I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive by Steve Earle

Author:Steve Earle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780618820962
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

XII

The voice was female, neither young nor old, appropriately anonymous.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been fourteen years since my last confession."

The priest would have been shocked or at the very least surprised if he weren't hearing the third confession of a long-term apostate in as many days.

"Go on then, child," he encouraged her. The priest's accent had moderated little in the ten years since he'd arrived in America fresh from an Irish seminary, and the woman continued, encouraged as much by the music in the disembodied voice as the kindly words.

"Well, I don't know exactly where to start, Father. The beginnin', I guess. When I was eleven—"

"Perhaps," the priest interrupted, "we need only concern ourselves with the sins that you have committed since your last confession."

"Oh, okay. Let's see then ... Well, to begin with, I've taken the Lord's name in vain about a million times; well, maybe not a million, Father, but you know what I mean. I guess you hear that all the time, don't you, but it is a sin, ain't it?"

"Yes, child," the priest agreed. "It is indeed a sin and as good a place to start as any."

"Well then, I've taken the Lord's name in vain many times, Father," the woman reiterated, and as she continued, the overtone of anxiety in her voice gradually gave way to relief, and the priest settled back in the narrow wooden seat for what the experience of the past few weeks had taught him would be the better part of an hour.

"Well, I've lied a lot, that's for sure, sometimes when there wasn't even nothin' to be lyin' about. Just to stay in practice, I reckon ..."

He had known that something was afoot as early as February; unfamiliar voices on the other side of the screen, new faces in the nave at Mass. He had originally dismissed it as an anomaly, an unusually enthusiastic observance of Lent by well-meaning chronic backsliders, perhaps. But now it was the Saturday before Holy Week and they were still coming.

" ... and I guess I don't have to tell you, Padre, that I stole my share of anything that wasn't tied down, I mean, well, I do have to tell you, so I'm tellin' you: I used to steal. From perfect strangers on the street. From so-called friends of mine. It didn't matter. As soon as their backs were turned I stole 'em all blind. I even stole from my own mama and now she won't even allow me in her house no more ..."

They were easy to spot, these newcomers. At first, they sat in the back of the little church in little knots of two or three. By mid-March they occupied the last four rows and it was hard to ignore the gulf of empty pews that separated them from the regular congregation. After Mass one day, the priest asked an elderly parishioner why this was, and he was taken by surprise when she spat on the ground

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