Free Everyone Pays by Seth Harwood Page B

prayer over his body. This sinner would need more than my absolution to walk through heaven’s gates.
    I untied the girl, left her waiting on the bed. She’d have to pass his body, and perhaps that might be a message to her, one she’d hear. But I didn’t hold a lot of hope. From the way she fought her ties and the look of her teeth, eyes, and skin, I knew she was already gone. Not that the devil had claimed her yet; she had chosen her path.
    She was far down that road.
    What I saw as I walked back to the rectory was more of the same: sinners. I saw so many of them in this city, on these streets. Only a small few came to God. Those who came to ask for absolution, such a small piece of the whole, a tiny fraction; it was hard to understand why more didn’t take matters into their own hands. What drew me forward was my love for her and the need to cleanse her for heaven. But I also wanted the men who hurt her to pay.
    I did it for Him. In His name. As Sodom and Gomorrah fell, and the flood cleansed the world in Noah’s time, I would do my part to the city’s filth. Whatever I was able.
    It was dawn, and the streets had emptied as I headed back, pale light showing only the few homeless who slept in plain sight. Most retreated to alleys, doorways, or underneath whatever they could find.
    We offered a place for them in the church for parts of the day, to sleep in the pews. The Gubbio Project. But now they had the shelters and their own haunts. The shelters could only take so many, and they had to be in by a certain hour. The laws helped the city to go on eating itself. Nothing new.
    I didn’t have time to stop in and see her, though I wanted to very much. I wanted to see she was all right, that she had slept. Instead, I had my duties: lighting candles and the preparations for morning mass to tend to.
    Father Kevin was there, filling the prayer altar with fresh candles. He whistled. He had already set out the sacrament for our service: His body and blood.
    Inside the church, protected from the world outside, Kevin was cheerful. Always cheerful.
    I wanted to ask him what he made of the sinners on the streets, how he could forgive in the name of the Lord, or how he could even walk past them without getting sick. I wanted to know how he could omit them from his heart, avoid carrying them in it.
    Somehow, he did.
    “Good morning,” he said.
    “Good morning.”
    We smiled at one another and nodded. Then his face changed. He saw something in me, noticed a scent or a mark or blood. Or perhaps he felt my energy, knew it had changed. Maybe he suspected me of keeping Emily in my room, or heard me slipping out late at night.
    “Everything is right with you, Michael?” he asked. Grave concern.
    “Yes. Yes. Everything is fine.” I hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last two days, didn’t know what he might see, or think he saw.
    “Sometimes I worry for you,” he said. He stepped to his left, stood in front of me, meeting my eyes. “Since you come here, you do excellent work. Still, I worry. You come in trouble, on drugs. I concerned. Now you with us long time. Still, I ask when I see you not okay.”
    “Yes. I understand.” He waited for me to say more. “I can assure you, all is well. Thank you, Father. There is nothing to cause you worry.”
    He nodded, though still grim.
    Our eyes met, and I smiled. “I am all right.” I reached out to his hands, squeezed them, and he seemed relieved. He smiled too.
    “Very well.” He turned then and was gone.
    I wondered at his comment, his concerns and what I was showing, but there was no time for that. A long time ago he had saved me. Now was my time to save another.
    I doubted if Father Kevin directly heard His word, if anyone did. I was chosen for a reason, for a specific path. Myself alone.
    I often wondered at the other fathers: how they could live in this desolation and not become ill with it, how they could tolerate the filth on the streets outside our walls.