The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  —The Primitive Rule of the Templars Chapter 46

  “Brother, may I have a word with you in private?” Abbot Thomas asked Ken Johnson as he sat reading in the living room of the ranch house, still dressed in sweats and a T-shirt from a recent lackadaisical workout.

  “Sure, Tom.” The younger man set the book down on the arm of the chair rather than back on the shelf where it came from and rose to follow the abbot out.

  Thomas sighed. “Walk with me.” Cranberry walked out the door and down the steps at the front of the ranch house and then headed up one of the now well-beaten paths into the woods toward the ridge. Once they were well away from the other, he slowed his pace.

  “Why did you say ‘yes’ when you were asked to come here, Brother Ken?”

  “Lots of reasons. Broke. Nearly homeless. Messed up life. I didn’t see any choice really.”

  “But you did read the vows you took, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. Sure. We all did.”

  “Did you understand them?”

  “I think so. Seemed pretty straightforward.”

  “What did you swear to do?”

  “Come out here and do what you told me to do, pretty much.”

  “That’s it? That’s your understanding?”

  “Well, yeah. On my end. You feed me and train me. I do what you ask.”

  Thomas shook his head. “So much more than that. So, so very much more. You were asked to come here to fulfill a spiritual journey. To grow as a person. To come to believe in and love God as much as he believes in you. But you are going through the motions here, Brother Ken. Nothing more. You are not putting your heart into it. You can recite many passages from memory, but it is clear to me that you don’t believe them.”

  “You never said anything about that.”

  “It was more than implied in the contract. You made a commitment to a faith community, not just a financial obligation. It is not like a government job where you put in your hours and punch the clock, and everything is union protected.”

  “You can’t prove I don’t believe,” Ken replied defensively.

  “No, I cannot. Not in the legal sense. But it is clear from your continued lack of diligence, your continued swearing, and your stated position that baptism is silly and that you don’t think you should have to do it.”

  “What’s the big deal about that anyway? It’s just water and oil.”

  “It has been explained to you before. I have tried in private, as have some of the others. We have spoken about this before as a group, much as is laid out in the Book of James. I think it best that you return home, Kenneth. You are a decent person, but you are not cut out to be a monk.”

  “You mean you’re kicking me out?”

  Thomas walked in silence for a short time, taking a path that would circle back to the main house area. “Not all people are meant to be what they find convenient. Faith does not come easily to all people. The aim of this order is to give men the worldly support they need so they can make the journey to belief. We do not require baptism, much biblical knowledge, or even being a practicing Catholic of those who cross the threshold and serve here. You are doing very well with the worldly aspects of training. Your duties, your electronics teaching, your shooting, construction, and all the rest are fine. Your flashbacks and depression are all but gone. We have held up our end of the bargain. But that is just the start of training. You need to shed your cynicism and begin to develop faith in yourself, in your fellow man here and elsewhere, and in God.

  “You may in time be a fine member of a congregation back home. But your continued lack of faith is a flaw that we cannot overlook in an abbey. We’ve tried correcting your behavior before in the hope that mental action will follow physical. But it’s not just your behavior that is troubling; it’s the external actions that show what is in your heart. You have improved greatly in medical terms, and that is good. But you live in God’s house and you do not follow God’s rules as we’ve laid out. You are not trying to change your heart. So… You are not, at least at this time, going to be a monk of St. Possenti.”

  “But what will I do? I don’t have a job to go back to!”

  “All the normal government benefits are still there, Kenneth, for you as a citizen and veteran. But you will have to apply for them yourself. You are an adult, not a child. You knew what was required of you when you signed up and swore an oath, and we bought up your debts to help you start anew. You will still be required to pay those off.”

  “But no job. Remember?”

  “Then you have two choices. Return home, look as hard to get one as you worked here on your favored worldly duties, and pay it off as you would any other loan.” The would-be monk didn’t look as though he liked that idea at all. “The other option. There are many jobs around here that need attending to. You could stay on here as a non-monk and work off the debt we consolidated and reduced for you at a reasonable rate, deducting food and basic expenses. If you work hard, it might be done in a year, and you’ll have a clean credit record. If you continue in your normal level of effort, it would likely be closer to two and a half.”

  The man looked shocked. He sat down on a nearby log placed by the trail for that very reason. He tried to think, but it wasn’t easy at the moment. At last, he shook his head. “No. I can’t stay. I couldn’t look them in the face. They’d see me as a failure. No idea what I’ll do, but I have to go.” Abbot Cranberry said nothing, just nodded slightly to acknowledge hearing the decision, and then he slowly walked down the path. A minute later, Ken stood and joined him.

  They arrived back at the arena, which was surprisingly empty. Nobody but Brother Tim was to be seen. He was standing next to the truck with a duffel bag. “Got all your stuff packed,” Tim said quietly. “Hop in.” He tossed the bag in the back and climbed into the driver’s seat, pushing open the opposite door.

  With a numb expression, Ken Johnson climbed in the passenger side and just sat. Thomas closed the door for him before addressing him through the open window.

  “If you find it in yourself to truly follow the vow you took, if you find God out there and want to return here with an open heart and accept the salvation we offer, you are welcome to come back. But that faith is not a line item to be ignored. We offer respite, but not for free. I wish you the best of luck. Truly, I do. You have in the bag the price of a ticket home and some cash for food along the way. Tim will drop you off at the bus station. I’ll let Chaplain Bunt know, and he can put you in touch with some of the normal veteran services. Go with God, my son.”

  * * *

  Abbot Cranberry watched the truck depart with a heavy heart. He knew there would be more whom he would watch leave the same way. Many more, for many reasons. God’s way was righteous, but not always easy or nice. Good and nice were not synonyms. But what was done was done. Now he had to prepare for a rather more enjoyable activity. Two of the new men had asked to be baptized, but not in the creek with the assembled men, but rather in a small, quick, private ceremony with just Abbot Thomas, two sponsors, and each other. They wanted confession and Communion so they could properly unburden their sins, which weighed heavily on their shoulders. They were both rather shy, reserved souls and were very uncomfortable in large groups unless they were a totally anonymous part of it. They were finding the routines and quiet activities very much to their liking and were making good progress.

  Such was the daily life of the abbot at St. Possenti.

  Going to Press

  It was psychobabbler Abraham Maslow who wrote of the phenomena of self-actualization. What Maslow failed to grasp is that reaching true self-actualization can only be ultimately achieved when you have your own brand of ammunition.

  —Ted Nugent

  He teaches my hands to make war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze

  —Psalm 18:34

  The abbey was picking up speed and growing in leaps and bounds, with nearly 400 monks in residence, when the ammunition-production plan came through. The
y had acquired a 60-acre parcel nearby, just off a main road, with nothing but a decent-sized unused building on it. It had a slab floor, insulated walls and roof, and not much else. Power hookups were easy. If necessary to do so, it would be simple to expand the building. The plot was big enough to have a proper powder magazine onsite yet legally far enough from any other structures. Mickey Finnegan had been talking with tool-and-die manufacturers for a while as well as studying the environmental laws and business side of things with a couple of lawyers who were regulars at the dojo and the Howling Puffin.

  Production work is not exciting work—as long as nothing goes wrong. But it is necessary, teaches useful skills and teamwork, and when done right, pays the bills. Or, in this case, loads the ammo, and just about everyone liked the careful, deliberate pace and precision of shooting time.

  When the full-scale production hardware arrived, it took several days to unload and do the initial setup, another two days with the manufacturer’s rep on site to get it configured, and then another week work out the rest of the major bugs without breaking anything or wasting too much raw material. Abbot Cranberry fretted over the sums of money involved and fretted more over the delays. It was something he was totally unfamiliar with, and as such, every problem sounded unexpected and immense.

  Eventually, though, the machinery was ready to do more than incremental test runs for their first cartridge, the only round they’d make bullets and brass for from the beginning: the .22 Long Rifle. They ran all the way through a small test batch of ten thousand rounds in production mode on a Friday; with the help of a Boy Scout troop, the scouts’ fathers, and about a third of the brothers the following day, they ran a meticulously recorded test on the back-lot range using fifty-five guns in seventeen different models.

  Nothing says “supporting your community” like free ammo and training. Everyone had a great time, the bugs had been worked out of the software so that most of the shooters could upload their numbers directly from their smartphones, and the preliminary results were announced before the troop left.

  The results were mixed. The accuracy was marginally acceptable and seemed to vary significantly in different models of gun. The failure-to-fire rate was high to borderline, but an examination of the cases revealed the cause, which should be easily fixable. Velocity was good, but consistency was much lower than desirable. The biggest upside reported was that it shot very cleanly, and the general feeling was that it was a decent plinking and practice ammo but not suitable for anything serious. An Appleseed instructor said that last factor, when teaching a lot of new shooters at a weekend-long event, would make it his ammo of choice simply because of the lower maintenance requirement with a very clean product.

  * * *

  Quality bullet and brass manufacturing (except for the .22 LR) would be difficult and require more expensive tooling than they could afford, even though they would eventually have room for the machinery. They would buy new and used components in very large quantities, prep and sort for consistency, and assemble them.

  Real production started with the four popular cartridges for handguns and six for rifles, as well as .22 Long Rifle, for which there seemed to be a chronic shortage of inexpensive plinking ammo. Several wholesalers and major chains said they would be happy to test-market a new domestic brand. They decided to start with only one load for each cartridge.

  The abbey invested in one machine to sort brass by weight, one to sort bullets by weight, trimmers, a de-priming system for used brass that they’d use themselves, a heat-treating system for annealing the case necks, optical case crack-detection and dimension-check systems, a brass cleaning system, proper powder and primer magazines (separate, of course!), pallet jacks and a fork-lift, presses to assemble parts, QC protocol, packaging. It all added up and took thought, but with enough research and bright people it came together by the second spring.

  Things moved slowly at first, very slowly. The centerfire ammunition did not require quite as much testing because they’d had so much practice on the hand-presses that they knew what to look for, and it was happily tested by the brothers without the help from the scouts. They created much greater quantities of what turned into test lots of rimfire, .308 Win, and .223 Rem than they expected before they had something salable. The 9mm and .357 went a lot more smoothly, being simple straight-wall cases. Once they had the system down, though, production really started rolling.

  Money and ammo were short. The original grubstake was running low. The original contu of brothers were not quite starting to get antsy to return to the world because they liked the camaraderie and environment of the monastery so much, but Thomas knew it wouldn’t last forever

  When it was clear the major bugs had been worked out and the ammo they produced would reliably go bang the right way, they started running the presses nearly around the clock, only taking time off on Sunday and for major holiday obligations. A crew of twenty could operate the place, so they ran five four-and-a-half hour shifts a day for a while, making .22 LR all the time and rotating the other presses between cartridges on a twice-weekly basis. Everyone got a chance to work a different shift or a different cartridge. It wasn’t hugely profitable, but in a month it more than paid for their own ammo consumption, and in two it was paying for fuel, power, and sundries. In three it almost covered the food cost.

  The tongue-in-cheek Fisherman brand ammo, with a logo of a man shooting fish in a barrel, was well received. They didn’t put together a website, do marketing, or retail. They sold ammo by the pallet after cold-calling some of the nation’s largest ammunition retailers, shipping test samples, and setting up deals. That was followed by a word-of-mouth campaign about explicit religious affiliation. It was enough. Market forces helped; any brand which was reasonably priced and available moved itself. Recognition of cost-effectiveness and acceptable quality followed quickly. With more experience at production, quality and efficiency improved. Volume, prices, and profits edged up to reflect market facts.

  Within three years they had branched out a bit and were loading a dozen rifle cartridges, two .22 LR loads—one optimized for rifle and another for a pistol’s shorter barrel—and ten handgun loads. But with only a few exceptions they still sold only by the pallet to wholesalers and major retailers.

  They tried for a small military ammunition contract, making 6.5mm Grendel rounds, but came in second place to a major contractor. They made and renewed some personal contacts in the world of defense business, however, and the attempt allowed them to bring in state-of-the-art ammunition weather-sealing technology, opening up the ever-growing heavily packaged “battle pack” market to sell to the emergency-preparedness market.

  A year after that, they added their own bullet-manufacturing capacity. The next year, new brass case production. The following year saw the addition of gunsmithing classes and barrel manufacturing. They were starting to wear out a few of the guns and knew more were going to be needed eventually. A few of the brothers hoped they might one day manufacture a whole rifle from scratch… but that was distant dream.

  One day when Cranberry was looking at the pile of brass that had failed quality control inspection during his time on the line, he was inspired by the metallic sound and the memory of brass church bells. In the spirit of Isaiah 2:3-4 and beating swords into plowshares, he directed that several hundred pounds of the scrap brass be saved. He wanted to set up a simple foundry, melt it, and recast it as proper church bells for the monastery. When asked if using scrap brass wouldn’t be an insult to God. “No,” Thomas replied. “It is merely recovering its soul to a new purpose. It is no more scrap to be disposed of than the men cast aside by society who end up here.” The men grinned in understanding and enthusiastically did as he ordered.

  It took numerous attempts, but eventually, they had proper bells for the abbey to toll the hours and to call men to attend the Divine Offices as was right and proper—large ones in the tower and smaller ones elsewhere.

  Election

  Education withou
t values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

  —C. S. Lewis

  The abbey had registered the monks to vote gradually, filling out the forms and dropping them off with Hetty Price each month. By the time election season had rolled around, the abbey was bursting at the seams with 396 brothers, and another four specialists on loan from the VA for a special assignment (a PT, a prosthetics specialist, a semi-retired TBI researcher, and Dr. Hines as the shrink/pharmacist).

  The implicit graft and regulatory overreach of the county commissioner and his chosen means of revenue generation by his accomplice Nishell Lehew in the permitting and planning department had ruffled more than a few feathers, and people were not just angry at the national political scene, but the locals were on the verge of using harsh language with women and children present.

  Rodgers Sellers was on the ballot, and his platform was simple: leave good folks alone, and let the national codes and insurance companies manage compliance. Keep the roads in decent shape and let the schools celebrate Christmas rather than commerce day. He was generating a lot of support. But the incumbent had gotten there with a lot of votes, too, and people riding the gravy train are highly motivated to keep it running on time. It would be close.

  The abbey rented a couple of buses to shuttle the brothers to the grange hall for the balloting. Turnout was good, with nearly 700 mostly long-time residents attending the shindig scheduled at the same time. Abbot Cranberry thought it unwise to make too large a showing and brought enough to represent the order well and a stack of prearranged absentee ballots from “the brothers who may not do well in a boisterous crowd of strangers, however polite and godly they may be.” People appeared to understand. But he did bring sixty-one monks who had been in the order long enough to clean up well, knew a few songs, and had the voices to carry a tune.