Hell on Church Street Read online

  “That’s the family wall,” she said.

  I turned and she stood at the entrance to a long hallway. She was wearing a plain blue t-shirt and shorts.

  “Yeah,” I said calmly. I pointed at the family picture in the middle. “Is this your brother?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Gabe. He’s twenty-seven.”

  “Hmm. Where’s he at?”

  She seemed bored by the question and flopped down on the stuffed chair next to the couch. “He’s in grad school in Illinois.” Hands in her lap, knees close together, she stared at the television.

  I sat down in the easy chair next to her. My hands were moist and my scalp itched. “Do you like football?” I asked.

  Wrinkling her soft brow she said, “Not really, but it’s the only television in the house. My father likes to watch it.”

  Being an astute observer of people, I noted that the term my father (as opposed to Dad) was a distant one. It was a title, not a name. It didn’t have to mean anything, but it was something to tuck away.

  “But not you,” I said.

  “I like basketball,” she said and smiled, and something in how she said it told me she was in love with a basketball player.

  “Basketball’s cool,” I said.

  “Did you play sports?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I have the physical prowess of a hippopotamus.”

  She laughed—a sweet, involuntary little giggle. I was pleased she didn’t seem to take my sarcasm as a fat joke.

  Sister Card came into the room. She was still holding that goddamn butcher knife.

  “What’s the joke?” she asked with a smile plastered on her face.

  Could she see through me?

  “Nothing,” her daughter said. She didn’t sulk when she said it, but the warmth went out of her.

  “Well, why don’t you help me finish dinner, Angela?” Sister Card said.

  The girl shot me a look, and I had to walk a very thin wire in returning it. I couldn’t roll my eyes—that would be too much—but I gave her a little grin that could be interpreted by her mother as See you later, kid. Do what your mother says, but could also be read by the girl as I think she’s stupid, too.

  It worked, and she grinned back and passed Brother Card on her way out of the room. He and I shook hands.

  He wore slacks and a short-sleeve button-up dress shirt and looked like he’d just come from the church. “Sorry to be so long,” he said. “I was on the phone with Mrs. Dyess.”

  I won’t bore you with his inane conversation over the next fifteen minutes, but much of it surrounded this Mrs. Dyess, an old widow in the church who was fighting off a terminal case of cancer. I acted interested (no, I acted concerned, moved even), quoted scriptures and promised to pray for her. Card, satisfied, finally sat back in the chair and stared at the television.

  “Your daughter told me she doesn’t like football,” I said.

  “Did she?” He watched the quarterback lick his fingers.

  “Said she was more of a basketball fan.”

  He turned slowly and looked at me and then glanced back at the kitchen doorway. We could hear running water and the beeping of a microwave. Leaning in he said, “It’s this boy at school. He’s on the basketball team.” He shook his head. “Brother, you don’t know what worry is until you have a child, until you have a girl. My boy, Gabe, he’s always been fine. Good grades, kept his head about girls, and now he’s off in school studying to be a periodontist. I’m sure he’s lived it up a little, but he always stayed in church, always stayed close to the Lord.” He hung his head. “But Angela…”

  “You’ve had problems?”

  He jerked his head toward the kitchen and stood up. I followed him and we walked through the kitchen—where Sister Card was pulling a tinfoil-covered dish from the oven and Angela was sitting at the island twirling salad tongs on her index finger—and Sister Card gave us a five minute deadline for dinner. Angela watched me as I followed her father through a door and into the backyard. The air was bitter, but Brother Card didn’t mind. I stuck my hands in my pockets.

  “She’s never had quite the same head on her shoulders that Gabe has,” Brother Card said. He hooked his thumbs on the empty belt loops on his slacks and whistled. “I don’t know. You pray for them, you raise them in the ways of the Lord, but at the end of the day they have to decide on their own.”

  “What is it about this boy on the basketball team that you disapprove of?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath. “He’s Catholic.” Shaking his head, he said, “I talked to her. I sat Angela down in my office at the church, just like I would anyone else, and I said, ‘Do you believe that Mary was some sort of goddess?’ And she said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Do you see anywhere in the Bible where it says we should pray to statues?’ And she said, ‘No.’ ‘Well, do you think we should commit ourselves to people who do?’ And again, she says, ‘No.’ So I explained that dating was a big thing and that we shouldn’t date the unsaved because the Lord told us not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.”

  “What’d she say?”

  He shook his head and kicked a rock. “Oh, she tried to tell me that Catholics weren’t idolaters, weren’t drunks, weren’t worshippers of that pagan in Rome.” Abruptly, he looked at me, so nakedly seeking affirmation that I wanted to laugh in his face. The second fundamental truth of this life is this: we only really trust people who share our prejudices.

  “Catholics are the world’s biggest cult,” I said.

  He nodded vigorously. It was freezing, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I agree,” he said. “And it’s not bigoted to say it, is it?”

  “Absolutely not. We’re supposed to proclaim the truth.”

  His entire body moved in approval, head nodding, hands rubbing together, feet moving closer to me. “Exactly. I told her that, too. The truth is Jesus and nothing else. No Pope, no priest, no statue of Peter. There’s only Jesus and once you pass him by—or once you try to add things to him or take things away from him—then there’s a short drop off into nothingness.”

  I was shivering, but he was oblivious to it. You greedy fuck, I thought. You don’t even notice hypothermia overtaking me. Staring at me and talking about your daughter and your desire to protect her from fucking Catholics. Are you crazy? Are you really so stupid?

  He kept raving about Catholics, stopping every so often to assure me he didn’t hate them, and the entire time I was freezing to death, my fingers and nose starting to burn with coldness.

  Finally, my savior opened the door. She leaned out of that warm kitchen and said, “Hey, you two Eskimos. Dinner’s ready.”

  Her father gave her a little smile. “Thanks, sweetie.”

  She closed the door, and Brother Card’s smile turned truly sad for the first time. “Of course,” he said, “the worst part is, this boy completely rejects her. Thinks she’s fat.”

  Dinner was instructive. Sister Card made some kind of meaty casserole and served it with vegetables and garlic bread. Brother Card talked about the local football team and people in the church. I held up my end of the conversation, going on about youth groups and youth rallies and the need for a better national outreach program for the youth—youth, youth, youth. Angela interjected occasionally but mostly she seemed distracted, thinking, I suppose, about her Catholic basketball player.

  Sister Card barely spoke and I sensed this was unusual. She didn’t openly challenge me on any point, but her entire bearing toward me was distant. She rarely looked at me, and when she did, she stared. “Really?” she would say. Or, “Is that so?” These tiny retorts had the smallest hint of acid in them. When it came time for me to leave, she looked absolutely unburdened. She didn’t say anything, of course, but I knew I had flunked some kind of test with her. She was one of those people you could offend and never know how you did it.

  “Bye now,” was all Angela said before she turned and headed off to her room. I watched her go, her young body full of life and ene
rgy. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a quality. She needed to lose weight, fifty or sixty pounds, maybe more, but she was still healthy and young and, in her way, pretty. My body leapt alive when she said, Bye now, turning, her hair slapping her shoulders. I wanted her, wanted to conquer her, wanted that healthy youthfulness for myself and no one else.

  She turned and the moment exploded. Her body underneath her clothes, her hair, her voice—Bye now—her complete dismissal of me. I knew she wasn’t thinking of me as she turned to leave. She was seventeen, in love with some fool at school, some boy, and I was her geeky youth minister. I worked for her father. I was his friend. But she liked me, and she didn’t like him very much right now. She trusted me already and could come to trust me more until one day she trusted me more than anyone else.

  She turned (and turned and turned) and I wanted to turn with her, to follow her down the hall, into her room, into her private world, into her soul.

  Or is that something I’m just telling you to make myself look better?

  My whole life has been a long, tangled series of lies designed to make me look better than I am. Maybe I loved her and wanted to spend forever with her. Maybe I just wanted to follow her into that room and rip off her clothes and throw her on the bed. Maybe her body—imperfect as it was—was all I wanted, after all. I really don’t know anymore. These things are a jumble to me now. I can drudge up a mix of truths and lies from the past, but the original distinction between truth and lie has long since disappeared. Worse still are my attempts to remember how I felt. I am sure I felt love. And surely at some time I have operated philanthropically.

  But that’s not what I remember. What I remember is the hunger. Maybe I just wanted that moment on top of her. No matter how good I am at articulating the opposite, maybe that moment is all there is for someone like me.

  Chapter Five

  I needed a plan. My life thus far had been run without any large plan. It had progressed, stage by stage, in small steps, each designed to secure some small measure of comfort from the harshness and horrors of this world. The ministry was an easy job. I was around nice people—or let’s say “nice” people—all the time. I gave them want they wanted, and they took surprisingly little in return. But now I had something I wanted.

  So I needed a plan. The first thing was to steal Angela away from this kid she was infatuated with. Of course, that would be easy enough because he’d already rejected her. But I already had a lot of experience at watching people, and I suspected that she had that masochistic kind of love for him that compels you to love the more you’re rejected. I got my first chance to observe them interacting a few weeks later when he arrived at church one Wednesday night.

  We were holding services in the Fellowship Hall at the end of the church’s classrooms. The kids milled around talking and drinking colas and munching on potato chips while their parents stood around the snack tables and did the same.

  I stood at the podium at the front of a large group of chairs and looked over my notes for the night’s lesson. It was the same sermon with a different spin. I was going to talk about why kids shouldn’t drink, citing all the biblical warnings against drunkenness and so forth. What I was really doing, and what I was really always doing, was watching Angela. She was standing against the wall with her two friends. One was a fat, black girl with skin the color of chocolate pudding, and the other was fat, white and pimply, with skin like Tapioca pudding. I think Angela kept the pudding sisters around to make herself look better. When the boy strolled in, oblivious to them, they all smiled like fools.

  His name was Oscar—a stupid name for an eighteen year old. He was a tall, muscular boy with dark hair flapping over his ears and a tanned complexion that accentuated his caramel-colored eyes. With his confident jock stride and a big, easy smile, it was easy to understand what my love must have seen in him. He was the type that impressionable, insecure girls worship. I’d seen it a thousand times. They love these guys for their assurance, for their ease with the world. It’s more hero-worship than love.

  He came in with a kid named T.J., a Baptist version of Oscar. The boys drifted over to some popular girls and began talking. Angela watched Oscar as if beams of light were shooting out of his fingertips.

  I walked over to him.

  “Hi,” I said, extending my hand. I told him who I was and said I didn’t believe we’d met.

  “Oscar,” he said, pumping my hand. He had a strong handshake, and I gave it back to him as best I could.

  “Great to meet you,” I said. There was nothing odd about it. I was just the friendly youth minister. “You came with T.J. here.”

  “Yeah,” T.J. said. He shifted on his feet, and the girls looked at each other. They all seemed to want me to leave.

  “They play basketball together,” their PR person—a petite redheaded girl—told me. Leaning against the wall, Angela crossed her arms over her stomach and chewed her bottom lip.

  “Do you go to church anywhere?” I asked Oscar.

  Again the stupid grin and big alabaster teeth. “Yeah,” he said. “Over at St. Mary Magdalene.”

  I smiled. How nice. “Well, it’s great to have you here.” I made my exit and retreated to the other side of the room. Angela watched him some more as the pudding sisters whispered in each other’s ears and giggled. When it wasn’t obvious, I snuck out and went down the hall.

  Brother Card was in his office. He stayed in there a lot. I’m not sure what he did. When I was in my office, which wasn’t often, I didn’t do anything but sleep.

  “Howdy,” he said. “How goes it?”

  “Very well,” I said. “Looks like we have a good turnout tonight.”

  “Good.”

  I needed to ease into this. “Lot of new kids,” I said. “You know, I think the best ministers for the Lord are our youth themselves. No one can reach a kid like another kid.”

  He propped his elbows up on the desk and rested his chin on his knuckles. “Absolutely. I’ve always thought that. I think the Lord is using you as a real motivator in that department, too.”

  And on and on. We always talked like that, Brother Card and I, giving each other imbecilic little lectures on what God was doing, constantly defining and redefining the Good Lord’s “actions” and “will.” If God exists, then I think he only invented mankind so someone would know he exists. Well, that and he needed a show to watch. If not for the stupid, petty little antics of humanity, what would he be doing with eternity?

  Anyway, Brother Card and I rattled on for a few moments before I threw out the hook.

  “T.J. brought a kid tonight. Nice kid.”

  He bit. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Another basketball player, goes to St. Mary’s.”

  The hook set, and Brother Card looked like a fish suddenly realizing that his easy meal is yanking him out of the water.

  He just stared at me, and I stared back, faking the dawning of a realization and said, “Is it that boy…”

  “Oscar.”

  “Oscar, right. I think that’s his name. Oh well, it’s good that he’s here, I suppose.”

  Card leaned back in his chair and chewed on a knuckle. “Yes. Of course. But I wonder…”

  It’s always funny to watch someone—especially someone as transparent as Brother Card—pulled between what they feel and what they should feel. He wanted to run downstairs and kick Oscar’s papist-loving ass out the door, but he knew he shouldn’t. Maybe Oscar would come to know Jesus—the real, Baptist Jesus. There was always hope and prayer.

  But I wasn’t about to let hope and prayer get in my way.

  “You know I didn’t make the connection,” I said. “I’m pretty dense sometimes. But now that you mention it, they were together, Angela and Oscar.”

  “Together?”

  “Flirting and laughing. Strictly above board, of course. They seemed to be enjoying a private joke.”

  “Joke?”

  “Like he was here only to see her and they didn’t think any
one would notice. I can see it now that you mention it.”

  He was genuinely perplexed now. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “But I thought he didn’t like her.”

  “Oh, he likes her,” I said. “Still, he seems like a decent boy to me.”

  “His decency isn’t at question here,” Card spat back. I looked chastened and ready for enlightenment. He gave it. “What’s at question is his susceptibility to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, a susceptibility he’s unlikely to have gotten at an altar of the Virgin Mary.”

  “Very true,” I said, shaking my head as if I thought it was the most profound thing ever said and I was disappointed I hadn’t thought of it myself. “Very true.”

  Card said, “You bet it is.” Only a man who made his living being meek could have accepted my ass-kissing so causally.

  “What should we do?” I asked.

  “Nothing for now, of course. I’ll talk to her tonight.” His face was tight with worry, the worry of a man with an unattractive daughter. All fathers fear that boys are predators, but the father of an unattractive daughter lives in terror of his daughter’s own low self-esteem.

  I looked at my watch and said I’d better be getting down the hall but, “Maybe it would be best if you don’t mention that I was the one who spilled the beans. For the sake of my ministry with your daughter. She might very well hold it against me and I’m afraid that…”

  “You’re right,” he said. “She needs to feel she can come to you about this or anything else.”

  I nodded. “Exactly. I’m sorry to have been the one to bring this to your attention.”