Assault with Intent

by William X. Kienzle

  1

  Several teeth were missing from the skull. The gaps gave the skull an even more eerie appearance. Not that it needed anything to amplify its stark and fearsome impact. The mere sight of a human skull is usually enough to make a reflective person more thoughtful. Not only does it punctuate mortal life; together with crossbones it signifies lethal poison. And the skull provides both home and protection for the brain, that organ which distinctly makes us human. Just whose brain had been enclosed in this skull was a mystery. For years, it, along with its accompanying male skeleton, had been the property of the Biology Department of Sacred Heart Seminary. However, when the seminary had discontinued teaching biology more than a decade before, the department’s various properties had fallen into the hands of a few vulturine students and faculty members.

  Father Leo Ward had gotten the skull. He had plans for it. For nearly fifty years, he had taught English to seminarians in all four years of college. His favorite subject was Shakespeare. He saw to it that the students who survived to college graduation had sampled all Shakespeare’s plays and most of his sonnets.

  But until he had managed to pluck the skull from the moribund biology lab, Ward had never had a Yorick. Which is not to say he had a desperate need for a Yorick: along with no Yorick, he also had no other props called for by Shakespeare’s plays. But Ward enjoyed keeping students off balance. Few undertakings were better suited to achieving this goal than compelling a young man to recite the wonders of Shakespeare’s English—virtually a foreign tongue to late twentieth-century American college students—while clutching a skull.

  Yorick was on Ward’s crowded desk today because tomorrow the senior class was scheduled to begin reading act 4, scene 5 of Hamlet. Yorick did not appear until act 5, scene 1. But that was only a few pages away, and even if they didn’t reach Yorick tomorrow, it would be delightful to have Yorick in the classroom so the students could contemplate the agony that would shortly befall one of them.

  The only illumination in Ward’s room came from a directional desk lamp. Against all four walls, from floor to ceiling, were wooden shelves filled with books. The faint light shed by the small lamp reflected off the glass doors fronting each shelf. Nearly every inch of floor space was heaped with books. This was the case not only in his sitting room but also in his bedroom: wall-to-wall volumes with a narrow, mazelike path cleared for walking. Only Ward’s bathroom was nonbooked. However, there was a stack of magazines near the toilet.

  It was 9:00 p.m., October 31—Halloween. A party was in progress in the gymnasium. Faculty, students, employees, those who worked in the myriad organizations housed within the seminary walls, even some of the seminary’s neighbors were at the party. But not Father Leo Ward.

  He had been a recluse nearly all his life. Now, as he neared his eightieth birthday, his existence had become even more solitary. He lived almost exclusively for his students and his beloved Bard.

  In tomorrow’s reading of Hamlet, Ophelia, as she went mad, would croon her nonsensical ramblings. Ward plotted his own peculiar scenario. He wanted to make certain that William Zimmer, prime macho man of the senior class, would read the mad Ophelia role. Since readings were assigned daily in the order of the students’ alphabetical seating arrangement, and since Ophelia would be the fourth character to speak in scene 5, Michael Totten would have to be the queen and Andrew Umberg the Gentleman; then Francis Wangler, Horatio and Mr. Zimmer, Ophelia. What fun!

  Father Ward suppressed a smile. Any incipient laugh was always thus inhibited. His teeth, victims of determined neglect, were all but rotted. As a result, he tried never to let them show. On the rare occasion he was caught by surprise, usually by a ridiculous statement from a student, he would smile, but his lips, which he would shield with his hand, never parted. Occasionally, he would reflect that when it came his time to shuffle off this mortal coil, his skull would not look nearly as good as Yorick’s.

  All was now prepared for tomorrow, and he was an hour late for bed. He usually retired about eight so he could rise at five and prepare his usual side-altar Mass, the earliest by far in the seminary.

  Daylight-Saving Time had ended the previous Sunday; it was now very dark. He had only one task remaining before sleep. He would deliver Yorick to the classroom where the students would find him bright and early tomorrow. He extinguished his cigar—his fifteenth of the day—stood, and arranged his simple black cassock so it was not bunched on his fragile frame.

  With Yorick in his left hand and a large flashlight in his right, he managed to exit his quarters and close the door behind him. The corridor was long, narrow, and deserted. It was illuminated only dimly by the outside spotlights that shone on the seminary in hopes of discouraging break-and-enterers.

  Ward switched on his flashlight and, in an enchanted mood, directed its beam onto Yorick. He began, softly, to intone Hamlet’s monologue. “Alas,” Father Ward recited from impeccable memory, “poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times: and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.”

  Ward, as was his wont, was being carried away by the stunning beauty of Shakespeare’s language. “Here hung those lips that I have kist I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now — uh-oh, I’m there already!”

  Lost in Shakespearean declamation, Ward had reached the end of the rear corridor. To his right was the hall that led to the front of the building and then, immediately, a stairway that he intended to take down to his first-floor classroom.

  Suddenly, a figure stepped from the shadows near the porch at his left.

  The presence so startled him that only later could Ward fix such details as the person’s height—approximately five-feet-five; voice—male, but rather high-pitched; and attire—a black cloak and hat and something—perhaps a stocking— over his face that distorted his features.

  But right now, Ward was mainly conscious of the long, menacing knife in the figure’s upraised hand. The blade caught and reflected an edge of Ward’s flashlight beam.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Ward exclaimed. “What’s going on here?”

  Instinctively, in an attempt to keep his assailant at a safe distance, Ward had begun to paw the air in a dog-paddle motion while backing away from the fray. Each time Ward’s hands passed each other in midair, the beam of the flashlight in his right hand shone full upon the skull in his left.

  As he advanced on the retreating Ward, the assailant caught sight of Yorick. “What the hell! What in hell! WHAT THE HELL!” The man’s voice rose in pitch with each intonation. Now, mirroring Ward’s gestures, his gloved hands began to paw the air. In the fluctuating flashlight beam, the two appeared to be engaged in some sort of hitherto uninvented disco step.

  Actually, the assailant was trying to knock the flashlight and the skull from Ward’s hands. After some dozen pawings, he succeeded. The flashlight plunked down and the skull flew up.

  Ward lost his balance and toppled backward. The flashlight, Ward, and the skull hit the floor in that order. However, as Ward spun heels over head, one foot caught the assailant’s knife hand, catapulting the weapon into the hall’s darkness. The knife thunked into the soft wood of a lavatory door and stuck there. Out of sight but not out of mind.

  “Now, where the hell did the damn thing go?” wailed the assailant, looking at his now empty hand. “What the hell! You’d think I could at least...” The sentence trailed off as the figure turned abruptly and disappeared, stumbling noisily down the unlit staircase.

  “Great Caesar’s ghost!” Father Ward sat upright on the floor, rubbing his head and trying to slow his rapidly beating heart and bring down his blood pressure.

&nbs
p; No doubt it had been a student.

  But which one? Ward hadn’t a clue. Well, he pondered, Halloween pranks were all well and good in moderation, but this was going a bit too far, thank you!

  As his adrenal glands settled, he assessed the damage. Nothing in or on his person seemed broken. He retrieved his spectacles. The wire frame was bent, but that was easily straightened. He picked up his sturdy flashlight and shone it about. The beam found the knife, imbedded in the door not three feet above his head. He shuddered.

  Finally, the flashlight found Yorick. He had lost two more teeth. Ward briefly contemplated the loss. It made Yorick definitely more rakish, he concluded. And, after tonight’s brush with injury, possibly death, definitely more fearsome.

  “The Enlightenment? Eh ... eh ... I don’t see what the Enlightenment has to do with it,” said Father Phil Merrit.

  “It’s pretty clear, Phil,” Father Paul Burk rejoined. “The Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century pretty well marked the beginning of the end of the contemplative approach to reality in Western civilization.”

  “That statement is about as clear as this alleged pea soup,” said Merrit, aiming his spoon at his bowl.

  Sacred Heart Seminary’s faculty and staff, along with others who worked in the building, as well as visitors, dined in what had been an open second-floor brick porch. The arches had been spanned with Thermopane to close in the area.

  The luncheon diners had begun to assemble. Some were already eating; others were waiting their turns at the serving tables. Two white-jacketed seminarians were on hand to serve beverages or cater to special needs. Except for that, seminary meals were normally cafeteria-style.

  Merrit taught English. Burk not only taught philosophy, he was close to being a philosopher.

  “Look at it historically, man,” Merrit continued. “The golden age of contemplation in the West was the twelfth century. Why…eh…eh…we in the West began to lose our intuitive values as early as the fourteenth century.”

  “Which is not to say there have been no contemplatives in recent times,” contributed Father Robert Koesler. “There’s Thomas Merton, of course; C.S. Lewis, Thoreau, and T.S. Eliot, among others.”

  Koesler was not a full-time member of the faculty. He taught a single course in communications. The instruction stemmed from his twelve years of experience as editor of the Detroit Catholic, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Detroit. However, Koesler was no longer in that assignment. For the past several years he had been pastor of St. Anselm’s parish in suburban Dearborn Heights.

  Koesler never ceased to marvel at the general headiness of conversations at seminary meals. Though he was fairly conversant with Western contemplative history, amid these experts Koesler felt he was close to being out of his depth in this discussion.

  “Quite right, Bob.” Burk gestured vigorously with his fork. A flourish that made his companions a whit nervous. “And,” he turned to Merrit, who leaned defensively away from the fork, “I wouldn’t argue over your citation of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. But it was the Enlightenment and its consequences—Scientism and the Industrial Revolution— that put an empirical end to the contemplative view of reality.”

  “Oh, well... eh ... eh ... if you’re going to look at it that way...”

  “What do you mean by Scientism?” Koesler asked.

  “In the sense that science is the exclusive source for the answers to all humanity’s problems.” No longer in argumentation, Burk, now the teacher, lowered his fork. “Scientism fostered the Industrial Revolution. And its material success reinforced Scientism’s claims. Ever since, we in the West have been asking only ‘how to’ and hardly ever considering ‘what for.’ And we’ve been getting away with it, until fairly recently when we began to run out of energy, power, and moral integrity.”

  During this conversation, Father Edmund Sklarski joined the group. He listened with little interest or comprehension. His sole intention was to enter into and, if he were at all lucky, dominate the conversation. He never played the silent guest.

  “It’s been my experience,” Sklarski pontificated, “that while the pen is mightier than the sword…” he hesitated, searching for some port in this storm, “faith comes by hearing,” he concluded with an air of triumph.

  An uncomfortable silence ensued.

  Sklarski had recently been called out of retirement—a clear indication of the priest shortage—to teach public speaking at the seminary. While he did have one or two helpful theories regarding the composition and delivery of homilies, Sklarski tended to be vague about almost everything else. He was a man almost totally governed by mood. Students diligently tried to keep him in a good humor. The alternative could be terrifying.

  Burk’s open-mouthed puzzlement over Sklarski’s non sequitur dissolved into a hearty laugh. “Absolutely, Ed. Faith comes by hearing. And Catholics in this archdiocese are not going to hear unless you teach these youngsters to speak up.”

  Burk had accurately picked up Sklarski’s cue. Now Sklarski was part of the conversation. Never again, at this sitting, would the topic under discussion soar to the level of contemplation.

  “Went in the drugstore the other day,” Sklarski edged toward the interlocutor’s position, “went in the drugstore, yes, walked up to the pharmacy counter and ordered a bottle of rubbing alcohol. And then, I don’t know why, just for the hell of it,” he paused for effect—he had everyone’s attention—“I winked.

  "Well, the clerk grinned from ear to ear, and winked back. So I just waited. And, sure enough, he came back with a fifth of Canadian Club. Well, I blew my cork. ‘How dare you, sir!’ I said. ‘Here I want a bottle of rubbing alcohol for my poor sick father. And you, sir, you bring me an intoxicant! And me, sir, me a man of the cloth!’ Well, the other customers stopped what they were doing and watched what was going on. The clerk spent half his time apologizing and the rest of the time trying to quiet me. And do you know what the upshot was?”

  His audience collectively acknowledged ignorance.

  “He gave me the C.C. and the rubbing alcohol free!”

  All laughed.

  “The perqs never quit, do they?” observed Koesler.

  Sklarski noticed a large pitcher filled with a dark liquid on the serving table. It was fruit juice. But what kind? He beckoned one of the student waiters to the table.

  “Uh…” Sklarski knew almost no one’s name.

  “Leonard Marks,” the pudgy student replied.

  “Ah, yes—Marks. What kind of fruit juice do we have today?”

  Marks glanced at the pitcher. He had no idea what the juice was. But it looked like grape juice.

  “Grape juice,” Marks said decisively.

  “Ah, yes, good. I’ll just have some, Leonard.”

  Marks carefully poured a large glass full of loganberry juice and presented it to Sklarski, who downed it in one significant chugalug.

  Sklarski’s expression went from pleasure to surprise to anger.

  “This is not grape juice,” Sklarski fairly shouted as he banged the glass to the table, “this is gall! From now on, Mr. uh…”

  “Marks,” came the shaken clarification.

  “Marks, you have my permission to taste the juice beforehand so that this disaster will not be repeated!”

  “Yes, sir … uh … yes, your grace … uh … yes, Father.”

  How quickly things change. A pall settled on the gathering.

  Koesler, finished with his light lunch, noticed Father Leo Ward sitting at a small table by himself. Nothing unusual about that. Most of the faculty and staff acknowledged Ward’s Garboesque desire to be alone. Koesler, on the other hand, correctly perceived Ward’s hermitlike life as the defense of a very shy man. He excused himself and moved to Ward’s table.

  “Quite a display.” He nodded toward the still fuming Sklarski.

  Ward glanced at the younger priest who now sat opposite him. A look of welcome flickered in his steel-gray eyes. “Yes, I should say.�
� Ward was by no means reluctant to publicly castigate a student. But he was not fond of Sklarski, who, admittedly, was scarcely an academician. “However,” Ward added, “he is a stupid boy.”

  “Marks?”

  “Yes. He simply cannot do anything right. Years ago, he would not have lasted more than a semester or two. Now, there are so few candidates for the priesthood …”

  The sentence did not need completion. The virtually worldwide shortage in Catholic religious vocations was due not so much to priests, nuns, and brothers leaving as to the remarkably few young people entering.

  “It’s a buyer’s market,” Koesler agreed. He reflected on his own time in the seminary, back in the forties and fifties—a time when priests were portrayed by such macho actors as Pat O’Brien, Gregory Peck, and Humphrey Bogart. When seminaries were packed and only a small percentage of those who entered in the ninth grade persevered through the four years of high school, four of college, and the final four years of theology.

  Now, Sacred Heart Seminary had closed its high school; there were fewer than forty students in its college and fewer than that at St. Joseph’s Theological Seminary.

  Now priests, when they did appear in films, were portrayed as confused, doubt-ridden men who were losing their vocation or faith, or both. In an explosively changing world, few things had changed as much as the image of the Catholic priest.

  Ward had no sooner finished eating when Marks’ companion student-waiter deftly removed his plate and quickly returned with coffee.

  “Then on the other hand,” said Ward, as the young man went back to his post, “there are seminarians like William Zimmer. He is almost enough to restore one’s faith in the future of the priesthood.”

  “Yes, he is kind of special, isn’t he?” Koesler glanced across the dining room at Zimmer, standing tall and alert next to the rattled Marks.

  “Comes from a fine family,” said Ward, “an excellent student, a fine cut of a man.”

  “Good voice, better-than-average musician,” Koesler continued the paean, “good athlete, becomingly modest. And the other students recognize his specialness, don’t they? I mean, there is no jealousy, is there?”