Chapter 6: The messenger
Jared’s Catholic world: It runs like a nightly revue through his dreams. All he ever wanted was to be a priest. Or at least that’s what the family expected. Life was simple: “God calls, you answer!” His was a world of obedience: a commandment to obey parents and the absolute duty to obey God. But how does one hear the call? Jared wasn’t sure.
Things in his life went quite automatically for years—the years of obedience to his father. He obeyed by enrolling in the minor seminary. It wasn’t that his father said, “Go there!” No, everyone simply assumed he would. He was the last of seven children and none of his siblings had entered the religious life. This was almost a family sin of disobedience in the Irish Catholic world. Someone—at least one child—had to give his life to God on behalf of all others. That was the family obligation and Jared’s fate.
So his spent his high school years at Mount St. Francis Seminary. He was a holy boy and a holy jock, ripping up the hardwoods and having to struggle with the sin of pride as he heard, “You’re really great! God, what a gift to give up. You could be a star in college ball!” Coaches from other teams asked him, “What college are you going to?” Tempted him with the capital sin of pride. No, he obeyed, and the next step was the novitiate in Chaska, a year secluded from “the world,” one of intense spiritual formation and study. But like most young seminarians, Jared struggled with the call—intellectual doubts spiked with hormonal cravings. Had he heard correctly? Was this really what God wanted him to do—be celibate? Then, one day, a messenger arrived.
Friar Albert is a “late vocation,” one of those who enters the monastery after some life-altering event, usually a tragedy. Otto knows a bit about the Vietnam War because his brother Thomas, five years older, has been over there for several years, but then not too much because he and Thomas were never close. Now three veterans have entered the novitiate right after they returned home from the battlefield. They don’t talk much about the war and they’re a bit cliquish given that they’re older. Most novices are in their late teens like Otto, just graduated from high school in the minor seminary system. He’s seen these vets together now and then, sharing smokes and the kind of laughter that comes from sharing an inside joke.
Otto’s seen Albert mostly in his self-appointed role as monastic photographer. However, he’s had no more than cursory exchanges with him. At times he’s overheard bits of conversations but nothing of note. Of all the novices, Otto knows Albert the least. So the note slipped under his door was more than a surprise—“You got to talk with me.” Its straightforward urgency was perplexing.
“C’mon in! Don’t gawk like a tourist!”
As Otto has noted before, Friar Albert seems to always have a camera, the mechanical eye, draped around some part of his body. Even while chanting the Divine Office, Otto knows that it’s hidden in a fold of his robes. He has fantasized that Albert pulls it out and snaps a quick one of the Real Presence!
Albert motions him into the dimly lit room, remaining half stooped over a light-box which is a slide viewer and the sole source of light. It takes a half-minute or so for Otto’s eyes to fully adjust to the twilight atmosphere. Even in this shadowy world what he can make out is certainly more than what he finds in other monks’ rooms. This one has the feel of an inner sanctum. He squints and sees fuzzy outlines of posters, photos, and film strips taped or tacked to the walls. It’s certainly more a workshop than a room for prayer and meditation. More striking—and in stark contrast to the bareness of his own room—is a huge basket of freshly cut flowers. Carnations and roses—curiously, all pink!
Albert head-beckons him to step closer. Otto moves like a moth to flame.
“You should leave this place!”
Otto hears the sentence but not its meaning as it slips, slightly muffled upward from Albert’s face-down lips. He’s intently looking at one slide, pushing it this way and that.
“You should leave this place,” he repeats.
“What?”
Still not looking at him, “You should leave this place.”
Albert suddenly straightens up, almost knocking Otto backwards, walks past him and flips on the central light. As the harsh illumination unmasks their surroundings, Otto jerks a step further back in shock—from all sides it feels like he’s being attacked!
Albert’s world: “Attack of the eyes!” Eyes from an army of war photos. Splattered all over one whole wall. Hungry eyes, but not for food. Laughing eyes, but not for jokes. Longing eyes, but not wishing that you were there. Faces of American soldiers dressed and armed to the teeth. Faces of yellow people in black pajamas and sandals walking beside oxen. Otto recognizes from TV that these are Vietnamese farmers. Albert is clearly obsessed with faces and eyes.
What? Otto begins to feel the creeps—someone is looking at him, spying, sneaking up behind him—he turns and locks in on a set of eyes peering out from a gigantic mushroom cloud that rises to form a skull whose eyes, once the illusion is grasped, are the Earth and the Moon. He voices a soft, startled, “Jesus, Mary, Mother of God, protect me!” as he blesses himself.
More horror: Another enlarged photo shows a monk—Otto presumes he’s Buddhist—sitting meditatively before a huge Gothic crucifix that holds Christ’s body, broken and torn, with gouged flesh, blood streaming in every obscene direction and—horror of horrors!—Christ is headless!
“Oh sweet merciful Jesus!” Out loud, blesses himself, again. Otto is transfixed, immobilized.
Unnoticed, Albert has begun his ritual chain smoking and the wispy trails float, surrounding and irritating Otto. This nastiness makes him acutely aware of Albert and he once again hears his odd directive, “You should leave this place.”
“What?”
“Listen, I’ve been watching you and it’s clear, crystal clear, you gotta take a hike over the hill.”
Albert doesn’t wait for Otto’s response. He’s shuffling pictures, moving slides on and off the viewer, pausing now and then to draw Otto’s attention to a specific image like a docent on a museum tour. Then he steps over, turns off the lights again, steps back, and like magic—without Otto’s hearing the click—images appear against another wall, tall, wide, sharply focused, almost life like.
“See that?”
Otto looks at the projected image and as Albert brings it into focus a young, scraggily bearded face appears. It’s a soldier with an index card taped on his helmet, stating “War is Peace!” Otto laughs.
Albert grumbles, “Funny? Jesus, Otto, you’re—” but it gets suffocated by two quick hits and a deep exhale.
“Sorry. I mean, look he must be kidding? I mean, you know, he’s killing people every day and he’s certainly not enjoying the Peace!”
“Asshole!” Not noticing Otto’s shock at the profanity, he urges, “Look closer, man. Whaddya see?”
As Otto steps nearer the projection, Albert blurts out, “It’s me, man, it’s me.” Almost a whimper, “It’s me, sucker. Look at that idiot. He believes he’s waging peace. Look at him. Look into his eyes!” The eyes do fascinate and Otto is moved. He’s about to say something when Albert presses forward, “Do you know what I did?”
Before Albert answers his own question, he spins around and slaps and tapes another enlarged photo on the lighted wall.
“Thoc! You got to understand Thoc.”
Then Albert starts talking like a man with caffeine jitters, quickly, darting, frenetically, at times stuttering. “I was an assassin. On a team of assassins. But, but . . . no one will admit that, not—” He turns to check Otto’s comprehension.
“You don’t believe me, that in war there are assassins?” More smoke flares forth, “Jesus, are—are you—? You are a moral virgin!”
Albert slowly backs away and moves from the photo to the slide-board, picks two, three, slips them into the carousel, then in a rising panic—something he deals with daily—he starts rapidly projecting slides and as rapidly speaks to their illuminated faces on the wal
l. His frenzied passion conquers his stuttering.
“Napalm! Burns the skin and eats flesh like dragon breath. Anti-personnel bombs! Turns people—shit, even kids and old ladies into Swiss cheese. Booby traps! That guy lost his leg. He was lucky. See that! A kid, just a baby, dropped a grenade into that bar room.”
Then up comes the face. Suddenly, Albert is stone-cold quiet. He appears caught, as if just nabbed by the cops. It takes a minute, then Otto cracks the silence. “Thoc?”
Albert coughs, takes out a new pack of cigarettes, slowly tears the wrapping, then lights one up and speaks through a cloud of smoke, “Right, Thoc.” The words drag out from Albert’s mouth. “He was one of my kills.”
“What?!”
Albert pulls up a chair, sits, nasty laugh. “Or the one who killed me . . .” Quiet suffocates the room.
Motherfucker!
Stillness. Faces. Eyes. Thoc. Otto is bewildered. “Why am I here?”
Albert crushes his barely smoked fag and stands up, getting back to his mission. “Why did you come to this place? Afraid of your d-d-dick? Or being eaten by some broad’s p-p-pussy?”
What?!
Thomas had always taunted him, called him a pussy every time he whipped his ass shooting lights out at “horse.” Big brother-little brother horseplay but it was more than that. Thomas didn’t like his little brother. Coming to the seminary was Jared’s not so sub-conscious way of one-upping the war hero. Unknowingly tapping into all this, Albert’s remark roundly pisses him off. An ugliness crawls up and all around Otto’s face: eyes that pierce his “big brother” Albert with little brother spite, lips that curl ready to spit, cheeks that harden, struggling to control a tongue that will only lash back with words that will evoke further punishment. Raging within, Otto pivots towards the door. Albert lurches and throws a forearm around Otto’s throat, almost locking him in a half-nelson, only the bulky robes foil the move. Otto instinctively twists around and, face to face, slips his arms under Albert’s armpits and lifts up the slightly shorter monk—athletic fingers pressing on cheekbones, ready to crush. Thomas was stunned the day Jared did that—the distance between them widened into a chasm. Here, the intimacy of the embrace, its virile heat, is something the Novice Master might interpret as too erotic for brotherly love. Both men freeze at the edge of a violence neither seeks.
Albert breaks the tension, snipes: “No doubt, Otto, you do need a good hot fuck, that’s for sure.”
Otto recoils. The statement frightens him. It’s not Ablert’s foul language that startles him, rather he hears them echo his gravest self- doubt. True? He lifts Albert higher, and in one powerful stroke, slams his friarly feet onto the ground, as if trying to stake him there, then shoves him backwards. Albert stumbles, staggers, and falls flat on his holy ass. He sits stunned for a moment, then laughs, rolls over and gets up off the floor. He whips out his pack and within a breath has a cig on his lips, lights it. To Otto he looks like a devil, horns rising amidst clouds of billowing smoke.
Otto struggles with whether to flee or fight. Words pour out—he’s cross-examining Albert. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”
Albert rips Thoc’s photo off the wall and holds it like a piece of evidence being shown to the jurors. His voice is from a morgue. “Thoc.” Tapping the wall, “I told you. My kill, damn, or he killed himself first. Immolation. Doused himself in gasoline and went up. Poof! Like a Roman candle.”
Otto’s compassion distracts him, “God, how sad. Was he crazy?”
“Crazy?! Jesus, Otto, he was holy . . . holy . . . holy, not crazy. Only me, I was crazy!”
Abruptly, with ambush startle, Albert is back at Otto. “How the fuck can you, in here? Look, you g-gotta get out of here. In here you, they—you know!—they’ll lead you into false worship. You’ll end up being a priest, not a saint. That’s what you want, r-right, to be a saint?”
Otto is totally flustered, tongue-tied. Albert shakes his head, both disapproving and disappointed. He puts down his smoke, steadies himself, smoothes out his robes. Turns towards Otto. Coughs. Kneels, assumes a confessional posture.
“Listen. Look at Thoc. He was the leader of the Buddhist nonviolent resistance. His followers caused no end of problems for us and the South Vietnamese government.” He pauses. The next words come out sounding false, and it’s clear that Albert knows he never believed it. “He was the enemy. Worse than the Viet Cong. I had no choice.”
Albert takes out his rosary beads, closes his eyes and raises his arms to heaven. Otto watches his lips move in silent prayer. Forgiveness? Mercy? Otto is at a loss as to what to do next.
Abruptly, Albert rises. His voice is steady, soft. “I spent six months undercover as his disciple. I sat in lotus meditation till I thought my d-dick would fall out my a-asshole. I suffered all the time because I was a good soldier. I was waiting to find the right time to k-kill him. And ya know what happened?” He lights up yet another cigarette. Puffs, long drags. Crushes it, half smoked. The mound of the nicotine dead in the ashtray grows.
“Sh-shit, one night he calls me in and tells me,” he blesses himself, “Jesus, tells me what I was about. He knew. G-goddamn it, he knew!” New smoke. “Instead of cursing me, instead of calling in some thugs to do me in, he blesses me! He tells me—Jesus, oh, Jesus, can you believe it!—he picks up our Bible and reads from Daniel, a passage: ‘I will kill this dragon without sword or club.’ Then he says, ‘This is written for you. You are the messenger of he who kills without sword or club.’”
Otto doesn’t have to ask. Clearly this is why Albert is here, searching for Thoc’s meaning. But what does it mean, “without sword or club”? Otto wants to ask but Albert doesn’t stop to talk about himself. He steps over and clicks another slide. It’s Albert in saffron robes, nestling a charred body in his arms. It’s a Pieta-like shot. Albert speaks but not to Otto. It’s as if he’s asking the question of himself, “Do you know what he’s saying to me?” Answering, “He said, The children.”
“What?”
“The children. He was always talking about “the children.” How God doesn’t want us to kill the children.”
The messenger —Thoc!— is now speaking to Otto; he hears him. How could Albert have known?
The Novice Master asks, “Tell me about your family.” Joey. Young boy, just two years older. My brother, Joey, frothing at the mouth, me, standing, yelling, “Mom, Dad, something’s wrong with Joey!”
“Encephalitis, Mrs. Jennings.” The doctor turns to Dad as if the medical explanation is too burdensome for her. “The disease comes from Africa. It’s spread by mosquitoes and when it bites the young it’s almost always fatal.” Then the death sentence: “They rarely make it through puberty.”
“May he rest in peace,” the Master blesses himself.
Nothing more need be said. Both know how the wheel of spiritual justice turns. Jared is called to give up his life to give fuller meaning for a life given up.
“But he killed himself. Suicide. He’ll go to hell! Forever!”
Albert is weeping. His tears harden back into fierce eyes. “Hell?” His left arm sweeps the area forcefully. “We’re in hell, now! This place is hell as long as we k-kill for our God. Listen, Otto, Thoc did not die in my arms. No, a thousand times no. He was reborn. I died in his arms. He slew me with his love—love for the children I was killing. All of us, children of the One God.”
Both men stand, stare at one another, perplexed. Albert: “All I know is this, Otto. I’ve seen terrible things. I’ve looked into the eyes of men who’ve done terrible things. I’ve done terrible things. I’m not forgiving myself, but God does work in mysterious ways. Thoc spoke to me so I could speak to you. Hear me?”
It’s over. Whatever was meant to be said has been said. Albert has spoken what Thoc revealed. Albert knows that it was a message for Otto, knew the first time he looked the kid in the eyes—saw Thoc’s eyes. It’s the reason he’s avoided getting to know him. He’s put off this day as long as
possible. Not because he feared for Otto but because he feared for himself. Once Thoc speaks to Otto through him—once the message is delivered—then Albert has to get about his own work. He’s come here to look at the eyes of his fellow friars to see if he could find God’s eyes. Somehow he knows that living here is part of his own journey, a battlefield where he has to learn how to kill the dragon without sword or club.
What more is there to do?
Exhausted, as if saying farewell, he whispers, “You’ve got to leave.”
“You stay and I leave?” More incredulous than asking for clarity.
Albert nods, head bent in resignation.
I came here because of Joey. He doesn’t want to share this with Albert, but he hears himself speaking before he can censor himself, “I came here because of Joey. He was just a kid. I was just a kid. Why did God let that happen?” Otto hears the echo of his father’s graveside despair.
Albert:“I don’t know. I really just don’t know.”
Otto: “That’s why I’m here. Like Thoc said, for the children. To bless the children. Baptize them. Teach them the ways of the Lord.”
Albert takes out another cigarette and lights it as Otto steps away, turns, leaves, fingering his rosary as he walks back towards his room.
Walking alone, no one else in sight, Otto speaks to God, his dad and himself: “I’m to leave?” Pauses. Shakes his head, “I don’t think so.”
Spiritual justice: His meeting with Albert gives him no rest. Like all novices, Friar Otto has had doubts about his worthiness to become a monk. Such doubts plague all souls who seek spiritual treasure. The Novice Master counseled, “If you don’t have doubts, then most certainly come talk with me!” But what Albert has raised in Otto’s mind goes beyond doubt. He has delivered a message, possibly from God the Father through this holy monk Thoc. It didn’t really matter how he heard—God does work in mysterious ways!
Day after day, Otto is convinced, then not. Is Albert a nutcase? Working out his guilt through me? Maybe. But I came here to hear God’s call. Is he calling from Vietnam? Is this why Thomas is there and I’m here? He prays. Spends excessively long stints kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Late nights and early mornings in deep meditation on the sufferings of Jesus hanging from the cross. Was I to leave the world? Or live in the world? Joey! Joey! I love you. Help me. Help me now. I need you, my brother!
As is Otto’s way—as it has been for Jared—he often gains spiritual insight while shooting hoops. Such a day comes: The sun is just rising. He’s on the basketball court, ball in hand. The front of his shirt says, “Knights of Columbus, CYA” and the back, “St. George’s Dragon Slayers” with the number 7. At court’s edge he does some preliminary stretches. Then he starts a routine: lay-ups, jump shots and hooks. His athletic ability is apparent. He stops at the top of the circle, pauses to look at the rising sun.
Suddenly, with a lurch, he escalates the intensity. Rains shots through the basket like a pro: twenty-footers, top-of-the-key hook shots, left hand, right hand. He is a man possessed. Huffing, puffing, up and down the court, shot, rebound, again, again, faster, harder, push it, push it until at last he collapses, exhausted, face down on the grass.
I hear! Chest and shoulders heaving, he grips the grass, pulling up soil. With a clod of the fertile earth in each fist he rolls on his back and crumbles them onto his face and shirt. I die with you O Lord! He smears himself with the dirt, smears it all across his chest. Lies there a long moment. Shouts, “I rise with you O Lord!” Stands, takes the roundball, palms it, lifts it as high as his reach allows and then slams it down as if planting it in the ground. He looks at the hoop, raises his arms to the sun, implores the heavens, shouting, screaming, screeching: “I hear and I obey.” Over and again: Accepting, rejoicing, a bit manic and at last, upon his knees, eyes towards heaven, “I hear and I obey.”
All said, he turns and walks, without the ball, back to the monastery.
The Novice Master stands gazing out the window behind his desk. His thoughts are far off, grappling with the action this young novice has just taken. Friar Otto stands in full monastic garb, halfway across the room. It is noon. The sun is halfway up the window.
“Are you sure?”
With a sigh of empty resignation, “I’m sure, Reverend Father.”
The Novice Master knows it is futile to try and convince young men to live the celibate life, knows that it has to be a gift from God. So, although shocked that this is coming from Jared, whose family he knows so well, he knows his task. He must make certain that this young soul is sincere—he must put him to the final test. Turning towards Otto, the Master upbraids him, “I am disappointed!”
Otto holds his ground, says, “I have prayed, I have searched my soul, I—”
“What foul thoughts have led you astray?”
Otto spurts out defensively, “The children!”
The Master is caught short—he has no idea what “The children!” means.
“What? What did you say?” The Master advances. Their faces almost touch.
“The children, Master. I must serve the children.” But it comes across as a weak and lame excuse, sounds like whimpering, even to himself. Otto wishes that Friar Albert would come in and explain it all.
“You are denying God’s call because of children?” The Master can only assess that this is a most clever way to cloak his real desire. “Children?” An embarrassed silence floats between them, “You mean you want to have sex with a woman. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Not knowing what to do next, feeling totally bewildered even by his own statements, swamped by a rush of doubts as to whether he’s truly grasped what Albert meant, uncertain as to what is really driving him to this act of madness, the young Friar reaches back and speaks in the language he knows the Master will understand, possibly accept.
His head jerks slightly backward, lips trembling and hands shaking. “I am unworthy of God’s call.” Hurriedly, “I, I am impure in thought and heart . . . I am weak in will!”
This confession draws forth the Master’s compassion. “Yes, truly, a monk’s life is a hard life.”
The Master pauses. Beyond his own disappointment, he’s concerned for Jared’s father, knowing how much he wants this, his youngest, to become a priest. Still, a priestly vocation has to come from within. No sense shaming the boy for what he doesn’t have.
“It is good that you’ve listened to hear God’s Call. It is good that you tried. Now,” sighful resignation, “go back to your loving mother and father, your family—give my love and blessing to all the Jennings. You are a good boy, Otto—” he pauses, renames him. “You’ll make a good husband, Jared.”
With a blessing and a fond touch on the cheek, the Master—accepting as God wants him to do at these sad moments—dismisses him, “Go. Do God’s work in the world.”
Jared quickly returns to his room, disrobes Friar Otto for the last time, packs his belongings and heads for the monastery garage where he knows a ride is already waiting to take him to the train station. Fittingly, it is the feast day of his Order’s founder, St. Francis of Assisi, October 4, 1964.
Friar Albert watches from the chapel window. He’s trembling and crying, feeling abandoned and gripped by the self-hatred that visits him every time after a kill. He tracks Jared’s progress towards the waiting car, suitcase in hand, walking slowly, climbing in—Otto, one of my kills!
Albert wants to die right there, but then—poof!—the image of Jared lights up like a Roman candle. His heart feels suddenly, strangely lighter.
Thoc is no longer here!
Kill the dove! Page 6