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In the two years since I’ve been ordained, I’ve never heard an admission as disturbing and unjust. One that strikes a chord so sharply inside of me, I feel stunned and paralyzed, running merely on autopilot, as trained and familiar words tumble from frozen lips. “You can still redeem yourself. Confess your crime.”
“I did confess. And I don’t feel so redeemed. But now God knows, at least. Blessed is the fruit, ain’t it? Blessed and so damnsweet.”
I can see her, that girl, just as he’s described her. Small, curly-haired blonde, his dirty fingers digging into her throat. The echo of those cries pounding out an ache inside my chest, one that calls out to instincts long repressed, hidden beneath layers and layers of prayer and focus.
Science refers to us assapiens, the wise ones, judicious and logical, but we’re born with a strange dichotomy—both a civilized and primitive mind with an innate proclivity to protect. In my most basic mind, the man confessing is evil, and even as a priest, my nature is to banish it. Banish him. Rid the earth of the rot.
He could be lying, though. Toying with me. Perhaps it’s the alcohol talking for him, spewing lies based on some fantasy. I’ve heard those before, too.
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“Now, why would I lie to a priest? You ain’t gonna tell nobody.” The chuckle in his throat grates on my nerves, like the aggravating buzz of a fly that needs swatting.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Whiskey makes the noise go away.”
Of course it does. I know that as much as anyone. It makes everything go away—pain, guilt, regret.
“You go up on Angels Point,” he goes on, while my mind spins like a tilt-a-whirl in darkness. “Go on up there and see what you find.”
For eight years, I’ve kept my composure, and I can feel the threads thinning with every word that tumbles from his lips.
“Do you have any remorse for what you’ve done?”
There’s a pause that gives me some small measure of hope that I might be able to persuade him to go to the authorities, but the ensuing snickering withers my brief optimism.
“Remorse? Did God have remorse when he put cancer in that sweet lamb’s blood? He have remorse when he took her eyesight? No, y’all call thatHisdoing.”
Sickness churns in my stomach, as his sin bloats inside my chest, expanding and writhing within me, like a living, breathing thing, stirring long forgotten memories.Standing beside a hospital bed. Holding one small hand in mine. Praying. Always praying. For a miracle. For more time.I hold the back of my palm to my mouth to keep from expelling dinner on the already worn and dappled wood that seems to be closing me in. The tickle in my chest threatens panic, and I chide myself to pull it together. Tamp down those memories and focus on the present.
“I’ll ask you one last time, go to the authorities. Confess your crimes there. This is your last chance.”
“Or what?”
I don’t answer, my mind lost to an unbidden scene already crystalizing inside my head.
I fall to my knees and reach out for my little Isabella, dragging her small and lifeless body across the bedsheets. A trail of blood follows behind her, and as I turn her into my arms, tucking her against my chest, a new wave of misery pulls me under. I stroke a trembling hand down her sleeping face, over the delicate wisps of hair plastered to her temples by a smattering of blood there.
The wood creaks, and the click of the door breaks my thoughts. Jumping to my feet, I push through the door of the confessional and collide with a body. Not the man who’s stabbed at my conscience the last twenty minutes, but a woman. A slim, lithe form that I have to catch to keep her from crumpling to the floor with the impact, bracing my hands at each of her shoulders to hold her steady.
She gasps, and for one brief second, my eyes are drawn to the red of her lips sticking out from a pale face and her black high neck dress.
“Oh, my … I’m sorry, Father.” Taking a step back, she shrugs out of my grasp and straightens her clingy dress.
Slicing my gaze towards the door, I catch the man hobbling out of the church. The bright blue shirt he wears carries a yellow logo, but I can’t make out what it is, or the name of the company. “Excuse me one moment. I’ll be right back.”
“Father, I really—”
“One moment, please. I promise I’ll be right back.”
I jog after the man, slamming through the door of the church, and out into the dry summer air that steals my breath as I descend the stairs to the sidewalk. The encroaching darkness dims what little is left of daylight, as the sun hides behind the adjacent buildings. Scanning over the handful of bodies ambling about, I search for the silvery hair and blue T-shirt I noted when he exited the church. Rounding the corner brings the rectory in sight, standing still and unperturbed. Only the muted hum of traffic up and down the street interrupts the quietude.
At the approach of a young kid, perhaps seventeen years old, I pause. “Have you seen an older man? Silvery hair and blue shirt?”
The kid shakes his head. “Nah,” he says, without bothering to slow his pace and knocking me in the shoulder on his way past. “Sorry.”
I narrow my gaze on each individual form. A woman, hooker no doubt, in a short skirt and spaghetti-strap tank, leaning against the brick wall of the 7-Eleven. Two old men talking outside a cigar shop, neither wearing a blue T-shirt. Another woman, chiding a toddler, who runs ahead of her while an infant sits propped at her hip, as they make their way across a parking lot. About a dozen faces, none of which look capable of carrying out the kind of brutality I heard only minutes before.
