- In the dark, with only the occasional flash of lightening to guide him past the mass of people and the poop and pee bucket they all have to share, the priest tip toes toward a wall where he can kinda sorta sit down.
- An old man next to him starts rambling on about how priests are to blame for his situation. They took his bastard child, a woman tells the priest.
- The priest thinks of his own daughter, Brigetta.
- He tells the old man that the priests were wrong to take his daughter from him.
- The old man objects to this, opining that the priests know what's right.
- Our protagonist admits to everyone there that he is a priest. Whoa. Didn't see that coming!
- A woman admonishes him for revealing what he is.
- The priest says he's afraid but that his disclosure doesn't matter as he'll be discovered in the morning anyway.
- He begins to preach to them about martyrdom, insisting that he will not be a martyr because he will die in the state of mortal sin. He will go to hell, not heaven. He doesn't want the Church mocked.
- Strangely, he feels affection and companionship with the prisoners in way he'd never experienced.
- The woman, put in prison for owning banned books, asks for confession, here among the other prisoners, but then complains loudly about a couple in the cell who are having sex.
- The priest asks her what good saying an Act of Contrition would be when she's focused on judging the sin of others.
- She calls their sin ugly, but the priest begs to differ. He says that, to them, it's beautiful and that sin can be beautiful.
- Now convinced that he's a bad priest, the pious woman threatens to write his bishop.
- The priest laughs at this, asking her not be angry, but to pray for him instead.
- She says the sooner he's dead the better.
- The priest tries to sleep, but the cramped space, regular sounds of urination, and the pious woman's complaining about nuns who refused her vocation keep him from getting much rest.
- He makes a deal with God that if he gets out of this he'll head north and make for the border.
- In the morning, the police sergeant makes him empty the pails from the cells. To pay for his free lodging for the night, you see. Yuck!
- In another cell he sees the hostage Miguel, badly beaten, among others. He looks at them for a while, giving them a chance to free themselves by turning him in.
- In the last cell he finds the mestizo, and, you guessed it, he recognizes the priest.
- This fellow, though, he's a clever one. He knows that he'll get little to no reward turning in the priest here. Plus, he's got a roof over his head and beer for his trouble. This is the life. So he tells the priest that he'll wait to catch him. House Slytherin for this one!
- Upon cleaning the cells, the priest is sent to see the chief to ask permission to leave. Instead of the chief, the official he meets is the lieutenant.
- The lieutenant, hearing from the priest that he has no money, gives him a coin (the price of a Mass) and sends him on his way.
- The priest, astonished, tells him he's a good man.