In any case, he would have no struggle making do with the cabbage. There was almost no way he knew of spoiling cabbage.
“Have you had all that much trouble, Arnold? I mean with priests who get mad at you?”
Bush nodded. He had a mouthful of food, which he chewed and swallowed before speaking. Koesler was grateful.
“In confession, mostly. But sometimes I’d go in the priests’ house and try to talk to one of them. And sooner or later they’d get mad and start yelling at me.”
Koesler shook his head. “You’ve had spectacularly bad luck, Arnold. Most priests aren’t like that.” Even as he spoke, Koesler could recall a whole string of priests he’d known while growing up who’d been exactly like that. He liked to think the ranks of the hellfire-and-brimstone gang had been thinned by now.
“Well, the ones I’ve met were. You were the first one who seemed sort of understanding. And I didn’t even tell you the worst of it.”
Koesler toyed with a small slice of corned beef. “But you’re going to now, aren’t you Arnold.”
“Well, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s what you had in mind when you said you needed me . . . right?”
“Yeah. Is it okay? I mean, if you get mad, it will be all right. It’ll just mean I made a mistake and you’re like all the rest.”
“Shoot.”
“Okay. I wasn’t confirmed.”
“That’s it?!”
“See, I thought you’d get mad.”
“Arnold, I’m not angry. Just very surprised. What’s so horrible about not having been confirmed? Besides, you can be confirmed any time.”
“That’s just the beginning.”
“Oh.” Koesler poured more Mogen David into his glass. Maybe he could get to like the stuff.
“See, I didn’t get confirmed because I didn’t have any real home. See, I was an orphan. At least that’s what they told me. But I did a little checking on my own. I got no idea at all who my father was. He was gone right after he got my mother pregnant. She was a Catholic. That’s why she had me baptized. But then she dumped me.”
“She abandoned you?”
“She put me in an orphan asylum. A Catholic place, because she was a Catholic. Then I went into a series of foster homes. Mostly Catholic because the agency who had charge of me was Catholic . . . or at least knew I was a Catholic. That’s why I got to make my First Holy Communion. But when it came time to get confirmed I was in another foster home and they didn’t let me get confirmed because you had to have a new suit. And there wasn’t no way they was going to buy me a new suit.”
“They wouldn’t enroll you in a confirmation class because—well, that’s outrageous. I don’t know whether it was worse for them to keep you out of the class or worse for the parish to require new clothing. What did they dress you in, for God’s sake?”
“Well, every once in a while we’d go down to the St. Vincent de Paul clothing store and get second- or third-hand clothes for just some change. Sometimes for free. But—now, this is the bad part— this couple I was living with then, they had to hit the road. The law was after them for bad checks.
“So they took the kids—I mean the ones who were their real kids— and left the state. But there was no way they was gonna take me with them. They had enough to handle with their three.”
“So she turned you over to the agency again?”
“No. And it’s okay if you get mad now. The woman turned me over to her sister who ran a cathouse.”
“A cathouse? A house of prostitution. What happened to the agency?”
“I sort of slipped between the cracks.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twelve.”
“You poor kid.”
“Are you mad?”
“At you? No. Maybe at the system. Maybe at your foster mother. But certainly not at you.”
“See, I was right: You don’t get mad. But now that bad stuff starts.”
Bush launched into a monologue, an autobiographical sketch of life in a brothel as seen through the eyes of a growing boy going through an extremely painful and unusual adolescence.
Koesler listened. He listened so intently his mouth became dry from hanging open. As he listened he found himself comparing his boyhood to the aberration that was forced upon a hitherto innocent youth.
Bush had begun bordello life as a curiosity. Chances are there might have been in that house the traditional hooker with a heart of gold—some kind woman who might have protected and mothered him. But Bush bucked odds all his life. Instead of being sheltered and protected, he was treated as a joke. Upon arrival at the house, he was introduced to each and every fact of life by a series of the inhabitants. He was encouraged to—or at least no one seemed to mind if he did—surreptitiously watch from hiding places as the girls plied their trade. He knew what a condom was before he was able to spell the word.
While the parents of other children his age were insisting on the completion of homework, Arnold was running errands for the women as well as for their customers. As a final obscenity, Arnold was taught how to satisfy clients who preferred boys as sexual partners. He was allowed to keep a small percentage of what he earned.
At a comparable age and at almost the same time, Koesler was a seventh grader in a parochial school. He had loving parents who lavished attention on him. He had older sisters who included him in their lives. He lived in a protective cocoon.
At about the time Bush was learning how to turn a trick with a John, Koesler was in a seminary, further insulated from the world, the flesh, and the devil.
As his narration continued, Bush congratulated himself on his judgment of character. This priest was exactly what Bush had hoped him to be. No yelling, no table-pounding, no widened eyes, no fingerwagging. He just sat and listened. Perfect. Maybe, you never know—and at this point it could go either way—but, maybe he could tell this priest the whole thing. Get it all off his mind.
Koesler, for his part, was all but spellbound by the tale. He’d read of lives like this. But he had never actually known anyone who had spent his tenderest formative years in a milieu where immorality was so pervasive it became merely amoral. As the priest listened, he tried to imagine what effect such an upbringing might have on a person. What sort of adult would develop from so bizarre a background? What moral values could possibly endure the immoral soil in which this grew? What sort of attitude would such a person harbor toward women in general, when the women among whom he grew up used and abused him so shamefully?
As Bush continued his story about a life that had taken every possible wrong turn, Koesler, not pressed to respond, started to see something develop in Bush. It was not sharply at first. But then it began to take shape. A likeness. To whom? If one were to put . . . a collar . . . a roman collar . . . a clerical vest, on Bush, he would look very much like—no, he would look exactly like—Dick Kramer.
Odd that it had not occurred to him before. Both men were blond. Both were of stocky build. But most of all, facially they were so alike.
Then his mind took another turn. Something had been bothering him. A question. How . . . how something—oh, yes—how was it possible for two eyewitnesses . . . Who were they again? Adelle and Ruby . . . His train of thought leapfrogged. Adelle had seen the killer from a distance of several yards. Ruby had seen him from only a few feet away. Both women had identified Father Kramer in the show-up. Ruby, who’d had the best vantage, had been the more certain of the two. They both had identified Kramer. And they were both wrong. But—and this had been his problem—how could they have been so mistaken? That policeman, Mangiapane, had told Koesler about the police officer lookalike in the show-up. The women had had some difficulty making the identification because of him.