The Confession of Joe Cullen (9 page)

“No way. I hate priests. They scare me.”

“You're a Catholic, Kovach, aren't you?”

“That's why they scare the hell out of me. I haven't been to confession in twenty years, and now I don't have the guts to have someone point out the road to hell. Anyway, do you ever think about getting laid? I mean right here. Some of these Indian chicks are gorgeous, specially the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, and they are built. Cullen, they are built, and there's a shower on the other side of the supply shed where you can wash them down, and you lay a dollar on them and they do it. You name it and they do it.”

“You're an animal, Kovach,” Cullen said sourly. “I got a daughter. I haven't seen her since Frannie and I split up, but she's my daughter.”

“OK, don't get excited.”

“I ain't excited. You'll know it when I get excited.” Cullen rose and walked off into the night. He detested Kovach. Ten, fifteen years ago, he would have provoked the other man, and then decked him, but brawling was in his past. He didn't do it anymore; he had no taste for it.

The moon was up, three-quarters full, and it cast a silvery glow on the airstrip, and that and the starlight made it possible to walk at this late hour without stumbling over objects. Cullen found himself at the shed where the priest was kept. The guard was asleep. A sleeping guard, found by one of the officers, would be beaten half to death. Cullen shook him awake.

“
Volvi a hacerlo
,” the guard moaned.

“Look, none of my business. My lips are sealed,” Cullen managed in bad Spanish. The guard was no more than seventeen, small and frail. Cullen patted his shoulder and went into the shed. A single candle burned, and Father O'Healey was on his knees in prayer.

Cullen sat down on a packing case and waited. After a few minutes, the priest stretched his arms and climbed to his feet. “I'm not sure,” he said, not facing Cullen yet aware of his presence, “that kneeling is the best mode for prayer. I have an old aunt, past eighty, who still fusses with her tiny garden on her knees, and she tells me it's a result of practice with prayer, but the way I feel, in ten years it will be a miracle if I can kneel or get to my feet after. What can I do for you, Joe?”

“Hear my confession.”

“Come on, Joe, come on — do you believe in God?”

“No.”

“Then I can't hear a confession. What good would it do? I can't give you absolution.”

“All I want is confession.”

“Joe, Joe, use your head. What in hell does confession mean! You're going to tick off your sins? For what? You don't even know what your sins are.”

Cullen shook his head. “That's not so,” he said. “You're wrong, Padre. I know what my sins are.”

“Easy, easy, Joe.” He sat down, facing the pilot. “I am going to tell you about sin — very simply, no fancy clerical thinking, no theological trapping, just the story of one small black woman in our parish in San Francisco. She had five children, and a husband who was a bum and walked out on her. She worked two jobs as a maid, she fed the kids, she raised them as good decent kids. We had them in the parish school. The oldest was sixteen — then down to five years old. Five years old was a little girl; she was the most enchanting little five-year-old I had ever encountered. Her name was Daisy, and I taught her the song about the bicycle built for two. She was so bright! She said to me, ‘Father, you will look so comical on a bicycle built for two with your robes flapping, and I am going to braid my hair so it sticks out straight behind me.' Can you imagine a five-year-old saying that? Now, the sixteen-year-old freaked out, as they say, on crack. We don't know how much he had, but it was a hell of a lot, enough to make him completely crazy, and with a kitchen knife he killed his mother and the four siblings. He was a big strong boy, and there was no way they could stop him. He cut the throat of his five-year-old sister. Was this something you were going to confess to me, Joe?”

Staring dumbly at Father O'Healey, Cullen shook his head and whispered, “I didn't know about that case.”

“Of course you didn't. You bring enough cocaine in every week to make thousands and thousands of kids crazy. A few years ago, a Catholic bishop was murdered in El Salvador. He was murdered by a death squad supported with money and guns by our State Department — with the same American guns you now run to the contras. My colleague and blessed friend Father Jesus Consenta was murdered by the contras. It happened in a tiny village where he had gone to baptize some children. The contras took this undefended village and put everyone there to death. They cut off my friend's penis and put it in his mouth. Were you going to confess to that? Shall I tell you about the nuns who were murdered—”

“That's enough!” Cullen shouted.

“Anger. Are you coming alive, Joe Cullen?”

“Fuck you!” Cullen shouted, and then stormed out of the shed, and then once outside came to a halt and stood rigid, his back to the shed.

“
Qué pasa? Qué pasa?
” the guard said.

Cullen silenced him with a look, and then turned around and went to the entrance of the shed.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure. Come on in, Joe.”

“I'm sorry. I never used that kind of language to a priest. I'm sorry, Padre. Please forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive. Come in and sit down, Joe.”

Cullen sat down on the same packing case that had been his chair before, nervously clenching his fists. “Padre,” he said, “do you want to escape? If you want to escape, I'll manage it.”

“No. If I escape, Joe, it'll give them an excuse to hunt me down and kill me. I don't know this country.”

“There's one guard sitting out there. I could gag him, and our 727 is ready to lift off. We're gassed up and ready to go — just waiting for the dope. Yeah — they can eat it. It's night and they're either asleep or drunk, and anyway those Honduran officers don't walk around at night. There's nothing to stop me flying you out.”

“And what happens to you, Joe? You think you'd live to talk about it if you stole their plane?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“No, I'll let them send me back to the States. I haven't been back in three years. A few things I must do, and then I'll return here. As a matter of fact, I hear arrangements have been made to fly me down to the main contra base tomorrow.”

“I know. I'm taking the chopper down there.”

“Can you fly a helicopter?”

Cullen laughed. O'Healey loved Cullen's smile, Cullen's laughter. It was unpremeditated and appeared like the ghost of another man, an unworried man, a man who lived in humor and delight. “Can a duck swim?” Cullen asked. “I am the best, Padre. It's the only thing in the world I can do better than most.”

“That's reassuring, Joe. Do you know, I'm looking forward to it. I have never flown in a helicopter. It must be very exciting. Joe, do you like to fly?”

Cullen nodded — as always, at a loss for words when a question was posed that he had never considered. In all truth, no one had ever asked him this question, not as O'Healey asked it, not lightly or offhandedly, but as part of a search that the priest was conducting. Cullen had a sense of this and it placed an obligation upon him. “It's not that I like to fly — I have to. It's like getting drunk,” he said slowly, searching for terms to describe what he felt, “but better. Because I don't slow down, no loss of function. I'm airborne. I'm at peace. I don't want anything, because I have everything.”

“Everything?” the priest asked curiously. “What is everything?”

Cullen shook his head.

“You used the word,” Father O'Healey insisted. “Look into yourself.”

“I can't look into myself. Goddamnit, what are you doing to me!”

In the dim candlelight, Father O'Healey saw the tears running down Cullen's cheeks, and then Cullen slid off the packing box on his knees facing the priest, his head pressed into the edge of the priest's robe, his body racked with sobs. O'Healey put his hands on Cullen's head, and said softly, “Who saves a human life saves the whole world.”

Cullen awakened with the dawn, and he felt wonderful. He felt absolutely wonderful. Nothing bothered him, not the mosquito netting that shrouded him, not the stickiness of the morning, not the heat, not even the presence of Oscar Kovach in the tiny canteen, where Cullen had a breakfast of coffee, fried eggs, and fried beans.

“It's nice to see you with a grin on that ugly face of yours,” Kovach said. “What did that priest do for you — set you up in heaven?”

“Don't be a horse's ass.”

“Good. That's the old Cullen. I'm glad he didn't reform you.”

“I told him I'd have to ask Kovach. After all, I haven't enough brains to piss without permission from Kovach.”

“You're a joy to be around,” Kovach said. “I hear you're taking the priest out of here on the chopper. We're loading at noon and I want to take off by one o'clock. So don't decide you want to get laid down there.”

“I'll be back. Don't worry. On the other hand, you can drop dead. Surprise me.”

“Very funny.”

“We're both funny, Kovach. You and me, we're a couple of clowns.”

Still, this did not disturb Cullen's pleasure in the morning. He hadn't touched the controls of a helicopter in years, but a copter was a copter, and he had no doubts on that score. As he broke away, Kovach quickened his pace to stay with him, and said, “Come on, Cullen, so I kid a little.”

“OK with me.”

“No hard feelings?”

“Not here. I'm used to your shit,” Cullen said.

“You see — you see, I try to be decent and where does it get me? What is it with you, Cullen? You were broke, and I gave you a job. Doesn't that count for something?”

Kovach was small and wiry. He had a habit of hunching his shoulders and sniffing. He had taken up with a girl in Vietnam and fathered a child and bugged out on both of them. That was not what Cullen held against him, but Cullen used it as excuse to himself for detesting the man. Yet the truth was the truth. He was aware of what he owed Kovach — which made him even more touchy. Now he gave Kovach a friendly pulled punch on the arm, and said, “It counts.”

Kovach did not respond and Cullen said, “It counts. Of course it does. Nobody has to tell me what it feels like to be broke and out of a job.”

“Thanks,” Kovach said. “Tell you something else, Cullen — I don't leave without you. Without you come back safe and sound, that plane sits on the ground.”

Cullen nodded. Kovach wanted desperately to be liked. He envied Cullen's superior height and strength. The girls always turned to Cullen. It didn't matter where they were or what nation or color or nationality the girls were. When they saw Cullen's smile, they responded with delight.

“You know,” Kovach said, “we're just two of us down here with the spies. We got to stick together, Cullen.”

“You got something there. You carry a piece, don't you, Oscar?”

Kovach regarded him suspiciously. “You're not going to do something crazy?”

“What, for instance?”

“Maybe I should take the priest down?”

“You want to play with a Sikorsky? You're no chopper pilot.”

“Come on.”

“OK, you can fly. You ever been in a Sikorsky?”

“All right. I got a thirty-eight revolver. I keep it under the seat. You can't walk around in shorts and a shirt in this heat and hide a gun.”

“You wear shorts. I don't.”

“What the hell difference does that make?”

“Look, Oscar,” Cullen said patiently, “if I want to hide a weapon, I strap it on my leg. Only an asshole hides a gun anywhere else. Now calm down. Nothing's going to happen, but I don't want to be sealed in a damn chopper alone in a situation.”

“What situation?”

“I don't know. You been around these clowns long enough to know that anything can happen.”

“You want me to come with you?” Kovach asked.

“Shit, no! We're in a strange place under very strange circumstances and I ask to borrow your piece and you make a federal case out of it.”

“OK, OK. Don't bite my head off. Walk over to the plane with me. I got a thigh strap that can probably hook it on to your calf.”

They climbed into the big jet, Cullen feeling that hell couldn't be much hotter, and Kovach pulled the gun out of its hiding place. Cullen checked it. The cylinder was loaded.

“You want some extras?” Kovach asked him.

“What am I going to, a war? No — thank you, Oscar. Do you know who's coming with me?”

“Sanchez, I think.”

“That loathsome bum?”

“Show respect, Joe. He's a West Point graduate — which is more than you and me ever came up with.”

“You mean West Point educates these lousy fuckers?”

“That's what I hear. I only know what I hear.”

“Let's get out of here before I die,” Cullen said.

Back on the ground, they were both pouring sweat. The gun on Cullen's calf was a hot, uncomfortable nuisance. His whole leg began to itch. “Tell me something,” he said to Kovach. “Do you think they're going to kill O'Healey?”

“Why should they kill him? They're Catholic.”

“Oh, Christ, Oscar, dry your nose. They're as much Catholic as Billy Graham. Do you know how many priests they've wasted down here?”

“How do you know?”

“Because I talk to the padre, and he knows. And not only priests but nuns — American nuns — and a bishop. Now that's no small shit, a bishop.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Well, it's their turf. Let the mothers tear it up.”

They were at the shed now, and Father O'Healey was standing at the entrance, next to the guard. Kovach took off, calling back to Cullen to take it easy.