An Angel On Her Shoulder

by Dan Alatorre

  I pulled back my curtain a little wider to ensure my assessment was right. The hall was vacant, and kneelers tend to get uncomfortable quickly. Probably part of a leftover medieval torture setup during The Inquisition. A wood seat sounded like a nice upgrade. “Oh, the regular seats will be fine.”

  “Good!” He said, rising. “My butt was getting sore in here.”

  I smiled. My kind of priest.

  I stood up and went through the curtain to greet him. He was a barrel chested man, dressed in plain clothes. Guess he wasn’t expecting to be seen outside the confessional box so he skipped the black shirt and white collar.

  I held my hand out. “Father, I’m Doug.”

  His massive mitt took mine. “Call me Frank.” Gesturing to the empty pews with his book—The Bible—he smiled. “Shall we sit? Or would you rather walk a little?”

  I opened my mouth to speak but he answered his own question. Rubbing his butt, he turned toward the exit door. “Let’s walk.”

  I followed. Father Frank walked with a slight limp, almost unnoticeable. His shoes were old and faded.

  “What brings you to me today?” His voice boomed off the walls of the empty church, making it sound that much louder. “What’s the problem you need to talk about so strongly that you dare disrupt the sanctity of my confessional booth?”

  My stomach twitched. I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic.

  At the door, Frank frowned. “Ah, it’s raining. Damn.” He turned back to me. “Looks like we’ll have to talk here. Just a moment.”

  He took something out of his pocket and dropped it into a can by the rack of candles. It hit the bottom with a metallic plunk.

  “Do you mind if Joseph listens in?” He pointed over his shoulder to the stature of St. Joseph behind the candle rack.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not talking much for a man who wants to talk about his problem,” Father Frank noted. “Wanna know why I put that nail in the can?”

  I blinked. A nail?

  “I tend to swear a lot. I enjoy it. I find it helpful to me in my work. However, the powers that be within this fine institution find the use of profanity to be . . . undignified. And unworthy of any representative of the Holy Church.” He grinned. “Can you imagine? And so a crafty method was devised to cure those of us with this horrendous affliction—that is, the bad habit of cussing.”

  He put his hands in his pockets and tipped his head toward the statue. “I have been given a hammer and some nails, not unlike Joseph here, a carpenter. Every time I use a swear word, I hammer a nail into a piece of wood in the rectory storage room.”

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  “We don’t know yet. Some days it sounds like a machine gun going off over there.” He burst out laughing at his own joke, a thunderous whoop that bounced around the cavernous room.

  Plopping down in the pew in front of me, he threw an arm over the back of the bench and cocked an eye. “Now, what’s on your mind?”

  I drew a slow breath. “Okay. But it’s going to sound nutty.”

  “Nobody’s keeping score, son.”

  “I have a daughter.” I swallowed, searching the ceiling for the right words. “We do—my wife and I—we have a daughter. Sophie. That’s her name. We call her Sophie.”

  “Cute,” he said. “Go on.”

  “She recently turned four years old . . .”

  “That’s a fun age.”

  I nodded. “And there has been some trouble. Not trouble like she’s a bad kid. God, she’s a great kid.” I caught myself. “Oh. Sorry.” Using the Lord’s name improperly. And in a church yet.

  Father Frank dug into his pocket. He reached over and plunked a nail into the can by Joseph. “That one’s on me.”

  “Thanks. So . . .” The words were hard to say out loud. I had thought about it and thought about it, and still I was at a loss as to how to describe what was happening. Or what might be happening. “There seems to be some sort of big event that occurs, a really bad event, every year.” I looked at him directly. “We feel jinxed, or cursed or something. Possessed, maybe.”

  I watched Father Frank’s face to see if the crazy alarms had gone off yet. So far, so good.

  “It’s just, things don’t make sense.” I folded my hands, then unfolded them. “They don’t add up. I mean, if you almost get killed at a winery are you lucky because you weren’t killed, or are you unlucky because you were almost killed?”

  He nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  I was surprised. “You do?”

  “Yeah. It does sound nutty. Have you seen a psychiatrist?”

  I opened my mouth to speak.

  A burst of laughter erupted from deep in his barrel chest. “Just kidding.”

  Relief swept through me. This guy was quite a character.

  Father Frank scratched his chin. “I suppose how a person sees events like that all depends on their perspective. If you’re an optimist, you see it as lucky. You weren’t hurt, right? You and your family, in this winery incident?”

  “No, not my family. Others were hurt, though. One lady was nearly killed.”

  “Mm hmm.” The thick fingers massaging his jaw stopped. “Why does it bother you?”

  “Because we should have been killed. It scared us.” It sounded terrible when I said it out loud.

  A frown crept over Father Frank’s face. “Why should you have been killed? Did you do something wrong, to be punished?”

  “No, nothing like that.” I leaned forward and dropped my elbows onto my knees, running a hand through my hair. I had gone over this so many times in my head but it still sounded insane. “We, my daughter and I, we were walking out to the parking lot right before the wreck happened. We were going to have a picnic. We had a cooler in the van, and it was a nice day, so why not? Spend some time with my daughter while my wife sampled wines.”

  Frank nodded again. “Go on.”

  “Anyway, we went to go have our picnic by the side of the van. Only, on the way out, we got distracted.”

  “What distracted you?”

  “Nothing really. Dumb stuff. Sophie got fussy so I read her some t-shirts.”

  Frank gave me a sideways glance. “T-shirts?”

  “We’re always encouraging her to tell us what the words are on things. Like if there’s a poster or sign, we read it together. Things like that.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He smiled. “That’s cute.”

  “So we were in the winery, they had some wine t-shirts and I read them to her, to distract her because she was getting fussy. She was hungry. And they had some funny shirts that said ‘I like to cook with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food.’ Stuff like that.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “But here’s the thing.” I looked into his eyes, watching his face. “It was that little delay, reading the stupid t-shirts, that was just enough time for us not to get hit by the pickup truck in the parking lot. It smashed right into the car next to us and pushed that car, a sedan, flat up against our rented minivan. That’s where we would have been sitting for our picnic. We would have been killed.”

  Frank let this sink in. “It sounds like you were lucky. But it also sounds a lot like a coincidence.”

  “I don’t disagree,” I said. “In fact, that’s pretty much where my wife and I left it. Until we started talking about it that night. There have been other things that happened to us. They always happen around the same time of year, around our daughter’s birthday. That made us start thinking that maybe there was a connection. Once they were all laid out, you start to realize there has to be a connection. I mean, I really don’t see how it can be coincidence anymore.” I swallowed hard. “That’s when we started to wonder if maybe we . . . you know, if we were cursed. Or possessed. Or plain wacko.”

  “Well, I can see your concern.” Father Frank sat straighter, adjusting his shirt. “You’re her parents. You job is to keep her safe. If bad things are happening around you, around your daughter, you feel
as though you aren’t doing a good job.” He stood. “But bad things happen. There are good things in the world and there are bad things. Necessarily.”

  He stepped into the aisle, pacing and shaking out his legs.

  “You cannot have good without evil,” he said. “You look at the embodiment of goodness in the world. A child. A baby. Is there anything that you have seen in your life that was not as good and as pure as your daughter, or any baby, when they are born?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “You suppose correctly!” Frank boomed. “So we agree that some things are good. Absolutely good. But remember, as a Catholic, you believe that your daughter was born with original sin, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “And so therefore we see that the good is always accompanied by the bad. But you didn’t come here for scripture. Let’s look a little deeper, and from a different angle.” Frank meandered past Joseph and the candles.

  “If we allow that things can be good, they are only good in comparison to other things. If there was only one color in the world—the color blue, let’s say—we could reason that there were no colors at all, because everything would be blue. That would be all that we know, and maybe that would not be enough information to let you understand that blue was even a color. Like air, blue would just be. It isn’t until the addition of a second color that we can see blue, because we now have something else that is not blue. So that allows the comparison, and the comparison allows for the whole spectrum. Do you see?”

  “I think so.”

  He cocked his head, apparently looking for a bigger commitment.

  I gave it to him. “I’m with you so far.”

  “Okay.” Frank strolled the aisle, gesturing like crazed professor. “Now, if we allow that something is good—and we do—then we have to allow that something is bad. Good and bad, or good and evil, et cetera.” He stretched his arms out. “And between them, a spectrum. Varying degrees of goodness, and badness. Or evil. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why is it hard to believe in God and not believe in a devil? Or in this case, if someone can be lucky, can they not also be unlucky?” He threw his hands up. “Of course they can. Usually, they aren’t too much of one or the other.”

  Launching himself into my pew, he brandished his finger like a pirate’s broadsword. “Do you recall the paintings you have seen? Of God and angels?”

  I leaned away from the pointer in my face. “Like on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Yes.”

  “Very good. Now—do you believe that they were merely imagined by the artist, by Michelangelo? That he simply made them up?”

  I thought for a moment. “I suppose he was creating a visualization of something that he had read, or that had been told to him . . .”

  “Again you suppose correctly!” Frank beamed, retreating into the aisle. “And let’s not forget who Michelangelo’s boss was. The Pope. So it’s safe to say that he was getting his information from a good source.”

  He spaced back and forth in the aisle, his head down, one hand behind him and the other out front leading the way, stabbing the air as he spoke. “Now, if you can believe that there is a God and that there are angels, some sort of Old Testament embodiment of energy, that can bring down a sheep to interrupt you from sacrificing your son on the altar, like Abraham, or an aberration that can talk to this man’s wife.” He hooked a thumb at the statue of Joseph. “And tell her that she’s pregnant, why would you not think the other possibility is true as well? That there are beings from the other side of the spectrum that could also interact with us? Why is that so hard to believe?”

  Frank stepped into my pew and plopped down. “Most people believe the other way. They see a movie like The Exorcist and after two hours they completely believe in the devil. They’ll have nightmares from that belief, and it may stay with them for the rest of their lives.” His eyes fell on mine, seeming to study me. “Or, when nothing dramatic happens to them, like hovering over their bed, or their head twisting around backwards, when nothing like that ever actually occurs, they eventually shrug it off. The devil becomes a boogeyman, not a real thing, and stories they read about people who think they are possessed become things to ridicule.” He sat back with a grunt. “And why shouldn’t they? You only can focus on so many things, so you don’t pay attention to what’s unimportant or what never happens. But some of those same people can’t make the leap to get their heart and mind to believe in a God, even though the proof is all around. In the beauty of a flower, in the magic of a child, on and on. What sense does that make?”

  He stared at me. My turn to talk.

  “Because if one exists, the other has to,” I whispered. “And if God and His good angels exist, the others can, too.”

  His eyebrows raised at my revelation. “Aha!” Bounding up again, he went back to pacing the aisle. “You understand that there is a lot more to this.”

  I nodded.

  “God can still exist even if people don’t believe in Him, right?”

  It was a rhetorical question. I didn’t try to answer, and he didn’t wait for me to.

  “The devil and his dark angels can exist even if people don’t believe in them. And until something bad happens that can’t be explained any other way, most people choose not to believe in dark angels and Satan. It’s pretty simple, really.”

  He put his hand on the back of my pew, leaning on it like he’d exhausted himself. “Let me ask you this. In the story of Abraham, he is told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to God. Was Isaac lucky, or unlucky? Had his father Abraham gone mad, ready to sacrifice his own son on the altar, and at the last minute God intervened? God sends down an angel with a sheep, and Isaac is spared.”

  I shook my head. “Nobody mentions luck in that story, do they?”

  Frank erupted in a laugh. “They sure as shit don’t!”

  He dug into his pocket and clanked another nail into the cup. Then he settled into the pew again, apparently happy with the progress we were making. I was, too.

  The thick fingers returned to his jaw. “When do you think you may have seen other things like this, that make you wonder if your daughter is possessed? Aside from ones around her birthday, and even aside from being connected to your daughter at all?”

  I shrugged.

  “Think about that. It’ll help. Maybe you’ve been missing things. Signs.”

  “But not possessed.” Mallory would have none of that. “I don’t believe my daughter is possessed.”

  “There are different types of possession. Degrees of intensity. Allow that thought in your head, too, purely as a discussion point. You want to consider—and eliminate—all the possibilities you can.”

  I took a breath. “Okay.”

  “Think about when in your life these things may have happened. Let them come to you. Then, think about those examples when they do.” He lowered his voice. “This is like making tea. It won’t happen just because I suggested it, but as you allow the possibility to steep in your head, you may think of something. Consider it, and what it might mean.”

  He glanced at his watch and stood up. “People will be filing in for the next service soon.”

  I followed him as he walked back toward Joseph. “Think about all of it. And then, please, come back and see me, and we will chat some more. You can talk to . . .” Frank gestured toward the church offices.

  “Mrs. Clermont.”

  “Okay, sure.” He smiled.

  We walked out the door together. The rain had stopped again.

  Father Frank looked at me “What does your family say about all this?”

  “You mean my mom and dad?”

  He nodded.

  “I haven’t told my dad about it. My mom passed away.”

  “Recently?”

  “No, mom died years before Sophie was even born.”

  “Hmm.” Frank eyed the cloudy sky. A light breeze tugged at a tuft of his hair on his forehead. “The mother is usually the religious force in the famil
y.”

  “Yeah, she was,” I said. “Especially when I was a kid. It’s a shame that Sophie will never meet her grandmother, somebody who was so influential in my life.”

  “As a Catholic, don't you believe she will see her grandmother in Heaven someday?”

  I squinted at him as my eyes adjusted to the brightness outside. “To be honest, Frank, I spent the first week of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I kinda see my job as trying to keep her from returning to Heaven for as long as possible.”

  “I’m only teasing.” Frank patted my shoulder. “We talked about a lot of things today. You have some thinking to do.”

  I shook his hand. “Thanks, Frank. You helped a lot.”

  “Talk to my boss.” He grinned. “Maybe I can get a raise.”

  I pulled my car keys from my pocket.

  Frank lifted his face skyward, scanning the clouds. “Remember, there have been many iterations of good and evil throughout time. Fire. Dragons. All kinds of things. The original burning bush was God, and then later fire represented Satan and Hell. Nobody connects fire with God now, do they?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Angel of light, angel of darkness.” Father Frank held hands out like weighing scales. “The Church believes these things exist, and so do I. Most people just find it easier to believe one way or the other. Why not both? Why should only the bad guys get to have all the fun?” He laughed. “Fuck ‘em!”

  “That’s a two nailer!” I said, smiling.

  “At least!” Frank chuckled as he waved goodbye.

  Chapter 14

  She didn’t hear the train coming. It was an accident.

  Driving home from my meeting with Father Frank, I got stuck waiting for a train. That didn’t happen much in Tampa, but it used to happen all the time when I was a kid.

  I guess the conversation with Father Frank had gotten me to thinking. He seemed to know it would.

  Anybody could have read my face and known that I was in need of answers that weren’t going to come easily. Father Frank’s conversation put the wheels in motion.