by M. O. Walsh
7
Father Pete
People of God, like teachers, may also live multiple days in each day.
Who are we to say?
As Father Pete would be the first to tell you, making assumptions about anyone else’s situation, no matter how seemingly obvious it may appear on the outside, is to willingly close yourself off to the heart of God. He wouldn’t say the word God, though, and definitely not Jesus or, even worse, Christ, if he was just making polite conversation. He knew the way his students’ eyes would glaze over, even some of his parishioners’ eyes, for that matter, when he said God’s name anywhere other than Mass, as Catholics don’t much care to be preached to unless wearing their Sunday clothes. So, instead of invoking the names of the Almighty God the Maker of Heaven and Earth and Jesus his only living son who was crucified, died, and was buried for our sins, Pete might simply remind them of the much less heavy and guilt-ridden saying that to “assume,” if you look closely enough at the word, can make an ASS out of U and ME.
The parents at the Lenten fish fries on Fridays, the men working the BBQ booths at the school fair, they would get a kick out of something like that, but he couldn’t use this same phrase with their kids. Their attention spans would snap completely as soon as he said the word ass, making the rest of the conversation as productive as trying to teach math to a cat. So, what would he tell these students if he found them making assumptions? People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones? Do unto others as you would want them to do unto such and such? What would he tell his own child if he had one? And why was he thinking about this again? Maybe he’d pray on that tonight. A good long prayer about giving advice to a child he would never be able to know. Hell, he figured, why not? He’d done it before.
Regardless, Peter Flynn, or Father Pete, as people called him, lived two full days in each day and he knew that. A man of fifty years old, stout in the shoulders from the fifty push-ups he did each morning at the foot of his bed along with the forty bicep curls he did in front of the mirror with his shirt off, the hair on his chest beginning to gray, Father Pete had lived in Deerfield only three short years, having been reassigned from Livingston Parish, outside of Baton Rouge, through no fault of his own. He was a good priest, he felt, a loyal friend and admirer of women and men and fishing and sports and God who didn’t outwardly break any priestly vows. He just had thoughts, is all, some regrets, some resentment, which was normal. And when a person gets to his age and has the type of routine and discipline that the priesthood requires, he knows exactly how many days he lives.
So, by the time Father Pete reached his truck and waved good-bye to the school principal, who was rolling back toward the primary building in her odd sort of spherical manner, and gave a nod to Douglas Hubbard, who he liked quite a bit but never spoke much to, he was already looking forward to his second day.
He was currently one hour and forty minutes away from this day beginning, of which he was massively aware, as it always occurred, if he could help it, at exactly five o’clock. This was when Pete, unless under some work obligation, would finally be alone in his house. This is also when Pete would take a lime out of the little hanging basket he kept near his kitchen sink and set it on top of a small wooden Louisiana-shaped cutting board that could double as a wall decoration but typically stayed right there in the drying rack on the counter. He would then take a knife from his drawer and cut the lime across its equator, turn it upright to slice it in half again and then again, until he had exactly eight identical triangles. These were squat triangles, though, more like pyramids, and not those crescent-moon-looking jobs you get when you cut the lime from top to bottom as they do at the El Sombrero Mexican restaurant in town. This was important to him, the precise manner of cutting, as were many rituals. Pete would then reach into his cabinet, where he kept a set of two crystal-clear cocktail glasses that had a frosted silhouette of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans on their sides. These glasses were fancy, somehow both sturdy and thin, the set a gift from one of his professors when he graduated from the seminary, along with a handwritten note to accompany them that said only “Keep ’em clean, Pete.”
Pete intended to. They were two of his favorite things.
So, at five o’clock he would take one of them down from the cabinet and hold it to the light, still clear as the day he got it five years ago, and set it near the cutting board. Then he would walk to his refrigerator, where he kept a bottle of cold soda water that he himself had made that morning from a SodaStream machine he’d purchased online to avoid any rumors that might rev up if he was seen purchasing a soda maker at the Deerfield Walmart. Sure, you could ostensibly use this device to make root beer and cola and other flavored drinks, but this was Louisiana, and people know what adults do with soda water. Anyway, he would grab the bottle of soda and open the freezer and remove for himself the fifth of Sobieski vodka he kept in the door, stash it under his arm, pluck a handful of cubes from his bucket of ice, and walk back across the kitchen. He would then drop the cubes into the glass, where they made a clinking sound that bordered on the divine, squeeze in the lime, pour just enough Sobieski to flood the bottom floor of the cathedral, and top it off with soda water so fresh and bubbling that the sound of it coming to life in the glass would fill his empty kitchen like rain.
Father Pete would then remove his collar and raise the drink to his lips, where, at this time of the day, if everything had gone just right, the falling sun through his kitchen window would light up the bottom of the glass in a way that made the lime cast its particular shade of green on every angle of ice and bubble around it. This display would look almost glowing to him as he thought of his wife, Anna, dead nine years now, and said what he always said at this hour, which was “One day closer to you.” He would then bring the glass to his mouth to feel the pleasant patter and pop of carbonation on his nose and upper lip. And then he would take that first sip, that sip you can’t ever get back for the rest of your second day, and would think he’d done pretty well in life, that he’d served both man and God and Anna to the best of his ability, because he’d made it back to five o’clock undeterred again, just as he promised them all that he would.
But in order for him to even have that second day today, Pete needed to go to the liquor store. It would be fine, of course, if Pete didn’t have this moment tonight, it wouldn’t be a huge deal, as there have been plenty of nights when he hasn’t, but he would prefer it. And as he was a working adult, and as he didn’t need to coach the school cabbage-ball games or attend to anything else at the rectory, he was going to get what he wanted. So, he backed his truck out of the parking lot and cut up Iris Lane, where he then planned to drive past the square and up Highway 61 toward Clessy’s Package Store, over in the neighboring parish.
He’d no need to go that far, as the good state of Louisiana allows liquor to be sold basically anywhere that has a cash register. Gas stations, convenience stores, Johnson’s Grocery, Walmart, even the Deerfield pharmacy sold beer and wine, but he was wearing his collar and didn’t want to go all the way home to change and, you know, maybe the drive out to Clessy’s might do him some good, allow him to think about some things.
One of the things he needed to think about was not a thing at all but rather a person, whom he now saw standing on the side of the road. It was his niece, Trina, the daughter of Pete’s tragically AWOL sister, who’d had, he knew, a hard couple of years. He also knew Trina was having trouble adjusting to Deerfield Catholic after moving here last fall, as Pete had endured no less than four conversations with Principal Pat about her seemingly strange and antisocial behavior. He had vouched for her each time, explaining that her mother had become addicted to pills and run off to who knows where, that her father was also of no account, and that, as surely Pat recalled, the Bible says, Bring us your weak, your feeble, your in need, and the lot of it. Or was that the Statue of Liberty?
Regardless, Pe
te was the reason she’d come to Deerfield Catholic in the first place, once he found out she was no longer showing up to classes over at the public school. He’d negotiated a family discount on her tuition and paid that, as well. So, he understood that he was somewhat responsible for her behavior. And, truth told, she was an odd bird, for which he worried. She hardly spoke to him or to anyone, it seemed, especially the past few months. But the entire community had been saddened by the Richieu boy’s death. It was a tragedy in that real way something is a tragedy when a child of God is seemingly taken before their time. Pete had heard rumors about her relationship with the boy, seen a few disparaging remarks about her scribbled on the boys’ room wall at school, which he bleached out after school hours, but, try as he had, he could never get a straight answer out of her.
So, wasn’t it strange, Pete thought, that she was now standing by the road with the other Richieu boy, looking so similar to his brother in the face if not in the body that it appeared as if this same exact scene could have unfolded months ago? Was she now dating this boy, too? He didn’t want to assume, of course, because you know what the word assume can do, but he pulled over to the side of the road anyway and gave her a little toot with his horn. “Hey there, stranger,” he said. “You need a lift?”
Trina lived a few miles up 61 with her father, Lanny Todd, a man who made it difficult even for a priest to see God in. He had been the undoing of many other people’s lives, Pete’s sister Amanda among them, and lived in a run-down rancher on a plot of land he’d inherited from his family right at the edge of the parish, which Pete would, perhaps providentially, he thought, be passing on the way out to Clessy’s today. Maybe this was the man upstairs at work yet again?
The surviving Richieu boy, whose name was Jacob, Pete remembered, looked up and nodded respectfully when he honked, but Trina didn’t acknowledge him at all. Instead, he watched her reach up and kiss that Jacob boy right on the mouth in plain sight, full on tongue-to-tongue as if they were chewing the same food for a while, and then stop and poke him hard in the chest. It did not appear, from his angle, to be much of a loving gesture.
“Katrina,” Pete hollered from the car. “Let that boy have some oxygen. Come say hey to your uncle.”
Trina slung her backpack over her shoulder and walked toward the truck without looking at him. The boy then shuffled off in his own direction and, instead of just leaning in through the open window, as he thought she might, Trina opened the door of the truck and sat in the cab.
“It’s hotter than that made-up place in your favorite book out there,” she said. “I’ll take the ride.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Pete said. “Why are you walking anyway? Doesn’t your daddy pick you up?”
“Normally, yes,” Trina said, “and it’s such a joyful experience, let me tell you. But, alas, he couldn’t find his car this morning. My theory is that he sold it for drugs but doesn’t remember. My reason for thinking this is because I watched him sell it and now he doesn’t remember. Still, there’s no use arguing with him.”
Pete pulled back onto the road, waved his hand at the car behind him to let them know he appreciated their slowing down, and headed for the highway.
“You can always call me if you need something,” he told her. “You know that, right? I know your dad can be trying to live with. I’m here for you.”
“Oh, but you have plenty of other souls to save, Uncle Pete,” Trina said. “Trust me. Plus, making me come to this shithole school has been help enough, thanks.”
If there was one thing to admire about Trina, which Pete was always looking for, it was that she let you know where you stood with her. Ever since her mom had run off and Pete had begun checking up on her, ever since he had moved her to Deerfield Catholic, Trina had been outwardly aggressive toward him. He saw some of his sister in this and was sure that his reputation had been somewhat poisoned for the girl since her youth. His sister Amanda was not a bad person, as Pete felt very few people were, but she was not well. Ten years younger than him, she saw his entrance into theology after Anna’s death as a reproach to her own selfish partying ways, a sort of one-sided trouncing of her in the sibling-rivalry arena, and acted as if, since her brother was now going to be free of sin, she might as well double up. Pete missed her, and worried about her, but it would be a lie to say that they were ever close. He often wondered if this, a sort of feeling of lost kinship, is why he had taken such an interest in her daughter.
After he’d convinced Lanny to let her enroll in the private school, bringing the sheriff along with him to explain Louisiana truancy laws, and promised Lanny that he would cover her expenses, that Lanny wouldn’t even have to get off the couch, Pete took Trina to the Young Fashions outlet to get her uniforms for the year. Trina wore a black tank top to this store that seemed not to have any back at all, pimples dotting her broad shoulders, a patch of dark hair, he saw, in her armpits, and openly ridiculed every item in the place. When he’d finally gotten her all the various requirements from the list Principal Pat had given him, she walked out of the changing room in her plaid jumper and blouse, her socks pulled up to her knees, her black-and-white Mary Janes unlaced on her feet, and said, “So, is this what God makes women wear in heaven, too? What does he have, some sort of fetish?”
The man working the counter looked over at Pete and Pete simply handed him his credit card. He looked back at Trina and said, “I’ll wait for you in the truck.” And once inside his truck he prayed for her, as he was apt to do.
She was wearing that same uniform now, but Pete noticed she had undone it in various ways since school let out. She put her Mary Janes up on the dash and they were dirtied from the trail he knew she’d just walked.
“How’d you get to school this morning, then?” he asked her. “If the car was gone.”
“Tessa brought me,” she said.
“Who’s Tessa?”
“She’s the whore that lives with us now.”
“Trina,” he said. “That’s no way to talk about a person.”
“But wasn’t Mary Magdalene a whore, too?” Trina asked, doing a really wonderful impression of a person feigning interest. “And, if so, then aren’t I potentially giving her, like, the greatest compliment? I mean, maybe she could one day grow up to be Jesus’s favorite whore!”
“That’s enough,” Pete said. “What you got going on with that other Richieu boy? Aren’t you a little young to be swapping DNA out on the street? You dating him now, too?”
“Dating?” Trina said. “I don’t date, Uncle Pete, especially not boys. I am what they call polyamorous. Boys, girls, men, women, mixtures of those things in between. Straight, gay, lesbo, transbo: All of God’s possibilities are open to me. Does that bother you? Am I going to hell, Uncle Pete? Does God hate it when I like other people?”
“All right,” Pete said. “I was just making conversation.”
They drove a few minutes in silence until Trina said, “I’m also thinking about getting an abortion, you should know. Then I plan to donate to Planned Parenthood and maybe do some porn work on the side.”
“A person’s choices are their own,” Pete said, and grinned. “But, if that’s the case, how about we get you home before you get gonorrhea all over my truck.”
“Ouch,” Trina said, and smiled for the first time since she’d hopped in the cab. “You’re going to have some rosaries to say for that one.”
Pete reached up and rubbed the rosary he had hanging from his rearview mirror. “I’m on it,” he said.
When they got out past the gas station and onto the open road, Pete saw what looked to be Phyllis Vernon pedaling a bicycle on the shoulder. Outdoor recreation took many forms in Deerfield, such as fishing, hunting, four-wheeling, and, hell, even some amateur archery, but, as a general rule, you didn’t see a lot of people riding bicycles unless they were either between the ages of six and seventeen or w
ere one of the patrons of Getwell’s Bar who had long ago lost the state’s confidence with regard to their responsible operation of motor vehicles. This was not the type of town, in other words, where you saw people exercising in public. It was just too damn hot for that type of thing. All of these social and geographical factors were part of what made Phyllis stand out, sure, but what Pete most noticed was her outfit.
Phyllis Vernon, age sixty-two, with a rear end that had taken on a sort of legendary status to those who saw it slowly spread itself across two chairs over the last twenty years at Heroman’s Flower Shop, was wearing what appeared to be a neon-pink spandex onesie with black racing stripes down the side. She had on a yellow bicycle helmet with reflectors pasted on the back of it, the sort of laceless shoes a person might wear if they planned to go swimming in a public pool, and was moving that bicycle down the road at a speed of approximately two miles per hour.
Pete rolled down his window and slowed the truck. He liked Phyllis a great deal. She was a good Catholic who had what he imagined was an untreated eating disorder combined with simple human sadness caused by the loss of her husband nearly three decades ago. She’d talked about her eating in Confession with Father Pete on several occasions, detailing the nearly always surprising number of empty ice-cream tubs she found in her own trash bin, and he felt for Phyllis.
When he got beside her, Pete saw that this was no ordinary bicycle she was working on. This thing was gleaming and brand-new and had its own suspension system in both the front and the back. The name Gary Fisher was embossed on the frame and since Pete had no idea who Gary Fisher was, and since this was the most interesting bicycle he’d ever seen, he figured it was probably expensive.
“Let’s just say hey,” he told Trina, and leaned his head out the window as he drove.
“I can’t wait,” Trina said.