by Chris Cander
“It’s fourteen, fifteen years since my last confession,” Liam said in a croaking, wheezing voice. “I accuse myself of the following sins.” He went quiet for a moment, and Myrthen leaned in, straining her piety slightly. “I got passed over again,” he finally said. “Again. Can you believe it?” He stopped.
“Go on,” said Father Timothy. His voice never fluctuated or faltered through that crucifix-mesh lattice screen. He never assumed an apocalyptic tone, no matter how grave, how deplorable the sins. He’d told Myrthen once that he had vowed never to make someone suffer further along their righteous path toward reconciliation.
“I come back from serving this country and take up again with Blackstone. They’re lucky to have me, I’ll tell you. I been underground since I was, what, thirteen? Daddy’d get too drunk and so I’d go on down with his dinner bucket and pickax. Couldn’t let my mother starve, could I? And all these years since — all these years! — before I left off for the war and then coming back these few months, I ain’t ever been moved up. I ought to be fire boss by now. I know just as much as any of them others. How to check underground for dangers, particularly the explosive kind. They need someone like me. Don’t they know that?” Myrthen righted herself, as it was no longer difficult to overhear what her cousin was saying, loud and sharp. Father Timothy said nothing.
“Those shirts don’t seem to understand …” Liam laughed, a dry peal that sounded like dead leaves crunched underfoot and ended in a coughing spell. “Those guys ought to know how easy it would be for somebody like me — electrician with, what, twenty-three years’ experience? — to blow their damn mine straight out of the mountain. They oughta be afraid. Really afraid.” He coughed again until he wheezed. “I been thinkin’ about doing somethin’ about it, Father. I been feelin’ awful nervous about it, too. Like I really could imagine myself doin’ it.”
A moment of silence. “How long has this been on your mind, my son?” Father Timothy said. Only Myrthen, who had heard him channel God’s forgiveness thousands of times, noticed the vaguely sheared edge in his voice.
“Well, for a while now, but especially since I just got passed over again here recently. I thought it all through. You know, how I’d do it.”
Father Timothy waited a beat, then continued. “Have you considered the effects of such an action? The miners whose lives would surely be lost? The grief and sorrow it would cause their families? Not to mention, you could lose your own life in the process.”
“No, I guess I haven’t really thought that part all the way through.”
“My son, we do not have independent dominion over human life. God has granted us the right to use life, and placed us in charge of protecting and preserving the substance of it. Only He has dominion over your life and the lives of others. To do something like that would have consequences far beyond what your mind is capable of seeing. You need to think about those things, and pray. You must ask God to heal you, and lead you out of this temptation.”
“I didn’t have anybody else to tell it to except you, Father.”
“I’m glad you did,” Father Timothy said, restored to confidence. “God is a merciful God. Pray for forgiveness, and I will pray for you. Do you have any other sins to confess?”
Liam’s voice returned to the raspy whisper with which he began his confession. “I sometimes touch myself when I’m underground, on my break. Sometimes when I’m alone in quiet places. The woods. The cemetery, oncet.”
“That particular sin is made worse by defiling someone’s final resting place. Now let me absolve you of all your sins, and especially this one.”
As Father Timothy prayed, Myrthen’s heartbeat quickened and her mind encircled a scheme, something she’d never thought of until now. Before Liam exited the confessional, she moved to the end of the pew, crossed herself, and nearly ran, light and brisk as though she were just a girl and not a nearly forty-year-old woman, down the aisle to the door. She burst headlong into the failing late-summer light, ran thirty paces down the path, and stopped. Then she took a breath, turned around, and with windless aplomb and the genesis of a savage idea, began a slow walk back to the half-opened door of St. Michael’s, for a chance encounter with her cousin.
“Liam,” Myrthen said, feigning surprise. “You’re back.”
“Hello there, cousin.” His voice scraped against her. “I am. Few months now.”
She straightened her mantilla down over her collar. “How have you been?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You just askin’ to be polite? Or do you really give a damn?”
“Liam!”
He held his hands at his sides and looked down. “I ain’t had a letter from you since I left.” She could tell he was hurt by the way his voice softened to the pout of a little boy, just the way he used to sound after a beating from his daddy.
“Well,” she said, shrugging. “I guess I’m not much for writing letters.”
“ ’Spose not.”
“I’m surprised to see you here. You didn’t often come to our parish.”
Liam cleared his throat. “No,” he said, and kicked at the wet dirt that met the bottom step of St. Michael’s. “Not often.”
“What brings you?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing?”
“A troubled heart, maybe. Nothing much.”
“A troubled heart?”
“No,” he said. “It’s nothing.” He glanced up at her, then looked down. Looked up once again, up under her black lace, as if trying to peek under her skirt.
… Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done …
“Surely something must be troubling you if you’ve come all the way up the Hollow,” she said, smiling. It was such an awkward use of her jaw. She brought her hand up to her mouth, testing it, as though it might break. Then she pressed her fingers to the inverted curve of lips. A blind woman reading her own facial expression.
Liam kicked the dirt again. “Been a long time since I seen you,” he repeated.
“I’m here most days. I play the organ every Mass. And practice as much as I can.” She looked over her cousin’s ungroomed red hair at the cross that stood like a phallus atop the pitched roof of the church. “I should thank you again for your years of service. I’m sure the army was proud to have you,” she said, her mind working, spinning sticky silk into an elaborate web.
“It weren’t nothing.”
She made her voice sound coy. “It was to me.”
He looked up again. “I’d a done anything for you, you know that.”
Myrthen nodded, adjusted her mantilla. She closed her eyes, languorous and brief — thinking, thinking — then flared them open and looked directly into his. “I need to speak to you, cousin. It’s something of an urgent matter.”
He leaned back, away from her sharp tone. “What is it?”
She reached out and took his hand.… Forgive us our trespasses … She pulled him off the path, led him to a flat rock, and sat him down.… And lead us not into temptation … “During my prayers,” Myrthen said, solemn and downcast, “God has spoken to me.”
Liam turned and stared at her. He hadn’t been this close to her since they were children. The only other times she’d spoken to him as an adult were at her parents’ funerals. And now here she was, holding on to his hand, looking mostly into his face. Her voice could have been that of an angel, speaking on behalf of the Lord.
“God has told me about your situation. He told me to help you, cousin. He told me, I’m the only one who can.” … But deliver us from evil …
It was true, wasn’t it? Why else would God let her hear the crimes of the sinners if not to help guide them on their path to righteousness? She took note of his slack expression and continued. “God has been trying to speak to you directly for some time, but evidently you haven’t been paying attention. Do you know what I’m talking about, Liam?”
“I ain’t got any idea what you’re talking about. What do you mean, God speaks to you?”
&nbs
p; “Well, of course.”
“What makes you think it’s God talking?”
“I don’t think, I know.” She admired her own conviction. “Do you need proof to bolster your weakened faith?”
He shrugged.
Closing her eyes and clasping her hands, she moved her lips in prayer.… Penetrate my being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Yours … She looked up. “God wants you to cease your masturbation in the cemetery. It offends Him.”
Liam’s eyes flew wide, one hand — unwitting — to his crotch. It wasn’t too bad confessing it to the priest, he was a man, too, but hearing it come back at him, again, through his cousin’s comely mouth now humiliated him. He panted a few dry breaths until he could steady his mind enough to speak.
“How did you know that?” he croaked.
She lifted one shoulder. “I didn’t. God told me. When God’s chosen won’t listen, He sends another to translate for Him. For Jonah, it was a fish. For you,” she said, opening her hands, “it seems to be me.”
“You’re lying.”
“You remember the story of the prophet Samuel, don’t you? Of course you do. I believe I was the one who read it to you when we were children.” Her stare was unrelenting. He wiped his brow. “Twice Samuel heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him at night, but didn’t recognize Him. He had to be told, ‘That is your Lord speaking to you. Listen and do what He tells you.’ God told me to tell you, Liam. He’s been trying to talk and you’re not listening. Now, you said you’ve got a troubled heart. That, cousin, comes from not listening when the Lord is trying to tell you something.”
He shook his head, muttered something in the direction of his lap.
“What’s that?” Oh, how clear and sharp her voice was.
“I said what’s got me troubled ain’t anything God would be sayin’.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because things I’ve been thinkin’ about don’t sound like nothin’ would ever come out of God’s mouth. Besides, God might be talkin’ to you, but why would He be talkin’ to me?”
“You’re special, Liam. Like Samuel. But it’s not for us to ask why God chooses to speak to those of us whom He does. We are only meant to listen and heed.”
Liam pulled a pack of Pall Malls out of his pants pocket. They were supposed to guard against throat-scratch better than other brands. He set one between his lips after he stopped coughing again, then he struck a match on the rock and cupped a shaky hand around the flame.
Myrthen moved a few inches away from him. “Why don’t you tell me about it, cousin? God told me I’d be able to help you.”
He exhaled downwind, hard like a sigh, and coughed. Picking a bit of tobacco off his lip, he relented. “I been thinkin’ some crazy thoughts. They fly up in my head like motion pictures. Realistic. I can just close my eyes and see it all like it’s already happened.”
“Like what has happened?”
Liam jutted his chin vaguely westward. “The mine. Blown up. Those assholes at Blackstone standing there watching, all their money falling out of holes in their pockets, till there’s nothing but scrip, and then that’s gone, too. Smoke pouring out from the pit, entrances sealed up. Them thinkin’, We should’ve raised up old Liam ’stead of passing him over like we did. He’d a prevented something like this happening. We shoulda listened to him. Now look what we got.” He stared across the thin woods, through the Hollow and toward the tipple.
Myrthen watched him, ruthless, her placid countenance inversely proportional to his agitation. She tucked away the creep of a smile into a bitten fold of cheek.… Make us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O dearest and most clement Virgin Mother … “Liam, I want you to know,” she said, virtuous, bewitching, “that I’ve been keeping up with you. Even though we don’t see each other often, I’m interested in your well-being.”
So what if she had to make up a bit of a story to help deliver the message? The thoughts that entered her head weren’t entirely hers, were they? God had a say in the words that came out of her mouth. Everything under the heavens was unfolding according to His great plan, was it not? If that was so, then whatever she said must be grounded in truth, even if it didn’t actually happen.
He looked up at her the way a dog awaits a treat, his bitterness momentarily forgotten. “You been keepin’ up with me?”
She nodded. “You may not be aware of this, but John and I are no longer living together as man and wife. Even so, I spoke to him not very long ago on your behalf. I asked him why you haven’t been promoted in spite of all your years of faithful service.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I thought you said you didn’t know I was back home.”
“I didn’t want to appear overeager.” She smiled again, then opened her hands. “I’m sorry. I was unable to convince my former husband to take up your cause. And in fact, I’m deeply ashamed to say, I think he might in fact be one of those who have prevented your rise.” She looked down and then back up from beneath her eyelashes. “Perhaps it’s partly because he’s jealous of you. He may know, on some level, that I’ve always had a deep … affection … for you. Perhaps that’s even why he asked me for a divorce.”
Liam’s mouth fell open, but it was a moment before he spoke. “You have … affection … for me?”
Myrthen straightened her back. No need to take it too far. “Liam, do you realize that God is revealing to you His judgment upon Blackstone Coal Company?”
He cocked his head slightly. “God’s revealing what?”
“Liam!” She slapped the rock with the palm of her hand. “Pay attention. I’m telling you! God has chosen you. He has chosen both of us. Who are you to question Him?”
He scoured his cigarette onto the rock. “So what are you saying? I’m supposed to go blow up the mine?”
She shifted away from him to hide the pounding of her heart through her clothes. “If that is what God wants you to do, then what choice do you have?” A hint of a smile. He looked away.
“It don’t sound like a good thing. I don’t understand. I mean, I wanted to do it. I … I want to do it. Serve those bastards right. But what if somebody got hurt? Somebody innocent? Guys I worked with, what, fifteen, twenty years? Good guys, some of them. I wouldn’t want them to get hurt. Except maybe them who’s been keeping me down.”
“You don’t know who is innocent and who is not. That’s for God to know. And God will protect the innocent. Remember the story about the three men King Nebuchadnezzar tosses into a furnace for refusing to bow to him? No? Well, when he looks into the fire, he sees not three but four men, and none of them burning. The fourth was God’s angel, sent to protect them because they were righteous before the Lord. And God will protect the innocent, Liam. You don’t need to worry.”
Slowly, he began to bob his head. His eyes searched the ground, looked left and right, a sign he was thinking things through. Myrthen watched her idea, like a minnow on a hook, sink itself into the soft contours of his mind.
Just like that, she could be rid of them both. Thank You, Lord.
After some time, Liam stopped his unconscious nodding. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Maybe you’re right.”
She patted him on the hand. “Sometimes there is evil inside people that you can’t see. It’s like a coal seam buried deep underground. You don’t see it, but God sees it. He knows. And he wants them to be punished. You’re doing the right thing, listening to God,” she said. “Go now, and pray. Come back and meet me here on Wednesday evening. Father Timothy makes house calls then. I’ll help you, Liam. I’ll help you make a plan. I told God I would.”
The voice of God, yes, he could hear it now. How had he mistaken it for anything else all this time? His mind was swirling with penance-turned-permission, his cousin’s impossibly delicate skin, being chosen, being seen, those Blackstone bastards with money running out of their trousers like the liquid wrath of angry bowels.
He hadn’t thought to wonder if there was something in it fo
r her.
She stood up, their meeting adjourned, and smoothed her skirt in a practiced sweep. “Don’t tell anybody else about this. God chose you and only you. Other people might not understand. You hear?”
“Yes,” he said, then dipped his head and added, “I always had affection for you, too.”
“Wednesday. Seven sharp. We’ll make a plan.” She walked a few steps up the path toward the doors of St. Michael’s, then turned. “And one more thing,” she said, straightening her back. “Stay out of the cemetery.”
October 6, 1950
Three weeks later, John and the rest of the crew on the Number Seventeen’s day shift spilled out of the cold darkness of the pit into an October afternoon so clear and bright their voices trilled off the exposed mountain face.
“Hold up, Gibby!” said a middle-aged half-Polish, half-Italian miner named Mooska. “My old lady’s goin’ to visit her mother this weekend,” he said when he caught up with him. “So poker night at my place tonight.” Mooska nodded at two others, Willit and Bullseye, who’d turned around while they were walking. “You’re in, right?” They both nodded. One of them said, “I’ll call up Jonesey. I think he’s got a honey-do list but maybe he can get out of it.” They chuckled, happy the workweek was done, a weekend of liquor and cards ahead, their smiles like cracks in dried mud on their dirty faces.
John Esposito walked past them with a long stride and a wide smile. “Hey, Johnny,” said Mooska with a tip of his chin. “Poker night. You in?”