SEPTEMBER 1956 – TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER
THEODORE RILEY
THE CONCRETE TOWERS of the Oregon State Penitentiary rose high, a doomed cathedral against the wide blue sky. I parked my ’39 De Soto, took another swig of Murphy’s, put the bottle back under the seat, and climbed out of the car.
Next to the front gates lay a bird—a sparrow. Smashed, rusty brown-and-white feathers flittering in the breeze. I wanted to scoop it up, take it home, bury it on Neahkahnie Mountain. Instead, I walked by it and through the overlapping, locking metal gates. I was late.
Guards stared down from their twenty-foot towers of providence past the barbed wire, the cement barriers, and their rifles—.30 caliber M1s. I felt the ghost of mine slung over my shoulder. Theirs were aimed at me. I looked up. They nodded and I opened the second gate.
Inside the office was the check-in desk. Behind that desk sat a fat man with a pelt of black hair, stern puffy eyes, and a nameplate over his silver badge: Officer Stamboli. He had sausage-like fingers, furry knuckles, and an aroma like liverwurst. I’d never seen him before.
“Father Riley?” he asked.
“Sorry I’m late,” I replied, though in that place time was a relative thing. “Where’s Charlie?” I took off my watch and gave it to him.
Officer Stamboli put my watch in an envelope, handed me a pen with his hairy hands, and said, “No Charlie today.”
“Okay,” I said, and signed in.
He checked my signature against his paperwork. “Keys?” he continued.
I handed over the car keys and emptied the contents of my pockets: my red rosary and Kiernan’s tin soldier with a chipped red arm band.
“Interesting companion for your rosary, Father,” he quipped. “Okay, sleeves.”
I rolled up my black shirt sleeves to reveal no knifes or razor blades taped to my skin.
“Nice tattoo,” he said studying the angel on my forearm, his eyes tracing the bloody sword in my angel’s hands. “Fancy yourself a fallen angel, huh.” He then nodded to roll my sleeves back down as he thumbed through my Bible. “Officer Timmons, show our toy-soldier-totin’, tattooed fallen angel to the chapel, will ya.”
Officer Timmons—we’d met before—was a towering, hard-boiled officer with a square jaw, crew cut, and watchful eyes. He opened the door that led down the linoleum-floored corridor past the locked gymnasium where prisoners worked at the prison’s main industry, wooden furniture. He didn’t speak; gave the impression he didn’t care for priests. That’s okay, neither did I. We were both just going through the motions. Hell, had my family not left Ireland when we did I’d likely be an occupant in a penitentiary much like this one, with a guard much like him.
Our footsteps echoed off bare walls all the way to the windowless chapel. I laid my Bible on the shelf, sat on the padded bench in the confession booth that looked more like a poor man’s crypt than a place of secrets, and waited for my first confession. Most weren’t much more than guilt-ridden claims of virtue and pleas for clemency; they had little to do with true repentance. True repentance was rare.
***
“RIOT!” Muffled screams and shouts arose from somewhere outside, then a gunshot. “Riot in the yard!” someone yelled. I stepped out of the coffer. Two guards rushed into the chapel, kindly demanding my company. They ushered me down the hall, then shoved me into a six-by-six holding cell. The stench of bleach and vomit made me nauseous.
“I’d rather not be locked into—”
“It’s for your safety, Father,” one of the guards said. The clank of the metal door slammed behind me. Sirens rang out. The officer bolted away. A door somewhere far off sealed shut, sucking the air from the room. A brittle stillness fell over the long, government-green corridor. There was hushed silence except for the muted uproar outside the narrow, ceiling-high windows. Sweat covered my face, dripping from my forehead to my black cleric shirt. I blinked away images of chicken wire and sludge in my cell in Korea, the stench of urine and blood, the sound of roosters, women screaming, and gunfire—and took a deep breath, reminding myself I was in a comfy U.S. prison and would soon leave at will.
***
“A man of the cloth.” A faceless voice curled around from the bars of the adjoining cell; a concrete wall divided us. His resonant tone was menacing, controlled—a patient cougar’s rumble. “Locked up, eh . . . Well, welcome to the dark side of Eden, Padre.”
I looked along the row of cages, cages painted a polluted milky green. My eyes and ears landed on the one to my right. His large hands hung limp outside the bars. One hand was long and slender; the other knotted, twisted, and gnarled with imperfections, yet sporting a large gold ring, as if he celebrated the defect. But why did a prisoner still have his ring?
“Father Riley!” blustered one guard with a just-past-puberty face and anxious blue eyes as he rushed down the hallway. “Are ya alright in there?”
“I’m fine,” I said as I stood from the padded cot. “Thank you.”
“I’m fine, too,” my nameless neighbor announced. “Thank you.”
Color drained from the guard’s cheeks and his face turned to stone. He yanked the club from its holster and whacked it against the bars of my neighbor’s cage. “Shut the hell up!”
Then he looked back at me. “Don’t waste time on this one, Father.” He hammered his club against the metal again. “There ain’t no redemption for a man who hungers for children. We’re processin’ him in today and he’s here for a good long time . . . aren’t ya, buddy . . . We’re gonna break that ugly-ass hand a’ his to get that ring off. Should be a good day.”
Another shot outside. The guard trotted off, the clank of his crowded key ring and his footsteps ricocheting off the hall into silence.
“Redemption?” My neighbor’s gravelly voice pierced the quiet. “Fool.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked. “Redemption?”
“Well, maybe a little salvation,” he said. “Not too sure ’bout redemption.”
“Anyone can be saved,” I offered, “but not everyone can be redeemed. So which is it?”
“Ah, a man who knows the difference,” he pondered. “They don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Understand what I do.”
“What do you do?”
His feet shuffled. The bars creaked with the weight of his body leaning against the gate.
“I illuminate,” he said, a trace of the South in his tone. Arkansas, or maybe Missouri?
“Illuminate?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” I said.
“You . . . you’re just another gatekeeper to my salvation.”
“I’m no gatekeeper,” I said tilting my head, pressing against the bars again, to see what I could see of him, his twisted hand, his ostentatious ring. “Then is there anything I can do for you, brother? Any prayers?”
His hands appeared outside once more, clasped together.
“Prayers, Padre . . . to you? Why, did you ride in on some proverbial pale horse? You that rider named Death? Should I hold my breath, speak in tongues amongst the dying, all vying, crying, lying. Should I, Padre? No . . . no plea for clemency shall be. The Grim Reaper holds no dominion over me.”
“Okay, poet—what do you want then?”
“I want out!”
“Besides out, what do you want?”
“A cigarette.” He took a deep breath. “And to go to the Kansas City Fair, ride some rides, dance, see people . . . cotton candy, kids,” he laughed.
My stomach seized as his laughter released his dark essence. It filled his cell.
“You from Kansas?”
“Did ya know, Padre, it’s tradition with German Jews, when death occurs, open a winda’ so the soul can fly away like a bird . . . ‘Flee as a bird to your mountain,’ they say.”
“So, Jewish then?”
“’Bout as Jewish and Kansas as you, Padre. Saw ya when you limped in. Saw your face in the newspaper, you’re that war-hero-boxing-champion-turned-priest, from the coast. You’re what, thirty-three years old? You walk like an old man.”
I remained silent.
“Strange career path,” he said. “War hero. What is it you want in this place, Padre? Didn’t you get enough prison after that bug-infested Korean cell? And why do you smell like a Baby Ruth . . . and whiskey? Man of contradictions, eh?”
The weak scent of dried cloves didn’t mask his sour sweat. I slouched back alongside our adjoining wall and listened to his deep, struggling breaths—the raspy noise of asthma teased his lungs, and he sounded like a sluggish Grizzly groaning in anticipation of hibernation.
“I can pray with you, or for you,” I said. “That’s what I have to offer.” My jaw tensed again at the thought of making any request for redemption on behalf of this pervert.
“You mean prey on me?” he chided. “That’s what your ilk does, right? Lay hands, seek some lever of power, find that crack in a man’s soul, something he feels bad about. Always collectin’ secrets in that little booth, black mailin’ with the threat of a fiery future, strong armin’ poor, dumb folk into bein’ ‘better men.’ But for whom, Padre?” He took a deep breath and continued. “See, this is the funny thing ’bout jail. In here, I’m a free man. Free to rest, think, do as I please. Out there in your world, if you had your way, everyone would be a slave to some higher power. You come here selling salvation, freedom from the future. Funny thing is, you’re the one who’s damned. At least we know we’re damned. I know I’m burning . . . my daddy made that clear to me . . . but, I’m curious Padre, what are you trying to buy with your so-called virtue? War hero? I got a feelin’ you killed more folks, more kids, than me. People you didn’t even know. So who do you serve? Uncle Sam? Or was that just another dose of God’s mercy? War HE-RO! Now that’s divine comedy, there. Always got to keep your eye on those ‘higher powers,’ priest, murderer priest . . . slave. You and me, Padre, we’re both slaves. Rats rotting in a cage. Thing is, I can get out.”
Murderer priest reverberated off the walls, windows, bars, and silence. Through the faded green wall I felt the sneer on his face. How had this snake sensed the crack in my soul?
“Was that a confession?” I asked as two gunshots were fired outside the window.
“You familiar with the Chamber of Guf, Padre?”
“Chamber of Guf?” I repeated. Then, recalling my religious studies I asked, “Jewish mysticism?”
“Jewish mysticism,” he laughed. “Finally, an educated opponent. Got a cigarette, Padre?”
“No cigarettes. What about this Chamber of Guf?”
“Alright . . . salvation, then,” he decided. “Or some of that redemption you carry in your pocket with your fancy prayer beads. Not that I haven’t done enough to earn my way into that glorious seventh heaven.”
“We receive salvation through grace, not works. When we perform good deeds, it’s out of gratitude to Jesus and to spread His kingdom, not to earn our way into heaven.”
“Well, that’s your take,” he said. “That’s fine. Absolution, then.”
I should have begun the prayer of absolution right then and there. A real priest would have, a rational man would have, but I remained silent, lips clenched, jaw hardened to stone, picturing him offering pink cotton candy to a child, then sweeping that child into his dark hell. I’d seen a country full of stolen and thrown-away children. Sometimes death was better.
“Then justice,” he chose. “I want justice.”
“There is no justice.”
There was a thud as he dropped to the floor. “So . . . you’re a priest who doesn’t offer a condemned man redemption and doesn’t believe in justice?” He laughed, then his voice grew angry, his breathing heavier. “You dare deny me absolution?”
“I have nothing for you.” I spit out the words with no compassion, hope, or comfort.
“They don’t see the art in what I do,” he said, his voice now smooth and low, deceitful in its remorseful tone. “I just want someone to see the beauty. You would see the beauty.”
“Again, what is it you do?”
The metal door crashed open and the guard reappeared. “Father,” he said as his many keys clanked against the bars. “It’s time to get you outta here.” He swung the door open.
As I walked by my dark neighbor’s cage, I stopped. He lay hunched in the shadows of the cell; Lucifer, trapped in a hell of his own making. He turned his large, shaved head into the painted green corner. I didn’t see his face. He didn’t want pardon, forgiveness, or to confess his many crimes. No, he wanted respect, to be appreciated for his art. And no, I didn’t offer him absolution. Instead, I longed to reach through those bars and beat the life from him with my bare hands. Another place, another time, I would have.
“Who’s in a prison, priest?” His guttural voice emerged from the shadows.
“Perhaps,” I proffered into his darkness, “perhaps the days of reckoning are at hand, for both of us . . . Poet.” I turned and followed the guard out. Maybe that guard was right—there was little appetite for salvation behind those towers of doom, the hollow corridors, doors of steel, and windows where no light was allowed to shine through, and where birds lay dead at the entrance.
***
Outside, the bird’s body was gone. All that was left were a few blood-stained feathers. Garbage trucks were at the side gate; the air reeked of the compost from the thousands of lost souls behind those walls. Clouds rolled in from Tillamook Valley, carrying the smell of farmland, cows, fresh-turned soil, a hint of rain, moisture in the breeze. I popped the top on my convertible, got in, took a drink from the bottle of Murphy’s, then started the car. That hint of cleansing rain trickled light against my skin. I put on my hat, let that rain fall, and left the flat, grey parking lot to drive through the evergreen hills and wind-shaped trees of the Oregon Coast, out to a sweet world just two hours west: Manzanita, a little piece of heaven the angels saved for those few folks who work and struggle to make a life. Not the reeking souls who don’t think twice about what it means to take one.