Chapter 2 American Crow #8
They waved. They made no attempt to get out of the car. I waved again and called, “We need some help here!” Their glacial
slowness as they climbed out of the car proclaimed reluctance as eloquently as a sign. As they approached, I called, “I’m
Irene Bigelow and this is Miranda, my mom. We’re friends of the Wilds. It seems like they’re not here. Did something happen?”
After a stretched-out moment, the woman, stern, with chopped gray hair said, “You might say that.”
“What happened? Are they hurt?” I thought, Somebody’s done for.
“Not in the way you mean,” she said.
“What then? I need to find them. It’s about their daughter, Felicity.”
“We know about Felicity. We are praying for her,” the woman said, as the man pulled a snow shovel out of the Jeep.
“Are the younger kids okay?”
“They’re with their father,” said the woman. “We’re the Gows, Sharon and Dave. We’re the caretakers. I can give the reverend
a note if I see him.” I handed her a card from the exterior clip of my phone case.
“Tell me how I can find the other pastor, Sara?” I said. “She must be here.”
“She’s in a conference with the council,” said Sharon Gow.
“What happened?”
The man began to shovel the front walk, sending up furious jets of snow. “It’s not for us to talk about,” he said. “You can see what happened on the news. There were some camera people out here yesterday.”
My mother spoke up. “My daughter is the news. She’s a reporter. Please tell us where Ruth is.”
“That, ma’am, nobody knows,” said the presumed Dave Gow. “You can probably find the reverend, if you can call him that, at
the home of Faith Nilson in Fond du Lac.”
Bemused, my mother and I quick-stepped our way back to our house.
“I don’t know who Faith Nilson is, but I’m not going to give her a chance to hang up on me,” I told Miranda. “I’m going to
go see her in person.”
My mother wanted to come but had her book club that afternoon, so I headed to Fond du Lac alone. The drive wasn’t far and
because Wisconsin, unlike other places, expects bad weather, the roads were clear, the snow crisp and immaculate. I’d looked
up Faith Nilson’s address, which was across from a pretty little forested park. There being no other way to announce myself,
I knocked at the door and a tall woman maybe five years older than I, with the longest blond braids I’d ever seen on an adult,
opened the door.
“Hi?” she said.
“I’m Reenie Bigelow. I’m trying to find Roman Wild. I’m a friend of his daughter, Felicity, and I’m writing a story about
her.”
“Which are you? A friend or writing a story?”
“Both,” I said. “Ruth and Roman were our neighbors. And now Felicity is in trouble and I work for a magazine . . .”
“We don’t want any trouble,” the woman said. “We have been given enough trouble as our portion.” I wondered if English was
her first language.
“Are you Faith Nilson?”
“Yes. Roman is my husband.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In the eyes of God.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Go ask him then,” said Faith Nilson Wild-or-not-Wild. “He’s over there in the park with our children. If you see him, tell
him to come home.”
I walked over to the low stone wall that encircled the small park. Snow was picturesquely drifting down on several groups
of children who had braved the cold to chase each other and stuff the new powdery stuff down each other’s necks. Their mothers
leaned against the climbing fort, like identical padded pillars of nylon. I pulled on my mittens and my whimsical red Beth
Pedicini flat-top hat and began to pace the perimeter of the park’s child-sized evergreen maze, hoping that the head-clearing
techniques in British novels, where people were always throwing on a mac and heading out for a walk, would literally work.
Suddenly, a voice just behind me said, “Reenie! What are you doing here?”
Roman had to be well into his fifties. But still, he was movie-star handsome. No, that’s wrong. He was cartoon handsome, like
a Disney prince come to life: oversize square chin, even white teeth, dramatic scooped dark eyebrows.
“Hi, Reverend Wild. I’m actually . . . I’m looking for you,” I told him. His carefully concerned frown asked why, but his
eyes told me he knew very well. “How are you?”
“I’ve had better days,” he said.
“I wanted to talk to you. I’m writing a story about Felicity. I’m a writer. I don’t know if you knew that.”
“I haven’t seen Felicity in over a year.”
“Okay, well. I’m sure you and Ruth have talked about Felicity?”
“I haven’t seen Ruth in a long while either,” he said, his tone the deep, authoritative bass he used in the pulpit. “Ruth and I divorced.”
“Oh gosh! I’m so sorry.”
“Some time ago. I live with my second . . . wife, Faith . . . and our children.”
“Your children? You adopted her children?”
“They’re my children too,” he said.
“Oh.” I dropped my bag on purpose but got out my phone and pretended to be checking if the screen was broken, but really switching
on Voice Memos so I could record him. Then I decided that there was no reason to hide it: “I want to record what you say in
case it’s necessary to use anything in the story. I doubt that because this is really just background, but I don’t want to
make a mistake. I hope that’s okay.”
I looked up, way up, at Roman Wild, who had to be six-five or taller. Then I looked behind him where two little boys were
running around, maybe about four or five—I had no idea how to estimate the age of kids. “If you were married to Ruth? You
had two families at once?” He didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head. “That’s real tabloid stuff for anybody, but a minister?”
He shrugged.
“Reverend Wild, I only came to your church one time. But it’s kind of a coincidence that what you were preaching was about
honoring your wife and being chaste in your marriage. But you were already with this other woman? Don’t you feel like you
betrayed the people who saw you as some big role model? And supported you?”
“I betrayed myself and my family—”
“Which one?”
“Very good, Reenie. Very sharp. Anyway, I betrayed myself and my Lord, first and foremost.”
I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that in that moment, I was here as a reporter, not as Ruth’s friend and Felicity’s friend, but it was as a friend that I got mad and wanted to slap that self-pitying look off his face. “And your congregation too,” I said.
“They can make up their own minds about that,” he said.
They evidently already had. “My mom and I went over to Starbright Ministry. It was a ghost town.”
“It’s being reconfigured. The county bought most of those buildings, but the church will still be a presence, I think.” He
told me he had decided to abdicate (his word) in favor of the assistant pastor because of a complex series of issues and misunderstandings.
“I was fired. I won’t be a minister anymore.”
Roman Wild looked miserable. On his cable TV show in the middle of the night, he used to proclaim himself “Wild for the Lord.”
But now, all that holy exuberance seemed distant as a cold star is distant from earth. “The short version is that I borrowed
money from the church that I intended to pay back. I had some significant debts, bills for medical things and some supplies . . .”
I thought of my father ranting, after he’d encountered Roman once downtown, in a new Mercedes and a bespoke cashmere suit,
about how the vow of poverty clearly didn’t extend to Protestants. I thought of that big, luxe, deserted house and the school,
the missionary dorms, the auditorium, the gyms . . .
“Was it a lot of money?”
“It depends on what you’d call a lot of money.”
“I would call, like, a hundred thousand dollars a lot of money.”
He said nothing.
“More than that?”
“We are all sinners,” he said.
“Well, I hope you work it out. I just wanted to talk about Felicity . . .”
“I haven’t killed anybody,” he said.
Just then, the two little boys in identical stocking caps embroidered with leaping red stags ran up and grabbed Roman Wild around the waist. One yelled, “Daaaaaad! I’m too cold! Hot chocolate! Hot chocolate! You promised!”
“Felicity pleaded not guilty,” I said.
“I heard.”
“Dad!” the second child shrieked. “We have to go home!”
“Reenie, this is Owen the Loud, and this is . . . Roman Jr. We call him Romy.” He had no shame. “I should get these rascals
back. Faith probably has dinner ready. Anyhow, Felicity’s problems have nothing to do with me.”
“You sure you want to say that? It sounds cold.”
“I don’t mean to be cold. But I’ve lost everything. I am suffering.”
I nodded at the two beautiful little kids. I’d met Rapunzel, their mother. It seemed that Roman Wild would land on both feet.
He saw my glance. “Reenie, I did not want to hurt Ruth or my boys, my older boys. They’re with me right now, in fact, and
I’m trying to explain to them in a way they’ll understand. But they’ll never understand. Not until they’re grown men and they
have their own complicated lives. I am mortified.” Roman looked like he was strangling, his face purpling. Was he having a
heart attack? Or a stroke? “When David saw Bathsheba, he was struck with love for her and lay with her, and when her husband
came back, to cover for the pregnancy, which is what happened to me, there was a pregnancy . . .” He spoke as if this baby,
presumably Owen the Loud, had fallen from the sky, which maybe, in Roman’s mind, he did. “But Uriah didn’t want to claim the
baby and so David sent him into battle and made sure he was killed.”
“Well, right, you haven’t killed anybody. And you’re not King David.” What kind of delusions did this guy have anyway? A defrocked
Wisconsin minister comparing himself to this great Biblical prophet . . . or whatever David was?
“David pleaded with God to forgive him. He freely acknowledged his sin. He said, ‘my sin is ever before me . . . Against you . . . have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight . . . Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me . . . blot out all my iniquities.’”