Beyond the Bridge by Thomas MacDonald

Author:Thomas MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 31

The next day I visited the Copley Boston Public Library and read the newspapers for an hour. From the library I walked east on Boylston Street and cut across the Public Gardens and Boston Common to Winter Street. At Arch Street I turned left and went into Saint Anthony Shrine. Some nasty things had been weighing on me, and I wanted to unload them. After lighting a votive candle for Aunt Agnes and splashing holy water on the pant leg of my bad knee, I entered a dark confessional box for an overdue sacrament of reconciliation. The friar opened the screen and listened to my sins. He gasped when I mentioned the weight-drop whacking of Lopo Gomes. He wasn’t too thrilled with my verbal assault on Bishop Downey, either, but he hung in there with me.

“Give me a good act of contrition,” the friar said.

After I recited an act of contrition, he absolved my sins. I stepped out of the box a bit lighter in spirit and knelt to pray penance. After completing the prayers, I left the shrine and headed for Downtown Crossing. On Summer Street an ambulance raced by and turned down Arch Street, probably to resuscitate my confessor. I entered the subway at Chauncey Street, and an Orange Line train took me to Community College.

As I was walking through Thompson Square, a young black man in a wheelchair rolled up and jingled a tin can. I dropped in a five along with my loose change.

“Dermot?” he asked.

I stopped and looked at him. His face was shaven and his eyes were clear. He wore tattered but laundered clothing. He seemed familiar, perhaps a food pantry client or an AA man. I said hello to him and started to walk away.

“Dermot, it’s me, Buck Louis. We played football together at BC, remember?” He wheeled closer. “I got injured my freshman year and had to leave the team. I left school, too.”

“Yeah.” I studied his face. “Buck Louis.”

“You remember me.”

I didn’t know Buck that well. He had left school shortly after he suffered a paralyzing neck injury, an injury that happened in practice during an Oklahoma drill. Buck never got to play in a game.

“Of course, I remember you,” I said. “Let’s get out of the cold.”

“Sounds good.”

We went into Dunkin’ Donuts on Main Street and ordered coffee, sat down, and talked about BC football. Buck’s face grew serious.

“I’m homeless these days,” he said. “But I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink.”

“You’re one up on me.”

He took off his frayed gloves and laid them on his lap.

“Lucky for me I’m not a quad. I can move my arms and fingers, got good flexibility in them, too. I keep my upper body toned up by wheeling around the city. Sometimes I do pull-ups if I can find monkey bars low enough.”

“Where do you sleep at night?”

“Shelters, mostly. My parents died. I got some money from the house in Tennessee, but that’s gone now.”

That’s right, Buck came from Tennessee.

People rushed in from the winter air and went to the counter.

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