The Trinity Game

by Sean Chercover

  “My peppermint twist is a little rusty,” said Trinity, “but you should see my watusi.”

  “He’s just nervous,” said Daniel.

  “I know,” said Priestess Ory. She turned to the back door of the house, and called, “Tambours!”

  The screen door opened and a white man and two black men stepped into the courtyard. All three were shirtless and shoeless, wore white pants, and each carried an African drum. They set the drums up along the east wall, sat behind them on stools.

  The drummers began beating out a compelling rhythm with their hands. The screen door opened again and an older black man came out, carrying a wicker basket, followed by five black women and two white women, all dressed like Ory, the youngest about twenty-five, the oldest in her sixties. Three of the women carried colorful sequined flags.

  The drumming grew, both in complexity and volume. The old man put the basket down, picked a conch shell off the altar, lifted it to his mouth, and blew a long note through it.

  Priestess Ory called out, “Annonce, annonce, annonce!” and the group sang out the same in response. She poured a thin line of Florida Water cologne from the back door to the center pole, then from side to side, creating a crossroads. The old man faced Ory, and they made three formal pirouettes and then exchanged a double-handshake, making crossroads with their forearms. The other women did the same, and then swayed with the drums as the old man took two handfuls of cornmeal from the altar and used the cornmeal to “paint” a veve on the ground. He leaned forward and kissed the veve three times.

  Priestess Ory reached into the wicker basket as the group sang, “Damballah Wedo, Damballah Wedo, Damballah Wedo…” She lifted a young boa constrictor, about four feet in length, from the basket, held it above her head, and danced backwards around the center pole, pausing so each participant could touch the snake. Ory sang, “Damballah Wedo…Nous sommes les sevite…Ti Ginen.” She returned the snake gently to the basket and closed the lid, then danced with a beaded gourd in her hands as the intensity of the drumming climbed ever higher, growing into a hypnotic polyrhythm.

  Ory chanted…

  Odu Legba, Papa Legba,

  Open the door, your children are waiting.

  Papa Legba, open the door,

  Your children await.

  Ago! Legba! Ago-e!

  And the congregation responded…

  Ayibobo!

  The old man lit a corncob pipe and made the sign of the crossroads in the air with its smoke, then lifted the plates of food offerings for Legba and passed them through the center, inviting Papa Legba to take possession, reciting in French: “Legba, qui guarde la porte. Mystere des carrefours, source de communication entre le visible et l’invisible. Acceptez nos offrandes. Entrez dans nos bras, dans nos jambes, dans nos coeurs. Entrez ici.”

  Ory took a swig of rum straight from the bottle and sprayed it from her mouth, soaking Legba’s cornmeal veve. She then whirled around the pole, shaking the gourd over each initiate, and they joined the whirling dance, around and around, intentionally scattering Legba’s veve with their feet as they passed. Ory picked up a handful of the rum-soaked cornmeal, daubing it on the forehead of each, except for the old man, who she touched on the back of the neck.

  The old man closed his eyes and stood stock still for a few seconds, jerked spasmodically, threw his head back, and laughed very loud. He snatched a bottle from the altar, took a large swig, then poured the rest of the rum over his head, over his face, and even into his open eyes with no sign of discomfort. He then grabbed a carved walking stick and the smoldering corncob pipe and danced around the pole, twirling the stick and puffing madly on the pipe, sending up clouds of cherry-flavored smoke, dancing faster still as the drummers jacked up the tempo and the initiates sang praises to Papa Legba.

  Priestess Ory came over and took up Daniel and Trinity’s mugs. “Papa Legba has opened the crossroads to us,” she explained. “We drink once more to his honor, and then I will paint Shango’s veve and invite him to take possession of my body. If he speaks directly to you, don’t be alarmed. His voice may come from my mouth or it may manifest in your mind’s ear, so listen for it.”

  But there was something wrong about the way she said it. Daniel had seen a lot of religious grifters over the years, had grown up with one of the best, and until a minute ago Ory had seemed completely sincere. But that last line, about Shango speaking directly to Trinity…she seemed to be selling it.

  He stole a glance at his uncle as Ory took their mugs to the altar. Trinity was moving with the drumbeat, a serene smile on his face, like everything was right with the world.

  And now there was something wrong about the way Ory refilled their mugs at the altar, the way she turned her back to them…like she was purposely blocking their view.

  Daniel shifted to his left in order to see.

  The rum bottle was in her right hand…but something else was concealed in her left, hovering over Trinity’s mug.

  An eyedropper.

  Daniel’s heart filled with despair. Had he really seen that? Was she really spiking Trinity’s drink with something?

  Damn. He really had, and she really was.

  Priestess Ory returned with the mugs and handed them over. She raised her own mug. “To Legba!” She drank.

  Daniel slapped the mug out of Trinity’s hand just before it reached his mouth.

  The drumming followed from the backyard as Daniel stormed through the gate and toward the car, digging the keys from his pocket.

  “I don’t know what you’re so riled over,” said Tim Trinity from behind. “It wasn’t poison, she put it in her own drink as well.”

  Daniel stopped in the middle of the front lawn and spun around. “You knew?”

  “Hey, remember who you’re talkin’ to, son. I’ve seen all the moves.” Trinity smiled. “I may play a yokel on TV, but very little gets by me.”

  “But you were gonna drink it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a con, that’s why. Because the woman is just another grifter.”

  Angelica Ory stepped out from behind Trinity. “Watch your mouth, boy. Grifter? Did I ever once ask you for money? Did I even mention money?”

  “Mama Anne, let me apologize for my nephew,” said Trinity.

  “Excuse me?” said Daniel. “I didn’t slip drugs in your drink, I have nothing to apologize for.”

  “Before you make an even bigger ass of yourself,” said Priestess Ory, handing him a small tincture bottle. “Extracts of passionflower, mugwort, kava-kava, and wormwood. All natural ingredients used by indigenous root doctors for thousands of years.”

  “And hallucinogenic,” he said.

  “Sure, if you drink about a cup of the stuff. We use about twenty drops. At most, it enhances your sense of connectedness to the world, boosts your awareness of your own mental imagery, and causes a slight numbing of the tongue.”

  “Loa-in-a-bottle,” said Daniel, handing it back to her. “Very clever.”

  “It is an aid to spiritual insight. It does not render that insight false.” She sighed deeply. “We agreed that the goal was for Tim to receive what I provide. You may not like it, but this is it.”

  “Exactly right,” said Trinity. “You can wait in the car. I’m going back in for my date with Mr. Shango.”

  Ory shook her head. “I’m sorry, Tim. You left the peristyle in the middle of a possession. You walked out on Papa Legba. The crossroads are no longer open to you tonight…and I don’t think he’ll open them again to you any time soon, after such disrespect.”

  Daniel could not detect any insincerity in her at all. He didn’t know what to think. He said, “So you actually believe that old man in there is possessed by Legba?”

  “What does it matter? He believes it, and I believe he gets something of value from it. Daniel, you’re looking for absolute knowledge about the ultimate reality of the universe. I don’t have that knowledge. Nobody does. What I have is faith. And what I do know is, pe
ople have an inborn need to believe in the spirit, and ritual helps sustain that belief. And that is what I provide.”

  Daniel gestured toward the sound of the drums. “So all this is just a ritual to sustain belief in something we can’t understand. That seems pretty hollow to me.”

  “Not hollow at all,” said Priestess Ory. “It’s healing, and it’s very human. Listen, I didn’t come up in Voodoo, I was raised a good Catholic girl, but I always knew I wanted to be a healer of some kind. I tried the conventional route, got a PhD in clinical psychology at Loyola, spent fifteen years as a therapist. Fifteen years of frustration…successes were too few and too fleeting. Then I found Voodoo, and it just spoke to me. And I’ll tell you, I’ve helped more people by waving a chicken’s foot over their heads than I ever did in endless discussions of how their daddies were mean to them as children. I don’t deny there’s an element of performance in the ritual, just as there is for a priest giving communion, just as there is in all human ritual. But whatever the ultimate reality behind it, the bottom line is, it works.” From the backyard, the drums changed tempo and the singing stopped. Priestess Ory glanced toward the gate. “I must get back to my ounfo.” She turned and walked away.

  Trinity stepped forward and snatched the car keys from Daniel’s hand. “Walk with me.” He marched off down the middle of the street.

  Daniel caught up and fell in beside him. Trinity kept marching in silence. Daniel said, “I know you’re angry, but wandering around the Lower Nine in the middle of the night is a very bad plan. Let’s at least get the car.”

  “I’m not angry, I’m thinking. I always think better at a brisk walk. Be quiet a minute so I can hear my thoughts.”

  The skyline of downtown New Orleans glowed faintly in the distance, and the sound of drums faded away as they walked the empty streets, Trinity listening to his thoughts and Daniel listening to their footsteps and watching for trouble among the ruins.

  They reached an intersection and Trinity turned right. Daniel stopped him.

  “Not that way. No streetlights.” So they turned left instead.

  A few blocks later, Trinity stopped walking. “Can you find the way back to the car?” he said.

  “I think so.” Daniel pointed down the next block.

  “Let’s go.”

  And as they walked, Trinity shared his thoughts. “I’m not angry with you…I actually think everything happened tonight exactly the way it was supposed to. Think about it: We all react to things according to the people we are. God knows who you are, and he brought you into this knowing you’d react exactly as you did. I wasn’t led here to commune with Shango at all, I was supposed to experience this night just as it happened.” His hand swept across the devastation all around. “I was supposed to see all this.” Even in the dim light, Daniel caught the glint of his smile. “Nothing tonight happened by accident. And I’m beginning to understand what it means.” He stopped at the intersection, looked around. “God, I wish there were some street signs. Which way?”

  Dawn was now breaking, and everything looked different bathed in its dim blue light. “Right, I think. No, wait.” Daniel scanned for something recognizable, came up empty. “Damn. I don’t know.”

  Trinity dug into his pocket, pulled out a quarter. “Heads it’s right, tails left.” He flipped the coin, caught it, and slapped it on the back of his hand. “Tails.” He turned left and resumed walking. A foghorn moaned somewhere in the distance.

  Halfway down the block, Trinity came to an abrupt stop, his mouth hanging open.

  Daniel reached for the gun. “What?”

  “Oh my…will you look at that!” Trinity ran toward the ruins of a single-story commercial building. The cinderblock structure was still in one piece, but the glass double-doors and all the windows were gone, and the sign was smashed. “You see?” he said. “This proves it.”

  Daniel looked to where he was pointing, to the smashed sign above the entrance.

  T__ TRIN__Y WORD OF GOD MIN_______ NUTRIT_____ CENTER

  The sign jolted his memory, and he recognized the place from a photograph he’d seen on Trinity’s website. It was his uncle’s old soup kitchen.

  Nothing tonight happened by accident…

  Trinity sat on the curb. “Now I can see it clearly.”

  Daniel sat beside him. “Tell me.”

  “OK…all my life I was a grifter, religion just a con, I didn’t even believe in God. But I did build schools and clean-water wells in Africa and a medical clinic in Haiti, and I did fund the largest soup kitchen in Louisiana. Sure, I did it just to keep the IRS off my back, but that’s not the point, just like my lack of belief wasn’t the point. The point is I was doing good works, whatever the reason. But after Katrina, I abandoned the very people who made me rich. When this city desperately needed some good works, I ran off to Atlanta and revved up the money machine again. And then the voices started. And the tongues.” Trinity looked back to the sign. “Remember that last sermon, before the bomb went off? I thought God left me up on stage looking like an idiot with nothing to say, but I was wrong. He said everything. It was the only time he’s ever spoken through me clearly, no backwards tongues, just straight out. And he said: Faith without works is dead.”

  “But you’re saying more than that. You’re saying faith is irrelevant.”

  “Of course faith is irrelevant. God brought together a Catholic priest, a Voodoo mambo, and a total unbeliever. I don’t think He cares what the hell we believe—or even if we believe—as long as we live the word. Think of it this way: In my dream, Mama Anne said, ‘There’s only one God—everything else is metaphor.’ Now, strip away all the metaphors, and what is the one single commandment common to every decent religion ever known?”

  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  “Exactly. Every religion in human history has had a variation of it, but why do so few people live by it? Because of all the other crap, because of the metaphors. Jew or Muslim or Christian or Hindu or Voodoo, everybody’s trying to connect to the same fundamental truth, but they’re confusing themselves, taking the metaphors literally. They’ve all got their checklists—I don’t work on the Sabbath, I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I don’t eat pork, I don’t drink, I don’t commit murder, whatever—but in the meantime, they treat each other like shit. Taking the metaphors literally gives them a free pass to duck out of the real heavy lifting. Hell, look around.” Trinity gestured to the street. “And I don’t just mean this, I mean look at the state of the whole world. People do the easy stuff, they run around bragging about their faith in God and their love of their fellow man…but easy to say ain’t easy to do. And love is a verb. It carries obligation.”

  Love is a verb. The weight of it hit Daniel with an almost physical force. It was the very foundation of Jesus’s message to the world. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. It was also the Catholic prayer for the holy day of Corpus Christi…now just two days away.

  Daniel stood and faced the old soup kitchen. “I’ve spent the last fourteen years searching for a miracle,” he said, “searching for evidence that God is present in the world. But you know, I think what I was really looking for was that feeling I had as a kid…when you were God’s messenger and I was His messenger’s companion. The feeling that I was living in a state of grace.”

  “That feeling came from your belief that we were helping people,” said his uncle. “I think you’ve spent the last fourteen years looking in the wrong places, son. It isn’t about miracles or proof or having God on speed dial. You want to be close to God? Reach down and help your neighbor. Faith without works is dead…and maybe in the end, works is all that matters.” Trinity stood and put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It is God’s only commandment.”

  Daniel danced around the heavy bag, snapping off left jabs and pounding home right hooks, left uppercuts, the bag rattling its chains, sweat pouring down his brow.<
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  The Saint Sebastian’s Boys Athletic Club hadn’t changed a bit. When Daniel rang the doorbell just after sunrise, Father Henri had welcomed him with a hug and a pat on the head. The old priest set up a couple of cots for Daniel and Trinity in the back rooms and then handed Daniel a key to the front door. No questions asked.

  Daniel reversed his footwork and pounded the bag with another newly remembered combination, amazed by how being in the old gym melted the years away, brought it all back.

  Trinity had his brisk walks, Daniel had this.

  It wasn’t just the boxing exercises flooding back. He remembered himself as eighteen-year-old Danny Byrne, remembered how it felt to be that kid. Soon-to-be New Orleans Golden Gloves Welterweight Champion. Living with the fathers and more than a little relieved that these particular priests in this particular parish didn’t seem to have a thing for teenage boys. Good student, and street-smart as hell, courtesy of a childhood spent with the Reverend Tim Trinity, grifter-at-large. Enough swagger to carry on a relationship with a beautiful and smart college grad and drink with her friends in bars that catered to grownups.

  But scheduled to enter the seminary after his next birthday. Scheduled to become a priest. On a mission to find a miracle.

  He had told himself that it was a great way to get a free university education. He had told himself he’d find a miracle before his twenty-sixth birthday and still be a young man with his whole life ahead of him, an advanced degree on his resume, and the stain of the con man washed clean.

  He had told himself a lot of things. He had even told himself that, if it was meant to be, he might still end up with Julia.

  He was a smart kid. He could rationalize anything.

  But he couldn’t face the truth. Truth was, Daniel was an angry young man, and more than just angry. Trinity’s betrayal of his boyhood trust had provided a perfect channel for it, but truth was, the anger had always been with him, a deep rage that rushed like ocean currents far below the surface calm. Rage for a mother who died in childbirth and, worse, a father who chose to kill himself rather than stay and raise his newborn son.