The Gospel of Winter (9 page)

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Authors: Brendan Kiely

BOOK: The Gospel of Winter
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“Have a seat.”

“I don't want to be here anymore.”

He took off his overcoat, then took my coat and hat from my hands. “Now, look,” he said as he draped them over his desk chair, “just calm down. We can talk about this.”

He walked me to the couch, but I wouldn't sit. I rubbed my thumb over the dull copper studs that lined the seam of its arm. St. Augustine stared at me from his small portrait on the wall. The reading lamp on the desk cast a dull cone of light over a stack of thank-you notes Father Greg had written. They were waiting for me, I realized, to fold, stamp, and send out. Father Greg moved the bottle of scotch and brushed the two rocks glasses across the green desk pad with the back of his hand. He leaned on the edge of the desk
and crossed his arms over his shirt in a way that pulled it taut against his chest.

“Why don't you take a seat?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Easy, Aidan, easy. Calm down. Just take a seat.”

“No,” I said again, louder.

“We are going to talk about this. I didn't know you were here.”

“I thought you expected me. You told me to come.”

Father Greg rubbed his face. “Oh, Aidan.”

“Yesterday. You said, ‘Tomorrow.' I came.”

“You wouldn't leave.”

“I don't understand anymore!”

“Aidan, calm down.”

“I thought it was different. I thought I was different.”

“You are. You are. Let me explain, Aidan.”

I stepped toward the door, but Father Greg pushed me back. I fell onto the couch. “Enough!” Father Greg shouted. He leaned against his desk and rubbed his face. “Just stay seated while we think about all this.”

I was quiet while I tried to catch my breath. Father Greg stared at his feet and nodded to himself. “You don't want to go home. That's not what you want, right? You know that.”

I said nothing.

Eventually, he looked up at me. “You are going to be okay.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it's true, Aidan. It is.”

“No,” I said. “You lied.”

“No. That's not right. Let me explain this all to you.”

“You lied.”

“No. I didn't,” Father Greg said. His voice sounded younger—pleading. “I need you to understand me.” He approached me, put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned in closely. He spoke softly, hovering just over my head. “Shhh. Shhh. Hold on. You know who you are talking to here. I've never lied to you. Shhh. I care too much about you, you know that. Shhh. Shhh.” He wiped his face with his hand and pulled on all the sagging skin. “There. Settle down now. Good. Just breathe awhile. Good. Yes, good.” He reached up to my face and wiped at my tears with his thumb. He pressed against my cheek and rubbed right down into the corner of my mouth. “You are special, Aidan,” he said softly. “Don't forget how much I care about you. We just need to remember this. We can understand, right?” His hand went around the back of my head and clutched my hair. He tugged gently. The cloth of his shirtsleeve brushed my forehead. His sweat. Hushed, scotch-stinking breath. I trembled and, after a moment, he continued. “You've never told anybody, have you? You've never said anything, have you?”

I shook my head.

“You know what they would do to me?” he continued. “You don't want them to hurt me, do you?”

He leaned back, and I saw the wall beyond him again,
and the pictures on it of his worldly travels—El Salvador, Kenya, Senegal, Cambodia, the people, the children, smiling around him. Now Father Greg stood smiling down at me. He touched my forehead with the back of his hand. “You're on fire, Aidan,” he said. “You're shaking. Let me get you a glass of water.” His hand felt icy. I couldn't feel it again.

Father Greg stepped beside the desk. I looked again at the bottle of scotch, and Father Greg followed my glance. “Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded, and I stood. “I guess that'd be good. We'll both have a little. We understand each other?” I nodded again, and Father Greg relaxed his shoulders. He smiled more as he poured. We swallowed quickly, and I stared down into my empty glass. There were tears in my eyes. “Easy,” Father Greg said, and I listened to that tone shift in his voice again. I squeezed at the glass with both hands and shook. “Aidan. Please.”

When he reached for my shoulder, I smashed the glass down against the edge of his desk, and the shards exploded everywhere. I backed away, and it wasn't until I saw the blood in my hand that I felt the pain.

Father Greg grabbed me before I moved farther away. He repeated my name again and again with panic. He pulled me closer as he opened drawers, and I wiped my hand down on the desk pad and the notecards and cried at the pain.

“Please,” Father Greg begged. “Let me help you.”

I coughed and tried to pull away, but Father Greg's grip
was too strong. He had no other directions for me, no more words. He pulled a tea towel from the drawer and dabbed my hand. “Aidan, Aidan.” He repeated my name over and over as if it were all he had left to hold on to. I grunted. He looked at my hand and tried to examine it for slivers, but I kept tugging back. It was bleeding quickly, and I turned it and wiped at Father Greg's sleeve—the pain burned again. “Aidan,” Father Greg said. “Please. Let me take care of you.”

In response, there was a shout from outside the office. “Greg!” The door swung open, and the bright overhead lights from the rectory's main hall lit up the room. “What the hell is going on here?” Father Dooley asked as he came in.

“He's cut himself,” Father Greg said.

Father Dooley stared at Father Greg.

“Aidan. He cut himself. I'm trying to help.” Father Greg dabbed at my hand again with the towel and then wrapped it tightly. I couldn't speak.

“Greg. Stop,” Father Dooley said.

“No, no. No, it's not that.”

“Shut up,” Father Dooley snapped. “Stop talking. You're sick, Greg. You're not well.” He trailed away and shook his head.

“No, no. He's only cut himself.”

“Greg! Enough!” Father Dooley said. “Aidan,” he continued, “please don't be afraid. Nothing else is going to happen.” He waited for me. “Please. Let me drive you home.”

Father Greg began again, but Father Dooley cut him off.
“Damn it, Greg. This is too much. Let go of him!” Father Greg was about to speak, but he hesitated. His grip slackened, and then he finally let go of me.

“Everything is going to be okay. Please, Aidan. Come here. Come here right now.”

I stepped forward, but as Father Dooley gestured for me, I pushed past him and ran out through the rectory, to the driveway, and down to the sidewalk. The snow-covered lawns looked like a desert. Ornamental bushes became cacti casting hazy shadows across the sand and dust, and I was out there in it like some creature seen only by the light of the moon, wide-eyed, loping through the yards, a pale shadow passing through town.

Blood pooled in my hands and dried in brown threads around my wrist. It was mine, I was sure, cut from the glass, but somehow it felt like his, like he was reaching out, grabbing me, and pulling me back.
Aidan.
I stuffed my hand in a snowbank, and the cold bit at my skin, but it stopped the bleeding. The wind howled around me, and in it I thought I heard his hushed breath whispering at my neck. I screamed to keep his voice out of my head, and I kept running while the low moon burned an orange ring through the clouds and hovered, like an eye blinking down on me and following me into the night.

After a while, my throat went raw and my face stung with the chill. I found myself standing, shivering, in the pale light beneath a Mobil sign. I had left the church without my
coat, gloves, and hat. The smell of gasoline cut through the air, and I realized I had walked out of town to a rest stop near an on-ramp to the highway. Only a few cars were in the lot outside the McDonald's attached to the gas station. It wasn't all that late, but there were only a few people inside. My teeth clacked uncontrollably, and I couldn't hold my hands still. I went into the Mobil Mart and walked up and down the aisles a few times. I bought a burrito and an Irish Crème coffee. I warmed up the burrito in the microwave and watched it grow in the yellow glow.

The attendant didn't give a shit about me. She sat behind the counter on the other side of the Mobil Mart, talking on her cell phone. I wasn't even sure there was someone on the other end of the line. She just kept going and going. I took my burrito and coffee over to the window and used a short tower of beer cases for a table. Cars whipped by on I-95. Thoughts charged all around my head, and I kept picturing little objects in Father Greg's office: the small portrait of St. Augustine on the wall, the jar with pens beside the desk pad, the dull copper studs that ran along the seams of the leather couch—the little things I had stared at so many times, focused on, and known the texture of.

A white bus pulled off the highway and rumbled down the road. It bounced into the parking lot and dropped off its passengers in front of the McDonald's. They all got in line behind the counter. Another cup of coffee would have done me good too, or a tab of NoDoz, like truckers pop as they
floor it across the country in the dead of night.

The bus rolled forward and parked in front of the diesel tanks. When the driver got out, started the pump, and then made his own way into McDonald's, I made a break for it. On the side of the bus, bright green and red Chinese characters were painted around a blue sign with double arrows pointing to New York and Boston: the express bus, even more run-down than Greyhound's.

I kept looking over my shoulder, thinking the driver was going to come out of McDonald's, but when I hopped on the bus and looked out from the coach, I could see the driver buying cigarettes at the Mobil Mart counter as if nothing was the matter. The back of the bus had a cramped, windowless closet of a bathroom, and I snuck in. It smelled like somebody had just taken a piss in there, only he'd sprayed down the whole room and gotten it everywhere except the pot. Strands of toilet paper stuck to the walls in dissolving clumps. The door didn't have a lock either—you got it to stay shut by hooking a bungee cord around the handle and stretching it over another one along the wall. I stood there, terrified and paranoid the driver had seen me, until the bus finally started and lurched forward. It stopped again, and I heard people climbing back on board. I stayed in the bathroom until we were rolling down the road and onto the highway, and once we'd been cruising for a while, I opened the door. The bus was mostly empty. People dozed in their seats. I sat down near the bathroom
and hugged myself tightly as the bus slowly warmed. It was heading south. The engine hummed, and the tires zoomed a rip-and-thump beat along the road. The seats smelled like Windex and Bounce and some fruity bubble gum air freshener, but nothing felt clean. When I breathed it in, I felt propelled—hurtling forward toward nothing.

+    +    +

The highway was swallowed by the city as the expressway dipped down between high concrete walls and sliced through the neighborhoods. Eventually, the bus came to a stop at a clustered corner beneath the massive steel structures of a bridge. Every sign hanging over doorways or taped to storefront windows was written in Chinese. Passengers filed off the bus, and eventually, I did too. I walked through the warren of streets that smelled of fish and gasoline. Fire escapes ran like zippers up and down the tenement building facades. People yelled and shouted over one another everywhere. I was bumped and ignored. My nose hurt in the cold, and no matter how much I wiped at it with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I couldn't clear the snot from my lip.

I wandered through the barricaded downtown Manhattan streets, avoiding the clusters of National Guard soldiers around the financial buildings. It was Old Donovan territory, and I pictured him sitting at a desk near one of the windows high up in the office towers, peering out over the glowing city beneath him—lording over the landscape and
seeing nothing within it. I yelled, then listened to my voice echoing among the canyon of buildings, but nobody found me or heard me, and eventually, my voice was too raw to leave my throat.

I was exhausted, and I felt noise in my head like the glass that had been in my hand. Dusty tracks of blood still wound around my fingers. I stared down at my hands as if they belonged to someone else. I found a quiet, cobblestoned street and a steam grate for the subway near what looked like an old, unused, brick doorway. I held myself in a ball, but as the gray huffs billowed up from below, I never really fell asleep as the machinery of sirens, brakes, and hissing hydraulics crept inside me like the cold air.

CHAPTER 5

I
awoke amid an air of violence. As I crawled out from my little hovel, it all came back to me in flickering bursts: the warm shade of the desk lamp; the green desk pad; glass exploding; Father Greg pressing a tea towel into my hand; a bloody swipe across his shirt. Father Dooley called to me, but somehow it felt like he had been calling to someone else, a stranger—a stranger who'd been keeping all my secrets for me, as if they weren't mine, as if they'd been locked up inside somebody else, until now.

I cleaned myself in the bathroom of a diner downtown. After breakfast, as I wandered north through the city, I admitted that I didn't have any other real option: I needed Elena. I'd never been to her home before, but I knew where she lived. It was late afternoon when I finally mustered the energy to descend the stairs of the subway pavilion at Union Square and look for the 4 train to the Bronx. Everywhere,
packs of three or four National Guard soldiers stood in their spread-eagled stances with their guns strapped to their shoulders and the barrels pointed toward the ground. They scanned the crowds stoically, waiting patiently for a violence their very presence made seem imminent. The more armed guards I passed in the subway station, the more I glanced around, wondering if they could see something I could not.

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