Sunday Morning

“Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line”

Simon Morganstern

“I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out … just my enemies, that’s all…”

Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part II

Chapter 1: Friday Night with Brian Bowfield

“Always be underestimated.”

I walked down the street on this Friday night, the voice of my father ringing through my head. I watched the pavement beneath me, the cracks in it full of dust and rubble merging together like a spider’s web. As I moved, so it seemed did it, and it was far-reaching, never once letting me out of its web. I could not help but smile. Its intricacy was at odds with its simplicity, like a quick, premeditated checkmate.

I lifted the bottle of coca cola to my mouth and took a sharp swig, and just then noticed a lone man on the other side of the pavement, across the road.

“Hello there, David!” the man called over to me.

I raised my hand in acknowledgement.

“It’s good to see you, Brian,” I replied.

The man called Brian checked that no cars were coming, no headlights speeding by in the darkness of this currently quiet town. He strode across the road to meet me, a warm smile etched on his face.

“How’s life treating you?” he asked, a cross, of which the shiny silver glimmered in what little light the streets gave at this late hour, dangling from a chain around his neck.

It was remarkably strange to think that this was the man who had brutally murdered a married couple twenty-five years ago while they slept and ransacked their house.

Brian Bowfield was a man officially rehabilitated. Released from prison a year previously, he was now an active member of St Morgan’s Catholic Church in the town. He was famed for the fact that he lived solely for his own redemption, squalid and painfully arduous as he knew the journey could only be. Despite his nefarious past, the now much older, much wiser man was regarded by the more forgiving locals with admiration, who had earned his second chance, and by the cynics as someone who had thus far not re-offended. But people who were a little closer to Brian knew beyond any real shadow of a doubt that re-offense was out of the question. Mr Bowfield’s heart had become larger with age, filled with a warm human passion.

With auburn hair tinged with streaks of light grey, bright blue eyes and clean-shaven ruddy cheeks despite the obvious wrinkles of age, dressed in a light white shirt, joggers, and a pair of brown sandals, Brian’s appearance was the epitome of good nature.

I always like to sit near Brian during communion at the Sunday Church service. I see the hope in his eyes as he drinks from the cup, the desperate desire for constant faith, and ultimately, for rescue from the demons of his past, which he undoubtedly feared could plunge him into eternal damnation.

“Very good,” I told him, whilst thinking about all this. “Yourself?”

“Oh yes, fine and well,” Brian said jovially. “I’m just off to the youth club.”

Brian did what he could for the community – he volunteered in charity shops, he helped them out by organizing dances and car boot sales and other charitable events, he held anger management classes for difficult pupils at the local High School, and he helped out at the local youth club fortnightly, despite the controversy and furore it had originally caused this had originally caused. He had, after all, only been out of prison a year.

“OK, well … I’ll see you,” I answered. This was the last time I would ever see him, I realised with a jolt.

“Are you not making an appearance at Church this Sunday? Your last ever?” Brian asked. He looked at me; I think he knew the answer.

I sort of laughed inwardly - all year, and I had gone to Church for one reason only.

“It isn’t possible,” I said, shaking my head. “Before I go I have an important meeting I can’t get away with not attending.”

Despite looking genuinely upset, which I was surprised at, though should have expected as I knew it to be the old man’s nature, Brian looked understanding.

“I won’t be too lonely … my old friend Gerry is coming up from Manchester for the week-end.”

“Oh, really?” I exclaimed. I had in fact visited Manchester just the other month on a business meeting.

Brian nodded, and I saw he looked a little distant. I wondered how I’d feel seeing an old friend for the first time “outside” following a stint in prison lasting nearly a quarter of a century. Then Brian finally looked at me again and held out his hand.

“See you,” he said. “It was nice knowing you, David. Good luck.”

I grasped his hand and he shook mine vigorously. I wondered if such genuineness was an act or actually … genuine.

“Where is it you’re actually going to?” Brian wondered interestedly.

I shrugged. “Not really that far at all,” I said. “Just up the coast a little to Rosewood. It’s just a small seaside village, meant to be very nice. Have you heard of it?”

Brian beamed. “Well sure I have, why that’s barely an hour’s drive from here!” He looked at me, happy. “So we may very well see your face around here again someday soon!”

I inclined my head, smiling too.

“I’d like to think so.”

Brian patted me on the shoulder.

“But for now,” he said. “Arrivederci.”

I smiled. “Good pronunciation,” I told him, and then I walked on.

Sunday morning, I thought.

I walked past a newsagent’s and picked up one of the local newspapers, which were close to selling out. I paid for it then continued on my walk. For an outsider, the current local news would be shocking, but the townspeople were becoming sadly accustomed to hearing of the yobbish, unnecessary acts committed by James “Tattoo” Erskine and his little gang of young hooligans. They stole from the local shops in the dead of night, leaving broken windows and broken locks, and they would beat people up to bloody pulps for very minimal, ridiculous reasons, on them a small note that always read:

“Tattoo has settled his differences.”

I was a local, I was used to hearing about the ugly crimes Tattoo committed and ordered, but as my eyes absorbed the newspaper’s headline and main story, I felt startled and affected in a way that I had only experiences once before.