Pew

by Catherine Lacey

Where I am from, we have many woods, many hikers. Here, not so many—people go to church instead. So we must let the forest know we appreciate it. We kept walking, slowly, each step soft. A few feet off the path a dark bird was bathing in a puddle. She turned her beak toward Mr. Kercher as we passed, chirped, then flew deeper into the woods. We climbed a slight hill, and when we reached the top, the light shifted, made the world more stark and clear. There was a log on its side and Mr. Kercher sat, so I sat next to him and we listened to a creek below us, listened to the water pass over the stones and the stones be washed with water. A wind came and went. In our silence I felt as if something had been given back to me that I’d lost a long time ago. Mr. Kercher did not look at me and I did not look at him. There was no need.

Mr. Kercher’s voice disappeared into the pines, the creek, the soil and stones. His hands were palm up on each knee and his face tilted up. His mouth hung slack awhile, then shut. It’s always seemed to me—and as I get older, I feel this even more intensely—that kindness to other people comes with its own reward. It can be immediately felt. And the only thing I can see that a belief in divinity makes possible in this world is a right toward cruelty—the belief in an afterlife being the real life … not here. People need a sense of righteousness to take things from others … to carry out violence. Divinity gives them that. It creates the reins for cruelty … Mr. Kercher stood up then and looked around him, as if he’d just remembered where he was. All his crying was gone then. I’m so sorry to take up all this time. He smiled and looked around as if suddenly lost. I don’t usually say so much. He put his hands in his pockets and removed them. There’s really so little to say.

Dr. Corbin came in a pale beige truck with one soft, undivided seat in the front. He wore a plain gray suit. His shoulders stooped and his chest caved as if he were forever peering over the edge of something. I had the feeling he’d just realized something dear and lost to him was never coming back. He held a complicated privacy, his own slow wind. I don’t know how it is I can sometimes see all these things in people—see these silent things in people—and though it has been helpful, I think, at times, so often it feels like an affliction, to see through those masks meant to protect a person’s wants and unmet needs. People wear those masks for a reason, like river dams and jar lids have a reason.