A Fountain Filled With Blood

man, bearded and bespectacled, was trying to keep a pair of skinny kids from falling off the edge of the pier. The children, holding clouds of cotton candy bigger than their heads, waved energetically at the boat. Clare waved to them and turned back toward her companions, inexplicably buoyed up again. It was too beautiful a day to feel bad, and the thought gave her another epiphany. The long, hard winter had given her an appreciation for the summer that she had never had before. The sun, the clear blue sky, the green and growing things were blessings that she enumerated day by day, because they would be gone in a twinkling, in a heartbeat. Winter was the default here, with summer a brief and glorious escape. She felt that this ought to provide her with some solid spiritual insight, but all she could think was that she now understood why no one was attending the Sunday services.

“You’re looking particularly thoughtful, Ms. Fergusson.” Mrs. Marshall, silver-haired and elegant, could never bring herself to address Clare either by her first name or as Reverend Fergusson. Clare couldn’t blame her for the latter—she herself had grown up hearing that the word reverend was an adjective, not a title. Her grandmother Fergusson would no more have addressed a priest as Reverend than she would have attended services without a hat. Of course, Grandmother Fergusson’s priests had all been male. Father was not a title that Clare would choose. She supposed she would have to either get her doctorate in divinity or rise to a post in the Episcopal hierarchy in order to get a proper gender-free title. Bishop Fergusson…

“Isn’t this the point where you say, ‘I’m sure you’re all wondering why I brought you here’?” Sterling Sumner said. The word Clare usually applied to Sterling, in the deepest recesses of her mind, was disagreeable. In vestry meetings, the architect was impatient and prone to dismiss the opinions of others as uninformed. Today, his face was pinched into an expression that suggested irritable bowel syndrome.

Robert Corlew broke in before she could answer him. “I think we all know what we’re here to talk about. Let me try to frame the issue. We’ve had some very unfortunate episodes of violence this summer around Millers Kill.”

Clare opened her mouth to point out that a bloody murder was a bit more than an unfortunate episode, but then she thought better of it and shut it again.

“It appears that there may be a connection between the attacks and the victims’ lifestyles. In other words, all the men involved were homosexuals. Reverend Clare made a statement to the press, expressing her opinions. I’m sure you all saw it. Now, if I understand what she’s told me, she wants St. Alban’s to get involved in some way.” He sat back down on the transom chest so abruptly, Clare was startled. She had expected him to start in on what he wanted to see happen.

Everyone looked at Clare.

She could feel things slipping out of control, her own waspish reaction ready to burst forth, her impatience with having to deal with these people.

Not these people. My people, came the thought. Her thought? She wasn’t sure. But she knew what she had to do. She put her glass into one of the cup holders molded into the side of the bench.

“I’d like us to start with a prayer,” she said. Corlew looked surprised, then nodded. She watched each of them as they gathered into themselves. Mrs. Marshall folded her hands neatly beneath her chin. Sterling ducked his head and covered his face with one splayed-fingered hand. Corlew, still standing at the wheel, tilted his head back, a practical position that left his eyes half-lidded but still able to see. Terry Wright laced his fingers together easily and rested them in his lap, head bowed. For a moment, she wished she could bring them together, hold hands, and pray, but they were all Episcopalians, after all, and holding hands was not the way things were done. It would only make them uncomfortable.

“Lord God,” she said, “if there’s one thing we know about You, it’s that You love boats. You chose fishermen to be Your companions, and You walked to them across the water to quell their fear and doubts. Be with our company in this boat, Lord, and help us to remember that, quarreling and disputatious as we might be, we are all Your apostles. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Everyone repeated the amen, and there was a moment when they all looked up and around them at the taut sails and the sun and the fast-slapping water racing past their hull.

“My thought is this,” Clare said. “I believe we have an obligation to speak out against hate crimes. I believe that we can’t, in conscience, stand aside and witness attacks like these happening and not come forward and say, ‘This is wrong.’ ”

“But there’s no doubt that it’s wrong,” Terry Wright said in his mild, reasonable voice. “It was obvious from the papers that the attacks were horrific and that the police are going after the culprits with everything they’ve got. What more could we do?”

“It’s not as if the news of Ingraham’s murder was followed by editorials ripping up gays for their lifestyle choice,” Corlew said. “I can personally attest to the fact that not one person I’ve met over the course of the past week has said anything along the lines of ‘Good, they’ve got it coming to ’em.’ ”

“My position is very simple. I don’t want to see St. Alban’s name dragged through the mud again,” Sterling Sumner said. “After last winter’s debacle, I say we need to keep our heads down and our noses clean. Where is all this going to lead? People associating our name with crime and homosexuality. That’ll be bringing new recruits in by the busload. You do remember that we wanted you to increase membership, don’t you?”

“There are three new families attending St. Alban’s since I became rector,” she said.

He sniffed. “That’s a start….”

“I haven’t been here a year yet!”

“Calm down, Reverend Clare. No one is questioning your ability to get the job done. Get up on top of the bench, will you?” Corlew turned the wheel slightly and released the jib several inches. The boat responded by keeling starboard, away from the wind, and Clare and Terry stepped up on the padded seat and sat on the outer edge of the cockpit, leaning against the yaw of the boat.

“Sterling’s raised a valid point,” Mrs. Marshall said, taking a small sip from her gin and tonic. “How do you answer it, Ms. Fergusson?”

“I don’t think anyone would mistake our concern for victims of crime as an association with crime, any more than our mentoring program for teen mothers is a stamp of approval for girls getting pregnant.”

“Another idea of which I did not approve,” Sterling said.

Clare ignored that. “And as for people shunning us because of our known association with homosexuals”—here she wiggled her eyebrows, because she sounded ridiculously like Joseph McCarthy—“I say we don’t want new