One of the girls loosed the bungee cord and brought me the box. When I opened it, Fingers laid his hand on the wine and looked at me.
He was asking me a question I didn’t want him to ask, and one I certainly did not want to answer. I shook my head. “You’re the priest, not—”
“Stop. No time.”
“But—”
His eyes bored two holes in my soul.
“I—”
He pushed out the words. “Bread first. Then wine.”
I tore off a small piece of bread and mimicked the words I’d heard him say a hundred times, “. . . the body, broken for . . . ,” then I laid the bread on Fingers’ tongue.
He pushed it around his mouth and tried to swallow, which brought a spasm of coughing. When he settled, I pulled the cork, tilted the bottle, and rolled the wine up against his lips. “The blood, shed for . . .” He blinked. My voice cracked again. “Whenever you do this, you proclaim the . . .” I trailed off.
He spoke before letting the wine enter his mouth. The smile on his lips matched that in his eyes. I would miss that smile. Maybe most of all. It spoke to the deepest places in me. Always had. The wine filled the back of his mouth and drained out the sides.
Blood with blood.
Another spasm. More coughing. I clung to Fingers as the waves rocked his body. One breath. Then two. Mustering his strength, he pointed at the water.
I hesitated.
Fingers’ eyes rolled back; he forced their return and they narrowed on me. Calling me by my name. Something he only did when he wanted my attention. “Bishop.”
I pulled Fingers over the gunnel and into the warm water. His breathing was shallower. Less frequent. More gurgle. His eyes opened and closed. Sleep was heavy. He grabbed my shirt and pulled my face close to his. “You are . . . what you are, what you’ve always been . . .”
I walked out into the gin-clear water up to my waist while Fingers’ body floated alongside. The girls huddled and said nothing, crying while a trail of red painted the water downcurrent. Fingers tapped me in the chest and used one hand to make the numbers. First he held up all five fingers, then quickly tucked three, leaving two. Meaning seven. Without pausing, he held up all five only to tuck two. Meaning eight. Then he paused briefly and continued, making a seven followed by a zero. His cryptic motions meant 78–70.
Having learned this rudimentary code from him years ago, I knew Fingers was quoting the Psalms, which he knew by heart. The numbers 78 and 70 were a reference to King David and how God “took him from the sheepfolds.” In short, Fingers was speaking about us. About the beginning of my apprenticeship. Twenty-five years prior, when I was a sophomore at the Academy, Fingers had pulled me out of class and said the strangest thing: “Tell me what you know about sheep.” We’d walked a million miles since. Over the years, Fingers had become a boss, mentor, friend, teacher, sage, comic, and sometime father figure.
Life had been different with him in it.
Over the course of his career, Fingers had been in multiple places where making noise could get him killed, which is why he learned to communicate with numbers corresponding to the Psalms—earning him the nickname “Fingers.” The trick meant whoever he was talking with either had to know the Psalms as well as he did or have access to a Bible.
As Fingers’ life drained out into the ocean, he pulled me toward him and forced out, “Tell me . . . what you know . . . about sheep.”
We had started this way. We would end this way. I tried to smile. “They tend to wander.”
He waited. All of these were lessons he’d taught me. Each a year or more in the learning.
“They get lost often.”
“Why?”
“Because they can.”
“Why?
“Because the grass is always greener . . .”
“And that’s called?”
“Murphy’s law.”
“Good.”
“They’re easy prey. The lion is never far.”
A nod.
“They seldom find their way home.”
He prompted me. “So they need . . .”
“A shepherd.”
“What kind?”
“The kind who will leave the warmth of the fire and the safety of the flock to risk the cold, the rain, and sleepless nights to . . .” I trailed off.
“To what?”
“Find the one.”
“Why?”
I was crying now. “Because . . . the needs of the one . . .” The words left me.
He closed his eyes and laid his hand flat across my chest. Even now, he was taking me to school—showing me the reason he lay dying in my arms. He’d gone after the one and turned her into seven.
He pulled himself toward me. One last moment of strength. “Need to give you—” He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a blood-soaked letter. The handwriting was hers.
He placed it flat against my chest. “Forgive her.”
I stood incredulous. “Forgive her?”
“She loved you.”
Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. The flow was deep red. He shook me. “To the end—”
I held the letter and forgot how to breathe.
He spoke through the gurgle. “We’re all just broken children—”
I stared at the paper. The weight of hopelessness. Tears spilled out of my eyes.
He reached up with his one working hand and thumbed them away. He was crying too. We’d searched for so long. Gotten so close. To have failed at the end was . . .
He tried to smile and then to speak, but his words were failing. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the chain hanging around my neck. The weight of his arm broke the chain, and it spilled over his fingers; the cross he’d brought me from Rome swayed with the movement. “She’s home now. No regret. No pain. No sorrow.”
A moment passed. He closed his eyes, floated, and whispered, “One more thing . . .”
My hands were warm and slippery from the water and the blood. I could no longer feel his pulse. I knew what he wanted, and I knew it, too, would hurt. Not able to let him go, I just pulled him to my chest and held him while the life drained out and the darkness seeped in.
He whispered in my ear, “Spread my ashes where we started . . . at the end of the world.”
I held back a sob while my tears puddled. I stared six hundred miles south in my mind’s eye. “I can’t—”
He crossed his arms, the chain still dangling. He was smiling just slightly. I looked out across the water, but my heart had blurred my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I nodded for the last time. He let go and his body lay limp in my arms. His words were gone. He’d spoken his last. Only his breath remained.
I leaned in, managed a broken, “I’ll miss you.” He blinked. It was all he had left. I rallied what little strength of my own remained. “You ready?”
His eyes rolled back, then he drew a last surge of energy from the depths and focused on me. While he may have been ready, I was not. The words of his life were draining off the page, black to white. From somewhere, he mustered a final word. With his eyes closed, he tapped me in the chest, murmuring, “Don’t carry her. That one’ll kill you—”
With one hand beneath his neck and one hand covering the hole in his chest, I spoke out across the water. Echoing what he’d taught me. “In the name of the Father . . . the Son . . . and the . . .” He blinked, cutting a tear loose, and I pushed him beneath the surface.