I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (15 page)

"Well, I don't know exactly where to start, Father. The beginnin', I guess. When I was eleven—"

"Perhaps," the priest interrupted, "we need only concern ourselves with the sins that you have committed
since
your last confession."

"Oh, okay. Let's see then ... Well, to begin with, I've taken the Lord's name in vain about a million times; well, maybe not a million, Father, but you know what I mean. I guess you hear that all the time, don't you, but it is a sin, ain't it?"

"Yes, child," the priest agreed. "It is indeed a sin and as good a place to start as any."

"Well then, I've taken the Lord's name in vain
many
times, Father," the woman reiterated, and as she continued, the overtone of anxiety in her voice gradually gave way to relief, and the priest settled back in the narrow wooden seat for what the experience of the past few weeks had taught him would be the better part of an hour.

"Well, I've lied a lot, that's for sure, sometimes when there wasn't even nothin' to be lyin' about. Just to stay in practice, I reckon ..."

He had known that something was afoot as early as February; unfamiliar voices on the other side of the screen, new faces in the nave at Mass. He had originally dismissed it as an anomaly, an unusually enthusiastic observance of Lent by well-meaning chronic backsliders, perhaps. But now it was the Saturday before Holy Week and they were still coming.

" ... and I guess I don't have to tell you, Padre, that I stole my share of anything that wasn't tied down, I mean, well, I do have to tell you, so I'm tellin' you: I used to steal. From perfect strangers on the street. From so-called friends of mine. It didn't matter. As soon as their backs were turned I stole 'em all blind. I even stole from my own mama and now she won't even allow me in her house no more ..."

They were easy to spot, these newcomers. At first, they sat in the back of the little church in little knots of two or three. By mid-March they occupied the last four rows and it was hard to ignore the gulf of empty pews that separated them from the regular congregation. After Mass one day, the priest asked an elderly parishioner why this was, and he was taken by surprise when she spat on the ground and hissed, "
¡Putas!
"—whores—indicating a small group of the strangers who were making their way across the little plaza before the church. "They do not belong here."

" ... of course I drank a little, well, more than a little, I guess, but that was before I got on that dope, and then, well, I just couldn't get enough of that shit—oh! Pardon me, Father!—but, well, anyway I was only seventeen and I didn't have no job or nothin' and there's only so much a girl can steal and it was just a matter of time before I figured out that there's only one way that a poor girl like me can make that kind of money if you know what I mean ..."

The priest knew of course that a semi-notorious red-light district thrived a little over a mile away from his church, but until recently he had never given it much, if any, thought. He had been elevated to pastor only a year earlier, at the rather precocious age of thirty-six, upon the sudden death of his predecessor, Father Cantu. Since then he'd had his hands full winning the hearts and minds of the mission's all-Hispanic, mostly female, middle-aged-to-elderly congregation. Some, he sensed, still saw him as the fresh-faced curate who had served at their longtime padre's side for nearly a decade. In truth, he had been loath to squander the hard-earned goodwill of the faithful on a handful of heathen hoping to mitigate a lifetime of sin by putting in an appearance on alternate Christmases and Easters, but in the end his calling won out over parish politics. He had vowed to minister to all comers. Young and old, rich and poor. The wretched as well as the righteous. Of course he would hear the confession of this sinner, just as he heard all the other newcomers'. That was his job.

As usual, he made no attempt to keep a tally of the transgressions as they flew by, offering only the occasional semiverbal encouragement or comment, an "I see" or an "um-hum" here and there. Indeed, the stories of these strangers were much the same, including this poor girl's, and he was ashamed to realize that he had been only half listening until she suddenly burst into tears.

"Oh, Father! Please tell me that it's not too late! I swear that I can change, really, truly change! And I promise that I'll try to do good from here on out. Maybe not like
she
does. I mean, something like that must be a gift from God, don't you reckon, Father? A great gift that not everyone—?"

The priest was caught completely off-guard. The litany had droned on for long enough that he found it necessary to clear his throat before he interrupted.

"Um-humm! I-I beg your pardon, child! Just so that I'm sure that I understand ... who is
she?
"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Father! I guess I thought—well, you know. The girl, Father. Everybody's talkin' about her, from one end of the strip to the other!"

"One of the other, uh, working girls, then?"

"Oh no, Father. Not Graciela! I don't reckon she's ever turned a trick in her life and one thing's for sure, Father, she ain't from around here! What I heard was that she comes from way down deep in Mexico somewheres and that she has powers, Father—"

"Now, now, child!" the priest interjected. "One can't be too careful about the stories that one hears, especially the ones that come up from, well, dark places."

"But that's just it, Father," the voice insisted, whispering for the first time, forcing the priest to lean in close, his ear only inches from the screen. "This ain't no story. I seen it with my own two eyes! It's in her hands. She just lays her little hand on 'em, wherever they hurt. All she had to do was touch me and, well ..."

"A trick. A sideshow act."

"But it wasn't like that! Take it from me, Father. I traveled with a carnival for a while. There weren't no smoke nor flash nor none of that! She just touched me was all, and she smiled at me, and I went away from there knowing, Father! Knowing that I could kick. I mean, I was still sick as a dog for three solid days but I toughed it out this time and whenever I felt like I couldn't take any more I only had to close my eyes and I could see her face and I just knew that everything was going to be all right! It was a miracle, Father!"

"Now, see here, child—"

"I know, Father, I know it sounds crazy, but how else do you explain a thing like that? I tried everything to kick dope. Had myself locked up in hospitals. Loony bins. Hell, I even handcuffed myself to a Murphy bed once. Damn near pulled my arm out of the socket tryin' to get loose. Probably would have gnawed it off if the cops hadn't showed up with a key. Oh, I got all the way through the sick part a couple of times but it was never more than a week before I was right back on the street again. But this time, it's been over a month and I don't even think about dope anymore, not even when I see the other girls line up at the spot to get their wake-up. I give it up, Father. I give it up once and for all. And now that I give up the dope there ain't no need for me to be, well, you know, hustlin' no more. Truth is, Father, I haven't turned a trick since that night. It's like everything changed the minute she touched me, and the funny thing is, Father, I didn't even go down there for myself. I just carried my girlfriend Esther there so Doc could look after her ..."

"To the hospital?"

"No, Father, to the boarding house, the Yellow Rose, down at the end of the strip."

"But you said that your friend was ill."

"Beggin' your pardon, Father, and the Lord's forgiveness, but I never said nobody was sick. She was ... well, it's just that Doc ain't that kind of a doctor and if you don't mind I'd rather not say anything else bein' that this is my confession and not Esther's!"

She was right. He had forgotten himself entirely and it had been necessary for a member of his own flock to remind him that his curiosity was threatening the sanctity of the confessional.

"Uh, well, then, is there anything else that you'd like to unburden yourself of, child?"

"No, I guess that's all I got, Father. I mean, right off the top of my head."

"Tell me, then, are you sorry for the sins that you have committed?"

"Yes, Padre, with all my heart."

"Then make an act of contrition. Do you remember how it goes? Come on now, I'll help you. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell," he began, and on the other side of the screen the voice joined in. "... But most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen."

"Good," the priest affirmed. "Now I want you to go say a decade of the rosary every day for a week, and not just an Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and a Glory Be to the Father and then about your business, but a proper decade, meditating on all five of the appropriate Mysteries for the day. Do you remember your Mysteries, child? Beginning with Monday, they go Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Glorious. It'll come back to you. Now go in peace."

Though he knew it was a sin that he would have to deal with in his own confession, he was unable to keep himself from peeping through the curtain to watch the woman cross the nave, earnestly repeating the order of the Mysteries to herself.

Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Glorious.

Doc couldn't see, but the smell of blood filled the air, warm and salty as it settled on his tongue, and he nearly gagged.

"Graciela!" Doc shouted, loud enough, he could only hope, that the girl could hear him over his patient's screams. In any case she responded again and again, wiping his glasses with a length of gauze wrapped around her hand like a bright red mitten.

Somebody had really done a job on the kid. The bullet had evidently entered at the point of the back of his hip, just missing his kidney, and exited from his groin. Doc reckoned that it had nicked one of the branches of the femoral artery, too high and too deep for a tourniquet to do any good, so the only hope was to locate the lacerated vessel and close it with a stitch or two. Unfortunately there was so much blood that locating the bleeder was proving to be difficult. He probed the wound with his fingers, not really knowing what he was searching for. He wasn't a surgeon, after all, and he'd seen just enough emergency room action during his residency to know that he wasn't cut out for it. He was in way over his head and he knew it, but he had to do something or this kid was going to bleed to death. Right here. Right now. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and, ignoring the loudening screams, forced his way past torn flesh until ... there it was! He could feel it, a faint quiver of a pulse.

"Hemostat, goddamn it!" he barked.

Graciela had stood beside Doc through enough procedures to know which instrument was needed and not to take offense at his tone. He was cussing the blood, not her. She slapped the long-handled stainless steel clamp into the palm of Doc's hand the way she had been taught, waiting for him to close his fingers securely around it before she released it. Among her many gifts was an unfailing calmness under pressure, but it wasn't the cool detachment of a good scrub nurse so highly prized in a modern operating room; it was more like the warm, loving patience of the caregivers of another culture, if not another time. She performed each and every task that was asked of her flawlessly and gracefully; no matter how chaotic her surroundings became, she never stopped praying.

"
Santa María de Guadalupe, Mistica Rosa, intercede por la Iglesia, protege al Soberano Pontifice...
"

Doc knew this one. It was a prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Graciela always began with it, her voice rising and falling in accordance with the urgency of the situation at hand. Scattered among the Hail Marys and the Our Fathers were less familiar passages, some in Spanish, some in that other language that she sometimes recited. He had asked her, once, what the words meant and she had answered that she didn't know. She had learned them by rote from Grandfather. Still, he found the very sound of Graciela's voice reassuring and was grateful that she never stopped praying until the procedure was completed.

"Got ya, you slippery little motherfucker!"

The clamp snapped into place.

"
... Danos un amor ardiente y la gracia de la perseverancia final. Amén!
"

That was how they worked together: Doc cussed and Graciela prayed. There were nights when they were literally awash in blood and the screams continued to ring in their ears long after the procedure was completed, but Doc kept cussing and Graciela kept praying and not a single life had slipped through their fingers so far.

Six months ago Doc would have told the kid that there was nothing he could do and retired to the boarding house to shoot a lick of dope big enough to assuage his Hippocratic guilt, and the ghost would have hovered above the scene and agreed.

"
There ain't nothin' you can do, Doc. Hell, you can't save yourself, let alone nobody else!
"

Oh, Hank was around, all right. Doc would catch a glimpse of him once in a while, lurking in some shadow, but he didn't hear him anymore or, more accurately, he didn't listen.

Doc was pretty sure that Graciela saw him too, but they never spoke of it so he didn't know that she did not perceive the shade of a great hillbilly singer or even the shape of a man.

She had always seen the ghost, and those like him, had seen them since she was a little girl, and her grandfather had recognized her gift. The first day that she'd laid eyes on Doc, back at the beer joint, she had glimpsed something hovering above him. Like a shadow on the ceiling but at least a shade too dark, and whatever it was, it occasionally failed to accurately mimic the shape actions of its host. Sometimes it fleetingly took on the vague form of an animal cowering on the edges of consciousness, a coyote or a feral dog.