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It was probably rude to call, Jud thought. But the sick feeling in his stomach hadn’t left, not since he stood in the empty church after the departure of his congregation that morning. The warm Sunday afternoon and the peace of the sanctuary should have been comforting, but it only seemed to echo his own doubts back at him.
He glanced at the new crucifix and thought about what sat inside its breast, then walked out of the sanctuary and into the office and dialed the fourth number in his contacts alphabetically.
It rang twice. “Father Jud?” Blanc asked. Which would have made him a truly great detective fifty years before, but now only proved that he’d saved Jud’s number in his phone.
“Blanc,” Jud said, and then said nothing else.
“Well, how nice.” Blanc did sound pleased to hear from him. “I would have thought you’d be busy, it being a Sunday and all.”
“No,” Jud said, the word like ash in his mouth. Maybe he should have lingered longer with the congregation. He hoped he hadn’t rushed them out the door, but it had felt—in the moment—like something poisonous, staying near him.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Blanc said.
“Am I interrupting something?” It might have been a relief if it was, except that hanging up would leave Jud alone with his own thoughts again.
“No, no, not at all,” Blanc assured. “Now, not that it isn’t nice to hear from you, but I have something of a suspicion this isn’t just a call to say hello.”
“I wanted to talk to you,” Jud said. He began to pace between the doorway and the desk. “I’m having some problems. With the church.”
“Well,” Blanc said. “Old problems, or new problems? Are they giving you a hard time?”
“No,” Jud blurted. “That’s the problem.”
“That they’re not giving you problems?” Blanc sounded, perhaps understandably, bewildered.
“That they believe these things about me, and they’re not giving me problems! At service today, this teenager—he said good job killing that dude!”
“Ah,” Blanc said.
“And online it’s worse,” he said. He stopped midway through his return to the desk to flip through his phone. “That’s where they’re coming from. Listen to this. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. That makes Father Jud his dude! That’s the opposite of what that means!” Jud closed the tab, which was less satisfying than what he wanted to do, which was pitch the phone across the room.
“Well,” Blanc said.
“They think I’m a murderer,” he said, pacing again. “And they like me. Which means the ones that hate me—they’re right, or at least they’re right for what they think they know, because they shouldn’t be supporting me. Because I’m a murderer! Or, well. They think I am.”
“Well, you can be right about one thing and wrong about another,” Blanc said. “And that can add up to the wrong thing altogether, to be sure. But if they’re looking for someone to listen to and they’ll only listen to someone who they think is capable of evil, well, they couldn’t possibly have stumbled into a better place, could they have?”
“What?” Jud said, baffled.
“What I mean is, if they’re determined to listen to the devil—metaphorically speaking—then maybe you should consider it a stroke of luck they’ve made a mistake,” Blanc suggested. “Besides, someone once told me that Jesus loves people when they’re guilty.”
“But it’s not like that,” Jud argued. “If they believed I’d done something terrible and were okay with it, that would be one thing. But—a community of people who think that something is good, those people…”
“Are what?” Blanc said. “Misguided? I think you’ll find a lot of people like that.”
“Looking for an enemy,” Jud said. “If they come to me because they think I killed someone, and that’s good—because he was a bad person? Because he deserved it? We’ll end up back where we started, with a group of people who think they’re right and everyone else is wrong and they deserve to suffer because of it. I can’t be the reason they think that.”
“And what about the others?” Blanc said.
“The others?”
“Everyone else in your congregation. You’re bound to have a few folks who don’t think about things the way they ought to, and the only way that’s ever going to change is if other folks are there to change their minds. Maybe it’s good to have them around those other folks. The ones who believe you’re a good person, and are listening to you because you’re a good person.”
Jud had forgotten that, for all that he liked Blanc, he also found him somewhat aggravating. “Well, they’re wrong too!” Jud snapped. He’d reached the desk again and flung himself into the chair.
“And how is that?” Blanc said, still perfectly calm. “You said the ones who think you’re a murderer and hate you, they’re right to do it. So the ones who think you’re a good man, and a good priest, and that you’re innocent—why shouldn’t they follow you?”
Jud said nothing. The silence stretched, until Blanc sighed.
“I’m not a priest, Father,” he said. “So, and far be it for me to advise you on matters in which you are certainly the expert, I don’t think I’m exactly qualified to take your confession.”
Jud bit his lip hard, tasted blood, and regretted it. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then can you tell me what it is?” Blanc asked. “Because I am a little confused.”
“I…” Jud started. “I was hoping you could help me.” It came out more accusatory than he’d intended. He tilted his head up towards the ceiling, as though it might also help him. It did not.
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to do,” Blanc said mildly. “But it seems to me the answers you’re looking for aren’t the kind of answers that I am going to be able to provide. They’re matter of—of belief, not fact. There is no capital-T Truth here, Father. When it comes to a matter like this—well, sure, there’s some things that are easy, don’t mistake me. Murder, that’s wrong. But most of the time…” Jud could imagine him shaking his head. “Most of the time, it doesn’t work like that.”
“Now,” Blanc added. “I think I’m pretty good at knowing about people. Who to believe, and who not to. And I think we got to know each other pretty well for such a short period of time. So, Father Jud,” Blanc said. “Maybe you can tell me why you think I’m wrong.”
“You know,” Jud said. “I told you. I killed someone with hate in my heart.”
“Ah,” Blanc said. “Well. You did tell me that. And—once again, I feel I’m overstepping a bit on the matter—but I thought that you were forgiven for that sort of thing. I thought that was how it worked.”
“Yes,” Jud said. “I—yes. That is how it works.”
Another short silence. “Well. Then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you? And I imagine if you think your God has forgiven you, you probably shouldn’t be wasting time not forgiving yourself. So let’s pretend it’s not that at all. Let’s pretend—well, you told me this too, didn’t you. You told me that you’d killed someone with hate in your heart once, and that made you real sure you’d somehow done it again, even though you didn’t have hate in your heart then at all. And we both know that wasn’t true. So it isn’t about forgiveness at all, is it? It’s about trust. You don’t trust yourself to do the right thing.”
“But you did do the right thing, with Wicks, and with Martha, and with all of them. And you’re doing the right thing now, trying to help them. It isn’t always going to work, and that’s okay. Not everyone will believe it, and that’s okay. You know what you did. I know what you did. And I can promise you that plenty of people out there know what you did. And while not everyone who came into your church this morning might be there for the right reasons, I can promise you that if they’re looking for someone to listen to, they could be doing a whole hell of a lot worse.”
Jud’s vision blurred. He blinked to clear it, by which time Blanc was saying, awkwardly, “…heck of a lot worse.”
Jud laughed, a little choked. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” Blanc said. “Now, I wouldn’t spend the rest of this lovely Sunday afternoon cooped up there in that office. And don’t be a stranger,” he added, as though Jud wasn’t the one who’d just called him out of the blue.
Jud glanced out the window, wondering vaguely how Blanc had known where he was.
“No,” he said. “I won’t.”
After he’d hung up, Jud went back to the sanctuary for a moment and stood there. The light through the stained glass marked the dark interior with uncharacteristic brightness, and while Jud wasn’t sure that what he was feeling was peace, exactly, it was considerably more pleasant than what he’d been feeling before.
He wasn’t sure, entirely, if Blanc was right. But when he walked outside into the afternoon sunlight, he found that Blanc had certainly been right about one thing: it was a beautiful day.