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9. The Reverend Ashley
- University Press of Mississippi
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9 The Reverend Ashley Nearly a year later, Mary Kerr, on a spring afternoon, was working in the garden at Grace Episcopal Church. It was a student group project, but she had come much too late to join the others, because of her dance class. There was still a lot to do, and she was down on her knees with a trowel, working the soil, turning the mulch for the roses. Getting hotter. Working alone. She straightened to look around her, and there around the corner of the church came Jeff Blaise. He was carrying a spade he must have just found leaning against the wall of the church offices, which were tacked on to the back of the main structure. Seeing her, he gave a grin he couldn't help. How to act around him? He had been in jail once, for blocking the campus appearance of somebody high in the Department of Defense. So she just said before she thought, "Out of jail?" "Obviously/' He lifted the spade. "Thought I'd help." Again she said the first thing she thought of. "But you're a Catholic." Later she wondered why she'd said it. She knew next to nothing about Catholics, there were so few around. It was just the differences between them that she was hitting on. The gaps there were no bridges for. "Maybe you can convert me." Long ago she'd told herself it was mainly just attraction she'd felt for him. Nobody else had made her feel excited the way he did. She turned away now because she was feeling like that again. Sex was making its crazy attack. Of course, he'd come there to find her. "Mary?" 56 The Home Scene The slant of his tone told her that he was into some need that wasn't about sex at all. She listened. "I—I finished my dissertation yesterday, turned it in. The dissertation . . . you remember. It's done." "Then you'll be Dr. Blaise." It had a strange sound, said aloud. "Ethan's the director, backing it, of course. I'm afraid that will be a strike against it these days." She tried remembering what he'd told her. The subject was something about U.S. policy involving Germans after the war. Secret documents withheld, but others found. Ethan working hard at getting crucial material declassified. Walking a tightrope. Danger. She realized something. "He told you I was here." Ethan was a sometime friend and confidant of Reverend Ashley. Ideas exchanged . . . religious biases. "No organized church will take any stand at all worth taking . . . you realize that." She'd been present when Ethan had said that, speaking of Reverend Ashley. "I've been wanting to track you down anyway. Just to touch base, I guess. . . . I'm sorry if you mind." "I don't guess I do." She sat down beside him on a large granite memorial stone, something with a brass plaque with an inscription on its side. Jeff looked at what he carried. "I even found a shovel." He didn't seem to find it real. "Well, use it," said Mary, and went back to work. "Pile the straw around. Here." Spadeful at a time, he dutifully heaped straw where she told him to. Farther on, there were irises to be thinned, bloomed out and withered on their stalks. Flats of verbena sat waiting to be turned out and planted. It would take another day or so. "When'd you get so religious? I never knew—" "Being good these days, I guess. Work . . . I like it, though. Something besides dance practice." What were they talking about? Nothing seemed to the point. Looking up at him was like stepping on quicksand, so she didn't. Then she did. His face looked strained under the sweat the sun was drawing out of him. "Mary. . . ." He touched her hair. It had turned darker brown from the hot work, the sweat. Hand on her arm. Currents running. She pulled off. "I'm not going back to you. Just not." He spaded fiercely at some azalearoots. "I heard you got engaged." "Don't be silly. Just dated Ron Bower for a while." 57 [18.205.67.119] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:44 GMT) 58 THE N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S "Suit and tie type, I guess." "I guess." "What was wrong with him?" "I don't know. He couldn't dance...