En Passant

       

   

 

 

 

 

  

                                          Nowadays

 

                                                                        Part First

Joe had been engaged for, oh, maybe ten months before anyone noticed. One reason we didn’t notice before was because Mary stayed indoors a lot. Naturally. But Tom’s wife saw Mary at the market one day, and it didn’t take long for word to spread.

In fact, Tom was the first to actually say something to Joe, not an enviable task. Joe had this Western quiet strength that you just didn’t want to mess with. But Tom had downed a couple of brews, there was a nice lull at the shop, and said, “Uh, Joe, buddy, when is it y’all are supposed to get married?”

Joe said, “ Three weeks.”

Tom rubbed his grizzled chin. “Well, y’all expecting a big family?”

Joe was quiet. He looked at Tom for a moment, then resumed lathing. Tom half-glanced at Joe, half-glanced at us, and said, “You see, Myra saw Mary yesterday in the square.”

Joe took an inordinate interest in the wood he was fooling with.

Tom: “Yeah, and Myra came home and ridiculed me for making you out to be some kind of saint. So I guess what I’m saying is, have you fooled us all, there, buddy? Has temptation gotten you, are you really subject to the same vices we are?”

This was cruel, to Joe and to us. To Joe because, albeit far from perfect, Joe was a somber and sober man, one we thought would make a good provider for Mary, a good husband, not given to the indiscretions most of us practiced or at least occasionally participated in; to us, because we had no idea what Tom was talking about, only that he had something on Joe.

Joe walked to the other side of the shop. Tom followed him. We followed Tom.

“Yeah,” Tom drawled, conscious of our rapt attention and knowing Joe was squirming, “I guess in four or five months, something wondrous is gonna happen, huh?”

Joe stood stock straight and eye-balled Tom. “More like six.”

Tom started hooting. “So it’s true? It’s true! I can’t believe it! Joe, the man of stone, the silent wunderkind of wood, the sullen statue, has succumbed!” He hooted some more. Joe patiently watched him, then walked back over to the lathing monstrosity. Tom square-danced behind him, and of course we followed them both like sheep.

Joe slid his hand along lumber. Tom, mock-wiping tears, turned to us--finally. “Gents, I want you to know that our wooden friend here has feelings and desires after all. Joe ...” here Tom put his hand on Joe’s shoulder; Joe shrugged it off, though not contemptuously, “Joe has been tackled by the temptation that gets all of us in the end, except the Sadducees ... Joe has diddled his betrothed.”

It took a second to settle, then we all kind of gasped. It was amusing, but we didn’t laugh. We were, I think, collectively curious that Joe didn’t deck Tom and amazed that he--at least in this area--was as weak as we. I spoke up.

“Is it true, Joe?”

Joe nodded.

What more was there to say?

 

 

                                                                                     Part Second

We razzed him pretty hard. He took it well. That is, he wasn’t really good-natured about it, but he didn’t seem to get riled. He just set his jaw and continued working. Without a more animated target for our barbs, of course, we tired in a couple of days and went back to working and occasionally talking about Joe.

The next week, though, Matt brought us a juicy tidbit. Seems someone had been inquiring around sanatoriums about possibly keeping a certain enceinte fiancee. We didn’t know why. Tommy wanted to.

“Hey, Joe,” he asks at the spa we sometimes frequented after work. “Is Mary crazy?” Just like that. Joe turned white, and not because of the baths. He excused himself, draped a sheet, and left. I shot Tom a pointed look the others shared, and followed. Alone.

In the changing room I asked Joe if he was all right. He wept.

I put my arm around him but it felt uncomfortable so I patted his back. “It’s all right, Joe, I’m sorry. Don’t pay attention to Tom. We don’t.” A lie, but intended as a palliative. Joe began to talk, the most I had heard him say in two years.

“John, Tom’s right.” He wiped a remaining tear and sighed. “John, I’ve never known Mary. In any way.  Capiche?”

I wasn’t sure.

“John, I’ve never known Mary.”  He looked at me. I understood.

“Oh.” Pity. Mary was such a nice girl. Quiet, timid, but strong, sort of like Joe. But it wasn’t the first time a girl had been untrue, and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

“And apparently, I never really knew her.”

“And when you told us you enjoyed connubial relations ...”

“I lied.”

“And the sanatorium?”

He nodded. “That’s true. John, she believes--really believes--that her pregnancy is inspired.”

“What do you mean?”

“She thinks she’s still a virgin.”

Wow, if so. But, in light of what transpired in the following months, maybe not incredible. I tried to be delicate. “Are you sure, Joe, she’s not just saying that?”

He wagged. “No, I wish she were. It would mean, at least, that she was mentally sound, like the rest of us, capable of lying. No, she says an angel told her that she would bear the Messiah.”

Now I got it. Tales had been circulating for a thousand years about how we were in the last days, the Messiah would come, etc. Some of the prophecies were recondite and others impossible to discern, though that didn’t stop the Pharisees from telling us exactly what they meant. I saw now, though, that Mary was claiming to be the selected one. She had chosen to utilize one of the more popular interpretations of the prophecies. And Joe naturally assumed she belonged in the bin with the Napoleons and possessed who clutter our world.

 

“Why didn’t you send her away?”

 

“I was going to, privately, so no one would know. I don’t know. I love her.”

I whistled. “Women.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re still betrothed?”

“To be married in two weeks.”

I whistled again, this time not so loudly. “You’ve got some decisions to make.”

“I know,” he said.

 

 

                                                                     Part Third

 

Unfortunately, I divulge confidences. Not an endearing quality, but I’m sweet and kind and understanding, and people confide in me without thinking. By the next day, everyone knew.

 

“Joe, are you a fool?” Tom upbraided Joe for all of us. “Your betrothed is scandalized, tainted, soiled, and you’re going to still marry her?”

I wanted to crawl under the lathe, but Joe didn’t seem perturbed that others knew.

“She might be telling the truth,” he insisted, correctly assuming that I had told everyone everything.

Tom laughed, as did a couple of others. “And I might be the Queen of Sheba.”

 

Joe was placid. I thought maybe my comforting him the day before had calmed him, but, in retrospect, it might have been something else. He had obviously confronted all his demons and made his decision. He was going to marry her, and to hell with what anyone thought.

 

 

                                                                                      Part Last

After the birth and it became evident that they would stay married, the rash began. Joe was considered a solid catch, I suppose, by the local girls, and if Mary managed to hang onto him after what she had done, well, why fix what’s broken?

In the first few months of the new year, in addition to many contented stable boys, there was probably a score of betrothed women who mysteriously became pregnant. They all claimed to be virgins, of course. Insisted, in fact. About half of them married their fiances, an impressive percentage, considering that it was practically unheard of before the birth of Jesus (Joe and Mary named him after her Mexican grandfather). It became epidemic.

Monty Python did a sketch about it. John Chapman in drag, John Cleese as the cuckolded shepherd. “Say now, what’s this?” Cleese says, pointing at she-Chapman’s plump belly.

Chapman, sewing, not bothering to look up, in falsetto nonchalantly says, “Oh, it’s the Savior” and continues sewing.  Cleese says, “Right, then” and goes to the kitchen.

Pregnant Python players in drag can be seen outside through the kitchen window, screeching in their clangorous falsetto, “It’s the SAVE-yor” and “I’m a VIR-gin” and begging “dimes for a holy mother” and such. One was a hooker, asking a passing Levite priest if he wanted to “till sacred soil.”

It was one of their better bits, I thought.

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