A Priest Who Does Not Bill
Father Enrique drove down from New Bern the next morning in a 2007 Honda Civic that had been red before it was grey and that had two hundred and thirty thousand miles on the odometer. He parked behind me in the driveway at fourteen Kirby at nine-ten. He was carrying a canvas grocery bag. Inside the grocery bag were a small wooden box, a flat linen stole folded like a hand towel, a thermos, and a paperback of Thomas Merton with a thick rubber band around it holding in loose papers. He had not worn a clerical collar. He was wearing a navy windbreaker and khaki pants and white sneakers that had been white in 2019.
"Marce." He kissed me on the cheek. He is a small man, sixty-eight, and his voice is what a lot of Spanish men's voices become when they have been in North Carolina most of their lives, which is quiet and patient and slightly tired. "Tell me about the boy."
I told him about Lyle Bohannon and the bicycle in the shed. I told him, also, about Emmett in the attic and the second presence attached to Mr. Lindeman, because he had asked for the full picture, which he always asks for, and because I had learned over the course of a difficult job in 2019 that Father Enrique is more useful when he is fully informed than when he is being managed.
He listened without interrupting. He sat on the porch rocker with his grocery bag between his feet and his thermos in his lap and he