The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (11 page)

But that leaves me more than a little clueless as to how to deal with this. What do I say? What do I do? Should I apologize? Should I get her flowers? Not that there’s a florist in Grand Prairie.

On impulse and possibly because I still have too much beer in my system, I pull over to the shoulder to look for some sort of flower, maybe a dandelion or something. It’s December and I know damn well I’ll find little more than rye grass, but I’m terrified of facing her. Better to cast about in the damp grass and face potential armadillo attacks. I’ll grab something tall and green, make a joke of it. Maybe that’ll disarm her, I’m thinking when I spot an odd cluster of plants, about knee high. There are no flowers, but the stalks and leaves look a little more interesting than plain grass: thick stalks and, though it’s hard to tell between the dark and the glare of the headlights, some reddish tint to the leaves. I reach in and squeeze tight around the base to break the stem and—

“Holy shit!” I scream, pulling my hand back immediately. It feels like I’ve put it in boiling water. “Shit, shit, shit!” I hop around waving my hand in the air. Tears stream out of my eyes. Burning grass. Stinging nettles. Indian brush. Whatever the hell it’s called. When we were kids, we knew enough to stay away from it. But here I’d gone and wrapped my hand around it and squeezed as hard as I could.

I get back in the car and drive to Vicky’s house as fast as I can.

“Vicky! Hurry up! Let me in.” I pound on the door. I wipe my nose with my left hand. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Jesus, Steve. Hold your goddamn horses.”

That’s right. She’s pissed at me. She swings open the door, a glower fixed on her face. “You don’t need to be so loud.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I barge in, run to the sink, and turn on the cold tap.

“What the hell?” she says, a touch of confusion in her voice.

“Burning grass.”

“Burning grass? How?”

Yes, Steve, how? Go on. Explain that one to her. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You come running into my house with your hand swollen and red from burning grass…”

Damn it. And it occurs to me, too, that if I don’t explain, the only rational explanation for this is that I stopped to do my business roadside and made a bad grab when it came time to wipe.

“Fine. I was trying to find flowers for you to apologize for being such an idiot.”

She shakes her head.

“What?” I ask.

She starts to smile a bit. “So this is how you try to make up for being an idiot?”

I clench my jaw. I can feel my face turning red. “Yes. I am aware of the irony.”

“You dumb-ass,” she says, laughing. She grabs a couple of beers from the fridge. “Here, hold that. And don’t think this lets you off the hook.”

“Yeah, sure. Can we just do this now?”

“Oh, now you’re the one in a hurry all of a sudden?”

I back off. Contrary to all evidence suggesting otherwise, I’m not developmentally challenged. The sacrifice of my hand was enough to erase her anger, but it will only go so far.

“Sorry. It just hurts.”

“Sissy,” she says, leading me into the living room. “You know, Jesus had spikes driven through His hands. Both of them.”

“I’ve never claimed to be anything close to the kind of man he was.”

Vicky drags her feet across the carpet and flops down on the couch. She’s wearing slippers, sweats, and a hooded zip jacket. It’s halfway open, revealing her collarbones and a bit of cleavage dipping into a tank top. Her hair is pulled off of her neck into a short ponytail.

We sit side by side on the couch. The light, the feel in the living room is drastically different than in the kitchen—or any room in my place. In place of the glaring fluorescents and white tile, there is a dimmed lamp and earth tones. It makes me want to whisper…or take a nap.

“So what’s the deal?” I ask.

“Have you looked at this at all?” She waves Blackfoot’s literature.

“No,” I say. “Not at all.”

She gives me a look, shakes her head.

“The first decision is how to handle payment.” She flips to the appropriate pages.

We have two options, it seems. One is called a traditional carnival. Blackfoot and his crew would come in full bore and run the show at no cost to us. They take their cut, we take ours. The second option would be to pay for the equipment and manpower, rent it so to speak, and then take one hundred percent of whatever we took in.

“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” I say. “Option one all the way. Let them do all the work. Then we don’t have to worry about these stupid fund-raisers.”

That was easy enough.

“Not so fast, chief,” she says.

Of course.

“But, Vick—” I start.

“But, Steve,” she says, mocking me. “Look. I thought option one would be the best way, too. But there’s a catch.”

“What? Is the cut too small?”

“Well, thirty percent isn’t the best cut in the world. But, no, that’s not it. Option one gives them control of
everything
—that includes placement of our booths and stages. They also get a cut of everything, including
our
food concessions and
our
event booths. And you can bet your ass our food concessions are going to bring in a lot more money than theirs will.”

“You go over this with Blackfoot already?”

“No. He didn’t want to deal with me,” she says, biting her bottom lip for a second. “Asshole. Just wanted to know where the man was.”

“Oh,” I say, wondering if I should poke at that wound to her pride. I decide not to. “So what are we looking at with option two?”

“On average, five hundred per ride for Saturday and Sunday. Two fifty per ride for Friday.”

“In American dollars? Per ride! Per day!” I stand up and start pacing. “Aw, crap, Vick. We’ll never be able to raise enough money. What can we afford, the elephant and a merry-go-round? Shit.”

“Sit down and shut up for a second.” She pats the couch. I throw myself down next to her and fling my head back. She turns to face me and her leg ends up pushing against mine. “We just put down a deposit and we’ll pay him the difference with what we take in on the rides.”

“But what if we don’t make enough? What if it rains? That’s been known to happen in Louisiana.” I’m whining now.

“Have some faith,” she says, and pats my knee. “Now sit up straight. Your nostrils aren’t exactly your best feature.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Good,” she says. “Now the fun part.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. We pick the rides,” she says, and flips to those pages.

Of course, this leads to another argument. But this one I don’t mind so much, silly as it is. I immediately draw up my list: TurboForce, the Flume Ride, Gravitron, Space Loop, Twister, Zipper, Bullet, Bumper Cars, the Yo-Yo, the Screamer, the Murderer, the Mangler and the Strangler, and Quadzilla.

At which point, Vicky calls me crazy for any number of reasons. “Two seconds ago, you were worried about pricing and now you have the most expensive rides and no room left over for the kiddie rides.”

“Ah, fuck the kids,” I say, my inner teen slobbering over the possibility of a backyard full of my very own thrill rides.

“Steve!” She slaps my knee. “Besides. You don’t have room for these tall rides. Unless you rip out all the trees.”

“To hell with the trees.”

She shoots me a warning look, but doesn’t really mean it. She lets me keep the Zipper and the Gravitron and suggests a Ferris wheel, swings, Super Slide, the Hurricane, a merry-go-round, and the Tilt-a-Whirl.

“Honestly. How could you have forgotten the Tilt-a-Whirl?”

“I didn’t forget,” I say. “The Tilt-a-Whirl makes me sick.”

She laughs at me. “You
are
a sissy.”

“Hey, the Tilt-a-Whirl probably would have made Jesus his own self sick. I’ll take crucifixion over the Tilt-a-Whirl any day of the week.”

“Whatever.” She then adds to her list a few kiddy rides: Crazy Planes, Dragon Wagon, Spin the Apple, Helicopters, Granny Bug.

“And the biggest damn moonwalk they have,” I add.

“Ohhh. Good idea,” she says.

She rewrites everything in a neat and orderly fashion and hands it to me. “Make two copies. One for me. One for Blackfoot. Then call him for a meeting.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I find myself on her doorstep, heading for my car.

She’s leaning against her door. “See, Steve? That wasn’t so hard.”

“No, I guess it wasn’t,” I say.

“We make a good team, even if you are a slacker.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say, waving off her comment as I climb into the car.

I drive back to the rectory with the radio blaring, the window rolled down, letting the wind blow the thoughts out of my head.

A fit of paranoia is always a good way to start off the day—especially Christmas Eve. This morning I received a call from the bishop’s office requesting me to drive to Lafayette immediately. Wasn’t told what it was about, just to get there. So of course I was having heart palpitations for the entirety of the drive to Lafayette. What was it? The altar girls? I’d been spending too much time with Vicky? I didn’t get proper clearance for the festival? The Xbox lifted from the toy drive? Oh no. I’d deprived some kid living in a shelter of the Christmas gift he’d been praying for all year long!

But Bishop Flemming had cleared everything up quickly.

“We seem to have a problem,” Flemming said the moment I stepped into his office. He was grinding a cigarette butt into a Notre Dame Fighting Irish ashtray.

At which point I almost confessed not only everything I’d done wrong since my first day in seminary, but everything I’d ever thought of doing.

“It’s your friend. Mark,” Flemming said, saving me from myself.

That stupid video-game console. I decided to play dumb.

“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.

“You don’t know?” Flemming countered, arching an eyebrow at me. The old “you can’t shit a bullshitter” look.

“To be honest, I don’t know Mark all that well,” I said, which was true enough.

“Really?” Flemming asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yes, Bishop Flemming. He’s stopped by a couple of times, called a couple of times, but that’s about it.”

“That’s odd,” Flemming replied. He waved me farther into the room. “Sit, sit.”

I sat.

“We thought he might have called you. According to word around St. John’s, he’d taken a shine to you. They say he’s been out your way a few times and that he talks about you quite a bit.”

Had they been following Mark? Spying on me? Did they think I was gay?

“Well, I mean we did hit it off, Bishop, but.” I stopped. “I, uh, don’t. Well. You know.”

“Steve, it’s okay. I’m not trying to get at that.”

“Oh, of course not,” I said weakly.

“But Mark did have some personality issues with a lot of the men here in Lafayette. And he did seem to like you, to be on good terms. So we thought he’d at least call you when he ran.”

“Ran?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Flemming said. “It happens. People have a moment, a crisis of faith and all that. We just want to get him back home, into the fold so to speak.”

“But, Bishop, I had no idea,” I said. I didn’t quite know what he expected me to do. “He never even called. I wouldn’t know where to find him.”

Flemming leaned forward and fished a cigarette out of a gold cigarette case on his desk. “Oh, we know where he is at the moment. We were just hoping you could go and talk to him. We think he might listen to you.”

So here I stand, in the doorway of this dark, throbbing place, a gay disco preposterously set off a highway in the middle of Cajun country halfway between Lafayette and New Iberia.

Smoke is thick like fog in the low-ceilinged darkness of the room. When the air conditioner cycles on—my hopes for a white Christmas dashed yet again—I can practically feel something…sin? temptation?…swirling in the smoke. I stand just inside the door, letting my eyes make the transition from the white glare of sunlight behind me to the indoor dusk in front of me. A few heads swivel my way, then back, with little pause in the conversations.

Mark’s in here somewhere among the mumbling midday shadows.

Immediately behind me, the door opens. The shaft of sunlight splits the room, landing on Mark, giving him the appearance of a persecuted saint—a saint perched on a stool in a gay bar, hunched over a beer, a neglected cigarette burning to the filter between his fingers.

The door closes, bringing us all back into darkness. I make my way over to Mark, who doesn’t acknowledge me.

“Jack on the rocks,” I say into the smoke.

“There you go, Father,” the bartender says.

I had no idea the word
father
could be made to sound so dirty.

I put a hand on Mark’s arm in greeting.

“So, how we doing today, Father Johnson?” I say in a bad Irish accent.

He turns and looks at me, his eyes unfocused, more red than white.

“Mark,” he says. “The name is Mark.”

“Get off the stool, Mark, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

A woozy grin creeps across his face and he turns to me.

“You coming on to me?” he asks, and grabs a belt loop, yanks me closer. His head swivels a little and a sour cloud of cigarettes, booze, and body odor envelops me. His hazel eyes focus suddenly, and his voice shifts, more a threat now than a joke. “You want a piece, Steve? You want to take me home and fuck me? Tired of jacking off? It’s a sin either way, right? Might as well get some ass, no?”

I grab him by the collar of his dirty T-shirt and pull him even closer. “Don’t start this shit with me,
Father.”
I’m hoping the “father” makes a dent, reminds him of his office, that he’s something more than just a drunk in a bar having a tough time of it.

“Mark,” he says in a whisper, his eyes swimming out of focus again. “My name is Mark.” He loosens his grip on my pants and turns back to the bar to fumble with a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

“Shit.” I snatch the pack from him. I light one for each of us and turn back to my whiskey. A conversation bubbles down in the smoke at the end of the bar, the bartender and bar-back bantering in a foreign language. The words filter in while I try to figure out what to do next. I recognize the language but don’t understand it. The words and structure are just on the other side of familiar—like something struggling not to be Latin. Maybe they’re talking about how tough it is to pay the electric bill for this place. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn dark in the joint.

“One thing I want to know,” Mark slurs. “Been coming here every day for a week and still don’t know what language they’re speaking.”

“Didn’t think to ask?” I say, and immediately regret it.

“No. No, Steve. I didn’t think to ask.”

“It’s Esperanto.”

Like a dog who’s heard a barely perceptible noise, Mark lifts his head slightly. “Huh. That’s the name of this place.” He seems amused. “Go figure.”

“Yeah, it was supposed to be this scientific thing. Rational. Simple, straightforward, rules that everyone would understand. It was supposed to be the universal language.”

“I thought Esperanto meant hope,” he says.

“Yeah, that, too.”

He takes a drag off his cigarette. “Well, I guess this is where it all ended up.” He waves his hand in the air to indicate our surroundings.

I’ve got no response for that. We fall silent and stare into our drink glasses, looking for answers.

“You know what I been thinking about lately? Thinking about a lot?” Mark says suddenly.

“I don’t know, Mark, the years of school, seminary, service you’re throwing away?”

“I been thinking about Uncle Charlie’s cat,” he says, oblivious of my comment. “Uncle Charlie’s old black cat. What was that damn cat’s name?” He stops as if he expects either me or the beer to provide an answer.

I turn from the bar and wait, staring at the empty dance floor. Suddenly the music kicks on, Beethoven’s Ninth set to a ludicrous disco beat, complete now with electronic chirps and beeps, dry-ice smoke, and strobe lights. At noon, no less. The loud, driving thump of it all hammers at my chest. A handful of men move to the dance floor and start dancing and grinding.

“Can I get another Jack over here?” I call a bit too loudly into the smoke. “Double. Please.”

New drink in hand, I down half before my gag reflex kicks in. The warmth rushes through me.

“Chase,” Mark says. “That was the cat’s name. Chase. Black cat. Had a little white patch just under his neck. Old as dirt. I was just a kid, fifteen or something, and I’d gone to stay with Uncle Charlie for a couple of weeks in New York. Lived in the Village. Don’t know what the hell my parents were thinking.”

Mark orders another beer and a shot, but leaves the tequila standing untouched on the bar. He lights a cigarette with no problem. He takes a drag, then holds the cigarette away from him, considering the burning ember as if he’d only now discovered fire. After another drag, he begins talking, the smoke pouring out of him, making him look like an overworked machine.

“So I’m in the apartment alone one day. Hanging my head out of the window, checking out the cruisers on the street below. It was hot. I didn’t have a shirt on.” He chuckles, shakes his head. “At the time, at that age, I didn’t even allow myself to see that the men walking by were checking me out. I didn’t even allow myself to think that Uncle Charlie was…you know…Anyway. I’m sitting in a window in the Village, half naked, sweat running down my little tan body.”

Mark waves at the air in front of him, clearing away an unnecessary part of the story.

“Anyway, I’m watching all the men go by when I hear this meowing, almost a howling. I know it’s the cat but it doesn’t sound right. He sounds like he’s in pain. So I go into Uncle Charlie’s bedroom and there’s Chase. It’s almost hard to see him, ’cause he’s black as night and tangled up in this black sweater. I call his name. ‘Hey, Chase. Hey, buddy. What’s the problem?’ And he looks at me with this, this look on his face. Like he’s been caught with blood on his paws or something. He tries to run off but his claws are caught. He’s hunched over the sweater and his claws are caught and he looks confused so I decide to help him. I’m walking toward him when I notice it. His little kitty cock is out, red and swollen. I stop and stare at him. He stares at me, pissed off or guilty or something.

“So Uncle Charlie and his roommate walk in and Chase frees himself and runs under the bed. ‘I think Chase was humping your sweater,’ I tell Uncle Charlie. And you know what he does? He tousles my hair and he and his friend laugh. ‘Oh, that’s not my sweater, Mark,’ he says to me. ‘That’s Chase’s special friend. Cats get lonely, too.’ ‘But it’s a sweater,’ I say. ‘You make do, kid,’ he tells me. ‘Sometimes you just make do.’”

Mark mashes his cigarette out and shoots the tequila as if washing the story out of his mouth.

I stare into the smoke and try to make sense of this cat story. Is it some sort of repressed, mixed-up memory? Was Mark the sweater, his uncle the cat? But the music thumps on and the Jack is catching up to me. Someone slides up next to me at the bar and shouts, “Cosmopolitan,” into the smoke. The bar to either side of us is empty, but here’s this clown brushing up against my arm.

I don’t want to turn and look, but out of the corner of my eye I can see the man turn to me, twirling the straw between his teeth, looking me over like a piece of meat.

“What are you drinking?” He leans in close over my drink and actually sniffs it. “Whiskey?”

Against my better judgment, I turn to him. Deep brown, hungry eyes look into my own. He’s a young-looking forty and sports a deep orange spray-on tan. A light sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead.

“Thanks, but no,” I say.

He gives me a knowing smile, as if he’s heard that one before, and turns back to the bar. When the cosmo arrives, he leans over the bar, disturbing the smoke, revealing the shirtless bartender for a moment. Whispers are exchanged; then my orange friend walks away.

Another double appears in front of me. I stare at it.

“For fuck’s sake, Steve, have the drink,” Mark says quite clearly. “Have the drink, grab a fucking stool, and say your piece. Try to talk me out of it. I know you have to. And to be honest, I want to hear what you have to say.”

I turn to Mark and our eyes meet again. They’ve come back into focus.

“Just sit,” he says. He exhales a cloud of smoke and smiles. “And no, I wasn’t molested by my uncle.” He laughs and shakes his head. “If you only knew how much I want you to convince me, how much…I don’t know…how much I want to see the light or whatever and go back with you.”

I grab a stool. “I know,” I say, more to myself than to Mark. I take a swallow of Jack and light another cigarette.

“It’s only sex,” I say. The words ring hollow. I don’t even know why I’m saying them, but something needs to be said, even if it is bullshit. I push on. “Sex is only one facet of the human experience. It’s something sacred, reserved for marriage between a loving man and woman.” I stop, unable to go on. For some reason, the image of the cat goes through my mind.

“You’ve got to do better than that,” Mark says. “I’ve gone through all that already. I’ve given that little speech myself.” There’s a hint of desperation in his voice now. “Tell me you’ve got something reserved for emergencies, some great secret, a mystery, something that will heal me.”

“Think of the years you’ve invested, Mark,” I begin again. Maybe practicality can win the argument. “Look at it that way. All these years of education and preparation and service. And you’re gonna throw it away for what? For a little taste of sexual freedom? Don’t do it. Reconsider.”

Mark looks at me for a moment. He seems angry almost, let down that I can’t come up with something better. “Why? Why reconsider? Why did they send you out to catch me? Why this need to stop us from leaving the fold? Do they think it’ll cause a mass exodus? That everyone else will realize how much of their lives they’ve wasted and priests will just start heading for the exits, run to the nearest hooker or singles bar?”

“Mark, they’re just worried about you. And you know it’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it, Steve? Is it?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. You know how few of us there are these days. Just…just don’t quit.” I mean that. In that moment, I discover a little protective spot in my heart for the priesthood. We can’t just surrender, can’t let go of people like Mark. We’re growing fewer by the day. “Listen. It’s understood.” I search for the right words. “It’s understood that there will be transgressions. That’s what confession is for. Just because you make a little transgression every once in a while is no reason to quit. I mean, we’re only human. Hell, you know that.”

“Confession?” Mark says, astounded. “Are you serious? Listen to yourself. Did it occur to you the main reason they sent you is not that they give two shits but that they’re afraid I’ll rat some of them out?”