The Unspeakable (10 page)

“Have a chunk,” he said.

A piece of ham, a river of dripping grease, hung from Marbury's fork like a downed suspension bridge. I tried to decline the best I could.

“What are you, abstaining from meat now?”

“I'm just trying to be sensible. I don't have your build, Marbury.”

He looked at my plate and frowned. “You have to eat something.”

“Don't you ever worry about cholesterol?”

“God made cholesterol too, you know.”

Marbury didn't change. In some ways he was still the same man who begged our cooks in seminary to make meat loafs and sausages, anything with meat in them, which only infuriated people. There was a movement, popular then, of vegetarian dishes, often only clumps of green kelp or spinach, and fresh bread. These were our staples, vegetables and bread, not the Texas-style cookouts that Marbury would have preferred.

Some people took exception even to vegetables. There was one seminarian who insisted on eating only ovum; that is to say, he ate exactly that which presumably could be harvested and consumed without killing the host specimen. Mostly he ate nuts and fruit. Other vegetables like broccoli, potatoes, and carrots, anything that had to be uprooted or chopped off, killed, were excluded on moral grounds, namely trading one life for another, which this fellow considered immoral. It was a bizarre philosophy and not one without its opponents, Marbury for one, who thought the idea downright insane.

He said, “We live by killing. As for Creation, it'll be redeemed later when the prey meets the lion. In the meantime, Peter, have a slice of ham.”

And I found it on my plate.

Our waitress came by to freshen up the coffee. She kept glancing at Marbury while she exchanged a warm pot for the one that we had
all but drained. He told me to thank her for the meal, which I did.

She leaned into me and with a quieter than normal voice said:

“I saw the Helen Keller story. Plain horrible.”

“You don't have to whisper,” I said. “My friend already knows that he can't speak. He assumes everyone else does as well.”

“Does he—?”

“Accept it? Yes.”

“You poor man,” said the waitress, studying Marbury. “How do you sing?”

Marbury gave me a look, which I returned in kind.

“He doesn't,” I said.

“Criminal, not to sing.”

The waitress just shrugged her shoulders and walked away. She didn't have to deal with Marbury's story. For her, Marbury was simply a man who lost his voice. But for me the story was more than that. It was both an explanation of where he had been and a signpost to where he was going. And I didn't like either one.

Marbury looked at me. At times he could almost read my mind, and this was one of them. He was sensing my doubt.

He said, “You don't believe it could happen again.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. Another Christ Child.

“Could, yes. Won't, more likely.”

“But the Resurrection—”

“Risen, Marbury. Not an encore performance.”

“It sounds like you've already made up your mind then.”

“I have.” My voice was firm.

Marbury nodded and forced a great heap of scrambled eggs into his mouth. He ate without a care in the world, as though he was confident that everything would work out. A confidence that I didn't necessarily share.

Reinforcing this, I said, “You're not helping any. This story—”

“I know it's unbelievable.”

“I'm glad you agree. How do I bring this back to the Bishop? He already has my future in his pocket from the last time that I helped you and brought you here.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It's my job, Marbury.”

“I thought this was your job, snooping around other people's lives.”

“Your welfare is my job. You might not believe this, but I want you to succeed. I want you to shine.”

“But on your terms.”

“On everyone's terms. Don't be selfish.”

I knew that would rattle Marbury and it did.

He said, “I don't work in an office, do I, Peter? I'm out in the world.”

A low blow but one that I probably deserved. I didn't start out thinking that I would end up in an office either, but after almost fifteen years of it, it's a job that I've come to respect and I told Marbury that.

He just nodded his head, saying nothing. It's not that I haven't thought of other positions or even held the job descriptions in my hand. Rather I just felt better suited for this one. That's what I told myself at least.

Now I even questioned that.

“Tell me what to do with this story, Marbury.”

He just raised his eyebrows in surprise.

Marbury said, “You just write, Peter. Then let God do the rest.”

I bristled at his use of God again. God the giver, the protector of life, and like Shiva in the Hindu scriptures, God the destroyer as well.

I said, “Unfortunately, God won't decide your fate. The Diocese will.”

He laughed, making me feel stupid.

“—You know what I mean.”

“Yes, yes. You could relieve me of my duties.”

“I could relieve you of everything you've worked so hard for.”

Marbury looked at me and smiled.

He said, “I think I'll take my chances with God.”

Marbury stuffed another piece of ham into his mouth, followed by a quick bite of jellied toast. Had he been able to speak or even wished to, I'm sure that he would have been humming to himself by now, a smug reaction to my authority. And I couldn't blame him. The truth was, I was going to listen to his story regardless, he already knew that, and despite my doubtful reactions to the contrary, I was still perplexed by his story enough to hear more.

That there were elements here of a collegiate prank, I couldn't deny. And I often felt that at any minute a gang of our old friends, including the Bishop himself, would just jump out from behind the scenery and begin the inevitable ribbing. They would tease me about how gullible I was and we would all have a good laugh. Except that when I looked around I saw no one but Marbury.

He glanced down at my plate and asked me if I was going to finish my toast. I told him to go right ahead, which he did. Both pieces.

“Never waste, Peter. I've seen too much hunger.”

“At the shelter?”

He nodded. “And growing up.”

“Why didn't you just get a job yourself? You could have helped out.”

“Only a farmer's son would ask that. I did get a job. Later.”

Marbury said that Rick, his brother, was in Vietnam only four months before he was killed. The news hit the father like a brick. He quit his job as a janitor and settled on a new path, drinking all
day and watching the soaps. The family went on welfare and lived on food stamps, which Marbury traded in for cash so his father could drink. They gave blood together, sold scrap aluminum and stolen car parts. Anything for drinking money. This slide would have continued, said Marbury, probably right into cirrhosis of the liver or worse if not for one thing.

Graduation.

He was now almost seventeen, a senior in high school, and Marbury was thinking about what to do with his life. He had all but ruled out college. No money for it, much less any ambition. And this left only one other path in his mind. The military. But his father didn't like that.

“He already lost one son. He wasn't about to lose a second.”

“What did he do?”

“He got a job. Quit drinking right there.”

Albany was a tough town back then. And the neighborhood numbers were run out of a local bar that Marbury said his father would occasionally frequent. He got to know the place, its customers, and the business that was conducted there, and he cleaned himself up for a job. He took a position first as a runner, then at records until finally working himself all the way up to payoff man. The profits were good, and soon Marbury said that his father heard the most delicious sound at that time. The jingle of change in his pocket. Bills were paid and money was being set aside for his father's dream, of Marbury one day attending college.

Marbury said that he started to come to the bar as well, just to wait for his dad. After work they would go out and get a burger together and discuss the day. They kept no secrets. Marbury knew what his father was doing and he didn't blame him. He just let it go. As the weeks passed, Marbury said that he found himself lingering in the bar longer and longer, waiting for his father, who always was busy. He found himself watching more TV, drinking
and eating the free peanuts and soda, killing time mostly until it suddenly came to him. Something bigger than himself.

“They had a pool table,” he said. “Big thing. Green as money.”

And so Marbury taught himself to play.

He took books from the public library and started to read about the great pool sharks. Guys like Minnesota Fats and Willie Mosconi. Marbury began to practice new shots as well. Angles and tricks, sliders and hooks. He shot pool until his arms ached and then he shot some more. Somewhere along the line he became very good.

“I could beat anyone who walked through the door. And that was my problem. I felt like I could never lose.”

It was a problem as well because business for Marbury's father began to take a turn for the worse. Betting had begun to slide into the same recession that everyone else was feeling, and along with a renewed crackdown by the police, folks started to stay away. Money got tight. The middlemen demanded more, cuts were passed around that left less for the retailer, the guy at the bottom. Marbury said that his father, now a full-fledged bookie, began to work even longer hours to make up the revenue. Fourteen-, sixteenhour days. He covered the spreads on everything imaginable from elections to basketball, even European soccer. But the profits still shriveled and before he knew it, the slide backward resumed.

“That's when I heard the call of the stick,” said Marbury.

“You played for money?”

“I played to survive.”

There was a whole psychology to master, a psychology that, Marbury said in retrospect, seemed to match his adolescent leanings to a tee. A pool shark had to be arrogant but still vulnerable enough to be beaten. The easiest way to do this, what Marbury called the loudmouthed approach, was to overstate one's ability in public. This always involved money and the notion that the opponent was being hustled, badly hustled as it were. Marbury would select his prey
and start the act, saying how good he was, that he couldn't be beaten, et cetera. Then he would shoot around the table, not playing his best, for this was the double blind of pool sharking. No two opponents ever knew each other's real strengths until it was too late.

Somebody would suggest a small fee, maybe five dollars a game, and the balls were racked. The first few games Marbury would lose terribly, throwing more money into the pot, swearing and grumbling to himself. Eventually the ante would be raised. Twenty bucks a game or maybe more. And the opponent, if he was good, used a kind of counter psychology found only in pool halls. He held back as well, perhaps even throwing a game just to crank up the ante. Marbury, using a counter to the second counter, had to appear to play his best, pulling out all the stops until he won. Then of course, he would take his money and start to leave.

That's when the real game began.

The opponent, sensing that he could really win, would finagle a last, winner-take-all contest, which reluctantly, almost kicking his feet, Marbury would agree to. And the slaughter would begin. Marbury would launch every reserve he had, and if he had calculated correctly, he would beat the poor individual into submission. If he hadn't, then it was his Waterloo. He would get destroyed.

With this method, Marbury said that he earned several hundred dollars a week. But it wasn't always that easy. Sometimes the betting never escalated past the five- and ten-dollar range, and he would gain very little for his efforts. Other times, the opposite would happen and bids would rise quickly with his opponent throwing in dollar after dollar until he was cleaned out. The saddest thing to watch, said Marbury, for people rarely knew their limits, especially when it came to their egos.

“So what you're saying, Marbury, is that you were a crook.”

“That's not a word I would necessarily choose.”

“What then? Hustler, confidence man, scam artist? You pick it.”

“‘Entertainer' sounds better. I liked to entertain.”

“And do you still?”

Marbury gave me a lazy smile. “I haven't entertained in years.”

Our waitress returned with more sugar for Marbury, who had already used up every packet on the table. I thought that she'd returned just to take another look at him, as though Marbury were on display somewhere, but I was wrong. That was reserved for me. She fixated this time on the clerical collar that I was wearing and ran her eyes up and down my body, not solicitously but with a hardened, studious kind of gaze.

More popping gum.

She said, “I dated a priest once. He could see women. Go out.”

“A pastor, you mean. Protestant.”

“All I know is that he dated women. I mean he wasn't—”

“Celibate?”

“God, no.” And then she laughed.

Her laughter sparked something within me, the memory of a recurring dream that I often had. In it, I'm being led up to the gates where Saint Peter, a clean-shaven man dressed in a black Armani suit and shirt, presides over eternity. He's sitting at a desk full of huge ledgers and scrolls, and he's busy making notes, just scribbling like mad.

I'm standing there, naked, no clothes to speak of, certainly none of my official black, and old Peter doesn't know whether I'm alive or dead. He just keeps on going about his business with the ledgers and such, quite busy, and he moves from ledger to ledger, always writing. I let him scribble some more, then clearing my throat I announce myself.