The Trinity

  He became obese by the age of eleven, and was pushed through to the next grade each fall even though his teachers knew he shouldn’t be. They didn’t want him back in their classrooms the following year, finding it too hard to teach a child when there is no structure at home, no continuity of the orderly school day.

  He learned his predicament by the time the fall of his senior year approached. He heard other kids talking about jobs and college and potential careers. He had never thought about his future after school, other than being miles from his grandparents’ neighborhood in Omaha and in a place where there were no black people. He dreamt of a sort of Utopia where college football is played all year. (The fact that several of the Nebraska football players are of African descent has been of no consequence to him. That fact, he has always conveniently ignored.)

  He knew he needed some sort of vehicle to propel him towards adulthood. He knew his childhood had not prepared him to take care of himself. He didn’t want to keep following his mother around—nor was he welcome to do so. Many of her boyfriends looked at the chubby child and then the tall and fat adolescent with disdain. Life with his grandparents wasn’t appealing, either; aside from watching football with his grandfather, life in their home wasn’t too pleasant. He didn’t like sitting in the dark and small living room with bottles of pills on a television tray. He didn’t want to fall asleep each night listening to his grandfather wheeze while attached to an oxygen tank.

  So he was led to the military, and because of his late and unknown father, he picked the Navy. The recruiter was straight with him. “If you want to get in the Navy, you need to lose the weight, most of it, anyway. You won’t make it, looking like that.”

  He lost the weight. A lot of it, anyway.

  Through sheer willpower and starvation, he deprived himself of food after seven in the evening and didn’t eat lunch in school. He hid in the school library during the lunch hour and pretended to do his homework while his stomach ached for food so badly that his hands started to shake. He wanted out of this life badly, and a certain discipline that had not been evident in him for his entire life took over and he succeeded. He still looked like an overweight young man. Some would call it baby fat. His stomach still hung over the waistband of his pants, but in appearance, he looked respectable enough.

  His success in losing weight gave him confidence, a sense of pride that he had never possessed. He passed his physical during the summer after graduation, and he was sworn in and sent to boot camp late in September of 1984.

  And at that moment, all the discomfort of being ignored by his peers because of his weight or color vanished. His life was presented with opportunities he thought would never come. Better still, his life was presented with a plane ticket from Omaha to Chicago, and boot camp in Great Lakes. He flew away from an existence he knew was pathetic.

  He had hoped to find some sort of acceptance in the Navy. He thought everyone would form a sort of clique of the type he had observed as an outsider all through his childhood days. He thought a common uniform and a common occupation would cause all his fellow sailors—in boot camp and beyond—to be a sort of fraternity. A family.

  He found this to be untrue, as he has never really developed any sort of friendships. He didn’t know how friends should act. He became obnoxious, almost a bully. He made fun of the more inept and smaller recruits in boot camp. (He did well. He was able to follow the directions of the company commanders, and he managed fairly well with the physical training, despite his girth.)

  He remained friendless throughout basic training and throughout the storekeeper school conducted on the other side of the base at Great Lakes. He remained obnoxious, loud mouthed and opinionated in the classroom. His friendlessness caused an emptiness in his heart that he was not able to identify. He didn’t know that his loneliness bothered him, as he had grown callous from the years of watching endless television programs wrought with violence and betrayal and casual relationships. He thinks that’s how the world is. Every man for himself.

  He was equally miserable when he arrived in Scotland fresh out of storekeeper school, and he found another outcast in Lee Rodgers. He found the first real friend he had ever had in his life. When sober, they talked little. While drinking, they talked a great deal.

  Then Father Crowley comes along and he feels as a part of a family; he feels the camaraderie he hoped for and subconsciously expected the Navy to provide. He finds himself a member of an exclusive club. He is a member of the white race. He is descended from supermen from the north, descended from the gods of fire and ice.

  He is comfortable in the priest’s house, in front of the fireplace, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, comfortable talking about the inadequacies of the races, and how the white man should and shall reign supreme.

  He feels vindication for those Omaha days, those days of fearing his classmates and the passage along crooked sidewalks through the crumbling neighborhood going to and from school.

  To be bonded by blood and courage.

  These words continue to ring in his ear, drowning out the noises of the small pub, the noise of conversation, the din of drunken humanity that resonates through the establishment.

  He lets the priest’s words resonate inside his cluttered mind. He stares at the barely perceptible veins traversing his wrist and the back of his hand.

  Blood. White blood. It is holy blood—chosen blood—that is traveling throughout his body. He decides that the misery he felt in Omaha wasn’t his fault. He is an Aryan, a supreme being, never meant to mix with the lower races. Anyone else growing up in his situation would be miserable and destined for failure.

  But not Brad Hinckley. The world owes him too much. He is a warrior, and he will continue to fight.

  “We can’t stop,” he says to Crowley after the fish and chips are exhausted and the pint glasses reappear full of lager. “Two or three of us, we can’t stop.”

  “I agree, I agree,” the priest says, “but we shall lay low for a while, maybe avert our attention towards another sphere. There is a small Jewish population in this country, one that hasn’t been dealt with yet. They are too comfortable here. We can change that.”

  Brad has never thought about Jewish people before. As far as he knows, he has never met one, nor has a Jewish person ever done him any harm.

  He only knows Judaism as the religion that doesn’t believe in Jesus, the religion of Israel, that faraway nation from the evening news that is fighting Palestinians in southern Lebanon, which is now a nation of scarred and bombed out buildings. He has never given any thought to the Jewish people. The blacks were an enemy he could identify, could summon up the sufficient anger to fight.

  “I think that the bloke police suspect me of something. They came around after Lee’s suicide. They have nothing on me. I never fired a gun, and, unfortunately for you, I never wrote a letter. If I’m to direct any operation, I have to do it cleanly. The head of the Trinity, as the head of an army or a state, must never fall. With no evidence against me, I will never fall.”

  Brad suddenly feels betrayed by this information. He hadn’t noticed before that the priest’s hand never did get involved in any of their activities.

  The priest senses Brad’s sullenness. He places his hand on Brad’s shoulder. “Look,” he says, with an intonation of tenderness, “I never had you fire a gun, did I? You are special. You will always be my lieutenant, my right hand man. I won’t let you fall, either.”

  He returns his hand to his pint glass, drains it halfway, and continues.

  “I want no attention drawn to me right now. If anything occurs in this country, any sort of violent behavior against minorities, the bloke police will pay me a visit. There are some indoor projects we can work on, and these we can do with just the two of us. No one will know.”

  “What’s that?” Brad asks, his third pint glass now empty. Alcohol-induced joviality streams through his body, and his face and stomach and heart feel warm.

  “In due time, in du
e time,” the priest says. “Meanwhile, stay away from my house for a few weeks, or even a month. Make some friends, meet some girls—but don’t get too involved with girls. They will weaken your will. We need a third member, and I want you to find one. Once you find one, let me know. Bring him over, and we shall see. We have to have someone to do the dirty work.”

  Chris learns of his roommate’s association with Lee Rodgers by doing what he’s always done best: he listens to the conversations of others.

  He sits in the galley for dinner before a mid-watch in the days after the word of Lee’s suicide has fanned across the base, along with the news that he was the one who murdered the sailor in Dundee for purely racial reasons.

  Across the base, Rodgers is recalled with disgust and loathing by all who claimed to have known him. His co-workers, those who frequent the club and the barracks lounge, all speak of him lowly, all saying they knew something wasn’t right. But they didn’t know he was racist, not until his remarks after Hughes was shot. They thought of him as dim and crude, but not a racist with a propensity for the most severe form of violence.

  Rodgers is characterized as a misfit and a loner on the Scottish radio, and Chris has heard as much about him that way as he has on the base. There were countless phone calls during a phone-in show on Radio Tayside about Rodgers, and then the conversations led to Americans in general. Some of the callers’ brogue was so thick that Chris could barely understand them, but their point was clear: the Americans should leave. Especially now.

  Chris overhears a typical conversation about Rodgers. A cluster of young men is congregated at the opposite end of the long table he is seated at. The group is almost done eating. They sit and talk idly, glancing at their watches to see if they have enough time to continue their chatter before their own mid-watches start.

  “He hung out with that fat kid in supply—you know, that goofy one with the buzz-cut that wears Nebraska shirts all the time.” One of the young men says this knowingly, working a toothpick between his teeth.

  Chris feels his heart stop. He recognizes the description instantly, and knows the fat goofy kid is his roommate.

  He now remembers Rodgers. On the few times Chris would return to the room unexpectedly, there his roommate would be with Rodgers, as if they were getting ready to go somewhere. Chris could hear them talking quietly through the closed door, but as soon as he opened it, their conversation would cease and they would leave. That was okay with Chris; he never felt comfortable with his roommate in the room. He felt tense, as if every move he made was irritating, and as if he were being watched with disdain. Hinckley’s stature and almost constant sneer make him intimidating to Chris, as he is much slighter and shorter, and with a personality more curious than confronting. He has always hated confrontation, even as a child. Chris spent hours hiding under his bed with his hands over his ears during the weeks and months when his parents’ marriage became unraveled. He was maybe ten or eleven and didn’t want to be in the middle of the skirmish. He is not necessarily a coward, but he prefers people to get along in his presence.

  Several days after hearing that conversation, Chris has finished his string of watches and he is entering his period of three days off. It is now mid-February. The days are slowly starting to lengthen; a hint of sun is visible in the sky during the afternoon shift change.

  His first full night off is Saturday, and he knows he will be up all night; he slept most of the day, having worked the previous night. His roommate is absent throughout the day, occasionally popping in to quietly grab duffle bags of laundry. Chris barely hears his roommate; he is surprised at the consideration Brad is showing him. He refused to accommodate Chris’s schedule prior to this, making an equal amount of noise whether Chris was asleep or awake.

  He goes to the galley for supper shortly after waking up. It is five in the afternoon and the sun is nearly faded; only a gray light breaks through the dark and cloudy sky. It is a typical meal: spaghetti, garlic bread and glasses of milk with cake for dessert taken from the revolving glass dessert carousel next to the milk dispenser.

  He is quite full and content and looks forward to a cigarette and an evening of reading and laundry as he returns to what is usually an empty room, especially on a Saturday night. Chris sees light coming from the bottom of the door leading into his room and is surprised that he left the light on. He didn’t. He finds his roommate sitting at the desk they share, the chair tilted back on its two rear legs and Brad’s feet on top of the desk sporting dirty and unlaced high-top sneakers with the tongues pulled out and folded over.

  “I thought you might be off tonight,” Brad greets Chris. “Whatcha doin’?”

  Chris is taken aback. His roommate has never asked him a question, never treated him any differently than a piece of furniture.

  Confused, Chris shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  “Cool.” Hinckley reaches into the small refrigerator that came with their room and retrieves a six-pack of canned and stale American beer that he bought in the base commissary. “I figure we’ll have a couple of cans of the good stuff, and then we’ll hit a pub somewhere, and then we’ll have to drink the bloke beer. It won’t taste so bad, though, after we have a couple of these in our guts.”

  Chris is thrilled at the sight of beer; he hasn’t really had any since Pensacola, as there has been no one for him to drink with. The thought of drinking alone somewhat disgusts him, and the prospect of drinking is a pleasant one. Even if it is with someone he is afraid of.

  Chris takes the beer and is indifferent to the poor taste. He drinks the can hurriedly and the warmth from the alcohol works rapidly, spreading across his body. He feels as much at ease as he has in the longest time.

  “Well, look at the thirsty one.” Hinckley laughs and tears another can from a plastic ring and hands it to Chris. This beer, too, he empties quickly, and he now feels lighter than air, an intense joy. The joy comes from the sudden show of friendship from his roommate as much as it does the alcohol.

  “Ya got bloke money?” Hinckley asks Chris. Chris checks his wallet and pulls out his entire paycheck. He has hardly spent any of it except on magazines and newspapers and cigarettes and soda, nor has he thought to save it. He has never had a bank account and he has stared thoughtfully at the branch of the Bank of Scotland on base while walking by.

  “Yeah, I got like twenty-five pounds.”

  “Well, I got about fifteen, so that should be plenty. Where do you want to go?”

  Chris shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t been anywhere yet.”

  “I noticed that. You’ve always been the stay-at-home type. I want to go where we won’t see none of these idiots from the base. I like to go where the blokes go—you know, somewhere off the beaten path.” His reasons for this are twofold: he wants privacy while talking to Chris, and he feels like a bit of a pariah. He is stared at constantly across the base, and he knows people whisper as he walks by. “There goes that friend of that one guy—you know, the racist killer. He was probably in on it, too.”

  They leave their room after the six-pack is a memory and walk across the courtyard to the main gate of the base, their breath visible underneath the floodlights that shine on all the sidewalks and roads of the base. It is perhaps seven in the evening, and there is a queue of cabs outside the base.

  “Brechin,” Hinckley says to the cab driver with the veteran air of someone who has directed many cab drivers.

  The cab driver recognizes Hinckley; he has taken him to the priest’s house in the past. “Aye, where’s your mate? Where is the lad you usually run with?” The driver is referring to Rodgers in a friendly manner, not knowing what Rodgers did. Hinckley gets nervous and looks at Chris, to see his reaction to the cab driver’s question. Chris is too drunk to notice, too drunk for the words to resonate any more than the sound of the radio.

  “He’s gone,” Hinckley says.

  “Aye, back to the States?”

  “Yeah.”

 
The conversation ceases as the cab drives the six or seven miles into the village of Brechin, a pretty town with maybe five thousand souls, providing shopping for the farmers and smaller villages—such as Lutherkirk—that lie in this northeast corner of Scotland’s Tayside region.

  Though it is a small town, it supports perhaps thirty pubs of varied size and pleasantness. The more modern and larger ones are favored by the Americans, as they more resemble bars back in the States.

  Hinckley found some of the off-beaten-path pubs with his friend Lee in their jaunts they took together before they met Father Crowley. They would sit and drink and stare at the girls and look down upon the Scottish people that they saw, complain about the beer and poor choice of food. Hinckley would somehow manage to talk about Nebraska football, and Lee would talk about Waylon Jennings or Johnny Cash or Hank, Jr. and how the South would rise again.

  The cab deposits them in the center of town, per Brad’s instructions. He is not quite sure which pub he wants to go to, so they walk through the windy and damp night air along Brechin’s High Street, which winds in several curves and goes up and down three low hills over several blocks before it reaches either end of the village center. The center contains simple shops: an ironmonger, a chemist, a small appliance store, a bakery, a butcher, a small supermarket, a storefront department store selling everything from records to tennis shoes, and there are a few more specialty shops, all surrounded by pubs.

  As they walk, Chris constantly circles around looking at the faces of the stores and the faces behind the wheels of the cars that drive by. He has never been off base, and he feels silly for not having ventured off sooner.