Read Online Welding with Children by Tim Gautreaux - Free Book Online

of spirits, longed for the afterburn of brandy in his nostrils. He went back into the empty church, a high-ceilinged Gothic building over a hundred years old, sat in a pew, and steeped himself in the odors of furniture oil, incense, and hot candle wax. He let the insubstantial colors of the windows flow over him, and after a while, these shades and smells began to fill the emptiness in him. He closed his eyes and imagined the housekeeper’s supper, pushing out of mind his need for a drink, replacing the unnecessary with the good. At five to six, he walked to the rectory to have his thoughts made into food.
    The next evening, after visiting a sick parishioner, he was reading the newspaper upstairs in his room when the housekeeper knocked on his door. Mrs. Mamie Barrilleaux was downstairs and would like to speak with him, the housekeeper said.
    The first thing Father Ledet noticed when he walked into the downstairs study was the white cast on the woman’s arm.
    â€œMamie,” he said, sitting next to her on the sofa. “I have to tell you again how sorry I am about your arm.”
    The woman’s face brightened, as though to be apologized to was a privilege. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Father. Accidents happen.” She was a graying brunette with fair skin, a woman whose cheerfulness made her pretty. One of the best cooks in a town of good cooks, she volunteered for every charity work connected with a stove or oven, and her time belonged to anyone who needed it, from her well-fed smirk of a husband to the drug addicts who showed up at the parish shelter. While they talked, the priest’s eyes wandered repeatedly to the ugly cast, which ran up nearly to her shoulder. For five minutes, he wondered why she had dropped in unannounced. And then she told him.
    â€œFather, I don’t know if you understand what good friends Clyde Arceneaux’s wife and I are. We went to school together for twelve years.”
    â€œYes. It’s a shame her husband’s so sick.”
    Mrs. Barrilleaux fidgeted into the corner of the sofa, put her cast on the armrest, where it glowed under a lamp. “That’s sort of why I’m here. Doris told me she asked you to do something for her and Clyde, and you told her no. I’m not being specific because I know it was a confession thing.”
    â€œHow much did she tell you?” The priest hoped she wouldn’t ask what she was going to ask, because he knew he could not refuse her.
    â€œI don’t know even one detail, Father. But I wanted to tell you that if Doris wants it done, then it needs doing. She’s a good person, and I’m asking you to help her.”
    â€œBut you don’t know what she wants me to do.”
    Mrs. Barrilleaux put her good hand on her cast. “I know it’s not something bad.”
    â€œNo, no. It’s just…” He was going to mention that his driver’s license was suspended but realized that he couldn’t even tell her that.
    Mamie lowered her head and turned her face toward the priest. “Father?”
    â€œOh, all right.”
    *   *   *
    He visited Mrs. Arceneaux on a Wednesday, got the keys, and late that night he sat outside on the dark rectory patio for a long time, filling up on the smells of honeysuckle. The young priest walked up to him and insisted that he come in out of the mosquitoes and the dampness. Upstairs, he changed into street clothes and lay on the bed like a man waiting for a firing squad. Around midnight, his legs began to ache terribly, and the next thing he knew, they were carrying him downstairs to the kitchen, where the aspirin was kept, and as his hand floated toward the cabinet door to his right, it remembered its accustomed movement to the door on the left, where a quart of brandy waited like an airy medicinal promise. The mind and the spirit pulled his hand to the right, while the earthly body drew it to the left. He heard the