“Sure. And now you’re giving me the creeps as well.”
“I want to tell you all about him. I want to tell the story, everything I know. The Charlie I knew was not the Charlie of the media, not the mythical Charlie who became a synonym for evil. I knew a different Charlie than the one manufactured by that prosecutor and sensationalized by the media.
“Who was he then?” Maggie asked.
“When I knew Charlie, he was a fourteen year old kid. He was a special boy, the kind of guy that kids flock to. We wanted him to lead us. That may sound bad from your perspective, but Charlie understood things we’ll never grasp. Charlie might not be acceptable to most, but to me he had heart.”
Maggie moved her purse from her lap and set it on the floor, a signal for Jake to continue.
“Charlie was the closest thing to a big brother I ever had. We were family.”
Maggie shook her head again.
“Everyone loves their family, Maggie, but Charlie was fanatical about it. He was willing to fight to defend the family life he wanted. Maybe that played a part in the horrible problems later in Los Angeles.”
Maggie held up her hand to quiet Jake.
“This conversation is too bizarre, Dad. Frankly, I’m wondering why I should go on with it. You’re ignoring that Manson was a crazed killer. I’m starting to think maybe you’re crazy too.” She took a deep breath for fortitude. “I didn’t come here to listen to you preach about Charles Manson.”
“Give me time, Maggie. Let me tell my story. Maybe you can understand me better.”
“I keep getting hints that something happened?”
“Something did happen. I’ll get to that. For now, just listen.”
“I hope there is a point to this.”
“There is a point. There are things you need to know.”
What does he want to tell me? What has he done that I need to know about?
“Here’s where I struggle, Dad. I already have all the truth about Charles Manson I need. I remember how he tortured and murdered that pregnant movie star in Los Angeles.”
“No he didn’t,” Jake corrected. “Let’s clear that myth first thing. Charlie wasn’t even present when Sharon Tate and the others were murdered. His presence was never a question. Manson wasn’t convicted for murder.”
“You’re mistaken, Dad.”
“No, I’m not. He was convicted for conspiracy to commit murder.”
“Charles Manson murdered those people.”
“Not true. You’re way off base, Maggie. You’re speaking with conditioned responses. Read about the case.”
“Okay, maybe I don’t know all the legal technicalities, but I remember that Manson controlled his cult from jail during the trial. It was huge news. He was an insane killer who ordered weaker minds to do his dirty work. If he didn’t personally murder those people, he still orchestrated it. He didn’t have to be at the murders to be guilty.”
Jake recognized her mounting frustration.
“I think we need to call it a day on Manson. I love you, baby, but you need to educate yourself about him. He’s not insane, never was. The state has spent boatloads of money trying to establish insanity, but they can’t. You need to get beyond the urban legends. Don’t be among the easily led masses that demonize Charlie rather than seek the truth.”
There was rejection in her glare.
They sat in silence for a few minutes before turning to less charged conversation. For half an hour longer they spoke of medical treatments and common acquaintances.
She saw him fatiguing and readied to leave. Jake took a conciliatory tone.
“You get the last word, baby. I want you to come back tomorrow.”
“I’ll try to read about your friend tonight. Maybe there is something about him on the internet.”
Jake smiled. He knew it was time for her to go.
She kissed his clammy forehead and left. His lips puckered but touched neither her cheek nor forehead. She was gone.
That evening, while nurses attached a morphine pump to Jake’s IV stand, Maggie stood facing her kitchen counter. She alternately fumed and felt guilt.
In the loving cradle of her home, Maggie almost forgave Jake for his relationship with Charles Manson, almost dismissed the weight of her anger, and almost attributed his Manson-devotion to old age. These things she almost did.
I need to keep in mind that he is on his death bed. He deserves compassion and a chance to talk.
Perhaps it was inevitable that after dinner, the smoldering embers of rejection rekindled as she searched the internet for information about Manson.
Chapter 34
Sunday Morning - Boys Town, April 1949
Any other day of the week, Boys Town would have already been humming with activity, but on Sunday, most of the residents and the staff slept late before going to Mass.
In the grayness just after dawn, Gallagher sat in the rectory drinking a cup of coffee and toying with his toast. He had a bad feeling about the day. Something wasn’t right. There were times a sixth sense warned him of trouble, and this was one of those times. He felt it, but couldn’t put his finger on anything.
Maybe it’s Charlie. The kid sure has nerve. Said it in plain English, ‘Well, you know, it wouldn’t be the first time a priest lifted his robe and lowered his boxer shorts for a nun.’
Churning inside, he pushed the toast crumbs across his saucer as he thought. A calming idea came to him.
Maybe it’s only the gloomy morning. I’ll feel better when the sun burns through.
The toast crumbs now formed a small brown cross on the white saucer. Gallagher studied it.
Pointed end. Looks more like a dagger.
He squared off the tip of the dagger so that the crumbs now made a perfect cross.
Time to get ready for Mass.
He picked up his dishes. At the sink, he washed the cross off the saucer and down the drain without a second thought.
On the morning of his third day at Boys Town, Charlie arose from his bed and dressed. Jake and Hiram were sleeping soundly, so he slipped quietly out of the dormitory.
They had a rough night. Let ‘em sleep.
Outside, he encountered Diablo sauntering across the dorm yard. He stopped for a minute to pet the meowing menace before following the smell of sizzling bacon to the dining hall. Despite feeling full, he stuffed down three pancakes and a slab of bacon.
A guy never knows when he’ll get a another chance to eat.
When he finished eating, Charlie stood. He was bloated and uncomfortable. He decided a hike around campus might settle his stomach and slogged away from the dining hall in the direction of the pylon monument.
In due course, he made his way to Boys Town’s northern border at Highway 6. He sat on a log to think and was watching cars pass when the church bells began calling the village to Mass. Like three hundred other boys, Charlie began the obligatory trek to the chapel.
He was surprised when every boy in the church yard and on the steps greeted him. Some in groups seemed to speak to him in unison, as if rehearsed. “Good Morning, Charlie,” they said.
Charlie, still adorned with lipstick and a new hickey, waved and smiled at them. He wasn’t sure what to make of the off-stage attention. He decided he was embarrassed by his appearance and the events on the bus.
They musta been talkin’ about me.
He escaped by entering the chapel and making his way into the nave where he walked up the center aisle to within seven rows of the altar. To the right stood St. Joseph, stern eyes watching the swollen congregation packed almost as tightly as a Boys Town football game. To the left, the beautiful Virgin Mary. Charlie chose a pew on Mary’s side of the church and sat.
At the front of the church, Link emerged from the inner sanctum wearing a long robe and looking confused. He began the artful task of lighting candles with a body better suited for the less precise work of eating. He was new at the job and cast about awkwardly, trying to decide which candles to light
and which to leave untouched. Twice he passed in front of Jesus without making the sign of the cross and quickly stumbled back to do so.
Charlie smiled.
‘Ole Link is a good boy. I am well pleased with him. I knew he could do it.
Several rows ahead, ten nuns sat together. Even from the back, he easily identified Sister Klara in a lineup of identical habits. She was the one sitting straight and alert. And when Father Gallagher entered the church from the sacristy, her head turned in his direction.
Yeah. Lock those big eyes on him, sister. You want that priest, huh? Want what’s under that robe, don’t you?
At this point, Charlie noticed a sensation in his stomach, not mild like butterflies, but what he thought it must feel like to have a four-foot tape worm hard at work. It was as if a great pressure was building inside him. The pain passed. Charlie turned his attention to the priest.
Father Gallagher was wearing a black robe and a white stole, but not his favorite one from Rome. He bore his normal authoritative look, but today he looked more serious. This was the look he had been taught as a helpful technique to keep parishioners and orphans under control.
The Mass began with a mournful organ solo that Charlie thought must belong at a funeral. The deacon delivered a dry scripture reading, and when he closed his lectionary, Father Gallagher stood. He lit incense in a golden burner and blessed the congregation. The perfumed offering ascended to God carrying the prayers of the faithful. Shortly afterward came the divine collection basket.
As the collection basket drew closer, the boy across the aisle noticed a strange look on Charlie’s face. When the collection plate arrived, Charlie reached in his blue jeans pocket and produced the only thing he had to give, a salt shaker labeled Wabash Railroad. He placed it in the basket and gave the boy across the aisle a wink and sheepish grin before passing the basket along.
Now, Father Gallagher stood close to the pulpit, lifted his hands to God, and boomed out an eloquent introductory prayer of thanks.
Next came two hymns of praise, songs Charlie had never heard before. He was impressed that the congregation sang almost as loudly as the junior choir in the balcony loft.
And now for his sermon, Gallagher returned to the pulpit to stand before them. Gallagher the red-faced, the strong-voiced. Gallagher, God’s warrior. All eyes looked unblinking at their spiritual leader.
God chose to bless Gallagher with a strong voice. At age fourteen, the world had perceived Sean as a nonstop, annoying jabber-mouth. That perception changed when he stood before his parish appealing for help for a friend’s mother who lay near death with cancer. It was a heart-wrenching story that generated the support he sought and earned him a reputation as a gifted speaker. It also set him on a course toward priesthood.
Gallagher was an actor of sorts who often began sermons with fearsome tales of fire and pain in hell. Today he began by waving a newspaper high in the air. “Here in this front page story are the wages of sin!” he proclaimed and then read a particularly gruesome article. Predictably, the story enthralled the boys and set the stage for the day’s moral lesson. Fear, it seemed, had a great impact on impressionable Boys Town youth who needed the priest’s guidance.
As always, he presented his lesson with perfect cadence and diction mixing drama and empathy in a skilled manner that built intensity.
As the sermon moved steadily toward its peak, Charlie again felt an uneasy rumble in his gut, this time with worse pain. He felt bloated and unable to move. Then, the pain eased again.
Gallagher climaxed the sermon with the newspaper’s description of death and dismemberment, almost screaming at the congregation.
“And what does God say about this?” he shouted, eyes bulging with righteous fury. “What does God say about such heathen acts?”
Silence fell over the room as Gallagher allowed his voice to echo. And just before the priest answered his own question, when the church was at its quietest with anticipation, someone in the congregation released a massive fart.
Perhaps he was sitting at the acoustic epicenter of the sanctuary, or perhaps there was something more. For whatever reason, the sound of it was amplified and roared through the chapel like crashing spring thunder, echoing louder than the priest’s shouts moments earlier. It bounced through the entire chapel, bouncing among the Gothic arches and columns, louder than the deafening flatulence of Chaucer’s character in The Canterbury Tales.
Father Gallagher stood there, frozen, still holding his newspaper high in the air. Three hundred boys sat aghast, yet amazed by the inhuman fart. Silence prevailed, but only for a moment. A fifth grader opened the floodgates with a giggle. Two rows back another snickered, and within seconds the entire holy sanctuary erupted with uncontrolled laughter, not just laughter, but cleansing laughter from the soul. Complete laughter.
There was no holding back. Riotous laughter echoed through the chapel. Gallagher’s eyes fell on Charlie, looking angelic in the seventh row.
Him! Of every boy here, there is but one who is not laughing, one who tries to look innocent.
It was Charlie, sitting with ample space suddenly cleared around him, looking as blameless as a babe awaiting his turn in the baptistery, his focus wholly on the dramatic results that two jars of Kentucky beans had wrought.
Charlie suddenly became aware every boy within five rows was looking at him, admiring, laughing, holding their noses. A grin crossed Charlie’s face
“Musta been them Kentucky beans I ate,” he muttered softly.
The momentum in Father Gallagher’s sermon was lost with no hope of recovery. Charlie had won the day.
Gallagher’s tormented mind debated how to handle the situation without making an outlandish situation worse. He had never faced a dilemma like this during Mass.
How can I condemn a lad for a bodily function he might not have been able to control. Best to keep control and dismiss the service rather than cause a scene.
Father Gallagher held up his hands in defeat and said, “Okay boys, let’s get things back under control.”
When the room calmed to the shaking of suppressed laughter, he spoke. “I think today we shall celebrate a shortened Mass.”
With the promise of a quick dismissal, Gallagher regained the congregation’s attention, if only for a minute.
“I have one announcement before the final blessing and dismissal. For those who need forgiveness and healing, confessions will be begin at one o’clock this afternoon. If you need to restore your relationship with God, please consider celebrating this important sacrament. Reconciliation with God is important.”
There was an utterance of several Latin phrases, a short prayer of benediction, and then a rush for the exits.
Hiram and Jake, late arrivals at Mass, spotted Charlie across the church and moved against the flow toward him.
Before they reached him, a ten old boy pushed to within touching distance and patted Charlie on the shoulder.
“You sure can sing good,” he said.
Thank you,” said Charlie slowing to talk. “I’ll sing a special song just for you real soon. What’s your name?”
The younger boy smiled. “My name is Jeremy Stone, but they call me ‘Germy’ for short.”
Charlie looked the boy square in the eye. “Something about you reminds me of the little red fox who always gets a chicken no matter what the farmer does. That’s the nickname I’m going to give you—Fox. That’s better than Germy, ain’t it? Do you like that?”
“Sure do. Thank you, Charlie.” Jeremy smiled at his new nickname and walked away forming the name on his lips.
Hiram and Jake had seen the interaction from a distance, and when they reached Charlie, Jake asked, “That was Germy Stone. What did he want? He can be an aggravating little turd. We can tell him to leave you alone.”
“He just wanted to compliment me,” Charlie answered.
“He’s kind of a strange one. His parents burned up in a fire.”
“Ah, Jake. It’s like my G
rammy used to read to me, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.’ Jeremy will be fine. I’ve given him a new name – Red Fox.”
Jake wondered at the things Charlie said.
Hiram was decidedly blunter. “Charlie, that was your fart, wasn’t it? Man, you fumigated the whole church. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to wash this shirt when I get to the dorm.”
“Yeah, that was pretty loud, huh? Kinda embarrassing.”
“The deacon was about to pass out gas masks when Father Gallagher evacuated the place. That was Candy’s Kentucky beans. For Christ sake, stay away from those things.”
“I thought I flushed everything out back at the dorm. Man, was I wrong. Phew!” Charlie grinned and fanned the air for emphasis.
They stepped into the fresh air on the church steps and followed the crowd to the dining hall.
“I think I might go to confession after lunch. I’d like to spend the time with Father Gallagher,” Charlie said.
“No way the chapel will be aired out by then,” Jake joked. “Gallagher might just crucify you if you show up. Stranger things have happened, you know.”
Charlie was mildly amused.
“Even Jesus survived a few visits to the temple. I’ll take my chances with Gallagher,” Charlie said “Where do I go?”
“Those little booths on the side of the sanctuary are for confessions. The priest sits in the middle booth behind a screen while confessors sit in booths on each side. He can’t actually see who’s coughing up their sins.”
“Yep. I’m going back for confession.”
It would be a confession that would simultaneously blow up in the priest’s face and bite him in the ass.
CHAPTER 35
Douglas County Health Center – August, 2012
Before He Became a Monster: A Story Charles Manson's Time at Father Flannigan's Boystown Page 19