Chapter 5 #2
Ben moved down the center aisle. The nave was empty, awaiting the next service. Only a couple of candles on the altar illuminated the space, leaving the deepest recesses in dark shadows.
He chose a seat a few rows back. The wooden pews were just as hard on his backside as they’d always been, with the front edge of the seat digging into the backs of his thighs. Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes, but he didn’t pray. God wouldn’t want to hear anything he had to say.
The soft noise almost went unnoticed, but the groaning of the pew told him he wasn’t alone.
Sister Matthews smiled softly at him, her wrinkles accentuated by the flickering flames of the candles. “This is exactly where you used to sit.”
“I’m surprised you’d remember, with as many children as there are coming and going out of here. You can’t remember all of them.” Ben noticed the tattered hymnal in front of him. How he’d hated having to stand up and sing, his awkward voice standing out.
“Oh, but I do,” the nun replied, leaning back and looking remarkably comfortable on the pew. “Whether they know it or not, they’re all very special to me. These children are my calling. They are my purpose in life. Because of them, I wake up each day eager to see what it holds.”
“Isn’t God supposed to make you feel that way?” A smile flitted across Ben’s lips, and for a brief moment he felt the terrifying sensation of the punishment that would surely come his way for insolence.
But Sister Matthews simply wagged her finger at him and smiled a little wider. “He has His ways. He knows how to touch us, how to reach out with exactly what we need.”
“Mm.” Ben wasn’t going to argue with her, though he wasn’t sure he agreed. Would God have created all that Ben had seen on the battlefield? Would He have gladly let his sons suffer, dying of rotting wounds that couldn’t be cured?
“Did you get enough to eat?” she asked.
It was a safer topic, and one he was much happier to discuss. “Yes, thank you. Sister Andrews is very talented, especially cooking for so many.”
Sister Matthews bobbed her head. “That she is. I’m very grateful for her. I noticed how difficult it was getting for me to keep up. It was either bring in another nun or start refusing the children who were brought here.
“Not that I wanted to admit I needed the help,” she added. “Even a woman like me has a little bit of pride every now and then. I thought they might move me to one of the convents if they thought I couldn’t do my job here.”
“Surely they wouldn’t do that to you.” Ben couldn’t imagine Sister Matthews anywhere else.
“It’s often not about what’s best for one person, but what’s best for everyone.
” Her face softened, and for a moment she looked much younger than her many years.
“The children are the most important thing, much more important than my pride or my desires. Sometimes we’re called to something much bigger than ourselves. ”
“Like the war,” Ben said softly. He’d sat in this spot for the church services, but this was also where he’d first told Sister Mattews of his dream to help his fellow soldiers.
“You didn’t have to run away, you know.” She laid her fingertips gently on his cheek.
“But you didn’t want me to go,” he reminded her.
Her lips tightened, and for a moment he thought she was angry, but when she shook her head it was clear she was only angry with herself.
“I can’t tell you how much I regretted that.
I was honest with you, Ben, perhaps more honest than I’ve been with most of the orphans who come through here.
I felt you were too young; that you could wait a little while longer before making such a commitment.
“I didn’t want to lose you,” Sister Matthews choked, “and in trying to prevent it, I only drove you away. That morning when your bed was empty, I knew exactly where you’d gone. I wasn’t sure I could forgive myself.”
“And now?” Ben’s heart ached.
“I’m still figuring that out, but the fact that you’re alive goes a long way toward reconciling that.” She touched his cheek again. “You’re here and you’re alive, which are two prayers answered for me. I can tell something is bothering you, though.”
The silence stretched between them as Ben twisted his fingers together. That was her way. Sister Matthews would bring up a subject but not ask a question directly, leaving only space for the other person to talk. It was a tactic reserved only for the older orphans.
And now he was the oldest orphan of them all.
“Things have just been difficult, that’s all,” Ben finally managed.
The old woman nodded. “What happened out there?”
“Many things,” he said with a small but humorless laugh. There was too much to tell.
“How did you get hurt, then?” she pressed. “I don’t mean to be too bold, Ben, but I’d like to know. It would ease my heart more than you might imagine.”
How could it? He wouldn’t question Sister Matthews, though. The rest of the world was an uncertain, dangerous place, but she and the orphanage were the safest place he could find.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
Ben hadn’t even realized that he’d laughed. “It’s just that I used to feel so confined by the orphanage. Not all the time, but as a boy I dreamed of leaving.”
“Most of them do,” she noted quietly.
“And it was only by leaving that I found out it wasn’t the prison I imagined. It was a home. A refuge. A place where I belonged when the rest of the world wouldn’t have me. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, Sister, but I think that’s why I came back. This is home for me.”
“Oh, Ben.” She pulled him into her arms and held him close. “I was so worried about you.”
When she let him go, Ben told her. He told her of his feats as a courier, of how brave the old soldiers and generals told him he was. He described the various men and women that he’d met and those he’d lost. Ben even told her about the cornfield and the injury he’d sustained there.
There were some details he couldn’t bring past his lips: the medical tents, the piles of limbs, the sound of a saw on bone, the screams of the dying men, the warm shower of blood from the man who’d died at his own hands. Those were his secrets, or at least some of them.
“I still have this, though,” he said when he saw her face looking particularly wrinkled with concern after hearing about the bayonet. Ben pulled the leather thong out of his shirt collar, the crucifix so tarnished it was nearly black.
“God has been watching over you,” she said proudly.
He clamped his lips against any contradictions.
“It’s getting late. I can fix you up a bed in the orphanage.”
“No. I don’t want to disturb any of the boys. I’ll just stay in here.”
Sister Matthews gave him a quizzical look. “Even I know that those narrow beds are more comfortable than these pews.”
“I’ve slept on much worse,” he promised.
“At least let me get you a blanket and a pillow,” Sister Matthews insisted.
A short time later, when she’d gone off to bed, Ben was left alone. He’d been surrounded by people ever since he’d arrived. He’d been similarly surrounded while on the battlefield, but that’d been different. Everyone there had been fighting for their lives, even when they weren’t actively fighting.
Aren’t they doing that here, in a way? The orphans didn’t know what kind of future there might be for them.
The girls might have a chance to marry or to become housemaids, but they’d always suffer the stain that came from a lack of family.
The boys would have nothing to inherit to help them make their claim on the world. They’d have to start from the bottom, with no privilege or assistance, and hope that it would be enough to keep them off the streets.
He worried for them just as he worried for himself. Ben had gone out into the world, but it’d only brought him right back where he’d started.
The stained-glass windows were simple, no more than geometric patterns of colored glass. They didn’t depict Christ’s life or other scenes from the Bible as he’d seen in other churches during his travels.
On one of them, a clear panel had been inserted to replace a colored one that’d broken. Ben watched the moon drift through it as he drifted off to sleep.