★
Living in the Castle Manor was an old man named Mr. Kerby. I met him at dinner. One of the nurses had wheeled Mr. Kerby to our table and put a tray of food in front of him. Mr. Kerby was very old, somewhere in his eighties. He was a slight man, with no teeth, and he would open and close his eyes and scrunch up his face whenever he spoke or thought of something. He was bald as a cue ball, with a friendly, open face, and this particular evening he wore a wide-necked white undershirt.
★
I found out from Kay that years earlier, before he was a resident himself, Mr. Kerby had been forced to check his ailing wife into the Castle Manor. He’d been devoted to his wife and had visited her every day, staying from early in the morning to late at night, feeding her, bathing her, cleaning her—performing all the functions of hygiene and sustenance the nurses were being paid to perform. Eventually she died there, in the Castle Manor, and it wasn’t long after that that Mr. Kerby was brought in by social services, after taking a fall at his house. He had been a resident five years by the time I met him.
★
I spoke to Mr. Kerby while he ate his dinner. He’d grown up on a farm in Indiana, and spent most of his life working in an accounting office in Chicago. As a young man he went to France during World War II, and worked in payroll for the army, so he had seen no action. I was glad about this, because five seconds after meeting Mr. Kerby I saw that he was the most kind and gentle man who had ever lived, a simple-minded, open-hearted saint. He loved trains. He loved trains the way a mountain climber loves the mountain, or a surfer loves the wave.
★
After the war, when he was discharged, instead of returning straightaway to America, Mr. Kerby went to Paris—for only one reason: to ride the subway. He told me, opening and shutting his eyes and scrunching up his nose, that he had ridden every inch of every line. Then he went to Berlin, where he rode the subway there, the U-Bahn, every inch of every line. He went to London next and rode the Underground, every inch of every line. He told me that every inch of western American rail led to Chicago’s big stations. He remembered his first trip to the city as a boy, with his father. As the locomotive had pulled into the station, its whistle blew, and he squeezed his father’s hand in excitement. (I may have made this part up, I don’t remember.)
★
He asked me what I did for a living and I said I was a writer. He was hard of hearing and didn’t catch that, so I SAID I WAS A WRITER. I WRITE BOOKS. He said, Oh I see and smiled, opening and closing his eyes.
★
Then he said, in his very slow, midwestern drawl: There are lots of things that you could write a book a bout…
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You could write a book a bout the trains in Chi ca go…
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You could write a book a bout the cat tle in dus try…
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(He thought awhile longer…)
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You could write a book a bout the corn in dus try…
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(He thought awhile longer…)
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You could write a book a bout the rail road in dus try…
★
★
You could write a book a bout the coal in dus try…
★
★
You could write a book a bout the steel in dus try…
★
★
You could write a book a bout the sub ways of the world…
★
A few days later my wife and I returned to Castle Manor. We’d left Kay in Mexico to resume our trip back home, and wanted to leave a thank-you card for her with Jeff. As we walked toward his room we spotted Mr. Kerby, sitting in his wheelchair, with a group of residents. It was a very sad sight to see. They formed a crescent moon of wheelchairs, all of them facing the long rectangular nurses’ desk, behind which three nurses were doing paperwork, silently. None of the old people were speaking to one another. They were just sitting there, as time went by. When we saw Mr. Kerby there in the semicircle, we approached him, we bent down so as to be at eye level, and when he saw us—and then finally recognized us—his face lit up, he smiled and squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again and said: Oh, hel lo!
★
Just this mor ning I thought of a no ther thing you could write a book a bout!
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I could write a book about a man who rides the rails to the end of the world.
★
And it is
★
MADNESS
★
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
★
★
★
★
★
And it is hard work
We’re so proud of you, babe! It’s all right! You did good, and you’re doing well now, K?
★
VI
>IT IS HARD WORK BEING A SAINT.
(The Bishop of the candidate’s local Diocese begins the formal process. Information must be gathered detailing the life and works of the candidate, and the holiness of his or her character. Those who knew the candidate in life are interviewed.
★
Second- and thirdhand testimonies may be submitted.
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Once the information is exhaustively documented, the Bishop may petition to begin the beatification process. The information is presented to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Officials of the Congregation create an historical account of the candidate’s life and character. The candidate must be proven to have lived a life of heroic virtue.
★
Finally, a miracle must be proven to have taken place after the candidate’s death, due to the intercession of candidate.
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Once the heroic virtue and the postmortem miracle is acknowledged by the Congregation, the candidate may then be designated beatific by the Pope. Once beatification is recognized the candidate has been officially venerated, and is known from then on as a Blessed One; e.g., Blessed Virgin Mary, Blessed Charlemagne, etc.
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Then, if the Pope so wishes, the process of canonization may take place, the final step toward Sainthood.
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A second miracle must be shown to have taken place due to the candidate’s postmortem intercession.
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This is taken as a sign that the candidate continues to intercede for the flock as a member of God’s heavenly court and thus henceforth, the name of the candidate—as it appears in the hearts and minds and on the tongues of all creatures in all realms—both above and below—shall forever be prefixed by:
★
St.★)
★ For martyrs, miracles aren’t necessary.
★
August 2000, my grandmother Helen—not to be confused with Helen my four-year-old niece—was taken to the hospital. I was far from home, in Itchy City, rubbing calamine lotion onto my bites.
★
I spoke to her on the phone, and she told me of her symptoms, and that the doctors didn’t really know what was wrong with her, but she assured me that she would be fine, she would be back home in her apartment very soon. She asked me how my writing was going.
★
Coincidentally, I had just begun a chapter about a kind-hearted, elderly Irish-Catholic woman who suddenly finds herself falling apart. I had no beginning and no ending; I had only an inbetween and it wasn’t leading anywhere in either direction. I was frustrated. I wrestled with it for a long time, getting nowhere.
★
She was not recovering, so a few weeks later I flew home to Seattle to see her. They’d moved her from the hospital to a home. Her wig was on the bedside table, and she wore a white cotton wrap on her head. I’d never seen her without her wig. I don’t believe ANYONE! had. I’d brought her
a copy I’d purchased of a small and for some reason incredibly pricey literary journal published by the English department of New Mexico State University which, by accepting a story I’d sent to them (as well as to many, many far more prestigious publications), had granted me my first successful submission of any kind—as well as two complimentary copies. I wrote her a note on the inside cover. I don’t remember what it said. Most likely something like: I am extremely indebted to you. Or: You’re the one member of my family who really encouraged me in my writing, who liked what I wrote, and said that it was great.
★
She was so happy. She knew from the beginning that her grandson was going to be a famous writer. She was confused. I think she was finally taking the pills they’d been trying to give her for the pain. Her wig was on the table.
★
The visit was short because she had so little strength. She said she’d have one of my aunts read her Looking After My Own when they came to visit. She wasn’t complaining but she was having trouble READING? these days. I kissed her goodbye, and,
★
as I turned to leave the room, from behind me a voice was heard to say my name. I turned back around
★
and a young woman was sitting up in the bed where my grandmother had just been; her face was smooth and very fair, her lips red, her eyes were blue and bright, and long, dark tresses flowed about her cheeks, cascading in curls down her shoulders.
★
She said, “The journey ahead is very difficult, and the one against whom you must stand will set many obstacles in your path. But the prize is great indeed.
★
You must be bold, and good and true, and never fear. The water will get colder the closer you get to the end, but you will not freeze. And the fire will grow hotter but it will not burn you. Everything will appear to turn upside down. The sky will be below you and above will be the ground. The one who tries to climb will find himself falling. But the one who lets himself go will rise to heaven. There will come a light. And then a flash. And then darkness. And then the end will appear to come. But do not be afraid. For the end is only a doorway to another world, the real world, which underlies, supports, and sustains this dull reflection. Always always always remember:
★
.”
★
I said, OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
OK,
★
and flew away the next day.
★
Begin another new section?
★
>OK
V
Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia, friend & adviser to King Henry VIII, was sentenced to death for refusing to swear oath to two Acts. 1.) of Succession, which reconstituted the line to the throne, and 2.) of Supremacy, which declared His Majesty the head of God’s earthly church.
★
He was beheaded in 1535, after having said, with his ordinary humor, that he did not consider the severing of his head from his body as a circumstance that should produce any change in the disposition of his mind.
SAINT THOMAS MORE, Martyr
(1480–1535)
★
lol
★
Very late one night in my 18th year, my roommate JD and I were, as we often used to say, (Dude, I’m) “fucked up.” We’d been in front of the TV drinking malt liquor and smoking pot all afternoon and then all evening and into the night and now it was half past three in the morning, I Love Lucy was on, and we were out of alcohol and weed. We woke up another roommate, Steve, and asked him if he had anything that we could get high on. Steve was a very serious student—he studied hard, took all the difficult classes—he smoked cigarettes and drank beer on the weekends but he didn’t do anything else. He didn’t even smoke pot. He majored in chemistry. He said he had a bottle of CD cleaner on his desk. That would probably do it.
★
JD and I sprayed CD cleaner into a paper bag and passed it back and forth, taking turns inhaling the fumes, as the show went into its first commercial.
The lights were off, so it was dark, except for a demonic teddy bear who fell through the sky and landed on a stack of fluffy bed linens, giggling like a maniac and crying out with an insidious high-pitched squeal about the virtues of something he called “snuggly softness.” My head was filled::: :::it lifted off:::
★
St. Damien of Molokai went to the Islands to “make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ,”
★
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★
Not long after, the reader finds us both slumped darkly in our chairs, minus a number of brain cells. The lightness in our heads, the sense of euphoric imbalance, are all byproducts of the evil, craven slaughter of these cells. As each cell had exploded, it had sung the song of its release. It went:
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