Three Hail Mary's

If walls could talk.

They built the church in ’73, the confessional booth was added early the next year.

If walls could talk.

The first words I heard upon my construction, ‘Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.’

If walls could talk.

There are things we wouldn’t say. There are secrets we would keep.

*****

‘Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It has been twenty years since my last confession.’

In the confessional booth the light strikes their faces through a small pane of coloured glass. I sit between them. Hearing their apologies ricochet.

‘Confess, my child. You are safe here.’ Father Thomas’ voice came back, cracking and broken. He was getting older, and his stout body filled the booth. For fifty years he’d been the priest at St. Nicholas’ guarding over his congregation, listening in this confessional booth. He was an old man, now, and his congregation had dwindled. He had forgotten the man across from him, separated by myself, but I remembered well.

‘I have done so much wrong.’

‘Confess, child. The only judge is God, and God is forgiving.’

*****

When he had first come to confess, he’d been twelve.

I remembered his wavering voice as he explained his sins. Minor infractions. Small bouts of fighting and some cruelty to other children. There was one child he was bullying quite badly. Three Hail Mary’s and that’d be all, I thought. Until Thomas asked the question.

‘Is there anything else?’

Then I could hear it. The laboured breathing, the unsteadiness of it. There was something he was holding back.

‘Yes.’ His voice squeaked.

‘What is it? You can speak freely here, child.’

Still, the breathing was heavy and uneven. His small body moving up and down with each one like waves splashing around the booth.

‘I played with it.’

‘With what?’

‘The neighbour’s cat. After it was dead.’

I listened closely. It wasn’t all.

‘Did you find the cat dead?’

Now he stopped moving. His breath was imperceptible in the stale air.

‘No.’

Father Thomas’ head fell into his hands. His temple flickered with the movement of a muscle as he thought.

‘Three Hail Mary’s and I urge you to tell your neighbours what happened to the cat.’

There was no sound for a long while. A small, pre-pubescent voice broke the silence.

‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’

*****

It was three years before he came back again.

In the booth his voice did not shake but held strong as he spoke.

‘What is it, my son?’

‘I stole my father’s car.’

‘Three Hail Mary’s and I urge you-‘

‘I’m not done.’ His voice cut across Father Thomas’ coolly. ‘I stole my father’s car and got into an accident with it.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘A girl.’

Thomas paused, his eye peering through the gap in myself, the wall that lay between them.

‘What happened to the girl?’

Now I could hear the nervousness return to his voice. When he spoke it trembled, not remorsefully, but with something like fear.

‘She lay in the road for a while. She was very still, but I could see she was breathing. I backed the car up. After a few times I was sure she was dead. I buried the body.’

Father Thomas’ eye was wide in the gap. His own breathing was ragged.

‘Who knows?’

‘No one.’

The priest cracked his knee against the wall in his shock. Rubbing it and wincing with pain he said:

‘Make sure it stays that way.’

Again, there was a long silence. The door to the booth opened and Father Thomas was left alone.

*****

They sat in the shadowed booth. It was a while before the man spoke.

‘Is God vengeful?’

The priest sat silently.

‘Are you a God-fearing man, Father?’ the man said.

Again, Father Thomas took his time to speak. He turned slowly and looked through the gap.

‘You came back.’ Not a question, more of a statement. The old voice lacked emotion and somehow that indicated some kind of cold reprimanding. ‘It’s been a long time.’

The man held his hand in his pocket. The tendons running up the arm flexing and relaxing over and over and over.

‘How long did you stick around after that incident with my car?’ The Father spoke again. ‘A year, eighteen months? What’ve you been doing all this time?’

‘That’s what I came to confess.’ The man spoke softly.

‘What’ve you done. Son?’

Silence. The priest spoke again.

‘More accidents?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

The old man sighed. He put his head down into his hands again. This time they were wrinkled and he struggled to rise back up as easily as he once had.

‘I tried to protect you.’

‘I wasn’t the one who needed protecting.’

‘I see that, now.’

The door opened and closed with a dull sound. Then the priest’s side opened, and the man stood looking at his father, the years piled across his brow in thick worry lines. His tendon tensed as the hand clutched at the knife in his pocket. The old man looked up at him, his eyes watery and bloodshot like a tired bloodhound. Legs not what they used to be, nothing quite what it used to be.

‘God is vengeful.’ The old man said, his eyes meeting his son’s. ‘You are my penance.’

The tendon strengthened. A slash of light tore between the two of them. Blood splattered up the wall dividing the two confessional booths, as the sound of feet running echoed between the empty pews. A candle flickering solemnly in the corner.

The ragged breaths of the priest struggled through his ruptured throat. On the cold floor his blood spilled, red like the communion wine.

With his last dying breaths he spoke.

‘Hail Mary, full of grace…’

*****

‘Christ,’ said the officer, popping his head into the confessional booth to get a better look. ‘What’s the motivation here? Too many Hail Mary’s?’

If walls could talk, I might’ve explained.

If walls could talk, I might’ve named the perpetrator.

If walls could talk, I might’ve said yes. Only yes, and left it at that. At least something more would’ve been said.

Instead, it was a day later that the new priest arrived and attended to his first confession. A middle-aged man with his hands in his pockets. Tendons tensing, tensing, tensing. And the words crooked on his forked tongue.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’