Читать книгу Tale of the Taconic Mountains - Mike M.D. Romeling - Страница 3

Mostly the mountain broods. That’s what folks said about it if they said anything at all. Indeed, exposing its north face toward the town of Cedar Falls, the mountain, except in high summer, showed mostly a shadowed and gloomy countenance to the town. Cedar Falls was nestled along the upper Bluejay River, a river born and fed by the two racing streams that cascaded around the flanks of the mountain to finally come clashing together in the eighty foot falls that gave the village its name and its last surviving paper mill. Few actually lived on the mountain and those who did were considered to have “gone queer” and had become something of an embarrassment to those in town who kept their noses stuck in the air.

Yet in truth there was little reason for the town dwellers to feel superior to their neighbors higher up the mountain because, after all, the town itself seemed to be dying. Everyone had said so at least once even if most of the time it was best not to dwell on it. If you did, the scars began to leap out at you. The remaining paper mill seemed not long for this world. Owner William Stark was so awash in EPA regulations that he’d been forced to lay off a third of his work force and spend money hand over fist trying to stay legal. In the meantime, he was drinking his stress and possibly his life away.

Gil Brady’s bowling alley was in trouble as well, but Gil’s fate will unfold slowly as it weaves its way strangely and tightly into the other threads of the odd and disturbing happenings in Cedar Falls in the coming months.

Then there were the buildings with boarded up windows or no windows at all. Three or four of them were haunted, as any child would have told you while his mother laughed tolerantly and explained the lure deserted houses offered to stray cats and wild raccoons. Once in a while, when some of the men were drinking hard, they’d talk about how every night you could hear blood-curdling cat fights and how the raccoons were totally stinking up some of the abandoned houses so badly you could smell them as you passed by on the road. Then they’d drink more beer and later might fetch their rifles, creep into one or two of the abandoned houses and “fire away at the bastards.” It was a grim business, and one more thing it was best not to dwell on afterwards. The town sheriff, Ron Bosley, eventually had quiet but firm conversations with these men until finally the practice stopped and the town’s animal control officer took over and had some success trapping the creatures alive.

But the worst scar—more like an open wound—was the closed school standing cold and empty on the outskirts of town. One rusting bicycle still stood in the metal rack as though waiting for the bell to ring, the doors to fling open, and all that exuberant young life to rush out and spread through the town like the bubbling river rapids. For a while the kids still used the playground behind the school but soon the grass turned to tall weeds and there were bugs and snakes.

The parents were both saddened and angry. Just seeing the closed school every day reminded them of Bennetsville, twenty miles down into the valley where their kids were now bussed to school. Not only were there separation anxieties to suddenly deal with, but also the frustration that their kids were at a disadvantage. During bad winter weather the buses wouldn’t come up to Cedar Falls. Then the parents would have to either keep the kids home or form car pools for the treacherous ride down into the valley. The same applied if their kids wanted to join after-school sports or other activities.

“They’re chicken shit in that cruddy town,” Gil Brady had once said, and that pretty much summed up the general feeling Cedar Falls residents had for Bennetsville, a feeling that stemmed chiefly from what folks in town called “the water problem.” This referred to the fact that Cedar Falls received nearly the entire runoff of water from the mountain and rarely did a year go by when the Bluejay River, running alongside the town, didn’t overflow its banks in the Spring. What followed would be dismal weeks of smelly mud, flooded basements, and whining sump pumps. All this could be avoided, it was generally agreed, if the chicken shits down in Bennetsville would let the water through their own town as God intended. But of course they wouldn’t because years ago, Bennetsville had built a dam to form Bennet Lake, a three mile stretch of water that brought in tourists and jobs and tax dollars.

There was supposedly an agreement between the two towns that Bennetsville would run as much water through their dam as possible in the Spring, but everyone knew it wasn’t happening as promised. The dollars rolled in to Bennetsville because the fishermen came in April to catch the rainbow trout and the bass and the pike. The tourists came to shop in overpriced boutiques and dine alfresco on the back decks of the restaurants that were quickly erected by the side of the lake. All of these folks were looking for clear water lapping placidly all the way up to the docks and up to the clean, rocky shoreline. They were definitely not looking for mud with creepy crabs crawling over dead snails and sunken beer cans. And so Bennetsville kept the lake high, raked in the dollars and smiled. Meanwhile Cedar Falls swept and pumped out the floodwaters amid curses and forlorn lamentations. There were official complains and petitions, but the county politicians knew which side their bread was buttered on and of course did nothing but pretend to be concerned.

Indeed, no one in Cedar Falls would ever quite forget about Homer Jebs either. People liked Homer, he worked hard when someone would give him some work, went to church most of the time, and never had a bad word for anyone. It could be overlooked, then, that Homer couldn’t so much as change a fuse without asking for help. “He’d be living in a cave if it weren’t for good neighbors,” folks said.

One Spring morning, Homer awoke to a torrential downpour and flooding that had already let three or four inches of water seep into his tiny house—a shack really—that had no basement. Homer decided to check the weather report on the radio to see how much worse things were going to get. As it turned out, they got a lot worse for Homer Jeb. He was still using some old decrepit coil heater that an old uncle had given him years before, a heater that should have been condemned long ago. He kept it on a table near his bed because he could never seem to get that room warm enough. His radio was beside the heater. When, in his early morning grogginess, he went to turn on the radio to check the forecast, he knocked both the radio and—far worse—the coil heater into the standing water, promptly zapping himself into the Great Beyond.

“You can chalk this one up to the bastards in Bennetsville,” Wesley Wheeler said not quite under his breath right in the middle of Homer’s funeral service. Wesley received his wife’s elbow in his ribs by way of a reply as the pipe organ moaned on interminably. But everyone agreed with him. Later at burial time, Mother Nature, in a final capricious act against a gentle soul, brought more torrential rain. The old tarp above the grave, a tarp in use now for one too many funerals, tore to shreds in the gusty winds. Before they could get Homer lowered down in a decent way, there was about as much water in the grave as had been on Homer’s floor.

When it was over, Father Francis Mancuso trudged his way down the dirt road that led from the cemetery back into town and turned left toward the Catholic Church. His gait seemed almost reluctant and weary, perhaps because the church was fast becoming another scar in the town, and that was heavier on his mind after the sad funeral. Attendance was down in church and so were the collections. Father Mancuso had been harboring the forlorn hope that hard times would draw the community closer together in faith and prayer. He still hoped and prayed for that, but lived in constant fear that someday soon he would get the dreaded letter from the Bishop telling him that his beloved Saint Joseph’s Parish would be closed and he would be sent off, perhaps to suffer the oblivion of being an assistant pastor in some suburban parish—God knows where.

This fear was almost constant and sometimes goaded the priest to some desperate sermons that brought mixed results at best. His clever—he thought so anyway—exhortation one Sunday morning about not wanting to hear any jingling in the collection plate resulted in a take that was twenty-one dollars less than had been collected on the previous Sunday. Worse was to come after his impassioned plea on another occasion for cooperation on fixing the leaky roof of the church. At first there seemed room for optimism when a group of volunteers arrived the following Saturday with a ladder and roofing supplies. Regrettably, though the spirit was willing, skills were weak and casualties were high. By the time the project was over—or more accurately, abandoned—the list included one broken leg, one scalp totally encrusted with spilled roofing tar, and two men so drunk they had to be carried home. And to make matters worse, a sizable mob of spectators had gathered by then, some of them secretly disappointed when the debacle had ended. The broken ladder that had led to the broken leg was never claimed and in fact gained a sinister reputation for having broken while doing God’s work. For years it could still be seen under the eaves of the church where, oddly enough, all the rungs rotted away except for the broken one that precipitated the calamity. Father Mancuso was depressed about the incident for several days but eventually achieved acceptance and even some relief that the roof leaked only slightly worse than it had before. And more importantly, no one filed a lawsuit.

This spectacle lead to very hurried Masses on subsequent Sundays as Father Mancuso tried to ignore the evidence of what became known for years around town as The Charge of the Roof Brigade. But how could he ignore it when Bob Bukowski—he of the broken leg and who had never really been a regular at Mass—suddenly became a pathetic sideshow each and every Sunday? He had taken to arriving about five minutes late on his crutches, lurching and thumping his way to the front pew. Once there, he would perform a caricature of a genuflection, grimace painfully, and sit with a thud and a clatter as his crutches banged down beside him.

As for Norm Kraus, whose entire head was so much more effectively tarred than the roof, he was reduced to sitting moodily in the back pew each Sunday wearing a too large Tyrolean hat that came all the way down to the middle of his ears. After the mishap, Norm had been taken to the small hospital in Bennetsville where the doctor decided that the hair would have to go so that the more important scalp could be attended to properly. Unfortunately whatever the cleansing agent of choice had been, it did not at all agree with Norm and his head promptly swelled up horribly and turned a dreadful shade of purple. This necessitated an injection for Norm and sedation for his wife who had become hysterical. Now some weeks later, Norm’s formerly luxurious gray hair was just beginning to sprout little bristles under the ever present Tyrolean hat, and some unsympathetic souls, who had never liked Norm much in the first place, now referred to him behind his back as the Burghermeister.

Still, sometimes late at night, when The Readers Digest was put aside and there was just a small swallow left in his brandy snifter, Father Mancuso could reflect that it was not these irritants that left him with a vague feeling of malaise, but rather something deeper that stretched back to the years before he even arrived in Cedar Falls. It was something he kept at bay through hard work and willpower because he knew that to entertain these thoughts might be construed as at least bordering on the sin of pride—one of the so-called Deadly Sins. He had hoped that time would diminish these feelings but quite the opposite seemed to be happening.

The problem was this: nothing spiritually significant had happened to Father Francis Mancuso since he was ordained almost twenty years ago. Nothing? Well yes, of course he realized that he was present at a miracle each and every day at Mass when the bread and water were turned into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and yes, he realized too that in doing the best he could to guide people in the ways of faith, he was important—at least in a small way—in the unfolding of God’s plan. But he had always hoped for just a little more; not a lot mind you, but just a little.

If he had ever been asked exactly what it was he wanted, he might have had great difficulty answering in words that didn’t sound pompous or foolish. He might have said he hoped becoming a priest would accelerate and enhance his spiritual growth. Instead it seemed that ordination into the priesthood had brought only a never ending deluge of bingo games, chicken barbecues, sick calls, and church repair headaches. Gone forever were those all night sessions at the seminary where religion, philosophy, and psychology were debated and discussed over bad instant coffee. Even the views of the atheists and the humanists were considered if for no other reason than the thrill of playing with fire. Now he had neither the time nor the companionship for such reflections.

If pressed further, Father Mancuso might have also admitted that he secretly hoped he might be a witness to something—not just miraculous in a symbolic way—but rather something startlingly miraculous. He knew this did indeed smack of the sin of Pride and even strayed into those dangerous waters warned about in the gospel story of Doubting Thomas. He knew he was not really one of those unfortunate doubting souls. Yet it bothered him that, if God or the Virgin Mary were going to manifest themselves—as it seemed they did sometimes—why was it so seldom to those, like himself for instance, who had deliberately sought out the spiritual life? At Lourdes it was a bunch of seemingly unremarkable kids who had seen the Virgin Mary. And not that long ago another group of kids in Yugoslavia were said to have seen and spoken with her. The Vatican wasn’t saying anything about this yet but interest was piqued. And now there were even reports that the face of Jesus was appearing periodically on a sick room door in Saint Peters Hospital, right down in nearby Albany, New York. This story didn’t seem to last long and resulted in a spate of jokes about the effects of morphine. Still, what if it was true? And it was so close at hand too. Yet for Father Mancuso it seemed his days dragged on and on with a nagging sadness that his vocation would never quite deliver the magic he had always hoped it would. Nevertheless, he knew what to do on those evenings when those thoughts roiled around in his head for too long. He said an Our Father, had another smallish brandy, counted his blessings, and went to bed. But then, out of the blue, on Christmas Eve of last year, something actually happened: something strange, oddly thrilling and unforgettable.

As usual winter had already sunk its teeth deeply into Cedar Falls and the snow banks along the streets half hid the buildings where narrow shoveled paths weaved from door to door. The air was thick with wood smoke, sweet where cherry or birch burned, bitter where it was elm or oak.

It had been almost eleven o’clock at night when Father Mancuso came out of his house across the street from the church and started slogging through the snow. His destination was a short walk to the large Christmas tree that grew in the town square. It was cold but the wind was light so he did not cover his face with his scarf as he walked, his rubber boots crunching on the cold packed snow. He had been out earlier, shortly after dusk and watched a new moon and brilliant Venus set into the west side by side. The night seemed charged with mystery and expectation but the priest was resigned to the sad fact that it would be a fleeting feeling that would pass with the ending of Midnight Mass, celebrated after the community caroling that would begin in just a few minutes. He passed by the deserted hardware store that had closed last year, though a new owner was rehabilitating it. The faded red sign that still hung out over the sidewalk creaked as the wind now picked up from the east. Snow was predicted for Christmas day.

Along the streets that led off from the town square, Father Mancuso could see the houses and shops where Christmas lights shone through opaque curtains. Window sills were crowded with garish Santa Clauses and cozy manger scenes. Brief snatches of Christmas music came from the small brass band warming up beneath the tree in the middle of the square. Soon doors would open and people would be coming along the streets to form a circle around the band and the tall decorated blue spruce that rose high above them. The priest used these minutes to consider what he would say to start off the ceremony. He liked it to be short, hopefully memorable, and different every year.

He arrived beneath the tree as the last stragglers moved into the circle. Some faces were aglow with the anticipation of warbling loudly with what they thought to be their talented voices, while others showed anxiety that someone might notice they would be just moving their lips rather than actually singing and making fools of themselves. The four horn players kept licking their lips, trying and keep them moist and warm. The trombone player continually moved the slide back and forth as though fearing it would freeze up otherwise and refuse to slide at all.

A nearby streetlight gave some small illumination, but some of the carolers had brought lanterns while others were having varying degrees of success keeping candles burning. Faces were ruddy from the cold and children played at the edges of the square. Vainly they tried to make snowballs with snow that was not sticky enough. There had been a fresh two inches of snow earlier in the day but it was quickly being urine-blemished by a half dozen dogs who hoped this might be one of those human gatherings that would result in yummy tidbits being dropped and tossed about. But by the middle of the festivities the dogs were finding that this was not at all like the firemen’s picnics or the church barbecues where the pickings could be simply marvelous. No, at this gathering all the humans seemed to be saying the same thing at the same time which was unusual to begin with, and then there was some dreadful noise coming from the large shiny things that were poking out of some of the humans’ mouths who evidently did not realize how painful such noise was to the acute hearing of canines. For a while, a couple of the dogs howled more or less on key with the blaring horns and squeaking clarinet, but soon they contented themselves with peeing and defecating on the outside of the circle and joining the straying children who at least seemed to be acting normally. Father Mancuso was just relieved that this year none of the dogs charged inside the circle to pee on the Christmas tree itself.

When Silent Night, always the grand finale, came quavering to an end, Father Mancuso checked his coat to be sure he had the buttons lined up correctly and wiped at his frozen droopy mustache that people thought made him look jolly or silly or wise or world-weary. He stepped forward into the middle of the circle with that same nervousness he always felt when he knew all eyes were upon him.

Even with many faces covered with masks and scarves, the priest recognized one and all. Even Gil Brady from the bowling alley was there with his big bass voice. Gil was never to be found in church. He had little patience for what he called “all that mumbo-jumbo Latin stuff.” Bob Bukowski and Norm Kraus were there with their families. Little could they anticipate that the time was near at hand when they would be laid low during the the charge of the roof brigade. They nodded at Father Mancuso when his eyes met theirs, while the wives tried to hush the children who resembled tottering penguins in their bulging snowsuits. All the children had reluctantly heeded their parents’ calls to return into the circle now, but many of them had gotten wet during their earlier romps in the snow and some were beginning to whine and fidget. Others would be miserable with chilblains later that night and keep their parents up long after everyone should have been in bed before Santa arrived.

When he judged it was as quiet as it was ever going to get, Father Mancuso straightened up, cleared his throat and began: “Dear friends, it is fitting on this most holy of nights that we should gather in song. Music lifts us above the drudgery and cares of our daily lives. Music transports us into the higher realms of God, whose son we honor and revere this night of His blessed birth. It might be said that the songs we offer tonight are perhaps the highest form of prayer.”

“Amen,” exclaimed most of the voices in the circle, although a few of the women raised their eyebrows and peered down their noses at each other. After all, singing was one thing and praying was another. Of all people you’d think a priest should know the difference. But no one wanted to be uncharitable on Christmas Eve and so they quickly turned their attention back to the priest who clasped his hands behind his back as he continued: “And above all let us never forget God’s eternal promise that wherever His children gather in His name, He is there. He is with us now. He will be with us aways, even at the hour of our death if we but do his will by loving Him and loving each other. Follow me now as the church bells ring; they chime to us now to welcome us to God’s house and to His protection.” The priest raised his hands above his head which was the signal for old Clarence Burns, who had perched in the church belfry for over forty Christmas Eves and almost every Sunday morning in between. Clarence loved to pull the rope and set the venerable bell swinging and pealing through the town’s frozen air.

And that’s when it happened. Heads began turning and people began whispering with hushed excitement. At first some said no, it couldn’t be them. But it was indeed. The mysterious Boudine sisters were coming down the street, obviously intent on joining the group. The whispers grew more urgent; some actually gasped.

They were known simply as the Boudine sisters in polite circles. Elsewhere they were known as “those crazy Boudines” and sometimes by far worse and more sinister epithets. They lived up on the mountain somewhere. No one knew for sure how long they had been up there except that it had been a very long time indeed; so long in fact that many doubted that these two were the same women who had come to the mountain originally. They hardly could be unless they had somehow found the fabled fountain of youth.

Years ago when the titanium mine was operating on the mountain, rough-hewn miners would come into town and after more than a few drinks would tell tales of having wandered off through the woods to take their ease with the Boudine sisters. But when pressed by anyone who knew much about the mountain, it became obvious the men were engaging in wishful bravado. Once in a while one of the locals would slam an empty beer bottle on the bar and loudly announce he was off “to get me a piece of them crazy Boudine sisters.” But in truth, no one to this day knew where their cabin was, or if they did they weren’t telling. There was only the general supposition it was high up on the mountain. And what if you did find it? What kind of reception would you get? What if they had guns or vicious dogs? Exactly how crazy were they? And did you really want to find out? They only showed up a couple times each year to buy some meager supplies; never said more than was necessary to transact their business and then they were gone. It was assumed they must be living mostly off the land somehow.

Still, whatever their strange lives and history might be, there was no doubt that, beyond all expectations, they were here tonight on this cold Christmas Eve and for most of the carolers, this fact sent a chill through their bones that made the night yet colder. The sisters were on the square now and walking slowly but purposefully toward the tree. They wore long wrap-around capes of deerskin, homemade but strikingly handsome against the fresh snow. Hoods almost totally hid their faces, and as the sisters reached the circle, space was quickly and nervously made for them and they moved in and joined hands, looking straight at Father Mancuso. The church bells continued to ring and the wind now made the tops of the trees sway and whisper above them. The priest was momentarily at a loss until he decided that some sort of welcome was in order for these strange visitors who had appeared out of the darkness and into their midst.

“We have with us tonight two very welcome if infrequent guests to our little community. Perhaps they will honor us with a song of their own choosing and from their own traditions. Ladies?”

The sisters looked at each other for a moment, not in an embarrassed or nervous manner, but in a direct and composed way as if they silently communicated between themselves. Then together they tossed back their hoods onto their shoulders.

Father Mancuso had only seen the sisters on two other occasions and then only briefly. Now he could no more stop himself than the rest of the congregation from staring. He was reminded immediately about what people meant about their age. If they indeed had come to the mountain long ago, then the years had been uncommonly gentle to them during what had to be a hard life on the mountain. They seemed to hover always in that fine space between youth and age, like the long years of a mature beech tree before its smooth, gray bark finally begins to gnarl into old age. It was this that no doubt helped spawn the rumors that these were not the original Boudines but perhaps some offspring from dalliances with the titanium miners or some itinerant loggers or God knew who else.

“Maybe they made a deal with the devil up there on that damn mountain.” some would joke in an uneasy way. Some of the women—perhaps more than a bit jealous—just sniffed and said the two didn’t even look like sisters, whoever in tarnation they might be.

That much was true, Father Mancuso reflected. Ariel was tall and dark, black hair and eyebrows framing and contrasting with an almost doll-like ivory complexion. Beside her was Tara, with slightly freckled skin, who had the kind of long reddish blonde hair that didn’t seem really possible, and some said they didn’t care if Tara was living in a damned cave or in a hollow tree; either way she was doing something unnatural with her hair. Besides, why the hell would they bother to be looking so good in the first place if they weren’t stepping out with somebody. Sure as hell better not be their husbands. Even now on Christmas Eve, some of them peered accusingly at their men to gauge how interested or guilty they seemed by this strange visitation from the Boudines.

But then all eyes were back on the sisters because they had suddenly begun to sing. The song would never be forgotten by anyone who was there. Long afterwards none could quite agree how long they had sung or even what the song was about or even if it was in English. It was the pure sound of their harmonies that grabbed at the heart. It sounded like more than just two voices, ringing and driving everyone’s attention to the bright stars, the east wind and the blackness of the night. It seemed to wrap the carolers in a blanket of comfort, in the joy of exaltation, and in the thrill of mystery. Everything else that had passed before on this night seemed muted and half forgotten.

Suddenly the song was over and immediately all eyes were no longer on the Boudine sisters but instead were darting around uneasily as the sound of howling and baying dogs came from all directions. Just town dogs everyone tried to assure themselves, but it was an unsettling sound when everyone knew coyotes and wild dogs roamed the mountainside above them. And then everyone almost literally jumped a foot when a yowling cat fight broke out through the boarded windows of the abandoned diner down the street. The fight was quickly over, and the dogs quieted, but no one felt much relief or comfort in the following silence. Some of the children whimpered and begged to go home.

Father Mancuso finally gathered himself together as the uneasy crowd broke up into groups and began moving toward the church or back to their homes. He walked over to the Boudine sisters whose hoods were back up, hiding their faces again. Only Ariel’s greater height revealed now which sister was which in the shadows beneath the tree.

“You are both of course welcome to celebrate Midnight Mass with us now. There will be hot chocolate and cookies afterwards at Mrs. Whipple’s house. I hope you can come. You have both heightened this holy night for us with your beautiful singing.” The priest could feel almost an ache inside for this moment not to fade. But Ariel shook her head.

“We must return home. Our fire will be low and Tara is not altogether well.” Her speaking voice was low and mellow as he had imagined it would be. Tara did not speak.

“I’m so sorry. Perhaps we shall meet again soon, then.”

“Perhaps. But we do not leave our home often I’m afraid.” Beside her Tara seemed to shiver and she wrapped her arms around herself protectively for a moment.

“Then might we walk together as far as the church? It is on your way I believe.”

Ariel agreed to this, and along the way, Father Mancuso tried to draw the sisters out with assorted small talk but was largely unsuccessful. He tried one final ploy.

“If I could change your minds about staying, lodging could easily be arranged for you in town. It is our belief that there is no better time for togetherness than on the birthday of Christ. And your sister could rest before your journey home.”

Ariel smiled, a flash of white teeth through the dark. “There are of course many reasons for gathering together, but it is best we return home tonight. I hope you understand.”

They were gone quickly then, not so much seeming to walk away but rather to melt into the darkness. Behind the priest, the stained glass windows of the church beckoned him inside; yet he hesitated and looked out toward the mountain, imagining he could still see the two hooded figures who would soon now be on its flanks. He heard Oh Holy Night begin on the organ from inside the church and he turned almost reluctantly toward the door. Midnight Mass, always the high point of Christmas Eve, was waiting for him to celebrate. He breathed deeply, trying to toss off the feeling that something—something just as magical as the mysteries of his own faith—had left an empty place in his heart this holiest of nights.

To his disappointment, Father Mancuso had not seen the sisters again and after a while, that strange wonderful evening began to fade and life went on. Sometimes on his solitary walks along the roads above town, prayer book or rosary in hand, the priest would catch a particularly fine view of the mountain or the valley below where the Bluejay river traveled its winding path. But what should have been an inspirational showcase of God’s majesty, instead held gloomy reminders that Spring would bring the inevitable floods; that another dozen or so residents of Cedar Falls would leave their drenched homes in disgust; that there would be more boarded up windows and more howling cats. Meanwhile the mountain would wrap itself in swirling mists and summer rainbows. And as always, folks still said, mostly the mountain broods.