Billy and the Priest by Luke Beling
Father Sampson took me in after I passed out on the curb outside his church. He let me use his shower, gave me a clean set of clothes and a peanut butter sandwich. When he drove me back to Ma’s house, he told her I’d go only if she let me sleep in my old room, that he’d help get me on the straight and narrow.
“How many times have we been through this now, Billy? Tell the priest, damn it!” Ma screamed as we stood on the porch, my bloodshot eyes burning holes into my dirty feet.
“I’ll get him right, Mrs. Clover. Just give him another chance. There’s no shortage of second chances in God’s kingdom.”
The first five days coming off the streets were always the toughest. I spent my time watching TV, sitting on Ma’s big brown leather sofa, but I could only make out a snowy mess of nothingness. First, the tips of my fingers burned with an itch, then spread through the rest of my body until I’d jump up and start rubbing myself against the wall like a love-starved cat.
“You itching for it, ain’t ya?” Ma would say when she’d see me against the wall. “I smell even a trace of it, and you’re out. Ya, hear me?”
Ma had a nose like a bloodhound. But a week without meth was the longest I’d ever gone since getting hooked on the stuff. It was that Sunday after my first mass I got the idea.
Father Sampson invited me into the vestry after the benediction. “Not as holy in here as we make it out to be, is it, Billy?”
The room was tiny, with the walls painted an awful cream color resembling unpasteurized milk. A small offering of light spilled through one little shoulder-height window, hardly helping the dull put-me-to-sleep energy of the room. I stood in a corner next to the giant bronze cross the altar boy carried.
“Now let me just count the collection, and then we’ll get going for lunch.” Father Sampson removed his liturgical vestments and looked like an ordinary man. The offering plate was silver, resembling a giant ashtray, and filled with cash that had to be upwards of a thousand dollars. I watched him count the money, then retrieve a key from beneath the purple flower planter on the window sill.
“What’s that?” I said as he unlocked the cabinet, opening the door.
“This?”
“Yeah.”
“Not many people know about this. But, just between us, it’s worth a whole lot of money. Enough to build five more churches, I reckon.”
“Why?” I asked, walking towards the cabinet, eyebrows raised, studying the cork inside the glass container.
“It’s from the bottle of wine that was used for communion when the pope visited a few years ago. I saved it.”
“They let you do that?”
The glass box rested in his palm, a glint in his eyes. “Why not? I mean, I didn’t really feel the need to ask anyone, you know? I just thought it might be worth a lot of money one day. And an old priest like me has to think about retirement, too, right?”
Father Sampson handed the artifact to me as though it were a bird that had just been born. “Here, have a look. It still has a little wine stain on it. You see that?”
I didn’t study the cork for long, setting the glass container back into the cabinet, pretending to be distracted by the purple flower while stealing quick, serious glances at Father Sampson.
“It’s a violet.” He said.
“What?”
“The plant you seem so interested in.”
Furling the small leaves in his fingertips, Father Sampson smiled, gazing at the flower as though it were animate. “I suppose, a struggling violet more like it.”
“Oh yes, yes,” I managed, turning my vision from the base of the plant, under which he’d set the key. “My mother has one just like it.”
He sprayed some water on the browning leaves. “Is that right?” he said, craning his neck to make eye contact. Then he set the bottle down and approached with sinking eyes and lips pressing into each other like one faint pencil-traced line. “How are things going at home, Billy?”
The grandfather clock chimed. The loud gong made me step back, bumping my head against the wall. “I guess that means it’s time for lunch, Father.”
Father Sampson grinned, halting. “Well, I suppose it is, Son. Where would you like to eat? And promise me you won’t tell anybody about that cork? Our secret, okay?”
I watched him put his keys in his coat pocket, the same set of keys he’d later set underneath the lemon tree outside.
“Of course, your secret’s safe with me. Only if you’re buying lunch! Somewhere fancy!” I said, smiling big.
***
I parked Ma’s old Toyota near an orange dumpster. The stray cats scrambled into hiding. The moon was just a quarter-crescent spotlight on the darkness. I watched and waited, gloved hands on the steering wheel.
I hit my head on the roof as a cat swiped an empty can with its paw. “My mask!?” I whispered.
I combed through the empty fast food boxes on the floorboards, then dug my fingers in the slits of the seats.
Just as I was about to start the engine to return home, I caught a glimpse in the mirror and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the black ski mask loosely fitted above my brows.
I pulled the mask down, readjusting it, making sure nobody would recognize me. “You got this, Billy. You damn well got this.” I took a deep breath through my nose, then slowly opened the car door.
Approaching the backside of the church, I stopped near the small lemon tree. The motion light flashed, and I almost fell back down the steep brick stairs. I ducked below a freshly cut hedge, surveyed my surroundings, inhaling deep breaths through my nose. Crawling to the lemon tree, I carefully watched the busy street and the nearby houses, comforted by the unchanging veil of darkness. I lifted the potted tree with the tips of my fingers, then grabbed the keys with my other hand, doing so with one quiet, swift motion.
The second key I tried opened the backdoor to the church. Before locking the bolt behind me, I gazed at the cats for a minute or two. When an ambulance whizzed by with its dizzying red-white lights, I slammed the church door and tiptoed toward the altar. Two gold-laced candles burned on the altar table. I grabbed one and walked towards the vestry, careful not to spill any wax on the blood-red carpet. The same key I’d used to open the church back door fit the vestry door. A light turned on from a house across the street, shining like a giant sun through the small vestry window. I shuddered and spilled wax onto the grandfather clock. Setting the candle next to the clock, I switched on the floor lamp, then drew the curtains shut. The violet looked even less alive in the low light, shriveled brown-grey leaves drooping below faded purple petals. A leaf flaked off the stem and feathered to the floor as I lifted the pot and found the cabinet key. When I removed the glass container from the cabinet, I noticed the collection plate full of cash. I stuffed a few hundred dollar bills into my pocket, pulled off my ski mask, and studied the cork wide-eyed. The latch on the casing wasn’t moving as I tugged on it, stuck as though glued to the hinge. I shook the container back and forth, but with measured force, scared the cork might get scuffed. A stone crucifix lay on a pile of papers on the cabinet shelf. I grabbed it and slammed it into the glass container until it shattered, and the cork fell onto the floor. I placed the cork into a ziplock bag, blew the candle out, turned off the lamp, then snuck out of the church, safely back to my mother’s car.
I couldn’t sleep that night, checking the cork on my bedside table every five minutes. I’d already secured a buyer, a guy I’d sold cocaine to a few years back.
The following day we met under an old oak tree at a park down the road from ma’s. I handed him the zip lock bag, pretending to tie my shoelaces.
“Nobody’s watching us, Billy. Stand up, would you!? Let me see what you got.” He removed his dark shades. “This thing’s nice. I think I can shop it. You got the papers?”
“What papers?”
“Authentication! How do we know this thing’s real?”
“The priest said it is, told me himself.”
The man laughed then his face went tight. “You wasting my time. I can’t help you if I don’t have papers, kid.” He shoved the bag into my hand and turned for the parking lot.
I thought about breaking into the church again that night to see if I’d missed the papers, but it was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, despite the itching getting worse. I decided to wait three more days to allow the dust to settle.
Three days passed without Father Sampson’s daily call. I wondered if he’d figured it out, giving me space to fess up before calling the cops.
I decided to check out the scene at Wednesday’s mass. Upon walking into the service ten minutes late, I noticed a different priest behind the altar, a much older man. My heart beat a hundred miles through all the hail mary’s, then peaked at the end of the benediction. I waited until most of the congregation had left, then approached the old priest as he headed into the vestry.
“Father, where’s Father Sampson?”
“Nobody told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Some massive insurance payout came through for him, so he quit- packed up everything in a day. I think he headed south somewhere warm.”
The priest moved to the windowsill, fetched the key underneath the violet then opened the cabinet.
“I heard about that stolen cork. Such a pity.” I stepped closer, trying to peer into the cabinet underneath his drooping shoulders.
“What cork?”
“The one from when the pope visited.”
The priest began to chuckle, then turned his head and squinted at me. “The pope?”
“Father Sampson said he was here a few months ago.”
His chuckle grew into a belly laugh. “That Father Sampson sure had a sense of humor. I’ll give him that! You got a better chance at seeing Jesus himself in this church than the pope, my son!”
My eyes moved to the collection plate. “Say, Father, are you still keeping the church’s key under the lemon tree outside? Father Sampson would leave it there so I could come and pray.”
The priest locked the cabinet, then returned the key underneath the violet. “Strictly against church policy, Son. I’m quite surprised to learn he let you do that.”I turned the engine of Mom’s old car and watched the cats jump in and out of the dumpster, then I drove home, scratching myself, without any concern of drawing blood.
About the Author: South African born, Luke Beling, left home at 19. In 2007, he graduated from Campbellsville University with a BA in English.Luke has had several short stories published in journals and magazines, including: Quiet Shorts (2012), Eyelands Flash Fiction (2019), Academy of the Heart and Mind (2021), New Reader Magazine (2021), The Salt Weekly Magazine (2022), Impspired Magazine (2022), Shallow Tales Review (2023), and Pigeon Review (2023). Luke is the director of tennis for a private club on the Big Island of Hawaii and an indie-folk singer-songwriter. https://www.instagram.com/luke.beling/ https://www.facebook.com/luke.beling/ Tweets by BelingLukeMain Page
