The Paper Shepherd

by Olivia Landis

  “Loyalty is important, Prentice,” Max reflected. “But at some point, you can’t just let your friends bind you up in their problems because they’re your friends. You know, Jesus did say in Matthew, if your brother sins, try to persuade him not to. And, basically, if you try a few times and he still won’t listen, you don’t have to keep going along with him. “

  “Yeah, but four hundred and ninety times?” Prentice speculated. “That will take forever.”

  “Four hundred ninety?”

  “Um, yeah. How’d Jesus put it? Seventy times seven.”

  “You have to forgive him seventy times seven times,” Max explained. “But you can stop being his friend long before that.”

  “And that’s in Matthew?” Prentice asked seriously.

  “Chapter 18, verse seventeen,” Max recited. He never remembered Prentice having any interest in the Bible in the 11 years they spent together in school. He wondered where the sudden interest was coming from.

  “How do you do that?” Prentice asked, sitting down on a park bench.

  “Do what?” Max asked, unfazed.

  “Remember all of that off the top of your head?” Prentice said with obvious awe. Max shrugged.

  “I dunno,” he said weakly. “It’s always just been easy for me.” Easy to read, Max reflected sadly. But hard to do. Easy to memorize the bible, but so hard to forgive. Easy to advise others to let go, but so hard to let go. They sat for a while in peaceful silence watching as cars and buses pass on the main road past the park. Finally, Prentice broke the silence.

  “Max, I just want to say I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  “Sorry for what, Prentice?” Max asked, confused.

  “You were such a great role model in high school,” he said regretfully. “I should have been more like you.”

  “I wasn’t exactly perfect,” Max admitted.

  “Yeah, but, I could have been a lot nicer to people,” Prentice admitted. “I just feel like a dick now. I wish I had been more like you. I think it’s so cool what you’re doing, Max. I think you’re going to be the kind of priest that makes kids excited about wanting to be good and learn about Jesus and....” he trailed off. Max was feeling self-conscious, but Prentice, oblivious to this, went on. “I don’t know, man. What do I know. I got expelled from Sunday school… twice. But, I think you’re going to be a really kick ass priest.” Max felt exposed, as though Prentice’s admiration would bring the truth of his own failures into focus and make them visible to everyone. He instinctively went back to where he felt safe—teaching. Stamping out ignorance.

  “You know, it’s not too late to change,” Max said. “If you really do want to change your life, the steps are simple. They’re not easy. But, they are simple.” Max was surprised Prentice looked at him with real interest. He continued.

  “You just go to confession. Apologize to the people you wronged if you still know where they are,” Prentice nodded.

  “That sounds too easy,” he said suspiciously.

  “God loves all of us,” Max said, hoping he sounded more convinced then he felt. “He wants us to find our way to grace.” Prentice nodded again. “If that doesn’t seem like enough,” Max went on. “You can try getting involved with the youth programs at the church and try to steer other young men away from the traps you fell into. Maybe you could volunteer to coach basketball during the summer. They’ll be looking for help since I’ll only be home two more weeks this summer.” Prentice looked serious.

  “I think that sounds like a really good idea.”

  “Thanks,” Max said nervously, wanting to change to topic. “Now, let’s get back to the church before all the cake is gone.” Prentice finally lightened up his expression.

  “Yeah. Let’s go get some cake.”

  Renee looked at herself in the mirror and wondered who she was trying to look presentable for. She and Salome obviously did not see eye to eye on dress or hairstyles and she hadn’t seen Pat in two months. She had practiced in advance how to look happy, smiling at herself in the mirror to convince him she was too healthy to need therapy.

  Could I convince myself? She wondered. She tried smiling at herself in the mirror now. A grotesque, mask like face smiled back at her. It had been exactly a year since her horrible hair experiment. Her hair was now long enough to cut off the hideous technicolored horns and still leave her with a few inches to style like a girl. She had tried for the first few months to dye it all back to her normal color, or even to one color. Unfortunately, the original dye job had left her hair so damaged, it absorbed the dye in unpredictable ways and never looked quite uniform. So, she waited under baseball caps and knitted caps and every conceivable color bandanna. Finally, today, she got the chemically tortured, stiff, frayed, dried, crunchy tips cut off her hair. She looked like she was twelve again, after a year going to Barbara’s Beauty palace, growing out the years of boy haircuts her uncle’s barber inflicted upon her. But, she looked more like herself.

  It will take more than hair, she thought. It would take more than just hair to hide what she had become. It would take more than just her own hair cut to feel like her old self. No matter what Pat told her, nor what she told him, she was broken, tainted. She never felt this so acutely as she did today knowing it was Jen’s wedding day. She and Jen had been best friends in high school. She wanted to be there for Jen. But, she couldn’t go now. She would bring scandal to the whole blessed event. When Matt and Prentice had seen her at the Fox Tail, it was bad enough. But, Max wasn’t friends with them. If Max knew Renee’s new occupation, everyone in town knew. Jen had probably invited Renee just to be polite but couldn’t possibly really want her there to ruin everything. Renee thought with a sigh that it would be just as uncomfortable for her having to face everyone’s accusing eyes. It’s not worth it, she thought. Nothing good could come out of it.

  Unless he’s there, she thought in desperation. Renee no longer feared nor dreaded seeing Max again. In fact, she longed for it. If she saw him again, she knew, this time, she would not hide from him. She would not chase him away. This was not, as she let Pat believe, because she was no longer ashamed of who she was. It was not because, having discussed her feelings with a therapist, she now had a mature understanding of their relationship and the break down of communication that lead to the gulf between them. She was not healed and she was not ready to rebuild their friendship. She knew it was too late for that. She knew he could not love her. She knew he could not even accept her. But, she was ready even to take his condemnation. Even if she was only an obligation to him, even if she was just an anonymous soul to save or condemn, she would gladly take that condemnation, because it would mean that she did actually exist, that she did matter to someone no matter how foul or wretched they found her.

  Pat did not approve of Renee using words like “wretched” to describe herself. Do you ever feel like the world would be better off without you? he would ask when she described herself this way. Do you feel like you would be better off dead? He had to ask, Renee knew. It was his job to make sure she wasn’t planning on killing herself. No, she would answer honestly. No, I don’t want to be dead. How could he understand it was because she felt like she was already dead? Renee had been walking around for a month feeling like she did not exist, like she was in some terrifying book by Jean Paul Sartre—the invisible undead. She had fallen off humanity’s radar screen. She was just out of God’s field of vision. They could call her Renee, Tiar, Gabine, Salome, Herodias… they could call her Alfred or Al Saud and she would answer. But, there was no one to call her, and no place to call her home to. She had tried using religion, science, and medicine to fill this void to no avail. The men of the church had given up on saving her and the men of medicine refused to let her be condemned. So, she was in Limbo, that place that infants go when they die too young to commit sin but are not yet baptized. This is where Renee found herself. From where she was, there was no path out. And, he’s not there anyway, she thought. Jen and Max knew each other only thr
ough Renee. Except for the one movie they watched together, Renee was not sure Max and Jay had ever actually spoken. Renee turned her back to the mirror and leaned against the sink, wiping a tear out of her eye with the heel of her hand. He won’t be there. She sat on the floor of the bathroom, clutching her knees to her chest in a tight ball. He couldn’t be there just for me. Not for me.

  46

  Glory to the Father, and to the Son... Searing electrical pain shot though the back of Max’s leg to distract him from the steady throbbing in both his knee caps. After Jay’s wedding, Max only had a week to fill before returning to the seminary. He spent as much time as he could cleaning and doing grounds keeping tasks for the church. His evenings were once again divided between the church gym, supervising youth athletics, and Buck’s tavern, where he had begun to supervise the new Mrs. Holstead at darts so she could compete with her husband and his friends. The blind sight continued. If anything, it worsened. Max reflected that it made the summer go by mercifully quickly. Events passed with no meaning at all to attach to them. Max imagined that if he could keep this up, he could fit the entire emotional content of the rest of his life into five minutes. The summer had taken about fifteen seconds once he learned to use his disability to his advantage. Now, he was back at school where things were real. None of this emotional pain bullshit. The pain here was real. It was physical. He felt it right now. He had spent the past hour on his knees in prayer on the cold stone floor of St. Rocco’s chapel. He was pleased with the pain. A week ago, it had started stabbing at him after thirty minutes. Whether his muscles or his will were stronger this week, he was making progress... and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning... Max enjoyed these tests of endurance. In classes, he only got the feed back three or four times a semester, by tests and papers, to know if he was improving—if he was getting intellectually closer to God’s ideal for him. Here, in the chapel in daily prayer, he could see his progress everyday. He could test his physical and spiritual growth in minutes. He could know for certain that he was making tangible strides toward his goal of being a soldier for Christ.

  Is now and ever shall be, World without end, Amen. For Max, the analogy to being a soldier was one he was using increasingly as a crutch to bolster his faith. A soldier was asked to make certain physical sacrifices of food, sleep, warmth, a comfortable bed. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come... A soldier spent long spans of time away from home, family, and friends...thy will be done... A soldier had to obey and never question, even when the purpose for which he was being asked to sacrifice was becoming increasingly unclear. On earth as it is in heaven...For Max, just starting his third year at the seminary, the last of these was the analogy nearest to his heart.

  Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those...Max continued to pray, eyes closed, lips chanting away, barely audible. He could sometimes get himself into a trance praying this way, reciting things from rote memorization. And in his trance state, cut off from the rest of the world, he felt warm and safe. He had his brethren around him, like a soldier had his brothers in arms.

  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...The process, the fight itself, was becoming more important to Max than the goal. There was no way, he knew, that he could ever fix the problems of the world, that he could ever banish evil from the earth. In that realization, there was a certain comfort. He had no fear he would fail. He certainly would fail. But it was not the outcome of the battle that mattered, it was that he was on the right side of the fight. He would sacrifice, he would obey, he would be a foot soldier for the Lord. When it was all said and done, evil would win out and death would overcome, but he could know in his heart that he had stayed faithful to the effort. He had battled valiantly against greed, sloth, hatred, vanity, gluttony, jealousy...For thine is the Kingdom, the power, the glory, forever and ever.

  We believe in God, the Father Almighty...Max ruminated on these thoughts. For the past few weeks, a doubt had been growing in his mind, a nagging shadow. Maker of heaven and earth…What if there was nothing else but this world? Of all that is seen and unseen... What if there was no God? Out on the quadrangle among the willows, this thought was terrifying. But in here, in the chapel, this meant nothing. In here, Max felt completely safe to doubt.... the forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting, Amen. It was irrelevant to him. If there were no God, if he could perform a scientific test to prove it, it would mean nothing. Society needed religion just like in needed policemen to bring order, to motivate citizens to act decently. People needed the illusion of a heavenly father just as they needed Max’s earthly father—and that meant they needed priests. Max enjoyed studying to be one. What did the truth matter? He had given up trying to find truth in books, in prayer, on his knees, with his eyes closed, a stone roof between him and heaven.

  Our father, who art in Heaven... If there was a God, Max was sure, this is not where he would be found. But, the process of searching was enough to keep him going. He enjoyed the simplicity of it, the sacrifice, the wine, the robes, the incense, the trappings of piety. He loved the pomp and circumstance of a vigil mass, the quiet solitude of morning matins. Give us this day our daily bread… If someone wanted to pay him, house him, and feed him so that he could live this way, that was all he needed. If other people in his parish found it easier to sleep at night because he was there to teach them to pray, so much the better. And forgive us our trespasses.

  God was not in a book. Blessed are thou among women.... He was not in candles or incense or in a tabernacle. Max had looked in all of these places a hundred times. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb... He had looked in all of these places but found nothing to validate the journey. Pray for us, sinners. People would say God is love. Max once knew what that felt like—love. At least, he thought he had. But what had been action, a living breathing way of life, had become emotion. Emotion had become thought, thought had become memory. And now, he couldn’t even remember what love felt like. So, how could he know God? He used to see God’s love in the beauty of a tree in bloom, but now he saw only photosynthesis, a chemical reaction, the product of pragmatic evolution.

  Glory be to the Father.... There was no point even in pretending to himself anymore that he did believe…and to the Son.... He could admit to himself it was all an act… and to the Holy Spirit.... There was no god to hear him. There was no one who could hear his thoughts. If you are there, he screamed inside his head. If you are listening to me, take me now! Max’s lips kept chanting on while his mind cursed in the silent darkness inside his head. If you can hear me, kill me. I dare you. Kill me now and send me to hell. Send me to that whore you left behind when you took the last good soul off this earth. Max’s palms, pressed together in prayer, began to sweat. Lucifer, Baal, Beelzebub! Take me to hell so I can finish what I started. Take me to your fiery torture paradise so I can do all those horrible things you showed me in your evil magazines—your demonic publications. Take me to hell so I can be with my sister-lover-whore. As it was in the beginning.... Max began to feel a terrible pain in his chest. Is now... It was getting difficult to breath. And ever shall be.... His vision began growing dark, his ears were ringing, and then. Amen.

  “We’ll be right there.” Dr. McLeod slammed down the receiver. “Suicide attempt in the ICU,” he said to his fourth year medical student. Pat was on call for the psychiatry service at Brighton University Hospital.

  “How?” Jean, the student, asked.

  “IV tubing around the neck.” They grabbed their white coats and hurried down the hall to the intensive care unit, talking on the way.

  “What was the patient in the ICU for?”

  “Pneumothorax.”

  “Do we know how the lung popped? Are we looking at chronic disease or acute?”

  “Don’t know,” Pat answered. “She’s 21, so probably car accident or something.” They pushed open the door to the unit and found the room they were called to. Pat looked at the bright red name sticker pasted to the window.

  “Damn it!�
�� Restraints applied, and sheets pulled up tightly, nothing could be seen of the patient except several inches of soft, brown hair. Jean knew to keep quiet. Dr. McLeod did not easily loose his temper. Jean picked up a clipboard from a nearby rolling table and handed it to Dr. McLeod who skimmed over the first few pages. He threw the clip board down hard on the table. “If I ever get my hands on that fucking priest!” he said, punching the wall.

  “Stay right here,” he said to Jean evenly, and turned to walk into the hospital room. A passing nurse caught Pat’s attention and he stopped her abruptly, grabbing her arm.

  “How long since the attempt?” he asked, trying, and failing, to sound patient.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes. Right before we called you,” she said timidly.

  “How long has she been in the hospital?”

  “About three hours.”

  “Why didn’t you call me then?”

  “The paramedics said it was an accident,” she answered defensively.

  “Damn it, woman. When have you ever heard of someone accidentally stabbing themselves in the chest?” He let her arm go and entered the room alone, closing the door behind him.

  Max felt a throbbing pain in his forehead, and a cold stone floor under him. “What happened?” he asked, rubbing his head. Tony leaned over him, no sign of concern on his face.

  “Classic rookie mistake, kiddo,” he said. “If you lock your knees, blood can’t get back from your legs to your head and you pass out. Especially when it’s warm like this.”

  “Why does my head hurt?” he asked, sitting up.

  “You hit it on a pew on your way down. Good way to cause amnesia. I’ve never heard a skull make such a loud sound before,” he said flippantly. “Way to go. I think you just lost the Book of Revelation.”

  47

  “Next,” rang out an apathetic shout in the waiting area of the telephone company satellite office in Brighton, New York. A mass of unrelated people, united only in their common purpose to derive some service out of the phone company, lethargically inched forward like varied morsels of meat sharing the same sausage casing. Renee had been present for ten or so of these cycles and noticed now that the shout was identical each time as though it were electronically recorded long ago to spare the phone company employee the trouble of saying it herself. She was a middle-aged woman with feathered blond hair and turquoise earrings who sat on a swiveling stool behind the counter. Renee stepped up to the window and put her change of address form on the counter between them.