The Unspeakable (18 page)

I thought about this when I asked Marbury whether he ever visited his father in prison. If he even could. He just nodded.

“Often?”

“Not at first. But more later. Once I got comfortable.”

“What on earth did you talk about?”

I was making a reference to guilt. Namely, if he felt any, but I circled around it the long way.

“We talked about books mostly.”

“I take it that your father was a reader.”

Marbury shook his head. “He never read. But in prison books are your only windows. So you become a reader fast.”

Marbury explained that his father, having hardly read anything before but the sports pages, became a voracious reader. The problem was, he didn't know where to start. He didn't know how to direct his reading. And the first few attempts were clumsy books from the prison library. He started with philosophy, thinking that since he had the time to reflect he might actually uncover something interesting and novel about his life. But the books were just too dense. So he moved on. He tried to be random, reading fiction and plays, poems as well, but these were just imaginary and he quickly lost interest. Science was boring. As for history, it was the opposite. Too real. And Marbury said that his father flirted from book to book, hardly settling on anything more than a few chapters.

“Luckily I was in college. It gave him a direction.”

I knew about him and books. His mistrust of them.

“So you guided his reading?” I asked, incredulous.

“No, my teachers did.”

Marbury said that his father began to read everything that was assigned to his son. Even going as far as taking notes for him and outlining the texts that would later become papers. He read the
lecture notes and even helped Marbury study for exams. They were a team.

I liked the idea of a father and son exploring books together, really going to school together and I told him that.

“It was more one-sided than that,” said Marbury.

For what began as a good idea quickly became something else. A disaster. It was finals week and Marbury, already pushed with the many exams and papers that he had coming due, asked his father for help. It was completely innocent and he agreed. He would write a paper. Before long Marbury said that his father was writing more and more papers, and transcribing notes as well that Marbury dropped off, in an envelope, twice a week. They quit laughing together. They quit talking, except about class work.

“I was drinking and having a good old time while my father slaved.”

“How long did this go on?”

“About six months. Then he started to spit up blood.”

But it really began earlier than that. Marbury said that his father smelled liquor on his breath several times and asked him about it. Marbury lied about it of course, but when he returned a few days later he noticed that his father had gotten rid of every book in his cell. Except for one.

“He gave away all of my textbooks.”

“Everything?”

“The notes, half-written papers. My whole future.”

Marbury said that he almost gave up with college and might have, had the prison doctor not called him a couple of days later and told him about his father's cancer. The disease had already progressed, said the doctor, and time was at a premium. At least there was not enough time to argue.

“I sucked it up after that. Wrote my own papers. I even studied.”

A real achievement and I told him that.

“It wasn't my inclination. But I owed him that much.”

Marbury said that he went back to visiting his father and they put everything behind them. School, the death of Marbury's mother, the lousy jobs, even the incident at the bar. Finally they began to read together again as well, taking turns and reading aloud. But this time it was the Bible.

A natural thing if you knew Marbury. For he always said, probably quoting his own father now that I think about it, that every argument, every scrap of what we call civilization and culture, could be found in the Bible. Its layers were simple but complex, like those of an onion, unraveling the stories of the human soul itself, where resided all the great poetry and drama and science anyway. The real science of men, said Marbury, was the science of not figuring out what it all meant but how to survive it with dignity.

“It was a revelation, you might say.”

A slight gurgle of a laugh, ironic.

“You've never read the Scriptures before that?”

“Only with a critical eye. My mother, remember?”

The Christian Scientist. Marbury said that his father went back to the Bible with great reluctance, especially after the debacle of his wife and her illness, but one day he just started reading and he never put it back down.

“They must have touched a chord, the stories.”

“I guess they touched something. Look at me.”

“Did you think about becoming a priest back then?”

He shook his head. “No, that inspiration was left for Jill.”

Marbury said that his relationship with Jill, which started out slowly, began to gradually pick up steam. But it really picked up after the death of his father. He found himself alone in the world. Completely alone.

“It wasn't love. But I had nowhere else to turn.”

“How old were you?”

“Almost nineteen.”

Jill, it turned out, was also on her own. Her parents had split up at a young age, and she had no idea where her father was, though her mother was a different matter. She was in a mental hospital, a hopeless schizophrenic. There were no sisters and brothers to fall back on, and the man that Jill had married at eighteen, when she too realized that she was alone in the world, walked out on her.

“We were quite the match,” said Marbury.

Soon the two of them, Marbury and Jill, began to spend as much time together as possible. They gravitated to one another like moths to a flame, and like moths to a flame, they got closer than they wanted. Then one day, out of the blue, Jill asked Marbury to move in with her.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Why, I said yes.”

And the descent continued.

The Bishop was waiting for me in his office back at the diocesan headquarters. He was unwrapping his vestments and checking them over, picking off the lint and dust that might have collected since the last time they were used. I told Marbury that I had to leave, a disappointment for him since he had hoped that I would stay, but he understood. It was part of my job, assisting the Bishop in more official roles like saying Mass.

I was tending to my own vestments when I heard the Bishop.

He said, “I spoke with Father Stone today. He wanted to know how you were doing with that address he gave you.”

I swallowed hard. “I was going to tell you, Tony.”

“Well, I already know.”

Tricky and his girlfriend.

“So you were waiting, I understand. How much did they get?”

“Nathan thinks five hundred. Probably more.”

“Five hundred? All on drugs?”

“It's only a suspicion.”

“What did the bookkeeper say?”

“Stone talked to her.”

“And?”

“Nearly twelve thousand. But that's over two years.” I tried to sound upbeat, as upbeat as one could about twelve thousand dollars just vanishing.

“Amortized, you mean.”

The Bishop's idea of a joke, but he wasn't smiling.

He said, “So what you're saying is that there could be more.”

“Yes.”

“Stolen?”

“Just missing.”

“But not lost, Whitmore. Your drug friends can vouch for that.”

“Marbury said that he stole nothing.”

“And you believe him?”

“I don't know what to believe.”

“What about Holland?”

More bad news.

“Did you know that Nick Holland has a police record?”

The Bishop just shrugged that he didn't.

“He spent two years in jail,” I said. “Check fraud.”

“Like I said, the whole situation stinks, Whitmore. I can smell it from here.”

I couldn't argue with the Bishop on that point. He was right. And now the money entrusted to the shelter was gone, whether because of poor bookkeeping or because of Marbury, or even embezzled by Nick Holland himself, I wasn't sure.

I said, “I'll talk to the bookkeeper myself.”

“Then you'd better hurry. I don't want it spread around that the church lends people money for drugs.”

My game plan in dealing with Marbury, if indeed I was ever forced to articulate one, was to appeal to his sense of reason first and, that failing, rely on the dedication and love of his own ministry. Marbury had been a victim of bad circumstances throughout his life. Not only with his shortened youth or the missing money but first in Pennsylvania and the snowstorm that he claimed to have been stuck in, and later when he was discovered in Altoona. The police, thinking that they had found someone matching the description of the suspect for a local robbery, took Marbury to a holding cell for several hours. There he was questioned. But Marbury couldn't defend himself. His voice was a mere whisper and the Altoona police, believing only that the individual they had in lockup was a nut or a good liar, did what they had to.

They called in a psychiatrist.

Marbury spent half the day with the doctor trying to convince him who he was, but it wasn't going very well. For one, he hadn't eaten or slept in several days, maybe more, and his memory was affected. Marbury couldn't remember where he had left his car or in what town, much less why. And police bulletins to find the vehicle, at least immediately, proved futile. To make matters worse, Marbury had lost his wallet. He was penniless and he looked that way, unshaven and dirty. He was wearing only a torn shirt and slacks. No shoes. His feet were cold but remarkably not frostbitten. He didn't look like a priest. He barely looked human.

Fortunately for Marbury he had the wisdom not to talk about his ordeal, though I suspect in reality the story probably hadn't come to him yet. He was badly dehydrated, living on only snow, and his mind wasn't working. Or maybe it was working too much, I don't know. Somehow Marbury talked the doctor into the phone call that saved his life. He had visions before that, of going off to some mental hospital, squirreled away against his will. No voice,
no memory of one, clearly no alibi for the crime committed. And even the doctor thought these options were possible ones.

But when Father Stone accurately described Marbury, right down to his height and weight, even down to a tattoo that he had on his shoulder from his pool-hall days, the psychiatrist conceded. Marbury was exactly who he said that he was. Still, there was a question of his sanity. A man, even a priest, found walking around half naked wasn't normal, and that had to be addressed. But Stone thought quickly. He notified the Diocese in Pittsburgh, who interceded, and set into motion Marbury's return to Minneapolis, which happened only a few days later.

Marbury was now a free man. But only briefly. He was greeted at the airport by his staff from the mission, who only had to take one look at him to see that he was in trouble. Mental trouble. Stone thought that it was a breakdown at first, but then he realized that it was much more than that and he contacted the Bishop for help, who then contacted me.

It was later that Good Friday afternoon and Marbury and I were sitting in his office, relaxing. Or rather, he relaxed as I wrote. I told him about those first few days, what I'd uncovered about them from Father Stone and others, which seemed to interest him. For he had little recollection of anything beyond Wheelersburg.

“I remember the cops,” he said.

“Well, they certainly remember you.”

“What was I accused of again?”

“Robbing two convenience stores.”

Marbury slowly rubbed his chin, thinking. “Armed or unarmed?”

“Does it matter?”

“I want to see how dangerous I was supposed to be.”

“Armed. You were armed. Or whoever they thought you were.”

But the police said that after a few hours of questioning, they gave up on Marbury as a suspect. The videotapes from one of the
convenience stores, though showing a figure matching Marbury's general description, didn't confirm that he was actually the robber. They were also tiring of Marbury's responses, written on a tablet and shown to the detective in charge, who was getting sick of reading it to the others.

I said, “You lucked out again.”

“You keep saying that, Peter. I wish you wouldn't.”

“Why?”

“Luck has nothing to do with anything in the world.”

“I suppose you believe it's more involved than that.”

He nodded. “Look at a forest. Where are all the leaves? On branches. And the branches to the trunk. Trunk to roots, roots to ground, ground to sky. It's all connected.”

“Through God?”

“Yes.”

“I'm talking about you, Marbury. Not God. Unless you're—”

“Don't be stupid. God has spoken to me. I don't expect you to believe it, but at least show some respect.”

“Now he speaks to you.” I laughed.

But Marbury didn't find it humorous. “Through other people, yes.”

I felt myself going in circles. Marbury was almost playing with me, playing with my expectation that he wanted to hang himself, burn his career and everything along with it.

“That's not the same,” I said.

“Sure it is. Changed nonetheless.”

He was right but I didn't tell him that. Other people do change us, maybe more than even God, for we can feel and see those changes for ourselves. I myself have been shaped by many in my life, by teachers and sports heroes, by my family. I've even been changed by someone like Marbury, who gave my life a direction.

I said, “Change isn't enough. If it were, the world would
be a different place, even with second chances. You know that.”