The Sanctuary

25

“THEN COME HERE and do it to me.” Danny’s challenge hung in the hard yard, blasphemous and demanding a response.

Someone cleared his throat; otherwise there was no sound in the heart of that sanctuary. Randell stood fifteen paces away, left of center; Slane, fifteen paces right of center. The room was already turning in Danny’s mind, transformed into a three-dimensional model examined by a student of the fight. The distance to the walls, the positioning of the members, the sections of the concrete floor that were smooth or rough, the lights, the switches, the clothing his opponents wore, all of it. Like a gladiator armed only with his fists. Adrenaline had sufficiently cleared his mind.

“Who do you think you are?” Randell asked. There was a note of sincerity in his voice. “You think you’re gonna change anything?”

“Yeah, you think you’re gonna change anything?”

“Shut up, Slane,” Randell snapped at his punk. The man’s face flattened.

The big man jabbed his chin at Danny. “You think a priest like you has anything on us scum?”

“I’m not the priest who abused you,” Danny said. Randell stiffened. “I’m the priest who found a boy abused by your punk. I’m the one who defends boys like you.”

Randell’s face flushed red. “Shut up.”

“They don’t know you were raped by a priest when you were a boy?”

“I said shut up!”

Randell was moving already, marching forward with his thick hands balled into fists.

“Not so fast, Bruce.” The warden’s voice rang out from behind Danny.

Randell wasn’t stopping.

“Back!” The order was that of a master commanding his dogs. This time Randell pulled up, eight paces away.

Pape’s hard-soled patent-leather shoes clacked and grated on the concrete as he strolled out into the middle of the yard, one hand in his pocket. Danny let him come into view without removing his eyes from Slane or Randell.

“You think this is an unfair fight?” the warden asked Randell. “That you two can take him down? Then you don’t know that our priest has made a life out of chewing up and spitting out people like you. When you were a little brat running around the neighborhood stealing old lady’s purses, Danny here was in the business of killing men twice his size. More men than you can count.”

He faced Danny, lips curved with a hint of a smile that reflected in his eyes. He was nothing less than delighted.

“It is unfair,” he said. “Isn’t it, Priest?”

Danny watched him. The words he’d spoken earlier were still cycling around his head like stray buzzards.

Do it to me.

“But it wasn’t just these two who hurt little Peter, Danny,” the warden said. “No, there were three more.” He scanned the members who stood along the walls. “Weren’t there? Sure there were. Mason, Ratcliff, Stone. Step out.”

Three men broke from the ring of onlookers and approached the center of the yard. Danny recognized two of them, both heavily tattooed white knuckleheads who in any other prison might be scrutinized for gang affiliation. But none of their tattoos was familiar to Danny. Prison ink.

The third was a skinny man with a bald head and a viper’s sneer. Of them all, he was likely the most dangerous.

They moved into a circle around Danny. So then, it was now five on one.

“You kin take ’em, Danny,” Kearney said from the side.

“You’d like to join them, Brandon?” the warden asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then shut up. I will allow the priest to defend his honor and fight those who have so recklessly and gratuitously hurt Peter. The boy was abused, and however much that might disturb me, he was guilty of the same, so justice is served. As the book says, an eye for an eye. But death is a different matter. Just because God slays the wicked doesn’t mean you may. Our aim is to rehabilitate, not kill, and one of these five men killed Peter. So now it only follows that the priest kills one of them.”

He was speaking to the whole room, but his eyes stayed on Danny. No one seemed to be aware that Pape was contradicting himself, speaking of rehabilitation and retribution in the same sentence.

“If he can.”

Danny stood at the epicenter of the grand stage, surrounded by opponents he could not fear, did not fear. Not because they couldn’t kill him—a single mistake and they would, and might even if he made no errors. He could not and did not fear them because he’d been trained not to. Respect, yes. Fear, no.

But Danny feared himself.

If he extracted justice now he would be lost, pulled back into an ideology that had once ruined him.

Do it to me, he’d said to Slane. But if Danny struck back…To what end? More dead bodies for his graveyard?

An image of Peter bowed in prayer pleaded with him. Danny’s eyes rested on Slane, the one who’d surely enjoyed Peter’s abuse the most. And there he saw a man. A hellion, a beast, but one with pretty blue eyes.

“What do you say, Danny?” the warden said. “Will you rise up to your calling?”

And there was Randell as well, belligerent, once abused by a priest. Now he would be killed by one?

Danny felt the muscles in his shoulders begin to ease. He let his fingers relax. There was Brandon Kearney, face stark with hope, eager to see Danny extract revenge. There stood tall Tracy Banner, with a scar on his cheek, watching with some wonder. Down the row, John Wilkins’s lost expression begged for answers.

Here stood the whole world. They all wanted to see justice. They all wanted him to spill blood. How much was enough?

“In my sanctuary, I am God, boy,” the warden bit off. Danny looked at him and saw that his face had gone flat. He knew.

“Vengeance is mine. When I say march, you march. When I say kill, you will kill. Or, my friend…I swear I will send you to that hole down there that they call hell. And this time your wailing will be heard for miles.”

“No.”

Pape’s eyes briefly narrowed. “No?”

“I was wrong. You’re right, I could hurt these men.” He glanced at Randell, who looked confused. “I could snap Randell’s neck before he landed one blow.” Slane. “I could break Slane over my knees like he deserves. That might be fair. But fairness has failed the world.”

The hard yard sat in perfect quiet.

“Why did you come?” The warden’s voice was tight.

“I came to kill Randell.”

“Then you will kill him.”

“I was wrong.”

“And so you’ll let them kill you?”

Danny took a deep breath, knowing already what he would do, what he must do. This wasn’t just about him, it was about Renee. He could not die.

“No.”

Marshall Pape looked at Randell, then the other four. “Kill him!” he said.