The Unspeakable by Charles L. Calia

Author:Charles L. Calia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

I reported to the Bishop’s office early the next morning. We talked about the celebration of that afternoon’s Good Friday Mass and other things, until the topic landed squarely on Marbury. He listened patiently as I recounted, in varying degrees of detail, the story that Marbury had already told me. In particular, the trip to Pennsylvania up to that point and the story about Helen and Barris. But the Bishop seemed especially interested in Marbury’s relationship with his father, and I showed him the newspaper article, which he read without comment.

“I’m in the process of checking it out. But it looks solid.”

The Bishop nodded and played with his cigar. I noticed that he wasn’t smoking and I offered him a light, but he declined. He said that he was cutting back, which I knew would only make him more irritable. And he was. I certainly didn’t tell him about Tricky and his girlfriend.

The Bishop: “Did you mention the job?”

“Yes. He said that he wasn’t interested.”

“I’m not asking him to choose.”

“Marbury seems to think that he still has a choice,” I said.

“And what did you say?”

“I told him that he couldn’t stay there.”

“Then you explained to him our position. He knows.”

“Not fully.”

He peered at me from over his bifocals. I knew that he was debating about lighting his cigar, but he didn’t. Instead he just twirled the cellophane wrapper through his thick hands until it slowly came off.

“You didn’t tell him?”

“We’ve discussed other things.”

“But not the money.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re not stalling because you two were friends?”

I could literally feel those words. Heavy like snow chains.

“He’ll have every chance to clear himself, Peter. I’m hoping that he does.”

“I don’t think he believes that,” I said.

“Tell him to forget this business about Easter and we’ll talk.”

The Bishop was talking about the Easter service. The service that the landlady told me was a healing service only in disguise.

I said, “He won’t. I know him.”

I heard the sound of a striking match. Then another.

“What if he can really—?”

“Don’t say it, Whitmore. He can’t.”

“But some people believe it. They have faith.”

“People also believe in ghosts.”

I protested, “I have reports. One woman—”

“Reports? Do you have pictures? Medical records?”

I just shook my head.

“Then what? Hearsay? Innuendo?”

He had me cornered.

“I don’t know what to think, Tony.”

I have felt, and still often do feel, that the Bishop and I were born at the wrong time. Our influence outside the church is limited, the Bishop knows that. We cannot control the minds of politicians and governments the way members of the clergy could only a few centuries ago. Nor can we control the production run of large presses, casually squash ideas with a rolling sweep of the hand. And despite perceptions to the contrary, we can neither mount an army of recruits to do our bidding, whatever that bidding is, nor stop the ones that are opposed to it. Yet it is assumed that we can.

That I can.

In a sense, I am much like my brothers. They toil away on the farm of my father, toiling away at an earth exhausted by pollution and pesticide.

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