“I see. Is there something I can do?” He put down the glass of water on the phone table next to a little white statue of the Blessed Virgin.
“If you’d talk to Clyde and let him know it’s okay to die without telling Nelson about the car, I’d appreciate it. He already confessed everything anyway, right?”
The priest looked down the hall toward the patio, longing for the openness. “I can’t discuss specific matters of confession.”
“I know. That’s why I gave you all the details again.”
“All right, I’ll call. Is he awake now?”
“He’s here at home. We got him a crank-up bed and a oxygen machine and a nurse to sit with him at night. I’ll put him on.”
Father Ledet leaned against the wall and stared at a portrait of John the Baptist, wondering what he had done to deserve his punishment. When he heard the hiss of Clyde Arceneaux’s mask come out of the phone, he began to tell him what he should hear, that he was forgiven in God’s eyes, that if he wanted to make restitution, he could give something to the poor or figure out how to leave his brother-in-law something. He hung up and sniffed the waxed smell of the rectory, thinking of the sweet, musky brandy in the kitchen cupboard, and he immediately went upstairs to find the young priest and discuss the new Mass schedule.
—
On Saturday afternoon, Father Ledet was nodding off in the confessional when a woman entered and after she’d mentioned one or two venial sins, she addressed him through the screen. “Father, it’s Doris Arceneaux, Clyde’s wife.”
The priest yawned. “How is Clyde?”
“You remember the car business? Well, something new came up,” she whispered. “Clyde always told me he and the Scadlock kid towed the car off with a rope and when they got it downtown behind the seawall, they pushed it off the wharf into the bay.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a new wrinkle.”
He removed his glasses to rub his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Clyde just told me he stored the car. Been paying thirty-five dollars a month to keep it in a little closed room down at the U-Haul place for the past ten years.” She whispered louder, “I don’t know how he kept that from me. Makes me wonder about a few other things.”
The priest’s eyebrows went up. “Now he can give it back, or you can give it back when your husband passes away.” As soon as he’d said this, he knew it wouldn’t work. It was too logical. If nothing else, his years in the confessional had taught him that people didn’t run their lives by reason much of the time, but by some little inferior motion of the spirit, some pride, some desire that defied the simple beauty of doing the sensible thing.
Mrs. Arceneaux protested that the secret had to be kept. “There’s only one way to get Nelson his car back like Clyde wants.”
The priest sighed. “How is that?”
Mrs. Arceneaux began to fidget in the dark box. “Well, you the only one besides me who knows what happened. Clyde says the car will still run. He cranks it up once every three weeks so it keeps its battery hot.”
The priest put his head down. “And?”
“And you could get up early and drive it back to Nelson’s and park it where it was the night Clyde stole it.”
“Not no,” the priest said, “but hell no!”
“Father!”
“What if I were caught driving this thing? The secret would get out then.”
“Father, this is part of a confession. You can’t tell.”
The priest suddenly sensed a plot. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you, Mrs. Arceneaux. Now I’m going to give you a penance of twenty Our Fathers.”
“For telling one fib to my daughter-in-law?”
“You want a cut rate for dishonesty?”
“All right,” she said in an unrepentant voice. “And I’ll pray for you while I’m at it.”
—
After five o’clock Mass on Saturday, Father Ledet felt his soul bang around inside him like a golf ball in a shoebox, something hard and compacted. He yearned for a hot, inflating swallow of spirits, longed for the after burn of brandy in his nostrils. He went back into the empty church, a high-ceilinged gothic building more than a hundred years old, sat in a pew, and steeped himself in the odors of furniture oil, incense, and hot candle wax. He watched the insubstantial colors of the windows flowing above him, and after a while these shades and smells began to fill the emptiness inside him. He closed his eyes and imagined the housekeeper’s supper, pushing out of mind his need for a drink, replacing the unnecessary with the good. At five to six he walked to the rectory to have his thoughts redeemed by food.
The next evening, after visiting a sick parishioner, he was reading the newspaper upstairs in his room when the housekeeper knocked on his door. Mrs. Mamie Barrilleaux was downstairs and would like to speak with him, the housekeeper said.
The first thing Father Ledet noticed when he walked into the study was the white cast on the woman’s arm.
“Mamie,” he said, sitting next to her on the sofa. “I have to tell you again how sorry I am about your arm.”
The woman’s face brightened, as though being apologized to was a privilege. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Father. Accidents happen.” She was a graying brunette with fair skin, a woman whose cheerfulness made her pretty. One of the best cooks in a town of good cooks, she volunteered for every charity event involving a stove or oven, and her time belonged to anyone who needed it, from her well-fed smirk of a husband to the drug addicts who showed up at the parish shelter. While they talked, the priest’s eyes wandered repeatedly over the ugly cast, which ran up nearly to her shoulder. For five minutes he wondered why she had dropped in unannounced. And then she told him.
“Father, I don’t know if you understand what good friends Clyde Arceneaux’s wife and I are. We went to school together for twelve years.”
“Yes. It’s a shame her husband’s so sick.”
Mrs. Barrilleaux fidgeted into the corner of the sofa, placed her cast on the armrest, where it glowed under a lamp. “That’s sort of why I’m here. Doris told me she asked you to do something for her and Clyde, and you told her no. I’m not being specific because I know it was a confession thing.”
“How much did she tell you?” The priest hoped she wouldn’t ask what he feared she was going to, because he knew he couldn’t refuse her.
“I don’t know even one detail, Father. But I wanted to tell you that if Doris wants it done, then it needs doing. She’s a good person, and I’m asking you to help her.”
“But you don’t know what she wants me to do.”
Mrs. Barrilleaux put her good hand on her cast. “I know it’s not something bad.”
“No, no. It’s just…” He was going to mention that his driver’s license was suspended but decided he didn’t want to tell her that.
Mamie lowered her head and turned her face toward him. “Father?”
“Oh, all right.”
—
He visited Mrs. Arceneaux on a Wednesday, got the keys, and late that night he sat outside on the dark rectory patio for a long time, filling up on the smells of honeysuckle, until the young priest walked up to him and insisted that he come in out of the mosquitoes and the dampness. Upstairs, he changed into street clothes and lay on the bed like a man waiting for a firing squad. Around midnight his legs began to ache terribly, and the next thing he knew they were carrying him down to the kitchen where the aspirin was kept, and as his hand floated toward the cabinet door to his right, it remembered its accustomed movement to the door on the left where a quart of brandy waited like an airy medicinal promise. The mind and the spirit pulled his hand to the right, while the earthly body drew it to the left. Somewhere in the sky above, he heard the drone of an airplane, and he suddenly thought of an old homily about how people were like twin-engine planes, one engine the logical spirit, the other the sensual body, and that when they were not running in concert, the craft would run off course to disaster. The priest supposed he coul
d rev up his spirit in some way, but when he thought of driving the stolen car, he opted to throttle up the body. One jigger, he thought, would calm him down and give him the courage to do this important good deed. As he took a drink, he tried to picture how glad Nelson Lodrigue would be to have his old car back. As he took another, he thought of how Mr. Arceneaux could gasp off into the next world with a clear conscience. After several minutes, the starboard engine sputtered and locked up as Father Ledet lurched sideways through the dark house looking for his car keys.
—
At one o’clock he got into the church’s sedan and drove to a row of storage buildings at the edge of town. He woke up the manager, a shabby old man living in a trailer next to the gate. Inside the perimeter fence, Father Ledet walked along the numbered roll-up doors of the storage areas until he found the right one. He had trouble fitting the key into the lock but finally managed to open the door and turn on the light. The Oldsmobile showed a hard shell of rust and dust and resembled a million-year-old museum egg. The driver’s door squawked when he pulled on it, and the interior smelled like the closed-in mausoleum at the parish graveyard. He put in the key, and the motor groaned and then stuttered alive, rumbling and complaining. Shaking his head, the priest thought he’d never be able to drive this car undetected into the quiet neighborhood where Nelson Lodrigue lived. But after he let it idle and warm up, the engine slowed to a breathy subsonic bass, and he put it in reverse for its first trip in ten years.
The plan was to park the car on a patch of grass next to the street in front of Nelson’s house, the very spot where it had been stolen. The priest would walk into the next block to Mrs. Arceneaux’s house, and she would return him to his car. He pulled out of the rental place and drove a back road past tin-roofed shotgun houses and abandoned cars better in appearance than the leprous one that now moved among them. He entered the battered railroad underpass and emerged in the nicer part of town, which was moon washed and asleep. He found that if he kept his foot off the accelerator and just let the car idle along at ten miles an hour, it didn’t make much noise, but when he gave the car a little gas after stop signs, the exhaust sounded like a lion warming up for a mating. The priest was thankful at least for a certain buoyancy of the blood provided by the glasses of brandy, a numbness of spirit that helped him endure what he was doing. He was still nervous, though, and had trouble managing the touchy accelerator, feeling that the car was trying to bound away in spite of his best efforts to control it. Eventually, he turned onto the main street of Nelson’s little subdivision and burbled slowly down it until he could see the apron of grass next to the asphalt where he could park. He turned off the car’s lights.
—
One of the town’s six policemen had an inflamed gallbladder, and Patrolman Vic Garafola was working his friend’s shift, parked in an alley next to the Elks Club, sitting stone-faced with boredom when a shuddering and filthy Toronado crawled past in front of him. He would have thought it was just some rough character from the section down by the fish plant, but he got a look at the license plate and saw that it bore a design that hadn’t been on any car in at least five years. Vic put his cruiser in gear, left his lights off, and rolled out into the empty streets, following the Toronado at a block’s distance past the furniture store, across the highway, and into the little Shade Tree subdivision. He radioed a parish officer he’d seen a few minutes earlier and asked him to park across the entrance, the only way in or out of the neighborhood.
Even in the dark Vic could see that the car’s tires were bagged out and that it was dirty in an unnatural way, pale with dust—the ghost of a car. He closed in as it swayed down Cypress Street, and when he saw the driver douse his lights, he thought, Bingo, somebody’s up to no good, and he hit his headlights, flashers, and yowling siren. The Toronado suddenly exploded forward in a flatulent rush, red dust and sparks raining backward from underneath the car as it left the patrolman in twin swirls of tire smoke. Whoever was driving was supremely startled, and Vic started the chase, following but not gaining on the sooty taillights. Shade Tree had only one long street that ran in an oval like a racetrack. At the first curve, the roaring car fishtailed to the right and Vic followed as best he could, watching ahead as the vehicle pulled away and then turned right again in the distance, heading for the subdivision exit. When Vic went around a curve, he saw a white cruiser blocking the speeding car’s escape. The fleeing vehicle then slowed and moved again down Cypress Street. Vic raised a questioning eyelid as he watched the grumbling car slow down and finally stop in front of Nelson Lodrigue’s brick rancher. The patrolman pulled up, opened his door, and pointed his pistol toward the other vehicle.
“Driver, get out,” he barked.
Slowly, a graying, soft-looking man wearing a dark shirt buttoned all the way up slid out of the Toronado, his shaking hands raised high.
“Can you please not yell?” The old man looked around at the drowsing houses.
Vic stared at him, walked close, and looked at his eyes. He holstered his weapon. “Why’d you speed away like that, Father?”
The priest was out of breath. “When you turned on those flashers it frightened me and, well, I guess I pressed the accelerator too hard and this thing took off like a rocket.”
Vic looked at the car and back to the priest. “The tag is expired, and it doesn’t have an inspection sticker.” He went to his patrol car and reached in for his ticket book.
“Could you please turn off those flashers?”
“Have to leave ’em on. Rules, you know,” Vic said in a nasty voice. “You want to show me your proof of insurance, driver’s license, and pink slip?” He held out a mocking hand.
“You know I don’t have any of those.”
“Father, what are you doing in this wreck?”
The priest put his hands in front of him, pleading. “I can’t say anything. It’s related to a confession.”
“Oh, is this a good deed or somethin’?”
The priest’s face brightened with hope, as though the patrolman understood what this was all about. “Yes, yes.”
Vic leaned in and sniffed. “You think it’s a good deed to get drunk as a boiled owl and speed around town at night?” he hollered.
“Oh, please hush,” Father Ledet pleaded.
Vic reached to his gun belt. “Turn around so I can cuff you.”
“Have some mercy.”
“Them that deserves it get mercy,” Vic told him.
“God would give me mercy,” the priest said, turning around and offering his hands at his back.
“Then he’s a better man than I am. Spread your legs.”
“This won’t do anyone any good.”
“It’ll do me some good.” Just then a porch light came on, and a shirtless Nelson Lodrigue padded down the steps to the walk in his bare feet, his moon-shaped belly hanging over the elastic of his pajamas.
“Hey. What’s goin’ on?”
Other porch lights began to fire up across the street and next door, people coming out to the edge of their driveways and staring.
“It’s Father Ledet,” Vic called out. “He’s getting a ticket or two.”
Nelson was standing next to the car before his eyes opened fully and his head swung from side to side at the dusty apparition. “What the hell? This here’s my old car that got stole.”
Vic gave the priest a hard look. “Collections been a little slow, Father?”
“Don’t be absurd. I was returning Nelson’s car.”
“You know who stole my car?” Nelson lumbered around the dusty hood. “You better tell me right now. I didn’t sleep for a year after this thing got taken. I always had a feeling it was somebody I knew.”
“I can’t say anything.”
“It came out in a confession,” Vic explained.
Nelson ran his hand over the chalky paint of the roof. “Well, charge him with auto theft and I bet he’ll tell us.”
Two ladies in curlers and a tall middle-aged man wearing a
robe and slippers approached from across the street. “What’s going on, Vic?” the man asked. “Hello, Father.”
The priest nodded, hiding the handcuffs behind him. “Good evening, Mayor. This isn’t what it appears to be.”
“I hope not,” one of the women said.
Other neighbors began walking into the circle of crackling light cast by the police car’s flashers. Then the parish deputy pulled up, his own lights blazing. Vic looked on as the priest tried to explain to everyone that he was doing a good thing, that they couldn’t know all the details. The patrolman felt sorry for him, he really did, felt bad as he filled out the tickets, as he pushed the old head under the roofline of the patrol car, and later, as he fingerprinted the soft hands and put the holy body into the cell, taking his belt, his shoelaces, and his rosary.
—
Father Ledet had to journey to Baton Rouge to endure the frowns and lecturing of the bishop. His parish was taken away for two months, and he was put into an AA program in his own community where he sat many times in rusty folding chairs along with fundamentalist garage mechanics, striptease artists, and depressed wives to listen to testimonials, admonitions, confessions without end. He rode cabs to these meetings, and in the evenings no one invited him to the Ladies’ Altar Society dinners or anyplace else. Mrs. Arceneaux never called to sympathize, and pretty Mrs. Barrilleaux wouldn’t even look at him when he waved as she drove by the rectory in her new secondhand car.
The first day he was again allowed to put on vestments was a Sunday, and he went in to say the eleven o’clock Mass. The church was full, and the sun was bleeding gold streamers of light down through the sanctuary windows above the altar. The Gloria was sung by the birdlike voices of a visiting children’s choir, and later the priest stood in the pulpit and read the Gospel, drawing scant solace from the story of Jesus turning water into wine. The congregation then sat down with a rumble of settling pews and kicked-up kneelers. Father Ledet began to talk about Christ’s first miracle, an old sermon that he’d given dozens of times. The elder parishioners in the front pews seemed to regard him as a stranger, the children were uninterested, and he felt disconnected and sad as he spoke, wondering if he would ever be punished enough for what he had done. He scanned the faces in the congregation as he preached, looking for forgiveness of any sort, and fifteen minutes into the sermon, he saw in the fifth pew, against the wall, something that was better than forgiveness, more than what he deserved, a sight that gave sudden expression to his dull voice and turned bored heads up to the freshened preaching. It was Clyde Arceneaux, a plastic tube creeping down from his nose and taped to his puckered neck. He was asleep, pale, two steps from death, his head resting against the wall, but at least he had finally come inside.
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