Lake Shore

John Power was born and raised in and around New York City, graduated from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and has resided in Chicago for the last 15 years.

Power’s stories have appeared in The William & Mary Review, Barzakh Magazine, West Trade Review, Cleaning Up Glitter, and The Great Lakes Review, among others.  His novel "Participation" is available on amazon.com,

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes (7776 words)

It was, unfortunately, a warm spring day.  Gideon was hoping for a cooler one.  Or, if not cooler, one where it had been cooler the night before, and the morning’s sun had not yet burned off the fog.  A week or so ago, Gideon had gone out for a morning walk along the lakeshore path, and the fog was so thick the Lake disappeared into the grey barely a few feet beyond the water’s edge.  He couldn’t see anything ahead of him, and if Gideon hadn’t known where he was already, he could have easily assumed he was at one side of an unimpressive river, with the opposite bank just a few yards away.  When he got back to the rectory his clothes were damp, as if he’d been out in a drizzling rain.

Today, however, it was clear, and Lake Michigan stretched out as an endless expanse of dark blue under a light blue, cloudless sky.  With the better weather came the runners, walkers, cyclists, and dogs, and Gideon wasn’t alone as he had been in the fog.  Gideon wondered why that fog was here a week ago, and why it was so clear now.  It had been a warm spring, and a warm winter before that.  But for a few weeks April snapped back and behaved like April, or even like March, and when Gideon went to look at the vast expansive nothingness of the Lake, he was instead hit by a wall of enveloping fog.  

He’d been meaning to learn more about weather, and had resolved to pick up a book on the subject next time he was at a half-off book sale.  Cumulus, nimbus, low barometric pressure.  Gideon had vague ideas of what those words meant from an earth science class in seventh grade, and from watching the local news.  Cold fronts were marked with blue triangular spikes, like barbed wire, and warm fronts had red semicircles, like little suns.

He had picked up a book about birds and another about trees, both for half-off, a few years ago when he resolved to learn about birds and trees.  The books were still on his bookshelf, mostly unread.  Gideon looked around now at the trees that surrounded him in the park.  He couldn’t identify any beyond knowing they weren’t pine trees, and weren’t giant sequoias either.  He wished he knew trees and birds.  That seemed like something to know.

Weather, too, was something to know.  Why was it foggy a few weeks ago, when he wanted it to be clear, and now when he hoped for a foggy day, was it crisp and clear?  It was something to do with the changing temperature, Gideon knew, but wasn’t sure if it was hot weather following cool, or cool weather following hot.  Humidity was probably a factor too, and maybe that barometric pressure.  “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” popped into his head, though he doubted prayers for rain to win a few baseball games would be answered.  From Noah to the Spanish Armada and beyond, though, God had been seen in the weather.  Gods, too, in Indian rain dances and other Indian monsoon ceremonies.  God didn’t do that, though.  Or, at least, God wouldn’t do that for Gideon just so he could have a foggy day when he wanted a clear one, and now, when he wanted to be enveloped, a crystal clear day.  God was certainly a personal God acting in individual lives, but not like that.  Gideon remembered Pat Robertson once got in trouble for claiming that the prayers of his flock diverted a hurricane that was on path to destroy his church.  The hurricane missed Robertson’s church, but destroyed homes and caused extensive damage and even killed a few other people along its new path.

God didn’t work like that, Gideon knew.  At the very least, God wouldn’t trouble himself with fog or cloudlessness depending on which would better fit Gideon’s pensive mood.  He didn’t work in sarcasm.  And so, now, there was no fog forcing Gideon to listen for tires or sneakers on the pavement, or jangling dog collars, before he crossed the path.  No fog making him wonder, if his arms were just a few feet longer, if his hands would disappear if he held them all the way out from his body.  No fog making even those objects close enough to see appear blurry and wet, as if a camera’s focus settings were just slightly off.  Instead, Gideon stood on thick green grass, looked forward to white sails dotting the blue lake, and south to a khaki beach in front of a black and grey and glass city, and a long red pier.  Gideon wanted the fog to come over him, and to cut him off from everything in this world.  Instead, he stared out east, at the vast nothingness of the Lake.

**

“Did Warren Spahn play for St. Louis?” Gideon asked, “or maybe Cleveland?”

Martin sat quietly, and when the answer didn’t come to him quickly enough he shook his drink, the ice cubes clanking against the sides.  “I used to know that,” he said.

Martin had a large triangular nose placed dead-center on his face, slightly above severe-looking lips, and slightly below dark, bushy eyebrows.  He had a sweep of black hair parted on the left and revealing a high forehead, but his sideburns and the rest of his hair was grey, curly, and longish, like a soldier from the 1840s.  Now a large man, though thinner in his youth, Martin looked like he could have been a kindly grandfather doling out aged wisdom, or a ruthless capitalist calling in strikebreakers.  He was neither, of course.  He just looked that way.  The simple wisdom Martin bestowed was simple not because he’d explored the complicated and knew the most important things were simple.  The simple wisdom was just as far as he got.

“Spahn and Sain and pray for rain,” Martin mused.  “Sounds hopeless, and I think a team that’s no longer around.  The Senators?”

Martin had a glass of wine with dinner every night, and then a glass of scotch afterwards “to help the digestion.”  He was now at the scotch part of the evening, and Martin and Gideon had retired from the dining room into the rectory’s living room.  There was a small TV room back behind the dining room by the kitchen, but since the living room was used for occasional parish gatherings, it was devoid of a television.  The large living room had a smattering of unmatched couches, chairs, and coffee tables, red wall-to-wall carpeting, and old pictures of the Church and past pastors hanging on the walls.

“I’ve got it,” Martin said, and smiled, quite proud of himself, and rattled the ice in his glass again.

Gideon didn’t have a drink, but routinely joined Martin for a few minutes after dinner each evening.  Before going back to his own room to read or watch TV, or oftentimes into the TV room by the kitchen to watch sports or news, Gideon would sit with Martin while Martin finished his nightly digestive.  They’d finish up a conversation from dinner that had meandered down a digression without ever concluding, or Gideon would ask about the week’s readings and bounce homily ideas off Martin, or Gideon would bring up some other philosophical problem he’d read about that day.  Martin was content to drink his scotch and talk about the Cubs, or the Bulls, or the Bears, or the offseason, or to just sit in silence.  But if Gideon was asking questions and driving the conversation, Martin was willing to offer his thoughts and ideas about the truth as he saw it.

“The Braves.”

“The Braves?”

“Yeah, but not Atlanta.  Boston.  Or maybe Milwaukee.”

“Oh, that sounds right,” Gideon said.  

Gideon had a long thin face with a long thin nose, watery brown eyes, and thick black hair he combed up and back over his head, almost in a pompadour, which only added to his height and made his face appear longer and thinner.  His posture was too good, and his collar kept his chin up and prevented slouching.  Martin took off his collar in the rectory, or in the car, or at a game, or anywhere he thought it appropriate for a priest to relax.  Gideon put his collar on in the morning with his contact lenses, and took the collar off and the lenses out before going to bed.  

Gideon couldn’t help the posture, even though he’d been trying.  His brother and his sister had the same posture, as did his father, and if there wasn’t a genetic component to it, the straight back was certainly nurtured into all of them.  Gideon was concerned now that it kept him from connecting with the parishioners, that he seemed standoffish, and that he lacked the easygoing, slouched, hand-shaking-on-the-plaza-after-mass abilities that Martin had.  Gideon worried the older parishioners would see him as just pretending to stand firm and dignified, as a phony putting on airs of Church authority, the kind of person they thought they got rid of with Vatican II.  He worried the middle-aged parishioners would think the stiffness wasn’t put-on, that it signified a deeper coldness and rigidity, and that he only became a priest because he didn’t have any friends and couldn’t find a girl to marry him.  He worried most about the younger parishioners, however.  As the young priest it was his job to relate to the young people, to show them he was one of them, and there was a place for cool young people in the Church.  It was a fine line between cool and cold, however, and Gideon worried he was turning more of them off than on.  And so Gideon leaned back in his chair, unbuttoned his collar, drooped his shoulders, and made an effort to slouch like Martin.

“They were terrible, I think, Boston or Milwaukee,” Martin said.  “Spahn and Sain were their only two good pitchers, so they hoped it would be them two, then it would rain until they were up in the rotation again.  Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.”

“It didn’t work, did it?”

“That I do not know,” Martin said.  “You’d have to doubt God is a Boston fan, though.  Or Cubs.  Well, Boston Braves.  Maybe He could have been a Boston Braves fan.  Definitely not the Sox.”

“I haven’t found praying for weather ever works,” Gideon said.

“He works in mysterious ways,” Martin shrugged before taking a sip.

“I had a bad confession.  I was hoping the weather would agree with me, but it was clear.  I went for a walk by the Lake and I could see for miles.  Have you ever had a confession shake you?”

“That’s not really a baseball question, is it?” Martin asked.

“No, it’s not.”

“What do you mean ‘shake you?’  Shake your faith?”

“No.  Just shaken.  I knew people could do this.  I didn’t know they’d come tell me about it,” Gideon said.

“The need to confess is strong.  We all need it sometimes.  I’ve had some doozies in there.”

“What do you do?”

“I think I assigned a rosary once.  As soon as I did it I realized the person probably didn’t know how to say the rosary.  Maybe she went and looked it up, I don’t know.  Ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers is as high as I go now.”

“Not for them.  I mean for you.  Someone confesses something truly and wholly awful.  What do you do?”

“They didn’t confess to me,” Martin said.

“I know that.”

“They confessed to Him.”

“But you’re in the room,” Gideon said.

“Yes.”

“And how do you go on knowing that?”

“You must have known whatever was confessed existed, didn’t you?  Man’s capacity for sin may be boundless, but there hasn’t been a truly original sin for a long time,” Martin said while smiling at his favorite joke about original sin.

“Of course I knew it existed.  I didn’t know I’d have to confront it.  Most of the confessions I get are from the school.  Suzie was mean to her brother or talked back to her parents.  I can forgive those.  The big ones are different.”

“You’re not forgiving the small ones or the big ones.  You’re not forgiving anything.”

“I know I’m not forgiving anything,” Gideon said.  “I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was.”

“That’s all right,” Martin said, and he took a sip from his glass even though the scotch was gone now, and all that was left were three ice cubes slowly melting.

“But it’s different, isn’t it?  Isn’t it something different to forgive a big one and little one?”

“There is a different weight to it,” Martin admitted.  “And it’s different for them too.  The kids were told to go home and think about their sins the night before.  It’s homework.  I’ve wondered how many Suzies were even mean to their brothers or talked back to their parents at all, or if they just needed to come up with some sins to confess.  That makes you think, doesn’t it?” Martin smiled.  “What kind of sin is it to lie about the sins you’ve committed just so you’ll have some sins to confess?”

“That doesn’t seem so bad.”

“Nothing’s so bad it can’t be forgiven.  Adultery.  Lies.  Stealing.  I’ve had them all.”

“Murder?” Gideon asked.

“No.  Well, I had a hit-and-run.  Drunk driving.  That one has stayed with me.”

“What did he say?”

“She.  She broke down.  Young woman, from the voice.  I didn’t look, of course, but she sounded like a young woman.”

“What did you do?” Gideon asked.

“Absolved her.  Counseled her to report it.  She said she didn’t even know what happened to him.  She hit him and was scared and drove away.  Not knowing what happened seemed like her real concern.  If she knew what happened to him, she would have known what to do.  But not knowing made it so there were a million possibilities running through her head, and she was frozen.  Ten Hail Marys.  There are some, I’ve found, who need to know that what they’re confessing was actually wrong, and the Our Father seems to do that.  It has more power and glory, as they say,” and Martin motioned with his hand in a grand and rolling way when he said “power and glory.”  “It talks about forgiveness, and leading us not into temptation.  It conveys the sense that they did something wrong, and if they’re not sorry for it, His will will be done.  When they know they did something wrong, the Hail Mary is better.  Pray for us sinners.  We all need her prayers.  The image of the Blessed Mother is better too.  We’ve sinned, but she’ll still give us a hug.”

“Did you look for it in the news?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see it?”

“No,” Martin said.  “It was probably already in the papers by the time she came in to confess, but I didn’t go back to look for it.  Or maybe it didn’t make the papers.  Maybe the guy was OK.  Who knows?”

“And you never told anyone?”

“No more than I told you.”

“You only told me it was a woman.”

“Exactly,” Martin said.  “Even among priests.  You don’t know who, or when, or where.”

“Do you know who it was?” Gideon asked.

“I have a suspicion, but I don’t know.”

“She’s in the parish?”

Martin smiled and shook his head.  “It’s confidential, Gideon.”

“I’m not trying to find out, I’m just surprised.”

“She told me some details.  If I wanted to find her I think I could.  Or maybe I’ve been reading too many mysteries.”

“And you don’t feel any obligation to tell anyone?” Gideon asked.

“Tell who?”

“The police.  She might have killed someone.”

“We can’t do that.  Separation of church and state, and all that,” and Martin again rolled his hand in a grand manner when he said “separation of church and state.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Gideon said.  “Don’t you want to tell someone?  I feel like I’m sinning by not telling anyone.”

“If we told the police, no one would confess in the first place.  We’re not keeping secret anything anyone else would ever know.”

“I know the theoretical side of it, Martin.  But someone confessed to me that they killed someone.  I don’t know if I can live with not telling anyone, but if I tell the police then maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

“Do you know who did it?” Martin asked.

“No.”

“Do you know when it happened?”

“No.”

“Did he say he was going to kill again?”

“No, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“No.  It sounded like a kid.  He said it was a gang thing.”

“Black kid?” Martin asked.

“The voice sounded African-American, yes.”

“You don’t think a parishioner?”

“No,” Gideon said.  “I think he came up here because no one knew him up here.  I couldn’t ID him even if I wanted to.”

“So what would you tell the police?” Martin asked.  “Some black kid in a gang from the South Side killed someone?  The police know that already.  What did he tell you?”

“He sat down on the other side.  I think maybe he went to Catholic school at one point because he said ‘forgive me father for I have sinned,’ but then he didn’t know anything after that and I had to walk him through it.  He said he was in a gang, and another gang was pushing into their area.  They shot his cousin in the leg, and he’s OK now.”

“How old do you think he was?” Martin asked.

“I don’t know.  Sounded about twelve.  Could have been seventeen, eighteen, I don’t know.  He said they found out who shot his cousin.  He went with some other guys to his house.  They saw him, through the front window, on his couch watching TV.  Two guys went in the front and two went in the back.  When they kicked in the doors the guy grabbed for his gun, so they shot him.  And then they left.”

“What did you do?” Martin asked.   He tipped the drink into his mouth and took the last ice cube to chew.  As it crunched in his mouth he placed the glass on a coaster on a small side table next to his chair.

“I absolved him.  And I told him to say fifty Our Fathers.”

“Fifty!” and Martin chuckled at the quantity.

“He killed someone.  And I absolved him.”

“No, you didn’t.  You may have been in the room, but you didn’t forgive him.”

“I’ve got to carry that with me.”

“We all carry things with us,” Martin said.  “Man can be terrible.  That’s why we forgive.”

“He’s a kid, and he’s already a murderer.  Just give him a couple of years and we’ll see what evil he can do as a grown up.  Life underpins everything we do.  We’re against abortion because every life is worthy.  We’re against euthanasia and capital punishment because every life is worthy.  We’re in support of immigrant rights and social justice because every life is worthy.  Just by being alive, every life has value, and this kid killed someone, and he gets to say he’s sorry and it’s gone?”

“That’s why it’s a sacrament.  It’s a beautiful thing, absolution,” Martin said.

“I can’t understand it.  I did.  I do in the abstract.  But when a kid comes up and tells me he murdered someone, and I have to forgive him?  I know I’m not the one doing it, Martin, but that doesn’t make it better for me.”

“Hold on a second,” Martin said.  “You can still absolve the kid who was mean to his sister, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And the guy lying to his boss?”

“Yeah.”

“And the woman cheating on her husband?”

“Yeah.”

“OK,” Martin said.  “So the issue is the big stuff.  That doesn’t come around so much, so that should be some solace, right?  You’re probably never going to see this type of thing again.”

“Hopefully not,” Gideon said.  “That’s the thing about averages, though.  Maybe you’ll never get one, and maybe I’ll get five.”

“Maybe,” Martin said.  “But we absolve them and we can’t ever tell anybody what they did.  That’s how it works.  If we told, they wouldn’t confess, and they need to confess.  There’s too much shit in the world to get through it clean, Gideon.  I had an old priest tell me that once.  Fr. Scanlon, when I was in high school.  He was probably younger than I am now when he told me that, but he seemed old at the time.  He was a Jesuit, too, so it’s got to be true.”

“I figured it was a Jesuit since his words of wisdom had a curse in it.”

Martin smiled.  “There’s too much shit to get through clean.  We all need it washed off from time to time, and He’s the only one who can wash it off.”  Martin pointed to the ceiling when he said “He.”  “I remember when I wanted to be a priest because I thought they only worked one hour a week.  Nothing’s easy, but this certainly isn’t easy.  And the things people think are the hard things usually aren’t.  The really hard things are things you didn’t even think about until you have to do them.  Reconciliation is a great joy.  We do a great thing for people.  Of course it isn’t easy.  If it was, there wouldn’t be so much shit to wash off.”  Martin looked at his watch.  “I think the Bulls are on.”

Gideon looked at the big grandfather clock against the wall.  “I think they started at seven.”

Martin nodded, lifted himself out of his chair, and picked up his glass to carry into the kitchen and leave in the sink.  Their talk had not comforted Gideon.  But he heard the TV switch on, and knew Martin wouldn’t be interested in talking anymore.  Gideon didn’t feel like talking either.  He hadn’t figured things out enough to be able to communicate his thoughts, to ask the right questions, and to organize his feelings in a scientific manner.  Everything was foggy and jumbled.  Things he thought he knew were not clear anymore.  Gideon went to the kitchen for a glass of water, and then went up to his room to read until coming back downstairs for the fourth quarter.

***

  Lew was the sort of guy who, if he ever had to introduce you to a seventy-five-year-old, would say “this is Mike, and he’s seventy-five-years-young!”  Sarah was different.  Gideon hadn’t known her in college.  Lew met her a few years later, in law school, and Gideon only met her, briefly, at one friend’s wedding before meeting her again at her wedding to Lew.  Gideon and Lew were generally in the same circles in college, but only really got to know each other later after ending up, otherwise alone, in the same city.  That’s when Gideon got to know Sarah.  She was sharper than Lew.  Gideon couldn’t quite figure out why she didn’t end up on the partner track at some big law firm, and certainly at a firm more prestigious than the one Lew was at.  But somehow she got off that treadmill, maybe because she was too sharp for it.  Gideon went to their home to relax with Lew, who by rights was his old friend if they had actually been friends in college.  He went to wrestle with LaSalle, a powerful brindle mutt with some pit-bull in him, and maybe to bounce Nicola on his knee if she was still up.  But he actually listened to Sarah, since she usually had something worth hearing to say.

“I was over at the Art Institute this afternoon,” Gideon said, after they had all moved to the living room after dinner, and Sarah returned to the room after putting Nicola down for the night.  “I checked in on Sunday in the Park.”

“You didn’t just go for that, did you?” Lew asked.

“Mostly.  One or two others, but mostly Sunday in the Park.  I had to change busses to come down here, so I stopped in real quick.”

“You didn’t pay eighteen bucks for one painting, did you, or whatever they’re charging nowadays?” Lew asked.  “I could have given you some passes.  I’m on a junior board of theirs.  Junior something or other.  I forget what they call it exactly.  I’m on a few junior boards because they pretty much make us at work.  It’s supposed to be good for networking.  I pay five hundred bucks and get a cocktail party or two a year out of it, but I also get passes.  You could have gone for free.”

“That’s OK,” Gideon said.  “I’ve already got a membership.  I must have been there at a lull, so I had the painting mostly to myself.  I did the whole in-and-out thing.  Up close to a dot, gradually backing up as you take in more, and back and back and finally seeing the whole painting come into focus.  And the border.  There’s a frame of dots around it.  They don’t tell you about the frame of dots, but that might be my favorite part.  Or maybe the monkey.”  Gideon motioned to LaSalle, who had just put her head down on the carpet, but the dog rose and walked over to get her ears rubbed.  “There’s a monkey.  On a leash.  The main lady has a monkey on a leash.”

“Really?”

“I guess it was something people did in Paris back then,” Gideon said.  “I can’t remember the last time I did that—got up really close and then backed away like that, and I did it a few times.  The room is so packed normally.  I feel like you take that one for granted.  Or at least I do.  You see it everywhere, you don’t even think about it.  I just saw a documentary, and the priest talks about man’s ability to understand his world.  He uses Sunday in the Park.  The world is like pointillism, because we only see one dot clearly.  Or maybe we can see a bit more than that, but it’s blurry and we can’t make out the picture.  But God sees the whole thing at once, all the little dots and the whole big picture, and everything adds up to a beautiful painting.  Maybe we can’t understand some of the dots, like the dark dots that are foreboding, but you need dark and light and all the different colors to make the beautiful painting, but only God understands how it all fits together.  That’s a good metaphor, isn’t it?”

Lew nodded in agreement that it was a good metaphor, but he hadn’t been paying much attention.  Dinner was over, and Lew was beginning to wonder how long they’d have to sit around the coffee table in the living room before Gideon would finally excuse himself for the night. 

“I like that other one more,” Sarah said.  “I don’t know the name.  That big one, I think it’s in the same room, of the Paris street with all the rain, and it’s overcast, and everyone has an umbrella up.”

“I looked at that one too,” Gideon said, “but I don’t remember the name.  Or the artist.  I feel like it’s not by one of the major impressionist guys.”

“The rain in that is great,” Sarah said.  “It’s so overcast and blurry.  I think that’s amazing.  You feel like it’s raining on you when you look at it.  How do you even paint like that?  How do you paint blurry?  I mean, I can paint bad, and it comes out blurry, but to paint rain?  To paint it so everything is clear, but then add on a layer of rain so everything is blurry?”

“Mist,” Gideon said.

“Yes, mist!  How do you paint that?” Sarah asked.  “Make everything blurry?  That’s why that’s my favorite.  An impressionist painting, which is blurry, but then blurry again because of mist.  It makes my head hurt just thinking about painting that.  Make blurry blurry.  It’s like a double negative.”

  “It should be clear again!” Lew said laughing, which caused LaSalle to raise her head and look at him, tilting her head as she thought, and then put it down again between her feet.

“Do you know anything about rain?” Gideon asked.  “Real rain, not the painted kind.”

“What?” Lew asked.

“Do you know what causes rain?  Clouds and stuff?  Barometric pressure and that stuff?”

“Angels are crying?” Lew suggested.

“No, I mean the real scientific details of it,” Gideon said.  “Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” Sarah said.  Why?”

“Nothing,” Gideon said, and he leaned down to roll LaSalle on her side, and scratch her chest.  “I was out in the fog a few weeks back.  Along the Lake.  It was ridiculous.  It was the thickest fog I’ve ever been in.  It was grey everywhere.  I’m not kidding, I felt like I could barely see two feet.  Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration.  But the fog was so thick.  I was shrouded in fog.  Everywhere around me was grey and wet.  This was a few weeks back, during that cold snap.  I’ve been meaning to learn more about weather, but I haven’t gotten around to it.  I’m wondering if you know anything about fog?”

“The fog comes on little cat’s feet,” Sarah said.  “Right and wrong don’t always meet at the water’s edge.”

“Right and wrong don’t always meet at the water’s edge?” Gideon asked.

“It’s from a poem,” Sarah said.  “Different poem from the cat’s feet one.  But that line and the one about little cat’s feet are probably the only two things I remember from high school English.  Right and wrong don’t always meet at the water’s edge.”

“What’s it about?” Gideon asked.

Sarah thought for a few seconds before saying, exasperatedly, “Christ, I don’t remember.  I remember that line, though.  Right and wrong don’t always meet at the water’s edge,” she repeated.  “I mean, I remember it was about how the coast is a clear line, and either you’re in the water or on the land, and the author wanted right and wrong to be that way too.  But then he goes to the beach and the water is coming in and out with the waves, so even that isn’t a clear line.”

“So there is no right and wrong?” Gideon asked with a smirk.

“I don’t remember the point of the poem.  It was high school.  There was probably some communist English professor talking about moral relativism.  I don’t remember,” Sarah said shaking her head.  

Just then Nicola began to cry from the other room, and Sarah, Gideon, Lew, and even LaSalle turned their heads to look down the hall.  They waited in silence for a few seconds to see if Nicola would quiet herself, but as she continued to cry LaSalle eventually put her head back on the floor.  Sarah got up and went down the hall to check on the baby.

“Have you done any criminal cases?” Gideon asked.

“Some pro bono stuff, sure,” Lew said.  “I’ve done a bunch of death penalty cases.”

“Have you?”

“Yep,” Lew said.  “And then some 1983 stuff for murderers in jail who guards beat up.  My body count’s at seven.  The guy in the office next to me is at nine.”

“Body count?”

“My clients have killed seven people.  The guy next to me has represented people who have killed nine.  We joke we’re playing to twenty-one.  Well, he says we’re only going to eleven, but that’s just because he’s two bodies away.”

“Have you met them?” Gideon asked to change the topic, but even as he was asking the question he wanted to return and know more.  “Do you have to win by two?”

“Ha, that would be great,” Lew said.  “That’s actually a good idea.  Win by two.  Or maybe we’ll set up a mercy rule if he gets up by five bodies on me or something.  Then we can start back at zeroes on an even footing.”  Lew smiled, and Gideon could see the wheels in Lew’s head turning as he tried to make the game more official, perhaps by adding a community chest or bonus points if a murder took place in a conservatory or a billiards room.  Treating murder as a game was horrendous to Gideon.

“How can you defend someone like that?”

“What do you mean?” Lew asked, as if he’d just been asked why someone would want to play first base for the New York Yankees.

“Someone who has taken someone else’s life.  You can defend other people, right?  You don’t have to defend someone who killed people?”

“I don’t have to,” Lew said, “but why wouldn’t I?  They’re great cases.  I get a ton of experience.  It’s more interesting than most of what I do.  Everyone deserves a lawyer.”

“Did you know they were guilty when you signed up?”

“Um,” Lew said for a few seconds, holding the note as a long “uuummmmmmm” as he thought.  “Yeah, pretty much.  The 1983 case, he was in jail.  Two had appellate issues.  And one was at the sentencing phase, so guilt was already decided.”

“They all killed people?  I don’t understand that,” Gideon said.  “That just seems so awful.”

“They were actually pretty good people,” Lew said, and he paused to raise his eyebrows as an acknowledgement to Sarah when she came back to the room, Nicola now back asleep.  LaSalle too raised her head to look at her, and then put it back down when she took her seat next to Lew on the couch.  “I only met two of them.  Some matters I just worked on a little bit, or the partner went.  One I met quickly, and he was very polite and thanked us repeatedly for taking the case.  The other guy I met a bunch of times.  Anthony.  He was nice.  I’m glad he’s locked up and I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, but he was nice.  He was funny.  Big Beatles fan.” 

“I don’t see how you can call a murderer a ‘nice guy,’” Gideon said.  “Everything we have comes from life.  You can’t take away more than that.  I just don’t see how you can defend someone like that.”

“Everyone gets an attorney,” Lew said and shrugged, not wanting to get into a deep philosophical debate.  He snapped his fingers and tried to get LaSalle to join him on the couch, in part hoping the activity would create a pause and an opportunity for a new conversation.  But LaSalle stayed where she was, not even raising her head at the snaps.

“But why does it have to be you?” Gideon asked.  “You’re smart.  You’re a good lawyer, I assume.  And this person killed someone.  OK, so everyone gets a lawyer.  Why can’t someone else take the case?”

“I wanted to take the case,” Lew said.

“Why’d you want to take the case?  You weren’t sure he was really guilty?”

“No, I was pretty sure he was guilty.”

“So how could you defend him?” Gideon asked.

“It’s about mitigation at that stage, right?” Sarah said.

“Yeah,” Lew answered.  “Capital cases have two parts.  “There’s the guilt phase, which is guilty or not guilty, which is normal.  But then there’s the sentencing phase, which is where you look at someone’s entire life, try to figure out if they’re really one of the worst people out there, and if we, as a society, need to kill them.  I didn’t think Anthony was one of the worst people out there.”

“Did you know that when you took the case?”

“No,” Lew said.

“And you would have defended him if he was one of the worst people out there?” Gideon asked.

“Sure.”

“Why would you defend them?” Gideon asked.

“You forgive people,” Lew said.

“But I don’t try to put killers back on the street.”

“There’s a difference between a sin and crime,” Lew said.  “Sin is your business.  And for a lot of people I’m glad there will be some eternal punishment coming after this.  Guilt, in the criminal context, not the sin context, is different.  People are guilty of sin the moment they do it.  People aren’t guilty of a crime until we say they’re guilty.  There’s a lot of sins that aren’t crimes.  That’s the thing people forget about the law.  When we throw people in jail for breaking the law, it’s because society made those laws and society is enforcing those laws.  That’s the whole point of a jury.  It’s society.  We’re all involved.  We have trials because we’re the kind of civilized society with a process for punishing people, and not a barbarian society that just forms lynch mobs.  We don’t have trials for the defendant.  Well, we do in some ways.  But we have trials for society, so we can be the kind of society we want to be.  Defense attorneys aren’t defending the guilty people.  They’re defending society.”

“Well, that’s not too grandiose,” Sarah said sarcastically.

“That’s the theory, at least,” Lew backed off.  “Everything in practice is a bit different, but that’s the theory.  

“How do you keep it all to yourself?” Gideon asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Everything’s confidential, right?”

“Yeah, within reason,” Lew added, shrugging his shoulders.  “I tell her more than I should,” and he pointed at Sarah.  “I’m not sure if the attorney-client and the spousal privilege overlap.  Maybe I shouldn’t tell her stuff, but, whatever, she’s not going to tell on me.  Are you?”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head.

“Plus, most of what I do is public anyway, or about to be public.  That’s the whole point, eventually you put everything in a brief.  Have I said more than I should?  Sure.  But, it’s not like I’m saying it on the news.  I’m still keeping things private.  I mean, what are the odds the other side is going to overhear me when I’m at a restaurant?”

Lew’s question wasn’t rhetorical.  He wanted Sarah or Gideon to ask a follow-up question, or to theorize about the odds.  He wanted to keep on talking, about the inside knowledge he had, about the knowledge people gave him, and about the knowledge the courts, in their eternal wisdom, knew not to claw out of him, and granted him privilege.  And he wanted to talk about how, despite that guarded privilege, he flouted the rules.  He’d breach confidences and give away litigation strategy because he could, as idle gossip between appetizers and the main course, and nothing would happen to him.  He wanted them to ask about the case he was working on now, so he could tell them it was an internal investigation for a large company they, and everyone else in America, had heard of.

But they didn’t ask any follow up questions.  Sarah was tired.  She had worked today, as part of her three-days-a-week schedule.  It was getting late, almost ten now, and even LaSalle, still at Gideon’s feet, had closed her eyes.  She was awake, though, because Gideon was reaching down from his chair, scratching the back of her head again.

Gideon almost asked a follow-up question.  But instead his eyes became deep and withdrawn, and his lips tightened and thinned to make a straight line.   He looked away, and then down at LaSalle.  He wanted a dog, and wondered if he could get one at the rectory.  He’d need to talk to Martin about it.  He thought about how soft LaSalle’s fur was, and as his left hand continued to scratch behind her ears he raised his right hand and ran it through his own hair.  He thought his hair started too far back now, and wondered if his widow’s peak was just the way his hair always was, or if it was slowly retreating, and if he’d be bald in few years.  Gideon knew he’d lose the young parishioners if he went bald, and he began to feel very old.

Lew had an advantage, Gideon realized, because his confidences were not, in fact, kept confidential.  Gideon wondered if he could do that as well, but immediately knew he couldn’t.  The confidences he kept didn’t work that way.  What he knew, he knew, and others wouldn’t and couldn’t.  What he forgave, he forgave, and others, at least others who weren’t priests, couldn’t.  Surrounded by friends and a good dog, Gideon felt very much alone.  

“It’s getting late,” Gideon finally said.

“Yeah,” Sara added.

“Is it?” and Lew shifted his posture, craned his neck around a lamp, and looked at a clock.  “I guess so.  Should I call a cab?”

“Please.”

***

A few minutes later an Uber was outside Lew and Sarah’s complex, and a few minutes after that Gideon was headed north on Lake Shore Drive.  East, stretching out forever in blackness except for a few boats, and planes, and stars, and the moon, was nothing but more blackness.  Along the other side was the city, with glass skyscrapers lit and shimmering.

Gideon was happy to be in a cab, not only because it would quickly zip him north to the rectory.  The entire bus ride down to Lew’s he couldn’t help studying the faces on the bus, imagine what their voices sounded like, and wonder if his killer was somewhere on the bus with him, maybe sitting right across from him.

Not too long after that the city was behind him, and shortly after that Gideon exited the cab and went into the rectory.  Martin still had a game on.  Gideon went by to say hello, but then went upstairs to work on his homily.  Martin had the Saturday mass so Gideon still had two days to prepare, but he was behind.  Gideon had a system.  He’d read the upcoming readings Sunday night, and then think and maybe research for a few days.  On Wednesday he’d draft an outline, and decide on his conclusion.  Thursday, he’d begin writing, focusing on the main chunk of his homily.  Friday he’d come up with the opening—a joke, a story, maybe something academic, but importantly something only vaguely related to the readings, which he’d have to explain and show the connections to.

But now, at eleven p.m. on Thursday, Gideon didn’t have anything.  He knew, at the worst, he could Google a homily.  Better than that, there were ways to give a good homily if he had to.  He remembered his mother told him a story about a homily she once heard during the hottest day of the summer.  The priest went up to the pulpit, read the gospel, said, “remember, there’s one place hotter than we are right now,” and sat down.  It got the point across, and got him out of hot vestments.  There were ways to cover when you didn’t have anything.  

Gideon didn’t want to cover, though.  It was one thing for old priests, who had given homilies on the same readings dozens of times, to cheat and phone one in on simple tricks, or to call up a friend from seminary and swap notes.  Gideon could come up with something fresh.  Besides, from eleven o’clock on Thursday to nine a.m. on Sunday, he had fifty eight hours to write a homily.  That was plenty of time, and Gideon was willing to stay up all night and keep reading and working until he had something.

Still, the issue wasn’t that Gideon didn’t have anything.  The readings were good ones, with rich seams to mine.  Gideon’s problem was that he couldn’t stop thinking of Lazarus, and that he kept wishing he could preach about Lazarus, and that he wished he had the power, through Christ of course, of bringing dead men back to life.  That would be a remarkable gift, but he didn’t have it, and the readings weren’t about Lazarus.

***

Gideon woke shortly before seven the next morning, sprawled on the leather couch in his bedroom like a fish about to be gutted.  Because he had never gone to bed he had never closed his curtains, so he woke early because the sun had finally beaten upon his eyes for so long that he couldn’t stay asleep.  Gideon woke awkwardly, and as he got his bearings his neck and lower back hurt from having slept on the couch.  

A Bible, with a mess of creased and folded pages, was on the floor next to the couch.  Gideon didn’t remember falling asleep.  He stretched and twisted his neck and hoped for a click or a crack to make it better, but the strain was still there and Gideon began to worry about dealing with a crick in his neck for the next week until it worked itself out.  

Gideon figured out he’d fallen asleep on the couch while reading the Bible, and after standing, stretching, and cracking his back, Gideon realized he’d slept with his contact lenses in.  They didn’t hurt so much as they felt.  Gideon normally didn’t feel the lenses.  But when he slept with them in, or if they’d been in for a long time, he could feel them.  Every time he blinked, Gideon felt the contacts like a speed bump, making his eyelid rise up to pass over them.  And when his lids were open, the lenses were blurry and everything was slightly out of focus.  Something, mucus maybe, had built up on the lens overnight.  He needed to get them off, and went into the bathroom to do so.

But Gideon’s glasses weren’t quite the right prescription.  They weren’t bad, but they were off.  Gideon only wore his glasses for a few minutes in the morning before putting in his contacts, or for a few minutes at night after taking out his contacts but before falling asleep.  He got new contacts regularly, but new glasses only every other, or every third, prescription.  These glasses were based on an old prescription.  They were mostly clear, and he could and did drive in them on occasion, but they weren’t quite precise.  Somehow they were off in odd ways, almost as if he was looking at a reflection in a pool, with some spots clear, some spots distorted, some spots blurry, and some spots glistening and magical.

The rectory was silent.  Except for when he had the nine a.m. mass on Sunday, Martin slept in.  Since Martin made the schedule, Gideon normally had the nine on Sunday.  The rectory was silent, but Gideon was awake.  He knew he wouldn’t have any luck falling back to sleep, but he also didn’t want to go downstairs, brew a pot of coffee, and potentially wake Martin.  Instead, after stretching again, Gideon sat back down on the couch, picked up the Bible, and read Sunday’s readings.

But he had read Sunday’s readings before.  He had thought about Sunday’s readings before.  There wasn’t anything he was missing, and, just the opposite, Gideon suspected he was too deep into the material, too surrounded by trees to see the forest.  

Gideon changed his clothes.  He went downstairs, through the front doors, and walked down a few steps to the small plaza in front of the rectory.  “Plaza” was too grand of a word, and he wondered why Martin insisted on calling it that.  The cement walk bowed out a bit, and there was a bench, but that didn’t make it a plaza.  It was another clear Spring day, but Gideon’s glasses made everything, especially objects off in the distance, unfocused.  It was also too bright, and Gideon needed to squint to see where he was going.  Gideon walked to the corner, turned west, and set off on a long morning walk, hoping to clear his head and begin drafting Sunday’s homily.