by A. R. Moxon
Even now, that’s the way membership works: Nothing requested, nothing required. The lack of clear standards for inclusion are, ironically, what has kept their membership so exclusive. Certainly, it keeps the Island’s religious population away. Most people have no way of dealing with a purely open invitation, and, suspecting some catch, some hidden snag lurking in the river, never dare get their toes wet.
In truth, each of them has discovered something or other to do.
Father Julius jogs the city, locating need—hungry folks, broken things—noting it, bringing the list to his proxy for funds.
Mysterious Dave Waverly, the secret proxy with reserves of moxie, he releases those funds.
And Jack and Brock, when they’re not manning the grills, they fix what’s broken.
And Sister Biscuit Trudy hauls sacks of fresh-baked rolls to the hungry.
And Sister Mishkin, she does the baking, then follows Trudy, carrying the excess sacks.
And Nettles tends the garden, grows the produce to balance the meal, and even adds some flowers for beauty.
And Brother Pretty Trudy, himself only recently escaped from a hard life selling ass, brings medical and emotional aid to all the pretty girls and pretty boys, and those not so pretty, and those aged out and discarded, all those whose young bodies bought them first attention and flattery, then rough treatment and bad use.
And Sister Winnie, a dropout from the Island’s wholly unsuitable public schools, tutors in the secret room Donk and Julius made for abandoned children, the only other entrusted with its location.
But none of it is required, requested, or even suggested.
Brother Jack still has trouble believing nothing is required of him—that’s how Monseigneur Ex came to be. Jack is not a man driven by self-mercy, he’s a man driven by self-accountability. He’d been foreman on Sister Nettles’ line when she had her accident, and he’d been the one to affix the tourniquets. Blood everywhere, and, in the blood, lifeless sardines taking one last sanguine swim beside a severed splay of fingers unnaturally liberated from their handsome positions. Brother Jack still confesses about it some nights, how the whole awful mess was his fault, must have been his fault, it had happened with him in authority, he should have ordered more inspections of the machines, tested the fail-safes with greater diligence…his tidal perseverations always bearing him back toward those severed digits among the fish. Monseigneur Ex doesn’t mind, though; Ex never talks back.
Ex never tells you to shut up, either, Julius muses. Good news for Tennessee, who’s still going and going and going as Nettles knits, as Ella proclaims the season summertime and the living easy. Monseigneur Ex holds mute witness, his register counting number by number, recording it all. They’d installed the first version of Monseigneur Ex a few months after the confessional-kindling weenie roast. Jack had insisted on having some form of confessional, confession being (as he saw it) necessary to absolution, but Julius had refused adamantly to have anything to do with the role of Father Confessor. “Not anymore,” he told Jack. “It might be somebody else’s place, but it’s not mine.”
Jack scowled. “That’s not much help. Ain’t you a priest?”
“So they say.”
“Well, I need something.”
“Well, holy shit, Jack, I’ll think on it—how’d that be?”
And he had thought on it. Soon after, in the choir of his “cathedral,” Julius began construction on a new confessional more suited to his hands-off missional strategy, made of high plywood planks. Inside, a plush couch. Facing the couch, a mirror, behind which lay a hollow. In this hollow, a cassette tape whirred on continuous loop, five hours’ worth of tape writing and overwriting and overwriting itself in perpetuity. A sturdy door locked from the inside.
“Get in there, face the mirror, and talk,” Julius said to Jack. “Anything you say will be recorded and then obliterated, which is exactly how I’d like you to think about it. You’ll be talking to one of two individuals who can absolve you for anything in this old world, and you’ll be staring at the second.”
An hour later, Jack emerged from the box’s inaugural confession and given the priest a single terse nod, Brother Jack’s version of eloquence—That’ll do.
This had been years ago, when it was only him and Brock, and Jack, and Nettles with massive gauze golf balls still bandaging her hands. Since then, the booth has become an unofficial member of their coterie. After years of worn and snapped audio tape, frustrating replacements of huge spools, and plenty of cursing, Julius had called the techs in to set them up with electronic data recording. They’d even blessed the confessional with a name: Monseigneur Ex-Position—because, as Julius had so frequently averred, confession was his position no longer. Each of them had at least occasionally spent time unburdening sin, crime, and foible to Monseigneur Ex, who took it all down without comment and then, as a function of his programming, deleted it.
On Nettles’s wall, a cuckoo clock strikes the time. Julius opens his eyes and wonders idly if he’s been snoring. Ella’s taking five; Louis Armstrong is singing now, advising that a woman is a sometime thing. Nettles, noticing him stir, puts her knitting away, her face a complex map of perplexity and amusement and concern. “So,” she says. “You showed up hours earlier, wandered in looking like you’d seen a ghost or killed a man, and then fell asleep, still sitting up, half into the night. When are you going to tell me all about your interesting day?”
Julius clears his throat. “How long has he been going?”—gesturing toward the confessional, where Tennessee is still prattling (Julius tries not to overhear) about the boxes, and the generations of love, and bird and spade, and his lost boy gone forever….
“Hours. Never have I been so glad for Monseigneur Ex. He was getting on Pretty’s nerves, and Biscuit’s, too. They were trying not to show it, but…well. They weren’t trying hard. I sent him into the box to work it out there.”
“Well then, thank Christ for Monseigneur Ex,” Julius mutters.
“Yes, Jules,” Nettles says—indulgently, but he can hear telltales of concern. “But you were just about to tell about whatever happened to you today—weren’t you.” It’s not quite a challenge, but it’s not a question, either. Julius gives her what he hopes is a charmingly rakish look.
“Maybe I found a lady friend.”
“Maybe you didn’t, though.” Still, she raises one eyebrow. Julius marvels at his strange reluctance—didn’t you come to Nettles seeking her reaction? It’s just so hard to know what to say about what you saw. Perhaps it would be better to say what you didn’t see? Jesus, what a day.
Finally, he says. “Trying to think how to say it.”
She smiles, still concerned, but also now a little annoyed and a little amused. “Lips tongue and mouth are my recommendation.”
“I was at the Wales this morning.”
“You’re at the Wales every morning.”
“I saw someone there. A patient, I think. I saw him…until I didn’t see him.”
“He left?”
“He disappeared.”
“He…”
“I mean sometimes he’s there and sometimes he’s not. Physically. He flickers in and out. Like a lightbulb.”
He sees her try to hide her reaction, but it’s no good; Nettles is obviously thinking the same thoughts that have been occurring to Julius all day. Perhaps this is a manifestation of some clot, the first telltale fissure in the foundation of an unsound brain, or perhaps this visitation is the first loose thread tossed from an unspooling psyche, an early indication that after years of trying to make a difference in a place the world has marked for indifference, Julius has finally begun losing his marbles…but Nettles doesn’t say any of that, she only draws a long slow breath, adjusts her posture almost imperceptibly, and gives a short circular gesture with her needle, go on, go on, please go on…
Slowly, he begins to ex
plain. Nettles keeps mostly still, listening, thumbs pressed together, unnaturally shortened fingers steepled. Occasionally she looks quizzical, occasionally she interjects. In particular she’s concerned about the loonies; there’s no way the Fritz Act was written to simply push hundreds of mental patients out on the streets, and the fact that’s what’s been done speaks to some as-yet-unseen malfeasance. As Nettles notes, it doesn’t take a gardener to see what way the vine grows. Mostly she lets his silences hold until he’s ready again to fill them. At last he arrives, haltingly, stumblingly, to the conclusion.
“He said something to me,” Julius tells her.
“What did his voice sound like?” Nettles asks. That’s Nettles; anyone else would ask what he said, she wants to know how he sounded. The question surprises him into answering more honestly than he might have. “Scared,” Julius says flatly. “He sounded scared.”
“What do you think he’s scared of?”
“God,” Julius says, surprised once again into the truth. That—explaining to Knuckles—was the whole problem. The flickering bastard had gone and gotten God involved in the mess.
Nettles listens to all this without comment until it’s clear he’s said all there is to say. At length she picks up her needles and begins knitting once more. Julius keeps still. It’s clear to him he’s not being dismissed; rather, she’s keeping her hands busy while she thinks.
Finally she says: “Well, Jules, obviously you need to help him.”
“You believe me that he’s real?”
“Of course he’s real.”
“But the flickering—”
She waves his objection away impatiently. “I don’t know about that part. You’re nuts or something. Or really, you’re nuts in a new way, because—” she gestures around the Neon Chapel—“you’ve been nuts. He’s probably nuts, too. But who cares? The guy obviously needs your help, and that’s what you do, is help people.”
“But I just don’t kn—oww!” She’s poked him lightly with a needle, and now she’s looking at him very kindly and very impatiently.
“Listen, guy. You came here because you want to help this fellow and for some reason you need to hear from somebody else that it’s all right to do it. You picked me for that weird job, and I told you, and now you have to go do it. This isn’t hard. What are you waiting for?”
“That sounds just like my boy!” shouts Tennessee, making both Julius and Nettles jump in their chairs. They hadn’t noticed him leave Father Ex’s confines; he’s been eavesdropping.
“My boy gone forever and missing, he said God talked to him,” Tennessee says. “Back in Pigeon Forge. My boy bought a lottery ticket and it won—big time. The prize was power over everything in the universe. That’s why Morris was chasing him, and how I wound up in this mess.”
Julius and Nettles exchange glances. One good thing about having Brother Tennessee around, the priest thinks, is I’ll never have to worry about sounding like the craziest guy in the room. He’s trying to formulate a response to Tennessee’s odd proclamation when there’s yet another disturbance, just as unusual in its own way.
A throat ostentatiously clears. Someone is standing in the middle of the central room, someone who’s never been in the Neon Chapel before. It’s Bailey, looking serious. She has her baton out, and her eyes scan the room restlessly, as if she anticipates a sudden attack.
“Father J,” Bailey says. “Donk needs to talk to you. Tonight.”
Julius stands. “What’s the rhubarb?”
“Something very weird is happening at the Wales. We’re thinking you can help shed light.”
“I’m coming too!” Tennessee shouts. “I’ve got light to shed!”
Bailey glances his way, gives her tight-braided head a curt shake. “Invite-only deal, sorry.” Strange; Julius thinks he sees some familiarity there, as if she’s making note of a person already known to her. What the hell—has this loony met everyone in the neighborhood already?
He looks to Nettles. “Appears I have to go.”
“Then you’d better get,” Nettles says.
MEET
Donk didn’t tell Julius everything, but that wasn’t out of hatred or mistrust. In fact, if you want the truth, I think he may have loved him; may have considered him the closest thing he had to a brother remaining.
It’s just that Donk had other priorities.
In public, Donk appeared to honestly hate all people, which made it difficult for even those close to him to determine whether they were his friends or on the outs. This kept his friends safe but off-balance, and his enemies off-balance and in danger of over-reach or under-reach, providing Donk with valuable additional seconds of analysis, micro-hesitations as his adversaries tried to measure and process the barometric levels of his pique. Donk learned to exploit that advantage; it’s how he managed for so many years to remain the top man in Ralph’s organization. Donk’s scowl he honed as sharp and precise and effective as any surgeon’s knife or cartoonist’s pen. The gangs might decide to negotiate to grow their profits, but, fearing what Donk’s stink-eye might represent, they’d concede on their original ask, and a proposed three-percent decrease in funds paid to Ralph would become a one-percent increase, just like that. Ralph loved the extra funds, and so he loved Daniel Donkmien, who naturally behaved as though he hated Ralph most of all.
But this is what a thicket of lies does: makes it impossible to detect the thorn of truth.
Donk did hate Ralph most of all.
The secret Donk cradled closest was his memory of what Ralph did, what happened with the greenhouse…I’ll tell you like Donk told it to me. It’s a sad story but a simple one. Yale and Ralph had come up together—if Ralph was king, Yale was prime minister—but Yale got crosswind of him and Ralph killed him. That’s the short of it—but the “why” hides the truth.
Why did Ralph kill Yale?
Ralph was in the midst of unifying the gangs, and he found out Yale was running a rival gang against Ralph on the side. It was an information racket. Every kid in the Island has a situation at home; a presence or an absence. For those with an absence, or those with a bad presence, back then, on the sly, there was Yale. Yale found an abandoned greenhouse up on the roof of HQ, which was the Headquarters, the part of Domino City that belonged to the Zoots, the main gang—Ralph’s gang. Nobody knows who built the greenhouse, and nobody ever went up there until Yale found it. He made it a sort of a fort. It was a place for kids to go who had nowhere else. Kids are perfect spies; nobody notices them, and they’re in every building on the Island, where intelligence is more valuable than gold.
You can maybe guess what happened next. Creating new gangs doesn’t exactly lend itself to unifying the existing ones, and Yale well knew it. Yale was cutting Ralph out of his business, so Ralph cut Yale out of his life.
When Ralph found out, he caught Yale on the roof of HQ, right there in the greenhouse, and threw him right off that roof. Then all the kids who were in the greenhouse with him disappeared, and the disappearance got hushed up very effectively. Donk always assumed Ralph had them disappeared. It’s a fair assumption.
But there were at least some who belonged to Yale’s child gang that Ralph didn’t kill.
Bailey was among Yale’s elder recruits, only a few years younger than him—and of course Yale’s little brother Donk was involved. They both saw Yale killed. They were skilled enough to have realized what was about to go down—but only in time to save themselves. They fled the greenhouse that day just in time, hid, and avoided the fate of the rest, but they saw Yale fall. Terrified, they went to earth and stayed there, beneath anyone’s notice, until their undeniable skills raised them to enough local prominence that Ralph noticed them again.
Ralph wasn’t suspicious when they reappeared. To him it wasn’t a reappearance, just an appearance. He never knew any of the names of Yale’s child gang. He didn’t know Donk knew anything ab
out what had happened to his brother, but he needed a right hand, and he probably was feeling sentimental about his old partner. Nor did Bailey pose a particular concern. To him, Bailey was his relation. He didn’t realize that Yale had been her boyfriend. He had no idea his two managers even knew each other before they became colleagues—a misapprehension those two encouraged. No, I doubt Ralph gave Yale a passing thought when he made the hires.
But Donk and Bailey sure gave Yale a passing thought. For them, their new jobs were less a hire than an infiltration. I suppose you could say seeing brother and lover murdered affected them a bit, as regarded their feelings toward Ralph Mayor.