Blood, Guts, & Whiskey

by Todd Robinson

  “And he abused him.”

  “I didn’t know until the end of the trial,” she said. “I called Patrick to tell him the good news, that Brendan was free, and he cried as if someone had died. He was living out in California then, as far from the rest of us as he could get. I told him he should be on his hands and knees praying. It was only then that he told me ... what Brendan had done.” She shook her head. “He hung up on me and I tried to call him back. I tried and tried and finally that night I got his landlord on the phone. He went up to Patrick’s apartment and found his body. An overdose, like you said.”

  “He killed himself?”

  “Accident or not, who could say?” Maire stared down at her skirt.

  “That’s why you changed your mind about Brendan. But by then, it didn’t matter.” His hands were drumming against his thighs. “So where is he now?”

  Maire shook her head.

  “I can’t believe you’re still protecting him. He’s responsible for the death of your other son, you know that?” His voice was getting louder. “You know how many other deaths he’s caused? How many drunks? How many addicts?” He towered over her. “You’re going to tell me if it’s the last thing you do.”

  Maire laughed suddenly, a short, mirthless sound that was almost a bark. “That would be a threat if my life meant anything to me.” Paul’s blue-green eyes stared at her. “Do you think I want to go on living like this, knowing I gave life to a monster? This is hell on earth. I wish I were dead.”

  Paul shook his head disbelievingly. “When the trial was on, somebody asked you how you were getting through it. You said it was faith. What happened to that?”

  “I put my faith in the wrong things,” she answered quietly. “I have committed a mortal sin and I ...” Her voice trailed off. “I can’t even take communion now. I’d have to go to confession first. I’d have to tell a priest my sins, and there are too many to tell.”

  “Hiding your son from me is a sin.” Paul sat down on the couch next to her. “You know he’s guilty.”

  “And you want revenge,” Maire said, staring straight ahead.

  “It’s not just that.” He put two fingertips on her bloody jaw and gently turned her face to his. “I think about what he’s doing now. I think about him hurting other kids.”

  Maire stared into his eyes for several heartbeats and took a deep breath. “He can’t hurt anyone.”

  “I need more than just you telling me that,” said Paul.

  “If I tell you where he is, you have to promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “You’ll put an end to my suffering. I don’t mind how you do it, so long as you do.”

  “Put an end ...” Paul stared at her in disbelief.

  “I can’t kill myself. A Catholic can’t do that,” Maire explained. “But it would be a mercy if—”

  At that moment there was a crashing sound and shouting, and men with guns yelling, “Don’t move!” and a camera crew behind them getting everything on tape. Paul was shoved onto the ground, a patrolman’s knee shoved into the small of his back as he was cuffed. “No!” shouted Maire. “You can’t take him away! Let him alone!” No one listened to her. Another cop frisked Paul and pulled out a small baggie from the pocket of his jeans.

  “This is Janey Saxon, reporting live from the home of Maire Kennelly, mother of accused sex offender Brendan Kennelly. Mrs. Kennelly’s quiet home was brutally invaded this morning by a pair of drug addicts ...”

  Maire closed her eyes and sank back against the couch, offering no resistance to the medics who swarmed around her. There would be no release and no absolution for her.

  Maire refused to press charges, but Paul was arrested for drug possession, denied bail, and shipped to Rikers Island awaiting trial. Janey Saxon had spotted his partner leaving Maire’s house, but the police hadn’t found Ray. For all Paul knew, he was headed back to San Diego. One morning Paul was told he had a visitor, and he was stunned at the sight of Maire on the other side of the glass. Her silvery hair was freshly permed and she was wearing a black suit and red lipstick. One side of her face was healing from dark bruising, but the cut on her jaw looked as if it had healed without a stitch.

  “You look better. Healthier,” she said when she picked up the telephone to speak to him.

  “Maybe orange is my color,” he said, and gave her a slight smile.

  “I’ve thought a great deal about what we talked about, the last time I saw you,” she said carefully. “I told you about Saint Monica. Now I want to tell you about Saint Rita.”

  Paul stared at her, wondering if it was the blow in her front hall or the fall in the kitchen that had jumbled her brain.

  “I started praying to Rita after the trial, when I finally knew what my son really was. Do you know anything about Saint Rita? Her life was a hell on earth. Her husband abused her and her sons were terrible creatures. She prayed for them, for all of them, but the only relief she got was when they died.”

  Paul took a sharp breath.

  “The last thing my son Patrick said to me was: Take care of Vincent. Don’t let Brendan get him too.” Maire blinked back tears. “It hit me then, my grandson was in danger. Brendan wasn’t going to stop. I had to stop him.” She took a deep breath. “Brendan could read me like a book, just like you did, and I thought he would realize that something in my heart had changed. But with Patrick’s death, it was easy to explain why I was ... different. After Patrick’s funeral, when Caitlin had left with her husband and boy, I made dinner for Brendan. It was never hard to get him to come over for that. He always said I was the best cook in the world.”

  Paul swallowed hard.

  “Do you think anyone’s listening to this?” Maire said idly. “Be an interesting test, won’t it? So when Brendan came over, I served him dinner. And that was the end of that.”

  “You mean you ...” Paul’s hand shook and he gripped the receiver.

  “It had to stop. It was the only thing I could do.”

  “But how did you ... get ... rid ... of ... ?”

  “There’s a rather large freezer in my basement,” said Maire. “The next time you come over, I’ll show you.” She sat straight in her seat. “You’ve a fine way of listening to an old woman prattle on. Almost as good as a priest.” She started to get up. “Keep in mind you made me a promise,” she said, leaning close to the glass. “I intend to hold you to it.”

  Faith-Based Initiative

  Kieran Shea

  Every Monday at a quarter past five, Father Mike Hogan takes a corner stool at The Raised Jar.

  Mondays are Father Mike’s days off from the bleak, celibate trade of the doomed at Sacred Heart down in Asbury Park. Shepherding the indigent, the guilty, the infirm, and more and more these days, the totally fucked.

  Typically, Father Mike settles in at the end of the mahogany, tucks into a recycled stack of Sunday papers I save for him, maybe orders a thrifty special off of the menu. Curried stuffed potato skins and Manhattan clam chowder are keen with Father Mike. Never more than two pints at a sitting lest it get back to the fretful diocese brass.

  The Raised Jar’s owners, Ed and Eleanor Campbell, love the old man to pieces. Hell, everybody does. What with his coaching the summer hoops league and the shore homeless shelter, the man is a local saint. The Campbells comp Father Mike too, because he hooked them up with Ethan and Luke, their two adopted Korean sons.

  There’s no TV in the bar, so Mondays are a dead shift behind the sticks, and because of this I’ve gotten to know Father Mike pretty well.

  He reads thick, political biographies and both of us think James Gandolfini is totally overrated. I’m lapsed, but what the hell. Father Mike keeps trying.

  “A seltzer, Gabe.”

  I arch an eyebrow. “No Guinness tonight, Father?”

  Father pats his pockets like he’s forgotten something.

  “No,” he says. “My stomach’s been acting funny. Just the soda, please, Gabe. No straw.”


  “Fruit in it?”

  Father Mike shakes his head no and rakes his scalp-cut with his fingernails. I smile and gun him a large soda, tapping it down on a coaster in front of him. His skin is scarlet from the cold walk up to Long Branch. February low off the New Jersey coastline makes the sea air slash like a razor. From where I stand I can smell the stale smoke drifting off his faded blue Knights of Columbus windbreaker like an old attic sheet.

  What can I say? The priest likes his Winstons.

  I stick a black plastic swizzle stick in my mouth and switch it back and forth with my tongue as Father Mike slugs back some of his seltzer. Setting his drink down, his eyes bore into the space on the bar between his scabbed hands. And then Father makes a noise that sounds almost like a child stifling a hiccup.

  Father can’t hold it. He starts crying.

  I reach for his forearm.

  “Hey, Father. Hey, now. Hey.”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, nothing to be sorry about.”

  He backhands some tears. “It’s been ... it’s been hard.”

  “I know, Father.”

  “Hard for me, Gabe. Hard for the other priests, but they’re younger. Ethiopia. Sierra Leone. They’ve seen worse where they come from.”

  “I know, Father. It breaks my heart.”

  “Horrible things.”

  “It’ll get better soon, you’ll see.”

  With fractured grief, Father Mike stares into my eyes and starts to cough, a heavy smoker’s jag.

  Two other patrons at a lone two-top across the room look up from their burgers and I shoot them a look. They go back to their specials while Wendy, our sole waitress on Mondays, refills their water glasses.

  I let go of Father’s forearm and go old school.

  I pour Father a double of Tullamore Dew.

  After closing, our grill cook, Miguel Morales, sits near the back door of the kitchen. He’s peeled out of his checks, apron, and chef’s jacket, and changed into his street clothes—some ratty sweats with a black zipped hoodie, swollen dirty sneakers, and a red Fila trucker’s cap. Miguel kind of leans and sits on a short stack of four green milk crates, arms resting on his thighs like a whipped prize fighter.

  After I called Father Mike a cab, we had about a dozen other bar and dinner customers. Ed came by to cash out the register with a security escort about a half hour ago, and he gave Wendy a lift home. It’s part of my job to turn out the lights and set the alarms. Because it’s a light night, I gave Miguel a hand breaking down the kitchen and running the dry mop over the mud-colored tiles. Eight dinner tickets all night long. Clean up was a breeze.

  Miguel and I are drinking our second shift beers before heading home. The scent of bleach and lemon cleanser from the floor is stifling. I pull on my brown Carhartt jacket and shake my keys.

  “Light night, huh?”

  Miguel looks up.

  “Mondays at The Jar ...” I go on, taking a slurp from my beer. “Macking.”

  Miguel mutters something I can’t hear.

  “What’s that?”

  “S’not right, yo.”

  “What’s not right?”

  “Father Mike.”

  I chew my lip. “Yeah, well. Hey, what’re you going to do? Scumbag kids.”

  “Still. S’not right.”

  I zipper up my jacket and adjust my watch cap in the shine of the glassed doors of the standup convection oven behind the line. I rent a garage apartment a stiff ten-minute walk from the bar, and if I get a move on I can probably catch a shower and maybe ESPN SportsCenter before midnight and dreams. In ten hours I’ve got class over at a Rutgers satellite. Economics.

  “Somebody should do somethin’, yo.”

  I turn and tilt my head. Miguel is looking at me now, his brown eyes dead on and hard. I wait a beat.

  “Do something?”

  Miguel’s head bobs.

  “Yeah.”

  I eye him up and down.

  “What? You?”

  “No. Me and you.”

  I bark a short laugh, but Miguel’s face stays stony.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Sí. I totally serious.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Miguel.”

  Miguel throws up his hands. “But Father Mike, he does so much, man. My cousin? Enrique? Fuck. His little girl got sick and Father Mike was, like, paying for her meds an’ shit. Does it all the time. Father, he give when no one care. Old Italian ladies yell: Latinos ruining their parroquia and I’s like, fuck them. But Father Mike sticks up for us. You don’t know what that’s like, G.”

  Miguel is right. I have no idea what it’s like.

  I grew up middle class with broken family roots one county over. I attend college on my own dime because I can’t pour beer forever, and I’m dating a cherry-haired, Irish bombshell with great tits who adores anything I do. I have prospects. Young guys like Miguel, from the battered, carved-up houses in the trashed, flagged parts of all these Jersey beach towns, the cheap apartments and forgotten residential tracts—it’s got to suck. All feared and shunned. Clawed their ways out of the brutal guts of one country into another’s just to be squashed in the slack and scapegoated. It was Father Mike who talked to the Campbells into hiring Miguel on the line at The Jar in the first place.

  I try to talk sense into him.

  “Miguel, come on, man. Think about it. What’re you going to do? Like in a perfect world I’m sure there’d be some justice out there and those sickos who trashed Father Mike’s church would get theirs.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I’m sure the cops are doing everything they can. Just forget about it, dude. It’s their problem.”

  “Ellos saben la mierda.”

  I finish my beer.

  “Yeah, well, they may know shit, amigo, but sooner or later they’ll figure it out.”

  Miguel sulks. “Been, like, three weeks, man.”

  “So?”

  “So? So? Someone like me, I do somethin’ like that? Like ... bang, jail. Throw away the key.”

  And I think, maybe Miguel just needs another beer. Fuck, I know I do. I saunter into the dining room and reach over the bar to pour us a couple more Harp Lagers from the tap. I walk back gingerly and hand him his. We drink our third beers pretty much in silence until Miguel leaps up and punches a hole in the drywall.

  “Hey!” I shout.

  Miguel is up now, pacing. “Like I know, man! Like I know who did it, G!”

  “You? You know who trashed Sacred Heart?”

  “Sí.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. No shit. Enrique knows too.”

  “Enrique?”

  “My cousin. Says last month Father sees this homeboy hitting some girl bad, so he stop to help. Fucked Father all up. Bryant. That’s the guy. Bryant guy say he gonna get even, fuck Father Mike for good. And, yo, people, man ... they saw it. Everybody saw it! Him say all this shit, but nobody say nothin’ to police. Nothin’. Word is, homeboy brags about what he did. Proud.”

  “What’s this Bryant dude’s first name?”

  “No se. Pinche puta.”

  “Where does he live? Up here? Does this piece of shit live down in Asbury proper or what?”

  “Nah. Down Neptune.”

  “Neptune?”

  “Yeah.”

  I remember Father Mike weeping at the bar and slowly I begin to feel my shoulders tighten.

  I cannot imagine the humiliation, the suppressed rage Father Mike feels. A real boot in the face. Paint and garbage and broken stained glass everywhere. Graffiti describing acts of pedophilia. Dog shit stuffed in the chalice. Sacred Heart’s statue of the Virgin Mary had her eyes blacked out and her hands chopped off.

  “We need a lookout, yo.”

  “What? Wait. Who? Me?”

  “Yeah. Jus’ a lookout.”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  Miguel paces. “Enrique an’ me we teach this maricón respect, yo. You don’ have t
o do nothin’.”

  “Fuck. What the fuck, Miguel?”

  Miguel rolls his shoulders. “Back in an hour, G.”

  Three more beers and Miguel makes a call from the kitchen’s phone. Ten minutes later a dented, tan Toyota minivan picks us up half a block down from the bar. We climb in and I slide the side door closed.

  “Enrique, este es Gabriel.”

  Enrique is slightly taller than Miguel and bigger across the shoulders. He has a closely shaved head, full goatee, and wears a heavy lined black and tan flannel shirt over a gray sweatshirt. From where I sit in the back, I can see a dark green shadow of an ornate tattoo creeping up from below his collar to the base of his skull.

  Enrique pulls into traffic and doesn’t acknowledge me at all.

  The radio plays some Latin talk show, real low, the DJ’s rapid-fire prattle sounding like he’s trapped in an oil drum. A minty air freshener with a Salvadoran flag on it swings from the rearview mirror and there are kids’ toys all over the backseat. I adjust my legs. There’s easily a half a dozen empty McDonald’s and White Castle sacks on the floor.

  Enrique points below the glove compartment and turns the wheel.

  “Compruebe el bolso ...”

  Miguel unzips a duffel at his feet, rummages, and zips it back up.

  “Galán.”

  Via the side streets we pick our way over to Route 71 and head south towards Neptune. I’m more than half drunk but I’m thinking how bad this all is, about how I’m about to royally fuck up my life and maybe after a few beers this isn’t the best idea to go vigilante, but fuck it.

  Miguel gestures to me without looking back and the two of them in the front seat speak so much rapid-fire Salvadoran caliche slang that I can’t keep up with my restaurant Spanglish. They laugh and Enrique catches my eyes in the rearview mirror.