On the Fifth Day (3 page)

"Yes," he said.

"Could I speak to Thomas Knight, please?"

It was a man, but not Peter, and the voice was oddly formal. The press?

"You could," he said, "but he's currently engaged with a bottle of whisky. I'm surprised he's still newsworthy. I mean, it's been a good ten minutes since he was fired." A Hamletic exaggeration, he thought, dignifying what was ob

viously a pretty sophomoric jibe. "Or is this the human in

terest follow-up?"

There was a fractional pause. The voice when it returned was careful, even grave.

"I'm sorry? I'm looking for Thomas Knight, brother to Fa

ther Edward Knight."

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And then the room began to spin a little, his elder brother's name jarring him with its unfamiliarity.

"Speaking," he said again, needlessly adding, "this is Ed Knight's brother."

"My name is Father Frank Harmon. I'm the provincial su

perior for the Society of Jesus here in Chicago."

Thomas nodded and then forced himself to say, "Yeah?"

There was a hint of something sardonic, an old bitterness that he couldn't quite suppress when dealing with officials of the Catholic church, a bitterness that surfaced even through the dread he felt gathering like fog.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you," said the voice. CHAPTER 2

The taxi seats were hard and cold, but his ancient Volvo, after two days of sitting idle in the snow, had refused to show any sign of life. Watching from the backseat as Oak Park's gridplan streets unfolded around him, the driver beyond the Per

spex screen making Hindi chitchat into his radio, it felt to Thomas a little like he had been arrested. There were still a couple of inches of snow on the ground, but the potholed roads and driveways were clear so that the overall impression was one of a job only half done. The single-family homes spread on, their little differences somehow reinforcing their uniformity. The rectory, if that was the word, was different in form, but not in kind.

It was attached to a dilapidated brick church, smaller than Thomas remembered and badly in need of maintenance; the roof was patched, the walls stained and crumbling, the blue gloss trim peeling and rotten. St. Anthony's Parish Church said the sign, its gilt lettering cracking. Thomas would bet good money that the place was only a quarter full on Sundays 13

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and a good deal less than that the rest of the week. It was a church like the one he had grown up attending, a building that was somehow fading, part of a bygone world. Not old enough to be quaint, not grand enough to inspire awe, a building con

structed on the expectation of plenty, now obscure, its foothold in relevance slipping further by the day . . .
Give it a rest.

Thomas shrugged the mood off, set down the empty suit

case he had brought to collect Ed's things, and pushed the doorbell. It rang, a thin, monotonous jangle in the distance. Then nothing but the cold wind. Thomas hugged his jacket to himself ruefully. He considered the discolored white Honda on the drive. It was old enough to still have those square an

gles, and the body work was half eaten away by the Chicago cold and--probably worse--the salt they put on the road. The door opened and a man appeared, one hand clutching a half-eaten sandwich. He was perhaps fifty, thin, balding and chewing. He gestured with the sandwich and stepped aside, allowing Thomas in. As the door banged shut behind them, the biting wind abated, but the hallway was not significantly warmer. It was also dark and smelled of damp and mildew.

"Cup of tea?" said the man, through his sandwich, walking quickly along the corridor.

"Er . . . sure," said Thomas. He entered the thin man's slip

stream and hurried after him, catching the thick tang of peanut butter in his wake.

"Cold one today, huh?" said the man as they emerged in a stark and faded kitchen.

"It'll get worse before it gets better," said Thomas.

"I'll give you something for now and see if I can call a shelter," said the other, rooting through an uneven stack of pa

pers. The room seemed to double as kitchen and office, both inadequate. "But they get pretty short on beds this time of year," he said, not looking up.

"I'm sorry," said Thomas, "my name is Thomas Knight."

"Jim," said the other, looking up and giving him a nod. He sounded Irish or maybe Scottish. He continued to thumb 14

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through the papers, scattering the ones he decided were of no use, his eyes tightly focused.

"Ed Knight was my brother," said Thomas.

It took perhaps half a second, and then the man who had called himself Jim froze midshuffle, straightened slowly, and gave a long, vocalized sigh, part realization, part selfdeprecation.

"Right," he said. "Sorry. I thought . . ."

"You thought I was homeless," said Thomas, finding--to his surprise--that he was smiling.

"It's the suitcase," said Jim, nodding to Thomas's battered luggage. "And the force of habit."

"It's no problem," said Thomas, thinking that in other cir

cumstances, he might have taken the other man for homeless too. "Better icebreaker than most. And you are . . . ?"

"Jim," said Jim. "Sorry, I thought I said."

"You did," said Thomas. "I mean, you're the housekeeper or the gardener or . . . ?"

"Have you
seen
the garden? There's no bloody gardener here, I'll tell you that. No. I'm the parish priest. Father Jim Gornall. Pleased to meet you. Your brother was sent by the Js to help out here. He was a good man."

A good man. He didn't emphasize
good,
as if he were making a statement on Ed's piety or moral standing. He said it as a soldier would of a fallen comrade.

Thomas hesitated a fraction too long, processing the idea that this disheveled and ungainly Irishman was a priest, and Jim shrugged without embarrassment or indignation. He didn't care, and Thomas immediately warmed to him.

"You still want tea?" said Jim.

"That would be great."

"More force of habit," said the Irishman. "When in need of warmth, welcome, or consolation, tea is generally the first line of attack."

"Unless you can get to the whisky first."

"Exactly," said the priest with a sudden grin that lit his 15

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whole face. "The obligatory Catholic vice. You fancy a small one?"

"Bit early for me," said Thomas, adding almost apologeti

cally as the lie struck him and registered, "not today."

"Fair enough," said the priest. "Then tea it is."

They drank from heavy mugs, chipped but clean, on either side of an inadequate electric heater that was turned to its low

est setting.

"Completely bloody useless," said the priest, "but if I turn it up any higher it blows every light in the building."

Thomas grinned.

"So what's a genuine Irish priest doing in Chicago?"

"Priest shortage," said the priest. "I fancied coming to America, so I applied to seminary here rather than at home. That was a long time ago. I think of myself as a kind of mis

sionary," he said, grinning again.

"Don't you think America has enough religion?" said Thomas, his gaze level.

"That's why they need a missionary," said Jim.

"I don't think I follow," said Thomas.

"Forget it," said the other, shrugging it off. "Private joke. You look familiar. Have we met before?"

"I don't think so. People say I look like Ed."

"Maybe that's it. So when do you want to start going through Ed's stuff?" said the priest. "It won't take long. There isn't much."

"What about . . . wherever he died?" said Thomas. "They didn't tell me. They said he was overseas, but they didn't say where." He paused, and the silence seemed long and loaded.

"I suppose I should have asked," he added lamely. The priest made a face.

"He wouldn't have had much with him," he said. "Nothing beyond a suitcase or two. His worldly goods, such as they are, are here, and whatever you don't claim will go to the order."

"So what was he doing?" said Thomas. "He wasn't a mis

sionary, right?"

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"No," said Jim. "Unlike me. He had been based here for a few months. I'm a diocesan priest. He was a Jesuit--a mem

ber of the Society of Jesus. He was sort of on loan to me here for a while, helping me out. When things calmed down, he went on retreat. I expected him back for a little while, but he would probably have been moved again by the end of the year. There was talk of him teaching at Loyola."

Thomas nodded, but there was something in the priest's manner he found careful, even evasive despite his breezy man

ner. He was intellectually agile, somehow, this priest, and if his scattered and disheveled appearance wasn't actually an act, it was certainly misleading.

"So. Ed's stuff," said Thomas. "I just take what I want and toss the rest away?" It seemed wrong, disrespectful.

"You're not so much an inheritor as an executor, as I un

derstand it," said the priest. "The Js take a vow of poverty, so he doesn't really own property as you or I do. They are going to send a lawyer round to help out. Technically everything be

longs to the order, though I'm sure they will respect your wishes if there are personal things you want to keep."

"I shouldn't think there will be," said Thomas, more brusque than he had meant to be. The priest nodded and Thomas looked away. He didn't want to get into a conversation about why he had so utterly lost touch with his only brother.

"Then it will be a short visit," said the priest, sipping his tea and watching Thomas over the rim of his mug. "But you can stay the night, if you like."

"That won't be necessary," said Thomas. "I live locally."

"What's 'necessary'?" Jim shrugged. "I could use the company."

Thomas thought quickly. It was not as if he had anything to rush home to, and odd though it seemed, there was suddenly something appealing about being in his brother's space, in what had been his life, if only for a moment.

"Okay," he said. "Thanks."

"You can take Ed's room," said the priest. "Top of the stairs on the left. Illinois game tonight. You a basketball fan?"

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"Not really."

"Perfect," said Jim. "Me neither. We can get a pizza, a cou

ple of beers and watch freakishly tall people running around for no good reason."

The sheer ordinariness of the generosity took Thomas off guard, so it was a moment before his pleasure and gratitude could make its way into his face and voice.

"That would be great," he said. "Can I go on up?"

"Sure. I'll leave you to it, if you don't mind," said the priest. "I have a spiritual direction meeting."

Thomas laughed. "Sounds like something I could use," he said as he made for the stairs, avoiding the priest's gaze. CHAPTER 3

Ed's was a sad little room. The minimal furniture was cheap, old, and stained with years of use. Apart from a meager selec

tion of clothes there were only books, papers, an overstuffed manila folder bound with rubber bands, an ancient transistor radio, and a couple of shoeboxes of oddments, all stacked haphazardly on a set of shelves made of planks and cinder blocks. The place looked less like the home of a priest than it did a dorm room that had been hurriedly vacated. A crucifix hung on the wall, but the place was otherwise unadorned ex

cept for an Amnesty International calendar. As Jim had said, there was nothing here, certainly nothing of value. Thomas's trip--save the pizza and basketball part--was likely to be done within the hour. If he'd known, he wouldn't have both

ered coming. Now he had to kill time before the lawyer ar

rived with the paperwork.

He sat on the bed. The mattress was thin and uneven, the springs pressing insistently through.

God, what a place.

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It felt empty, joyless: not unlike his own house, Thomas thought wryly. This was what Ed had chosen, what he had dedicated himself to, sacrificing God-alone-knew-what for this blank little cell with its cheap crucifix for company. Thomas had found a certain comfort in calling Ed's life an escape, a way of dodging the soul-killing business of every

day life, but sitting here now he had to admit that if his brother had thought in those terms he had been sadly de

luded. But Thomas suspected that his brother had known ex

actly what he was getting himself into and, perhaps more tellingly, what he wasn't.

Thomas picked up one of the boxes and emptied it care

fully onto the bed. Most of what spilled out looked like junk (a ticket stub from a Cubs game, a few faded and unframed photographs, a dusty cassette tape, some weird little silver trinket shaped like a fish, a stub of pencil), but it all felt saved somehow, hoarded as if it had all once been special, meaning

ful. The thought depressed him.

He flipped one of the photographs over and his breath caught. His own face looked up at him from the paper, a smil

ing, confident face Thomas had searched for in the mirror for the last six years. Next to Thomas was his brother in full cler

ical array--vestments, collar, the works--but somehow still looking like his brother as he had been when he taught him how to read a curveball or showed him the best comic books. And beside Ed was Kumi, her long black hair up and knotted in a suitably Japanese arrangement, the white of her wedding dress almost too bright for the camera to capture. They were all beaming, glowing with happiness, standing in the weedy garden only yards from where he now sat. Thomas closed his eyes, permitting himself to remember her as he so rarely did, suddenly feeling her absence as he had done when she first left.

The picture was almost ten years old, but she'd been gone for more than half of that. It struck Thomas that his wedding day had been the beginning of the end of his relationship with 19

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