Free Confessions by Ryne Douglas Pearson

the messenger?”
    He lets my explanatory question hang there for a moment. The thrust of it does not seem to strike him with any force. Or if it does, he is unmoved by its certain gravity. His only reaction is to look away from me, his own gaze settling on the twinkling ranks of offertory candles arcing before the statue of Mary to the left of the altar. He stares at the chiseled figure, gleaming alabaster representation of who we believe to be the earthly mother of Christ. Looks only at her as he speaks.
    “I cowered in a mud shack in Rwanda as men dragged a woman from her home and hacked her to pieces with machetes.” He says this matter-of-factly. No emotion. Just the recounting of a truth noted in a ledger of his life. “She was one life among millions that were taken, but I should have interceded. My calling demanded that I intercede. Still, I did not.”
    I knew of Father Taylor’s missionary work in Africa, but never the specifics. He never spoke of it, and to learn that a priest had been on a mission in Africa is akin to learning that space is vast. As a vocation we spread ourselves about the globe. I, myself, spent several months in Brazil, hoping to spread the word of God by deed and example.
    But in my brief sojourn to Latin America I was not confronted with tribe on tribe violence, the scale of which Father Taylor experienced in Rwanda nothing short of a genocide conveniently forgotten as it happened.
    Though not by him.
    “They would have killed you,” I say. “And they would have then killed her.”
    He looks back to me and nods. “Yes. That should have been what happened.” His statement is cold and true. The lamb is sacrificed. Jesus went to the cross for us. These things are drilled into us by our church from a young age, and as priests we embrace this concept knowing that we must be willing to do as our Savior did. We should walk through the valley of the shadow of death and we should fear no evil.
    We should.
    “That one failing on my part,” he begins, “to choose life for myself, does that cast a shadow over all the right things I have done? So much so that they are lost in darkness and seem never to have come to pass?”
    I shake my head at his wondering. The question posing the actions of man against those of a super man. An impossible comparison. “Of course not.”
    He smiles now, and nods. “Of course not.”
    He looks at me for a long moment and I realize that the very solemn question just posed was not for his benefit. It was for mine.
    “Of course not,” he repeats once more, and slowly rises, spindly hand clenched atop his cane. He wills his body up, joints straightening with effort. He slides between the pews toward the aisle and shuffles his way toward the exit, pausing to cross himself before the altar. His show of respect for the church which he embraces, and which still embraces him.

Chapter Nine
    Still Waters
    I have not made peace with myself. But I have with my decision to go on. To move on. To be what I am. To accept my failings as much as my devotion to my calling. There is much still to do in this life I have chosen. What happened to my sister, what was done to her by others, has destroyed enough already. I will let it destroy no more.
    Father Taylor’s words to me began my acceptance of this. The days that followed trickled back toward some sense of normalcy, though at times I found myself questioning the ‘rightness’ of many ordinary decisions. Should I have spent more time counseling a troubled parishioner? Is it prudent to have the rectory painted in the spring? Would spending more time with my mother ease memory of me back into her dimming consciousness? These things I wondered on Monday. And on Tuesday.
    But not today. Not as I drive up the lightly rutted path through the trees and stop in the small gravel clearing behind the house on Arrow Lake. I am here to put a new storm door in place. I am here for two days and nights of detached relaxation. I am here