Walter Mosley - Parishioner

“I think Auntie would have wanted me to have that money and stuff,” the girl said to Xavier.

“I thought you said she wanted to kill you?”

“But that was only because I might get her in trouble,” Doris said simply. “It doesn’t mean she didn’t love me.”

“Maybe she would have wanted you to have the money,” Xavier agreed. “But I think we’ll hold on to it for a while until we work out all the details of the murders and kidnappings. Maybe later on somebody can use it to help the people she harmed.”

Doris didn’t respond to his statements and accusations. She just looked at him brimming with California innocence.

Leaving the wrecked bureau behind, Xavier and Doris drove up the dark coast in silence.

After talking to Doris for more than an hour, Frank decided to ensconce her in the small room on the north side of the church encampment. Sister Hope, Frank’s stalwart number two at the church, took the girl off for food, a bath, and a night’s sleep.

“You were right to bring her here, Brother Ecks,” Frank said.

“She might have been there when Benol and her partner brought the three boys in. She’s the right age. I didn’t have the heart to interrogate her that far yet.”

“Do you want Sister Hope to ask?”

“No. No, I’ll do it tomorrow. But could you get Clyde to decode the contents of this journal using this.” He handed the red book and parchment page to the minister.

“Will you be going home?”

“I was hoping you’d let me sleep on one of the pews tonight.”

“That’s a hard bed.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that, Frank. Sleep in the room with no one else around.”

Frank smiled and then nodded.

Xavier slept on the front pew to the right of the Speakers’ Spot. He lay on his back, hands crossed over his chest like an undertaker’s approximation of eternal sleep. There was a half-moon peering in from the westernmost southern window. The lunar glow was peaceful, but it was the silence that made Ecks smile in his sleep: a hush so complete that it felt imposed by some greater being, some outer force too large to enter the church in its entirety. There was no electric hum or water flowing through wall-bound pipes, no cars from the road or distant music.

Even asleep Xavier reveled in the quiet. In that room slumber was a blessing, silence a sanctity, and breath the consecration and proof of the sermons Father Frank espoused.

“Brother Ecks.”

Xavier was aware in a separate, unconscious place in his mind that he had a role in life. His heart and mind, muscle, and even his rage were indentured to a fate beyond his control. He had not killed the white man with the crowbar in his chest. He allowed Winter Johnson to decide his own fate. Almost every step he had ever taken was the wrong step, and still he was there on this bench-a pawn of something possibly divine and definitely unknowable.

“Brother Ecks.” He felt a hand on his shoulder.

Xavier Rule had been born, he thought, with the potential for purpose. He could have turned away. He could have strangled Pinky in her sleep and never met Frank. He had lost hope, but hope had not forgotten him.

He opened his eyes to see Sister Hope leaning over him on the pew. She wasn’t smiling, but she never smiled. Her face was twice the size you’d expect. It dwarfed her head, which, in turn, seemed too large for her slender form. Her skin was the color of bright amber, and she had met menopause and conquered its storm like the conquistadors on ships bound for a new world.

“Hope,” he said.

“People may start coming in soon for morning meditations,” she said. “They don’t always come, but we would like to keep the room hospitable for them if they do arrive.”

“I’ve never seen you at Expressions,” Ecks said.

Her eyes were darker amber. She grimaced sadly.

“No,” she said. “I am the matron of the plant. I keep it running. That’s my job, my only penance.”

“And what is your sin?” Xavier asked the question almost innocently, without force or even the expectation of being answered.

The large face turned down and somehow in on itself. The dark beads of her eyes went cold.

“In the old country my father was a drunkard and my mother had too many children. She died and during a famine when I was not yet a woman it was up to me to make sure that my younger brothers and sisters survived.…”

In a rush of intuition Xavier understood that part of Hope’s self-imposed punishment was to confess her sin whenever asked. It was why she never left the church. It was her iron maiden to bear..

“… I lured a boy into a trap I’d made. I killed him and skinned his body. I cut him into pieces and brought him home to feed my starving family. I did that fourteen times.”

Xavier sighed and then stood. He wanted to apologize to the woman, but even that, he realized, would be another burden.

She squared her shoulders and adjusted the loose, full-length black uniform that she always wore. They peered into each other’s eyes and accepted the pain they both felt.

“Ecks!” a man’s voice commanded.

The shout seemed to fit the situation. There would be no easy egress from the cannibal child-memory.

Captain Guillermo Soto was striding down between the pews on a collision course with the Harlem hard man.

“Guilly. How’d you know I was here?”

“I called Clyde.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I’m placing you under arrest,” the LA cop exclaimed. He reached out to clamp his big hand on Xavier’s steel-banded left forearm.

This was a mistake.

Pivoting from his hip, Xavier pulled the larger man off balance. At the same time Ecks sent out a straight right fist that knocked the big cop flat on his back on the flagstone floor.

But Guillermo Soto was not a soft man. He bounced from the floor with a.357 Magnum in his left hand.

In his mind Xavier had already kicked the right-hand bench at Soto, was already crouching to his left and pulling the throwing knife he kept in a sheath on his right shin. In Xavier’s mind Soto was almost already dead.…

“Stop!” Father Frank called from the doorway behind the Speaker’s Spot.

Sister Hope stood there passively, understanding that she, at that moment, could not stay the foolish men.

“I can’t stop, Frank!” Soto shouted. “This is my prisoner.”

“This is sanctuary,” Frank replied.

Xavier stood up straight.

Soto lowered his high-powered pistol.

“There’s a woman dead, Frank,” the LA cop said. “A man too, and one critically wounded. There’s a girl missing and a basement filled with the skeletons of children.”

“There was a truck left out in the Arizona sun with sixteen dead workers in it,” Frank said. “There was a shoot-out in Chihuahua where women and children were caught in the cross fire.”

A shudder ran through Soto.

Xavier squelched the desire to kill the man.

“It’s my job,” Captain Soto said.

“I’m speaking to your faith.”

“Did you kill them, Ecks?” Soto asked.

“I shot the one guy and threw the crowbar into the other one’s chest. But they were getting ready to kill me and burn down the house. I think they wanted to remove Sedra’s body, maybe the skeletons too.”

“What about the girl?”

“She was gone when I got there.”

“Where is she now?”

“You have all the answers you need, Brother Soto,” Frank said. “Brother Ecks is blameless.”

“You aren’t the law, Frank.”

“I am within these walls.”

“I have a life, man,” Guillermo said, “and a duty.”

“A life maintained by Hope and Ecks and the rest of us.”

Guillermo Soto tucked his gun into a holster on his hip while staring at Xavier.