, into the prickly hedge. Or she could tell them it was dark. One could only imagine, in the dark, what sort of, what flavor of shameful—or no. She could tell them she saw, with the eyes of faith, with her own eyes, deep in the wicker window of the confessional, in the shadow, in the seat of the sinner, the priest.

Out of the shadows now they sailed, up the road in a convoy home. Eva in the lead. Sally gathered up her skirts and scurried to keep pace. The gals babbled on. 

We seen her go.

That walk of hers.

Sure enough she—you could tell it—got her ashes hauled.

They laughed.

Talk about a sash-shay.

Allemande left.

They been drinking, no?

The communion wine.

Snacking on the host I betcha.

Stop it! Don’t talk like that!

What’d he do? What? Lift the robe?

A de-frocking, that’s what they call it.

I love a hairy chest.

Shut up now, shut.

What a thing to say.

Such a boost. An injection of vigor. And such a melody in the voice, caper in the step, you’d think the tryst belonged to them and not to Maggie, that it was them, their delicate bones all abuzz with the shock of a coupling.

When they reached the edge of town, and could take it no more, they stopped her. Latched onto her sleeves.

So tell us, Eva.

Tell us.

What did you see?

What happened?

Eva looked up at the moon. When you gut a melon there’s a moment—spoon in hand, the innards flung aside—you see the shape of the empty, how the solid’s a hollow now and no longer a thing in its own right. A vessel. A container at the ready.

“Imagine that,” said Eva. “Just imagine. You gather up a stack of bolsters, you know, from offa the pews?” said Eva. “Got all the ingredients.” She broke away. Continued walking. Called back over her shoulder. “Make a mattress right there in the aisle.”

I knew it.

What did they say. Could you hear?

“You can imagine the sound,” said Eva. “Think of it. And in a church.”

Animals.

And so on into the night. So goes the tale. Quite a fella, this Italian priest, to ravish a trio of biddies from the comfort of a leather recliner and out the depths of an ecclesiastical dream, a dream of ovens made of ice and hummingbirds with wings of iron. So goes the world.