Mary Mabel wilted onto the cot.
“Ah, here come the tears. I’m to feel guilty, am I? Well, you can boo-hoo till doomsday. You brought this on yourself, you and your games of pretend.” He brushed a tear with his sleeve. “It’s for the best, us parting. You’ve hated me your whole life. I don’t mind. Just have the guts to say it. Say that you hate me, so I can leave in peace!”
She couldn’t. He went to smack the hurt off her face. Instead, he grabbed her mama’s teacup and smashed it against the wall.
“Now, curse me,” he wept. “Curse me to hell!” He grabbed his knapsack and ran out the door.
She listened as he blubbered down the corridor, and up the steps to outside. Heard the heavy door slam. She stayed very still for a time, as if, if she stayed still long enough, it would all go away. At last, she crawled across the floor, collected the shards of her mama’s cup, and shrank into a ball in the corner. It was time to pack and go. Go? Where?
“Mama,” she called out, “what am I to do? I need you. Help me. Please.”
But there was only silence.
III
HUNTERS and HUNTED
A Night of Terror
The next thing Mary Mabel knew, the porter had arrived to collect her. “You’re to be stowed in the trunk of the Packard and spirited past the newshounds at the gates.” The indignity was a relief. She was too upset to think, much less be swarmed by reporters. She tossed a few clothes in her bag, along with The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, said goodbye to the rest of her books, and left home forever.
The porter dropped her across town, at Highway 2, on the outskirts of London’s east end. “Hike your skirt, you’ll hitch a ride no problem.” He handed her five dollars.
“Thanks,” she said. Together with the spare change her papa had thrown at her, she’d have food for a couple of days.
The porter drove off. Mary Mabel planted her suitcase at the side of the road and stuck out her thumb. The fourth car stopped.
“Where to?” the man asked as she got in.
“Wherever you’re going.”
“Aren’t you the sly fox.” He put his arm around her shoulder. She slapped his face, hopped out, and raced back into town as fast as her legs would carry her.
The rest of the day she wandered the east end, incognito. Parishioners from St. James didn’t go near these dead-end streets, and her picture hadn’t appeared in the papers. Not that her mug on the front page would have changed anything; she went unrecognized by a pair of Pentecostals who’d been at the hospital. Out on a missionary patrol, they spotted her sitting on a bench, and ran over with their Bibles, eager to testify how they’d witnessed the Beeford resurrection with their very own eyes, and how Miss McTavish was one of their own.
“Well, I’m she, and I’m not one of anybody’s,” Mary Mabel said, “though if you could spare me a room for the night I’d be obliged.”
“You’re not Miss McTavish!” the elder huffed. “You’re a two-bit whore! A pox-ridden clap-breeder! How dare you pretend to be who you aren’t?” The pair turned on their heels and took off in search of likelier candidates for salvation.
At dusk, Mary Mabel found herself at the entrance to the Western Fairgrounds. The revival tent stood silhouetted against the sky, the centre collapsed, tears in the canvas brilliant with sunset. “So this was where Timmy Beeford was electrocuted,” she marvelled. She gaped at the shell, what was left of the generator, and the hulk of the trailer-truck. It was a wonder that only the boy had died.
Night fell. Shadows slipped under the tent flaps and into the trailer. Was it safe to fall asleep among strange and lonely men? She decided not to chance it. Luckily, the truck’s cab was empty. She crawled in, locked the doors, and fell asleep, a full moon shining through the windshield, God’s night light to the forsaken.
Next morning, she was up before the rounds of the London Parks Department. She freshened up in the Fairgrounds’ washroom, managing a sponge bath in one of the stalls with a pair of socks she wet in the sink. For food, she settled for a late afternoon bowl of pork and beans which, with a slice of buttered bread, rice pudding, and a Maxwell House, could be had for sixty cents at Minnie’s Good Eats across the road.
By sundown, she was back in her cab, curled up for bed, proud of herself for surviving her first full day on the streets. “It’s not so bad,” she thought. “At least it could be worse.”
Mary Mabel was right. It could be worse. And it soon was.
She woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling she was being watched. Rolling over, she saw a man standing outside the passenger door, his nose squashed flat against the window. Her Peeping Tom was a vision from the crypt. His eyes gleamed wild from deep sockets, sunk in a head papered in gauze like Boris Karloff’s Mummy. Ears, unnaturally large, sprouted from the bandages, along with clumps of matted hair. Seeing her awake, the monster began to jabber. Saliva drooled from his mouth, a mouth with jaws that appeared to be wired shut with clothes hangers.
Dear God, she thought, it’s a lunatic escaped from the town asylum!
The creature began to claw at the window. Long, bony fingers rattled the door, fiddled the handle. Mary Mabel scrambled to the driver’s side and pressed the horn with all her might, praying the nearby tramps would save her. No such luck. They fled in all directions.
The lock popped up. The door swung open. The madman grabbed her by the calf. She flipped over, yanked up her free leg, and landed a boot to his chin. He reeled back, howling. She turned to escape out the driver’s side. A second stranger blocked the exit. He shone a flashlight in her eyes. She hoisted her bag from the cab’s floor and held it like a shield.
Flashlight chuckled. “We’ve got us a live one.”
“Godda beesh!” swore the madman.
Mary Mabel looked from one to the other. “Back off or I scream!”
“As if anyone would care. What’s your name?”
“None of your beeswax!” She cast a nervous eye at the maniac. To her relief, he’d shifted his attention to the glove compartment, rifling through a grab-all of maps, receipts, pencils, old toothbrushes, and crumpled sandwich bags.
“I admire your spunk,” Flashlight continued, “but you’re in a heap of trouble. Break and enter. Tell us your name or we turn you in.”
“Clara Brimley,” she answered warily.
“Liar. Not to worry, I’ve other ways to find out.” He emptied her bag and searched it, opening the cover of her Collected Works. He read the inscription: “‘From the Library of Miss Mary Mabel McTavish..” His jaw dropped. “You’re Mary Mabel McTavish?”
“What’s it to you?”
Flashlight whooped like he’d hit the bingo jackpot. “Criminey, crackers, and tangerines!”
His monster pal joined in: “Ass an ee sha ruhseef!”
“You can say that again,” Flashlight said. “Miss McTavish, God has answered our prayers.” He saw her confusion. “My apologies. The name’s Floyd Cruickshank. And this here’s my partner, Brother Percy Brubacher.”
Life in the Vineyard
Brother Percy Brubacher would live to regret finding Mary Mabel in the Holy Redemption trailer-truck, would live to curse her name and all her works, fulminating from soapbox pulpits on Los Angeles street corners to the cell of the prison where he would be held on charges of kidnapping and murder. Yet at the time,