Once Beyond a Time Read Free Page B

somewhere else. She says she’s hoping to get a job in Philly. Can she stay with us for a short time, just until she finds her own place?”
    Of course! Of course she can. She’s family after all. Meg’s cousin on her father’s side. Meg’s younger cousin, only twenty-two, but yes, of course she can stay with us. What, with Carl gone, we have a spare bedroom. Tell her to come right away; we’ll leave the light on for her.
    And so she came.
    At first I pitied her because of the broken engagement. None of us spoke of the ex-fiancé by name, though he was always there, hanging around, making Charlene weep at the oddest times. She used to play the piano and cry, tears running down her face, her mascara two black streaks that she dabbed at with crumpled tissues. Meg tried to comfort her—“There are plenty of fish in the sea”—and, who knows, maybe it did some good because as the days passed, Charlene grew less and less somber and occasionally even ventured a laugh. And often, very often, she smiled at me.
    I asked her how she could coax such beautiful music out of an out-of-tune piano, and she said one has to love the instrument, love what it can do in spite of how broken it is. If one loves and respects the instrument it will do great things for you. I told her she was a talented musician, and she said she wasn’t yet, but one day she hoped to be. I told her she couldcome next door to the church any time and play the organ, and she said she’d like that.
    She was a beautiful girl: young and lithe and blonde and perfect. She didn’t spend much time trying to find a job or a place of her own, but neither Meg nor I rushed her. She had, after all, a broken heart and needed time to mend.
    I should have run, somehow. That was my mistake. I should have helped her find an apartment, but I didn’t. Of course, I couldn’t admit to myself then what I readily confess now: I didn’t want her to leave.
    I still loved Meg, and for that reason I tried at first to toss off the desire Charlene aroused in me. And there was that pride again; I had prided myself on being strong enough to resist temptation. I believed myself impervious to the charms of Lorelei! But, in the end, I couldn’t resist the siren’s song that lures men to shipwreck on the rocks.
    The day came when she found me alone in my office at the church. She approached my desk where I sat reading the sermons of Spurgeon. She wore that orange mini-skirt and white sleeveless blouse, her long hair hanging around her shoulders in gentle waves. She smiled at me as she said, “You know, you don’t look like a pastor to me anymore.”
    And startled, I replied, “I don’t?”
    “No,” she said, touching my arm with her fingertips. “You just look like a regular man.”
    And so as easily as that, I was. A regular man. My grip let go the wheel of the ship, and I was lost.
    Father. Father.
    Forgive me, for I have sinned.
    Forgive me.

4
Digger
    Friday, July 12, 1968
    Y EE HAW! I ’M Daniel Boone! I got my rifle, and I’m going hunting, and I’m not coming back till I got the biggest buffalo ever! I’m not afraid of nothing!
    Oh boy, this is great. This is the best thing ever. I wish we’d had a rock like this in the backyard up home. I never saw a rock this big for climbing on and jumping off. It’s just like flying.
    Yee haw! Pow, pow, pow! This might look like a stick, but it’s the meanest rifle you’ll find anywhere in these mountains. I can shoot a tin can at sixty paces. Pow!
    Boy, I wish Marjorie and them could have stayed a little longer so she could go on playing the Indian maiden I rescue from the bad guys. Aunt Donna said Marjorie had to go to bed, but what I want to know is, who can go to bed when it’s not even hardly dark yet? Yeah, I guess she’s only seven and I’m eight, and I can stay up longer.
    Look out below! Here I come! And I’m the roughest, toughest, rootin’ tootin’est …
    Hey! What’s that?
    I must have said it out loud because