The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (8 page)

For the first time in the conversation she looked away.

“What?” I asked. “What?”

“Steve.”

It sank in slowly, but got there all the same.

“Oh! My! God! I wasn’t your first?”

“Steve.” She was tearing up, crying not for the damage she’d done to me, but for the damage she’d just done to her sweet reputation.

“You lying cow!” I screamed, pushing her out of the way and making for the exit.

In the living room, where all the other kids were gathered, I grabbed a bottle of gin that was—thankfully—almost empty. I drained it.

“My girlfriend,” I yelled at the room, all eyes now locked on me. “My ex-girlfriend,” I shouted. Then the gin came up as swiftly as it had gone down, the thick oily taste of it scorching my throat. It was just the gin. Luckily—or unluckily—everything else stayed down as the clear stinking stream spilled onto my shoes. A few heads turned in disgust. But I wasn’t to be stopped. “My ex-girlfriend is a slut!” I shouted, and threw the gin bottle at the wall, where it bounced and fell to the sofa. “Come on. Raise your hands. Which one of you hasn’t fucked her?” They all sat in silence, afraid to move.

I grabbed a half pint of vodka from a shelf and stomped back toward home. The vodka I kept down, and at some point on the walk back, I apparently decided that what I needed to do was take my clothes off and ride my bike while crying.

“So I find this knucklehead on the lawn all covered in grass,” Tommy’s saying. “And I’m like, ‘Steve, what the hell happened? What’s wrong?’ And he just starts saying, ‘Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh.’ So I give him a good shake and he finally gets out, ‘Rachel,’ then pukes all over the place and just starts crying and crying.”

Vicky can’t stop laughing. “That explains so much,” she says.

I blush a little, but it’s a good story, I think. It shows that I was a normal, stupid kid. At least Tommy was interrupted before he could tell of the horrible events that followed.

Since Vicky’s fitting right in, I take the opportunity to walk off into a corner of the yard, under an oak tree, to smoke a cigarette.

This is something I’ve always done, this sneaking off to a different vantage point. As a child, if there were no other kids around demanding my attention, I’d gather up my Matchbox cars, find a patch of dirt, and roll them back and forth absentmindedly as I watched the adults carry on. Standing there laughing and eating, they make it all look so natural, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.

Am I part of this? Was I ever? Or was I always just an observer, and my job simply a natural outgrowth of that?

Vicky turns from the group and looks around. Noticing me, she walks over and takes a cigarette from the pack in my shirt pocket. “What are you doing lurking here in the shadows?”

“Smoking. Mama doesn’t like it. And watching, I guess. I like to watch them carry on.”

“Sounds almost dirty,” she says.

I don’t say anything, just finish my cigarette.

“You ever miss it?” she asks.

“Miss it?”

“The family. This scene.”

“Well, Vicky, I’m standing right here. I can come back every weekend if I want.”

“But you don’t.”

I look at her now. She turns, too, away from Mama’s party, and looks at me.

“You think one day you’ll regret not choosing this?”

“I’ve made that decision already, Vick.”

“That’s not what I asked, Steve.” She gives me one of those smiles that says, “Okay, ass, I’ll let you get away with it this time.” In its own way, it’s not a bad smile.

She turns away and looks back to the group.

“Your family’s pretty amazing, Steve-O,” she says.

I’m sitting in the confessional, fighting hard to stay awake. I’m slightly hungover. I might have had a few too many drinks at Mama’s party. Then I might have had another one or two while surfing the Web when I got home.

So I’m bored, tired, and cranky. Sometimes I feel like this one duty is penance enough for anything and everything I’ve ever done wrong in my life, this sitting in a box for two hours until my ass hurts, listening to the droning of sins, transgressions so slight that sometimes I have to fight an urge to shout across the screen.

Miss Celestine is a perfect example. There she is, right this minute, keeping her every-Tuesday-morning appointment to confess that she’s sneaking drinks out of her husband’s commemorative Wild Turkey bottles.

“You know,” she says, “the ones shaped like real turkeys.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Each time, I take the head off a different turkey.”

The first time I heard that sentence I almost fell over laughing. Now it’s just sad. How can she look me in the eye at our festival meetings? Oh, it’s not the sin—if it’s even a sin—it’s that she’s boring me half to death. Apparently, she keeps a spare bottle hidden away to top off the commemorative bottles when they start to get low.

“Why must you drink out of the commemorative bottles?” I asked her once.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Why don’t you just sneak your sips out of the regular bottle?”

“I don’t know,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

“Well, why don’t you just drink out of the regular bottle in the open?”

“Oh, because I don’t drink, Father,” she said without hesitation.

I’d pointed out that she was kneeling there, lying to a priest in confession. “You just told me you drink.”

I could hear her sniffling. Still, I figured we were verging on a breakthrough so I pressed on, asking her what exactly she was confessing to—the theft of the whiskey, the drinking, or the lying about the drinking. At which point she had herself an honest-to-goodness sobbing fit, as if heartbroken at the realization that, at the least, this was a multifaceted affair, a three-pronged pitchfork poking her straight to hell. On that day, I prescribed two entire Rosaries knowing it would take at least that to make her feel better about herself.

Now, I don’t pry. I just sit there and let her get it off her chest.

But today, I don’t know. Maybe it’s from seeing her so much at festival meetings. Maybe I need a vacation. Maybe it’s some sort of priestly repetitive-stress injury. Whatever it is, I want to slide the wood panel shut, walk over to her side of the booth, poke my head in, and have a few words with her.

“Hey,”
I’d say,
“would it kill you to find something interesting or different to confess? I mean, we all drink. You should have seen me in high school, stealing from the old man’s cabinet, stealing pints from the Wagon Wheel Truck Stop, drinking till I couldn’t see, then driving the center line all the way home. Hell, I’m sure there are some people in this town who get drunk every night, then beat their kids, wives. Scream at their husbands. On the grand scale of sins, yours doesn’t even rate. So c’mon. Fess up. Don’t you have thoughts about killing your husband or at least wish he’d die so you could have a few nights alone? Don’t you diddle your old dried-out dandy, coddle your crusty cooter while thinking of some other man, maybe even me?”

I open my eyes and my head pops up. She’s still mumbling along, like usual.

When she pauses, I say, “It’s okay. Please continue.”

And here in my dark wood-paneled box, in this close warm air, I nod off again, then wake with a start, like a woodpecker working a tree, like a hammer hitting a nail.

I’ve tried bringing coffee into the booth, but the smell is overwhelming and my sipping sounds—yes, I’m a sipper, we all have our faults—my sipping sounds are amplified by the acoustics in here.

To think this was the part I’d most looked forward to when I was in seminary. My childhood fascination with watching and listening was equally matched by that southern love of gossip, that thrill of seeing what sort of pettiness and ugliness lurks just underneath the skin of seemingly decent people.

But the present reality of Grand Prairie is that life is just as boring as it looks. Sure, a priest with a child is quirky, I suppose. But much to my disappointment, I’ve seen no evidence that anything in southern gothic writing has any basis in reality. If people are sleeping with their siblings or poisoning in-laws or torturing lost northerners in the woods, they aren’t telling me about it. Maybe they’re too busy enjoying themselves to come in and file a report. Maybe people these days would just rather forsake their culture and hang out at Walmart.

You’d think I’d at least get some crazy kid practically dying from guilt because he’s been masturbating every night since he was eleven and just found out that it’s considered a grievous sin.

So I sit here, listening for the swish of the outside doors, the shuffling of orthopedic shoes, the clop of heels, the whispered conversations, the drone of Hail Marys accompanying the clacking of Rosary beads.

Miss Celestine wraps up and I take a sip from the can of Mountain Dew I brought in today. It doesn’t have a strong odor like coffee, but the can’s too small for my own liking and it’s almost empty. I tried a bottle, but I have a habit of recapping after every sip. A hiss in the confessional—even if it is a carbonated one—wouldn’t go over well with the penitent.

“What was that, Father?”

“Oh, that? That was just Satan voicing his approval of your heinous acts.”

The door on the other side clicks open and a familiar scent wafts in. Strawberry shampoo.

My thumb, acting of its own accord, presses a dent into the soda can.

Denise. She’s only here for one reason. To tempt me. There’s no other explanation. Her first communion is long behind her and her confirmation a year off yet. Teens don’t just come to confession. But here is the strawberry smell.

I slide back the wood panel.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

She doesn’t say anything else.

“It’s been?” I prompt, feeding her the next line.

“Oh! Hi, Father Steve,” she says, her voice brightening, like she’d been expecting someone else.

“Hi, Denise,” I reply. “So how long has it been?” Strictly business, that’s me.

“Ummmm, two years. It’s been two years since my last confession.” She sounds like she’s talking to one of her friends about a boy band. She’s practically speaking in the lowercase, unpunctuated sentences of her e-mail. “How long you been in here today?”

One hour and seventeen and a half minutes I almost say. “I don’t know. Since ten.”

“Wow, it must get kinda stuffy in there.”

“Yes, well.”

“What happens if you need the bathroom or something?”

That was another problem with the big bottle of Mountain Dew. I clear my throat. “Denise, there are other people waiting. We should continue.”

“Oh, there’s no one out there.”

Great. Just my luck. Here I am, all alone in a church with the Strawberry Seductress. I shake my head clear. “Denise, maybe we can chat later.”

“Oh. Okay,” she says. “Well, anyway, these are my sins.” Like it’s something she says everyday.
“Hi, Kerri, did you see Toby? Oh my God, he’s so cute. Anyway, these are my sins.”

“Uhhmmmm,” she starts. “I’ve lied to Mama and Daddy. I beat up Billy pretty bad the other day. But he deserved it.”

“Violence is not the answer,” I say.

“Well, Daddy says it answered slavery, the Nazis, and Iraq, too.”

Dear Lord, help me.

“Those situations were a little different, Denise. I don’t think your brother was oppressing an entire country. And you’re supposed to love and honor your family.”

“Didn’t Jesus say you have to leave your family behind?”

Great. Tell me again who had the bright idea to switch from Latin to English and let people read the Bible on their own.

“That’s a different situation as well, Denise.” Before she can ask why, before I’m forced to make up an explanation out of whole cloth, I go on. “Look, plain and simple, you should not be beating up your brother.”

“I know,” she whines, “but still. He was being such a little—”

“Denise.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. Okay. So, ummm. What else? I guess I dishonored Mama and Daddy a few times. I skipped church a bunch of times. That was before you started. And I kind of cheated on a test. But I would have passed anyway. So I don’t know if that counts.”

“Cheating is cheating.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. So. What else? Let’s see. I cuh—cuh—What’s that word? You want something somebody else has?”

“Covet?”

“Yeah. That’s the one. I coveted my neighbor’s goods. Sharon, this girl at school. She’s got this new MP3 player and Daddy absolutely refuses to get me one. I swear, he makes me—”

“Denise.”

“Sorry, Father Steve.”

Then she falls silent.

That was pretty easy. Run-of-the-mill kid stuff. Nothing to worry about. And the way she prattled on. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was ten years old.

“Oh, and I’ve had impure thoughts,” she mumbles.

“Shit.” The word escapes before I can stop it.

“What?” she says.

“Nothing. I just sneezed.”

“Oh. Bless you.”

“Thanks.”

Silence again. Impure thoughts? About whom? Me? Is she more than just some passive temptation placed before me by the Lord? Is she now going to be an active agent of Satan? Is she lusting after the priest? It happens. So often in fact that there are hours of class time devoted to it. I still have the notes. Somewhere.

It could just be my ego. Yes. Probably. But there’s no way for me to find out.

“Have you acted on these thoughts?” I ask. That’s a perfectly proper question to ask, right?

“No! Of course not,” she squeals.

Of course not? Why of course not? Was it an older man? Someone she can’t approach?

Maybe I should have committed a “selfish act” before coming in here today, cleared my body of the hormones obviously affecting my mind.

“Impure thoughts are indeed a sin, Denise. A minor one.” My voice sounds steady. I think. I hope. “But acting on those thoughts is something else entirely.”

“Sure, Father.”

We both fall silent. I’m almost afraid to move. It sounds like she’s stopped breathing.

“Is there anything else?” I finally ask.

“I guess not.”

“You sure?”

Okay, that’s a bit much, Steve.

“Well, uh, does it matter who it is?”

“Who what is?” I ask. “I’m not sure I follow you, Denise.” Of course I follow you, Denise. Now just spill it already. Let it out. You’ll feel so much better.

“Do I have to tell you who it is I had those thoughts about?”

I bite down on my tongue for a second before answering. “No, Denise. That’s not necessary. This is about clearing your conscience. Not about gossip.”

“Oh, okay!”

She falls silent again and after a minute more, I send her on her way with twenty Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition.

Then the church falls silent. It’s just me in my box. I nod off for I don’t know how long, waking up when I hear the hydraulic hinges of the front doors and steps running through the church.

Now what?

On the other side, the confessional door jerks open, then slams shut with a thud. Someone plops down, his breath heavy through the screen.

“Father. Oh, Father!” an old man gasps. “You’ll never believe what just happened. Never. Listen. I’m walking outside Walmart and I bump into—”

“Sir. Excuse me.”

“Wait,” he commands, impatient. “Let me finish. So I bump into this young girl. She’s twenty-two or something. And I knock her down.
Kapow!
Flat on her ass. So I help her up and, well, I don’t know. We hit it off.”

“Sir,” I interrupt.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he says. “Well, she asks me for a ride home and next thing you know I’m in her house in her bed. Nekkid. I’m a sixty-year-old man, Father, and here I am having wild monkey sex with someone two years older than my granddaughter. I tell you, don’t that just—”

“Excuse me,” I cut in. “You have to start…” What exactly is it I’m trying to tell him? “Well, how long has it been since your last confession?”

“Never been,” he says. He sounds like he’s about to pop with glee.

“You’ve never been to confession?”

“No,” he says. “I’m not Catholic.”

“You’re not Catholic?”

“No, sir. I’m Jewish.”

Jewish? There are Jews in Grand Prairie?

“Then why are you here, telling me this?”

“Are you kidding?” he says. “I’m telling everybody.” And with that, the old man bursts into laughter and falls out of his chair. But his laugh suddenly sounds much younger than that of a sixty-year-old.

“Hey!” I say, pressing my face to the screen. “Hey.” I bang on the screen. “Who is this?”

He’s laughing so hard that he’s having difficulty breathing.

“Who is that? This is no place for jokes. Who is that?”

“You can’t ask that question in confession,” he says.

“Bullshit,” I say. “You just made this a fake confession, I can ask whatever the hell I want to ask.”

“C’mon,” he says. “You have to admit that’s the most excitement you’ve had in this confessional since you’ve been here.”

He’s got a point.

“Yeah, okay. Okay,” I say. “Fine. So who the hell are you?”

“Father Mark Johnson.”

“Father?”

“Yup. From St. John’s in Lafayette.”

“So what the hell are you doing out here?”

“I was bored out of my head. Nothing to do in Lafayette.”

“So you run to Grand Prairie?”

“Well, it’s different at least. Same faces, same thing in Lafayette. Thought I’d take a ride. Heard there was a newish priest and figured no one had been around to welcome you.”

“Gee, thanks.” Still, that’s going to make one hell of a story. And I guess I can find it in my heart to be hospitable. I look at my watch. “Tell you what. I’m done here in about five minutes. Hang out in the church or let yourself into the rectory. I’ll catch up to you.”