Two days before the killers came for Maria, a gang of teenagers rampaged across church property. I was washing the liners under my prosthetic arm when I heard them. Their whistles and shouts came from everywhere, as though they had the rectory surrounded. It was just past dusk, too dark to see clearly out the window. All I could detect were amorphous black images, vaguely human, flitting in and out of my field of vision.
Manuel, Maria’s thirteen-year-old son, was the first to come downstairs. As always, he spoke with facial expressions and physical gestures, as opposed to using his tongue. He hadn’t said a word to me since he and his mother had moved into the rectory, two months ago. Given his father had recently been hanged to death over the course of an hour while a block of ice melted beneath his feet, I wasn’t surprised. He stood now at the base of the stairs, his deceased father’s gold watch around his wrist, lips quivering and eyes bulging, begging me to tell him his mother and he weren’t in danger again.
A Catholic priest must be a father. He is a spiritual provider and protector in the image of God, in the person of Christ. The role of father is my favorite part of being a priest, the one that comes most naturally to me and gives me the most joy.
I walked up to Manuel and put my arm around him. I spoke to him in Spanish. “Don’t worry, son,” I said, as though he were my own child. “There’s nothing to fear. I’ll take care of you.”
When I opened the front door, the clucking and crowing stopped immediately. The sight of a six-foot-three, two-hundred-twenty-pound, one-armed and one-legged priest limping on his prosthetic limb as an empty sleeve dangled at his side sent the boys scurrying. All I could hear was the sound of feet pounding the asphalt as they escaped into old Dillon Stadium, across the street.
“You boys go on now,” I said. “And don’t come back. This is a church, you know.”
The screen door was against my back. When I turned and swung it open, the springs let out a long, eerie squeak. It was followed by the sound of a teenage male voice from the direction of the stadium.
“You need me to hear your confession, Father?”
After a few howls and laughs, more footsteps followed and the voices faded. I went back inside and explained to Manuel that the hooligans were just a bunch of bored kids. He calmed down and returned to his room to finish his homework. His mother, Maria, taught violin at the local university during the day and studied English at home at night. She was in her room listening to language tapes on her headphones and had missed the entire event.
After reattaching my prosthetic arm, I called the police and reported the incident, just to establish a record in case the next time the kids decided to break into the church and steal an icon or a chalice. It took ten minutes for a police cruiser to arrive. That didn’t surprise me.
Once Bermuda usurped Hartford as the insurance capital of the world, the companies moved out and the drug gangs moved in. Now Hartford is just a waypoint between Boston and New York City, and you need a different kind of insurance to walk around at night. With the Kings of Solomon in the South End, 77 Love in the North End, and city and state budget crises, the police are spread thin. There are precious few resources to dedicate to the eastern fringe of the city near the defunct Colt’s gun factory and Dillon Stadium, where the old Hartford Knights used to play semipro football back in the day. The oldest Catholic church in Hartford, however, still stands on a tiny wooded lot, serving a small but devoted parish whose members live in the projects nearby.
After I told them what happened, the patrolmen stared at me as though I were a self-indulgent moron. They exuded the arrogance of the armed and immortal. One of them looked like Mr. Clean, with a shaved head and a physique that could double as a battering ram. His partner was long and wiry, with an untrustworthy-looking pencil mustache that he might have lifted from an uncooperative nightclub owner.
Their eyes told me I was wasting their time. There were serious crimes being committed in other parts of town.
A priest must be a mediator. Just as Moses revealed the law to Israel, the priest brings the human family together through eternal redemption. In this case, though, I needed to redeem myself for appearing to be a pain in the ass in the cops’ eyes.
“I didn’t mean for you to come out,” I said. “I didn’t dial nine-one-one. I told the dispatcher not to send anyone if you were busy.”
They continued glaring at me, as though motives mattered little in their world. “Hot June night, Father,” Mr. Clean said.
“Probably kids from Franklin Avenue, Father,” Pencil Mustache said. “They break into the stadium to party. They never hurt no one. But we’ll drive around and take a look for you.”