annoyance beginning to grow somewhere deep inside him. “Well, there’s really only one thing I wanted to come and tell you today.”
“Only one sin in thirty years?”
“Well, no, I suppose if I were to think about it, there’s been a few more than that, but I really just wanted to focus on one in particular. There’s one that’s sort of a large one, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Quin looked down nervously and then returned his focus to the outline of the priest on the other side of the screen. “Well, if sins were stones, I’d have a few pebbles, a couple of nice rocks the size of apples and one that could have broken off of a small planet, you know what I mean?”
“Not really, why don’t you tell me about it.”
Quin took a long hard look at the screen, and then took a deep breath.
“My son, I’m a vehicle for you to speak to God,” the priest said, and shifted his body as if trying to make himself comfortable. “If it makes it easier for you, imagine that you are speaking directly to God.”
“Well, let’s not get carried away,” Quin said, a light chuckle suggesting he wasn’t buying the good father’s act of divine volunteerism.
“Please begin.”
Quin cleared his throat and began. “About fifteen years ago now. Yeah, it was about fifteen years ago, my little brother Edger got engaged.”
“That’s wonderful my son.”
“You know what. Just let me finish; it’ll be easier that way.”
“Go on my son.”
“Well, Edger got engaged to this very pretty rich girl. Her name was Mary Anne, her name is still Mary Anne actually, and so, about a month before the wedding, Mary Anne’s family—her parents, invited our family over for a little get together.
“Yes, my son.”
Quin stayed silent for a moment, hoping the priest would get the hint and relax with the “yes, my son” routine.
“Anyway,” he continued. “My mother, my father, my older brother Julie and I went over to the Appletart’s house to meet Mary Anne’s family.”
He paused again. The priest said nothing.
“Father, I’m surprised you didn’t ask me about my brother’s name.”
“Why, my son?”
“Well, his name is actually Julie, and he’s a male—he was named after a poet or something.”
“That’s fine my son.”
“So anyway, we’re all at the get together, sitting around having cocktails and meeting the Appletarts, and after about ten minutes something dawns on me.”
“What, my son?”
“You know what, I think you need to ease up on the ‘my son’ thing.”
“Carry on.”
“Well, it dawned on me that the Appletart’s were asses.”
“My son,” the priest said quickly.
“Sorry, probably not appropriate language for this place,” I said. “But they really were. I mean, these people were filthy rich, and the house was about a billion square feet. There were servants, kitchen staff and things like that—it was ridiculous.”
“You still haven’t committed a sin my son, other than your choice of language a moment ago.”
“Right, well, these people were very rude to their staff. My family is of modest means, if you know what I mean, and I don’t have a problem with people who have a little money, but these folks were just plain rude. They made my skin crawl.”
“Perhaps, they should be here rather than you my son. They seem to be the ones who have done an inordinate amount of sinning.”
“Patience father; I’m setting the table for you here. I’m sure you know where this is going,” Quin said coyly.
“Very well my son. Carry on.”
“After a while, I went upstairs to go to the washroom. Madame Appletart was relieving herself in one of the washrooms on the main floor, and I couldn’t find the other, so one of the butlers or whatever he was, told me to try the one upstairs. I did and when I was finished, I came out, and my brother Julie was standing there waiting to use the washroom.”
Quin paused.
And continued. “Julie and I gossiped a bit about what a bunch of morons the Appletarts were, he used the washroom, and then we started downstairs. We passed by a bedroom and we both froze in our tracks; sitting on a night table in plain view was a ring with the biggest goddamn diamond in it.”
“My son!”
“Right, I guess that was particularly bad language considering where we are.”
“My son, when you feel the urge to use a profanity, just count to five in your head.”
“Uhhh . . . alright, I’ll give that a try. Anyway, I don’t need to tell you what I did; I took the ring. I’m not exactly sure why. It might have been that I was jealous, or it might have been that I had hatred for these people, but I took the darn ring, sold it and spent the money on my family.”
“You didn’t get caught my son.”
“No, I guessed that they’d know that one of us took the ring, but that they’d avoid spoiling their daughter’s wedding. They likely knew that they wouldn’t have to deal with us again after the wedding. And they could certainly afford to replace the ring, assuming it wasn’t insured, and it likely was.”
“They never mentioned the incident, my son.”
“No they didn’t”
“And nobody knows about this but you.”
“Me and Julie,” Quin said smiling. “Don’t forget Julie was there.”
“Yes, my son. Your older brother Julie was there.”
“So that’s it father. I’d like to be forgiven for stealing that ring fifteen years ago,”
“You know my son that there is penance.”
“Yeah, can’t quite remember how that works. You give me a prayer to say or something.”
“I’ll ask that you say a combination of prayers my son.”
“And that’s it then, I’m forgiven?”
“You’ll be forgiven my son as long as in your heart you truly want to be forgiven for this sin.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here. I mean, I’m sorry for doing it because I could have ruined Edger’s wedding or ruined his life I guess, and that’s not a very nice thing to do to your little brother. I’ve regretted for a long time that what I did could have ended up causing my little brother pain.”
There was a pause. Neither man saying anything for a dozen seconds.
“Alright my son, I do sense that you’ve carried the weight of this with you for some time.”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that to my little brother.”
There was another brief silence.
“Alright my son, I’d like you to say one thousand eight hundred and twenty five Hail Marys.”
“For Christ sake, you’re insane,” Quin screamed. “That’ll take me eight goddamn weeks to say that many Hail Marys.”
“My son, you don’t have to say them all at the same time—that’s one a day for the next five years. Every time you say one, I want you to think about your little brother Edger and how you could have spoiled his marriage.”
“I will think of him father. I love him and the marriage has worked out fine; they have five gorgeous children. I’ll be honest with you though; I hope my older brother Julie feels some remorse and has asked to be forgiven and has received a penance of some kind.”
The priest slowly exhaled, and then Quin could hear him leaving the booth. A moment later the priest had opened the curtain, and was staring at Quin, who said nothing, but had expected they might go down this path.
“Quin, your little brother knows that you and your older brother took that ring.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I told Edger.”
“I suspected as much,” Quin said and took a deep breath, the weight of a decade and a half of guilt having just vacated his shoulders. “I’m glad you did.”
“Quin, I’ve spend the last fifteen years asking to be forgiven for taking that ring,” the
priest said.
“I know Julie, I know.” And Quin hugged his brother.
Big Money
Ford Toliver was a lucky man. His lot in life had a prosperous fragrance to it that could only be appreciated by understanding his plight in relative terms. He lived in a small house, had recently gotten engaged to his girlfriend of six months, and had a small amount of money in the bank. Two years earlier, he had lost his first life to a penny stock promoter who offered him the chance to bet on three sure things. He had lost his and his ex-wife’s savings on the first; had doubled down using their line of credit on the second; and had finally used their credit cards in a desperate attempt at redemption on the third. He had gone to counselors, for both his marital and gambling problems, had faced the indignity of admitting he had been stupid, but had slowly forged ahead. He had a decent job now and had lived like a pauper for two years, so he could pay his ex-wife her savings back. Things were good, they were stable, he was happy. His only extravagance was an occasional trip to the race track; he’d bet two dollars a race and more enjoyed savoring the beauty of the horses than the thrill of the action. Things were indeed good.
On this blazingly hot summer day, Ford’s resolve was tested. He had often heard that Oakhill horse track was a corrupt place; that every once in a while a horse, which was favoured to win, would get a less than honest effort by the jockey, allowing dark evil criminal types to make loads of money betting on the appropriate alternatives. Standing by the paddock watching the horses get saddled for the fifth race, and armed with a tendency towards conspiracy based paranoia, Ford was sure that he had tapped into this underworld of deceit. He overheard a conversation between a trainer, whose picture he had seen in the newspaper but whose
Rumours & Lies Page 20