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CHAPTER THREE
“Oh, God, what are we going to do?” Willard Smith asked, trying to wipe the tears from his face with a large, red paper napkin.
“Please get yourself together,” the Bishop in Max said sternly. Willy was falling apart before our eyes. It was an echo of that distant day for which I would gladly give up my Captaincy, and my honor, to be able to forget. That is what we were there for, after all, to find out if there was, or ever had been, any honor among us. I feared I already knew the answer to that question even as it came to me.
“I’m sorry, Bish . . . Biff,” Willy finally said.
“In any case,” Biff intoned, “after we prayed, I asked Clayton why he wished to see me. I’d been at his bedside the night before. We had ministered to him just the previous evening. He had been given his last blessings. And we were scheduled for another laying on of hands the following night. So what could he want, except comfort, I wondered?”
“What he wanted to tell Biff,” Max suddenly said in a clipped tone, “Is that he is going to confess to his part in the death of Hank Shelton, and he is going to name those who became . . . were . . . accomplices.”
“Witnesses,” I said sharply.
“Cowards,” Max said quietly.
There it was, as clear a statement of catastrophe as I would ever hear. I had thought it buried, forgotten, removed, and expunged from my memory and the memory of man.
“Why would he do that?” I asked, not trusting my voice.
“For the only legitimate reason he could ever have,” Biff said solemnly. “He fears for his immortal soul. He feels he has to make a clean breast before he can go to God. Perhaps it was inevitable.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. All three men stared at me as if I had declared God dead.
“It may be ridiculous to you,” Biff said coldly, “But it is not ridiculous to a dying man.”
“It’s your fault!” Willy suddenly cried, standing, pointing a shaking, work-bent finger at Biff. The table was nearly tipped. Biff stood angrily.
“My fault hell!” he said. “It was your stupidity!”
Max pushed Biff back into his chair with a stern look.
“Oh, oh,” Willy began to sob, and he sat and let his arms hands drop to his side, utterly defeated.
“It’s not going to do us a damn bit of good to fall apart,” I sharply barked. “What is needed is more information. We’ve kept this a secret for thirty years, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let the fear of a weak little man like Clayton Booth destroy my life for the comfort of his own quivering soul.”
“It’s his decision,” Biff said angrily.
“It’s a damned Catholic throwback, false absolution,” I protested. “Mormons don't have to confess to shit,” I said. “You have no priests in the proper sense, but laymen in coveralls who guess and by God hope they’re right!”
“It is a dying man’ prerogative,” Biff insisted. “To bare his soul. It may damn us all, but it is his right.”
“It’s not my fault,” Willy said again, softly, almost in a whisper.
“It’s all our fault for not turning you in to the Sheriff when it happened,” Max said, just as loudly. “We’re all in it up to our eyeballs, just as we have always been. What we have to do, is get him to change his mind,” he insisted. “To hold his silence and let God sort it out.”
“Damn right, change his mind,” I said. “Change it . . .” I bit off the rest. Death was a decisive solution to adversaries I’d come to learn over a couple of wars.
“We’d better look at the ramifications in a more rational light, or we’ll all hang, and hang together,” Max said. “Biff, what exactly did you say to him after he told you he intended to, ah, lay bare his soul?”
“I tried my best to get him to change his mind. He said he was sorry, but he could no longer keep the secret, our oath.”
“Does he realize what it will do to the rest of us if he implicates us?”
“He said, sadly, he did,” Biff said.
“Jesus,” I said.
“I’ll thank you not to take the Lord’s name in vain,” Biff said coldly.
“I’ll thank you to keep your Lord to yourself. I’ll say any Goddamned thing I feel like saying, Biff,” I said. The loss of my self-control, after so many years of brutal self-discipline, threw a fear into me deeper than any fear of God.
“I suggested to him it may be possible for him to make his peace in more general terms, so to speak,” Biff added mildly.
“No names?” Max asked.
“Yes, just generalities. Not the name of . . . the victim. Or the participants, or the circumstances.”
“And?” I asked, reseated, lighting a cigarette. All of them noticed this grievous breach of their faith.
“And he said that was impossible. The truth was the truth. He could not lie. He said he would not name us, but if he gives Hank’s name, which he will, and the circumstances . . . Heck, we were under suspicion for months,” he shrugged. “The Sheriff will add it up in a moment, and there are no statute of limitations on murder, even accidental murder.”
“We have been under suspicion since the day he died,” I said. “Everyone in the valley knows we were there that day.”
“But they can’t prove that!” Willy said. “They can't prove anything because we’ve held our silence. No can ever prove anything unless someone tells. Oh, Jesus, what are we to do?”
“If he calls Stake President Rich, and confesses, then I am afraid the three of us will be charged as accessories to murder, or as accomplices. At the very least, with obstruction of justice as material witnesses. That would ruin me. Us.”
“I would never practice medicine again,” Max whispered. “The church would excommunicate me within a week. Oh, God, forgive us.”
“Oh hell,” I said. “They’ll need more than that to ruin you,” I said with undisguised contempt.
“My business, my family, and my God will disown me,” Biff said, oblivious to my anger, a look too bleak to contemplate.
“Ranch. Kids. Accident. That’s what it was, accident,” Willy was mumbling. “Lose the whole goddamned place. Sharon will disown me. Oh, Jesus.”
I was finally beginning to recover some semblance of rationality after the initial blow of Biff’s revelation. Max may lose his practice and church standing; Biff his business and church standing; Willy his ranch; and me my ship. In point of fact we would lose all of those things. Who was I to say their loss was more important, more devastating than my loss? The only single thing they had to lose and I didn’t was a family.
“How many children do you have, Willy,” I asked, quietly now.
“Five,” Willy whispered. “And one in the chute. Six grand children.”
“Max?”
“Five. Three grandchildren, two on the way.”
“Biff?”
“Seven. Nine grand children.”
“You married Jeanette then?”
“The day after graduation.”
Tainted unto the last generation–all tainted by the sins of the fathers.
Willy, a barbed wire tough rancher was quietly sobbing, his head in his hands. I could see the thin hair on the white scalp like thin strands of black willows.
“I think, Biff, you have to dissuade him,” I said.
“I have talked with him for hours on end, Andrew,” Biff said solemnly. “The closer he draws to his death, the more convinced he is that this is something he must, for the sake of his soul, do before he dies.”
“And he is rational?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“Max, do you think he is rational? You’re the expert.”
“The pain medication probably affects his thinking. The disease itself colors one’s thoughts and emotions. But I can’t see how he couldn’t understand the position, the peril, in which his confession would place us.”
“He understands, and says it is an agony to him. If asked, he will name names,” Biff said.
“We’ve got to stop him,” I declared.
“I don’t see how,” Max said. “Biff?”
“No, it’s hopeless,” Biff affirmed.
“I’ll kill him if he tells,” Willy suddenly said, bringing to the table, as it were, the question of the day.
“A possibility,” I said.
“Absurd,” Max said.
“Unthinkable,” Biff said.
“The Brethren” is copyrighted © 2001 by T. O. McCallister. All rights reserved. You may not republish or reproduce this work without the expressed written permission of the author by any means mechanical, electronic, graphic, including photocopying, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems. Permission can be granted by writing the author at alimed42@yahoo.com. He also welcomes your feedback to this story. All violators will be persecuted.
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