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But the hood was not up and nobody cared enough to see why a woman would stand on the side of a busy highway with a tiny, curly-haired boy clasped tightly in her arms. Alex kicked his feet against his mother’s stomach, but his pink heels had no effect on Elizabeth Ann’s posture.
It was Roger who finally stopped.

“I’ve sort of made a habit of picking up hitchhikers.”

“I am not a hitchhiker. My car broke down.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I see that. Quite a mess you’ve made out of the engine, I see.” He had lifted the hood. “Out of fluid, I expect.”

“Can you take me someplace where they’ll fix my car?”

Roger nodded.

Elizabeth Ann moved Alex to her right hip as she collected her purse and a denim bag that overflowed with cascades of cotton patchwork. A flowered square from her bag was snatched by a wind that also tore at the hem of Elizabeth Ann’s dark red skirt. Roger stooped, caught it, and returned it to a white hand, spotted with callouses and round, unpolished nails.

“Thank you.”

“You sew, Ma’am?”

“I sew a little. My mother quilts.”

“Yes’m.”

Alex burbled happily as a grimy moving van sped by, spewing black exhaust.

“Would you like me,” Roger indicated Alex’s car seat, “like me to put that in my car? It won’t take but a minute.”

“I’ll hold him.”

Elizabeth Ann turned to Roger’s car. Her blue cardigan slapped at her thighs as she walked; the pockets were full of change and Kleenex. Following her, Roger opened the door and waited for her to settle comfortably with Alex on her lap.

He shut the door, careful not to catch the end of Elizabeth Ann’s skirt, and hurried around the back of the small gold Honda.

“I try to keep her polished up,” he said, pulling the seat belt across his slim waist. “I figure if you’re going to spend a lot of money on something, you may as well keep it nice.”

“Yes.” Elizabeth Ann tilted her head to one side as though she were thinking hard about something, blinked, then folded her hands across Alex’s round belly.

“I’ve picked up lots of people in this car, Ma’am. A whole lot of people. Of course I don’t give rides to big guys with beards and flannel shirts. I’ve seen too many movies to do that.” He paused. “Mostly college kids.”

He spoke rather loudly. The radio was on, but that had nothing to do with his volume. Roger was under the impression that he seemed more friendly when he was more vociferous. Alex seemed to enjoy his prattle and smiled when he spoke. His mother sat silently listening as well. Roger thought she was trying to hear the radio.

“You sew clothes for your baby there?” Roger watched Elizabeth Ann’s head turn slowly to him. “He’s a nice looking boy.”

“Some.” Her hair hung brown to the base of her neck. “I make some of his clothes, but he grows out of them almost before I’ve stitched them together.” She rubbed a yellowing callous on her right index finger with her thumb.

“He’s a handsome fellow, that one.” Alex had begun to amuse himself with the knob on the glove compartment.

“I made pillows when I was pregnant. Twenty-three. I gave them all away as presents to my cousins and my husband’s mother at Christmas.”
The glove compartment served as a fine diversion for Alex, but he grew impatient when it refused to open.

“He can’t get in there, ma’am.”

“I’ll see that he doesn’t.” Elizabeth Ann pulled her son’s tiny white hands away from the latch.

“What I meant, ma’am, oh, he’s welcome to play with the handle, but he can’t get in there. It’s locked.”

“I’ve never known anyone who locked their glove compartment.”

“No’m.”

Roger’s eyes dared his passenger to ask why he differed from all of her acquaintances in this respect.

“I have stuff in there, ma’am, important stuff.” The three rode in silence for a moment. Alex’s eyes rolled over the passing landscape and crossed whenever a bright billboard rushed past.

“I have papers in there. Newspapers. Not the entire paper, mind you, just some articles that I’ve cut out. You see, a man in New Jersey saw the Virgin Mary. He was walking one Sunday and saw her. In the Pine Barrens.” He waited for a moment to see how the woman would react to this, hoping rather selfishly that it would not agree with her mental digestion. “My glove compartment has every article about the sightings. I’m collecting them so I’ll have proof for anyone who asks.

“Of course the Pope hasn’t said a thing. He doesn’t like to have miracles happen in America, I don’t think. We’re not Catholic enough.”

The road rounded a hill. A radio announcer declared that it would be three at the tone. As the highway twisted, sunbeams began to bounce off the hood of the gold car. Roger noticed that Elizabeth Ann’s cheeks were burnt from her long solitary stand.

“Oh, but I’m Catholic, Catholic enough for the Pope even. First Holy Communion, Confirmation, Mass every Sunday, and during the week sometimes too, all that stuff. Catholic enough to be a saint. My mother says that. But I never really used to think about it before, being Catholic, I mean, not until lately.”

He was silent for a moment, trying to remember all that he had told himself about being Catholic.

“It’s not the church that prepares you to be Catholic, it’s what happens to you out in the world, the real world where your thinking’s is not clouded by incense or chants or Latin. I guess that I hadn’t really been Catholic until I read about the man in New Jersey. I even have an article from California about the man. My aunt sent it to me.”

The sun was beside them now, and when Roger glanced at his passenger, it looked like a golden disk set on her head, little rivulets of light bleeding through the dark brown locks. Alex stared ahead at the white column emitted from an unseen cooling tower mounting into the air with an elegance usually reserved for dancers and old movie actresses.

“My aunt says she’s glad that someone’s Catholic in the family. Says she was tired of being the only one.”

Elizabeth Ann was concentrating hard.

“I can’t hear the radio either,” admitted Roger. “It doesn’t always come through that well during the day, all the trucks on the road.”

He paused.

“I’m going to see her. The Virgin Mary. She comes on the second Sunday of every month. That’s what the articles say, even if the Pope doesn’t believe it.”

Elizabeth Ann pursed her lips, hugging her baby to her breast. Her chin rested lightly on the curly golden head.

“She killed her baby.”

“Ma’am?”

“She killed Him.”

“Who?”

“Mary. Mary killed Him. A good mother would have known that her baby was in danger. A good mother could have saved Him.”

“I don’t think that she was supposed to save Him. He needed to die.” Roger turned off the radio so he could think better. “Mary had Him so He could die.”

“Then she shouldn’t have had Him; she shouldn’t have brought him into the world.” Elizabeth Ann picked her chin up and set it before the rest of her face. “I would never have had Him.”

A pattern of clouds flitted across the sun dissecting the occupants of the car into patches of dark and light.

“I can’t say that I agree with you, ma’am. I don’t think that we agree at all.” Roger did not like the direction the conversation had taken. He gripped more firmly to the wheel. “I heard a man say that it wasn’t Mary at all anyway. He doesn’t go to church. Says it was probably the Jersey Devil there to fool dumb Catholics. He read the article and didn’t believe it. He doesn’t know.”

Roger stopped talking. He did not want to say any more. He looked down the road, hoping to see some tree or landmark that he could study to pass the time. Today was not the day to pick up strange women. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, and he tucked his left foot underneath the seat.

The highway was an old one, made out of concrete slabs. The car wheels made a rhythmic th-thump as the gold car sped along. Roger was glad for the noise; it gave him something to concentrate on. He thought about turning the radio back on, but he felt that if he did that, he would be admitting to her that he needed noise to protect himself from what she said. Alex was still knocking his chubby hands on the locked glove compartment. Roger envied him. He wanted more than anything to read his newspaper clippings so he could reassure himself that it was real, that a New Jersey man had seen the Queen of Heaven in the Pine Barrens. This woman made him uneasy. He had never believed that Elizabeth Ann would say such things. He thought that she would understand his newspaper clippings. He stopped. He tried to conjure up every picture he had ever seen of Mary. Scenes of the Holy Family in darkened stalls, lit only by the golden disks set atop their heads. Mary, soft and white, her eyes lowered tenderly to her child. Soft with gentle hands and warm breath and eyes, eyes that were kind.

“Mary loved her baby.” His words surprised him. He did not intend to speak, but the words came unbidden.

Elizabeth Ann turned to glare at him.

“You aren’t a mother so you really can’t say if she loved Him or not. Mothers know.” She twisted her wide wedding band around her ring finger. Her hands were swollen and it was difficult to turn the ring.

Roger looked at her cautiously. Her hands had reddened at the fingertips. She held her left hand before her so the two of them could study it more carefully.

“Are they hot?” Roger hoped that being solicitous would soothe her mood.

“Feel.”

She placed her left hand upon his cheek. Roger bristled at the warmth.
“Yes, they are hot.”

He did not turn his head, but continued to drive, hoping that he would find a gas station soon. His eyes were fixed upon the road ahead of them. For a while they continued this way until he realized that Elizabeth Ann had not taken her fingertips from his face. He shot a glance to his passenger.

Evidently, Elizabeth Ann had forgotten completely about her hand and where it was. Her eyes looked beyond him and into the passing greenery.
In a field alongside of the highway three boys played. Their naked bellies were white beneath sunburnt shoulders. Sweaty tongues of hair licked their foreheads, eyes squinting to avoid the sun. One had wrestled the other to the ground, while the third slapped his bare feet against the earth in merriment. His pants were big and patched and cut off above the knee.

“Boys like that need someone to take them up and manage their life for a while, then they’ll know.”

“Here’s a gas station.” Elizabeth Ann took her hand and pointed it toward a large lighted sign. “See if they have a tow truck.”

“Yes’m.”

Roger signaled then turned into the neon encrusted service station, the back wheels spinning slightly on some gravel left over from the winter’s salt trucks. Leaving his keys in the ignition, he parked, climbed from his grey cloth seat and entered the glass office. The walls, fortified with a pyramid of oil and washer fluid, immediately obscured him from sight. Elizabeth Ann remained in the car, alone with her baby.

It was some minutes before Roger emerged from the office followed by the young attendant’s orange face.

“I think she’s out of fluid. My car looked the way hers does once when it was out of fluid. Maybe she just needs some of that to start her up.” Roger directed the boy to a place beside the car so Elizabeth Ann could hear the conversation.

“I’ll see when I get there.” The boy opened his mouth to scratch his chin. Yellow and black stripes fell around his dangling hand from the sleeve of his blue coverall. “I’ll take her out there in the truck.”

Roger was satisfied with this and helped Elizabeth Ann from the car and into the high seat of the truck. Alex immediately found that he could open this glove compartment and discovered with an excited gulp an oily rag and a wrench. The boy drove away while Alex giggled over his new toy.

Returning to his small gold Honda, Roger found that it bore no trace of Elizabeth Ann or her small son. No lingering perfume floated about, not a scrap had fallen from her bag; her seat belt had not even been used during the trip. She had passed leaving only an uneasy flutter in Roger’s mind. He pulled the key from the ignition and drove it into the lock of the glove compartment. He needed to read an article to focus his thoughts, to streamline his mind.

The latch clicked. The door fell open. Roger stopped.

Elizabeth Ann had torn every article in two.

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Now and then one looks out from this eyrie, across the wide-spread country, who turns to look at the sea or toward the shining foreheads of the mountains that guard the inland horizon, who will remember the place long afterward. A peaceful vision will come, full of rest and benediction into busy and troubled hours, to those who understand why some one came to live in this place so near the sky, so silent, so full of sweet air and woodland fragrance; so beaten and buffeted by winter storms and garlanded with summer greenery; where the birds are nearest neighbors and a clear spring the only wine-cellar, and trees of the forest a choir of singers who rejoice and sing aloud by day and night as the winds sweep over. Under the cherry thicket or at the edge of the woods you may find a strayaway blossom, some half-savage, slender grandchild of the old flower-plots, that you gather gladly to take away, and every year in June a red rose blooms toward which the wild pink roses and the pale sweet briars turn wondering faces as if a queen had shown her noble face suddenly at a peasant’s festival.

There is everywhere a token of remembrance, of silence and secrecy. Some stronger nature once ruled these neglected trees and this fallow ground. They will wait the return of their master as long as roots can creep through mould, and the mould make way for them. The stories of strange lives have been whispered to the earth, their thoughts have burned themselves into the cold rocks. As one looks from the lower country toward the long slope of the great hillside, this old abiding-place marks the dark covering of trees like a scar. There is nothing to hide either the sunrise or the sunset. The low lands reach out of sight into the west and the sea fills all the east.

The first owner of the farm was a seafaring man who had through freak or fancy come ashore and cast himself upon the bounty of nature for support in his later years, though tradition keeps a suspicion of buried treasure and of a dark history. He cleared his land and built his house, but save the fact that he was a Scotsman no one knew to whom he belonged, and when he died the state inherited the unclaimed property. The only piece of woodland that was worth anything was sold and added to another farm, and the dwelling-place was left to the sunshine and the rain, to the birds that built their nests in the chimney or under the eaves. Sometimes a strolling company of country boys would find themselves near the house on a holiday afternoon, but the more dilapidated the small structure became, the more they believed that some uncanny existence possessed the lonely place, and the path that led toward the clearing at last became almost impassable.

Once a number of officers and men in the employ of the Coast Survey were encamped at the top of the mountain, and they smoothed the rough track that led down to the spring that bubbled from under a sheltering edge. One day a laughing fellow, not content with peering in at the small windows of the house, put his shoulder against the rain-blackened door and broke the simple fastening. He hardly knew that he was afraid as he first stood within the single spacious room, so complete a curiosity took possession of him. The place was clean and bare, the empty cupboard doors stood open, and yet the sound of his companions’ voices outside seemed far away, and an awful sense that some unseen inhabitant followed his footsteps made him hurry out again pale and breathless to the fresh air and sunshine. Was this really a dwelling-place of spirits, as had been already hinted? The story grew more fearful, and spread quickly like a mist of terror among the lowland farms. For years the tale of the coast-surveyor’s adventure in the haunted house was slowly magnified and told to strangers or to wide-eyed children by the dim firelight. The former owner was supposed to linger still about his old home, and was held accountable for deep offense in choosing for the scene of his unsuccessful husbandry a place that escaped the properties and restraints of life upon lower levels. His grave was concealed by the new growth of oaks and beeches, and many a lad and full-grown man beside has taken to his heels at the flicker of light from across a swamp or under a decaying tree in that neighborhood. As the world in some respects grew wiser, the good people near the mountain understood less and less the causes of these simple effects, and as they became familiar with the visible world, grew more shy of the unseen and more sensitive to unexplained foreboding.

One day a stranger was noticed in the town, as a stranger is sure to be who goes his way with quick, furtive steps straight through a small village or along a country road. This man was tall and had just passed middle age. He was well made and vigorous, but there was an unusual pallor in his face, a grayish look, as if he had been startled by bad news. His clothes were somewhat peculiar, as if they had been made in another country, yet they suited the chilly weather, being homespun of undyed wools, just the color of his hair, and only a little darker than his face or hands. Some one observed in one brief glance as he and this gray man met and passed each other, that his eyes had a strange faded look; they might, however, flash and be coal-black in a moment of rage. Two or three persons stepped forward to watch the wayfarer as he went along the road with long, even strides, like one taking a journey on foot, but he quickly reached a turn of the way and was out of sight. They wondered who he was; one recalled some recent advertisement of an escaped criminal, and another the appearance of a native of the town who was supposed to be long ago lost at sea, but one surmiser knew as little as the next. If they had followed fast enough they might have tracked the mysterious man straight across the country, threading the by-ways, the shorter paths that led across the fields where the road was roundabout and hindering. At last he disappeared in the leafless, trackless woods that skirted the mountain.

That night there was for the first time in many years a twinkling light in the window of the haunted house, high on the hill’s great shoulder; one farmer’s wife and another looked up curiously, while they wondered what daring human being had chosen that awesome spot of all others for his home or for even a transient shelter. The sky was already heavy with snow; he might be a fugitive from justice, and the startled people looked to the fastening of their doors unwontedly that night, and waked often from a troubled sleep.

An instinctive curiosity and alarm possessed the country men and women for a while, but soon faded out and disappeared. The newcomer was by no means a hermit; he tried to be friendly, and inclined toward a certain kindliness and familiarity. He bought a comfortable store of winter provisions from his new acquaintances, giving every one his price, and spoke more at length, as time went on, of current events, of politics and the weather, and the town’s own news and concerns. There was a sober cheerfulness about the man, as if he had known trouble and perplexity, and was fulfilling some mission that gave him pain; yet he saw some gain and reward beyond; therefore he could be contented with his life and such strange surroundings. He was more and more eager to form brotherly relations with the farmers near his home. There was almost a pleading look in his kind face at times, as if he feared the later prejudice of his associates. Surely this was no common or uneducated person, for in every way he left the stamp of his character and influence upon men and things. His reasonable words of advice and warning are current as sterling coins in that region yet; to one man he taught a new rotation of crops, to another he gave some priceless cures for devastating diseases of cattle. The lonely women of those remote country homes learned of him how to achieve their household toil with less labor and drudgery, and here and there he singled out promising children and kept watch of their growth, giving freely a most affectionate companionship, and a fair start in the journey of life. He taught those who were guardians of such children to recognize and further the true directions and purposes of existence; and the easily warped natures grew strong and well-established under his thoughtful care. No wonder that some people were filled with amazement, and thought his wisdom supernatural, from so many proofs that his horizon was wider than their own.

Perhaps some envious soul, or one aggrieved by being caught in treachery or deception, was the first to find fault with the stranger. The prejudice against his dwelling-place, and the superstition which had become linked to him in consequence, may have led back to the first suspicious attitude of the community. The whisper of distrust soon started on an evil way. If he were not a criminal, his past was surely a hidden one, and shocking to his remembrance, but the true foundation of all dislike was the fact that the gray man who went to and fro, living his simple, harmless life among them, never was seen to smile. Persons who remember him speak of this with a shudder, for nothing is more evident than that his peculiarity became at length intolerable to those whose minds lent themselves readily to suspicion. At first, blinded by the gentle good fellowship of the stranger, the changeless expression of his face was scarcely observed, but as the winter wore away he was watched with renewed disbelief and dismay.

After the first few attempts at gayety nobody tried to tell a merry story in his presence. The most conspicuous of a joker’s audience does a deep-rankling injustice if he sits with unconscious, unamused face at the receipt of raillery. What a chilling moment when the gray man softly opened the door of a farmhouse kitchen, and seated himself like a skeleton at the feast of walnuts and roasted apples beside the glowing fire! The children whom he treated so lovingly, to whom he ever gave his best, though they were won at first by his gentleness, when they began to prattle and play with him would raise their innocent eyes to his face and hush their voices and creep away out of his sight. Once only he was bidden to a wedding, but never afterward, for a gloom was quickly spread through the boisterous company; the man who never smiled had no place at such a festival. The wedding guests looked over their shoulders again and again in strange foreboding, while he was in the house, and were burdened with a sense of coming woe for the newly-married pair. As one caught sight of his, among the faces of the rural folk, the gray man was like a sombre mask, and at last the bridegroom flung open the door with a meaning gesture, and the stranger went out like a hunted creature, into the bitter coldness and silence of the winter night.

Through the long days of the next summer the outcast of the wedding, forbidden, at length, all the once-proffered hospitality, was hardly seen from one week’s end to another’s. He cultivated his poor estate with patient care, and the successive crops of his small garden, the fruits and berries of the wilderness, were food enough. He seemed unchangeable, and was always ready when he even guessed at a chance to be of use. If he were repulsed, he only turned away and went back to his solitary home. Those persons who by chance visited him there tell wonderful tales of the wild birds which had been tamed to come at his call and cluster about him, of the orderliness and delicacy of his simple life. The once-neglected house was covered with vines that he had brought from the woods, and planted about the splintering, decaying walls. There were three or four books in worn bindings on a shelf above the fire-place; one longs to know what volumes this mysterious exile had chosen to keep him company!

There may have been a deeper reason for the withdrawal of friendliness; there are vague rumors of the gray man’s possession of strange powers. Some say that he was gifted with amazing strength, and once when some belated hunters found shelter at his fireside, they told eager listeners afterward that he did not sleep but sat by the fire reading gravely while they slumbered uneasily on his own bed of boughs. And in the dead of night an empty chair glided silently toward him across the floor as he softly turned his pages in the flickering light.

But such stories are too vague, and in that neighborhood too common to weigh against the true dignity and bravery of the man. At the beginning of the war of the rebellion he seemed strangely troubled and disturbed, and presently disappeared, leaving his house key with a neighbor as if for a few days’ absence. He was last seen striding rapidly through the village a few miles away, going back along the road by which he had come a year or two before. No, not last seen either; for in one of the first battles of the war, as the smoke suddenly lifted, a farmer’s boy, reared in the shadow of the mountain, opened his languid pain-dulled eyes as he lay among the wounded, and saw the gray man riding by on a tall horse. At that moment the poor lad thought in his faintness and fear that Death himself rode by in the gray man’s likeness; unsmiling Death who tries to teach and serve mankind so that he may at the last win welcome as a faithful friend!

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