The Unspeakable

by Charles L. Calia

  Marbury nodded and forced a great heap of scrambled eggs into his mouth. He ate without a care in the world, as though he was confident that everything would work out. A confidence that I didn’t necessarily share.

  Reinforcing this, I said, “You’re not helping any. This story—”

  “I know it’s unbelievable.”

  “I’m glad you agree. How do I bring this back to the Bishop? He already has my future in his pocket from the last time that I helped you and brought you here.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “It’s my job, Marbury.”

  “I thought this was your job, snooping around other people’s lives.”

  “Your welfare is my job. You might not believe this, but I want you to succeed. I want you to shine.”

  “But on your terms.”

  “On everyone’s terms. Don’t be selfish.”

  I knew that would rattle Marbury and it did.

  He said, “I don’t work in an office, do I, Peter? I’m out in the world.”

  A low blow but one that I probably deserved. I didn’t start out thinking that I would end up in an office either, but after almost fifteen years of it, it’s a job that I’ve come to respect and I told Marbury that.

  He just nodded his head, saying nothing. It’s not that I haven’t thought of other positions or even held the job descriptions in my hand. Rather I just felt better suited for this one. That’s what I told myself at least.

  Now I even questioned that.

  “Tell me what to do with this story, Marbury.”

  He just raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  Marbury said, “You just write, Peter. Then let God do the rest.”

  I bristled at his use of God again. God the giver, the protector of life, and like Shiva in the Hindu scriptures, God the destroyer as well.

  I said, “Unfortunately, God won’t decide your fate. The Diocese will.”

  He laughed, making me feel stupid.

  “—You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, yes. You could relieve me of my duties.”

  “I could relieve you of everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

  Marbury looked at me and smiled.

  He said, “I think I’ll take my chances with God.”

  Marbury stuffed another piece of ham into his mouth, followed by a quick bite of jellied toast. Had he been able to speak or even wished to, I’m sure that he would have been humming to himself by now, a smug reaction to my authority. And I couldn’t blame him. The truth was, I was going to listen to his story regardless, he already knew that, and despite my doubtful reactions to the contrary, I was still perplexed by his story enough to hear more.

  That there were elements here of a collegiate prank, I couldn’t deny. And I often felt that at any minute a gang of our old friends, including the Bishop himself, would just jump out from behind the scenery and begin the inevitable ribbing. They would tease me about how gullible I was and we would all have a good laugh. Except that when I looked around I saw no one but Marbury.

  He glanced down at my plate and asked me if I was going to finish my toast. I told him to go right ahead, which he did. Both pieces.

  “Never waste, Peter. I’ve seen too much hunger.”

  “At the shelter?”

  He nodded. “And growing up.”

  “Why didn’t you just get a job yourself? You could have helped out.”

  “Only a farmer’s son would ask that. I did get a job. Later.”

  Marbury said that Rick, his brother, was in Vietnam only four months before he was killed. The news hit the father like a brick. He quit his job as a janitor and settled on a new path, drinking all day and watching the soaps. The family went on welfare and lived on food stamps, which Marbury traded in for cash so his father could drink. They gave blood together, sold scrap aluminum and stolen car parts. Anything for drinking money. This slide would have continued, said Marbury, probably right into cirrhosis of the liver or worse if not for one thing.

  Graduation.

  He was now almost seventeen, a senior in high school, and Marbury was thinking about what to do with his life. He had all but ruled out college. No money for it, much less any ambition. And this left only one other path in his mind. The military. But his father didn’t like that.

  “He already lost one son. He wasn’t about to lose a second.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He got a job. Quit drinking right there.”

  Albany was a tough town back then. And the neighborhood numbers were run out of a local bar that Marbury said his father would occasionally frequent. He got to know the place, its customers, and the business that was conducted there, and he cleaned himself up for a job. He took a position first as a runner, then at records until finally working himself all the way up to payoff man. The profits were good, and soon Marbury said that his father heard the most delicious sound at that time. The jingle of change in his pocket. Bills were paid and money was being set aside for his father’s dream, of Marbury one day attending college.

  Marbury said that he started to come to the bar as well, just to wait for his dad. After work they would go out and get a burger together and discuss the day. They kept no secrets. Marbury knew what his father was doing and he didn’t blame him. He just let it go. As the weeks passed, Marbury said that he found himself lingering in the bar longer and longer, waiting for his father, who always was busy. He found himself watching more TV, drinking and eating the free peanuts and soda, killing time mostly until it suddenly came to him. Something bigger than himself.

  “They had a pool table,” he said. “Big thing. Green as money.”

  And so Marbury taught himself to play.

  He took books from the public library and started to read about the great pool sharks. Guys like Minnesota Fats and Willie Mosconi. Marbury began to practice new shots as well. Angles and tricks, sliders and hooks. He shot pool until his arms ached and then he shot some more. Somewhere along the line he became very good.

  “I could beat anyone who walked through the door. And that was my problem. I felt like I could never lose.”

  It was a problem as well because business for Marbury’s father began to take a turn for the worse. Betting had begun to slide into the same recession that everyone else was feeling, and along with a renewed crackdown by the police, folks started to stay away. Money got tight. The middlemen demanded more, cuts were passed around that left less for the retailer, the guy at the bottom. Marbury said that his father, now a full-fledged bookie, began to work even longer hours to make up the revenue. Fourteen-, sixteenhour days. He covered the spreads on everything imaginable from elections to basketball, even European soccer. But the profits still shriveled and before he knew it, the slide backward resumed.

  “That’s when I heard the call of the stick,” said Marbury.

  “You played for money?”

  “I played to survive.”

  There was a whole psychology to master, a psychology that, Marbury said in retrospect, seemed to match his adolescent leanings to a tee. A pool shark had to be arrogant but still vulnerable enough to be beaten. The easiest way to do this, what Marbury called the loudmouthed approach, was to overstate one’s ability in public. This always involved money and the notion that the opponent was being hustled, badly hustled as it were. Marbury would select his prey and start the act, saying how good he was, that he couldn’t be beaten, et cetera. Then he would shoot around the table, not playing his best, for this was the double blind of pool sharking. No two opponents ever knew each other’s real strengths until it was too late.

  Somebody would suggest a small fee, maybe five dollars a game, and the balls were racked. The first few games Marbury would lose terribly, throwing more money into the pot, swearing and grumbling to himself. Eventually the ante would be raised. Twenty bucks a game or maybe more. And the opponent, if he was good, used a kind of counter psychology found only in pool halls. He held back as well, perhaps even throwing a gam
e just to crank up the ante. Marbury, using a counter to the second counter, had to appear to play his best, pulling out all the stops until he won. Then of course, he would take his money and start to leave.

  That’s when the real game began.

  The opponent, sensing that he could really win, would finagle a last, winner-take-all contest, which reluctantly, almost kicking his feet, Marbury would agree to. And the slaughter would begin. Marbury would launch every reserve he had, and if he had calculated correctly, he would beat the poor individual into submission. If he hadn’t, then it was his Waterloo. He would get destroyed.

  With this method, Marbury said that he earned several hundred dollars a week. But it wasn’t always that easy. Sometimes the betting never escalated past the five- and ten-dollar range, and he would gain very little for his efforts. Other times, the opposite would happen and bids would rise quickly with his opponent throwing in dollar after dollar until he was cleaned out. The saddest thing to watch, said Marbury, for people rarely knew their limits, especially when it came to their egos.

  “So what you’re saying, Marbury, is that you were a crook.”

  “That’s not a word I would necessarily choose.”

  “What then? Hustler, confidence man, scam artist? You pick it.”

  “‘Entertainer’ sounds better. I liked to entertain.”

  “And do you still?”

  Marbury gave me a lazy smile. “I haven’t entertained in years.”

  Our waitress returned with more sugar for Marbury, who had already used up every packet on the table. I thought that she’d returned just to take another look at him, as though Marbury were on display somewhere, but I was wrong. That was reserved for me. She fixated this time on the clerical collar that I was wearing and ran her eyes up and down my body, not solicitously but with a hardened, studious kind of gaze.

  More popping gum.

  She said, “I dated a priest once. He could see women. Go out.”

  “A pastor, you mean. Protestant.”

  “All I know is that he dated women. I mean he wasn’t—”

  “Celibate?”

  “God, no.” And then she laughed.

  Her laughter sparked something within me, the memory of a recurring dream that I often had. In it, I’m being led up to the gates where Saint Peter, a clean-shaven man dressed in a black Armani suit and shirt, presides over eternity. He’s sitting at a desk full of huge ledgers and scrolls, and he’s busy making notes, just scribbling like mad.

  I’m standing there, naked, no clothes to speak of, certainly none of my official black, and old Peter doesn’t know whether I’m alive or dead. He just keeps on going about his business with the ledgers and such, quite busy, and he moves from ledger to ledger, always writing. I let him scribble some more, then clearing my throat I announce myself.

  Peter Whitmore, I say.

  But the old apostle doesn’t even look up, he’s so busy. I announce myself a second and a third time. Then I do something that surprises me, even in the dream. I grab Peter’s hand. He stops and looks at me and I can see into his ledgers by now, which are completely blank. He’s writing but nothing is going on the page.

  I’m a priest, I say with pride.

  And old Pete just bursts out laughing. And he just keeps on laughing until I wake up in a cold sweat.

  Marbury had heard this dream before. I had it in seminary a few times and I told it to him, but he didn’t see any significance in it, then or now.

  He just said, “People laugh. Both in dreams and in real life.”

  I watched our waitress circulate around another table. She probably had a whole routine down, talking to people, probing their inner workings, and then moving on. Like a game.

  “Anyway, it’s just your imagination. More likely your fears.”

  “How is it, Marbury, that when Helen has a dream about finding a husband for her child you lend it credence, while my dream says nothing?”

  “Don’t be insulted.”

  “I just don’t understand it.”

  “It’s a stupid dream, Peter. That’s all.”

  “Maybe Helen’s dream was the stupid one.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Marbury went on to explain why. He said that one of the nurses from the hospital in Wheelersburg, apparently suffering from nicotine withdrawal, braved the snow to retrieve an extra pack of cigarettes from her car. But the snow was deep, in large drifts, and she returned with frozen feet. Not frostbitten, though cold enough to cause her discomfort. She did her rounds anyway, limping and cursing, which continued with every patient until she reached Lucy.

  Abigail was the first to notice it.

  “Damnedest thing,” said the nurse. “I was taking her temperature when I felt it. Like a tingling in my feet. But everything’s all toasty now.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Nothing, that’s it.” The nurse shrugged and walked away, recovered.

  Abigail looked at Marbury and smiled. But he wasn’t buying it.

  He said, “She’s a child, not an oil burner.”

  “Sure, a child of God. Something’s not right with her, Father.”

  Marbury said that he didn’t know which way Abigail meant that, and he decided to hedge his bets by looking in on the child. Lucy was in bed, half propped up by several pillows that had to be folded twice just to create enough cushion for her head. She just stared off into space. No toys, no books, no television. No place for a child at all.

  He circled around the room once to make sure she was actually awake, but he still wasn’t sure. Lucy didn’t say anything. Marbury said that he was about to leave when he heard her voice. She said it was cold. Marbury told her about the snow, which she couldn’t see, and he talked about snowmen and sledding. But Lucy just shook her head.

  “No, silly, it’s cold.”

  She held out her hand, which Marbury felt. Like ice.

  “Cold boo-boo.”

  “You’re frozen,” he said, trying to warm her.

  And then Marbury noticed it. A diabetic identification bracelet dangling from one of Lucy’s wrists. It was so loose that had Marbury not caught it, noticed it at that very moment, it might have easily fallen off and got lost in the sheets.

  “You’ll need this,” he said, adjusting the bracelet tighter.

  She smiled a thank you and tucked her hands under the sheets for warmth. And that was the last said about it.

  But Marbury couldn’t let it go. He kept thinking about Lucy and her mysterious injuries, now compounded by the fact that she was diabetic. And it made him angry.

  He asked her, “Do you get many boo-boos?”

  “I come here. Sometimes I fall.”

  “How do you fall?”

  “Jacob says I fall.”

  “Oh, Jacob says.”

  “Then I come here. But I get better.”

  “Do you fall again after that, Lucy?”

  “I fall and fall. Others fall too. Lots of boo-boos.”

  “What happens to the boo-boos?”

  “God keeps them. In his box.”

  “He has a box?”

  “It’s big and yellow. Boo-boos go in there and live.”

  “It must be a very big box, Lucy.”

  “The biggest. For all the boo-boos.”

  “What does Jacob think about the box?”

  “Damn child.”

  “He actually says that?”

  “Damn child. Sometimes I fall.”

  “And you come here.”

  “I get better. Every boo-boo fits. Mommy’s. Jacob’s. Even yours.”

  Marbury said that he must have given Lucy a quizzical look, for she pointed right to his chest. More exact, right to Marbury’s heart.

  “That one, mister. A really big boo-boo I see.”

  Marbury closed his eyes for a moment, breaking the thread of his story. When he opened them again, he looked far-off and exhausted, as though somehow the plug had been pulled from him. He n
o longer seemed the vibrant, energetic man of only a few minutes before but old and worn out, like a man aging before my very eyes.

  I asked him, “Did you alert the authorities?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The man was a monster. Surely you didn’t let her stay there?”

  Marbury struggled a thin smile.

  He said, “Barris wasn’t a monster. He was just a man.”

  “Which means you did nothing.”

  “You’re missing the point, Peter.”

  “I’m missing that you left a child where she shouldn’t be.”

  “She was safe.”

  “Landing up in a hospital isn’t what I call safe.”

  But Marbury shook his head. “You need evidence.”

  “Were you trying to find any?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t want to get involved.”

  “That wasn’t it. I was already involved. Don’t you see?”

  I felt my face get flush and my pulse was racing. Marbury looked at me, then placed his hand on my shoulder for comfort. But I didn’t feel any comfort.

  He said, “I was angry too. But then something happened.”

  When I couldn’t even muster up a response Marbury added:

  “God boxed up my boo-boo.”

  I was stunned. Marbury was past being just another priest for me, our history together, our friendship assured that, but I didn’t know what to say. I was no longer just questioning the decisions that he made in Wheelersburg, I was questioning the decisions behind the decisions. His entire foundation.

  But Marbury didn’t care about that. He said, “Lucy was right. I had claws within me, tearing from the inside out.”

  “You listened to a four-year-old?”

  “I listened to God. Everyone has a boo-boo, Peter. Even you.”

  I just shook my head.

  “Don’t worry about me, Marbury. I’m just fine.”

  “Really? Then why do I feel you bleeding?”

  Chapter 5

  What Marbury said to me, or what he was even suggesting, seemed presumptuous and I told him so. My own life had nothing to do with the story of his going to Pennsylvania and his voice fluttering about in the wind somewhere supposedly speared by God for purposes unknown. He might have pulled that years ago, trying to turn the tables upside down on me as though it were my fate in question, my very happiness, but he couldn’t do that now. I was older.