Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t want to tell other people, that’s all.”
    I had scratched the lacquer off a thin strip of the pew next to me. “I guess that’s a good thing to do. What you do, I mean.”
    “They have an old saying about situations like this.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You are only as sick as your secrets.”
    “They got a saying about everything, don’t they?”
    “It’s true.” He smiled again.
    I thought about it awhile. “You mean, like, I should make a confession or something.”
    “Well, not a, not a…just…talking.”
    “I just made a mistake is all.”
    “Everyone makes mistakes,” he said.
    “Nah,” I said. “They don’t. Not really.”
    The children and the tour guide had filed out of the cathedral. Light no longer fell through the windows and they looked like dark holes below the ceiling of the church in the dim lamp and candlelight.
    I sat back in the pew and he sat at the end of the pew a little away from me and I thought how strange it was to be here, with the lights flickering, cold and wet. I felt foreign, acutely and overwhelmingly foreign. I felt an urge to run but didn’t.
    We both paused awkwardly. “I appreciate it, but I’d better be on my way. Thanks for your time, Father. If I’m not back soon I’ll catch hell. Well, you know what I mean.” I turned and began walking out of the transept and toward the large wooden doors at the front of the church. There was no noise other than my footsteps when the priest called out, “Do you want me to pray for you?”
    I thought about what the priest asked and I looked around the cathedral. It was a beautiful place, the most beautiful I’d seen in a long time. But it was a sad kind of beauty, like all things created to cover the ugly reason they existed. I took the pamphlet out of my pocket. The entire history of the church was written there, three pages for a thousand years. Some poor fool had had to decide what was worth remembering, had had to lay it out neatly for whomever might come along to wonder. I had less and less control over my own history each day. I suppose I could have made some kind of effort. It should have been easy to trace: this happened, I was here, that happened next, all of which led inevitably to the present moment. I could have picked up a handful of dirt from the street outside, some wax from a candle on the altarpiece, ash from the incense as it swung past. I could have wrung it out, hoping I might find an essential thing that would give meaning to this place or that time. I did not. Certainty had surrendered all its territory in my mind. I’d have just been left with a mess in my hands anyway, no more. I realized, as I stood there in the church, that there was a sharp distinction between what was remembered, what was told, and what was true. And I didn’t think I’d ever figure out which was which.
    “No, sir. That’s all right.” I appreciated the gesture, but it seemed obligatory and somehow therefore meaningless, as all gestures come to seem.
    “A friend, perhaps?”
    “I had a friend. I have a friend you can pray for.”
    “Who is he?” the priest requested.
    “Daniel Murphy. My battle. He got killed in Al Tafar. He died like…” I looked to the wall where the paintings of the saints hung. “It doesn’t matter.” The whole church was dark except for a few spheres of light that welled up from glowing candles and a few dim lamps.
    Still, there went Murph, floating down toward that bend in the Tigris, where he passed beneath the shadow of the mound where Jonah was buried, his eyes just cups now for the water that he floated in, the fish having begun to tear his flesh already. I felt an obligation to remember him correctly, because all remembrances are assignations of significance, and no one else would ever know what happened to him, perhaps not even me. I haven’t made any progress, really. When I try to get it right, I can’t. When I try to put it out of my mind, it only comes faster and with