(2005) Wrapped in Rain (32 page)

He reached up with his right hand, grabbed his left wrist tightly, looked me square in the eyes, and nodded. I placed his hand in my lap, pulled out my Swiss Army knife, and extracted the tweezers from the end. His eyes watched my hands but never flinched. I picked up his hand again and said, "You sure?" He nodded without hesitation and watched the tip of the tweezers. The splinter was dug in deep, so I pressed in, grabbed the covering layer of skin, and peeled it back. He winced but forced his right hand to hold his left steady. "You want your mom to do this?" He shook his head and kept looking at his hand. Katie looked at me again over her glasses and smiled.

"Thanks, make me the bad guy."

I dabbed the spot with my shirtsleeve and cleared away the blood. I grabbed the tip of the splinter with the tweezers and tugged, but it was a good-size splinter and didn't budge. I got a better grip on the tweezers, pressed in, and pulled again. It budged but needed one more pull. Jase bit his tongue and strengthened his grip. I loosened the tweezers, got a better hold, and checked his eyes. I pulled. A thorn, about a centimeter in length, slipped out. I held it up to the light. "Oh, that's a good one."

Jase leaned forward. "Let me see." I placed it in his palm and dabbed the spot where the blood had bubbled up.

"We're not finished. You'd better come with me." I led him by the hand and we walked into Miss Ella's house. I turned on the kitchen faucet, warmed the water, and said, "Hold your hand right here." I pulled out the box of Band-Aids from the cabinet above the sink, peeled open a medium-size Band-Aid, dried his hand, and placed it over the small hole. "There. All better."

He held up his badge of courage and turned it over. "Thanks, Unca Tuck."

"Here," I said, sliding two spare Band-Aids in his pocket. "For later." It was something Miss Ella had done for me a hundred times.

He patted his pocket, tore out the door, and headed for his bicycle.

Child, you did that pretty well.

I had a good teacher.

MUTT WANTED TO GET A GOOD SEAT, SO WE PULLED INTO the parking lot of St. Peter's Catholic Church at about a quarter to six. Located on the outskirts of Dothan, the church property covered four city blocks that were dissected by two perpendicular streets and one stoplight. The locals called it "Catholic Corner," which was fitting because if you stood beneath the stoplight, every corner was covered by the church. The grounds were sprawling, and everywhere you looked, the parish had spread farther from the stoplight-this was a working church. The parking lot was more than half-full every day of the week, and many of the homeless shelters and veterans' hospitals in surrounding counties were funded by donations from St. Peter's. On the grounds, they sheltered abused mothers, ran an orphanage, funded a youth baseball association, and a few blocks away, turned a run-down house into a drug rehab center.

At the center of the property sat a large sanctuary that certainly made a statement, but it was not ostentatious. Every time Miss Ella drove by here, she'd tap the steering wheel, lick her lips, and say, "That is a house fit for God!" She'd tap her Bible sitting next to her on the seat and say, "We may not agree on all the theology, but they're reading the words in red and doing them."

It seated a couple thousand, and come Saturday nights, seating was not easy to find. This place drew people from everywhere. The center of the ceiling might have been eighty feet tall, and most of the inside construction, except the pews and altar, was marble, red velvet, or gold flake. The huge silver pipes from the organ covered the entire back wall, and the fans needed to generate the air filled two entire rooms in the basement. Most every Christmas Eve I can remember, Miss Ella drove us around town to see the many houses decorated in lights, and inevitably our route ended with a twenty-minute stop in the parking lot of St. Peter's during the organ concert. She'd sit, hands clasped, eyes closed, head slightly rocking, and smile. "When I get to heaven, I hope it sounds like this."

I parked, slid off my seat, and walked to the back of the truck where Mutt was wondering which side to exit. Judging by the contorted look across his face, the wrinkled look of his suit, the rubber gloves on his hands, the spray bottle hooked in his back pocket, and the roll of paper towels stuffed under his arm, he planned on keeping himself and everybody else clean. According to my count, he had been taking his medication, but doing so seemed to have little effect on the muscles covering his face. Jase had loaded into the truck wearing his boots, hat, and twoholster belt. When he opened the door and began walking toward the church, I whispered, "Hey partner, no guns in church."

He pulled both six-shooters out of the holster and walked back to the truck where I stood holding the door open. He placed them on the seat, patted both handles, and walked back to Katie. Except for the visually odd appearance of Mutt, we walked through the front door like regulars. Jase even took his hat off and handed it to Katie.

The faint smell of incense mixed with freshly cut flowers floated at nose level throughout the inside of the sanctuary. Crosses and candles decorated every nook and cranny, and several saints stood enshrined in small cutouts in the church walls. Stained glass windows climb ing to the roofline; chains hanging from the ceiling supporting several hood-sized chandeliers; white marbled floors; ornate, hand-carved wooden pews-the entire place spoke of reverence and permanence.

Heels shuffled down the hard, cold floors, echoing across the room as parishioners walked down the center aisle, bent their knees, bowed their heads, crossed themselves, and then slid quietly into their seat. Like every church I'd ever been in, no one had assigned seats, but everybody knew where everybody sat. So not wanting to cause a scene, I grabbed Mutt by the coattail and steered him to a pew two-thirds of the way back. He shook his head and pointed down front. We walked, shadowing Mutt, and took our seats nine rows back from the front.

At a few minutes after six, the organist brought the congregation to their feet with a responsive hymn during which the priests and acolytes proceeded in. The first acolyte carried a large wooden cross, a second swung an incense burner, and the priests sang in unison without having to read the verses from their hymnals.

Five verses later, Father Bob, a tall, bald, and tanned man with graying sideburns and broad shoulders, welcomed us. His voice was deep and soothing-the kind that made you think that maybe confession wasn't all that bad, and his smile was genuine. Following his welcome, he crossed both himself and us several times and, I am ashamed to admit, in doing so, reminded me of my third base coach.

Two adjunct priests approached the podium and read from both the Old and New Testaments. They read slowly, with both delight and purpose, the meaning almost palatable. When finished, the congregation rose while Father Bob read the Gospel lesson. The first half he read; the other he recited from memory. Following the Gospel, the congregation knelt and recited the Apostle's Creed. Surprisingly, Mutt knew every word by heart. That completed, they confessed their sins and then prayed for everything from their church to parishioners who were ill or had died to the country's leaders. Jase and Katie knelt on one side of me, while Mutt knelt on the other. All three heads were bowed, hands clasped and eyes shut. I knelt, clutching the back of the pew in front of me, and scanned the congregation to see who else was praying with their eyes open.

Jase tugged on my shirtsleeve and whispered, "Unca Tuck, who is that man with the hat?"

"He's the rector."

"What's that?"

"He's in charge. Kind of like the coach."

"Well, why's he wear that hat?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, buddy."

The lady in front of us looked over her shoulder, put her finger to her lips, and wrinkled her forehead. Jase looked up again. "You think he wears that hat all the time?"

The lady gave us the "Shhh" sign again, so I put my hands to my lips and said, "Probably just in here."

We finished the prayers and sat back, so I picked him up and put him on my lap. After a minute or two, Katie scooted a few inches closer to me and snugged her shoulder next to mine. Due to the stone and marble, the sanctuary was cold, but her shoulder and his back warmed me.

I inched forward, pressed the tip of my nose against the back of Jase's head, and breathed a slow, deep, and silent breath. The feel of his soft hair on my top lip and nose reminded me of Miss Ella's warm, gentle lips on my cheek. When she got older, they grew prickly with fuzz and quivered when she reached up to kiss me. I never shied away from that. Not ever. Prickly or not, I wanted that woman's lips on my face.

When I got too old and too big to spank, which was about thirteen, Miss Ella began painting me with coal. If I lied about my homework, or didn't take the trash out, or didn't make my bed, or didn't do something I knew I should have, Miss Ella would sit me down, pull a piece of coal from her apron, touch it to my tongue, and then wipe it across the entirety of my lips-the consequence of my disobedience. Then she'd touch the tip of my tongue again and draw a large "t" on my forehead. I wasn't allowed to wash for an entire day. School or no school. "Tucker," she'd say as she put the coal back in her apron, "I'm not going to quit saying it simply because you get tired of hearing it. That ash is a reminder that willful defiance must willfully be defied."

"Why?"

"Because it leads to the grave, child. The grave."

I looked in the mirror, pointed to my head, and asked, "Then why the cross?"

"Because, child, you got to die before you can live."

Father Bob stepped to the pulpit, looked at his notes, and then decided he'd rather talk from down front. He closed his notebook, descended the stairs to our level, genuflected, leaned on his cane, and began telling us the story of his four years in the Vatican, how and why he became a priest some thirty-five years ago, and how the work of the church isn't something "reserved for the men in white robes and funny hats; it's something all of us do."

While he preached, which was less of a sermon and more of a conversation, Jase jammed his right index finger two knuckles deep into his left nostril. Thirty seconds later, he extracted his shiny finger and held it up to the light. Not a pretty sight. Then he shook his hand toward the floor, trying to flick it off. Problem was, he missed the floor. It arced off his finger, flipped a few times in the air, and landed square on the back of the lady in front of us. It was big, green, and stuck to her cream-colored coat like a caterpillar crawling across a bedsheet. Katie turned white, her eyes as big around as silver dollars. She grabbed a tissue from her pocket and attempted to pick it off, but that only made matters worse.

Having come to a pause in his story, Father Bob wiped his brow with a white handkerchief and seemed to tremble a bit, but his voice never slowed and he never skipped a beat. I looked at the other priests, and the closest to Father Bob seemed poised to jump if Father Bob fell. Father Bob noticed the consternation painted across the faces of those closest to him and said, "Oh, don't look so worried. Yes, the chemo has made me weak, but it won't kill me." He turned and looked at the cross hanging above the altar. "I don't think He's finished with me just yet." He turned, folded his handkerchief, and spoke to all of us. "My dear brothers are worried that I'm too weak to preach. That this cancer, which the doctors say is eating me up, is winning. That preaching today might further weaken my already crippled immune system and just kill me on the spot." He smiled, looked at them, then back at us, and finally at the cross. "But my, my, my! What a way to go."

The congregation laughed, and the other priests sat back in their chairs and relaxed. Mutt was sitting erect, face forward, hands gripping the pew in front of him. He too was poised to spring.

"Which brings me to my conclusion." Father Bob smiled and walked in between the first two pews and then pointed back to the cross above the altar with his cane. "Many times in our lives, we act like He's still dead. But sev eral times today, we've testified that He's not. So which is it? Why say one thing with your mouth and yet live another with your life? If He's alive, act like it. He either is or He isn't. You can't be half-alive."

He paused for a moment and gathered himself. "I have been to Jerusalem, walked the garden of Gethsemane, the Temple Mount, even walked into the tomb where most scholars think our Lord was buried. Now, I'm not saying that particular place was His tomb-or that it wasn't. I don't know. It's really not important. But I do know this." Father Bob paused, and Mutt moved farther forward on his seat, his hands trembling. "He wasn't there." He smiled and stared out the stained glass high above him. "That rock casket made an impression on me. Why?" He paused and then whispered, "Because, like Him, I walked out."

He let his words echo off the back wall. When they had finished, he asked, "How is that?" He took a step between the pews and pointed his cane at all of us. "The stone had been rolled away." He leaned on his cane again, and his eyes scanned the rafters. As if speaking to the ceiling, he said, "That fact alone demands a response from us." His eyes leveled and focused on the packed pews where few backs rested against them. "We can either crown Him with thorns, spit in His face, pierce His side with a spear"-Father Bob sliced the air with his cane-"and decry Him the Lord of lies, or"-Father Bob turned to the altar and limped forward-"we can run with reckless abandon to the foot of that same tree"-Father Bob knelt heavily-"fall on our knees"-he bowed his head and whispered-"and call Him Lord of all."

Moments passed while Father Bob buried his head in his hands.

Finally, he whispered as if to himself, `Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Another moment. "But He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed." Father Bob's shoulders rose and fell, his head pressed hard into his hands. "And upon Him was laid the iniquity of us all." He stood and turned to face us, leaning more heavily now, his cane bowing slightly in the middle and a tear cascading off his cheek. He waved his hand across the altar. "Which will it be?"