Nods and uh-huhs from inside the car.
“Well, we will have an arsenal of those, at least two bagfuls, and we will simply light them and throw them inside. We will fill them with gasoline and oil. The gasoline will burn, and the oil will allow the fire to stick wherever our bottles are thrown. Chris, you will have to do the throwing, because Brad will be holding Thor’s hammer, to deal with any sort of insurrection. We will also cover the doorways in gasoline, and will light those as we leave, so no one can get out. The building is old. The interior is made of wood and I am sure the pews are, too. If we do this right, the building will ignite rather quickly.”
His plan is now clear in Chris’s mind. He plans to burn people alive.
“What is Thor’s hammer, Father?” Brad asks.
“Do you know who Thor is?”
Brad nods. Hesitant, he says, “Yes.” He recalls a cartoon show from his youth and Crowley’s occasional vague reference to the Norse gods.
“Thor is the son of Odin, a mighty god indeed. He rules the thunder, the lightning, and the rain. His hammer is a powerful weapon. He used to fight and slay giants in the ancient days, and he carries it now, in Valhalla, and returns to Earth occasionally to mete out justice as he sees fit.
“I have my own version of Thor’s hammer that I’ve recently acquired. I have been waiting to show you, until the time was right. I ordered it through the mail, from the back of a mercenary magazine. It’s a metal club with a five-pound metal ball with spikes on the end. I knew it was Thor’s hammer the first time I saw it. It is, indeed, beautiful. As you are the largest and strongest among us, I thought it would be best for you to handle it. You will destroy anyone—man, woman or child—who tries to leave the synagogue or gets in our way.”
“Not a problem, Father,” says Brad, proud of himself, proud to be a mortal version of Thor, relishing the opportunity to slay the enemy.
Crowley deposits Brad and Chris right outside the gate of the base, and they walk back to their room. Brad is swinging an imaginary club through the air, making noises with his mouth, as if he is making contact with human flesh. His pantomime becomes quite animated. Chris walks alongside, silent, his eyes seeing only the ground.
“It is going to be awesome, Chris. People are going to hear of us around the world.”
They enter their room and Chris immediately finds the bathroom.
He vomits, emptying his stomach and then some.
Chris spends the time off between the day and mid-watches with little or no sleep, while trying to avoid Brad as much as possible. He hides in the base library when it is open, mindlessly reading magazines. He even goes to the gym and tries to exercise, lifting weights among the larger and more athletic sailors but not remaining for too long, as he again feels awkward. He is unsure of how to exercise and self-conscious of his un-athletic form.
However, he can’t avoid Brad in the evening, as he has to return to his room. To avoid conversation, he feigns sleep, the earpieces of his Walkman glued to his ears. Radio Luxembourg occupies these evenings, with European popular music that he finds puzzling but interesting and mildly distracting. Distraction is welcome, anything that takes his mind away from Crowley and fire and war.
He knows he can’t go through with any plans that involve murder. At first, he was able to convince himself that the Jews and the blacks were all evil and inferior to his own race, and he felt superior because of that. Crowley managed to make him feel like he had some sort of special value, even though it was based solely on the color of his skin.
The priest’s venom has changed all that, and he now knows what is truly evil. The barbaric images of people running to avoid flames and smoke, especially women and children, are too horrific for him to keep in his mind for very long.
Even more horrific is the imagined sight of Brad clubbing the frightened masses, clubbing them to a bloody and charred submission, with the beastly device coined by Crowley as Thor’s hammer.
His mind while awake—with the irregular rhythms of Radio Luxembourg reverberating in his head—scrambles for a solution.
He could hide and avoid the priest, staying away from his house and from the chapel. He doubts the priest has been granted a security clearance, and doubts he has access to his worksite.
Hinckley—because of his roommate status—is a permanent fixture in Chris’s life, as permanent as a layer of skin.
That leaves him with no other option but to confront the priest, to tell him he’s out, out of the Trinity, and sorry, but he hopes there’s no hard feelings.
Chris knows this approach is not possible. He bears too many of the priest’s secrets, the graffiti and fire and murder that he has left in his wake. There is no way the priest will let Chris just walk away.
He, too, could die of an apparent suicide.
He thinks about running away from the base and trying to immerse himself into the Scottish countryside. Maybe he could find a job or something and become as anonymous as the countless sheep that dot the hills just underneath the nearly perpetual gray sky.
Not possible. He has no place to live, and he doesn’t see Scottish society putting up with a vagrant American, wandering from village to village seeking food and shelter.
He thinks briefly about reaching out to his family, maybe his father, but this idea is also rejected. He doubts his father would even open a letter from him.
He has no address for his mother.
That leaves him with one option. The Navy has always stressed using the chain of command. One should always go to their direct supervisor with any questions or concerns, and if that supervisor feels it is necessary, they can forward the information further up the chain.
That leaves him Karen, and he knows this is the best option of all. She seems to emanate a certain sort of serene wisdom, and he knows though she may be shocked with what he reveals to her, she may offer a solution.
His first mid-watch comes. Bleary-eyed from a lack of sleep, shaking from an overindulgence of cola and stress, he enters the building with trepidation and hope. He is nervous about what he has to tell Karen. The details are unpleasant to think about, let alone to explain with words.
He is also hopeful. Something will happen because of this. His career in the Navy may be over, but that is better than the alternative: having a hand in mass murder.
He arrives for his watch and takes the pass-down from the outgoing seaman. There has been a bit of activity in the Mediterranean and a flurry in the Arctic Ocean as an American destroyer has been shadowing a Soviet sub. All part of the endless charade of cat-and-mouse that is part of this Cold War.
Normally, Chris would be excited by such details, the flurry of activity stirring his sense of duty and patriotism. But not on this night. On this night, he would prefer the oceans and seas surrounding Europe to be devoid of any military activity.
Karen takes her pass-down from the outgoing supervisor, another Petty Officer Second Class like herself. They chat idly for a while, longer than Chris would like. He wants to get his confession and his plea for help delivered as soon as possible, and he needs to wait until all ears have left the room, leaving just Karen and himself.
He enters his initials in the logbook, and the printer starts to buzz with the traffic of the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic. He ignores the printer as the scrolling paper piles up on the floor. Karen stares at him as her peer leaves the room. Chris has been distant lately, she realizes, but still dutiful.
“Are you going to get that?” she asks, pointing at the paper piled on the floor. “There’s stuff going on. You need to pass it along.”
“I need to tell you something,” he says, tearing off the paper from the printer and scooping the pile off the floor, placing the heap of paper on top of the table that serves as a common desk.
“I’m guessing this is important, seeing how you’re putting the welfare of the Atlantic Fleet at stake,” she says, pointing at the pile of messages on top of the table.
“It is.” He
draws a deep breath. He tells her everything, slowly at first. The speed of his words increases. He tells her everything, from the beginning, the first meeting with Crowley at the chapel, concluding with a breathless account of Crowley’s plan to ignite the Jews. He deliberately leaves no fact out; he even relays the embarrassing tale of the Aberdeen prostitutes.
Slowly, she digests the information, information that takes nearly half an hour to relate, and longer to understand.
And she does understand. She understands the loneliness that Chris feels. She understands the desperation that led him to the unholy alliance with the priest and Brad. It is no fun wandering through life without having someone to share it with, male or female.
Everyone needs friends. Everyone needs lovers… Even though friends and lovers come with a price.
Chris has had to pay a price that is steep, a price that is climbing still.
There are some things that she needs to explain to him. She is a woman of the world, so to speak, her life a myriad of experiences more varied and tragic than Chris has previously imagined. Her existence has been wrought with pitfalls, several minor and one very major, and these tragedies give her that mysterious air. These tragedies explain the melancholy that perpetually shrouds her countenance, leading to her enigmatic presence that has long confounded Chris.
This enigma, this melancholy, she feels compelled to explain.
“So, you think you hate blacks and Jews, do you?” she asks Chris upon the conclusion of his confession.
“Well, I don’t know. I thought at first I did, because of what Father Crowley said, but deep down, if I take away what he’s told me, then no, I have no reason to hate blacks or Jewish people or anyone else.”
“That’s right. You have absolutely no reason to hate anyone based on race or religion.” She sighs, takes a deep breath, as she readies her body, her mind, to tell Chris the tragedy of her life. Not for a number of years has she revealed herself to anyone.
“You know how I said I was married once?”
Chris nods slowly. “Yes, you did mention that. I figured you got divorced.”
She shakes her head. “No. I’m not divorced. We were very much in love. We met in college, and got married right after I got my teaching certificate. He was in law school, and I was the breadwinner, teaching while he went to school. We also had twin babies, a boy and a girl. They would be eight now. Marc and Michele.
“We were married for just about three years when it happened. My husband and I, along with the twins, who were just over a year old, went out to dinner at a fairly nice restaurant in Silver Spring, near where we lived. We were celebrating. My husband had just finished law school, and our possibilities were endless. He had finished near the top of his class, and we knew it was just a matter of time before we left our apartment and would be able to afford a house and a new car.
“It was hard on us, me the only one working, paying for law school and babies. We did without a lot of things, but we didn’t care. We were happy, very, very happy. We were happy being poor, and our potential for a wonderful life was boundless. So when he finished school, we went out to eat, something we never did. We lived on macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for weeks at a time, trying to feed the twins as best as we could.
“Dinner was wonderful. The kids sat in highchairs and ate, smiling all the while, and my husband and I had a couple of drinks. He had more than I did. We were so happy.
We talked and laughed and I remember thinking that it was the most wonderful night of my life.
“Until we went home.”
She now removes her glasses and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She pulls out a tissue, wipes her nose and blows and rubs it so hard that Chris notices the normally pale tip of her nose is now a temporary shade of scarlet.
“We both had a few drinks. We weren’t accustomed to drinking. Not since our college days had we really drunk more than a glass of wine. I think maybe that night we split almost a whole bottle. Henry drank most of it.
“That’s why I drove home, because he drank more. Every day, every moment since then, I wish we’d taken a cab.
“I felt a little tipsy when we left, you know, relaxed and sort of giddy. I wasn’t drunk, but maybe a little too relaxed, too relaxed and happy, very, very happy.”
She stands up and removes her utility jacket, something Chris has never seen her do, exposing her blue dungaree shirt, obviously one or two sizes too big. Chris guesses correctly that she has lost weight since she first purchased the shirt. He can barely make out her arms in the sleeves, and her neck appears lost in the vast collar.
“It was still daylight when we left the restaurant, but it was fading fast. The sun was setting and the clouds were almost bright red. It’s funny, I never notice the sky, but I remember it that evening. It was beautiful in a surreal sort of way. The red clouds made the blue of the sky a pale shade of pink, as if God put a piece of cellophane over the sun.
“We had only a few miles to drive. Henry loaded the babies into the back of our old ’71 Mercury, which he had in and out of the shop since we bought it a few years before. We couldn’t afford a newer car, though I would have liked one. It was white and rusty and huge, and I felt so small behind the wheel, but I also felt safe, being inside such a big car.
“We laughed all the way home, and Henry talked about the Maryland bar exam, how hard it was going to be, and what sort of work he was going to do. He wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. That was his dream. He didn’t want to be a lawyer to be rich. He wanted to provide well for his family, but he wasn’t greedy. He wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives. He made a difference in mine.
“I can remember the number of traffic lights between our house and the restaurant. Five. I remember hitting every single one red, having to stop but not minding at all, as we were in no hurry. Except for the last light. I thought it was green.
“But it was red.”
Now there are tears streaming from her eyes, and she is breathing hard, almost in cadence with the scrolling printer, which continually feeds paper to the floor.
“There wasn’t another car stopped there, so I guess, I don’t know, I must have assumed the light was green. I could see our apartment building just a block away, on the left hand side, and I was already checking the oncoming traffic, to see how quickly I could turn into our parking lot. I went through the light and almost made it through the intersection, except a gravel truck demolished the car and the only three people in the world that I cared about, Henry and my two babies.
“The truck hit the car so hard that it spun like a crushed top in the middle of the intersection, and somehow I fell through the door, which popped open, and I landed on the asphalt. I passed out. I didn’t wake up until later that night, in a hospital bed in the emergency room of the same hospital in Silver Spring where Marc and Michele were born.
“I knew, when I woke up, that the world was blacker than I last remembered, and I also knew, as I still know today, that it was all my fault. It is a heavy burden, though it gets lighter every day. The years pass and memories fade and I get to where in my mind I forget what Henry looked like, and how sweet my babies were, but I have pictures, trapped in an album under my bed, and I drag it out now and then and sit down and cry as I remember them. I just don’t remember how they looked, but how they smelled, how the babies felt as I held them in my arms, how I felt when Henry held me in his arms.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this, how it’s relevant to your situation. It is and it isn’t. Henry was black. I guess our society would say my babies were black, even though they were half-white, and I never realized how ugly our American way of life is until Henry and I first started dating, and I brought him home to meet my parents.
“It was Thanksgiving. We were in our junior year at the University of Maryland. I grew up in Rockville, and Henry was from Washington, D.C., not even half an hour away. We were both going to meet our respective families then.
Dinner at my house, pumpkin pie at his.
“I never thought Henry’s color would be a concern with my family. I heard my father make snide comments about blacks before, you know, the same things your father probably said, how black neighborhoods aren’t safe, how they commit crimes more than white people do, and how they shouldn’t be trusted. I didn’t think he meant anything by it, and it obviously didn’t plant any kind of racist seed in me.
“So I thought when I brought Henry to my family’s house, there would be no problem. I thought since he was with me and was important to me, he would be welcome, no matter what. That’s how strong I thought my family’s love was. I wasn’t even nervous. I didn’t think it would be an issue.
“Henry didn’t even get his coat off. My father made a scene. He said no niggers were allowed in his house, and he’d be damned if his daughter was going to date one. I had never heard him use the word ‘nigger’ before. It shocked me, but it embarrassed me more than anything. As Henry walked out of the house, my father tried to pull me in, grabbing my coat as I stood in the doorway. I wanted nothing to do with him, and I still don’t. That was the last time I spoke with my father. A year later, we were married, and then the babies and then the funeral, and I never saw hide nor hair of my father. My mother called when they died, but she wouldn’t come over. She said my father was too upset, still, and she didn’t want to upset him more. She took my father’s side, and ignored the needs of her daughter. Having been a mother, it is unfathomable to me how a mother could ignore her children. I think it is instinctive to care for and protect your children first, and then worry about spouses and the rest of your family.”
Chris can relate. He feels a chill as Karen speaks of her disappointment with her mother.
“I had tried to call my mother, right after that Thanksgiving so many years ago. She asked me if I was still seeing my Negro friend. I said, yes, of course. Well, you really shouldn’t come around then, your father is very upset, she said.
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