The Green Age of Asher Witherow. M Allen Cunningham

      We crested the ridge and descended through the fog toward town, the Congregational church windows hazing yellow ahead of us. Mother sighed and dropped my hand to pull her shawl up. She spoke again and her voice was low and pointed.

      “There are things that should not condescend to us, Asher—things that ask of us and are strong in how they stand. It’s not our place to find them fitting or not fitting, because they’re older than us, or worthier or holier. Do you see? Don’t ask how school agrees with you and don’t let anyone else ask you such things. Fit yourself to school and learn to agree with it. That’s the best way.”

      “Yes, mama. I understand. I’ll keep my head at my books.”

      “The grave,” she said, “is no place for mirth!” The words jutted against the clouded night. It was clear she had not addressed them to me but to something inward with which her soul grappled.

      At home we found father in the rocker by the stove, smoking his ivory pipe in a daze.

      “Did someone walk you home?” he asked.

      “Asher escorted me,” said mother. She swept across the room to the stove, rubbing her hands.

      “Yes, but you two fumbled through the dark no doubt.”

      “We made out. We’re here after all. Our son’s a fine chaperone.”

      “I just wish you’d take a lamp.”

      The kettle clattered from mother’s hands to the burner. “But the oil, David. We needn’t burn it if we can see well enough.”

      “Ah, my wife—who won’t bear the escort of any good fellow with a lamp. And Maggie Hopkins having broken her neck in the dark just last year!”

      “Let it be, David. We’re safe and sound.” Mother tapped at the tea leaves in a jar. She brought a parcel down from the cupboard, parted the paper, and squared out a yellow cake for cutting. “Mrs. Dolan asked after you tonight. I hardly knew what to tell her.”

      Father held his pipe at his lap. It turned to and fro like a tiny boat between his fingers. A thread of smoke zigged and staggered from the bowl. “Mmm. Yes. I reckon I just was not suited this evening.” He spoke lowly down the length of his beard, which lay to his waist as he sat. “To bathe, scrub clean, then to stand at the lip of the grave, washed and smelling of soap. It didn’t suit me tonight.”

      Mother sheared three slices of cake onto a plate and slid it into the warmer. “Josiah Lyte talked to Asher again this evening.”

      “Did he?”

      “That young man takes a peculiar interest in our son. Asher says Lyte speaks to him often at school, asks him how school suits him.”

      “Hmm. Well, that’s well enough I reckon.” Father’s eyes darted toward me, a speculative sideways glance.

      “Lyte smiled at the grave again tonight,” said mother.

      “Did he?”

      “Once was curious but twice is just queer.”

      “Yes,” said father. His brow blenched in a quick wash of anger. “Tis queer. I wonder, has Reverend Parry noted it?”

      “He’s silent if he has. But I’m not the only parishioner to see it, that’s sure. Mrs. Dolan, Mrs. Griggs, Mrs. Aitken have all seen it. We can only mistrust the man—the lot of us. And for him to speak like he did this last Sunday—Jonah swallowed by an angel and not a whale, Pilate as God’s helpmate!—Better that Reverend Parry not compromise his pulpit.”

      Father got up. “Well,” he said, hinging open the stove door to knock the ash from his pipe, “man and man’ll clash sometimes. I guess it’s more troubling when it’s man and man of God—or woman and man of God for that! But it’s all one, isn’t it, not to see eye to eye sometimes?”

      “Of course, but to have Josiah Lyte drawing out questions in our boy. Asking how school suits him. As though school ought to bend to his tastes. There’s trouble waiting there.”

      Father slumped into the rocker again. He shot me a narrow grin, as though making me partner to the grain of salt with which he sometimes took mother. “But we can hardly forbid Ash to speak to him. Or him to Ash.”

      “Can’t we! Why not?”

      “Abicca, no! We’ll not stir dust in this town. Lyte means no harm.”

      “But there’s a long valley between meaning and doing—”

      “If Reverend Parry isn’t alarmed then should we be, Abicca? A man of God like him knows best.”

      Mother huffed. A bitter silence, sharp as a meat knife, halved the room while she poured the steaming tea into three cups and lifted the warm cake down. At last she made a little grunting noise, like a slight cough.

      “I only wonder how long we’ll bear it, David, before we see the cracks it makes in our lives. Such queerness on the part of a minister—”

      “Abicca,” said father. One soothing hand stroked the air as it would stroke a dog. “Enough now.“

      She brought us the tea and the cake and we sipped in silence. Father’s smoke still lingered fragrant in the house. The stove settled with quiet metallic crackles.

      After some time father spoke again, cake crumbling between his teeth. “After all Abicca, you said it yourself. We shouldn’t ask how the clergy suits us. We ought to honor our ministers.”

      Mother’s snapping voice was edged on all sides: “Then we shouldn’t ask how funerals suit us either. We should honor our dead by attending, don’t you think?”

      Father blushed. He dipped the cake in his tea cautiously, as though it were a precarious labor. His eyes clouded up and he seemed to shrivel in the rocking chair, to shrink and double over as though some massive hand had deigned to fold him up and put him away in its huge pocket. For a long moment he sat there nibbling his wet cake. Finally he said: “The Lord forgive us.”

      “The Lord forgive us,” said mother.