Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [105]
Once he was allowed to see his superior, he told him everything. He told the entire story of how he had gotten drunk and impregnated a girl and later refused to assist or help her. He explained his silence about Trina being with him the night of the fire in Pie Town, how he had not stood in defense of a girl who had been wrongly accused. He told of his promise and his failure to keep it. All of this he told without hesitation or defense, and then he waited for his judgment.
It didn’t take long. The older man dropped his head and then lifted it again. Absolution came from the Monsignor, instruction for counseling and a designated time of probation, and then the Monsignor paused. He turned to the young priest standing before him and said, “I assume this conversion experience that has led you to confession has also led you to an understanding of service.”
Father George raised his shoulders, lifted his face, and replied. “Pie Town,” he said. “I am being sent back to Pie Town.”
Father George explained about Oris’s visit earlier when he had been in Gallup, and about the unexpected voice that came to him while praying. He told him about the pool of light, the sweet experience of relief. He said he knew he had to return to the place he had abandoned, the people he had left behind.
As the Monsignor listened he suddenly remembered his own visit from the old man from Pie Town, how he had begged the Church to rebuild after the fire, to give his town another sanctuary. “We cannot rebuild the church,” he had explained to the man and then again to Father George. “There are no funds. If you do this thing, you will have no assistance from us here.”
And Father George had smiled and nodded. The news did not discourage him.
After listening to Father George’s request, engaging in his own time of prayer and discernment, talking to the young man’s spiritual director from his seminary, as well as his hometown priest, the Monsignor agreed and sent the young priest back to his original post.
Upon hearing the news, Father George had turned to leave the office, the joy spread wide across his face, when the Monsignor stopped him. He reached behind his desk and pulled out a large box, explaining that the old man from Pie Town had asked that Father George be given its contents. “I forgot that I had this. After you left, I had planned to mail it,” he explained. “But since you’re here . . .” And he handed the box to George. “I can’t imagine what it is.”
And George opened one end and peeked inside. He smiled and closed the box without displaying what he had seen. He bowed and left the diocese and his superior.
Father George, freed and focused in a way he had not been in a very long time, found the old station wagon parked in a lot behind the offices, drove out of town, stopping only to gas up, make a call, and then a visit to an out-of-the-way stop in Amarillo.
It had taken him a while to track her down, but he recalled enough of her story, their conversations, that he remembered the name of the bar she frequented. From the bartender he found the place she was staying. In the end, it hadn’t taken much to convince her to join him. It seemed, in fact, to George that she had been waiting for him to call, that she had been expecting him, expecting the best of him. And when he drove into town, she was standing outside the bar, her suitcase packed, a knowing smile across her face.
“Took you long enough,” she said as she threw the suitcase in the backseat.
“I’m a little slow,” he answered. And he opened the passenger-side door while she got inside.
The two of them, therefore, arrived in Pie Town and the parking lot to the diner in the exact same way, but in an entirely different spirit than they had first appeared almost six months prior.
When he opened the door and stepped out of the car, Trina was already standing