green glass

In urgent quest of his mother’s choir robe, Brian Winslow found the vestry closet locked, with a peculiar sound coming from behind. Brian knocked at the door—the snuffling stopped and he heard shallow breaths biding the unnatural silence. A moment passed, the snuffling resumed. Brian called out,

“Somebody in there?”

A volley of curse words rang through the closet door at him. Their complex construction identified the speaker as Martin Saint. No other boy in the Sunday school, even under great emotional duress, could have equaled Martin's deft turns of phrase with profanity. And it was impossible that any of the grown-ups should use words of that kind in church, no matter whether their faces were hid by closet doors.

Finding that it was Martin locked inside, Brian’s impatience to get the choir robe was cooled by a pleasant sense of justice. Only that morning, Martin had stuck four matches in Darien Mooney’s new shoes and lit them with a flint. The pious Darien, holding forth on the evils of whisky-nipping after school, making veiled references to persons in the room guilty of that evil, began suddenly to hop and shout.

Brian did not mind the prank on Darien, but he did mind getting pegged for it by Miss O’Rourke, when everyone knew that only Martin Saint had the nerve and prowess to carry out a scheme of that calibre. So it was with satisfaction that Brian answered the insults,

“Can’t you get out, Martin?”

The door opened a crack.

“Look, Winslow…that’s you, isn’t it?” A tear-wet eye peeked through the inner darkness. “I…that was rotten stuff to say, Winslow. I’m sorry, really.”

The apology seemed to stick in the door, as Brian confronted it in disbelief. The door slammed vengefully shut.

Brian stammered, “Well, that’s all right, Martin. I forgive you.”

The door opened again, only a crack. Martin’s glassy eyes and sharp nose poked out.

“You do? Just like that?” His face squinted as if he’d eaten something sour. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” He began to pull the door shut.

Brian started. “What?”

Martin’s eyes shifted across the floor. “You’ve got one up on me, haven’t you? Does that make it not count anymore?”

“Make what not count?”

“Saying I’m sorry, shithead!”

Helplessly, Brian shrugged. “I don’t care so much if you curse. I’m used to it,” he said.

Martin’s eyes emerged again. He whispered, “Look, Winslow. You’ve been at this all your life, haven’t you?”

“At what?” Brian asked.

“Being good.” Martin’s voice was hoarse with urgency. “Does it ever start to come easy?”

Brian chose his answer warily. “Sure, I guess. You stop doing bad things because you’ll be caught.”

“So it’s only bad if you’re caught, then.”

Brian felt safer, treading on Martin’s own ground. “Well, you can’t be punished if they don’t catch you.” He thought it quite diplomatic, and was pleased to Martin’s scowl fade a little.

“But He sees everything, doesn’t he?” Martin’s brow clouded. “So it’s no good.”

“Who does?”

“Jesus does, stupid prick!” It immediately gave him remorse, which he expressed with “Shit--sorry." Again, he desperately bleated, “Sorry!”

“What do you mean, Jesus?” Brian interjected.

“Father said so this morning, didn’t he? Said he sees everything good and bad, sh…stupid.” Martin bucked his head defiantly. “See? I stopped myself that time. But I thought it, didn’t I?” He began again to snivel. “Why’d He have to go and die, anyway? I didn’t ask Him to.”

Troubled by a vague sense of responsibility, Brian said uneasily, “It doesn’t work like that. If He waited to die until everyone asked…He’d have to die lots of times. It was once for all…” Heaven sent him a resource. “The petitions addressed to our Father, as distinct from the prayers of the old covenant, rely on the mystery of salvation already accomplished, once for all, in Christ crucified and risen.” He delivered it as he had memorized it, in monotone.

Martin looked at him with grudging respect. “Say, how’d you know that?”

“It’s catechism. You’d know it too, if you were listening in Sunday school and weren’t cutting the belt of people’s trousers.”

“Yeah. If I ask you to forgive me, will it be all right?

Gratified that Martin remembered the episode, which had given him such grief at his mother’s hands, Brian was not inclined to grant a swift pardon. “Well, it won’t put the belt back together,” he said.

“Yeah,” Martin said gloomily. “And what about Jesus?”

“What about Jesus?” Brian demanded exasperatedly.

“Well, you didn’t go and die for nobody, did you?”

The responsibility was wearisome to Brian. “Look, Martin,” he said, “I’ve got to get my piece of glass.”

“What piece of glass?”

“Just a piece of glass. It’s in my mum’s choir robe.”

“What’s it for?” Martin demanded.

“Looking through.”

“I saw you!” Martin pointed at him, wide-eyed. “You were doing it in church. Looking through that piece of green glass while the priest was talking.”

“Yeah, what of it?” It was altogether out of the natural order that Martin should scold him for misdeeds in church or anywhere else.

“Don’t get in a strop,” Martin said. “I’ve done lots of things worse than that. Took the Lord’s name in vain all the time, and…” He paused shamefacedly. “You remember what happened to Mrs. Gallow’s cat?”

“Look,” Brian interrupted quickly, “maybe you should tell all this to the priest.”

Martin cried, “I can’t do that! Bad enough talking to God. What’d I do with a real person I can see? Besides, they’ll never let me into confession. They’ll think I’m going to plant another stink bomb.”

His eyes fell. “Yeah, that was me.”

Brian sniffed. “We all knew that,” he could not help saying.

Martin looked up at him as if from a great distance below.

“What’ll I do, Winslow?” His voice was dull with despair. “I didn’t know nothing about Jesus before today—I never listened, see. I was going to hell, but I didn’t know it. And now I do know it, and...” His voice drew thin like a thread, and he looked down. When his gaze resurfaced, his eyes were filled with tears. “Is it any better now? I still done all the things I done.”

Brian tried to think what to say, but could not rid the thought of his piece of green glass. So hard to see through, dark and cloudy, putting lumps in the faces of people he saw through it—even the priest’s. His mother had taken it away, hissing that it distracted him from the Word of God; it was galling she should know so well. Trying to decipher a face through the glass, putting the warped vision of the priest right with the knowledge of the real priest, he could only hear watery echoes of the homily. He could remember only snatches of the hymn. Without the glass to play with, the service was long and rather too much to bear.