The Trinity

by David LaBounty

The priest did call Brad, only to tell him to be sure to come over this Friday evening, and that Chris needed a bit more convincing. That was all.

  “I hear you talked to Father today,” says Brad, flipping on the light switch.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, he didn’t tell me much about it. He says we’ll all talk Friday. That’s cool. I’m looking forward to relaxin’ and kickin’ back a few beers and not have to go anywhere. You got a cigarette?”

  Chris fishes a fresh pack from a carton in his locker and gives the whole pack to Brad.

  Brad opens the pack and lights a cigarette without thanking Chris.

  Chris readies himself for work, showering quickly and getting dressed.

  He hopes to find Brad gone when he exits the bathroom, but there he is, sitting on his bed, surrounded by a cloud of smoke.

  “You wanna eat?” he asks Chris.

  Chris shrugs his shoulders and grabs his coat.

  They eat. Chris is sullen, and Brad talks incessantly.

  “It will be something, you know, when we do it,” says Brad. “We’ll be famous. If you ain’t white, you’ll be afraid to come to Scotland, that’s for shit-sure.”

  Chris spins his neck to make sure no one can hear Brad’s boasting. As usual, no one in the half-full galley pays any attention to them. No one is interested in what he or Brad has to say. They are just part of the galley’s landscape, no different than a table or a chair.

  “I bet,” Brad continues, “after we do what we’re gonna do, people will hear of it around the world. They’ll know about it everywhere. Nebraska, Detroit, Israel, heck, probably even Russia.”

  Chris realizes that Father Crowley has not told Brad everything, that he hasn’t learned of his desire to abstain from the group’s violent activity.

  He doesn’t fill him in. Brad thinks Chris is still a part of the fold.

  Chris enters his building for the mid-watch, anxious to hear the result of Karen’s conversation with Chief Lassiter.

  Chris pictures a snowball rolling from the top of a mountain, turning into an avalanche.

  He somehow expects the watch floor to be covered in snow, but it isn’t. He takes his pass-down from the departing seaman. The night promises to be busy, which Chris is excited about. On this night, his mind is elsewhere. Although he was comforted by the priest’s reassuring words this morning, he is still haunted by the specter of a Father Crowley angered by his reluctance to continue their racial and religious war. A man of a sort of god capable of murder with his bare hands.

  He is dreading Friday. He hopes the evening will be innocent, the way he envisioned his relationship with the priest would transpire, merely a place to go off base, to drink and relax and enjoy semi-intelligent conversation without any sort of social pressure. No need to worry about being without a girlfriend in the company of a priest or to be accepted by the larger social circles. It was okay to be a misfit and still be a friend of the priest. Chris liked that.

  Chris asks Karen how her talk with Chief Lassiter went as soon as the outgoing watch leaves the work space.

  “Fine,” she says numbly. She slept little during the day. Her adrenaline was raised by her confession to Chris, as if she had just completed a vigorous exercise, causing her to be too wound up to relax.

  “Did he say anything?” Chris asks, concerned about his own culpability.

  “No. I’m going to wait for him in the morning and see what happened. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Chris tells her about his conversation with Father Crowley. He tells her that it went well, that the priest didn’t seem to mind his reluctance to carry on their relationship.

  He omits one important detail. He is too embarrassed to tell her that he has agreed to spend Friday evening in the company of the priest.

  The night goes on, and they forget about their situation in the midst of their work. The morning comes and Chris goes to the galley and then the barracks. Karen remains an extra hour or so, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee while waiting for Chief Lassiter.

  She confronts him as he walks in, again groggy from a lack of caffeine. She asks what is going to happen next, if the priest should be arrested, or even Chris.

  “It’s done,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The priest and the situation have been investigated, and there is no reason to examine it further.” Lassiter sips his coffee and avoids eye contact with Karen.

  “What do you mean? The man is evil! Look at what he’s done already!”

  “Just because the young seaman told you something doesn’t mean it’s true. Did you ever consider that?”

  Karen is silent. She gets it. The Navy will not persecute one of its own, especially an officer, unless there is something solid. If the priest is doing something wrong, well, they won’t need to do anything until a corpse lands on their doorstep.

  Until another corpse lands on their doorstep.

  Dejected, Karen drives home. She wonders how she will contact Chris, to warn him of the impotence of the chain of command.

  She also wonders—driving home with the window of her Austin Mini rolled down to combat the sweat she has developed—if there is anything she can do to confront the priest herself.

  She has only seen the priest once before, coming out of the exchange. She knew he was a chaplain by the gold cross pinned on the collar of his khaki uniform. She rubbed up against him accidentally and said, “Pardon me, sir” with a smile.

  He didn’t return the smile, and she felt a certain sense of dread, a feeling like so many hot knives shredding her stomach, which reacted in twists and turns. Immediately thereafter, she forgot the very brief encounter, and didn’t recall it until just now, driving home in the approaching sunlight, sunlight filtering through the branches of the grand trees along the narrow road leading from Lutherkirk to the A92.

  It is Friday, the Friday of Chris’s unfortunate decision to visit the priest at his cottage.

  Chris sleeps until noon and then spends the day kicking around the base, trying to stay out of his room as much as possible. He is trying to avoid the many thoughts that enter his mind while confined to four walls, paperback novels, and the lonely headset of his radio.

  He is also trying to avoid contact with his roommate. He is already dreading the evening ahead, an evening where he is bound to feel uncomfortable, having spurned the priest’s request to participate in the firebombing of the Aberdeen synagogue.

  The afternoon is also filled with regret. He regrets choosing the friends that he has. It would have been easier and wiser to remain anonymous and alone. He also regrets the crassness of his first feminine encounter—the insidious event at the George Hotel. He had enjoyed a sort of pristine picture of the end of his virginity, envisioning it as some sort of magical event. The night in Montrose shattered all his daydreams and expectations.

  He still considers himself a virgin, and is now more resolved than ever to fall in love in the truest sense. There have been no prospects, and in this, too, he is disappointed. He expected the path to companionship to be open to him upon his arrival in Scotland. He expected a smorgasbord of suitable girls. The only candidate he has encountered so far is a widow more than ten years his senior. Still, she is a widow he cares about very much, and he also suspects that she cares about him.

  He also regrets, deeply, being secretive about his appointment on this evening with Crowley. He feels as if he is betraying Karen—she has gone out of her way to help him—staying after the mid-watch to talk to the chief and seeming to understand how he got into this predicament, the desperation of his friendlessness, the naïveté of his blind devotion to a man so much older and wiser and kinder than any he has ever known.

  Obvious to him, too, is the fact that Karen hasn’t passed any sort of judgment on him, even though he knows his character deserves to be assassinated a thousand times or more. She seems to understand his humanness and he takes her lack of censure as a sort of backhanded forg
iveness, forgiving him for taking the path that has led him to where he is on this day.

  He knows that if she knew about his plans for the evening she would be angered and even more disappointed. However, he still feels a sort of allegiance to Crowley, and felt obliged to take his invitation. And hope lies in that obligation—the vague promise of Crowley being nothing more than an innocent mentor, a sort of lovable uncle who lets the nephews come over and drink beer and smoke without the parents knowing.

  He will also come to regret not being in the barracks on this afternoon. If he were in his room, he would find Karen standing at his door, wanting to warn him about the inaction of the chain of command and of her decision to take another course of action.

  She wants to talk to the Scottish police, and knows the small office in the village of Lutherkirk is the logical station to go to, as the base would obviously fall under its jurisdiction.

  But she needs Chris to go with her, as he is the only link to the activity of Father Crowley and his Trinity.

  She gets his room number from the Scottish gentleman on duty in the barracks office. He tries to summon Chris via an intercom system that is present in every room. There is no answer, and, boldly, Karen marches up the steps to find his room. She bangs on the door. There is no answer. Impatiently, Karen paces along the balcony for nearly fifteen minutes, smoking four cigarettes in a nearly continuous inhalation.

  She leaves as her intuition tells her Chris won’t be around for a while, and against her intuition, she decides not to go to the Tayside Police. It can wait till Monday, she decides, upon the conclusion of their day watch. She goes home to Brechin and spends the day and evening in melancholy, staring at photographs from her past, thinking about the possibilities of her life, what those possibilities were, and what they are now. She knows now she will stay in the Navy as long as possible, until they tell her it’s time to go. Then, maybe, she will find some small town somewhere in the center of the United States and live simply off of her retirement, spending her days reading books and still wondering about what her life’s possibilities could have been. She sees herself very much alone, but she knows she would be happier in the company of someone else, someone who would want to live a simple life, someone who can understand the disappointment that life can bring, the disappointment that one’s own loved ones can bring.

  She thinks of Chris. His life has been similar, in a way. He too has felt unloved by the people he has spent all of his life loving.

  As the late afternoon comes, Chris finds his way to the barracks, knowing he can avoid his roommate no more. Soon, it will be time to go to Father Crowley’s. Chris buys a six-pack of beer from the small convenience store attached to the base exchange. It is a cheap American beer, loaded with preservatives for the purpose of export. It is barely palatable, but he forces it down, needing the alcohol to wash away the dread that goes hand in hand with his concerns about this evening.

  By the time Brad returns to the room at the end of his workday, Chris has consumed three beers and is more than relaxed; he has already drowned his anxiety in a flood of alcohol. Brad sees the remaining beers attached to a plastic ring on top of the refrigerator and takes one without asking. Chris has another and leaves the sixth for Brad, who drinks his two beers in a rapid succession of long swallows. They make their way to the galley and eat a large amount of mashed potatoes and gravy and roast beef as Brad talks quietly about the deadline that is approaching at the end of next week. “I bet Father will have it all mapped out tonight, what our roles are gonna be,” he says. Even though Chris has lost much of his inhibition, he decides not to tell Brad of his decision. He just nods and eats, scraping his nearly empty plate with a spoon.

  Shortly after eating, they find themselves in a taxicab driving in the fading daylight through the village of Lutherkirk, heading to Father Crowley’s.

  Chris is feeling pleasant, enjoying the ride, but as he passes the castle in Lutherkirk, just a quarter mile or so from the priest’s cottage, the euphoric feeling of alcohol begins to give way to anxiety. He is sweating underneath his collar as the cab deposits them at the end of the gravel driveway.

  His anxiety is quickly washed away by the hospitality of Father Crowley. Chris expected to read a sort of hostility in the eyes of the priest. There is nothing but warmth as he welcomes Brad and Chris and quickly brings them each a beer. They sit down on the couch in the living room, and even though the mood is ostensibly light, Chris can feel as if things have changed, that this evening is the end of something.

  “So, Mr. Hinckley,” begins the priest, “I suppose Chris has told you of his change of heart. He no longer wants to be in the Trinity.”

  Hinckley glares at Chris in anger, and then turns his head towards the priest with a look that is searching for an explanation.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right.” The priest holds up his hand to shush Brad as he sees a protest forming on his lips. “If he doesn’t feel comfortable and if he’s not with us one hundred percent, then frankly, he’s no good to us. We’ll just have to wait. This is a war that has been going on for centuries. We can stand a setback for a few weeks or even months and maybe even years. Our day will come.

  “Besides, Chris,” he says without looking at either of them, swirling wine in his silver goblet, “I love you very much, like a father loves his son. I could see you were upset in my office the other day. If a father sees that his child is upset, then he, too, feels upset. I want you to be happy, more than anything, and if you can’t stomach what needs to be done, then so be it. More beer?”

  Chris and Brad both nod, and Crowley rises from his sagging chair. He stirs the coal in the fireplace and throws more on, brushing the black dust off his hands on his trouser legs. He asks Brad to come into the kitchen and help him with the beers, as he wants to grab some snacks.

  Brad follows him into the kitchen obediently. They are gone for more than a moment, and Chris can hear frantic and low whispers coming from the open doorway between the kitchen and living room. Brad and Crowley return silently.

  Brad returns to the couch and sits as far from Chris as possible. He continues to stare at him with loathing, as if Chris is touched with some sort of plague.

  If Chris were sober, this sudden coldness on the part of Brad would have caused some alarm, but on this night, in his state of nearly complete drunkenness, he barely notices.

  The priest returns to his chair at the head of the coffee table with a bottle of wine in his hand. He doesn’t release the bottle, just constantly refills his goblet as he empties it rapidly.

  “Chris, I want you to remember one thing,” Crowley says as he settles into his seat. “I want you to remember one thing about this night, now, while you still can. I want you to remember that whatever happens will only happen because of the choices you’ve made. Does that make sense?” This the priest asks with an innocent smile, his eyes twinkling. And inside those eyes, Chris can see the reflection of the burning coal, the reflection causing the priest’s normally pale blue eyes to appear to be a bright red, a red that grows with intensity as the night colors the sky.

  “Okay,” replies Chris calmly, returning the priest’s smile. He feels quite content right now, warmth from the alcohol, warmth from the fireplace, and warmth from the priest. In his comfort, Chris’s mind starts to wander. He wonders what Karen would think if she saw him here now. She would undoubtedly be angry. Chris wonders at what lengths he would go to to include Karen in this sick group of friends. This daydream quickly passes. Even drunk, he knows that it is an impossibility.

  The priest uses his gift of inane conversation to keep the mood light, not expanding any more on the result of Chris’s choices. He shuffles beer from the kitchen almost constantly, making sure Chris always has a full can in front of him. One other thing odd that Chris would normally notice but doesn’t on this night: Crowley is constantly pulling on his penis through his pants. Chris does not notice the outline of an erection bulging behind Crowley’s zipper.
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  Once again, Crowley summons Brad into the kitchen.

  If Chris were more cognizant, he would also notice that Brad is drinking much less than he, and is sitting silently with arms crossed while he and the priest talk.

  Brad and the priest return from the kitchen, the priest holding a beer for Chris, and Brad holding a video camera. Chris wonders why he has a camera, but doesn’t ask aloud.

  Crowley is feeding Chris Valium in his beer, not quite the same amount that he fed Lee, but combined with the eight or nine tall tins of beer that Chris has consumed, the effect of the drug is rapid and severe. Chris collapses on the couch. His eyes flutter but remain open. If he were more aware, he would feel the priest’s hands grab his legs and swing them onto the floor. The priest forces Chris’s face down on the couch, placing his knees on the floor. He would also feel the priest reach around his waist to unbutton his pants and slide them down around his ankles.

  He does feel the priest sodomize him. But he is too powerless to move or protest, and through the haze, the entire evening is starting to make sense to him. It lasts only a few moments as the priest pulls out in a mix of blood and excrement and semen. Chris will feel the pain later, in the morning, when he wakes up feeling a severe hangover and a feeling in his body where the priest has been.

  Brad videotapes the whole thing. He doesn’t feel queasy or disgusted at all. It is a necessary act, to force Chris’s compliance.

  The priest is acting out a long fantasy, and there is a bit of a letdown when it is over. In his fantasy, Chris had been a more willing participant, not a near-zombie. It is a longtime craving that he has satisfied. He now knows that he will have to do it again—and often.

  Clumsily, the priest pulls Chris’s pants back up and swings his legs back onto the couch. Chris lays there motionless as his mind falls away and he lands in a dreamless sleep.

  Chris wakes up to the sight of sunlight shining through the very dirty window above the priest’s chair. It takes a moment for him to recall the evening, and when he does, he is washed in dread and shame. The half-memory of the assault makes him feel lower than he ever has before, even lower than the moment he realized his family had finally disintegrated. He sits up feebly on the couch, catching the sight of a patch of dried blood gathered on the floor.