Hell on Church Street (5 page)

“Catholics are the world’s biggest cult,” I said.

He nodded vigorously. It was freezing, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I agree,” he said. “And it’s not bigoted to say it, is it?”

“Absolutely not. We’re supposed to proclaim the truth.”

His entire body moved in approval, head nodding, hands rubbing together,
feet
moving closer to me. “Exactly. I told her that, too. The truth is Jesus and nothing else. No Pope, no priest, no statue of Peter. There’s only Jesus and once you pass him by—or once you try to add things to him or take things away from him—then there’s a short drop off into nothingness.”

I was shivering, but he was oblivious to it. You greedy fuck, I thought. You don’t even notice hypothermia overtaking me.
Staring at me and talking about your daughter and your desire to protect her from fucking Catholics.
Are you crazy? Are you really so stupid?

He kept raving about Catholics, stopping every so often to assure me he didn’t hate them, and the entire time I was freezing to death, my fingers and nose starting to burn with coldness.

Finally, my savior opened the door. She leaned out of that warm kitchen and said, “Hey, you two Eskimos. Dinner’s ready.”

Her father gave her a little smile. “Thanks, sweetie.”

She closed the door, and Brother Card’s smile turned truly sad for the first time. “Of course,” he said, “the worst part is,
this
boy completely rejects her. Thinks she’s fat.”

Dinner was instructive. Sister Card made some kind of meaty casserole and served it with vegetables and garlic bread. Brother Card talked about the local football team and people in the church. I held up my end of the conversation, going on about youth groups and youth rallies and the need for a better national outreach program for the youth—youth, youth, youth. Angela interjected occasionally but mostly she seemed distracted, thinking, I suppose, about her Catholic basketball player.

Sister Card barely spoke and I sensed this was unusual. She didn’t openly challenge me on any point, but her entire bearing toward me was distant. She rarely looked at me, and when she did, she stared. “Really?” she would say. Or, “Is that so?” These tiny retorts had the smallest hint of acid in them. When it came time for me to leave, she looked absolutely unburdened. She didn’t say anything, of course, but I knew I had flunked some kind of test with her. She was one of those people you could offend and never know how you did it.

“Bye now,” was all Angela said before she turned and headed off to her room. I watched her go, her young body full of life and energy. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a quality. She needed to lose weight, fifty or sixty pounds, maybe more, but she was still healthy and young and, in her way, pretty. My body leapt alive when she said, Bye now, turning, her hair slapping her shoulders. I wanted her, wanted to conquer her, wanted that healthy youthfulness for myself and no one else.

She turned and the moment exploded. Her body underneath her clothes, her hair, her voice—Bye now—her complete dismissal of me. I knew she wasn’t thinking of me as she turned to leave. She was seventeen, in love with some fool at school, some boy, and I was her geeky youth minister. I worked for her father. I was his friend. But she liked me, and she didn’t like him very much right now. She trusted me already and could come to trust me more until one day she trusted me more than anyone else.

She turned (and turned and turned) and I wanted to turn with her, to follow her down the hall, into her room, into her private world, into her soul.

Or is that something I’m just telling you to make myself look better?

My whole life has been a long, tangled series of lies designed to make me look better than I am. Maybe I loved her and wanted to spend forever with her. Maybe I just wanted to follow her into that room and rip off her clothes and throw her on the bed. Maybe her body—imperfect as it was—was all I wanted, after all. I really don’t know anymore. These
things
are
a jumble to me
now. I can drudge up a mix of truths and lies from the past, but the original distinction between truth and lie has long since disappeared. Worse still are my attempts to remember how I felt. I am sure I felt love. And surely at some time I have operated philanthropically.

But that’s not what I
remember
. What I remember is the hunger. Maybe I just wanted that moment on top of her. No matter how good I am at articulating the opposite, maybe that moment is all there is for someone like me.

Chapter Five

I needed a plan. My life thus far had been run without any large plan. It had progressed, stage by stage, in small
steps,
each designed to secure some small measure of comfort from the harshness and horrors of this world. The ministry was an easy job. I was around nice people—or let’s say “nice” people—all the time. I gave them want they wanted, and they took surprisingly little in return. But now I had something
I
wanted.

So I needed a plan. The first thing was to steal Angela away from this kid she was infatuated with. Of course, that would be easy enough because he’d already rejected her. But I already had a lot of experience at watching people, and I suspected that she had that masochistic kind of love for him that compels you to love the more you’re rejected. I got my first chance to observe them interacting a few weeks later when he arrived at church one Wednesday night.

We were holding services in the Fellowship Hall at the end of the church’s classrooms. The kids milled around talking and drinking colas and munching on potato chips while their parents stood around the snack tables and did the same.

I stood at the podium at the front of a large group of chairs and looked over my notes for the night’s lesson. It was the same sermon with a different spin. I was going to talk about why kids shouldn’t drink, citing all the biblical warnings against drunkenness and so forth. What I was really doing, and what I was really always doing, was watching Angela. She was standing against the wall with her two friends. One was a fat, black girl with skin the color of chocolate pudding, and the other was fat, white and pimply, with skin like Tapioca pudding. I think Angela kept the pudding sisters around to make
herself
look better. When the boy strolled in, oblivious to them, they all smiled like fools.

His name was Oscar—a stupid name for an eighteen year old. He was a tall, muscular boy with dark hair flapping over his ears and a tanned complexion that accentuated his caramel-colored eyes. With his confident jock stride and a big, easy smile, it was easy to understand what my love must have seen in him. He was the type that impressionable, insecure girls worship. I’d seen it a thousand times. They love these guys for their assurance, for their ease with the world.
It’s more hero-worship
than love.

He came in with a kid named T.J., a Baptist version of Oscar. The boys drifted over to some popular girls and began talking. Angela watched Oscar as if beams of light were shooting out of his fingertips.

I walked over to him.

“Hi,” I said, extending my hand. I told him who I was and said I didn’t believe we’d met.

“Oscar,” he said, pumping my hand. He had a strong handshake, and I gave it back to him as best I could.

“Great to meet you,” I said. There was nothing odd about it. I was just the friendly youth minister. “You came with T.J. here.”

“Yeah,” T.J. said. He shifted on his feet, and the girls looked at each other. They all seemed to want me to leave.

“They play basketball together,” their PR person—a petite redheaded girl—told me. Leaning against the wall, Angela crossed her arms over her stomach and chewed her bottom lip.

“Do you go to church anywhere?” I asked Oscar.

Again the stupid grin and big alabaster teeth.
“Yeah,” he said. “Over at St. Mary Magdalene.”

I smiled. How nice. “Well, it’s great to have you here.” I made my exit and retreated to the other side of the room. Angela watched him some more as the pudding sisters whispered in each other’s ears and giggled. When it wasn’t obvious, I snuck out and went down the hall.

Brother Card was in his office. He stayed in there a lot. I’m not sure what he did. When I was in my office, which wasn’t often, I didn’t do anything but sleep.

“Howdy,” he said. “How goes it?”

“Very well,” I said. “Looks like we have a good turnout tonight.”

“Good.”

I needed to ease into this. “Lot of new kids,” I said. “You know, I think the best ministers for the Lord are our youth themselves. No one can reach a kid like another kid.”

He propped his elbows up on the desk and rested his chin on his knuckles. “Absolutely. I’ve always thought that. I think the Lord is using you as a real motivator in that department, too.”

And on and on.
We always talked like that, Brother Card and I, giving each other imbecilic little lectures on what God was doing, constantly defining and redefining the Good Lord’s “actions” and “will.” If God exists, then I think he only invented mankind so someone would know he exists. Well, that and he needed a show to watch. If not for the stupid, petty little antics of humanity, what would he be doing with eternity?

Anyway, Brother Card and I rattled on for a few moments before I threw out the hook.

“T.J. brought a kid tonight. Nice kid.”

He bit. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Another basketball
player,
goes to St. Mary’s.”

The hook set, and Brother Card looked like a fish suddenly realizing that his easy meal is yanking him out of the water.

He just stared at me, and I stared back, faking the dawning of a realization and said, “Is it that boy…”

“Oscar.”

“Oscar, right. I think that’s his name. Oh well, it’s good that he’s here, I suppose.”

Card leaned back in his chair and chewed on a knuckle. “Yes.
Of course.
But I wonder…”

It’s always funny to watch someone—especially someone as transparent as Brother Card—pulled between what they feel and what they
should
feel. He wanted to run downstairs and kick Oscar’s papist-loving ass out the door, but he knew he shouldn’t. Maybe Oscar would come to know Jesus—the real, Baptist Jesus. There was always hope and prayer.

But I wasn’t about to let hope and prayer get in my way.

“You know I didn’t make the connection,” I said. “I’m pretty dense sometimes. But now that you mention it, they were together, Angela and Oscar.”

“Together?”

“Flirting and laughing.
Strictly above board, of course.
They seemed to be enjoying a private joke.”

“Joke?”

“Like he was here only to see her and they didn’t think anyone would notice. I can see it now that you mention it.”

He was genuinely perplexed now. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “But I thought he didn’t like her.”

“Oh, he likes her,” I said. “Still, he seems like a decent boy to me.”

“His decency isn’t at question here,” Card spat back. I looked chastened and ready for enlightenment. He gave it. “What’s at question is his susceptibility to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, a susceptibility he’s unlikely to have gotten at an altar of the Virgin Mary.”

“Very true,” I said, shaking my head as if I thought it was the most profound thing ever said and I was disappointed I hadn’t thought of it myself. “Very true.”