The Nature of My Inheritance by Bradford Morrow Page B

father
means, for better or worse, having certain insights
into the mechanical workings, the practical
racks and pinions, of what transpires
behind the ethereal parts of any ministry. See,
being a clergyman isn’t all riding around on
puffy clouds and giving godly advice and just
generally being a beacon of hope and inspiration.
It is about keeping the tithes and offerings
flowing, like mother’s milk—oh, Amanda—so
staff wages can be paid, the church roof doesn’t
leak, the stained glass window that some local
punks saw fit to riddle with thrown rocks can
be repaired. The church is a nonprofit, so the
tax man never came knocking, but the insurance
man did, as well as many others whose
services were necessary to keep the ark afloat
and the fog machine running—at least, that’s
how I viewed things from my corner perch in
the peanut gallery, knowing leather-winged Lucifer
waited for me with open arms in the bowels
of Hades.
    Simply and seriously put, my father was in
desperate need of money. Utility bills were overdue.
Last year’s steeple restoration remained
largely unpaid. The organ was in serious need
of an overhaul, and while it had sat idle for a
year or so, the piano that replaced it had steadily
gone out of tune. Even his own stipend was at
risk. I am sure that for every single problem I
knew about, watching my folks wringing their
hands on a nightly basis and sharing dire worries,
there were ten more deviltries utterly unknown
to me. One night, when I wandered in
on them, deliberately, I must admit, although
pretending I only just then heard about these
money issues, I offered to pick up a job after
school to help out.
    “That’s good of you, Liam,” my father said.
“But I don’t think you understood what we were
talking about. No need for worry, everything’s
perfectly fine. You just stick to your schoolwork
and our lord savior will take care of the rest.”
    Yes, he often spoke in such ecclesiastical
terms. If it weren’t so innocently offered, his
dimples flexing from nervousness and earnest
blue eyes searching for the confidence their
owner so badly wanted to convey to his eldest
son, I would have snorted, “Please, spare me!”
Or, worse, I would simply have laughed. I did
neither but left the room knowing that I had
tried to intercede and was rejected. Like a latterday
Pontius Pius, if a lot more reluctantly, I
washed my hands of the matter.
    No one at the funeral said that my father was
pushed down the stairs, not in so many words.
Nobody whispered that he had borrowed himself
into debt, very deep debt, on behalf of the
church, not in so many words. And not one soul
suggested in so many words that in order to get
these loans, the church’s minister found himself
dealing with less than savory elements in the
community, churchgoing, god-fearing folks,
maybe, but people for whom the less-than-flattering
term “elements” was intended nonetheless.
The rumormongers were vaguer than all
that. It was from their overheard tones of voice
that I cobbled together what I knew, or thought
I knew, they were huddling about. One can say
the phrase “He’s such a good boy” so that it
means the boy is good or the boy is bad just by intoning
it differently. That much I understood, as
I wandered around, shadowed by my brother,
for whom our abrupt fatherlessness hadn’t yet
sunk in fully, accepting people’s condolences,
not trusting a single one of them, looking into
their eyes for a confession of some kind. I wasn’t
any more in my right mind than Drew, though
I felt I needed to put a brave face on my stunned
confusion. The way I figured it was that my father
was in the peak of health, athletic in his way,
cautious of diet, regular of habits, head on his
pillow at ten, up with the cock’s crow at six. In
church business he might have been stumbling,
but when walking down that flight of stairs after
his sermon that Sunday he did not trip, that
much I felt was irrefutable.
    The coroner wasn’t so sure.