The Sexton

I see him first scraping the cold dirty ground with a flimsy black plastic rake. He moves laboriously, trapping schoolyard debris in its cheap pliant teeth–rotted leaves, scattered weeds, discarded candy wrappers. Slowly and meticulously, he pushes the refuse into a black Hefty bag, lying limp, half-open on the dirt.

I watch only for a few minutes, standing outside the diocese office, waiting to begin my internship. The 11-story office building is a concrete behemoth compared to the surrounding squat businesses and apartments. It even overshadows the next-door Saint Thomas More Cathedral and school; casting a wide blanket of shade over the small church campus.

This is not how I wanted to spend my summer. Entering into my sophomore year at Marymount University, I’d developed a fascination with Auden in my freshman literary class. A sweet blonde named Kristi Summers helped. We bonded over “As I Walked Out One Evening,” and the gay poet’s unexpected return to faith. I was particularly struck by Auden’s admonition to “love your crooked neighbour/With your crooked heart’; a near-perfect distillation of my still-youthful faith that I was trying to grow by attending a Catholic university.

I was brought up in the Church, but only in the surface-level way most Americans encounter God. Catholicism, I learned early, was the “one true faith,” compared to the hippy-dippy Protestantism of female pastors and electric guitars playing in worship. Robust theology, however, was rarely included in the Sunday sermon. Our priest, Father Grimson, a meek, sorrowful little man, stuck close to a general Christian message of love and openness, despite the nagging questions of sexual sin and exclusion.

During my first two weeks back home from school — home being a 20 minute drive down the highway, my parents living in the same northern Virginia county as the university — I exchanged hundreds of texts with Kristi, who lives in North Carolina. We talked about everything from faith to Auden to new music to my dread of having to take an internship. She didn’t empathize much with my struggle; she had been working at the same ice-cream stand every summer since she was 15.

My father, a 30-year veteran of the Interior Department, insisted I get real work experience. All I wanted was to languidly read Auden paperbacks on our back porch during those long stretches of summer afternoon. His casual mention of withdrawing financial support, and subtle insinuation that taking out student loans may be necessary, ended my dream. I was to work, not to cover the cost of tuition, but to placate my meal ticket.

“Charles?”

A soft voice snaps me to attention. I turn around, away from the doddering groundskeeper. Donald Mason, a deacon my father has known for years, is staring at me intently with a bright smile. His teeth, a near-perfect white, matches his starched collar. His cool blue eyes are full of joy, as his ruddy face, hidden behind square-framed glasses, beams with delight.

“Hello, Mr. Mason,” I respond, unsure if this is just a friendly greeting, or he’s actually enthused to have an assistant for the summer.

“I’m thrilled your father convinced you to work with us!” Mason exclaims. He extends his hand toward me, taking a firm grip of mine and shakes it vigorously.

“Thank you,” is all I reply with, because it’s a lie to say I’m happy to be here. Mason can sense I’m uneasy and starts gesturing me inside. I don’t know why, but I look back, trying to get another look at the feeble groundskeeper. He’s gone. Mason notices. He asks, “Are you looking for something?”

“So…sorry,” I stutter, turning around, “I just saw…” I stop myself, unsure why I’m even bringing the old man up. “Nevermind, it was nothing.”

“OK…” Mason replies. He looks at me quizzically, but I lower my eyes to avoid the subject. Mason asks, “Shall we?” gesturing again toward the entrance. I follow him into the obelisk of an office building. We take the elevator to the 11th floor. He makes small talk along the way, inquiring about my classes. I reveal little, other than my slight interest in poetry. Mason does his best to seem interested.

We enter the diocese office, which occupies the entire floor and is surrounded by bright rectangular windows that provide a vast, unparalleled view of Arlington County. The office itself feels open, with small, half-cubicle stations dotting the main floor. At each of the ends are larger individual offices, including an extra-spacious room reserved for the Bishop’s office. The entire place is filled with gold-gadrooned tapestries and stained glass murals, like the spoils of a pillage of Constantinople.

Mason walks me to window and we gaze southwest, our eyes hovering over the schoolyard, tracing Virginia’s leafy suburban sprawl all the way to horizon. Mason mentions something about God’s bountiful gifts to mankind. I hardly listen. Way down below, the sexton has caught my eye again.

— — — — — — —

The work is menial and redundant. Deacon Mason makes no excuses: he admits the summer will be full of tedious but necessary drudgery. I spend almost eight hours a day digitizing paper records. There are endless rows of file cabinets in an unkempt broom closet down a hall few ever darken. I fill a box with as many stacks of paper I can fit and lug it out to the scanner. I then scan the sheets individually, cataloging them as best I can, marking whether they’re invoices, receipts, stocking lists, memos, obituaries, marriage records.

My second day, I encounter the sexton again. I’m walking into the office when I spot him standing in the middle of the yard, his rake recumbent on the cold ground. In his hand is a Tastykake, maybe a Krimpet. He is eating it voraciously, crumbs raining to the ground, artificial cream smeared on his face. He devours the pastry in the most primal way, like a hungry cheetah catching a springbok in the veldt.

I can make out his features better this time. He’s old, older than I first noticed. He has deep creases on his sallow yellow face. Liver spots cover his decrepit hands. Under a frayed black skull cap, wisps of snow-white hair poke out. His eyes, which I still can’t determine the color of, are sunken far back into his head, like anchors dropped in a rippled bay.

He finishes the Tastykake and begins licking the wrapper clean, his greyed incarnadine tongue sweeping up every last morsel. I feel sick watching the feral display. It’s unnatural, almost devilish. As he finishes, a school bell rings out over the campus. The sexton looks spooked. His frail body tenses up before he makes a sweeping motion for his rake and shuffles away out of view. “‘In headaches and in worry/Vaguely life leaks away,’” repeats in my head.

The bell marks the beginning of recess for students, who pour out of the school across the yard. The once-empty space fills with laughter and playground balls and girls singing and boys yelling. I watch the riotous scene, probing my own fascination with the doddery groundsman. I don’t consider much before a hand falls on my shoulder. It’s Deacon Mason, still beaming his luminous smile.

“How fun it would be to be a kid again,” he says kindly, peering over me.

“Yes,” I abruptly reply, not turning around.

“Well, we had our chance for fun years ago. Now is the time for the thankless toil that comes with being an adult,” he says with a laugh. He begins to draw me inside subtly with his hand. I resist for a moment.

“Um…Deacon Mason…” I start.

“You can call me Donald,” he smiles back in the same warm and inviting tone.

“OK, Donald,” I confirm, unsure how to broach the subject without perfect bluntness. With a dearth of options, I speak directly. “I saw a man in the yard earlier, before the kids came out, with a rake. He was eating a pastry of some kind. Who is he?”

Mason’s smile faded. His bright teeth suddenly hide behind his lips, like a car turning off its headlights. The smallest contour forms across his brow. “That’s Mr. Williams. He’s the sexton of the campus. Please leave him be. He’s a very private man,” Mason answers with agitation.

I didn’t press any further. I just nod, and follow Mason into the building. During lunch, a few staffers are gathered around a conference table, eating takeout from the hole-in-wall options at the strip mall across the street. Mason, who’s sitting beside me, eats the same Subway sandwich everyday: turkey and swiss. My sesame chicken from the shabby Chinese joint has a cardboard-y taste.

Between clumps of soggy rice, I listen in to what others are talking about. Another priest was outed as a pedophile, this time in Argentina. The diocese tried to cover it up, transferring the pederast priest to another parish. It didn’t work; the media found out anyway. The victim’s family is furious. They’re suing the church. The Vatican has another P.R. mess on its hands.

These incidents are all-too-commonplace in the Church these days, even though Arlington County has been largely immune from the scandal. In neighboring Washington, D.C., however, the former archbishop, Theodore McCarrick, was outed as a serial abuser. It’s rumored Pope Francis was aware of allegations against him but chose to ignore them.

All this goes unspoken in our little pocket of a parish. We ignore it, focusing on day-to-day matters. Or at least that’s the impression I get.

After lunch, I walk back to my half-cubicle with Mason. Before we separate, he starts to ask me something. “You know, Charles…” His voice is cut short by another from behind us.

“Mason?” Bishop Gracie asks in a low voice full of gravitas. We turn around to see the Bishop, a tall, steady-looking man in a pitch-black cassock. His azure eyes flash concern around his firm but strained face. “May I talk to you briefly?” he asks.

Mason nods in my direction and approaches the Bishop. They saunter into a vacated office and close the door. Their voices, though hushed, betray an excitedness. My curiosity, or maybe my boredom, compel me to eavesdrop. I grab a manilla folder from my desk and pretend to meander towards the file storage room. Nobody is watching me, but I pull out my phone in front of the closed office and pretend to be typing an important message. I can barely make out Mason and the Bishop, but there’s no mistaking the tone of the conversation. Something important is going down.

“Are you sure you’ve been keeping an eye on him?” I hear the Bishop ask. There’s a sternness to his voice.

“Yes, I can guarantee there have been no incidents. Jeb is not a threat.”

Who is Jeb? I’ve never heard the name before.

“With what’s going on in D.C., and now the Vatican, all eyes are on us, on every parish, really,” the Bishop replies. “I see him hobbling around in the yard…”

“He’s keeping the grounds clean,” Mason interrupts.

“We can hire a professional to do that,” the Bishop retorts.

“I did the math,” Mason explains, “giving him the one room costs us barely anything. Things stay clean, the weeds stay away, and we help an old sinner out. Without us…”

“But the children,” the Bishop interjects. “The children’s well-being must come above all…”

“The children are fine! There’s been NO incident!” Mason erupts. Startled, I quickly lower my phone and look around to see if anyone noticed. Everyone appears to be back at their desk checking their e-mail from lunch.

I listen in closer. The room is still silent. Mason and the Bishop must have paused to see if anyone overheard. Their hushed voices start again.

“Even if the children are fine, even if Jeb hasn’t had any incidents, it’s not a risk we can take. He could bring the whole parish down if he’s discovered. Do you realize that?” the Bishop asks.

“I do,” Mason replies quietly. “But I promised him he could stay. All sinners need grace, no matter how depraved. You taught me that, Your Excellency.”

I hear the Bishop sigh, but the conversation becomes too soft to make out what else they are saying. But I think I’ve heard enough. Who are they talking about? The sexton? Why are the children in danger?

Many questions fly through my head when I hear the ground depressing closer to the door–they’re coming! I mince away just as the door opens, keeping my back to their exit, still pretending to be dawdling around on my phone. Mason whispers something to the Bishop before they both depart in separate directions.

Questions linger on the tense air.

— — — — — -

A few days pass. The children leave for summer vacation, their tiny voices no longer punctuate the quiet office atmosphere. Mason mentions nothing about his talk with the Bishop. I don’t expect him to. At lunch, he asks me questions about what I’m studying next year, favorite professors, best classes, what I ultimately want to do with my life. I mention Auden and Mason admits he’s unfamiliar. My other answers sound like hackneyed phrases found in college brochures. A friend told me last year that no sophomore has a damn clue what they want to do for a living, other than make one. My current uncertainty proves him right.

I still text Kristi. We talk about our boring summers jobs, classes for next year, and, of course, the poet. Early in the summer, I serendipitously stumbled upon a first edition of Random House’s Collected Poems in a dusty old bookstore in Alexandria. My goal was to read it cover to cover by summer’s end.

One day while leaving the office in early July, I spot the sexton taking a spell on a bench near the school yard. His breathing is labored, his thin eyelids trying to block out the glaring sun. He looks rougher than usual. His loose-fitting work wear is draggled, grass and dirt stains cover his faded dungarees. I try to keep walking, but I’m stuck staring at him, my feet cemented into the sidewalk. So I stand looking, a frozen voyeur. His eyes, deep crevices in his crenulated face, are a blank. Slowly, his withered hand reaches into a drooping pocket. He pulls out another Tastykake, this one a pink Snowball. He probably buys the treats from the Exxon station across the street, I surmise. He tugs at the plastic covering until it’s a strewn mess on his lap. Then he devours the cake, its pink outer layer bursting into the air like confetti.

He wipes his mouth with his ragged sleeve. I see pink smears swirl around dingy stains, forming an oleaginous mess. The sexton takes a deep, stertorous breath, then lifts himself from the bench and shuffles away. This time, I walk a few feet onto the field to spy his path. He plods toward a brick shanty attached to the back of one of the school building.

— — — — — —

Mason continues to stay mum about the sexton, the Bishop, and the ongoing sex scandal roiling all levels of the Church. Most people I work with mention the latter only in hushed tones. They fear for their faith; their jobs; their place in the overall magisterium. Yet a scared silence ramifies through the diocese, dominating the atmosphere.

On my way in some day in mid-July, Kristi texts me. “OMG, did you read The Platonic Blow yet? It’s sooo nasty!!”

“No,” I quickly type back. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s Auden’s tribute to getting a blowjob from a stranger. It’s the raunchiest thing he’s ever written!”

I recoiled, like a child watching his mom and dad kiss. I have no issue with gays. I think they will land in the same fiery hell pit as liars, cheats, spousal abusers, adulterer, and anyone who does anything sexual other than missionary. I’m just a squish on all things prurient.

“Well, we know Auden was a complicated guy,” is all I can text back before noticing Mason walking hurriedly into our office building. From my car in the parking lot, I see him almost jogging to the front door. An invisible force compels me out of my car and I rush after him. Through the front door, up the elevator, and, as if by divine intuition, I stalk in front of the Bishop’s office, where the door is closed tightly and Mason is arguing loudly. It’s still early in the morning, and only a few staff members have arrived, yet I’m the only person in the vicinity who can hear the turmoil inside.

“Paul, this has nothing to do with, Jeb!” Mason shouts.

The Bishop is quick to reply in his own raised voice. “It doesn’t matter. There’s actually proof the Pontiff knew about McCarrick and did nothing about it. The news will soon spread across the country, and the world. We’ve been told to take precautions, to batten down the hatches. The storm is coming.”

“So we throw Jeb out on the street? That’s the solution? He’s already paid for his sins, but he has to keep paying because of the evil of others?”

“Do NOT refer to the Pope as evil in my presence ever again, Deacon Donald,” the Bishop snaps. “We don’t know what Francis was thinking by keeping McCarrick in the public. Perhaps he had a plan for him…”

“Your Excellency,” Mason starts with a more calm tone, “I apologize for my tone. I’m just trying to protect an innocent man. He’s repented for the crimes he committed all those years ago.”

“I know,” the Bishop calmy acknowledges, “but I have a duty to the Church. The accusations leveled at the Vatican are about to become graver. I’m afraid we could soon be under siege, not just in Rome, but everywhere, in every parish, in every church, at every Mass.”

“All I can do is ask you to reconsider, Your Excellency, before an innocent man is thrown out onto the street,” Mason meekly requests.

“Sins don’t fade away, Deacon Donald. They rest with our holy Father for eternity, until he finds mercy warranted.”

A long silence passes before the Bishop speaks again. “I will reconsider Mr. Williams’s residency here. However, if I have the is the slightest inkling he could relapse, or that he’s hiding a stash of illicit photographs, I’ll be forced to take action. And it may include bringing in the secular authorities.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Mason responds. I take that as my cue to become scarce. As I zip back down the hallway, I hear the door to the Bishop’s office creak open. Stealing a glimpse over my shoulder, I see Mason trudge away, looking resigned to a grim future.

— — — — — — — -

Mason disappeared after his meeting with Bishop Gracie. Having no supervisor to look over my shoulder and make sure I’m busy, I start researching online. The name “Jeb Williams” brings up few results, none of them related to an elderly man in Virginia. I then search “Jebediah Williams.” At the bottom of the first page of Google results, I find my man. An archived news clipping from the Arlington Register, a local periodical that stopped publication in the early 1990s. The report, which is dated October 11,1962, is brief: a seminarian working in the Arlington diocese was caught with a teenage boy in a car parked along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The man, Jebediah Williams, was with the minor in the backseat with his pants completely removed when a police officer showed up.

Jebediah was arrested on the spot and charged with a litany of crimes, including committing lewd acts on a minor. That was all the information the write-up contained. Mr. Williams really was a pedophile. And it appeared that the charges levied against him may have gotten him kicked out of seminary.

I then understood why Williams made a beeline for cover when recess started. It has to be illegal for him to live and work so close to a place full of children. And Mason clearly understood that. Why was he covering for him? And why continue to cover for him in light of the new scandals, which threatened the very heart of the magisterium in the Holy See?

My face felt hot; a righteous anger swelled up within me. It felt like a betrayal, not just of me by Mason, but of numerous children and teenagers by the Church itself. Questions were pouring into my head from an unknown place. How could Mason do this? How could the Church — my church and my parish — continue to cover for pedophiles? Examples of abuse were cropping up and parishes across the globe, like an epidemic. Yet here was more subterfuge, more lying, more denial putting children in danger.

I dig my face into my hands at my desk. Everything around me feels duplicitous, almost unreal. I think of the sexton, gorging on gas station pastries like a scuzzy drifter. All those kids, right at his fingertips. And Mason defends him to the hilt.

It’s too much. I jump out of my seat and move quickly to the window, looking down on the schoolyard. Williams is absent, despite him usually tending to the field at this hour. “‘O stand, stand at the window/As the tears scald and start;/You shall love your crooked neighbour/With your crooked heart.’” The Auden lines echo in my ear. But I don’t feel like loving my crooked neighbor. How can you love a man who preys on children?

In an unthinking burst of action, I scurry to the elevator, mashing wildly at the lobby button. The crawling descent of the elevator does nothing to calm me; in fact, it has the opposite effect. Each floor I pass, I grow angrier. By the time I reach the lobby floor, I sprint out the building through the back. I race across the schoolyard toward the shanty. The inner lights shine dimly through the fogged and cobweb-covered windows.

The door, an old wooden relic, is locked. The iron knob is rusted, its latch bolt jiggling weakly in my grip. The rational part of my brain tells me to cease; the emotional part urges me to proceed. Pathos easily wins the mental tug-of-war. I press my shoulder against the door, feeling it give a little bit. In one swift motion, I push my body weight against the door, while jamming the knob inward, trying to break the lock. There’s a sudden snap followed by a piercing crack as it swings open. Inside, I’m met by the shocked looks of Mason and Williams.

Mason is sitting lightly upon a rickety night stand, a rosary wrapped around his quivering hands, which are clenched in prayer. The sexton, who I see for the first time fully up close, wears the same ragged clothing, patched with dirt and grease. He’s sitting on a flimsy cot, resting upon its thin mattress. His skull cap is off, and I see the wisps of his thin white hair lay lazily around his wan pate. I can finally make out his cataractous grey eyes. His mottled hands are folded restlessly within each other, as if they struggle to maintain the prayerful position.

The whole room is untidy, with torn pairs of jeans and dingy work shirts strewn about. The brick walls are smeared with chalk inscriptions, none of which are legible There are a few old pieces of lawn equipment–rakes, weeders, trash pick-up reachers — piled up near the entryway. An ancient hot plate sits on the floor near the cot, bits of victual scattered around it.

Martin at first looks at me with the shock of surprise, which quickly assumes a glare of disturbance. The sexton gives me an empty stare of resignation. The atmosphere is tense, almost forlorn, like before an execution. It looks like Mason was preparing for an unexpected end.

“Charles, what are you doing…” he begins to ask before my voice takes on an angered mind of its own.

“That man,” I point directly at the sexton, “is a convicted pedophile! What is he doing here, of all places?”

“Charles, please calm down. It’s not what it looks like,” Mason assures me in a bitter tone.

My heart is racing. The palpitations feel like a jackhammer against my ribcage. I’ve never done anything like this before, directly confronting such an evil. My adrenaline is spiking. I feel that, if necessary, I could overpower by Mason and the sexton, two on one.

“Looks like?” I cry. “You’re covering for a pedophile living near children!”

“Charles, things have changed,” Mason utters through gritted teeth, “Mr. Williams is no longer like that.” His jaw looks clenched, like he’s trying hard not to scream his excusing words at me. “But it doesn’t much matter now. Everyone, including you, has their mind made up.”

I’m not listening. I can’t. How can I at a moment like this? My body’s senses are on overdrive. I’m under a righteous high, ready to vanquish the Devil himself.

My eyes, which feel like pits of fire searing in my head, meet Mason’s. Behind his refractive bifocals, his pupils look black, a resigned distress. At once, he appears vulnerable, like the sexton, who still sits quietly at his cot, completely submissive to the events surrounding him.

Out of a feeling of overwhelming loathing, staring down Mason becomes too hard. My gaze wanders the sullied room. In the corner is an antique school desk, a remnant of the mid-century mass-produced steel and wood era. Just under its tabletop lid, I spy the corner of a glossy photograph. A child’s curly brown hair! I dart over to the desk just as Mason stands, shouting at me to stop. Opening the lid, I find the most extraordinary thing: a pile of photographs, countless pictures of little girls.

In my shock, I pause, giving Mason time to grab my wrist and wrench me away from the desk. He shoves me to the middle of the room. We both look bewildered and furious with one another. The sexton sits quiet in a serene trance, unaware of anything going on in his little hovel.

In the flurry of the moment, I snatched a couple photos. Mason glares stingingly at me, but I look at them anyway. They contain pictures of not little girls, but the same girl. They’re dated. The child, whose rosy dimples are covered with winding tresses of chestnut brown create an immortal look of innocent youth. Judging by her clothes — a matching corduroy dress and striped undershirt — the photo was taken sometime in the ‘60s.

Looking past Mason’s glowering form, I see the desk is filled with photographs of the same little girl. “Who is she?” I ask aloud, unsure if Mason will even answer.

“His daughter,” he answers roughly. “It’s his daughter. Those photos are all he has left of her. He doesn’t know where she is, where she lives, what her name is anymore.”

What? A daughter? That doesn’t make sense. “I thought he was…but I thought he was…” I start to ask, too confused to finish.

“You thought he was gay?” Mason asks angrily. He raises his wrist to his brow in disgust, like I’m the sun’s glare he can’t bear to look at. “Charles, not everyone who engages in homosexual acts is gay. Men sometimes have moments of weakness. They…” he stops, unwilling to go on. I hear faint sobbing coming from under his dark cleric shirt sleeve.

The sexton remains unmoved. He stares straight ahead, with an eerie placidity. The refrain “O look, look in the mirror,/O look in your distress”, recites in my head.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s gay,” I mutter, almost embarrassingly even though I have no reason to feel embarrassed. I’m outing a sex criminal. “The man’s a rapist and shouldn’t be near children.”

Mason stops sobbing and shoots me with a pointed stare. “And then what?” You help get Mr. Williams kicked off campus. What happens to him? Where does he go?”

The question is stupefying. Why does it matter where he ends up? Why is it my business? I’m trying to do the right thing here. “I don’t understand,” is all I reply.

Mason sighs. “Charles, you may think you’re doing the right thing here, confronting a monster. But that’s not what’s happening. You’re attacking a defenseless man over a long gone history.” My face must have betrayed my confusion because Mason continues. “The law won’t hear of this, but Mr. Williams raped nobody. That teenage consented. He was 15, and knew what he was doing. But our laws didn’t recognize that back then. And the cultural stigma surrounding homosexuality made it impossible not to prosecute. The boy lied in court, said he was coerced. His parents insisted it was rape. They told the judge he was a pious young man who couldn’t possibly engage in any sinful behavior. Williams spent nearly a decade in jail. Heaven knows what other convicts put him through.”

I try to process everything Mason said. Plausibility is there. One question still nags me. “How do you know all of this, Mason?”

“Because, Charles,” he stops and takes a long, deliberate breath. “Because that boy was me.” Mason’s eyes immediately fall to the ground, as if gravity, taking account of his horrible admission, adjusts right there in the room. Everything at once feels heavy. My breathing, which was hurried before, now strains. It feels like a millstone hangs upon my neck.

“In headaches and in worry/Vaguely life leaks away”.

The confessions strikes me mute. But Mason, whose own breathing is frantic, won’t stop. “I was such a stupid and confused kid. I had longings, bad longings I couldn’t deny. So did Jeb. It was nothing at first. He was married with a child on the way. He never did anything to me, we just talked about our repressed sexuality. Then once he was driving me home, I made a pass at him. He couldn’t say no. Just as we were getting started, on a dark side of the road, the officer appeared. All of a sudden, my entire future was in jeopardy. I threw him under the bus, blamed it all on him, said he was the aggressor. I cried in court, not for my lie, but to add to my case.

Mason speaks through deep nasally sobs. It feels like confession, and I’m the priest, ashamed of one of his wandering sheep. Except I offer no forgiveness. The sin I hear is too grave, almost murderous. A man wasn’t killed, but his life was.

“I was such a selfish kid!” Mason shrieks. The outburst snaps the sexton to attention. He gazes around the room thoughtfully, though it’s unclear if he understands what’s happening. Williams looks at Mason, who is now a crying mess. He slowly raises his withered hand and begins to rub Mason’s back gently. This instinctive gesture brings more anguish. Mason wets his sleeve with tears.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I stutter finally. All I want to do is leave.

“They threw him in jail!” Mason continues, trying to control his weeping. “He never saw his wife and daughter again. I felt such guilt about it in college, I decided to enter seminary. By the time he was released from prison, I was working here. One day, I saw him standing outside the office on the sidewalk. He was in torn clothes, had no money or identification on him. He looked lost. That’s when I realized the trauma of prison and losing his family must have detached him in some way from reality. So I brought him in, in secret at first, but then I was able to give him the groundskeeping job, a charity case.”

“Did the Bishop ever find out?” I ask, still wanting to leave, but curious.

“Yes, eventually, though he doesn’t know I am the reason he went to jail. Nobody knows. Except you.” Mason’s red eyes rise to meet mine. His look is unlike anything I’ve even seen in a man. Not angry, not sad, not stressed or disturbed. He just seems fatigued, worn out by a gnawing mendacity.

Time passes, I’m not sure how long, without anyone saying anything. I feel trapped in a room, a conspirator in a crime committed long ago. Leaving would be easy, but I know there’s no leaving anymore, there’s no retreating back to normal. What I learned means I can no longer work at the diocese.

“Into many a green valley/ Drifts the appalling snow”.

“So what happens now?” I somberly inquire.

Mason has stopped crying. He wears a mow of dim acceptance. “Jeb is going to be forced to leave anyway. New abuse allegations are forcing us to sever all ties with potential abusers.”

“But it happened so long ago…” I interrupt, giving voice to my internal reaction.

“It doesn’t matter. The Church is on the defensive now. I don’t know what will become of Jeb. I don’t have room for him in my home. He’s off the books here. He’s off the books everywhere, from what I understand.”

“So that means…”

“That means he’ll be just another vagrant on the street, peddling outside the Metro station,” Mason barks back, taking his anger out on me.

Another long silence transpires. Mason’s emotions are polarized; he’s, at one moment, sorrowful, the next moment, livid. The futility of his efforts wears on him.

At last, I offer, “I’m sorry if I made it worse. I didn’t understand the history. I just pieced together what happened.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mason says between heavy sighs. “The Bishop made up his mind already. He told me Jeb needs to be gone by the end of the day.” Once again, Jeb pays no mind to his own future playing out in front of him. He maintains a blank, airy look.

“Maybe there’s a shelter he can stay at?” I ask obligatorily, trying whatever thought pops in my head to fix it.

“Those places are dangerous, especially for someone like Jeb, who isn’t always quite there to protect himself,” Mason replies.

There isn’t any hope for him, I realize. I look at the sexton, finally really look at him, as if through new eyes and with a new heart. He’s a frail, tired old man, beaten down by his own sins, long after he committed them. The unkept hovel of his is all that he has. The hot plate, the creaking cot, the ancient desk, the single flickering light bulb hanging perilously from an uneven fixture in the ceiling–he’s about to lose the certainty of a home. Yet he remains silent, staring blankly ahead, unaware that his life is about to lose a tenuous familiarity.

Tears well up in my eyes. The cruelty of it, the unjust punishment for someone who did nothing wrong, it’s all too much to hold in. “It’s not fair!” I exclaim. “He shouldn’t be punished for something he didn’t do!”

Mason, who finally reined in his emotions, replies calmly, “Deuteronomy says that children shouldn’t be punished for the sins of their fathers, and fathers shouldn’t be punished for the sins of their children. But I’m afraid this is yet another instance of divine teaching falling short of real-world intention.”

I can’t control my emotions as well as Mason. Tears keep gathering in tiny little pools, just to stream warmly down my cheeks. I want to curse God, curse fate, curse justice, curse all of creation. But I just stand and cry. A rapid-fire series of questions flows through my head. How can God allow this to happen? Why must punished men never be forgiven? Why are hate and pain so easy to find, while love remains hidden, an ever-elusive cure for all of life’s ills?

“‘In the burrows of the Nightmare/Where Justice naked is,/Time watches from the shadow/And coughs when you would kiss.”

Questions of theodicy, fairness, and the wickedness of a loving God ring out for no one to hear but me.

Then, in the middle of the angry silence, a darkness emerges. The sexton starts stirring. He moves rigidly at first, then more fractured. His limbs shoot out violently. His movement is random and uneven. Then his voice comes. A guttural and inhuman scream rises up from a chthonic pit from within him. It is the most terrifyingly unreal thing I’ve ever heard. It echoes of the hovel’s walls, millions of bitter screams from damned souls burning in eternal agony.

— — — — — — — — — —

Jeb is gone, and so is the summer. Mason also left the diocese not long after the sexton disappeared. He never said goodbye. One day at the end of July, his office was suddenly cleared, emptied when everyone was at lunch. I heard the Bishop talking on the phone about his abrupt departure. He said he didn’t understand why and that it was in God’s hands. He then assured the man on the other end, the Archbishop I assumed, that “the issue” was resolved.

Back at Marymount, my love affair with Auden continues. I can’t say the same for Kristi. She moved on, or simply grew bored when I started responding sporadically to texts in August. The tail end of the summer was a depressing time. I ceased being social and brooded over the world’s hardships, endured by those who never asked or wanted to take on a cross.

I don’t blame Kristi, though. Ours was a friendly relationship with no promises made, and no promises broken. Still, in the quiet moments of my diocese desk, I pictured myself serenading her, singing her favorite, ‘Love has no ending./I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you/Till China and Africa meet,” as she looks back at me, lovingly and admiringly with her magnetic brown eyes.

The daydream will have to wait for someone else. I couldn’t even call it unfair. Fairness, I learned that summer, is a concept some people go their whole lives without knowing. Their crooked hearts aren’t straightened by the crooked and imperfect love of another.