The Priest

The bar stank of stale cigarettes and stale beer, and it took him back to the days when his drunk of a father would drag him here because he couldn’t find a babysitter. The same peeling paint. The same decaying photographs of adult softball leagues, bowling leagues, and gun range champions. And, by the looks of it, the same drunks he remembered as a boy, now joined by their children. The Bull and The Rider was the standard trope for a low income, smalltown, midwestern drinking hole. The bartender was the same gristled and bearded blowhard, now with gray hair streaking the sides of his scalp. The waitresses were the quintessential southern cowgirls, scantily clad in bosom-bearing crop tops and Daisy Duke shorts stretched tight by the little extra weight, their hair flowing out of their cowboy hats like a blonde waterfall, and the clack of their boots letting you know exactly where they were without an upward glance.

He gazed around the establishment, the jukebox blaring its country rock sound, and took in the faces of the drinkers. The smoky haze hung in the air as he watched the men shooting pool across the way. Raucous laughter erupted from the packed bar, where there were nearly as many people standing as there were sitting. He watched as a group of five clanged their shot glasses together and drained them in an instant. Then he turned his eyes to the small dance floor in front of the jukebox, where he saw a couple handfuls of patrons performing a broken line dance and laughing with each other.

Finally, he looked to the dark corner where the dart board was lit up. A man and a woman smiled at each other as they threw their darts to the board, but it was the quiet man behind them, his face hidden in the shadows, that drew his interest. He watched as the hidden man eyed two young girls at the bar. As the man’s eyes were lit up by the cigarette in his hand, he could tell the man was mentally sinning… and planning.

He removed his black trench coat and folded it over his arm, and he could feel the wave of silence pass through the bar. No doubt the clientele had never seen a priest enter their bar, much less a priest of the Vatican breed. He smiled mischievously, wondering how many of these people would go home later and say a secret prayer of forgiveness for taking part in this debauchery. Nodding once or twice on the way, he made his way silently to the bar. And like Moses parting the Red Sea, his expression did the same to the crowd before him, and he strolled up to an empty barstool and an awestruck bartender.

“What can I get ya, padre?” The question was nice enough, but the undertone gave off a ‘what the hell are you doing here?’ vibe.

“Double scotch, neat, if you please,” he answered.

The barkeep’s eyebrows raised high at the request. Apparently, liquor is not something that priests were to be drinking here in backwoods Oklahoma. It took but a minute and the glass was in front of him. He threw the bartender a ten dollar bill and picked up the drink. As he turned, his glass was nearly knocked out of his hand by one of the young women the man in the corner had been spying.

“Say there, Mr. Preacher Man, you lookin’ to sin tonight?” The girl flashed him a big southern smile and gave him a wink.

He was unfazed by the brazen sacrilege coming out of the girl’s mouth. It was commonplace for the Catholic priests of Rome to be hounded by the local prostitutes. Less common, but still more common than it should be, was the acceptance of the clergy to these offers. It was one of the many oversights by the Vatican, because even they realized that you couldn’t control human nature.

“I’m here to find sin, child, not to commit it,” he said with a smile and a wink of his own.

This sent the girl, and her friend, into a small fit of laughter. Southern preachers would not dare even entertain to joke about such things, their devotion to God and the Church having taught them to condescend to the human condition, not to embrace it. The human condition was a sin in and of itself, and was something that needed repression, suppression, and brainwashing to defeat. He gave credit where it was due when it came to the Protestant faiths, for the Catholic Church was a badly aging dinosaur full of corrupted old men, but they at least accepted the human condition for what it was.

His eyes now fixed on the man in the dark corner, and the people continued to part for him as he made his way there. Not surprising to him was the man’s eyes being fixed on him as he drew closer. Without pause he stepped in front of the couple playing darts, much to their irritation.

“Hey, asshole, what d’ya think you’re-”

“You’re done playing darts, child. Go get another drink.”

Without so much as a pause, the man with the darts spoke again, “You’re lucky my beer mug is empty, padre! We’ll be back to finish our game, and you better not be here!” He turned to look at his girl, “C’mon, baby, I’m thirsty.”

As the couple stormed off, he hung his coat on the back of the barstool opposite the man in the corner and put down his scotch. The man didn’t say a word, but the priest saw his eyes narrow at the intrusion.

“Trevor Brisby…” began the priest. “You know, son, if you told me that you were drowning, I would not lend you a hand.”

Trevor sat up at the priest’s words, instant ire springing up in his expression. “Well, that’s not a very priest-like thing to say, father. Hell, that’s the furthest thing from a proper greeting in these parts. I’m gonna give you a chance to start again.” The threat was leveled, and the priest was not impressed.

He picked up his glass of scotch and took a pull, basking in the sweet sting of the alcohol travelling down his gullet. He didn’t drink for courage, he drank for calm. “I’ve seen your face before my friend, but I don’t know if you know who I am.”

“No… friend, I certainly don’t. But your tone is about to get yer ass kicked, clergy or not.” Trevor’s bravado was taking over, he wouldn’t allow himself to be rundown verbally by a man of the cloth. He was not a God-fearing man, and there was no way in hell he’d fear God’s minions on Earth.

“You don’t understand, son,” the priest’s tone remaining cold and matter-of-fact. “I was there, and I saw what you did. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

He was six years old, his father had passed out drunk with the sunset. A man had come to pick up his sister, Chloe, who was fifteen. He didn’t know how old the man was, but he certainly didn’t look like a teenager. Chloe had swiped the whiskey bottle and was already half-drunk when the man showed up. He watched as she climbed into his ’71 Chevelle and they tore off down the street. As was common in these parts, the boy knew they were headed to the abandoned train station, and he snuck out and ran there as quickly as he could.

He hid in the bushes just on the outskirts of the property and heard the struggle inside. Something bad was happening to Chloe, but he was only six years old. Suddenly, her screams stopped. The sounds that now reached his ears were ones of pain and delirium. After a few minutes, he heard her tears and whimpers as she tried to struggle more. The man’s gruff voice told her to “be still” and “it’s almost over.”

The train whistle startled him, but he knew it was still a couple of miles away. That’s when the boy saw the man helping his sister to walk out of the station. Her clothes were tattered and torn, her makeup had run down her face, and he could see the beginnings of a black eye where the man had hit her. The train whistle blared again, closer now to the road crossing not too far away. The man continued to help his sister towards the tracks, and the boy was unsure about what he was doing.

The rumble grew louder as the man helped Chloe onto the tracks. There, he trapped her foot beneath the rail and took off towards his car. The boy was petrified, his muscles locked into place behind the bushes. He watched, helpless, as Chloe was there one moment and gone the next, the noise of the passing train flooding his senses.

“Listen here, Judas Priest, I’ve done a lot of things in this life that many people could say to me what you just said,” and a smile of indignation spread across his face. “What makes you think that your experience is anything special?”

He grabbed Trevor’s hand and held it to the table in an iron grip. In an instant, all of the terrible things Trevor had done in his life flooded through his mind. The amount of pain and anguish and sin committed by this man was tragic and deep. The idea that this man was still free and sitting in a bar drinking was incredible, and it proved how capable Trevor was when it came to lying and making excuses. He had to control himself through the grief and horror.

“I know it all, Trevor,” barely audible over the music and filled with vengeance. “So, you can wipe off that grin. I know where you’ve been… it’s all been a pack of lies.”

Trevor’s grin did disappear, but he was yet to show fear. “Whaddya gonna do, father, force me to say my ‘Hail Marys’? Let’s get this over with so we can both forget it.”

“Don’t worry, Trevor,” and now it was the priest’s turn to smile. “How could I ever forget this? This is the first time and the last time we’ll ever meet. But now I know the reason you keep your silence up.”

“You don’t know shit,” Trevor retorted, his words a threat.

“No, you don’t fool me.”

The priest tightened his grip on Trevor’s hand and stood up. He picked up the glass of scotch and drained it in a moment. Then he came around the table, never releasing Trevor’s hand, and pushed the captive elbow to the wall behind them. He could see the mounting pain in Trevor’s grimace, and yet he made no move against the priest to prevent the pain. Reaching into the basket of crackers sitting idly on the table, the priest broke a piec off of one of them and brought it to his forehead. Then he brought it down to his lips, whispered something silently to it, and kissed it, his eyes never opening.

“You see, Trevor, after what I saw you do to my sister, I pushed the entire world away. I withdrew from everything and suffered mental breakdown after mental breakdown. I shuffled through foster homes and schools, and I nearly took my own life on more than one occasion. Then I found the Church, and I found that I had a special ability, one usually reserved for the most special of devout individuals in this world.”

The priest brought the cracker to his lips again and whispered some more. “Now, when I first learned to use this craft, I used it blindly, I used it to make money, and I never truly thought about whether or not the person truly deserved forgiveness. Then I realized that I could make a decision of judgement… Just like God! I found a way to make those that deserved suffering and damnation, but had not yet been subjected to it, to suffer it in the most painful way possible.”

After a pause, the priest placed the piece of cracker to Trevor’s forehead and whispered one last time. In silence, Trevor’s eyes grew as large as plates and his lungs filled with air. He watched as Trevor’s eyes relaxed into a feeling of joy, his soul now clean of all his sins as they flowed into the cracker. Then he removed the cracker and placed it in Trevor’s mouth. Holding Trevor’s mouth shut, the priest watched as all of the sins flowed back into him like a tidal wave. In silence, tears flowed down his face and his skin turned a deep red.

The priest leaned into Trevor’s ear and spoke, “The hurt doesn’t show, but the pain still grows. It’s no stranger to you and me. I am God’s forgiveness and his vengeance, and His wrath is in the air tonight.”