A God in Ruins

by Leon Uris

  Dan O’Connell watched Quinn with intent. Dan didn’t have college because of family economics.

  He kept track of Quinn’s growth and skill on the fields of play. Quinn would stand five feet ten inches and weigh a hundred and seventy pounds, most of it brick hard.

  Troublesome Mesa High School put weak teams on the field, fortunately, to play other weak teams. Quinn was a nifty first baseman in baseball. He played ice hockey and ski raced in a rather mediocre manner.

  Dan harangued him into football. Quinn played fullback on offense and linebacker on defense. He was average to everyone except Dan O’Connell.

  Dan worried about the growing bookshelves in Quinn’s room, some on subjects he did not comprehend. He saw it as a symbol of the boy’s desire to leave home permanently. For Daniel O’Connell it would be the ultimate nightmare.

  As time went by, there was less and less interaction between Dan and Quinn. It seemed that Dan had an agenda, hitherto unseen goals he was slowly uncovering.

  To make matters very lonely, Carlos Martinez went off to the University of Texas in Austin, where he loaded himself up with courses.

  The two boys wrote quite often at first, but as Carlos went into a new atmosphere, mail time lengthened. Carlos simply studied and let women chase him.

  Their first meeting back at the ranch was tinged with sorrow, for they

  knew that what they had once had was faded and would not return. Carlos even looked different, what with his mustache and all.

  Quinn had his little pal, Rita, who seemed very content in being nearby. Almost into her teens, her body was beginning to bloom. Still a kid, unfortunately, but Rita was going to be extremely beautiful.

  Quinn found himself pondering the issues of his Catholicism. School out, Carlos gone, and even Rita away with her father in Mexico. He had time to find a boulder by a stream, throw in a line, and think. The spark of his meditation was the devoutness of his parents, which often led to dead-end attempts at explanations.

  Carried to somewhat of an extreme, the ranch and formal garden carried a dozen shrines, and every bed in the house was guarded by a cross.

  Quinn knew better than argue the subject with his parents.

  The arrival of Father Scan came on a good wind. He was a wise observer of the family progress. A certain quality of conversation was now possible on a hundred subjects Dan and Siobhan knew nothing about.

  On the porch of Father Scan’s apartment, Quinn became an evening guest.

  “Lonesome, Quinn?” the priest asked.

  “In a manner of speaking. There’s plenty to do, and I’ve a bushel of great friends. What I seem to be missing is someone to talk to. Carlos is staying in Austin this summer. He’s maniacal to complete his courses. I had wonderful hours with Reynaldo Maldonado, but he and Rita are in Mexico till school starts.”

  “Your dad tells me you’re a natural for a football scholarship to one of the smaller colleges.”

  “My dad looks at me and sees Gayle Sayers. He’s never really asked,

  but I don’t like football. Not that I mind mixing it up. I’m pretty

  good at ice hockey. Football doesn’t excite me like, pardon the expression, baseball. But Dad seems obsessed with getting me a football scholarship.”

  It was not the football scholarship, it was control of his son. Father Scan knew what he had suspected, that Dan was setting the boy up as an alter ego. It wasn’t working. Every time they grated on one another, Dan feared it was Quinn’s desire to bolt, to search for his birth parents. His fear became unreasonable.

  It worried Quinn as well. “Uncle Sean, I can’t control certain insatiable desires. I can’t fathom why God has taunted me with the secret of my birth. So I look deeper into my Catholicism to find comfort from my frustration. Please know that my loyalty is to Dan and Siobhan, but I have lost some trust in the Church. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, I’ve pondered on the same thing,” Sean said. “The system must be doing something right; it’s the oldest and strongest non-military organization ever known to man.”

  “How can I find solace in so many alcoholic priests? Or a virgin birth? I almost died when I found out that Saladin, the Moslem, was the true hero of the Crusades, and the Crusaders were mindless butchers. And the Inquisition and the Holocaust. All of these were done by primarily Catholic nations.”

  Father Sean held his hand up. “There are many paths to God; we are only one of them. We must put on a show for the wealthy who identify with the pomp and gold and splendor. The Church’s power is their power.

  “The same show is performed for the hopeless. Human fodder. They use Catholicism for their own purpose, for survival. They sacrifice chickens on the cathedral steps in some cultures. Each group’s needs twist Catholicism around to fill those needs.

  “Evil men attend church,” he went on. “Evil men pray in synagogues, and evil men perform mutilations on women to the glory of Allah. Evil men pay large sums for us to renew the leases on their consciences. Men invented the system because they needed it, and the system, faulty as it is, works.”

  Wise man, his uncle, Quinn thought. His wisdom made him realize how lonesome he was for the rich food of ideas and conversations.

  “There is one bottom line for me,” Father Sean said, “and that is the message of love from Jesus. All the rest of it, miracles and saints and whatever we’ve contrived or distorted, doesn’t matter. Love is the bottom line. Find something in that message you can weave into your life.”

  Even as he spoke, Father Sean realized that Quinn would always inquire, always challenge a Church that did not promote inquiry and challenge. But no other religion would work for him, either, because he could never truly accept what was unacceptable to him.

  It seemed that each turn in season, particularly coming out of winter, the divide in the father-son stream widened. At Troublesome Mesa School, with four hundred students from kindergarten through high school, Quinn was one of the campus heroes. A charming personality beamed from a charmed spirit. He was a nice person. Kids gravitated to him.

  Father Sean, with great care and diplomacy, got Dan to thinking:

  Quinn’s quest for his birth parents was a natural human drive known by every orphan. It would not endanger his relationship with Quinn.

  Moreover, Quinn was an intellectual. Yet they had the Dodgers in common and Duke Snyder and Jackie Robinson and Camp and Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges and Preacher Roe. But the Dodgers upped and left Brooklyn.

  Maybe, just maybe, Dan began to think, there could be a real mending instead of the growing aggrievement if he could think along the lines of a great scholastic university for his son.

  Constraint took over. When civility has to be practiced with caution, it becomes a draining way for two people to communicate.

  They ceased doing things together. Fishing or the rodeo or canoeing or riding their dirt bikes. With graduation from Troublesome Mesa School, the time had come to make a decision, perhaps the first life decision.

  Carlos Martinez wanted Quinn to come to Texas, but it was a selfish request. At the speed Carlos was pushing through college, they’d be together for only a year or so.

  Dan O’Connell applied to a number of universities for Quinn, some “just for the hell of it.” In a moment of magnanimity, and to prove to Quinn he had his interest at heart, he sent Quinn and Siobhan back East to look over some of the great campuses. Not that anybody ever gave Dan O’Connell this kind of golden chance. I’ll never, Dan thought, get him to understand that sports is where a young man sets his mark for life. But his life is his life. If he gets into a fine Eastern school, then he’ll be morally indebted to return to Colorado. Dan was wrapped up in scenarios, and none of them thought through seriously.

  Mother and son drove about New England, in a journey of realization. The East was not the West. In New York, during the second act of a Tennessee Williams play, all the characters on stage were crying out their misery and no one heard the other. If truth be known, Quinn wa
nted New York City and Fordham. But no one would hear the other’s misery.

  Quinn knew if he went East, he might have serious trouble returning to the ranch. It would devastate his parents. Further, no one leaves Colorado without having inflicted a wound on himself. It was Quinn’s life, but he could not turn away from Dan’s legacy. Wanting a brother had long come and gone in Quinn’s fantasies. Quinn was it, alone.

  Quinn and Siobhan made a drive from Washington state through Stanford and into Los Angeles. Quinn was awed by the greatness of America and felt his first urges of desire to do something of value for everyone.

  They returned to the ranch to find Dan elated. In their absence something good had gotten to the man.

  “Which school was your favorite, Siobhan?” Dan asked.

  “I personally liked Berkeley.”

  “Commies,” Dan retorted. “They eat protest flakes for breakfast. As for UCLA, it’s a brothel.”

  The moment was at hand for Dan to pass to them a half dozen letters of acceptance, all fine schools. Dan held one out, then slapped it on the table and broke into a wide, wide grin and awaited the howls of joy which never arrived.

  Siobhan could see Quinn’s stare become troubled as Dan read, “Harvard!

  “.. . That’s Harvard, in case you didn’t know. Harvard! The first O’Connell to go to Harvard, the first to do anything but night school. Harvard. My son goes to Harvard!”

  “Mom told me to apply through my school. I didn’t think I had a prayer.”

  “Prayers have been answered. Along with my Silver Star, this is the proudest moment of my life.”

  “Hold up, Dan,” his wife said. “You don’t seem to be pleased, Quinn.”

  “Shouldn’t I have something to say?” Quinn asked.

  “Well, didn’t you and your mother visit enough campuses? I mean, we’re talking Harvard. The greatest university in the world. Do you know how many applicants they turn down?”

  “Dad, I agreed to take a look at Harvard to confirm I’m going to make the right choice.”

  “What’s your point, son?” Dan asked with a touch of meanness in his voice. “You could even make the baseball team.”

  “For God’s sake, Dad, I’m a marginal athlete.”

  “Not in baseball. You have a real talent.”

  “Stop trying to make a Brooklyn Dodger out of me. Students go to Harvard for scholastics. I don’t want to get involved in the rat race until I know what I want to study.”

  “Quinn, you’re the first white man ever to turn down a Harvard education. Have you got any idea how much it costs?”

  “That’s enough, Dan,” Siobhan said angrily. “Forget what he said, son. God has been gracious to us, and I’ve got plenty of money put away.”

  With direct insults falling now, Dan unloaded bottle into glass. Quinn made him uneasy by not backing down.

  “I want to live my own life, Dad. I saw enough of the country with Mom to know how wonderful it is. I don’t want to be lured, yet. I want to stay near here. Dad, you don’t need a Harvard education to operate a ranch.”

  “So what is it, then,” Dan said ominously.

  “He’s only a boy,” Siobhan said. “How many times did you come in off of your police beat cursing your father for setting up your life?”

  “I’m going to the University of Colorado,” Quinn said. “No ice hockey, no football. Maybe I’ll play baseball if the team is bad enough. I’m going to study a general liberal arts course and the humanities. I want to study with Reynaldo Maldonado. I hope it leads me to something I can be passionate about.”

  Dan arose, came to Quinn, and slapped him in the face. Siobhan was between them instantly. Quinn turned away and made for the door.

  TROUBLESOME MESA, 1968

  It was mud season. The tracks and washboard of the dirt road went from slop during the day to a thin coat of frost through the night. It was a slippery go from the ranch to the town, two miles of switchbacks and steep grades. Walking was slippery. One was off one’s feet every twenty steps.

  Quinn left without a jacket, a flashlight, the Jeep he never really felt was his. Go to Carlos in Texas? No. That would bring Consuelo and Pedro into a family brawl they had no part of.

  Call Uncle Scan? He laughed aloud at his own misery. There were no phones for over a mile. Headlights hit him in the back. He stopped in a rut with slush running over the top of his boots.

  “Quinn!” Siobhan called, stopping the Jeep. “Son, come home! Please!

  Your father is beside himself with sorrow. Please! Quinn.”

  All he did was shake his head.

  She pleaded to the mesa and the valley, for he did not hear. Her arms went about him. He pushed her away firmly. She was a mud woman, a streaked mud woman grotesquely crying with mud running down her face.

  “Take the Jeep,” she gasped. “There’s money and credit cards in the glove compartment. Please phone me, son, please!”

  She turned and staggered back toward the house. After a time, Quinn grabbed the steering wheel and, in an automatic move, slid into the driver’s seat. The windshield was half ice, half water. He wiped away a spot of fog so he could see through, then put the vehicle into four-wheel low and inched down the incline.

  Between his tears and the frost he could hardly see, but he knew the turns of the hill and he understood it could be his last moment on earth. His caution told him he did not want to die and gave him a tiny relief from his pain.

  The Jeep skidded. He had to lay off the brakes. It stopped abruptly down in the roadside ditch, barely kissing a great old pine tree. He’d stay here. Town was still two switchbacks away. Well, what’s the difference? he thought, I don’t belong to anyone. I’m no one.

  A flashlight beam hit his face.

  “Holy Mary, is that you, Quinn?”

  ugh.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, no, I’m okay.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered when she saw the agony worn like a Pagliacci mask.

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s Rita Maldonado.”

  She found a rag and wiped his face carefully and put handfuls of snow on the rising lumps and bruises.

  “What the hell you doing out on a night like this?” he groaned.

  “I was at the movies and, if memory serves me right, you were the one in the ditch trying to climb this tree. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  “No, I swear I’m okay.”

  “Looks like you’ve just seen the abominable snowman.”

  “Yeah, maybe I have.”

  “All right, then, I’ll run you home,” she said.

  “No. I have no home.”

  “Oh, God,” Rita mumbled. “Come on, now, I’m taking you to my house.

  I’ll call the sheriff and tell him where your Jeep is. Come on, now.” She half dragged him to her pickup and plopped him on the seat and buckled him up, then got behind the wheel.

  “What are you doing driving? You’re only thirteen years old,” Quinn growled.

  “I’m going on fourteen and I’m very mature for my age. Besides, I baby-sit the sheriff’s kids. He just doesn’t want me to drive during the daytime.”

  Rita was right about one thing, she was mature.

  They sputtered on the slick track up to the next shelf and turned into a one-lane road affording another fabulous view down to Troublesome Mesa. The Maldonado spread was highlighted by a few acres of level lawn filled with wild sculptures and a flying-wing house.

  Reynaldo Maldonado, only a seven-year resident, had brought a measure of fame to Troublesome by selecting it for his studio and home.

  He had done it all, from picking cotton in Texas to doing prison time in Canon City. He did it by being a roustabout, by smuggling on the border, by boiling booze, by selling peyote.

  His early primitive drawings were of the usual Mexican rage against exploitation, and he worked to become one of the nation’s foremost portrait artists and sculptors. Although he was always though
t of as being Mexican, he was actually third generation American. His only marriage was to a fair, blond Minnesota girl who died of breast cancer and left him with a six-year-old daughter.

  Her death settled his wild ways, and for the sake of Rita he found Troublesome Mesa.

  Maldonado’s home had become a sort of sanctuary for the high school

  children of the area. He spun rapturous tales, he

  sang and played the guitar, he had lots of nudes on his walls and

  pedestals. For years Maldonado was an in-and-out figure at the

  University of Colorado, where he taught to small groups, at random,

  about an array of worldly subjects. He was a Colorado

  ((. yj treasure.

  Rita helped Quinn up the back porch steps. Mal flicked on a light for them. “What you got there, Rita?”

  “Quinn O’Connell.”

  “Quinn, you look like a yard of dirt road.”

  “I’m all right. I mean, I’m not hurt. I mean, I’m hurt but I’m not hurt .. . nothing’s broken or anything.”

  Rita unlaced his shoes, gave him a big robe from the hot tub, and ordered him to take a shower. Each time the icy fingers brought him closer to awareness, the whap from Dan hit him again. All right, he told himself, pull it together.

  “I’d better call your home,” Mal said a few minutes later.

  TT “

  No.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  After a time he said, “We had some words.”

  “I’m calling him. If Rita was out in this weather, I’d want a phone call no matter what had transpired.”

  Everyone knew, Quinn thought, that Mal was an artist with an eccentric leaning. He heard Mal’s muffled voice from the next room.

  “You’ll stay with us tonight. Eaten?”

  “I wouldn’t mind something warm.”

  As the soup brought chilled nerves and circulation back to Quinn, he came out of his half-frozen trance.

  “Did you know I was adopted?” Quinn asked.

  “I didn’t know,” Rita said.

  “Nor I. You didn’t just find out tonight?” Mal asked.

  “No, I was about ten.”