In God's House (6 page)

Cheney Falgout spent the afternoon of his tenth birthday on his father’s shrimp boat in Cypress Bay. His dad was in the engine well. Cheney was handing him tools. But he was thinking about something he’d read in a storybook at school that week. The story was titled “No Secrets”. The hero of the story was a young boy who learned that secrets were like poison and truth was like medicine; secrets could make you sick and truth could make you well. Cheney had felt sick for three years. He wanted to be well again.

Cheney thought about his seventh birthday often. He remembered everything that had happened on the altar that September Monday three years ago, and what had happened after he left the little church with Father Nicky.

Father Francis Dominick Dubois was the only person with keys to the church in Amalie on the shore of Cypress Bay. As he locked the door behind them that day, he had made sure Cheney understood that. The priest had led the way as the two of them climbed the rickety stairs to the belfry. Leaks in the roof had rotted some of the wooden steps and parts of the railing. A long snakeskin lay across the top step. Father Nicky smiled and said, “I think that snake’s still in here.”

Cheney Falgout was terrified. He had heard ghost stories about the church. The first story was about a man who had hung himself
from the rope that rang the church bell and how the bell only rang once as the dead man slammed into the wood siding. The second story was about the bell also. One afternoon it rang so many times that everyone in Amalie and Cypress Bay came running. Just as the crowd gathered outside the church, an old priest appeared on the belfry walk and did a swan dive, his black cassock spreading like the wings of a monstrous vulture. These stories were on Cheney’s mind as he stepped over the snakeskin.

When he and Father Dubois emerged onto the walkway around the top of the steeple, the child instinctively breathed deeply, inhaling the salty air, smelling the bay. He looked for the dock on the canal where his father moored his shrimp boat, a big, long hauler. Cheney breathed deep, over and over.

When they were back downstairs in the church, the priest showed Cheney the baptismal fount where he had been christened. Father Nicky allowed him to sit in the clergyman’s center cubicle of the old oak-and-pecan-wood confessional. He then guided Cheney round the communion railing to the altar.

As Cheney stood by the altar, his heart raced to be standing so close to God. Father Dubois reached down and lifted the little boy to a sitting position on the altar. He placed the chalice between the boy’s legs, and let him touch its gold surface and the jewels set on the side of the cup. Then the priest set the chalice on the floor.

With a hand on the boy’s chest, the priest gently pushed him onto his back. Cheney stared at a large crucifix mounted on the wall behind him. Light flooded in through a red, green and blue leaded glass panel on the rear wall high above the sanctuary. From where he lay, the crucifix and everything else looked upside down.

“Now Father must do something very important,” the priest said. “It’s a physical inspection kind of like at a doctor’s office but a little different. You are going to be an altar boy before Christmas. You will be on this altar at Midnight Mass. Everyone will look at you as a holy boy. Father is going to make you a holy boy. What we are doing right now is a secret, a secret that only priests and special boys know. There are lots of secrets you will know that you
can never tell anyone, not even your momma and daddy. This will make you feel really good. And after this, Cheney, you will be Father’s boy.”

Father Dubois unzipped the boy’s jeans and removed them. As he was pulling the child’s Winnie the Pooh jockey shorts off, the priest unfastened his own pants and let them fall to the floor, pushing his boxer shorts to his knees. The boy shivered and then he felt Father’s mouth pushing down between his bare legs.

Cheney had no idea what was going on. He felt cold on the marble altar, scared in his head and icky down there. He had no idea what was happening. He could feel the priest’s left hand stroking his face, sometimes running through his hair. He felt the priest’s right arm kind of banging against his left leg.

The priest made a noise Cheney had never heard any person make. Then Father Nicky took his mouth away, pulled up his pants and fastened his belt. He helped Cheney dress and lifted him to the floor.

The boy hung his head. He felt like he was going to be sick.

Afterwards, Father Nicky had taken him to Thiberville, forty miles away, where they visited a mall and Cheney got more birthday gifts than he could have dreamed of: a pellet gun and ammo, a tackle box and fishing gear, camouflage clothing, a pirate puppet, and a jam box and a stack of music cassettes.

Over the next three years, everything had escalated in Cheney’s relationship with Father Nicky. The gifts got greater and the degradation deepened. Cheney became one of Father Nicky’s special boys, a favorite. Once Cheney suffered rectal bleeding and was admitted to the local hospital. The physician diagnosed the cause as a hard stool. Father Nicky visited him every day and brought gifts, once whispering, “Even a doctor cannot know our secrets.”

The night before his tenth birthday, Cheney had collected every gift the priest had ever given him and dumped them in the canal where the shrimp boats and tugs were moored.

Now, as Randy Falgout climbed out of the engine well, Cheney grabbed his papa and started crying. The fisherman sat on the deck and pulled his child into his lap. Cheney clung to him, sobbing, “I’m scared, Papa.” When he had told enough of his secrets for his papa to have a clear picture, his father wiped the tears and sweat from the child’s face.

“Papa, I’m tired. Everything hurts inside.”

Randy Falgout picked Cheney up, cradled him like an infant and carried him down a short stairwell to the crew quarters. He put the child in a bottom bunk. Kneeling next to him, he held Cheney’s hand until he was in a deep sleep. After watching him sleep for a while, he climbed back to the deck and paced, circling the engine parts that were spread across the planking.

He could hardly think; his emotions overpowered his mind.
How could anyone do this to a child?
His gut burned like fire. He could almost see himself killing the priest. His chest tightened and he began to sweat.

Staring at the sun setting over the gulf, kneeling and holding onto the bow rail, Randy remembered. He remembered that his two older sons had been altar boys at Our Lady of the Seas in Amalie under Father Francis Dubois, the man all the children called Father Nicky.

The pastor of Saint Bernadette Church in Bayou Saint John, Monsignor Phillip Jules Gaudet, changed the color of his cassocks twice a year. Each year on the day of the autumn equinox he donned black clothing of the kind worn by other priests in the diocese, and on the vernal equinox he switched to the white attire favored by some Mediterranean clerics.

That morning the monsignor was wearing a straw hat with a wide brim, white cassock, white socks and Mexican-made sandals. He stepped gingerly onto the wet lawn, clipped off an
orange-colored
rose with a long stem, and held it in his gloved hand. Using the clipper, he surgically removed the thorns, then admired the flower and laid it in a basket alongside roses of other hues. Humming the aria “
Nessun dorma
”, Monsignor Phillip Jules Gaudet carefully surveyed the circular bed of roses that dominated the garden between his residence and the Church of Saint Bernadette. Satisfied, he removed his gloves and carried the roses into his home.

Across the street, in the tiny oak-shaded town square, six adults stood in a tight circle around the miniature replica of the cave in Lourdes, France, with its statue of a young girl in brown clothes kneeling before the Virgin Mary.

“We are going in there,” Randy Falgout said, nodding towards the rectory. “We have to. Somebody’s got to get Father Francis outtahere.”

Two of the women were crying. It had been a night without sleep for all of them. After Randy had put Cheney to bed at home, he talked to his two older sons, who broke down and told him about things Father Dubois had done to them. Then Randy called his two sisters about their sons who had served as altar boys in Amalie and they too learned a truth too terrible to believe.

The three couples spent the night on the end of the pier in front of the Falgouts’ bayside home. It had been quiet all night, the only sound being the bay lapping against the pilings and, every so often, the sobbing of the women. None of the six could understand how or why such things had happened in their little village, and happened to their children. No one wanted to believe their little boys had been sodomized by a priest who was popular, a man who always had compliments for women not used to receiving them, one who traded talk with the men about fishing, hunting and farming. They felt they were awake in a nightmare, living a horror their minds and hearts could not deal with. Mostly they shut down talking and cried quietly, waiting for the sun, hoping it would all be gone in the light of day.

None of them knew what to do.

Finally, Randy Falgout took control and called the rectory for the parish of Saint Bernadette, demanding an appointment with Monsignor Gaudet. He assumed the monsignor at the big church in Bayou Saint John, a few miles from Father Dubois’s parish in Amalie, would be Dubois’s boss.

Now, in the town square, they were arguing. Randy’s baby sister and her husband were shaking their heads. The man said, “We can’t talk to nobody about this. I can’t think about it. How can I talk about it?”

“I’ll talk,” Randy said. “I’ll talk.”

The couple kept shaking their heads. His younger sister said, “No, no, I just can’t.”

His other brother-in-law was looking down at his shoes. In a measured tone, he said softly, “Randy, if I see a priest today, I might kill him. My bare hands.”

“I want to kill the bastard myself – beat him to death slow like, but we decided,” Randy said emphatically. “Last night we decided. First thing, we gotta get him outtahere. We can’t get him outtahere by ourselves. That monsignor across the street got to be his supervisor or something. He can get him outtahere.”

Randy’s wife asked, “How many more boys do you think there are, Randy? How many?”

“I dunno. Maybe every altar boy since Father Dubois came here. We can only do what we can do, honey. We gotta get the bastard outtahere now, today.”

The three couples walked up the steps of the rectory. An officious housekeeper opened the front door and led them down a long corridor to an ornate chamber with an old-fashioned stuccoed ceiling and a wall of leaded glass windows. Monsignor Gaudet had his back to them. He was fussing with a spray of roses in a tall crystal vase. He turned around, walked past the couples and handed the vase to the housekeeper. “For the table, Annette.”

Addressing Randy, who stood a few feet in front of the others, Monsignor Gaudet said, “My mother is coming for table.” He pointed to a black-and-white photograph on the wall. It depicted a young Phillip Jules Gaudet dressed in a sweater, slacks and saddle oxford shoes, standing next to an older woman in a long overcoat; they were in the Piazza San Pietro in Rome, in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica. “Mother,” he said. “She will arrive punctually with a friend of hers for noon table. We do not have much time. My secretary said one of you had left messages that you had some urgent business with me. Please sit down.”

As Randy Falgout started to speak, Monsignor Gaudet raised his hand to silence him. He reached for the small bell on his desk and rang for the housekeeper, who appeared immediately. He asked for iced tea, offering nothing to his guests. Then he sat in a throne-like chair behind his desk, and nodded to Randy.

Randy Falgout’s chest tightened as it had on the deck of his shrimp boat the previous afternoon. He wanted to reach across
the large desk and strangle Monsignor Gaudet with his Roman collar, but he knew he had to control himself. He knew he had to do whatever it took to get Dubois out of the area before he or his brother-in-law murdered Father Dubois, the man who had sent Randy’s youngest son to the hospital with a torn rectum. Randy was surprised by his own voice when the first words he spoke came out smoothly while his insides were screaming.

“It was me who left the messages,” he said. “Our children – six little boys –have had all kinds of sexual stuff done to them by Father Dubois in Amalie. We are here to tell you that you best be getting about the business of getting this man out of here now, today, before the sun goes down. I know at least one person who might kill that priest. When word gets out, I think lots of people will want to kill him. He’s a sick no good. A no good son-of-a-bitch.”

Monsignor Gaudet shook his head side to side. “Please, sir, please…”

“This ain’t no time to be worrying about language, Father. We want him out before dark. He even raped our baby. Sent him to the hospital.”

All three mothers began crying.

Monsignor Phillip Jules Gaudet turned red in the face, accepted his tea from the housekeeper, sipped, swallowed. “You don’t understand, sir,” he said. “First, a replacement would have to be found. The chancery in Thiberville takes care of these things. Immediate removal may not be an option.”

“Monsignor, I don’t think you understand the options. Somebody is going to kill that son-of-a-bitch.”

“You should hear what you are saying. And you should know that spreading gossip about a priest is a serious sin against the Church. The most serious sin is a sin against the Church. And this is the worst kind of sin, a mortal sin. We cannot, as Catholics, ever do or say anything that brings scandal to the Church. What you are saying against a priest would indeed bring scandal to the Church. Do you understand me? It is a sin. Nothing is to be said about this outside of this room.”

“Father, I think I remember now. You know this priest good. Father Dubois was right here at this church with you before he came to Amalie. It’s true, isn’t it? You already knew the priest was this way, didn’t you? He lived in this place with you, didn’t he? You knew what he was when you sent him to our church.”

The women dried their eyes with handkerchiefs and fixed their gaze on Monsignor Gaudet.

“Sir, you will not accuse me or interrogate me. I did not send him to you. Vicar General Moroux and Bishop Reynolds make assignments, not I.”

Randy looked at his wife and sisters, remembered why he was there, softened his voice. “What are you gonna do, Father? We gotta know.”

“Sir, you are overlooking a very important aspect of this matter. If there is any truth to what you are telling me about what Father Francis supposedly did with your children, you are overlooking that there is more than one person involved in this sin. There is the priest – and, of course, there are the boys.”

“The boys?” Randy said incredulously. “What about the boys?”

“Sir, we are talking about sin. When two people commit a sexual sin together, both are sinners in the eyes of God.”

“You’re telling us our boys have sinned?”

Ignoring the question, Monsignor Gaudet said, “Sir… please, please. I do have the solution.”

“What?”

“The sacrament. The sacraments are always the solution. If you will bring your children to me, I will hear their confessions. They will receive penance and absolution. Their sins will be forgiven. They will again be in a state of grace.”

“What?” Randy Falgout leaned forward, causing the monsignor to flinch and push against the back of his leather chair. “You expect our sons to confess to a priest what another priest did to them? You’re not playing with a full deck, Padre.”

“I am telling you I will hear the boys’ confessions, and give them a penance and absolution. They will again be in a state of grace.”

Randy Falgout slammed his closed fist on the top of the monsignor’s desk, upending the goblet of iced tea. He turned on his heel and strode toward the door. The others followed him out of the room, down the long corridor, across the town square and into the law office of one of Mrs. Falgout’s cousins.