“Gotta tell ya sumpin’. Sumpin’ ya gotta know.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.” Nolan felt that vague uneasiness that the more fortunate cherish when confronted with the outcast.
“Have time, faduh? If ya don’t, it’ll keep.”
“I have time, go ahead.”
“It’s Richie and Joey.”
The priest watched the anxious face as the words spilled out. “Now back up a minute. Just who are you talking about?”
“Aheh, aheh.” Eight-Ten smiled stupidly. He didn’t understand. With downturned eyes, he intently studied his hands. Eight-Ten had rehearsed his few lines to a point of childish perfection, a perfection that precluded any questioning. He knew what he was talking about. It was all quite clear.
“Let’s start again. Richie who?”
Eight-Ten peered questioningly at the priest and remembered the black box. The priest never asked him any questions in the black box. He would listen to him through the screen, then say, “Bless you, my son. May God go with you.” Why was he asking things now? Maybe he should have taken his story to the black box. Then he could tell it without anybody asking anything. Eight-Ten dearly wished he had taken his story to the black box.
“Now that’s an easy one, Richie who?” A surge of pity overcame the priest as he watched Eight-Ten trying desperately to form the words on his silently moving lips.
Then a smile of shadowy recognition crossed the dullard’s face. “Aheh, aheh. Aheh, aheh. Richie who? I gotcha, faduh. Richie who? Richie Maxwell, that’s Richie who.”
“Now Joey, Joey who?”
“Aheh, aheh. Joey who? Joey Bancik, that’s Joey who.”
Nolan studied the man-child standing before him in the now-dark path. Even in the dimness, he could see that the dullard’s face was no longer beseeching. At that instant, the small, automatically controlled lights that illuminated the church grounds snapped on. One was directly overhead. Eight-Ten’s bearded face took on a yellow hue. The dullard’s lips were compressed and his head trembled slightly. But he made no effort to say anything. Father Nolan had had enough. “Well, if that’s it, good night.” He gave one last glance at Eight-Ten, and turned toward the rectory. “Good night … my son.”
He was brought up short when a strong, calloused hand clamped his left wrist. “Faduh, ya gotta listen.” There was no mistaking the look on Eight-Ten’s face. Father Nolan could see that this powerful, infantile hulk had no intention of letting him go until the whole story had been told. The priest, simply by raising his voice, could bring Father Schneider from his nearby study. By shouting, he could bring the good sisters from their convent on the other side of the rectory. Either prospect was absurd. With a sigh, he sat down on the grass beside the path. Eight-Ten did not release the priest’s arm until he was sure it was not a trick. He was always being tricked.
“Okay, go ahead, I’m listening.”
Eight-Ten, his head still trembling slightly, peered at Father Nolan. No, it wasn’t a trick. He waddled to the other side of the path and sat down heavily.
“Aheh, aheh. It’s bikes.”
“Bikes?”
“It’s Richie’s fault. At Milt’s they all love Richie’s new bike. Joey has one, too. That makes me so mad. Now they have two bikes to love.”
“You should be happy they have bikes. Why are you mad?”
“At Milt’s it’s not the same anymore.”
“I go to Milt’s, and I see nothing has changed.”
“Aheh, aheh. You don’t see what Eight-Ten sees. They don’t fool me this time.”
Nolan had no idea what this dimwitted hulk was talking about, only that he was deeply troubled, and for some unfathomable reason felt that a priest could help. He decided to give it a try.
“The bikes are good things, are you saying they are being used for bad things?”
“Bad things, yes, aheh, aheh, for bad things. The numbers. Eight-Ten knows the numbers, he plays them with his good friend Gino.”
“I don’t understand. What are Richie and Joey doing with the numbers? Do they play the numbers like you?”
“Aheh, aheh. Aheh, aheh,” the dullard’s features softened and his voice took on a superior tone. “They don’t play, they run. Don’t fool Eight-Ten this time, that they be only paper boys.”
The priest wondered if it could be true, that two of his altar boys were numbers runners, using their paper routes as cover. He eyed the dumb oaf who sat opposite him, and to his surprise was convinced.
“Do you know who Richie and Joey are running numbers for?”
“Richie first, and now Joey go to that nigger barbershop on Spruce. The bikes, they be from that cheap Jew’s pawnshop. I watch and I know.”
“Why does all this make you mad?”
“If everybody at Milt’s loves the two bikes, they won’t love my pretty pictures the same way anymore. Richie and Joey laugh at my beauties, even push them on the floor.”
The priest watched Eight-Ten, who was now crouched on his haunches. His face was curiously immobile, frozen in a dumb but confident leer that seemed almost a jaundiced death mask in the glare of the overhead light. Father Nolan then realized that he was on the defensive, and a thought flashed across his mind. It was a spark zigzagging crazily through the blackness.
“Keep a tight asshole.”
The exhortation was as much a part of each Pacific island invasion as were the Japs who waited patiently. It only took a few months as combat chaplain for Father Nolan to realize that any priestly pre-landing homily of his could hardly match the all-inclusiveness of the profane advisory. It said it all.
How odd, that sitting here, on the well-tended, thick grass beside St. Mark’s, he had the same debilitating feeling that he had experienced every time he climbed down a landing net to an invasion craft. He knew that if he were standing, his knees would feel weak. A flood of enervating sensation arose from deep within the muscles of his thighs, knotted his stomach, and bounced heavily off the inside of his ribs. It gurgled up his throat and left a sour taste in his mouth. “Keep a tight asshole.”
Father Nolan watched as the hulk backed off into the shadows and shuffled across the lawn. Despite their inadequacies, they had communicated. The kinship was real. The priest felt helpless. What could he do? For the half-man, for the kids? With the realization of inadequacy came fear.
Eight-Ten had reached the sidewalk, where he paused under a streetlight to look back at the rectory.
Terry Nolan remained on the grass late into the night. The light in Father Schneider’s study had long since been out when he arose and walked toward the rectory. Several times he could sense the elderly priest’s eyes upon him from his second-floor window. He knew that his lonely sojourn had not escaped Mrs. Spiser, who as housekeeper was omniscient. He didn’t care what they thought. The encounter with Eight-Ten had brought back memories.
Once again he had relived that day on Saipan, a recurring horror. It had happened only a week before he was to rotate back to the States, after he had spent almost two years accompanying Marines on one island-hopping massacre after another. He performed his vocation in a theater of death, was, in fact, a harbinger of death. What was his purpose if not to prepare a man for dying?
What kind of leaders would perpetuate a sham that bathed the world in blood? An unthinkable thought. So, for almost two years, he performed his vocation well.
That all ended his second week on Saipan. The battle for the island with its weeping soil, lush checkerboards of sugar cane and volcanic juttings, was in its final stages.
Father Nolan had spent a rather leisurely day in and around Charan Kanoa, the site of the original landings. He had received his orders for rotation stateside in plenty of time to beg off this invasion, but had been with the Marines too long to miss the action in the Marianas. The assault would eventually lead to the conquest of Guam, and the first reclaiming of soil taken from American boys by the Japs. He couldn’t miss it. It was a decision he would spend the rest of
his life regretting.
The battle had moved to the center of the island, and Marines were fighting their way toward the heart of Garapan, the seat of Imperial Japan in the Marianas.
Father Nolan had spent the early part of the day visiting at the tent of chaplain friends with the 4th Marines. They were assigned to the big medical evacuation area at the airstrip near Afetna Point. His orders home were common knowledge before the landings. A bottle of Black and White appeared, and there were toasts until the scotch bottle was empty. It was a nostalgic few hours.
The bottle was drained for the last toast by Father Gregory Fallon, an intense Episcopalian. Flushed from the heat and booze, Fallon arose shakily from his seat atop an empty five-gallon gas can. The sweat on his scalp glistened through his sparse hair. His face was streaked with dirty sweat that ran down to his chin. His fatigue shirt was soaked, and there were wet patches at the knees of his pants. A little, hollow-eyed man with a jutting chin, Fallon eyed his silent companions, all of whom were no less miserable looking than himself.
Father Nolan watched the little guy’s eyes as they traveled from one face to another. Then their eyes met, only to be broken off after a few seconds by the mutual consent of two young men trying desperately not to be anachronisms.
“Get your ass home safely, Terry.”
They quickly drained their canteen cups, shook Father Nolan’s hand, and filed silently out of the tent.
By early afternoon Father Nolan was on his way back to rejoin the 2nd Marines northwest of battle-ravaged Mount Tapotchou, a recently secured thirsty peak that drank the blood of Marine and Jap without prejudice.
The coast road from Charan Kanoa paralleled a railroad that ran the length of Saipan’s west coast, what was left of it. The road was a maelstrom of activity, casualties moving south and fresh men and equipment moving north, the grist of war.
Nolan was hot and weary. The few belts of scotch made him drowsy, and the boiling wet sun didn’t help. He had gotten a lift on a medical evacuation jeep to the juncture of the road that cut across the island to Tsutsuran. The driver was sorry he couldn’t take him any farther, but there were still plenty of wounded who had to be moved from Purple Heart Ridge.
The priest slogged it on foot from there. By late afternoon the crackle of small arms fire could be heard along with the bigger stuff. An occasional round of enemy mortar or artillery fire added to the never-ending chaos always found behind an attacking front line. Nolan knew he would soon be back to work, and he felt suddenly drained. He sat down on an overturned tree somewhat removed from the constant swirl of activity. He took off his helmet and leaned forward to rest his head in his cupped hands. The break didn’t last long.
“Excuse me, sir, but are you a Catholic priest?”
Father Nolan looked up through tired, bloodshot eyes. It was a 27th Division GI, about nineteen at the most. His uniform looked fresh, a replacement about to join his outfit. It was all there: blond stubble over a tanned, frightened face, the flat nasal tonality of small-town Midwest, and the clear eyes of a free man. Another young visionary who never loses sight of that Better World at the other end of a rainbow rising from the horrible carnage.
Nolan felt a keen sense of resentment. The boy evoked an endless stream of Saturday Evening Post covers, sanitary Americana. Norman Rockwell would have been proud of this kid.
“I hate to bother you, sir, but are you a Catholic priest?” The eager eyes moved from Father Nolan’s face to the cross on his collar. “If you are, I would like you to hear my confession. This is my first combat and … well …”
“Yes, I’m a priest. I understand, no need to explain.” Father Nolan arose and reached into his shirt pocket. He removed his stole, wrinkled, stained, and badly worn, but still the symbol of his priestly authority. He put the vestment around his neck as they walked behind a gutted armored troop carrier. The burned-out vehicle partially blocked the sound of the whirling tires of a deuce and a half trapped in loose sand with its heavy cargo of gas drums.
The words of atonement droned on and on. A word here, a word there. A shopping list of sins, real and imagined. It made no difference to the kid; each took on an importance that only the threat of impending death could give. Father Nolan tried hard to concentrate on what the young GI was saying. In the end he failed. Without realizing it, he fell into a doze, awakening when his head began to nod. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the shocked and bewildered look on the young soldier’s face.
“Go ahead, my son, I’m listening,” he lied in an attempt to recoup his dignity.
“Like hell you are.”
The look on the boy’s face was unmistakable. He turned from the priest and began to trudge back to the road. He had gotten about fifteen yards when a Jap mortar scored a direct hit on the fuel-laden truck stalled nearby. Flaming gas drums flew through the air like skyrockets. One of them struck the young GI in the head, decapitating him. The gas drum, carrying the boy’s head with it, splattered against a palm tree. Father Nolan watched in stunned disbelief as the boy’s headless body staggered toward him, took a step, and then collapsed. Blood gushed from the huge wound.
Father Nolan tried to swallow it back, keep it inside, but he couldn’t. He vomited all over his boots. He also pissed his pants. He had to pinch it all in to avoid shitting himself.
“Keep a tight asshole.”
Patrick Nolan wanted the best for his son, and in 1930, the best could only be that blending of the temporal and the heavenly found in the Catholic Church. Terence Nolan was thirteen when his father made it perfectly clear which path he would like him to take.
The revelation came at the end of a ninety-minute bus ride from their home in Jersey City to Montclair. Father and son got off the bus and leisurely walked from the candy store/bus depot to Sacred Heart Church. The church was huge. It had flower-bedecked statues on a rolling, well-manicured lawn. This was a far cry from their cramped little parish of St. Anthony’s with its church, rectory, convent, and school pinched between an apartment house and Hurley’s Furniture Store. The tiny playground in the rear was just big enough for the eight grades to assemble before morning and afternoon classes. At the chancery office in Newark, St. Anthony’s had long been recognized as “an asterisk parish.”
This mark entitled St. Anthony’s to special financial consideration among other “troubled parishes to be closely watched.” So to Patrick Nolan, it stood to reason that young Terry would be greatly impressed by Sacred Heart. “Gosh, Dad, this place is big. Is it a cathedral?”
Patrick Nolan smiled. “Not quite, son, but it’s close. Lots of money here. Monsignor Flaherty runs a tight ship. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned him before. Tim and I are old classmates from Fordham.”
Terry had never heard his father mention the monsignor before. In fact, except when the conversation got around to St. Anthony’s pastor, Father Joseph, he had never heard his father mention any priest at all.
A big grinning man in a sport shirt and slacks greeted them at the front door. An enormous, brass-plated oak door dwarfed their host, but not his air of authority.
“Pat, it’s good to see you. Come on in.”
The two men shook hands. It began with each offering his right hand, and ended with the pumping of all four in a tightly clenched grip. They were big men, each over six feet. Almost identical in size. Their faces beamed with the smiles of quickly rekindled memories. Typical Irish Catholic smiles, disarming with their easy flash of teeth, haunting at the eyes.
“And this has got to be Terry. Your father told me about you on the phone. The spittin’ image.” A huge, hairy hand, surprisingly hard, enveloped the boy’s and held it. “Nice to meet you, son.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“I was sorry to hear about Mary. May God rest her soul. She was quite a beauty, inside and out.”
“Thanks,” Pat said.
Mary Nolan had been both his and his father’s guiding light. Terry tried hard to keep the memory
of her final days away, but he couldn’t. They flooded back all the time. Even now, as he listened to his dad and the Monsignor talk those painful last days filled his mind.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. That’s never happened before,” Terry’s mom said as he walked into the kitchen for a fast breakfast. She was seated at the kitchen table, no more than five or six feet from the counter on which a shiny new electric toaster was smoking, the smell of the blackened, badly burnt bread filling the room. “I don’t know. I just don’t feel like moving. Terry, can you please pull out the burnt bread and make your own toast. The butter and jelly are still in the fridge.”
“What’s the matter, Mom? You don’t look well. Can I get anything for you?”
“No, thank you, Terry. If you can just take care of your toast,” Terry’s mother said. “I’m sorry about the eggs. Have a banana now and take an apple with you to eat along the way to school.”
His mother remained seated at the table when Terry got up, grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter, and turned to throw her a kiss. Her face was bathed in sweat.
“Are you sure I can’t get anything for you, Mom?” Terry said.
“No, Terry, your dad is coming home early today, probably before noon,” she replied. “He’ll take good care of me. Don’t you worry. I’ll be okay.”
That afternoon, Terry rushed home, ran most of the way, to see his mom and dad. The image of the weak and perspiring woman had stuck with him all day. When he reached the family home, he bolted up the four steps to the front porch. His schoolbooks, tightly trussed with one of his father’s old leather belts, were tossed onto a wicker swing as he slammed his way through the front door into the parlor.
“Mom. Mom. Dad. I’m home!” Terry shouted. There was no response. The house was silent. He raced through the parlor and dining room into the kitchen, and poked his head into the big utility room. He even peeked into the small bathroom. Fear took hold. “Where is everybody? Mom? Dad?” Terry’s stomach was suddenly sick—not vomit sick, but fear and anxiety sick.
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