by J. J. Martin
“Our precious nepotism: the priest and his acolyte, avoiding any franchise with women. Agape, our secret, unpolluted, pristine love — handed down from priest to disciple for nearly two thousand years. Continent and manumitted from lust. God has made you special, but I will show you how to have an extraordinary life. Show you true love. No lust. True love, as God intended for our kind. For if one lies down alone, how can one have warmth? Ah, but if two should lie down. Two solitudes connecting in love. Agape! God Himself. Agape!”
I stood. “Let’s put more logs on.”
The fire crumbled down. He searched my eyes eagerly.
“I feel queasy,” I said. Must have been the whisky.
23
I considered forcing myself to vomit. That way it might convince Father Sweet to take me home, but I pictured my parents and their wrath as he delivered me to them. Quivering, I resolved to ride out the remaining evening. The night became cool enough that I added a sweater. We crawled into the tent. Despite the temperature, Father Sweet chose to bed down in his old-fashioned underwear again. His body odour was strong as a snow boot.
I did not sleep, and I was unable to think. My mind slipped away hypnotically and off-kilter. Somehow, we were back in our old positions. I found myself at the edge of the canvas with my face to the ground. He spoke but I could not hear what he said. There was, again, that insistent sighing of his, and his menacing restlessness. Did last night ever end? I heard his arms moving. He whispered my name and I resorted to ignoring him. I was not there. I became a ghost.
Without a flashlight, it was blackness, and each sound rubbed close against the ears. I pinched my thumb.
He shuffled his body closer to me along the oilskin, and I heard him yelp when the sticks poked him in the ribs, the same sticks I remembered planting under the floor in the afternoon. It was as if someone else had done that, but it was a friend. I’d given myself a gift that I’d forgotten.
Growing relieved, I took a breath.
I could think. The fugue broke. I was alert.
He was mumbling. I breathed the air wafting in from the edge of the tent, which was fresh and cold and good.
In that cold air, breathing long and deep, I could relax a little.
At some point sleep came, but it was broken by a sudden, frantic movement above me.
I gasped.
His huge, smelly bulk was on top of my body. I was in the midst of a struggle.
He was babbling incoherently, like a lunatic. “Continentiam! Agape, agape!” I could not see his face, but I smelled his foul breath, his dirty, oily face and hair.
Then, with a crow-like shriek, he cried out, “No! No! Oh no! The lust, the lust! No. No.”
And he rolled over, and he was still as the grave.
The moment passed.
He snored.
I was shaking. Back at the tent mouth, eyes wide open; this time, it was I who breathed hard, in shivery gasps. What just happened?
Quietly, I cried for a long time.
Why am I here?
Was he even awake?
Was I awake now?
24
When you are startled by a bear in the woods, there is a certain facial expression you make. You cannot help it. Bug-eyed, stretch-mouthed, red-cheeked. Your hair might even stand up. You won’t scream. You’re too frightened. You are paralyzed.
It’s pure terror. You are staring down a monster. It may be your end.
That was how I found Father Sweet as I opened the tent that morning.
He was backed against a beech trunk as if — having been shot by arrows — he was breathing his last, gasping and moaning in agony.
I spun round, looking for the bear.
There was nothing.
I turned back, and it was then that I spotted the underwear around his ankles. Watching the first blob of muck fall, I heaved a sigh of relief knowing he was only using the tree as a toilet.
As for me, I had awakened that morning having wet myself. Something I had not done since I was four. It was shameful. Humiliating.
He wasn’t in the tent, so I had quickly changed from my sopping underwear and camping trousers into a pair of shorts.
After a quick rinse in the river, I lay my wet clothes on a rock to sun-dry. But for a single, long airplane vapour trail, the morning sky was clear of any cloud. It was warm.
I had the shakes, though I was not cold. The first aid kit held Aspirin, so I took one with canteen water. The muscles twitched in my upper limbs as I raised the pill to my mouth.
Maybe I had a fever. Or I was losing my mind.
I got to work gathering kindling.
Everything with Father Sweet had gotten confusing and weird, exactly as I had warned my dad.
The rodent body was all but gone now, little more than a few tufts of fur. Mostly grass. No faces. Its carcass had become soil. There was only the return to Nature.
Nearby, Father Sweet was doing a series of awkward-looking squats and exercises in his underwear while humming cheerfully.
“And now, my 5BX!”
He ran in place for a few seconds then began doing sit-ups. Fully out of wind, he stopped.
“More like 2BX,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said sternly, huffing. He seemed disappointed I was not impressed by his display. “Set up for Mass,” he barked.
He disappeared into the tent.
Once I’d got the fire back in shape, I dutifully set up our log altar, enjoying the layout’s symmetry. The curve of the forest, and the tall ash trees, created an apse. I built a church. Our Descended Lord of Nature.
He emerged and whipped his stole over his neck.
It was quick, in English, with no reading and he never looked me in the eye. Just Eucharist, rapid as can be. He grumbled that he would recite lauds on his own that morning, and I gladly traipsed off to clear and pack the altar.
I reassembled the case to the screeching of blue jays. Over my shoulder, I sensed him hovering.
He was done his prayers, but wandered around, aimless and impatient. “Why are you quivering?” he asked me, his breath sour as pickles with old pipe smoke. “Look at you. Shivering like an old lady. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop it.”
I cleared my throat. “I can’t.”
“I said stop that. Stop it. You are being indulgent.”
I didn’t know how to appease him. I just wanted this last day to go by quickly. I was almost home.
“Yes, Father.”
Father Sweet slumped down on a log near the fire.
He seemed disappointed. “The next time we spend the night together, we must become closer.”
I didn’t answer. He threw up his hands at me. “It’s as if you understand nothing,” he muttered. “Like nothing is true with you. You are deliberately desecrating your vocation.”
For our breakfast we ate the last can of beans in silence. I washed out the pot and made tea for him. We still had the Kraft Dinner, which I planned as lunch before we could finally, finally go home.
He had a pipe and a cup of tea.
“Ours is a vocation of sacrifice, but we gain so much. We gain service of the Lord and we win each other. Listen to me,” he said. “You will lose everything you value. But this is what God wants for you. And your parents.”
My jaw trembled. What did I value?
“Within the Church there is complete freedom,” he said. “We are ourselves. Don’t you see how precious this is? God himself has anointed us, apart from the faithful.”
A long smile came across his face and he perked up. Something occurred to him. He chuckled into the mug. Whatever blocked up his mood dislodged. All cheer now, he hummed and looked into his pack. He was eager to share an idea.
“There is a place nearby I would us to hike to. Something I want to show you.”
I reached for my backpack.
“No, no,” he said. “Leave that. I shall bring my rucksack. And all our needs. You need only br
ing yourself.”
More weirdness, I thought. What could I do?
He pulled together his kit and seemed determined.
I filled my canteen and we were off, hiking upstream.
25
With no cloud cover, the sun made quick work of rising and getting hot.
We climbed up a moderate-sized escarpment that was difficult to hike. Below, the river got deep and then went rapid. The forest became thick, with plenty of old, felled trees, and the terrain forced us to the edge of the ravine. We walked a narrow ledge that was ragged and crumbly. There was no trail.
It kept getting rougher. The forest came right up to the edge of the ravine wall, which was dangerous and steep. I felt weak. My hands still quaked. He led on, making his way by grabbing at trees for balance like an orangutan. The terrain rose higher and I saw that the easier path would be across the river. There was no shore on this side. Because of the slope, I had to walk at a painful angle, and a single slip would have sent me down and my body would break on the rocks and all my blood would drain into the river.
How can he do this? Even managing to carry a pack at the same time? What gave him this sudden energy?
I saw the worst ahead, and clipped my canteen to my belt loop.
At its most treacherous part, the ledge disappeared, changing into a rocky and baked-mud slope — almost a vertical cliff — covered with ragged weeds. Dense forest overhung the top, putting the drop into shadow. At the crest of the slope, there was a crooked cedar blown by wind into an angled, lopsided cross. The ravine here had weedy vines and plants holding dirt. Far below, small rapids gushed along ready to drown you dutifully if you slipped.
“It might be easier to go into the bush and then swing back to the riverbank,” I shouted to him, so far ahead of me.
“That would take hours!” he called back.
“Why don’t we go back?”
“Almost there!”
I fell farther behind him, but at last I could see that the high ground was giving way ahead to a hill, and then a small open flood plain down to the river.
Finally, we descended. We came upon a flatter ravine bottom, where both river shores were obscured by bulrushes. The river here was shallow and gentle. There was another wide bend ahead.
Now we were more than a thirty-minute walk from the campsite. I was out of breath.
This new location was strange to me, with the high bulrushes and a bad smell. I did not feel the control a good Scout can have over his campsite. This was an open area not well-travelled by people, but maybe by animals.
“There.” Father Sweet pointed at a minor, sulphurous spring that was drooling over some stones into the river with little more force than a drippy hose.
“See? That, my boy, is a font.”
I stared blankly at the dribble. It smelled putrid.
He seemed proud and stood with his fists on his hips.
“Remember? We were discussing the font of life?”
It came back to me — the gore of the heart fountain.
“Oh! Right. So that’s it?”
He nodded.
“A font,” I said. “Okay. So that’s a font.”
“Do you understand now? Everything?”
I nodded cautiously, detecting he meant something momentous.
“Now,” he said in a weighty voice, “let’s get on with it.”
He dropped his pack, withdrew two striped beach towels and set a long-lens Pentax camera on top.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Let’s go for a dip,” he said, urgently pulling off his clothes.
“I haven’t got a bathing suit.”
“A skinny dip!”
“I don’t like swimming.”
“Now, now,” he said, hopping and tugging off his pants and undergarments. “You must bathe, my lad. Hygiene.”
He was naked now, wearing only a wooden cross on a thin leather cord, and beginning an awkward heron-walk into the chilly water. All the hairs of his back prickled alive down to the ditch of his arse.
“Come, my boy, the water is glorious!” he said, shivering, thigh-deep and splashing some handfuls onto his chest.
“Can’t be. You’ve got goosebumps.”
He smiled and bent over to dramatically inspect and pull at his balls. “Oh, you’re looking that closely, eh?” he said.
When he stood up again, the shape of his dick had changed.
“Well, it’s just the effect of temperature,” he announced. “Now, you come in here.”
“I haven’t got a towel,” I said, picking at my thumbnail.
“I brought you one.”
“I don’t want to get wet and cold.”
“No, no! That’s not it at all! Are you really so dense? Be open to experience! Aren’t you an adventurer?”
“I’ve gone swimming in a river before.”
“Don’t be shy, my lad. You’ve got no reason. Why, you’re Greek perfection!”
“It’s fine for you, but I’m not going in. No way.” I lowered myself to sit on a rock near the pack, eyeing his camera.
He stood for a while, hands on hips, breathing and thinking, his chest scrubby with charcoal hair and the grey flabby skin on his shapeless torso pale as an uncooked sausage.
“Oh, look! There’s something interesting down here on the bottom,” he said finally, making a big show of looking into the water. “Come see!”
I didn’t answer. My thumb started to bleed with the picking.
“Come, come look! Ooh, I think it’s a little crab or something.”
I clutched a big chip of stone. “Crayfish, maybe.”
“Yes, but I’m not sure. Come tell me.”
I crossed my arms. “No, thanks.”
He pondered me. Another expression crossed his face. Bitterness, maybe.
“Are you a shadow?” he asked. The question gave me chills, the way he spoke.
“What?”
Suddenly, his demeanour changed. “Now, you listen here,” he said in a new voice, pointing at me. “Your parents will be very cross if they learn you were difficult.… And worse, that you did not bathe.”
The pulse in my neck throbbed. My face grew hot.
“I’ve got responsibility. I will tell your parents you were a wilful, naughty … scamp!”
A big lump engorged my throat. My trembling fingers fiddled with the stone.
He held up his right arm, with its bandage from my accident with the hatchet. With his short, baby finger, he pointed at his wound. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble.”
Oh, god, I thought. Dad will kill me. I found that suddenly I was breathing hard as a runner.
Minutes passed. There he stood, naked, thigh-deep in the water with his beard quivering in the cold, staring fiercely into my eyes.
I felt weak. As if it would help me cling to gravity, I hugged my knees.
“After all this effort,” he said, looking to the heavens. “It’s true what they say. No good deed goes unpunished. Don’t you understand I have beaten my heart empty for you?”
I kept stuck in position.
“You brought me to this place!”
I shook my head in confusion.
“I am Hylas! After all this, I should receive you. My deserts.”
Squeezing my thumbnail was all I could do to keep my nerve.
“Perhaps you are not who I thought you were,” he said with a long sigh and another gaze skyward. “Perhaps I have gone on holiday with the wrong brother.”
I clutched the stone like an axe head.
“Leave him out of it,” I cried.
He tilted his head and grinned.
“Yes. That must be it, eh? The wrong brother.”
I pictured Jamie, shorter than me, weaker than me. One night in the tent such as the two I had just endured would have surely led to an epileptic fit. How would Father Sweet have responded to that? How would my baby brother make it out in one piece? As it was, it was not looking good for me, and I was
bigger than him.
“Maybe I should plan a new trip,” said Father Sweet, smirking. “With the little one. The correct brother.”
I bit my lip and stared back.
“Or not?” He shrugged. “Prove it. Prove to me you are not the wilful brother.” He leaned my way. “Come here.”
It was Saturday morning. Right now, Jamie was probably sitting at the kitchen table, eating one of Mum’s grilled-cheese sandwiches. Maybe she sat with him.
I thought of her, gossiping on the phone, chewing the paint off her nails and smoking. My heart broke, missing her. In the rare times I had hugged my mother — like last Christmas when we got the CCM bikes — she would stiffen at the touch and go all cold. But at that moment I longed for her to hold me close, so I could smell the Arpège and Du Maurier in her blouse while she protected me, and I could shut my eyes.
I swallowed hard and blinked away tears.
Sticky with my own sweat, the rock fell from my hand back to the other river-washed stones.
Up raised my head. This put a smile on Father Sweet’s face and his arms opened wide. We stayed that way for a while, staring. Father Sweet licked at his lips.
Out of the blue, our moment was broken by a sound to my right. I heard a splash. Then another.
The noise startled us both.
It was coming from around the bend, hidden by the bulrushes. I craned to see what or who was splashing, and Father Sweet looked down and around, suddenly very aware of his nudity.
It got louder. Nearer.
Father Sweet and I recognized it together — paddling. It was nearing too quickly for Father Sweet to react. A boat was coming round the bend. Someone new was entering our claustrophobic two-man world.
26
Father Sweet stood naked as a mangy badger as two witnesses in a green canoe paddled into view, past the riverside weeds. They were two normal-looking people, to my eyes. It was a man and a woman — about my parents’ age — paddling quietly along in their canoe. They were the first people we’d seen since leaving Blackburn Hamlet.
Hope drained from me almost immediately. They saw the bulbous and hairy body of a naked man standing in the shallow. On a rock, they saw a crying boy hugging his knees. Their mouths dropped to their chests in unison, like they were witnessing some occult back-country ritual. The woman squeaked and they both averted their eyes from us.
