The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (26 page)

“What’s that mean?”

“Come,” he says, heading over to my computer. “I would have told you sooner, but you were having your fit or whatever it was, and I was just too pissed to deal.”

He pulls up the Web and surfs over to a Gmail account. He clicks on an e-mail weighted down with attachments and begins moving picture files to my desktop and opening them. He’s moving fast and windows are popping up all over the place, but I can see that some of the photos are clearly, as the kids say, not safe for work.

“What is that?”

“Southern Decadence. Last year.”

“Southern what?”

“Humongo homo-fest in New Orleans at the end of the summer. Imagine Mardi Gras, but less inhibited.”

“Less?” I can’t even picture that. “Less?”

“Whatever it is you’re imagining right now, multiply it by ten. Swinging dicks. Public fornication. Varying degrees of prostitution. It’s a grand old time.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“Here we go,” he says, dragging one of the photos up to the front and expanding its window. This one looks harmless enough. Three buff guys with too-pretty hair and too-tight T-shirts holding neon-pink drinks and assaulting the camera with thousand-watt smiles. The one on the left catches my eye for some reason. “This one on the left is a guy named Timmy,” Mark says.

“What the fuck?” I say.

Mark, who was set to move onto the next guy, stops, confusion on his face.

“I know that guy. I went to elementary school with him,” I say.

“Get out of here,” Mark says. “I used to fool around with that guy.”

“Wow. Just…wow. We were best friends in grade school and then the Pentecostals took him.”

Mark smiles again. “Buddy, you don’t know the half of it.” He turns back to the computer. “Now, this second guy, believe it or not, was a roommate of mine in seminary.”

I do my best to drag my eyes off Timmy and onto the guy in the middle. I’m happy to realize I don’t know him and look back over at Timmy. He’s aged well, I’d say. Very well. If he grew his hair out, he could try out for the cover of a romance novel.

“Now this one.” Mark’s finger drifts over to the right. My eyes follow. Instead of sliding back to Timmy, they stick.

“Now, why does that one look familiar?” I ask.

“Take a moment,” Mark says, focused on the screen.

I’m drawing a blank. He looks vaguely familiar, but because of the shock of Timmy, my mind’s stuck in a rut, trying to dredge up other names from grade school.

“No idea,” I finally say, exasperated.

“Oh, c’mon, Steve.”

I look again. “Nope. He looks familiar, but I just can’t place him.”

“I guess it’s all about context.” He clicks on the next photo. Gone are Timmy and the former seminarian. The guy on the right in the previous photo is now all by his lonesome, visibly drunk and shirtless, his chest beet-red from too much sun.

“Pretty sure I’ve never seen this guy with his shirt off,” I say. “So it’s not exactly helping.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Mark says. “How about this one?”

Same guy, still outdoors, still drinking something pink, still sunburned, but now wearing boxers. Boxers, I might add, that are parting in the front to reveal an erection.

“Now, c’mon,” I protest.

“Quit being such a prude,” Mark answers. “Trust me, this is going to be so worth it.”

“Really? How? This doesn’t exactly do anything for me.”

“Oh, I know you’re batting for Team Vicky, Steve.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, Steve. Make you a deal. You quit insulting my intelligence and I’ll quit teasing you with this.”

We stare at each other for a moment.

“Fine,” I say.

“Very well, then,” he says, then opens a photo of the same guy completely naked, standing with his arms outstretched. It’s dark now in the New Orleans of the photo, which makes his crab-red chest and his moon-white ass look even more absurd. Of course, the group of guys standing around him, laughing and pointing at his monstrously large and erect penis, adds a dash of, I don’t know, surrealism to the photo.

“I give up,” I say. “Really.”

“I know. That wasn’t fair. But I couldn’t help myself. Try this. Take a good look at him. Now imagine him in designer jeans, a tight T-shirt, sunglasses—”

“But what’s the point?” I say.

“And he’s climbing out of a bright yellow Hummer, with his prick of a dad smiling away and threatening to ruin my goddamn festival,” Mark says, turning back to the computer.

Now it’s my turn. “Get out of here!” I’m not sure, but I think I may have shrieked. “Junior?”

“His actual name is Lester. I don’t know how you forget a name like Lester, but if you’d called him that instead of Junior, I might have made the connection sooner. I told you he looked familiar that first time I saw him!”

“Wowwwww.” Now I’m whispering.

“It only gets better.”

Mark begins to click on more photos and the computer starts to look like a fornication flip-book, with Junior—sorry, Lester—pleasuring and being pleasured by any number of different men.

“I can’t believe you have photos of this,” I say.

“It’s called Southern Decadence for a reason,” Mark says. “A few thousand drunk men with not a bit of estrogen around to shame them? Forget it.”

“Jesus,” I whisper.

“Name in vain,” Mark says. “Name in vain. Let’s not have this little session corrupt you.”

Corrupt me? I’m about to have a stroke. I don’t know what to do.

“Does B.P. know?” I ask.

“I’m sure he suspected, which is probably why my charms didn’t work on him that first day. Especially after I made the crack about Lester looking familiar. And let’s just say he’s a little more suspicious.” He clicks open the photo of the three guys again. “I actually showed this one to him.”

“You did what?”

“I
tried
to tell you. That night Vicky and I went to Esperanto, I saw ‘Junior’ there. Well, I thought I did. So when I got home, I looked through some photos, made a few calls, and pieced it all together. And when B.P. caught me ripping down his posters, I just happened to have a printout of this one.”

“What a coincidence,” I say.

“I know, right? So I showed him the photo—just this harmless little one where everyone’s smiling and dressed—and I haven’t heard a peep from him since.”

I stand silently for a moment looking at the screen, then at Mark. Then I look at the ceiling. Then I look out the window. Then I look at my hands and notice I’m still holding B.P.’s poster, the one advertising his revival that’s directly challenging my festival, my authority, my flock’s ability to have themselves a good time.

“Move,” I say to Mark.

“What are you doing?”

I pull up my own e-mail and key in the address written on the bottom of the poster. I attach the photo of his naked, sunburned son standing on a dark New Orleans street, a pack of ravenous men leering at him. I type:

B.P…. thought you and I should have ourselves a little talk. I need a favor or two and I think for any number of reasons you’re just the man to help me out. One reason is attached. If you don’t find that one convincing enough, I have plenty more. And trust me, the others are much, much more convincing.

Mark is jumping up and down and clapping his hands. “You are so not going to send that!” he screams. “No way.”

I type two more lines—Yours in Christ, Father Steve Sibille—and hit
SEND
.

I’m sitting on the back steps of the rectory enjoying a cigarette and a final moment of silence before the festivities begin when I hear my name.

“Father Steve.”

It’s Denise. She’s wearing a Rabbit Festival T-shirt, one of the ones she’d designed, and black jeans and bright red sneakers. In the sunset, she looks like what she is, a thirteen-year-old girl with not a great deal of worry in her young heart. She’s a good kid, one who helps around the house, one who volunteers at her church, one who wants to please adults. Looking at her, I feel more than a little embarrassed that I’d made her out to be such a temptress. Coy, maybe. A young girl trying out her new flirting abilities on the safest thing around, possibly. But a temptress? Hardly.

“Is it time?” I ask.

“Yeah, your turn.” She looks nervous. She has a lot riding on the success of this thing, I guess. This is her first almost-adult undertaking. She wants desperately for it to go well.

I follow her through the gathering crowd and up onto the stage. I see the same look of apprehension and excitement on the faces of Miss Emilia, Miss Celestine, and Miss Pamela as they stand watching me climb the steps. How much of their lives have they put into this?

The crowd in front of the stage is growing quickly. My parish. All of them in the same place at the same time. I’ve never seen that before. It’s always broken into thirds: Saturday evening, early Sunday, regular Sunday, each with its own personality. Now they’re all here, standing before me, looking at me expectantly, as if I have the power to give them something.

I do have a power, in a way, to stand in place and let people make of me what they will, to project upon me whatever it is they think they need. I don’t have to do much, really. Just show up, listen, offer a nod of understanding, a word of encouragement, let them know that there is always at least this much, a priest. After all, the most important job of the shepherd is to stand there and watch, provide comfort. There they all are, my flock.

And the carnies. They’re here, too, a scraggly lot of tattooed predators, probably drunk, possibly stoned. But even the carnies are behaving themselves for now.

And Mark and Vicky, standing off to the side, arms crossed, looking at me. Mark is smiling. Vicky looks tired.

I haven’t spoken to her since the confession. I figure we needed a little time to figure out our next moves, whatever those will be. I have a vague notion of what I want to do, but it’s going to be a test of faith and courage to say the least. And, to be honest, I’m afraid of Vicky, afraid she’s still angry and will never be able to forgive me.

They look at me. I look at them, smile sheepishly. Mark’s beaming with pride. Vicky’s expression doesn’t change, but her eyes challenge me.
Your move, boss,
she seems to be saying.

I step up to the microphone and tap it. There’s no feedback.

“Testing?” I say, and my voice comes through loud and clear.

“Well, it’s a beautiful evening. Looks like someone’s smiling down on our little festival.” Being good parishioners, they laugh at this. “And I think we should start off with a little prayer.”

There’s a general commotion as the men remove their hats and heads are bowed. The carnies fidget some, at a loss for what to do.

“We want to offer up thanks today, God, for You providing us with such a strong community and with this opportunity to gather in one place and celebrate one another, celebrate Your gifts. You have a good flock down here in Grand Prairie and I want to personally thank You for that right here in front of them. They need to know I’m proud of them for coming together like this and working so hard.” A rock star would simply have said,
“Hello, Grand Prairie,”
but it serves the same purpose. It’s a shout-out to the hometown crowd. “And we all want to thank You for the weather, and the music, and the food.”

After the prayer, they look up at me expectantly. How much longer am I going to hold up the festivities, they want to know.

“Before we start, I want to thank the volunteers who set up and those of you who volunteered to help clean. And I also want to especially thank our Festival Board, Miss Emilia Boudreaux, Miss Celestine Thibodeaux, Miss Pamela Pitre, and Miss Denise Fontenot. Yall come up here.” The four of them come forward and the crowd applauds loudly as I hand each one a bouquet of a dozen roses. A few of the men even whistle. I look over at Mark and Vicky. Mark’s smile has grown a little larger. He’s a sucker for drama. Vicky seems surprised that I had the presence of mind to get something for the three women and Denise. She doesn’t need to know it was Mama who “reminded” me that I should make the gesture.

“These ladies did a lot of hard work, so yall give them a hand,” I say. The crowd goes about as wild as a Grand Prairie crowd can. Denise is smiling so hard, I worry that her teeth might fall right out of her head.

“And there’s two more people I have to thank,” I tell the crowd. They all turn to Vicky and Mark. “While I was off doing whatever it is I do, these two people were the ones running around getting these fund-raisers together, working the phones, and finding the music so we can dance from tonight straight through until Sunday evening.”

The crowd breaks into applause again, with the carnies even contributing a few hoots and hollers.

“So if Vicky Carrier—she was the director of the board—and Mark Johnson, our consultant, the one who really got this thing to where it is—if they could come up here.”

Vicky and Mark look at each other hesitantly before moving forward and climbing the steps.

“Mark,” I begin, “well, Mark. I didn’t know quite what to get him. But I do know he has a little black cat, about this big.” I hold my hands up about six inches from each other. On cue, the crowd lets out an appreciative “awwww.”

“So,” I continue, “I got the cat something instead.” I motion to Denise, who comes forward with a cardboard box with holes in the side. “I got that little black cat a little girl cat.” I lift the kitten out of the box, hold it close, and stroke its fur. I can feel its heart thumping quickly against my chest.

“Mark?” I say, turning to Mark.

Mark comes forward, biting his bottom lip. I don’t know how the parish is going to react if a grown man starts crying in public over a kitten. I hadn’t thought of that. But Mark holds it together even as I give him a firm, manly, heterosexual hug.

“Mark,” I whisper, careful to step away from the microphone. “I’m sorry. This is the proper apology I owe you. Really.”

“You did good,” Mark says. “But I think Chase might be gay.”

“Shut up,” I say. “And look. Not that you’d want to, but you can move back in whenever you want. If you want.”

Mark’s smiling again. “Would tonight be too soon?”

“Tonight?” I say, surprised.

“Yeah,” Mark whispers. “Living with that woman’s getting to be a bit much. Lord. She’s been nuts since you went AWOL.”

I don’t mean to, but I smile. “Yeah. Sure. Tonight’s fine. Yeah.”

I turn back to the microphone. “Big hand for Mark.”

After the applause dies down, I start again. “Now, yall all know Vicky Carrier. She’s been part of the parish for a long, long time.” Everyone murmurs approval. “And she’s a hard woman to buy for. She’s got pretty much everything.” A number of people nod, but I flash a knowing smile at the audience and add, “Well, except a husband.” It’s a risk, but I’m trying to uphold the false impression that everything is normal. Nothing to see here. Everyone in the crowd laughs. Real laughter this time. I look over at Vicky. She’s not smiling. “Anyway, they were out of those at Walmart.” Again, the crowd laughs. “So I talked to some people around the parish and we put our heads together and we all came up with an idea.”

And that idea involved B.P. He’d responded to my e-mail within the hour by driving up in his son’s bright yellow Hummer.

Before I could even say hi and ask about his health, he was making threats. Seems he’d forgotten his aw-shucks charm at home.

“I could just call up the diocese and rat you out. You and your gal and that little poof you got there and whatever it is you got with them little altar gals—the whole damn lot of you.”

So it was going to be like that.

“I suppose you could. Guess you’d have to ask yourself who has more to lose. Whose family would be hurt most by this? That’s what I’d ask myself. But I don’t know if that’s all that fair, considering I don’t have a family.” All that living alone had finally paid off!

He’d glared at me, his nostrils flaring.

“And to be perfectly honest, B.P., though I don’t have a son of my own, I think the rest of these photos would break your heart to a million tiny little pieces. I think these photos might be the sort of thing to come between a man and his God. In fact, I’m inclined not to show them to you at all. But you push me, you’ll see them, but not until after everyone else from Ville Platte to Church Point has gotten a good look.”

He huffed like a bull and I thought for sure he was going to drive one of those sledgehammer fists of his right into my face.

Finally, he said, “What do you want?”

“What do I want? Well, B.P., luckily for you, I’m not a greedy man. I only want three things. I want you to postpone your tent revival for a week.”

“Look here, you know I can’t do that. I got five preachers coming down from—”

“I don’t care where they’re coming down from. Fake a stroke. Fake a death in the family. Just call them and tell them to come the following week. Or never. Or would you rather them be the first to see these photos?”

His face had grown so red by this point, I was afraid he would have a heart attack. “What else?”

“Second thing’s much easier than the first. Just keep your mouth shut about what happens out here and stay on your side of town.”

“My side of town.”

“I know. It’s not really a town, but you get my drift. Don’t come around trying to convert my people and I won’t go around trying to convert yours. Don’t drive into Opelousas spreading my business all over town and I’ll be kind enough to do likewise. Hell, at some point, maybe we can have some of those interfaith things that seem to be all the rage these days.”

“Over my dead body,” he’d said.

“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll come around.” I couldn’t help myself. I was half tempted to hit him up for money to see how far I could take things.

“What else?”

“Last thing is the easiest one of all,” I said. “Might involve a little sweat, dirt, and hard work, but, hell, it’ll be fun.”

Denise walks up to me and hands me a covered plaque.

“Now, we’re an odd little parish, we know that. Some of our secrets are not so secret.” I pause before continuing. “And while I didn’t know the man too well, I know you all had a lot of love for Father Carrier, almost as much love as Vicky did.”

The entire crowd, with the exception of the carnies, who by this point have wandered off to their rides and games, aim a smile Vicky’s way. “So I got this plaque made, and it says ‘The Father Paul Carrier Memorial Trail. In Loving Memory of Father Paul Carrier, the Parish of St. Peter’s Church in Grand Prairie.’” Again the crowd applauds.

Vicky’s hand has gone to her chest and she seems to be clutching the buttons on her shirt. It strikes me as such a ladylike thing to do.

I push on. “Now, I know this isn’t going to make Mr. Robichaux and some of the others too happy, but I also went ahead and took the liberty to lay gravel on that path from the back of the rectory clear to the bayou.” And by that, I mean I took the liberty of telling B.P. to get his fat ass on his big yellow bulldozer and get working. Which he did with minimal complaint. “Put some benches back there, too. And Jimmy Vidrine built a little deck overlooking the water and everybody’s welcome to it all year long.”

Vicky’s crying now. That shocks me some, but not half as much as the fact that I managed to surprise her with this. I thought for sure some old bird in the parish would have squawked before today.

I hold the plaque out to Vick. When her trembling hands reach for it, I pull her in tight for a hug.

“You are one nervy son of a bitch,” she whispers, her arms dead at her side.

“I know, Vicky,” I say. “I’m a no-count bastard, too, but sometimes I can’t help myself.”

“Shit.”

“It’s okay, right? This is a good thing?” It’s almost as if I’m trying to convince her. I hadn’t thought of it before and suddenly I’m worried that I’ve gone and made everything worse.

She tries to compose herself, wipes her nose on the heel of her palm. So much for ladylike. “Just get this party started, damn it. I need a beer,” she says while smiling at the crowd and waving.

“Can do.” I turn back to the microphone and put on my own false cheer. “Okay, folks. I’m going to shut my trap now. Yall go and have a good time.”

We descend into the crowd. As parishioners mill around us offering congratulations and compliments, Vicky maintains a breezy air. But I can see the cold glint in her eyes, a tightness in her face when she’s forced to acknowledge me.

When the first strains of accordion wash over the crowd and the Zipper jumps to life, people suddenly remember they’re here for a party, not simply to jabber the night away. A few couples spin off onto the dance floor, the teens make a mad dash for the scary rides, the smaller children drag their parents toward the kiddie rides, and the largest contingent—of which I am one—amble toward the beer and food booths.

I tug on Vicky’s sleeve, and she stops to consider me. I’m not sure where to start.

“Seriously, Vick. Thanks for all the help.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, her face stony, her body language guarded.

“I just want to—”

She cuts me off. “Not now, Padre.”

“But—”

“Just drop it. We have to get through this weekend. We have to put on a show. Whatever it is you’re going to say isn’t going to help. So drop it.”

“Fuck,” I say, more to myself than to her.

“That about sums it up,” she says. Then, “C’mon. We have to judge the rabbit stew contest.”

Side by side, we walk down the midway. The sun is setting over the cemetery, and the blinking lights of the carnival games and rides are a sight to behold. It’s a cool night and the sounds of zydeco and screaming girls mix easily in the air; they can probably be heard all the way in Plaisance. Children, their faces already covered in cotton candy and face paint, run by, kicking up dust behind them. I’m struck by such an overwhelming sense of nostalgia that I have to stop. For a moment, it hurts to breathe. I remember clearly the sensation of heartbreak. Not the anger and envy and self-loathing that immediately follow a breakup, but the pure, almost sweet sadness at the bottom of it all.