But she just smiled as though she knew better.
Marbury said that it was about then that he heard another sound over the cheering. A loud wail. It sounded like an animal in pain, and the sound grew louder and louder until it was outside the door, which burst open with the thumping of an angry fist. It was Barris. Tears were rolling down his cheeks and his shirt was torn, as though he had grabbed it and pulled from such an agony as had never been seen or felt.
He said, “My Helen is dead.”
“When?”
“Does it matter? There’s your God, priest. A murderer.”
Lucy just shook her head. “God doesn’t kill, Jacob.”
But Barris wasn’t listening.
“To hell with you, brat. You could have saved her.”
“She’s only sleeping now. You’ll see.”
“She’s dead, kid. But that’s the way you want her, isn’t it?”
He took a step toward her. Menacing.
“You can’t fool me. Just by holding back, you did it, all right. Killed her. I’ve seen you cure other people. You could do it, kid. You just didn’t want to. And now my Helen’s gone.”
His eyes, wet with tears, began to look larger. Almost to magnify.
He said, “I curse your birth, child.”
“Jacob—”
“Out of my way, preacher. This is between me and the kid.”
But Lucy wasn’t afraid.
She said, “God isn’t mean, Jacob.”
“I did my part. I did what I was told. I did exactly what your God wanted, right down to the letter. I had promises.”
“Promises come true,” said Lucy.
“Like what, kid?”
“Big kisses.”
“Kisses? I don’t even have that now.”
Barris took another step forward. His fingers curled into a fist.
“Look at me. I’m ruined, child. My heart’s ruined.”
Marbury grabbed him and said, “I thought you didn’t hit kids, Jacob.”
“I don’t. But I might think about starting.”
Someone broke Marbury’s concentration by yelling. We both turned to the bar and saw two guys, who were on opposite sides of one another, standing up and cheering on the basketball game. The two teams were separated by only a point. It was down to the last few seconds and somebody from one of the teams was working an in-bounds pass. Everyone held their breath, at least the guys watching the television did, and all eyes followed as the pass flew up high to the perimeter. Someone grabbed the ball, took a shot, and missed. The crowd went crazy. Game over.
I saw one of the guys hand over a few bills and just shake his head. Easy money. My own experience with gambling wasn’t so easy. I only made a bet once in my life, with Marbury, it turns out, wagering that I could hit twenty shots in a row from the foul line. It was a stupid bet. One bred from my own ego and probably wanting to show him up, but I won. Barely. The last shot rolled around several times before falling in. And then it fell only from the slightest push from gravity, not my skill.
Marbury looked at me.
“That glass. You’re gripping it like my throat,” he said.
“I was thinking about the fifty bucks I won from you.”
“You mean, stole. That last shot should have rolled out.”
He was right. I was lucky.
I said, “Well, the con man was finally conned. Serves you right.”
He smiled. “Then how about a rematch? I’m due.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Peter. We have a basket in the parish basement. Let me exact some vengeance on you for a change. At least allow me to recoup my fifty bucks.” Then he added, “I might need it for the unemployment line.”
Chapter 9
I spent part of Saturday afternoon, the next day, in the Bishop’s office. He was listening to something on the radio when I walked in, a discussion, or more like a shouting match between two men. I said hello but the Bishop just waved me off with his hand, in silence, motioning for me to sit down, which I did. He was absorbed with this conversation, smoking a cigar and rocking back and forth in his chair, his head bobbing.
I could tell that the two men on the station were participants in some sort of radio call-in program. One of them was busy arguing about the Resurrection, taking the view that it never occurred. The other one, equally passionate, was raising the argument up to another level, screaming, calling the other an agent of the devil. The rational man, or at least the one trying to sound rational, with his discussion of everything from ancient Roman discipline to the importance of the full moon and Passover, started to raise his voice as well. His ideas began to suffer. He could no longer hear himself think, I could tell that, and the more the other man shouted, the more rattled this one became, stumbling with his facts, hedging and even forgetting things. Just when I thought the two men would kill each other, right there on the radio, the Bishop had enough. He turned it off, his head shaking bitterly.
“Empires crumble, Whitmore. Even spiritual ones.”
He sounded tired. Burned out.
“And do you know how? They fall apart brick by brick.”
“I don’t think those views are representative, Tony. Look around.”
“You don’t?”
“People come out of the woodwork. It’s been happening since the first Easter, you know that.”
“Do you mean people like your friend Marbury?”
A cloud of smoke traveled across his desk and collided into me.
“How’s he doing anyway?”
“I really don’t know.”
“He’s aware of the money, I assume.”
“Yes. Marbury said he gave it away. He said it wasn’t stolen because that was the purpose, to help people. It’s an error in judgment but—”
“He suffers from a lot of those.”
I agreed.
“And I suppose he won’t recant either.”
“He says there’s nothing to recant. Marbury makes no claims about his healing. He’s smart that way, relying on others to voice it instead.”
The Bishop nodded slowly. I knew what he was thinking. That he had made a mistake assigning me to Marbury. But it was too late to turn back. Everything was on my head. The investigation, the fate of Marbury, everything. I tried to assure him that I had the situation under control, but he didn’t listen. Maybe it was the radio callers that bothered him or maybe he felt undermined by the whole idea of Marbury and his healing, I don’t know. But he seemed oddly at peace. Almost resigned.
“You’ll make a recommendation, I trust.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me over his bifocals.
“Oh, come now. It’s not like you’re Judas or anything.”
“I feel like it. People connect with him. It’s strange but—”
“Do you admire him?”
“I admire his strength.”
“Strength we need,” said the Bishop.
I nodded. Marbury’s fate was in the palm of my hand and I didn’t like it. I had no right to hold it there or even to wish that I could control it, and the Bishop knew that.
I said, “I don’t think I’m qualified to judge him.”
“You don’t have to. Christ will.”
And then he said, “Tell Marbury that we need his strength now more than ever. We need him to be strong for the church, strong for Christ. We need him to be strong enough to abandon what he loves one more time. Tell him. He’ll understand.”
The Bishop stood up and led me to the door, which he opened for me. He was about to turn away when something came to him.
He said, “Marbury has made one canonical mistake, you know.”
I asked him what that was.
“Why, the presumption of God’s forgiveness.”
I surprised Marbury by walking into his office with my gym bag. He didn’t expect me to take him up on his offer about playing basketball, with the bet or even just to shoot around with him on his court,
but here I was. A smile crossed his face.
He said, “Let me see how much cash I have.”
I told him to put his wallet away.
“No money. We’ll play for free.”
“You want to play a game?”
“Why not?”
Marbury gave me a strange look, as though I had called his bluff.
He said, “I haven’t played in years.”
“Then I’ll go easy on you.”
He showed me to his bathroom, where I proceeded to change. The bath was as cluttered as the rest of his office, with razors and green bottles of shampoo lying about, towels and piles of old magazines stacked on the floor. Most of the magazines had more pictures than text in them, crisp photographs of other countries and people so Marbury wouldn’t have to waste his time reading the story. He could just see it instead, full-blown.
Marbury handed me a hanger for my shirt and pants, which I hung over the shower stall, first creasing my slacks. As I changed I couldn’t help but think about what the Bishop had said about the presumption of forgiveness. It was a sin against the Holy Spirit and therefore the church, but it was more than that. It was a sin against sensibility, for nobody knew the future, especially one’s place in it, and to assume oneself already forgiven was more than presumptuous. It was stupid. But here was Marbury in the prime of his stupidity, acting like every transgression in his life was already forgotten by God without necessarily making it so.
Marbury knocked on the door.
I tucked my T-shirt into my sweatpants and adjusted my expanding waistline in the mirror, looking first sideways, then straight at it, measuring the ever so slight curve of my belly or trying to imagine that it wasn’t there. I might have kept on staring at myself if not for a second knock.
The door opened. Marbury reached in and grabbed the closest thing that he could find, an old sweatshirt and sneakers. He was already standing in a pair of gym shorts, ones that were too large for him or else he had lost weight, for they looked like giant balloons on his legs and that made me smile. But he wasn’t laughing. Marbury was instead fumbling with the sneakers. They were badly knotted, the laces in a great clump, and only clumping worse.
I watched him struggle. Marbury struggled with everything in his life.
“Do you need a knife?”
He shook his head. “It’s a test of wits. Cotton versus flesh.”
“You like to test wits, don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, you test everyone at some point. You’ve tested me. You’re still testing me. You’re testing the church, the Bishop, everything you stand for. You’re testing your past, probably even God.”
He stopped. “I’ve never tested God. That’s a test lost.”
“Then mark one up for common sense.”
Marbury struggled some more but the knot wasn’t budging. I could see his face redden, the slow incline of anger, which he didn’t like to show.
“Do you ever wonder about Jill?” I asked, thinking about the Bishop.
“Talk about tests. Why do you care?”
“Curious, that’s all. If you’re still in contact.”
“No. I think she’s married now, living somewhere.”
“Do you believe that she’s forgiven you?”
“Is forgiveness what we’re talking about?”
“You’re the one who hit her.”
Marbury just peered at me. Then I heard a snap. He held the broken shoestring in his hand and smiled, wickedly.
He said, “Jill? It was her forgiveness that almost killed me, Peter.”
Marbury said that both their lives were out of control. He was drinking more and doing less work, even in school. By this time he had adopted the ex-husband’s way of dressing completely. Marbury not only wore the man’s baseball caps, his shirts, he even snuggled his way into the ex-husband’s pants. And Marbury got the old car started too, driving around to the local bars for a few beers while Jill worked. And this was where he made the discovery.
Marbury said that he was down to his last couple of bucks when he started to scrounge around the car for money, looking beneath the cushions and under the carpet, anywhere a few extra coins might be hidden. He was sprawled underneath the steering wheel, his hand stretched deep into the bucket seat, looking through old wrappers, pieces of hard gum and food, old coffee cups, et cetera, when he found it. A photograph. There were several men standing around in the picture, just holding up beers and mugging for the camera. It was something he might have thrown out with hardly a second glance if not for one thing.
Marbury recognized one of them.
“It was Henry Burk. The man that I killed in the bar.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Standing there in his full glory.”
Marbury said that he brought the photograph home to Jill, who admitted the incredible truth. She knew Burk. But more than just knowing him, Jill added a devastating admission.
Henry Burk was her ex-husband.
I just smiled, taking it all in stride. When a few moments passed and I didn’t say anything or even comment, Marbury clicked his fingers to lock my attention.
He said, “I’m serious.”
“Come on, Marbury, I mean, the odds—”
“That’s what I’m saying. How do you explain it except by design?”
“Design isn’t a word I would use.”
“Regardless, I went full circle. Or was sent that way by God.”
Marbury continued. He said that Jill, who was now back to using her maiden name, explained that she disavowed the existence of her husband until she had to, when word came back to her that Burk was murdered in a bar. But she never found out the details because she believed in her heart that she knew the reasons for his death.
And those were because of Jack.
Jack was a friend of Burk’s from prison. He was living in Queens around the same time that Jill and Burk were living there, before the house and the crumbling foundation. Burk was working as a truck driver for a small moving company but his real job was transporting stolen goods across state lines. It involved a lot of cash and many clandestine meetings in different parks and rest areas, on the sides of country roads, and such. One night Jack went along, just for fun, but when he saw all the cash being exchanged, much of it in shoeboxes and brown paper bags, he came up with the idea of making more at the track. Their cut. It was just a loan, he said, to be paid back a few days later in triplicate. But that never happened. Jack lost everything and Burk soon found himself short of over fifty thousand dollars, much to the disappointment of the owners of the moving company who didn’t like to be disappointed, or ripped off.
“They went on the run after that. Hiding out like mice.”
Marbury said that six months went by, and Jill and Burk were still moving around, going from friend to friend. One night Jack surfaced again. His luck was no better but not as bad as that of Henry Burk, who had people looking for him. Nasty people with guns. Jack, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt perhaps or maybe even responsibility, offered his help. He gave them the keys to a place in Connecticut where they could hide out, at least until the coast was clear. That was over three years ago. He never came back for the keys.
I massaged the news into my brain, trying to absorb it all.
“I never told Jill about Burk. Maybe that was cruel.”
“Or maybe she wouldn’t have believed you. I’m not sure I do.”
Marbury just shrugged.
“Wasn’t she at the arraignment?”
“No.”
“Then she knew nothing about his murder?”
“Nothing other than she expected it. I couldn’t tell her.”
“Maybe Jack could.”
But Marbury just shook his head.
He said, “I’m not sure if Jack’s alive. If the men found him, he’s not.”
“What men?”
“The men looking for the money.”
It was winter, sa
id Marbury, and he was still living with Jill. It was the coldest New England weather in years. Snow was piled up several feet high and every night the temperature plunged to zero or lower. Marbury still hadn’t fixed the upstairs heat and the rooms were only slightly warmer than the outside, too cold even for Marbury. And the downstairs wasn’t much better. It was cramped, with hardly enough room for a few chairs and a television, much less a bed. Though there was a kerosene space heater. Jill and Marbury took turns huddling around it at night, blankets over their head to keep from freezing, while sleeping on a carpet on the floor. The worst place, said Marbury, for Jill was developing a horrible cough and she refused to go to the doctor, relying instead on home remedies of Vicks VaporRub and shots of whiskey. She hated doctors and probably feared them too, but not nearly with as much fear as came that night.
Marbury said that he was dead asleep when he heard it. A pounding at the front door. The pounding soon became a full crash and when he sat up, Marbury saw two men looming over him. They had guns.
“Where’s Jack? He has our money,” one said.
A flashlight lit up Marbury’s face. He was blind.
“I said he has our money.”
“I don’t know who Jack is,” said Marbury.
“We know he lives here.”
“I’m the only one who lives here.”
“Then where is he?”
The flashlight was still blinding him.
“Look upstairs,” said the one, now sounding like the boss.
Marbury said that he heard the steps wobble as the other man went up them. He only hoped that they would hold his weight or, if they collapsed, crush him altogether.
“If he’s here, you’re a dead boy.”
“I told you, I don’t know any Jack.”
The boss looked around and saw Jill, coughing her lungs out into the fold of her pillow. “Who’s the skirt?”
“Just a friend.” Marbury was scared.
“Sounds like your friend has TB.”
More flashlight. And then a tug on the blankets.
“I hate women who sleep in sweatpants. Sexy like a bad gut ache.”
“She’s sick. I need to find a doctor.”
The other man with a gun came back downstairs and announced that he’d found nothing. No sign of Jack at all, much to the relief of Marbury. But that didn’t seem to comfort the two men. They looked around the downstairs and in the kitchen, knocking stuff over. Banging pots and pans. The sound of milk splashing on the floor and beers opening.
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