The Night Listener and Others

by Chet Williamson

  I must now tell of the first time, for it set the pattern for the others. I have said before how my mother left my father and me. My father died of a massive coronary while I was in my third and final year of seminary. He had never again heard from my mother after their divorce was final, but I received a letter from her every Easter and every Christmas. Her second husband was killed in a plane crash during the first year of my pastorate at Dunbarton Methodist, and the following year I received a telephone call from a hospital in Philadelphia informing me that my mother had died during exploratory surgery. Cancer had been devouring her for years, but her irrational fear of doctors (that I still remembered from my childhood) had prevented her from seeking help until it was far too late, and when she was opened up, the tissues were found to be in such a degenerative state that there was no way to put (and no point in putting) her back together again.

  Her will (which left her limited possessions to me) dictated that she should be cremated, and I arranged for the body to be shipped to Jim Meinhart’s funeral home, where it arrived only two days after her death. A short memorial service was held the next day (more people came than I expected, more out of deference to their pastor’s loss than a respect for the deceased, whom no one even knew), and the body was taken to the crematory for a simple disposition. The ashes would be placed in the columbarium at Peace Haven, as Dunbarton Church has no columbarium of its own.

  Jim and I were the only ones in the small chapel. His assistant had helped us set the simple wooden box on the catafalque, from which it would slide on a mechanically driven belt into the cremation chamber, and then left. Jim remained to do the honors, but I asked him if he would leave me alone for a few minutes with my mother, and he graciously acquiesced, telling me to just let him know when I was finished.

  The feelings that went through me were indescribable. Up to that point, I had not looked at the body, as no embalming or other cosmetic work had been done. I did not even know if my mother was clothed or naked. The only thing I knew was that I had to see, for one last time, this woman who I had loved and who had deserted me. The box was not sealed, and I lifted the lid slowly, thinking that it had been four days since her death, and wondering how much decay could have set in in that period of time.

  It was not nearly as bad as I had thought it might be. Jim had washed the body and dressed it in the white slumber gown it wore. The face, terribly gaunt, as was the rest of the body, was a yellow-gray, and the eye sockets had begun to sink in, but it was easily recognizable as my mother. The expression was peaceful (no doubt altered by Jim, who could not resist a challenge, even when no one but himself was there to see his work), and the hands were folded upon the chest.

  Tears pooled in my eyes, and I blinked them away savagely, feeling loss and anger and regret and a dozen other emotions, and thinking most of all, This is what you bring to me, this is how you come back to me, wanting her to hold me again as she used to when I was a child, feeling like a child at that moment, needing love, needing to be fulfilled in some way that was (I thought) impossible now, and I reached out and grasped her hands.

  The fingers were stiff, the flesh was cold, but the contact surged through me like an electric current, and it suddenly struck me how I could keep her with me, how I could cling to her despite her living desertion and the final desertion of death. I let my fingers trail gently over the flesh of her hands. It was still soft and pliant, and I remembered that evening in my bed and my first taste of flesh, remembered my mother’s embraces, remembered the fulfillment that the taking of communion gave me, remembered the penknife that I carried in my pocket for opening letters. These disparate things coalesced in my mind into one logical, undeniable need that demanded to be transformed into action, and my next clear thought was from where I could take the flesh.

  I would remain when Jim Meinhart set the crematory into operation and the box slid in, but how was I to know that he would not look into the box beforehand, prefatory to checking on some required form the line, “Body observed before cremation,” or some such phrase? But even if he did such an unlikely thing, particularly in the presence of the bereaved, he would certainly not look beneath the slumber gown.

  Praying to God to understand (if not what I did, then at least why), I took the hem of my mother’s gown and slid it upward, unutterably relieved to find that she was wearing underwear. I think that if I had had to gaze upon her nakedness I should have had to abort my plan. But instead I drew the gown over her stomach, revealing the ragged line where the surgical incision had been stitched up. The stomach was (mercifully) not at all bloated, and I surmised that the doctors had removed the offending organs for autopsy before closing the rest. The thought occurred to me that Jim Meinhart may have performed some of his magic here as well, for when I made my first cut I felt certain that someone had drained most of the blood from the body.

  It is painful to confess that I felt no remorse in incising my mother’s flesh, but I did not. I felt, of course, the normal distaste that one would feel who is used only to applying a blade to cooked meat, but the queasiness did not delay me, for I knew that I had little time. So I cut straight across my mother’s stomach—two long parallel lines which I joined with two shorter ones to make a rectangle an inch wide and perhaps six inches in length. I then put the blade of the knife beneath one end, and, my fingers wrapped with a handkerchief, pinched the end of the flap of skin and pulled upward, surprised at how easily the strip pulled away from the yellow tissue beneath. There was very little blood, as I said.

  My first concern now was what to do with this fragment that symbolized so much to me. It seemed relatively free of fluid, so I decided to wrap it in my handkerchief and put it in my inner suit coat pocket. Having done so, I placed my mother’s gown back over her body, and was just about to lower the lid when I noticed that the gown over the spot from which I had taken the flesh was darkening with some seepage from the open wound.

  Panic raced through me, and I envisioned Jim Meinhart opening the box, noticing the mark, investigating further, realizing the truth, and exposing me to the world as a man who…what? Defiled the corpse of his own mother? It sounded like the most loathsome act imaginable, and the gravity of what I had just done burst upon me. I broke into a cold sweat, trembling with sudden fear, imagining even that my mother’s corpse would push the lid aside, sit up in her thin pine box, and accuse me of that unspeakable crime, her cold fingers drawing her gown upward like some cadaverous ecdysiast, exposing not only the nakedness of her flesh, but the deeper nakedness where that flesh had been cut away.

  At last I steeled myself, made certain the lid was closed and the pitiful evidence was safely tucked in my pocket before I opened the door and, without a word, beckoned Jim Meinhart inside once again. His face took on an instant attitude of sympathy, as I am certain he interpreted my fearful unease as the throes of grief, and he patted my shoulder, a surprisingly delicate gesture for a man with hands so large, and told me that he knew how hard it was to lose a mother, then asked me if I wanted to leave while he ushered the box into the cremation chamber.

  I said that no, I would stay. I did so mostly to make sure that he would leave the box closed, and the ploy worked (or so I thought—I learned later that he never opens the boxes after they are placed on the catafalque). Jim disappeared into the small operator’s closet, and in a moment the doors of the chamber opened, the box slid in, the doors closed, and I heard the dull roar of the flames. Jim reappeared and told me that it would take an hour before it was over. He would stay, and I could go back to the parsonage.

  An overwhelming sense of freedom swept through me as I stepped outside. The leaves of the trees were bright green, and the day was crisp with the promise of oncoming autumn. What I had done was now being obliterated, save for the piece of flesh whose presence (so I sensed) beat against my chest like a second, external heart. It was with a great deal of effort that I put on a sober face for Mrs. Bunn, who was waiting in the kitchen with a pot of freshly brewed c
offee and some hot rolls, which I declined, telling her that although I appreciated her sympathy, I wanted only to be alone. She took the hint and left in her car to shop for groceries, which gave me an opportunity to secrete the piece of flesh I had taken.

  I dared not open the handkerchief to look at it, for I feared what I might do with it. To devour it was my intent, of course, but not immediately, not like a beast or some ghoul, but in reverence, at the proper time and the proper place (which I would come to decide later). I took a piece of aluminum foil and placed the handkerchief-wrapped treasure in it, folding the foil over and around, then put it in the freezer in the cellar, far beneath similarly wrapped cuts of beef, veal, pork, and chicken that Mrs. Bunn would not unearth for many weeks.

  When I ascended, a half hour remained until my mother’s body was reduced to ash, so I sat on the porch and watched the trees and the sky, into which the slightest wisp of white smoke was drifting from the crematory chimney, invisible to anyone who was not looking for it against the backdrop of dark green leaves. For a long time I spoke to God, asking for His guidance, for His assurance that these longings that I had were not evil, but good, some manifestation of His love. And I heard Him in my heart, felt His love and compassion and pity, and I knew then that this was only one way of worship, one way that I could feel His touch in my life, and I knew what I would have to do.

  Of course I doubted at times. I wondered if this sensation of the Lord’s presence was nothing but a rationalization of some psychological quirk. But God works in strange ways, and in many ways, and I do believe that this is one, that He is truly within me when I take this communion.

  There are others who feel that their deeds, no matter how horrible, are blessed. But they are mad—those who kill people, who place bombs for “religion’s” sake. They are sad and deluded, and only think they feel God’s glory. I have felt and seen and heard and tasted.

  Then there are those others who make not even a pretense of searching for God in their actions. There are those, whether we wish to believe it or not, who search for something totally opposite to God.

  Two weeks after the grave was robbed, the church was broken into. I did not discover it until the morning when, after breakfast, I was planning to do some work in my office. As I unlocked the door to the narthex, I was struck with a foul smell, which I followed into the sanctuary. I am not easily shocked, but what I saw nearly made me vomit up my breakfast. It was not so much the things themselves, but the idea of the sanctuary violated in such a way, of the mind that could ignore all the laws of God and the most sacred rules of society.

  The chancel had been transformed into the site of a Black Mass, but a Black Mass as designed by a mischievous child. The communion table had been taken from its storage closet and set in front of the altar. On it lay a dead cat. It had been decapitated, and its head was on the metal paten that held the bread at communion services. Much of its blood spattered the table, but most had been caught in the chalice. On the altar, the brass crucifix had been turned upside-down, and was stained with what I guessed was semen. The altar Bible, opened to the Sermon on the Mount, had been defecated and urinated upon.

  I wept. The sight was so appalling that I could do nothing else. I wanted to cleanse and make right, but I knew that I should touch nothing, so it was unbearable to stay a moment longer. I ran to my office and called the police. They arrived shortly, two different young men this time, but just as kind and agreeable as the others had been. They took their pictures and samples once again, removed the Bible, the cat’s body, the chalice and paten, the altar cloths. The perpetrator or perpetrators had entered, they learned, through one of the sanctuary windows. A pane had been broken in order to let them unfasten the latch, push up the sash, and enter. They had most likely, the policemen said, gone out the same way. After dusting for fingerprints, they left, telling me that I could set the place to rights again, which I did with Mrs. Bunn’s help.

  The poor lady was as shocked as I was, and there were tears in her eyes as we both scrubbed and washed the defiled sanctuary. She kept muttering, “Why?” as she worked. “Why’d anybody want to do such a thing. Awful…just awful…” From time to time I nodded, concurring. It was indeed awful, and, although I am a Christian and believe in loving the sinner while hating the sin, I did not know what to do in such a situation where the sinner becomes the sin. For such an act as was performed upon the altar that night seemed to put the perpetrator entirely outside the mercy of God. A man may steal or even commit murder and still receive God’s grace for the asking, if he truly repents. But to spit in God’s face…it is incomprehensible to me, outside the bounds of human behavior or psychology, and I knew that there was no way I could ever love this sinner, and envied God all the more for his miraculous ability to do so.

  That afternoon a reporter came and questioned me about the vandalism. I told her that yes, the church had been defiled, but when she asked in what way, I said in an obscene way, and that I didn’t want to go into any details, and I would appreciate it if no speculations appeared in the newspaper. This was, after all, a place of worship, and such rumors could only serve to draw people’s minds away from reverent thoughts. She seemed to understand, and assured me that her paper would print only the general outline of the case. I thanked her and she left.

  It was late that night in bed that I suspected I knew who was responsible. These nighttime depredations had not begun until the Holt family moved into the area. Now I knew that other families from the cities had come in as well, but when I remembered Keith Holt’s gaze and words and attitude, it seemed extraordinary to me that I had not thought of him before.

  First of all, I had no doubt that the same person who had robbed the grave had also defiled the church, and neither, I think, did the police. This kind of occurrence was so rare that the odds of it being the act of two separate individuals were too long to consider. Oh, there was an occasional beer party in a car on the lane that led back to the church, especially in May, when high school graduations neared. I would find empty cans strewn among the trees on either side. But never before was so much as a tombstone toppled. And now these two abominable acts in quick succession—well, there was no other conclusion to draw.

  Secondly, the culprit must have been young, and (this was my conclusion, not that of the police) he must have been evil. The sheer audacity and senselessness of the acts spoke of youth. Now admittedly, at the age of fifteen, Keith Holt should not have been able to drive the car that I heard the night the grave was opened, but to a boy who would do such things as rob graves and defile a church, the additional transgression of taking his parents’ car seemed relatively tame.

  I wondered what to do next. Should I go to the police and tell them of my suspicions? No, for what did I have to base them on except for my own distaste toward the boy? I did resolve to watch him more closely in church and to attend next Sunday evening’s Youth Fellowship to see if I might be able to derive any clues from his behavior or his words. It is difficult for young people to keep their offenses secret from their friends, for half the joy of wicked acts (so I have read) is being able to tell others about them later.

  On the verge of sleep, I began to imagine what deed Keith (if it was Keith) might perform next. He had already violated the cemetery and the church, and the crematory was unassailable, having as it did no windows and only one door with a heavy lock. That left only the parsonage then, and fear suddenly ate through me so that I sat bolt upright in my bed. It was not the fear of confrontation, for I am a large man and would have been more than a match for such a youth as Keith Holt. My fear was that of exposure. I remembered the cellar windows and their pitifully fragile catches that might easily be pushed open, leaving the cellar easy access for a body slender enough to slip through the gap. I could see him sliding down, feet first, stepping on the freezer, then on the wooden box behind it, the box breaking, the boy investigating…oh dear God…

  The box. How did I come to the box? I came to the box as I cam
e to the taking of flesh. One is dependent upon the other.

  Several years ago, when I proposed to take the communion of my mother’s flesh in the way I did, I waited until one of the Tuesday evenings when Mrs. Bunn went off to visit her relatives in Baltimore. She always leaves on a Tuesday morning, and arrives back the following evening, as weekends are always too busy to permit her absence (indeed, she had never asked—she is a wise and knowing woman). Her trips come only once every two months or so, and I decided to use the solitude to perform the act that I had so looked forward to for several weeks. Every time Mrs. Bunn left the parsonage, I would go down to the cellar, open the freezer, and check to make sure that my treasure had not been disturbed. It never was.

  That Tuesday evening, after the adult choir had all driven home following their weekly rehearsal, I took the foil-wrapped piece of flesh from the freezer, pulled the blinds, locked the doors of the parsonage, and unwrapped it to find that the handkerchief was clinging to it in several places. I did not want to pull it away too hastily for fear that the cloth would tear and adhere to the skin, so I rewrapped it in foil, put it in a plastic bag, boiled a pan of water, and tried to thaw it so that the handkerchief would pull away easily. After several minutes of boiling, I withdrew it from the pan and unwrapped it once again. This time the handkerchief came away easily, and the flesh lay exposed to my view.

  The freezing had certainly done nothing to make it more visually appealing, as I had not wrapped the foil tightly enough to prevent ice crystals from forming, thus causing freezer burn, and (I discovered in later reading) I had done nothing to help the situation by my impatient method of thawing. Still, there it was before me, that yellow strip of flesh, and I cut from it a morsel no bigger than a dime, washed it under running water, and prepared for the service.

  It was everything I had expected, and so much more, and I praised God and blessed His name for allowing me to come so near Him.