Tarot Sour (8 page)

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wiley, what can I do for you?” From behind his back, possibly from tucked inside his hat, he holds out a folded sheet of paper. I take it, my smile still there for him to see but no longer genuine. “What is this?” I ask as I take it from his oily hands.

“I'm from the archdiocese, Mr. Johns.”

“
Father
Johns,” I correct, unfolding it. I read the sheet of paper, fold it up again and hold it out for him to take back. “This is bullshit,” I say. “What is this?”

“That is my appointment to this church, and your dismissal, Father.”

“Yes, it is. And I see whose name is on the bottom. General Anselmo doesn't speak for the archdiocese.”

“No, sir, he does not. But he does influence them. And so I'm sure you'll find that more and more often, it's the archdiocese speaking for the General.”

“You're a son of a bitch.” I mold a fist around the sheet of paper and throw it at his feet. “We all know what's going on up there. Does he really think sending you in here to take my place is going to change what people think about him?”

“They will, Father, when I tell them that it's what God wants of them. And you know that's true.”

“They're not stupid.” I tear my collar off and throw it at his feet with the letter. I imagine setting a bonfire beneath him, one straight from the devil's lips.

“No,” he concedes. “But they
are
afraid. You know they are. You've set the stage for that with all your talk of the end of the world. And religion is nothing if not a teat for the fearful to suck. God is milk, Father. Don't pretend
that's
not true. The General knows all about you and your hobbies. And your past. And he knows that you aren't about to go crying to the archdiocese about it because it might all come out. And what would your people think if they knew about Mr. Cifezzo? What good would everything you've done here do
anyone
, if you were to have it all undone?”

I unclasp the robe and slide my arms from it. It goes with the smoothness, the readiness, of water off a cleansed body. I hold it out to him and he takes it, drapes it over his shoulder like a rag.

“Even if I'm on the corner side preaching like a madman, they'll be right there listening to me before they come here to you.”

“We'll see, Father. Good luck.”

He walks past me to the vanity, taps the apple with the back of his hand so that it rolls off the table into a wastebasket. And he watches me in the mirror as I leave and shut the rectory door. I imagine his smile is wide and toothy.

When I get to Adolphus Henrik's home, I let myself in. He's lying in bed upstairs. I go into the kitchen and put down the bag of groceries I picked up for him on my way over, and then I make a sandwich. The bread
here
is soft, plush, the meat and cheese is fresh. It should be, because I just bought it a few days ago. I bring it up to him along with a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade and I sit on the bed as he props himself up against the headboard to eat it. He tells me that he's having a bad day. His joints ache, he feels dizzy, there's a boding pinch deep in his stomach someplace. I tell him he should have called me sooner, and he says, “Father, I didn't want to bother you. It's Sunday.”

I realize that it
is
Sunday, and something inside of me snaps just a little bit further. I feel a fresh torrent of molecules drift off of my body like dust in a wind and fly someplace far away where there is a version of me still whole and functional, still with a purpose, still with a daughter whose years have tallied fast. He apologizes for making me leave the church so early on a Sunday and I make up an excuse that it's been a slow day and he needs God's attention more than most these days. I pity the old man for not being able to die faster. If I were a few molecules short of what I still am, I might be willing or able to help him quicker along that path.

As that thought crosses my mind, I think of the car. I think of the way I grind my palm into the horn to get them to pull over. I think of the way I run my headlights into their bumper after they come to a stop so that I can spin it nose-first into the ditch, and how easy it had all been.

I get up urgently, not able to face him right then, this poor old sack of what was once a person. How much longer until it's me? I doubt that when it is my turn I'll have someone to come make me a sandwich when I need one. I
could
have
had a daughter. I tell Mr. Henrik that I am going to tidy up a bit for him. Not that he needs it. I doubt that he's been out of bed to so much as piss on the seat since the last time I've been here. But I go anyway. I make my way to the bathroom and I slide the door shut. I go to the window and slide it open. The heat seems to be dying down a bit, but the cool breeze might just be because I'm up high above the low skyline of the city. Across the alley I can see right into Mrs. Fasch's bathroom. I stand there for a moment trying to discern the shadows I see shifting behind the lace curtain. It's not her, probably her deadbeat beast of a husband.

Lately, I've been thinking of going back to South America, back to where I used to vacation with my parents. It's nice to think that there might be something keeping me here, but if I sit down to figure out what that something might be, I can never quite come up with anything substantial. It would be nice, I think, living in the jungle. Mr. Henrik is calling for me so I shut the window and go back to his bedside. He has finished his sandwich and teeters the plate delicately on the edge of his table. I kneel on the floor and take his hand in mine, bow and hold our meshed fingers up to my forehead. I deliver the sermon I would have delivered that morning if there had been anyone left to listen. I still prepare them each week, tuck the rehearsed scripts away in an old dresser drawer where they rot in peace. When I'm done, we pray in unison, mumbling incoherently the same things we mumble together every Sunday.

When we finish, I stand to leave, but I feel his withered old fingers flinch in my palm, trying to grasp me. They feel like salted sardines, long and slender but baggy. “It won't be much longer now, Father. I can feel it.”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Henrik. I've seen men in worse condition than you with years left to go. As long as you put your faith in the Lord, He will watch over you.”

Mr. Henrik, his eyes closed, the lids sunken as though there is nothing beneath them, shakes his head slowly. The sparse bundle of whiskers that still clutch to the back of his head rubs against the silk cover of his pillow. “No, Father. Not this time. Please, I know you're busy, but just a minute longer?”

I check my watch, though these days there's not much reason for me to do so, and I consent. I take my seat again with his hand still gripped softly in my own.

“What's troubling
you
, Father?”

“Nothing's troubling me, Adolphus,” I smile to him.

“Oh, come now. You come every week, and every week you pester me until I tell you about my every aching joint and sore spot. You've been a godsend to me these last few years, Father, a
true
godsend. But I'm not nearly sick enough not to know that there's something deeply bothering you. I haven't got much left to say of myself, I would appreciate it if you would let me return just an ounce of the comfort you've given me.”

I think for a long moment. What's troubling me? My mind wanders to the rats. The gnawing, scratching, crying rats. I can't tell him about those. I think of my dead wife. She must be disbanded into the plump bodies of a thousand squirming worms by now. I try not to think of the daughter I abandoned, the daughter I was so certain would have caused nothing but misery for myself and everyone around us. I wonder if I could confess that I'm no longer a priest, that I've been dethroned and replaced by a man whose agenda belongs in the hands of a crooked man. “You know the Fasches?” I finally ask.

“Next door? Of course I know them.”

“The boy, Emery, he left two weeks ago. I watched him board the train and disappear, from a hill on the horizon, hidden in the midnight. His mother was heartbroken. I watched her try not to cry, for the little girl, for Ingot.”

“Emery? He used to come and tend the yard for me. Where did he go?”

I tell him, “The coast.” These days, even the shut-ins know what that means.

“The coast,” he repeats. He tests the words on his dry lips. If he still had his eyes, they would be looking straight up at the ceiling right now, tilted high up toward his forehead. “Emery has gone to the coast. So General Anselmo is still at it.” I nod. He can't see it, but he seems to feel the vibrations of my old creaking vertebra. “That old miserable bastard. How does he keep conniving our boys to come to him, Father?”

Because, Henrik, the good General bribes the archdiocese to place one of his men in the one place where the people of this town will listen and obey unquestioningly, and that man repeats week after week that the General's cause is patriotic, holy, righteous, and whatever opposition there is to his cause is, by his definition, demoniacal. “I don't know, Adolphus. It's a sad state we've found ourselves in.”

“I suppose I can't blame them for having their reasons. Lord knows I had a reason.”

“
You
?” My body stiffens. The General has only recently begun recruiting grown men. Before that, it was only the young and the strong ones, which is the most prominent reason for the undoubtedly false rumors that the General's war was simply an excuse to host hedonistic homosexual orgies where the boys dance naked around him as though he is a god, hoisting him above their body, then laying it down again for worship. The General is a deranged man, but certainly no pervert. In any case, it can't have been possible for Mr. Henrik to have been conscripted. By what little was known about him, the General couldn't have been much older than myself, and his Cannery not much than a decade or so old.

He must sense my confusion. He says, “Oh, I'm not as old as I may look, Father. That's just a symptom of the times. Things are coming to an end, and not just for myself. Things happen differently than they should.
I
was there.
I
was one of his boys. That's where I got this.” He points to his chin where a long, baby-pink scar runs down the side of his throat and disappears into the collar of his shirt. “He gave that to me himself, right after I stuck a knife into his gut.” I pity him for a moment in his growing senility and decide he must have the facts of some past war confused with those of the current state of things. Still, it does not seem right not to deny him his glory.

“A knife!” I laugh. I lean back in my seat and my stomach pinches itself in the side. I can't remember the last time I have actually laughed. I can't remember the last time anyone in that town laughed. “I bet that showed that son of a bitch.”

Mr. Henrik chuckles. “You'd think so, but no. It hardly even fazed him. He just rolled that damned pair of dice of his and sent me away.” His wrinkles seem to smooth over as he speaks, the deep lines twitching the way gills do as a fish breathes, as though just speaking about his youthful days draws him back closer to them.

“So tell me, what was
your
reason for going over there, Mr. Henrik?”

“My reason would bore you, Father. I went because my mother asked me to.”

“I can't imagine a boy's mother actually asking him to go work for General Anselmo.”

“It was a different time, Father. Maybe we didn't quite understand what was going on back then. Hell, we barely really understand it now. All we know now is only one in three ever makes it back.”

“Do you think it will ever end, Mr. Henrik?” The ruffle of the curtains over the open window on the other side of his bed catches my attention. They are canary yellow and, in my periphery, look to be chained birds trying to escape their perch. Through it I can see the slanted roof of the Fasch house. It is Emery's room. It has to be. Posters of baseball players hang on the wall across from posters of swimsuit models, one of which conceals her wet buxomness with a fine layer of sand. I can see the edge of a bed that disappears beyond the field of vision granted by the synchronicity of Mr. Henrik's and Emery Fasch's windows. On the edge of the bed sits a comely woman in an open-faced robe. She sits doubled-over with a hand wrapped viciously in the long locks of her wet hair, and the other bent at a crooked angle and pressing the back of its palm against her red-rimmed eyes. Her body vibrates with the inertia of events I might have been able to control under other circumstances, under the dictum of more appropriate choices.

“It will end,” Adolphus Henrik says, though by that time I am transfixed by the woman, Margot Fasch, as she cries silently to herself, and I barely register his answer. He slides his paper-thin hand out of mine and folds it on his chest. “It will end when there are no boys left to go to the coast, or when there is nobody left to wait here for their return.” His wrinkles re-deepen. In fact, they appear now deeper than they had been before.

* * *

I sleep easily that night. I always do after visiting Mr. Henrik, even though our visit ends with the unpleasant reminder of the misery that hides behind the walls of our town. It was easy to believe in a man like Asam Cifezzo because you would never expect that Asam Cifezzo might come and save you some day. That is the problem with most religions. It's difficult to believe in something that bases itself on an event that hasn't yet occurred, and I have never understood that. Though perhaps that is the basis of faith, and it is not religion but faith that I have never understood. The sun is set by the time I get back to my house from Mr. Henrik's. I cut up an apple and put it on a plate in the basement for the rats to nibble during the night. After waking, I replace the plate, empty except for a few apple seeds and a tooth-chocked core, with another diagonal-cut ham sandwich. In the next day or so I will need to go to the grocer's whether or not I think it is necessary. Soon not even the rats will disgrace themselves by succumbing to those stale and watery sandwiches.