Bulletproof Vestments Page 2

  So instead of hearing confessions, Jay said one himself. He confessed his uncertainty, his anger, his resentment at his brother, his grief for a crime ten years old that probably wasn't a crime at all. He confessed that he didn't know if it was sinful to fast-talk his way out of getting shot in cold blood.

  “I wouldn't worry too much about that,” murmured Father Ron.

  Father Ron had heard his first Confession too. It had taken place months after Jay had gotten blown up, months of physical therapy and operations and medications that helped only a little. Then a conversion that took everyone by surprise (primarily it had taken Jay by surprise) followed by daily talks with a round-faced chaplain who didn't mind Jay's angry questions, snapped rejoinders, and eventually a request to become Catholic.

  A year later he could have had his first Confession at the parish where he was taking classes, but instead he insisted it be Father Ron. Father Ron had done the hard work. So it was only fair (Jay thought ruefully now) that Father Ron get the even harder work.

  It had taken an hour. Jay had written whatever sins he could remember for his entire life, and although he started to read them off as a list, it came to him with each and every one just how many people he'd hurt, how even those victimless crimes ended up victimizing himself as they made him harder and harder toward every other human being. Which of course ended up hurting the world.

  How do you get beyond that? When he'd finished, he couldn't raise his eyes. He'd stared at the faded carpet in Father Ron's hospital office and waited for the condemnation he knew should come next.

  Instead, Father Ron had laid hands on his head and started praying with, “God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of your Son…”

  Jay had closed his eyes, trying to hold tight to himself and not fall apart, but then Father Ron said, “May God grant you pardon and peace.”

  Pardon.

  Peace.

  Suddenly Jay had been able to breathe. Pardon. Something he'd never known he wanted for all those years, the mistakes and the selfish decisions alike. He couldn't have walked away from that life on his own, so God had pried it from his clenched fists with a crow-bar. Today here he was, having thought himself empty-handed and yet holding something so much better.

  And now, after Jay finished confessing to God all the ways he'd fallen short and the good things he'd failed to do, Father Ron intoned the same prayer. God, the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of your Son…”

  Jay emerged from the Confessional a little less unsteady. Whatever happened next with Toby and Eric, he'd done whatever he could.

  He took over while Father Ron readied the church so they could say Mass together. Jay heard confessions for his parishioners. More parishioners arrived, bit by bit. They stopped in at the sacristy and talked with him, joked, told him about their lives. He'd never expected to love his parish, but he did, and he hoped his parishioners knew it even though he was just another priest to them. The gang had been a surrogate family, but in the army he'd learned about sacrificing your life for your country. In the church he'd learned about living it for them. The army gave him brothers and the parish gave him community. Every step of his life, he'd given up one thing and gotten back the same thing so much better.

  Masa scooted in at the last minute and vested up as an altar server. Jay pulled on the green vestments and set up the portable microphone, and they began.

  Another thing Jay had never expected was how the sameness of the liturgy emphasized the differences. It could be the feast of this or that, a special prayer for some other thing. The Mass intentions. The different readings as the Church moved through the seasons. Different opening prayers that hit on so many different aspects of God through a three-year cycle, and through it all, the stability of a ritual that ran like a backbone through the calendar year. He could lean into it the way he leaned into his crutches while learning to walk again after the land mine, and it took the weight of any burden, any sorrow, any worry.

  During the first reading, Masa came up next to his chair and whispered, “There's a gang here.”

  Jay chilled. He fumbled for his mike to make sure it was off. “Where?”

  “Two in the front row, our side. I saw one guy's gun, but the other guy just has that look.”

  Jay focused his pinpoint vision on the faces in the front scanningfor the blank expression of men on a job. One he thought he recognized. The other looked just hardened. Neither was Eric.

  Since these two were sitting right at the front, this screamed of “making an example.”

  Of course it did. You don't rat out someone and get away with it. Even ten years later, you paid.

  As the second reading drew to a close, Jay leaned away from Father Ron and whispered to Masa, “Whatever happens, stay out of it.”

  Masa said, “Man, I gotta help you.”

  “No weapons,” Jay hissed. “It's me they want.”

  He headed to the lectern for the Gospel.

  This was not, as it turned out, something his instructors covered in seminary. Whatever happened next, he'd be making it up as he went along. Let the Bishop scold him afterward. Oh happy dilemma, being alive for the Bishop to scold.

  He read the Gospel passage, his voice unsteady and his hands shaking. His parishioners would notice that, but he couldn't help it. The long-ago steadiness he could bring into combat just wasn't on call anymore, and two altar servers weren't exactly a platoon.

  At the end of the Gospel, Jay set aside his homily and said, “If you do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word, if you give your bread to the hungry and relief to the oppressed, your light will rise in darkness and your shadows become like noon. That line from Isaiah is the reason I entered seminary, and it's appropriate now because this may be the last Mass I say.”

  The congregation stirred. He looked around at a crowd out of focus even as he removed the stole from his vestments. “Not by my choice—but these situations seldom are. I've told you how before I joined the army I used to be a criminal, how I assume I've done worse than anyone else here in this church. There are currently at least two members of my old gang in the congregation.”

  The people rustled like a forest as they turned to look around the pews. Jay unfastened the collar of his vestments with unsteady fingers and removed them, leaving him standing in all black at the lectern. Father Ron came to stand beside him. “Back when I was still in the gangs, I informed the police about my friend Toby, and now they want revenge. You might as well come forward.”

  The two men in the front stood, followed momentarily by one more.

  Jay blurted out, “Three men to kill a crippled priest?”

  One of the men came closer, but Masa and the second altar boy rushed down the altar steps brandishing knives. “Hold it!” Jay still had the microphone. “Everyone stop this now—this is a house of God, not a wrestling arena! There will be no bloodshed in this church—none!”

  Still, nobody from the congregation moved. Masa stayed on the steps. Father Ron stayed at his back.

  And suddenly, his heart pounded. This is their fight too. Drugs and gang violence have hit this neighborhood hard. Half the parishioners are probably armed to begin with. If they shoot me, my people are going to tear them apart.

  “It's not them we want.” The closest gang member grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him down the steps, and then they were on him—two holding his arms and the third one pummeling him. Masa shouted, but they shoved him away, and Father Ron came forward and got punched as well. Jay didn't have the breath to say no, no, don't. They hit him again, and again, and Jay couldn't see through the tears, the pain. There was shouting everywhere and he couldn't focus on anything but the punches.

  It stopped. He was still pinned by the arms, and he couldn't stand, but the blows stopped. He raised his head.

  Everyone in the church had shoved in close, so close the gang members couldn't raise their weapons and couldn't raise their arms to hit. In
the press of the crowd, Jay looked around and saw faces: determined faces. Angry faces. Men and women who might have committed murder right here and now except that he'd asked to stay their hands.

  They loved him. He loved his parish, and right now it broke on him that they loved him right back.

  From the lectern, Masa shouted into the microphone, “Give it up! We're not letting you have him!”

  “Back off!” shouted one of the attackers. “I'll cut his throat where he stands!”

  “Freeze! Police!”

  It was the last thing Jay expected to hear, but the men on either side dropped his arms and started pushing through the crowd. Jay collapsed, but Father Ron caught him. Shouts and threats, orders through a bullhorn, and someone guiding him backward to sit on the sanctuary steps. He looked down to see blood on the carpet after all, and then it came into his mind that this was his blood, but there were people all around him, and apparently they loved him, and no one was going to let him die.

  An officer came up to him. “Is he okay? I'm radioing for an ambulance,” and Jay thought but couldn't form the words that no, he needed to finish the Mass. How'd the cops even know to come? There hadn't been time for anyone to call. Only a minute, maybe two.

  The cop's radio reported the third suspect apprehended. Jay shook, and a parishioner put a jacket over his trembling shoulders.

  “Hey, take it easy,” said the officer. “We'll have an ambulance here in five minutes. Is there someone you want us to call?”

  Kevin. With all these blue-uniformed police officers, surely one of them could be his brother? But no, it was the wrong precinct, the wrong place, the wrong time. “Officer Kevin Farrell,” he whispered. “From the 42nd.”

  The officer spoke into the radio, then said, “They'll call him and have him meet us at the hospital.”

  Jay said, “I have to finish Mass.”

  Father Ron said, “No. I'll finish. You go.”

  Masa pushed in between Jay and the police officer. “Did you see? Did you see? The place was totally crawling with undercover cops, and they've got like an assault vehicle out there! Someone tipped them off so they were waiting, even had plainclothes officers in here!”

  Jay blinked. “I said no violence.”

  “And we listened,” Masa said. “No violence. We didn't hurt no one.”

  The officer added, “But you should have known your people wouldn't let them martyr you.”

  * * * *

  An ambulance came. An ambulance left with Jay inside. Jay spent time in an emergency room triage bed, and eventually Kevin arrived. The silence was raw, uncomfortable. Jay told him about Eric, about Toby, and Kevin only muttered, “Animals. I'm lucky they didn't kill me to get back at you, you know,” and after that Jay asked about the weather.

  It was a parade of X-rays, of observation, of endless waits punctuated by doctors coming in to check on the nurses who had been coming in to check the machines that were checking his vitals. In came the police to take a report and half the time it was Kevin bantering with fellows he knew, and Jay wishing Kevin were still that comfortable with him. It was eleven o'clock before he got the all-clear to go home, and Kevin offered to drive him.

  “Do you want to come in?” said Jay, since they hadn't seen each other for six months, but Kevin said no. He had to go to work.

  So Jay just got out at the curb, and Kevin took off.

  Jay made his way to the rectory door, unsteady and more than a little spooked. None of the Archangel boys were around, so he kept it slow and made sure not to fall. Ten minutes and he could be in bed. Eleven minutes and he could be asleep. That sounded good.

  As he reached for his keys, he heard movement, breathing, a presence. His eyes wouldn't work well enough to pick a shadow out of the darkness, so he froze in place. “Who's there?”

  The Archangel boys would have announced themselves by now, one of their typical “Farrell! You're back!” greetings. Whoever this was said nothing, but Jay heard him move closer. He wasn't trying to be quiet. Whoever it was, he had confidence of walking away from this one.

  Jay had no such confidence. He kept walking anyhow.

  The person intercepted him as he climbed the first step. “I'm back.”

  Eric's voice. So after all that, it was over. Jay couldn't run. Not in the dark and not with all these bruises and not with his legs shaking. On the steps, if he turned too fast he'd fall. He couldn't fight. God, have mercy on me.

  Jay gripped the railing. “Talk.”

  But Eric said nothing, and Jay waited, heart pounding, hand aching as he gripped the railing.

  Finally Eric said, “I'm the one who called the cops.”

  Jay tensed. “Why?”

  Eric sounded irritated. “Why do you think, you idiot?”

  Thinking in and of itself was not something Jay found himself doing too easily at the moment. But Eric just went on. “There's no point in killing you now. You're right. You got what you deserved. You're a useless fuck-up and there's nothing left of you. So big deal, you turned tail and became some kind of fake holy man, and now no one's going to kill you because they're too scared to do it.”

  Jay swallowed hard. “Then why'd you return?”

  Silence. More silence. And then, “I want to go to Confession.”

  Now. Here. Nearly midnight in a sweltering rectory on a day when Jay had nearly gotten killed and cops had been crawling all over the place, and you know, that made it the most wonderful day and place in the world.

  Jay said, “Come on inside,” and he pulled out his keys.

  God the Father of Mercies, grand him pardon and peace.

  Thank you

  Thank you for reading about Father Jay! If you enjoyed this story, please check out Jay's next appearance in The Boys Upstairs.

  Father Jay has begun housing homeless kids in the rectory. Two nights before Christmas, with temperatures below zero and falling, his estranged brother Kevin brings him three more children. The little ones need a home, and Jay and Kevin are going to need to work together to bring it to them. But so many years and too many misunderstandings have piled up between the brothers that they may not be able to reconcile even to save the children.

  Seeing Jay in bed like a corpse had been awful, and having to stand in the room watching Jay slip back into semi-consciousness worse still. But of all those weeks after Jay had driven over the land mine, the moment most wrenching for Kevin happened seven days after Jay had risen from the coma. While he sat alongside Jay's bed speaking awkwardly about something unimportant, Jay had signed to him, Take it off.

  Kevin said, "Take what off?"

  Jay pointed to the respirator tube.

  Kevin's hands went utterly cold. "I can't—it'll kill you."

  Jay signed again, Take it off.

  His hands trembled so badly Kevin found it hard to make out the signs they'd used when coordinating mayhem out on the streets.

  Jay tugged again at the tube in his throat. So many inconveniences—Kevin had never needed a respirator, but he knew how someone's lips could get chapped from the constant suction of the air. Jay had been on it a week. It stopped him from talking or eating, and it trapped him in the bed. "Can't you bear it a little longer?" Kevin said. His hands now shook worse than Jay's. "You can't breathe without it. It's got to stay on." Machines did everything for Jay's body at that time.

  Jay pointed again to the tube and tugged at it. He raised a hand to sign once more, then dropped it back to the blankets.

  Kevin pushed the button for the nurse, and when she arrived, he asked her to shut off the ventilator.

  "Not without his doctor present," the nurse said.

  Kevin said, "Then get his doctor. Now. He has the right to refuse treatment, and I'll shut it off myself."

  Jay swiveled grateful eyes in the direction of Kevin's voice.

  Dad arrived with a doctor, and the doctor ordered the nurse to give Jay a sedative. Jay refused. Dad snapped, "If they're pulling that tube out, you need to be knocke
d out. Stop messing around." Jay didn't argue any longer. He didn't have a choice, Kevin realized. All these machines kept him trapped in this world, and he couldn't move his body enough to disengage any of them. For the moment, Kevin was his voice and Kevin was his hands.

  Table of Contents

  Bulletproof Vestments: A Father Jay Story

  Midpoint