Satan's Gambit

by Conti, Gene;

  The sports complex, named after the warrior Saint Louis IX, was one of the new structures that was added to the abbey complex by the investors. The style was modern. The brick facade had a washed out gray hue, which kept with the same color scheme as the original buildings. Only the entrance was reminiscent of the medieval motif.

  The complex had an Olympic-size pool, racquetball courts, a small café/lounge with a large screen TV, and the requisite pool table. The basketball court, where our team the Crusaders play, had six nets with backstops. There was one at each end for the home games. The four other hoops were across from each other on the sides of the court. Their backstops were attached to an electric cable and could be folded upward and out of the way when any game or function was held. The long rows of benches likewise retracted in accordion fashion against all four walls when not in use.

  We were an NCAA Division 3 team. I understood that the first few years were challenging, to say the least. The year before I started teaching we won a couple of games, I was told. The student support for our fledging teams was incredible. The booster club was extremely active. Close to one in ten students were involved with the boosters in some way.

  I changed in the men’s locker room and entered the multipurpose room. I looked over toward the rack of free weights resting on the Resilite mats. The last time I had worked out, I hadn’t dried my hands on my towel, and that was when a lousy twenty-pound dumbbell slipped from my grip, clanged against the rack and fell to the mat, almost hitting my toes. I was able to shift my feet out of the way just in time, but some jocks who were working out snickered nonetheless. They were probably thinking, “Dumb prof ought a stick to his books.”

  I hopped on the elliptical machine and grabbed the TV remote. I turned on Newsmax, adjusted the settings, and began my routine. After several minutes, I noticed that Pete and his brother, Andy, entered the room. Pete went directly to the bench press and began to load three forty-five-pounders on each side of the bar.

  Andy had gone over to the cable system and was adjusting the pin. He was about to lie down on the bench to work his hamstrings, when Pete asked Andy to spot for him. As a good brother, Andy placed himself behind Pete’s bench to monitor his bench presses.

  Three hundred plus pounds, and this was Pete’s warm up? The guy was big, around six two; he looked like a WWE champion. Pete was a solid brawny guy with a head of jet-black hair, and three to four days worth of facial hair. Andy must have taken after some other distant relative, as he was tall, with a frame like a runner, and he was prematurely balding.

  A number of other students and professors were also working out; some trying to get back in shape, like myself, and others just trying to keep Father Time at bay. The students, with few exceptions, were all on one sports team or another. Most were wearing ear buds, listening to their favorite iTunes while concentrating on their workouts.

  Andy and Pete noticed me, and we gave each other conciliatory nods of acknowledgement, as they each continued their individual monotonous routines and repetitious sets.

  Eventually I arrived at my last sets - the dumbbell curls. I made a concerted effort to make sure my hands were bone dry before grabbing the weights. When I finished, I immediately grasped for my towel, as the sweat was pouring off me, and quickly walked to the water cooler to quench my thirst.

  Arising from the spigot, feeling like a satiated camel, I saw Andy and Pete leaning against the wall nearby as if waiting for me. They had correctly perceived I was finished, in more ways than one, and began to walk over to me.

  “Hey Doc, looks like you’re done with your workout,” Andy observed. “Pete and I would like to kinda go over today’s lesson.” Pete was lightly nodding his head in agreement.

  “Okay guys, how about we go upstairs to the café/lounge on the mezzanine where we can talk and get rehydrated?”

  They both smiled and said “sure thing,” and we all proceeded upstairs to the café area. There we found a grouping of four comfortable overstuffed sofa-style lounge chairs with a coffee table in the center next to a pool table where some guys were shooting a game.

  Immediately, I plopped myself on the biggest chair and Andy took the one opposite me. Pete pulled one of the recliners to the side, replacing it with a standard metal chair, which he reversed and sat close to my right with his arms resting on the chair’s top crest rail. I beckoned for the waiter. “I’ll take your coldest lemon vitamin water, please. What do you guys want? It’s on me.”

  “I’ll take a green tea slushy,” requested Andy.

  “And I’ll take a quart of soy milk,” Pete promptly asked, to the waiter’s surprise.

  “Pete!!” Andy interjected forcefully. “The Doc’s paying for this!”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I rallied back while trying to look at both Andy and the waiter simultaneously. “Whatever he wants.”

  “Sir, it only comes in a pint.”

  “That’s fine, bring him two,” I ordered.

  The waiter left, slightly shaking his head.

  Pete then makes a poor attempt to defend himself. “I’m just trying to keep my protein level up,” he said, looking at Andy like a poor pleading puppy.

  We made some small talk for a while. We talked about their family’s fishing business in Mobile, Alabama, and how they came to apply at ICC.

  “So what do you guys like doing in your off time?” I asked.

  Pete responded quickly. “Anytime I have off, I’m sport fishing,” he said with absolute glee on his face. “Andy goes to Baton Rouge to party.”

  I catch Andy shoot a barely perceivable censuring glance at his brother.

  The waiter returned with our drinks. He placed the drinks and two straws for Pete’s bottles of soy milk on the low coffee table and then asked if we would like a sandwich with our drinks. “We have the best pork barbeque in town - really! The pork comes from our own farm-grown pigs, by our agricultural students and monks - it’s excellent.”

  “No thanks, just put the bill on my tab and add 25 percent for yourself.”

  The waiter’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Would you mind,” I asked of him, “turning down the volume on the TV?” He nodded and went back to the bar area where he found the remote to lower the volume. I gave him a slight smile and small wave to say thank you.

  “Well fellas, what’s on your mind?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  WHAT IS TRUTH?

  Pete jumped right in. “Man, that first discussion about right and wrong, the Tylenol deaths, then the Nazi judges, and finally the French Revolution with that big honcho guy Pierre something, making his own laws, getting his head chopped off,” he said as he struggled to remove the cap on his soy milk, which popped off spraying some droplets across the table toward his brother. “That Age of Enlightenment needed some enlightening, far as I can see.”

  “So Pete, what do you think was missing in all these historical moments,” I asked, handing him a napkin to wipe up his milk spots.

  “I think I understand about the power-and-control thing somewhat, but why do men have to be this way?” he asked, ignoring the straw and taking several hearty gulps from his bottle of soy milk.

  “Can’t we all just get along?” Andy whined mockingly.

  “Why?” I respond sarcastically, looking at both Pete and Andy.

  I caught them both off guard. They looked at each other, hoping the other would offer a clever riposte.

  “Look, you guys as well as most of the class, agreed that each of us determines what is right or wrong for ourselves as individuals. Most people these days believe that. Just look at those dumb bunny bumper stickers with all the religious symbols. But they are just that—a bumper sticker!”

  They both were stunned and I didn’t give them a chance to reply.

  “The problem is most people have a bumper sticker brain. Everyone can’t be right. There can be only one right answer to two plus two. So are you going to tolerate or placate those who believe
two plus two equals five or three or seven or whatever? Last I heard that was called chaos!” I exhorted, slamming my bottle on the coffee table so hard it spurt the vitamin water out the top.

  “But people do have a right to their opinions,” Andy came back.

  “True,” I answered, looking at him and glancing over toward Pete, “but you know what they say about opinions?”

  “What’s that?” Pete asked leaning a bit forward on his chair.

  “They’re like A-holes. Everybody’s got one,” I said calmly as I cleaned up my mess.

  Both brothers, as if they were electronically synced together, looked at me with eyebrows raised, eyeballs bugged out, and their mouths agape. “Fair and balanced is good for TV ratings with animated polemics, but is poor standard for determining moral principles,” I divulged as I relaxed a bit on my sofa seat. “It’s fine to have an opinion and debate on which tastes better - chocolate or vanilla, or should we raise or lower the tax on something, or should we build a bridge or roadway or not, but basic morality should not be negotiable.” I argued taking another sip of my vitamin water. “We must have a firm foundation to draw our thinking from; otherwise, our arguments are based on shifting sands.”

  “Yeah, Doc, America needs to get back to its time-honored traditional morals, values, and principles,” Andy declared firmly, with his right index finger pointed skyward, inadvertently mimicking a politician.

  “Really, Andy? Which morals, which values, which principles?” I questioned, boring my eyes directly at and almost through him, as I sensed Pete was leaning even further forward on his chair toward me. “I hate that namby-pamby platitude. Many conservatives, politicians, even atheists use that phrase, when what the expression really implies is Judeo-Christian morals, values and ethics; otherwise the phrase is meaningless.”

  I stopped for a few seconds, letting that sink in for a moment, scrutinizing both brothers for a response. Again, they were both speechless.

  “Let’s say I’m from a remote Indian tribe in the Southwestern United States, and when a newborn baby dies, we boil and eat it,” I said matter-of-factly, carefully observing their response.

  They were both speechless. Finally, Andy countered with, “But … but that’s not right,” he whined.

  “Excuse me,” I barked. “How dare you judge me, you bigoted, self-righteous, right-winged, closed-minded, intolerant, Bible-thumping piece of human excrement!”

  Both brothers were in a catatonic stupor now.

  I gave a hearty laugh and told them, “You can both relax and chill out. I needed to get this point across crystal clear, regarding whose morals, values and principles.”

  “Boy did you ever, Doc,” Pete answered, his voice wavering a bit.

  Pete, who is now leaning forward on his backward chair, with his arms stretched out, got very exuberant, “I get it, I get it … I think.”

  Andy, still in a fog, said, “Get what?”

  “What Doc is saying is that there can be only one answer, one correct position for all this right and wrong, Nazis, the guillotine, whatever; otherwise, we do have chaos. I think he’s saying Christianity may offer that answer.”

  “All religion is man-made B.S.,” Andy rebuked.

  “I believe you mean to quote Karl Marx: ‘die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes.’”

  “Come again, Doc,” Pete asked.

  “‘Religion is the opium of the people,’ is the English translation. Marx was one of the co-founders of Communism.”

  Pete was on a roll, “So are you saying, Doc, that there is such a thing as absolute truth?”

  I take another swig of my vitamin water. “Pete, many, many years ago a powerful leader asked that same question of a very important personage. Quid est veritas? What is truth?”

  Andy offered in a bit of a snarky tone, “Did the dude give him an answer?”

  Pete, still hyped up, turned slightly to his brother, “I bet he gave him a real good answer; and I bet it had something to do with being a Christian.” His balance shifted and he fell forward on his chair, crashing onto the coffee table. What was left of our drinks went flying in all directions.

  I jumped up and helped Pete to his feet. He was a bit stunned and embarrassed by his actions, but not hurt. The guys at the pool table stopped to check out the commotion.

  “Pete, you’re a rock. Pete, you are the rock, as you are the first in the class to grasp somewhat of what I will be teaching. Lesson over.”

  With that I stood and said good-bye. I patted Pete on the back and shook Andy’s hand. Both said they would stay to clean up the debris.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  MOTHER GAIA

  A violent storm raged outside the classroom. The branches of the poplar tree were making an eerie scratching sound against the windows like dulled wiper blades. We said the pledge, with most of the class having focused on the windows instead of the flag; the cussin’ jar was on the lab table.

  I posed a question to the class, raising my voice above the tempest that was going on outside. “So was Hitler right or wrong to have killed so many people?”

  Tom declared, “This was wartime, he did what he thought was right to preserve the German heritage.”

  Jude added, “Yeah, he was trying to maintain the purity of the German race.”

  Matt, whose parents are divorced, Reformed Jews, remarked harshly, “Why don’t both of you just say what you mean: the Aryan heritage, the Aryan race!”

  Santiago admitted, “He was El Jefe; he could do want he want man.”

  Maggie added her thoughts: “That mustache was stupid; made him look like a lunatic Charlie Chaplin.”

  Philip, who always leaned back against the wall, almost fell out of his chair upon hearing Maggie’s criticism.

  The class hissed their judgments back and forth around the room, both pro and con.

  I raised my hand for silence. “Well, that got resolved easily enough—not! Let me give you another challenge.”

  “If an indigenous tribe practices cannibalism as part of their ancestral rites, should cannibalism then be legal and acceptable in American society?” As I surveyed the class, I signaled to Andy and Pete with a slight shake of my head not to answer.

  Tom, our history major and “resident barrister”, again jumped on it first. “They have every legal First Amendment right to observe their religious customs,” he stated with a professorial tone to his voice.

  Claudia became indignant. She turned her nose up and stated in a haughty manner, “That’s just reprehensible, uncivilized, and uncouth behavior.”

  Nate added, “That’s just gross, man.”

  Jim followed up, “No, it shouldn’t be allowed. It’s wrong; it’s … it’s evil.”

  Thad, our journalism/astronomy major, attempted to be serious and reflective. He raised his hand and asked, “Don’t the victims have a say as to whether or not they want to be eaten?”

  To Thad’s astonishment, a roar of laughter resounded throughout the room.

  Santiago turned around and addressed Philip at the back of the room. “Hey hombre, don’t you Chinks eat monkey brains? What do they taste like, man?”

  Philip didn’t take the berating lightly. He snapped straight up from his chair. “Wetback and fool that you are, they taste like chicken,” he said with a laugh as he sat back down.

  A round of catcalls erupted throughout the class.

  I raised my hand once more for silence. I deliberately did not address the name-calling and gave Maria, who sat in front of me and had been clutching at her cross, a wink and a nod.

  With her demure Mona Lisa smile, she dropped her eyes, knowing I was up to something.

  “Would someone want to explain to me what that World Ecology Flag in the main quadrangle represents?” I inquired, scanning the room for a hand.

  Jim, our ecology major, shot his hand up first. “It shows support for our Earth.”

  “I support our earth Jim, but I don’t need a flag to do it.” I leisurely start
ed placing some small bottles of different elements in a line along the front of the lab table, pushing the cussin’ jar aside.

  “Well, we have been abusing Mother Earth, and we need to protect her from man’s abuse,” Jim replied.

  “Okay, Jim, I agree that some thoughtless men and/or evil entrepreneurs, whose only motive is greed, have promoted bad legislation and practices.” I continued to place the vials on the table. “So this flag is suppose to remind us of our abuse of, how do you say it - Mother Gaia?”

  By now Jim was getting a bit frustrated with me, and his emotional side started to get the better of him.

  “Doc, look, Mother Earth is all we got; she gave us life! We need to do all we can to nurture and protect her at any and all costs.”

  I saw a number of the students nodding in agreement.

  “So, if I got this straight, Mother Earth or Mother Gaia was doing fine until we came along to mess things up—correct?” I scanned the class and noticed many students smiling, and one or two giving me a thumbs-up.

  “Would someone be kind enough to tell me how Mother Earth came to ‘birth’ us?” I asked as I searched the class for a hand.

  Philip raised his hand, still leaning against the back wall.

  I acknowledge him. “With your background in biochemistry Philip, please elucidate for me.”

  “Doc, with all the science courses you must have taken, you’ve had to have learned this stuff.”

  “Philip, why don’t you give all of us a quick, down-and-dirty refresher.”

  “Well, it all started about 4.5 billion years ago, when the earth was just a blob of chemical elements called a primordial soup. These inert chemicals combined somehow to create organic molecules, which somehow over millions of years, formed the first unicellular reproductive organisms.”

  I raised my hand asking him to stop there.

  “I think it’s starting to come back to me. And somehow, by undirected unknown chance processes, it has progressed from goo to you. Am I correct?” I queried, looking at Philip and then at the entire class.