New Orleans Noir

your father. I can help you if you’re kind to me. Why won’t you respond to my letters?”
    I let his hand stay there for a second, paralyzed by the suddenness of it.
    “Be kind to me, Helen,” he said with a smile that was more a leer, and he moved his hand higher up my thigh.
    I reached for the lamp on the coffee table before I knew what I was going to do. He realized it, but he was a split second too late. I caught him flush on the side of the head. He dropped with the heaviness of someone dead; I stood over him for a moment, wondering what to do next.

    “My God, Helen, did you kill him?” Father Fitzpatrick asked in horror.
    He was a good-looking, tall, and well-built man with hair black as a crow’s feathers. He did have bad teeth, due mostly to his habit of getting into fistfights. Father Fitzpatrick insisted that we call him Billy and never Father unless he was in the church, and even then he looked pained when someone did.
    He was seated on the steps of a very clean but small shotgun house that served as the temporary rectory of the Corpus Christi Church while the parishioners raised the money to build the real rectory. I stood in the shade fanning myself with a street car schedule.
    “No, Billy, he moaned … and before I ran from the office, I saw him try to stand.”
    “Good. He deserves to die, but not by you.”
    “It’s not good. My temper has gotten me nothing but trouble. My father wants to send me to Baton Rouge.”
    “Listen to him. You must know how vindictive Murphy can be. He can do most anything without remorse. He has no conscience, but he does have all the conviction of a man who speaks with the authority of Jesus Christ himself. If I see him on the street it’s unbearable. He mocks the priesthood and demeans it; and it’s shameful that no one will stand up to him.”
    “So you must? No matter how awful Murphy is, you can’t think that beating him in the street will solve anything. Aren’t you afraid of losing your church or being defrocked?”
    He laughed. “This from a woman who just bashed a man in the head. God knows the truth but waits. I trust in the Lord to guide and protect me. Or least to help me sober up before Mass.”
    “Must you make light of everything?”
    He shrugged. “Why are you afraid of Baton Rouge? It’s a fine town.”
    “I won’t go to Baton Rouge. My father wants me to stay with relatives who I can’t tolerate.”
    “Why can’t you tolerate them? From what I hear, they eat and dance in Baton Rouge just like they do here.”
    “They drink and argue constantly. They have no culture.”
    He poured himself another whiskey and laughed. “Sometimes I forget how haughty you are.”
    “I am not haughty,” I said, and waved goodbye to him as I rushed to catch the trolley. I couldn’t help but like Father Fitzpatrick. He was a kind and worldly man who was ill-suited for the priesthood, and largely lived his life as though he wasn’t part of it. I knew that he frequented bars and gambling dens, and it was rumored that he had more than one female admirer, but he had a good heart and made sure that those who had need in the Seventh Ward were tended to, and that the Creoles and Negroes were treated with the same respect as the whites. The rumors that Father Fitzpatrick was on the way out of town were very hard to ignore, but until the day they ran him out of town, his rage at Murphy would be uncontrollable. It was only a matter of time before he’d get a couple too many whiskeys in him and walk the few blocks to Sacred Heart to bust Murphy’s eye once again, and this time Murphy would most certainly be ready for him.
    When I arrived home on Gravier she was already on the porch, fanning herself with her hat. Even from a distance she looked tall and imposing, an iron rail of a woman, black as night and fiercer than a lioness.
    “Your father asked me to escort you to Baton Rouge. He explained to me his thinking and I agree with him. He has very good reasons for you to go.”
    “Yes, Aunt Odie, he does, or so I’ve been hearing for the last few days.”
    “Have you gotten threats?”
    “Threats? Not yet. I can’t say that I expect threats.”
    “Child, think. You assaulted the kind of man who has the means and the temperament to hurt you.”
    “What do you suggest?”
    “Listen to your father. If you don’t go to Baton Rouge, you need to leave this house and move in with him for a time.”
    “I can’t do that. This is my mother’s house