A Little of This/A Lot of That

By Robert Joseph Foley

Foley’s collection of fiction astounds on every page. From the Southern Gothic ”Story of Rupert Chrome” to the often hilarious and always excoriating exploration of an interfaith relationship and its possible consequences heartbreakingly rendered in “Steltzer Stories”, this collection will leave the reader riveted. Innovative and experimental, each of these stories is destined to become a classic. The O’Connells, The Steltzers, Rupert Chrome and the ‘old man’ in “Final Words”: these and the scores of other characters within these pages will not readily fade from your minds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796074406

Robert Joseph Foley

Robert Foley is a retired teacher of English and Drama. He has directed close to 150 plays in the New York area and lives with his wife of 44 years in Westchester County. Writing has always been an intrigue for him; since retirement, it has become a passion. These Little Poems of Life and after Life is his first foray into publishing a poetry collection. He is currently working toward production of two completed plays and working on a short story collection which will appear under the collective title, The Consequences of Playing God.

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A Little of This/

A Lot of That

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Robert Joseph Foley

Copyright © 2019 by Robert Joseph Foley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/09/2020

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CONTENTS

The Story of Rupert Chrome

Yolanda Comes to Life

In the Wake of Sammy Steltzer

The Pine Box: Thoughts from Yolanda

Sammy’s Narrative: Part I

Reveries of the Little Flower: Part I

Sammy’s Narrative: Part II

Reveries of the Little Flower: Part II

Sammy’s Narrative: Part III

Reveries of the Little Flower: Part III

Sammy’s Narrative: Part IV

The Final Trump of Fritzie Steltzer

Reveries of the Little Flower: Part IV

Danny’s Story

Mysteries of the O’Connell Sacraments

Final Words

Also by Robert Joseph Foley

These Little Poems of Death and after Life

The Consequences of Playing God:

Tales from Lingor High School

Praise for Consequences

Comparisons to the work of, say, Flannery O’Connor and Sherwood Anderson seem appropriate. …There is an unmistakable lushness, almost an embarrassment of richness to Foley’s writing. His use of language is vivid and authoritative. … One of this author’s greatest strengths is his penchant for exploring moral ambiguity … Foley imbues his stories with depth of understanding. … No lover of piercing, tumultuous literature should miss it.

Christopher Soden

Clarion Review

A series of satirical vignettes from novelist Foley about the hijinks and school politics among the faculty at a suburban high school. … ebbs and flows in hilarious fashion … The tongue-in-cheek narration and astute observations about human behavior are drawn from Foley’s personal background as a former teacher. …the punchy storyline keeps the pages turning. … An amusingly offbeat parody that will appeal to quirky audiences.

—Kirkus Reviews

Mixing broad satire with magical realism, Robert Joseph Foley’s novel deconstructs one American high school piece by piece, leaving it broken and on the cusp of a disaster. … Petty academic politics drive faculty and administration hopelessly apart while plots and counterplots rage. … its insightful and comic take on the American high school and, by extension, American education in general strikes … the right notes with verve and precision.

—BlueInk Review

THE STORY OF

RUPERT CHROME

THE STORY OF

RUPERT CHROME

B ut for the trial, there would have been no incentive to go outdoors. The summer was that oppressive, the drought unrelenting despite moisture so thick you almost felt it necessary to claw your path through the atmosphere, air so heavy even the flies moved in lethargy, attempting to beat their wings without progress in the amber haze of late afternoon as though trapped in formaldehyde. Of course, you did go out, for the trial could not be missed. Nothing quite like it had ever occurred in Equity Falls, at least not in the memory of our oldest residents. So, for that you did go out, and you met others on the streets of like mind in curiosity, their sluggish weight leaving soft displacements in the melting tar, their clothes, freshly washed and ironed before leaving their homes, and swiftly soddened, clinging to the prominent patches of nasty perspiration that seeped from the crevices of their bodies.

And you talked only of two things that summer: the trial and the drought. And our oldest residents tried to connect the two in consequence of each other, a curse brought on the land that seared our crops and starved the waxwings and burned the thought of retribution into the minds of even our most complacent fatalists.

Ain’t nothing like it I can recollect.

Ain’t no reason ’cept we harbored the man, looked up to him like he was some kind a god.

A act of hubris, I calls it. A arrogance that we be made to pay for, each and every one.

Looking up at the late afternoon skies to the sounds of remote thunder and distant flashes of lightning that lit up the horizon, spooky and surreal with stormy threats vanishing before the brink of rain, such were the words we spoke.

But we didn’t know what kinda god he was, did we, Jesse? Alma asked of her husband, weathered of fifty-nine years.

Ain’t tha’ we didn’t know, ole woman. It’s tha’ we didn’t care t’ ashk about hizh odditiezh s’ long azh we wuz fed.

And now that we know …

Now we know it wuz desheptionzh we wuz fed on, desheptionzh we wuz all too willing ta eat. Desheptionzhs tha’ opened th’ doors t’ let the curshe on our town finally come home t’ roosht.

As above us hung the sun in smog like a soft omelet in the p.m. sky, we approached the tent that was the courthouse to hear the judgment rendered, the folk come in from farms and shanties, from the planted roadside trailers that were our homes, sprung up along the landscape in the random patterns of banyan trees, along the routes to town, into the heart of Equity Falls where we seldom other times came except to the convenience store or the threadbare operation that served as medical center for the weak of heart and broke of limb or the schoolhouse dying, for so many of us had pulled out our young ones out of fear; the schoolhouse where our single lawyer had his office set back in the shade of live oaks hung with boughs of ancient Spanish moss; we streamed on paths like the spokes of a giant parasol converging on and filing into the vast makeshift tent standing dirty white in the scrub of crepe myrtle that had failed to flower for another year set against a backdrop of towering pines.

And there in the scorching heat of the tent all of us crowded in, planted for the spectacle on makeshift seating—rockers and benches, ladderbacks and car seats dragged from the surrounding junkyards and barns, and the occasional flower-upholstered ottomans and broken gray tin folding seats salvaged from the ruined meeting house refectory hall that Rupert Chrome had built on the other side of the tracks—brought in because, so long as the trial clung to our fascination, there was no one who would go anywhere else for fear of missing out when the jury came back with the verdict. In our own way, there weren’t any who didn’t lust for a hanging or a realization of our conjuring of a lynching party or some gruesome public mode of death romanticized—stoning or slow dismemberment or great smoky pyres that would send the sinner screaming into the sky in a fetid stream of black smoke; there was no death too slow and agonizing for the likes of him except perhaps being boiled howling in oil for that alone might seem a comforting relief from the heat of the day.

Verdict come down now, fer certain the rains’ll come this night.

Deserves to be flayed alive fer the evil he brought on this town.

Like to see his pecker nailed to the courthouse door and him alive to feel the nails bein’ driven home. Like to see what comes o’ that.

No matter, now. We must learn again humility and praise be Our Lord and all He wrote.

Praise be Our Lord. Thass a sentiment I dun forgot a long time ago, when that man first come to these parts.

*     *     *

Inside the tent, the acrid air seared our eyeballs and coated our cotton tongues, stifled movement and even conversation but for the relentless murmur of expectation which somehow cut through the silence and made a statement of its own. You were too hot to expend even the energy for greeting but for the obligatory righteous nod of the head or a vague angling of fingertips and wrist or a slight curling of lips into a smile that smacked of castor oil or some noxious elixir prescribed by ole Doc Winters to thin catarrh. Crowded together, your flesh bleeding into your neighbor’s flesh obviated all talk of purpose or will.

All our townsfolk, their peculiar identities lost to pain and suffering, now pushed into one indolent oneness, silently acknowledging that today justice would be done so that once more we might, without rancor, gamble on Jesus for our salvation.

Among us, there were all the social types of Equity Falls, our few scattered elite and those whom, under other circumstances, they would have shunned; classes with every imaginable quality of skin and condition of tooth, for once bound into a single entity in the thirst for revenge or justice or, call it what you will, just plain satisfaction in the biblical sense of an eye for an eye. (Thank you very much, Exodus 21:23:7 for the redemption of our faith!) And even when our torpid bodies melted into a single flesh: Lena Pomfrey, fingers hooking and purling her never-ending ball of yarn, her pork butt arms escaped from a sleeveless rose-colored pinafore flush to and knocking on the bones of the scrawny croppers sitting on either side of her—pot-bellied Pete Gleason and powerful Todd Donaldson, walleyed and whiskered ’neath a tattered Panama hat, removing his shoes and socks and hoisting a meaty foot to his chin while he sat with nary a word from the glowering choir ladies, erect with disgust on the bench behind him, watching as he busied himself picking at the gritty gunk between his toes; or Mattie Holder, her mouth stuffed with a fan of bobby pins, working furiously to sweep escaped hairs from her neck into a coarse ponytail while sweat-stuck beside her Agnes MacPhereson raised not an eyebrow as she passed an ice cube over the crescents of her barely covered breasts—all of ‘em pressing together while from outside that endless stream of human beings continued to file into the tent, squeezing to make space where none was to be had.

Until finally settled in righteousness, our brains stretched by the isometrics of chewing chaws of tobacco or sticks of Juicy Fruit, our eyes riveted, mesmerized by the empty witness box to which he would soon be escorted by a brace of citizens deputized to secure him, summoned for his final reckoning by that laconic icon of justice, the Honorable Percival Graham, who would conduct the trial by his smile turned on and off by some invisible light switch, his actual words unnecessary, often unheard as he would issue a ruling of the law while we sat in a state of unrecognized arousal, not then understanding that there is always more joy in anticipation than performance, some of us thinking how we shared that sentiment with Jesus struggling on the Via Dolorosa. That, too, were the Way of Our Lord. Amen.

*     *     *

It has not been often, since the opening of the super arterial, which loops around our town by some thirty miles to the north and west, that visitors occasion to happen in these now remote parts; truly, the opening of that road plunged us not only into deeper isolation but also bankruptcy and obscurity. Those small establishments—the once formidable Roadside Kill (WHERE A MAN CAN GET HIS FILL) where the aforementioned Mattie Holder once waitressed tables with a Raleigh dangling from her lips; the convenience stores stocked with soda and cigarettes, postcards and vests beaded in intricate Cherokee design, and ashtrays in the likeness of tortoise shells and alligators and snakes coiled to strike, glasses and plates and stickers all with the logo of Equity Falls decaled on their surfaces; and the petrol stations, the roadside stands where our neighbors hawked their corn and tomatoes and the melons and fruits of summer harvests—all vanished quickly into the marshes that were then and forevermore will remain the foundation of our community. Low country indeed is what we were once called, and low country is what we have become.

So that a man, a seriously wealthy and sophisticated man, who is not merely a visitor but one whose bent it is to join our community for the duration of his life, presents the occasion for pause and speculation when he knocks upon our doorsteps and flashes a smile backed by a checkbook monogramed with gold initials. Truth is even the most bigoted of us is willing to drop rancor in the face of being bought. Catholic. Jew. Even one of those mullahs we eye with suspicion nowadays. Don’t matter to us if he spreads our palms with the necessities even our most devout will come to crave. For there be nothing like material wealth to feed a radiant soul.

Rupert Chrome first appeared in Equity Falls as a figure of mystery whose aura preceded him, for he had purchased some two thousand acres of our once best farmlands under the veil of legal anonymity. And where we had expected him to plant crops or resurrect a farmland teeming with prize livestock, he built himself a palace and created a landscape such as we had never seen: rolling hills of turf manicured and uniform and trees that had been brought from different terrains and irrigated by some unidentified web of underground lagoons we never saw and could scarcely have conceptualized. We watched being formed a great curving driveway that seemed to wind for miles up to a great plantation house from the past, wings on wings of stone building, a fortress with a frontage of high steps and pillars made of such marble as we had never seen ’cept in those dog-eared history primers of art and ancient cultures that now sit moldy in our empty school. We saw that dwelling take root and rise like some godly monolith fueling our curiosity before it was obscured almost forever from our view by that feast of exotic trees and foliage imported from forests of the world we could not envision and then denied even our trespass by a great, seemingly endless iron fence that ran for seamless miles, no opening but for the golden gates fronting that endless driveway.

No one of us ever saw him actually arrive, though there came a day when we assumed for fact that he was there, inhabiting his realm, his domain, when delivery trucks bearing food and supplies from the four corners of America drew up to those golden gates and were mysteriously ushered onto the grounds that never touched beneath our soles. And there were revels to be sure that we could hear penetrating and permeating the darkest nights when the mansion would go so ablaze with festivities that a corona of illumination blossomed over the trees and blotted out our vision of the stars.

Occasionally, there were purchases made from our convenience stores by silent folk whom we assumed to be his staff, small items no doubt forgotten or overlooked, supplies of staples or fresh melons or, if in season, pumpkins and other timely crafty items—preserves and pies ordered in advance by those same servants, as we called them for want of a more fitting appellation. They smiled with a kind of mitigated secrecy, completed their business efficiently, and never offered the opportunity for us to enter into any exploratory conversation.

And more occasionally, guests would arrive on the threshold of our town inquiring directions to the Chrome Complex as it was called, oddly suggestive of a powerful scientific or military installation; mannerly folk all —waspy Brahmans and Jews dressed in frills and fine accessories the like of which never graced our closets or our bodies—people from distant cities, not so snooty as we might have expected yet abrupt and resolute in the way of foreigners who wanted neither to call attention to themselves nor to engage in any extended commerce of dialogue. We directed them politely, for we had as yet no reason to be offended (only curious) as they vanished into the low wilderness that led to that spectacular explosion of architecture that we knew to be his domicile. And also, there were small private aircraft that flew over our heads and, descending, were swallowed into the enshrouded depths of his property; so, we assumed that somewhere beyond our range of vision was a landing field built that would allow Mr. Rupert Chrome a means of unencumbered access and departure when it took his fancy to take temporary leave of Equity Falls.

Then, when we had cornered his presence in our minds, satisfied that we had become the tangential recipients of his prosperity but nevertheless thinking him beyond our reach and our interests, an entity to be considered in the manner heathen agnostics might consider our own Savior, Jesus Christ, a presence that was unfathomable and therefore pointless to pursue, came the sensation of his first unheralded appearance in our midst occasioned by the joy of the annual communion service that our pastor, the Reverend Ezekiel Flanders, conducts each spring in commemoration of the Easter season.

Collie Wilkinson, nine years old and already known for being a prevaricator of tall tales and whom, along with other of our more rambunctious children, we elected to exclude from the service for we agreed that no soul’s introduction to Jesus Christ should be predicated on boredom or misunderstanding, first spied his vehicle approaching our humble meeting house where our community met each week for companionship in the service of the Lord.

Hit’s black and big as a locomotive, the boy shouted, bursting into the meeting room as Pastor Flanders was delivering a homily derived from 1st Corinthians.

Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another.

He’s come! He’s comin’ to our meeting place. I seen him with my own eyes. The boy, in an echo of his mother’s thin, nasal squeak, continued to shout to the consternation of us all, for in the confusion and the unpropitious timing of his words, many were momentarily uncertain of exactly who might be coming among us, thinking perhaps that final judgment was more imminent than we had anticipated. And we, not yet having received the Body and Blood of our Redeemer, were virtually thrown to our knees in terror.

But to Rona Wilkinson who, after the accidental death of her husband, had taken the firmest of hands in rearing young Collier, there was neither such hesitation nor fear before her rush to judgment. The good widow virtually bolted from her seat, the hymnal that had been perched on her lap falling to the floor with audible punctuation. She was a small but sometimes fiery woman with abundant French-braided hair pulled back from her pinched narrow countenance now turned so vermillion in rage and humiliation at her child’s intrusion that she might have been mistaken for a gargoyle.

Collier! she wheezed in a voice as thin and consumptive as her cheekbones. You know you hain’t got no cause for int’ruptin’ our service. Go on be outta here, and you jest wet ’til I get you home.

The boy froze at the entranceway, the wrath of his tiny mother more powerful indeed than any excitement that had been generated by the arrival of Rupert Chrome who, indeed, now appeared in the doorway behind Collie as our startled congregation, with no point of reference for such trespass on our sacred ground, drew uniformly into itself and waited breathlessly for guidance from our pastor.

We bid you most welcome, sir, said Pastor Flanders, and his words at once composed us and issued a chastisement for our momentary lapse of hospitality. But we could hardly be faulted for our restraint, our hesitation, in accepting him into our meeting. In Chrome, a certain duality of appearance caused us to pause in confusion as we tried to reconcile our sense of stereotype with the figure before us—a man most suspiciously Jewish in origin for that was the quality of his hair, which, though short-cropped, was still thick about the sides and of a red shade appropriate to the slaves in the ancient works of Menander or Terence and, frankly, a nose more prominent than any that customarily appeared in our line of visions; a nose which hung over a pendulous nether lip that seemed forever moist and quivering.

Yet in all, he was a striking, even sensual man of rectangular build and impressive stature, clean-shaven and well-groomed in a dark tailored linen suit and striking golden yellow accessories, carrying himself without the stoop we had expected. On seeing him, we might draw our breath in admiration or draw away disarmed with misgivings, for on first encounter, Chrome seemed to be a man patched together from physiological contradictions.

Rupert Chrome showed no emotion, his face a blank tablet on which we could each read our own dreads and aspirations. It was odd that, we later realized, we had been transfixed more by his eyes than anything else, bituminous eyes that raised more questions than they afforded answers, eyes that were cunning in their cast, penetrating yet opaque to those attempting to read beneath their enigmatic smirk. Yet, we realized they took in the entire meeting hall, seeming to personalize instantly a contact with each of us.

The boy, Collie, was both vindicated and forgotten in a single moment.

Impertinently, he alone pointed at Rupert Chrome while pressing his shoulders deep into the bony protection of his mother’s body.

Beside them, Lena Pomfrey seemed to sneer in justification as she retrieved a dropped stitch.

Again, Pastor Flanders attempted to bridge the silence. We are indeed honored to welcome you into our home.

For a singular stretch of time, no reply was offered.

What fortune has brought you among us? questioned the pastor.

Again, the silence was interminable as though some earth-shattering decision were to be made; and when Rupert Chrome finally replied, we were completely startled by the words escaping his lips. I wish to partake of your communion.

Our true roots are readily traced by some back to the Paris of Catherine de’ Medici who, for her perhaps apocryphal engineering of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, is referred to in our folklore as ‘the evil queen’; however, as new lighters, we Separatist Baptists truly came into our own only some 250 years ago as an offshoot of Southern Baptists limiting all those in our congregation to those born to limited atonement. Although now an isolated sect, we believe ourselves descended from the teachings of Shubal Stearns, who profoundly influenced our ancestral leader, Gideon Malbon. So tortuous is our history that today there are few rules or conventions governing us from above except for the understanding that we live in the belief that the Heavenly Son will one day return, and we patiently accept His teachings into our hearts. But it has remained the decision of our worshippers that our annual communion would always be shared only among those baptized as adults within our own community, a practice derived from the conviction that we in Equity Falls are truly elected, subjected to salvation by God’s grace.

This Pastor Flanders gently explained to Rupert Chrome.

Yet I still beg immersion. He spoke in a surprisingly placid tone, yet something in the cast of his eyes stood ready to thwart denial.

The pastor was unrelenting yet polite; at the same time, his own eyes held in check any of us who might have spoken more vociferously of our reluctance to accept the stranger in our midst. Sir, you are more than welcome into our meeting house today as on any occasion; however, we ask that you indulge our judgment that immersion is not to be taken lightly. Adult baptism is a commitment to our way of life that will bind you to our community until such time as Jesus Christ Himself returns from the dead to lead us together in the gleam of His light.

Rupert Chrome nodded slightly and took a seat in a rear row next to Obediah Olsen, the strapping son of one of our most established families, a young boy who had grown suddenly bald at the onset of puberty and then never again seemed to age; who, although mildly retarded, heavy of tongue as we surreptitiously said of him, had been capably trained by our community to the point that he was able to run our convenience store; and who, though his face was invariably without expression, now perceptibly drew back from Chrome as though he might have palpably felt some mysterious icy shroud emanating from our distinguished visitor.

The image of the two men, so diverse in appearance that they might have originated from different species, was comical. Obediah was the portrait of slovenliness in check, courtesy of his mother who groomed and dressed him according to our traditions. She herself sewed his clothes from bolts of fabric for catalogues offered nothing that would flatter the gargantuan excesses of his body; but little could be done with that sheer bulk or his still prepubescent flesh his pale, flat eyeballs blending without particular identification among the large freckles that dotted his skin; the pronouncement of his expansive lip; and his eternally expressionless but serene face that proved he was indeed one of God’s special children. He wore overalls that, although freshly pressed, hung loosely about him and a brightly plaided shirt opened three buttons down to accommodate his overflowing neck. Cradled in one arm, he clung to the hymnal, which, not reading music, he never opened as if he might draw from its covers some warmth that would buffer the frigid presence now beside him—the stranger in our midst, Rupert Chrome, upright and squarely shaped in that impeccably tailored linen suit, a man who seemed to adumbrate in Obediah’s limited mind the terrible and inevitable catastrophe that a reprobate might bring to our community.

To his credit, Rupert Chrome suffered the proximity of that bovine boy with neither apparent acknowledgment nor umbrage, and he maintained that poise even as Obediah brushed his side at the climactic moment of our service when we all moved into an embracing circle and Pastor Flanders passed among us to bestow the sacred Body and Blood of our Savior on our tongues. Yes, even with the wafer mingling with our bodies, we sensed with Obediah the chilling presence of Rupert Chrome alone, rigid and foreboding, an outcast who for that fleeting moment appeared to be in some profound, as yet unexpressed pain aching for conversion.

*     *     *

In the days and months that followed, through that first summer and autumn after his arrival, Rupert Chrome began to move more comfortably among us as though he truly were suited for our community. He appeared regularly at our Sunday gatherings, attended scripture classes with our most knowledgeable and devout believers, and, though he rarely spoke, preferring to respond to our questions with that cryptic smile that we might have, but for the avarice that lurked as yet unidentified beneath the pulsing of our hearts, taken as supercilious, he crept steadily toward the day when he would embrace rebirth and join in annual communion with us. And it was perhaps our negligence that we raised no questions when, after each excursion into town, arriving in that big as a locomotive limousine, he returned to his estate and disappeared into his solitary existence, his other life, behind those golden gates which cloaked and guarded the secret of his past and presence.

Our acceptance of such a foreign personage among us was not due so much to our generosity as to his, for among us, he became a philanthropist. Almost from the moment of his arrival, donations were made to our meeting house, needed repairs were attended to, comfort and medical assistance became readily available to those of us who fell ill, needed machinery appeared to aid our farmers in modernizing their facilities. Requests of course were never made, we being too proud and contained for such overtures, but it was as though some intuitive presence moved through Equity Falls, instinctively knowing where a tractor might best be placed, whose barn needed refurbishment, who might have fallen perilously ill with the cancer or murmurings of the heart, what texts or supplies were needed for our schoolhouse, which was, incidentally, within a year of his arrival, completely restored. In short, we prospered and even entered into expanded relationships with our neighboring communities. For as word of some beneficent presence among us spread through the countryside, others, hoping to share in what they perceived as our good fortune, came to join us in worship and share in our newly found bounty.

By the third year after his arrival, Pastor Flanders gratefully opened to literally hundreds of new worshippers the doors to a new and spectacular meeting house set in fresh land beyond the disused railroad tracks that cut through our terrain. It was a splendid structure, for the most part unbedizened but for the relics of our history, designed to accommodate our simple tastes and beliefs, yet furnished with a fully equipped kitchen and multiple small meeting rooms where we might come to study scripture and share concerns with our neighbors. The main room was vast (we thought when it was first built, too vast for our membership, but we were to be proven wrong in a short span of time). The walls were white and hung simply with portraits of our spiritual forebears—prominent among them Shubal Stearns, Basil Manly, Raccoon John Smith, and Richard Furman, each portrait offering beneath it a beautifully carved spiritual citation from scripture. Dominant, behind the plain pulpit, which stood on a simply raked gradation of the floor and created the illusion of our pastor as a larger-than-life presence, was the charcoal likeness of one Gideon Malbon, the very founder of our community whom only the oldest of us seemed to recognize and few of us could acknowledge without a slight shuddering of the heart, for it was he from whom the curse as well as the joy of our community descended. Yet, for all intents and purposes, it was a heartwarming, comfortable room.

And it was in that very room, on that third Easter Sunday after his initial coming, that Rupert Chrome was rigidly and comically wedged between bulbous Lena Pomfrey on his left and her sinewy friend, Rona Wilkinson, on his right. Each woman would later recall how they had sensed the coldness of his hands being slowly and insidiously absorbed into their own flesh, and to them came a sudden dread that they had unwillingly become conduits for transmitting some mysterious and undefined evil into our entire community.

It was two days after that noteworthy afternoon, the sun barely beginning to melt into the chill of a Lenten purple sky, when report came that the first of our children had disappeared.

*     *     *

Parnell Malcolm was but eleven years old, the eldest of five siblings, when he went missing from his homestead on an uncharacteristically chilled May morning.

He was known to be an adventurous spirit—affable, friendly and God-fearing, with always the bright smile of contentment camouflaging the mischief in his eyes.

Mischievous, yes, in the way that boys are at that age but always respectful and, above all, responsible, most certainly incapable of running off by himself. He awoke each day before the sun rose and attended to his chores on the farm, mostly cleaning out the stalls and tending the animals, feeding and grooming them when necessary, activities he took much pleasure in for he seemed to have a special relationship with each living creature. And then, while his mama came down to whip up breakfast for the family, Parnell would tend to his younger siblings, especially helping the six-year-old (whom we knew to be mildly special) into his clothes and changing his bedding, which was invariably soiled. In this task, Parnell took silent displeasure, for he did not fully comprehend specialness and believed that at six his brother should be rightly responsible for using the toilet. But Parnell rarely expressed his disinclination and faithfully attended to his younger brother.

Consequently, it was the child, the six-year-old Windy, so-called for he was frequently breathless with crying, who first called attention to Parnell’s absence by calling attention to his own needs.

Mary Malcolm, stirring oatmeal in the kitchen, set the saucepan on an unlit burner and tossed the wooden spoon into the sink, irritated from calling Parnell’s name repeatedly to tend to his needy brother. And then, backhanding the hair out of her eyes, she started up the steps to check on Windy.

Have ya seen Parnell this morning? she asked of her girls, who were lined up waiting to use the toilet.

No, ma’am, they said in unison.

They watched Mary for a moment, sensing the anger she felt, before turning their impatience back to the closed bathroom door on which the eldest rapped firmly, urging her sister, Rebecca, to vacate. C’mon, Becky. Don’t be such a toilet hog.

We gotta go, whined the middle girl.

Show some patience there, Mary snapped without looking around.

Herself, she didn’t bother knocking on the door of the boys’ shared bedroom so intense had grown the shrieking of young Windy; rather, she burst in, but immediately became oblivious to her six-year-old son, her concentration instead falling on Parnell’s undisturbed bed.

Mary Malcolm was not a woman to be readily alarmed, but in a single instant, she knew that something was radically wrong. Not only a freshly made bed—that could be explained since Parnell had been trained to make up his room each morning. But not like this. The bedspread was too tightly pulled, the linens fresh as she knew she had smoothed them the afternoon before, after changing the bedclothes. The pillow was as she had left it, one end leaning against the wall. And there were Parnell’s clothes, the shirt and pants he had worn at dinner the night before, heaped carelessly on the floor. His pajamas were resting where she had left them freshly pressed on the foot of the bed. His schoolbooks lay unpacked on the board that Joshua, her husband of thirteen years, had mounted on one wall as a desk whereon Parnell could do his homework. And the window was flung wide. A damp breeze drifted across the room, no doubt chilling Windy and adding to his discomfort. It would be a miracle if he didn’t come down with some dreadful croup.

Yet Mary still ignored the screaming six-year-old; instead, hurrying to the window, she thrust her head out as far as she could, vainly scanning the morning fog for a sign of her son. Nothing.

She ran back into the hallway where the bathroom door had just opened.

Becky, go down and be certain all them burners are off. Maura, tend to your brother.

Ma, I gotta go something fierce. To emphasize her discomfort, Maura thrust a hand between her legs and hopped from foot to foot.

Don’t fret me, child. Do as yer told.

The sharp alarm in their mother’s tone checked any further debate either might otherwise have considered. As Becky U-turned down the stairs, Maura flounced down the hallway toward her brother, whose feverish screaming now bordered on hysteria.

Mary addressed the youngest girl, Sadie, who was ecstatic at the prospect of having the bathroom to herself. Once more, child, have y’seen Parnell this morning?

No, ma’am.

Yer all but sure of that?

Ma, I know me own brother.

Mary was now too preoccupied to deal with sass.

Instead, she hurried downstairs and out to the barn, where also she found no sign of her missing son.

She first called Joshua who, working a construction project outside Columbia some two hundred miles away from his family, managed to commute back to his home only on weekends. It had crossed her mind that it was Monday; he had left with three friends hired to work the job with him at close to 3:00 a.m. the night before. Had her adventurous son stowed away in the car? Ridiculous, she knew, but boys do ridiculous things, sometimes without reason that adults can fathom.

Her conversation with Joshua infuriated her. If he was disturbed, and he should be, he covered himself by making light of the situation. What a fool idea! Suggesting a girlfriend! Mary knew her son. He wouldn’t sleep away the night without telling her. Would he? No, he wouldn’t. Never has before. Never would. Wouldn’t dare risk my wrath.

Well, we can’t be certain of that, Mary, can we? Probably intended to be back before you woke up, but, well, boys they say will be …

She detected some note of male pride in his tone that didn’t sit at all right with her. He barely completed his thought before she exploded into the phone. Josh Malcolm, ya git yerrself home where yer needed.

Impossible afore the Sabbath, Mary. There’s only one vehicle for four of us. Can’t expect Nate or Bill to give up working for a week, and they got no way to get to work without that car, even from here.

Joshua Malcolm, aren’t ye a little concerned about yer son?

Mary, I trust me son jist as you trust me. He’ll turn up afore noon, maybe go direct to school. You’ll see.

Joshua …

Mary, I’ll call back later today. Make some local calls. You’ll see. He’ll be fine.

Certainly, in their thoughts, there was then no inkling of foul play. Crime as it is known beyond our borders is unheard of in Equity Falls. Abduction, kidnapping, or worse, the wanton smiting down of another’s life, were alien concepts untasted in the recent history of our community. Moreover, vehicular accidents involving strangers on the road in the darkest hours of the night were not considered, for such random vehicles no longer, since the building of the interstate, passed through the town, even in daylight hours. The chance occurrence of one astray was instant news that swept through every corner of Equity Falls, an event to be dissected and analyzed, commented on by virtually everyone in town.

*     *     *

Here, even if somewhat redundant, it is necessary to emphasize the obvious—that in Equity Falls, police have seldom or never been an apparent presence. Our laws, or more properly our rules or code of life, are agreed upon by all and zealously adhered to by all our people. The lone citizen to whom we entrust our well-being has hardly a proper title. Marshal or sheriff or deputy are words that have little meaning to us, so Zacharia Wilton was a man more properly regarded as an overseer of the peace, a man who wore, rather than a shield or badge, a cross; he is a man who, for some thirty years since his election, has worked pro bono with our pastors and seldom has had anything more trying to deal with than searching for a stray animal or, when advisories predicted inclemency in our weather, directing our citizens away from the path of nature’s ire. At most, he might have been expected to waylay a disorderly stranger attempting to come into our midst (though such rare interlopers, if we may so refer to them, have never had nefarious purpose or, if they had, seeing the simple harmony in which we live, protecting and guiding one another as we await our Redeemer, have quickly left our community of their own volition, finding little of interest that might enable them to promulgate the devil in our hearts).

Zach will offer that the only trying moments in his career began in the year that the first intimation of Rupert Chrome’s eventual appearance on the outskirts of our community overwhelmed us all. The beginnings of development, shortly after Chrome had acquired his vast acreage, caused congestion and confusion and became a cause célèbre among us that poor Zacharia was totally ill-equipped to handle. As a virtually self-contained society, we deal well with neither wealth nor powerful strangers taking root in our town; so whether out of desperation or some ludicrous sense of hierarchy, we turned to Zach Wilton, as our law enforcement agent, to take charge, to sort out the mysteries surrounding this sensational event, which was to mark an epiphany in each of our lives.

And that was a mistake, for in our hearts, we surely suspected that, having weakness in his own life, Zacharia could and would most certainly be compromised. The man’s not well enough to do the job we ask of him, some of us said.

And others quickly rose to the argument, plunging us into deeper debate.

Not like Zach couldn’t have handled this twenty years gone by.

Well, I reckon this is not twenty years gone by; this is now, and he’s old, needs to be tendin’ t’ Wilma. Far az I know, she’s had one breast taken and another under a cloud. Thass enough fer a man t’ bear.

I heard rumor this Chrome feller was fixin’ up her cancer. Sent her up to one of them medical centers where they performs miracles.

We only need our miracles from one source, thank’n ye very much, and Zach’d be better off lookin’ to Him than to some stranger layin’ claim to prestidigitation.

Old and sick, a man’s known to git desperate, clutch at those straws, look for the brass ring at the carnie, buy a million boxes of them crackerjacks lookin’ fer the prize that’ll give’m his immortality.

He’s gotten too old too quick, if’n you ask me my ’pinion. A man’s only got to look at the shakes in his hands, the twitchin’ in his neck to see him agin’ afore us.

Well, time does that to a man. It makes him old.

Time makes a man spongy, ’n’ I say he’s grown some kind of loofah for a brain.

Well, I still sees him as a fine upstanding Christian aimin’ properly to carry out the Lord’s work.

What his aims are ain’t what he’s gonna ex’cute, and I don’t say that outta no disrespect for the man. I like Zach, always have, but considering his circumstances of late, I just don’t trust him being up to making the right choices here.

Such feelings and arguments erupted when, three weeks later, Zach himself came to a town meeting and delivered a panegyric about the man we had come to know as Rupert Chrome. Zach had used every resource at his disposal to check the stranger’s credentials and credibility and found him to be upstanding and honest; though not one of ours, nonetheless respectful of our beliefs. He was a man we could surely trust to help us through this intermediary travail called life.

That man sold him a bill of goods, but good, said Mattie Holder to a scattered chorus of approval, for it was not lost on any of us that coincidental with Zach’s endorsement of Rupert Chrome came Wilma Wilton’s sudden and mysterious journey to the Mayo Clinic where she had some cutting-edge technique done that sent her cancer scurrying into remission.

And so in our minds, Zach came to be the prototype for all those who quickly succumbed to the mesmeric powers of Rupert Chrome, those who would be converted or bought or otherwise capitulated by their personal indebtedness to this man whom some subversively sneered at as the Golden Calf come unto Equity Falls even while the majority, without a hint of objection, embraced him into our congregation.

Even three years before, seeking baptism on that afternoon when he first appeared in our humble community room, we had come to enjoy the newly paved roads that crisscrossed our community, the boon and booty of the new population of laborers and domestics who serviced Rupert Chrome, the wealth they brought to our coffers whenever they came to shop and dine at our convenience store and restaurants, and the beautification and gentrification of our town. So seduced were many of us that when Parnell Malcolm went missing, there was no overt question as to any role the prestigious and benevolent Rupert Chrome might have played in that otherwise inexplicable tragedy.

*     *     *

The simple, unvarnished truth is that by that evening of Parnell’s loss, with Mary inconsolable in her kitchen and Joshua belatedly en route back from Columbia, Rupert Chrome followed the protocol of our community in times of stress and came to the Malcolm farm to comfort her.

He came in that late afternoon with Zach Wilton and Pastor Flanders and two other monolithic, nameless gentlemen who were startling to see in that low-ceilinged room, hulking, broad-shouldered men with small deep-set eyes and square all-American jaws, clean-shaven and firm-set; men we thought to be bodyguards as they stood flanking the doorway, hands folded across their private parts; men we thought to resemble those stereotypes of secret servicemen who trotted alongside presidential motorcades, their mirror-shielded eyes scanning and taking in every nuance of potential danger. Whatever their role, Chrome was never seen about town without these men or their clones trailing behind him in watchful, expectant silence.

Mary, sitting in a circle of her women friends who would soon prepare a humble communal dinner, chained hands with them in prayer. She looked up, so startled when those men first come through the door, that words of greeting crossed neither her mind nor lips. The room was actually filled with womenfolk, not only those who simply sat with Mary sending out that unified force of spiritual belief that many of us believe can truly alter reality through the empowered will of a collective mind. These were the matronly, the women who shared both faith and trepidation in these anxious hours, among them the mothers of Parnell’s friends, Lizzy Morrison and Rachel Wellburn, who would soon face their own tribulations, and old Alma Fergusson, simply content to be included in the living circle of life and companionship, praying with a wary eye kept on the old man in the corner who was her life.

Others, younger women busied themselves easing Mary Malcolm’s sorrowful burden: cleaning and running interference for her family with journalists and the idly curious or simply tending the children, the many who were friends of Rebecca and Maura and little Sadie or just there because suddenly their own mothers, sitting with Mary, would not leave them behind. They had become, in the wake of Parnell’s disappearance, more protective and controlling of them, the children scattered in well-behaved clusters about the floor playing with hanky dolls and knucklebones and pick-up sticks, all hopefully safe under vigilant eyes. And solitary and ever aloof, crouched under the kitchen table, young Windy Malcolm who would never grasp the magnitude of what had occurred.

The younger women were mostly choring with backs to the door when Rupert Chrome entered, retinue trailing behind him; yet, they arrested in their disbelief just as the older women at the table facing the strange grouping of new arrivals instantly stopped their praying and froze their attention on the blunt presence that suddenly overwhelmed and paralyzed them all: Chrome, our Holy Bible in his hands, standing there with Zach Wilton and Pastor Flanders backing him and behind them the two brutes silhouetted black in a triptych with the orange-red setting sun glowing in the door-framed landscape beyond.

At length, Mary, frail and aged in a single day though still by calendar a woman of seven and forty, forced composure upon herself and rose from her chair. That peculiar liquid-glass weepiness of grief had enveloped her soft brown eyes, giving the illusion of cataracts suddenly grown there. She wore no makeup (Truly, she never did.), and the bloom on her cheeks appeared vanished overnight so vulnerable had become the armor of her skin. The woman, recalled by her neighbors as robust and immaculately groomed, seemed somewhat dowdy and homeless. Her thick hair was unpinned and fell without luster like tangles of moss dripped from a dying branch. Her loose, falling clothes were unpressed and faded. Surely, we hoped that this was the temporary manifestation of torment, and we were pleased when she seemed able to draw upon her breeding, the ingrained sense of hospitality that is so inborn among our people emerging obstinately. Slowly a wan smile of gratitude became barely discernible on her lips as she gestured for Rupert Chrome to join them in prayer.

Mistress Malcolm, I come to offer my support.

We thank you, each of us, Mr. Chrome, fer now and fer all the times ye have been in support of us. We mean that from the heart. Speaking, she rubbed her hands about each other nervously as though washing away some unspoken sin and then repeatedly smoothed down the folds of her apron against her skirt.

Amen to that, echoed one of the women who spoke without looking up from the table while others not refused but intuitively avoided any direct engagement of Chrome’s eyes.

Yes. The wisp of Alma Fergusson wafted aimlessly through the room.

Chrome had passed the Holy Bible off to Ezekiel Flanders and moved forward. He held Mary by her hands now, eating her grief with his impenetrable black eyes and no doubt felt the uncontrollable quivering in her fingers, which were cold with worry, coarse and pitted with the scars of rearing young, for she had moved from the table and taken the necessary steps to approach him in greeting.

We come to tell you that the good Pastor Flanders and I rallied the men up at the meeting house. They’ve already begun a search of the county, hands joined in a chain so as not to miss one speck of earth. Trust in me, we’ll find your boy, Mary Malcolm. The words were of course perfectly suited to the tense occasion; yet, there persisted something in his tone—and it was neither the citified abruptness of his speech nor the lack of our local cadence—that caused a moment of alarm. Indeed, we could not say what it was, but it was too perfect, too timely, too placid in its effect, delivered in a soft drone that all but mesmerized us into accepting the veracity of his intent against the judgment of our thoughts.

I thank ye, Mr. Chrome, and I am most certain Joshua will be grateful as well. He has but the greatest respect for your integrity.

Amen! Amen to that, murmured fewer than before, while others, more muted, stole quizzical glances at Rupert Chrome, not voicing their feelings outright yet still not quite trusting the ever-ready, over-expressed oblique concern that he offered to those in need of comfort. Trust is assuredly a difficult thing to earn in an isolated, closed community such as ours, taking sometimes years and generations to root itself firmly in the minds of the skeptics who dwell among us.

As our pastor, who had remained uncharacteristically reticent in the light and dominance of Rupert Chrome’s arrival, crossed to the table of praying women to join hands with them, he inadvertently kicked into a tower of blocks that Silas Harding and Mark Gibson had built nearly to the height of the table, sending them crashing and scattering about the floor. The boys looked up, sharply angered and frustrated, but held their tongues in check, focusing instead on the fervor in the reverend’s eyes, a fervor that would sometime later disappear forever to the consternation of all as there would come a moment when he would no longer be able to control the downward spiral of events that had now begun to disrupt our way of life.

Setting the Bible before them as an offering, he said, Ladies, let us turn our thoughts to Jesus Christ in Mary Malcolm’s dark moments of trial. How genuinely musical and fluent were the pastor’s words juxtaposed as they were beside Chrome’s efficient delivery. He held completely the power to move when he spoke, for despite the attenuated presentation of his body, his voice was rich and orotund, trained in the ministry to command respect. Let us think of the words of the disciple Peter when he spoke of the inheritance that can never perish and recall how he asked us to maintain our faith in the face of calamity. We pray, of course, that this young boy shall be returned to us in sound mind and body, yet we must not lose sight of some deeper meaning in his disappearance. Mary Malcolm, he said to the lamenting woman who was now ensnared in the powerful embrace of Rupert Chrome, who appeared to angle her conspiratorially in the direction of Flanders’ words, "remember that at one time or another, the