The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story Read online

  “You know,” Tom said, coming back into the kitchen, “my father bought this hat in 1950 at the haberdashery downtown. It was the newest style. The Whippet, they called it.”

  “Really?” Jack put his dishes in the sink. “The Whippet?”

  “When I’m gone”—Jack could hear the clinking of keys as his father pulled them out of the bowl on the hall table—“I want you to have this hat.”

  “It’s a nice hat,” Jack said, thinking he would not wear that hat if his life depended on it. “But you’re going to be around for a long time.”

  “I’ll see you this evening,” Tom said. He was bundled up tight. “Should be a quiet day, day after Christmas.”

  “Batteries,” Jack said, remembering. “You’ll sell a lot of batteries.”

  “Maybe so.” Tom nodded, raised a hand in good-bye, and was gone.

  Jack sat down at the fine oak table his Grampa Joe had crafted before Jack was born. He sipped his coffee and looked down at his dim reflection. He rubbed his finger over the glossy dark finish. Beautiful.

  As a boy, he sat here, his mother to his immediate right, his sisters across from him. Mary and Martha had been a year older, as identical as pieces of bread in a sandwich. When they switched places at the table to fool him, he never even noticed.

  That old sadness washed over him in an instant and he was plunged into a pool of grief. In the week after Martha’s death, his father had taken the leaf out of the table and hauled the extra chair out to the shop. The four of them had sat without speaking at an abbreviated feast, his mother drawn and red-eyed, while his father drew away from them, his words even fewer and more hard-edged, and Jack sank into himself, the one thing that could never be taken away from him.

  The stupid comments some people made, that it was somehow a blessing that the girls were twins, that you’ll always be able to see her sweet face in the one who’s left.

  A blessing?

  Or a curse?

  Jack put his head in his hands. The past was hard to visit. He suddenly felt exhausted.

  He let out a deep sigh and took a final sip of his coffee. Maxwell House. If those people in Seattle could possibly think less of him, this would do it. He trudged up the eleven stairs to his room, rolled back into bed, and pulled the covers over his head.

  He wanted to go back to sleep, wanted to dream of his mother laughing, to remember a time when laughter had lived in this place.

  She was the only one who could ever make his father laugh. He had been a different man once, long, long ago. Jack remembered the time his mother had imitated Grampa Joe’s Thanksgiving prayer at the reception after his funeral. She’d reminded them of that epic annual prayer when the old man built clause by clause, neighborhood by neighborhood—“and, Father, we thank you for rain, and for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns”—until seven-year-old Jack’s stomach growled in protest.

  He remembered how Tom had, at first, been offended but then had hidden his smile behind a hand. And then how he had been laughing as hard as the rest of them, laughing until tears filled his eyes, laughing until he had to sit down.

  Those had been better days.

  Better days.

  4.

  When Jack woke, it was dark outside. He shook himself awake as though he had slept through the morning alarm and had to get to work.

  Someone was ringing the doorbell.

  Jack got out of bed and looked out the window.

  A huge Dodge pickup sat in the driveway. Dennis, no doubt. Always Dodge trucks, one after another. The man was a study in steadiness.

  It must be time for dinner.

  “Hey, Dad,” his sister was saying from the hallway downstairs, and then he heard a rumble of greeting from Dennis.

  He couldn’t let them know he had slept the day away. He threw water on his face, pulled on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, and came down the stairs two at a time. When he got there, the three of them were conversing in low tones in what had once been the living room, that formal and uncomfortable room at the front of the house that was never lived in.

  Dennis was spread out across the dusty royal-blue velvet sofa that was perhaps as old as he was. Mary and her dad sat on the perpendicular matching love seat.

  Dennis Mays looked up as Jack walked in and a genuine smile spread across his face. “Twelve,” he said, and he hoisted his considerable bulk off the couch to greet him.

  Jack had worn the number twelve as Mayfield’s starting quarterback for three years, one of which Dennis had been his starting left guard. Dennis had been a considerable presence even as a young man. Now he was roughly the size of an oil tanker. Jack wondered clinically how a human being could carry a stomach that size around without collapsing. It was a feat of engineering, for certain.

  “Seventy-Eight,” Jack said, stepping forward, a smile creeping across his face. Their handshake was unsettling. Jack wasn’t sure his hand would recover without surgery.

  “Sis,” he said as Mary offered her hand from her seated position.

  “Jack,” she said. She nodded, let go, and he stepped back. Not the warmest of greetings, but just about what he’d expected.

  He settled into the ugly La-Z-Boy recliner.

  “It’s good to see you, Twelve,” Dennis was saying. “Good to see you.”

  “Your sister brought a casserole,” Tom said. “I told her she didn’t need to—”

  “You’d eat that fried food from Chicken Express every night if I didn’t cook for you,” she complained. She turned to Jack. “He knows better, he’s not supposed to—”

  Tom cleared his throat. Mary stopped midsentence. Jack noted this and filed it away for later.

  “It’s my ham casserole,” she began again. She looked across at Jack. “You always used to like that.”

  He was strangely touched that she remembered. Mary had taken over the family cooking after Martha died. Their mom had been severely depressed for years and rarely cooked. She would often spend the day in bed and then eat supper in the pajamas she’d worn all day.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You’ll have to give me that recipe someday.”

  “It’s in the Fannie Farmer cookbook in the kitchen,” she said crisply. “You would know if you were ever in there.”

  “Well,” Dennis said, raising a hand to stop her, “he’s here now, isn’t he? Twelve, why don’t you break out that cookbook and make us something for dinner tomorrow? You always were a good little homemaker.” He laughed, a big, rolling belly laugh that filled the room.

  It was famous in Mayfield lore: Jack and his friend Bill had taken Home Ec as seniors, had been the only boys in the Future Homemakers of America picture in the yearbook. Although the strategy had been to avoid taking Calculus—and it had worked—Dennis still found the Home Ec thing hilarious these twenty years later. But nobody had ever impugned Jack’s manhood. Being the starting quarterback, “QB 1,” inoculated you against that for all time.

  “How was your day?” Tom asked, his voice quiet after that ringing laughter. “Productive?”

  “Good,” Jack said. “Yeah. Good. I’ve got some leads.” He nodded, too many times.

  The silence stretched. Jack guessed his father had spilled that the house was dark when he returned home.

  “How long you here, Twelve?” Dennis asked. “I can get some of the guys together. Maybe we can go hunting this weekend—”

  Mary inclined her head in that way she was known for. She, too, was interested in Jack’s response.

  “I don’t know. Just ‘til I figure a few things out. Get my second wind. Not long.”

  Mary’s gaze was cool, remote. “Until the reporters find you?”

  Dennis raised a finger again as if to stop her, and she turned angrily to him and spat, “I am so tired of being shushed,” before delivering her next words to Jack. “Do you know how many calls I got from TV stations and newspapers in places I’ve never even heard of? How many ne
ws trucks have been set up in front of Dad’s store? How many headlines in the tabloids at the grocery store checkout?” She humphed. “‘The People’s Pastor in Mexican Love Nest’?”

  “Mary—” Tom turned to Jack. “They were only here for a few days. I told them I didn’t know where you were, that I didn’t imagine you’d ever come here. They left.” He shrugged.

  “They’ll be back,” Mary said. “And they will make our lives a living hell.”

  Jack looked around the room, at his sister, father, and Dennis.

  “If I’m an embarrassment to you,” he said steadily, trying to keep the edge out of his voice, “I can go. I can just walk out the door.”

  “Oh yes, Jack,” Mary said. “That’s what you always do. Just walk out the door. You haven’t wanted to be a part of this family for ten years.”

  “There hasn’t been a family here for ten years,” he said.

  “So go, Jack,” she said, her face flushed. “Go back to your perfect family and your big life.” She immediately regretted her words. He could see her lip crumple as she realized her comment had staggered him.

  But it stayed said, all the same.

  Jack got to his feet. He couldn’t stay, and he couldn’t go. Maybe all he could do was forget about things for a few hours. “I’m sorry,” he told his father. “I’ll leave in the morning. Could—can I borrow a twenty?”

  His father looked as though he’d been smacked in the head with a two-by-four. “I–I–Jack, I don’t think I have a twenty.”

  Jack actually laughed. He shook his head. Of course he didn’t. “Don’t worry about it. Really.”

  Tom took out his wallet, counted out a ten and three ones, handed them to Jack with a quavering hand.

  “I hope you enjoy the casserole,” Jack told the room. He turned and walked through the hallway and out the front door, into the cold night. After the door shut, he stood on the front porch shivering for a moment. He didn’t have a coat, but he didn’t care about that.

  Of all the ways to die, this wasn’t the worst of them.

  He set out across the front lawn toward town.

  Behind him he heard the front door open, and Mary called out his name. She ran to catch him.

  “Jack,” she repeated, taking him by his elbow.

  “Go back inside, Mary,” he said. “You’ll freeze out here.”

  “Jack,” she said, and he could see that she was crying. “If you leave, you will break his heart. Again. Do you know why he came to get you after all this? Do you even know?”

  “No,” Jack said. He yanked his elbow free. “And I don’t care. He was a lousy father. That was a nice thing he did, bringing me home from Mexico. I don’t know why he did it. But one nice thing doesn’t make up for—”

  “He’s dying,” she said, and she took his elbow again. “He’s already on borrowed time. I don’t think he could go without—without—”

  She stopped. She sobbed so hard that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Against his will, Jack felt himself swallowing, felt his stomach contract.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But what can I do? I don’t have a dollar to call my own. I can’t even—”

  “You could not break his heart!” she wailed. “Just this once, you could stop before you break his heart.”

  Jack looked at her.

  He shook his head, pulled his arm gently from her grasp.

  “Maybe we should have had this conversation a long time ago,” Jack said. “It’s too late now.”

  “Jack,” she pleaded.

  “It’s too late,” Jack repeated. He stumbled away from her, his feet crunching through the snow.

  She didn’t follow him this time, and he didn’t look back.

  He walked the eight blocks into what people still called downtown, past the bank, Chisholm’s Hardware, and the Buy-n-Buy convenience store. The town got smaller every year, more threadbare, closer to death. What kept people here?

  At last, he stepped into the warmth of Buddy’s, the perpetually run-down bar that at least didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was: the only place in town where you could drink your troubles away.

  Including him, three people sat at the bar. He recognized the bartender, a girl who had been two grades below him in school. She’d been married and divorced twice since then, and as Jesus might have said, the man she was living with now was not her husband. A white-headed man was at the bar with his back to him.

  Jack paid him no attention as he bellied up, said, “Hi, Shayla. Pitcher of Bud Light. One glass.” It was the best he could afford on his borrowed thirteen-dollar stake.

  She goggled at him. “Hey,” she said. “Umm. Okay. Coming right up.”

  “Why, if it isn’t Jack Chisholm,” said the wry and surprisingly kind voice to his right. He turned to see the speaker scoot his drink down the bar and slide into the next chair. The voice belonged to a priest—or at least the man was dressed like a priest, all in black and wearing a clerical collar. “It’s Francis Xavier Malone.”

  Jack recognized him at once, although he took the outstretched hand and shook it nonetheless.

  “Father Frank,” he said. “What are you doing here? I thought—”

  He caught himself. Frank Malone had been the priest in Mayfield from before Jack was born. And Jack had grown up knowing two sure things: in Mayfield, football was king, and Father Frank had to be kept away from alcohol.

  Oh well. He had put his foot in it already. So he nodded over at the amber liquid on the rocks in Frank’s glass. “I thought you couldn’t get a mixed drink in this county.”

  Frank smiled grimly. “A sad thing it is when your private shame becomes public knowledge.” He raised his glass and swirled the liquid around, the ice clinking. He took a sip, smacked his lips. “Only ginger ale, Jack. Although you recall aright. One still cannot order a mixed drink anywhere in this county, although I don’t think I could get one here even if it were legal.”

  “That’s God’s truth, Father,” Shayla said, bringing Jack’s pitcher, which had inches of foam atop the watery beer, and his one glass. “I’m not allowed to serve him anything but ginger ale,” she told Jack. “It’d be my job.”

  “That’s the way it is in Mayfield,” Frank said, “as I’m sure you remember. Everyone knows your business. But on the good days, no one lets you struggle alone.” He rolled the ice cubes around in his glass again. “So what brings you here?”

  “Family visit,” Jack said nonchalantly. “I’m just here for a few days.” He started to pour a beer.

  “So,” Father Frank said, steepling his fingers in front of his face, “I observe that you are here in Buddy’s, where I have never known you to be, on the day after Christmas. On the feast day of Saint Stephen.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “I also observe that you set out from your house without jacket or hat on the coldest night of the year. And,” he said, nodding his head toward the light beer Jack was pouring into his mug, “I observe that you are drinking for two. And not too particular in the drinking, if you’ll forgive my saying so.”

  “Trying to keep my girlish figure,” Jack said. He drank, grimaced at the bitter, watery taste. “Ugh.”

  “I know.” Father Frank sighed. “And yet even that, I pine for.”

  Jack looked at Father Frank’s open, smiling face and he prepared to stand up and sit elsewhere. “No offense, Father. I just wanted to drink alone. Not bother anyone. Not be bothered.”

  Frank nodded, took a drink of his ginger ale. “Sure. I get it. You wanted to pretend.”

  Jack almost spat out the beer he was swallowing. “Excuse me?”

  He tried to glare at Frank, but the old priest was having none of it. That grin had slid back across his face. “‘Excuse me’ because it’s bad manners to acknowledge the elephant in the room? Or because you think that perhaps your recent experience is unique in human history?”

  Jack could only look at him and blink.

  “We did have reporters li
ned up from there to there,” Shayla said, indicating from one end of the bar to the other. “It’s not like what you did is a secret.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Jack muttered, pouring himself another beer. One more glass and he would be in a good place; if only he could get there before anyone said anything else he couldn’t ignore.

  “What you did or didn’t do is of no consequence,” Frank said softly. “Not to God.”

  “Excuse me?” Jack repeated.

  “The world is full of the bedraggled, the beat up, and the burnt out,” Frank said. “The ragamuffins. You did get that one thing right in your preaching. Yes, I’ve followed your career,” he said to Jack’s wide-eyed stare. “We don’t send forth many famous men of God from Mayfield. We are a mess. All of us. Your case is just a little more visible in a day and age when everybody seems to know everybody’s business.”

  Jack poured himself that third magical beer, chugged a long drink, which gave him the courage to go on. “Father Frank, you’ve been stuck in this town for—what—forty years? What do you know, really?”

  “What do I know about people who don’t have it all together?” Frank fixed him with his gaze. “Only that I am one. But there is grace, Jack. Amazing grace. When we acknowledge that we are all just beggars at the door of God’s mercy, God can make something beautiful out of us.”

  Jack dropped his gaze and finished his beer. “That’s lovely, Father,” he said. “But I didn’t come to Buddy’s to talk shop. Why don’t you save that for your best-selling book Beggars at the Door of God’s Mercy. I expect it’ll get you on all the talk shows.”

  Father Frank shook his head. “A small-town priest is all I have ever been, and it has been the joy of my life. But if I were to write a book—if I were to leave behind something of my life’s work—it would be to tell people that broken and worthless as we are, we are nonetheless loved beyond all reckoning.”

  Something wet itched at the corners of his eyes. He rubbed them, then turned away. This pitcher had one more glass in it before he had to do something—to sober up and trudge back to his father’s house or to walk off into the endless night.