by Gene Logsdon
His classmates stared at him in gaping wonder. The idiot was going to get himself defrocked, Gabe thought. The Very Reverend Lukey, sitting next to Blaze, could not resist coming to the defense of the Church. “No doubt if I spent a night in a car with a young woman, I might be tempted to question Canon Law too,” he said primly, looking at Fr. Alexus for approval.
“You wouldn’t have to worry, Lukey. No woman would spend a night in a car with you even if the alternative were freezing to death.” A tittering as soft as the sound of mice feet scurrying across a linoleum floor filled the classroom. The seminarians all turned to the speaker, none as surprised as Blaze. It was not he who had spoken, but Fen the Fearless.
Fr. Alexus’ face paled, then turned red. In the secret depth of his mind, he more or less agreed with Oblate Blaise, but he did not intend for the Second Reformation of the Church to start in his classroom. That could threaten his chances of becoming the next Provincial.
“Outbursts like this are totally out of line,” he intoned gravely. “All three of you go to your rooms. And stay there until you hear otherwise from the Prior.”
Each of the three reacted in his own more or less predictable way. Back in his room, The Very Reverend Lukey paced back and forth in self-righteous agitation. Why was he being punished for defending Canon Law? He had always suspected that Alexus was soft on Church dogma. Lukey would inform the Provincial of this incident.
Fen sat at his desk staring glumly at the wall. Why had he opened his big fat mouth again? How many times would he let that idiot Blaze lead him into trouble? He had enough problems as it was. Lately he had been feeling so horny that he could hardly think about anything except sex. He had decided he must be homosexual. That’s why he liked that idiot Blaze so much. He really did wonder sometimes if Blaze were homosexual, which was why he doubted that anything had happened in the car that night with Marge Puckett. Now the idiot was championing penises. But if Fen were gay, why did he dream of endless lines of girls standing against a wall, himself moving from one to the other, methodically coupling with each in turn until he awoke, ejaculating semen all over the sheets. Could the celibate life somehow turn a heterosexual man into a homosexual one? Maybe he was both.
Back in his room, Blaze would have been stupified by Fen’s suspicions that he, Blaze, might be gay, since his secret thoughts were almost exclusively focused on Marge Puckett these days. But at the moment, he had much more combative issues on his mind. He banged away furiously on his typewriter, adding another chapter to “The Story of My Weird Life.” All the pent-up anger that he had tried to keep bottled inside him with his Peter Pan playfulness, his grating laughter and his absurd fantasy worlds, welled to the surface. He pounded on the keys: “I will join the Jains of India, wandering naked through the world, eating no meat, knowing no woman, owning nothing, not even clothing, teaching that sexual organs are the most decent parts of the body and indeed the glory of the human race. The brassiere and the codpiece are sure signs of human decadence.”
He stopped short, his thoughts careening around his mind like corn popping in a hot, covered pan. He tried to focus on one puffed kernel at a time but could not. “The Jews have their Passover and now we shall have our Takeover.” He pounded away on the hapless keys. “Time to move the Josephians into the New Age.”
He paused, his hands hovering over the typewriter, thinking about how to write down his thoughts. A new idea had occurred to him. By God, he would become a priest after all, just out of sheer contrariness. He and the SBDC Boys would take over the Josephian Order and turn it into a moral force that had enough relevance to the real world that they could eventually overthrow the Vatican. A sort of new Knights Templar without temples. They would show people how to obtain food, clothing, shelter not with money but with joyous work. They would make and dispense medicines for free. By God, he would. By God he would if he had to become Pope to do it. He paused in his thinking. No. Let’s not get carried away here, Other Blaze. I will then marry Marge Puckett. Let Gabe be Pope. Yeah. Much better. Gabe can handle shit like that. Our message to the world will be that life is supposed to be free of all oppression. Feeding, clothing and sheltering your family can be fun as well as work. The rest of the time, play games or strum guitars or rock babies. Hell, say prayers and go to church if that makes you feel better. Do not spend time and money writing asinine dogmatic, nit-picking moral laws. Do not try to control others. The whole world should take a vow of poverty. If you aren’t rich, you can’t get power. Get rid of all those big fancy church buildings that cost millions of dollars. Build baseball diamonds not cathedrals. We need a new Martin Luther to nail 94 new theses to the church door. He started typing again.
Thesis No. 1: Humans create their gods, not vice versa. The only God that exists outside the human mind is the continuing act of love that flows between people and between them and nature.
Thesis No. 2: The concept of an all-powerful God existing outside the human mind is just a scheme to gain power over the ignorant.
Thesis No. 3: Money is the root of all evil. Take a vow of poverty.
Thesis No. 4: When you’re dead, you’re dead. On the other hand, no one knows how long you can live.
Thesis No. 5: The only paradise attainable is here in the material universe.
Thesis No. 6: The material universe had no beginning and has no end.
Thesis No. 7: There is no need for a formal body of religious dogma or a religious hierarchy. The only purpose dogma serves is to support oligarchies of power.
Thesis No. 8: Cathedrals, mansions, bank and government buildings are a waste of money and energy good only for supporting armies. Raise chickens in them.
Thesis No. 9: Nudity promotes sexual morality better than clothes. If everyone went naked for three hours, no one would notice but to remark on how ugly human bodies are, Marge Puckett excepted.
Thesis No. 10: (Wow, only 84 more to go.) All the clergy should be required to support themselves by the work of their own hands, like Amish ministers do.
Thesis No. 11: (I’m never going to make it to 94. That Luther must have been a real blabbermouth.) Persons nailing religious reform measures on church doors should not be prosecuted.
Thesis No. 12 …
He paused. Gabe had appeared at his door. “You’re in deep shit,” Gabe said.
“Do you think I was diddling that girl?” Blaze asked angrily.
“No. You would have been having too much fun fantasying about diddling her to actually get around to doing it.”
Blaze glared at him. “Don’t disturb me,” he said. “I’m laying the groundwork for the New Order after we take over the Church.”
“Be sure to make provisions for moving Church headquarters out of Rome. Rural Minnesota would be ideal. Possibly Sleepy Eye. There’s a town that would make a wonderful address for a religious headquarters.”
“Won’t be any headquarters in the new Church.”
“That makes Sleepy Eye an even better choice.”
Blaze could not keep from laughing. He glanced at his eleven theses. He decided not to nail them to the chapel door just yet.
But he had a serious matter to attend to while Prior Robert was being so gracious to him. Jesse’s father had died, and Jesse would hardly leave the seminary barn for fear that social workers would take him away to an institution. Melonhead had installed in the lab an ancient woodburning stove that he had found in one of the farm sheds so that he could keep his potions from freezing. That gave Jesse a warm place to sleep at night. Blaze kept him well supplied with food filched from the kitchen. Jesse had learned the barn chore routines well enough so that some mornings he had started to milk the cows even before Brother Walt arrived. Jesse had to be supervised because he tended to overfeed and undermilk the cows. But he could rattle off the number of pounds of milk each cow gave at each milking without looking at the chart record. Blaze was amazed and baffled by Jesse’s profound power of numbers memory. He started reading books on mental retardation whic
h led him to books on autism. He learned that such ability was by no means rare among autistic people considered to be mentally deficient. Scientists seemed to have no explanation other than noting that they were not so much mentally deficient as unable to cope with life on their own. Perhaps, Blaze thought, they were so mentally brilliant that they realized how insecure and dangerous life really was. At any instant, calamity and death could come and the autistic knew that, with more clarity than other people.
Blaze had to talk to Prior Robert anyway, about his classroom misbehavior. He knocked on Robert’s office door and the Prior welcomed him inside, although warily. There was always more to anything that Oblate Blaise had to tell him than was apparent—even to Oblate Blaise.
“I have a problem,” Blaze said.
Well, yes, Robert knew about the classroom incident. “And how can I help,” the Prior replied.
“You know how that Jesse James guy hangs around at the barn. We’ve all become fond of him. Even you, I think.”
“Yes.”
“His father died recently. Here’s the problem. Jesse is frightened out of his wits that he’ll be put in an institution. He’s not really all that mentally retarded, you know. In fact he can be very smart, expecially with numbers. Anyway, I got myself boxed in. I really do kind of like him and I promised him I would not let anyone put him in a mental institution.” He paused.
“Yes?”
“Jesse’s actually been staying at the barn most of the time. Sleeping at night in the lab. You probably didn’t know that. He actually helps out considerably with the farm work. He knows how to do all the chores.”
The Prior nodded. Could this be going where it sounded like it was going?
“Could we … do you think … is it possible that we could sort of adopt him into the Josephians? At least on a trial basis. Temporary until Nash Patroux and I figure out what to do with him.”
“Who is Nash Patroux?”
“Ahhh, he’s been sort of looking out for Jesse for years. Lives over around Savage someplace. I believe he owns a restaurant. But you know, we could be doing something really good here, taking this man in for a while. He really is no problem.” Blaze felt like a little boy trying to justify to his mother keeping a dog that had followed him home.
“Well, Oblate Blaise, this would be highly irregular, would it not?”
“Not really. You remember that in addition to the First Order of Josephian priests and a Second Order of Josephian nuns, we have a Third Order of St. Joseph for people who want to live as much like us as they can, but as laypeople out in the world. Jesse could live here as a member of the Third Order, couldn’t he?”
“Has he expressed any desire for religious life?”
“Oh, he practically begs me to let him stay here. He could be a lay brother like Walt. Walt hasn’t taken vows yet. We could instruct Jesse in the Josephian life, you know, while he lives here. See how it would work.” Since Blaze thought all Josephians were mentally abnormal, he almost said that Jesse would fit right in but decided to save that delicious thought for his journal.
The Prior did not believe he could just receive Jesse into the community. There would have to be a guardianship established. Some legal papers to sign surely.
“Couldn’t I become his guardian?” Blaze asked.
“That’s quite a commitment, Oblate. And Canon Law doesn’t allow you to do that as an individual Josephian. Only a proper authority in the Josephians could do that, speaking for the whole Order. We would have to commit as a community.”
“Well, then you could do it.”
“You really want to take care of him, don’t you, Oblate Blaise?” Robert asked, an admiring tone slipping into his voice. He had forgotten that he was supposed to reprimand the oblate for his impertinence in Alexus’s class.
“Yes, Father. It’s not really a big deal. We’re taking care of him now. I just want some legal backing if the social services people come noseying around. If you just stand behind me, they’ll go away after an official inquiry and then, you know, we can play it by ear.”
Why did Oblate Blaise’s suggestions always seem so logical even though they always ended up being so troublesome?
“Well, there will have to be family signing off, allowing us to take him in,” the Prior insisted.
“He doesn’t have any relatives, far as Patroux can find. Unless it might be Frank James.” Blaze could not keep from making the joke that might not be a joke.
“Frank James? The outlaw? But he’s dead.”
“Yes, probably. Our Jesse James has papers purporting to prove he’s a long-lost relative. And apparently, he really was named after the outlaw Jesse James. And believe it or not, it is mathematically possible that Frank James is still alive.”
Prior Robert stared at the seminarian in amazement. What world had this guy come from and in what world did he really live? The priest knew he should just say no and be done with it, but remembering his promise to God about Oblate Blaise, he only shrugged resignedly. Maybe this was some kind of sign from God increasing Oblate Blaise’s chances of becoming a good priest. “Okay. We’ll take him in for awhile under one condition. You must get Mr. Patroux to sign something legal as this Jesse James’ guardian stating that he wants us to care for him temporarily.”
And so it came to pass that on Groundhog’s Day, 1955, Jesse James the Second emerged from his hole in the Western Range, did not see the shadow of his former self, and was duly ushered into Ascension Seminary as Brother Jesse James Brown of the Third Order of St. Joseph. He called all the oblates “Pal” and all the oblates loved him.
Other Blaze wrote in his journal: “Now I have absolute proof that you can’t tell the sane from the insane in religious life.”
CHAPTER 16
Spring hung its dainty green lace out to dry on the hills overlooking the Josephian acres, and Gabe and Blaze, with Brother Jesse following along like a faithful dog, paced their newly-drained swamp ground with unbridled optimism and enthusiasm. They were true farmers facing another spring: full of hope, blind to the obstinate machinations of the weather that invariably beat farmer ambitions into dust or mud before the year was over. They would grow potatoes on their new land and sell them at the Farmer’s Market in Minneapolis. And of course, make a fortune. Blaze cared nothing about the economic possibilities. He just thought it would be fun to spend time at the market. It was Gabe who dreamed of the possibility of profit because he had free Josephian labor at his disposal. Each night he prayed for success—not, he reminded God, to glorify his own lowly efforts, but to show the Hasses of the world the power of the Lord. Just to make sure of the power of the Lord, he consulted scientists and agribusiness experts at the University of Minnesota and scrupulously followed their every whisper of advice.
Hasse spied something from his hilltop that made him bustle down to the newly drained part of the swamp. Oblate Gabriel was seated on the back of his truck at the edge of the reclaimed acres, cutting up seed potatoes while Oblate Blaise worked down the plots between the ditches with a rotary tiller.
“Vel, Oblate, planting all dat to spuds?” Hasse asked, a sly grin on his face.
Hasse was butchering consonants worse than usual, so Gabe knew enough to be on guard.
“The oblates must eat,” he intoned, invoking his own kind of verbal disguise. “God willing, we shall have a bountiful harvest.”
“Like da lilies of the field, neither do dey spin or …”
“Potatoes should do well here,” Gabe interrupted Hasse’s taunt with his own. “The land is new, virtually untouched, seeing as how folks hereabouts are kind of shiftless if not ignorant about drainage methods. Were I a lifetime farmer of this area, I’d probably be a millionaire by now.”
“Hup!” snorted Hasse. “You’d go broke on spuds for sure.”
“Says who? I know all about raising potatoes.”
“It’s the wrong time of the moon for planting, dumkopf.”
Gabe stared at his adversary, a look
of perfect joy spreading over his face. “The wrong time of the moon?” He repeated the sentence, savoring every syllable. And then repeated it again. The chuckle in his throat climaxed in an unrestrained hoot. “You really do believe that, don’t you?” he finally said. “I can tell it on your face. All this time you’ve been hiding your fearful soul behind a façade of rationalism while believing in the basest superstitions. This time, Hasse, I’ve got you. You pretend to believe in neither God nor devil, but you worship a silly man in the moon!”
Hasse remained unmoved by the rhetoric. “Any damn fool knows you gotta better chance to get a good yield if you plant spuds in the dark of the moon. If you don’t, they go to vine too much.”
Gabe cackled in glee. “And chust how, my friend, are you going to prove dat!”
“Prove it? Prove it?” Hasse groped for words, realizing that he had been caught in a trap of his own setting.
“Tell you what,” Gabe said, the glow of victory in his eyes. “Let’s mark off two equal plots right here where the soil is identical. You plant an acre your way, and I’ll plant an acre my way and we’ll see who grows the best potatoes, your infernal moon goddess or the blessings of the Lord.”
“You got yourself a deal,” the old farmer shot back, a smile returning to his face. Neither moon nor God nor lack thereof could help a fool monk out-farm him.
Never before in Minnesota, even out in the Red River Valley where farmers had forgotten more about potatoes than the rest of the world knew, were such pains taken on a potato patch. Hasse used his own Kennebecs for seed, which over the years he had selected and saved annually from his highest producing hills. He planted the hills 18 inches apart in rows 42 inches wide so he could get a horse and cultivator down between them. He planted when the moon was between full and last quarter in April, that is, between the 13th and the 20th that year. The specific day he chose was the 20th when the sign was in Capricorn. According to zodiac tradition, he could have planted just as well on the 14th or 15th when the sign was in Scorpio or on the 19th when the sign was in Capricorn again. He settled on the 20th because that was the first day the soil was really dry enough to work.