Gangsters Last Supper
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“I don’t know,” said the priest. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The old man smiled and nodded to me before turning back toward the kitchen door, which now opened onto a long corridor with many doors along its length. The smell of cooking food reached us as I followed him.
The priest walked quickly and I hurried to keep up. He seemed eager for some reason to leave his church behind—and it must have been an interesting sight for him too because he looked both ways along the narrow passage before opening a door at the far end of the hall and stepping through it into another room that was even smaller than the one we’d just come out of.
It had a window on our left side, but only a little square of glass in the wall itself. A fire burned in the grate, and two men were sitting by it drinking coffee from tall mugs. Both of them turned to look at us when we entered.
One of the men stood and stretched while looking curiously at Father O’Grady; the other got out of his chair and crossed to where we stood by the doorway. The newcomer wore a dark blue suit and was balding, with thinning white hair, like someone who’s lost a lot of heat over time.
His face had fine lines around his mouth and eyes that showed him to be either quite young or a very old man. But his eyes were piercingly bright in his lean angular features. When he spoke he had a slight accent that made him sound like an educated gentleman.
Father O’Grady stopped speaking and bowed slightly to each of the two newcomers in turn before facing them again. “My name is Father O’Grady,” he told them. “And this is Father Brennan from Dublin.”
The stranger shook my hand. “I’m Martin Jaffre,” he said quietly, then turned to the older priest. “Father O’Grady, I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“Good day to you, Mr. Jaffre,” Father O’Grady replied. “Please call me Father Michael. And how do you do today, Father Brennan?”
I knew the answer to that one already. Father Brennan was known as Father Benny—a nickname so well earned that it would have been more appropriate if he’d worn a sign saying: Here comes Father Benny!
But he seemed to take the nickname without offense because his smile widened at the greeting from our host. We all took seats across the table from him. I noticed something odd about the room, although I didn’t understand what it meant until much later; after I’d learned how things worked in America and came home and found myself living on the outskirts of Dublin, with no money and nowhere to go, except to walk into my local pub and ask for work.
That first night back at home, in a bar where most of the clientele were Irishmen, and none of them recognized me… I could still see myself standing there with my coat open, holding my empty hands before me as though I expected to find money inside them.
Then a voice called out, and it was the same voice, from the same corner, as Father Benny, as though a different person was talking to me from the other side of the room.
“Hey there, Father Benny!”
He looked up to see my mother waving at him. “Benny, I haven’t seen you since last Christmas.” She gave a friendly nod to me, and then sat down with her own drink, taking out her cigarettes and lighting them right away. Her eyes moved between the two men in the corner as she spoke to her old friend.
“How are you doing, darling?”
“Fine,” said Father Benny. “But they’re making me move to the suburbs.”
Mom chuckled, then glanced at me as she said, “You need a job? You can stay at our house till you get settled.”
Father Benny smiled sadly, and said, “I’ll have to try, but I think not.” He took a sip of his drink.
She waved off his response. “It’s nothing important.”
Father Benny nodded. “Of course,” he said softly. “That’s why I came here, to talk to you about the future of this parish. They tell me St. Patrick’s needs a new priest.”
“Oh, dear God,” my mother sighed. “What else is happening?”
“Nothing you couldn’t handle,” Father Benny promised her. He turned his attention to me then and said, “And how are you enjoying your trip so far, son?”
There was silence as I tried to decide whether to lie to him—because lying is easy for me when it comes to religion. Then he asked, “Did you bring your family with you?”
I hesitated for another moment, then shrugged and said, “No. They stayed behind.” My father died a year ago of cancer. My brother was killed when we were kids—hit by a car as he ran across the street to greet someone walking home from the pub.
It had been raining hard and I don’t know how fast the car had gone when it hit him. I hadn’t spoken much about that part of my life. Not even with my therapist—until lately. Now I was telling Father Benny everything because my mother seemed to trust him.
“You know, I used to be very afraid of driving at night,” I admitted to him. “Driving anywhere. But once I began to drive at night, all I felt was the wind in my face. The rain on my arms. When it was over, I knew it was time to quit.
I got out of cars when I was young, too. Always thought it would never hurt to jump out before the light went green or the traffic moved ahead, but I always regretted it later. I should have stayed in the car and trusted it would stop. That’s how I feel sometimes now. Like I shouldn’t trust God.”
His hand fell back to the tabletop as his eyes stared past mine, lost in memory. “Yes, well, we all have our fears,” he murmured. He turned back to me. “But God doesn’t expect us to believe in Him without doubt, does He?”
I smiled at the idea of being a priest. “No, but maybe God wants us to remember how we doubted. Because faith isn’t about feeling certain. It’s about knowing that whatever happens, God will be there.”
The words sounded familiar to me like I’d heard them somewhere before—as though they were part of a song. I looked around the room to make sure nobody else might have overheard my thoughts; then I whispered to Father Benny, “Are you a believer?”
“Not exactly,” he replied. “I’ve been studying Christianity again these days.”
“Studying?” I repeated, puzzled by the word choice. “Like in school?”
My mother snorted as if to say what a thing to ask, and I saw Father Benny smile at her as he continued, “I mean, do you study things every day? Or just once in a while?”
I nodded slowly, thinking about how strange it seemed to hear someone describe their religion that way. “I guess,” I said. “Because it depends on where I am and what I’m supposed to be doing.”
He grinned, then glanced at me and said, “If that’s the case, my boy, you’re a natural-born Catholic.”
We both laughed as my mom glared at him, saying, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that God created everyone differently,” said Father Benny, as he finished his drink. Then he stood and offered his hand. “Well, it looks as though you two have an hour or two more together.”
“Aye, we do,” I agreed.
When we parted, he leaned toward me and said in a soft whisper, “Do you pray?”
I shook my head. “Sometimes, but not enough.”
“Prayer is a lot easier than trusting God, believe me,” he promised. “Now, come along with me.”
***
After breakfast, Mom and Dad headed into town and left me alone with my thoughts for a couple of hours. As they drove away, I pulled the book from the bag and opened it to the first page, hoping to catch up on some sleep.
Instead, I found myself flipping through it again and again—reading sentences aloud to see if something might make sense to me, or maybe give me some idea of what this whole thing was really about. It didn’t.
Then I closed the book and put it down, wondering what the hell I was going to do with my time. I could read more, but that would get boring after a bit, so I decided to wander around the grounds outside the church.
There’s nothing better for me than wandering in a cemetery when no one else is around. I know most people consider those places haunted. I can only say they’re full of stories waiting to happen because they always seem to inspire me. The only problem is, I don’t have any ghost stories yet, not like the ones that live inside books.
So instead of walking among the old graves in search of inspiration, I walked out the front door of the church and headed to the woods behind it. In those days, the trees hadn’t grown up to block anyone’s view, which meant I could climb right up on top of the hillside and look out over the countryside.
From the edge of the woods, I watched the road, looking for signs of the van that should have driven away from the house earlier, but none came.
As I climbed to the crest and took a seat on a rock overlooking a field of grass-covered boulders, I thought about the fact that I’d seen my brother yesterday, in what I knew must have been another life. And I wondered if he’d ever told me about his time here in New York during World War II.
What had he done there? If he’d fought in Europe, I imagined he’d spent some of his free time writing letters home. Maybe he’d even written some of the same kinds of songs I liked. I hoped he had.
But if he had written them, why hadn’t he sent them to me? Did he think they were embarrassing? Or did he not want me to find out he’d gone overseas in order to save the world? Either way, I felt cheated of my birthright.
Why shouldn’t I know about the man I share my DNA with?
And now I wasn’t allowed to ask him anything—because we weren’t connected anymore. We had lost our father and grandfather in the war, and we were all still learning to accept it. But now that he was dead, I realized we would never talk again. Not really.
The wind picked up and blew my hair across my face. A crow sailed past overhead. The air grew colder. Clouds scudded across the sky. Soon it would rain.
My eyes burned with tears as I thought about how much I wished I could tell him all about my life and my dreams and what I intended to do with them, even if it meant telling him stuff I wanted no one else to know. Like what happened last night when I saw those two women in white robes. I’d already told him I dreamed of angels. Now I was certain of it.
There must be a reason for everything, I decided. My grandpa, who was the oldest of the three of us, died in the war too. He was a soldier and a fighter, and he loved to fight. When he came home from that terrible place, he tried hard to teach me things, but it was too late for me by then. All of it had happened long ago, and Grandpa was dead.
If I’m going to make something of myself, I will need the strength and wisdom of both my grandfathers. They’ve passed on their gifts to me, and that means they’ve passed on part of themselves too. I don’t know how it happens, or why God allows it to happen, but we’re connected in a way that goes beyond bloodlines. And while that doesn’t mean I’ll become a warrior just like they were, at least I’ll try.
I looked toward the horizon, where a few wisps of gray cloud moved steadily eastward. Rain fell harder. I turned my head and glanced back up the hill toward the church. I’d forgotten my guitar in there.
“Oh, crap.”
It was gone.
The End