Authors: Charles L. Calia
All I could think about was a priest that I counseled once. I'll call him Father Smith to protect his identity, although his identity should need no protection. Smith was a young priest, barely thirty years old when he found himself, unwittingly, at the bottom of a love triangle. Photographs were taken of Father Smith and the girl in question, innocent pictures of the two eating lunch, laughing, sharing a conversation, which were then turned into ugly innuendoes, notes, incriminating letters laced with perfume and lipstick, even erotic poems. He claimed himself innocent of such affections, at least his half, that were bestowed on him by this college girl, who, according to Smith, created a fantasy world to trap her boyfriend or just to make him jealous. Which it did. The boyfriend barged into a Saint Cloud service one Sunday, right in the middle of the homily, yelling and screaming at the alleged hypocrite in the pulpit, Father Smith. The boy was restrained but not before destroying a young priest's reputation. For there was another side of this. Late-night Bible studies in private, the odd invitation for a walk along the river, even the lunches. Perception, especially for a priest, was stronger than any possible reality. And I never forgot that.
Marbury watched me look around the diner.
He said, “Relax. Nobody saw you looking at her.”
“I wasn't looking.”
“Come on, you were fixated.”
Not a word I would use and I told him that.
“Inquisitive then.”
But I just shook my head and used his old line. “I haven't been inquisitive in years.”
I
paid the check, careful not to hide the receipt from Marbury, who expected a free meal anyway. He didn't thank me. He didn't even acknowledge that I paid but instead just walked out ahead of me. The afternoon was cold, a bright sun shining, and we didn't talk. Marbury looked like he was in his own world, as I was in mine. I didn't think about Barris or Lucy or even about the waitress. I just thought about my sister.
Sandra was deaf. She was born deaf, according to my folks, and there was nothing to be done about it. Although I tried. I was the only one in my family who learned sign language, self-taught, I might add, from a book that I had to order special from San Francisco. We were close, Sandra and I, separated by only a year. I was in fact closer to her than I was to my three brothers, probably because of our age difference but also because we had more in common. I was asthmatic. It was a childhood illness that faded with my adolescence, and mostly I had to stay indoors. My brothers grumbled surprisingly little, working extra on the farm so my presence wouldn't be missed. But I still felt guilty about it. They baled hay and fed the animals while I was watching our sister, something they didn't want to do anyway, although they never came right out and said it. But ultimately, it was their loss.
Sandra loved to draw and she was good at it. She would paint
pictures and hang them around in her room. Little scenes. A mother and her children. A father working on an old truck. Language wasn't necessary to understand the story. It happened in front of you. I cut out cardboard boxes and built miniature sets for her drawings, which she had now pasted on wood. We had chairs and tables that I made from matchsticks, tiny sinks and couches and interiors that matched every room in our house, including the room that we were working in. Everything was very realistic. Even down to a model of a picture of me working on a model.
We communicated this way, with art. But as I perfected my sign language and Sandra began a new school, a state-run place for the hearing-impaired near Alexandria, our relationship faltered. Or maybe it was just that there wasn't enough time. Sandra began to live on campus a few years later, only coming home on weekends. And then my parents rushed to make everything seem normal, even though it wasn't. We were expected to play good roles in our family, everyone perfectly on cue. Dinners were all smiles. And when my father hopped in his truck to go to the feed store, practically a family outing, I was expected to take Sandra along for entertainment. Which I did. By the railroad tracks.
Marbury grabbed my arm, surprising me.
“Where are you going?”
I looked up. We were two blocks from his church and headed in the wrong direction. A block of brownstone apartments separated us.
“Do you want to walk some more or go in?”
The air was crisp, too crisp for early April. A thin crunch of snow was on the ground, and despite the fact that I was wearing a coat and Marbury had on nothing but a long-sleeved shirt, I was the one who was freezing. A fact that Marbury, with his thick, New York skin, seemed to enjoy.
He said, “There's heat inside. Nice and toasty.”
Marbury would have kept on walking. He loved the cold. Not me.
“Let's go in,” I said, giving up.
Maybe I've grown weak over the years or maybe I was never strong to begin with, I don't know. The asthma didn't help. But my brothers, all rugged boys themselves who became men, never made it an issue, not even when pulling my share of the chores. They didn't even make it an issue when we played basketball, a sport that they forced on me to strengthen up my lungs, even though my father yelled. “you'll kill him at that pace.”
My brothers, they were used to him yelling.
The game was called two-on-two. I was always paired up with my older brother, Paul, who later won a medal for valor in Vietnam, though he should have been awarded another for playing with me. We shot with a hoop that old James Naismith himself, the inventor of basketball, used. An apple basket tacked up to the side of the barn. All height was a guess, but to me as a kid the basket seemed far higher than the allowable ten feet, higher than the tallest skyscraper in the world. And just as impregnable. The ball that we used was as smooth as a cue ball, regulation, but that was the only thing. For we played without a foul line, without even an out of bounds. Fouls only counted if you hit the ground or drew blood. And elbows were encouraged.
We had our own rules too. Shoot from anywhere. From tree stumps, near wooden posts, anywhere one had the nerve. As the ball just might careen anywhere as well, especially long shots, which had the peculiar habit of landing in with the pigs. A whole regimen of fence climbing would then follow, negotiating the mud and slop to retrieve the ball again while trying to remain in one piece. The pigs didn't care much for basketball.
My brothers each shot like the great center George Mikan. They could hit hook shots and layups, even the long jumper. Of course
they had to, being terrified of climbing in with the mud and animals, which they left to me. I couldn't hit anything, with the exception of Jonah, a sow who liked to kick the ball around with her front hoofs. I'd take a shot, miss wildly, then over the fence to battle fat Jonah for possession. Or for my life. Muddy, I would take my position again, panting and wheezing for breath, rubbing the crud from my nose as I awaited another pass from Paul, which sometimes never came.
As I grew older, my asthma fading with manhood, basketball became my favorite game. We played a lot in seminary, in the basement of an old chapel that was later converted into a gym. Marbury often joined us, replacing anyone who was in the library or studying. I loved playing against him. For one, I honored his competitive spirit. Though great, it never quite matched his skills. The truth was, he wasn't very good. And it delighted me. Marbury outmatched me everywhere else, but on the court it was a different matter.
I wasn't as strong as Marbury on the inside, my weakness there, bred as much from my muddy body as anything. My brothers kept pushing me to the outside, the distant perimeter, far enough out to keep themselves clean. But years of climbing in with the pigs exacted one thing. I could shoot, as much from dread as actual practice, and I seemed to hit about anything I threw up, which only made Marbury crow. He couldn't stand it.
“Do you still play basketball?” I asked.
Marbury held the door open for me. His church.
“Did I ever really play?”
“You ran a lot. Sometimes you sank a few.”
He flipped me a thin smile. “It's just Nintendo now. Why?”
“We should play again. Get some exercise.”
“I get enough exercise.”
“Then get some more.”
“Only if you use sign language, Peter. Bragging hurts my ears.”
Marbury took me back to his office. He cleared out a space for me on the couch, which sagged terribly. The office was too small and cramped to do much work in, and he knew that. But space was at a premium. When the church was started some ten years ago, it was never expected to draw as many people as it did. Marbury was part of that growth as well, and he suffered. He had to do it all. From community outreach to typing up the programs, which now included a Braille version. But at least he didn't have to answer the phone. There was no phone, at least not one that rang here, and except for a taped message at the Diocese, no way at all to reach him.
Marbury probably liked that, being out of touch. He was in his own world. I watched him prop his feet up on his desk, in heavy black motorcycle boots, and wondered how he had done it these last few months. No words, no laughter. Nothing but an aching silence.
“I decorated the place myself. Some touch.”
The walls were bare. No pictures. Nothing tacked up at all.
“Do you work here or at home?” I asked.
“This is home. What do you think, I sleep?”
“Well, it looks penal enough.”
“Minimum security,” said Marbury.
I looked at him and smiled. But something else came into my mind. Something that he said at the diner that I had to ask him about.
“When did you talk to my mother?”
“Oh, that. Probably the first time she visited. She pulled me aside.”
“And she told you?”
“Everything. She said I should know.”
I felt betrayed almost. My mother never talked about Sandra.
And here was Marbury, a complete stranger, at least in those days, getting an earful.
“She thought I could help, Peter.”
“Help . . . how could you possibly help?”
“Get you to talk about it, I suppose.”
“I didn't want to then and I still don't.”
Marbury just nodded. He looked almost disappointed.
But I was worried. “You didn't tell anyone else, I hope.”
“Why would I?”
“Well, you knew the place back then.”
He smiled. I felt stupid worrying about what people thought about me so long ago, even in seminary. Maybe it was vain but a vanity that Marbury could understand.
He said, “People respected you. More than they did me.”
I tried to protest but Marbury wouldn't hear it.
“You don't remember St. Agnes, do you?”
St. Agnes was a memory buried so long ago that it was almost like it never happened. The church, located in Des Moines, was an out-of-the-way venue with mostly an older mix of immigrants. Women sat with dark scarves over their heads, refusing to take them off. And huge bags littered the pews. Shopping bags with loaves of bread and groceries sticking out. Mass wasn't always a big priority.
“That was my first sermon. You sabotaged me.”
“I didn't do anything,” I said.
“Well, somebody did.”
Marbury was right. His first real public sermon was at St. Agnes. A group of us drove down to Des Moines to witness it, but really we just went down for fun and games. One of my friends at the time loved to pull little pranks. He would leave rubber snakes in the pulpit or a pair of scary eyes. Harmless stuff. But somehow that day wasn't harmless. Marbury went up to preach, he might even have been halfway through with his homily when he noticed. Half of his notes were missing. Stolen.
“I had to improvise. God, I was pissed. And you laughing.”
“I didn't laugh.”
“You laughed.”
My friendship with the person who played this little trick ended that day but Marbury didn't care. That we were ever friends at all, that I was in on it in his mind, was enough to convict me. As he was still convicting me.
“You're angry about that still.”
“I was always on the outside, Peter. Even if I tried not to be.”
I was about to offer up some sympathetic words when an idea crossed my mind. Marbury was still angry about that incident, perhaps angry enough to hold a grudge after all these years. He must have known that when he claimed to have lost his voice I would find out. And having the trust and confidence of the Bishop it would be I who would be called in to investigate. But why me?
I asked Marbury this but he just shrugged.
He said, “You may not believe it, but I wasn't thinking of you.”
“And yet who did you expect? You put me in a bad position.”
“Why?”
“We were friends. Think about it.”
Marbury nodded. Then he added that he was sorry.
“I'm just saying that you knew I would be dragged into this. That our old friendship would be dragged in. I'd be compromised from the start.”
“Maybe you weren't dragged.”
“God, I suppose.”
“Or the Bishop. You pick. Anyway you're here. So investigate.”
Which is what I thought I was doing.
But Marbury shook his head. “You didn't ask me about Jill.”
“Jill? Who was she?”
“My fiancée.”
It was the first time that I ever heard him mention a fiancée.
Marbury said that the months following the murder in the bar
were among the very worst of his life. His father was in prison, and Marbury was living a perpetual stay of execution thanks to what his father had done. But Marbury wasn't grateful. He was eighteen and angry at everything around him; it was an attitude that he took too far. For he started to get into trouble, stealing automobiles, shoplifting, even taking money from his aunt.
“I hated the world. Imagine that, me free and I wanted to destroy it.”