Father O’Malley had introduced Niko to boxing to help him find a positive, productive way to use his anger and aggression. He also taught Niko about the Bible. The verses and stories, along with the names and places, stayed with Niko long after he quit boxing. He didn’t always remember things exactly the way they were printed on the page, or the way Father O’Malley explained them to him. But one way or another, it was all still in him. So Father O’Malley was a major force in shaping Niko. There were others, of course, like his mother, who died too young; and Esther, whom Niko crossed paths with on a warm night late in the summer of 1952.
Esther was a waitress in the Golden Albatross, which was known in those days for showcasing blues and jazz musicians from around the country. On the night of Niko’s first visit to the Albatross, the headliner was Lowell Fulson, a west coast blues singer/guitarist whose piano player and musical director at the time was the young, unknown Ray Charles. Niko was mesmerized by the blind pianist. The way Charles rocked and swayed on his bench, the way his hands moved over the keys, sometimes dancing lightly, sometimes pounding the ivories as if trying to beat them into submission, reminded Niko of boxing – of being light on your feet while waiting to unleash your strength in a decisive punch.
Niko didn’t notice Esther that night, but she noticed him. He was one of only a handful of white men at the bar, so pretty much everyone noticed him. Niko didn’t care about race or skin color. He had come to hear some blues, and wasn’t aware that he didn’t exactly fit in. It wasn’t just his skin color that caught Esther’s attention, though. It was the power and energy she could sense from him when she brought him his drinks, the strength she could see in his hands as he slapped the table in time with the music and in his hips when he walked out the door at the end of the night. She wanted to know what it would feel like to be touched with those hands, loved with those hips.
Niko left the Golden Albatross with two new appreciations: The piano playing of Ray Charles, and whisky. Esther, on the other hand, left with an appreciation for Niko. Neither Ray Charles nor Father O’Malley were affected in any way, since neither of them were aware that Niko had even been there that night.
The chain of events that had led Niko to Father O’Malley began with the death of his mother, Angelika. Niko had never known his father, and had no other family. So when his mother was raped and killed, thirteen-year-old Niko was suddenly very alone in the world—and very angry.
Angelika had been working as a waitress in The Hibernian, one of the rowdier drinking establishments in the Irish ghetto. The owner only hired attractive women and required them to wear short skirts and silky blouses with deep, plunging necklines. Angelika put up with the humiliation of being manhandled by the drunken clientele because she needed the job to support herself and Niko.
The general belief in the neighborhood was that the man (or men) who killed Angelika and left her naked and bloodied in room 11B of the Sandy Acres Motel, out on the edge of town, was likely a cross-country truck driver. Young Niko suspected that it was Francis Callahan, one of the regular customers in the Hibernian—and the one his mother complained about most often.
And so, thirteen years old and full of grief and rage, Niko broke into Callahan’s house in the middle of the night and beat him with a baseball bat while he slept, leaving him bloodied and broken. Five years later, at the age of eighteen, Niko was released from the County Juvenile Detention Center in Hendersonville. He was big, strong and every bit as angry as he’d been when he had first been locked up in there. Father O’Malley was waiting at the gates of the detention center, as he was on the first Friday of every month. (That was the day the center released any of their inmates who’d reached the age of eighteen during the previous month.) And to all these newly released young men, Father O’Malley made the same offer: come to work for the diocese, do some painting and landscaping around the rectory, the church and the cemetery in exchange for a place to live in the attic above the garage. Most of them would decline, maybe because they had families waiting for them or didn’t trust this strange priest. But Niko accepted, mostly because he had no idea what else to do.
“It’s like she died for nothing,” Niko told Father O’Malley over coffee and scrambled eggs on his first Saturday morning in the rectory.
“Niko,” Father O’Malley replied, “this idea that one death has more meaning or more significance than another . . . this is a question I used to struggle with. But no more. Whether one death is more important or more meaningful than another, there is none among the living who can say. And I believe there are none among the dead who would even consider the question worth asking. It’s not the dead we need to worry about, son, nor the manner of their death. It’s how you live that matters, and what choices you make here on earth.”
“You mean, like me choosing to beat the hell out of the man who killed her?”
“Like that, yes. But also your decision to come here and to try to find a new path. As long as you’re alive, it’s not too late, Niko. Your fate is still yours to determine. Once you finish breakfast, I’d like you to mow the grass around the church. The mower is in the shed, and there’s a can of gasoline in there as well. If you have any questions, or need anything, I’ll be in my office. Lunch back here at one, then we’ll go to the gym.”
Father O’Malley instilled in Niko the value of ritual and routine: mornings mowing lawns, painting fences, and other small jobs around the church and cemetery; afternoons jogging, working out and sparring at the gym; evenings listening to Father O’Malley read to him from the Bible or sitting in on group Bible study classes in the church. Niko added his own bit at the end, of course, sneaking out to bars and clubs to listen to some blues or jazz after the priest went to bed. That’s how he spent his days throughout that summer, and the days turned into weeks, then months.
One evening, after dinner, Father O’Malley read to Niko from his Bible, specifically the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant from the book of Matthew. Peter has come to Jesus, privately, away from the other disciples, and asked him about forgiveness: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus responded, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Jesus then told Peter about the king who forgave his servant’s debt because the servant begged him for mercy. The servant did not forgive a debt owed to him by another, however, and instead had this other cast into prison. When the king heard about this, he said, “You wicked servant! I forgaveyou all that debt because you besought me;and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” The King then sent the unforgiving servant to prison until he paid the debt he owed.
The priest looked at Niko, who was listening intently, and recited the final line of the chapter, Jesus’ words to Peter: “’So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.’ Niko, you must forgive the man who hurt your mother. You must forgive all the sins and transgressions committed by your fellow men, else your own sins and transgressions cannot be forgiven you.”
“Is it that simple, Father? Just forgive him, after what he did to my mother? It’s easy to say, but I don’t know how to do it.”
“Easy? No, certainly not. But you can do it, Niko, if you make the effort. I want you to think about this. And while you’re thinking, I’ll do some drinking.” The priest took a bottle of whisky down from the shelf over the sink and poured some over a few ice cubes. “None of us are perfect. We all transgress. We all have our weaknesses. You, me, Francis Callahan, even your poor mother. We are human, not divine. The closest we can get to the perfection of our Lord Jesus is to forgive others for their weaknesses.”
Niko went up to his room and tried to sleep, while Father O’Malley sat in his leather chair with his Bible in his lap and his whisky glass in hand. Sleep didn’t come to Niko, however. His mind swirled with thoughts of the night he’d beaten Francis Callahan. How, he wondered, could he ever forgive that man? And how could he himself ever be forgiven for what he had done to Callahan?
Once Niko saw that the priest had turned out his lamp and the rectory lay in quiet darkness, he climbed out the window of his attic apartment and walked to town, lured by the glare of neon and the sound of trumpets and saxophones. He didn’t find forgiveness that night, for himself or for Francis Callahan, but he did find a way to forget, to escape from his own thoughts by letting the music of the night wash over him and fill him.
Father O’Malley was a firm believer that running was as important for a boxer as sparring or weight lifting. “If you get tired before the other guy does,” he once said, “you’re done, no matter how strong you are or how fast your hands are.” And so Niko ran almost every day, building up his endurance.
His route started at the rectory and went once around the perimeter of the cemetery, down Chestnut Street until it reached the railroad crossing, then along the tracks themselves until they led back to Main Street, then back to the rectory: a total of five miles, almost to the inch. In addition, Niko was learning the town and its neighborhoods: the Irish and Italian ghettos on either side of Springfield Boulevard; the small two block section of Greystone Avenue where the Greeks had congregated; and the tenements on Oakwood Avenue where the blacks and the Puerto Ricans lived in uneasy peace.
Like Niko, the town had a kind of rhythm. The residents had their routines, habits, rituals. One that Niko witnessed every Thursday afternoon as he jogged around the cemetery was Mr. Oakley’s weekly visit to his wife’s grave. Mr. Oakley would park his 1946 Oldsmobile Coupe on the side of the road, leaving it running with the radio tuned to a classical music station. Then he’d pull a folding chair out of the trunk and a bunch of pink tulips out of the backseat, and walk slowly down the tree-lined path until he reached Mrs. Oakley’s grave. It was close enough to the street, Niko realized, so that Mr. Oakley could hear the music from his car. Mr. Oakley would place the tulips on the ground in front of his wife’s headstone, unfold the chair, and sit down. He’d stay there for an hour or more, sometimes singing along if the radio station played an opera.
Niko was fascinated by Mr. Oakley’s devotion and dedication. He wondered what the man thought about as he was sitting there. Was he remembering the times he’d had with his wife, the meals they’d shared, the little intimacies of a life lived together? Or was he thinking of the times they could have had if she hadn’t died, maybe even wishing he’d been the one to go first? It’s much harder being the one left behind, Niko thought.
And, so it went until the night at the Golden Albatross, when Niko saw Ray Charles, and Esther saw Niko. Niko returned to bar the next night, and Esther made sure he noticed her this time. She flirted with him, giving him her best smile and resting her warm hand gently on his shoulder. When the music was too loud for him to hear her, she leaned in close and let her lips brush his ear, “Need another drink, honey?”
When Esther brought Niko his next whisky sour, she dropped her pen on the floor beside his chair, giving him a chance to examine her stockinged legs as he bent to pick it up for her. He handed it back to her, and she used it to write her address on his cocktail napkin, bending over his table, exposing her warm mahogany colored cleavage for him. He was hooked, and she knew it. “Meet me at that address,” she said. “We close at two. I’ll be there by two-fifteen.”
Niko, for his part, didn’t say a word. He didn’t know how to act with a woman—at least not a woman like Esther. The ladies at Father O’Malley’s bible study were demure, modest. Esther was neither. So when the band finished for the night and the lights came up, Niko moved slowly toward the exit along with the last few stragglers. He glanced back toward the bar and saw Esther there, looking at him with a mysterious gleam in her eye. He didn’t know what to call the feeling he was having, but he couldn’t deny it. He saw her look at him with something that reminded him of hunger, saw the shape of her, remembered how she’d smelled when she had whispered in his ear, remembered how her breath had felt against his ear and his neck. He wondered how her brown skin would taste, how it would feel to touch her. He nodded in her direction, ducked his head and stepped outside.
It was raining, a warm summer rain. Not a soaker; just enough to make everything seem clean and fresh. Niko ducked under the awning of O’Reilly’s drugstore to look at the cocktail napkin without letting it get wet. The address was in a neighborhood he knew from his daily run, on the south side of town. He headed there, cutting through the cemetery he’d mowed that morning. He felt like he should bring something with him, some token to give to this woman he was going to meet—this woman he knew nothing about, but to whom he was suddenly drawn. There were no stores open at this hour, or course, but Niko knew he could find a fresh bunch of pink tulips at the base of Rosalind Oakley’s headstone. “It’s not the dead we need to worry about,” Niko remembered Father O’Malley telling him; and though Niko knew this wasn’t exactly what the priest had in mind, he felt that he was embarking on a new path that could help him erase the one he’d been one—a path that could return him to the world of the living.
Wet but full of anticipation, Niko arrived at Esther’s place, a three-story, three-family tenement building next to the railroad tracks. He knew she couldn’t have gotten there yet. Plus, he didn’t know which apartment was hers. The cocktail napkin only said “Esther, 179 Oakwood Avenue.” He felt strange about waiting on the porch, so he found a broad-limbed maple tree on the corner of the property and took shelter beneath it.
The only sound was the rain falling on the leaves overhead, until he heard the clicking of Esther’s heels on the sidewalk. He stepped out from under the tree, his rain-soaked shirt clinging to his skin, the bunch of stolen tulips in his hand and a shy smile on his face. Esther laughed gently and took his other hand, leading him around to the back of the building where there was an external staircase to the third floor. She held her umbrella over them both as they climbed up, and he wrapped his arm around her waist.
Neither of them spoke as they entered the apartment, or as she unbuttoned his shirt and stroked his chest. There was no need for words as she let her dress drop to the floor and placed his hands on her. Esther led, and Niko followed eagerly. He was surprised at her strength, and her softness. He’d never felt anything as soft as her breasts when she guided his hands to them; and when she straddled him on her bed, the power in her hips and thighs as she moved against him was something he had never expected in a woman. By the time the first rays of the morning sun were streaming through the window, Niko had experienced much that he had only dreamed of before, and some things he’d never even imagined. He knew he should get back to the rectory before Father O’Malley came looking for him, but he had no desire to leave Esther’s bed. Her head was resting on his chest, and their legs were tangled and sticky with sweat. He thought she was asleep, but as soon as he tried to move her so that he could get up, she spoke softly. “Don’t leave me. Stay. I’ll make us breakfast.”
She rose and he watched her as she walked away, her graceful brown body looking more beautiful to him than any of the stained-glass windows in Father O’Malley’s church. He listened as cabinet doors opened and closed in the kitchen, pans and dishes clanged and water ran from a faucet. He smelled bacon frying and coffee brewing. He slipped into an easy sleep, comfortable and warm.
When he woke again, he found Esther bringing him a plate piled with bacon and eggs and a hot mug of strong coffee. “You need to refuel after all the energy you used last night,” she teased.
Niko blushed, but didn’t hesitate to dig into the eggs and bacon.
“I don’t know anything about you, Niko,” Esther said, “but I like you. Tell me about you. What do you do? Where do you live?”
And so Niko told her everything, without hesitation or shame. He’d never felt so comfortable with another person, so free to share, not even with Father O’Malley. When he told her about beating Francis Callahan, a tear came to her eye. She could see the thirteen-year-old Niko, still there inside this man who sat before her now with tears welling in his eyes; and she knew that he was still frightened and angry at the loss of his mother. She brough his hand to her lips, then pulled him to her while he spoke of his years in juvenile detention. She stroked his neck, and let her tears roll down her cheeks into his hair. They made love again, this time with less frantic energy and more tenderness. Niko felt as though something that had broken inside him all those years ago was somehow mended. Not returned to its original state, but no longer ruined.
As much as Esther was drawn to Niko and felt his pain, Esther was not ready to open up to him in the same way. She’d been hurt too many times by men who had listened when she unburdened herself, who’d held her and seemed sympathetic while she’d cried—only to prove that all they’d wanted was to get her into bed. That was why, now, she was determined to be the one to do the seducing. Not because she intended to do to Niko what had been done to her, but because she wasn’t going to let anyone ever do it again to her. She thought that if she controlled the situation, if she took the lead, then the man wouldn’t be able to hurt her. She’d call the shots, get what she needed, and be ready to get out if things started to turn south, all without feeling betrayed. So, when Niko got dressed and said he’d better get back to the rectory, she didn’t beg him to stay. She let him go, secure in the knowledge that she’d been the one to reel him in, and that if she never saw him again it wouldn’t be because he had taken advantage of her.
When Niko got back to the rectory around ten-thirty, he found it empty. Father O’Malley hadn’t been as shocked by Niko’s absence as the young man might have expected him to be. The priest knew the ways of the world. He’d been an eighteen-year-old himself once, with a rebellious spirit and a raging libido. And he was aware of Niko’s nocturnal escapes, even if he didn’t know the exact details. At age thirty-eight, he was far from an old man, and he remembered well his own sense of teenage confusion and desire to experience the world. In 1932, the big swing bands of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington had provided the soundtrack for rebellious youth, and now they’d been replaced by the rhythm and blues of Lowell Fulson and the like. The essence was the same, though, as it had always been. The musical style might change, but always there were places for young men and young women to find each other after dark, hold each other, and share a moment while the band played on.
Indeed, Father O’Malley knew well the siren call that lured Niko from his bedroom into the seedy corners of the city. So, he wasn’t surprised as much by Niko’s absence from the breakfast table that morning as he was by the fact that it hadn’t happened sooner.
When Niko finally appeared in the priest’s office, expecting a reprimand and some sort of punishment, Father O’Malley instead invited him to sit and share some tea.
“Niko, you’ve been training and sparring for almost three months now,” the priest said. “I think you’re ready for a real match. I talked to my friend Jimmy Hayes, who books fights over at the municipal arena. He’s got you down for a three rounder next Friday, second fight on the ticket. So we’ll need to be there at six p.m. to get you ready. You can use my old trunks and robe.”
“You sure I’m ready, Father?”
“Sure enough. The only way to be certain is to get in the ring and see what happens. What do you think?”
“I want to, yes. I’ll do it.”
“Good. There are still a couple of hours before lunch. Can you get over to the hardware store? I’ve ordered some boards and nails to patch up that hole in the back wall of the shed. Need to get it done before the weather turns.”
“Sure, Father. I’ll head over there now.”
“One other thing, son. Have you given any thought to what you’ll do or where you’ll go when you leave the rectory?”
“No, Father. Do you want me to leave? Is it because I didn’t come home last night? I can explain—”
“No, Niko, you don’t have to explain. I understand. And no, I’m not asking you to leave. You’re welcome to stay. But I wonder if the time isn’t coming when you’ll want to have a place of your own, with more privacy and space. Some independence. I’ve no doubt you can handle the responsibility. You don’t have to answer now. Just give it some thought, and know that I’ll help you and support you in whatever you choose. Now head over to the hardware store and bring back those supplies. Then we’ll have lunch before we hit the gym.”
“Thank you, Father.”
As Niko made his way to the hardware store, he was full of emotions, new hopes and new fears of what life might become for him with Esther in it—and without the safety of living above Father O’Malley’s garage. He wanted the future he could see rolling out before him like the sidewalk he was walking on—a life full of excitement, love, and plenty of music. But he wasn’t sure he was ready for it, and struggled to believe he deserved it.
He had to cross Oakwood Avenue on his way. As he approached the intersection, he heard sirens. A police car sped by, with an ambulance close behind. He quickened his pace, reaching the corner of Oakwood just in time to see the ambulance attendants making their way down the staircase from Esther’s apartment, carrying a stretcher. The white sheet that covered the body was pulled all the way up over the face of whoever was lying beneath it. Niko broke into a run and reached Esther’s house just as they were loading the stretcher into the ambulance.
“Who is it?” he asked. “What happened?”
A police officer held him back, telling him to move along, to mind his own business. But Niko pushed past him and pulled the sheet from Esther’s bloodied, swollen face. He fell to the ground, shocked. Memories of his mother’s lifeless, blood-soaked body filled his mind. He watched as the ambulance drove away slowly, with no flashing lights or siren. There was no need to hurry. Esther was dead.
One of the police officers on the scene knew Niko. He was a member of Father O’Malley’s parish. So he drove the distraught young man back to the rectory and told the priest what had happened. The elderly lady who lived on the second floor, just below Esther, had called the police when she’d heard a struggle upstairs. The police had arrived just in time to apprehend two men leaving the scene, but not in time to save Esther. The men had apparently started drinking sometime the night before and never stopped. They told the officers on the scene that they’d “taught that black-skinned whore a lesson,” and that “she’d be sticking to men of her own kind from now on, keeping her hands off the young white boys.”
Niko sat in Father O’Malley’s kitchen, stunned and silent as the police officer recounted the tragedy. The broken place inside him that had just begun to heal–thanks to Father O’Malley’s strength and understanding, and Esther’s loving attentions and acceptance–was broken once again, shattered beyond all hope of recovery. He couldn’t help but blame himself for what had happened to Esther. Those drunken bastards must have seen him with her; he had to have been one of the “young white boys” they thought they were protecting from “that black-skinned whore.” A silent rage rose inside Niko, at himself as much as at Esther’s murderers. Just as it had at Francis Callahan five years before. Would it never end? Would the women in his life always die violently at the hands of ignorant drunks? And what if he’d stayed with Esther that morning? Could he have prevented her murder?
Father O’Malley must have seen all those thoughts on Niko’s face, as plainly as if they’d been written in black ink on white paper. He sat beside the young man and placed a paternal hand on his shoulder. “Remember forgiveness, Niko,” he said. “Forgive yourself. You are not to blame. There’s nothing you could have done. And forgive those boys, too. They’re drunks who’ve learned hatred at their parents’ knees. The law will handle them, see that they receive the punishment they deserve here on earth. And one day, Our Father in Heaven will judge them as well. That is not our place, yours and mine.”
Niko heard Father O’Malley, saw him there beside him, felt his hand on his shoulder. But it all seemed like it was happening to someone else. He felt he was watching a scene playing out on a stage or a movie screen. It wasn’t real. None of it was really happening. His mother hadn’t been killed by Francis Callahan, he hadn’t spent five years in the detention center for beating Callahan, and Esther wasn’t dead. She was waiting for him now in her apartment, in her bed, waiting to love him and teach him all about beauty and tenderness.
He continued to watch himself and Father O’Malley from a distance, as the priest guided him out the back door of the rectory and up the stairs to his loft bedroom above the garage. He heard the priest’s gentle voice, though he no longer understood his words. He saw himself lying on his own bed, saw the priest exit and quietly close the door, leaving him to his grief. But he no longer felt grief. He no longer felt rage or guilt, or anything else.
Niko lived above the garage of the rectory until the following spring, but he was never quite right after that. Father O’Malley could never get him to talk about Esther, or about his mother. Niko had closed those memories away, buried them. He kept training under the priest and boxed in a few matches, losing as many as he won. He also continued to study the Bible under the guidance of Father O’Malley, though he forgot or mixed up as much as he understood. And, he continued to go to the city’s bars and clubs to listen to music. But he never again allowed himself to be drawn to a woman, and denied himself the pleasures of love. In this, he was like a priest himself, imposing celibacy upon himself but for different reasons.
And then one day, Niko didn’t come down to breakfast in the rectory kitchen. Father O’Malley found his bedroom cleaned and all of Niko’s few belongings gone. When the priest returned to his kitchen, the radio DJ was introducing a new record by Ray Charles. “Mess Around” was about to become an R&B chart-topper, and Charles was about to become a star.
Though they rarely saw each other after that, Niko and Father O’Malley followed Ray Charles’ career over the years. And every time either of them heard “Mess Around” or “I’ve Got a Woman,” they thought of the other.