Page 1 of Absolution

1

Damon

“Have you ever tasted sin, Father?”

A deep rasp stipples the unfamiliar voice on the other side of the partition, dragging my attention from the benign thoughts spinning inside my head, to the dark shadow moving beside me. The sour burn of whiskey spikes the air, along with the odor of stale cigarettes that clings to his clothing, a combination I’m intimately familiar with. Except, I haven’t touched a cigarette in eight years, so the strong tobacco wafting off him slaps me awake.

“We’ve all sinned at one time, or another. It’s in our nature as human beings.”

The guy hasn’t given the sign of the cross, nor bothered to tell me his last confession, which indicates he probably isn’t familiar with Reconciliation, or he’s just too drunk to care. A drive-by looking to talk to someone. Considering Tuesday nights hardly draw much of a crowd, I can’t really complain.

“Tastes sweet to me. Sugary. Like that Ames girl. Pretty little thing with blonde curls, big doe eyes.” Alcohol weighs thick on his words, slurring them as he speaks over the creaking of the tired wooden kneeler beneath him. A quiet grunt gives way to more creaking, and I wonder how long I’ll let this go on for. At what point will I have him go sleep it off and come back when his head is clearer? “So innocent,” he continues. “Don’t find ‘em so pure these days, with all that technology and horseshit at their fingertips. Skin like the first snow, milky white. Reminded me of the lambs we used to keep back on the farm. How I’d sit and play with ‘em for hours. Stroking their fur. Listenin’ to ‘em bleat. Such a …” A scratching noise interrupts the brief pause. “… irritating sound. All that whinin’ and cryin’.” His voice grew tense, as if his teeth clenched while he talked.

I’m compelled to ask him more about the Ames girl, but I don’t. It’s not my position to ask probative questions, so I listen, as I’m tasked to do, and wait.

“Ain’t nothin’ bugs me more than the sound of ‘em cryin’. So I’dsnaptheir little necks, and they’d sit quiet and still in my lap.”

Frowning, I tilt my head, as if that’ll offer a view of his face inside this cramped and claustrophobic boxdesignedto conceal a penitent’s identity. All I can make out is his dark form, nothing more than a silhouette, and that sour odor assaulting my senses.

There’s a sound of amusement and more creaking, more shifting, more curiosity filling the box. “Used to tell my daddy it was the coyotes that got ‘em, ‘til one day, he found me in the barn. Lamb cut throat to belly with its insides spilled out all over. My daddy beat me ‘til I couldn’t walk.Blessedshall bethe fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.” The resentment riding on each word of the verse tells me his father must’ve spoken this during his punishments. “The flocks of thy sheep,” he echoes with derision. “That Ames girl, she was just like them lambs.”

It’s only then I realize the girl he’s referring to isn’t an adult, or some indulgent affair, like so many confessions I’ve sat through, but a child. An innocent lamb of the flock. And the pieces of his confession come together to form a picture I pray isn’t what I’m imagining.

“Innocent. Pretty. So young,” he prattles on, and I can practically see this girl in my mind’s eye. “And so damnirritating.”

A cold frost branches across my chest and wraps a fist around my lungs. Squeezing the air out of this box. “And what happened to her?”

He doesn’t answer at first, but I hear resignation in a heavy exhale, before he sniffs and clears his throat. “She was noisy, too. Told her to be quiet, but all she did wascry, cry, cry. Like a little lamb.”

The fist grows tighter, and I curl my fingers around the bench at either side of me. “And did you …”

“Lambs good eatin’. Soft and tender. Nothin’ like mutton. Some say it tastes salty, gamey, but not me. Add some potatoes and onion. Somethin’ special about eatin’ meat so tender. So innocent. One of God’sblessedlambs.”

I choose my next words carefully, knowing the more I engage him, the deeper I fall into a web that offers no escape. “What is it that you wish to confess?”

Giving a sigh that fans his whiskey breath, he reaches up a shadowy limb like he’s scratching his head. “How you carry all that weight around? Like your lips is sewn, can’t speak a damn bit a truth, can ya? Cheatin’, robberies, murder, you hear it all and gotta swallow it in silence. How’s all that sin taste, Father?”

“If you’ve hurt someone, I would strongly urge you to go to the authorities. Seek out some help.” It’s only my training, my devotion to the church that urges these things. There is a darker entity calling me to act on something I’ve spent the last eight years burying deep inside my bones. A primal instinct unfitting for a man in my position. A man who’s vowed never again to give in to such tantalizing thoughts.

My hands flex and ball into tight fists, nails scraping the old wood beneath me. The tugging inside my chest begs me to pray. Not for him, but for myself. For the strength not to crack through that partition and snap his neck like he did to those he’s described. For the strength not to see my own little girl’s dull and lifeless eyes on the face of the child of whom he spoke.

“I’m askin’ to be reconciled. Don’t that get me points with God?”

“I’m afraid I can’t offer the absolution you’re looking for. Not until you make good on those you’ve harmed. Go to the authorities. Confess your crime. Accept your punishment, and perhaps you’ll be at peace with God.”

“At peace with God.” His hand slams into the screen,thunking against the wood, and my muscles flinch, already poised in defense. Pale, bony fingers curl into the cross-shaped lattice design, showing unkempt nails and wrinkled skin. “You priests are somethin’ else. You ain’t nothin’ but a man. A man who sins as much as any other. You hide behind that screen, but I see you. I see what you are.”

He sees nothing more than what he imagines me to be—a man of the cloth. Simple and chaste in the eyes of most. Controlled and composed. He has no idea the complexities that divide my thoughts every day, the nightmares that plague my sleep, the circumstances of my past and what I’ve been robbed of, which have my head spinning with ungodly visuals of what this man truly deserves. The insufferable weight of pain I’ll carry to the grave. He has no clue what I am and what he’s stirred inside of me with his confession.

“The Ames girl. Is she alive?”

“Don’t you priests watch the news?” A taunting chuckle ripples down my spine, stoking the wrath I can’t control. “Girl been dead over a year. Gutted like a lamb. Her bones is buried up on Angels Point.”

“And you did this.” It’s not a question, yet something compels me to prod the answer from him. To affirm what has already sealed the tomb where my conscience lays trapped with his sins.

Fucking tell me, the man inside of me pleads, like a smoldering fire seeking out a single drop of gasoline. “Tell me.”

“Need me to spell it out for you? Can’t figure the shit out on your own? Fine. I killed her. Played with her a bit, and finished off everything but her bones.”

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