by Michael West
“I can’t do that, Father!” Paul looked over his shoulder to the front door, to The Temptation of St. Anthony which hung framed above it. The creatures drawn there seemed to writhe, to howl – as if they knew the endgame was at hand and felt their prize slipping from their grasp. “They’re coming. They’re coming for me and I need forgiveness.” And then the slide show started in his mind once more, flickers of atrocity that brought fresh tears to his eyes. “I’m so sorry! Christ, Jesus, please, Father, I need forgiveness for my sins!”
“All right,” Father Andrew said, his voice surprising tranquil. “Please, stay calm. I’ll hear your confession.”
Paul’s sobs became grateful tears of joy. “Thank you, father.”
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the priest said, making the sign of the cross with his right hand. “Amen.”
Amen.
“May God, who brightens every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in His mercy.”
God didn’t show me my sins, Father, Paul thought, but He did bring me to you. He did show me how to end this, how to win.
“What are the sins you wish to confess to God?”
“Father Andrew,” Paul said, “have you ever heard of The Wide Game?”
He began his confession, telling the story from beginning to end, braiding his own tale with those of Robby, Mick, and the others to create the complete tapestry of what had happened. He kept nothing secret. Nothing. And, by the time he’d finished, Paul and Father Andrew sat facing one another in one of the pews.
“You’re not making this up,” Father Andrew said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that followed. Paul was surprised to find the words were not in the form of a question. The priest looked at a slow-spinning ceiling fan that hung down from the rafters. “I remember the fall of 1987. Quite a few young lives lost. Quite a few funerals held in this building.” He nodded at the altar, where pictures of Danny and Cindi had been placed amid bushels of flowers. “You say there were ... demons?”
Paul nodded, shocked to find that he actually felt better. “I know the Church has kind of distanced itself from –”
“Society has distanced itself from the thought of demons, Paul. The Church hasn’t totally given up on the idea.” Father Andrew turned to look at the drawing above the door. St. Anthony’s torment at the hands of sketched devils. “And I certainly believe. I remember seeing the video you spoke of. It was on the news, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Mick Slatton stabbing the Fields boy. They were good friends, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah.” Paul nearly choked on the word, his eyes still hot with tears. “Danny was like Mick’s big brother. He stuck up for him all the time – that day even.”
“I remember hearing that at the time and thinking it odd. The more I thought about it, the more it disturbed me. I’m sure you remember how this town reacted to the news, to the loss. As a priest, I was expected to have something inspirational to say in the face of it. I’m afraid I had to rely heavily on sacred Scripture. I could find no words of my own to explain it, nothing that would offer any kind of comfort, anyway.” He drew in a breath and his eyes returned to Paul. “No, I don’t have a problem believing the demonic aspects of your recollection. Rarely do we encounter them so directly in our lives – well, throughout history, really. But for people to do the things I saw to one another, and have heard about tonight ... Maybe devilish tomfoolery is the best available explanation.”
Paul cringed. “Father, tomfoolery ...?”
“I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean to belittle this. I’m used to taking weighty issues of the supernatural and –” He glanced around at the empty pews. “– dumbing them down for the consumption of the masses.” The old priest’s sympathetic eyes found Paul’s again. “Feeling better? More in control?”
“Yes.” Paul’s face warmed and he started to rise from the pew. “I’m ... I’m better. Thank you.”
Father Andrew grabbed him by the wrist. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to do what Deidra said I should do. I’m going home to my wife. I need to tell her everything I’ve told you before I forget again.”
“I don’t think that’ll happen, do you?”
Paul shook his head and the tortured faces strobed for a moment in his eyes. They were his now, his for eternity.
Father Andrew now looked troubled. “And what then?”
Paul sighed. He should turn himself in; let them put him in jail, or perhaps an asylum. The tears flowed now, and he wiped at them with his hand, smeared blood across his face. “In the morning, I’ll go to the police. I know you’re not supposed to tell anyone what I’ve confessed, but if you could come with me I’d –”
“Here.” Father Andrew took a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Paul. “Wipe your face and wrap that hand.” The priest stood and moved toward the outer aisle, beckoning Paul to follow. “Walk with me.”
Paul did as he was asked, wiped away the blood and bandaged his wound as he followed.
“If turning yourself in would result in justice, in peace for the families of your victims, I’d say you were doing the right thing. Hell, as a priest, I’d be obligated to talk you into it. If I couldn’t convince you, I could always call the police myself and anonymously mention your name – the sanctity of the confessional preserved and my conscience clear.” Father Andrew paused, took a still burning candle from a candelabrum and re-lit the blackened wicks around it. “But I fear justice is out of our grasp. I’m sure you’ll remember Sheriff Carter was even forced to admit that. Had your friend Mick not killed himself, he’d be walking freely among us now.” He cocked his head at Paul. “No bodies.”
Paul remembered. As damning as his videotape had been, they never found a corpse in the field. And Deidra’s mother ... any lawyer worth his weight in salt could have gotten Mick manslaughter at worst.
“As for peace ...” Father Andrew continued, “Coming forward now would bring them just the opposite, I’m afraid. This will throw a national spotlight onto their pain and this town will be torn apart all over again. I know one of the mothers, Paul. She barely survived the loss. Now, ten years later, I just don’t think she can live through it again.”
“I don’t deserve to be let off the hook, Father.”
Father Andrew put the candle back in its place. “What about your wife?”
Paul’s stomach sank. “She –”
“You may in fact deserve the legal hassles, the loss of reputation, but your wife certainly doesn’t, does she?”
Paul didn’t know how to respond.
“She didn’t choose to marry a murderer, Paul.”
“She didn’t know!”
“You didn’t know. And you aren’t a killer presently, are you?” Father Andrew raised a hand and placed it on Paul’s shoulder. “God is constantly placing forks in the road we travel. We can travel down the easy path, or walk the more difficult trail. The choices we make define us, shape us into who we are.”
Paul lowered his eyes. “I deserve –”
“You deserve nothing.” The priest’s sympathetic tone turned punitive. “You don’t get to walk the easy path.”
“Going to prison, never seeing my wife and children again ... you call that easy?”
Father Andrew nodded. “Come forward with your guilt, let them strip away your name and give you a number, let them stick you in a cell and tell you where to walk and when to do this and that. They’ll take away all those pesky choices, won’t they? No. That’s the easy way out, much more righteous than Mr. Slatton’s way, of course, but you’re still not facing who you are. You’re just giving up.”
“Then where’s my penance?”
Father Andrew looked at him sternly. “You want penance, do you? Okay, how many Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s should I tell you to recite? What would be enough to cover this?”
Paul’s eyes widened, his mouth hung open as he tried to find the appropriate response
to fill it. There wasn’t one.
“Let me show you something.” Father Andrew turned and walked to the altar, stared up at the bronze image of Christ.
Paul kept pace, confusion running through his mind. He couldn’t believe what this priest was telling him.
“Not very accurate, our statuary.”
Paul looked at the bronze figure, remembering his childhood aversion to it. “Yeah, I’ve heard that argument. He’s too American looking. He should be –”
“He shouldn’t even be recognizable as human. He wasn’t just a naked man with blood on his forehead, on his hands and feet. By the time they put Him up there, in all likelihood, His back was shredded open to the bone. Many people didn’t survive a Roman scourging, you know. That’s why they called their 40 lashes ‘40 minus one’ – they took one off in case the punisher lost count. That extra lash could be the one that did you in. Leather whips with glass and stone flung and drug across His back. Thirty-nine times, Paul. Blood loss alone would sometimes kill them.”
Paul felt uncomfortable. Part of him wanted the beating the priest described. Part of him thought he deserved that and more. After what he’d done, it seemed only fitting. Then there was the six-year-old inside him; the one who’d seen this image of Christ as something horrible. That part of him now cried.
Father Andrew continued, “Our religion is based on the concept that we are incapable of making up for what we’ve done in God’s eyes, so He made up for it Himself. He paid the price. By our pictures and statues you’d think that the price was merely a public and humiliating death, one of, say, starvation. For all the horror it would evoke, I still wish I had a more accurate vision of what He really looked like – right there at the altar for all to see. God, hung on a cross, body mutilated beyond all recognition.”
Paul’s new memories of Dale Brightman assaulted him. Stabbing him again, and again, and again as Deidra watched, then chaining him on the wooden cross – creating a mockery of what the priest had just described. Paul wiped at the tears that scalded his cheeks.
“He did it voluntarily, Paul. For all the power of Rome, no one made Him do it. They couldn’t have; He was God. He died for us ... not for Himself, but for us, for our sins. All sins. Your sins. Your murders, Paul.”
Paul shook his head.
Father Andrew nodded at the bronze Christ. “We can’t make up for our sins, so He did it for us ... and it’s done.” He turned his attention back to Schongauer’s engraving above the door. “I’ve often seen you look at that.”
Paul nodded. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
“That’s what it’s there for. It’s above the door to remind you of your sins, the sins you bring here with you. I hope that people look at it and are all the more grateful when they look at this bronze Jesus here, this beautiful reminder of Christ. I hope they leave this building with His mercy, His peace.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
Father Andrew sighed. “As far as your religious obligations, Paul, you’ve clearly repented. Now you can either accept the mercy of Christ ... or not. That’s your choice. That’s it. No time in prison, no angry mob, no knife held at your neck will ever fix what you’ve done. You can’t pay it back. You can’t. You repent ... and you accept.”
Paul continued to look at the engraving over the door, but now he did not concentrate on the demons. Now he focused on St. Anthony’s face, calm, almost serene. “I’m still not comfortable with this.”
“And you shouldn’t be. You should never be comfortable with what you’ve done, never let yourself excuse it, or try to shift the blame from yourself. Price paid or not, you’ll always have to struggle with what you’ve done. Someday, you may even have to share it with others.”
Paul swallowed. “Father, I’m scared. Knowing what I’ve done, what I was even capable of ... how can I look at my wife again? How can I ever hold my children? Will I even see them the same way?”
“Look at me,” Father Andrew instructed. “Do you have any urge to kill me?”
“No.”
The priest nodded. “No. You’ve repented. This doesn’t define you. Understand, Paul, it’s not even who you are anymore, and that’s both a choice you make today, and it’s because of the choices you’ve been making for the last decade. That’s what repentance is, why it’s different from just being sorry. It’s seeing things as God sees them, in all their glory or ugliness, and adopting that perspective. When people are sorry, they say things like, ‘I didn’t mean to ...’ or ‘I wish I hadn’t ...’ When people have repented, they say ‘I had no right ... I had no excuse ...’ and they say the ‘I can’t believe I did that’ in a wholly different way than do the merely apologetic. You’ve seen what you’ve done, who you’ve been, and opted to do and be something altogether different.”
“But there has to be more ...”
“Look up there, at the crucifix. See it as I’ve described it, as it really was – with the blood, and the torn flesh ... see the agony of it ... and you tell Him that’s not enough for you. Tell Him that you need more.”
Paul looked at the statue, his cheeks bathed in fresh tears, then lowered his eyes and slowly shook his head.
The priest’s right hand rose and he placed it on Paul’s head. “I absolve you in Christ’s name. You’ve been forgiven much, Paul. Now do what Jesus said to those like you – love much. Not as payment, but just in response – to honor what He’s done for you. In a sense, we all get off Scott-free upon entering Heaven. You’re getting that now. React accordingly.”
“What? Live a good life and try to earn it?”
“You can’t earn this, Paul. You must honor it.”
Paul continued to look at his shoes. He felt calmer, but there was no great sense of relief.
Father Andrew walked to the vestry and retrieved a broom, dustpan, and trash bag. He handed the dustpan to Paul. “Now, help me clean up the mess you’ve made on my steps.”
Paul nodded. “Thank you, Father.”
They swept the dead crow into the trash and the old priest left Paul alone. He stood in silence on the steps to St. Anthony’s, looking out into the surrounding fields. The corn swayed gently in the moonlight and he walked across the asphalt parking lot to stand at the edge of the rows. After a moment’s contemplation, he drew back his arm and flung the knife into the corn. This time he did not stop the arc of his pitch and he watched as the knife turned over and over, landing in the hidden depths of the field.
Like Deidra, once it entered the stalks, he would never see it again.
Paul turned away, walked back to where his Jeep sat parked, and drove off into the night.
Thirty
No streetlights stood along the white rivers of gravel that cut through these northern fields. The road was dark beyond the Cherokee’s headlights, and, to Paul, it looked as if the route were being created as the Jeep approached. Ruts had been worn into the roads from the weight of vehicles, and pits filled with water after even the slightest rain. On either side, the corn swayed, whispering. The stalks were so tall they seemed to blot out the stars, turning the world dark.
Paul flipped on his brights in time to illuminate a small signpost that read Rural Route Six. He watched the sign go by the passenger’s side window, turn red in his taillights, and his grip on the wheel tightened.
Route Six.
The road abruptly dipped, as if to give him confirmation that this was where he had his accident. This, he realized suddenly, was the first time he’d driven it since that night. His heart accelerated in his chest and his scarred back seemed to itch with the memory of its own creation.
June 1989. His freshman year at Stanley University had not been particularly enjoyable. He got so little enjoyment from anything since Deidra left him, even less since she wrote to say good-bye, but he’d tried to go on, tried to get through the daily chores of life.
He’d come home for the summer to find his job at Tony’s Speedway Market waiting for him. It had been hot that year. He re
membered that part clearly. Every day, around four in the afternoon, the skies had opened up and covered the town in a downpour – as if someone had picked up Harmony, Indiana and moved it to the tropics while everyone slept.
One afternoon, he’d come home from a day of bagging groceries and helping elderly ladies out to their cars –
Oh, no tips, ma’am. Customer Service is Tony’s business.
– to find a letter from Deidra on the counter. It was the first one he’d received in months, and, as the daily rain fell against the window, he was showered in anxiety, the forces of hope and fear at war within his heart and brain. The envelope was fancy – marbled blue in color, with an edge that looked frayed, torn. He opened the letter only to find it wasn’t a letter at all ...
Mr. Benjamin Perkins
requests the honor of your presence
at the wedding of his daughter
Deidra Jeanne Perkins
&
John Eric Shusett
At the bottom of the invitation, written in Deidra’s familiar scrawl, were the words: I don’t know if you can make it. But I’d really like to see you. Please come.
How long Paul stood there looking down at the invitation he could not say. It was as if someone had slipped him the zombie drug from The Serpent and the Rainbow. He was alive, could actually feel the blood flowing through his veins and the pressure that pushed it along, but he was unable to move. At least he was standing. If he were lying down, they might think he’d died. He heard a voice seep into his consciousness ...
“Paul?” His mother. She sounded frightened. “Paul, what is it?”
He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t form words. The drug. Someone soaked this damn invitation in that zombie drug and now they’ll put me in a coffin and let the worms have their way with me and I’ll feel it because I’m still alive and I’ll feel them burrow right through my heart and I can feel them now squirming around in there and it hurts, God, how it HURTS!
“Paul?” She looked at what he had in his hand, took it from him to read it herself. Understanding seemed to come over her, and, worst of all, worse than anything she could have done at that moment, she looked relieved. It’s over, that look said. She’ll be out of his life now. I never liked her. I never liked her for my son. “Well, she must really value you as a friend if she wants you at her wedding.”
