Jake Aloft Read online

Jake Aloft

  By Matthew Montague

  It happened at 10:57 on a sun-drenched morning in March in the middle of the first reading (Exodus 17:3-7) just as the lector, Bill Potter, read aloud about Moses striking the Rock of Horeb and the water flowing forth for the people, and their children, and their livestock to drink.

  Jake Winters, who had been on his knees, rose slowly straight upward from his pew, his heels knocking on the seat as they passed by. His eyes were closed and his hands raised and held together, palms under his chin and his strong farmer fingers covering his eyes. As he rose higher, his knees could be seen, slightly apart, and his legs bent, and his heavy boots with toes worn from Jake using them to nudge close stall doors in the morning before Mass. Jake finally came to a stop, kneeling in mid-air, with his toes and knees about six feet above the church floor. He seemed unaware of his new position and, in fact, his jaw could be seen working under his hands as continued his prayer.

  It was a testament to Bill’s ability as a lector that no one noticed Jake for quite a long moment, but even with Bill’s rolling deep voice and the various concerns and worries and happenstance observances (“Jeez Stan’s getting bald fast”) that occupy a parishioner’s mind during Mass, it was inevitable that someone would notice Bill’s body was floating above their heads. In fact, it was Bill the lector who glanced up from the text to judge the congregation’s reaction to his pronunciation of “Massah” and “Meribah” (from the Lector Guidebook “MAS-ah” and “MAIR-ih-bah”) who first noticed Jake.

  Bill paused and then glanced down and read the last three lines of the reading very quickly. As he intoned “The Word of the Lord,” he looked up again and saw that he was not mistaken, there was a man floating above the pews. The congregation responded “Amen” and Bill thought he ought to say something but he could not really remember the man’s name very well and the cantor was already walking toward the lectern with her sheets of music and so Bill hurriedly left the lectern and walked back to his pew, forgetting to turn and bow to the alter. This was noticed by several of the liturgy committee.

  Bill sat down next to his wife, who gave him the sweet smile she saved for his civic occasions – reading at church, speaking up at a zoning committee, asking a question at Parent-Teacher Night. He smiled back at her and then turned to crane his head down to the front left of the church, to the outside side of the inner pew, where that guy…Jack something or other…was still in the air, his bent praying knees roughly at ear level.

  Bill hardly knew Jack…no, Jake. They had spoken once or twice at the Coffee Hour after Mass, something inane about the line for coffee, whether this pot was caf or de-caf or how there seemed to be more kids in the parish every year. Bill was leery of the weather as a topic, knowing that Jake…it was Jake…farmed and, that for a farmer, weather is not the light topic it was for everyone else. Bill was afraid that he might make a favorable topic about dry, sunny weather not knowing that there was a drought or say we really needed the rain not knowing that the crops were rotting in the field.

  So Bill was not the type to stand and point out that Jake (what if it was Jack?) was floating in the air above his pew – he frankly had no standing in the matter – and so he contented himself with responding to the cantor and slowly, slyly entwining his fingers with his wife’s.

  The cantor focused on the psalm – it was her first time away from the safety of the choir and Susan was extraordinarily nervous to be standing alone at the lectern and singing the complicated rhythm alone with only a suggestive chord from the piano as a guide. She had woken up that morning with a sore throat that she immediately ascribed to a subconscious desire to avoid this confrontation with the sheet of music that had bedeviled her for the entire week.

  She had sat at her piano in her dark white house in the valley by the creek every night since Monday, carefully trilling out the notes with her right hand and then slowly trilling them with her voice. She hoped a little that the nice man who had moved in two doors down would choose this night to be out walking down the disintegrating sidewalks of her damp little village and hear her voice and pause, shushing his dog, and listen in the dark to her lovely voice. But it rained all week, hard and cold with snow mixing in, and really there was no way any man was going to walk out in to the rain to hear her sing, not that her voice was any great shakes anyway.

  That Sunday morning, she had taken a cough drop and had a big glass of strawberry punch with her eggs and by the time it was time to go to church, her throat was fine but her stomach was not. All the way up the hill, she considered pulling over to burp up breakfast but when she got to the top, her bile settled and slid down her throat and she made it to the church door before the music director did.

  Susan lifted her head and sang a tricky little sequence of notes in the fourth line of the third verse nearly perfectly and smiled broadly out over the congregation, her heart aloft, and lifted her arm to call the response forth from the congregation.

  It was a lovely arm, long and graceful and thin, thought Ronald, sitting as was his habit six rows from the back, on the left, inside pew, where he could crane his head and just see the choir around the shoulders of the people in the front pew, right side. Unless that woman came in her wheelchair and sat outboard of the pews three rows back from the front. Then, Ron would need to move forward six or seven pews in order to see Susan.

  One week, he had come and sat down safely only to have the woman come, pushed squeakily down the aisle by her reluctant daughter, and park directly in his field of vision. He had spent the first part of Mass steamed at the wheeled interloper and the second part trying to atone for being angry with a woman in a wheelchair and none of the Mass seeing Susan. Which was the whole point of coming.

  When he sat and looked at Susan (whose name he had found in the parish guide) (along with her portrait, which he felt could have been done better), he admired her clothes. She wore flowing skirts, below the knee, and a different hat almost every week. Her hats themselves were sometimes questionable, he thought, but usually her yellow-gray slightly curly hair peeked around the edges in a faintly Spanish way that he greatly admired. Ron had only lived in his small house in the valley village by the falls for three months, just he and his tiger cat with the tattered ears, and he did not know his neighbors yet. He sat for just a few minutes at Coffee Hour each week, sipping his mug of bitter coffee before leaving it half-full on the table.

  Susan’s new role as cantor had come as a shock to Ronald this morning, her walk to the lectern a thrilling moment for him and hearing her voice alone and unaided left him weak-hearted. She sang, mouth partly open, eyes reaching out over the people, and he sang with her in response and followed her walk back to the choir with his eyes all the way open. He could feel his heart beating.

  Across the aisle, Mrs. Kindle watched the new man carefully and heard the fervor in his voice. She had seen him choose a pew in the rear the first week he had attended St. Mary’s and had noted his progress forward. Two weeks ago, after the congregation had mostly left, she and her life-long friend Mrs. Harrison had slyly sat down in the man’s seat and had judged his sight lines. The week following, their deductions were confirmed when Mrs. Pondermilk had wheeled in late and the man had squirmed and twisted to see around her wheelchair.

  Now, she nudged Mrs. Harrison in the ribs and nodded toward the young man sitting enraptured. Mrs. Harrison smiled and whispered a quiet, joyful “yes!” Last night, over their dinner in the kitchen of Mrs. Harrison’s small house on the lake, they had gone over their plan once more, but had decided to wait for one more piece of confirming evidence before putting it into action.

  Now, they were sure and would position themselves accordingly during coffee hour. Mrs. Harrison would exaggerate her arthritis (only a little, u
nfortunately) and ask the man to carry her coffee to the table for her. Meantime, Mrs. Kindle would recruit Susan to the table by asking for an update on Susan’s mother (the old dear was in a home these days). They would ask the young man to sit down with them and then gently interrogate him until he had revealed himself to Susan. Sparks would fly (as they were clearly already flickering) and nature would take its course. And it would be the third or fourth for the two of them. (They had introduced Bill Potter and his wife but were unsure whether to count this as a coup, as the two had disliked each other immediately, only to find that emotion preferable to none at all seven years later.) Mrs. Kindle nodded to Mrs. Harrison and whispered “yes” in return.

  Sarah Cuthridge was sure that those two old birds were whispering about her. That Harrison woman had it in for her – had never gotten over the night when Mrs. Cuthridge (then Bindle) had danced all night with Sam Cuthridge at the 1957 spring semi-formal in the old fire hall. Sarah and Sam had walked out the rear door and into the chilly