by Pat Conroy
In Germany, near the town of Dissan, my father, at that very moment, lay hidden in a choir loft, watching a Catholic priest say Mass. The left side of my father’s face was paralyzed, his left arm was numb and tingling, and his vision was blurred by his blood. He was studying the priest, who was saying the Common of the Mass in Latin, which my father, in his innocence and pain, thought was German. By observing the priest’s gestures, the way he genuflected before a crucifix, his expression as he turned to bless the three bent, misshapen old women who had come to this morning Mass in the middle of the war, the way the priest held the chalice aloft, my father was trying to make a judgment about the man’s character. Is this the kind of man who would help me? my father thought. I have killed his people with my bombs, but what does a man of God think of Hitler? What would this man of God do if I asked him to help me? My father had never been in a Catholic church in his entire life. He had never known a Catholic well. He had never seen a priest.
“Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi,” he heard the priest say, and the words struck him with their beauty even though they were meaningless to him.
“Agnus Dei.” He heard the words again.
My father lowered the pistol he was aiming at the priest’s vestments and watched as the three women walked to the rail and received Communion. He thought he saw the priest smile at each of the three women but could not be certain. His head ached. He had never been in such pain, never knew such pain was possible. Before the Mass ended, my father passed out, his head against the stone banisters, his body wedged between the organ and the wall.
The priest’s name was Father Günter Kraus, a sixty-year-old native of Munich whose white hair and sharp-nosed, nervous face gave him an odd, inquisitorial appearance. It was a malignant face on a kind man. He had chosen his vocation partly because of what he considered his unredeemable homeliness.
Once he had been the pastor of the third largest congregation in Munich but had quarreled with his bishop over the bishop’s collaboration with the Nazis. The bishop had exiled Father Kraus to the Bavarian countryside for his own good. Several of his colleagues, braver than he, had sheltered families of Jews and had died at Dachau. He had once turned away a family of Jews who sought refuge at his church. It was a sin he believed no God, no matter how merciful, could ever forgive. My father had not come to the church of a brave man. But he had come to the church of a good one.
After Mass, Father Kraus walked the three women to the front door and spent ten minutes gossiping with them on the steps of the church. The altar boy extinguished the candles, washed out the cruets, then hung his cassock and surplice in the small closet by the priest’s wardrobe. It was the altar boy who noticed the broken window in the priest’s bathroom. He did not notice the drops of blood on the floor by the sink. When the altar boy left the church, he told the priest, who was still at the church door, about the broken window.
In the distance the priest could see the white-capped peaks of the Bavarian Alps shining in the sunlight. The Allies had bombed four German cities the night before.
He locked the front door, checked the level of the holy water, and walked over to a side altar where he lit a candle in front of a small marble statue of the Infant of Prague. He said a prayer for peace. The first drop hit his white vestment and stained it a deep red. The next drop landed on his hands folded in prayer. He looked up and a drop of blood hit him on the face.
When my father regained consciousness, he saw the priest standing over him, studying him, trying to come to a decision.
“Buenos días, señor,” my father said to the German priest.
The priest said nothing in return and my father watched the tremor in the priest’s hands.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” my father tried again.
“English?” the priest asked.
“American.”
“You cannot stay here.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot either one of us can do about it. It looks like you and me’s a team.”
“Slowly. Mein English is not good.”
“I need your help. Every German in this part of Krautland is going to be looking for me when they find my plane.”
“I cannot help you.”
“Why?”
“I am afraid.”
“Afraid,” my father said. “I’ve been afraid all night. Are you a Nazi?”
“No, I am a priest. I must report you. I do not wish to, but it would be better. For me. For you. For everybody. They can stop your bleeding.”
My father lifted his pistol and pointed it at the priest.
“Bad storm,” Sara Jenkins said, rising. “Just like ninety-three.”
“We’ve got to get to the barn and go high,” my grandfather said.
“Bad for the babies. Bad for the mama.”
“Can’t be helped, Sarah,” he said. “I’ll get you out first.”
“What you talkin’ about? Sarah old, but Sarah ain’t dead. I’ll help with the babies, Amos,” she said. Sarah Jenkins reserved the right to call even white men by their given names if she had brought them into the world.
My grandfather lifted me from my crib and placed me, still sleeping, into Sarah’s arms. She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and held me tightly to her breasts. He then placed Savannah and Luke on top of a cotton blanket, covered them, then covered them again with his yellow slicker.
Opening the back door, they stepped into the howling bitter rains and ran for the barn. The winds, gusting up to two hundred miles per hour, screamed around them, demonic, and black. Sarah lost her balance or was lifted by the wind and was blown across the back yard, her shawl billowing out around her like a sail. She shielded me as she was thrown into the side of an outbuilding.
My grandfather struggled toward her, caught her with one arm around her waist, and hurt her as he lifted her to her feet. He held her for a moment and they stood there together, mud-splattered and rain-soaked; then they fought their way toward the barn, bearing three screaming infants. Once again he fought the wind as it held a door fast. When he forced it open, the door splintered against the side of the barn.
Inside, he climbed the ladder that disappeared into the darkness above them. He laid Luke and my sister side by side in a pile of fragrant hay. He sensed the panic of the animals in the barn. He left the hayloft and went back down for me and Sarah.
“Sarah hurt bad,” she said. “Can’t climb.”
He lifted the black woman up in his arms. She was as frail as a child and she moaned as he climbed the ladder, leaving me behind on the floor of the barn. The wind tore through the open door. He propped her up against a bale of hay. She reached for Luke and Savannah and tried to dry them off, but the blankets and her clothes were soaked through. So she unbuttoned her blouse and hugged them close to her bare breasts and let her own warmth flow into them.
When my grandfather materialized in the dark again with me in his arms, she laid me between the others. My grandfather hurried down the ladder and entered into the heart of the storm again. He had no idea how he was going to get my mother up to the loft.
When he entered the house, he saw the water spilling through the front door. He looked out into the darkness and the vision he saw would remain with him for the rest of his life. The river, wild and magisterial, was flowing swiftly, powerfully, against our house. A rowboat, torn from its moorings, lifted in the wind, and as if in a dream, he watched it hurtling out of the blackness, illuminated by the strange light of hurricanes, lifted his hand as if to stop it, and closed his eyes as it crashed through the window on the other side of the room and shattered the dining room table. A piece of splintered glass lodged in his arm. He ran toward my mother’s room and he prayed as he ran.
The priest trembled violently when he saw the pistol. He closed his eyes, folded his hands against his chest, and blessed my father in Latin. My father lowered the pistol. The priest opened his eyes.
“I can’t shoot anybody dressed up like you, padre,” my fat
her said, weakly.
“Are you badly hurt?” the priest asked.
My father laughed, then said, “Badly.”
“Come. Later I will report you to them.”
Father Kraus helped my father rise to his feet and, bearing my father’s weight, walked him to the door near the vestibule leading to the bell tower, which overlooked the village. They struggled up the narrow stairs and my father’s blood stained each step as they climbed. When they reached the small room at the top of the stairs, the priest set my father down. The priest removed his ruined, bloody vestments and made a pillow to support my father’s head. Then the priest took his chasuble and tore it into long strips, and tied them tightly around my father’s head.
“You have lost much blood,” the priest said. “I must get water to clean the wound.”
My father looked up at the priest and said, “Gesundheit.” Speaking the only German word he knew, my father lost consciousness again.
That night when my father awoke, the priest was bent over him, administering the last rites of Extreme Unction. The priest knew that the wounded pilot’s temperature had risen sharply and that his injuries were grievous. My father could not see out of his left eye, but he felt the softness of the priest’s hands applying the oils of the sacrament.
“Why?” my father said.
“I think you are dying,” the priest said. “I will hear your confession. Are you Catholic?”
“Baptist.”
“Ah, you have been baptized then, but, I was not sure. I baptized you minutes ago.”
“Thanks. I was baptized in the Colleton River.”
“Ach. A whole river.”
“No, just part of it.”
“I baptize you a second time.”
“It can’t hurt nothing.”
“I brought food. Can you eat?”
Years later, my father would describe with undiminishable wonder the taste of that dark German bread, that slab of precious, hoarded butter smeared across that bread, and the red wine the priest gave him from the bottle. The bread in his mouth, the butter, the wine, he would say to his children, and all of us could taste it again with him, the wine spreading like velvet in our mouths, the bread, fragrant as earth, softening and melting on the tongue, the butter coating the roofs of our mouths, the priest holding our hands, the smell of the oils of death on his hands, fear making those soft, veined hands tremble. Outside, in the dark, a German patrol had found the wrecked plane and the countryside was alerted that an American pilot moved among them. There was a reward for his capture and anyone found helping him would be summarily executed.
“They are looking for you,” the priest said to my father when the meal was finished. “They came to the village today.”
“Did they come to the church?”
“Yes. I told them that if I found you I would kill you with my own two hands. It amused them, coming from a priest. They will return—I am certain—to search for you.”
“I’ll go as soon as I can travel.”
“I wish you had not come.”
“It wasn’t my idea. I was shot down.”
“Ha!” the priest said, “then it was God who brought you here.”
“No, sir. I think it was the Nazis.”
“I pray to God for you today.”
“Thank you.”
“I pray to him to make you die,” the priest explained. “Then I feel much shame. And I pray for you to live. A priest should only pray for life. It is a great sin. I ask that you would forgive me.”
“Gesundheit,” my father said, wishing fervently that the priest would sneeze so he could use the word properly. Then he asked the priest, “Where did you learn to speak English?”
“In Berlin at the seminary. I like very much American movies. The cowboys, yes.”
“I am a cowboy,” my father said.
“Why did you lie to him, Dad?” Luke would ask, always disturbed by this part of the story when it was told and retold to us during our childhood. “There was this nice man scared out of his wits, and you pretending that you were a cowboy.”
“Well, Luke,” my father would say, considering his actions in the light of his own history, “I figured it this way. I’m half blind, half dead, and every German in the country is hunting my young ass. So here I am with this real nervous priest who happens to like cowboys. So I make a snap decision. I give him a real live cowboy to feed. He wants Tom Mix. I give him Tom Mix.”
“You are from California, no?” the priest asked.
“South Carolina.”
“This is the West, no?”
“Yes.”
As the priest left my father in his hiding place in the bell tower he said, “You sleep now. My name is Günter Kraus.”
“Henry Wingo, Günter.”
The priest blessed my father in Latin; my father thought it was German.
My father slept as soldiers searched for him in the darkness.
He awoke to Sanctus bells in the amazing light of October. He listened to the voice of Günter Kraus reciting ancient, lovely prayers. His breakfast was on a tray beside him. There was a note on the tray. “Be well,” it said. “Eat all your breakfast. It will make you strong. They took an American pilot prisoner last night near Stassen. I think you are safe. Let us pray to God that it is so. Your friend, Father Günter Kraus.”
My grandfather shook my mother awake gently. “Lila, I sure do hate to wake you, honey.”
“The babies,” my mother said dreamily. “My babies are all right?”
“They’re fine, honey. Got good lungs. Real good lungs.”
“The storm?”
“I’ve got to move you, honey. The river has come up.”
“The babies,” she cried out.
“Don’t worry. Me and Sarah have them safely in the barn.”
“Dad, you took my babies out in this storm?”
“We’ve got to go, Lila.”
“I’m too tired, Dad. Let me sleep.”
“I’ll carry you, honey. Now, I don’t want to hurt you because I know you’re sore. You did good tonight, honey. Two fine Wingos. Beautiful kids.”
“Henry’s dead, Dad. Henry’ll never see them,” she said, starting to cry.
“Help me, Lila. Help me all you can.”
“Henry’s dead, Dad. The children won’t have a father.”
“They won’t have a mother if you don’t lift up out of that bed,” my grandfather said. “He’s presumed dead. Presumin’ ain’t bein’. Henry’s a river boy and they’re hard to kill.”
He reached his hands under her back and lifted her off the bed. He carried her out of the room, hurting her with every step. As he walked through the back door, he stepped into moving water up to his knees. The wind and water almost brought him to the ground. He walked slowly, deliberately, planting his feet solidly before he took each step. The rain was cruel and stinging against his face. He thought of Joseph leading Mary and the child, Jesus, into Egypt during the persecution of Herod. Joseph was a strong man, my grandfather thought, as he struggled through the rising water, and he had faith in God. But he was no stronger than Amos Wingo and there was not a man or a woman alive on the planet with such simple astonishing love of God to sustain him. My mother, clinging to him like a child, moaned as he began climbing the ladder, holding her with a single arm. He was hurting her badly now. When they reached Sarah and the babies, the blanket he had wrapped her in was covered with blood.
It took over an hour to stop my mother from hemorrhaging and he would never in his lifetime understand the nature of that hemorrhage or what his part was, if any, in stopping it. He had torn his shirt from his back and held it tightly between her legs, the blood pumping through his fingers each time her heart beat. Behind him, Sarah tended the three screaming infants the best she could, whimpering with pain each time she had to shift her weight.
My mother grew weaker before his eyes and he was certain she was dying, but he could not even force the thought to consciousness, s
o aware was he of the rising, ungovernable waters moving through the barn. Below him, he heard the dread of animals and the demonic, cataclysmic howl of the wind as it rushed through the barn. He felt the tension of every nail in the barn as if the wood, suddenly animate, had begun to swell with water running through long dead roots and veins. In the barnwood, he felt the tremor along every grain. The mule began to kick against the stall door when the water reached it, as Amos held that once-white shirt against my mother and pushed hard against the terrible killing flow because he knew of nothing else to do. He saw the small boat he had taken in from the river lift up and move toward the back of the barn.
Two o’clock in the morning, the tide is supposed to be ebbing now, he thought. He could not understand why the water was not receding. Tide was one of the immutable constants of life by the river and he could not fathom why it had chosen this moment to betray itself and his family. Outside, the prodigious winds devastated the trees of the island in a two-hundred-mile-an-hour assault. Oak trees were lifted out of the ground like a child pulling candles out of a birthday cake. Saplings hurtled through the air like leaves. Ah, my grandfather thought, listening to that wind rush through the door of the barn like a train entering a small tunnel, it is the wind holding back the tide. He knew that this storm nullified even the moon’s pull and all daily laws were canceled in the horror and majesty of its passage.
The water cannot go back, he thought. It rises against its will.
He lessened the pressure on his shirt and almost wept when he saw that the bleeding had stopped. My mother, in shock, lay unconscious in her own blood. Sarah and the babies lay silent and exhausted. My grandfather searched the loft and found a tarpaulin covered with oil and straw, which he laid over my mother. He covered it with more straw.
Climbing down the ladder, he plunged into the water and swam to the stalls, forcing them open, freeing the animals. He tied his boat to the ladder. In the pandemonium of the escaping livestock, he was almost gored by a cow who swam over him in her desperation to leave the barn.
When he returned to the loft, the three babies were arranged like pale cordwood on Sarah’s breast and she held them in her dark arms. He bent down to check if my mother was alive. She was breathing, though her pulse was dim.