“Fine.” And although Brendan was as numb as a block of wood, although his eyes ached and his head throbbed and his hands were freezing, he still felt wonderful. Of course the names on the storefronts differed from those he remembered, and the big white houses surrounding the square had been cut into apartments or torn down or repainted, and of course the feed store was gone and so was the five-and-dime, but the post office was still in place and so were the Masonic Hall and the Congregational church. The square itself, with its center fountain and the wooden benches and the huge old oaks and sycamores, looked almost exactly as he’d remembered it, a cousin to the square in his vanished village.
On one of the benches near the sidewalk in front of the van, an old man was feeding pigeons. He had a big plastic sack on his lap, full of stale bread, and as Brendan watched he cast a handful of crusts around his feet. The birds, white and gray and tan and mottled, pecked at the crusts and at each other. The man threw some crusts away from the main clump of birds, toward two pigeons too shy or too young to fend for themselves, and when the other birds rushed in that direction he threw more crusts, distracting them, so that the two outsiders could eat. Then he took a bite from his own breakfast, a doughnut folded in white waxed paper.
His appetite, and his obvious enjoyment, made Brendan think back to the days when he could still eat happily. At his place in the refectory at Our Lady of the Valley, he had had a water jug, a spoon, a fork, a knife, a heavy mug, an enameled plate, and a large napkin draped over his mug. He’d eaten in silence, like the others, signing with his hands for bread or salt and listening to the low voice of the reader while he savored each mouthful. When he was done, he’d rinsed his utensils in his mug and dried them with his napkin, emptied the water from his mug into his soup bowl and dried the mug, and then draped his napkin over the mug, as it had been in the beginning. He’d given thanks for the food he’d eaten, but he’d never thought to give thanks for the desire or the ability to eat it.
Hunger had left him long ago, and now even the ability to force down food was gone, but he watched the old man and his pigeons with pleasure. The man finished his meal and scattered the rest of his crumbs. Then, to Brendan’s astonishment, he rose and made his way slowly to the van. The bench was no more than twenty feet away, but it hadn’t occurred to Brendan that, sitting with his face pressed to the window, he was as visible to the man as the man was to him.
The man wore a short-sleeved white shirt, open at the neck, and faded pants belted high on his stomach. His face was blotched with liver spots and his eyes were pale and watery. Although he looked to be about Brendan’s age, his white hair was still very thick and rose in a neat brush cut. Brendan raised a shaky hand to his own wispy strands and Bongo barked as the man tapped on the window. Brendan needed both hands to roll the window down.
“Morning,” the man said brightly. “Fine day, isn’t it?”
In his voice, Brendan heard the loneliness and eagerness for talk that had made him wheel his own chair out to the stoplight near St. Benedict’s. He wondered if this man sat on the bench each morning, snagging passersby. “It is,” he agreed.
“Couldn’t help but notice your van. You new in town?”
“Just passing through.” Brendan found it odd to be on the receiving end of one of these conversational ambushes. Imagine, he thought. A man so lonely he wants to talk to me. He made an effort to be friendly. “I used to live around here,” he said. “A long time ago.”
“Did you.” The man leaned toward the van, craning his neck for a better look at Brendan’s face. “Would you be having family here still?”
“They’re all gone,” Brendan said. “We were from Pomeroy — one of the villages that’s under the reservoir now.”
The man’s face brightened. “Hell, my family lived in Nipmuck — what’s your name?”
“Brendan Auberon.” Nipmuck had been the second village down from Pomeroy, just south of Stillwater and Stillwater Falls. He had once climbed two-thirds of the way up a horse chestnut in front of the church and seen the entire valley spread out below him. Had they cut down that tree? “My parents were Frank and Eileen Auberon,” he continued. “They had a place out Williamson Road, near the abbey.”
“Brendan? You’re Brendan? Don’t you remember me?”
Brendan couldn’t find a trace in this man of anyone he’d ever known. “Marcus O’Brian,” the man said. Brendan searched his memory.
“Your brother was the one I really knew,” Marcus explained. “Frankie and I were altar boys together, and I used to come out to your folks’ place sometimes. Frankie and I went into the service the same month. But that was later, after you took off.”
“Marcus,” Brendan said. A hazy memory surfaced — a small, wiry, red-haired boy who had tagged after him, along with Frank junior, during some of his rambles through the woods. Marcus and his family had walked to the Catholic church in Pomeroy each Sunday, and after Mass, Frank junior had often brought Marcus home.
“Your folks had the summer camp,” Brendan said. “Camp Nichewaug, where all the rich kids from Boston came.” Was the camp gone? The tidy white bungalows, the warm wooden docks with the splintery ramps, the canoes lined upside down on the racks?
“That’s right. Of course that’s gone now.” Marcus rocked on his heels. “Do you have a few minutes? Why don’t you come out and sit with me for a while?”
“I can’t.” Brendan realized that Marcus could see only his head and shoulders through the window. “But why don’t you come in?”
Marcus fumbled with the van door, and then his face fell as he saw Brendan’s wheelchair. “Ah,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You’ve been in that long?”
He climbed into the van and sat down in the passenger seat. “Long enough,” Brendan said.
“The war? No, of course not. You went into the monastery, I remember. After high school. And then when they tore it down, they sent you all away. I heard some of the brothers went to Tennessee.”
“Not me. I went to China — I was there during the Japanese occupation. That’s when this happened.” Brendan pointed to his legs. “Just arthritis. But it got a little out of hand.”
“China? You monks get around.”
Brendan made a face. “I left the Order thirty years ago.”
“No,” Marcus said. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
Marcus leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. “Was it women?” he whispered.
Brendan laughed. Marcus and Frank junior, he remembered, had once been caught getting drunk on sacramental wine. “No,” he said. “Not women. It was a lot of things — I was just worn out. It stopped making sense to me.”
“I can see that. Never made sense to me in the first place. All those lists and rules — I was sick of it by the time we were out of school. Remember Father Quinn?”
“Who could forget him?” Brendan said, but then he turned the conversation. When he’d dreamed of this trip, he’d never thought he might see anyone he knew. For years he’d thought of himself as the valley’s last survivor, although there was no reason why this should be so — he was only eighty and plenty of people lived longer than that. There were plenty more, a few years younger than him, who might still remember the valley and yet be only in their seventies. But as glad as he was to see another survivor, he found that he didn’t want to call back his childhood. Or not yet, at any rate, and not here: just thinking of his old home, with the woods stretched all around him and Frank junior still alive and making mischief with Marcus, was enough to make his heart stutter. He remembered that he and Marcus hadn’t really been very close, especially as they’d grown older. But your parents, Marcus had said when he’d heard of Brendan’s decision to enter the Order. Who’s going to help them out? You’re leaving Frankie stuck with everything. Hadn’t Marcus said that, sixty-odd years ago?