The man from canajoharie
by Nancy Scott
He had made a name for himself in this town. He was in his mid-thirties then. I can’t think of anything he did or said that offended anyone. He was the guy you trusted to follow through so you could count on a fair deal. If he thought he could do it, he’d tell you so; if he didn’t think it was a good idea, he would let you down in the most disarming way. When he addressed a group, he’d thank everyone, but make it seem as if he was speaking only to you. It had been easy to love a guy like that.
As I got to know him better, he confided that he never counted on things to go his way. Sometimes he got so annoyed with people who stuck to positions that had no merit that he was afraid he’d lash out and squander the goodwill he’d so carefully built.
“You don’t honestly believe that?” I said. “You are the most generous and organized person I know.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said, as he reached out and touched my arm.
I believe he saw his life’s work in service to others. He had recently finished a degree at the Seminary and was working on an MBA in New York City where he commuted two nights a week. He was married with two young kids and also a partner in a financial venture with a guy who knew about leveraging capital.
I was the director of a daycare center. In late May, we lost our lease and would be out on the street by the end of August. Where would forty kids and staff relocate on such short notice? We had been housed at the Friends Meeting for years, but could no longer afford the rent. In charge, I had looked everywhere for space but to no avail. I knew my friend held sway with his church, but I didn’t think it was large enough, and he never offered. There were other problems, too.
The white-washed church had stood vacant during the week because Reverend D., a brusque, fleshy old man, used a room behind the sanctuary for his trysts with young men from the Seminary. My friend explained that the congregation knew about it, but were short on funds to pay the minister. It was easier to look the other way.
I asked my friend why he put up with that. “You tithe a percentage of your income to pay this creep. You’re a deacon in this church.”
“I’ve tried many times to bring about change,” he said, “but I keep getting out-voted. It’s hard because these are consensual encounters.”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“We like the people in the congregation,” was all he said, and then added, “I hate to see any space stay vacant when there are so many community programs that could make good use of it.”
Was that a generic observation or was he trying to tell me something?
The following week after a town meeting we both attended, he said, “I have to drop some papers off at the church. Come with me.”
When he let us in, the church was dark and spooky. He switched on the lights and the whole place lit up like Main Street at Christmas. I couldn’t believe it.
He took the sheaf of papers he had with him into the front office. I followed him.
“I know you’re always chastising me about this place, but I wanted you to see it,” he said. “I think I can sell the congregation on your idea.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. I suddenly realized that he’d already done that and the place was ours.
I rushed at him and gave him a hug. He returned the hug, and there was an awkward moment when we both realized something more was going on between us.
He stepped back and smiled. “So where do we start?”
As we walked the empty corridors and sized-up the Sunday school classrooms to get an idea of what space we would have to work with, I suddenly felt as if my white shirt was too tight and my denim skirt too short. On the other hand, he hadn’t been ordained yet.
That’s how the new daycare center got started, and he and I became more than friends. We worked non-stop to get the doors open by September. He cajoled the zoning board to meet during June in order to secure a variance to permit daycare in the church. I chased to fill out forms from square footage per student to lunch menus to ordering more finger paints. He handled the church business: the lease and upgrades to the space. Then we strategized how to pass state and local inspections. He arranged for a local contractor to resurface the parking lot for free. I hired additional staff. We organized parent work crews to set things up inside and to build a fenced play yard. Doors opened 2 ½ months later on the first day of the public school session. We even had a waiting list. We were giddy with success.
Amidst the frenetic activity, he and I managed to carve out private moments. One evening while we were poring over blueprints in his office, he leaned in to kiss me. When I pulled away, he asked, “Do you know how it makes me feel when you do that?”
I nodded. We were about to cross the line.
“I know you’re afraid,” he said. “So am I.”
His friends had left him a key to their guest house. With both of us married and our careers not yet fleshed out, we concentrated on the present; we dared not think of a future. We found ways to spend time together after the daycare was up and running. It was never enough, but we had too much else at stake.
The following summer, he and his family left for Indonesia, where they would spend the next three years. We wrote to each other. “It’s good to hear from you,” he said. “…we had some fun, accomplished a few things…and celebrated some life together…for that I am grateful.” After his return, the family settled on the West Coast, and he and I lost touch. I want to believe we had the same lingering regrets about that.
My husband walked out a few years later. If he thought anything untoward had been going on that wild summer, he never mentioned it. In fact, he pitched in to build a swing set. But later, he became another jerk who tried to get out of paying child support. Luckily, I had stamina, because we didn’t have money. It was hard to console my boys when they objected to wearing “bobo” sneakers from KMart.
On a hot Sunday in July, I promised to take the three kids to the community pool. We couldn’t afford to keep the membership in the private swim club we had belonged to, but any wet place on a hot day provided some relief. The pool was crowded, so I found a shaded spot under a huge umbrella and tried to put aside the worries of the day.
“Do you mind?” I heard a voice and opened my eyes. They immediately focused on the stranger standing in front of me who motioned to the other deck chair.
“Not at all,” I replied. “I think they belong to the pool.”
He had an attractive smile, which he used to advantage. I thought he wanted to strike up a conversation. I didn’t feel like making small talk, but there was something about his demeanor that put me at ease.
“Do you come here often?”
“No. I’m from Canajoharie,” he said.
“Where’s that?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“About fifty miles from Albany, NY,” he said smiling. “It’s a Mohawk name.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I’m attending a conference at the Seminary. A pool pass is part of the entertainment.”
Glancing over at the crowded pool, I said, “That sounds like a bad deal. It looks as if your spot in the water has already been taken.” We both laughed.
“I agree.” He reached out to shake my hand, “I’m…” At that moment one of my boys barged between us wailing about something or other, and I completely missed the guy’s name. Too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it, I smiled and turned my attention to my son. Reaching into my purse, I pulled out several singles.
“Go find your brother and sister and buy some ice cream.” He was off like a shot. “You have kids?” I asked.
“Two,” he replied.
“Boy? Girl?”
“Yes,” he said. “One of each.”
He was tall and slim, with dark, wavy hair, but his body was very pale as if he didn’t spend much time outdoors, bare-chested, so that he could soak up the sustaining sun. I was itching to ask him his name, but convinced myself it wasn’t important because in a few minutes we would part company.
“This is my last night here,” the guy with no name said. “I realize I’m being forward, but I notice that you aren’t wearing a wedding ring, and I’d like to ask you out. It’s such a lovely town. Would you spend a few hours with me?”
Our eyes met. I had never been asked out by a strange minister before. While he held his gaze on me, he smiled and nodded “yes” as if he was answering for us.
In fact, I had no plans for the evening. The kids were going to their father’s house for an overnight, and I always hated to be alone during those times. It made me acutely aware that we were no longer a family.
My nameless date and I went for a simple dinner, and then we walked around the town hand-in-hand, stopped for a coffee and chatted about the night and the velvet breeze and that was pleasant enough. We ventured into the community park where we sat on the ground at the base of the giant oak and talked about raising kids. We laughed easily. I kept thinking I’d met him before but, of course, that was impossible. The more time we spent together, the harder it became to ask him his name.
Then things got weird. “I have a room at the Seminary,” he said. “Evidently, I am the only one on the second floor. Would you come there with me? I would very much like to spend the night with you.”
In my experience, there had always been some foreplay before that suggestion, and it had been many years since I’d sneaked into a men’s dorm.
“Don’t you have a wife?”
“Yes,” he said, “but we’re separated. The kids live with me. We are under a microscope in the town. It gets lonely because we are still married and, in the eyes of the church, I’m not supposed to have relations with any woman except my wife.”
There was something disarming in his voice. I naively believed that a minister who served his flock could handle his own problems, too.
My former lover and I had leaned against the base of the same tree years before, and the blue wave that swept us up had been palpable. He’d never told me what was going on with his wife. One day in August, while standing in line at Acme, I overheard her telling another woman how her husband was so busy getting his MBA that he was never home. I knew he had no summer classes. I never questioned him about how he had handled it with his wife. I trusted him to protect us and he did.
Now I’m sitting under the same tree with another minister who is propositioning me. I admit I was tempted. He was a nice-looking guy, his eyes sparkled when he talked, and his smile conveyed far more than his words, but I wanted the full story from him first. The deeper we got into this conversation, the more convinced I was that I could never say, “I’m sorry but I didn’t get your name.”
The short version was this: They had come from a small parish in western Massachusetts. The move to Canajoharie was a real opportunity for them. He had no idea what was coming until six months later, when his wife announced that she’d fallen in love with a local mail carrier, a women who lived in the same town, and she planned to become a mail carrier, too, and live openly with this woman.
When the congregation found out, the elders were upset. After much discussion, he was informed that his contract, which was ending in a few months, would not be renewed. They defended their decision by stating that, given the flagrant nature of his wife’s immoral conduct, she had become an embarrassment to them. They didn’t blame him, but felt he would be happier somewhere else. He was wounded. The kids had finally settled in. He didn’t have any other prospects. He said he still loved his wife and would take her back, but she refused to consider it. He added with a wry smile, “Ministers in my predicament are not in great demand.”
He told his story matter-of-factly, except to shake his head as if he couldn’t grasp his bad luck. I believed him.
The Seminary dorm room was monastic. A bed, a desk, a lamp, a bible. We could have been anybody. Curiously, it didn’t feel that way. The man from Canajoharie was attentive, passionate, and not, in the least, apologetic. After what his wife had put him through, I’m sure he no longer felt the need to honor his vows.
Years earlier, it had felt different. A first, we had struggled with ways to define our relationship but, after that blue wave crashed into us, we were helpless to resist. In the end, we did what we wanted to do. I still flashback to that summer where we stretched the late hour as far as we could, which might partly explain the night I spent with the nameless minister from Canajoharie who got up early the next morning to buy me coffee before he kissed me ‘goodbye’.
About the Author: Nancy Scott has been Managing Editor of U.S.1 Worksheets for more than a decade. She is the author of five full-length books and four chapbooks: Ah, Men (Aldrich Press, 2016); The Owl Prince (Aldrich Press, 2015); Running Down Broken Cement (Main Street Rag, 2014), Midwestern Memories (Aldrich Press, 2013); On Location (March Street Press, 2011); Detours & Diversions (Main Street Rag, 2011); A Siege of Raptors (Finishing Line Press, 2010); One Stands Guard, One Sleeps (Plain View Press, 2009); Down to the Quick (Plain View Press, 2007). Nancy has worked with foster and adopted children, homeless families and those with mental illness or AIDS. This work inspired the poetry in Running Down Broken Cement. Visit www.nancyscott.net for more information.