Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra Read Free Book Online

Everyone wanted to work funeral masses, sincethe service included a three-dollar fee and a chance to pocket more if you looked sufficiently somber.
    In addition, we went to mass once a week and sometimes more, especially if Father Bobby needed someone to escort the elderly of the parish to weeknight services. Other times, I would just stop inside the church and sit for hours, alone or with one of my friends. I liked the feel and smell of the empty church, surrounded by statues of saints and stained glass windows. I didn’t go so much to pray, but to relax and pull away from outside events. John and I went more than the others. We were the only two of the group to give any thought to entering the priesthood, an idea we found appealing because of its guaranteed ticket out of the neighborhood. A Catholic version of the lottery. We were much too young to dissect the issue of celibacy and spent most of our time fretting over how we would look wearing a Roman collar.
    John and I were intrigued by the powers a priest was given. The ability to serve mass, say last rites, baptize babies, perform weddings, and, best of all, sit in a dark booth and listen to others confess their sins. To us, the sacrament of confession was like being allowed inside a secret world of betrayal and deceit, where people openly admitted dark misdeeds and vile indiscretions. All of it covered by an umbrella of piety and privacy. Confession was better than any book we could get our hands on or any movie we could see because the sins were real, committed by people we actually knew. The temptation to be a part of that was too great to resist.
    There were two confessional booths on either side of Sacred Heart, lining the walls closest to the back pews, each shrouded with heavy purple curtains. The thick wood door at the center of the confessional locked from the inside. Two small mesh screens, covered by sliding wood panels, allowed the priest, if he could stay awake, to sit and listen to the sins of his parish. Every Saturdayafternoon, from three to five P.M . a handful of parishioners would head into those booths. There, every affair, every curse, every transgression they made during the week, would be revealed. On those days there was no better place to be in Hell’s Kitchen.
    John and I sat in that church every Saturday afternoon. We knew Father Tim McAndrew, old, weary, and hard of hearing, always worked the first hour in one of the booths closest to the altar. Father McAndrew had a penchant for handing out stiff penalties for the slightest trespass, whether he heard it confessed or only thought he did. He was especially rough on children and married women. Self-abuse was worth a dozen Hail Marys and a half-dozen Our Fathers.
    On a few occasions and always at my urging, John and I would sneak into the booth alongside McAndrew’s, shut the door, and hear the sins we had only read about. We couldn’t imagine what the penalty would be for getting caught, but whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly surpass the joy of hearing about a neighbor’s fall from grace.
    I was inside the second booth, squeezed onto the small wooden bench, my back against the cool wall. The Count, John Reilly, sat next to me.
    “Man, if we get caught, they’ll burn us,” he whispered.
    “What if our mothers are out there?” I asked. “What if we end up hearing their confessions?”
    “What if we hear somethin’ worse?” John said.
    “Like what?” I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
    “Like a murder,” John said. “What if somebody cops to a murder?”
    “Relax,” I said as convincingly as I could. “All we gotta do is sit back, listen, and remember not to laugh.”
    At ten minutes past three, two women from the back pew stood and headed for the first confessional, readyto tell their sins to a man who couldn’t hear them. They moved one to each side, parted the curtains, knelt down, and waited for the small wood doors to slide open.
    Seconds later the sides of our