Vapor Trail

to the right of the altar. Angel stood in the empty church with two old-world statues for company. The Roman goddess on the left and the corpse with the outstretched nailed hands in an alcove on the right. Candles guttered in the ornate gloom.

Is this really the way You want us to think of You?

She looked down the nave at a brooding wedge of stained glass and the clumsy images imprisoned in it: a knife-wielding Abraham was getting ready to stab his son Isaac. Just like God was willing to sacrifice Jesus. What a bloody-minded bunch of Aztecs they were.

Angel stared down the aisle of pews to the vaulted chancel, the organ, the choir stalls, and the altar. She could not imagine a place more removed from trees and clouds and fresh air. Her skin crawled. The old cramped stone and tired wood closed in on her. Cold rigid angles. Tortured figures imprisoned in the fractured windows. In all this heat, goose bumps prickled on her arms. Being here was like standing inside the replica of a man’s mind.

Father Moros heard the scuff of rubber soles. The bell on the door to the private confessional booth jingled as the door opened. The confessional was one room with two doors and was divided by a wooden partition. He placed a bookmark in the Liturgy of Hours. He had been reading Psalm 144.

Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! Or the son of man, that thou makest account of him!

Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.

He adjusted the purple stole around his neck and faced the grille. Cheap perfume, Ponds facial cream, and hairspray seeped through the partition.

The dime-store essence reminded him of the trailer-park Anglo girls he’d grown up with in El Paso. In Albuquerque the confessional had reeked of Estee Lauder. He allowed himself a smile. He had come full circle.

Nothing happened. Some squirming from the other side; perhaps the penitent was having difficulty with the kneeling rest.

So Father Moros offered a prompt in his habitual avuncular tone. “May the Lord be in your heart and help you confess your sins with true sorrow.”

“It’s been years since my last confession, but I do feel sorrow,” said the penitent. A low voice, strained and hard to place.

“Yes, my child.”

“I’m not your child, and you sure as hell aren’t my father.”

Victor Armondo Moros sat up at the sharp tone. Here was something different to break up the hot afternoon. The intensity in the tightly controlled voice intrigued him. The passion of it.

“How can I help you?” he asked sincerely, in a less officious tone.

“I’m not real sure. See, I’m not what you’d call a good Catholic; I mean I’ve never done something like this before.”

“This?”

“You know, explain something like this.”

“I’m here to listen,” Moros said.

“First I need to go back over the rules. I mean if I tell you something, you keep it to yourself, right?”

“Of course.”

“Even if it could get somebody in trouble?” The tight voice rose, strained.

“I’m here as a minister of the church to hear your sins if you are sorry for what you’ve done,” Moros said.

“Yes, but you won’t tell anybody?” The voice rose again.

“I’m bound by the seal of confession to keep what we talk about in confidence. The seal of the confession is absolute.”

“Okay, the thing is, I feel real bad, but I don’t think I offended God. I think I pleased God. But there are parts to it that I don’t understand.”

“What parts?”

“Well, the basic part, like why does God permit evil? Why do children have to suffer? This stuff that’s been in the news-those priests and that cardinal in Boston-that really bothers me a lot.”

Moros took a deep contemplative breath as he scanned the agony of the Church. “It’s the mystery of evil.”

“You have to do better than that,” the voice parried sharply. “Like, I know this woman who has six kids, and she went to confessional and told the priest she’s gotta go on the birth control because her family was killing her, and the priest tells her birth control is a sin that will send her to hell. So you guys have quick answers for some stuff, don’t you?”

Moros hunched forward, closer to the grille. “One can assume that God created the best possible world, but he gave us free will. So evil comes into the world through the choices some individuals make. .”

“But why?”

Moros inclined his head. “Perhaps because the human heart is vulnerable to the whole parade of venal and mortal sins. We must never forget that God has a rival who wants to collect our souls.”

Then the penitent’s words tumbled out in a rush. “There was this man. It was real big in the news. But this was before you came here, so you probably didn’t hear about it.”

“What?” Father Moros was taken aback by the personal reference, but before he could say another word the penitent raced on.

“He violated this child, and they let him get away with it. They said some of the people on the jury would not believe a kid over an adult, and that’s why they acquitted him. I mean, that’s not right. This guy was a teacher, and he got this six-year-old to play with his thing, you know, he told him it was a popsicle and got him to. .”

“Please, calm down,” Father Moros said, not prepared for the lurch of velocity building in the language coming through the grille.

“I’m sorry, but I have to get this off my chest; it bothers me so much I can’t sleep. Okay?”

Father Moros nodded his head. Yes. Yes. This was the work he was called to do. The thing every priest knew could walk through the door at any time. And now here it was. “Go on.” Moros fingered the rosary in his hand for reassurance and found the black beads shiny with sweat.

“All right,” the penitent said. “I always thought God was, you know, like a real fierce micromanager, that he was involved in everything. But maybe it turns out he’s more laid back, and sometimes he uses ordinary people to make things come out right. Is that possible?”

Father Moros wondered if she was on medication. This was swerving on the line that separated the spiritual and civil spheres.

“Well, is it?” the voice said, quavering. When Father Moros didn’t answer, the penitent began to cry.

The anguish in her voice brought him back on task. “Are you ready to confess your sins?” he asked.

“Yes.” The penitent’s voice caught in a sob. “You see, they wouldn’t stop him. Somebody had to stop him, or he’d hurt more children. I mean, they were going to let him go back to work in the same school where he did that to the boy. So I went to his house when he was all alone. I took a gun and I shot him and he died, and nobody knows who did it except you, me, and God.”

It was silent in the confessional for ten seconds. Angel kneeled awkwardly on the prie-dieu. She could smell the Tic Tacs on the priest’s breath not more than a foot away through the grille. And Old Spice aftershave. With her left hand she picked up the printed form on the top of the kneeling rest. It was titled: “Summary of the Rite of Reconciliation of Individual Penitents.” Her right hand reached into the shopping bag.

“Wait a minute, I get it,” Angel said. She cleared her throat, composed herself, and recited from the form: “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God.”

There was more on the form, but Angel was now preoccupied with the Ruger Mark II.22-caliber pistol she had removed from the shopping bag. The plastic Mountain Dew bottle duct-taped over the barrel made it cumbersome.

On the other side of the screen Father Moros hung his head. What a horrible thing. Could it be true? But Angel’s act of contrition put him back on familiar ground. Automatically, he began to recite the prayer of absolution.

“God, Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to himself