The day before the killers came for Maria, the same gang of kids tried to break into the church. They attempted, unsuccessfully, to jimmy open the padlock to the front door with a tire iron, and they ran away when I limped over from the rectory. I wished I could have caught one of them and had a discussion with him, helped him channel his energies into something more useful, such as the boys’ baseball team I coached in the Rotary league. It consisted of misfits and orphans, the shunned and unwanted. But this gang of kids was too fast for a one-legged priest.
“Hey, Father,” the same boy said from his hiding place in the stadium across the street. “You need me to hear your confession, Father?”
It was just past 9:00 p.m. when I got back to the house, sweat rolling down my cheeks from one minute of exertion. That’s all it took on a sultry June night. Manuel was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, like the first time. After reassuring him there was nothing to fear, I dialed 911. I didn’t want to bother the cops, but I had no choice. The kids had tried to enter the church. The church belonged to everyone, but its safekeeping was my responsibility.
This time it didn’t take the cops ten minutes to get there. It took them twenty.
“Doesn’t look serious, Father,” Mr. Clean said as we studied the old wooden door to the church.
“See the dent here?” I said, pointing to a welt in the church’s door. “That’s where they pushed off with the tire iron.”
Pencil Mustache tilted his head at me. “Just kids, Father. You actually saw them, though. Like, with your own eyes. Right, Father?”
“Yes, Officer. I saw them. I may have only one arm and one leg, but I still have vision in both eyes.”
Sirens sounded in the distance. The radios attached to their belts squawked. One of them answered the call, barked a clipped response into the microphone, and nodded at his partner. “We’ll write it up, Father,” Mr. Clean said.
“Yeah. And we’ll drive around and take a look for you,” Pencil Mustache added.
“Yeah, Father. We’ll take a look.”
They rushed back into their cruiser and peeled out of the driveway, lights flashing and siren wailing. They took off toward the center of town, away from the stadium. Understandably, once again, there was no time to drive around, no time to take a look.
The day the killers came for Maria, I was driving back home from the hospital when I spotted Manuel huddled with two older teens along the far side of the stadium. The teens were more than a foot taller than Manuel. They wore inscrutable expressions, knapsacks, and black bandannas wrapped around their foreheads like headbands. I had to swerve away from a telephone pole at the last second to avoid a head-on collision when I remembered I was driving a car.
When Manuel got home, I went to his room and asked him if he felt like a game of catch. He didn’t answer exactly. Instead, he shrugged, grabbed his glove, and shuffled out the door with his head hanging.
Since losing my right arm, I have become more proficient at throwing with my left, though my pitching wouldn’t remind pro scouts of Goose Gossage’s anymore. My prosthesis is a trans-humeral one, commonly known as an AE because it replaces the arm above the elbow. Both the hand and the arm are myoelectric, meaning a battery-powered device converts the electric signals of my muscles above the arm into movements of the prosthesis. It offers the strongest grip of any type of prosthetic; that’s the upside. The downside is the time lag between my muscles signaling a movement and my replacement parts reacting. Consequently, some of Manuel’s throws sailed past me even though they were within my reach. Although I saw the ball coming, I was a second slow when I tried to catch it.
After half an hour, we were both drenched and went back inside. There is no air-conditioning in the rectory and it doesn’t cool down until midnight, at which point the attic fan finally begins to help. The kitchen seemed hotter than the yard. I poured each of us a tall glass of lemonade from the pitcher that Maria had fixed that morning and asked Manuel to sit down for a moment.
A Catholic priest must be a teacher. He helps his parishioners understand the Church and deal with conflicts and adversity. I am less comfortable with my role as Manuel’s teacher because a great teacher should fully comprehend his student’s life. Maria’s mother told me that Manuel had been hiding in a closet and witnessed his father’s murder. Since I can’t truly comprehend what the boy has been through, I’m uncertain if I can establish an authentic bond with him.
He guzzled half the glass and gasped for air when he was done. Sweat trickled down his cheeks. His lungs heaved gently. I took a big swig of lemonade myself to celebrate seeing him diverted from his recent realities.