Paul Cleave - Cemetery Lake

“Helping you out, Theo, has led to a very long day.”

I nod. Yes it has. “You’d rather have left things as they were?”

“Well, no, of course not. But I think I need more notice before I help you out so I can plan some holiday time.”

We sit facing each other, mimicking each other’s position with our elbows resting on the top of the pew. The pews are solid wood, worn a little around the edges, but they’ve held up over the years in the way that only expertly crafted furniture from sixty or seventy years ago can. Wooden Jesus is looking down at us, wooden nails in his wooden hands. He’s holding up well too.

“It’s been one heck of a day for me,” he says. “For all of us. Sometimes I wonder. .” He doesn’t finish his sentence, just lets it trail off, making me think he’s wondering lots of things, and I don’t blame him. We’re all wondering lots of things. Foremost he is probably wondering where God fits into all of this.

“You’re starting to think retirement might be in the cards?”

His smile comes back for a few seconds-there are a few creases around the edges of his eyes-but then he sighs. “No, no, not yet. If I’m looking older than normal, it’s the day. It’s been a long one.”

“For all of us, Father. What can you tell me about the caretaker who helped me this afternoon?”

He cocks his head a little and pushes his shoulders back for a few seconds as if ironing out a crick in his back. “Bruce? Bruce Alderman? Why are you asking?”

“I want to talk to him.”

“Ah,” he says, and slowly shakes his head. Suddenly he doesn’t look as tired as he does sad. “You think he’s responsible. Well, I can’t tell you anything more than I’ve already told the police.”

“And what did you tell them?” I ask.

“That Bruce is a good man,” he says, “and this sort of depravity, well. . it’s simply beyond him.”

It’s been my experience that depravity isn’t beyond as many people as we’d like to think, and I’m pretty sure Father Julian doesn’t need me to point that out to him.

I adjust my position on the pew. Well made doesn’t mean comfortable. “Did you tell them where they could find Bruce?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know.”

“Guilt makes men run, Father.”

His head goes from shaking to nodding. “So does fear, Theo. Nobody would like to see what he saw.”

“But fear doesn’t make them steal a truck and go into hiding.”

He stops nodding. Now he just keeps his head perfectly still. “I wish I could simply ask for your trust in this, Theo. I can guarantee you, Bruce isn’t a bad kid. And he couldn’t have known those poor people were going to rise up from the lake.”

“He knew what we were digging up.”

“Of course he did. You had an exhumation order.”

“No, it was more than that. He knew we were digging up something more.”

“Something more?”

“The body we dug up wasn’t Henry Martins’s,” I tell him.

“I saw the exhumation order, Theo. I’m sure that’s who-”

“It wasn’t Martins in the coffin,” I tell him.

“But. .” he says, and doesn’t know how to continue. Not for about five seconds, and then he says, “So where is Henry Martins? Was. . oh, oh no, he was one of the bodies in the water, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know that,” I tell him, “but it’s likely.”

“Then the coffin was empty?” he asks, in a tone of voice that suggests he’s hoping his question comes with a yes attached to the end.

“No. It wasn’t empty. It contained the body of a young woman by the name of Rachel Tyler.”

The look of horror on his face settles in his features so heavily I’m worried they might set there. He doesn’t look comfortable with it. In fact he looks downright sick. He reaches out and grabs the back of the pew, as if to stop himself from tipping off and falling into an abyss that is opening beneath him.

“She was murdered,” I add. “And whether your caretaker did it or not, he certainly knows something. Please, Father, you have to help me.”

He lets go of the pew, rubs his palm across the side of his face, then lifts both hands into the air as if the gesture can ward me off. “I. . I wish I could help, but there’s nothing I can say.”

“Would you like me to bring you a photograph of Rachel? Show you what was done to her?”

The church seems to get colder as his horror turns to disgust, almost anger, and my stomach starts to knot. I wish I hadn’t said that to him. He’s too good a man to say shitty things to. This is the guy who got me through the hardest time of my life. This is the guy who would ring me every day after my daughter died and, when he couldn’t get hold of me, he’d come around to my house to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Sometimes he’d bring me cooked meals. Sometimes he’d sit and have a beer with me. Ninety-five percent of those times we wouldn’t talk about God or religion or the Big Plan. We’d just talk about life. We’d talk about my wife and my daughter.

Before I can apologize, he stands up and looks down at me, and he doesn’t look angry, he looks disappointed, and that’s far, far worse. “That sort of parlor trick is beneath you, Theo. If I could help you, I would, just as I helped you two years ago when you were lost.”

“Please, sit back down,” I tell him.

“You can’t-”

“Rachel has nobody to speak for her. I need to do what I can,” I tell him.

“She has God.”

“God let her down.”

He sits back down. He breathes out heavily. “You must have faith, Theo.”

“Faith lets everybody down.”

“People let themselves down.”

I want to argue, but there is no argument a priest hasn’t heard and isn’t ready for. Their answers may not make sense, but they are a doctrine, there to be repeated over and over, as if the very repetition makes their case. I could take a photograph out of my wallet and show him my wife and my daughter, but of course Father Julian remembers them. He knew them before they were killed and after. I could ask him where God was during their accident, but Father Julian would have some dogmatic answer that God-loving and God-fearing people love to use-most likely the generic God works in mysterious ways , which I want to scream at every time I hear it.

“You’re right,” I concede, “and I shouldn’t have said that about showing you a picture of Rachel. But you need to help me find your caretaker. He saw us digging up something that made him run.”

“I still find that hard to believe,” Father Julian says, but I’m starting to convince myself that the look on his face suggests it isn’t that hard for him at all. “Unfortunately, Theo, as I keep saying, I don’t know where he is.”

“Start by telling me where he lives.”

“The police have already been there and, to be honest, I’m not comfortable giving you information. You’re not a cop anymore. This isn’t your investigation.”

“No, this has become my investigation. Two years ago I had an excuse to raise Henry Martins’s coffin and I never did. That means. .”

“I know what that means. You think that if there are other people out there in coffins they shouldn’t be in, then you could have prevented it. Maybe this is true.”

“It is true,” I say, a little shocked at how quickly he has come to this conclusion.

“Two years ago,” he repeats. “Exactly two years ago?”

“Pretty much,” I tell him, knowing where he’s about to go.

“Then you know you can’t blame yourself,” he says, but his eyes seem to betray his real feelings. “The accident-that was two years ago, correct? Was it the same time?”