Saint Joseph School

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been ... um ... six days since my last confession."

The narrow room, smelling of Murphy's oil soap and the dim scent of candles from the votives burning outside. Peppery with old perfume, old sweat, old shame. Father Pat's voice, reassuring.

"Go ahead, my son."

Billy chewed his lower lip compulsively."I'm havin' trouble, Father."

It was so much easier to talk to Father Pat than it was to talk to Doctor Conrads. It was almost the same. The quiet room, the gentle voice asking questions. But there was always the threat, with Doctor Conrads, that if he heard something that surprised him, or made him upset, he'd tell the Authorities. He'd welch on the deal. Couldn't trust Conrads completely. And here, in this box, just him, and the Father. The sanctity of the confessional which, Billy knew, ultimately meant that whatever he said was between him, and God. He could confess to murder, torture, and rape in here, and it would never land him back in the Zig.

"What troubles you, my son?"

"Girls, Father. I got something to confess about a girl."

Without really knowing how the story began, he began to vomit forth his confession. Words spilled all down his t-shirt, through the filigreed wooden partition, and his memories, disconnected, followed a similar track.

She'd been sitting in a bus stop, long past the hours when buses came by, and asked him to lend her a cigarette. In the mushy yellow streetlight that made everything look evil, she looked good. Soft brown hair. Soft pink skin. Soft pink dress that clung to her body like paint. Everything about her yielding and sweet and perfect.

The brief conversation. His cashed paycheck money hot and large with potential, in his pocket. She'd taken him to some shabby rented rooms on the west side, and she'd undressed, like a miracle. Naked, though, her eyes were cold, and hard. And he, there with her, the look of calculation, barely-muffled disgust when he'd taken off his shirt, and she'd seen what a mess he looked. And him, trembling, freaked, unable.

"Can you just hold on to me?" he asked. Knowing it was little-boy talk, sissy talk. And she'd set the alarm clock for half-an-hour, taken his money, and wrapped her body around his. He felt his metal arms taking on the warmth of her skin, breathed in the smell of her hair. Like almost a sustained, perfect moment, before the harsh buzzing of the timer broke it open. The bed smelled like old love and insecticide. He was invited to leave.

"My son, you were spared a great injury."

"Yes, Father."

"But the transgression is still serious. I want you to pray the rosary five times, in repentance of lust."

"Yes Father."

"I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

He stepped out, breathed the open air. He took a seat on a nearby pew, intending to pray, but just sitting there instead, dazed. Tired.

"Billy," said Father Pat, touching him on the shoulder. He looked up. Father Pat smiled at him, as if this were a chance meeting, as if he had not been listening to his confession ten minutes before. "I wanted to talk with you. Come to my study, would you?"

All uncertain, he followed, his hands making fists and strange shapes in his consternation.

In his study, Father Pat reached up on a heavily-laden bookcase and pulled down a slim volume. He handed it to Billy.

Billy stared at it. There was a picture of a knight, in armor, on horseback. The picture looked old. The perspectives were all funny. Medieval. The title. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. "What's it about?"

"Oh," said Father Pat, crossing his arms on his chest. "A book. King Arthur. The Round Table. Knights, quests, women. Did you know that Sir Gawain is the first knight of King Arthur's anyone ever wrote about?"

"I thought that was Lancelot," said Billy.

"Oh, no. Before there was even a Round Table, there was Sir Gawain. A very complicated sort of man, Billy. Brave, strong, but sometimes ... well, lets just say he had problems with women. You might like it."

"It's not in funny English, is it?" Billy asked. "Like, ye old England-English?"

"No, this translation is modernized. Take a look." Father Pat patted Billy on his upper shoulder. "I'll see you tonight for Mass?"

Billy nodded. Carefully, he put the book in his bookbag, and meandered his way out of the church.

I like the knights. I remember I used to like them before, back when I was a kid. Building castles out of Legoes. Like, years and years ago. I think I stopped liking knights when I started playing basketball.

I got the ball under my foot now, sweating in the shade by the basketball courts. Jack and me playin'a pick-up game, one on one. He don't laugh at me when I try to play. Too easy to make those 'white boys got no game' jokes, but basketball is serious business, and he knows I can't stomach jive talk. It's all true, I'm terrible at it; I'm still trying to relearn how to play. Body moves okay but the arms... the arms are shit. They twitch, they can't grip the nubby surface of the ball good. I can dribble, but sometimes I punch the ball too hard. Jack set me up with a box of latex gloves he nicked from the lunchladies. That's helping a little. Helps my grip. Jack's kind to me; maybe in a few more months I'll want the sass. Be able to prove him wrong on the court.

Of course, I smoke now too. Coach at my old school would have busted my ass down to a sliver if he'd caught me. Basketball's a game of running, can't do that with lungs tarred down with smoke. But whatever.

So now I've got the basketball going again, I might as well try the knights. Picking up old habits. So Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In a time when King Arthur is young on his throne. I'm so used to picturing him all old and gray and bearded, getting cheated on by his firm young lollikins with that faggy Lancelot.

Arthur's young, Guenevere is young, and no Lancelot in sight. I like the story already. They're having a big party, an all-out half-month shindig. Descriptions of the food for the feast makes my mouth water. Roast meat with mawmenny. I look it up in the index, it's some sort of fancy sweet rich sauce made out of cherries and almonds and wine. I take a sip of gatorade and spare a brief thought for lunch.

So they're sitting there, when the Green Knight busts in on the party. He really is a green knight. Green hair, green beard, green armor, even the horse he rides is green. Some getup. He holds out a huge mofo axe.

In his hand, an axe, huge and uncomely, a cruel weapon in fashion, if one would picture it. The head was an ell-yard long, the metal all of green steel and gold, the blade burnished bright, with a broad edge, as well shapen to shear as a sharp razor. The steel was set into a strong staff, all bound round with iron, even to the end, and engraved with green in cunning work. A lace was twined about it, that looped at the head, and all adown the handle it was clasped with tassels on buttons of bright green richly broidered.

He reminds me of a 'Show boy. Course, if he had been, the axe woulda been part of his arm, not separable. The balls on this guy! I wonder if Father Pat gave me the book 'cause the Green Knight reminds him of the 'Show? Green Knight is out for a bloodsport game.

"If any one in this hall holds himself so hardy, so bold both of blood and brain, as to dare strike me one stroke for another, I will give him as a gift this axe, which is heavy enough, in sooth, to handle as he may list, and I will abide the first blow, unarmed as I sit. If any knight be so bold as to prove my words let him come swiftly to me here and I will abide his stroke, firm on the floor. Then shalt thou give me the right to deal him another, the respite of a year and a day shall he have. Now haste, and let see whether any here dare say aught."

Arthur, all jackkneed, is up for the dare. Strike the Green Knight a blow, then have that blow returned. Arthur's ready for the game. Ready to snipe against the aggro. But Gawain stops him. Gawain takes it on. Gawain's a tank. He picks up that axe and knocks the Green Knight's head right the fuck off. "Vxnaxin," I mutter, read it again. Pop goes the daisy-head of the Green Knight's brain-pan, rumble-tumble across the hall floor.

Now he's the kick. As the head goes, spurting blood out every-which-way like a liquid Catherine-wheel, the Green Knight picks it up.

He started forward with out-stretched hand, and caught the head, and lifted it up; then he turned to his steed, and took hold of the bride, set his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. His head he held by the hair, in his hand. Then he seated himself in his saddle as if naught ailed him, and he were not headless.
For he held up the head in his hand, and turned the face towards them that sat on the high daïs, and it lifted up the eyelids and looked upon them and spake as ye shall hear. "Look, Gawain, that thou art ready to go as thou hast promised, and seek leally till thou find me, even as thou hast sworn in this hall in the hearing of these knights. Come thou, I charge thee, to the Green Chapel, such a stroke as thou hast dealt thou hast deserved."
With that he turned his bridle, and galloped out at the hall door, his head in his hands, so that the sparks flew from beneath his horse's hoofs.

That Green Knight is a dirty busher. Cheater to the umpth degree. Gawain was a smart one, not to let Arthur take the wager.

I feel a little weird about reading this. I close the book with a snap, pop the ball under my arm, toss the cashed gatorade to the trash. I'll think about it later. The story pushes at my head in ways I don't like; already I can see the Green Knight like a Tank Swiper, the flesh of his face the only live thing in a body of barbed metal. Green metal. Up for the game. Cold for the kill.

When I wake up, the memory's all tangled up in my dream. There are four of us and this cape and we're beating the crap out of him. He's given up on fighting and is just curled up, fetal, trying to protect his skull. We wait for him to get up. We laugh, L33tero passes around little poppers. The hero won't get up. I get mad. I draw back my steel-toed boot and kick him, hard, in the ribs. I hear the bone snap. It sounds like ice cubes cracking in thick liquid.

I'm just sitting up in my child's bed. The sodium glare of the streetlights makes the ceiling orange. I try to rub my face and I almost put an eye out with my stupid metal fingers.

I flop back down. I stare at the wooden headboard. I can't sleep.

I grab the book and open it, tilting it up so the streetlight brightens the page.

Sir Gawain has gone to the castle in the woods, looking to make good on his wager with the Green Knight. He can't find the Green Chapel--typical of those sorts of people, I think, they never leave a forwarding address after they've fucked your life up. So he can't find the Green Chapel but he finds a castle where there's a wicked fat party going on. All these Knights seem to do is feast, go on quests, and feast again. There are two women in this guy, Bertilak's, castle. One's ugly as hells and one's superbly hot. I try to think of what she looks like and all I can see in my mind's eye is Renn Haven, the way her eyebrows arch, the tiny, birdlike bones in her wrists and ankles. Everything neat and clean and pretty. Like a movie star, a creature from another planet entirely. Which, I suppose, is what women are.

So Gawain is lying there in bed, having been welcomed, and he's sleeping in. I smile a little. Sleeping in is, apparently, a universal luxury. And Lady Bertilak, her Miss Nibs Hotness, sneaks in his room.

My god, why didn't I get to this part last night. I read it again to make sure it's really happening. The hot chick slips into bed with Gawain and talks sweet to him. And asks him for a kiss.

I think of how it might be if I dormed over at St. Joe's, instead of here with dad. How would it be if a girl came over to my room? Peeked her head in the door, saying 'shhhh,' coming in to snuggle with me. What if Renn...?

These are really nice thoughts. They paint over the bad dream like Dutch Boy.

Gawain's holding her off. What the hell is he doing? But it's funny, I can see the path his brain is taking, at war with his dick. Sure, it'd be nice to slip it to Lady Bertilak. But she's married, her husband's been nothing but nice to Gawain, and maybe she's hot, but she's not very nice to put Gawain in this situation. Is that chivalry? Not the questing and feasting and stuff, but putting other people above yourself? Thinking with your brain, and not your dick? One tends to wonder.

I put the book down. I think about dreaming about Renn, instead of the 'Show.

Gawain isn't a satanist, but he wears a pentagram on him. Funny, that. I didn't realize a symbol could change that way, over time. Seems like all the arcane things the weirdo cults have picked up were just on sale at Mother Church's flea market.

When Gawain goes out in the wild, his people dress him, bit by bit. They help him put on his armor. They help him get ready. It reminds me, a little, of the 'Show, getting sharp, getting dangerous, sparks curling working the angle grinders on bladed edges, revving up, popping uppers, getting ready to go.

But this is different, this is sacred. So Gawain wears the pentagram, which is apparently something really deep and old. It stands for truth. It knots over on itself end over end, with no origin point, no end. There's a picture of Gawain's shield, and I run my fingertip over the endless knot. My finger twitches, holds steady, and traces the mark, over and over, no beginning, no end.

So what does it mean?

And therefore was it well suiting to this knight and to his arms, since Gawain was faithful in five and five-fold, for pure was he as gold, void of all villainy and endowed with all virtues. Therefore he bare the pentangle on shield and surcoat as truest of heroes and gentlest of knights.
For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him...

I stop, reading this. I look down at the metal fingers, my metal fingers. I bite down so hard on my lower lip that it bursts like grape, and a trickle of blood goes down my chin. I bang my fingers against the edge of the desk; the tactile response settings give me a faint pins-and-needles sensation where my flesh fingers ought to be.

I don't know how long I sit there, thumping my fingers against the edge of the desk.

For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him...

...and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child. And the fifth five that the hero used were frankness and fellowship above all, purity and courtesy that never failed him, and compassion that surpasses all; and in these five virtues was that hero wrapped and clothed.

I think and I think and I think. The hole I've bitten in my lip bleeds salty in my mouth, closes, stops. How can I be like this? How can I be like Gawain when I can't do what he does? I don't even have the first fucking requirement. His five fingers never failed him. I've got ten and they are, to a one, unreliable. I check my watch. Eight o'clock. Still time.

I hustle feet down the street. I could fly, but it's standard courtesy that when you're going to church, you go humble. You go on foot. Even Saint Joseph of Cupertino only levitated in the Presence. So I jog, my breath dragging exhausted in my ribcage, the book in my hand, blood crusting and rubbed away as I go.

"Father Pat!" I say, panting. He's vacuuming the benches in the second pew. I dip my fingers and wet my brow, and enter. I put the book down gently on the pew between us. The ceiling, ringing with the choir of the electrolux, goes quiet as the Father switches it off.

"I need to return the book, Father."

"Did you finish, Billy?"

"No, Father."

"Why ever not?" His voice holds a note of impatience.

"For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him," I say, the words coming easy out of my stupid mouth. "Gawain, I mean."

"Billy, what are the seven cardinal virtues?"

I think a moment. I'm pretty good with things that are numbered, in lists. These come pretty easy. "Faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice ... uh ... temperance, and ... prudence."

"Now who exhibits all those virtues at all times?"

"I dunno." I kick at the kneeler and regret it instantly, as it leaves a black mark from the grit on my shoes. "Jesus?" I say, hopefully, 'cause that's usually the answer to anything.

Father Pat lets the vacuum hose flop over the pew. "Billy, do you recall Matthew 27:46?"

I shake my head.

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Father Pat looks at me. "Even Jesus, Billy, had his moment of doubt and pain. The virtues are not about being lived. They're about being lived up to." He bends down and pushes the book back into my hands, which close, instinctively, on it. "Reading about the pentagle, and the knightly virtues, is like that, Billy. Try to live up to them, don't give up because everything isn't in your reach already." He bends, bones cracking as he switches back on the vacuum. I tuck the book back into my pants pocket.

"I'll help," I say, taking the dusting-cloth and Murphy's soap from the workbucket. Father Pat nods at me, over the vacuum choir. "This would be humility!" he shouts, winking a blue Irish eye at me. I laugh, using my fingers to poke gently into the nooks and crannies of the scrolled woodwork.

((Posted with permission from Billy, this goes hand-in hand with Torquemada's Rave))

"With that he bent his head and shewed his neck all bare, and made as if he had no fear, for he would not be thought a-dread.
Then the Green Knight made him ready, and grasped his grim weapon to smite Gawain. With all his force he bore it aloft with a mighty feint of slaying him: had it fallen as straight as he aimed he who was ever doughty of deed had been slain by the blow. But Gawain swerved aside as the axe came gliding down to slay him as he stood, and shrank a little with the shoulders, for the sharp iron. The other heaved up the blade and rebuked the prince with many proud words:
"Thou art not Gawain," he said, "who is held so valiant, that never feared he man by hill or vale, but thou shrinkest for fear ere thou feelest hurt. Such cowardice did I never hear of Gawain! Neither did I flinch from thy blow, or make strife in King Arthur's hall. My head fell to my feet, and yet I fled not; but thou didst wax faint of heart ere any harm befell. Wherefore must I be deemed the braver knight."

Sam stopped reading and carefully closed the book, as Billy's eyes fluttered shut. She swallowed down the lump forming in her throat as she saw him lying there, looking like death itself. His face was pale with deep black circles shadowing his eyes, giving them the appearance of being sunken inside of his skull. The mohawk she'd carefully helped him construct and dye months earlier was half grown out, tufts of Billy's real hair now sprouted sporadically through his scalp. One arm had been removed, and she held fast to the other, his metal digits finally relaxing as he drifted to sleep.

The doctors said something about nanomites, hundreds of thousands of foreign little "things" in his blood stream, it'd take time to counteract all of them. As a result, he was still pretty heavily drugged from the medication.

While he was awake, he looked out of it, but she made idle talk with him regardless. She reminded him about his church and what was going on there. She still went every week for him, sat in his spot, and if she couldn't make it on Sunday, she'd go Wednesday nights. They were having a fund raiser for a new roof. She donated twenty in his name. One of the deacons went to Africa for some mission work and every week he sends a postcard. As soon as he got out, he could go and read them all, he was doing some pretty amazing things. She still lit candles for Mr. McGuffin. She told him how she kept up with the garage, mostly making sure nothing was stolen and that the Freaks didn't take it over. She told him about school and what was going on, who was seeing who, who broke up, who came and who left. She talked and talked until she ran out of words, avoiding the ones she wanted to ask most, but now as he lay sleeping she closed her hand around his, and whispered.

"What happened, Billy?" His eyes darted beneath their lids. She hoped the medicine kept him from dreaming. "A couple of weeks, you said. You were gone so long." Silently she cursed the officer who roped him into all this. Detective Pleasaunce was the name he gave, but he'd warned her to stay away from him.

"His day will come." Billy had said through gritted teeth before he left.

She remembered the stories he told her before, why it was so important that he go by himself. She hoped he'd never have to relive them, but now, as he slept it was so hard to tell. His expression was pained when he was awake, but even in sleep he looked like he wanted to cry or scream or lash out at something, someone. She wasn't there when the group of kids from St. Joes had gone after him, and she specifically didn't ask Tony for details. Maybe she was better off not knowing. Maybe Billy was better off if she didn't know. If he wanted to talk, she'd listen, but otherwise, no questions asked. Whatever it was, he wouldn't have to go through it alone, not this time.

She squeezed his hand one more time before standing up, cradling his book in her arms.

"I'll read you some more tomorrow." She promised in another hushed tone. "And the day after. And until you get out of here." She studied his face for a moment, and for a split second, she could swear he looked less anguished. "I'm just glad that you're home, Billy."

I'm just glad that you're home.

She took the long route back to the school, passing through Talos, and stopped briefly on the steps of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Billy's church. She lit a candle first thing, closing her eyes and saying a made-up prayer for Mr. McGuffin's soul. Her footsteps fell softly on the well worn carpet as she walked down the aisle and slid into Billy's seat, her eyes fixed on the same large cross that stared at her since Billy disappeared. He could reclaim his place soon enough, she reassured herself. Silence surrounded her but it was welcome. She always felt a little off. Two years in Catholic school, and religion was still a mystery. She and her dad were Methodists, but not especially the practicing kind, and part of her always felt like some priest would come and usher her off at any minute, pointing to a big "Catholic Only" sign, but none ever did.

She was reminded again of the funeral held in this church for Billy's father, and she bit back the tears. Bowing her head, she said another silent prayer to whoever could hear.

Thank you for watching out for Billy. For being his guardian angel, and for keeping him safe. Please help him get better soon, and please don't let him be in pain. Please help him forget the things he needs to forget, and remember the people who care about him. But most of all, thank you for bringing him home.

Thank you for bringing him home.