You Believers (39 page)

Katy would like that. He felt a softening in his chest, the kind of easing feeling he got whenever he looked up at her and saw that whatever he was doing or what he had just said had brought a smile to her face. He looked back to the cross, thought,
Please, God. Don’t let her be taken away
.

The man came out of the booth and again with not even a glance at Billy headed into the last one. Billy was thinking to ask whether you had to make an appointment for a confession, but the man moved the way the rabbit moved when it slipped into Katy’s garden and knew Billy was sitting right there watching. He’d imagine the rabbit
thinking something like,
If you don’t notice me, then I won’t notice you
. They’d worked out a kind of agreement, he and that rabbit. The rabbit got a good taste of lettuce, and Billy got the pleasure of watching him eat. Katy didn’t mind. She said rabbits were supposed to sneak into gardens. They couldn’t eat all the lettuce she grew anyway.

Billy thought he’d ask the cleaning man if you had to be Catholic to make a confession. He’d never believed much in religion, but people had believed in that man who’d died on a cross for the sins of the world, had believed in the power of priests and all that business of confessions and pardons and prayers answered if you were good and played by the rules; people had believed that for over two thousand years. What could it hurt for him to try what they all did? He’d tell the priest that he smoked too much pot and drank too much beer. It wasn’t exactly breaking a commandment, but he knew just about any Christian would say pot and beer were some kind of sin, so he’d tell the priest to tell God, whoever he was supposed to tell, that he was sorry.

He looked up at the clean lines of the vaulted ceilings, more like something out of
Architectural Digest
than a church. On the outside the church had looked old and solid, had a kind of eternal feel to it that made you think if you went inside those doors you’d find an older world, a more peaceful world, a place of music and prayers, a place where nobody screamed. It looked like something built by people who were a lot closer, really closer, to God than they were these days. Billy figured if people had been coming to sit in those pews, say those prayers, stand and bow, and take that communion for over a hundred years now, there had to be some kind of holiness to the place even if the holiness was a man-made and not a God-given thing.

But sitting there, looking at those clean lines that lifted his eyes up toward someplace like heaven, Billy felt cheated. He just saw a
ceiling and some old rusty water stains in the corner, where there must have been a leak when it rained. Then he felt guilty. He was sure God wouldn’t be happy with some pot-smoking bricklayer criticizing his church.
I’m sorry, God
, Billy thought.
It’s just sometimes I can’t help myself
. He sighed and looked up at the cross. If God really did know everything a man did and thought, then he’d know Billy was some kind of sinner who didn’t have the sense to admire God’s church. He’d never really thought of himself as a sinner; he’d laughed at the idea of needing to be saved. He just couldn’t buy those sincere looks of Christians when they’d tried to save him on street corners by pushing cartoon pamphlets about hell and damnation into his hand. He’d just keep walking, saying something like, “I’m all right; I’ve got my own religion.” And most days he did feel all right. Living was his religion, just living a good life and being a nice guy. Wasn’t that enough to please a God with any kind of compassion?

I’m not a sinner
, Billy thought. But maybe God thought he was. He sat there trying to think of anything he’d done wrong. Too much pot and beer. He’d never cheated on Katy. But there had been those years when he hadn’t been the most honest guy with the girls. Only the silent kind of lying, where you just let them think what they needed to think and kept the truth to yourself. But everybody did that. Didn’t they? He’d never stolen anything. He had even once told his boss when he’d paid Billy overtime on a job he hadn’t done. The boss had been so surprised at Billy’s honesty that he’d laughed and given him a beer out of that little refrigerator he kept in the office. Billy had thought he’d let him keep the extra money, but the next week, sure enough, it was docked from his pay. Katy laughed at Billy’s honesty. She said that was one of the things she loved about him—he didn’t even think to lie when most men would have taken the money and laughed. He knew she was thinking about Frank, who lived on lies and laughter, but he let her keep that
thought to herself. He let her keep lots of her thoughts to herself. And now he sat wondering whether he might be a little closer to knowing where she was now if he’d pushed a little harder to know what she kept in her mind. He wondered what she’d think of him sitting in her favorite church, a church they couldn’t get married in, but still her favorite. She’d probably laugh at the sight of him sitting there, trying to conjure up a prayer.

Since she’d disappeared, he liked to think that somehow she could see him, know what he was doing, could see that he was still loving her and trying to be good. She’d like the way he did the dishes and the laundry. And she’d like the way he’d been good to her mom even when they all knew her mom didn’t think much of him. As much as she didn’t want her mom to think of her as just a bartender, she would have liked him inviting Livy to the bar, where she could meet Pete, who’d be sure to lift her spirits because that was just what Pete did. Livy had liked Pete. Livy had been pleased to see that Katy was working at a nice Irish bar and not some dive. He looked up at the cross, thought,
Please let us find Katy. Alive. Please let her be alive somewhere
.

He remembered that bartender chick. Allison, that was her name. He’d made her cry that night, even though she wouldn’t show it. He knew he’d made her cry inside with that smart-ass shit about her being nothing but corn. What the fuck was the matter with him, talking like that?
I’m sorry, God
, he thought.
I’m sorry, Katy
. The girl hadn’t come near him since that night. Whenever he walked in, Pete jumped up and got him his beer, or somebody without a word just brought him a drink. The girl, Allison, wouldn’t even look at him. He looked up at the cross, which was looking more and more like a futuristic spaceship with the brighter light of day coming through the windows. He said the words: “Okay, God, I’m sorry.
Next time I go to the bar, I’ll go right up to the girl and apologize. And even if she smacks me in the face, I’ll say that’s all right.”

The confession-booth door opened, and the cleaning man came out. He must have felt Billy staring at him. He gave a nod and a quick little smile. Billy realized he’d probably heard him talking out loud. He was probably used to people coming in there and talking to themselves, or to God, whomever it was you were really talking to when you sat in a church. Billy thought,
See me, Katy? I’m here
. He thought about the girl from Land Fall. She’d said someone had been talking to her that night. She’d said she thought it was Katy, but if it was Katy, that would mean Katy was dead. That old knot of tears clenched in his throat, and he swallowed it down. He thought,
If you can hear me, Katy, please talk to me. Please don’t leave me alone with so much quiet. I don’t want to be alone
.

Since Livy had moved out to the beach, he saw her only once a week. She’d invite him to dinner, make his favorite things, like steak, pork chops. He’d only given up eating meat for Katy.
I’m sorry, Katy
, he thought. He knew she’d laugh, and he could feel the warmth inside he always felt when he got Katy to laughing. She’d be nothing but tickled that her mother was cooking for him, giving him meat.

Billy watched the cleaning guy walk up to the front of the church. He wanted to call to him, but it seemed rude to yell across a church. He thought of waving the guy over, but that seemed even more rude, would be like bossing the cleaning guy around the way some people told a bartender to hurry up and bring another beer. The man stopped in front of the altar, bowed his head, and quickly crossed himself. Billy smiled. Finally something he’d seen in the movies. Even when a church was empty, people stopped in front of the altar and crossed themselves. Most times they did a quick little drop to their knees. But this man lowered his head in a firm way, as if he
really meant it and wasn’t just going through the motions. With the way he stood, bowed, he seemed old. Billy figured that the old man might have trouble standing again if he went to his knees. The man gave a little nod to the altar and headed for the alcove where the votive candles glowed. There would be a lot of dust there, all that metal, glass, and wax. Billy decided to go light another candle for Katy so maybe he’d get a chance to talk to the man.

He walked quietly, even though no one was in the place but the cleaning man. Or maybe the priest was hidden somewhere behind a curtain where he could watch what his congregation did when they thought he wasn’t around. When Billy turned into the alcove, he saw the old man crouched, using a putty knife to scrape at the floor. He jumped, struggled up. “Excuse me, please,” he said. He grabbed his bucket of cleaning supplies and turned to go.

“It’s all right,” Billy said. “I already lit a candle. I came to talk to you.”

“Me?” The man looked confused. He wore gold wire glasses, and his head was balding, looked to be in his seventies. He had the kind of face that looked like it had gone gentle instead of hardened with age. Billy thought he looked like the old man in
Pinocchio
, the man who had made a wooden boy because he was lonely and just wanted a boy of his own. Katy loved that movie. It was her favorite Disney movie, and Billy thought that was odd since she was a girl.

The man rushed to arrange the cleaning supplies in his bucket, and his putty knife clattered to the floor. Billy bent to pick it up, saw the hardened pool of wax. He looked at the old man. “How does so much wax get spilled on the floor?” He looked at the little candles in the box, the ones arranged and flickering neatly in the red votives. Anybody with sense would put the candle into the holder, then light it. You’d have to really work at it to get so much wax on the floor.

“Kids,” the man said. “You know kids, looking for any kind of
trouble these days.” He reached for the putty knife. “Now I’ll get out of your way.”

Billy kept the putty knife at his side. “I’ll finish cleaning this for you.”

The man shifted his glasses higher on his nose and looked at Billy with a mix of doubt and patience. He’d probably seen and heard just about everything in that church. Billy crouched and jabbed at the wax, which came up in bigger, smoother chunks than the old man had been able to scrape up. “I’m sorry about the kids,” Billy said.

‘I’ve seen worse,” the man said. Then he went on to tell Billy that he didn’t really need to clean the mess, that he probably should just get on with his prayers and whatever else he needed to do that day.

Billy said he really didn’t have anything better to do with his day and kept scraping. He pushed the wax into a little pile, then scooped it into his palm. He stood, not knowing what to do with it.

The man offered his bucket. “Just dump it here.”

Billy looked into the neatly arranged bottles, brushes, carefully folded rags. “That’s too clean for dirt,” Billy said and shoved the wax into his front pocket, telling himself to be sure to empty his pockets before throwing the jeans in the wash. Katy had trained him to do that. The man kept looking from the floor to Billy and back to the floor again, as if some miracle had occurred. Billy spotted the citrus cleanser in the bucket. “Perfect,” he said. “This is just what you need to get the trace wax up. I thought I’d need to go get some from my truck, but you’ve got it right here.” He gave the man the putty knife, grabbed the cleanser and a rag. He bent to clean the floor. He liked that citrus smell.

Billy scrubbed harder than he needed to, felt the tightening in his face, the tears trying to rise. His throat ached. He remembered what Livy had told him: There had to be a million blue trucks in
the world. He rubbed the floor harder, heard his breath going in and out, the sound of a man running or fighting, struggling to bear weight, too much noise for a man just cleaning wax off a floor.

“You all right, fella?” the man said.

Billy sat on the floor, looked up at the man, who really did look like that man who made Pinocchio. Billy shook his head.

The man looked around the church as if he could find help. “Father Welly isn’t here today. You probably came for Father Welly. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Welly?” Billy smiled. “You have a priest named Welly? Heals the sick and . . .” he thought to say
raises the dead
, but wouldn’t say that. He looked up at the old man juggling his bucket on his hip and thought to say,
And I guess they call you Mr. Clean
. But that would be a smart-ass who’d talk like that. It was easy to be a smart-ass when you couldn’t say what you really wanted to say, when you wanted to cry and just say to someone,
Could you bring my Katy home
?

The man was looking down at him, worried now. “We have a deacon I could call if it’s an emergency.”

Billy stood and looked at the cleaning rag in his hand. He gave the bottle of cleanser to the man and then folded the rag into a neat square, just like the other rags in the bucket. “It’s not an emergency,” he said. He wiped the tears that had slipped from his eyes with the back of his hand.

The man took the rag, put it into his bucket. Then he lightly touched Billy’s elbow and led him to sit in a pew. “I’d say it’s something.”

Billy sat, looked up at the cross. Now it looked like a new kind of space shuttle frozen in flight. “When did crosses start looking so modern, like futuristic airplanes?”

The man followed his gaze, gave a little shrug. “How long’s it been since you were in a church?”

“You mean a real church?”

“Any kind of church,” he said. “I suppose they’re all real to somebody.”