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Via Dolorosa
by Fred White Donna Vale always seemed to be smiling, even when her dark-brown eyes were sad. Ryan Pritchard, who lived next door with his mother, wondered if Mrs. Vale’s husband might be the reason behind those sad eyes; a moving van driver, he was on the road for several days at a time. One Friday, Donna Vale invited Ryan to dinner, aware that his mother had to work late on Fridays. Mrs. Vale was lighting candles when he arrived. “Please help James set the table, sweetie,” she said. She wore a red satin blouse buttoned to the neck and a gold crucifix which swung like a pendulum as she placed bowls of potatoes and vegetables and a platter of halibut on the table. Once they were seated, she reached for Ryan’s and her son’s hands, bowed her head, and began reciting a prayer. Her hand was soft and warm. Ryan felt uneasy not knowing the prayer, and recalled how his father started praying after joining A. A. “As if praying can make up for all the misery you caused!” his mother had shouted at him just before he walked out of their lives for good. Ryan complimented Mrs. Vale on the halibut, even though he didn’t much care for fish. She thanked him with a radiant smile. Then she dabbed her lips and said quietly, “We live in a dangerous world, boys. That is why we must open our hearts to receive God’s grace.” James nodded absently, not pausing in his eating. It seemed to Ryan that she wanted to say more because her perpetually smiling mouth suddenly tightened. She turned to Ryan, “You’re friends with Marie Rankin, the one-armed girl, aren’t you?” “Yes.” “Yes, James said you were, but I wanted to make sure.” She closed her eyes. “Last Wednesday morning Mr. Vale found her stretched out behind the back wheels of his truck.” She touched her crucifix. “She had wrapped herself up in an army blanket. It looked as if—as if there was nothing but a rumpled old blanket behind the wheels.” James said, “It’s too bad she only got one arm.” “Do you have any idea, either of you, why that poor child would do such a thing?” Ryan felt queasy. “Did your—did Mr. Vale—I mean, did he—?” Donna Vale stared at her tightly folded hands. “Mr. Vale had actually switched on the ignition and was about to pull out when Providence intervened, urging him to jump out to retrieve the morning paper that he suddenly noticed on the lawn. That was when he saw the blanket . . .” “Marie likes to pretend she’s dead,” said James. “Maybe she’s depressed about having only one arm.” There was a moment of silence. “I . . . don’t think that’s the reason,” Ryan said. “Yeah, Marie does like to brag about how she can do more things with one arm than most people can with two,” James said. Donna was staring hard at Ryan, as if she could sense that there was more he wanted to say. He took a deep breath. “I think she hates her dad.” Three days earlier he, James, and Marie had been playing basketball at Our Mother of Sorrows parochial school. Ryan loved to watch Marie, with her long slender legs, dance with the ball, and then, using her stump and normal arm, make one spectacular basket after another. Later, they walked to the nearby park where they took off their shoes and splashed in the brook. Afterwards, while James chased squirrels, Marie and Ryan climbed an oak tree with lots of perches. At one point, Marie scuttled over him. A dirt-stained foot grazed his neck. “Hey, what the heck are you doing?” “Hold still! I’m trying to get onto that branch above your head.” After several false starts that nearly sent Ryan toppling out of his niche, Marie leaped up into her new roost; then she dropped her legs down and squeezed the sides of his head with them. “See how strong my legs are, Ryan? Who needs arms anyway?” He reached up and clasped her calves. “Ryan Pritchard! Are you feeling me up?” He tried to push her legs away. Suddenly she started groaning. “Oh-h-h-h . . . I’m gonna faint!” “Wait, let me help you down.” He kept an awkward grip on her as she worked her way out of the tangle of branches. At one point she clutched his arm and pressed her face against his. “Are you my lion, Ryan?” “My what?” “My protector! Or are you just a beast who’s gonna eat me?” “Grab that branch, Marie.” “Let’s run away! I’ve got seventy-three dollars saved up from baby-sitting.” “Don’t be ridiculous.” Marie let go of the branch she was holding, slid to the ground, and lay on her back, arms and legs splayed. James rushed over. “What the heck happened? Is she hurt?” “She got dizzy in the tree. I think she’s okay now.” “She don’t look okay,” said James, reluctantly inspecting her. “We’d better take her home.” “No!” snapped Marie. She kept her eyes shut and was breathing heavily. “Ryan?” Ryan put his ear to her lips. “I’m dead,” she whispered. “That’s not funny.” “Feel,” she said, louder this time, grabbing his hand and slapping it between her small breasts. “No heartbeat!” James pulled him away. “You’re not supposed to be horsin’ around like that.” He tried to pull Marie to her feet but she yanked herself from his grip and flopped back onto the ground. “Beat it, James. Better yet, go beat off somewhere.” Ryan bent down to her again. “C’mon, Marie, we’ll walk you home. She twisted away—then turned back to face him. “Promise you’ll come inside with me.” “No,” said James. “I’m not talking to you, pansy.” “I promise,” said Ryan. As they began walking out of the park, he could feel her stiffen. By the time they reached her house, she was trembling. Her father was laying sod. He glanced up when he saw the three of them and wiped his bald head with a rag. His eyes darted from Marie to James to Ryan, then back to Marie. “Where the heck have you been?” Marie pressed her body against Ryan’s. “I asked you a question.” “Tell him,” Ryan whispered. “I was in the park, Daddy,” said Marie. “I told you to ask me before you go runnin’ off. G’wan inside.” Marie stayed put. “Got a hearing problem, Missie?” “Don’t call me that!” she screeched, and then darted away. “Get your ass back here!” Rankin started after her—but stopped after reaching the sidewalk. He turned to Ryan and James. “Did you just tell her to run off like that?” “No sir,” said James. “What’d you say to her?” “Nothin’” “Like hell.” He glared at Ryan. “I saw you whisperin’ in her ear.” “I just told her to tell you that we were only playing in--” “Go find her; tell her that her old lady’s been bitching her head off for her.” “We don’t know where she went,” James said. Rankin scratched the back of his neck. “She likes to hide in weird-ass places. Found her under my car once.” Ryan and James returned to the park, but she wasn’t there. They yelled for her up and down four streets. They looked for her under cars. They searched the alley behind her house. It was as if she had vanished into thin air. After dinner Ryan asked Mrs. Vale if he could help clean up, but she shook her head. She put her hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “Why do you suppose Marie hates her father?” He shrugged. “It’s just the way she avoids him when he’s around.” “Has she ever explained why she avoids him?” Ryan shook his head. James was leaning against the refrigerator, staring at them. “Maybe,” said James, “she acts strange because that car accident she was in affected her brain. Isn’t that how she lost her arm? I know I’d act strange if something like that happened to me.” “Something happened to her mother in the accident too,” said Ryan, “I saw Marie’s father helping Mrs. Rankin into a wheelchair once.” Donna Vale gazed out the kitchen window for a long moment. “You pray to the Lord don’t you?” she asked Ryan. Ryan felt his face redden. “Yes,” he lied. His father used to try to get him to pray. “Life is too damned tough to go it alone,” he would say. “That’s the first thing they teach you in AA. You gotta acknowledge a higher power.” Ironically, Ryan would pray—he would pray for his father never to drink again, never to lose his temper again; but he vanished into thin air instead. “Then would you and James do something charitable for Marie this evening? Would you walk down to the church and pray for her? I would come along, but Mr. Vale promised to call me this evening from wherever he plans to stop for the night.” “Well . . .” said Ryan. He should have kept his big mouth shut about praying. “Sure,” James said, elbowing Ryan. “Come on!” They walked in silence in the cool dusk to the Mother of Sorrows church at the opposite end of the block. “I’ve never come here this late before except for midnight Mass,” said James. “Have you?” “No,” said Ryan, remembering how his mother used to get into a shouting match with his father because she didn’t want Ryan being brainwashed by religious fanatics, as she put it. James was explaining how he liked being inside a church when it was dark and empty. “I sometimes come here just to pray for a few minutes,” he whispered. “I had this little conversation with God about my dad, who has to deliver stuff from one end of the state to the other, and was always in a bad mood when he got home.” Ryan detected a faint, sweet, smoky smell inside the church. James explained that that was the smell of incense, what the priests used to spread holiness through the church. They walked down the aisle, and Ryan waited for James to kneel and cross himself before entering a row of pews. James pulled down the kneeler, crossed himself, and mumbled a prayer. Ryan sat tensely next to him, waiting. “There,” I just prayed for Marie to be okay. What about you?” “We should be out there looking for her.” “Okay, but you gotta say a prayer for her first.” I don’t have to do any such thing.” Ryan fixed his eyes on the bronze crucifix above the altar. “I want to start looking for her now before it gets too dark.” “But if you prayed for that, God—” “Praying is dumb.” James look mortified. “So you’re calling my mother dumb, and all the priests and nuns dumb?” “No, I said praying is dumb, not priests and nuns or your mother. You don’t listen too good.” “Don’t you believe in God?” He wanted to tell James to shut his mouth. “I wouldn’t want to live if God didn’t exist,” said James. Ryan tried to stifle a laugh; but it burst out anyway. James stared at him like a frightened cat. “If God does exist, I wish he’d give me a sign.” “You gotta pray for that,” persisted James. Ryan pressed his palms together and raised them over his head. “Hey, God, drop whatever you’re going and send me a sign that I’m not just talking to myself, okay?” James pushed him. “Stop it. You’re being sacrilegious inside a church.” Ryan was convinced there was no such thing as God, or the Devil, for that matter, but had no doubt that evil existed. There was plenty of evidence for that. Evil was as real as gravity, and just as difficult to pinpoint. Evil cast terrible spells over people, making them do awful things without caring or even understanding how awful they were. “I remember once during catechism,” James was saying, “how Sister Ann told us about people who couldn’t decide if God existed. She used a word, not atheists but ag – something or other. “I bet you’re an ag…nog . . . are you, Ryan.” “No, James, I am not an egg nog. The word is agnostic. I’m not an agnostic, but a creepy-crawling atheist. Woooo-wooooo!” Ryan made claws. James shrunk away from him and started wandering up the side aisle of the church, gazing up at the walls. “See those, Ryan?” his voice echoed through the empty church. He pointed up at the rows of bas-reliefs. “Those are the Stations of the Cross.” “What are they?” Ryan knew what they were; he just wanted to hear James struggle with an explanation. “Uhm, they, uhm, you know, show the path that Jesus took on the way to where he was, uhm, crucified. It’s called the Path of Tears, the Via . . . Dolorosa. Mom says she wants us both to go there someday and walk that very same path that Jesus took.” He continued to move along the wall. “Look! There’s Simon; he helped Jesus carry the cross for a while, before the Roman soldiers forced him to stop.” James suddenly crossed himself. “Is that what you’re supposed to do when you look at Jesus?” Ryan taunted. “Gosh, Ryan, can’t you feel his suffering?” “I’m too worried about Marie.” James walked over to the last Station, where the dead Jesus, wrapped in a blanket, was being placed inside a tomb. Ryan shuddered. It reminded him of Marie, wrapped in an Army blanket, lying behind the wheels of James’s father’s truck, waiting to be crushed to death. He clutched James’s arm. “I’m going now.” “But you should—” Ryan hurried out of the church, fearful that something terrible had already happened to Marie. He ran down the block, calling out her name, peering underneath every car—in the street, in every driveway. He scanned the next block and the next. He scoured a nearby alley. Where could she be? He prayed that she was still hiding, and not crushed under the wheels of a truck. He prayed that he could find her before it was too late. |
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