by Robert Ward
They liked him. They were impressed by him.
After Chuck had half a snort on, he told Bob that he’d seen him on TV. Bob smiled and said, “Oh that?”—like it was nothing—but old Chuck put his arm around his shoulder and said:
“You ain’t nothing like I thought you’d be.”
Bob winced a little. Here it comes, he thought, the jealousy and bitterness. He half expected Chuck to call him a phony, a creep.
But old Chuck smiled and squeezed his shoulder.
“Onna TV,” he said, “I thought you were gonna be a damn saint and all, but you’re just a good old boy, like me. And I’m right proud to have you inna family.”
Bob suddenly felt a flush of emotion and had to wipe the tears away from his eyes.
“Damn,” he said to Chuck. “That’s how I feel, too. I love you guys and I love your daughter more than anybody in the world.”
The two men, overcome with raw emotion, hugged as Jesse and her sister watched from the dining room. And Jesse wiped away a tear or two of her own.
The church, Saint Stanislaus Cathedral, a huge concrete mausoleum of a place built in the early 1900s, looked especially imposing and impressive that early spring day. Or at least it seemed so to Bob, as he drove up to the curb with his new family. He had never paid much attention to the place as a house of worship. Mostly the church had been used back in the social activist days for community action meetings. Now, two thirds of the congregation had moved away and there was constant talk of the church closing its doors forever.
But today, Bob thought, as he walked inside, slapping hands with well-wishers, the old place seemed austere and somehow a little frightening. It was almost as if God was sending him a message through the marble pillars and that message wasn’t “Gentle Jesus meek and mild,” but “Fear me. Fear the wrath of God.”
Bob remembered feeling that way when he went to church as a kid. That the whole thing was scary, fearful, and now as he saw all the artists and people he’d worked with over the years, he began to shake a little inside.
He recalled, out of nowhere, an old preacher he’d heard once, who kept staring at him and saying, “Remember this, boy. By your acts ye shall be judged.” And he remembered taking an inventory of his acts that very Sunday afternoon, and already feeling even then, at the age of twelve, that his acts didn’t in any way assure him of a berth on the Heavenly Express.
And now … today …
No … he supposed not.
Not with two blood-splattered corpses sitting in a freezing basement just about a mile away.
But no need to think of that. Not now. No need to think of that at all.
Instead, think of all the people who had attended the church today. Bob peered down the aisle and felt a little better.
There were Ida Washington and Fannie Mae Edwards, the two old black women whom he visited every week for years and years. Why, they had loved him so much that they made him cakes and played spirituals for him on their piano. And there was old Wyatt Ratley, a man who suffered from a terrible burn he’d gotten working at Larmel Steel. He’d been so depressed he’d considering taking his own life, but Bob had worked with him for years, not only in the office but had actually made house calls to see him when he was too depressed to come out. Bob smiled seeing Wyatt there, and the old gentleman with the terrible scar smiled and waved to him from the fourth pew. And there was Ethel Roop, looking like a chubby Easter egg, all dressed up in a purple crepe dress that did nothing to hide her girth, but she was smiling at him, too … and just a few seats behind her was Perry Swann, looking neat and under control, and maybe, Bob thought, maybe I have helped them. And the wild Finnegan Brothers had come, too, Jack and Tommy, dressed in black leathers, their fierce beards and mutton-chops making them look like Visigoths … and they’d brought half of their biker gang … and now they were waving to Bob from the back pews … and he thought to himself, yeah, well, that should count, too, shouldn’t it? Giving pleasure to people through music? You can’t judge a man for his one bad act, can you? Okay, three bad acts. One robbery and a double homicide. (And could maybe God think somehow of the Dave and Lou Anne thing as, like, one murder? Like a package deal of some kind? Twofers?) Standing there waiting for Jesse and Father Herb Weaver, the activist priest, Bob tried to imagine how God might tote that up. Like how many good acts does it take to discount one murder?
And how many dollars would one have to donate to the Church to wipe off the blood on one’s hands?
And as he looked around he suddenly got it, why Mafia dons made big donations to the Church. Not only to seem like big shots and pillars of the community. No, to buy their way into heaven. Of course, and who knew … maybe they could.
Which was a very odd way to think, because before he’d killed Dave and Lou Anne he’d never really thought about heaven much, nor worried one way or the other about it.
Now, though, killing his friends had seemingly awakened a dormant sense of sin and a religious impulse he’d never experienced since childhood.
Wasn’t that strange?
Wasn’t it strange that he felt connected to these people, many of whom he’d helped. There was Barb Silenski, whose mother had died of cancer and needed grief therapy and Bob had seen her through. And there was Eileen DeLuca, who had had such a terrible time when her husband had walked out on her, but Bob had been there for her. And sitting next to them, on the aisle, were Ronnie and Leslie, the kids whose lives he had saved. They beamed up at him with such admiration, such gratitude, that Bob could barely stand it. He tried to tell himself that the fact that he had stopped to save them did mean something … that the bomb wasn’t really his responsibility … that, after all, he couldn’t possibly know they’d be there …
Fuck it, he silently said to himself. Put it behind you. This is the first day of the rest of your life. Funny, how moronic clichés like that could be useful sometimes. The thing he had to concentrate on was that he loved them … he loved them all … he really did. It was like a fire burning inside his chest.
They were all there to see him married and for the first time since this strange obsession had begun, Bob suddenly felt relieved by it all….
He loved them all, and they loved him. It was that simple.
It occurred to him that it didn’t matter if he was acknowledged or not by the media. It didn’t matter if he was rich or not, if he could buy fancy cars or not … or if he could fly around the world or not, that none of that was him. Not at all.
And, as he talked to Curtis Frayne and told him that he didn’t know what had happened to Dave, and he’d be honored if Curtis would be his best man … just then Bob felt that the strange question was why … why had he thought money and fame and glory mattered so much?
Why, it was as though he’d been infected by a virus, a virus that ravaged him as surely as any bug would, and the virus had been greed and jealousy and bitterness … and now, here at the church, on the day of his wedding, the virus had burned out of him, and he was able to be the sweet, kind, good guy that he’d always been before the infection had set in. His eyes began to tear up. He had been a good man before, and maybe now that he had regained his sanity he could be a good man again.
Yes, why not.
He was Bob Wells, goofy but nice leftist shrink, who loved people and was only too happy to help them, and his people, his flock, as it were, were all there, bikers, steelworkers, teachers, old welfare recipients, and even, in the back pews, a couple of his old shrink friends … and they were there because they loved him, respected him for what he used to be—a good man.
And all the rest, the fame and money and worries about being celebrated by the media, all of that was sheer madness.
Yes, he thought, this is my real reward, and how could I have not seen it? How could I have forgotten what goodness and kindness meant?
And then he heard the organ playing and saw Jesse, walking down the aisle dressed in white, the white lace veil obscuring her face, and he realized that s
he loved him more than any of them. Because she knew him at his worst and loved him anyway.
Well, not quite his worst.
No, not quite. Not yet.
As he looked at her hips, her slender legs, and her small but full breasts and lips, Bob felt such overwhelming love for her that his knees buckled.
He would marry his lovely bride and they would live as before, helping people, both of them leaders, models of compassion and goodness. Maybe, Bob thought, as Jesse walked toward him … maybe the greatest turn-on of all time was being good. Wasn’t that why they all loved him, after all? Yes, it must be that … his former kindness, goodness (or were they all only here because he’d been on television? God, don’t let that be so).
Father Herb Weaver regarded him with a compassionate and respectful smile on his face and began:
“We are here today to join together two people, Bob Wells and Jesse Reardon, in holy matrimony.”
Bob looked at Jesse, and his heart swelled with such a tenderness and happiness that he actually thought that it would burst. His love for her, he felt, was magnified a thousandfold by the love he felt emanating, in waves, from the crowd of well-wishers, people whose lives Bob (and now Jesse, too) had enriched.
Bob smiled at Jesse with tears in his eyes and heard Father Herb say the words:
“If any man has reason why these two people should not be joined in matrimony, let he or she speak now or forever hold their peace.”
It was just then that from the back of the room Bob heard what sounded, at first, like a cough. A loud, choking cough.
But the sound wasn’t merely a cough. No, not at all.
Someone was trying to say something. You couldn’t make out the words through the cough. But then, then finally the words were understandable:
“They’re dead. They’re dead, Dr. Bobby.”
Bob turned and looked at the back of the church. He watched in shocked disbelief as Barry Lansing, aka 911, staggered up the aisle, his hands and cheeks soaked in blood.
“Dr. Bobby, I had to tell you. Your friends. They’re both dead.”
Jesse clutched Bob’s hand, as the crowd stood up and began buzzing excitedly. Bob watched 911 steady himself on a pew back and then slowly move forward.
“I seen it,” he said. “Dave and his wife, Lou Anne. They’re both dead.”
“Throw him out,” Old Finnegan screamed, his face contorted by rage. “The man’s wasted!”
“Let’s kick his ass!” Young Finnegan said.
“No, let him talk,” Ronnie Holocheck said.
Jesse turned and pulled up her veil.
“What happened to you, Barry?”
“I went over there to Dave and Lou Anne’s house,” Barry said, his voice trembling.
“You went to their house?” Bob said. He couldn’t quite grasp this.
“Yeah,” Barry said. “It was ‘cause of what you done for me. I mean, getting me into AA. See, the thing is you get in there and they tell you you gotta try and make amends to people you hurt while you were drinking. And I made a list … a really long list … and I decided I’d go see Dave ‘cause I kicked him in the … the crotch that night at the Lodge. So I thought I’d go over and, you know, apologize … and I rung the front doorbell and they didn’t answer, so I started to leave. But then I thought maybe I’d try the back door. And I went around there and looked in, and I seen them sitting onna couch downa cellar, and I rapped on the door over and over, but they didn’t get up. That’s when I knew something was really wrong. So I broke the pane of glass and went inside, and, oh God, it was awful … they was all hacked up, ripped to shreds.”
There was a collective gasp from the audience. Bob looked out at them all, people who only minutes ago were happy and calm, awaiting a great and glorious day, were now sitting with their mouths agape, their eyes bugged out in horror.
“I came over here ‘cause I thought you’d want to know, Bob, you being my sponsor and everything,” 911 said. “I’m real sorry I maybe messed up your wedding day.”
“He’s real fucking sorry,” Old Finnegan yelled, moving down his pew toward 911. “Well, maybe you can explain to me how you got that blood all over your shirt, pal.”
“I don’t know,” the homeless man said. “I might have tried to, you know, help them. Pick them up … I don’t remember.”
“Oh, he don’t remember,” Young Finnegan said, his face curling in a violent sneer.
He looked as though he might start crying.
“But they were already dead when you got there, right?” Perry Swann yelled. “So why’d you go and pick them up?”
“I don’t know. The way they were sitting there on the couch was so awful. I wanted to lie them down, so they would look right.”
“What bullshit,” Old Finnegan screamed, now only a few feet from 911’s face. “You did it. You killed them … then you came here to confess, ain’t that right?”
“Yeah,” Young Finnegan said, joining his brother. “You went over there to rob them. And when they resisted you, you killed ‘em both dead. Right, you homeless fuckhead?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You scumfuck murdering bastard,” Old Finnegan said.
The church, only moments ago, a haven of kindness and love, had undergone an instant and violent revolution of consciousness.
One after another, the wedding guests moved toward the bloodstained messenger with hatred on their faces.
“I didn’t go there to hurt them,” 911 said, staring wide-eyed at Old Finnegan. “I went to apologize.”
Bob watched in horror as the crowd moved from the pews to the aisles. He saw Wyatt Ratley, the burn victim, moving toward 911, his grotesque face twisted with fury. He saw Ethel Roop blunder forth, pushing people out of the way. All her life people had laughed at her for being fat, and now … now, by God, she had a chance to exorcise her pain. He saw Perry Swann, the public masturbator, jumping over pews to get to the aisle, where he could ejaculate his wrath onto 911. All of them were moving around like a great, many-headed beast … ready to kill.
911 looked up at Bob with a piteous gaze.
“You believe me, don’t you, Bob?”
Bob watched as the crowd stopped for a second, their eyes turned toward him.
“Yes,” Bob said. “I believe you.”
The crowd stopped and looked at him in mass disbelief.
“Awww, that’s just Bob,” Old Finnegan screamed. “The softy son of a bitch thinks everybody’s good, even me! But we know you, you asshole. We know you for the murdering scum you are! Let’s hang him!”
He reached out and grabbed 911 by the collar, jerking him off his feet. Young Finnegan leaped into the aisle and kicked the fallen man in the head. Ethel Roop joined him, lashing out with her portly leg, and got in a powerful kick to the kidneys.
Bob froze in horror as he watched the crowd go mad, smashing and kicking bloodied Barry.
All he had to do was let it happen, he thought.
His incredible run of good luck was still holding.
The crazed, blood-smelling mob were capturing, indicting, trying, and punishing the man they thought responsible for Dave and Lou Anne’s murder. He was off the hook.
It was almost, he thought, as if it were written.
He looked at Jesse, whose face was frozen with horror.
“Bob,” she said. “Stop them!”
He felt something happening to him, something terrifying and strange. Goodness and kindness and compassion attacked his soul like blood-sucking vampires.
All he had to do was let it happen … and yet looking out at the man curled in the fetal position, covering himself up from the angry, bitter fists and feet, it was almost as he himself were lying there in the aisle. He could feel the bikers’ boot heels pounding on his ribs, the fists cutting his eyes.
He watched Father Herb scream at the crazed crowd and try to pull them off, but he was thrown back into Jesse.
“Good God,” he said, “somebody stop it. They’ll tear him apar
t.”
All he had to do was let it happen …
And he would have Jesse, and the money and fame and glory.
The stolen money, the phony glory.
All he had to do was …
And yet, Bob found himself moving forward, with a kind of strength and determination he hadn’t felt since … since he had led the neighborhood people against the cops and city hall all those years ago.
He had, God help him, the strength of his convictions.
“Stop it,” he screamed. “Stop it at once! Now!”
The crowd heard his strong voice and, though confused (why was Bob trying to ruin their fun?), did as he said.
Old Finnegan, his beard covered with Barry’s blood, squinted up at Bob.
“The man killed your best friend. Dave and his wife. And you want us to stop?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “I do.”
“Why should we, Bob?” Ethel Roop said. “He deserves it.”
“No,” Bob said. “He doesn’t. Not like this. He deserves a fair trial, like anyone else.”
The crowd looked back at Bob like kids who were being pulled away from a birthday party. They let out a collective “awwww.”
911 looked up, trembling in fear.
“I’m telling you, Bob. I dint do it!”
Bob moved toward the seething mob and picked Barry off the floor. He put his arm around the whimpering, blood-soaked homeless man and carried him up to the altar.
“Jesse, call the police,” he said, handing her his cell phone.
“Okay, Bob,” she said.
Bob watched the crowd as she dialed. There they were, he thought, the ones he’d helped and worked with all these years. True, most of what he’d done was useless. That he’d ever believed, as he had when he was young, that these people could be welded into a revolutionary force that would strike down capitalism and start a more humane world now struck him as the most absurd thought he’d ever had. Even more absurd than his attempt to become a colorful bad guy. And yet they were his people, even the lowliest of them. That was how he’d felt before he’d lost his own mind, and it was how he felt once again.
