After the $250 advance from the Zenith Press, I had received no more royalties. The book had not sold very well in hard covers. But six months after moving to Florida, the Zenith Press had sold the reprint rights to a paperback house, and I had received a check for $1100 as my share. I considered this a handsome share and I had sorely needed the money when I received it. The $1100 was now gone, however, and to continue my way of life I needed money. Something would turn up...
"Hey!" I shouted through the open window, "how about putting on some coffee?"
"As a matter of fact," my wife shouted in reply, "I intend to in a minute, as soon as I have finished hanging up the laundry."
Virginia had this habit of adding "as a matter of fact" before, or in the center, or at the end of each sentence. For awhile I had been rather irked by it, but I had become accustomed to the little trick and was no longer bothered by the term. She had picked up this phrase from watching television interview programs, I supposed, and at least it padded her small talk.
Deep down in my heart I knew that there was a very simple solution to my money difficulties. I was an excellent accountant; Miami had a need for accountants as well as Columbus, and all I had to do was take a job and get out of debt, slowly but surely.
Now that I was down to $87.42 I turned the pages of the Miami Herald to the want ads for the first time since moving to Florida. I did this reluctantly, but I also made up my mind to work only as long as it was necessary to get out of debt. While I waited for the coffee, and as I idly flipped the pages, a short news item at the bottom of page twelve caught my eye and saved me from another fate worse than death.
CGF MONASTERY ON THE BLOCK
Orangeville, Fla.—The Church of God's Flock Monastery, established in 1936, is being sold, according to the Rt Rev. Jack Dover, Abbott of the Protestant order since 1954.
All monks have been reassigned, and only Abbott Dover has remained at the monastery to oversee the sale of the property. No reason was given for the closing of the monastery.
Long a part of the Orangeville scene, monks of The Church of God's Rock order were self-supporting, raising goats, Key limes and oranges, and selling CGF Orange Wine on the premises.
It took a writer to see the possibilities in that news item! I carefully tore the piece from the paper and went into the kitchen where Virginia was pouring hot water into two cups for instant coffee.
"Read this," I told my wife, handing her the news item.
"Is it a sale?" she asked.
"In a way. Read it."
While Virginia squinted at the newsprint, I spooned the coffee dust into our cups and stirred. She sat down at the table and returned the clipping.
"Do you want to buy the monastery, dear?"
"No, Virginia. I plan to do an article on the monastery. Today, people all over the United States are vitally interested in things religious; self-help, homilies that will help them get through their days. How to live a day at a time, how to keep warm, a prayer a day keeps boogers away. You see this stuff all of the time in the papers, in books, in magazines. Are you following me?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, I'm going up there to Orangeville and see this Abbott Dover and find out what's going on. I've been reading Thomas Merton paperbacks ever since they started coming out, and according to him there's a big boom in this monk business. Of course, he's a Trappist and a Roman Catholic instead of a Protestant monk, but I can't understand why any monastery would close. It's too good a set-up. No financial worries, no responsibilities, no children, no friends; just wholesome work, a few prayers and a little meditation."
"That sounds like the way we live," my wife said, with a touch of melancholy in her voice. "Back in Columbus, as a matter of fact—"
"Now listen," I cut her off. "We are getting a bit low on funds, and if I can get an inspirational article out of this trip we will be back in the money. This Week magazine pays fifteen hundred dollars for a good lead article. If This Week turns the article down, I can sell it to the Miami Herald for fifty dollars. If the Miami Herald turns it down, I'll expand the article into another inspirational book, condense it, and sell it to the Reader's Digest. Can you see the possibilities?"
"What are you going to write about, Sam?"
"I'm going to write the truth. That's all. Evidently, the monastic way of life is crumbling, and there has to be a reason. I don't know what that reason is, of course, but what if there is a secret moral discouragement throughout the country that we don't suspect? It says in the news item that the monks have all been reassigned. Where have they been sent? Why were they reassigned? This is news, my dear, and people today want to find out everything pertaining to religion—and especially about monks. In a valueless society, half-Republican and half-Socialist, monks and hermits are the only people left with any individuality. If they go, where does that leave the rest of us? Don't you see?"
"As a matter of fact, I don't. Your coffee is getting cold."
"You're right. The coffee is getting cold. And I really don't know what I'll find up there. It may be a dead trail, but on the other hand, I may run into a swarm of Life reporters and photographers beating me to the story. But I have to see for myself. I haven't been able to think of anything to write about for a long time, and this story has potential. When you finish your coffee, pack a bag for me."
"How long will you be gone?"
"A couple of days, maybe three. No more."
That evening Virginia drove me to the Greyhound Bus station and I purchased my ticket for Orangeville. I decided that the trip would be cheaper by bus than it would be with the car, and besides she needed the car to get to the supermarket. While we waited for the bus to leave, I reassured Virginia that I would only be gone for three days at the most.
"Have you got any money?" I asked.
"As a matter of fact," she replied, "I only have about three dollars."
"Here." I gave her a five dollar bill. "This should be enough until I get back."
I boarded the bus, took a seat by the window, and waved goodbye through the blue-tinted window to Virginia as the bus pulled away from the station.
It was not until the Greyhound stopped at Melbourne, Florida, about a hundred miles up the coast, that I realized I had only purchased a one-way ticket to Orangeville. Why did I do that, I wondered, when a roundtrip ticket would have been substantially cheaper?
I knew all right. My conscious mind knew, and my subconscious mind also knew...
Chapter Three
Every year in these United States thirty per cent of the husbands leave their wives and go elsewhere. A large percentage of these deserting husbands return, mostly those with children; they miss the children. Others are brought back reluctantly by court order when they are caught. Many return because they miss their wives, and when they realize that taking care of their own laundry, meals, sex, and so on is quite a chore when alone in a room somewhere. Some of the errant husbands are persuaded to return by relatives, ministers, and by repentant wives.
Many, however, get away. For the determined man, it is a relatively simple matter to disappear in the United States. The first step is to leave and go to another state, preferably a fairly large city in another state. The second step is to change the name, and then get the name certified as legally correct. The easiest way to do this is to register at any Social Security office and obtain a number to go with the new name. No questions are asked at the Social Security office and within a few days you will find yourself with a new Social Security card. Next, obtain a state driver's license. Although it plainly states at the bottom of the Social Security card that it is not for identification, the driver's license bureau usually will accept the card for identification anyway, that is, if they ask for any identification.
With new identity established, the husband can now find a job and go to work. Within a few months his identity is firmly established in the new city and he can have a pocket full of cards; engraved calling cards, membership cards to the YMCA, the lo
cal Toastmaster's Club, Kiwanis, Boosters, Athletic Club, and with a saving's account at any bank, a membership card for the Diner's Club.
The key to successful escape is "determination." The deserting husband must be willing to forsake forever his wife, his children, his relatives, his friends, his old Army buddies, and his former way of life. This isn't easy, and although statistics reveal that thirty percent try to get away every year, only five percent make it. But when one considers that we have about fifty million married men in the United States, five percent is a lot of loose husbands.
I was not concerned with the others, I was only concerned with myself. And as I rode through the dark Florida night, I examined my motives. When I purchased a one-way ticket to Orangeville, I certainly did not intend to desert my wife. I bought the ticket unconsciously. "Give me a ticket to Orangeville," I said. That was all. But my sensitive conscious mind knew that my way of life was in danger. By becoming a writer I had escaped a dull, unrewarding, life-sapping job as an accountant in Columbus. My thoughts that morning, while sitting peacefully in my study, surrounded by books from the library, magazines, writing tablets and carefully sharpened pencils, had been forced into examining ways to obtain money, and the only way I really knew how to make money was as an accountant.
What was I doing on this bus, riding to a tiny Florida village, and what could I possibly find at a dying monastery that would be worthwhile to write about? What indeed? I could fool my wife, but how could I fool myself? I was merely exhausting the few dollars I had left in a foolish expenditure, which brought, in turn, the necessity for fulltime employment that much closer...
For a full year I had enjoyed the fruits of a published novel. In the peaceful quiet of Ocean Pine Terraces, I had watched the husbands of the neighborhood leave for work in the morning, and I had watched them return in the evening. A pitiful crew. While watering my lawn in the early evening I had watched them drive into their open carports, and I had waved to them kindly. I felt sorry for them, and although I knew I was hated and envied by most of the husbands on my quiet block, I could understand their feelings. As a writer I was above any outward show of emotion, and gradually, as the days lengthened into weeks, into months, I was incapable of feeling any kind of emotion.
That year had taught me how to live, how to see, how to enjoy, and to fully realize what I had missed in life by working for more than ten years hunched over ledgers at the Tanfair Milk Company. At first my heart was filled with compassion for the others. I felt sorry for everyone. I loved everyone. How could I have felt otherwise? But there was no way to show my feelings, so I did not let myself betray them.
How could I tell my next door neighbor, a trust officer at the Citizen's bank, that I felt sorry for him? When I saw him drive into his carport and dismount from his new car with a bulging briefcase under his arm, my heart flooded with pity for this poor fellow. His light would be on far into the night as he worked over papers from the bank. Could I have told him about the bright red cardinal that perched on my window ledge every morning, and how beautiful the little bird was, and how I missed the little thing when it failed to put in an appearance?
Of course not. The only things I had in common with my banker neighbor were the chinch bugs in the lawn!
I knew these working men. I had been one myself before becoming a writer, and I knew how they kidded themselves into believing that what they were doing mattered.
Gradually, as the weeks passed, I shut all thoughts of my neighbors out, and lived entirely within myself. I wrote down my vagrant thoughts, snatches of imaginary dialogue, and a few short stories—the article on D. H. Lawrence. I read three and five books a week from the public library, books I had always wanted to read and had not read, and I reread many of my favorites. Once or twice a week I would drive to the beach and sun myself, lying quietly on the hot sands and basking in the subtropical rays of a bright and kindly sun. By myself I would swim out past the pounding surf, float on my back, and open my eyes to the changing colors of the sky. I was fully, vitally alive, and aware of the beauty of the world; the world that had been denied to me in the changing climate of Columbus, confined in the thick woolen clothing I had been forced to wear; the tight collars and the damned neckties.
And to the dismay of my wife, I had gradually become celibate. How many months had it been? I counted on my fingers—five months—a long time to do without sex. But I was above it, and the thought of sex left me indifferent, uncaring—it was all so boring anyway, and messy on top of that.
As a writer I lived in my mind. That was enough. I sighed deeply, an anguished sound brought up from deep within my chest. The sound awakened my companion, an elderly gentleman in a grey wash-and-wear dacron suit, and he glared at me.
"What's the matter, buddy? You sick?" He asked.
"No," I replied angrily. "Are you?"
"I ain't making no noises like I was dying." The old man turned his head away from me and went back to sleep.
Orangeville, population 603, was not a regular stop on the run from Miami to Jax, and the driver had his big bus in gear and on the highway again before I realized that I was on the ground. My Timex wristwatch indicated that it was four a.m. and there wasn't a single light shining in the little town. With my small overnight bag between my knees, I blinked sleepily in the darkness, and wondered where the monastery was, and how I could find it in the blackness.
I didn't feel like standing in a dark filling station waiting for daylight, and I was in need of a cup of coffee. A mile or so back we had passed a SAVE! chain gas station, well-lighted by neon tubing, and I started back down the highway toward this oasis. There would be a Coke machine, anyway, and light, and an attendant to shoot the breeze with, at least.
Facing the light traffic, I walked on the edge of the highway until I reached the all-night filling station. After a session in the men's room, I talked to the station attendant, a young man in his late twenties who taught American history at the Clewiston High School to supplement his income.
He was glad to have company, and talked animatedly about a current project his students were working on; a class skit depicting the balances of Government which a friend of his at Florida State University had set to music.
Waiting politely for a break in the monologue, I asked the teacher-attendant where the famous Church of God's Flock Monastery was and how I could get there.
"It's closed," he said.
"I know, but the Abbott is still there, and I have an appointment with him."
"Did you ride the bus all the way into town?"
"Yes, and then I walked back down here."
"You shouldn't have done that. You should have asked the driver to put you off at the monastery. It's five miles back." He jerked his thumb in a southerly direction.
I cursed and looked at my watch again. Four forty-five.
"I'd better start walking," I told the attendant.
"If you want to wait until six-thirty, I'll drop you off when my relief comes," he offered eagerly, reluctant to see me leave.
"No," I shook my head. "The exercise will wake me up."
We shook hands formally and I departed, carrying my light bag. The night was pitch black, and there was a smell of smoke in the air that came in strongly, and then drifted away again from a muck fire several miles away. I could make out a faint red glow on the horizon, and I recalled that there always seemed to be untended fires in central Florida. Cars on the highway were few and far between, and the highway was a straight gray line through the empty countryside. The night was noisy with crickets and insects of all kinds, and every five minutes on the dog, a bull alligator roared from the depths of the swamp oozing back from the right side of the highway.
I walked with an infantry pace, ninety steps a minute, which would give me a rate of two and one-half miles an hour if I stopped for a break of ten minutes after the first hour. I was in no hurry, and I found the walk very pleasant, especially the sunrise part. A Florida sunrise is different from other su
nrises. First the sky, which has been completely black, turns pearly gray, all at once, as though a dimmer switch had been thrown; a few moments later, the dimmer is turned up full to bright, and the sun is up. The sunrise doesn't sneak in, like mood music; it comes on full, and the state is flushed with a white heat; the sweat begins to flow, and you don't think you will be able to stand it. But somehow, high noon is no hotter than daybreak. So long as the sun is shining there is a maddening sameness to the heat which most Northerners never seem to get used to.
An archway constructed of concrete brick and stucco, painted orange, fronted the entrance to the monastery, and a yellow gravel road led to a small line-up of one-room structures which resembled an abandoned motel. There were seven of the one-story cabins, and each of them was painted a different tint or shade of orange. At the far end of the short stretch of cabins, a fair-sized Butler building, also painted orange, gleamed in the sun, with a wooden, orange cross nailed to the slanting roof. This building, I supposed, was the chapel. Multicolored croton grew thickly about each building; interspersed with the croton were blue century and castor-bean plants, gallberry bushes, Florida cherry hedges, scrub palmettos and red, triple-blooming hibiscus. All of the untended foliage was well choked by gama grass and assorted weeds. Over the first cabin, marked OFFICE and ABBOTT in old English script, lettered in black paint beside the screen door, a galloping flame vine had been trained across the roof, and the spreading plant completely covered one entire side of the building.
Twenty feet behind the row of cabins, an orange grove, of perhaps twenty or twenty-five acres, stretched up and over a rise of ground and reappeared in the distance, halting atop a small hill which held a crudely constructed, slowly revolving windmill. Downwind, which did not help, a waist-high corral, dotted with seven packing boxes, had once held goats; I could tell by the smell.
The Black Mass of Brother Springer Page 2