"How long do you think it will take to get clearance?" Moon asked. "Any idea?"
"Probably two days if you're lucky," she said. "But don't count on being lucky." And she dismissed him with her official consulate clerk's smile.
Moon had retreated to the Hotel Maynila to wait. He collected his laundry. He bought more socks and underwear. With the help of a vastly overweight cabdriver he solved the problem that large Americans have in Asian countries. The owner, either in ignorance or whimsy, called the shop L'ObŠse Boutique, and in it Moon found two shirts, a water-repellent jacket, and jeans big enough to fit him. Then he got on the telephone to L.A. He talked to the nurse in the Intensive Care Unit and learned that Victoria Morick was still not ready for transfer to the Cardiac Care Unit but was "doing as well as can be expected."
He left word for her doctor to call him at the Maynila. He called his own number in Durance and reached Debbie. Debbie reported that J.D. hadn't been able to find anyone to put his engine back together, and what could he do about that? Shirley's dog was no longer on the premises, and no, she didn't know what had happened to it. She'd had his car washed. And don't forget he'd been gone for her birthday. Also, she missed him terribly.
"I miss you too," Moon said. "I dreamed about you last night." True. And, of course, it had been an erotic dream. After he hung up, he sat awhile on the edge of the bed, glumly thinking about that. Why did he kid himself about the Debbie relationship? Why? Because for some reason he had never been able to fathom, he always needed to think of himself as the guy in the white hat. Moon, the good guy hanging around to save the poor maiden when J.D. and the other predators dumped her. Never Moon the going-to-seed lecher kidding himself about his motives with this sexy youngster.
Enough of that. He called the newsroom and learned from Hubbell that Rooney was threatening to quit, that their Sunday editorial about the ski basin had produced indignant telephone calls, that the Ford dealer on the school board was threatening to pull his advertising if the sports editor didn't lay off the football coach, that nothing much was happening on the vacation edition, and that they'd had an electrical fire in the darkroom and were farming out their photo printing until the rewiring was done. That was playing hell with the newsroom budget.
Those duties done, Moon considered what was left. He should call Mrs. van Winjgaarden and tell her about Rice. He should return the three calls he'd had from old Lum Lee. Instead, he walked to the window and looked out at the evening. Lights coming on along Roxas Boulevard and Manila Bay. Clouds blowing out to sea. Stars appearing.
He picked up the telephone. What would he say to Mrs. van W.? Now that it seemed likely he could find Rice and talk to him, he didn't want to do it. He didn't want to go to Palawan Island and visit this jerk in his jail cell, and she would certainly expect him to go. He didn't want to go to collapsing Vietnam. Or bloody Cambodia. He wanted to go home.
Failing that, he'd go for a walk.
He walked faster than his army regulation pace at first because he was tense and he needed to burn off nervous energy. But the mild air got to him quickly. April is April, even in a climate where winter hardly makes itself noticed, and yesterday's rain seemed to have provoked a sort of renewal. The perfume of flowers overpowered the aroma of decay. He could hear songs of frogs in the ditches, insect sounds, some sort of night bird he couldn't identify, other noises strange to him. And on a night like this, Manila slept with its windows open. Somewhere someone was playing a violin. He heard laughter. A radio far off to his right broadcast Bob Dylan exhorting Mr. Tambourine Man to play a song for him. He meet three boys on bicycles. He met a couple hand in hand, the man grinning, the woman giggling. He met an old man carrying a cat. He thought about the priest in the confessional.
The priest had said his name was Julian. if this stroll took him past the cathedral, he'd go in and see if Father Julian was waiting to absolve his evening quota of sinners from their guilt. If he was there, if no one was waiting to confess, he might go in and ask if Julian would like to continue their conversation. Moon guessed he would. After all, he'd left the confessional with the priest's curiosity unsatisfied. And he'd been rude. He'd like to apologize for that.
What was that big sin, Julian had asked, and he'd told him he'd killed a man. There had been silence then: Julian surprised, Julian shocked. The priest must have wondered if Moon was simply mocking him. His response, when it finally came, suggested that. The tone was light. As with the secular law, he'd said, the church has degrees for homicide too. Had he committed murder, premeditated and done with unrepented malice? Or had it been homicide committed in a sudden rage? Or perhaps Moon had left a fellow to starve stranded on some isolated cliff, simply out of forgetfulness. That would be another sort of sin altogether. Probably no sin at all. And the litany might have continued, had not Moon interrupted and cut it off.
It was murder by self-indulgence, he'd said. Far too many bourbons with water and then too much insistence on driving when Halsey wanted to drive and should have driven. Then driving too fast, losing control, flipping the jeep, killing Gene Halsey, killing the best friend he ever had.
And Julian had said, Ah, that is a terrible tragedy but not a terrible sin. To be a terrible sin it would need to be done with deliberation, an intentional, defiant violation of God's prohibition against killing one's fellow human being. And Moon had been able to bear no more of these sterile truisms. He had interrupted Julian again.
"I understand all that," he'd said. "I was an altar boy. I memorized my catechism answers. That wasn't the terrible sin I meant. That only set the stage for it." And he'd stepped out of the booth and walked into the darkness and the rain. Tonight there was no sign it would ever rain again. The moon, about two days short of full, hung over the yacht basin and made a bright yellow streak across Manila Bay toward Moon. It cast his long shadow ahead as he walked down the broad path and sidestepped this evening's migration of roaches and turned onto the bricked corridor that led to the cathedral steps. But the moonlight didn't follow him inside. It seemed darker than he remembered.
And emptier. A fat bald man sat in the final pew at the back of the church. One woman knelt in the candlelight at the side altar. An old man in a white shirt leaned against the wall at the end of the confessional row, apparently waiting his turn.
Moon sat, stretched his legs before him, felt himself relax. The doors were closed at the confessional where Julian had been three nights before, and a little green light glowed above it. Julian was at work. The door to the cubicle where Moon had sat opened. Ayoung woman emerged, made the sign of the cross, genuflected, and walked past Moon. She was smiling. The waiting man disappeared inside, taking her place. Moon considered how he would describe this incident to Halsey, how Halsey would react to it.
"Why did you go in there?" Halsey would ask. And then he would, Halsey fashion, answer his own question. "Because you wanted to recapture your misspent youth, I think. No, you wanted him to forgive you for not being nice to your mother. So then why did you cut out before you got to that part of your story?" And Moon would find himself pulled into a discussion about why he, and why Halsey, behaved in the way they did. And what it all meant. And why they couldn't seem to relate to the sort of women who appealed to them, and what life was all about in the first place.
The door of the other penitential cubicle opened and another woman emerged, this one elderly. She walked slowly toward the main altar and knelt. The door remained open, inviting another penitent. None appeared.
Moon's thoughts drifted back to Halsey. In retrospect their rapport seemed odd. Conventional wisdom says opposites attract. But, except physically, he and Halsey were very much alike. They would not try to defeat the world but they would survive. Their cuts would heal. Halsey was no more ambitious than he was. The three stripes on Halsey's sleeve were there by default. The same with Moon's rank as sergeant. The army was all right with Halsey. It was stupid, senseless, inefficient, full of the absurdities that Halsey collected and trea
sured. He'd found a home in the armored division. And so had Moon. And both for the same reason: the draft board lottery came up with their number. Halsey could have qualified for a deferment. Why hadn't he? A lot of trouble, he'd said. And he was curious. What else would he do? Fate had decreed it. The two of them had sat in the post exchange night after night drinking bad PX beer and discussing such questions. Going into town together in usually fruitless searches for women. Exchanging boyhood embarrassments, triumphs, and defeats, looking under it all for some hint of meaning.
The man in the white shirt emerged from the penitential doorway and departed, leaving it open. If the priest in the center cubicle was indeed Father Julian he would be idle now, looking out to see if another customer was waiting. Moon was aware that the priest was probably looking at him right now, wondering if he'd come in. Well, would he? Moon wasn't sure. It was a long, long time since he had had a talk like the ones he and Halsey had shared. He hadn't realized how he hungered for them. He glanced back, saw that now the center door was open too, and a small priest, his cassock hanging loosely on his skinny frame, was limping down the aisle toward him.
"I decided that you might not be coming in," said Father Julian. "I decided I would bring you a personal invitation."
"You recognized me," Moon said, because he could think of nothing else.
Julian made a deprecatory gesture. "Biggest man in the cathedral," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if you're the biggest man in Manila."
Moon laughed. "You exaggerate," he said.
"How big are you?" Julian said. "Six and a half feet, I'd say. Maybe two hundred sixty pounds."
"You're still exaggerating."
"But not by very much, I think. Anyway, I am happy to see you. I had hoped-" Julian paused, thinking.
"That I'd finish the story?"
"Oh, that. Yes. That would be interesting. But I had hoped, too, that you would tell me something that would jar my mind from its lethargy and I would somehow think of something wise to say to you. And you would say, `Yes! Yes! Of course! This dinky little priest is absolutely correct. I should forgive myself for this awful sin of which I am so proud. And then I will allow God to forgive me."
Father Julian had seated himself in the pew beside Moon, and he looked at him sideways now, grinning.
"We priests sometimes entertain such grand delusions. It is something that happens to us when we receive the Holy Orders, when the bishop ordains us."
"It happens to all males, I guess," Moon said. "I used to enjoy some grand delusions." But when had that been? As a child, of course. But not much after that. He had time enough to think about it because Father Julian seemed to be thinking about it too. At least he wasn't talking. He sat, head slightly down, smiling slightly, a minuscule nod in agreement with whatever was passing though his mind. Relaxed. It skipped Moon back to post exchange evenings he and Halsey had spent.
"It's not a s‚ance," Halsey had said after they'd finished a second beer without a word spoken, "because a s‚ance requires some effort. And some outside interference from a spirit. I'd call it nonverbal communication-the ultimate in intellectual inertia." And Moon had said, But we don't communicate, and Halsey had said, "Sure we do. When the First Sarge came in a minute ago you raised an eyebrow. I looked. You smirked. I remembered how he tried to take the wrong gal home last time we were here. I nodded. We communicated." And Moon had said, Just call it comfortable silence.
And the silence now was comfortable. Father Julian, having heard his quota of sins for the day, seemed to feel no hunger to hear more. Moon was in no hurry to provide them. They talked about why Julian had gone into the seminary, and why he'd returned to it after dropping out. They talked about American journalism, and Manila journalism, and, eventually, about what Moon was doing so far from Durance and the cold, clean air of the Colorado high country.
"That's odd, don't you think?" Julian said. "That your brother didn't tell you he had a daughter? Didn't he tell your mother either?"
"Maybe he did," Moon said. The thought had hung at the edge of his consciousness for days, but it was the first time he'd allowed himself to really consider it. "if he did, she didn't tell me."
Julian seemed to notice how forlorn that sounded. He looked at Moon, expression sympathetic. "Maybe he thought you would disapprove. Big brother-little brother, you know. The infant born out of wedlock. Woman of a different race. All that. Maybe he told your mother to keep it a secret."
"Possibly," Moon said. "Who knows? Maybe she knew all the time. Maybe not telling me was her idea."
"And why would that be?" Julian said, but he was asking himself more than Moon, and Moon had no comment.
A woman came in through the side door, lit another candle before the alcove altar, and knelt. From somewhere far out in Manila Bay came the sound of a tugboat hooting; from Quezon Boulevard the sound of a siren; from somewhere behind them, someone coughing. Silence.
Julian sighed. Chuckled. "This is going to sound Freudian, I think. What I'm about to say. But is there something between you and your mother? Some rift? Some-some problem?"
"Well, yes," Moon said.
And as he said it he knew that this was what he had come for: to talk to another human being about how he had brought about the defeat of Victoria Mathias. To make this confession.
"Women have more trouble forgiving, you know. You told me that. Your experience from ten thousand weeks of hearing their confessions. I'll tell you what I did to my mother."
Julian held up his hand. "Wait. Think about it for a moment. I am curious. I would like to hear it. But do you really want to tell me?"
Moon thought about it. "Not exactly," Moon said. "I don't want to but I need to."
Julian nodded.
"I have to go back a ways," Moon said.
Julian nodded again. "Go back as far as you need," he said. "Nothing awaits me but an empty room."
But where to begin? "She was a small woman. Still is, for that matter. But I was thinking of when I was a boy. Little. Very neat. Very pretty. Our house was neat too. We lived in Oklahoma. In Lawton. We owned a little printing shop. My dad was a great big guy, like me. People called him Marty. For Martin. Looking back on it, knowing what I know now, I know he drank too much. Like me. When I was twelve he got sick. Very sick. They put him in the hospital and the doctors decided he had pneumonia. They treated him for that. Turned out they were wrong." Moon paused, tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "He got sicker and sicker, and finally they discovered he had tuberculosis and it had spread into his spinal column. They called it Pott's disease, and whatever it was it killed him, and it took a long time doing it."
Moon stopped. He could never talk about this without feeling a rage building up inside him.
Julian sighed. "Tuberculosis,", he said. "An old-fashioned disease. They could probably have saved him now. Since about 1960 they have a drug that works."
"I guess he was a little too early or they were a little too stupid. The TB strewed up the vertebrae in the neck and upper back and caused abscesses and put pressure on the spinal column. We used to go visit him in the hospital, the three of us, and when Mother could finally bring him home he was paralyzed. Almost totally from the neck down. Just a little motion in one arm and hand."
Moon inhaled a great breath and let it out. Father Julian sat motionless just down the pew, head slightly bent. Moon inhaled the smells of spring in the tropics, and of an old, old church, and sorted through the memories.
"It gave me a chance to understand what love is all about," he said, and he described the way Victoria Mathias had cared for a husband who had become nothing more than a helpless talking head. How she kept the printing operation going to support them, working nights and Sundays on billing and the books, and, when she wasn't working, being always with Martin. Taking him out to the park in his wheelchair, reading to him, bathing him. Cleaning him up before the doctor came, shaving him.
"She had to do absolutely everything. As if he were an inf
ant." Moon paused. He had come to the part he had never told to anyone except Halsey. Not even Ricky. Certainly not Ricky.
"You are describing perfect love," Julian said. "Unselfish. And perfect tragedy."
"And now the other half of the tragedy," Moon said. "My father's half."
"Yes," Julian said. "I was thinking about that."
"He wanted to die. He wanted to set her free."
"Yes. I would guess that. So would I."
"I didn't guess it. It didn't even occur to me," Moon said. "It got so I resented him. Ricky did too, probably. But we never talked about it. I'd think, Why don't you just die? I'd wish it all the time. I'd even pray for it. Pray that when I woke up in the morning he'd be dead."
"But you never said anything."
"Of course not," Moon said. "For God's sake. No. It didn't occur to me for a long time that my father was praying for it too."
"But you figured it out."
"I didn't. I wasn't that smart. Or that kind. I overheard them. Talking."
Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon_v4 Page 12
