The Paper Shepherd Read online

  From that point on, his son just got stranger. And then, to top it all off, a few months ago he called home and suddenly revealed he wanted to be a priest. Jack was disappointed but not entirely surprised at the news. Leave it up to him to do something fruity. He tried for weeks to convince himself he approved. It was just like law enforcement, he told himself. One of them used the fear of prison time to convince people to do the right thing and the other used the fear of eternal damnation. In the final analysis, both jobs were about convincing bad people to act good. Or so Jack wanted to believe. But, he’ll find some way to screw it up, he thought, shaking his head. He always does.

  Up in his room, Max fingered away mechanically, trying to distract himself from the joyless scene unfolding downstairs. He tapped away at the wooden back of his guitar, the hallow sounds replacing the joyful, stomping footsteps that should have been running up the stairs any minute now to interrupt him. There would be no footsteps anymore, he knew. That time was over. Many things are over. Throughout summer break, Max felt like he was connecting with his parents less and less. He had gone home with Tony for Thanksgiving and dreaded Christmas. This was still his familiar room. This was his house, the one he had grown up in. But more and more, St. Andrew’s was his home. Here, in his parents’ house in Hectortown, there had been a light that was now dimming, like a chandelier with one bulb burnt out. The lack of that one bulb made the whole place seem cold and gloomy.

  I need to get out of here, Max thought, strumming away without feeling. I need to get out of this house. Tomorrow, he had promised Father Neman he would help supervise pick up basketball in the gym for the middle school age kids. Saturday, he could meet Jay, Prentice, and Matt at Buck’s. He could fill the rest of his holiday here with mundane activities. Before he knew it, he would be back at school where he belonged. Back in the seminary, he thought, where I belonged my whole life. If he could only wait two more weeks. How did I ever tolerate it here? he wondered. How did I think this was something I couldn’t leave? What had the attraction been, he wondered, that had made him want to go to the state school to stay near home? Some silly little girl I used to date in high school? Just a silly girl. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  36

  The late January snow crunched under foot as Max and Tony walked to the legendary Jake’s. It was quiet in the bar and far less smoky than Pugs. There wasn’t a dart board or a pool table in sight. Nearly a mile from campus and one of the few bars in town that regularly checked ID’s, Jake’s was patronized by an older, higher class of clientele. Max, in his old faded jeans and denim jacket, felt slightly out of place. Tony nodded at the owner and lead Max to a high table along the back wall of the bar. Having just come from his Thursday afternoon pastoral music class, Tony was still carrying his guitar. He put it on his lap, opened the case, and took out a Mylar gift bag with Happy Birthday emblazoned in different fonts, colors, and languages. Tossing the bag onto the table, he leaned the case against the wall behind him.

  “Happy Birthday, roomy,” Tony said unceremoniously. Max untied the ribbon and opened the bag. Looking inside, he shook his head and chuckled.

  “If only I could really get away with this,” he said, holding the novelty T-shirt up to his chest. The T-shirt, which had a mock turtle neck, was printed to look like a black button down shirt with a Roman collar. “Thank you, Tony.”

  “Well, you’re worth the fifteen ninety nine. You only turn twenty-one once.”

  “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t just go to Pugs,” Max said, taking off his jacket and hanging it over the bar stool. “This place looks expensive.”

  “Dude, you’ve been drinking at Pugs since you were 18,” Tony answered, hiding the T-shirt back in his guitar case. “You have to go someplace that cards on your 21st birthday. Anyway, you deserve some class once a year.” Jake walked over to their table and set a bottle between Max and Tony.

  “ID,” he said, putting two glasses in front of them. Tony clearly had planned in advance. Max got out his wallet and took out his driver’s license. Tony took out a fifty dollar bill and slid it across the table toward Jake. Jake slid a ten back and uncorked the bottle. Then he walked away.

  “Meduzzel,” Max said reading off the bottle. “What’s this, Tone?”

  “Only the best for you, Max,” Tony said, pouring some of the sherry in each glass. The golden liquid poured like syrup. Tony picked up his glass and swirled it around. He watched as it dripped slowly down the sides of the liquor glass making amber arches clinging to the clear crystal. Max put his glass unceremoniously to his lips and sipped.

  “Pretty good,” he said. “I’ve never had sherry before.”

  “Pretty good!” Tony protested. “Heresy!” He swiped Max’s glass away. “Now, do it like this,” he said, handing Max his glass back and demonstrating how to swirl the sherry around. “Now, inhale the aroma,” he said, putting his own nose near his glass and taking a deep breath in. Max copied him. “Now, drink.”

  “Tastes like figs,” Max said matter-of-fact.

  “You’re hopeless, Max. Try it again.” Max took another sip and closed his eyes. A tiny smile came to his lips.

  “How in heck do they do that?” he asked without opening his eyes. Tony smiled.

  “What do you taste?” Max thought over his answer very carefully.

  “It’s like...a church. Like, candles and soot and incense and wine.” He opened his eyes. Tony was staring back at him. He had discovered Meduzzel sherry backpacking through Andalusia, Spain before starting undergraduate school. When he first had it, it made him feel like he was drinking two thousand years of Catholic history. He had yet to find someone else to share his passion for it, but he had long suspected Max would.“They have these wooden barrels stacked up in the distillery. Every 10 years, they take a fifth of what’s in the barrels and put it in the barrel below. They do that three times before they bottle it for sale.”

  “You mean this stuff is thirty years old?”

  “Forty. But that’s the youngest molecules,” Tony explained. “Since a majority of each barrel stays behind, some of the molecules are from the original batch each time. Some of the molecules of sherry are as old as the oldest cask.”

  “How old is that?”

  “Three hundred years.” Max held the glass out and stared at the remaining few drops, thinking about all the wars, the triumphs, the birth, deaths, plagues, and discoveries had happened within a few miles of those very drops. Just as he had with so many museum artifacts growing up, he imagined the stories this object would tell him if it could.

  “You mean I just drank something older than this country?” he finally asked, trying to feel a sense of scale.

  “And there’s plenty more where that came from,” Tony said, refilling Max’s glass. Max swirled it around and inhaled it deeply. He felt connected with something ancient and mysterious. Something passionate and romantic, and yet tragic and sorrowful. How can all that fit in a glass, he wondered. For once he decided he didn’t want to know and kept drinking.

  Renee sat at a table near the back of Ray’s Original Coffee with a biology book open in front of her when the bell on the front door started jingling. She stood up to run behind the counter before realizing the customer was Sal. Behind the tall, well bundled figure, the sun was just beginning to set on the other side of the plate glass windows.

  “Hey, Sal,” Renee called out to her, already getting out a cup and saucer. “The usual?”

  “Make it a double today, Renee,” she said, stomping the snow off her boots. “I have a test Friday I haven’t started studying for.”

  “I thought you were gonna go home right after I saw you yesterday and hit the books!” Renee protested.

  “I know, I know,” Sal said defensively. “But, there was a party at alpha sig last night.... boy, you should have been there.” Behind the giant industrial espresso machine, Renee sighed to herself. She had had more than her fair share of parties in high school, she thought to herself. She
could forgo them now. Maybe this summer… she thought to herself, longing for a break in her hectic schedule. Renee finished pouring the steaming liquid into a ceramic demitasse cup and put the cup and saucer in front of Sal.

  “A party on a Wednesday night,” she said casually. “No thank you.”

  “Your loss,” Sal said flippantly. Seeing no other customers, Renee pulled out a chair across from her friend and sat down. She loved five o’clock on weekdays. It was the hour of the day that was too late for a late lunch and too early for the after dinner crowd. The coffee house was always nearly abandoned at this hour, which is why this is when Sal came by to study.

  “You look like you could use one of these, too,” Sal said, lifting her coffee cup. “What’s with the bags under your eyes.”

  “It’s nothing,” Renee said, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn. “I’m just trying to study more then last semester. It isn’t easy with my work schedule.”

  “Hun, how much are you sleeping?”

  “I dunnoh,” Renee said noncommittally. “Three, four hours a night.” Sal’s eyes widened.

  “Hun, don’t you know that’s counter productive? You can’t learn well when you haven’t slept. Your brain shuts down.” Renee stared off into space and sighed.

  “I feel like my brain is shut down,” she said, looking deflated.

  “You need to cut back on your hours at work,” Sal suggested. Renee shook her head.

  “We’ve been over this before. If I want my trust fund to last through college, I can’t spend it any faster. I have to work this much.” There was a jingling at the door. Renee ran back behind the counter. A middle aged man in a trench coat walked in, shaking flakes of snow off his umbrella and balancing it against the wall near the entrance. He didn’t take off his coat. Renee was thankful as she pulled a paper cup off the stack in preparation for his order. She filled his coffee order and watched him walk out, then sat down again with Sal.

  “Renee, I think you need to consider my offer,” her friend urged. Renee closed her eyes and remained silent, thinking for the fourth time I can’t believe I’m even considering this.

  “I’m not going to work at the Fox Tail,” she said, opening her eyes. Sal could already tell her conviction was waning since their last discussion on the topic a few days earlier.

  “Renee, it’s the only way you’re going to be able to make the money you need for school and have the time you need to study. I can make $500 a night there. I’m sure you can make close to that.”

  The topic had first come up two months ago when Sal was shopping for Christmas presents. Renee, who had no one to shop for, had gone along as a much needed diversion from studying. If Sal had realized how tightly Renee’s budget was constricted, she never would have invited her along, afraid she would seem to be gloating about her own good fortune. Conveniently, Renee was the same size as Sal’s younger sister, Clara. Sal contrived to buy Renee lunch as payment for Renee modeling potential gift ideas.

  Renee was uncomfortable with this thinly veiled act of charity until she saw the gifts Sal was buying for her family. She was amazed at what the 20-year-old could afford—a $200 watch for her little brother, and expensive stereo system for her parents. That’s when Sal told Renee her secret. She was an exotic dancer three nights a week. For Pete’s sake, Renee, she said when her friend seemed shocked, my name is Salome. What did you expect?

  “It just seems too much like prostitution,” Renee said, her usual starting point.

  “No, that’s the Fox Den across town,” Sal responded evenly. “If Chuck were considering anything shady, he reconsidered when they got busted and the owner spent a year in prison. Chuck’s all legal. He keeps the place pretty classy.”

  “Classy... a strip club,” Renee said dubiously.

  “A gentlemen’s club. An exotic dance lounge. Most of the girls aren’t even topless. No poles. Everyone has to have a legitimate act.”

  “A legitimate act?” Renee asked.

  “Yeah. Like, since I did all of that ballet as a kid, I do this Russian ballerina act.”

  “And you do ballet naked.”

  “Scantily clad.... by the end… topless… ish.”

  “I don’t know,” Renee said, getting up to make herself some coffee.

  “Renee, you’d be perfect,” Sal insisted. “You could do a belly dance thing… show off some of those moves I saw you do at that party at the beginning of the year.” The party, the night before classes started Freshman year, was Renee’s last. That was now five months ago, three months after Renee had left Hectortown for good. It was the last time she felt like her head was above water.

  “I thought Micah already did a belly dance routine,” Renee protested weakly.

  “She had such a huge scar after the appendectomy, Chuck had to let her go.”

  “Just for having a surgical scar?” Renee asked, shocked at what seemed terribly hypocritical.

  “I told you, Chuck has high standards.”

  “Yeah, what about Kelly?” Renee asked. Kelly was one of Sal’s friends who worked full time at the Fox Tail. “She cut both her arms all the way up to the elbow.”

  “Yeah, but when she dances she wears elbow length gloves,” Sal answered, draining her cup. “That’s not the skin men pay to see.”

  Renee busied herself moving things around behind the counter. She fingered the St. Francis medal around her neck. Max had given it to her before her sophomore year of high school when she had started working at the animal shelter. She had known even then what she wanted to do with her life. How could she let something as trivial as money keep her from becoming a veterinarian now? But how can I dance naked for money? She asked herself. St. Francis suffered for his love of animals—suffered poverty, hunger, disease. Couldn’t she tolerate a little humiliation? Renee tried to block out the voice of her guidance counselor. Pearls before swine… She had to persevere for her education. Pearls before swine… even if it was going to be difficult. Max would want you to go to Brighton and do well and be a veterinarian. Max would want you to go. But I can’t dance topless! She argued back at herself. You don’t want to disappoint him, do you? Renee shook her head. And, on his birthday. His twenty-first birthday, and I’m going to get a job in a bar. Ironic. But, I can’t do it. You can. You can do it for him. You always were dancing for him anyway… all those nights. All those parties. But topless?

  Other then Max, she hadn’t been topless in front of any men except paramedics and doctors since her father used to give she and her brothers baths as preschoolers. She remembered the day Jen and Sarah took her underwear shopping. She felt dirty even then in front of her friends with a brassier on. What’s the big deal? She imagined Max asking. It’s not like their eyes can hurt you. But they can, she wanted to argue back. Because they’re not yours. Renee sighed to herself. In those eyes, she had had nothing to hide. In those eyes she’d felt safer then in the reflection of her own in the mirror. Max would want you to… She wished those eyes could watch over her now. Somehow, they would keep her safe. They could guard her from danger. She could almost see him at the seminary, conscientiously in prayer. Could he still see her from hundreds of miles away? She was out of his sight now, she knew. She was banished to self-imposed exile. Yet, if he were still praying, vigilant, pious, for the safety of his family and friends, surely some of God’s protection would still spill out onto her accidentally. You wouldn’t want to disappoint him. Renee crossed herself and walked around the edge of the counter.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Sixteen hours later in Ohio, Max stared at his oatmeal, his head pounding. He had woken up two hours ago with lightning bolts shooting through his brain. Two aspirin, a few glasses of water, and an hour of sleep later, and he had just converted a sharp stabbing pain into a dull throbbing pain and nausea. After a hot shower, he got dressed and wandered across campus to the cafeteria. He hoped some bland food would help settle his stomach. He could think of nothing blander than the cafeteria’s oatmeal. But w
ith the steaming bowl in front of him, the last thing he wanted to do was eat.

  “It’s not going to answer you back,” Tony said, plopping down in front of him. Max looked up at him confused. “The oatmeal. You’re staring at it like you expect it to start talking.” Max continued to stare blankly.

  “What in the heck did we do last night, Tone?”

  “Dude, I drop forty bucks on a bottle of forty-year-old imported sherry for your birthday and this is how you thank me? By forgetting the whole thing?” Max rubbed his eyes with his right hand.

  “No, Tone, I remember that. I remember the sherry. Then I remember you taking out the guitar and massacring some love song. And then.... nothing.” Tony chuckled.

  “You forgot the twins?”

  “Twins?”

  “You have to remember the twins.” Max shook his head. “What about the blond in the green dress?” Max’s eyes got wider.

  “No,” he said honestly. He was beginning to worry. He had often had a drink or two with his friends since starting college, but he never drank enough to actually forget what happened... at least not before.