Tanner reached the midpoint of the wall even before Hector, whose efforts ticked by as always at a constant, unremitting meter. Tanner stepped back, removing his wire spectacles and wiping his brow with his sleeve.
“From your surname I assume your family is Catholic?”
“My dad. My mother was lapsed. They’re both gone now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah.”
“And what about you? Do you consider yourself Catholic?”
“I’m nothing.”
“Surely you must have been christened.”
Hector nodded.
“I was just curious. It’s not important, but I suppose I was wondering how much time you’d spent in church.”
“Why’s that?”
“Again, it’s not material, but I want to ask if you would be able to construct a chapel for us. The outdoor pavilion is perfectly fine now, but I don’t see how it will be useful come winter. Had Reverend Hong any such plans, about what to do?”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me about them.”
“I’m glad we’re talking about it, then. I was thinking that perhaps you could build a small chapel, just one big enough to house all of us.”
“I doubt I could get the lumber to build anything but a shed.”
“What about converting a space?”
“There’s really nothing that would work, except maybe the main classroom.”
“No, that won’t do,” Tanner said. “I feel strongly that if possible we should have a chapel that’s just a chapel. Where we solely hold prayer services and read Scripture and sing our hymns. Nothing else, no classes or eating. It doesn’t have to look churchlike. A room with benches is all we would require. Nothing large. The closer we are, the better.”
Hector pictured the big Catholic church in Albany where they went for Easter, and then the one on West Street in Ilion where his father would regularly take him and his sisters on Sunday mornings, and sometimes for the Vigil on Saturday afternoons. It was massive and impressive to his boy’s eyes, built from blocks of granite and with a medieval-style tower, and within its soaring buttressed wooden ceiling above the nave, the supports and walls were clad in a limestone that shone brilliantly in the daytime from the light that streamed in through three high, narrow stained-glass windows over the main entrance. It was a very long structure with dozens of rows of burnished mahogany pews. On certain stifling summer days the air would be unbearable and his father would often doze off for a while, and if they were sitting toward the back Hector could slip beneath the pew in front and lie down on the cool stone floor until just before the sermon was over. There was a separate small chapel off the nave, devoted to the Annunciation, and Hector was surprised how well he could recall it now, the narrow space like a miniaturized chapel with its smaller altar and cross and off to the side a statue of a remarkably beautiful Irish-faced Mary, who could have been one of his wild sisters.
“There’s the vestibule between the girls’ and boys’ sleeping rooms,” he told Tanner. “I think it was open space between the buildings that was enclosed at some point. I wouldn’t have to do much except maybe install a woodstove, if I can find one. I suppose I could salvage enough boards from the base for some pews.”
“Yes, that sounds fine. That might just hold all of us.”
“Not me.”
“Have you not attended any of the services here?”
“No.”
“And Reverend Hong never minded?”
“I do jobs here. He knew that.”
“Well, you should know it’s likely he won’t be returning in three months. He’s done a good job and the Church will be asking him to go to Minnesota after his time in Seattle, to help begin a new ministry. He doesn’t know this yet. A good number of the children, from all our orphanages around Korea, will be adopted into families there.”
“Are you telling me I ought to get going? Because I’ll move on whenever you like.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that.” Tanner said. “Of course, it’s up to you. However, I would ask you to stay on for a while. There’s clearly much work to be done around the property before the weather turns. Reverend Hong went over it with me, particularly the refurbishing of the kitchen and the new septic tank, as well as patching the roofs of all the structures. And now this chapel. I’d ask you to see these projects through, if not for me, then for Reverend Hong. For the children.”
He looked directly into Hector’s eyes. “May I be frank with you? All right, then. Although I’ve only been here a week I will tell you directly that I think your presence otherwise is detrimental to the children. I took the liberty of interviewing some of the staff aunties. Please don’t blame them, but I was quite forceful in my queries. Again, I have nothing against you, personally. Your life is your own, and I didn’t come to Korea to mold your habits or your character. But I am certain that the children don’t need to see you return every morning after long nights in town. Or be so aware of your public drinking. Or your obvious indifference to our assembly and worship. So I disagree with Reverend Hong when he says that because the children are accustomed to you there should be no concern. They are rootless in every regard, and this may be their last chance for a new beginning, and so why would I wish any influences on them that weren’t wholly benevolent? Do you think I should?”
“No.”
“So you can understand. You agree.”
Hector didn’t disagree.
“Good. I want to say now, too, that in my view everything is conditional. My hope is that from this point on I’ll be persuaded otherwise. You’re a very young man, with your entire life ahead of you. I don’t know what happened to you before or during the war, or what you think this life now holds for you. But I would say you have the posture of someone awaiting the inevitable. Or even inviting it. I am sure that there is no worse sin than the one a man can perpetrate on himself.”
For the next few weeks Hector kept fast to his work. It wasn’t to try to impress Tanner or alter any of his views. He didn’t like the last thing the reverend had said about him, but there, too, he couldn’t quite do anything but agree: indeed, he was waiting for the inevitable. He was looking for something to befall him, to strike him down; he was a man clambering to the top of a hill in a lightning storm, waving an iron rod. But for Hector the skies blew always empty, broke open vast and blue. So he threw himself into the labor. He wanted the rack of heavy toil, not as discipline or punishment but as cover, a way to erase himself. He patched the older roofs in the afternoons. Only the small schoolhouse roof was solid and sturdy, having been constructed by an army ordinance battalion a year earlier, at the end of the war, but the rest of the buildings dated from the 1920s and were converted farming structures, rickety swaybacked buildings meant for housing livestock and chickens. He spent the hottest part of the day on the clay tiles, clearing everyone out from beneath the roof he was working on, in case of collapse. In the intense late-August heat the orphanage grounds were deserted, the rest of the populace staying inside for their studies, or else resting or doing chores under the tent or the meager tree shade on the edges of the compound. The sun was relentless, its rays like sheets of fiery glass cascading down to shred him, but he welcomed the burn on his shoulders and back as he stepped about on the creaky structure. He felt nimble and insignificant, an ant at labor, but an ant alone, drifted far off from its brethren.