by Weston Ochse
“But I’ve done everything you asked. I pray. I assist the orderlies. I must have emptied as least a thousand bed pans since I’ve been here. I’ve…”
It wasn’t that he wasn’t a hard worker. It was because of his constant questions. Even now, when he believed in the truth of it all, he couldn’t keep from asking. Sometimes he felt that if he ever made it to the pearly gates, he’d ask St. Peter to explain the reason for the pearls.
“The very fact that you’ve counted says much about how serious you are with the Alexian vocation.”
“What else is there?”
“Ever since the order was founded in the terrible years of the Black Death, we’ve served the people. We don’t ask questions. We don’t wonder why all the time. If we’d stopped what we were doing back then and emulated your behavior, the very fabric of modern Europe would be different today. We were the only ones who weren’t too afraid to help.”
Once again, Simon felt slapped. Why was curiosity such a terrible thing?
“I suppose that’s not fair,” said the Father. “We’re a welcome group, as you know. You’ve been a Postulant for almost a year now. Most find their calling and either leave us and return to the secular world or profess their vows and become a full Brother of the order.”
And not knowing what to do with him, they’d packed him up and sent him to their Retreat House in Arizona. A place of transition, they’d called it. Simon knew that their greatest wish was for him to transition out, but oddly, he felt happy being an Alexian Brother. Helping people fulfilled him.
Now, however, after only a few weeks, Father Roy had him reporting his every movement, like he was a small child. The gray-haired priest had said it was because of the strange disappearance of Brother Dominic, but Simon figured that a campaign of harassment had begun— some benign plan of the Brothers to rid themselves of him.
He swung the huge land yacht onto Highway 92 and headed east towards Sierra Vista.
He remembered the old Mexican Padre. If it hadn’t been for him, if it hadn’t been for the Demon, he never would have converted to Catholicism. He never would have joined the Brothers.
* * *
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
The swirling dust on that Sunday morning was as much a part of Nuevo Laredo as the air, combining, separating, recombining, as if the place was attempting to recreate itself into something other than just an abused border town. The thickness of the gusts blinded people as they hurried along the unpaved streets to the Church of The Sanctified Virgin. Umbrellas were opened in the intense sunshine and, like the prows of many ships, the citizens plowed through the air, their goal the silent safety of the church.
Fords, Studebakers and Bel Airs, rusty reminiscences of an age past, were as common as their modern day brothers. An old woman, bent by the wind and her years, scoured the streets, filling bags with trash, each aluminum can causing her face to crease with a smile. A mutt followed hoping for a lick or a taste, anything to provide it one more day of existence.
Like any border town, Nuevo Laredo was a mix of American and Mexican values, each striving for prominence in a population that was more Native American than anything else. It was the bane of the conquered to become what they hated and Nuevo Laredo was no exception, each citizen desperate to create an identity.
Simon leaned against his push broom as he stood upon the top stairs of the old church, watching the wind undo his hard work. He’d been in Mexico for a month, the last three weeks working as a handyman for the church in exchange for room and board. Before Mexico he’d been in Europe, spending two and a half years on a walking tour of the ancient places, worshipping, studying, trying to understand.
He’d been considering returning to Macon, Georgia. It had been three years and the last report he’d had from his sister said his mother was dying fast. At the terminal in Chicago, he’d found himself buying a ticket to Dallas instead of Georgia. Turning his back on his past, he’d headed west, eventually arriving in Laredo when his money ran out. Destitute, and still unable to understand, he’d gone south to Mexico. It was so simple to saunter across the border and lose himself. No one knew who he was. No one knew what he had done. He was free here.
“!Simon! ?Que es haces castea furea aqui? Padre Nick su necesitas ayuda. Tenemos un casa completo hoy y necesidad algunos sillas triaste uribba da el sotano.”
He turned towards the speaker, his mind turning the words around, transforming them to English. He thanked God for the patience of his high school Spanish teacher, Mr. Roberts. The language had come back quickly to the point that they only laughed at him a little.
“Simon! What are you doing standing out here? Father Nick needs your help. We have a full house today and need some chairs brought up from the basement.”
He grinned at the tiny woman.
“Come on, Boy. Hurry! No need to smile at an old woman. I am immune to your charms.”
“Sorry. I was just thinking. I’ll get on it now,” he replied in Spanish. At least that’s what he thought he said as he hefted the broom over his shoulder and scooted around the side of the building.
This had been the twentieth church he’d worked at in as many months. If anyone found out, they’d surely think he had some kind of religion fetish, but after what had happened during the Gulf War, Simon felt a need for some answers.
He’d never been very religious. He could count on his two hands the number of times he’d been in church before the war. God had merely been something that influenced the outcome of football games and often been damned for his ineffectiveness.
Then Simon had been called to active duty. His reserve unit had tried on their new uniforms, oiled their M-16s and flown to Saudi Arabia to meet and kill their first Muslims. To Simon, they were just like Catholics. As far as he was concerned, they just used different names and preferred not to eat hotdogs.
It was on his second day that he’d witnessed true devoutness. Not devout like the Bible-thumping Southern Baptist preachers back home who drank and whored on Saturday nights so they’d have an excuse to repent the next day. Nor was it like the tel-evangelists attempting to extort money from unsuspecting grandmothers. It was the devoutness of a people who would stop at nothing for their religion. A people who expected nothing in return for their devoutness. A people who truly believed.
He’d been in midserve in a hard-fought volleyball match between his infantry squad and a squad of Saudi Guardsman when the siren sounded. Simon had hit the dirt, throwing his hands over his head, his elbows and knees digging great gouges in the earth as he tried to bury himself, all the while praying that the SCUD would somehow miss him. When he didn’t hear anything more except the ringing of laughter coming from the spectators, all soldiers who’d done the same thing at one time or another, he glanced around and discovered it wasn’t an air raid siren. He’d stood. Feeling pretty stupid, he’d brushed off the sand that now covered his body, pretending the stares weren’t directed at him.
It was then that he’d noticed that the Saudis had all turned, kneeled and were praying, their foreheads pressed to the sand. He remembered thinking how this would never happen in America. He tried to imagine seventy thousand people halting a Georgia Football game and praying, two football teams and Uga 6 bowing between the hedges. It would never happen. The embarrassment faded, but the formalism had left an impression upon him that had grown with each new day.
Then shortly after the war while they were clearing mines, they’d encountered a bunker. The sky had been heavy with flies. From fifty yards away, they smelled the awful sweetness of rotting flesh coming from within. They pretended to ignore it, but the lieutenant’s medal-driven ambition sent them into the heart of the stench. They’d put on their gas masks, and with the aid of flashlights, descended into hell. Forty Iraqi soldiers had died in an intense fireball as a smartbomb had pierced the roof of their bunker while they’d been praying. Each figure had been forever locked in prayer, their bodies blackened and rotting from within. The burned ski
n had dried and was pulled tightly over harsh bones. In several places upon each body where the skin had miraculously escaped the horrendous fire, insects trekked back and forth carrying the riches of weeks old entrails to caverns deep beneath the sands.
Simon had retched inside of his mask as he helped carry out the bodies, the awkward loads shifting and twisting in their rubber-gloved grips. Every single one had died praying, kneeling positions, hands melted to their foreheads. Pieces of scorched skin flaked off as the desert winds caught them. At one point, a struggling pair of privates dropped their burden and the body cracked open at the top of the hard stone stairs, the head and hands separating and rolling back down into the bunker as the insides spilled out in a miasma of gray intestines.
The episode was a sick epiphany as he, once again, encountered the devout. A host of soldiers directed by a madman, sure in their goal. As the rest of the world condemned them, they stood fast in their belief. It was the will of God. It was Allah’s will.
Enshallah.
The experience had left him with a chasm of doubt and a wonderment about his own lack of understanding. He needed to understand, to find out what he was missing. He needed to experience God, to discover if everyone else was being duped, or if he was merely out of the loop.
When he’d eventually returned to America, he’d taken all the pay he’d never had a chance to spend and boarded a plane to France. He’d gone from the gothic spires of Notre Dame to the Spanish mission of the Church of The Sanctified Virgin, searching. Searching, until he’d finally found himself in a church in the small border town of Nuevo Laredo.
Carmelita was right about tonight. It was a full house. It took six trips to bring up enough chairs, but finally Simon had set up three more rows behind the pews for the overflow. Ever since the Revivalist had come two weeks ago, the number of parishioners had doubled. In fact, the entire complexion of the church had changed. What had been a traditional, nearly boring Methodist-like service had become a footstomping, arm-waving spectacle where the people were as likely to shout Amen as they were to speak in tongues.
Simon had been to a Pentecostal church as a kid where he’d had the shit scared out of him when half the parishioners had fallen to the floor twitching and screaming crazy dialogues. His father had said they’d made it up and explained about mass hysteria. But then that was Dad, always a reason for everything. Every emotion, every action was the result of the brain. His father’s world could be completely explained in psychological terms.
But now, weeks later, the church was awash in the after-effects of the revival, as if the revivalist had injected it with a holy energy, turning the services into more Baptist than Methodist. Simon had heard the Padre grumbling, but knew the man secretly appreciated the renewed interest in God and the overflowing collection plates. It would return to normal eventually, but for now the Padre seemed determined to ride out the wave and appreciate any increased interest in God, regardless of the reason.
The inside of the church was almost suffocatingly hot with no chance of any air-conditioned relief. Even as hot as it was, the temperature was at least ten degrees cooler than outside, the inherent coolness of the granite providing the tiny respite. Simon sat all the way in back. While waiting for the service to begin, he once again admired the church.
He’d chosen the church because of its architecture and style. The grandeur had grabbed him with its opposition to the structural norms and its ambition to be a shining place amidst a land of brown squalor. The outside was pure Spanish Mission—white stucco walls reflecting the sunshine like a mirror. But when he’d stepped inside, he’d been shocked to discover that instead of a continuation of the Spanish style, the interior was Baroque, reminding him of the Cathedral of Smolny Convent he’d visited in St. Petersburg. Tall, flat coffered ceilings allowed space for clerestory windows to light the central space and lower outer windows to light the side aisles, the sun reflecting through interpretive, Mexican stained-glass gospels.
Simon loved the architecture. Sitting within such grandeur always evoked a feeling of somberness, and like the old churches of Europe, he felt closer to the God that he was becoming closer to understanding.
The service started on time with the Padre stepping upon the platform. The congregation immediately hushed.
“Peace be with you.”
“And also with you,” they replied.
Simon accepted the almost imperceptible nod of thanks from the Padre with a nod of his own and settled into the service. It wasn’t until mass was half over that, literally, all hell broke loose.
Simon felt the man before he saw him. He was a wiry young man in a stained white t-shirt and jeans. His skin was unwashed. His hair was matted with small leaves and twigs. His eyes were animal-wild. His aura tainted the happy lethargy of the people, and almost as one, the gathered ensemble turned in their seats and examined the newcomer.
When his mouth opened, all chances of worship were shattered. “Stupid motherfuckers! What the fuck do you think you’re accomplishing with your pathetic prayers to a pedophile God? Do you think he even fucking cares about your own pissy little lives?”
Everyone, Simon included, reeled with the strength and animosity of the verbal assault.
“Butt-fucking, pussy-eating Father of raped sheep, come down from behind that pulpit where you’ve been ejaculating and kneel before a real man.”
Simon leapt and grabbed the man by the shoulders, but was thrown back by a surprising strength. Simon hit the floor hard, his head bouncing off the hard granite.
“Simon, no! The house of the Lord is no place for violence,” said the Padre.
“That’s right, Simon, you pretty bitch, stay on your knees and I’ll let you suck me off once the Padre’s done.”
Simon rose, but came no closer. He wasn’t used to losing fights. This small man had tossed him aside like he was a child. The brother swallowed his outrage and planted himself squarely in front of the door. When it was time for the man to leave, they’d have a conversation outside—a bloody conversation.
The man spun as three large men stood and formed a protective arc in front of the Padre. Even though their large hands seemed capable of dismantling a charging bull, fear flashed in their eyes.
“You worms of the earth, fornicators all! You can’t stop me.” Then, his voice changed to that of a beaten child, “help me.”
“You need to leave, Mister,” said Simon.
The man jerked a knife from his pocket. With a flick, a rusted four-inch blade sprung to life. Those who hadn’t yet been standing jumped to their feet and surged back towards the walls creating a circle of empty pews with the maniac in the center.
“All of you will die.”
And the man lunged.
Before he could get three feet, however, six strong arms grasped him from behind and threw him to the floor. The knife clattered across the granite and disappeared beneath a pew. He was a fury of arms and legs as he fought, desperate to free himself from the farmers, but they’d have none of it. It was nothing to hold him until he became too exhausted to continue.
The Padre descended, moving swiftly through the crowd, smiling and grasping hands. He motioned for the congregation to take their seats. Slowly, casting concerned and fearful glances towards the man upon the floor, they cooperated.
The Padre placed his hand upon the sweaty forehead of the young man. He stared deeply into eyes that switched from fear to anger and back again in an internal emotional strobe. Spittle flecked the young man’s lips. His chest heaved violently.
“Have peace my son, we are here for you. God is here for you.”
“No. No. Fuck you. Help me,” rasped the man, his voice changing in octave and tenor with each word.
“Join me in prayer,” said the Padre, indicating that everyone else should join him. “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
As the people chanted the ancient words, the man began to shake and quiver, the earlier strength returning to ex
hausted limbs.
“. . .on earth as it is in heaven. . .”
A pining scream soared to the vaulted ceiling, stilling some of the voices as the man’s soul sounded its agony.
“. . .and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Deliver us from evil. . .”
He gagged and choked. A thick lump of vomit poured from his mouth and onto his chest. The stench made the farmers turn their heads, but the Padre remained steadfast.
“. . .the kingdom and the power and the glory. Forever and ever, Amen.”
As the prayer ended, the man screamed again, the painful pitch rising and rising then dropped into the whimpering cry of a child. The Padre held the man and rocked him, sobs filling the inside of the church. Simon’s own anger had dissolved, replaced by a hard lump in his own throat. He rushed to the Padre’s side and helped him to his feet. The aura of evil was gone, and the man seemed to be himself again.
Then an agonizing scream erupting from the front row, interrupted the silence. It was quickly punctuated by another round of cursing, this time from the mouth of Carmelita—the kind old woman who looked after the Padre and the church, a woman who was grandmother to all and had never done anyone harm, was recreating the untranslatably American word Fuck with every other syllable.
The people around her stumbled back, falling and tripping. Within seconds the church was filled with screams as they ran towards the door. Men and women and children found themselves pushed to the ground in the mad scramble. Several younger men leapt over the bodies, using the pews as a horizontal stair until they reached the door, only to fling themselves into the backs of those clogging the door.
It was a full minute of confusion until only a dozen people were left within the church. Simon, bruised and battered, noticed the young man was gone, as were two of the farmers who’d earlier helped subdue him. The church was a wreck. Pews and chairs had toppled. Prayer books and hymnals were scattered everywhere. Simon made his way to the front where an arc of humanity huddled around the seated figure of the cursing Carmelita.
