Parishioner
A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, DECEMBER 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Thing Itself, Inc.
Excerpt from
Little Green
copyright © 2013 by Thing Itself, Inc
.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Little Green
by Walter Mosley. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at the Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-0-345-80444-0
v3.1
There is a stone chapel on the outskirts of Seabreeze City, a small town that is situated between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. This church has no denomination and is not recognized as a religious institution by any but the ninety-six members of the congregation—them, Father Frank, and his personal staff. The church is made from limestone and stands like a white scar on a green hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The weather is mostly fair and still, as if Time had paused there to appreciate a perfect moment of rest.
This nameless house of worship comprises a large room with long, plain, sun-filled windows and eight rows of simple hardwood benches separated by a slender aisle.
That Sunday, Father Frank, wearing all black as usual, stood before ninety-three souls of the ninety-six parishioners. There was no pulpit or even a podium from which his sermon was given, just a round circle of light-colored stones.
“My words here this Sunday morning are a miracle,” the tall, willowy white man said. “You, hearing these words and making some kind of sense from them, are a roomful of miracles. The spider that is dying in a crevice far above our heads is the same as my words and your understanding. Existence itself is mind-blowing, inscrutable, and, in the end, beyond our ability to comprehend. That’s what a miracle is—something beyond comprehension.…”
With his hands clenched together and his eyes tightly shut, Xavier Rule lowered his head even further, allowing the words, as much as possible, to become his mind.
“… We have no choice but to exist as miracles among the uncountable wonders of creation, our brothers, ourselves. Every breath and vision, love and fear, and yes, every sin we commit is something extraordinary.”
Upon hearing this pronouncement Rule released his prayer grip and raised his head to look at Frank. The minister’s hair was stark white and coarse. This mane stood up and to the side like a crop of sun-bleached, windblown hay.
Frank had also shifted his attention. He was looking toward the back of the chapel.
Xavier turned around to see a young-seeming caramel-colored woman in a satiny blue dress with a white, dovelike hat perched at the side of her head. The hem of the dress came down to her ankles, hugging her generous form. Her lips were red and her eyes hopeful.
“We are all sinners here,” Father Frank intoned, bringing Xavier’s attention back to him. “All of us. We have dragged ourselves from every gutter, back alley, and addiction this world
has to offer.”
“Amen!” someone, probably Yin Li, affirmed.
“Many of you,” Father Frank said, “have broken each and every one of the Ten Commandments, and you’ve done more than that. You have been, and I have been, the enemy of the potential of creation. We were the slag after divine creation, the maggots on the flesh of slaughtered innocents. But even our sins, our wayward steps, are part of a greater plan. Each of you has found your way to this sanctuary. And here, inside the shelter of pure faith, you have discovered the hope for forgiveness.
“Man cannot judge you. Woman cannot judge you. Even the victims of your crimes cannot, in the end, demand retribution. Our evil is ours alone to bear.…”
The feeling of tears welled up in Xavier Rule’s eyes, and once more he was amazed by the power Father Frank held over him.
“… Do not believe,” Frank continued, “that even you can demand payment for your crimes, that even you can understand what marvels might arise from your actions. Among you there are prostitutes, assassins, gangsters, and worse, much worse.…” Frank bowed his pale mane for a moment, quivered, and then looked up again. “But no matter the evil, no matter the disease that festers in our mortal bodies, we must press onward toward the light. None of us can wallow in self-pity, because the greatest sin is giving up.”
“Preach,” Lana Antonio proclaimed.
Frank gazed around the room with empathy. Xavier wondered, not for the first time, at the preacher’s power to move and hold that room of lost souls. He glanced toward the back and saw that the caramel-colored woman had taken a seat in the last row, to the right.
“We have a guest today,” Father Frank said, also looking at the visitor. “We will call her Miss Jones.”
“Welcome, Miss Jones,” ninety-three voices said.
Among the speakers there was represented almost every race and all the continents: men and women who had, against impossible odds, escaped their destinies and sloughed off their disgraces to look inward and out through Frank’s eyes.
“We will break up into our prearranged groups and go down to the cells to perform the Expressions,” Frank said. “After that, supper will be served in the yard.”
Frank turned from the congregation and passed through a doorless doorway behind the
Speaker’s Circle.
Xavier grimaced and took the lavender-colored envelope from his pocket.
On Saturday afternoons the members of the congregation called in to a special number to say whether or not they were coming to service. Once Frank got this information he wrote a note card telling each member which cell to report to and what subject he thought he or she might like to broach. Thrice a year Frank met individually with members of the no-name church, discussing in blunt terms the nature of their sins and hopes for their deliverance.
At their first meeting Xavier had told the self-ordained minister about crimes committed from Harlem to East New York.
“I have beaten, raped, and murdered my brothers and sisters,” he said when he and Frank were introduced at a Skid Row dive in downtown Los Angeles. “When I was fourteen I mutilated a girl for laughing at me.”
He didn’t know why he confessed like that. A woman named Pinky had introduced them. Pinky was dark skinned, not dark chocolate like Xavier, but deep brown like cured mahogany.
“I want you to meet a friend’a mines,” she said after a night of cheap wine and debauchery.
Xavier had already considered killing Pinky, because he didn’t remember what he’d said the night before. And then he met the white-haired white man and his life changed course as if by some preordained plan.
The note cards would have a number between one and sixteen and a short sentence or two. These suggestions were often odd, sometimes on the head, and usually revealing.
What did you use to wash the blood from your hands after beating someone?
was once suggested.
How did you heal the cuts and bruises on your knuckles?
What is the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?
a line one day read.
Have you ever forgiven a sin against you?
List the first names of the people you’ve killed or tried to kill
.
Sometimes Xavier found that he could not follow the advice or answer the question, but he always tried. And he listened when his fellow parishioners spoke, hearing them and trying to understand why they would do the things they did. Arsonists and serial killers were the hardest for him to comprehend. Luckily there were only three people who fell under these categories—at least, only three he’d met.
Xavier opened the lavender envelope and unfolded the white greeting card.
See me in the rectory in one hour
.
Xavier, called Ecks by members of the congregation and friends, went out through the back entrance of the church and sat on a big gray stone amid the shrubbery and sandy soil. He stared down at the highway and the water beyond practicing the
Meditation of Forgetfulness
—an exercise that each member of the congregation was taught at the beginning of his or her tenure. The idea was to look upon any landscape and see what was before you with no past and no future. There was supposed to be only a now.
In three years Ecks had not mastered this method of contemplation. Always in the background there were grunts and cries, words of anger, and the sense of a journey or path in anything he saw.
When he complained to his sponsor, the thief Sarah Jones, she said, “Frank says that the attempt to forget is all we can hope for.”
“But isn’t forgetting just like denying your sins?” Ecks asked Sarah.
“No,” she said. “It is the attempt to eradicate the foul long enough to realize a hope for change.”
The rectory was a smaller version of the church behind the high white stone walls that also surrounded the yard where the congregation supped after Expressions. The door was wooden, painted scarlet, with a brass knob and no bell or knocker.
This door was always unlocked but no one ever went there without an invitation, so Xavier pushed it open and walked straight in.
There was a huge, shatterproof window on the wall opposite the entrance; through this portal bright sunlight shone. There was no desk or sofa only a plain maple table and a single mattress, covered by a military blanket, on the floor under the window. Across from the simple bedding stood a dull metal rack that held a dozen pine folding chairs.
Frank had set out three chairs. He and the caramel-colored woman sat in two of the seats, while a third sat empty, waiting for Xavier.
“Brother Noland,” Father Frank hailed.
This greeting told Xavier Rule that his true identity was not to be shared with Frank’s guest.
“Sir.”
“This is Benol Richards.”
She smiled and nodded. The first thing Xavier noticed about her was that she was older than she seemed at a distance—around forty, more or less.
Xavier crossed the room and lowered onto the empty folding chair.
“Ms. Richards,” he said.
“You can call me Benol,” she said, “or even Bennie.”
“Odd name.”
“My mother made it up. She told me that it came to her in a dream, and since my father wasn’t around she decided to call me that.”
“What had your father wanted to call you?” Xavier asked.
Both Frank and Benol smiled.
“No one has ever asked me that,” she said.
“Benol has come to us for redemption,” Frank said.
Xavier turned to his pastor, an immediate question etched on his dark and brutal face. There was a gash under his right cheekbone that looked like a canyon across an onyx plain.
Father Frank was missing two front teeth, one upper and one lower. These gaps were presented with his grin.
“Benol,” Frank said.
“Yes?”
“Would you please step outside for a little while? If you sit at one of the stone tables someone will come out to feed you.”
“But I thought this man could help me.”
“I said that I would ask him, but we have to speak privately before he can decide.”
Despite her age Benol exuded a youthful beauty: brash, or maybe fearless in some way—like an adolescent. Xavier could see all this. She didn’t like the idea of being pushed out, but
there was no gainsaying Frank’s words in his own house.
She nodded at the self-ordained cleric, glanced at Xavier, paused a moment before rising, then walked slowly toward and finally out of the unlocked door.
“Whoa,” Xavier said when she was gone.
“Beautiful woman,” Frank added.
“Yeah,” the Parishioner agreed. “Like an adder or rattlesnake.”
“She liked you.”
“Hawks like rabbits. Cats like soft sand.”
“Mr. Rule,” Frank said.
Xavier realized that he was still staring at the scarlet door and turned back to the minister.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you think of her beyond the threat?”
“I
thought
that you told me that we don’t deal in redemption here.”
“She is
asking
for redemption,” Frank said easily. “I didn’t offer it.”
“You never mention the Lord’s name in your sermons,” Xavier said.
In between the three private meetings a year, the Harlem gangster was hungry for knowledge about the man and his words. He didn’t care about Benol Richards—not yet.
For a moment it seemed as if Frank would not answer, but then he raised his eyebrows and sighed.
“Words are divine but they are also traps,” he said. “Rabbit and snake, good and evil. These are mere cages for things we know precious little about. Either we feel heat or pain, or glimpse a fleeting shadow, detect a scent coming from some unknown corner. We use words to capture meaning, but the Infinite will not be trapped or captured, seen or smelled. It defies our senses and values. It cannot be imprisoned, incarcerated, or otherwise locked up inside our minds—it can’t be locked out either.”