THY WILL BE DONE By Jeffrey Harper (Excerpt)
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father his child:
and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to
death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth
to the end shall be saved.
– Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 10:21-22
0
*
Pitchstone, sand, basalt, sun. Stinging and blinding. A parched and cracked lakebed. Ochre and alkali. Mountains beyond. Then desert and two crosses.
Lordsburg, New Mexico. Hidalgo County.
A stained-glass Christ, crucified, flares in a church window, His ceramic blood molten in the daggered light, the centurion’s Spear of Destiny a golden shaft in His tormented body. Father Augustin Coronado, surpliced and austere, plunges the desiccated Host into the chalice, immersing it in Holy Wine, offers the ancient incantation, raises the sanguine wafer to his mouth, awaiting the miracle, then consumes the body and blood of Jesus. Our Lord, our God, our Eternal Present.
Not far away, a tiny steel lance pierces a soft mound of puckered red flesh, a hairpin pressed between red lips. Deft, sun-spotted hands sweep up long claret tresses into a tight bun, and bind them with the hairpin. In the mirror Madalena registers each crease and line, demarcations of Death’s timekeeper. She crosses splintered planks to a glass case on a corner table. A coil of banded red, white and black lies still. She reaches below the table into a cage. Tiny feet scuffle across shredded newspaper. She pinches a gray mouse in her fingers and lifts it from the cage and holds the frantic creature above the glass case. Then drops it. O, says, Madalena. O: my goddess of the East. Of Isla de Mujeres. Island of Women. Know my sacrifice. The coral snake stirs. The doomed mouse rams the glass case walls. The serpent seizes the mouse’s gray head in its gaping fangs, vents its paralyzing venom until the hapless prey relents, and the snake begins its measured ritual of consumption. Madalena raises the snake with swift coercion, its rodent-gorged mouth tense and obsessed, and wraps her head in the reptile’s tri-colored bracelets. O, know my sacrifice, says Madalena. The snake relaxes in her touch.
She is without mercy. She has no fear. She has her sorcery.
A train whistle saturates the bleached desert silence. The Sunset Limited pauses along the Southern Pacific rails at Lordsburg, the station but a wooden platform above gravel strewn gray earth. No tickets are sold here. Lordsburg is a flag stop. The engineer only halts the locomotive for a rare traveler with known reservations. Few passengers detrain. The silver mines are long shuttered. This is a place of departure.
Victor Montoya spreads a plastic sheet across a wooden table. He lifts a canvas duffel from a chair. The soiled brown satchel rattles like a sack of tossed wooden blocks. A lunatic’s purse, he thinks. The rummaged assembly of a rubbished mind. He unzips and tilts the bag. Distracted by the train whistle, Montoya lifts his head, absently upending the duffel bag with a startling table clatter: Mandible, cranium, scapula, femur, fibula, tibia, sacrum – an ossified, tumbling incantation. Bone on wood. His evidence table an altar of sacrifice. He regards the severed skeleton, dons a latex glove and lifts the coupled carpals, metacarpals and phalanges – a skeleton hand dwarfed in his large, plastic-hooded palm. Just as the man said. The hand of a child. His litany of obligation is clear. Sworn and professed. He is the Sheriff of Hidalgo County. And a child is dead.
*
That Saturday evening, in the vestiges of slanting light, Father Augustin Coronado stands alone in the sacristy of his church. He admits with remorse that he prefers the sanctuary empty and silent. The sun’s final, declining rays bleed through the stained-glass Christ and the two thieves on their crucifixes, and then night suddenly falls and extinguishes the figures. Augustin folds his stole and chasuble and places them in his black case with the chalice, ciborium, hosts and sacramental wine. Sheriff Montoya has relented on his insistence of grape juice for the prisoners’ Eucharist. “I suppose a taste of Heaven is good for sinners,” Montoya had said. “We should know,” Augustin replied. Augustin glances at the stained glass as he leaves, but Christ and the thieves cannot be discerned.
Madalena closes the door of her stuccoed cement bungalow. She walks past the cemetery on Mountain View. The tombstones sit on brown, dry plots, like tormented rocks that sprouted from incinerated soil. The cemetery trees are withered, spare, their shade futile. Her car is broken and useless, like Jordan’s promises to fix it. There is no money. Not now. Not yet. She walks past the mobile homes. She finds their implied transience comforting. The neighbors, like the homes, come and go. No one, save Jordan, can hold her. The homes and people in this place are as easily tossed in a whirlwind as dust, which is all that increases here with any vigor.
None but the poorest, the scrambling illegals and the benighted, walk the roads. Especially at night, with the faithful reliability of drunk drivers and diamondbacks seeking the warmth of asphalt. And she, a woman, almond-eyed and tawny – la china, the Mexican gangbangers shout at her, la puta china, to which she silently replies, you would have worshipped my grandmother, and she would have boiled your entrails – there she is on West Street, alone on the road, carrying a lantern, in sandals, a black skirt and a brocaded blouse – a huipil. Mayan.
In a cell in the Lordsburg jail, Father Augustin Coronado ministers to two prisoners. Mexican mestizos, the new deputy gratuitously told him when Augustin arrived. Both thieves – one cars, one guns. Augustin gently told the new deputy he never discusses a prisoner’s charge with the Sheriff or his staff. Only the men’s needs. “Is that so?” said the deputy.
Augustin, in chasuble and stole, shares coffee and fresh churros with the men in the cell. The air rank with cinnamon and sweat. The prisoners sit on thin blankets on hard beds bolted to the wall. Both are stocky and short, one with a shaved head, the other a ponytail. The prisoners eat silently, eyes cast down, tracing the food’s descent. In a low voice, in Spanish, Augustin says, “I am Father Coronado. I am a Catholic priest. I am not a policeman. Not DEA. Not la migra. I do not serve the sheriff. I only serve God. I will never share one word you tell me with Sheriff Montoya and his deputies, nor anyone else. I only share God’s Word.” He says, if they wish, he will call their families here or in Mexico. He asks if they understand. The men raise their heads, the slimmest nods. He asks if they require a doctor. If they have spoken to lawyers. If they need a lawyer. If they prefer a Pentecostal minister or other cleric. If they desire confession and to share the Eucharist with him. They stare at him with black, blank eyes. They want nothing. They do not know how to want, thinks Augustin. “I will be here Tuesday,” he says, adding, with a mordant trace, “Vaya con dios.” He turns to call the deputy. A voice hisses, “Sabes lo que me gustaría compartir? Me gustaría compartir el culo de tu madre con mis eses.” You know what I’d like to share? I’d like to share your mother’s ass with my homeboys. Before Augustin knows which man said it and if the insult’s arrow targeted his back or the other prisoner, a splash of boiling coffee sears his hand. He pivots and sees the men locked in a festival of savagery, biting fingers, gouging eyes, kicking. He throws himself between them, shouting for the deputy, that new pendejo who said he’d keep an eye out for the padre.
Madalena walks for fifty minutes on asphalt, dirt and stone. She hops into a gully to avoid an oncoming pickup truck, stops to remove pebbles wedged between leather and foot, then removes her sandals and walks barefoot until she arrives at the jail. She slips on her sandals and enters. A new sheriff’s deputy – Katsouris, his nameplate reads – screens visitors. She thinks, a Greek – they are always far-flung. Always fleeing. Something. Someone. This she knows.
“I’m here to see Father Coronado,” she says. “Has he arrived?”
“And you would be?” His voice freighted with a weakling’s thirst for authority. His gluttonous eyes confess admiration.
“Madalena Miguel.” Madalena Ixchel, until the Holy Sisters demanded her surname’s corruption.
“Identification?”
She hands him her driver’s license. “Where’s Harry?” The usual deputy.
“Alamogordo. Signed on with the Sheriff, Otero County. Can’t see the reason. Maybe prefers drunk airmen to Mexicans.” He scans her body with casual violation. “Too bad for him.”
“My license.”
He holds it, prolonging his donkeywork. Appraising the photo. Proving he can detain her. “Purpose of your visit?”
“To see Father Coronado.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Always business. Certainly no pleasure.”
“Go ahead.” The dismissal a failed salvage of dignity, a cloak for the self-pity of failed bullies and the craven.
Madalena walks, feels his eyes on her, marking her. The mark of men. Then Katsouris’ voice. “He’ll be glad to see you. Who wouldn’t?” His Hail Mary.
“God is watching,” she says, not looking back.
Augustin is staring at a chessboard when she enters the storage room Sheriff Montoya grudgingly meted out for the chaplain’s irregular use. The priest glances at a laptop next to the board, then moves a white bishop down a diagonal, placing the black king in check. Augustin’s hand is bandaged. His right cheek is bruised royal purple. He smiles wickedly. “What are you going to do now, you devil?” And he stabs the keyboard with an accusing finger.
“Me? What have I done? More importantly, what was done to you?”
“Ah, Sister Madalena. It’s nothing. I tried to break up a fight.”
“Between prisoners?”
“I was about to leave their cell, and they started brawling.”
“Rival gangs?”
“Just men. But one’s a Zeta, the other Caballeros Templarios. Low level.”
“Montoya won’t like it,” says Madalena. “A priest assaulted in his jail. His reputation. His re-election.”
“Yes. But I won’t celebrate mass or serve the imprisoned through bars. With reasonable exceptions.”
“But you never know the exception until it’s too late.”
“I try to believe it’s never too late for God’s grace.” I try to believe – Madalena notes the qualification. Augustin conveys a distance from his faith, invested with conviction, but never certainty.
“Let me get ice for your cheek. It’s swollen.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“You won’t.”
“True. I have my homily to prepare for tomorrow. Perhaps it will be turn the other cheek – because this one is spoken for.”
She gently takes his bandaged hand. He gasps and pulls it away.
“Let me see,” she says and turns back the gauze. The skin is blistered and bloody.
“Scalded by the coffee I brought.”
“Your reward. I’ll bring you a balm – paste from a nopal. You must use it. It prevents scarring.”
“India. Bruja.” Indian. Witch. Though her Spanish is fluent as his, Augustin only resorts to it to amuse them. Or when his anxiety his aroused.
“From the inner leaf of the prickly-pear cactus. Wisdom of the Maya.” They do not know each other well. He does not know she speaks Yucatec. Dreams in it. She adds, “You have beautiful hands. A priest should have beautiful hands. You touch so many people.”
“Not me,” says Augustin. “Not my hands.”
“I’m being literal. Holy or unholy, no one follows an ugly priest, wizard or shaman. They only fear them.”
“Perhaps that’s why St. Peter’s Basilica is so beautiful. God in his best light.” His piety and mockery are often indistinguishable.
“Perhaps.” She glances at the chessboard. “How are you faring in this arena of combat?”
“Muy bien. I’m saying the last rites for the black king.”
“Have you ever beaten the computer?”
“Never,” says Augustin with pleasure. “A good thing for a proud priest like me.” He gestures for her to sit, and turns from his ivory warriors and their board. He leans towards her, his hands on his knees.
“There’s a man I’d like you to see,” says Augustin.
“Who is he?”
“The Sheriff arrested a man with bones.”
“Better than a man without bones,” says Madalena. “Impressive police work.”
“But they weren’t his bones,” says Augustin. He savors conundrums and enjoys parceling out information like steps in a proof.
“That’s quite a feat.”
“A child’s bones.”
“A man with a child’s bones? A dwarf?” Madalena sustains her patience.
“In possession of a child’s bones,” says Augustin.
“A skeleton?”
“Yes. Dismembered. The man came here. To the Sheriff. With a sack of bones.”
“The man confessed?”
“Let him tell you. It’s a puzzle.”
“That’s your specialty. Why don’t you see him?” She is only curious.
“Because I don’t like child-killers. A weakness of mine. One of many,” he says, hollowed with disappointment. “So, will you speak to him?”
“Of course, Augustin – Father Coronado.” Within his church and their place of work, she provides the honorific. When it suits her.
“Thank you.” For the title or assumption of duty, or both, it is not clear. “I have to go to Reserve tonight,” he says. A village in Catron County – 140 miles north on bent roads. “There’s a young man in jail I promised I’d visit. He won’t be there long. A murder charge.”
“Repentant?”
“No. That’s why I must visit him.”
“Certainly,” says Madalena. “You’re a good man.”
“I’m not. If I were, I wouldn’t be compelled to do this work. My life would be sufficiently abundant.”
“Who else do you have for me?”
“Jorge, the teenage meth dealer in the back cell would like you to visit again. His mother refuses to see him, and he needs a mother right now. The mad barber is finally taking his medication, though you’ll find he does most of the talking. I’d offer him confession, but I’m afraid it will never end. One of the deputies just brought in a couple of others. I don’t know who they are. Is your car repaired?”
“Do you need me to travel?”
“The jail in Deming. Several women were arrested, and the priest is unwell.”
“I will find a way.”
“But if it is too difficult –”
“I will find a way.”
“Thank you,” says Augustin. He does not inquire further about her car. There is Greyhound. Madalena discloses little of her life. She offered herself to the parish less than a year ago. And despite some misgivings, he is grateful for her service, offered for meager sums diverted from his church’s paltry collections and his bishop’s slim munificence. And he is grateful for her occasional, remote company. Circuit riders of the Faith. That she will find a way is a solace that there is always a way.
“The man with the bones,” says Madalena.
“Yes?”
“What’s his name?”
“Jebb.”
“First or last?”
“I don’t know,” says Augustin. “I’m told that’s all he’ll say.”
“I’ll see him now.”
“Thank you. I may have left for Reserve when you’re done. Call me if you need anything.”
“Of course.” She walks to the door.
“Madalena. Sister Madalena,” says Augustin, returning her favor, “I ask again that you reconsider wearing your habit in the jail. Especially with the men.” An old and worn conversation.
“I’m pleased to serve, but since the Sisters do not recognize me in this province –”
“Yes, I know – at least the little you have told me –”
“There’s no more to know or to be said, Augustin.” What honor is offered may be withdrawn. “And I won’t enter a man’s cell. Unlike you, I’m only touched by God’s hand.”
Her oblique, impious inference and subtle wickedness please and concern him, but before he can respond, she is gone. Augustin resumes his chess match. He looks at the computer screen and from the digital ether receives the next move from his opponent, a black rook springing over a pawn, and then his face falls in appreciative defeat: his white king – the match – is lost. Mechanically, he plays out the endgame, until the black bishop knocks over his white king, which tumbles on the board with a wooden rattle.
*
Madalena carries a chair down the hallway by the cells. A foul assonance of sucking and kissing squirts between the bars, whispered filth. She is impervious to the prisoners’ depravity. They do not know her power. Deputy Katsouris watches her through a closed door with a steel mesh window. She reaches cell 3 and places her chair on the floor, several feet from the bars. She sits, nods at Katsouris, and he steps away from the window. She faces the cell and beholds the man.
He sits against the back wall on his wood bed, his back, thighs and shins at perfect right angles, a human chair. His dark brown hair is short and combed. Hands flat on his thighs, his shiny bitumen eyes, unblinking, unmoving, he stares impassively beyond the confining walls, or perhaps, thinks Madalena, within his own recess. Meditative, not catatonic. Years’ of fruitless labor have printed their grim stamp on his tanned, bleak face.
“I don’t want a social worker,” he says.
“I’m not a social worker,” she says.
“Or lawyer. If that’s what you are.” His voice is clear and flat, from the west perhaps, though not obviously so. His eyes do not register her, as if he’s speaking through a closed door.
“I’m not a lawyer. My name is Sister Madalena Miguel. I’m a chaplain. You requested one.” She hears his breath. A blink.
“A woman?”
“Is that a problem?”
The impassive face immobile. He takes a deeper breath, taking me in, thinks Madalena. Summoning my essence.
“Are you a Catholic?” he finally says.
“Yes.” In her fashion. “Is that all right?”
“We’ll see.”
“If you’d a prefer a priest –”
“I said, we’ll see.” His tone spiked with insistence, his eyes meet hers. “You’re a nun?”
“A religious sister.”
“Which order?”
“Taught by Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. Formation with the Immaculate Conception.” Simple vows only, not solemn. Augustin doesn’t know this.
“You’re from here?” he asks.
“No.”
“Where?”
“Far east.”
“The Far East?” His interest, untarnished by carnality, is unusual. As is his perception.
“Just far. Many places.”
“Such as?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Believe me, I have time.”
“How can I be of help, Jebb?”
He rises from his bed and walks deliberately to the bars and holds them. Madalena doesn’t move, though she sees he could touch her if he wished.
“By the way, is Jebb your first or last name?”
“It’s my name.”
The steel door down the hallway creaks open and Katsouris’ metallic voice soils the quiet. “Prisoner! Step back from the bars!”
I am always watched by the wrong men, thinks Madalena. She turns and waves him away. “I’m fine, Deputy Katsouris.”
“So was the padre – until he wasn’t.”
“It’s okay. Thank you.” The door slams shut, but Katsouris’ face doesn’t appear in the window. Gone.
“You have a protector,” says Jebb, sitting again on the bed.
“Do I need one?”
“We all need one.”
“Yes.”
“The deputy thinks I’ll hurt you.”
“Will you?”
“Touch you? No. Perhaps he thinks I’ll start masturbating in front of a beautiful woman.”
“Will you?”
“No. I need you.”
“For what, Jebb?”
He looks away from her, tilts his head.
“I don’t like the religious who don’t wear their vestments. Where’s your habit?”
“It’s not required.”
“It seems cowardly,” says Jebb, lightly, without rancor, “As if you don’t have the courage to stand apart, to stand for something, to say this is who I am – and to hell with you if you don’t like it.”
“That’s not necessary. We give directions to hell every Sunday. But most people don’t need them. They’re already there. Looking for another route.”
“That’s very smug of you.”
“It is. That’s the threat of truth. It makes you a little smug.”
“A price for everything.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” says Madalena.
“Even God’s love?”
“The price was His Child,” says Madalena.
They are silent now, each savoring a private elliptical pleasure in the encounter. Embedded in disquiet.
Then Jebb says, “I want you to go somewhere for me.”
“Where?”
“The bus station and the train station.”
“Here? In Lordsburg?”
“Yes.”
Madalena considers this. “Is there someone you want me to meet?”
“No.”
“What should I do there?”
“Just go to each place and stay for fourteen minutes.” How precise.
“That’s all?” says Madalena.
“And kneel before you leave.”
“Why?”
Her word sits in the air, then vanishes as if unspoken. Jebb rises from his bed, his soft voice filling. “Will you go or not?”
Madalena, unmoved, says, “I’d like to think about it.” Then suddenly discomfited, she rises from her chair so they may regard each other at eye level.
“All right, but if you don’t go, don’t come back to see me. I won’t speak to you. Send someone else.” Their eyes couple. “You know why I’m here?”
“You said you killed a child.”
He nods. “Yes. Don’t ask me about it – ever – until I’m ready to tell you. Goodbye.” He turns his back on her and walks to the edge of his bed and sits, facing the wall.
Madalena watches him, rigid and locked in contemplation. His breath and back rise and fall more quickly now.
“Guard!” he shouts, “Guard!” rupturing the queer solemnity of their meeting and her ministry.
Katsouris’ arrival is swift, his baton drawn.
“Take Sister Madalena away,” says Jebb plainly. “Our business is finished.”
Katsouris eyes Jebb staring at the wall, looks at Madalena and begins, “Did he –”
“No, nothing,” says Madalena. “Let’s go. Goodbye, Jebb.”
He does not reply.
***
© Jeffrey Harper. May not be reproduced or transmitted without author’s permission.
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father his child:
and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to
death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth
to the end shall be saved.
– Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 10:21-22
0
*
Pitchstone, sand, basalt, sun. Stinging and blinding. A parched and cracked lakebed. Ochre and alkali. Mountains beyond. Then desert and two crosses.
Lordsburg, New Mexico. Hidalgo County.
A stained-glass Christ, crucified, flares in a church window, His ceramic blood molten in the daggered light, the centurion’s Spear of Destiny a golden shaft in His tormented body. Father Augustin Coronado, surpliced and austere, plunges the desiccated Host into the chalice, immersing it in Holy Wine, offers the ancient incantation, raises the sanguine wafer to his mouth, awaiting the miracle, then consumes the body and blood of Jesus. Our Lord, our God, our Eternal Present.
Not far away, a tiny steel lance pierces a soft mound of puckered red flesh, a hairpin pressed between red lips. Deft, sun-spotted hands sweep up long claret tresses into a tight bun, and bind them with the hairpin. In the mirror Madalena registers each crease and line, demarcations of Death’s timekeeper. She crosses splintered planks to a glass case on a corner table. A coil of banded red, white and black lies still. She reaches below the table into a cage. Tiny feet scuffle across shredded newspaper. She pinches a gray mouse in her fingers and lifts it from the cage and holds the frantic creature above the glass case. Then drops it. O, says, Madalena. O: my goddess of the East. Of Isla de Mujeres. Island of Women. Know my sacrifice. The coral snake stirs. The doomed mouse rams the glass case walls. The serpent seizes the mouse’s gray head in its gaping fangs, vents its paralyzing venom until the hapless prey relents, and the snake begins its measured ritual of consumption. Madalena raises the snake with swift coercion, its rodent-gorged mouth tense and obsessed, and wraps her head in the reptile’s tri-colored bracelets. O, know my sacrifice, says Madalena. The snake relaxes in her touch.
She is without mercy. She has no fear. She has her sorcery.
A train whistle saturates the bleached desert silence. The Sunset Limited pauses along the Southern Pacific rails at Lordsburg, the station but a wooden platform above gravel strewn gray earth. No tickets are sold here. Lordsburg is a flag stop. The engineer only halts the locomotive for a rare traveler with known reservations. Few passengers detrain. The silver mines are long shuttered. This is a place of departure.
Victor Montoya spreads a plastic sheet across a wooden table. He lifts a canvas duffel from a chair. The soiled brown satchel rattles like a sack of tossed wooden blocks. A lunatic’s purse, he thinks. The rummaged assembly of a rubbished mind. He unzips and tilts the bag. Distracted by the train whistle, Montoya lifts his head, absently upending the duffel bag with a startling table clatter: Mandible, cranium, scapula, femur, fibula, tibia, sacrum – an ossified, tumbling incantation. Bone on wood. His evidence table an altar of sacrifice. He regards the severed skeleton, dons a latex glove and lifts the coupled carpals, metacarpals and phalanges – a skeleton hand dwarfed in his large, plastic-hooded palm. Just as the man said. The hand of a child. His litany of obligation is clear. Sworn and professed. He is the Sheriff of Hidalgo County. And a child is dead.
*
That Saturday evening, in the vestiges of slanting light, Father Augustin Coronado stands alone in the sacristy of his church. He admits with remorse that he prefers the sanctuary empty and silent. The sun’s final, declining rays bleed through the stained-glass Christ and the two thieves on their crucifixes, and then night suddenly falls and extinguishes the figures. Augustin folds his stole and chasuble and places them in his black case with the chalice, ciborium, hosts and sacramental wine. Sheriff Montoya has relented on his insistence of grape juice for the prisoners’ Eucharist. “I suppose a taste of Heaven is good for sinners,” Montoya had said. “We should know,” Augustin replied. Augustin glances at the stained glass as he leaves, but Christ and the thieves cannot be discerned.
Madalena closes the door of her stuccoed cement bungalow. She walks past the cemetery on Mountain View. The tombstones sit on brown, dry plots, like tormented rocks that sprouted from incinerated soil. The cemetery trees are withered, spare, their shade futile. Her car is broken and useless, like Jordan’s promises to fix it. There is no money. Not now. Not yet. She walks past the mobile homes. She finds their implied transience comforting. The neighbors, like the homes, come and go. No one, save Jordan, can hold her. The homes and people in this place are as easily tossed in a whirlwind as dust, which is all that increases here with any vigor.
None but the poorest, the scrambling illegals and the benighted, walk the roads. Especially at night, with the faithful reliability of drunk drivers and diamondbacks seeking the warmth of asphalt. And she, a woman, almond-eyed and tawny – la china, the Mexican gangbangers shout at her, la puta china, to which she silently replies, you would have worshipped my grandmother, and she would have boiled your entrails – there she is on West Street, alone on the road, carrying a lantern, in sandals, a black skirt and a brocaded blouse – a huipil. Mayan.
In a cell in the Lordsburg jail, Father Augustin Coronado ministers to two prisoners. Mexican mestizos, the new deputy gratuitously told him when Augustin arrived. Both thieves – one cars, one guns. Augustin gently told the new deputy he never discusses a prisoner’s charge with the Sheriff or his staff. Only the men’s needs. “Is that so?” said the deputy.
Augustin, in chasuble and stole, shares coffee and fresh churros with the men in the cell. The air rank with cinnamon and sweat. The prisoners sit on thin blankets on hard beds bolted to the wall. Both are stocky and short, one with a shaved head, the other a ponytail. The prisoners eat silently, eyes cast down, tracing the food’s descent. In a low voice, in Spanish, Augustin says, “I am Father Coronado. I am a Catholic priest. I am not a policeman. Not DEA. Not la migra. I do not serve the sheriff. I only serve God. I will never share one word you tell me with Sheriff Montoya and his deputies, nor anyone else. I only share God’s Word.” He says, if they wish, he will call their families here or in Mexico. He asks if they understand. The men raise their heads, the slimmest nods. He asks if they require a doctor. If they have spoken to lawyers. If they need a lawyer. If they prefer a Pentecostal minister or other cleric. If they desire confession and to share the Eucharist with him. They stare at him with black, blank eyes. They want nothing. They do not know how to want, thinks Augustin. “I will be here Tuesday,” he says, adding, with a mordant trace, “Vaya con dios.” He turns to call the deputy. A voice hisses, “Sabes lo que me gustaría compartir? Me gustaría compartir el culo de tu madre con mis eses.” You know what I’d like to share? I’d like to share your mother’s ass with my homeboys. Before Augustin knows which man said it and if the insult’s arrow targeted his back or the other prisoner, a splash of boiling coffee sears his hand. He pivots and sees the men locked in a festival of savagery, biting fingers, gouging eyes, kicking. He throws himself between them, shouting for the deputy, that new pendejo who said he’d keep an eye out for the padre.
Madalena walks for fifty minutes on asphalt, dirt and stone. She hops into a gully to avoid an oncoming pickup truck, stops to remove pebbles wedged between leather and foot, then removes her sandals and walks barefoot until she arrives at the jail. She slips on her sandals and enters. A new sheriff’s deputy – Katsouris, his nameplate reads – screens visitors. She thinks, a Greek – they are always far-flung. Always fleeing. Something. Someone. This she knows.
“I’m here to see Father Coronado,” she says. “Has he arrived?”
“And you would be?” His voice freighted with a weakling’s thirst for authority. His gluttonous eyes confess admiration.
“Madalena Miguel.” Madalena Ixchel, until the Holy Sisters demanded her surname’s corruption.
“Identification?”
She hands him her driver’s license. “Where’s Harry?” The usual deputy.
“Alamogordo. Signed on with the Sheriff, Otero County. Can’t see the reason. Maybe prefers drunk airmen to Mexicans.” He scans her body with casual violation. “Too bad for him.”
“My license.”
He holds it, prolonging his donkeywork. Appraising the photo. Proving he can detain her. “Purpose of your visit?”
“To see Father Coronado.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Always business. Certainly no pleasure.”
“Go ahead.” The dismissal a failed salvage of dignity, a cloak for the self-pity of failed bullies and the craven.
Madalena walks, feels his eyes on her, marking her. The mark of men. Then Katsouris’ voice. “He’ll be glad to see you. Who wouldn’t?” His Hail Mary.
“God is watching,” she says, not looking back.
Augustin is staring at a chessboard when she enters the storage room Sheriff Montoya grudgingly meted out for the chaplain’s irregular use. The priest glances at a laptop next to the board, then moves a white bishop down a diagonal, placing the black king in check. Augustin’s hand is bandaged. His right cheek is bruised royal purple. He smiles wickedly. “What are you going to do now, you devil?” And he stabs the keyboard with an accusing finger.
“Me? What have I done? More importantly, what was done to you?”
“Ah, Sister Madalena. It’s nothing. I tried to break up a fight.”
“Between prisoners?”
“I was about to leave their cell, and they started brawling.”
“Rival gangs?”
“Just men. But one’s a Zeta, the other Caballeros Templarios. Low level.”
“Montoya won’t like it,” says Madalena. “A priest assaulted in his jail. His reputation. His re-election.”
“Yes. But I won’t celebrate mass or serve the imprisoned through bars. With reasonable exceptions.”
“But you never know the exception until it’s too late.”
“I try to believe it’s never too late for God’s grace.” I try to believe – Madalena notes the qualification. Augustin conveys a distance from his faith, invested with conviction, but never certainty.
“Let me get ice for your cheek. It’s swollen.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“You won’t.”
“True. I have my homily to prepare for tomorrow. Perhaps it will be turn the other cheek – because this one is spoken for.”
She gently takes his bandaged hand. He gasps and pulls it away.
“Let me see,” she says and turns back the gauze. The skin is blistered and bloody.
“Scalded by the coffee I brought.”
“Your reward. I’ll bring you a balm – paste from a nopal. You must use it. It prevents scarring.”
“India. Bruja.” Indian. Witch. Though her Spanish is fluent as his, Augustin only resorts to it to amuse them. Or when his anxiety his aroused.
“From the inner leaf of the prickly-pear cactus. Wisdom of the Maya.” They do not know each other well. He does not know she speaks Yucatec. Dreams in it. She adds, “You have beautiful hands. A priest should have beautiful hands. You touch so many people.”
“Not me,” says Augustin. “Not my hands.”
“I’m being literal. Holy or unholy, no one follows an ugly priest, wizard or shaman. They only fear them.”
“Perhaps that’s why St. Peter’s Basilica is so beautiful. God in his best light.” His piety and mockery are often indistinguishable.
“Perhaps.” She glances at the chessboard. “How are you faring in this arena of combat?”
“Muy bien. I’m saying the last rites for the black king.”
“Have you ever beaten the computer?”
“Never,” says Augustin with pleasure. “A good thing for a proud priest like me.” He gestures for her to sit, and turns from his ivory warriors and their board. He leans towards her, his hands on his knees.
“There’s a man I’d like you to see,” says Augustin.
“Who is he?”
“The Sheriff arrested a man with bones.”
“Better than a man without bones,” says Madalena. “Impressive police work.”
“But they weren’t his bones,” says Augustin. He savors conundrums and enjoys parceling out information like steps in a proof.
“That’s quite a feat.”
“A child’s bones.”
“A man with a child’s bones? A dwarf?” Madalena sustains her patience.
“In possession of a child’s bones,” says Augustin.
“A skeleton?”
“Yes. Dismembered. The man came here. To the Sheriff. With a sack of bones.”
“The man confessed?”
“Let him tell you. It’s a puzzle.”
“That’s your specialty. Why don’t you see him?” She is only curious.
“Because I don’t like child-killers. A weakness of mine. One of many,” he says, hollowed with disappointment. “So, will you speak to him?”
“Of course, Augustin – Father Coronado.” Within his church and their place of work, she provides the honorific. When it suits her.
“Thank you.” For the title or assumption of duty, or both, it is not clear. “I have to go to Reserve tonight,” he says. A village in Catron County – 140 miles north on bent roads. “There’s a young man in jail I promised I’d visit. He won’t be there long. A murder charge.”
“Repentant?”
“No. That’s why I must visit him.”
“Certainly,” says Madalena. “You’re a good man.”
“I’m not. If I were, I wouldn’t be compelled to do this work. My life would be sufficiently abundant.”
“Who else do you have for me?”
“Jorge, the teenage meth dealer in the back cell would like you to visit again. His mother refuses to see him, and he needs a mother right now. The mad barber is finally taking his medication, though you’ll find he does most of the talking. I’d offer him confession, but I’m afraid it will never end. One of the deputies just brought in a couple of others. I don’t know who they are. Is your car repaired?”
“Do you need me to travel?”
“The jail in Deming. Several women were arrested, and the priest is unwell.”
“I will find a way.”
“But if it is too difficult –”
“I will find a way.”
“Thank you,” says Augustin. He does not inquire further about her car. There is Greyhound. Madalena discloses little of her life. She offered herself to the parish less than a year ago. And despite some misgivings, he is grateful for her service, offered for meager sums diverted from his church’s paltry collections and his bishop’s slim munificence. And he is grateful for her occasional, remote company. Circuit riders of the Faith. That she will find a way is a solace that there is always a way.
“The man with the bones,” says Madalena.
“Yes?”
“What’s his name?”
“Jebb.”
“First or last?”
“I don’t know,” says Augustin. “I’m told that’s all he’ll say.”
“I’ll see him now.”
“Thank you. I may have left for Reserve when you’re done. Call me if you need anything.”
“Of course.” She walks to the door.
“Madalena. Sister Madalena,” says Augustin, returning her favor, “I ask again that you reconsider wearing your habit in the jail. Especially with the men.” An old and worn conversation.
“I’m pleased to serve, but since the Sisters do not recognize me in this province –”
“Yes, I know – at least the little you have told me –”
“There’s no more to know or to be said, Augustin.” What honor is offered may be withdrawn. “And I won’t enter a man’s cell. Unlike you, I’m only touched by God’s hand.”
Her oblique, impious inference and subtle wickedness please and concern him, but before he can respond, she is gone. Augustin resumes his chess match. He looks at the computer screen and from the digital ether receives the next move from his opponent, a black rook springing over a pawn, and then his face falls in appreciative defeat: his white king – the match – is lost. Mechanically, he plays out the endgame, until the black bishop knocks over his white king, which tumbles on the board with a wooden rattle.
*
Madalena carries a chair down the hallway by the cells. A foul assonance of sucking and kissing squirts between the bars, whispered filth. She is impervious to the prisoners’ depravity. They do not know her power. Deputy Katsouris watches her through a closed door with a steel mesh window. She reaches cell 3 and places her chair on the floor, several feet from the bars. She sits, nods at Katsouris, and he steps away from the window. She faces the cell and beholds the man.
He sits against the back wall on his wood bed, his back, thighs and shins at perfect right angles, a human chair. His dark brown hair is short and combed. Hands flat on his thighs, his shiny bitumen eyes, unblinking, unmoving, he stares impassively beyond the confining walls, or perhaps, thinks Madalena, within his own recess. Meditative, not catatonic. Years’ of fruitless labor have printed their grim stamp on his tanned, bleak face.
“I don’t want a social worker,” he says.
“I’m not a social worker,” she says.
“Or lawyer. If that’s what you are.” His voice is clear and flat, from the west perhaps, though not obviously so. His eyes do not register her, as if he’s speaking through a closed door.
“I’m not a lawyer. My name is Sister Madalena Miguel. I’m a chaplain. You requested one.” She hears his breath. A blink.
“A woman?”
“Is that a problem?”
The impassive face immobile. He takes a deeper breath, taking me in, thinks Madalena. Summoning my essence.
“Are you a Catholic?” he finally says.
“Yes.” In her fashion. “Is that all right?”
“We’ll see.”
“If you’d a prefer a priest –”
“I said, we’ll see.” His tone spiked with insistence, his eyes meet hers. “You’re a nun?”
“A religious sister.”
“Which order?”
“Taught by Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. Formation with the Immaculate Conception.” Simple vows only, not solemn. Augustin doesn’t know this.
“You’re from here?” he asks.
“No.”
“Where?”
“Far east.”
“The Far East?” His interest, untarnished by carnality, is unusual. As is his perception.
“Just far. Many places.”
“Such as?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Believe me, I have time.”
“How can I be of help, Jebb?”
He rises from his bed and walks deliberately to the bars and holds them. Madalena doesn’t move, though she sees he could touch her if he wished.
“By the way, is Jebb your first or last name?”
“It’s my name.”
The steel door down the hallway creaks open and Katsouris’ metallic voice soils the quiet. “Prisoner! Step back from the bars!”
I am always watched by the wrong men, thinks Madalena. She turns and waves him away. “I’m fine, Deputy Katsouris.”
“So was the padre – until he wasn’t.”
“It’s okay. Thank you.” The door slams shut, but Katsouris’ face doesn’t appear in the window. Gone.
“You have a protector,” says Jebb, sitting again on the bed.
“Do I need one?”
“We all need one.”
“Yes.”
“The deputy thinks I’ll hurt you.”
“Will you?”
“Touch you? No. Perhaps he thinks I’ll start masturbating in front of a beautiful woman.”
“Will you?”
“No. I need you.”
“For what, Jebb?”
He looks away from her, tilts his head.
“I don’t like the religious who don’t wear their vestments. Where’s your habit?”
“It’s not required.”
“It seems cowardly,” says Jebb, lightly, without rancor, “As if you don’t have the courage to stand apart, to stand for something, to say this is who I am – and to hell with you if you don’t like it.”
“That’s not necessary. We give directions to hell every Sunday. But most people don’t need them. They’re already there. Looking for another route.”
“That’s very smug of you.”
“It is. That’s the threat of truth. It makes you a little smug.”
“A price for everything.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” says Madalena.
“Even God’s love?”
“The price was His Child,” says Madalena.
They are silent now, each savoring a private elliptical pleasure in the encounter. Embedded in disquiet.
Then Jebb says, “I want you to go somewhere for me.”
“Where?”
“The bus station and the train station.”
“Here? In Lordsburg?”
“Yes.”
Madalena considers this. “Is there someone you want me to meet?”
“No.”
“What should I do there?”
“Just go to each place and stay for fourteen minutes.” How precise.
“That’s all?” says Madalena.
“And kneel before you leave.”
“Why?”
Her word sits in the air, then vanishes as if unspoken. Jebb rises from his bed, his soft voice filling. “Will you go or not?”
Madalena, unmoved, says, “I’d like to think about it.” Then suddenly discomfited, she rises from her chair so they may regard each other at eye level.
“All right, but if you don’t go, don’t come back to see me. I won’t speak to you. Send someone else.” Their eyes couple. “You know why I’m here?”
“You said you killed a child.”
He nods. “Yes. Don’t ask me about it – ever – until I’m ready to tell you. Goodbye.” He turns his back on her and walks to the edge of his bed and sits, facing the wall.
Madalena watches him, rigid and locked in contemplation. His breath and back rise and fall more quickly now.
“Guard!” he shouts, “Guard!” rupturing the queer solemnity of their meeting and her ministry.
Katsouris’ arrival is swift, his baton drawn.
“Take Sister Madalena away,” says Jebb plainly. “Our business is finished.”
Katsouris eyes Jebb staring at the wall, looks at Madalena and begins, “Did he –”
“No, nothing,” says Madalena. “Let’s go. Goodbye, Jebb.”
He does not reply.
***
© Jeffrey Harper. May not be reproduced or transmitted without author’s permission.
