Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

Reverend Yates looked at Pearl. She was not shivering but her cheeks glowed from the cold. He had baptized her and Susanna on the same July Sunday five years ago. A thin, delicate child, one often sick. He remembered how light she’d felt as he took her in his arms and lowered her into the river.

“You and your mother come into the house, child.”

“Nah,” Gunter said. “We need to be getting back. Some of us has to work more than just on Sundays.”

“Eliza,” Reverend Yates said.

She looked at him now, her pale face blank.

“This Sunday, Preacher,” Gunter said. “Douse me in the morning and me and Pearl will get the justice of the peace to marry us right after. I done got that set up.”

“Our baptisms are held in warmer weather.”

“I know for a fact you baptized Henry Cope last winter,” Gunter challenged.

“He was dying,” Reverend Yates answered. “Even then it wasn’t this cold.”

“I know that water will be cold,” Gunter said, grinning now, “but I figure Pearl will warm me up real good later.”

“It isn’t just the water that cleanses a man,” Reverend Yates answered. “It’s what is in the heart.”

“I know that, Preacher.”

“What if I won’t do it?”

“We’ll go to Boone,” Gunter answered. “There’s more than one preacher in this county. Of course that’s a mighty long walk for Eliza and Pearl, especially with the chance of more snow coming.” Gunter turned and nodded at Eliza and Pearl. “Go on now,” he said.

Reverend Yates watched mother and child walk out of the yard and into the woods, stepping in their earlier footprints as if in Gunter’s presence they dare not even disturb the snow.

“We’ll be seeing you Sunday, Preacher,” Gunter said, raising finger and thumb to tip his hat. He nodded at the shotgun. “I’m a forgiving man, maybe you ought be the same, especially since I wouldn’t be needing a wife if you’d not meddled in another man’s business.”

“I know my business, Gunter,” Reverend Yates replied, but the words sounded feeble.

“Good,” Gunter replied. “Do it come Sunday.”

Gunter jerked the reins and the horse turned. He kicked a bootheel against its flank and went back up the path. Even when Gunter was out of sight, Reverend Yates heard the crunching of snow under the horse’s hooves. He stared at the woods, the bare gray branches reaching upward like wailing women.

Susanna had come in the middle of night, knocking frantically on the front door. Looking out the manse’s window, he’d seen her silhouetted behind a lantern’s glow. When Reverend Yates ushered her in, he saw she was barefoot and dressed only in a shift. Susanna raised the lantern to show the red and purple marks where his fingers had grasped.

“All I done was be late fixing his bath,” Susanna pleaded, terror in her eyes. “He said next time it’d be a rope around my neck, not a hand. He’d do it, Reverend. You know he would.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Get me away from here, someplace he’ll never find me.”

“What of your mother and sister?”

The fear in Susanna’s eyes dimmed.

“They ain’t able to stop him from killing me,” she answered, a sudden coldness in her voice.

Whether she had or had not understood the intent of his question, Reverend Yates would never know. She’d asked for his help, he told himself, so how could he not give it? Was there a relative who could take her in, he asked, one not close by but that she could get to by train. Susanna nodded. He’d put a quilt around her and they walked down the street to Marvin Birch’s house. The three of them had gone to Marvin’s dry goods to purchase Susanna shoes, clothes, and undergarments, enough to wear and also fill a carpetbag. Marvin was known as a skinflint, but he refused any money. Which was all to the good, because it left twenty dollars to give her after Reverend Yates paid for the ticket to Johnson City. She could get to her final destination from there, he’d told her.

Afterward, he’d returned to the manse and waited for Gunter to show up, the shotgun by the door, unloaded but Gunter would not know that. But it was Eliza who’d come on that October morning. Reverend Yates told her he didn’t know where Susanna was and would swear so on a Bible if need be. Without another word Eliza walked back up the path to her farm. Except for some glares when they’d passed each other in the street, Gunter did nothing. Perhaps he believed, as Reverend Yates feared, Susanna would return on her own. He’d seen it before, women or children fleeing and then returning not out of corporal need but some darker necessity. At such times, he feared some malevolent counterpoint to grace operated in the world. But Susanna had not returned. Gunter obtained a divorce on grounds of abandonment.

A polite knock interrupted Reverend Yates’s reverie. Opening the door, he found four congregation members on his porch, in the forefront Marvin Birch. He invited them in. Birch seemed reluctant but the others eagerly left the cold, though no one sat when offered a chair.

“We have heard about Gunter’s latest outrage,” Birch said. “If I had known this was the purpose of his divorce I would have ensured Judge Lingard did not grant it. What Gunter proposes, surely you will not allow?”

“If you mean the marriage itself, I have no part in it. He says he will go to the justice of the peace.”

“But the baptism,” Birch said. “What of it?”

“If I don’t, Gunter told me he’ll go elsewhere,” Reverend Yates answered.

“But if you do so,” Birch sputtered, “it would mean the community condones this abomination.”

“It was Eliza, a member of our congregation, not Gunter, who asked this of me.”

“That is of no importance, Reverend.” The storekeeper bristled. “Let them go elsewhere.”

“He will make them walk there, Marvin, and in this weather such a trek could give a girl with her delicate constitution the whooping cough or influenza. Would you want that on your conscience?”

“Doubtful, I say,” Birch answered. “And if so, might not death be better for the child than being wedded to that blackguard?”

“There is something else,” Reverend Yates said, his voice more reflective. “What if the act itself, despite Gunter’s lack of sincerity, were to truly cleanse the man?”

For a few moments the only sound was the crackle and hiss of the hearth’s burning wood.

“You believe Gunter capable of such change?”

“No,” Reverend Yates answered, “but God is capable. It is the mystery of grace. I cannot be true to my responsibilities if I doubt the possibility.”

“But our responsibility as town elders is different, Reverend. We cannot permit this.”

“So you question God’s wisdom in worldly matters?”

“God allows us the ability to discern evil, Reverend, and the strength to defy it.”

“Yet not in this matter,” Reverend Yates replied, with less certainty than he would have wished. “Be assured, I have not made my decision lightly, gentlemen. I appreciate and understand your concern, but the baptism must be allowed.”

The next morning at the service, Gunter sat with Eliza and Pearl on the back pew. Reverend Yates had contemplated altering the sermon he’d written out Thursday night, but found himself too vexed to do so. As planned, he spoke of Moses, and how he’d led his people to the Promised Land though unable to enter that place himself. He read the sermon with as little attentiveness as his congregation offered in their listening, Gunter’s presence casting a pall over the whole church.

Reverend Yates did not announce the baptism. Instead, he waited until the church emptied but for Gunter, Eliza, Pearl, and himself.