Shred of Evidence

Billie Slack was nearly seventeen the summer she found her father’s name in a Detroit telephone directory in a branch of the Philadelphia public library. “Wilton Wist,” she read aloud. “Wilton Wist.” Of course, there was no guarantee this was her father; it was, after all, the third Wilton Wist she had come across.

Wilton Wist #1 lived in New Canaan, Connecticut. She had called him nearly two years ago, and after keeping her on the phone for twenty minutes pretending to some sort of relationship, #1 finally admitted to being in his eighties. No, he confessed regretfully, he had neither sons nor male relatives with his name. “Let me know if you find him,” he urged as she quietly replaced the receiver. “You can call me collect.”

Wilton Wist #2 was the right age but the wrong color. She found him in Gainesville, Florida. Midway through her nervously hoarse recitation, he informed her he had hardly ever been out of Florida in his life except for a stint in the army in the late forties and a few brief fishing trips to a North Carolina lake.

He seemed as eager to be rid of Billie as the first Wilton Wist was to hang on to her. “I spent nearly that whole two years in Frankfurt, Germany,” he told her. “I’ve never been to Philadelphia once.” A long pause followed while Billie considered the credibility of his story. She was somehow reluctant to let go of this Wilton Wist, having discovered by now just how rare they were.

“Look, you’re a white girl, aren’t you?” he finally asked.

His question caught her off-guard. It never occurred to Billie that someone with her father’s name would be anything other than white. Sure, she couldn’t help but notice the colored people traveling on the city buses, attending the same schools, and sitting in the same public library, but they seemed to live in a different world. She doubted she had ever spoken to a colored person other than the man who sharpened knives for her mother in the back alley in summer.

“Yes,” she said, belatedly, trying to affect a casual tone. “I’m white.”

“Well, you’ve got the wrong line of the family then, I guess. To the best of my knowledge, the Floridian Wists are of the colored variety.”

That was more than a year ago. Since then Billie’s trips to libraries and Bell Telephone Company offices yielded only a handful of W. Wist(s). Not a single Wilton had turned up in the last fourteen months. The W’s she found usually turned out to be women reluctant to reveal their gender in a public directory. Billie had spoken to two Winifreds, three Wendys, one Wanda, and a Wisteria Wist in Annapolis, Maryland. None had a father, brother or son with the name of Wilton. Several insisted Wilton wasn’t even a name. “Maybe you mean Winston—like Winston Churchill,” one woman suggested.

If the W’s weren’t women, they were men who loathed their W names—and there were a fair number of them—Wilkie, Walter, Wendell, Wallace, Wesley and Ward to name a few. There were also several W. Middle Name Wist. She followed up on these too since her mother couldn’t remember Wilton’s middle name.

“I don’t think he ever mentioned one. You know, if you aren’t careful,” Kay told her with exasperation, “your whole life is going to get away from you. You’ll be an old lady complaining bitterly about missed opportunities.”

“I need to know where he is,” Billie insisted, “and why he left town like he did.”

“Well, it wasn’t anything to do with you if that’s what you think.” Kay literally shrugged off this notion by raising and lowering her shoulders and looking Billie straight in the eye. “If you have some idea that you were a howling puppy in the night he wanted to return to the pound, well, that’s just wrong. It was me he couldn’t get away from quick enough. That shows you how marrying in haste turns out. You know where we ended up after all that—just what I was trying to get away from. ”

“I’m going to find him,” Billie said stubbornly.

“People only get found if they want to be, Billie, and he’s shown no signs of wanting that. He knows where to find you. For Pete’s sake, you were born less than two miles from here!”

“He might be looking for us as Kay and Billie Wist. He doesn’t know you changed our names back to Slack. And then changed yours to DiSantis!” Billie flung the telephone directory across the table. “No one would even know I exist from the listing in here,” she shouted at her mother’s retreating back.

But now Billie had found him. She was sure it was her father. Kay told her once that Wilton came from somewhere out west and Detroit was certainly west of Philadelphia. Taking out the roll of quarters reserved for just this circumstance, Billie slipped into an empty phone booth in the library lobby.

“Wilton Wist?” she asked a minute later. Late Saturday afternoon was an excellent time to find men at home in her experience. They all settled down in front of the television to watch sports. Her stepfather even watched bowling if it was between the football and baseball seasons.

“Yes. This is Wilton Wist.”

For a moment, she couldn’t speak. “Have you ever lived in the state of Pennsylvania?” she finally blurted out.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I lived in Pennsylvania around fifteen years ago. On Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia. In a three-story stone house with a shingled roof and a wisteria vine in the summer. It had a wide front porch with an aqua-colored glider on it.” He hesitated a second. “The glider wasn’t ours but we were permitted to use it.” He cleared his throat. “By the landlady, that is.” Wilton Wist certainly wasn’t shrugging off his past; he seemed to have all the details memorized.

“Well, this is your daughter then. Your daughter, Billie. Do you remember me?”

“Praise be to God,” Wilton Wist said. “My daughter!” His voice softened to a whisper. “Are you saved, Billie? Are you saved?”

Saved? Saved from what? Her ignorance threatened to put a crimp in their conversation. She hated to admit to stupidity this early in their relationship, so she went along with it.

“Yes, I’m saved,” she told him agreeably. Perhaps it had something to do with her virginity. ‘Saving yourself’ was the usual expression. In that case, she was saved—saved at least partially by the hours stolen by her search for this very man.

“You saved me,” she confided rashly. “I’ve been too busy looking for you to do much else.”

“Praise be to God,” Wilton repeated, seeing her meaning. “My baby girl’s come home to me the way God made her. God does work in mysterious ways. Thank you, Jesus!”

* * *

“I can get there by train if I switch lines in Toledo,” Billie told her mother an hour later. “Or I can take a Greyhound bus. The train’s faster but the bus is half the price and gets there almost as fast as a car would. I’m leaning toward the bus.”“There’s no way in hell you’re going to Detroit. He hasn’t called, written a single word, bought one lousy birthday card, or sent a dime in all these years, and you want to reward him by spending all your baby-sitting money getting out there. Why can’t he come here if he wants to see you?” Kay’s eyes glittered. “Or send your fare? He’s the same worm he always was, isn’t he? Do you see what I mean now? Why I didn’t encourage you?”

“No, you don’t understand, Mom. He’s just started a new job and he can’t get away right now. He’s the director of Christian Education at a new church in Detroit. Things are just getting started there. He wants to come to Philly, but he can’t get away just now.” She sank wearily into a chair. More and more, conversations with her mother wore her out.

“Whoever heard of a new church? Every church I’ve ever seen is as old as Betsy Ross’s house. I don’t know when he got so holy either. In the days that I knew him, he didn’t go to church at all. When I insisted on having you baptized, he griped about tipping the minister a lousy ten bucks. Is that the kind of man who goes to church? What kind of church is it anyway, Billie? Christian Education! The man quit school in the eleventh grade.” Kay rose, shaking her head. “I hope I don’t need to remind you that you have a wonderful father right here. Mickey worships you and he’s going to be hurt that you want to chase across the country after that dopey Wilton Wist! I don’t even want to tell him such a thing. Just put it out of your mind.”

When Kay refused to come around to her point of view, Billie decided the decision was hers to make. In some states, she could already be married and making her own plans, going wherever she pleased. Once she was gone, Kay and Mickey would accept it, and she’d only be gone for a few days anyway, a week at most. After she got to know her father, they could take turns visiting each other. She certainly didn’t plan to stay in Detroit forever.

On Thursday, she boarded the Greyhound bus in mid-afternoon. She had set up considerable leeway for herself by pretending to a prolonged baby-sitting job. By then she’d be in western Ohio and out of Kay’s grasp.

The bus was hot and crowded and she spent the first four hours of the trip sitting next to a boy of about twelve traveling alone. He held a large bag of hard, little apples on his lap and was eating them hurriedly with his head ducked behind the bag.

“You don’t have to hide them,” Billie told him irritably. “I don’t want one anyway. They’re out of season, you know, and you’re smelling up the whole bus. We’re only supposed to eat at rest stops.” She pointed to the sign at the front of the bus where pictures told passengers what activities were not allowed. He wouldn’t even look up and her voice grew shrill with frustration. ”You shouldn’t eat so many of those things. Did you even wash them? You’ll get diarrhea!” She knew she sounded just like her grandmother but the words and tone came out of her mouth with unnatural ease.

He shrugged and continued scarfing down apples until he got off the bus in central Pennsylvania. No one took his place and Billie finished her journey in comfort, legs stretched out and eyes closed once she had tired of the dull Ohio terrain. Once the smell of apples dissipated, the bus smelled of something far less pleasant, and seeing the green cast on her face, the woman across the aisle struggled to open the window wider. The hot summer air, filled with diesel fumes and, on occasion, manure, did little to freshen the vehicle, but the hours passed as day turned into night and back to day. Eighteen hours after climbing on the bus, she stepped down into Detroit.

The terminal in Detroit was full of servicemen on their way to Germany or South Korea or Vietnam, college students on summer break, and seedy, tired-looking people who couldn’t afford to travel by plane, train or car. Wilton Wist fit right in with the last group. He came forward hesitantly, looking for a girl with a pink rose in her lapel. That was the marker they agreed on. He held his marker, a brown suede hat with a red plaid band around it, in both hands, much in the manner of a supplicant. His shoes were scuffed, with worn, uneven heels and his pants were both too long and too wide for the style of the time. His yellowing shirt collar was frayed, a button missing. The entire ensemble looked like something hastily assembled from the remnants of a church’s last charity drive, as indeed it turned out to be. In this urban setting, Wilton Wist had the gnawed-faced look of a recent Appalachian transplant. Yet Detroit was where he came from originally, wasn’t it? Kay had thought so.

Billie took in only a few of these characteristics at first glance, but she certainly recognized Wilton as someone down on his luck. His recent acquisition of a job hadn’t altered the look of terror on his face. He looked as beaten down as any man alive. If she had come to him for succor, it was going to be difficult to extract any.

“Billie?” he said, looking doubtfully at the pink rose in her lapel. Plucked surreptitiously from a neighbor’s garden yesterday morning, it had drooped hours ago on the torrid bus, scarcely resembling a flower at all now.

“Yes,” she answered. “Dad?”

This was a word Billie had waited her entire life to utter and she put down her suitcase to give him a long overdue hug. But Wilton misunderstood her intention and picked up the bag before it was completely down. He grinned nervously, feigning distress at its supposed weight. His smile revealed a nearly toothless chasm banked by puffy, red gums.

“You look kinda old for your age, don’t you?” Surprisingly, it was Wilton who said this to Billie. “What are you now—fifteen? I was picturing someone younger.” He shook his head regretfully and turned, heading for the door.

“I’m almost seventeen,” she said almost apologetically, but he was half way across the room. She hurried after him.

The street outside smelled of garbage and seemed more like an alley meant for hotel and restaurant refuse than a true street. She followed along, trying to take it all in. In a minute, he turned the corner, coming to an abrupt halt at a city bus stop. Here he put down her bag, placing it protectively between his legs.

“It won’t be a minute,” he said, ducking his head in a semi-apology. “I guess a girl like you don’t ride on buses much.” He looked her up and down.

“I take a bus to school, but my mother’s—Kay’s— husband, Mickey, has a car.” She didn’t know why she added that. Or why she referred to Mickey that way. It felt unseemly to even mention him under the circumstances. Mickey’s material success, modest as it was by most standards, only served to point out Wilton’s palpable failure. But Wilton just nodded as if he had been expecting to hear Mickey’s name and to find his successor with a car as well as his ex-wife and daughter. Well, most people had a car these days. Some families had two.

“Do you always call him by his name?” he asked suddenly. “Not Daddy then? How long has she been remarried anyway?” He ducked his head again to glance at his shoes as Kay’s name came into the conversation.

“Four years. I usually call him Mickey,” she admitted, although it seemed overly familiar now. “He’s got a daughter of his own to call him Daddy. Dad, I mean. She’s eighteen.”

Wilton, whose eyes had never stopped scanning the street for the bus, nodded as it rounded the corner and they climbed aboard. It was nearly empty at this hour of the afternoon and her father deposited two tokens in the fare box.

“So how is Kay? I bet she’s still a dish.” He blushed at his own choice of words. “I mean, I bet she’s still pretty. Looks like hers don’t fade.” He reached into his pocket and took out a wallet. Right up front was a picture of her mother. It was a photograph Kay kept a copy of, too, but Billie examined it as if it were new to her. The picture was dog-eared and molded to the plastic sleeve. It had spent too many years between Wilton’s bony bottom and a comb from the shape of the dent it bore.

“She still looks pretty much the same except for the change in hairstyles. Oh, and she’s a blonde now—Mickey likes blondes. She’s thinner, too.” Billie looked at the snapshot even more closely before handing it over. “I guess she looks s lot different.”

“Got rid of the baby fat, I’d imagine.” He closed the wallet carefully and put it back in his pocket. Looking at Billie closely, he added, “If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look much like her.”

“I look like my grandmother. Kay’s mother, I mean, not yours. You remember Adele?” Her grandmother had never had one good thing to say about Wilton Wist, and he seemed to intuit this, nodding glumly.

She looked at him again, trying to see past the frayed clothing, poor haircut and missing teeth. She wondered if he had a baby picture of her in his wallet, too, but was afraid to ask. They both sat silently watching the streets of Detroit pass in front of them. Once in a while, Wilton pointed out a landmark. Most of them seemed to be churches, and he was only able to muster enthusiasm once when they passed a large park that stretched along the water.

“That’s Belle Isle,” he told her, half-rising. “I’ll be going there on a church picnic a week from Saturday. Maybe you can come, too.” She nodded, but it was unlikely that Kay would put up with her absence for that long.

“Have you lived here very long?” she asked politely. This seemed like a neutral topic.

“About two years, I guess. Before that I lived in Denton, Texas. And before that in Des Moines, Iowa.” He said each of the names carefully, as if she never would have heard of such places before.

“Are you working on the Ds?” It came out of her mouth before she could stop it. She could hear Kay saying, “Wiseacre!” in the distance.

He looked at her blankly, and then shot her a half-grin. “Oh right! I guess I forget all the places with other letters. I wasn’t in too good a shape before that.”

“You’ve been sick?”

“You might as well know from the start, Billie, I had a wicked drinking problem.” He looked at her sharply. “That’s what busted up me and Kay. It was whiskey did us in though she probably don’t know it.” He rubbed his hands together, seeking warmth as if were January and not July on the bus. “She never caught on. Oh, I had a thousand ways of hiding it and she was too young to see what was happening. It’s part of my pledge to tell it all now. I’ve even been working on a letter of sorts for you to take home with you. Explaining what happened back then.”

Billie didn’t know what to say. She was not unfamiliar with the problems of drink. Her grandfather, Slack, had died of it and her Uncle Coe was traveling the same route. Nobody in her household spoke about it, but Kay wouldn’t have a drop in the house. Mickey didn’t mind. If he wanted a nip, he ducked into a bar although that rarely happened since he was a health nut. “That’s the best place to get it,” he told Kay. “Too easy to get hooked if it’s sitting around the house.”

Seeing Billie’s discomfort, Wilton blurted out, “We don’t need to talk about that stuff now. Come on! Let’s talk about something else. Tell me how you were saved, Billie. There’s nothing like a good testimony to raise the spirits. Jimmy says it’s like penicillin on an infection.” He looked at her expectantly and when she didn’t say anything, he doubled his efforts.

“Come on now. Don’t be shy. We’ve all been Saul on the road to Damascus once. There’s no story more pitiable than my own. I’ll tell it to you soon enough.”

“I don’t feel right talking about it yet.” She tried to look demure rather than dishonest. It was too bad she had claimed she was saved but there was no going back on it now. She was beginning to get the gist of such salvation and it seemed harder than she’d expected to fake it.

They got off the bus a few stops later and made their way down the street. Wilton walked fast and with his head down. It was all she could do to keep up with him. His gait became more and more resolute until he stopped abruptly in front of a two-storied house.

“Is this where you live?” she asked him, trying to sound relaxed. It looked like something thrown up hastily by desperate men. The left half of the house was so much lower than the right that it threatened to disappear entirely but for the drought-hardened dirt in its way. Several window panes had been replaced with cardboard; the paint was nearly eaten away, probably by harsh winters, and the two porches, an upper and lower, swung away from the façade as if attached by nothing more substantial than some rusty nails.

“I know it’s not much but it’s paid for by honest money. Neither is it defiled by alcohol or loose women. I’ve got a bed laid out for you, Billie. Won’t you come inside?” Her father stood there shivering on the sun-soaked street.

She followed him up the steps, wondering from his words if he expected her to go to bed at four o’clock in the afternoon. His flat was on the first floor and she stood quietly in the dark hallway while he struggled with the lock.

“The darned thing always sticks in humid weather,” he told her finally, “though we don’t usually get the sticky weather you have in Philadelphia.” At last he swung open the door and she followed him inside. “That’s one thing I sure don’t miss—the humidity. I’m still getting settled in,” he continued, moving across the room, “and, of course, I’m not here very much. As soon as I wash and dress, I’m over to the church. Jimmy counts on me to take care of most things.” He said this with an air of pride that seemed unnatural to his demeanor. “I’d live there if the insurance company allowed it.” This last was said with a fervency that even his talk of Kay hadn’t aroused.

The paucity of furniture and the humility of the flat itself were chilling. Her bed, made up with threadbare sheets, was set up in a living room that contained only an easy chair, a paint spattered table, and a lamp. The paint on the bare walls was peeling, the linoleum on the floors was coming loose, and the sole window was covered by a yellowing shade with a rip in it. It had never occurred to her that some people lived with so little and she had certainly never been in a home with no TV.

“Is Jimmy the priest at your church then?”

“He’s not a priest, Billie and you shouldn’t call him that. He’s not too fond of papists.” It grew quiet after that exchange. An hour into their relationship and already there seemed nothing to say to one other. Once their talk about Kay ended, Wilton seemed to lose his interest in her. He was used to a solitary existence, she told herself, but, in time, he would warm up to her. She sat on the lone chair and watched as he prepared a meal on the hot plate that served as a stove. Her offer of help was hastily refused.

“No, I’m used to doing it alone. It’ll go faster if you stay over there.” He looked up. “You just rest your bones after that long ride,” he added, softening his previous words. Speed was important apparently. It was barely five o’clock. She had never had dinner this early in her life and two day’s worth of odd snacks at odd hours and the sight of this flat had left her without appetite.

In her U.S. history class last year, Billie had watched several documentaries about the Great Depression. An image that stayed with her was one of a group of hoboes cooking their meal over an ashcan fire in a railroad yard. Their Depression-era meal consisted entirely of canned foods. Wilton’s meal that night evoked that scene. Everything came straight from a can and it was unadulterated from its tinned state. Nothing fresh or frozen was added to it. Neither were the contents mixed together. Kay was real clever at adding soup to a casserole, but Wilton apparently didn’t have any of the Campbell recipes. He tore into the meal as if it had come from Bookbinder’s Restaurant on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. Billie managed to get hers down somehow, although it was doubtful her father even noticed, so busy was he with polishing off his own plate as fast as he could. It was obvious from his skinny frame that food took a low priority.

“Want to go over to the church with me?” he asked her once the dishes had been washed at his tiny sink. “I should check things out. They had the Martha circle over there today. Jimmy will be upset if things aren’t just so.”

The jargon of church life was not part of her vocabulary, but Billie didn’t have time to ask what Martha circles were. Clearly they were trouble for her father. He hustled her out of the apartment and down the street. She hurried after him as he nearly ran the half-mile to his church. Although none of the streets they passed were as bad as the one Wilton called home, neither did they inspire confidence.

The Church of the Open Door was housed in a building still bearing the faint lettering of its former occupants, Arasz’s Bakery, on the facade. It was wedged in between Rita’s Coiffures and a nameless shoe repair business on a busy, yet dilapidated Detroit street. Inside, the Church of the Open Door remained yeastily evocative of its former tenants, although an unpleasant secondary smell was beginning to assert itself. Wilton began pointing out features and reciting church history as soon as the door closed behind them. Billie had been to church with her grandmother over the years, but that church, St. Raymond’s in Philadelphia, was a traditional Catholic house of worship. The Church of the Open Door had few of the accoutrements of organized religion. Beyond the empty vestibule, it was furnished with an odd assortment of cast-off chairs and benches. There was a red cross, badly painted, on the rear wall, and a large pile of dog-eared bibles and hymnals sat on a wobbly table at the front. Box after box of dampish clothing sat along the far wall. This was the probable source of the odor.

“The roof leaked on them last April,” Wilton told her, kicking one of the boxes. It was damp enough to hold his footprint. “I’ve been meaning to take them over to the Laundromat. We’ve got them boxes earmarked for our sister church in West Africa. Maybe you can give me a hand with them sometime.”

Seeing her surprise if not disappointment at the church, Billie’s father offered up a variety of explanations, all centering on the unwillingness of some people to part with their money or on the newness of the operation. Operation sounded like a funny word to use for a church to Billie’s ears and it didn’t match the formality of the rest of her father’s speech. She watched from the doorway as Wilton flitted about the room, rearranging things in a haphazard fashion. When he was finished, it was hard to say what had been improved.

“So what do you think of our little operation?” The voice came from behind her and she turned to find a bulky, bandy-legged man in the doorway. A smile, his only compelling feature, was brandished like a spotlight and he directed it first on her and then on Wilton, who began to babble.

“This is her,” Wilton said. “This is my Billie.” His voice had a tremble in it and Wilton seemed to occupy even less space in the world than moments earlier. Billie waited for her father to announce the man’s name, too, but he seemed to have been struck dumb.

“Jimmy,” the man said, “The name is Jimmy Hart.” He slipped across the room and threw all the switches, illuminating every shadowy corner. “Ain’t it grand?” he said, embracing the room with a wide sweep of his arms.

Billie didn’t know whether or not to respond, and in the interim, Jimmy began to laugh. His laughter was so infectious, so inclusive, that both Wilton and Billie began to laugh with him. After a moment, Jimmy began to dart around the room, pointing to some of the more exasperating features: electrical wiring dangling from holes in the ceiling, insulation poking through the poorly plastered walls, sitting water in places with no plumbing to explain it, rodent feces, broken window panes, loose tiles on the floor, and on the ceiling. With each item on his list, he made a comment or a joke that kept the mood lighter than the room’s condition might permit. Suddenly, he whipped around. “And is this the kind of place to welcome God?” he intoned, all traces of humor banished from his voice.

Wilton and Billie stopped laughing on cue, Wilton’s mouth resuming its customary slack-jawed frown. But it was Billie’s response that Jimmy sought.

“I guess not,” she decided. When he continued to wait, she amended it. “Certainly not.”

Jimmy nodded, and turning his back on the pair, began to open a pile of mail sitting on the table. Wilton signaled her that it was time to go and they headed for the door.

“Our youth group meets on Wednesday night,” Jimmy said without turning as Wilton held open the door.

“I’m not sure how long I can stay in Detroit.”

“If you’re still here, I’ll be expecting you. Wilton leads the group, isn’t that right, Wilton?” Wilton mumbled something Billie couldn’t catch. Jimmy didn’t respond either, and the two left as quietly as the creaky door allowed.

“He’s kind of scary,” Billie said almost to herself when they were half a block away.

“You just have to get used to his ways. We’re in the presence of a great man,” Wilton told her in a near-whisper. “When you hear him preach, you’ll understand what I mean. He’s got the gift for it. Not many do, you know.” She wasn’t surprised Wilton felt this way about his employer. She could see it in his eyes as he followed Jimmy Hart from room to room, as he hung on his every word, as he tried to anticipate what he might need. It might take her a little longer to come around to his way of thinking though—her not needing salvation as much as Wilton.

* * *

When they got back to Wilton’s flat, he made her call Kay right away. “No sense getting her any madder than she already is. Tell her I didn’t put you up to lying to her either.” He stood with his arms folded by the phone, but when she offered it to him, he waved her away, shaking his head adamantly.“I’ve called there half a dozen times already. You left a million little pieces of paper with his name and address on it,” Kay told her. “I think you wanted to be found. Mickey has half a mind to jump in the car and come after you.” Billie did not believe this for a minute. She wasn’t sure he even remembered she existed once she left the room.

“There’s nothing weird going on out there, is there?” Kay asked.

“Like what?”

“Well, I don’t know, Billie! I know he’s your father, but he may not have fatherly feelings toward you. Is he feeding you? Where does he sleep?”

“Mom!”

“All right, all right. Just keep your eyes open. You’re an attractive girl. What are you doing out there all day long? I don’t remember Bill as much of a talker.”

“Mostly going to church.”

“I’ll bet,” Kay said bitterly. “The Church of the Open Bar.”

But it was true and became truer still. They were at the church almost every minute. The city of Detroit was centered, indeed only existed, in the Church of the Open Door as far as Wilton was concerned, and if she suggested a trip to Belle Isle or the zoo, her father looked scared to death. There was choir practice, budget meetings, youth groups, men’s bible study, and endless circles apparently named for biblical women, composed solely of the church’s females, all populating the tiny building from dawn to dusk. Every activity, Billie found, involved Wilton in some capacity, and he was always at the piano if there were music involved. Although the congregation probably numbered less than seventy-five, many of them hung around the church in various configurations from mid-morning to ten or eleven at night. As soon as Billie was up and dressed, he was edging toward the door, and if she suggested that she wait for him at home, he began shaking his head.

“I don’t like leaving you here alone,” he told her. “We don’t have that much time together.” But once at the church, she was left to her own devices while Wilton occupied himself with a million menial tasks. He seemed incapable of even suggesting ways that she might help him and instead, he shuffled around the building, shaking his head and moving boxes back and forth. Back home, Wilton was often on the phone with Jimmy or other parishioners, who seemed to be a needy bunch. Jimmy encouraged this, her father told her.

“We’re a community—like the first Christians,” Wilton explained. “All we need on this earth, we can get from each other. We’ve got a plumber, an electrician, a greengrocer, a dentist and a hairdresser now. Pretty soon, we won’t have to count on anyone outside.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “If you decide to stay,” he told her shyly one day, “you can take on some of my tasks. I’m not so good at bookkeeping, for instance. You any good at math?”

One day Wilton made a trip to the western side of the city for scrap electrical supplies. “Why don’t you come along?” Wilton urged after breakfast. “It’s fun to poke around there and you can help me decide what to get.”

“I’ll stay here and give this place a good cleaning,” she suggested. “It can sure use it.”

Looking around, he nodded. “Well, if you have any time left over, give the Elizabeth Circle a hand with their bookbinding.” The women in the group were attempting to reclaim damaged hymnals and bibles with an inexpensive method of repair. Billie agreed to go over to the church in time for the one o’clock meeting. Left to their own devices, her father had told her, the women sat around making jokes, mostly about getting Jimmy alone. “I know they’re good Christian women,” he had said, “but that don’t mean they don’t want to get their hands on him.” She walked outside with him and watched as he made his way down the street in a crab-like fashion, stopping once to tie his shoe and another time to tip his hat to a passing mailman. Only later did she realize he didn’t step on sidewalk cracks or cross streets without a light. This made for his odd gait perhaps.

Alone in the apartment for the first time, she went through every drawer, every closet. Somewhere in this scruffy apartment must lay the secret to Wilton Wist. It was impossible for her to imagine her mother and Wilton together. But if her father had a secret life, or any life before this one for that matter, it was hidden elsewhere. Every drawer was more than half-empty and what was inside could have belonged to anyone. There were no photographs, no documents, and even the bills were scarce. Every item of clothing came from thrift shops or rummage sales, every pan was dented, and every glass showed the scratch marks of age. The medicine chest held only an unopened bottle of milk of magnesia and a dented tin of Bayer aspirin. Had any man in his forties ever had so few personal needs?

It was past one-thirty when she arrived at the church. It was the first Philadelphia-like hot day in Detroit since her arrival and the street outside was deserted. She knew before she stepped inside the building that the Elizabeth Circle had come and gone. For half a dozen women, they could make quite a racket and the vestibule was still, the hymnals sitting in a box by the door untouched. But she went inside anyway. Maybe in the church, she could find something of her father’s. Something that would tell her more of his past—of why he had left them.

Inside she heard the thunderous voice of Jimmy Hart preparing for his next sermon. His deep intonations filled the tiny building. Last Sunday, he had half-raised her out of her seat with his promise of hellfire and damnation, with his talk against the sins of the flesh. Although the congregation seemed moved, even inspired by his style of preaching, she was repulsed. Used to the tepid homilies of the priests at her grandmother’s church, Jimmy’s words and style seemed overripe and directed at a different group than the one before him. Yet his tiny congregation seemed strangely thrilled by the accusations he flung at them. She could feel an electric charge pulsing through the room as people called out their agreement with the worst of his charges, seemingly glad to be evil rather than plain boring. Much of his sermon smacked of political concerns rather than religious ones, and he finished with an especially vicious attack on President Kennedy and his papist friends in Washington. “He takes his orders from Rome,” he informed the congregation repeatedly. “What about separation of Church and State?” he reminded them.

Alone with him now, she began to move toward the door, but Jimmy Hart heard the faint rustle and whipped around. “Who’s that?” he called into the darkness.

“Just me. Billie Slack.” Her voice sounded childish and she felt her ears growing red.

“Well, hallo, Billie Slack,” Jimmy said, coming into the light. His face was damp; perspiration necklaced his shirt. Reading her mind, he pulled a large handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. “Whew! Think they’ll ever be a time when churches like this one get air-conditioned?” He walked over to the door, and holding it open, used it to fan himself. “It’d be a real luxury to air condition a building people think of only once a week.” He let the door slam shut. “Nobody gives a damn about a preacher, doing God’s work in an inferno. Not a hint of a breeze.”

“I guess I missed the Mary circle.”

“Elizabeth,” he corrected her. “Come and gone.”

“Well, I’d better go, too. My father…”

“Your father?” He looked at her with flickering eyes. “Your father’s over in Dearborn today, right? Hunting down some light fixtures.” Jimmy walked over to a scrubbed but battered pine table where a brown sack waited. “Care to join me for some lunch?” He pulled out a chair and nodded toward it.

“I had a sandwich before I left the house.”

Jimmy sat down and opened the sack, taking out a small hoagie. “Do you like subs?” he asked. “Wilton usually shares one with me.”

“I’m not really…”

“Then just keep me company,” he interrupted, his voice rising precipitously like she was prepared to argue with him. “Nobody’s going to make you eat.” He cut the sandwich into two with a penknife he pulled from his pocket. “Or eat you, for that matter. That’s what you always seem to expect. That half there’s for anyone who comes along if you don’t want it. Most days, one of God’s creatures turns up hungry.”

Billie looked toward the door. The anxiety she was feeling retreated a bit. It was true that anyone could walk in here any minute. Why did she feel so anxious in his presence? She sat down.

Jimmy smiled and bit into his sandwich. “That’s better. I skipped breakfast today and my stomach’s been begging me to pay attention to it.” A drop of oil slid down his chin and a gray, flannelly tongue caught it. “Doesn’t all that hair get hot in summer?”

“I’m used to it.” The phone rang and Jimmy got up to answer it. He spoke to the caller for a few seconds and returned to the table.

“That was Wilton just now,” he told her. “Couldn’t decide on what to get, per usual. Your daddy tests me, you know.” Shaking his head, he pulled a thermos out of his bag and poured himself a half-cup of coffee. “Most people have something they’re good at, but with Wilton—well, I haven’t found it yet. Except for the piano, that is. He plays pretty good. Want some?” He held the thermos out to her. She shook her head.

“Yeah, Wilton hasn’t turned out to be much help,” Jimmy said. “I though once I got him off the sauce, he’d be more of a man. Turns out he’s less of one some ways. He’s not even funny now he’s sober.” Billie wondered why he was talking to her like this. She wondered if this was the way adults always talked to each other.

Jimmy got up, crossed the room in three strides, and pulled a bottle of Faygo from the fridge. “Strawberry, okay?” he asked, holding the bottle up to the light.

“Yeah.” Three sips and I’ll be out of here, she promised herself. He set the bottle down on the table heavily and put a glass beside it. She poured herself half a glass and took a sip. Flat.

“I don’t know how long I can keep paying a man with so few skills. He can’t even keep my Sunday school boys in line.” She took a few more sips of the soda and, once again, prepared to go. Sighing and shaking his head, he got up and walked to the door with her. As her hand went for the doorknob, his arms encircled her from the rear, and his thick, pulpy lips pressed against her neck. Before she could react to his lips, she felt his hand on her left breast as he pushed himself up against her from the rear. It took a second for her to realize what it was that pushed.

This was so unlike the kind of advances she had fended off with boys her age that she froze, and Jimmy took her stillness for assent or perhaps fear. While one of his hands threw the lock on the door, the other urged her down.

“Your Daddy said you didn’t do things like this,” he whispered in her ear, “but I thought you might.” His tongue dripped saliva as he pushed his right knee between her thighs and began to struggle with her shorts. Suddenly the lethargy left her and Billie managed to half push him off.

“You get off of me now,” she spat. His considerable weight made it nearly impossible to move out from under him.

He looked at her, eyes narrowing in anger in the half–light, as he began to force her down again. “Your Daddy ain’t gonna find it easy to get another job. Especially if he don’t have a good reference.” His arms, which had looked short and feminine moments earlier, pushed her down easily. “He’s mighty grateful to me for hauling him out of the gutter.” Inches from her face, he added, “Do you want to see him back there? Back in the gutter?”

In the movies, someone would have come to the door. Or the phone would have rung, saving her. Instead there was only the wild panting of the man above her, the dank blackness of the vestibule they lay in, and the desperate scratching of her left hand on the heavy metal door. As much as she pushed and sobbed and scratched, it went on. His hands were everywhere and his lips followed them. His kisses were almost more difficult to endure than his big soft hands, his pulsing erection. Suddenly, she felt him pushing, pushing—and in seconds, her stomach and leg were wet and sticky. It hadn’t hurt like she’d thought it would. It was nothing. Nothing. Except it was everything, of course.

“Damn,” he was saying. “Damn it all.” He looked down at her from his knees. “I should have known what would happen lying down with a Wist. No hope of it going right. Well, get up, girl.” She scrambled to her feet, trying to clean her sticky leg and stomach with the soiled shorts.

“You’d better take something from them care boxes over there,” he told her, tucking in his shirt. “You look like hell.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “That little poke don’t count for nothing either,” he hollered after her. “So don’t get any crazy ideas about it.”

Stumbling over to the boxes, Billie rifled through one until a suitable pair of slacks turned up. She slipped them on and started for the door, her shorts balled up under her arm.

“Now, just you wait a minute,” Jimmy bellowed. She turned to find him on his knees again. Wasn’t it over yet? She started to cry, the tears stinging her raw throat.

“Get down here with me, girl.” She dropped to her knees as if fired upon as he knocked her hand from the door. “God,” Jimmy intoned in a loud voice. “Forgive this young girl here for tempting a man such as me. Her Daddy would be saddened to know what she did here today. May no one ever tell him cause he’s my own right hand. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Billie jumped up and was out the door before Jimmy could say another word. The sidewalk stung her feet through her thin sandals as she raced home. The slacks, too big it now appeared, began to slide, and she twisted the waistband tight with one hand.

Back home, her father was still absent. She didn’t know whether she was glad of this or not. She sunk onto her bed where the tears began to fall. Had she been raped? Examining herself, she seemed much the same as usual. There was no blood, no pain. Only his scent remained—something strong and acrid. Was it his alone or did it belong to all men? She paced the apartment wrestling with these questions. Twice she almost dialed Philadelphia and then thought better of it. Finally, she ran a bath and sank into it. Her borrowed slacks and crumpled blouse lay in a heap next to the tub.

“Is that you in there Billie?” Wilton stood outside the bathroom door. “Why are you taking a bath in the afternoon?”

The water was cold now, her body a network of goose bumps. How long had she sat in the tub? “I’ll be right out,” she called through the door. What would she tell him? She was unsure of what had happened in the church. Stepping out of the tub, she discovered she smelled like herself again. Was it better to just go home then? Go home after pretending to Wilton that Kay had called today and ordered her home a few days early? Dressing quickly, she stepped out the door and found her father at the table with an assortment of electrical supplies piled before him, “Boy, I sure wish I knew more about this stuff,” he said, not looking up. “I’m likely to burn the place down fooling with them.”

“Dad, I’ve got to tell you something.”

He looked up expectantly. “You’re still dripping,” he noticed, “and shivering, too. Didn’t you take a towel to that hair?” He looked back at his hands, “Hey, did you manage to get down to the Elizabeth Circle?”

“Yes, but I missed them. They must have left early.”

“Did they lock the door behind them?” Wilton’s eyes returned again to the socket in his hand. “They sure do make these directions hard to read. I must need glasses. Can you read this for me?” He held the instruction sheet out to her.

“I need to tell you something first,” she said, ignoring the sheet in his hand. “Dad, Jimmy Hart was in the church when I arrived. Practicing for his sermon, I guess.”

“He don’t like you to listen to him, Billie. I hope you crept away without disturbing him. He read me the riot act more than once for hanging around when he was working on it. Jimmy’s real funny ’bout that.”

“He invited me to stay for lunch with him.”

“That must mean he likes you. He don’t share lunch with just anyone.” Wilton seemed pleased with this news. “Did you take him up on it?”

“No, and when I tried to leave, he—he—raped me, Dad. He grabbed me from behind and pulled me down and raped me.” Her voice seemed cool and distant to her ears. She wasn’t even sure she had said the important words aloud. But from the look on Wilton’s face, she had said them all right. He sat there saying nothing for what seemed like several minutes.

“Do you know what that word means, Billie?” Wilton finally said. “Do you know what rape means—a little girl like you? Are you sure he wasn’t just kissing you a little hard, maybe touching you?”

“He put his thing in me,” Billie told him. “His penis.” She had never said the word aloud before and it seemed almost comical to her, like a made-up word. Something children yell at each other at recess. Penis breath. Penis head. Did men name it that to make it seem harmless?

Wilton let out a sudden cry and covered his ears with his hands. The tears began to flow and she went over to him and put her hand on his back. Sobs racked his body and she could feel his heartbeat through the thin fabric of his shirt. Billie had never seen a man cry before, but Wilton did it naturally. He didn’t try to hide his tears and he didn’t have the strangled cry men always had in the movies. When he had finished, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and looked up at her with blood-red eyes.

“I’ll take care of this right now,” he promised tearfully. “I’ll go down to the church and get Jimmy Hart and make him tell the police what he done to you. I’ll march him down to the station and he’ll tell them everything.”

“Should I go with you?”

“No, it’s better if you don’t. I’ll go right now.” But he continued to sit in front of the electrical parts. He still had the screwdriver in his hand.

“Do you want to know exactly what he did?”

Her question seemed to prod him a bit and shaking his head, Wilton stood up slowly. “I’d rather not hear such a thing if I don’t have to.” He took his hat from the table and left.

Billie continued replaying the incident inside her head where it spun round and round like a movie that begins again as soon as it’s finished. She could still feel Jimmy’s lips on her neck, his hand on her breast, his knee holding her down. The only elusive memory was that of the actual rape. Had he ever really been inside her? If not, was it rape? The hours passed and although she wouldn’t have believed she could ever crave sleep again, she finally did. She wondered when Wilton would return. Maybe Jimmy was behind bars already.

Lying in bed, she decided to go home as soon as they finished with the police. Home to Philadelphia where she could be herself again. She would probably have to come back here later and appear in court, but for now she wanted to go. Sometime after ten, she heard the front door

“Billie,” she heard him say. “Are you awake still?”

“Yes.” She sat up partway and Wilton sat down on the edge of the bed. It was dark in the room except for a sliver of light from the street lamp that illuminated his knees. She heard him suck in his breath and then say, “Billie, I just can’t do it.”

“You mean you haven’t found him yet.” She felt him shake his head.

“I stood outside his apartment for hours, but I couldn’t make myself go in.”

“You don’t have to go in. You can just tell the police.”

“No, you don’t understand. I just can’t tell on him at all.”

She fell silent for a minute. “It’s me that has to tell on him anyway.”

“Yeah, but I gotta back you up. Take the lead and all.”

“Do you believe he raped me” She felt rather than saw his nod. “Then why can’t you do it?”

“What will become of me afterward, Billie? How will I get along on my own? That’s what I kept thinking about in that hallway. I’ll start drinking again without him and then where will I be? Jimmy’s got some kind of power over me. He’s the only person in the world that can keep me straight.”

“He just wants you to think that, Dad. You don’t need him anymore. He’s a bad person. He shouldn’t ever be around girls alone.”

“Look Billie. I know he did something pretty bad to you, but you’re okay now, aren’t you? He didn’t beat you up or anything, right? Can’t you just put it behind you?”

Put it behind her? “I guess,” she said finally. “I didn’t really bleed or anything.”

“Well, there you go,” he said, his voice rising with hope. “He just got carried away for a minute. You’d have to have bled for it to be a rape. They’d make you show them that at the police station. Bloody clothes, bruises, your—your area.”

“I’d have to show them my body?”

“Well, sure, Billie. You’d have to be looked at in a hospital. By a doctor. You’d have to prove you never did it before, too.”

She shivered. “I haven’t but I guess I don’t want to go through that.”

“Of course, you don’t. No nice girl would. But if you go home and tell Kay she’s going to make you do it.” His voice was full of terror. “She’ll march you out here in a minute.”

He was right. She’d fly here with Mickey at her side. Billie would never see Wilton again, though now she wasn’t sure she wanted to. It felt like he should do something about it. But what?

Billie got out of the bed and turned on the light. Wilton got up, too. “Should I leave now?” she asked him.

He shrugged a little. “I hate to see you go but maybe it’d be best. I can visit you in Philadelphia after we get things going here.” He went to the closet and brought her suitcase out. “You can pack in the morning,” he told her. “You’ll feel better when you’re out of here.” She nodded. It was clear she couldn’t feel worse.

“And you don’t have to worry about Jimmy Hart fooling with other girls. I’m gonna tell him you left real sudden. That I got up in the morning and your bags were packed.” He looked at her hard. “Do you get it?” She shook her head.

“See, that way he won’t know if I know about him—fooling—with you. And it’ll make him careful from now on. He won’t take a chance again cause he’ll know I’m watching him.” He put a hand on her arm. “And I will watch him, Billie.”

“You better, Dad, cause he’ll do it again. He’s quicker than a fat man should be.”

“He’ll keep his hands to himself when I’m around. That’s a promise.” Wilton got up and walked back to his room. Billie fell into a troubled sleep that ended well before five. She looked into the other room on waking, hoping that perhaps Wilton had risen and gone off to deal with Jimmy Hart. But he was sleeping, taking deep, noisy breaths. What had made him the way he was? He was like a drowning man, clinging to the rottenest piece of driftwood in the ocean.

* * *

When Wilton woke, her bags were packed. She was sitting on the end of the bed, her hands in her lap. Her bed was made up and her breakfast dishes were washed and put away. Wilton looked around the room. Finding nothing let behind, he ordered a taxi, handing the driver the soft wrinkled bills reluctantly.“You don’t have to wait with me,” she told him when they arrived at the bus station.

“I don’t have to be at work yet. Can I get you a candy bar? Or a Pepsi,” he said, looking around for the machines. “How bout some cheese crackers?”

“That’s okay. Well, thanks for coming out here.” He put his hand on hers.

“Can I ask you something, Dad?”

His left eye twitched but he looked at her steadily. “Go on,”

“Why didn’t you ever call or write in all those years?”

His ears reddened and he rubbed his nose hard. “I didn’t really believe in you. Does that make any sense?” She shook her head. He tried again. “It was like once I left, I couldn’t keep you in my head. Kay, I had a picture of and I could look at her whenever I wanted. I knew she hated my guts and hoped I’d never come back.” He laughed a little. “I didn’t make her much of a husband. But with you, I couldn’t believe you existed at all. I left too fast—didn’t even think to grab a photo to take along. So I let go of the idea of you. It seemed better that way. Do you get it now?”

“I guess.” But she didn’t really. How could you forget your own child?

Wilton picked up a newspaper section from the bench across from them and read her the weather report for Philadelphia. It was due to rain for the entire weekend in Philly.

“But not in Detroit,” he told her, looking out at the sky. “It isn’t going to rain here at all. We don’t get that darn humidity too much.” He put down the paper. “Did I tell you that already?” Billie nodded.

The bus was right on time, and she sat near the front, next to an older woman knitting a yellow baby sweater. “You’re always safe with yellow,” the woman told Billie with a tired smile.

The rain started to fall just east of Breezewood.