Crowley empties half his cupful of wine and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “People such as you come to church for one of those reasons that I described. And I would say—most assuredly, as I have studied your face—that you come for fulfillment. Life isn’t leading you where you want to go, and you think there should be something more, something that maybe only God in heaven can offer. Am I right?”
“Maybe,” Chris says, having to clear his throat from the minutes of silence.
“So I thought, so I thought,” Crowley says warmly but triumphantly. “What, may I ask, are you looking for? What of this life do you feel that you have missed? What hasn’t been put upon your plate? I have answers, my good young man. I have answers to some of the great questions of life. Ask, ask away!” Upon this last statement, Crowley pounds his open palm on the top of his desk, hard and loud, so loud that Chris slightly jumps, so hard that Crowley’s hand rings.
Those questions stir so much emotion in Chris. What does he want out of life? What does he feel he’s missed? Images of his mother and father and brother and lonely days on playgrounds and classrooms and cafeterias dance and twirl in his brain.
He starts to cry.
“I don’t know,” he says, trying to turn his head in a way so that the priest doesn’t see his tears, but Crowley does, and the sight of tears rolling down Chris’s pale and pimply cheeks endears him to the young man even more.
Father Crowley is no stranger to tears, and he is not uncomfortable in their presence. The years of dealing with parishioners’ trauma have left the sight of tears and raw emotion as mundane an event as the brushing of teeth. Wisely and tenderly, he pats Chris on the back. “There, there. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve. Please, I insist, take a swallow of wine.” And Chris, doing anything to distract from his tears, takes the bottle and swallows vigorously, emptying almost a third of the nearly full bottle. The wine works almost instantly; his body starts to feel warm inside, and the effects of last night’s lager drinking start to subside.
Chris wipes his eyes and his nose with his shirtsleeve. Crowley puts his hand on his shoulder.
“You know, I’ve heard it said that tears are merely poison leaving the body, so you should feel much better. Cry more if you like.”
Chris shakes his head and he composes himself. Embarrassed, he again wipes his eyes and his nose with his sleeve. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Well, you’re obviously looking for something. There is an emptiness in your heart that causes you pain. However,” Crowley continues, “I don’t think you will find fulfillment inside the stuffy confines of the Church. You’ll learn some songs and some prayers, but I’m afraid, my dear son, that there are no answers here that will satisfy your longings.”
Chris is shocked, and the look he gives the priest indicates as much.
“I know, I know, not the sort of answer that you expect to hear from a priest, not the rah-rah line that other men of faith live by and answer everything with. We live in an imperfect world, my young friend. This is an imperfect Church, and I am truly an imperfect man. The Church leaves me with many unanswered questions, and I know you won’t find what you’re looking for here.”
“I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.” Chris stares at the bottle of wine in hope of an invitation to drink some more. “I guess I came because you were nicer to me than anyone else when I checked in to the base. I was curious, mainly, and I have nothing else to do here. I have no friends and I’ve been too afraid to leave the base very much, though I want to. I want to travel, see Europe, the rest of Scotland, London, maybe. I don’t know if I’m looking for anything particularly. I believe in God, I just don’t know much about him.”
“Your answer tells me exactly what you’re looking for.”
“It does?”
Crowley pours another glass of wine and offers Chris the bottle. Chris takes a drink and waits for the priest’s answer.
“You are looking for the same thing that every intelligent man has been seeking since the dawn of time. You are looking for peace.”
“Peace?” Chris asks, thinking of the word only in the context of international relations or the absence of war.
“Peace of mind, a comforted heart, a clear conscience. Contentment. Satisfaction. You need to know that your life is on the right path, that what you are doing is worthwhile. You need to be loved, and you need to love someone back. That is peace. A calmness in your heart that prevails no matter what calamity befalls you. And peace can only be brought by faith, not by a church, not by a book, not by a set of rules.”
Chris can identify with what Crowley tells him. Peace. He has never thought of his life in relationship to his personal contentment. It seemed more like a long and hopeful journey, with hopes of love and experience awaiting him. He never thought about why he wanted love, or why he wanted experience. He now realizes by Crowley’s illumination that it is all a subconscious distraction to his one true aim. Peace.
Chris nods, his mind and his outlook on life much different than it was just an instant before. “Maybe,” he says, “but if I can’t find the answers in church, where should I go?”
“Most people in your predicament attend church for weeks or months or even years spanning the rest of their lives. They sing the songs and pray the prayers and participate in all the sacraments and they still long for more. So they find other avenues: they drink, they gossip, they overeat, they cheat on their spouses, or whatever. The Church simply misses the mark. Fortunately for you, I am an expert on this matter. As a priest, I too felt the need for peace. The Church wasn’t providing my soul the sustenance it so dearly craved. So I too went seeking.”
“But you’re still a priest?” Chris asks, somewhat confused by Crowley’s repudiation of the Catholic Church.
“Yes, yes, I’m still a priest. I still sing the songs and pray the prayers and perform the sacraments. It’s what I do. I’m not exactly employable in any other profession. There are worse things to do, and the answers I have found sort of lend themselves to the priestly life.”
“What have you found?”
“I turned to history. Everything you need is already written and foretold in the history of the world. These things I will tell you in due time. I have a sort of informal study at my home on Friday or Saturday nights. When might you be off one of those nights? We tend to talk for hours—and I like to drink—so it is best if you don’t have to work the next day, either.”
Chris runs his upcoming schedule through his brain. It will be several weeks before he has another weekend off.
“I can’t,” Chris says, “not for another two weeks.”
“We’ll make it a date, then.” Crowley writes the date down on a piece of paper inside a cluttered desk drawer. “Please, continue to come to church. I would like to see you.” He says this affectionately. Chris notices the softer tone of his voice, and this makes him feel at ease.
Chris stands. “I will.” They shake hands. Chris leaves and Crowley empties the bottle of wine completely, this time not bothering with the triviality of using a glass. He feels very satisfied, very hopeful. He has accomplished in a matter of moments what Hinckley has not yet accomplished after being friends with Chris for over a month, after living in the same room with him for a quarter of a year.
He closes his eyes. He enters a daydream that involves much smoke in the sky and fire on the ground. Out of the fire, he rises like a giant white phoenix.
The next set of day-watches is busy, and Chris and Karen barely have time speak to one another. The day staff is busy scurrying about the operations floor and the printers are spewing messages incessantly and Chris types so much and so fast that his fingers hurt and his wrists start to cramp.
He has things he wants to talk to Karen about, as there is no one else he can talk to. He wants to talk about Hinckley. He wants to talk about his conversation with Father Crowley.
He is anxious about both potential friendships. He knows Hinckley is a drunk racist, but
he seems friendly enough. No one else has been. He is afraid that if he digs into his life too deeply he will find that he had some participation in the acts that Rodgers committed. He doesn’t want to know; he wants to maintain the status quo.
As for Crowley, it isn’t common for an officer to befriend an enlisted man. In fact, it is discouraged if not forbidden. Even though he is still a novice in the Navy, he has heard the term ‘fraternization’ bantered about. Seeing Crowley socially probably would fall under that category.
He needs reassurance from a neutral party, someone to tell him the friends he’s chosen are okay, even though his heart makes him wonder.
The mid-watches finally come and there in the darkened quiet and the relaxed solitude that comes from being in a room alone with someone for several hours at a time, Chris tries to reveal to Karen, slowly and innocently, the things that he’s done, the places he’s been, and the friends he has started to make.
He approaches first the subject of religion. He tells her that he’s been going to church.
He tells her this in the first hour of their watch, her nose already buried into a book, and she looks up at him with a curious glance. “Why?” His statement comes entirely from left field; he has never mentioned religion before, and they have never discussed anything philosophical or lofty.
“I’m not sure,” he replies. “I guess I want to see what God is about. I want to see what the big deal is, but I’m not really sure.”
She gives a slight smile, charmed by his innocent curiosity. “And did you find Him? Do you know more about Him than you did before?”
“No,” he says, looking down at his feet underneath the table they share as a sort of desk. “I sang songs and repeated prayers, but none of it made any sense to me.” He returns his gaze above the table and stares at her without looking in her eyes. “Do you ever go to church?” He asks this question in another attempt to unravel the mystery of his supervisor, to find a detail about her life that he has been forbidden to learn.
Her faint smile disappears. “I used to go to church,” she replies. “Years ago.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Because,” she says in a way that is meant to end the discussion, and she returns to her book.
Chris persists in a fashion unusual to him. He wants to know why she quit going to church. He poses a question in the same forthright manner a young child would. “Because why?”
She looks up from her book, her mouth closed as small and tightly as possible, her forehead wrinkled in a frown. She lets out a deep breath. “I became angry at God.”
This statement intrigues him even more. “Why?”
She is starting to surrender. She even puts her book down. “Because he took something very important away from me.”
“Oh.” The tone of her voice lends itself to no more questions. Her face looks even sadder than usual, and he senses that her constant listlessness has something to do with whatever God has taken from her.
He changes the subject. He tells her of the pub he went to in Brechin and the pub in Aberdeen. He asks her if she knows where the pub in Brechin is.
“No,” she says. “I only live in Brechin. If I have the time or money, I’m usually gone.”
This surprises him. He has always pictured Karen as a sort of homebody, someone who never ventures outdoors unless it’s absolutely necessary. He pictured her in some small two-room flat above a store with a sparsely furnished sitting room with a few trappings of femininity: the odd potted plant, a vase of flowers in the middle of the coffee table surrounded by magazines, and bright pictures on the wall. He sees her sitting on the couch, her nose in a book, just as it is on this night. He sees her alone, wrapped in silence.
“Where do you go?”
“It depends,” she says. “It depends on how much time I have or how much money. Even though I get an extra allowance for living off base, it doesn’t go as far as you think. I have to pay rent every month and I have to buy groceries. In between the days and mids, I may find a castle nearby that I haven’t seen. I love castles. On the longer breaks, after the mids, I may spend a day or two in Edinburgh, or Newcastle or Glasgow, and sometimes I just get in my car and drive, and I see where I wind up.”
She does what Chris had hoped to do before he arrived in Scotland, what he had hoped to do before joining the Navy, and he is jealous.
She continues. “You won’t see the country from a barstool. You won’t get a feel of the people or the land in the bottom of a glass of beer. If you want to sit in a pub, you might as well be back home. Alcohol is the same in the States as it is here.”
“You don’t drink?” Chris asks, assuming everyone drinks.
“No.” She makes a face as if the thought of drinking makes her nauseous. “I think alcohol is a sign of weakness. I think it ruins lives.” She gets a far-away look in her eyes. “I know it ruins lives.” She returns her glance back to her book.
“Oh,” says Chris. “I never thought of drinking that way.”
“Well,” she says, “you’re young and naïve. You’re apt to do what those your age tend to do. But do yourself a favor—go out and see what you can. Before you know it, your time here will be up and you probably will never return. Life won’t present this opportunity again.” She puts her book face-down on the table, spread open to mark her place. “Life is relentless,” she continues. “If you don’t take care of the moment, it doesn’t return, and time keeps moving. We grow older and start to recall the past with regret. Don’t let that happen to you.”
He nods his head.
“In fact,” she says, “on these next days off, I’ll take you somewhere. You can chip in for gas and we’ll find a castle, maybe a city. Edinburgh for the day wouldn’t be bad. I haven’t gone to Inverness yet, been meaning to. I don’t know. We’ll see what the day brings.”
Chris is excited. “Really? You’ll hang out with me?”
She smiles, albeit slightly.
“Sure,” she says, returning to her book. The conversation ceases until the next night, the next mid-watch, when they decide where to go.
March 10, 1986
Dear Wife,
I have been in Scotland now for almost three months and at first I was disappointed, all I did was sit around the barracks or go to work and I wouldn’t leave the base. I couldn’t and didn’t make any friends. Do you have a lot of friends? I never have (I think I told you that already). I don’t know why. I’m not a jerk. My brother has a lot of friends—he used to anyway—and he’s a jerk. He borrows money without paying it back, he says mean things and he uses people. Still, he has a lot of friends. The most popular kids in school were usually the most obnoxious. I don’t get it. I try to be nice.
Anyway, I’m starting to do more things now. I’ve been hanging out with my roommate more. He was mean to me at first, kind of inconsiderate. He doesn’t seem to have many friends either. He had one friend, but he killed himself. A complicated story that I don’t like to think about too much. I may explain later.
I have gone to church a couple of times. I’ve gone to the Catholic Mass here on base. I was baptized Catholic but we never really went to church as a family. There is a lot I don’t understand. I don’t know if I’m going to church to find God or to maybe meet friends. I may find you there, but I don’t know.
I try to pray, I hear that’s important, but I don’t know how you’re supposed to do it. I think you just close your eyes and talk to God in your brain, tell him what you need. But doesn’t He already know everything?
The priest after Mass talked to me, trying to find out what I was doing there. He’s very nice, as nice as anyone has been to me here. I trust him. He told me church wasn’t for everybody, and to basically not take it so seriously. Very confusing. If a priest doubts what he’s teaching then there must be something wrong. Maybe there is no God. They didn’t teach religion in my school, but I think they should have. This world doesn’t always make sense to me.
I’m going on a
trip with my supervisor. She is going to show me some castles. I didn’t know there really were castles. I thought they were just from fairy tales or the movies. She says there are a lot of them. All over the country. She too is nice, but she doesn’t always seem that way. She is very quiet and doesn’t always talk, so I don’t know if she is angry with me, or just sad. She seems sad, like something terrible has happened to her that she can’t get over. She’s older, I think she said she was in her early thirties, and she used to be a teacher, a history teacher. Why would someone who was once a teacher become an enlisted person in the Navy? I would think maybe an officer, but not enlisted. It doesn’t add up. Maybe I will write more later, but I haven’t had much to write about, just hanging out in my room and going to work. Work is pretty cool, but sometimes there is nothing to do and it can be real boring. It’s classified, what I do, so I can’t really tell you. The communists might see this, you know, the Russians. If I tell anyone what I do that doesn’t have a clearance I go to military prison. They say it is in Leavenworth, Kansas. I want to travel but Kansas is one place I don’t want to see.
One more thing I want to tell you about me. I read a lot. Horror and war stories mostly, anything to take me away. Do you read? I imagine if you’re going to be married to me than you probably do. But if you don’t then that’s okay too.
Take care, and until we meet.
Chris
Chris and Karen agree to meet outside the base gate early in the afternoon following their last mid-watch. The passing of the hours of the morning gives them enough time for minimal sleep without wasting the day.
The day is unusually warm and the sky is a cloudless and brilliant blue as Chris waits outside the gate minus his coat, smoking a cigarette with his pale face turned towards the sky, his skin absorbing the warmth of the sun.
Karen pulls up in her car that he has already seen parked outside of their work site, a late 1970s Austin Mini, brown body, beige top. The car itself is no taller than the base of Chris’s sternum. He gets in, surprised at how low to the ground he is sitting, as if his rear-end will feel every bump in the road.
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