by Grant Farley
Of course, this was fate. If I was too feeble, too corrupt to return the sacred objects, perhaps someone who shared my blood, yet retained some goodness, could complete the task. Imagine my despair upon discovering my son had died before I would have found him. But he had two children, each by a different mother. And so I waited again until they would come of age. How is it possible that at eighty-five I could find the strength to move to this godforsaken farm? Neither of my grandchildren had inherited their grandmother’s homeliness, yet both, even in their darkest moments, exuded her spirituality, her purity. Roxanne had been my first hope, but it was not to be her.
So my life ends here with you.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Relic
My grandfather slumps against the altar, his eyes closed. My grandfather. Looking back, it all fits together, and I feel like a prospect that I hadn’t figured it. It makes the kind of sick sense that only happens in this for real world. So why didn’t I feel a connection to him? My feelings are like some pearl buried way deep inside me.
Weird sounds slide through the rain outside. Whisperings. Footsteps sloshing mud.
The old man is not breathing. Was that all Roxanne was to him, someone to do his dirty work? Is that all I am to him, some kind of cosmic go-fer? No. There’s more to us than that.
I remember taking care of Charley after he was born. He breathed so softly when he slept that I was afraid he’d stop altogether. Sometimes he lay there without moving, even his little chest not bumping up or down, and I’d rush over there, just staring, forcing him with my mind to breathe. Breathe! Afraid, for some reason, to touch him. Then he’d get a little gurgle in his throat, or he’d ball up a fist, or wiggle feet that even then bulged out against the plastic soles of his sleepers, and only then would my heart jump-start and I’d breathe. The old man looks just like that now.
“Breathe,” I whisper. I bend over and listen to his chest . . . a soft, faraway rattle. A clammy hand grabs my shoulder. The claws go around me like a wannabe hug and it’s like I’m afraid to move. But then it’s like I don’t want to move.
“How long was I out?” Grandfather drops his arms.
“A couple minutes.” I crawl back away from him.
“Minutes?”
“Yeah. Maybe two, three max.”
“A lifetime,” he whispers. “A lifetime.”
“I hate you.”
“Oh, child, if only you did.”
There’s a long quiet and he drifts off again. I’m trying to force him to breathe with my mind, just like I’d done with Charley. Why am I doing that? Just let him go. He opens his eyes, but I can’t see into them through the shadows.
“Do you understand now?”
“No. Understand what?”
“What you must do when I am dead.” He nods at the back corner of the cellar, at that worn backpack, brown and crusty with blood. “You must . . . return it.”
“I don’t get it! What do you want from me?”
“Please forgive me.”
“What?”
“Forgive me.”
“I ain’t God or Jesus or a priest! I ain’t nothing! . . . I’m only just RJ.”
“Forgive.”
He passes out again, only this time my mind don’t work at keeping him breathing. My head pounds. I pop a couple more aspirins. That sorry, crippled old man is my grandfather. I figure he can’t hear me, so I say it.
“Grandfather, I forgive you . . . I forgive you for . . . for all the stuff you did . . . and also for all the stuff you should have done but didn’t. I forgive you.”
His eyes open.
“You tricked me, you old . . .”
I can hardly tell the grin from all the other wrinkles on his face.
“In one of your tales,” he whispers, “your mother said you had a sweet voice just like your father. I wish I could have heard his voice.”
“I think I remember it even though I was only just three.”
“Sing for me.”
“I don’t sing.”
“I never knew of my son’s . . . your father’s . . . voice until you told your tale. It is our voices that connect us.”
“After my mom said about my father having that same sweet voice, I didn’t sing no more songs. There are no songs inside me.”
Pictures in my head, almost like someone else, of my first Communion. Of that little children’s choir. Yes, Jesus loves me . . .
“I don’t remember no songs.”
He’s just lying there, his head propped up. I can feel his eyes studying me from inside the candlelight shadows.
Yes, Jesus loves me . . .
“I won’t sing.” It’s like the song is all twisted up, sliding around, trying to find its way out like that incense toward the air vent.
“For our first solo,” he wheezes, “‘Ave Maria’ had been requisite.”
“I don’t know that song,” I lie. “I just know that kids’ one, ‘Yes, Jesus Loves Me.’”
He winces, like the title could kill him. “Don’t you know something not quite so . . . innocent . . . so cloying?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that song.” I don’t know why I’m POed at him bagging on a song I don’t even want to sing in the first place.
And then the tune slides out of my gut just to spite him. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong. They are weak, but he is strong.”
His face scrunches up. The sweeter I sing, the more it hurts him. So I make the notes come out as sweet and pure as I can.
“Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me . . .” Singing over and over. “Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so . . .” Singing over and over, listening to the words bounce off the stones. Listening to them against the warm, steady rain. Singing them as clear and sweet as I can make them. Singing them long after I hear the Blackjacks’ gonzo laughter from just outside the air vent. Singing them long after I know my grandfather is dead.
I lay his body out on the floor, cross his arms on that old suit, and cover him with the blanket.
Something heavy crashes against the cellar door.
Grandfather wanted me to return this relic. But how can I do that when I can’t even get out of here? He said something about remembering “The Pardoner’s Tale.” The gun lies next to me on the stone floor. Than a plan slaps into me.
Another smash against the door.
I move fast now. Grab the backpack and pick only the holy objects to stuff in it. The last thing I put in is the cross with the saint’s toe bones stuck in the crystal. I take what Father Speckler would have called the secular objects, jewelry mostly, and lay it at grandfather’s feet, where it’ll be seen from above. I can’t believe how much of it there is. Just a couple of these pieces . . . that gold ring with diamonds and that green stone that looks like a for real emerald . . . They could get my mom out of all her jobs. They could . . . All it would take are a couple of pieces in my pockets. I lift the pack on my back. Man, it’s heavier than Charley and that old man put together.
Some kind of boulder thunders against the door. God’s litany.
I pick up the gun and turn to meet them.
The wood splits apart and the heel of a boot crashes through.
“Damn, I’m stuck. Pull me back.”
The boot disappears. There’s shouts and then a rain of splinters as the door shatters. I guess I knew a long time ago, maybe from the sounds, that there’s only three of them left. The Ace and his two sidekicks.
I aim the pistol at his chest as he steps down the stairs. He laughs, probably figuring that little thing is a toy. Then he stops laughing. He’s lifting the stone he used to bash in the door. My finger tightens on the trigger. He stops. That open door behind them makes my head spin and I fight down the urge to bolt past them and up the steps. He lowers
the stone to the floor. I suck in the clean air and bide my time, like they say. They bend over to fit under that ceiling. Any one of them could reach out a long, freckly arm and grab the Luger.
“That gun must be sixty years old.” The Ace laughs again, but now it’s more forced. “It won’t never . . .” His mouth drops open. He’s seeing all the gold and jewels for the first time. It’s like my gun goes clear out of his mind and he just stares.
“Kinda pathetic,” I say, “a hundred years of Blackjacks coming down to you three.”
He forces himself to look up from that loot. He’s just a strung-out punk.
“We’re on our last deal,” I say.
“What deal is that?”
“You guys step back up the steps, and I won’t pull this trigger. And don’t say no dumb-ass movie talk about how I don’t got the guts to do it, ’cause truth is I don’t know if I got the guts NOT to do it.”
He twitches and my hand jerks, almost pulling the trigger. They scramble back, pushing and shoving and swearing, but never taking their eyes off the stash.
It’s my turn to laugh.
They step back from the door. I climb up the stairs, the heavy backpack tugging at the nerves in my neck and yanking at my brain like it could pull me back down.
There’s only a light rain now. The three of them stare at me like I’m full-bore gonzo. But they only stare for a second, ’cause their eyes go back down the steps to the treasure.
“Here’s how it goes,” I say. “I’m just gonna back around here. Then I’ll let you go down there. The gold is yours.”
They nod, but they’re not really listening. They don’t even see my backpack. I back away, and they’re fighting each other to be the first down the steps. They’re even pushing the Ace out of the way like he’s nobody, and I know that the Blackjacks are undone.
I take one last look to make sure they’re not touching my grandfather’s body. But they’re too busy with the gold. I throw the gun down the stairs. It belongs down there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Baby’s Grave
I climb up the hill behind the house, slogging through weeds and mud. The rain stops. The open air fills me, blowing my headache clean away.
My pockets are empty of any of that secular horde. Somehow, my grandfather knew they would be. But the weight of carrying all this church gold . . . just one piece . . . maybe that gold chalice that drips with the little red stones like for real blood drops . . . Just one piece would free my family. One piece would maybe fix Charley’s toes. What good is it to a church that’s already got more gold than it knows what to do with?
I sit at the top of the hill. Sun rays split the high clouds, dancing over fields already gone green, glistening off metal roofs. I’m sitting at the same spot as on that night when all this began . . . Roxanne with her chin on her knees smearing that purple polish across her toenails . . .
I pull the heavy cross out of the pack. What am I going to do with it? Grandfather wanted me to return it to its chapel. But how can I do that? It’s not like I can just make a house call off in France somewhere. Maybe I should tell my mom all about it. Except she sucks at making the right choices. Then what about asking Abuelita? It hits me, what she’d said about Charley. He has the toes of a saint. Maybe she had been talking about more than just Charley’s toes. But if I asked her, she’d just tell me another story, so I’d have to figure it out myself anyway. Okay, so maybe I just haul it down to the mission—that’s easy enough. After all, that’s almost like taking it to its for real chapel. Same outfit, anyway. But I’ve trusted priests before, and it didn’t ever turn out like I’d planned.
A muffled clap from inside the root cellar bounces up the hill. A gunshot. But there’s nothing I can do about that.
So maybe the cross has the answer. If it really holds some holy relic, it ought to have a bunch of miracles stashed away inside. I set it on a boulder in the grass. It’s a dull gold that sucks up the sunlight. I stare into that crystal like it’s a freaking TV screen into the future. I can see through to the world on the other side, the grassy hill streaked in funny colors, the barn twisted into weird shapes. The bones inside look smooth and yellow. Even if a lot of these relics were just con jobs, it gives me the willies thinking some guy had these toes hacked off his foot. He might have been a for real saint, or he might have been a murderer, or he might have just been a regular guy.
Another clap bounces up the hill.
This relic is one of the most awesome things I ever seen, but there’s no miracle in it for me. It makes me sick sitting here waiting for some quick fix when I got a job to do. Grandfather wanted me to return it . . . but he didn’t say when. I lift it and stuff it back in the pack. I shoulder the weight and just start walking. The mission bell tolls Mass, but I’m heading away from any of that up into the hills.
Just walking and walking until I’m climbing up Dead Man’s Gorge. The relic tugs at me like a whole lot of Charleys. Walking on the muddy path above purgatory. The hatch is open and a mudslide has filled its belly. It will be completely buried soon. Lupine and poppies and mustard spread across the hills. Big Mama rests along the coast with her jugs sticking straight up into low clouds. She’s not brown no more, but such a green that makes me want to roll and get lost in her.
A rotted blanket lies in the shade of a boulder, a broken platform dangles from a tree. Cigarette and candy wrappers swirl in the breeze. But no one is here, only silence. I pick up a shovel half buried next to a collapsed tent and continue walking. I climb over the rise and there it is in front of me, its branches creepy fingers against a clean sky. The rattan chair has blown away over the cliff. The evil is broken. The two roots are open arms.
Could there already be something buried there?
I stand between them and shrug off the backpack and drive the shovel into the earth. This wooden handle, this blade sucked by mud, this hole opening under me are all I know. This hole now deep as a baby’s grave.
But it’s only just a hole. Nothing more.
I bury the backpack with every piece of that sacred gold.
Someday, when I’m old enough, I’ll return and dig it out and return the relic to its chapel. But for now it’s got to rest here. No one will mess with it. I turn and head home.
A part of me already misses the weight that won’t ever be on my back again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Arcangel Valley—its people, places, and events—are a figment, as RJ would say. But he also said, “When it comes right down to it, made-up parts have the most for reals in them.” Of course, our world in the year 1978 often intrudes within its boundaries. At such times, I have strived to make an accurate account of that era, with a few liberties—and I’m sure, a few mistakes.
The concept and imagery of relics embodies the venal and the spiritual, the morbid and the exquisite. I mean no disrespect to anyone’s beliefs. St. Jerome Emiliani is, to the best of my knowledge, the patron saint of orphans in the Catholic Church. However, the particular relic mentioned in this book, as well as the chapel in which the reliquary was housed, are entirely fiction.
I wish the same could be true for the Battle of Verdun—and all battles, with their horrors that spill beyond their own bloody ground and wash down through time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mom and Dad, how I wish you could be holding this book now.
To my wife and children, my everything.
To my sister, Heather, the first to have ever heard my stories.
To Sheila Finch, lifelong friend and mentor. And to Dan Houston-Davila, whose enthusiasm for literature and life has swept me in its wake. In memory of one of my oldest friends, a fellow teacher and writing companion, Harry Lowther. And to all the other members of the Asilomar crew, founded by Jerry Hannah, especially: Rose Hamilton-Gottlieb, Dave and Mary Putnam, Jon Russ, Barry Slater, Kendall Evans, Natalie Hirt, Lydia Bird, Paul and Ju
dy Bernstein, Susan Vreeland, and Samantha Henderson. What a long, strange trip, my friends.
To Stephen Barr, the greatest of agents. Without your “yes” I truly believe this book would never have found a home. When I sit with other writers and they commiserate about agents, they are envious when I describe your devotion to your craft. Your belief in Bones of a Saint (a nod to your contribution of said title) willed it into existence. Thank you, my friend. And also to all the others at Writers House, for their work and support. Someday I hope to visit and maybe go in that mysterious vault and, who knows, find Bones there. Though I’m not sure how RJ would feel being trapped in a small, dark place.
To Daniel Ehrenhaft, editor extraordinaire and a great advocate of this book. It felt as though RJ and Daniel were good friends from the beginning. A visionary, indeed. And to Rachel Kowal, the managing editor tasked with somehow accepting RJ’s odd voice and rendering it onto the page. And to all the team at Soho, not only for publishing this novel, but for keeping storytelling alive.
Finally, to all who partake in the communion of tales.
