Chapter 86

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The priest noticed the couple after he noticed their boy.  The child was so beautiful. The mixing of races made for beautiful children.  The boy had bee-stung lips and high cheekbones and vivid green eyes.  He was probably nine. Perfect.  The priest had never seen the couple before and was surprised that two such people could produce such a perfect child.  The man was very dark.  One of the darkest blacks the priest had seen in a long time.  And, rail thin.  The man leaned on a cane and walked with a limp.

The woman was white and very pale. She was not thin, with such thick arms she might have been a butcher.  The boy somehow looked familiar. The priest wondered if he had seen him on any of the websites.  He hadn’t looked in so long.  The authorities were so very adept now.  Did they not know these boys craved the attention?  The priest walked over to the couple.  He made sure that he focused on the parents.  He wanted to stare at the boy.  He wanted to snatch the boy up and take him back to his rooms.

The woman looked troubled.  The man looked nervous.

“Father Donovan.  My name is Allie and this is my husband Rob.  This is our boy, Peter.  You don’t know us.  Sally Jones said to tell you that she recommended you to us.  We haven’t yet settled in this city.  We are forced to come here for work.  We have had some trouble, and I am afraid that it has been quite a while since my last confession.  Could you take my confession?  Perhaps then we could talk about an arrangement similar to the one you had with Sally Jones?”

The priest’s heart leapt when he heard the name Sally Jones.  Sally’s ‘son’ had been a guest in his rooms many times.  The priest believed that he kept his face composed and somber as he said, “Of course, my child.  Allie, you said?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Why don’t I hear your confession now?” he asked.

“I am sorry, but there isn’t time.  Perhaps if I came back in an hour?”

He dared not ask if they would bring the boy.  They chatted a little more and then the three left.  Father Donovan watched the boy walk away in his skintight pants.  What did they call them, joggings?  Oh, such beauty.  He would go back to his room and pleasure himself.  He already felt a swelling, and without any help.

When the three were in the nondescript rental car, the boy turned to them and said.

“I don’t know what you are doing Uncle Bob, and Mom said to help, and you know I love acting, but that freaking priest creeps me out.”

Robert E. Lee White smiled to himself at the boy’s language. Normally he would give the boy a talking to, suggest a more precise use of language.  Before he could say anything Alice Stewart, his new girlfriend, brilliant programmer and past women’s heavyweight power lifting champion of the United States said, “That freaking priest creeps me out too, Jesse.  I don’t think we will be visiting this priest any more, will we ‘Uncle Bob?’”

“No, we will not.  I have respect for men of the cloth, but some are better than others, and I think this priest must be a troubled man.  We will not visit him again.  Now, Jesse, you were given a choice of rewards for helping us with our little play-act.  Have you decided?”

JESSE OWENS SMITH thought quickly about his choices for the reward.  He wanted the guitar so badly.  It was the same kind that Jimmie Hendrix had used. He had tried one at the music store.  It felt so good in his hands. It was like a missing piece.  It would be so cool to have.  His friends would be jealous.

The other reward was an acting lesson once a week for two months from a woman who had taught with Lee Strasberg.  Not so cool with his friends, but it would put him one step closer to being a good actor.  Momma said Uncle Bob was a very smart man and, even though he talked country and didn’t act all important and didn’t look flash, he was rich.  Jesse already figured out Uncle Bob always had a reason for everything he said and did.  He was always trying to teach and guide, not just be a good uncle, but be the kind of role model Jesse’s father would have been if he hadn’t been killed in Afghanistan.

“I would like the acting lessons, please, Uncle Bob?”

Alice Stewart, who soon hoped that her new boyfriend would get off his skinny ass and ask her to be Mrs. Alice Stewart-White, smiled.  Robert E. Lee White, proud uncle, smiled and said, “That is a most excellent choice.  When you finish the first two months, if you give it your very best effort, we will have another reward.  Think about two things you really want, not extravagant, expensive things, but two things you want badly over the next few weeks.  Also think about how we can judge your acting efforts.”

“Thank you, Uncle Bob,” Jesse smiled, thinking he had chosen well, and thinking he was very lucky to have such a cool uncle.

Alice Stewart thought grimly about the job she had volunteered for, wondering whether she could really do it, and said with a smile, “Good choice, Jesse!”

They dropped Jesse back at his apartment and drove aimlessly through town.

“Alice, my love, you don’t have to do this, you know,” Bob said with as little lack of judgment in his tone as he could manage.

There was no answer for a while.  Traffic in the City was something he never quite got used to.  Assertiveness was required. He was surprised he had never seen a story in the news of a tourist running out of gas in their car because they didn’t have the nerve to pull out into traffic.  He stomped on the brake pedal and the anti-lock chattered in protest, but he managed to avoid clipping the bike messenger.

Alice reached over and squeezed his thigh, being careful not to bruise, and said, “I know I don’t have to do it.  I want to.  My cousin was molested when he was young and committed suicide after a horribly painful and too-short life.  People like priests, teachers, parents who violate a trust:They should be tortured and killed.  I just hope I can do it…”

“You are taking a mighty big risk, my love.  We have done everything we can, but someone could see you.  Before I drop you off and you do this, I want you to listen up for a spell.”

“I’m listening,” Alice said.

“I have the blood of twenty-seven human men on my hands.  That I know of.  I will soon have more.  No matter how ‘right’ it is, it touches your soul.  How about if I were to do it, and you helped me?”

There was a long silence again.

“I know this might be hard for you to understand, Robert my love, but I want to take the life of this man, if you can call this child-molesting pervert a man, with my own hands.  You have fought against madmen who kill anyone who doesn’t agree with their religion.  Now we have people like that here, pretending to be righteous.  We are going to stop these fucking fanatics and take their money and all the rest, but I have to do something with my own hands.”

She paused again and Bob simply drove.  “There is something I haven’t told you.  When I was in college there was a rapist on campus.  He must have gotten rooms confused and came into mine instead of Janna’s next door.  He almost had me.  He made a mistake and let me get my legs around him.  I crushed him until…  He tried to scream and I… I crushed him.  It made me sick for weeks, I had to reschedule a final, but afterward it also felt better to take direct action against evil thn almost anything I have ever done.  Since those two weeks I had to take off and process it, I have never lost a minute of sleep over it.”

Bob listened in silence.  Then he said, “You know if it is possible, I love you even more.  You know I’m a spook, and no racial jokes, please, pumpkin.  When I realized that I was in love with you, I did a background check on you, as you already ciphered I had to do.  Reading in between the lines of the police reports, I am sure the lead detective up there knew you had killed that man.  The detective didn’t pursue it.  It would have been open and shut self-defense anyway.  Please be careful and if you see or hear or feel anything that makes you nervous, simply walk away.”

Bob pulled to the curb a block away.  Alice leaned over to kiss him quickly and then slipped out of the car.  She moved very lightly for such a powerful woman.  She bounded up the steps of the church, her legs making easy work of it, entered the church and waited.  Another priest was taking confession, but then Father Donovan saw her and she motioned to the confessional.  He smiled, nearly hiding his nature, and motioned her in.

“How long has it been since you confessed?”

“Oh, quite a while, Father.”

Father Donovan was disappointed the boy was not with the woman and trying to figure out how to turn the conversation to the boy. Then the woman said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Father Donovan fulfilled his part of the sacrament on autopilot.  He barely heard her as he thought of her beautiful boy.  How could such a couple produce such a little angel?

The priest was more than startled as the lattice that separated him from the woman splintered.  He did not have time to react as her hands closed on his neck.  He reached up to push her hands away.  He was still a powerful man and was not worried the woman could hurt him.  He was not worried until it was too late.  He might as well have tried to fight off steel cables.  He scratched at the now gloved hands thinking it had been too easy.  He should have known.  His third to last thought was that it had been too easy, too pat.  His second to last thought was listening to the woman say, “This, however is not a sin.”  His last thought was wondering what the splintering crack was before the little light that was left in him went out in his dark world.

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