Thursday, August 27, 2009

Short story: The Monsignor and the Tambourine

As he lay in bed, he had a tambourine next to him. It was a tambourine that came from his mother’s church. He had stolen it as a boy and never wanted anyone to know that he had it. But one dark, starry night, he thought he’d break into the church and take it back. He was half-drunk when he came upon the notion, but completely sober by the time he found himself at the church door.

“What the hell am I thinking?” But in his mind he absolutely could not have waited until the light of day. His boys would’ve questioned where he was going, and what was he doing with a tambourine to begin with. “Naw, I ain’t no punk,” he uttered quietly. It’s bad enough that he found himself hanging with people he quietly despised. Knuckleheads- that’s what Xavier, who owned the corner bodega, called them. However it was better to be with them, than to get your ass kicked by them, he reasoned.

Before the devil could do what the young man quietly resisted, the door opened. There stood Monsignor Jackson, a man with a gentle, bespectacled face with a short salt-and-pepper ‘fro. “Can I help you,” he asked. “Aw damn,” the young man thought. He hadn’t had time to get his Plan B explanation together in the event that he was caught.

“I found this,” came from the young man’s mouth as he reached the tambourine across the years, back to its original home. “How do you know it belongs to us?” asked the Monsignor.

Plan C. Nothing.

The young man figured that there was no way out of this. The only way to save face was to tell the truth.

“I took it when I was a boy. Right after my moms passed.” The Monsignor stared for a couple of moments and then invited him in.

The young man hadn’t been in a church for many, many years. But at the instant of recognition memories flooded in from his past. His heart felt weighted by happy thoughts of his mother bringing him there, trying to help him find a relationship with his Maker. It was all so embarrassing to him. All the other kids, if they went to church at all, went to a regular church, not a Catholic one. They got a chance to see an old lady lose her wig when she got the Holy Spirit. They could dance and clap when the choir really got going and the organ raced alongside the piano. And they also got to talk back to the reverend, even while he was preaching. “Preach Rev!” “Tell the truth and shame the devil!” There was none of this at his Catholic church. But it was his mother’s church.

Thinking about these days made him sad that he had disappointed her stalwart efforts to ensure his salvation. He was sad that he hadn’t given her this one thing. Would it have been so much to pay attention just a little bit more? He could’ve even kept going on his own. There were plenty of kids who left church to ride in between the subway train cars, spit some lyrics in a cipher, or smoke a little weed when nobody was looking.

The young man turned to look at the Monsignor. “I want to become a priest,” he said. “Many do,” said the Monsignor adding, “but few are chosen. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The young man said, “then you could use a person like me who already knows the way.”