Authors: Chuck Stepanek
Alter Boys (12 page)
Chapter 4
1
Father Gustavus Milliken didn’t miss a thing. He didn’t miss the phone call from the church council (though he fully expected to receive one) as no call was ever placed. He didn’t miss the late night visit from the sheriff accompanied by two deputies (this too he knew was coming) because no public official decided to drop by. He didn’t even miss a bit of sleep, (though one would find this highly unusual considering the circumstances) as being obliterated on sacramental wine had taken care of that matter just fine.
For now.
The next morning Gus (today it would be safer to think of himself as Gus rather than Father Milliken) woke with a feeling of odd discontent not to mention a grinding headache. He had a moment of panic, thinking: ‘It’s Sunday! Cripes I’ve overslept!’ and lurched from the bed to his feet. The act, far too fast than what his thrumming head would allow, staggered him and made his knees buckle. His body waged a brief battle between prone and erect and then agreed on a compromise. Whoompf. He collapsed back to the bed in a sitting position.
He tried gathering himself; hands scrubbing his face, fingers tracing a path from temple to brow. His head and his body at fully mutiny, for the moment, Gus would have to rely on his eyes until the rest of him caught up.
The eyes weren’t much better. The images they revealed were swimmy and filmy. That, and they were all wrong. They
showed him that he was fully dressed, shoes and all. At the foot of his bed, piles of his old ‘civilian’ clothes were spilling out of the open maw of a suitcase.
The floor was littered with the detritus of shattered figurines and a jug that had once held a gallon of Gallo.
When he saw the shovel, the previous nights calamity registered and he was immediately jolted to memory.
‘Not Sunday.’ Was his first thought. ‘Oh shit’ was the second.
Friday. This was Friday. He hadn’t missed his Sunday obligation which was a good thing. If only he could resolve his other dilemma; his ‘oh shit’ dilemma just as easily.
The boy and his father. The encounter. Cracking open the new bottle of sacramental wine with the intention of having just a few drinks to calm his paranoia. Righting the figurines that had fallen from their spots. Drinking more wine. Kicking himself for his carelessness. More wine. Smashing a figurine – first one, then two, three – more. More wine; a lot more. And at some point (on this one he was less clear) packing his clothes with the intention of leaving town. Just jumping in the car and driving until he was out of gas, money and wine.
The reality of the night before and the denial of the morning after clashed hard. Denial had always been one of Gus’ best friends. An old friend that he’d known and come to rely on since childhood. His mom was a lush? Denial. The ogres had brutalized him? Denial. Last night? Denial. Nothing had happened! It was all a bad dream. A dream fueled by a lonely priests indiscretion to steal a few sips from the wine cellar.
And as badly as Gus wanted his old friend denial to come out on top, it was reality that pointed out the rest of the evidence: The step stool lay toppled under the window. His telescope was taking in a cosmic view of baseboard trim. And most undeniable were the items left carelessly on the nightstand.
Reality.
“FUCK!” He viciously ripped open the nightstand, slapped the sex aids in the drawer and then rammed it shut.
It had happened. It had happened and all of the wine-induced denial could not change it.
Chapter 5
1
If you were to ask Corky what was the earliest thing he could remember, he could tell you quite clearly that it was right before his
5
th
birthday (the birthday he couldn’t remember but the thing that happened before it he did). He could remember it vividly, even provide specific details of everything that had happened.
He had been sitting in this very spot when Walter Cronkite interrupted “Days of our Lives” with a CBS news special bulletin. “A news flash from
Dallas
, President Kennedy has been shot.” The news flash wasn’t all that notable to Corky. After all, they were always interrupting his TV shows with things like tests of the emergency broadcast system or announcements of blizzard warnings. This was just another of those interruptions. What
was
notable was his mother’s reaction.
“No. It can’t be.” Breathlessly at first. There was a pause. And then came a ululating wail that made the boy cower: “Noooooo! Oh but we are sinners! Our
P
resident! Our
catholic
P
resident! I’ll set the house on fire if I don’t turn off… Pray! where’s my rosary?!” She caromed around the kitchen like a lunatic.
Corky watched this with mild fascination. Whatever Walter Cronkite was reporting was pretty important to make her act so strangely.
Back and forth, back and forth. Racing around the kitchen like a bulldozer on roller skates. Opening and closing cupboards, turning the faucet on and off, off and on. The phone, the light
switch, the coffee pot, everything within reach was being handled again and again to no visible useful purpose.
It went on for about twenty minutes. News flashes from CBS and manic outbursts from the kitchen. And when Walter Cronkite declared the
P
resident as dead, mommy fell to her knees. She crossed herself and launched into the apostles creed, already counting and recounting the prayer beads with her fingers.
Corky watched her for a few more minutes. But when it became apparent that mommy was going to stay on her knees and keep saying her prayers, he turned his attention back to the television. It was still Walter Cronkite. He tried the other channel, but that was no good, it too was just N.E.W.S. about the
P
resident. So he decided to just play with his toys and wait until he heard the glorious announcement: “We now return to our regularly scheduled program.”
The wait would be much longer than anticipated.
2
The Presidents death couldn’t have come at a better time.
Gus had spent the morning putting his room back in order. A task that was both accusatory and exonerating. He felt culpable as he righted the stool and re-set the telescope, then the slightest sense of calm when they were back in their proper places. He scowled and self-admonished as he swept up the colored glass and ceramics, but allowed himself a gentle glimmer of hope with each deposit of the dustpan into the garbage.
Perhaps denial and reality could coexist.
Thanks to his pounding head the work was slow and methodical. And more than once Gus fell into a trance-like state. Opposite forces wrestling for control of his mind. He jerked awake from these episodes, his brain a little further away from what had
occurred and a little closer to what still could be. It gave him hope. But hope would be pretty useless unless he got this shit hole cleaned up.
He set back to work.
It was not hard work, but it was hard to finish. The mind-numbing duties he was performing provided a catharsis. But finishing the task would mean moving on to the cerebral (accusatory!) duties of the rest of the world. With everything back in order Gus sat on the bed and scanned the room in hopes of finding some small detail that he had missed.
No luck. He would have to leave his sanctuary and do – do what? Drive down to the police station and turn himself in? Write out his letter of resignation? Buy a gun and blow his brains out? Oddly the last option had the most appeal. But as good as it felt Gus was beginning to believe (with a little help from his old friend denial) that he still might get out of this mess. Plus there was something else he was feeling but he couldn’t quite put a finger to it. It was an uncomfortable but not unpleasant sensation coming from his midsection. Something so familiar, yet so foreign due to (
what happened
) due to the wine.
And then it struck him. He was hungry! He had slept well beyond breakfast, had cleaned through lunch and now his stomach was telling him what his brain could not. Food. It would be a good start.
It was twenty paces at most. He felt both relief as the room (the scene of the crime) was left behind, and trepidation as the kitchen (home to many a church council meeting at the large oak table) came into view.
It was empty of course. The rectory was his and his alone. The only time that others were in the rectory was at times of his biding.
Or when they came barging in unannounced.
“Stupid clodhopper” he hissed.
But no one would come barging in today. Even the police would have the courtesy to--. “Stop it. Just fucking stop it.”
With determination Gus yanked on the refrigerator latch and let the heavy door swing free. It banged on the sink counter and got halfway back home before Gus stopped its retreat with his knee.
Food.
Eggs were an easy choice. Milk. Butter for the toast. Bacon or sausage were too much work today. A leftover dish of cling peaches had a strange appeal so he added that as well.
Like so many others who had preceded him; in the ages old practice of recovering from brown bottle flu, Gus prepared the meal for his eyes and not his stomach. He cracked six eggs into a mixing bowl and it just didn’t look like enough. He added the rest of the dozen, poured in milk without measuring, and scrambled the mess together.
The eggs screamed in protest when he poured them into the red hot pan. He yanked it off the burner, adjusted the setting, and when the coil had tempered, returned the eggs to their fate. The mixture bubbled reasonably. He browned toast, slathered on too much butter, and considered the coffee pot.
‘Twelve cups.’ The water he could gauge by the lines of the percolator, the amount of coffee would be by pure chance – although the stronger the better. Later he would dump out most of it, but for now it was what he needed.
The coffee would have to catch up with the rest of his meal, but he had plenty to start with. He arranged two slices of toast on a plate and dumped half of the scrambled eggs on top. The rest of the eggs went back on the stove to warm and a fresh pair of bread slices were dropped in the toaster.
The percolator was just beginning to share the sounds that had given it its name as Gus started on his food.
The meal ended up being both a good idea and a bad idea.
