“I’d call the fucker a son-of-a-bitch except then I’d be insulting Granny. That fucker! That asshole!” She banged her hand against the steering wheel with each loud curse. She kept her eyes focused on the stop sign way off in the distance that marked the end of the old country road. There she would turn right and head into town where Bobby lived, over another hill and then a straight shot. She was close enough now to make out the spray painted initials “C.J” under the word STOP. Vicky knew most everyone in the area but she never figured out who C.J. was or who had spray painted the stop sign. As she approached the stop sign she realized how fast she was driving, as if she was late getting somewhere. The thought quickly crossed her mind that there was no need to hurry. She was only going to Bobby’s house. She wasn’t late.
“Take your foot off the gas, girl. Slow down. Smokey Bear’s thick through here,” she told herself as she braked at the stop sign. She was careful to switch on her right turn signal and look both ways before she turned onto the old two-lane state highway. She drove slowly and cautiously at first. Bored country kids with nothing better to do than drag race their hot rods down the highway had forced the cops to patrol this particular stretch of road. Two more miles and she would be in town.
The caution was short lived, however, and soon the demon anger surfaced again, causing her to forget about the cops. She accelerated. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel and her jaw clenched shut once again as curses escaped her throat and teeth in staccato-like bursts. Again she didn’t notice the land, the old barns, farmhouses, and fields. She remained oblivious as she passed the gas station on the edge of town and the sign welcoming all those entering the small rural community. Something instinctual slowed her down a little as she entered town. But still, she didn’t much notice the old courthouse or the public library or the storefronts or the parked cars or the people standing around outside the places of business, delighted to be outdoors on this unusually sunny and pleasant day in the middle of winter. She scarcely noticed the driving beat of the rock music that blared over her car stereo.
Vicky didn’t notice the oncoming car that passed her. She didn’t notice the little boy on the bike approaching her from her peripheral left immediately following the passing car. He crossed the street from the other side between two parked cars just as the oncoming car passed her, but she couldn’t see him until it was too late. (That’s what the police report said).
The sound and feel of a thud turned the demon anger into a sudden and stark terror. In a second the bike was under her car, the boy was on her hood, and blood was everywhere. Her immediate instinct–to swerve to the right as if trying to back track and avoid what just happened. Her foot fumbled for the brake, finding the pedal she pushed down hard. But to her complete and utter horror it was not the brake at all but the gas that her foot landed on. She was on the curb in a moment, smashing into the metal pole of the street sign at the corner of Main and Providence. The pole bent in half and came crashing through her windshield. Glass broke and then a searing pain on the left side of her face as the metal street sign bearing the name of Providence slashed her cheek. At last she came to a stop from the impact of the sign and her foot finally reaching the brake.
The next thing she remembered she was being placed on a stretcher, staring up at the bright blue sky and wondering if she was dead. She felt something liquid and warm on her face. She touched the area and examined her fingers; she gasped at the sight of her own blood. She felt it oozing out all over–on her cheeks and forehead from splintered glass embedded in the flesh and the deep gash left by the metal street sign.
“Relax,” a paramedic said leaning over her as he wrapped a blanket tightly around her. She’d been warm, almost hot, all day from the unexpected change in weather, but now she felt a violent iciness surge through her veins and she shook uncontrollably. She heard the paramedics say something about blood pressure and respiration.
“I–I,” she struggled to get words out.
“Shhh. Don’t talk,” the paramedic said.
“But there was a boy on a bike. I hit him. Oh, my God, I hit him.”
“Shhh. Relax.”
“Is he okay? Please tell me he’s okay.”
“He’s on his way to the hospital right now. Don’t worry.”
“So he’ll be okay then? Right?”
“You concentrate on you right now.”
“Me? What’s wrong with me? Am I dying?” She felt herself slip away as everything around her faded into a swirling black.
“Hang in there, now. Stay with us,” the paramedic said. She was vaguely aware of being confined, strapped onto a stretcher and lifted. “What’s her name again?” she heard him ask someone.
“Vicky. Vicky Dooley,” an unfamiliar voice replied.
“Stay awake, Vicky. Stay awake. Can you hear me, Vicky?”
Vicky looked at Father Mudd through eyes too blurred too see. All the years of anguish, pain, and regret–all the going back over it in her mind and replaying it–if only, could have, should have–all those years of trying to keep it down and keep it to herself came out in great heaving sobs. Father Mudd scooted his chair closer to her until their knees touched. He offered her the unused dusty tissue box. She pulled off several sheets and buried her face in her hands. Father Mudd said nothing until she composed herself enough to speak, until there was nothing left but a few aftershocks and an occasional sniffle.
“When did you find out about the boy on the bike?”
“The next day from my grandma. I spent the night in the hospital. They had to dig the glass out of my face and stitch me up. I was in pain and shock but still I kept asking about him. All the doctors and nurses just kept telling me not to worry. He died that night in the hospital. Imagine that, under the same roof as me. Funny, I was up most of the night. I knew they couldn’t save him.” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“His name was Joey. His Daddy called him little Joe. He was only nine years old. He’d be nineteen if he were alive today.”
“Were you under the influence at the time of the accident?”
“No, I was stone-cold sober. No drugs, no alcohol in my system. They tested me all right to make sure.”
“Were you speeding?”
“That’s a good question. See, there was this whole investigation that went on afterwards. I could’ve been charged with manslaughter. But it could never be proved that I was speeding. Personally, it seemed like I was speeding, like I had to have been or I could have stopped in time. But the witnesses, and there were plenty of them standing around on the street, gave mixed reports. The only thing that they all agreed on was that my car radio was turned up too loud. In the end it was decided that it was an unavoidable accident because of how it happened. They said that my vision was obstructed since he crossed from the other side of the street between two parked cars at the same time that oncoming car passed me. They said even going the legal speed limit I couldn’t have seen him in time to stop.”
“So why do you still blame yourself?”
“Don’t you see?” she blurted out “I was driving too fast. I know I was. I hit the gas instead of the brake.”
“Yes, but you told me that was after you already hit him.”
“It don’t matter. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. I would’ve seen him on the other side of the street if I’d been paying attention and I would’ve slowed way down. My mind wasn’t on my driving. It was on hateful things, terrible things, wishing my father was dead. So instead I killed this innocent little boy.”
“I wonder if you blame your father as much as you do yourself.”
“Damn right I blame him. Nobody could get me as angry as he could. You know he never came to see me that night in the hospital. I only saw him one time after that. It was when I went home to get my things. I moved out right after that and moved in with my boyfriend. You know what he said to me? He said ‘I knew you’d do something stupid like this some day’. Here I am wishing I was dead inst
ead of that little boy and that’s all he says to me.”
“You never saw him after that?”
“No, he died when I was twenty-one. Grandma said he wanted to see me there at the last. She said he wanted to make peace with me. I didn’t really want to believe her ‘cause I was still so pissed off at him. I never even went to his funeral. I think it just about broke my grandma’s heart. She died a year later.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Right now I do. But then when I get to thinking about all the mean things he did to me, how he never once said he was sorry, and then all of a sudden on his death bed he wants to apologize and expects me to write the whole thing off. It was just too late. Just too damn late.”
“Surely you’ve heard ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. “
“From the Lord’s Prayer. Yeah, I’ve heard it.”
“Do you want to forgive him?”
“Yes. Maybe I won’t tomorrow, but today I do.”
“Willingness. That’s the first step. Then, of course, there’s someone else you must forgive.”
“Myself, right? Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“Why do you have such a hard time forgiving yourself?”
“Because it’s still there with me.”
“What is?”
“That demon anger, that recklessness, rebel without a cause, whatever you call it. For crying out loud, I sell drugs.”
“Sold drugs.”
“Okay. Sold drugs. It don’t matter. I could be responsible for other people’s deaths. I tend bar for a living. I’ve let people leave the place drunker than skunks knowing full well they’re gonna get behind the wheel of a car. Hell, I’ve driven home so drunk myself I don’t even remember it the next morning. You know there been mornings I’ve had to run out to check my truck and make sure there’s no blood or dents on it. It’s horrible. I hate it. I already done killed one person, you’d think I’d never do stupid stuff like that ever again. So why do I keep doing it? Why?”
Father Mudd’s brows furrowed once again, but this time not in a sympathetic look designed to encourage gut spilling. His eyes seemed focused somewhere way beyond her as if he saw his own reflection on a distant wall.
“The worst part of it is that God sees me.”
“Are you afraid God will punish you?”
“It ain’t so much that as the fact that he’s gone, just plain gone. It’s like he’s way far away watching me from some other world and I don’t know what he thinks because I can’t reach him. I can’t get to him. He’s gone and he’ll never come back to where I am. I can’t get him back. I just can’t get him back.” Vicky felt herself succumb to a defeated tearlessness that left her with only sighs and a crushing gravity that pulled her down into the chair.
“I just wish I knew if you believed. Tell me, please. Do you?” Vicky pleaded in a tired voice strained from sobbing.
“I used to believe. Fervently. It’s why I became a priest. Well, at least partially why I became a priest. I had mixed motives, some right, some wrong, though at the time I didn’t know that. But that’s beside the point. I can’t exactly say I don’t believe anymore. I just have more doubt than faith.”
“What happened?”
“How does it ever happen? How did it happen to you?”
“Life just nibbled away at me. You know, like I said before, after a while it just seems too good to be true.”
“And that’s how it happened to me.”
“You know what I wish for you? I wish you believed again. Do you want to believe again?” Vicky asked.
“Yes.”
“Willingness. That’s the first step. Someone told me that once.”
“You know what I wish for you?”
“This ought to be good.”
“I wish you’d get baptized.”
A strange hope stirred inside Vicky and the crushing weight began to lift off her shoulders. She smiled and sat up straighter.
“Could you baptize me?”
“Yes.”
“Today?”
“No, not today. I’d want you to come back and talk to me more about this.”
“Ah, c’mon Father Mudd,” Vicky whined like a kid begging for a treat.
“I want you to be sure you know what you’re doing first.”
“But you believe right now, or at least you want to believe, you have willingness, whatever. If I come back you might not believe again and then it won’t take.”
“It would still take. It doesn’t so much matter what I believe as what you believe. It’s the grace of the sacrament.”
“Whatever. I just wanna know that it’s another believer dunking me in the water.”
“But don’t you see? It might help me to believe again, that is if I help you to believe again. We could walk through it together,” said Father Mudd.
“Okay, so if you won’t baptize me today could you at least give me abso.. abso..?”
“Absolution?”
“That’s it,” Vicky said, her notepad and pen already in hand writing down the letters. “That’s A-B-S-O-L-U..”
“T-I-O-N.” Father Mudd waited patiently for her to write down the word, and he seemed to lack curiosity as to just why she was writing it down. She finished and put the notepad and pen back in her coat pocket.
“So will you give me absolution?”
“No, I can’t do that. I already told you.”
“Please, please give me absolution. I need to know that I’m forgiven.”
“I’ll pray with you.”
“Please, Father, please.” Vicky began to cry again, and as the tears ran down her cheeks in unrestrained torrents, she scooted off the chair and fell to her knees. “I gotta know I’m forgiven. I’ve been carrying this terrible thing around with me for ten years. Please, please give me absolution. I beg you. I’m kneeling at your feet. I’m begging you.” Father Mudd handed her a wad of tissues before her eyes and nose dripped onto his black loafers. As she wiped her face and stared at the black loafers she felt his hands on her head.
She was catapulted back in time as she remembered the preacher man who placed his hands on her head when she was thirteen years old back at the tent revival where she got saved. The same warmth went through her. He bent closer to her face and she could smell the faintest trace of whiskey on his breath. He said the words in a hushed voice just barely above the sound of a whisper.
“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
“Was that it? Am I forgiven?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Father.” Father Mudd bent down and helped Vicky to her feet. He stood with her and as they rose they found themselves looking eye to eye. He was the exact height she was.
“What is your name?”
“Vicky.”
“Vicky. Call the parish office Monday and make an appointment to see me. Our number’s in the book. We’ll see what we can do about getting you baptized. Consider that your penance.”
“My what?”
“Your penance.”
“Could you spell that please?” Vicky said taking out her notepad and pen from her coat pocket.
“P-E-N-A-N-C-E.” It means…”
“Don’t tell me. I’ll look it up when I get home.”
”The Lord has freed you from your sins, Vicky. Go in peace.”
“Free.” Vicky exhaled the word slowly in a half whisper, letting its sound and meaning permeate her. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Father Mudd said.
Vicky turned without another word and walked out the door.
Chapter 17
The New Year: 1984
Vicky s
topped by the River Inn that New Year’s Eve. She didn’t even need a drink to celebrate the New Year. Her boss let her stay and work that night since the New Year’s Eve crowd was larger than he expected. She called cabs for the big drinkers and paid the fare out of her own pocket. And so she was back to work.
January spilt out one day into the next as Vicky experienced her New Year with a strange bitter-sweetness. She stopped worrying about Bobby and began grieving for him; just as surely as if his body had been found, cleaned up, dressed in the one blue suit he owned, laid out, eulogized, memorialized, and buried. She had laid him to rest in her mind; it was the only way she could go on.
She moved about with a cautious sort of gait at first, like someone recovering from a long illness or a prisoner released from years in a dark dank dungeon whose eyes are not yet accustomed to the light. She permanently turned off her porch light. Eddie must’ve gotten the word out because no angry customers came looking for her. She made excuses not to see her friends and acquaintances. She had to make a complete break from her old life. She didn’t know why exactly, but for something. She moved slower these days, but she thought perhaps her footsteps were a little lighter.
It was a day in late January when she retrieved her notepad and pen out of her coat pocket to write down a new word. There were the words “absolution” and “penance” on the page before her eyes. Vicky remembered with an exasperated sigh at herself. She still hadn’t made an appointment with Fr. Mudd and she still had nearly seven thousand dollars stuffed in a boot in the corner of her closet. She grabbed the new dictionary that Allison had given her and looked up the word “penance”. She skipped over the definition that said something about “confession”, “sacrament”, and “self-mortification.” It all sounded like it came straight out of Father Mudd’s text book. Her eyes moved quickly to the definition that said, “A penalty for wrongdoing: discipline, correction.” That she understood.
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