The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish (2 page)

They
, however, could get rid of
you
. Inevitably, they’d complain of her papa’s late nights abroad, the upshot being that they’d be out on the street by daybreak. To hear him tell it, it was always her fault — she’d got on their nerves with her games of pretend — that’s what he’d grumble as they’d hitch a ride to the next town and the next aunt. It was like that from north Wisconsin around Lake Michigan, and back into Canada at Detroit — like that all the way to London, Ontario, where they happened upon the Bentwhistle Academy for Young Ladies, and its headmistress, the illustrious Miss Horatia Alice Bentwhistle, B.A., a.k.a. her Auntie Horatia.

Mary Mabel checked the clock on the wall. It was time for her to put away the past and end the future. She gave her mama’s teacup a little rub and replaced it on the apple crate.

There were a few loose ends. She figured she owed her papa a clean start, so she did the dishes, wiped the ring from his tub, sewed the small tear on the underarm of his plaid shirt, and put a fresh bottle and a tumbler on the table. Finally, she took pen and paper and sat down to compose her note. She wished her last words could be as beautiful as Mr. Carton’s, but he went to a Paris guillotine to save the husband of the woman he loved, so how could he not be eloquent?

She got to the point: “Dear Papa, Forgive me. Please don’t blame yourself or worry. I’ve gone to a better place. Your loving daughter, Mary Mabel. Postscript. For supper, you’ll find a plate of macaroni and cheese leftovers in the icebox.”

It was all done but the crying; that, she’d leave to others. She propped the note up against the bottle. Then, before procrastination could cool her heels, Mary Mabel took a deep breath, rose smartly, and set off to be with her mama.

The
Wichi
t
a Kid

T
hree
days before, Grace Rutherford had stood on her front verandah across town and peered down her long nose at the little rascal tethered to the railing. “Timothy Beeford,” she’d said, tapping the right toe of her black hobnailed boot, “do you honestly expect me to believe that after a morning’s church service and Sunday school at First Presbyterian, you’ll be of a mind to attend an evening gospel revival?”

“Yes, ma’am,” her nephew replied, with all the innocence his ten-year-old eyes could muster. “Billy and me, we’ll be with Billy’s mom and dad. I aim to get saved.”

Aunt Grace was having none of it. Since arriving on her doorstep, Timmy had been the very devil. Neighbours shook their heads and muttered, “There goes that Wichita kid.” Well at least they didn’t call him “that Rutherford kid.” She and her husband Albert had had the good sense to steer clear of children; they hadn’t wanted any, and the good Lord had answered their prayers. That is until they’d received that late-night telephone call from Kansas.

It was Albert’s sister Belle on the line — Belle, who’d been sent as a youth delegate to the International Assembly of Presbyterians in Wichita eleven years before, and made hay with the first farmer she set eyes on. Aunt Grace shuddered to think of the missionary funds squandered on her sister-in-law’s disgrace; it had been hard for the Rutherfords to live it down. Now here was Belle, calling from her neighbour’s farm at three in the morning, if you please, begging her and Albert to take in her mistake.

“It’s about Ralph,” Albert whispered, his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s serious this time.”

Grace crossed her arms. It was always serious with Belle. She knew about Belle’s begging letters, the ones Albert hid in the shoebox under his side of the bed. If the Beeford farm wasn’t being eaten by locusts, it was dying of drought, or suffering dust storms so ferocious they buried livestock whole. Could Albert send a little money? Just a little? For seed? To fix the tractor? To replace the henhouse carried off in the last twister? “Please, Albert, I beg of you. Ralph and I will be eternally in your debt.” Wasn’t that the God’s own truth.

Albert always gave in. “Times are tough,” he’d say. Well, except for the likes of Rockefeller, life hadn’t been a cakewalk for anyone since the Crash, now had it? Besides, what was the point of buying seed, or repairs, or a henhouse, when Ralph Beeford couldn’t pay his mortgage? Sure enough, three months ago Ralph and Belle had lost the farm, and all the savings that Albert had shovelled their way had gone up the flue with it. Now, as the prodigals sat waiting for the bailiff to evict them, scarce a day went by without Belle scribbling even more letters; letters which, after much prayer, Grace had been led to intercept and misplace in her wood stove. With Belle so hard up, Grace wanted to know how she could afford so many stamps. And now this telephone call.

“It’s serious,” Albert repeated. “Ralph’s taken to reading the Book of Revelation. Tonight he brought the shotgun in from the barn. Belle’s with Timmy at their neighbours. There’s enough in the cookie jar to send Timmy here before Ralph does something we’ll all regret.”

Grace tightened the belt of her housecoat: How could he lay that guilt on her shoulders?

“The Lord never gives us more than we can bear,” Albert said.

Grace had her doubts.

Her suspicions were confirmed the morning she and Albert met Timmy at the station. Despite the long journey, he’d bounced from the train the image of mischief incarnate: dirty hands, smudged face, and clothes fit for the oil drum.

Grace recognized him from the Brownie snapshot Belle had sent the previous Christmas. “So you’re Timmy,” she said. “I’m your aunt Grace and this is Uncle Albert. Let’s save the hugs till we get you washed up, shall we?”

A scrub with a lather of soap and a rough facecloth had revealed dimples the size of dimes, like the dents of baby fingers plunged in pastry dough, and a mass of freckles — a spill of cinnamon on rice pudding. Aunt Grace sniffed. Oh yes, this was a face that spelled trouble; the acorn doesn’t drop very far from the tree.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Albert said.

From what Grace could make out, the cover was the least of their tribulations. Bullfrogs, cowpies, firecrackers, and stink bombs fascinated the Wichita kid, especially in combination and indoors, as did bodily functions and any hair-raising experiment involving fire and combustibles. When she and Albert demanded that Timmy explain why he had done this or that, he had two cheerful all-purpose replies: “Because” and “To see what would happen.”

Why did God create little boys?
Aunt Grace wondered. Give a girl a doll and she’d sit happily under the dining room table all afternoon and play house. Give Timmy a doll and within two shakes its limbs were clogging up the toilet.

Aunt Grace tried to curb Timmy’s instincts. When she caught him playing cops and robbers she confiscated the toy gun he’d swiped from Kresge’s. Without batting an eye, he replaced it with a stick. When she forbade him playing with sticks, he used his finger, cocking his thumb like a regular gangster.

Aunt Grace blamed it on the picture shows. Naturally, she refused Timmy permission to attend, but with or without her say-so she was sure he snuck into the Capital on Saturday afternoons with his little pal Billy Wertz. It frightened her to speculate on the sights he saw therein. If it wasn’t James Cagney shooting up the town, it was Boris Karloff robbing graves or Bella Lugosi sucking blood. What kind of example did that set the nation’s youth? Certainly not the kind found in the Good Book. At least when God ripped Jezebel into a thousand parts the better to be, consumed by wild boars, He provided young people with a cautionary tale of sound moral instruction.

Things came to a head the day Timmy blew up the tool shed in a chemistry experiment gone bad. He spent the next two weeks tied to the verandah by a rope. If the Rutherfords thought this punishment would curtail the mortification he caused them, they were mistaken. Passersby watched as the Wichita kid stood at the lip of the top step and practised long-distance spitting, self-induced belching, and the host of other skills with which little boys endear themselves.

Small wonder that Aunt Grace was suspicious of his desire to attend the upcoming revival. She knew all about the Tent of the Holy Redemption Tour. Run by a pair of American evangelicals, it breezed through town each fall before heading south to overwinter in the Florida panhandle. Folks praised the preaching of Brother Percy Brubacher and the charm of his partner, Brother Floyd Cruickshank, but the good reverends weren’t what drew the crowds, not in a month of Sundays.

Aunt Grace sucked her teeth. “Timothy Beeford, don’t tell tales. You’ve no intention of finding Jesus. What you really want is to get inside that tent. That tent with its history of horrors.”

“All right, okay,” Timmy confessed. “So can I? Please? I’ll be good for a whole week. I promise.”

T
immy’d heard about the tent the previous Saturday after seeing
The Mummy
with Billy Wertz. They arrived back at Billy’s to find an impromptu party in full swing. Mr. Wertz and a few of his friends, big hairy men like himself, were hunkered in a circle out back, while their wives were indoors exchanging cookie recipes. The way the men snickered, Timmy figured they were drunk.

Billy set him straight. “Us Pentecostals don’t drink. We just have apple cider.”

A whoop from the men. Cries of “kaboom, kaboom.”

“What’re they talking about?” Timmy asked.

“The revival tour. It’s coming next week.”

Timmy looked puzzled.

“You know, the tour, the tent?”

Timmy still looked puzzled.

Billy rolled his eyes. “Daddy,” he called out, “tell Timmy about the Tent of the Holy Redemption!”

The men blinked, then let out a collective guffaw. “Go on, Tom. Tell the kid. Make a man of him.”

Mr. Wertz cocked his head at Timmy. “If I tell, promise you won’t let on to your Aunt Grace?”

Timmy could hardly breathe: If this was a grownups’ secret, it must be important. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” He plunked himself cross-legged at the foot of the oracle.

“All right then.” Mr. Wertz took a glug of apple cider and leaned forward. “Next week, a couple of preachers are coming to town with the Tent of the Holy Redemption. But before the reverends got their hands on it, it wasn’t a revival tent, see? It was a den of iniquity. Belonged to the Bennetts, rich folks from Pittsburgh, made their money in coal.”

“Robber barons,” interrupted the man on Mr. Wertz’s right. Timmy pictured a family in Zorro masks sitting on shiny black thrones.

“Robber barons is right,” Mr. Wertz said. “Now these Bennetts, these robber barons, they had themselves an estate near Hornets Ridge, a village ’bout a slingshot east of Mount Pawtuckaway, off in the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire. And they’d get their richy-rich pals to come up by sleeper train to join ’em on pleasure trips. By day, they’d hunt. By night, they’d party in the tent. Stuff themselves sick on game, French pastries, and booze. Oh, yes! And dance to jazz bands bused in from New York!”

“Never mind about that,” the man said. “Get to the good part.”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there,” said Mr. Wertz. He had another glug of cider. “Now the Bennetts had this son by the name of Junior. The worst of a bad lot. He had slick hair, silk ascots, and wiggled his eyebrows at every gal in the county.”

A chorus of hoots: “A walking erection!”

“Doubled the town birthrate!”

“Wore out the back-seat springs on his daddy’s Hudsons!”

“At least he was good for something!” said a man to the left.

“Who’s telling the story?” Mr. Wertz demanded.

“You, Tom, you,” the men cackled.

“Right, so anyways, this Junior, he finally bites off more than he can chew. Starts making time with Nellie Burns, wife of the sheriff’s deputy, Reggie. Reggie gets wind of the hanky-panky. Late one night, he grabs his shotgun and heads to the Bennett tent. There he finds his wife and Junior naked as jay birds ’cept for their party hats. What happened next wasn’t pretty.”

The men fell silent. Timmy’s eyeballs were out of their sockets.

“‘The wages of sin is death,’” the man on the left observed.

“Amen,” said Mr. Wertz. “That’s Brother Percy’s very text. Adultery happened in that tent, lad. A double murder-suicide to boot. To this very day, you can see the holes where the lovebirds had their skulls blasted through to Kingdom Come. And if you look real hard, you can even see some brains.”

T
immy nagged his Aunt Grace for days. He nagged his Uncle Albert too. “I gotta see inside the tent. I just gotta.” The couple discussed their nephew’s request into the wee hours. Aunt Grace was inclined to say no. As a Presbyterian, she found the idea of tent evangelists embarrassing. “Too much singing, clapping, and general mayhem, not to mention those tambourines.”

But as Uncle Albert pointed out, the Wertzes were pretty respectable for Pentecostals. “Maybe our Timmy could learn something from a God-fearing sermon on the wages of sin.”

Aunt Grace counted to ten; Albert gave in to everyone, except her. She wrung a concession. “We’ll give you our blessing,” she told the boy, “providing Mrs. Wertz promises you’ll be home for tuck-in by nine o’clock.”

B
illy and his mother arrived at five to collect Timmy for the twenty-block walk to the fairgrounds; Mr. Wertz had gone ahead to help raise the tent. Before the revival, they planned to meet up with other families from Bethel Gospel Hall for a potluck picnic; then, after the testifying, to have Timmy home by nine as promised. Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace were waiting with Timmy on the verandah, Uncle Albert clutching the family Bible, Aunt Grace cradling a container of her special potato salad.

“Sorry we’re late,” Mrs. Wertz hollered from the street.

Aunt Grace smiled primly. Pentecostals could carry on like pig-callers in a barnyard, but Presbyterians knew better than to make a ruckus. “Why, Betty,” she said when Mrs. Wertz was within speaking distance, “aren’t you looking festive.” This was in recognition of Mrs. Wertz’s pleated navy dress and string of imitation pearls. For herself, Aunt Grace wore only black on the Sabbath — as Christ had died for her sins, it was the least she could do — but she understood that in fashion, as in most other things, Pentecostals had their own notion of the appropriate. Ah well, who was she to judge? God would let Pentecostals know what was what in the fullness of time, and in any case it wasn’t as if she had to invite Betty Wertz inside.

Mrs. Wertz showed off the frock with a spin. “Thanks muchly. It’s nearly new from my sister Bess, out Ingersoll way. Lucky for me, she’s been enjoying her suppers of late. Heavens, I wish I could put on some flesh, but there you are.”

“And here
you
are,” said Aunt Grace, presenting Mrs. Wertz with her special potato salad before the conversation could descend to body talk.

“You shouldn’t have,” Mrs. Wertz replied, packing it next to the bologna sandwiches and celery sticks in her picnic basket.

“No trouble,” Aunt Grace allowed. “I make it with olives and pimentos, you know. With a speck of pepper for zest.” Aware of a wriggling at her side, she glanced at Timmy, and faced an unspeakable horror. “Timothy! Get your hands out of your pants!”

“But my nuts itch.”

“Timothy!”

“Well, they do!”

Aunt Grace gave him two quick spanks. “That’s for scratching. And that’s for sass.” She pivoted back to Mrs. Wertz, red as a beet. “If Timothy gets himself into any mischief, give him a good smack. It’s the one thing he understands.” Timmy made a face. Aunt Grace grabbed him by the ear. “If we hear of any hijinks, there’ll be more where this came from.” With that she gave Timmy a third and final spank that sent the lad scooting down the verandah steps.

“I’m sure he’ll be just fine,” Mrs. Wertz said, as the boys ran laughing in circles to the street, the picnic basket swinging between them.