Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

There were nods, and several people turned to look at her.

“Well, now they tell me he’s been killed,” she said.

Soft sounds of dismay traveled down the rows.

“Tell me he got killed jumping out of a plane,” she said. “You know he was a paratrooper.”

More nods.

“Monday night these two soldiers came, all dressed up.”

“Ah, no,” they said.

“I told them I had thought he’d be safe. I said he’d been jumping so long now, looked to me like he’d learned how to stay alive up there. Soldier says, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says. ‘These things happen,’ he says. Says Chuckie was a, what do you call, fluke accident. Forgot to put his parachute on.”

Ian blinked.

“Forgot!” his neighbor marveled in a voice like a dove.

“ ‘Forgot!’ I said. ‘How could that be?’ This soldier tells me, it’s the army’s considered opinion that Chuckie had just jumped so often, he’d stopped thinking about it. So up he comes to that whatever, that door where they jump out of, the whole time making smart remarks so everybody’s laughing — you remember what a card he was — and gives a little kind of like salute and steps into empty air. It’s not till then the fellow behind him says, ‘Wait!’ Says, ‘Wait, you forgot your—’ ”

“Parachute,” Ian’s neighbor finished sadly.

“So I don’t ask your prayers for Chuckie after this; I ask for me,” the woman said. For the first time, her voice was unsteady. “I’m just about sick with grief, I tell you. Pray for me to find some deliverance.”

She sat down, fumbling behind her for her purse. The minister lifted his palms and the room fell silent.

Could you really forget your parachute?

Well, maybe so. Ian could see how it might have come about. A man to whom jumping was habit might imagine that floating in space was all his own doing, like flying. Maybe it had slipped his mind he couldn’t fly, so in the first startled instant of his descent he supposed he had simply forgotten how. He may have felt insulted, betrayed by all he’d taken for granted. What’s the big idea here? he must have asked.

Ian pictured one of those animated films where a character strolls off a cliff without noticing and continues strolling in midair, perfectly safe until he happens to look down and then his legs start wheeling madly and he plummets.

He gave a short bark of laughter.

The congregation swiveled and stared at him.

He bowed his head, cheeks burning. The minister said, “For our sister Lula.”

“Amen,” the others said, mercifully facing forward again.

“Any other prayers, any other prayers …”

Ian studied the sprigged skirt while shame slammed into him in waves. He had said and done heedless things before but this was something new: to laugh out loud at a mother’s bereavement. He wished he could disappear. He wanted to perform some violent and decisive act, like leaping into space himself.

“No prayer is unworthy in the eyes of our Creator.”

He stood up.

Heads swiveled once again.

“I used to be—” he said.

Frog in his throat. He gave a dry, fake-sounding cough.

“I used to be good,” he said. “Or I used to be not bad, at least. Not evil. I just assumed I wasn’t evil, but lately, I don’t know what’s happened. Everything I touch goes wrong. I didn’t mean to laugh just now. I’m sorry I laughed, Mrs.…”

He looked over at the woman. Her face was lowered and she seemed unaware of him. But the others were watching closely. He had the sense they were weighing his words; they were taking him seriously.

“Pray for me to be good again,” he told them. “Pray for me to be forgiven.”

He sat down.

The minister raised his palms.

The silence that followed was so deep that Ian felt bathed in it. He unfolded in it; he gave in to it. He floated on a fluid rush of prayers, and all the prayers were for his pardon. How could God not listen, then?

When Ian was three or four years old, his mother had read him a Bible story for children. The illustration had showed a Roman soldier in full armor accosting a bearded old man. “Is that God?” Ian had asked, pointing to the soldier; for he associated God with power. But his mother had said, “No, no,” and continued reading. What Ian had gathered from this was that God was the other figure, therefore — the bearded old man. Even after he knew better, he couldn’t shake that notion, and now he imagined the congregation’s prayers streaming toward someone with long gray hair and a floor-length, Swedish-blue robe and sturdy bare feet in leather sandals. He felt a flood of gratitude to this man, as if God were, in literal truth, his father.

“For our guest,” the minister said.

“Amen.”

It was over too suddenly. It hadn’t lasted long enough. Already the minister was saying, “Any other prayers, any other prayers …”

There weren’t any.

“Hymn sixteen, then,” the minister said, and everyone stirred and rustled pages and stood up. They were so matter-of-fact; they were smoothing skirts, patting hairdos. Ian’s neighbor, a stocky, round-faced woman, beamed at him and tilted her hymnal in his direction. The hymn was “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” The minister started it off in his soaring tenor:

“What a fellowship, what a joy divine ,

Leaning on the everlasting arms …”

This time Ian sang too, although really it was more of a drone.

When the hymn was finished, the minister raised his palms again and recited a benediction. “Go ye now into the world and bear witness to His teachings,” he said. “In Jesus’ name, amen.”

“Amen,” the others echoed.

Was that if?

They started collecting coats and purses, buttoning buttons, winding scarves. “Welcome!” Ian’s neighbor told him. “How did you find out about us?”

“Oh, I was just walking by …”

“So many young people nowadays don’t give half enough thought to their spiritual salvation.”

“No, I guess not,” Ian said.

All at once he felt he was traveling under false pretense. Spiritual salvation! The language these places used made him itch with embarrassment. (Blood of the Lamb, Died for Your Sins …) He looked yearningly behind him, where the first people to leave were already sending a slap of cold air into the room. But his neighbor was waving to the minister. “Yoo-hoo! Reverend Emmett! Come and meet our young person!”

The minister, already choosing a path between the knots of worshipers, seemed disconcertingly jubilant. His smile was so wide that his teeth looked too big for his mouth. He arrived in front of Ian and shook his hand over and over. “Wonderful to have you!” he said. (His long, bony fingers felt like dried beanpods.) “I’m Reverend Emmett. This is Sister Nell, have you introduced yourselves?”

“How do you do,” Ian said, and the other two waited so expectantly that he had to add, “I’m Ian Bedloe.”

“We use only first names in our place of worship,” Reverend Emmett told him. “Last names remind us of the superficial — the world of wealth and connections and who came over on the Mayflower. ”

“Really,” Ian said. “Ah. Okay.”

His neighbor laid a hand on his arm and said, “Reverend Emmett will tell you all about it . Nice meeting you, Brother Ian. Good night, Reverend Emmett.”

“Night,” Reverend Emmett said. He watched as she swirled a navy cape around her shoulders (so she was, after all, a nurse) and sidled out the other end of the row. Then he turned back to Ian and said, “I hope your prayer was answered this evening.”

“Thanks,” Ian said. “It was a really … interesting service.”