Ash Wednesday (32 page)

“It’s the ladies that’ll miss him.”

“Ha.”

Father Dowling thought of the lonely figure he had seen sitting in a back pew, apparently praying. If so, it would have been for his wife, Florence. Where was he having his Easter dinner?

“I should have invited Nathaniel to join us,” he said.

“He and his niece are going to eat together in Schaumburg,” Herman said.

“Carmela?” Marie asked.

“Is that her name?”

Marie harumphed and began clearing the table. Herman took his leave, and Phil and Father Dowling repaired to the study.

“Bring your wine, Phil.”

“I’d rather have a beer.”

A beer was brought to him by Marie. “After I do the dishes, I’m going upstairs for my nap.”

“Sleep tight,” Phil said.

“I only had two and a half glasses.” Off she went.

“Tetzel is spreading the rumor that the absent owner of the
Tribune
will allow the paper to mount a crusade against the Pianones.” Phil spoke in a monotone.

“Surely the Pianones won’t protect Augie Liberati then.”

“We’ll see,” Phil said. “What time does the game come on?”

During the coming week, no crusade began in the
Tribune
. Tetzel had gone AWOL, doubtless drinking away his disappointment.
Tuttle, by contrast, was jubilant. This proved premature. There was no sign of any intervention by the Pianones as the indicted Augie Liberati faced a jury of his peers and a bright young judge who was substituting for one of those in the Pianone pocket. She was scarcely thirty, wore her hair in a crew cut, and ran the trial as if she were in moot court in law school. Despite Tuttle’s efforts, his client was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months in Joliet.

“It wasn’t a murder trial, Marie,” Father Dowling said when the housekeeper grumbled at this light sentence.

“And Eugene Schmidt is still running around free.”

“Breaking hearts is not a crime, Marie.”

There was no pursuit of Eugene Schmidt; no charges had been brought against him.

“Breaking hearts? Do you really think it was an accident when he forced Helen Burke’s car into that bridge abutment?”

“You don’t?”

“Think of it, Father. Get rid of Helen, Natalie becomes rich, Schmidt leads her down the aisle.”

Father Dowling did not comment on the logical leaps in this theory. Nor did he mention the long thoughts he himself had been having about the accident. He called Earl Hospers one weekday and asked him for a favor. The results took some days to verify, but they were what Father Dowling had feared.

That afternoon, he strolled down the walk toward the school. Nathaniel was sitting on a bench, in the sun, reading. Father Dowling sat beside him.

“What are you reading, Nathaniel?”

“Crime and Punishment.”

“There is also sin and forgiveness.” Father Dowling remembered hearing Nathaniel’s confession weeks ago, a confession that
had ended with the surprising remark that it was Florence who had disengaged herself from the life support system. Since then, Nathaniel had learned that, even if she had, it would have been no more lethal than if Nathaniel had removed that oxygen mask from her face. And Jason had told his uncle who had turned off the oxygen tap.

Nathaniel seemed to be waiting for the priest to say more.

“Paint from your car matches some found on our shuttle bus.”

Nathaniel looked at him. “I thought of having my car repainted.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I left it in the hands of God.” He might have been remembering words from the wedding ceremony.
The rest is in the hands of God
. “What are you going to do?”

“Hear your confession, I hope.”

“And then?”

“Give you absolution.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s everything, Nathaniel.”

What Nathaniel had done would be trivialized in any court of law, the evidence tenuous, susceptible of any number of imaginative explanations by a shrewd attorney. If any charge were brought against Nathaniel, and that was not likely, the deed would be reduced to the dialectics of a trial. Nathaniel would be cleared of the charge.

Nathaniel closed his book and set it aside. “Sin and forgiveness,” he murmured.

“Here or in the rectory?”

Nathaniel stood. “How about in church.”

So it was in the church, in a confessional, that Nathaniel whispered through the grille that he had brought about the death of his nemesis.

“I hated that woman, Father. She killed Florence.”

“Let’s concentrate on your sins.”

A sigh on the other side of the grille. “That made everything seem ridiculous.”

His insistence that he had killed his wife, the long years in Joliet, the shunning when he had come to the senior center.

“Say an act of contrition, and I will give you absolution.”

Blessing the penitent, saying the words of absolution, Father Dowling, acting for their common Lord, absolved the sins of Nathaniel Green.

The following week Father Dowling drove north to talk once more with Willy Nilly. It was a gorgeous late spring day, and through the leafy trees he caught glimpses of the Fox River moving with the incessant movement of every river. The Fox River valley did not seem a good metaphor of the Vale of Tears, but of course it was. The evil we do often has a lovely setting.

Father Nolan sat on his patio, glasses on the end of his nose, reading a manuscript.

“My memoirs,” he explained. “Are you finished?”

“Am I finished or are my memoirs finished?”

“May that day be far distant.”

“I do have several more chapters to write.”

Father Dowling lit his pipe and then brought his lighter to the
tip of Willy Nilly’s cigarette. He told the old priest of the exemption from the no-smoking ban in the courthouse that had recently been lifted, thanks to an exposé by Rebecca Farmer.

“We can’t have people enjoying themselves, can we?”

“Do you remember the case I brought to you a month or so ago?”

“Remind me.”

Father Dowling brought his old professor up to date on the death of Florence Green and its sequel. He was breaking no confidence in telling Willy Nilly that Nathaniel Green’s car had been involved in the accident that killed Helen Burke. That he had learned from Earl Hospers.

“Will charges be brought against him?”

“The tests were not made by the police.”

Willy Nilly frowned at Father Dowling. “And you are wondering if you have an obligation to bring those perhaps inconclusive results to the attention of the police?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“The husband confessed to the crime because he thought his wife had ended her own life.”

“Did he think that would have prevented it from being suicide?”

“He thought it would prevent people knowing it was suicide.”

“And it wasn’t.”

“She would have been no more guilty than he if she had done it.”

“Surely you don’t mean that.”

“The oxygen tap had been turned off.”

“But neither of them would have known that. The question would be what either intended to do.”

They sat on for an hour on the sunny patio, letting what they both had said drift away. Father Nolan spoke of his memoirs.

“What will you call them?”

“Willy Nilly.”

A squinting look at his old student.

“I like it,” Father Dowling said.

On the drive home, Father Dowling thought of the mystery of human action. We can intend to do what in fact we do not do, and do what we do not intend. It reminded him of the death several years ago of Sylvia Lowry. Earl Hospers had spent years in prison for something he had in some sense done although not intending to do it. Odd that it had been Earl who had compared the paint of Nathaniel’s car with that found on the fender of the senior center shuttle bus. But life is often odd.

Meanwhile, he shook his mind free of thought and enjoyed the pleasant drive back to his rectory at St. Hilary’s.