Parishioner (2 page)

“People have been using the word God since before they could write,” Xavier argued softly.

“And look at the world,” Frank said, showing his missing teeth again. “Dynamite is a great tool. It can move mountains, but you don’t put it in the hands of children. The truth will set you free; everyone knows that, but try as they might the right words rarely come out.”

“But—”

“Xavier,” Frank said, “are you going to require a sermon of me for this meeting?”

“No, sir.” Xavier lowered his head and smiled.

“You come here of your own free will.”

“I do.”

“You pay nothing, are asked for nothing, are never judged.”

“No, sir, I do not and am not.”

“And all I want from you now is the answer to a question.”

“I understand.”

“Benol Richards was referred to me by a friend in Miami,” Frank said. “Benol’s mother died when she was eight and then, for years, she was thrown from one foster home to another. She was an angry child and so never fit in.

“When she was twelve, an uncle found her and brought her to live with him and his wife in Southern California. They ran a nursery out of their home and took in small children and infants.”

At this point Frank stopped and stared at his parishioner.

Xavier, for his part, looked up.

“A few years later she kidnapped and sold three babies,” Frank continued. “Took them for her boyfriend and then ran with him up to San Francisco. He left her when the money was gone, and she spiraled back down to Florida.

“All of that is true. She says that she had a sudden awakening in my friend’s mission down in Miami. She confessed her crimes and came up to California to find the people she harmed. She’s gathered as much information as she could and called my friend to ask if she could help. Theodora in turn called me. I met with Benol on Wednesday and now I’m speaking to you.”

“I deliver newspapers now, Father Frank.”

“Print,” the clergyman replied with laserlike emphasis. “Not blank pages. Not false promises. You deliver people an attempt at truth. You are a part of that attempt.”

“I wake up at three in the morning, pick up the kids that work for me, and then go down in a truck to the distribution center to wrap and then deliver. I go to bed at seven after dinner I cook on a hot plate.”

The two men stared at each other for nearly a minute.

Finally Frank spoke. “Will you go out for me and tell Benol that we cannot help her?”

“You could ask somebody else to help.”

“I asked you.”

“But she came to you.”

“And I brought you in.”

“It hasn’t been that long since I’ve been out of the Life, Frank. I don’t know what’ll happen if I get into some nasty shit out there.”

“This building is not a refuge, Xavier,” Father Frank said softly. “It is a trajectory from one kind of life to another.”

“I know that. I know I got to prove to myself that I don’t have to be what I was. But I feel like I need a little more time.”

“Fine,” the minister intoned. “Tell Benol that.”

“Okay,” Xavier said. “I’ll tell her.”

Frank smiled and held out a hand.

After shaking, Xavier stood up. He glimpsed the ocean out of the picture window and smiled.

“It’s a spectacular sight, no?” Frank commented.

“It is.”

“I love it because the waves and sky are always in motion, always changing. But even if they were to freeze into one gesture there aren’t enough lifetimes for a single man to see it all. There’s joy in our limitations, Xavier. We, all of us, only do what we can.”

The members of the congregation had completed their Expressions and were now seated at the twelve white-stone tables, on white-stone benches, eating barbecue and potato salad, corn on the cob and broccoli.

There were ribs and fish, burgers and chicken coming from the kitchens, carried by four silent men and women who wore saffron robes.

Benol was seated at a table talking to Iridia Gallo, a woman of East Indian and Mexican descent. Iridia too was near forty, also well preserved. She had been running cons on rich men
around the world since she was sixteen. She left behind her a trail of murders and suicides, jail terms and uncounted broken hearts. Her understanding of human nature was deft and merciless.

If a man wanted to bleed for me I let him bleed
, she once said in cell fourteen during Expressions.
If he felt unworthy I relieved him of the burden of grace
.

Now she lived in a mountain aerie raising long-haired sheep and looking after the grandchildren of a man she’d destroyed. She had a young lover named Colt Chapman and washed his feet every night before leading him to their bed.

“Hello, Ecks,” Iridia said. “Have a seat.”

Han Burkholter, the baby-faced bank robber, shifted over to make room for Xavier. Han had a deep tan and wore bright-colored beach shorts with a purple T-shirt. Iridia dressed in wraparound robes of silk that were composed of two sheets, one sea green and the other a buttery yellow. Xavier’s church wear was, as always, a black suit and a red shirt, black tie, and blunt-toed black leather shoes.

He nodded to the bank robber and stepped in next to Iridia, one body away from Benol.

“How’s it going?” Iridia asked.

“You lookin’ good today, Sister Ire.”

“Yes,” she said, never one for false modesty.

“How’s Chapman?”

“He’s taking taxidermy classes down in LA.”

“That’s strange.”

“Chapman likes to hunt … animals,” she said with a sharp smile. “I was talking to your friend. She seems very nice.”

Benol was staring at the man she knew as Noland; he could feel the intensity of her gaze.

“I’m sorry, Ire, but I have to talk to Ms. Jones for a few minutes.”

Xavier rose and Benol did too. He led her away from the gathering to a stairway carved into the thick white wall. Together they climbed to the top of the rampart, fenced in by a seven-foot clear plastic barrier that overlooked the ocean.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Xavier said when they were standing next to the glasslike wall. “I’m a newspaper deliveryman nowadays. I don’t know how to do what you and Frank want.”

He expected some disappointment in her mien, at least that. But Benol simply looked at him, listening closely to his words even after they had been spoken. There were two freckles
under her right eye, and her skin up close looked like blended rose and yellow-gold. Her irises were medium brown but deep, and her hair was curly with two dreads, one on the left side above the ear and another coming down the front on the right. These worry braids made Xavier think that Richards didn’t always wear her Sunday dress.

“Do you have children?” Benol asked after long consideration.

Xavier winced and immediately regretted it, like a boxer having just shown a weak spot in an early round.

He considered answering but worried that he was outmatched.

“You could at least talk to me,” Benol said.

“I can’t do it.”

“Do you have a child?”

Her name was Dorothy and she came from a respected Harlem clan. She had light brown skin with dark golden hair and eyes that were the color of walnut shell. Xavier met her at a party where he had delivered the cocaine. They fell into a passion that they both hoped would deliver them. But after the baby, Roderick, was born they went into different orbits contained within the same four walls.

He couldn’t remember the name of the woman he had spent the night with. Maybe he never knew her name. But when Dorothy confronted him the next morning, he beat her with an electric cord—that memory was etched on his mind: the welts on her light skin, the emptiness of their apartment when he returned after three nights of drinking and whoring.

The past is gone
, Father Frank said at least once a month.
You can’t let go because it is already gone. You have to look forward, for an opening that will allow the illusion of the past to fade
.

“You’re no newspaper boy, Mr. Rule,” Benol said when he failed to answer her question. “I need help and Father Frank brought me to you.”

Not for the first time Xavier regretted his conversion to the white stone church on the hill. Before Frank and the assembly of sinners he was his own man for better and worse. No one ever defied his wishes except by force. And even then they could break his bones but not his will. They could lock him in a dark cell, refuse him water or a toilet, but Xavier had always hung tough and been his own man. Always.

“Tell me about your crime, Ms. Richards.”

“You can call me Bennie,” she said. “All my friends do.”

“We aren’t friends yet.”

She accepted the rebuke with a slight nod.

“I was living at my uncle Clay Berber’s house in Pasadena,” she said, falling right into a story that had been told many times. “His wife, Rose, ran a child-care center there. I was fifteen, in high school, and I guess I was a little wild.”

“You guess?”

“I was. You know we did drugs and had sex a lot. I went to adult parties because I looked old enough for the men there. That’s where I met Brayton.”

“Who’s that?”

“Frank didn’t tell you anything about me?” she asked.

“I want to hear it from you.”

“He was a thief and the lover of this older lady—Beatrix Darvonia. I met him at a party my girlfriend brought me to, and he told me all about how he was a burglar. He said that he only went with Beatrix to meet her rich Pasadena friends and rob them. He said that she even knew about it but that he was so good to her in the bed that she didn’t know how to stop.”

“And what about you?” Xavier asked.

“I didn’t wanna stop either. Brayton would bring me right up in Beatrix’s house and sleep with me in the guest room. And sometimes he’d take me out on his burglaries. I loved him like Mary Magdalene loved Jesus. His hair was black with this shock of white right over his forehead.”

The sneer on Benol’s face held a passion that Xavier could feel.

“And what did he offer you?”

The amber-colored woman’s body shook involuntarily and she was brought back to the rampart.

“He said that the greatest theft was stealing babies and selling them on the black market. He said that all kindsa people wanted to buy children for all kindsa reasons. He said that if I could help him steal a child from my aunt and uncle, we could be rich and live in a town house in San Francisco.”