Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus (2 page)

“Forget it. You like confession. Tell you what. You take hospice visitation.”

The prospect gave him pause. Though he wasn’t up for Mass, he doubted he was any more up for a trip to the hospice ward. Father Glenn could be a thoughtless bastard that way. However, Samuel had a bit of a gambler’s streak in him. “Odds or evens?”

“Odds.”

“One. Two. Three. Shoot.” Odds. “Damn it.”

“You look good today. You’ll be fine,” Father Glenn turned from him.

“You’re a magnificent liar, but thanks.”

Samuel’s vestments weighed especially heavy today, but that might have been his general weakness, his body wasting away beneath his robes. The pasty film in his mouth tasted like decaying meat. He walked around the chapel, greeting his parishioners, the tingling in his hands and feet down to a dull burn. He preferred the numbness.

Samuel knew he was going through the motions.

His was a pernicious strain of AIDS. He wasn’t a drug user, and despite the recent bad press regarding his religion, he did not engage in sex, anal or otherwise, not since he’d taken his vows and only once before, with the woman he thought he would marry. No, in service to God he got the disease—a blood transfusion while on a mission trip to Africa. In October he was diagnosed with HIV and within months had full blown AIDS, a strain resistant to three out of four classes of medication used to treat HIV.

Politely pushing through the throng, he couldn’t help but think of how he missed his brother, Samson. Samuel and Samson, his devout mother’s idea of a joke. They weren’t twins—Samuel was, in fact, fourteen months older—however, she treated them as if they were. And they did share a special bond of sorts, he supposed. Though being the younger brother, it was Samson who was the overprotective one, probably due to his growth spurt that had left him towering six inches above Samuel. Samson had always called him his “little brother” because of the height difference. In high school, Samson would often walk in front of Samuel proclaiming “My brother’s coming through. Get out the way.” His idea of a joke, his way of showing love.

No greater love has a man for his brother and all that. If Samuel couldn’t find God in his brother’s love, there was no God to be had. With that, he had the topic for the morning’s homily.

Samuel’s malaise began to ease as he drank of the blood and ate of the flesh of Christ. That same divine love he often questioned—when the fevers and chills burnt through his flesh and kept him up all night tossing and turning—now filled him with its unmistakable warmth. One after another the faithful knelt before him to take communion, and he could see the light of faith burning furiously in their eyes as he placed the sacrament upon their tongues and blessed them one by one. His own doubts were not mirrored in his parishioners. Their faith humbled him. These were people he had grown up with, gone to school with, played handball on the streets with, now coming to him for spiritual salvation. Samuel thought it odd that the old woman who’d once called the police on him for smacking a tennis ball through her window during a stickball game now knelt before him and called him Father. But he could see none of his own discomfort reflected in her eyes. For her, all was as it should be.

By the time Communion ended Samuel felt like himself once more. Those who came to him for guidance expected a man of absolute unquestioning faith. They expected Samuel’s word to be the word of God given a human voice. He owed them no less.

Samuel took several long moments before entering the confessional. He stared at the stained glass windows painted with scenes of Moses bringing the Ten Commandments down from the mount, the virgin birth, Jesus being crucified and then rising from death as the living God to save all of mankind from sin. As it always did, The Savior’s sacrifice brought tears to his eyes.

“
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” Samuel whispered softly as he stared at the large crucifix that stood behind the pulpit and imagined what agonies Jesus must have endured. It seemed a sin to question His love after such a sacrifice. For whatever reason God had chosen to test him, he would not fail Him. Father Samuel entered the confessional; minutes later the door slid open on the other side of the screen.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last confession.”

Samuel recognized the voice. Mrs. Lucy had been best friends with his grandmother and had actively participated in raising him. She had even spanked him on more than one occasion. She was already old when Samuel was born, so he had a hard time imagining the hard-drinking, pot-smoking, free-loving party girl his grandmother had told him about, the one who spent night after night in the jazz and blues clubs that dotted the waterfront back in those days. He sometimes had to stifle a chuckle as he tried to picture it. Now she was one of the most pious and faithful women he knew, attending church almost every day. He’d heard the worst of her sins long ago, and some had indeed raised his eyebrows. Her confessions now ran toward the pedestrian, stealing an apple pie recipe from a television show and passing it off as her own, coveting Ms. Cicily’s new hat, speaking too harshly to the mailman when he delivered the mail late on the day her social security check was due. Samuel listened to it all patiently then gave Ms. Lucy her penance.

Some of the confessions Father Samuel heard were more interesting. He heard the usual adulterous thoughts (too many of them acted upon), petty thefts, cheating on taxes, lying, coveting, hating. Occasionally, he received a confession that tested his faith and some that made him want to rip open the confessional door and beat the hell out of the bastard on the other side. A man sauntered in to confess to repeatedly raping both his son and his daughter along with several other neighborhood children. Samuel had urged the man to seek counseling and made confessing to the police part of his penance. He never heard from the guy again.

Today was not nearly so dramatic. Aside from one woman’s confession of smoking crack and using methamphetamines while her husband was at work and she watched the kids, the confessions were all pretty mundane. Then he heard a familiar voice from the other side of the confessional.

“Forgive me, Brother, for I have sinned.”

He had been about to correct the man when he placed the voice. “Samson?”

“Shh. You’re not supposed to say my name. Isn’t that breaking the sanctity of the confessional or something?”

“You’re doing that just by being in here. You’re not Catholic anymore. You don’t even call yourself a Christian.”

“Just because I’m not particularly fond of God doesn’t mean I don’t believe in him. Who would I blame for all the crap in the world if God did not exist?”

“This is a confessional, Samson. Are you here to confess or just to poke fun at my beliefs? You could have waited ‘til Thanksgiving dinner for that. Why break a tradition?”

“Why all the hostility today?”

“I’m sorry. It’s been a hard day.” Samuel stifled a sigh and rubbed his temples.

“You not feeling well? Do you need me to take you to the hospital?”

“No. Thank you, but no. I’m okay.”

“Good, good. I’m always here for you, you know?”

“I know, Samson. I know. You’ve always been solid that way.”

The ensuing silence was more uncomfortable than he would have imagined. Samuel knew how hard it was for Samson to see him suffer. His illness seemed to affect his brother more than it did him. Still, he didn’t want Samson to come back to the church just to make his dying brother happy. He hoped that his brother had genuinely come back because he’d finally felt the love of God within him. He was, of course, wrong on both counts.

“I do have something to confess.”

The seriousness in his voice made Samuel pause. A powerful dread crept over him. Father Samuel lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Maybe you should talk to one of the other priests.”

“You won’t hear my confession?”

“I just don’t know if it’s right. I’m your brother. It feels like, I don’t know, a conflict of interest. Besides, in order for confession to mean anything, you must have a penitent heart.”

“No, I only want you to hear it. After all, I did it for you.”

The hairs on his neck stood on end and he sweated despite the cool temperature in the air-conditioned room. Samuel’s first thought was that Samson had taken another trip over the border into Canada to smuggle in HIV medication. He had warned his brother more than once about doing it, but had done so half-heartedly. Being an AIDS patient himself, he thought the prices the pharmaceutical companies in America charged for HIV drugs were criminal and so he’d said nothing when he’d looked in his medicine cabinet to see that his own supply of immune boosters had mysteriously quintupled. Even now he was torn between his fear of seeing his brother get caught, his distress at knowing that Samson had once again broken another of God’s commandments, and his own excitement at the prospect of a supply of experimental drugs.

“What did you do?”

“I took a soul.”

“You did what?”

Samson slid a small stack of papers beneath the screen that separated them. Samuel leafed through the pages. It was all written in legalese and he could barely make sense of any of it.

“What is this?”

“It’s a contract. It’s all perfectly legal, my lawyer drew it up for me. It gives me all rights, privileges, and powers including ownership of the signer’s immortal soul. A woman signed it last night, in blood. She signed her soul over to me for one night of sex.”

Samson’s voice brimmed with pride. It almost sounded as if he were waiting for his brother’s approval.

“Samson…this is…why? Why would you do something this perverse and…blasphemous? This is wrong. What are you trying to prove? That you’re some kind of God? You want to prove to everyone how great you are by having them sign their souls over to you?”

“It’s not about my ego, Samuel. It’s about your life.”

“My life? What does this have to do with me?”

“Remember when I was a kid and I wanted to be a dancer? Mom talked Dad into letting me take lessons. I stayed with it for four years. I went every day. Then one day I realized that I would never be a dancer, no matter how hard I tried. I could work at it hard enough to be good but I’d never be great and only the great ones make a living at it. So, I quit, just like that. Mom was so disappointed in me. She thought I was just being flaky. You and Dad didn’t really care. I think Dad was just happy to find out I wasn’t gay. I’ve never been good at anything, Sammy.”

“You just needed to find yourself.”

“No. I’m just not a talented person. I’m not particularly smart. You were always the straight A student. I was just average, except for the way I looked. When Mom and Dad talked about you, they imagined that you would grow up to be a famous politician or maybe a lawyer or a Nobel Prize-winning scientist or author or maybe a black leader of some kind. They thought you could have been absolutely anything. They were so proud when you decided to become a priest. But when they talked about me all they ever said was how handsome I was. How I could grow up to be a famous actor. Then I tried acting and failed at that too. They talked about me becoming a model. So I did. I’m one of the highest paid male models in the world because that’s all I could ever be.

“You know why they never talked about me becoming a politician or a lawyer, Samuel? Because I’m useless. They knew it then. I’m a beautiful piece of nothing. I used to see how envious you’d get when everyone would talk about how handsome I was and when all the girls would chase after me. I don’t think you ever knew how envious I was of you, though. To me, you were always the perfect one. You were the smart one, the one who never got into trouble. When I was fighting in the street you were turning the other cheek. When I was fucking everything that moved you were taking your vow of chastity. I should have hated you for being so perfect, but I never did. I love you, big bro.”

“I love you too, Samson. But what does any of this have to do with this…this contract?”

“Because it isn’t fair!”

Hurried footsteps rushed toward the confessional in response to Samson’s outburst. There was a tentative knock on the door.

“Father Samuel? Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. We’re just about done here.”

The footsteps backed away and Samuel returned his attention to his brother.

“Sorry about that. Samson, what are you doing? What are you trying to do?”

“You’re the perfect one. You’re my better half. And God is taking you away from me. You’ve done everything He’s asked of you. You’ve devoted your life to Him and look at you.” Vestments couldn’t hide Samuel’s thin wrists or drawn face. Though born so close together, Samuel seemed to have aged a decade since their last visit. Samson neared tears. “He’s taking you away!”