Kill and Tell

by William Kienzle

  He slipped his arms around her waist from behind. She was not startled. She had seen him pull into the drive and had been aware of his approach. She half turned toward him with a smile. He’d always thought she had the profile of Grace Kelly.

  “What brings you home so soon?” She rested the rake against herself.

  “Bad rehearsal.” His arms tightened about her.

  “Bad rehearsal, good show. As you always say.”

  “Actually, it was because they sent a woman to do a child’s job.”

  “What?”

  He smiled. “What would happen if you were to toss a set of keys down the inside front of your dress?”

  “Why would I do a silly thing like that?”

  “Because you were keeping the keys for Annie Oakley.”

  “Annie Oakley!”

  “What would happen,” he slipped his hands beneath her sweater and ran them up her body until they cupped her breasts, “is that they would stick right there. Lucky keys.”

  She laughed softly, deep in her throat. “You ought to have bad rehearsals more often.”

  “You mean you’re willing to leave your leaves?”

  “The leaves we will have with us always.” She gave the rake a push. It fell to the ground, scattering leaves on either side. “Who are you going to be today? Robert Redford? Humphrey Bogart?”

  “I think . . . Errol Flynn.” He scooped her up in his arms and swung her in a circle. Then, still carrying her, he sprinted toward the house with a whoop.

  She shrieked, and then called out, “Then I’ll be Maureen O’Hara!”

  Who cared if the neighbors were watching!

  Later, Mercury toyed with a ham salad sandwich while Cindy prepared a small pot roast for dinner.

  “Pam called from Western Michigan this morning,” she said as she went about her culinary work.

  “Oh?” He looked up, startled. “Anything wrong? She’s not ill or anything, is she?” He was naturally concerned about their only child . . . though at nineteen, she was a child no longer.

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. She wants to take a course in medieval history. She wants to fill in a liberal arts curriculum . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “I suppose that means more money. Is it worth it?”

  “Oh, yes, Angie, I think so. With a good liberal arts background, no matter what major she settles on, she’ll be well prepared for almost anything. Plus it’s just going to broaden her knowledge. Make her a better informed person.”

  “But,” he shut his eyes tightly, “where are we going to find the money?”

  She left the roast, dried her hands on her apron, and touched his shoulders. “Don’t worry. We’ll find the money.”

  “Frank!” He fairly spat the name out.

  She shut her eyes and massaged his shoulders. “Frank wants to help. Maybe he does it a little clumsily. Maybe he is a little arrogant. He isn’t a saint. He never claimed to be. He just wants to help us.”

  “You.”

  “All right, me. But it works out to be us.”

  “He’s taking my manhood. He makes me feel like a kid. He makes me feel like a beggar. He holds our lives by a string. Do you ever think of what would happen to us—to our entire way of life—if he ever turned off the faucet?”

  “He’d never do that!” She backed away, shocked.

  “Emma isn’t nutty about his giving us all that money. What if she made him quit?”

  “Em has nothing to do with it.”

  “She’s his wife.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s his money.”

  He was silent. She returned to the roast.

  “Medieval history,” he said after a few moments. “Why in the world would anyone want to study medieval history?”

  “She wants to be a German medievalist.” It was said almost defensively.

  “A German medievalist,” he repeated in awe. Until that moment, he would have had a difficult time thinking of any profession other than his own that could almost guarantee regular unemployment. “A German medievalist! Well, that’s great: If anybody ever needs one, she’ll be there.”

  Cindy, chopping carrots, smiled.

  “She could be Greer Garson,” he continued, “doing ‘Madame Curie Was a Closet German.’”

  Cindy laughed. Angie may never have grown up—might indeed never grow up—but she remained head over heels in love with him. Even though he hardly ever got offstage.

  Without reflection, she began to hum, “Can’t help lovin’ that man of mine.”

  It was catching.

  9.

  “What brings you home so early?” Father Koesler looked up from transcribing a baptismal certificate as a figure passed his office door.

  “I’m not home, exactly.” Bishop Ratigan stuck his head through the door. “Sort of in transit. I’m meeting Frank Hoffman for lunch.”

  “It’s all right for you to do that, you know. You don’t have to check in with me before you go to the Orchard Lake C.C.” Koesler had no trouble speaking with his tongue in his cheek.

  Ratigan almost smiled. “I’m picking up something I want to give Frank. The reason I’m giving the appearance of ‘checking in’ with you is that you never leave home. Thus I simply can’t avoid running into you.”

  “Easy there.” Koesler waved a hand. “I ring my share of doorbells. Besides, I’m just about to go over for a penance service.”

  “The school kids?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What grades?”

  “Fifth and sixth.”

  “Good! You couldn’t handle anything higher.” He disappeared from the doorway.

  Actually, thought Koesler, the bishop couldn’t have been more wrong. It had been Koesler’s experience that the younger the congregation, the more difficult time he had communicating.

  “By the way,” Koesler called after him, “can you see your way clear to taking early Mass again tomorrow?”

  The bishop’s face reappeared. “I guess so. What is it this time?”

  “Got to take my car back for repair.”

  “Ha! I knew it! And you just had the weather stripping fixed, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right. But while they were replacing the stripping, they noticed that one of the pillars was cracked.”

  “I’ve heard of planned obsolescence, but your car takes the cake.”

  Koesler completed transcribing the baptismal certificate. As he signed it, he recalled a similar transcription at a parish which, in its beginnings, had been heavily Italian. The first pastor had been Italian and had kept his records in a mishmash of Italian and Latin. One record Koesler had transcribed had been in Italian. He had transcribed it, faithfully, as was prescribed, in English. But between the names of the godparents, the old pastor had noted, in Latin, “nil dederunt.” So, Koesler had dutifully noted on the transcribed certificate, between the godparents’ names, the homey comment, “They gave nothing.”

  He carefully folded the certificate and placed it in the self-addressed stamped envelope that had accompanied the request. As he sealed the envelope, he heard the back door of the rectory close. The bishop was off to the country club.

  Hoffman had never invited Koesler to the club. Koesler didn’t mind. Ratigan and Hoffman were, after all, rather close. It was only natural they should socialize. Usually, it was better, Koesler believed, if the pastor was not all that socially familiar with his parishioners. It lacked professionalism and could prove a hindrance if the pastor ever felt it necessary to reprove someone who also happened to be a social companion.

  Time for the penance service. Koesler adjusted his cassock, slipped into his cape, and walked the short distance to the church.

  The children were already there, assembled into the first few pews. Their teachers having given up trying to keep them quiet, Koesler caught a distinct but unintelligible murmur as he entered the church. It did not cease as he walked by them and into the sacristy.

  However, as he reentered the
church, now in surplice and stole over his cassock, the children stood and sang the entrance hymn. All was in order.

  Koesler proceeded to the rear of the church and entered his confessional.

  He walked around the screened portion of the room, sat behind the screen, draped a narrow violet stole over his shoulders, and waited for the afternoon’s first young penitent.

  He gazed about the light, airy room. It is different than it was, he reflected. In fact, this type of confessional denoted one of the most decided and stark changes in the Church to flow from the Second Vatican Council of the early sixties. And today’s children—the ones who would be entering here in the upcoming minutes—would have no concept of what the experience of confession had been for centuries before.

  For the vast majority of Koesler’s priesthood, he had been squeezed into one grossly uncomfortable confessional after another. Appropriately termed “the box,” the traditional confessional space had consisted of three compartments. The priest-confessor sat in the central compartment. On either side of him was, usually, a sliding door. If no penitent was in either of the outer compartments, both doors were left open. Once a penitent was in either compartment, the priest would slide the opposite door shut.

  Even then, the confessor was separated from the penitent by a screen and a curtain. While there was no “standard size” for these compartments, the usual dimensions made it necessary for skinny priests to do a good bit of sliding back and forth in order to hear the whispered sins. Whereas a corpulent confessor had less room than that afforded by the average coffin.

  Koesler recalled one priest with an aversion to blondes that stemmed from an incident that had taken place one Saturday afternoon as he sat in his confessional. There he was, peacefully minding his own business, when suddenly a small blonde girl raised the curtain on the door, peered in at him, then shouted to the church at large, “Mommie! There’s a man in here sitting on the pottie!”

  In order to inform waiting penitents that one or another of the compartments was already occupied, some long-gone genius had installed small electric lights over each compartment. A green light went on when the confessor sat down, red when a penitent knelt.

  Koesler had a clerical friend who would occasionally place a brick on each kneeler, triggering the red lights. Then he would slip into his compartment and have himself a nice little nap.

  But now, in most churches, the old confessionals, along with their associated jokes, existed only in the memories of those old enough to have experienced them. Confession had segued into the sacrament of reconciliation.

  It was much, much more than a change in name only.

  Now, many, if not most, confessionals were outfitted in much the same manner as Koesler’s. His was a room divided more or less in half by a large, opaque screen with a kneeler in front for those who preferred confession in the old style, or who always or occasionally desired anonymity.

  Or one could—and many did—walk around the screen and occupy a chair facing the confessor. Confession under such circumstance tended to be less formal, as did the penances imposed by the confessor.

  Penances, a form of “punishment” meted out for sins confessed, also had changed—at least for those who chose to confess face to face.

  In ancient times, penances often were both public and extreme. Public begging for a year, for instance.

  In modern times, penances generally had consisted of prayers to be offered privately. Due in large part to the anonymity of the confessional, most confessors doled out a certain number of Our Fathers and Hail Marys as penances—the thinking being that while the priest would not know who the penitent might be, he could be reasonably sure that all Catholics knew the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary.

  Since almost all penances, or “punishments,” consisted of the Lord’s Prayer and/or the Hail Mary, numbers became important to differentiate between serious and not-so-serious sins. A penance might consist of three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys. Or perhaps the most popular of all, five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. For sins the priest considered “deliberate violations of serious matters,” perhaps ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys, or, if the confessor felt adventurous, the recitation of the Rosary.

  It was only natural that humorous, sometimes apocryphal, stories sprang up to illustrate this moral foray into crime and punishment. Koesler had heard—and told—the story of a series of young men going to confession one after the other. Each had confessed a fairly innocuous series of sins, such as being tardy for Mass, talking in church, being disrespectful to elders. And each had concluded his recitation of sins with, “and I played the fiddle.” The priest never having heard of a sin called “playing the fiddle” decided not to inquire into the exact nature of this crime. One tended not to inquire too deeply into such matters in direct proportion to the number of years one had been hearing confessions.

  In any case, the priest dismissed the first three penitents with the standard five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. But when the fourth consecutive penitent concluded with “. . . and I played the fiddle several times,” the priest lost the battle with his curiosity and asked, “Just what is it you mean by ‘playing the fiddle’?”

  “Fornication,” responded the young man.

  Considering the mild penances he’d been handing out for one of Catholicism’s traditionally most grievous sins, the priest leaned out of the confessional door and called out, “Will the first violin section please come back in here?”

  The question of anonymity, even in the Good Old Days, was not as uniformly guaranteed as it was intended to be.

  It is true the confessor could not see the penitent in the traditional confessional. It is also true that confessor and penitent communicated in whispers. But even then, sometimes there were peculiarities that to one extent or another shredded secrecy.

  Some penitents, for instance, spoke softly rather than whispered, thus communicating the distinctive qualities of their voices. And even though the confessor might be uninterested in the penitent’s identity, perhaps even to the point of preferring not to know, sometimes in such circumstance there was simply no mistaking the identity.

  Then there were those who, while whispering, had a peculiarity of speech that while it might not have revealed their identity, yet would identify them as having been there before. Sometimes it was a specific introductory formula. Koesler recalled a man who always began his confession, “Bless me. Father, for I have sinned. I confess to Almighty God and to thee, my Ghostly Father . . .” While Koesler never knew the man’s identity, the formula identified a frequent visitor who was scrupulous.

  Finally, there were those who simply identified themselves. For whatever reason, they wanted the confessor to know who they were. There were not many of these.

  All this Father Koesler reflected on while he awaited the arrival of the first of the day’s young penitents. Nowadays, fifth and sixth graders were eligible to go to confession. Fourth graders and younger no longer were granted this sacrament. They were warming up on the sidelines. Nor would all the fifth and sixth graders go to confession today. Only those who felt the need of reform.

  This, too, was a far far cry from the routine of only a few years before, a time when children in the second grade and up had begun to go to confession. Koesler had often thought that there was no more cruel torture devised by man for man than what used to take place in a Catholic school setting on the Thursday before First Friday. Spurred on by promises alleged to have been made by the Blessed Mother to St. Margaret Mary, many Catholics made a special effort to receive communion on the First Friday of each month. The promises required only nine consecutive First Fridays, but once the habit was begun, most Catholics simply couldn’t turn it off.

  The best time to begin this habit, many thought, was while one had the captive audience of parochial school children. And since it was a holy and wholesome thought to receive communion on First Friday, it also seemed to someone a good idea for everyone to go to confession
the day before.

  And so, on the Thursdays before First Fridays, at about 9:00 a.m., the good sisters would begin lining up the entire second grade for confessions. They were immediately followed by the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Break for lunch. Back to the box for high school freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

  Koesler’s mind ached at the memory. An exercise like today’s with individual members of a mere two grades choosing to confess was literally child’s play compared with the Good Old Days.

  His musings were interrupted when a small blonde girl stepped around the screen and sat opposite him.

  “Hi.” He greeted her with somewhat less formality than the rubrics suggested.

  “Hi, Father,” she said brightly. And then in a more serious attitude, “I’ve been thinking, and I guess I haven’t been as good to my mother as I should.”

  “No?”

  “No. She wants me to help around the house but I almost never do. And she’s so old now, she probably won’t be around much longer.”

  “Oh? How old is she?”

  “Thirty-six!”

  Koesler controlled an urge to smile.

  “So, I think I’ll help her more. At least I’ll make my bed in the morning. And that’s all,” she announced with a satisfied nod.

  “I think that’s a good resolution, Sally. Why don’t we make your penance just making your bed tomorrow?”

  Again she nodded.

  Koesler raised his right arm and intoned, “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins,” he traced the sign of the cross in the air, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

  “Amen,” said Sally. And, smiling, she exited.

  After a few moments, Koesler heard the familiar sound of knees hitting wood. For whatever reason, the next child was going to use the screen.

  “All right,” Koesler said, as he leaned head and shoulders toward the plastic latticed screen.