Forgiveness
Steven stands outside of the cathedral for the third time this week. It is the watered down remnants of a great building. Steven remembers being told that cathedrals were built in a time with little color. They were built when bright colors were rare. People came to the places of worship and the vibrant colors of stained class surrounded them as they performed ritual and prayer the same way every week. Steven remembers coming here as a child. He can’t forget that feeling of awe when he stood in the same place he stands now looking up at the grandeur of the holy place. Above the door is a stained glass portrait of Jesus on the cross. The morning sun plays tricks with the colors of the glass like it doesn’t know that it was a portrait of suffering. For Steven, that’s what it is. Jesus is suffering. It has little to do with him and his sins, just the tremendous pain that one man endured for sins that weren’t his own.
Rising on either side of the circle stained glass portrait are two matching towers steepled at the top. The ancient bricks that make the place are worn and crumbling slowly. The brown slate color sits dully beside the still vibrant colors of the glass.
The morning is brisk. Steven can feel the cold air grabbing at his lungs. Even the sunshine seems to be chilled by the eastern wind. With a squeeze of his rosary and a deep frozen breath, Steven walks up the steps, clasps the large door handle, and enters the place. He makes the walk he has made many times. He paces slowly up the center aisle, under the tall ceiling, toward the altar. He kneels before the cross and says a short prayer. He stands and traces his footsteps back half way to the door, turns left and heads toward the confessional.
“Forgive me Father for I have sinned,” Steven says. He knew the priest would recognize his voice and, in the sake of tradition, not acknowledge him by name. It seems a cold tradition for an institution of forgiveness, but Steven knows no other form of forgiveness that he can seek.
“Bless you child. How long since your last confession?” the voice asks.
“Lord you know all things; you know that I love you,” Steven says. The protocol is second nature to him. Since the accident, he had confessed three or four times a week.
As he confesses the same things he has confessed hundreds of times, he squeezes the tiny cross in his hand while the beads brush against his slacks. The strong grip is the same grip he put on the steering wheel that night. The brushing beads—his key lanyard brushing his right leg. His little brother sat in the passenger seat and they joked.
“Hey man, some day I’m gonna have sex to this song,” his brother said, referring to the song on the radio.
“Dude, this song is like six minutes long,” Steven said.
“So.”
“Yeah so what are you gonna do for the last five minutes?” Steven said. They laughed and kept on down the curvy road. They had spent the night out, just the two of them. Steven could still taste the Budweiser and bar food. His brother laughed and joked about Steven’s driving.
“Watch out man,” he said. Steven tapped the brakes.
“What?”
“Haha, thought I saw a deer man,” his brother said, “False alarm.”
Steven was proud of his driving. He had a few beers, was definitely over the legal limit, but didn’t feel impaired. His brother was too drunk to drive, so they strapped the seat belts and drove carefully.
As he was driving he remembered a promise he had made to his little brother when they were young. One day they were riding their bikes in the woods behind their house. It was something they did often. Steven rode ahead of his little brother and they travelled all the same paths. One night as it was getting dark and Steven decided to go off the path and his brother followed, as he would have no matter where Steven was going. Not long after getting off the path they went down a steep hill that neither of them knew about. The ensuing wipe-out was legendary; all their friends would talk about it later, saying how both boys flipped over the handlebars and rolled down a thorn bush covered hill for two hundred yards or better. While they did crash, only Steven’s brother hit the thorn bush. Steven rolled a few feet, gathered himself, then heard his brother. When he got to him, lying in the thorn bush, he was bloody with hundreds of cuts and a broken arm. Steven carried his brother back to the house while his brother winced in pain. Half way back, Steven stopped for a rest and sat his brother down.
“I’m sorry,” Steven said, wiping some blood from his brother’s face. “I’ll never lead you to danger again. I’ll protect you no matter what, buddy.”
Through the pain, blood, tears, and sweat Steven received a smile from his brother.
“Son?” the priest says, “Are you still there?”
Steven didn’t realize, but he had been silent for a while after starting his confession. “Yes father,” Steven says, and exits the tiny booth without properly being forgiven.
He walks back to the middle isle of the sleeping building. He turns up the aisle and walks back toward the cross, never taking his eyes off it. He sits in the front pew and hangs his head, not to pray, but in shame. As he sits he remembered the rest of that night in the car.
“Dude, watch out, seriously,” his brother said. Steven thought it was another joke so he looked at his brother, who was covering his face. When Steven looked up he saw the deer, too close to stop before they hit it. Steven yanked the wheel to the right, missing the deer, then left to straighten out. They were on the shoulder of the road, still going over fifty miles an hour. Steven saw a car pulled to the side of the road just in front of him, and a woman squinting back at him from under the hood of the car. It was the loudest noise he had ever heard and when he woke up he could still hear it. He woke up and shook his brother with his right hand. His brother made an ugly, but alive sound. Steven’s concerns then turned to the woman he had seen. He couldn’t remember if she was real or if he had just been seeing things. One thing was for sure, that car was real, his throbbing head told him that. Steven and his brother got out of the car and found the woman thirty feet down the road in a mangled heap. She was choking on blood from internal injuries. Steven heard the gurgling sound every night while he tried to sleep. She looked up at them with her eyes; she couldn’t move her head. She was mostly covered in blood. But, the thing Steven sees when he closes his eyes is the contrast of the white eyes and the dark blood. She died. They didn’t say anything, just sat and waited for the cops to come. They felt the most sober they had ever felt but the breathalyzer told a different story.
“Who was driving the vehicle?” the officer with the note pad asked.
“I was,” Steven’s brother said. “I was driving.”
Before Steven registered what had just happened, his brother was riding away in the back of a police cruiser. His brother smiled at him through the window.
Sitting in the cathedral, that feeling comes over him again. He is alone. He is more alone than he knew possible. He stands and walks out of the cathedral, breathing heavily. He pushes the old heavy door and the light attacks his eyes. He walks down the steps from memory while his eyes adjust. When they do adjust, he finds himself standing right back where he started. He turns and looks back up at the stained glass window. As he looks a cloud wanders over the sun. He doesn’t remember ever looking at the window without the sun hitting it. As he watches though, he can see the real picture. He noticed something that the sun must have always hid from him. Jesus is smiling. He can’t tell for sure, but he seems to have a smirk amongst all his pain.
Steven turns and walks down the sidewalk. He pulls out an old picture that is in his wallet. It is of him and his brother, back when nothing mattered. His brother was looking up at him while he looked at the camera. Stevens arm was around his brother. He stops and sits on a bench in front of a gun shop with a sign in the window that read “Free Box of Bullets with Purchase of Gun.” He stares at the picture. He stares so long that the colors start to look foreign. Like when you say a word too many times in a row and it begins to sound like it’s from another language. He studies the picture all over. He’s not looking for detail, just different colors; ones he hadn’t noticed before. He looks at the picture until his eyes can’t stand to look any more. He slowly lets go of the picture when he could no longer look at it. The breeze catches it and flips it over. Steven sees that it landed face down in a dark grimy puddle that a leaky car left. The white back of the picture sat sharp against the liquid. With a flash Steven sees her eyes again—surprisingly white with blood and dirt all around. On the back of the picture Steven sees the number he had looked up days after his brother went to prison, but had never used. He pulls out his cell phone, and dials.
“Yes, I would like to set up a visit with an inmate,” Steven says.