And Go Like This

by John Crowley

  The sisters who taught at St. John Bosco had come too and shared rooms with the Sisters of St. Joseph in their convent, and they came to the big church to Mass and to the special services held to pray for an end to the flood. It was like a big engine had doubled its power. Not all nuns are smart, and not all nuns are good; I knew that even then. But all of them have the power that God grants to all of us to bring about what we desire and need, and that power is greater in them. It’s like the difference between the Twin City ball team and the Yankees.

  This was for us to know: Prayer is how the world is managed. The Epistle to the Thessalonians says Rejoice always, and pray without ceasing. I prayed at night before I went to sleep and in school before classes. I prayed when I walked and when I waited. I prayed in prayers I knew as well as my own name, and I prayed in my own words: that Dad could keep his job in Twin City in the machine shop where he cut gears—I didn’t know what that meant but Dad loved his job and though it seemed the shop would fail I prayed as hard as I ever had and it didn’t fail. I prayed that Mom would stop smoking Old Golds because they aren’t good for your lungs, and though I never told her I was praying for it there came a day when she stopped. She never said a thing about it, just stopped forever; later on when cleaning the living room she came upon an old pack half-empty and looked at it a long time as though she couldn’t remember what it was.

  Prayer isn’t for things, Sister Rose of Lima told us. Prayer is attention: to God, to the soul, to the Virgin, to our hearts. Praying is for help to those in need, strength and courage for ourselves, honor and thanks to God. But I knew, and I knew she knew, that it was for things too: you had only to pray for something and receive it to know that. Ask and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. God made that promise to His Church, and He can’t take it back. Father Paine said that if we pray for what will harm us or harm others God must give us that to—though it may come in a form we don’t recognize, and won’t like. There must be a whole bureaucracy in heaven that is managing these things, putting everyone’s prayers together with everyone else’s and assigning the work of carrying to God the prayers made to all the varied saints who are patrons of this and that, of health and work and the soil and the sufferings of people.

  I have prayed for what might harm me, and I have prayed that others might be harmed, or at least obstructed. I have wondered if those prayers were answered in ways I can’t know.

  The rain stopped at last and the water receded, leaving everything filthy and covered in mud. We returned to our beloved Timber Town, but we kids decided it ought to be called Mud Pie Town now. The church hadn’t fallen into the river, but it would take a Capital Campaign to raise the money to fix it. Father Michaels said we should pray that the Capital Campaign would succeed, though he knew that many, many people were badly off now because of the flood, and the bishop doubted the money could be raised. But by July the money had been raised and the men of the parish were volunteering to help fix the church.

  August:

  It was the day before the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, which is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means you must go to church just as if it were Sunday. There were extra confessions to go to on this afternoon, which I could now go to and had to do, if I wanted to go to Communion in the morning, which I did. In the pew I did my Examination of Conscience and I couldn’t find anything except the time I told my brothers to shut up because I was doing my homework, which was a lie because I was just reading a book.

  There was a line for confessions. Waiting in my pew I read my Instructions for a Good Confession. What is a sin? A cruelty to others; a false representation of ourselves; a failure to honor God and the Saints in all the times and places we can, in all the ways we can, as often as ever we can.

  I had falsely represented myself to Thad and Willy and so I guess I had sinned. I hadn’t been sure.

  In the dark of the booth I confessed to Father Michaels. I asked him himself to forgive me, because the priest has the power to do that. Father, forgive me for I have sinned. When I was done with my one sin he spoke in Latin and blessed me (I could see the faint motion of his hand through the screen) and he told me to say a decket of the Rosary and he was shutting the grate when I said Father, can I ask you something? And he said Certainly.

  Is it true that older people can’t see their guardian angels and talk right to them and hear them?

  He paused for a little and then said: They hear them in a different way. They see them in a different way.

  But I knew from the little pause that it was a priest’s way of saying Yes, it is true. And he said: Our Lord tells us that faith is the evidence of things not seen, that what we believe but can’t see has substance.

  I said Oh. Thank you, Father. And he shut the grate.

  I went to kneel in the pew in front of the Mary altar, where Mary is holding the baby and also holding out a rosary, which makes her look a little like a busy mom doing two things at once; but her face was as serene as always. I said my penance, the beads passing through my fingers as I murmured the prayers one by one, and with the saying of it my sin went away from me and my heart was cleansed. That’s a nice feeling, your sin going away like dirty water down the drain. It would probably be a sin in itself to go out and sin just to feel that feeling. But I thought of it.

  I went out of the church and sat on the steps and took my Brownie cap off (it was the only hat I could find that afternoon) and a group of nuns from the convent next to the church were going by together, their habits sweeping up the dry leaves that lay on the pavement. The beauty of them moving all together, the airs lifting their veils, their smiles and voices—they sang together, the younger ones, out of simple good cheer. I thought of being a nun, singing and never sinning again. Yet maybe the beauty of it was that it was something to see and not something to be, like geese you see in the autumn sky following the leader, all the same but each itself, and you want to join them. I felt I was among the nuns even though I wasn’t, and wouldn’t want to be, not really.

  It’s so nice, I said to my guardian angel. The voices. Singing.

  It is, she said. It’s the only way we angels ever talk to one another.

  September:

  One night at dinner Dad told a joke. It was because of the new (or rather old) school bus that the parish had just got for the grade school, given to them by the Twin City Bible Camp because it was so broken down and shabby they wouldn’t use it anymore and had got another. The bus was needed to bring the children who lived out on the Timber Town road to Coalsburg to school and back again. It said Twin City Bible Camp on the side but Sister Fausta the art teacher said she would get some yellow paint and paint that out and put St. John Bosco School on it. On Monday the priest was going to bless the bus.

  The joke Dad told was this: A little public school had got a brand-new bus and wanted it to be blessed by the different clergy of the town. So the Protestant minister came and read some verses out of King James’s Bible. And the priest came and said some Latin and dashed the bus with holy water. And then the rabbi came up and instead of any of that he cut two inches off the tailpipe.

  My mother blushed and smacked my father’s hand. But nobody would tell us why the joke was funny. I thought maybe it was just funny because rabbis do funny things.

  When we got to school on Monday the side of the bus was painted and the new name lettered on very carefully. But it was really pretty old and battered. I looked at the tail pipe for no good reason and it was very rusty at the end and sort of decayed. After school was done Sister told us all to go out into the yard and those who were going to Timber Town road and Coalsburg should get on the bus and everyone else gather round. When we all got on and found a seat—there was a lot of arguing about that, and pretty soon Mr. Kowalski the groundskeeper, who was now going to be the bus driver too, got up and yelled that we should all pipe down—we could see that Fat
her Paine was coming, and he was wearing his stole and his biretta and an altar boy came after him with the bucket of holy water and the thing the priest uses to sprinkle people and things with. Yes, I know what they are really: the bucket is the aspersorium and the sprinkler is called the aspergillum. Thad told me that, and he is studying Latin and will maybe be a priest. He thought I would forget as soon as he told me but of course I didn’t. I cannot ever be a priest.

  Father Paine had a look of patient suffering, but he always does; it makes me think his name is the right name for him. He is so very kind and gentle and isn’t suffering really, I don’t think, any more than anybody. He crossed himself and said the In nomine Domini and we all did too, even we on the bus. And then the priest said Aspergo te omnibus and more and he splashed the water on us, and drops hit the windows and I thought of rain falling in the months of school still ahead even though this day was sunny and warm.

  Then Mr. Kowalski started the bus, but it didn’t start. It sort of shrieked or groaned, but nothing more. We all waited. He tried again, and this time the bus tried to start; it shook and made noise and then a loud bang came out the back and black smoke. Then it stopped. “It died,” Mr. Kowalski called out the door to Father Paine. Father Paine thought a moment, and then he turned to the students and the nuns and the lunch lady and with his hands he told them to kneel. When they had knelt he crossed himself and prayed. We on the bus couldn’t kneel but we folded our hands, except some boys. Mr. Kowalski turned the key again and the engine started. It was as if it didn’t want to but it had to, like Dad getting up in the morning. The bus rocked and coughed and made small bangs out its rear end and a boy said a bad word about that and got shushed. Then as the priest stopped speaking and the people waited, the bus ceased to suffer, and began to breathe easy. The bad smoke smell went away and a good smell of September air came in the windows. The bus seemed to be happier, not so tense. And cleaner. It purred.

  Father Paine smiled, and he waved to Mr. Kowalski to go ahead, and Mr. Kowalski very slowly moved the bus away from the school, as though he still wasn’t sure it wanted to. But it picked up speed, and we all took a deep breath, and somebody laughed and somebody else cheered, and the bus was happy now. The seats seemed less stained and shabby, and the windows fit better in their frames. We turned onto the road that goes along by the school and then onto the road that goes along the river and then we couldn’t any longer hear the kids and the nuns cheering from the lawn of the school beneath the pale statue of Our Lady. And after a time we on the bus were quiet and felt the shadows of leaves pass over us.

  October:

  On the day of Hallowe’en, Sister Rose of Lima, our principal, told us in school meeting to be careful how we dressed up that night. She reminded us that this night is the Eve of All Saints, and in the morning tomorrow we will go to church and honor all the saints, not only the ones we know but those many, many saints in heaven whose names are not known except to God and to those who have been visited by them, their families or their friends or their enemies. The night before the day of a great feast can be a risky time, she said, and this feast more than any other. We should be careful of how we dress up and what costumes and masks we pick, she said, because to dress up in costumes as ghosts or demons or figures of Death like skeletons or corpses might draw those very figures to walk with us. On this night they are allowed to walk abroad, and though the Church knows very well how they can be prevented from doing the harm they may wish to do, children out and about in the streets might not know that what seem to be other kids following them in costumes like theirs really aren’t, and careless children can be threatened and their souls drawn out from the houses of their bodies unwitting and into the world to come.

  A word to the wise is sufficient, Sister Rose of Lima said. She said this once every day more or less.

  I was pretty safe because I wore a Brown Scapular (scapulars are sort of itchy and always get tangled around your neck but everyone puts up with that) and Our Lady of Mount Carmel has promised that no one who dies wearing it will die in a state of mortal sin. I had a Miraculous Medal as well, which my favorite teacher in first grade gave to me. Because of these things I wasn’t afraid to walk in the night on All Hallows’ Eve, at least not more than a little. But because of what Sister said I dressed up as Snow White.

  Kids in my neighborhood of Timber Town would go to the houses in better neighborhoods, where you can knock on doors and say Trick or Treat and get better treats (not that I knew how to play tricks on anyone who gave me nothing). The way to get to those houses was to go up the street away from my neighborhood and cross the bridge over the old canal that runs to the river, which in the book has no name. I had heard—we all knew—that down under this bridge hoboes had their camp, and there were remains there of fires and cardboard shelters and tin cans. Kids told stories about the hoboes, that they could rob you or even kill you, but I didn’t believe them; I said I don’t believe that story but in that way you poo-poo stories you don’t want to worry about. My brothers and their friends told the stories when we crossed the bridge, and they made claws of their hands and tried to be scary.

  We knocked on the doors of the houses that had Jack-o’-lanterns on their porches fearsome or silly, with their fiery smiles and eyes, and my bag was full of treats to bring home, and so we started back. Then the boys got the idea to run to the bridge and across and leave me alone on the street. That was very mean of them and stupid and I called after them and said I would tell when I got home. I was more angry than afraid, and I walked on toward the bridge in my Snow White dress as though nothing was amiss. I set out on the bridge over the hobo camp, where maybe once a child had been killed though probably not. I could see a kid ahead of me on the bridge, in a white sheet like a ghost. When I looked again he wasn’t there, but I thought he wasn’t actually gone. And then again he was there, but only sort of. He was dawdling, as though he wanted me to catch up with him and maybe be with him, and he’d take me with him as Sister Rose of Lima had said; but he didn’t seem dangerous or evil to me, just lonely and sad. I spoke an Ejaculation under my breath: Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me and on all the living and the dead. I felt the Miraculous Medal grow warm against my chest and I knew that I was safe. And after I got across the bridge I could no longer see the little ghost child. He had remained behind.

  November:

  On the Feast of All Souls, the second day of November, I went to church after school to pray for the release of souls from their sufferings in Purgatory. On this day alone prayers of the living faithful can absolve them of their sins and admit them to heaven. The church was pretty full and smelled of damp wool and candle smoke and people, a smell I always liked and didn’t like at the same time. On the cards that were placed in every pew was printed the Prayer of St. Gertrude, in white script across a colored picture of a gravestone and a praying child. Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.

  Sister Rose of Lima said that God had promised St. Gertrude that when her prayer was said on this day with a righteous heart, a thousand souls would be freed from their sufferings in Purgatory. I looked around me at the others gathered there also praying for the dead, and some of them wept, perhaps for someone once in their own home and within their family, and I thought of Cousin Winnie. I didn’t know if it was allowed to pray for one soul in particular, but I thought of the kid I had seen on the bridge in the night and I asked in my prayer that if he was a soul in Purgatory he might be one among my thousand. I prayed also that if Cousin Winnie was in Purgatory he might be one too. And I said the prayer for the dead: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. I felt the rush of the thousands of escaping souls winging upward into perpetual light. I was happy and sad as
well.

  December:

  I wanted snow for Christmas very much. The last Christmas it had only rained, a small gray ceaseless rain that made the town’s decorations look miserable and hopeless, like a birthday party no one has come to; and then the floods had come and turned Timber Town into Mud Pie Town. Empty buildings on Second Street along the river still had dark shadows showing where the river had risen to.

  My guardian angel didn’t know how to ask for snow on my behalf, because though there are saints to pray to for rain, and saints for fine weather, there aren’t any saints to pray to for snow. But I thought I could get a hearing. That’s what Dad would say when he went to talk to the union shop steward: I’ll get a hearing. God will do what we ask, I knew, if we ask in the right way; but it’s not always easy to know the right way.

  I took down the Book of Saints from the shelf and started from the beginning, but there are a lot of saints (about twenty St. Johns) and it was hard to pay attention. In due time I found that there are certain saints who are called Ice Saints in far Northern countries, where they need to know when cold weather will come. One was St. Servetus, and there was St. Agnes and St. Priscia, St. Mamertus and St. Boniface. If their feast days are cold it will stay cold a long time after. So maybe they could bring snow as well.

  When Dad asked me what I was doing—making lists of saints’ names, drawing charts and birthdates, writing prayers—I told him I was praying for snow. He said he didn’t think God would answer such a prayer. Snow or no snow happens because of big weather patterns, which they show in the newspapers and describe in the short-wave radio broadcasts he liked to listen to. If God wanted to bring snow on a certain day—even His own Birthday—He’d have to start up the right weather patterns a long way back, long before you asked Him for snow. It can’t just be Ta-da, here it is.