Where does a priest go to unload a freight car shoveled full of sin, a decade’s worth of halfhearted remorse? I don’t know anything about it.
The scabbed up, dried out nuns at seminary never taught that lesson, where to go to drop the baggage. Or maybe I just didn’t listen.
I probably didn’t listen.
What’s left in an aluminum Tall Boy, I swirl it around- the last few drops of backwater spit.
Shit, it’s just another empty can I gotta toss somewhere, out of the way so it ain't around to think about.
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I gotta call this one in.
“Joey. Yeah, it’s me. I got you one ready to roll in, soon as the coroner wraps it up."
“What’s it look like? All the pieces still there? The last one was a goddamn bloody mess, took my guys three hours to scrub down. They had to hose him down outside with the pressure washer, it was caked on so thick. Then we had to polish the damn thing.”
“No, no, she’s golden, Joey. You’ll see. What could I do about that last one? Shit, I don’t control how they die- they can’t all OD or go in their sleep. It’s cash either way. So you gotta get a little muddy, what are you gonna do? What do you want me to do?”
“What do I want? I don’t want no bullshit. I want you not to bullshit me. So tell me, honest to God, how bad is this one? I got business to handle. My guys got business. I can’t just drop everything whenever you bring a fucked up corpse out here to clean up.”
“Joey, I told you. It’s all good. Everything’s still hangin’ on, you know. It’s not like the last one. You’re gonna have to sew her head up and pop some bones around, that’s all. A few nips and tucks maybe, piece of cake. I’ve seen you handle worse in an hour.”
“You better be right. It’s a Mexican?"
“Yeah, Joey, of course it’s Mexican. They’re always Mexican.”
Joey likes Mexicans, always says he’ll take one over a Gringo any day. Then he’ll laugh a great deep rumble, the booming laugh of an enormous guy that smokes two packs a day and won’t quit for anything or anybody. I can feel his vocal chords rumble through the phone. The ejected air explodes from deep in his belly outward until it fills the whole office. It floats into me through the ear piece, gets inside me. And all I can do is smile. I don’t know how it works; the guy’s just got a way about him.
They pay cash and don’t ask a lot of questions, he says- the Mexicans. White people might complain about the flower arrangement or the dressing on the corpse or whatever. The Mexicans don’t- they just hand the cash over real smooth. No problems. And if they ever do decide to get mouthy about the price or anything, you just hold up an index finger and tell ‘em you gotta make a phone call to ICE. The trick is to say it real casual- like you call ‘em three times a day, like you and the director are old friends.
Even if they don’t understand any other goddamn thing a person might got to say, they know about ICE. They get it. Means the same thing in English and Mexican. Straightens ‘em out real fast.
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My brick phone, on loan from the diocese along with my shitty Hyundai, buzzes on the coffee table. It’s the richest goddamn operation in the whole world I’m with, and the best they can give me is a 1995 ham radio. It’s bullshit.
The caller ID says “Randy.” I wish it would go away, the phone and the caller. He won’t; I’ve tried to ignore him since I got here.
“What did I tell you? Huh? What did I tell you last time?”
“You tell me lots of things, Randy. How am I supposed to know when you’re being serious?”
“You cannot have your secretary performing funerals. Nancy is not a priest. She is not a priest.”
He likes to say things twice, like I don’t hear him the first time.
“Yeah?”
“So why is she calling me in tears, telling me you’re trying to force her to do your job again? After I warned you last time?”
“Because I’m swamped, Randy. Jesus. I’ve got baptisms, confirmations…”
“I don’t care how busy you are or what you’re doing. When a parishioner leaves us, we leave her with God. We don’t send our secretaries do it, we don’t pocket family heirloom jewelry off their necks when no one’s looking…”
“That was a damn lie, Randy. I thought you’d know better. You know you can’t trust these people. They’ll say anything for a buck.”
“This is not a negotiation.”
“Listen here, Randy…”
“Call me Bishop.”
“Fine. Bishop. Nancy’s so much better at dealing with these people. Michelle’s family wants somebody that understands their weird voodoo shit.”
I can hear him sigh through the phone, deep and exaggerated. “Her name is Margarita.”
“Right. Margarita’s family’s been calling me- they all want Nancy. They told me so. Look, Randy…”
“Bishop.”
“Yeah, Bishop. I wish I could help, I really do. But I got this pile of paperwork on my desk stacked up to the ceiling, I got a Boys and Girls Club meeting to go to. Confessions."
“This conversation is over. You’ve been pawning your job off on Nancy for months. You’re on thin ice, son. Your Dad’s memory with the Cardinal won’t save you forever. Remember I told you that."
He loves that line. “Skating on thin ice.”
There ain’t any ice here, not in South Texas. Goddamnit, I hate the guy.
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If Nancy really did call him in tears, there’s gonna be one more reformed prostitute back on the streets of El Paso tonight, burned through all her second and third chances, scraping through a dumpster for some discarded half-eaten fast-food sandwich just to get that salty semen residue out of her mouth. To choke down the shame.
She’ll call like she always does, once she’s out of options and got no one else to turn to. She’ll be sobbing, apologize for going behind my back to Randy. Her voice will crack and stutter. I’ll ask her where she’s calling from, and she’ll tell me. And I’ll imagine it- stranded in a dark alleyway, bruised knees tucked up to her chin. Alone and scared. Shivering in the cold desert night like a stray cat, waiting for God to save her. Tonight, that’s me. I’ll play God for the night.
My cock’ll get real stiff thinking about it, rock-solid like a steel wrench, and I’ll laugh to myself.
“You can come back,” I’ll tell her. “But you better leave whatever shred of dignity you’ve got left in that dumpster. You’re not gonna need it.”
That’ll be mostly for effect; we both know she gave up her dignity a long time ago. Traded it in for desperation.
Rug-burned knees and desperation and cheap make-up. It looks good on her.
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Like Randy said, all this started a couple weeks back. I was hungover and got Nancy to cover for me on a baptism. She said she’d take care of it, and I told her not to fuck it up. I thought everything would be cool. I mean, she speaks these people’s language. I don’t even know what the hell they’re saying to me, why would they want me dunking their baby in some water? So I figured it would be best for everyone if I let her take care of it. That’s what leaders do; they delegate. I read that somewhere.
We walked through the whole process, made her repeat it back to me. I even gave her the script, but she fucked it up anyway.
Randy called me a couple hours later.
“What planet are you from? You think you can get away with this? You cannot have the secretary out there doing your job. You can’t do it. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, and you pissed the Garcia’s off again. You’re on thin ice, son.”
It’s bullshit. Randy’s fat ass isn’t gonna be the one in black, out there sweating in the El Paso sun reading stumblin' around some foreign language gibberish that I ain't got the time to try to understand. Balls sticking to my thighs. Not Randy- no, that’ll be me. And there ain’t a way around it anymore that I can see.
Yeah, well, I guess this is what I get for trusting a whore to do something right.
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The guy down at the cemetery, his name’s Joey Balzac- my bookie and the closest thing I have to a friend. Meaty, sweaty guy. Talks rough. Sweats in air conditioning. He’s got a red face, always breathing like he just walked five flights of stairs. He sucks all the air out of the room and blows it back in with his own onion flavor.
“Ballsack.”
That’s what the guys at the graveyard call him, the ones who run lawnmowers over dead people’s grass all day. Only them, though. To everyone else, he’s Joey or Mr. Balzac. I figure these guys get away with it because they’ve known him a long time- he brought ‘em with him from wherever he came from.
That’s the thing about Joey- I don’t know where he came from. Or why. He’s so out of place here. I asked him once, after we knew each other a while. Said he’s from North Carolina and laughed real deep, sucked all the air out of the room and blew it back in again. I never did get a straight answer how he got to El Paso or why he came, but I just let it go. Everyone’s got secrets.
Joey’s been coming to confession since I got here, and he’s got this way about him that every other dope doesn’t. Everyone else confesses to eating three cupcakes instead of one at the office party, whatever. Not Joey. Wire fraud, extortion, even murder from time to time. He’ll go into real detail- a few months back, he roasted a guy alive rotisserie-style over a bonfire. He was into Joey for a lot of money, and I guess Joey just got tired of waiting. He had the rotisserie stick set up to rotate, the whole nine yards. Happened right there in the graveyard, deep into it where there’s no light on a starless night and the only witnesses are either dead or in on the action. After the fire and the shrieks died down and he figured the job was done, Joey had his guys unhook the corpse and threw whatever hadn’t already burned to ash into the crematory.
It’s a weird thing to listen to behind veiled light, the casual talk of a man’s brutal torture. But the weirder thing is, he’s not bragging about it. He doesn’t sound proud or satisfied. I really believe the guy regrets it- sometimes he even breaks down in tears. Maybe that’s why I like the guy; I got a feeling he wouldn’t let anyone else see him like that. His hardness melts away, just for a minute in the dark confessional box. I got a feeling like needs someone to recount his misdeeds to, just to hear it said out loud.
It’s a funny thing about sin- since I’ve known him, the guy’s killed six people that he told me about, fucked two dozen assorted women, a lot of ‘em strippers, played fast and loose with the rules. All these things, they bring him to confession like clockwork. He’ll beg forgiveness, sometimes even cry. But afterwards, like clockwork, he goes back out into the world and picks up another slut he’ll apologize for later.
It doesn’t make much sense to me- maybe he thinks he’s destined for the fire. Maybe he thinks he lost his shot at salvation a while back, so he might as well get off while the gettin’s good.
Maybe that’s why I like the guy, I don’t know.
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Six years ago, Joey bought the Cloud Nine Funeral Home & Cemetery outright from the estate left by Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson, who then got themselves buried in their own cemetery. No one asked where Joey got the money, and he wouldn’t have said so anyway.
Joey doesn’t ride any lawnmowers like his buddies. He’s too polished, too glossy for that line of work. He smells too much like money to get mixed up with dirt, and he smokes too much.
Instead, Joey’s the man in the three-piece suit greeting the mourners as they shuffle in, consoling widows and shaking hands like he’s old buddies with everyone there. Like he knew the corpse himself. Joey’s got that kind of way about him. Joey the Gladhander.
We got an arrangement, me and Joey.
On my end, I supply the grieving widows and heartbroken daughters. The Cloud Nine Funeral Home & Cemetery hasn’t been so packed with bodies since Joey took over, and most of his new business is on account of me. We both know it- before we met he hadn’t even cracked the Mexican market.
These bodies I ship him, they pay off by the grand. It’s really the best time to cash in- when the survivors realize that money can’t prevent the worst, that haggling over prices doesn’t matter much in the end. That’s when they’re most willing to give it up, when they’re all too choked up about their dead grandmother or whatever to negotiate anything. Joey knows that. It’s a good thing he’s got goin’, good for both of us.
There are nine or ten funeral homes in town that I know about, and maybe a dozen cemeteries. But I only send my flock to one- Cloud Nine.
In return for the bodies, Joey wipes some of my worse bets off his books, which keeps me off the rotisserie stick. It’s the fucking Brewers- the reason I’m always in the red with him. Say they go up against the Cardinals; I know too much about baseball to believe they got more than a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Even if I didn’t know a damn thing about baseball, the odds-makers in Vegas do. Shit, all a guy’s gotta do is look at the spread.
But my Dad, though, he never bet against the Brewers a day in his life. I can’t either, so until they sign some talent I gotta spend considerable time digging out holes I dug for myself.
It’d be easier to gamble smarter for sure, but my Dad never bet against the Brewers. I ain’t gonna do it either.
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Melinda’s dead, and I’m sure that’s sad to someone. It’ll get my books clean with Joey though, so it’s not all bad.
Bottom 8th. The Giants are over us, 5-4. We got one out and a runner on second off a stolen base. Scooter Gennet’s up in the count 3-1. This is for sure a fastball coming, right over the plate. I might be listening on the radio, but I swear to God I can see the pitch. I’ve seen it a thousand times.
I can hear the crack through the radio. I know that sound- when you’ve heard it enough you know what it means. Not the sharp crackle of a foul; it’s that hollowed-out pure crack from the sweet spot on the bat. It’s that thundering pop of a ball that’s headed clean over the fence, the kind of rip that the pitcher doesn’t even need to turn around to watch leave the park. The kind of hit no one can argue with. Because it’s honest.
6-5, Brewers. Shit, after tonight I might be in the black with the guy for the first time in a while.
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I’m headed over to Joey’s to square things up, make sure the body’s patched up enough for Joey’s taste. I just gotta make one more call.
Nancy gave me the number. It’s Macarena’s daughter, probably the only one who speaks English.
“Señorita, I’m deeply, deeply sorry for your loss. Your mother was a testament to your family’s virtue. She’s with Christ now. I just need you to stay strong for your family, to trust in Christ. Can you do that for me?”
It’s all routine- the sobbing, the crying, the she was such a good woman, why would God take her from us. All the usual shit. We’re headed into crunch time, the top of the 9th, so I’m trying to speed this whole thing up.
“Señorita, I know a man. A Catholic man, a man of God. His name is Joey Balzac and he’s the owner of Cloud Nine Funeral Home & Cemetery. If you would allow me to put you and your family in his care, I promise you he will honor the memory of your mother. You’ll make it through, you just have to trust me. You know your mother deserves the best, don’t you?”
“I kno-o-o-w, Father. I know she does. Th-th-thank you so mu-u-ch.”
“My child, please don’t thank me. What I do is His will and for His glory alone.”
Bishop Randy gave me that line to drop on ‘em. It works real well, when they speak English. I don’t know how to say it in Mexican.
Hunter Pence hits a grounder to shortstop, right into a double-play. Inning over, game over. Brewers win against a huge spread.
Maybe shit ain’t so bad for us this year after all.
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The turnstile comes up to my head. There’s a lady red all over, red freckles and red hair and too much red lipstick. Her lipstick smacks open and she smiles at me, then hands me the stub in my left hand.
Dad’s got my right, pulling me. Back then, I’d go anywhere he took me. I’ll never forget the smells from my first Big League game- the piss-soaked bathrooms we pass, the greasy fleshy hotdogs twirling around the rack, the musky smell of fresh-cut grass that hits me when we pass through the tunnel and Dad pulls me to our row.
I knew it then, somehow. It wouldn’t ever get sweeter than this. It’s perfect. The sinking sun barely clears the upper-deck, and the whole stadium is lit burnt-orange.
My Dad never bet against the Brewers a day in his life.
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Where does a priest go to confess his sins?
I’ll skip the confession. I don’t reckon God or anyone else wants to hear from me about what I’ve done or haven’t done, or who I slighted or took advantage of. It’s a long list, anyway.
I’d talk to my Dad, about nothing or everything or anything, but he’s gone and I can’t make myself believe there’s anything left of him to talk to. I know that ain’t what they teach at seminary, but didn’t one of 'em know my Dad. He wouldn’t have stayed around for too long after his time was up. The old nuns down at the seminary would probably say otherwise and quote some verse from their little black books, but they don’t know shit.
They didn’t see the .44 magnum blast that sprayed the nursing home windows crimson. He didn’t belong there. It was time for him to get movin’ on, and he knew it. That just the kind of guy he was.
Back then, when I couldn’t see over the turnstile, I’d have gone anywhere he took me. Shit, I still would.
