The Trinity

by David LaBounty

  “So I didn’t come around. I invited them to the wedding, which of course was very simple, as I had grown up expecting my family to pay for it, and they didn’t.”

  “How did Henry’s family treat you?” Chris interrupts.

  “They were nice to me. They weren’t thrilled with the idea of their son marrying a white girl, but they loved their son more than they hated my race, and they were there for everything, reaffirming my conviction at the arrogance of my own race. For a while, I was ashamed to be white.

  “Whenever we went anywhere together, it would be white people, especially white men, who would point at us and shake their heads, as if we were committing some sort of terrible sin. Their disapproval just strengthened my resolve.

  “Henry’s family disappeared from my life after the funeral. My family remained missing. I felt all alone surrounded by the people I had loved growing up; they lived just minutes away. That’s why I joined the Navy, to get away from all that.

  “I think Henry’s family disappeared because they blamed me for the accident, as I blame myself. I tried reaching out to them, and they took my phone calls from the hospital, but they never came to see me, never reached out to me in the days and weeks afterward as I sat and cried and screamed in our apartment, surrounded by Henry’s and the babies’ things.

  “I left the apartment the way it was. I up and left and joined the Navy, leaving everything behind. I went to boot camp like you, only the clothes on my back and maybe fifty dollars in my wallet.

  “So, as you can imagine, I have no love for racists. Racism is ignorance. Racism is a reflection of the inadequacy one has in one’s own identity. Racism keeps our society polarized, never moving forward. One race is always worried about what the other race is doing while other aspects of our culture and society are ignored. The schools deteriorate; I should know. Our country would be so much better off, economically and socially, if racism were a part of the past and not the present. Blacks in America have been denied so much for so long, and most of them have to go to poorer schools, which means no college, which means a low paying job, which in turn leads to their own children growing up in the same circumstances. It’s a type of society unique to America. Race, for the most part, doesn’t have stigmas attached to it in the rest of the world. It’s the devil’s work, I’m sure, and it all is born in ignorance and hate, and nothing good has ever come from it. Nothing. All because of racism there was a civil war that left nearly a million men dead in gruesome battle, causing wounds in our country that never really healed, and an assassination that left a most brilliant and peaceful man dead—Dr. King—who was starting to lead our country out if its hateful slumber. Then he got murdered in cold blood by a coward. And now, right in front of me, I have some idiot following an insane priest, killing Jewish people and god knows who else in a country that doesn’t even belong to us.”

  Chris is irritated being called an idiot, but it’s true. He feels more connected now to Karen than he ever has. He has found a common thread. They are both adrift in this world without the anchor of a family, without the anchor of a place that they can call home. More significant still, he knows her secret, and he realizes every hardship he has ever encountered in his brief life is quite trivial in comparison.

  It’s one thing to lose a parent to lust or selfishness (his mother), or slothful indifference (his father), but for a mother to lose a child is quite terrible. Even Chris can feel that.

  “Now, as for your predicament,” Karen continues after taking a deep breath, “we have no choice. We must let the master-at-arms know, probably Chief Lassiter, and god knows who else. You need to confront Father Crowley. Tell him you’re done.” Her sorrow has turned to anger, and Chris sees crimson splash over her ever-pale face, as if she has a sense of purpose that she hasn’t realized before.

  Chris explains his fear of confronting the priest. He fears for his own safety, fears a man who can murder without the slightest remorse.

  “I realize that,” she says, “but you need to sever ties any way you can. You probably are already in trouble, at least a little bit, and the sooner you distance yourself from this mess, the better off you are. I understand trying to fit in, and feeling like an outsider. I get all that, but the Navy might see it different. You have to toughen up and take responsibility for your actions.”

  Chris is comforted, though fearful. He doesn’t feel as alone. Sharing his dilemma with someone else, someone he can trust, removes his burden.

  His feelings of attraction for Karen have returned. Her display of emotions has touched him. He knows they are alike in many ways.

  “Do you have a home of record?” he asks, after they have both sat in thought quietly for just a moment, privately pondering Chris’s situation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, for your service record. A home of record back in the States.”

  She understands the nature of his question. “My home of record is wherever I happen to be.”

  “Me too,” he says, smiling only slightly.

  They conclude their mid-watch in a flurry of busyness, dealing with the tremendous pile of messages that have gathered at their feet.

  They both agree to deal with Chris’s situation that morning, when the mid-watch is done and the day staff of the base wanders in.

  Karen will wait for Chief Lassiter and the ensign, and tell them what she knows.

  Chris will make his way to the chapel and wait for Father Crowley.

  Chris goes to the galley at the end of his watch and tries to eat breakfast. His stomach is hungry, but his nerves are ablaze and the food is hard to put down. He sits alone and knows he will be returning to that old kind of life again, a friendless existence.

  Karen called him a racist, a word he has associated with a certain ugliness ever since his childhood. He never thought of himself in that light before.

  A racist.

  It’s a label that he knows doesn’t suit him. There are other labels that suit him better, and he shifts these inside his mind as he sits alone at the end of a long table. Timid? Yes. A compliant lackey? Absolutely.

  He is not one with a penchant for hate, just a desire for love and acceptance.

  He is also disturbed by Karen’s history, a history more tragic than his own, more tragic than the history he is currently making. If she can persevere after what she has gone through, then so can he.

  As he leaves the galley, he spies Brad walking in through the front door, greedily grabbing his tray and cutlery. Chris has taken perhaps two bites of his scrambled eggs, ignoring the rest of his plate.

  He goes to his room and waits for the red digits of his alarm clock to read 08:00. That’s when Crowley should be at the chapel. He tries to compose a speech in his mind, responses to Crowley’s possible questions and statements. His anxiety heightens and he runs to the bathroom.

  He vomits, regurgitating the contents of his nearly empty stomach.

  He walks to the chapel as soon as the clock arrives at eight. He thinks about not going at all, about ignoring the priest altogether, and to just let Karen get things moving.

  As he walks, he feels like a prisoner on death row, like a dead man taking his last steps. He prays, even though he has never prayed before. He prays with a furrowed brow, concentrating on his thoughts, hoping his plea for help makes its way to heaven.

  Not to Valhalla.

  He walks into the chapel and finds that Crowley is not alone. Crowley and Chaplain Lambert are talking just outside their office doors. Lambert looks irritated as Chris walks in. Crowley smiles.

  “Father, I need to talk to you privately,” says Chris in a way that betrays his fear and exasperation.

  “Certainly, certainly. Come into my office.” Crowley is glad to get away from his supervisor, who had been chastising him for the less than satisfactory state of his khaki uniform. Crowley had spent the previous evening in the company of too much wine and this morning had to grab a uniform from the bottom of his closet. />
  “Well, well, it is a surprise to see you here at this time of day, on this day of the week. It is certainly welcome, like a breath of fresh air.”

  “I can’t do it, Father.” Chris is direct. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I can’t come to our meetings anymore. I can’t light a synagogue on fire. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

  Chris says all this without looking at the priest. He stares at the tops of his polished boots. He feet tap nervously.

  If he were looking at the priest, he would see a trembling of the lips, a face rapidly going from pale to scarlet, a jaw clenching, and a grinding of the teeth.

  Chris waits for a response but hears nothing but Crowley tapping his fingers on the desk. After a span of silence, Chris looks up at the priest.

  Crowley’s face softens and his color returns to normal just as Chris’s eyes meet his.

  He has developed a strategy, a way to deal with this insubordination. The Trinity must remain intact no matter what, and he will see that it does.

  “There, there,” he says, resting his hand on Chris’s knee and leaving it there. Chris’s gaze returns to his feet, which are still tapping, but not as quickly.

  “We can scale things back a notch,” continues the priest. “I certainly wouldn’t want you to do anything that you are not comfortable with. Not everyone has the Viking spirit for war. Some of us are dreamers and thinkers. Perhaps that’s what you are, and that’s important, too. We can stop. It’s all for one, or it’s none at all, and that’s okay, too.”

  Relieved, Chris sniffles and tells the priest how he appreciates going to his house, relaxing and drinking and how his friendship has been important in his life—and prior to the events at the synagogues—the best thing that ever happened to him.

  “Well, how about we just do that, then?” replies the priest. “We’ll keep things simple. I can deal with the enemy later; they’re not going anywhere. You are off this Friday, aren’t you?”

  Chris nods in affirmation.

  “Good. Why don’t you come over, and we’ll just drink and relax and we’ll put all this behind us?”

  Against his better judgment, Chris agrees to go to the priest’s house Friday, early in the evening. The back of his mind knows this may change. There will be a reaction to Karen’s report to Chief Lassiter, and he is still fearful of that result.

  But somehow he feels comfortable again here in the company of the priest, as if he is in a place that is very safe. The priest’s confident demeanor serves as a tonic for his shattered nerves.

  Not as fearful, he shakes the priest’s hand and returns to his room, where he sleeps soundly for the first time in several days.

  When Chris leaves, the priest’s face again turns red. He has issued a deadline to the Jews of Scotland, and it expires in exactly ten days. They will pay for ignoring that deadline. Chris or no Chris.

  At lunchtime, Crowley goes to the base exchange and purchases a video camera on in-store credit, his rank giving him a generous credit limit.

  He returns to his office and reads the instructions. He needs to be proficient in the use of the camera by Friday.

  He closes the door to his office and calls the supply department. Cloaking his voice, he asks for Seaman Hinckley.

  Karen waits for Chief Lassiter. She sits blankly at his desk and waits nearly an hour for him to arrive for work.

  This night has been emotional. She has talked about things that she finds unpleasant to even think about, but somehow her soul feels rinsed; the weight of memory isn’t quite as heavy as it was before.

  Still, she is far from smiling.

  The chief arrives and finds Karen at his desk. He is irritable, as his mind and body have yet to receive the necessary rush of caffeine.

  “I need to talk.”

  “Okay, but can you wait just one minute?” He grabs a mug off of his desk, a stained white mug with an image of a gold anchor, the symbol of the rank of Chief Petty Officer, his name scripted underneath the anchor. He then finds the coffee mess in the next room, no larger than a closet, and returns, steaming mug in one hand, a donut in the other.

  He sits down, and Karen tells him as thoroughly and briefly as she can the dilemma that Chris now faces.

  She makes no mention of her own history, though it is there somewhere in the recesses of her service record.

  Chief Lassiter listens with rapt attention. The tale holds his interest like a good movie or novel. And that’s what he thinks it is, a fictional tale, though he doesn’t relay that impression to Karen. Even though he was aware of Rodgers’s suicide, the details are too wildly fantastic to possibly be true. A priest firebombing synagogues? A Navy chaplain trying to establish some white, Nordic cult? No way. He thinks that perhaps Seaman Fairbanks has read a few too many of the paperback novels available at the base bookstore. With a bit of duty-bound irritation, he tells Karen that he will pass the information on. He dismisses her, tells her to get a good day’s sleep and be ready for the upcoming mid-watch.

  She walks out, concerned about what tempest will now be set in motion.

  Chief Lassiter tells the young division officer, the same militant ensign who first saw Chris on his arrival at RAF Lutherkirk. The chief relays Chris’s account as though it is a work of fiction, and he tells it with a bit of mirth and laughter. The ensign, because of the chief’s description, believes it to be fiction, too, and tells the chief to contact the base master-at-arms.

  “There’s no reason to take this further up the chain. Let the base police take care of it. We would be wasting everyone else’s time and energy,” the ensign tells the chief, proud of his own decisiveness, proud of his ability to seemingly think on his feet.

  Chief Lassiter finishes a few more cups of coffee and drives down to the quarterdeck to find Chief Wilson, the base master-at-arms, head of the four-man police department. The base police are a distinctive group, allowed to carry handguns in a country whose own police are forbidden to carry such things. Their uniform is different, too; they wear camouflage gear, not unlike the Army or Marines, instead of the dungaree or dark blue or khaki uniform that the rest of the base is required to wear.

  Chief Lassiter tells Chief Wilson the story, again with the same amount of mirth and laughter, as if the whole thing is amusing, better suited to be told over a couple of beers at the Chiefs and Officers Club.

  Chief Wilson smiles and nods. He doesn’t tell Chief Lassiter that the priest has been cast in a suspicious light before. What’s the point? The priest had been investigated before and was cleared of any wrongdoing.

  He takes a few notes, mainly for show, and tells Chief Lassiter that yes, this is probably too bizarre to be true, but he will look into it.

  Wilson lets out a big sigh as Chief Lassiter leaves. He can taste his upcoming retirement and doesn’t want to be bothered by anything cumbersome; he wants his remaining days in the Navy to be as placid as a frozen lake.

  He does feel that the story is a bit far-flung, too far-flung to be true. He recalls being puzzled at the priest’s involvement in the suicide of Lee Rodgers, and his forehead scrunches as he sits at his desk, recalling those days, those turbulent days interrupting the idyllic life of RAF Lutherkirk.

  He dons his camouflage hat and hops into a blue Chevrolet, not unlike a police car found in the States, the car even possessing a left-sided steering wheel. He drives the quarter mile to the chapel and walks into the office of Chaplain Crowley.

  The priest is sitting calmly at his desk, apparently doing nothing. Chief Wilson sees no papers on his desk or any other sign of activity.

  Just Father Crowley sitting there in an unkempt khaki uniform underneath the navy blue cardigan that only officers are allowed to wear. The shoulders of the sweater are covered in dandruff and renegade hair. Chief Wilson surveys the uniform crossly, but he doesn’t confront an officer and he doesn’t confront a man of the cloth.

  Crowley smiles upon seeing Chief Wilson. He instantly recognizes and recalls the face and th
e uniform.

  On the outside, Crowley appears calm and carefree. On the inside, he is cringing, his heart beating so fast that he can feel its tremors in his throat. His temples start to pulse.

  “Good morning, Chief, good morning. What brings you here to our Father’s house?”

  “Nothing, really. I just want to make sure that everything is okay with you. Some things have been mentioned about some extracurricular activities of yours, and, you know, it’s all kind of related to the suicide of that pathetic young seaman a few months back. I was just wonderin’ if anything has come up because of that.”

  “No, no,” replies Crowley with an unbroken smile. He is sure that the obese Dundee inspector has contacted the base. He burns with anger at the thought.

  “That’s kind of what I thought. I’ll leave you to your prayers.” Chief Wilson assumes that he had interrupted Crowley praying, as there would be no other explanation for him sitting at his desk so calmly.

  Crowley hasn’t been praying. He has been inside his current favorite daydream, a daydream full of fire and smoke and the suffocated coughs of Jewish men, women and children. He sees himself standing outside the Aberdeen synagogue, long enough to watch the building collapse as it weakens in flames. He joins hands with Chris and Brad and they raise them in triumph.

  “Anytime, anytime,” replies Crowley, angry with the Tayside Police, not suspecting Chris of divulging any of their privileged information.

  Chris awakens late in the afternoon. His sleep was deep and dreamless, and he is awake a full minute before he can remember the events of last night and of this morning.

  He somehow expects the world to be different as he peers behind a drawn shade and sees only the damp and empty courtyard of the barracks.

  Hinckley enters the room a bit earlier than normal and rather abruptly, almost slamming the door open as he comes in.

  Chris is nervous. He doesn’t know what the priest has told Brad. He is afraid Brad may antagonize him.