Alter Boys (9 page)

“Leave it!  Just go!” Gus flamed.  Daddy leaned the neck of the shovel against the bed and turned back to the boy.

14

Tears were unaccustomed to Corky.  His sedate life of TV, sleep and more TV left little opportunity for tears of any form or fashion.  He very well could have been just another piece of furniture or spool of thread among his family’s possessions.  He held a place of importance that was below that of lunch buckets and coffee pots.  He was a thing, an object, a tolerance at best.  That which is benign is not entitled to experiencing human
emotion.  And any practice with tears cried in the past had gone unresolved.  No soothing, no cuddling.  When he was done crying (for whatever the reason) he was just plain done. 

But this was no ordinary crying, and the time when it would be done would also go unresolved.

Linoleum in the winter is the last place a half naked boy would want to paste his body.  Unless that half-naked boy has just been savagely raped by a priest.  The cold hard surface gave Corky a sense of reality when every other part of his mind and body was dealing with trauma.  He lay on his side, knees drawn up and elbows together, only the absence of a thumb in his mouth left the classic fetal position incomplete.  But there was no opportunity for thumb sucking.  Long piercing howls and whoops driven by his diaphragm screamed past his voice box, and barely noticed his mouth.  The screams seemed to emanate from his entire head. 

On the floor, three independent pools; tears, snot and drool overcame the laws of cohesion and created a puddled confluence of liquid agony.

He had heard daddy shout.  Had felt the priest release him.  Had somehow ended up on the floor where he could hide.  Hide from the thing that had happened.  The things that were now happening.  The things that would happen. 

Daddy was reaching for him.  Not in a loving comforting embrace, but in standard parental duty.  He was placed on his feet and his pants were pulled up.  And then daddy was threading his arms into his coat and turning him in the direction of the door.  Certain that he was now being ushered off to another form of punishment for whatever it was that he did, Corky lifted his cries to an even higher crescendo.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this!  It was part declaration and part desperate plea.  “No one will believe you!  Make a statement against a pri—the church!  Make a statement
against the church and you’ll be excommunicated!  It didn’t fit but it was all that the grasping father could think of.  The Freudian slip would haunt him unnecessarily for weeks.  “Mind you, not one person will believe you, not a single parishioner, not the church council, not even the police!”  Now
that
was stupid.  The
boy’s
cretin dad had probably not even thought about going to the police or even the church council for that matter and glib Gus had spoon-fed the concept to him like honey on a dipper.    

The man herding his young boy to the hallway said nothing.  For Gus it was pure torment.  His silent departure meant that he was saving his story for the authorities, or did it mean that he had indeed heard the warnings not to talk and was being compliant.  Or was he just plain stupid, gutless, inept, dumb deaf and blind.  God damn it all to hell!  Why?  Why?  Why!  It would have been better if they had fought it out, exchanged blows, wrecked the rectory!  Ha!  Headline:  Crazy man attacks priest.  But no, nothing!  Not one fucking word after being caught in the act.

Why?  Why?!  Why the fuck was I so careless!  Sure, bang a preschooler while his moron father is right outside.  Why didn’t I lock the fucking door?  Dumb bastard, doesn’t he know how to knock?  He latched onto the notion and in desperation shouted after the man:  “You didn’t even knock!  That’s trespassing!  You make any trouble and I’ll give you trouble right back!”  And with that he heard the front door of the rectory pulled shut.  He was again alone.   

Gus slumped.  His mind scanned for answers and found none.  Likewise his eyes scanned the room, furtively looking for – for what?  Distraction?  Consolation?  Affirmation?  Again he found none.  The room (unlike Gus) was all in order; save for the footstool and the dripping snow shovel.  Rage boiled inside him.  He savagely booted the shovel away.  It flew across the room and clanged into his mahogany desk leaving an accusatory 4 inch gash along the side. 
Crystal
bottles of ointment and oil chattered nervously while half a dozen figurine saints tumbled face-forward like fallen angels.

“Shit and Shinola!  Fuck me up the ass with a red hot poker!”

Gus had to get a grip. 

Chapter 3

1

Dust, gravel and a scrim of oil layered the passenger side floorboard.  That, and a small boy.  After being led wordlessly into the car, Corky had instinctively crawled into the lowest, darkest, most confining crevice available.  Daddy didn’t correct him, perhaps didn’t even notice.  If others had been around they may have mistaken the boy for an amateur participant in a game of hide and seek.  Crouched on all fours, hands over his ears, face planted into the crook of his elbows, knees locked against his chest, there was a childish charm to his attempt to be hidden.  All you needed was another player counting to ten and the game would be on.

But this was no game as there wasn’t a predicate member of the phrase ‘hide and seek.’  There was just a boy on the floorboard.  Besides, there were those pathetic guttural sobs.  Nope.  No kids at play.  Just one boy.  A boy who had done something terribly, terribly wrong and who was gonna have the devil delivered to him when he got home.

Once the car was running and out into traffic, which is an overstatement as they were the only thing on the road, Corky flattened his face to the floorboard.  The thrumming of the undercarriage sang to him like a mechanical lullaby.   Albeit soothing, the vibration soon crafted a dual image of spinning gears, sharp metal rods,
and rusty
springs – all toys of torture as wielded by the devil.  He repelled from the vibrating motion – embraced it – and repelled from it again.  His mind swirled in a futile search for sanctuary. 

He could have stopped crying at any time.  But the wailings spasmed and oscillated.  One moment – relief; away from the once-revered, now-evil monster.  The next moment – anguish, anticipating the punishment that awaited him.  Now - freed from the rod that had brutally reamed his butt.  Then – a flare up of pulsing and what’s this? – blood seeping from his hole.  It was easier just to cry.      

As the car navigated the streets, he bounced around the floorboard in response to each turn and change in acceleration.  Doorframe – axle well – seat front – firewall.  Bang – bang – bang – bang.  And daddy did nothing to mitigate the severity.

Of course it would have done Corky well to look up and to his left.  An up-close view of daddy’s big feet stomping on the pedals and his hands working the gear shift and the wheel would have saved him more to cry about.  Seeing the mechanisms at work could have braced him from the forces of inertia.   But no, he could not look.  This was his punishment.  It was supposed to be this way.

When the car finally stopped, it was not relief that Corky felt, but yet a new threshold of panic.  Where was he?  Was it someplace where another monster would brutalize him?  Were they back at the church!  We’re they stopping so daddy could dump him out to be left in the cold?  These and a thousand other thoughts filled his mind.  But when he did dare to look up, they were the one place he hadn’t thought of.  They were home.

And somehow, that seemed even worse.

“Was the snow heavy on …the resurrection of the body… I baked kolaches…suffered under Pontius Pilate… Oh!  The coffee!  I’ll start…”

As keenly aware as she was of their arrival, Mommy was as equally oblivious to the demeanor of her two other family members at the front door.  Daddy’s expression was as blank as a refrigerator door.  Corky was just a tad more animated.  He was
screaming like a banshee that had been buggered with a broomstick.  It mattered not.  There was coffee to be perked and saints to be petitioned.

As tough as things were going for Corky, it was daddy who had the real dilemma.  How could he explain what had happened?  He wasn’t even sure what had happened or if he could even believe it for that matter.  The priest had said not to tell anyone about this.  And as a man who took orders, did what he was told and master of a vocabulary insufficient of repeating a knock-knock joke, the concept of keeping his mouth zipped was appealing.

Plus there was the pressing question of God, church and priest.  Speaking against the priest would be blasphemy.  And if he did, how could he then atone for his sin in the confessional – muttering his words of contrition to the very man he had transgressed. 

But the boy was screaming.  And that would bring questions.  Maybe not now, but if it kept up, maybe a few hours from now.  If he could get the kid to shut up it would buy him some time to think things over and maybe even forget the entire thing had happened.           

Neither man nor boy had moved after the door was closed behind them.  Daddy looked down at his son and tried to decide what he should do.  He was absolutely, utterly clueless.

The traditional methods of soothing a crying child (holding, rocking, humming, singing) had been forgone on daddy when he was young and thus were a skill set that he had never used on his own offspring.  But boldly (and to his credit) he tried it just the same.  First a word:  “Quiet.”  Again, to his credit, he waited for a reaction but none came.  He searched for and came up with a new word:  “Stop.”  Again a pause for effect but no response.

From the kitchen:  “Did you say someth…the communion of saints…there’s cream in… the life everlasting.”

It was yet another moment in his life where daddy’s mouth had betrayed him.  Almost.  He scrapped his original plan to quiet the boy with words and embarked on a new plan:  A plan to muffle him with walls. 

Taking the scruff of the boys coat sleeve he led him off to the bathroom, popped the plug into the drain and began filling the tub with water.  Immediately it was better, the sound of the running water diffused the cries of the boy. 

But corky did not undress.  He knew not that this bath was for him.  His father had NEVER prepared a bath for him, so he assumed that it was daddy who was taking a bath and he was here merely as an observer.  He laid on the floor, still fully hatted, gloved and zipped from his recent journey outdoors.  There was a whole lot of crying to attend to and a haunted cathedral of images in his brain would keep him occupied just fine while daddy splashed in the tub.

Clumsily, daddy righted the boy, undressed him methodically, and placed him in the water.  It was only by the grace of God that Corky did not have a scalding added to his current bag of woes.  By complete chance daddy had hit the mark just right balancing the flow from the hot and cold water taps.  But then again, a good scalding is a perfectly legitimate explanation for a screaming child – but daddy didn’t think of that.  And corky continued his screaming without the benefit of being boiled alive.

Then a very strange thing happened.  Daddy picked up the scattered clothes, stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door.  Corky had never seen the bathroom door closed from either side, inside or out.  It was yet another bizarre entry to tonight’s bizarre chain of events.