Wednesday Morning

“I’m just saying it. Who knows what she thinks? But, the important thing is before long, we’re going to have to get down to business at the camp.”
“Down to business?”
“Yea, little things like confessions.”
“Confessions?”
“Yea, remember confessions?”
“Oh, I had forgotten about those.”
“You might have, but I can promise you the people at the camp haven’t, and you’re going to have to hear all of them?”
“Why am I going to have to hear all of them?”
“Because, until I learn Spanish, someone could confess being the second shooter on the grassy knoll and I would probably tell them to say three Hail Mary’s and a Lord’s Prayer and be done with it.”
“Yea, I see what you mean. But, you are learning some Spanish.”
“What do you mean?”
“The other morning when Mr. Fuentes was asking us questions you answered most of them with ‘si’. You are learning Spanish.”
Danny smiled. “I guess I am.”
“Si.”
“I do worry about the confessions though. I remember when we were in the sixth grade having to walk into the confessional. How many eleven year olds have sinned?”
“I don’t know about that. Seems like about then you and I were doing some pretty shady things.”
“Maybe so, but I had a hard time thinking that a God who could wipe out Sodom and Gamora or drown all of Pharaoh’s men in the Red Sea would think locking Benny Wilson in the broom closet until he coughed up Peggy Turner’s homework was a capital crime.”
“You mean having to go to confession and not having anything to confess?” grinned Davy. “Okay, I’m with you, but I had that figured out. Three or four generic sins, unclean thoughts, late for church, things like that and then if I had lied three times, I just tacked another lie on for what I was saying then. Worked every time.”
Danny laughed, but then his smile faded. “Davy, are we biting off more than we can chew?”
“What do you mean?”
“These people. They’re different. For my good Episcopalian congregation, the church, everything it does, hell, everything I do, is just an ornament on their coffee table. They wear being an Episcopalian like a great big sign on their chest. . . ‘Look At Me, I’m An Episcopalian. I’m Better Than You’. But the people at the camp, they’re different. God is a part of their lives. They sincerely want to be good and do the right thing. That’s why they’re here, they’re trying to do better for their families. There’s just something pure about them. I don’t want to let them down.”
“I know what you’re saying. Your Episcopalians are better than everyone else and my Baptists are holier than everyone else. It’s the same thing. You’re just a trinket on their table. I’m a hood ornament on a great big car with ‘Look At Me, I’m Holy’ painted in great big letters on the side. Are we doing the right thing? Danny, I think for the first time in a long time, we are doing EXACTLY the right thing. Are we biting off more than we can chew? No. We’ve been in training for this since that morning so long ago that you tripped Jimmy Dempsey in the hall. I’ll never forget what you told him. I can hear it just as clearly as the day you said it, ‘Look you little son-of-a-bitch, I ever see you taking a pencil out of Emily Drake’s pencil box again, you will wish to God you hadn’t’. You even scared me.”
Davy was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t know why you and I do the things we do. I don’t know why we did them back then. But, we do and we are damn good at it. Mr. Fuentes would say it’s a God-given talent and I don’t know if it is or if it’s not, but there are people out there who need us, they don’t have anyone else.”
Then it was Danny’s turn to be quiet until Davy broke the silence. “I didn’t mean to upset you, that’s just the way I feel,” he said.
“Oh no, no, no, you’re one hundred percent right, but that’s not what I was thinking about.”
“Then why did you get so quiet?”
“I was just thinking, if that second shooter on the grassy knoll does confess to me, how many Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s should I give him?”
Davy shook his head, stood and went inside. In a minute he came back with two glasses and handed one to Danny.
“Oh, we going to have a bit of evening refreshment?”
“Yea, but this time it’s Coke. We need to be thinking clearly on what we need to do.”
“You’re right,” said Danny. My suggestion is, you’re okay with your church, why don’t you move down to the camp. And, as soon as I find out for certain what the Bishop wants to do, I’ll come along too.”
“That quick and simple?”
“That quick and simple.”
“This porch is going to be a lonely place without me.”
“You think I haven’t thought of that? Best thing you can do is to get your porch at the camp ready.”
“Yea.”