John the Six

I HAD come out that evening into the gray light of the locusts, hearing vaguely the old man’s voice behind me saying his ‘Good night, Father Vallé’ and the door closing, and had returned this greeting as always, but was still in that remote and exalted mood — as of one in whom flesh and spirit have wrangled, and the spirit, triumphant, sits with a smug and calm rejoicing. Still in me were the extreme peace and tranquillity of the words I had read and the silence of library rooms, high-shadowed and utterly voiceless. . . . Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain. . . . Clearness divine. . . . And the evening itself was like a wide hollow washed clean of dust.

I walked down past the convent and heard the pigeons moving and muttering quietly in the stone gutters. The blue seeds of the ivy hung in clusters and it was dark in the narrow garden where the nuns walked. It was always very soothing, very pleasant, to pass here, apart somehow from all noise and life. Under the aisle of elms the sisters drifted quietly, like black leaves along the path. Children stopped sometimes and tried to push their hard little skulls through the iron railings, and named the sisters in a loud whisper, — ‘Mary Bogardus . . . Mary Agnes . . . Mary Malthus . . . Sister Anna,’ — and clung like white whispering monkeys to the barred gate.

I had come on the children unexpectedly that night: four of them, shrill and clinging in the October dusk — three little girls and Shean Lynn, small and ugly as a little ape. The girls jumped down and scattered giggling when they saw the priest, but Shean stared and hesitated. Over his shoulder dangled a bag of books and another on top, full of unsold magazines. He held one out and waved it in front of me, standing with a sort of timid defiance on the walk. ‘New edishun, awnly five cents,’ he mumbled. ‘Get your new edishun off of me, Father! All about — all about — ’ He stumbled and got red.

‘All about the latest love suit and the penthouse widow and the broken heart,’ I finished for him, and took the stained magazine. I spoke vaguely, still in that remote and unruffled mood of peace, and held out my hand. Shean grinned and took it with hesitation.

We walked a few steps in silence, the child trying to pace solemnly, while his magazines thumped against his knees. He had on shoes, but one was bigger than the other, and he walked with a kind of shuffling hop.

We passed under the shadow of the church, and the windows were lighted for early service. A blue-gold stream came out across the pavement and Shean stared back at it over his shoulder. I asked if he went to church sometimes, and he shook his head, but made no comment.

We walked on a little way and then he cleared his throat like an old man. ‘I read the Saint John to myself,’ he said.

I was surprised, and stopped and looked down at him. ‘Saint John?’ I repeated stupidly.

‘John the Apostle,’ Shean said. He was a very homely and thin little boy with adenoids and bony cheeks, but his hands had a hard, determined grip, much older than his face.

I blundered down my mind, hunting in the apostle’s story for what might have fascinated him in the brief record of suffering and resurrection. I thought how strange and incredible that Shean too might have found the amazing power of hope and belief, and that exaltation beyond understanding which is bom of words. I thought of the manger scene, the preaching in the temple, and the austere dignity of Christ before Pilate. I thought of the glory of the Resurrection, the prophecy of the Second Coming, and I thought of Christ’s words, The meek shall inherit the earth. I thought too of the fantastic glory of the Revelation, and I wondered if this might be what had brought the queer and excited light to his eyes; or, if not this, then what did he find in the story worth spelling out all the words with such labor and holding his pinched face over the page? Then I leaped to a sudden thought. ‘Is it where Christ says, Suffer the little children to come unto me — is that where you read the Saint John, Shean?’

Shean shook his head. ‘That ain’t the part,’ he said. ‘I never read that part. I read all the time in John the Six. I turn where it talks about fish and bread. Where it says a boy come selling those loaves and two fish hooked on a string. And Christ feeds five thousand people off of that bread, and the two fish turns into a pile and spread out miles around.’ He waved his arms in a circle and gave a shuffling hop. ‘Were they baked or fried I don’ know, but everybody ate till they almost puked, and still there was twelve basketfuls of the scraps left over. Twelve baskets left over and nobody wanted nothing! Boy, those fish must have been a sight! After Christ, I would n’t have waited for nobody else to begin. I’d have eat as soon as my fish was done. I’d have wrop it aroun’ with one of them buns and stuffed it in!’

From the way that his mouth moved, and the strange and retreated shining in his eyes, I knew that Shean was eating the fish and bread, and he clutched the invisible crumbs that spilled across his hands. Then he gave another excited shuffle and looked up at me. ‘That’s a swell story, ain’t it, Father?’ he said.

‘A swell story, Shean,’ I answered him.

He stooped and knotted the string again around his shoe, then jerked up, red and excited with a sudden thought ‘Say, Father,’ he said, ‘what did they do with all them scraps? All them twelve bucket-loads left over? Say, maybe Christ made a big pudden out of all that bread! Boy, what a pudden He’d have made!’

All I could see of his face was two enormous eyes, and I could not answer.