Just passing through, the dark-haired man had said.
It looks like such a pretty old church, the little redhead had said.
Good a place as any to get married, the dark-haired man had said.
Bright sunny day, possibly the last one Calusa would see this winter. Sat out on the lawn behind the rectory. Chatting.
Dressed almost entirely in black.
Black jacket and trousers. Dark blue T-shirt, could’ve passed for black. Black loafers, no socks. The sleeve of the jacket was torn just above the right elbow. Tall white man in his forties, with a scruffy three-day growth of beard, looking tattered and travel-worn as he sat in the sunshine asking his innocent-sounding questions. Took off his jacket, it was that hot in the sun. The little redhead with him couldn’t have been older than twenty, twenty-one. Long rust-colored hair, blue eyes, freckled face. Wearing faded blue jeans, pale blue T-shirt, silver-studded belt, sandals. Both of them exceedingly nervous.
Well, they were always a bit nervous, making a commitment like this made them nervous. So they always asked a lot of questions. Or commented on how pretty the church was — it was an extraordinarily beautiful church, a medieval sort of jewel settled snugly in the sand, facing sunsets that set it aglow with a light that seemed God-inspired. The stained-glass windows were, in fact, medieval. Crafted by sixteenth-century artisans, they had been transported from a little village in Italy, the gift of a Whisper Key parishioner who’d made a fortune in aluminum siding back in his native Cleveland. The mahogany pews had been fashioned right here in Calusa, but they’d been stained and waxed and burnished over the years since the church was built to create a patina that seemed centuries old. So, yes, the church provided conversational fodder for young people — and sometimes older ones as well — who were nervous because they were there to bind themselves irrevocably, one to the other, in the eyes of God. Which is exactly how many of them put it. hi the eyes of God. Or in God’s eyes. Variations on a theme. Seeking God’s blessing.
The questions they asked had very little to do with the ceremony they were seeking. They wanted to know about the weather in Calusa, those who were passing through, those who had spotted this perfectly beautiful little medieval sort of jewel of a church settled snugly in the sand. Was it always this hot here? Or this rainy? Or this cold? Or this windy? Or this lovely? Or they wanted to know where they could enjoy a good celebratory dinner tonight, was there a very nice romantic place anywhere in town, you know, candlelight and wine, where they could seriously and in solitude reflect upon the enormously serious step they’d taken and toast their future together, was there such a place in town? Father Ambrose usually sent them to the Orchid Room at the Adler Hotel.
So yes, there were always the questions, always the comments, always the brittle chatter to cover the nervousness.
This was an enormous step for a couple to be taking.
This was commitment.
This was a solemn ceremony performed in the eyes of God.
He had married them at four o’clock on the afternoon of January twenty-ninth.
The day before the murder.
Married them in the little chapel off the rectory.
Both of them on their knees before the altar.
The one in black and the little redhead.
“Dear friends in Christ,” he’d said. “As you know, you are about to enter into a union which is most sacred and most serious, a union which was established by God himself. And because God himself is its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self. This union, then, is most serious because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate that it will profoundly influence your whole future.
“That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life and are to be expected in your own. And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and health, until death…”
They were alone in the chapel, the three of them.
No one there to object to the union.
Late-afternoon sunshine streaming through the stained-glass windows.
Father Ambrose looked down at the one in black.
“Do you, Arthur Nelson Hurley, take this person as your wedded spouse to live together in the state of holy matrimony, to love, honor and cherish in health, sickness, prosperity and adversity, forsaking all others so long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” he said.
Father Ambrose looked down at the little redhead.
“Do you, William Harold Walker…?”
You had to change the ceremony for them, of course.
Had to delete any words that might imply or even suggest that the act was a legally binding one. You also had to cut out all the words applying to gender, although some of them insisted you referred to one of them as “man” and the other as “wife,” rather than both as the androgynous “spouse.”
Over the years, though. Father Ambrose had evolved a ceremony that seemed to work for the participants. He thought of himself as one of the participants. Never mind Rome, the hell with Rome. Rome didn’t know what he was doing down here in this remote little corner of Florida, and he guessed they never would find out — not from him, anyway. The way Father Ambrose looked at it, if two men wanted to get married, then by God he would marry them. Two women, the same thing. Two alligators, two snakes, two warthogs, two chickens, two of any of the creatures the good Lord had made, if they wanted to get married. Father Ambrose would offer them the comfort of the holy sacrament and the hell with Rome.
He was fond of telling any homosexuals who found their way to St. Benedict’s the joke about the Catholic priest, did they know the joke? Well, this pair of homosexuals wants to get married, and they go first to a rabbi who says no, he won’t marry them, and then to a Protestant minister who says no, he won’t marry them, and finally to a Catholic priest who says, “Sure, I’ll marry you, what do they know about true love?”
The joke usually put his customers at ease, they were always very nervous when they arrived, and self-conscious, as if they were attempting to do something ridiculous and might therefore become the objects of laughter or even scorn. The joke, of course, implied that the Catholic priest was himself homosexual, a not farfetched surmise, but that was neither here nor there, since Father Ambrose was as straight as an arrow and always had been. His one and only sexual experience had, in fact, been with a girl. A long time ago, before his mother decided he had a calling to the priestly vocation. And yes, thank you, he’d enjoyed it, but his love for God was all-consuming, and he had not for a single moment looked back with longing on that afternoon of utter bliss he’d shared with fifteen-year-old Molly Pierson on the roof of a Chicago tenement, long, long ago. Occasionally, though, he wondered if Molly herself had ever married.
Never a week went by, even in the off-season, that someone didn’t knock on the rectory door and ask for Father Ambrose. Usually a pair of men. Now and then women. Women didn’t seem to need the church’s blessing, he didn’t know why. Maybe women didn’t need anyone’s blessing, maybe they knew they were God’s chosen and didn’t have to do a damn thing to prove it.