A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2)

by Terence M. Green

  A smile. A shrug. "We minimize unnecessary speech. We are not antisocial. Or mute. You'd be surprised how much speech is unnecessary."

  It is my turn to nod. Then: "Would you mind talking to me a bit?"

  He lowers his book, studies me.

  "Or is that wrong?"

  "Not at all."

  He approaches, sits at the other end of the stone bench. The sun slides from behind the cloud. I can hear only bees nearby, birds in the distance.

  "Is it true that you make wine and cheese?"

  He smiles. "Cheese and fruitcake would be more like it. We'll be doing extra work starting in September to prepare for the Christmas volume. It's a source of needed income."

  "What else do you do here?"

  "There is so much to keep us busy. We have cooks, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, mechanics among us. There are daily tasks: washing dishes, cleaning floors. We run our own waterworks, our own sewage disposal plant. There is a large vegetable garden, a mechanized farm, a small beef herd. We grow and harvest wheat. We have a granary."

  He folds his book shut, leans the weight of his body forward slightly, his hands braced on the front edge of the bench beside his thighs.

  "I'm Martin Radey," I say.

  "Thomas Merton." He offers his hand, which I take. "Where are you from?"

  "Toronto, Canada."

  "Really? My brother was stationed somewhere near Toronto early in the war. He went to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. He couldn't wait for us to enter the war."

  "Where is he now?"

  A hesitation. "He's dead." Another beat. "His plane went down in the North Sea."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I'm sorry too. It was the mention of Toronto that brought it back." A pause. "How long will you be with us?"

  "Three days."

  "Like Jonah."

  "Pardon?"

  "In the belly of the whale."

  I smile. "A nice whale, though." I look around me.

  "Have you been here before?"

  "No. This is my first time."

  "Have you been to Kentucky before?"

  I shake my head. "No."

  "What brings you here?"

  "What brings anyone here?" Then, as before, I surprise myself. "I have a son who lives in Kentucky."

  He nods, as if understanding. "Near here?"

  "Ashland."

  "That's in the eastern part of the state. Did he tell you about Gethsemani?"

  I think about it. "Yes," I say. "He did." Then I ask him, suddenly, the sun in his face, the memory of lightning flashing in the night, of Jack leaning on his shovel, staring at me, of the trip here, of my years alone: "What is a monk? What is this place?"

  He smiles, frowns. "Does the silence scare you?"

  I do not know what scares me anymore, can think of no answer.

  "Monasticism is rooted in all major religions of the world. It was practiced in the East a thousand years before the Christian era. Gethsemani has been here for a hundred years. A monk," he says, looking away, "is not a man with a fiery vision. A monk has nothing to tell you except that if you dare to enter the solitude of your own heart, you can go beyond death even in this life, and be a witness to life." He turns to me. "You can be a monk, just by accepting that. It is a process, not a destination."

  I look at him, into his dark, confident eyes.

  He stands, picks up his book. "Pray for me," he says, nods, and leaves.

  The sun beats down warmly on my neck, my back, as I lean forward, hands clasped, elbows on my knees.

  "Tell me about your son."

  It is the next day. We are in the garden again, on the same stone bench.

  "He runs a hotel in Ashland," I say. "The Scott Hotel." I see Jack in a shirt and tie, hair slicked down, at a large desk in a private office.

  Thomas Merton nods, looks down. "How old is he?"

  My mouth is dry. "Midthirties," I say. Jack signs a form, folds it, places it on the side of the desk.

  "I'm thirty-three," he says.

  I look at him. "You could be my son. I could be your father." You could be Jack, I think. He could be anywhere.

  "My mother died when I was six. My father died when I was sixteen."

  We are quiet.

  Then, sitting here, beside him, the past surfaces. I remember another priest, at the graveside of my baby brother Patrick, more than sixty years ago. I remember him telling mother that Patrick had been redeemed.

  In this garden, with this man, the question flows naturally, yet surprisingly: "What is redemption? I don't think I understand."

  He squints, smiles. "It's an interesting theological concept. Very complex. The root meaning is to set free or to cause to be set free. To redeem is to ransom. The Old Testament saw redemption as a transaction. One could be redeemed by sacrifice, by giving of self. We were capable of our own redemption. The New Testament, ah, now that's slightly different. It is imbued with a redemption for which God paid the price."

  I feel the sun warm my hands, listen to the silence around us.

  "Men need to be set free from a power greater than themselves, but it cannot be accomplished without cost. Someone must pay. Man or God." He stares out into the rush of summer colors: impatiens, petunias, white roses, baby's breath, soft mauve forget-me-nots, moss rockfoil, dark red.

  On the third day, I sit in the same place, hoping, then finally knowing, that he will return, and he does not disappoint me.

  "I'll be leaving tomorrow morning," I say.

  "I've enjoyed our conversations," he says. "Will you see your son before you head back home?"

  My eyes waver, then focus on a rose arbor, arched and bowed, climbing with red and green. "No," I say. Jack opens the door of his Dodge roadster, climbs in, checks the rearview mirror.

  He hears more than I say, tilts his head. "I had a son," he says.

  I watch a pollen-heavy bee lean forward into a daisy.

  "Both he and his mother were killed in the war, during the firebombing of London. I never married her. I never saw him."

  I am quiet for a moment. "You didn't have to tell me."

  He is calm. The air is still. "We only seek," he says, "to avoid unnecessary speech here." He turns, looks at me. "Has your trip been worthwhile?"

  I look up. A lone hawk is circling high in the blue August Kentucky sky. "It's been good." Then: "It's been inevitable. It's like I've been drawn here."

  "I know." He looks at me. "This is the center of America."

  I watch his eyes. They focus on a point I cannot see.

  "This monastery is holding the country together. This is its heart. I have a hermitage less than a mile from here. I write by candlelight at sunset, view the valley, the woods from my window. One has to be in the same place every day to realize how rich the uniformity is. The solitary life is awesome. It can shock you, and it can give you grace. We discover our eternal dimensions in the midst of our failures."

  He reaches down, picks up a stone at our feet, rubs it clean, hands it to me. "Here."

  I hold it in my palm.

  "This stone is life."

  I say nothing.

  "It exists before and after death."

  I close my hand over it.

  "It is all that we have, all that we are, all that we will be."

  I squeeze its hard, unyielding surface.

  He offers his hand. "We are all monks," he says. His hand waits.

  "Thank you," I say.

  "Good-bye, Martin."

  "Thomas."

  "Pray for me," he says.

  Before I board the bus to Bardstown, I walk once more among the array of small white crosses on the hilltop, feel the earth giving gently beneath my feet, among silent men who lead silent lives, among my brothers. My fingers touch the small stone in my pocket. And from a corner of my eye, cowled in white, retreating into an arched doorway, I see Jack, my son, fading into the stone walls.

  5

  March 1949, at age thirty-nine, Margaret ha
s another baby, a son, Dennis. Anne, Ron, Judy, Leo, and now Dennis.

  On my way back from the hospital, ahead of me on the streetcar, with my eyes still open, in blacks and whites and grays I see Jack brushing a daughter's hair, straightening up the collar of her coat against the cold, then pull the cord above his head. They leave by the side door.

  On Saturday, September 17, 1949, the Great Lakes excursion ship Noronic catches fire at its pier in Toronto harbor. The single exit blocked, the ship's fire hydrants dry, one hundred and eighteen people die.

  I dream that in the smoke, Jack is trapped, looking for me.

  A warm, beautiful Saturday, weather in the seventies, just before her twenty-second birthday, October 14, 1950, Joan marries A1 McLeod. During the reception at the Old Mill, my sister, Mary Rossiter, four years widowed, in her eighties, drinks too much wine, but no one cares.

  Margaret and Tommy are here. Jock is here. Things are good.

  And then everyone is waiting. I must dance with her. One dance. It is expected.

  There is a spotlight, the circle widens and we are alone. As I move about the floor, my daughter in my arms, I realize that it is the same: I am touching Joan at last, lifting her, like Gramma in the cold room onto her bed so many years ago.

  "Thank you," she says, and squeezes my hand. The words, with her face radiant, are a gift, all that I want. Joan is my second chance and I have not failed. There will be no further losses.

  I smile back, for me a rare smile, dance foolishly to the music, sway, and when it is over I surprise myself when I kiss her on the forehead, my heart thudding, and see that she is still, gloriously, smiling back at me.

  I light a cigar, pull my hat low over my brow, and watch as Joan and Al leave for Niagara Falls, unable to believe my eyes. Then, in the instant between joy and regret, between loss and possibility, I turn and fancy that Jack lights a cigarette beside me, his eyes sparkling.

  On Christmas Day, 1950, I board the streetcar, heading to see Margaret, to see what is left of my family.

  And then it happens. The blue candle goes out and it is my turn to die.

  CODA

  The wind owns the fields where I walk and I own nothing and am owned by nothing and I shall never even be forgotten because no one will ever discover me. This is to me a source of immense confidence.

  —Thomas Merton

  The Sign of Jonas

  In 1984, in the hospital room, jack, as unreal as I am, hands Margaret a rose, which seems real, which she clutches in her bent hand. Their bond is stronger than I have ever understood, born of shared experience of which I have not been a part. I have nothing to give her, nothing that can match this, but Margaret does not mind. Her hand would still hold out the nickel, give me everything. She has always asked for so little, and now is no different.

  My Margaret. Dying alone, as so many others. I think of my brother, my sisters, of all our children, and wonder how someone with so much family ends up so alone.

  Oh Maggie. Margaret is ours. Where are you£

  And then suddenly, Jack and Margaret are gone, the hospital is gone, the instant has vanished, and I am once again spiraling upward on black wings, turning, the sky above endlessly blue and white. My destiny as a father is over. My family, I understand, is scattered on the winds.

  Higher.

  The voice in my head is my mother's, teaching me, pointing to objects, naming them, saying the words. Time happens to the world around me, but not inside, not to memory, because memory is beyond time, traveling forward with me, forging lives out of life, shaping the earth, the sky, the heart.

  I am higher than I have ever been before, clearheaded, lungs bursting, can smell the sea, other lands, can see farther, almost to Ireland, a loy digging in green hills so far away, and Elora the bridge over the Grand the Tooth of Time the blacksmith's shop Sarah Patrick Loretta, now the Nipissing the hayloft at Boyd's farm the Queen's Hotel Brookfield Street Constance Street Pacific Avenue a Killarney razor and a shaving mug with a brush made of badger hair a silver thermos Da on the side of the road covered with canvas a Homburg hat a dancing bear a botde of Lourdes water a smoking stand and a hassock, the Scott Hotel Fire Proof Moderate Price Tub and Shower Baths the rose arbor at Gethsemani

  the hawk falls on me from above finally yes talons shredding my feathers piercing my heart where all things are won and lost and I feel Maggie's fingers touch my face Gert's breath in my mouth and then I look into the hawk's eyes fiery blue and see that it is Jack and understand as I hear him sing at last it is so perfect yes understand what I have been waiting for how it was to happen why it was to happen and am grateful

  am carried higher into the white clouds small heart pumping ecstasy as I join my family my sisters my brothers on the four winds vision dimming and look one last time at the hawk's beak spreading my breast crimson one last time to see that it too has changed oh changed yes and am filled with joy as I see Gramma open her mouth about to speak to me yes oh yes for the first the very first time.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpts from The Sign of Jonas by Thomas Merton, copyright 1953 by the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani and renewed 1981 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust, reprinted by the permission of Harcourt Brace & Company. Excerpt from The Ascent to Truth by Thomas Merton, copyright 1951 by the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani and renewed 1979 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace St Company. Excerpt from A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965 by Thomas Merton. Copyright © 1988 by the Merton Legacy Trust. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

  Copyright © 1999 by Terence M. Green

  Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

  ISBN 978-1-4976-2910-3

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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