Chapter One
9 . 11 . 2001
9 . 13 . 2001
The whole three weeks in Italy had felt like the
rescue Mabry hoped for – not a single moment of
cloudy vision and almost none of the maddening
jangle of threatened nerves in his hands and
legs. Even the two quick days in France, despite
the routine Parisian rudeness, had failed to
crank his symptoms. So he’d stuffed his ears
with the airline’s free plugs and sunk into a
nap in what he suspected was half-foolish hope.
Maybe my body isn’t ruined after all. Maybe Rome
has cured me. And the nap was so deep that the
pilot’s first few news reports didn’t reach him
at all. What finally woke him was the huge plane
itself – a steep tilt northward, a wide swing,
then a man’s calm voice as the wings leveled
off.
It said “Ladies and gentlemen,” not the usual
jaunty Folks. Then it took a long pause. “The
latest news is even more impressive. At the
World Trade Center, the second tower has also
collapsed. As many as six thousand people may be
lost. The plane that crashed into the Pentagon
has taken maybe three hundred lives, and a
fourth plane has crashed in a Pennsylvania field
with all hands aboard. All U.S. airports are now
closed to traffic, and we have our orders to
divert. We’re headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia.
No further plans are available at present. I’ll
keep you posted.”
Mabry had removed his earplugs by then; but he’d
still never heard such silence in an airplane as
what swept through in the wake of that voice.
Before he could look around – the plane was
half empty – the pilot said four more words
that were worse than all the rest. “I hope I
can.” When had any of them heard such
desolation?
Behind, a single voice sobbed distinctly. It
seemed to be a man.
But since no other passenger was near in the
first-class seats, Mabry rang for help; and a
rattled steward told him the little they knew.
Both of the World Trade Towers had been hit by
full-sized jets, and both had now fallen. The
collisions had come just after work started.
Some reports said a plane had struck the
Pentagon; a fourth plane had crashed in rural
Pennsylvania. Mabry sipped at the double gin the
steward brought, unasked. Then he shut his eyes
to think, if thinking was possible. He knew just
enough American history to calculate that, if
six thousand human beings were dead, then this
was the most disastrous day since the bloodiest
day of the Civil War – the battle at Antietam
when, almost surely, nearly four thousand died.
And this day had barely started. Whoever had
done this and what else was planned?
Yet when he opened his eyes again, he looked to
the jittery steward alone in the all-gray galley
and saw him as clear as a stark photograph – or
grim as a Goya torture victim. Mabry gave him a
brief consolatory wave, a windshield-wiper
side-to-side gesture (he was in first class,
courtesy of years of frequent-flier credits).
His wave brought the steward back; he leaned to
Mabry’s ear and whispered. “My partner works
fifty yards away, across the plaza. He’s an
architect. Say a hard prayer for him. Me as well
– he’s all I’ve got on the planet Earth.”
Somehow Mabry felt he knew the truthful thing to
say. “Your friend’s OK. I’m all but sure.” When
he looked, the steward’s name tag said Larry
Leakins; so Mabry took the further risk of
saying “He’s truly safe, Larry. I live down
there, just three blocks south.”
For the moment at least, Larry seemed to believe
him. He squeezed Mabry’s shoulder and went back
to work.
Then Mabry scratched his palms deeply to check
for numbness. He was hurting himself; the
feeling was normal. And his legs were still
calm. So in his mind he stroked the curious
peace he still felt, like a cooling wound in the
pit of his heart. He was tired, God knew, but
not drunk or drugged. All his life he’d been a
buoyant soul. Why on Earth now? From the time
the Towers had first been bombed in 1993, he’d
known the Muslims would try again – and likely
succeed. Now he was right, way righter than he
could ever have guessed. And aside from the blow
his city and country had suffered today – and
the future was botched for years to come – he’d
surely taken hits of his own.
His loft was in actual sight of the Towers. It
was bound to be damaged if not destroyed. How
many friends were dead? Likely the client who
sent him to Paris. His daughter lived and worked
uptown but was she safe? He’d never surrendered
to the cell-phone plague, and he’d had no luck
with airplane phones, so there was nothing he
could do before landing – if there was still
land in Nova Scotia. He looked out and tried to
imagine nothing but water water. It was easy
enough to think that the heaving steel-blue
plain stretching beneath them was all there was
or ever would be, from here on at least. Well,
he’d shut his eyes and try for more sleep.
Sleep took him straight in, no nightmares or
frights. And even as early darkness settled
round him, hours later, in Halifax – and while
he was waiting to learn where he’d roost till
U.S. airports opened again – he was still a
calm man. By then he’d guessed that the small
painting he’d brought from Paris, cushioned in
socks and T-shirts in his suitcase, was the
cause of his peace; but he couldn’t know why.
That understanding, and the help it would bring
him, was weeks away.
* * *
With all the diverted flights, every hotel was
filled before his plane touched the runway; so
Mabry was seated in the living room of the
Wilkins family, who’d offered him a tidy room,
before he learned from their television that no
private citizens were being allowed anywhere
near his part of lower Manhattan. And after a
welcome Irish-stew dinner, with healthy lashings
of good rye whiskey, his eerily quiet hosts left
Mabry alone in the kitchen to try once more to
reach his daughter. After six tries he managed
to speak with her brusque roommate on the Upper
West Side. Yes, Charlotte was safe but at her
yoga class.
When Mabry hung up he laughed for the first time
since leaving Rome and Paris. Why should a
world-class catastrophe disturb Charlotte
Kincaid in the higher reaches of mind-bending
yoga she’d now attained? He helped himself to
another drink from the quart Tim Wilkins had
left beside him and tried again to call the
numbers of a couple of friends who lived in his
building on Rector Street – endless unanswered
rings. Then he tried his father; and at last the
phone in North Carolina gave its ancient cranky
ring. It had been as busy all day as the White
House.
Eventually an unexpected woman’s voice answered.
“Father Kincaid’s residence. Who’s calling
please?” It had only been recently that Southern
Episcopal clergymen were addressed as Father by
their more fervent parishioners, and no one
representing his father had ever asked to know
who was calling. So when Mabry repeated his full
name twice and was still apparently
unrecognized, he raised his voice to a civil
near-shout. “Just say I’m his son – his last
living child. I suspect he still knows me.”
The woman thought through that as slowly as if
she were testing the claim between her teeth for
gold. Then her voice went lower, a sudden and
disarmingly beautiful pitch. “Oh good, Mr.
Kincaid, he’s truly been worried. Next time,
call him sooner.” The words were slow and oddly
accented – an almost surely American black
voice but distinctly altered by life abroad or
by earnest intent.
For a moment a patch in Mabry’s chest warmed to
her sound. Even in Italy no woman’s voice had
sounded that welcoming, but the whiskey made him
snag on her orders to call sooner next time.
Before he could ask what plans the woman might
have for further chaos, she set the receiver
down. Mabry could hear the trail of her
footsteps wandering off and at last the sound of
his father’s new wheelchair.
There were the usual thirty seconds of fumbling
and wheezing; then “Darling Jackass, where is
your butt?”
The big surprise of the long entirely incredible
day came instantly. Tears filled Mabry’s eyes.
For another half minute, he couldn’t speak. Then
he said “Oh Pa, I’m almost up in the Arctic – Halifax,
Nova Scotia.”
The Reverend Tasker Kincaid paused to test the
truth of that. Was this truly his son? Was his
only near-kin somehow safe in Canada? At last he
said “This new TV you so rashly sent me? – it’s
saying all the flights that weren’t hijacked are
skewed around badly. You’re intact though, boy?”
The rust was clearing from the old man’s voice.
By now he was sounding priestly again. Not the
holy-Joe fraudulent timbre so rife in the
Christian clergy but an almost trustworthy
confident beat. He also sounded more nearly in
control of his faculties than he’d been for
months.
Mabry had thought that the day’s disasters would
have shaken his father. He’d stumbled only three
weeks ago and broken an ankle; and at best
lately, his memory had seemed more fragile by
the week. But this voice now was encouraging. So
Mabry said “Pa, I’m in full possession of all my
limbs and most of my wits, such as they are. A
kind family up here has taken me in for as long
as I’m grounded – two days at most, they say.”
Tasker said “Who is they? You’re assuming the
airports will open, ever. I’m assuming worse
trouble is barreling toward us than anything
we’ve seen today. These Muslim lads know what
they’re doing and we plainly don’t. They’ve got
H-bombs.”
Mabry laughed again, now pleasantly weary. “Why
is it that a heathen like me takes the rosy view
while my favorite clergyman foresees the worst?”
“- Because your pa is a priest, dear Hotdog.
God is famous for smiting us, hip and thigh,
just when we think He’s our best friend.”
Mabry said “He’s holding four aces today, that’s
for sure. He or Allah.”
“Don’t knock Allah. Allah’s got our phones
tapped – and don’t forget, Allah’s just the
Arabic name for our God.”
There was some consolation in learning that,
whatever else the day had destroyed, his father
still held on to monotheism; so Mabry took
another deep draft from his tumbler of rye. He
was not a big drinker under normal conditions,
but surely he was past his limit today, so he
tried to steer the talk to saner zones. “The
airline says we may fly out tomorrow. Lord
knows, there are ten million things I’ve got to
check on.” He’d been on his first real vacation
in years.
Tasker said “Your zillion things can wait
forever. Where are the things these people
treasured who perished today? What good did
things do them?” The old man heard himself
mounting the pulpit and he chuckled
apologetically. Then he said what he thought was
his most important truth. “You don’t have a
home, son. Not in New York. You never did.”
For an instant Mabry feared his father might
know some awful fact; and the dim Canadian
kitchen around him, with his hostess’s
cookie-jar collection, threatened to be a
permanent prison.
In Mabry’s pause, Tasker gouged his point
deeper, though he kept his tone down. “You’ve
never made a home since you left your mother.
And you know that.”
Again, for a moment, it seemed a mere fact. He’d
never let his marriage be a home. Then his anger
at his father’s endless large-and-small
condemnations rose in his throat. “Listen, Pa,
you don’t know that. You’ve spent as little time
with me in the past forty years as you could
possibly spare.” That much, anyhow, was true.
And Tasker had the sudden grace to grant it.
“It’s been years, if ever, since I claimed to be
a father. But I also know you’ve failed your own
child, as lately as today.”
“Pardon me, Preacher, but how do you know that?”
“I’ve talked to your daughter – my one
grandchild – two or three times today. Talked
to her, not ten minutes ago. She’s not heard
from you.”
“You must have her cell-phone number then. I
refuse to use it. And she won’t respond to calls
anyhow from the midst of a perfect yoga position
with both heels locked behind her neck.”
Once more Tasker laughed and, this time, his
chuckle had become more nearly the giggle from
the rare times he’d roll on the floor with Mabry
and Gabriel (the golden brother who’d died at
age eighteen). When Tasker had caught his
breath, he took a new tack. “The weather down
here is so damned gorgeous you’d barely believe
it.”
And Mabry saw a splendid Carolina late summer
day – he still loved the gripping damp and the
blazing light like year-old brass. But he
couldn’t risk yielding to what reeked
suspiciously of one more urge to fly down and
visit the Aged Laid-Up Solitary Parent. He
launched his own tack. “Reverend Kincaid, sir,
who was the damsel that answered your phone? She
didn’t seem to know you had kinfolk. Have you
found some chunky new girlfriend from Poland or
an anorexic model from Mazatlï?n?”
“Audrey – you know her.” Tasker clearly
believed the claim.
“No, Pa, I don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me. Audrey – you grew up with
her. Well, very nearly.” Tasker’s mind was
balking on the woman’s last name. “She’s close
kin to us, old Cooter’s grandchild.”
Mabry said “You mean Thornton? Wasn’t Cooter a
Thornton?” Cooter had been Mabry’s grandmother’s
cook, an antique – but nonetheless
rail-straight – figure from near slavery days.
She wore a perpetual black cloche hat that made
her head look like a cooter shell, the dark safe
house of a ground turtle, a terrapin. And she’d
only retired, with hard-earned dementia, at
ninety-odd years old, when Mabry was maybe five
or six. But even with his adult knowledge of the
local miscegenation rate, any chance that they
were kin to Cooter or her numerous clan was more
than unlikely, however intriguing.
Tasker said “Thank you – yes. She’s Audrey Dell
Thornton.”
Mabry said “If she’s who I think, she’s bound to
be Cooter’s great-great- or great-granddaughter,
Pa. She’s something like twenty years younger
than me.”
But Tasker only said “Not quite.” Then he said
the full name again, rolling it out like a
phrase from the grandest litany in the prayer
book – the old prayer book before they made it
sound like something Xeroxed on cheap copy
paper. And the nicely imposing sound braced the
old voice even more strongly. It sounded almost
as firm as it had, oh thirty years back – the
days when Mabry would call from college and try
to ease out a few extra dollars for one more
trip to a Vietnam protest in D.C. or Boston or
down to Key West for “a spring break of
painting.” (Tasker might say “Painting what
exactly? – frescoes of luscious oases around
girls’ quivering navels?” And Mabry might say
“You sound like you’ve seen more navels than
me.”
Continues…
Scribner
Copyright © 2005
Reynolds Price
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7432-5400-7
Excerpted from The Good Priest’s Son
by Reynolds Price
Copyright & copy 2005 by Reynolds Price .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
