The Unspeakable

by Charles L. Calia

  “What?”

  “—I’m just saying it isn’t like in seminary.”

  The sound of crunching glass.

  I glanced at the address again and double-checked it against the mailbox, which was filled not with letters or old catalogs but with bits of used tinfoil. Drug paraphernalia.

  The door opened as I pushed it, broken at the lock, and I followed a skinny staircase up to an apartment above. I thought about Marbury, working on his sermon that afternoon, and wished that he were here with me. That anyone was with me. But I was alone. I heard someone scurry to the door like a scared mouse. Except that it wasn’t a mouse, just a woman in orange flip-flops.

  I said, “I’m looking for Tricky.”

  She gave me the once-over and grinned. Several of her teeth were missing and those that were left looked ready to join the others.

  The door went ajar.

  I saw a man sitting in a chair watching TV. The channel was mostly black-and-white static but he didn’t seem to care. He was massaging a beer with his fingers, oblivious that nothing was in front of him.

  “Never heard of him,” she said.

  “I’m here from St. Francis. Nathan Stone sent me.”

  The man stood up but he didn’t see me. He looked like he had been drinking all afternoon. His hair was unkempt and dirty, with a thin mat circling a bald spot. Grease and ketchup stains marked his shirt. And he walked around in his stockings, which were sliding off his feet. The place smelled of rotting bodies, except bodies that passed as being alive.

  “I don’t talk to cops.” Slurring words.

  “He ain’t the heat, baby.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “I’m a priest.”

  He stopped and looked at me square on, noticing my clerical collar. The woman started to laugh as though they had an inside joke between them.

  “Well, you look like a priest,” he said.

  I brushed off his comments and told him that I had a few questions for him, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Instead he made me repeat over and over where I had come from, who sent me, and what I was looking for. When I finally mentioned Marbury’s name he perked up as though he recognized it. So did the woman.

  She said, “You mean the preacher.”

  I asked her if she knew him.

  “Yeah. He gave us some money once.”

  “You mean, he gave me some money,” he said.

  “Why did Marbury give you money?”

  “I was living on the streets, man.”

  “We were both on the streets, Tricky. Both of us. Don’t forget it,” the woman said.

  “That’s the story. We were both on the fucking streets.”

  I glanced around the apartment. A real dump. Tricky and his woman had only a few pieces of furniture between them and those seemed like they were taken from the garbage. In a back room I could see a mattress just lying on the floor, their bedroom. Sheets and blankets were rolled up into a ball. Next to the bed were beer bottles and half-empty glasses of liquor, and clothes piled over chairs or just dumped on the floor. Absolute squalor.

  The whole scene depressed me.

  I asked them, “You found this apartment then?”

  Tricky laughed at my discomfort. So loud that he started coughing.

  He said, “What would I find? My girl got a job, more like it.”

  Two arms made a pumping motion to his groin.

  “She gives great head, Father. Twenty bucks.”

  “Tricky! He’s a goddamn priest!”

  “Once a man, baby, always a man. Fifteen bucks.”

  I declined but the price went down.

  “Ten and I can’t go no lower. I have expenses.”

  “I believe we already gave you enough,” I said.

  More laughter and coughing. I felt like an idiot.

  “We enjoyed your charity. Ain’t that right, baby?”

  But the woman didn’t say anything. She just hovered behind me.

  “What happened to the money, Tricky?”

  “Threads for an interview. What do you think? I just needed it.”

  “You mean you spent it.”

  He sniffed twice, trying to hide a wide grin. I knew what he was trying to tell me.

  I said, “It wasn’t meant for drugs.”

  But Tricky didn’t care.

  He said, “Hey, you’re the priest. Go collect more.”

  GOOD FRIDAY.

  I reported to the Bishop’s office early the next morning. We talked about the celebration of that afternoon’s Good Friday Mass and other things, until the topic landed squarely on Marbury. He listened patiently as I recounted, in varying degrees of detail, the story that Marbury had already told me. In particular, the trip to Pennsylvania up to that point and the story about Helen and Barris. But the Bishop seemed especially interested in Marbury’s relationship with his father, and I showed him the newspaper article, which he read without comment.

  “I’m in the process of checking it out. But it looks solid.”

  The Bishop nodded and played with his cigar. I noticed that he wasn’t smoking and I offered him a light, but he declined. He said that he was cutting back, which I knew would only make him more irritable. And he was. I certainly didn’t tell him about Tricky and his girlfriend.

  The Bishop: “Did you mention the job?”

  “Yes. He said that he wasn’t interested.”

  “I’m not asking him to choose.”

  “Marbury seems to think that he still has a choice,” I said.

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him that he couldn’t stay there.”

  “Then you explained to him our position. He knows.”

  “Not fully.”

  He peered at me from over his bifocals. I knew that he was debating about lighting his cigar, but he didn’t. Instead he just twirled the cellophane wrapper through his thick hands until it slowly came off.

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “We’ve discussed other things.”

  “But not the money.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re not stalling because you two were friends?”

  I could literally feel those words. Heavy like snow chains.

  “He’ll have every chance to clear himself, Peter. I’m hoping that he does.”

  “I don’t think he believes that,” I said.

  “Tell him to forget this business about Easter and we’ll talk.”

  The Bishop was talking about the Easter service. The service that the landlady told me was a healing service only in disguise.

  I said, “He won’t. I know him.”

  I heard the sound of a striking match. Then another.

  “What if he can really—?”

  “Don’t say it, Whitmore. He can’t.”

  “But some people believe it. They have faith.”

  “People also believe in ghosts.”

  I protested, “I have reports. One woman—”

  “Reports? Do you have pictures? Medical records?”

  I just shook my head.

  “Then what? Hearsay? Innuendo?”

  He had me cornered.

  “I don’t know what to think, Tony.”

  I have felt, and still often do feel, that the Bishop and I were born at the wrong time. Our influence outside the church is limited, the Bishop knows that. We cannot control the minds of politicians and governments the way members of the clergy could only a few centuries ago. Nor can we control the production run of large presses, casually squash ideas with a rolling sweep of the hand. And despite perceptions to the contrary, we can neither mount an army of recruits to do our bidding, whatever that bidding is, nor stop the ones that are opposed to it. Yet it is assumed that we can.

  That I can.

  In a sense, I am much like my brothers. They toil away on the farm of my father, toiling away at an earth exhausted by pollution and pesticide. And yet, they continue to work. Plowing the land, seeding, reapin
g their rewards or bad luck in the future. If the skies are too wet or too dry, prices rise and people complain. They never complain when crops are plentiful, when the larder is full, but only when it’s empty. My mother always said that’s when you see people at their worst, when facing their darkest fears.

  The Bishop struck up another match, this time igniting his cigar. I could feel the smoke wash across the room, like emotional relief and comfort, except that it stung my eyes. No comfort for me.

  Through a smoke ring I heard a voice. “You have nothing, Peter. As for the rest, whether he can heal or not, you’ll find that out on Sunday, won’t you?”

  I walked into Marbury’s church later that morning and found him praying. He looked perfectly natural. His head was bowed but I couldn’t see his lips moving. He was silent even deep within himself, a fact that made me more disturbed than any other. For the change, at least in his mind, was real.

  I set down my briefcase and just watched him. He stayed there, kneeling for almost twenty minutes before he lost his concentration. An amazing feat, for my mind began to wander nearly from the start.

  Marbury stood up. He noticed me at once.

  “I missed you last night. I was ready for you but no feet.”

  “I was busy.”

  My tone of voice betrayed me.

  “You didn’t celebrate?”

  “Not this year. I had other business.”

  Marbury knew that what I was talking about involved him. I could see it on his face, though he tried his best to disguise it. He started talking about Good Friday and the sermon that he had written about the two thieves, but I interrupted him.

  I said, “I know all about Easter, Marbury.”

  He wasn’t surprised.

  “I know that you’re planning on healing people too.”

  “Then you’re invited. Come and see for yourself.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m not doing anything. It’s only a prayer service.”

  “Well, it might be your last.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “One of the thieves was saved, Peter.”

  “And the other was damned. Which do you want to be?”

  Marbury sat down in the pew, right across from me. For a moment I saw him as divided, as though he were waging some war within himself. His lips started to pucker, ever so slightly, as if a word were rising to his mouth. But then it left.

  I pressed him further.

  “Since when did you get interested in this? Being on the fringe?”

  “Is that where I am? Nice to know that I’m somewhere, though.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ve always believed in prayer. Haven’t you?”

  “Yes. But I can’t raise people from wheelchairs.”

  “And you think I can?” he asked.

  “I think you’re leading folks to believe you can, a big difference.”

  “How?”

  “By not telling them otherwise.”

  “Let them judge my actions instead.”

  “Actions like what? Losing your voice?”

  “I didn’t lose it. It was taken from me; I’ve already told you that.”

  “Why? What did you do that was so horrible, Marbury?”

  He just smiled. “The question is what I didn’t do.”

  One thing that he didn’t do was to actually accept his predicament. Marbury said that he kept looking for some way out, a miracle snowplow or something to come and help him, save him from the people whose lives he was slowly becoming entangled in. But no help was on the way.

  And maybe none was ever coming.

  Outside the hospital over two feet of snow had already fallen and more was still coming down. Everything was a gigantic sea of white. And the town of Wheelersburg, hardly more than an intersection with a streetlight and a few gas stations, resembled a series of unstirred lumps, like flour in a mixing bowl, except with chimneys and trees poking out.

  Inside the hospital, Barris was still watching Helen, as he had before. Her pulse and respiration had improved considerably. The doctors were surprised of course, but attributed her improvement to their own efforts instead of some mystical intervention.

  “She’s not out of the woods yet,” said one.

  Barris nodded and touched his wife’s hand. Much warmer. Her breathing was less labored, with her face again getting flush. She began to look alive. But the doctor was still negative.

  He said, “I just wouldn’t get too excited, that’s all.”

  Marbury mentioned that he tried not to pay attention to the doctors either. Helen was better and that was the only thing that mattered. He picked up Lucy, who with all the excitement had fallen asleep in a chair, and he took her to bed. Her body was as limp as an old rag but she began to stir anyway.

  Marbury asked her the only question that he could. Or rather the only question on his mind.

  “Did you have anything to do with that?”

  Lucy smiled faintly.

  She said, “God did. He tried to open his box but he couldn’t.”

  “You mean, the big yellow one? Why couldn’t he?”

  “God said it was stuck. Too many boo-boos, I guess.”

  “Oh, God said this?”

  “Um-huh.”

  “I need to know, Lucy. What happened to Helen’s boo-boo?”

  Lucy showed Marbury her closed fist. It was a tiny fist for such a big boo-boo, he thought.

  She said, “I have it, silly. Wants to jump out, though.”

  Lucy crawled beneath the sheets in her bed with what little strength she had left. She looked spent, so much so that she couldn’t even cover herself up. Marbury did that for her. He said that he couldn’t remember ever covering up a child, and perhaps in all his years Lucy was his very first. A sad thought.

  I caught this remark and asked him about it.

  He said, “No children. Seems odd now, doesn’t it?”

  “Children aren’t part of the package, Marbury.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you don’t sound very convinced.”

  He didn’t answer. I must admit that I was thrown off somewhat. My expectation was that Marbury would have loved the temporality of this life, furnishing the building blocks for God to help him construct a better one. But he didn’t. And nothing seemed to shine a brighter light on his regrets for the temporal world than children, or not having them.

  “Then you should have been Lutheran,” I cracked.

  “Or else an atheist.”

  Marbury said that he covered up Lucy and wrapped the blankets high up around her throat just to keep her warm. She was chilled and almost shaking, which he attributed to the cold. A draft was blowing through her room, but he didn’t know from where. Maybe it was just the wind from outside.

  Lucy took the blankets and clutched them.

  She said, “Jacob doesn’t like me.”

  “He loves you, Lucy. I’m sure of that.”

  Marbury was lying and she knew it.

  “But he’s mean to me.”

  “I think he’ll be nicer now.”

  But Marbury wasn’t sure. Maybe Barris had always hated Lucy and would always hate her. Lucy, who came to him from out of the blue, attached to a wife that nobody wanted.

  He said, “We’ll make sure he’s nice to you, Lucy. I promise.”

  “He’ll forget. God says people forget.”

  Marbury was curious. “When does God say all this?”

  “At tea. He likes tea.”

  “When do you have tea?”

  “My dolly has tea.”

  “Does your dolly talk to God as well?”

  “Silly. My dolly doesn’t talk.”

  “Foolish me. I forgot.”

  “And she doesn’t eat cookies. So don’t give her any.”

  “I won’t.”

  “But God loves cookies.”

  Marbury said, “I’m afraid I’ve never offered God cookies before.”

 
; “He likes chocolate chip.”

  “Would he have tea and cookies with me?”

  “Oh, he wants to.”

  “When?”

  “You’ll know.”

  Abigail peeked into Lucy’s room just as she was falling asleep. A blood-pressure monitor hung from her hand. It was her rounds but Marbury asked her to wait.

  She said with a whisper, “I heard what happened.”

  “Barris told you?”

  “One of the doctors. Of course they don’t believe it.”

  Marbury shut the door behind him.

  “How’s she doing?” asked Abigail.

  “Tired. Do you know she speaks to God? She just told me.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re all exhausted. Nobody’s thinking straight.”

  “I didn’t tell you this before. I didn’t even believe it was possible, but now I don’t know what to think. She’s done this before, Father. Healed someone.”

  It happened several months back.

  Abigail said that she was on the morning shift. It was a crazy day. A mine fire had brought in several men for smoke inhalation and every room was filled. Lucy, who was under observation for severe neck pains and fever, possibly even spinal meningitis, was out in the hall, awaiting a bed. But there was no room. People were coming in and out, including a young boy with leukemia. The boy was dying and every attempt to save him had failed. His family swarmed around him, just waiting for the end.

  The boy, for reasons even he couldn’t later understand, noticed Lucy, and despite the fact that he was dying he made an effort to talk to her. Maybe it was her own suffering that he identified with or maybe he just wanted to take his mind off of his own plight, Abigail wasn’t sure. But something happened. The boy didn’t die that night. In fact, he didn’t die at all.

  She said, “The kid went into remission. Even the doctors called it a miracle, and they don’t call anything a miracle unless it slaps them in the face first.”

  “How do you know it was Lucy?”

  “One day the kid’s dying, the next the cancer is all gone. She was the only link.”

  “Maybe it really was a miracle.”

  “Yeah, a miracle named Lucy.”

  Marbury said that he had no explanation. But then he had no explanation for a lot of things. All the injuries, for instance.

  “Where did she get these from? Barris denies even touching her.”

  “I don’t know. But she gets ton of them,” said Abigail.