by Rolf Nelson
The beehive of activity exploded, and in short order the area was crawling with lines of men working to protect their new, if temporary, home.
They’d been at it an hour when a water truck and two vans of more formally trained firefighters came barreling down the road toward the abbey-in-creation. Everything near the building had been drenched, the ground damp, the grass cut, flammables moved, and regular sprinklers were spreading water in an ever-widening area. The smoke was much thicker, but no one was having a problem breathing yet. It looked remarkably calm and peaceful.
The team commander jumped out of the passenger side of the lead van as it rolled to a stop. He called out to Thomas, the closest man visible as he stood on the porch, “Is everyone here? You need to evacuate!”
“No, we’re fine. The others are in the hills,” he waved toward the ridge.
“They are what?” the man exploded, his florid face getting redder. “How many?”
“Two-score brothers are dealing with the situation. You are welcome to join them.”
“Amateurs can’t fight fires! They’ll get themselves killed! Get them back here NOW!”
Thomas leaned in the front door. “Brother Joshua! Will you please come out and explain what’s going on to these good men?”
One minute later the “theater map” of the property and surrounding area was spread out and being intently examined by Thomas and three of the fire crew while Joshua explained. Firebreaks in geographically advantageous areas—ridge line, creek, meadow, places with little brush and few low branches, roads, and so-forth—fall back areas, com channel, training background and equipment, and transportation. Ten minutes later the professional fire crews were spreading out to assist the teams already on the job, no longer mad at some “stupid civilians” but rather eager to get a leg up on a rapidly spreading problem.
* * *
It was a long afternoon and a longer evening, with many trips to deliver drinking water to the men, occasional flurries of high-speed shoveling, raking, sawing, digging, trenching, debris removal, and cinder stomping, but in the end the range road was the strong center that broke the fire’s progress. Instead of allowing a free burn-through as the fire crew had expected to do, attempting to save nothing but the structures, the ranch-cum-abbey grounds had held solid and let the other all-pro teams push in on each side and halt it.
There were would be hotspot watch and cleanup for days more, but it was a much happier crew chief who left Thomas and the brothers behind, well after midnight, with a firm promise to get the whole monastery properly trained for volunteer duty in the not too distant future as well as looking into returning on an annual basis for each new crop of residents at the abbey.
Another ally had been made.
Summer
Anger, as long as it is controlled anger, is no obstacle to efficiency. Self-control is one thing the sociopath does not usually possess. Use yours to his undoing.
—Col. Jeff Cooper
Abbot Cranberry didn’t like the expression on Cade Wilson’s face as the inspector emerged from his truck. It was a tired, resigned look, the look of a man who found himself between a rock and a hard place. But Thomas still greeted the man warmly and invited him in for coffee and a hunk of sourdough coffeecake Amos had made; he was turning into quite the baker. Joshua, Peter, Mickey, and Amos joined them.
“I’m sorry. She said you need to have complete plans, not a sketch of an idea, and you can’t use local materials because the quality cannot be properly verified. All materials must come from approved and regulated sources, and the nearest active quarry is nearly sixty miles from here. Lehew Aggregate. Her dad owns it.” Cade didn’t have to spell out who she was, his increasingly bureaucratic and painful boss, Nishell Lehew. “And the plans need to be drawn up by an approved architect and the details done by a licensed engineer. It’s not a private individual home, so she’s classifying it under the heading of a public building and applying state codes, saying you need to have everything down to the landscaping plants and locations detailed out before you can do anything. Including ADA codes for wheelchair accessibility and all. Parking spaces, too. She even wants to apply the percentage of expenditures dedicated to artwork.” Cade shook his head. He knew it was stupid and expensive but didn’t see any way around it.
“Well, at least the art will be easy,” said Amos gloomily.
Cade shook his head. “It has to be secular in nature. Iconography doesn’t count.”
“For the love of God, why?” exploded Father Mathews. “This is a monastery!”
“Art must not be offensive, and religious things on building the public might visit might offend someone.” Wilson’s tone indicated he understood the Kafkaesque absurdity of it.
Mickey leaned back in his chair. Peter tapped the table with his fingers. Amos took another piece of coffee cake and then stopped as he was about to take a bite in the silence. “Ahem.” The others looked at him. He set the cake down.
“This land is zoned ag, right?” Cade nodded. “So it can’t be a public building. And plowing is okay?” Another nod. “So we can keep plowing and kicking up rock with no worries.” Cade frowned, not seeing where it was going. “And if we collect rock, we have to put it somewhere, so dumping it on the property in a heap has to be fine, too, right?” A slow, thoughtful nod. “And of course, being agricultural land, digging for irrigation or drainage is totally cool, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Does it sound like she’s angling for a donation to a campaign before she’ll let up on things?” cut in Mickey.
Cade looked at him, taken aback at first, then looking doubtful, and then thoughtful before slowly nodding. “Now that you mention it… she has said a few things that I didn’t understand at the time, but looked at in that light… yes, possibly. But she is in an appointed position.”
“Appointed by…?”
“The county commissioner. Who is not up for election until next fall.”
“Ah, well. Long time,” said Abbot Cranberry, “and we need something for right now as well as then.”
“Back to my point,” said Amos. “So we can plow, level, haul rock, and dig in the dirt all we want, more or less. So if we just happen to work on clearing and leveling and trenching in a big ol’ squarish shape, something that might make a good flat corn field or something, and stack lots of rocks kicked up while plowing near it for eventual crushing and to use to possibly improve drainage, that’s totally within the letter of the law, right?”
A smile slowly emerged on Cade’s face. “Yes, it should be.”
“And if it’s she’s looking for donations, well, I don’t see how that should be a problem,” added Joshua. The inspector’s face fell. “Of course, it’s not like she was very explicit about to whom she wanted those donations or what form she wanted, so it would be purely a coincidental and unfortunate miscommunication if a bloc of votes were donated to the opposition next fall, when we are all full up with four hundred brothers.”
Thomas Cranberry objected at once. “That is not how the Church works, Brother Joshua. Render unto Caesar–”
“It isn’t Caesar’s yet. And she ain’t Caesar. But Jesus didn’t say you couldn’t talk to the man and try to convince him to see it from another perspective,” Mickey added, backing Joshua. “What would Jesus do? Flippin’ tables and whipping people ain’t out of the realm of the possible when money’s involved. How’s the county commissioner doing overall? And how’s Nishell getting along with the average folks?” Cade wasn’t a politically active man, but his expression told them all they needed to know.
“This monastery must not be seen as actively political, Mickey,” said Thomas severely.
“We won’t be. We just want to be left alone to take care of our own as best we can, without expensive and unnecessary interference by people who hate us and all we stand for. They may not have pentagrams of blood in their basement, but social justice warriors are every bit as much Satan’s minions. We get invol
ved, or we get run over. It happens every time. We don’t have to address every issue. Just side with people who side with us rather than let them hang alone, twisting in the wind. A noble loss is still a loss.”
“The mayor, Rodger Sellers–”
“We’ve met him.”
“–will be at the regular Tuesday meetings,” said Cade. “You could see if he knows about who’s running. Sellers is well liked. And pretty well connected, as least as far as anyone around here is.”
“Who is the election manager?” asked Pete.
“Oh, that would be Hetty. Henrietta Price. Nice gal. Married to Parson Price, preacher at the Methodist Church in town.”
“We won’t hold that against her. If you’d be so kind as to ask her to attend the meeting, I’d appreciate it,” said Finnegan.
“Please let her know she won’t need to bring a ream of voter registration forms though,” cautioned Abbot Cranberry, still uneasy with the idea. “But I think it might be a good idea for us to begin attending and introducing ourselves to the local population, so that if we end up with no choice but to vote, we are not seen as sinister foreigners trying to take over.”
Cade nodded agreement. “That’s a fine idea. I’m about the only one who has been out here more than once, so I get a lot of questions. You’d do worse than showing up with a few of the brothers every week, so they’d see you as just regular folks. Your store trips are already something of a bit of entertainment in a way.”
“Oh?” asked Thomas, who had not heard anything about this. “Yes, we can do that. The brothers who have been here a while and look the part of upstanding Christians could go, meet people, get out of here for a couple of hours.”
“I guess I see how that might change things long term,” said Cade, after some random conversation and another cup of coffee. “But I’m not sure how that helps you out right now. If I understand a’right, you are expecting new arrivals soon, and a lot of them.”
“I’m sure we can manage with the roofs we have for a while, at least as long as next fall. It’ll be tight, and we can always slow things up a bit if we need to.”
* * *
The town meeting the following Tuesday was better attended than normal, certainly the most since the previous election. The eight monks in attendance, including Thomas Cranberry, drew a number of comments. The people were polite enough, if reserved. The abbot had enough practice giving the quick and nonscary version of their mission and goals that he was able to allay most of the fears and suspicions that the unknown, the different, or the suspected mentally unstable always drew.
Hetty assured him that yes, any brothers living at the abbey, if they were legally allowed to vote anywhere, would be considered residents and could vote as any other new resident could. At Finnegan’s request she didn’t apply to create a new voting precinct for them but rather added them to a rather large rural county precinct that already had almost a thousand voters who voted at the grange hall. Apparently, it was quite a party some years.
There wasn’t a lot of business at the meeting, and they dealt with what little there was rapidly, before the session turned into a general social, which appeared to be the normal course of events. The people there were the sort of flyover country residents who respected service, respected strength, respected faith, respected honesty, and respected being left alone. The brothers had been reminded of their vow of obedience, which included the demand to spend a lot of time being silent and listening, learning, and being more intelligence officers than storytellers. If they did end up telling their personal story, they were to keep it short and general and leaving as much to the imagination as possible without leading anyone on and deliberately implying things that were not true.
It took a little while for the locals to really grasp that the abbey was expected to be permanent but the monks were much more transitory. Most would be returning home in a couple of years. Some had wives waiting; others were quite marriageable though all were celibate for the duration of their stay. Alan said he liked the area and might settle down there if the right situation could be found as the clean air, honesty, and hard work of the rural life was really starting to appeal to him. A farmer in the third row decided she’d be needing to have a talk with her husband and four single daughters on her return home. Liza Aker was in attendance, and she sort of liked the idea of moving back east where there were more possibilities, and maybe going with someone who was trustworthy, lived there, and could show her around might be just the way to do it.
One gruff old guy ambled up, stuck out a hand and said, “Thanks for savin’ my farm. From the fire.” He turned out to be a neighbor with a few hundred acres of young timber on an adjacent plot and a grandson who needed some sense beaten into him—what was the abbey application procedure? He said it sounded like army service with better politics and survival rate and even lower pay. Just what the kid needed. Abbot Cranberry said they didn’t have a guest program up and running yet as most monasteries had, but someday that might be a possibility.
All in all, the monks got along fine with the locals, each seeing some possibilities on the horizon.
Promotion
Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars.
—General George Catlett Marshall
“Hard to believe it’s been six months already,” said Thomas quietly after the lunch reading.
“True. Please pass the potatoes,” replied Mickey. “Might be about time to start passing out promotions.”
“Indeed. Much progress has been made. Most of the brothers are learning a great deal and taking it seriously enough.”
“I think the icy creek baptism was a good thing,” added Mickey. “Really helped set the tone.”
“Hmmm. Perhaps. Still not sure if His Holiness would approve.”
“Would he approve of the results? Of the men’s knowledge and progress?”
“Oh, no doubt.”
“Then he’d approve.”
“It is not our place to second-guess the pope, you know. It is not humble.”
“You mean, like you thinking he won’t, but doing it anyway?”
“Please don’t remind me,” Thomas said. “How many do you figure deserve the rank of novice?”
“Most of them. At least thirty. Only a couple I have serious doubts about. Tim has been learning slowly since the concussion, but he’s getting better. The short-term memory thing has made it hard. I’m sure he’ll learn the basics eventually. Ken isn’t taking it seriously. Knows the material well enough, but–”
“–But hasn’t been baptized and has a rather lackadaisical way. He doesn’t seem to take the weekly fault discussion too much to heart either.”
“Exactly. And Allan hasn’t sung the hours, yet. Missing the… Compline, I think.”
“And Nocturne. Well, he’s done them, but only once, with many mistakes.” Thomas consulted his notes as he talked. “He’s been very diligent with many other necessary tasks though, so I cannot fault him for lack of effort. I’m sure he will get them done soon. Part of it is my fault for scheduling things the way I have in order to get the necessary structures built out to meet our worldly needs. Only one master to serve but far too many tasks, and too little time and money.” He paused and thought a moment. “You know, I think McKale has missed a lot of that, too, given all the basic instruction he’s been involved with. The brothers have been at him nearly 24/7 on that. I’m sure he knows it, mostly, but he’s not done it yet.”
“We can skip him, humble him into getting it all done in the next month, and then slap stripes and a star on him then. So back to last week’s question. All at once or one at a time?”
“All at once, I think. We are equal before the eyes of God, and humility is strongly encouraged, so we do not need promotion order for seniority. We can have a monthly event, granted in simple alphabetical order. I think we should do it on the last Sunday of the month after Mass. Everyone who has earned it can get robe, stripe, or star.”
; “Sounds good. A pleasant thing to look forward to tomorrow.”
* * *
It was indeed a joyous event. Twenty-eight of the men had earned the right to call themselves novice. Another twelve were close and would likely advance the following month.
When the simple ceremony was done, robes distributed, and blessings said, Thomas was surprised when Mickey Finnegan stood up, walked to the front of the group, stood next to their leader, and called the men to attention. The abbot was even more surprised at what came next.
“Father Abbot Thomas Cranberry, front and center!” Mickey called out clearly.
With a slightly confused look, Thomas looked at the person who had been his right-hand man since before arrival. “Where exactly?”
Mickey waved him to a spot right in front of him. “Right here.” The senior man stepped over and faced Finnegan.
“No. Other way.” Thomas did an about face to face the body of men, who were all smiling widely enough to make clear they were in on the plan. “It has come to the attention of those assembled, Father Abbot Thomas Cranberry, that you have led, guided, and taught us well. It has also come to our attention that you are not wearing the proper badge of office. So, kneel, and accept the proper rank insignia.”
With a chuckle, Cranberry did so. From one of his many pockets Mickey pulled out a simple patch, gray thread stitched onto a dark green background. One chevron, two rockers, and a star with an olive wreath around it. He pinned it on the back of his senior’s cowl so he could be identified from behind. “You are likely to be the only person to ever wear this particular rank insignia, Father Abbot. You have not been here long enough to earn your second or third chevrons. But we are confident, nay, absolutely certain, that you will in time progress that far. All future abbots will, I’m sure, be drawn from the ranks of those who joined as postulants years before and will thus earn their stripes before the wreath.