not like any poor people will ever get the chance to use it.”
I swiped the hair from my eyes and blew my nose. “When you say stuff like that, it makes me think you’re reacting against your own cushy life. You wanna hang with the poor people? Come on over to my place for a while.”
Jon’s family owned Benning Home Furnishings: Quality & Tradition Since 1953. He always had a selection of new shoes and, other than his school uniform, he never wore the previous year’s clothes. On top of being rich, Jon had “class”—a kind of charm and refinement I was beginning to notice in others but found sorely lacking in myself.
Blessed with dark, deep eyes, Jon also had skin that was always a shade or two healthier than mine. When he smiled, people stopped what they were doing. From visiting sisters to the girls at the corner store, the few women who entered our lives were united in their opinion: hearts would be broken. Even my own mother said as much. Jon and I really didn’t look much alike—me being pale, my hair straight and blond—but sometimes when we were in town people would mistake us for brothers. That always made me proud.
Jon filled his mouth with Bog water and spat it at me in a thin stream through perfect white teeth. “I guess I did miss you.”
Relief flowed warmly inside me. We floated together, suspended in the last few moments of freedom. Tomorrow classes would start and the whole heavy, antique machinery of the place would shake and rumble to life, then hum all the way to Christmas.
An indistinguishable black form emerged from the guesthouse two hundred yards away. We both squinted, unable to determine who it was. But when the hands went up and rested on the hips, we knew we were regarding Father Albert. He stopped and watched us floating in the Bog, staring back at him. Looking left and right down the empty drive, he started marching across the field.
The first thing to come off was his scapular—over his head and onto the grass. Then came the belt. He picked up the pace and unbuttoned his habit, shrugging it off halfway to the Bog and continuing his waddling jog in T-shirt, boxers, black socks, and shoes. Jon and I turned to each other, bug-eyed with surprise, ready to laugh but not knowing where to begin. Then off came the shoes and socks and finally, at the edge of the mud, the extra-large T-shirt. Skin that white shouldn’t be exposed to the elements.
“You’re the man, Pair!” Jon cried, nearly climbing out of the water. “You are the man.”
When the other monks weren’t around, we called him Pair because père was French for father and he hated teaching French; because he was shaped like a pear; and because he did things no other monk would do.
“Watch out for the tsunami, boys.” He displaced a surprisingly small amount of water, then floated on his back, his taut, hairless gut breaching the surface like the head of a beluga. Treading water with unnatural ease, he murmured, “Isn’t it great when you wait for something, wait a really long time, and it turns out better than you imagined? Must be a little like heaven.” He rolled off his back and scanned the hill to ensure the coast was still clear, then gazed up past the trail of clothes to the new abbey church. “It’s not every day the world gets such a magnificent new sanctuary. I feel like a kid again.”
I sighed, then dog-paddled a figure eight around to the two of them. “It’s just a fancy room for a pipe organ.”
Father Albert’s eyes narrowed slightly, then shifted in my direction. As a satisfied smile stretched across his face, he blew bubbles in the Bog and laughed. “Pinch me. I must be dreaming.”
Night in the dorm. The juniors’ dorm now, not the nursery. The freshmen and sophomores were down the hall, crammed together in the biggest room on campus. Although it was more permanent and less crowded, the nursery reminded me of one of those gymnasium disaster relief centres you see on television with people flaked out all over the floor after an earthquake or flood. Even in the relatively posh juniors’ dorm we slept side by side, partitioned off by flimsy chin-level dividers. Privacy was for people with something to hide.
The bed cradled me hammocklike on old sagging springs. Breathing in bleach, sweat, and dust off the sheets and thin mattress, I could see the lump of Jon in the bed across from me, with Saint Charles Borromeo staring down from his frame on the wall above. Connor, the other guy in our bay, had nailed St. Chuck up there. Aside from being the patron of seminarians, the saint, like Connor, suffered from a debilitating stutter. I couldn’t see him clearly in the dark, halo radiating around his piously cocked head, but I was aware of his gaze. Then someone whimpered in his sleep and I began to pray.
Five days, Lord, and holding. Help me keep my promise to turn away from sin. Help me fight myself and never give up. Make me strong. Make me strong. Make me...
I listened to our breathing. We all seemed to fall into a pattern. Finally I drifted away on a stream of Hail Marys, travelling away from myself, away from what was into what would never be.
TWO ROMANS AND CHRISTIANS
The close September evening gave no hint of the coming change of season. On its way down, the setting sun kissed the nipple of rock at the top of the large, full hill that was Mount Saint John. When the day finally slipped past the edge of the horizon, the last of the light pooled in the Bog in a blue-orange sheet like metal exposed to fire.
I wasn’t sure how they played it at other schools, but at the Seminary of Saint John the Divine, contestants concentrated on the apprehension, torture, and simulated martyrdom of Christians. Most boys wanted to be Roman.
Old foxholes were dug in the black forest soil. They had been there for generations, hidden behind bushes and under the fan of upturned trees. Everyone knew where they were, except the new kids. I stood alone inside one such crater, last year’s leaves rotting in a pool at my feet. It smelled like urine. I could hear hoots and hollers spread thin in the distance. Crouching down, I pulled out a Marlboro, tapped it on the crush-proof box, and lit it. Jon jumped in from out of nowhere and splashed some of the muck on my cheek.
“Scrupus,” I said, lighting the cigarette, then wiping my face.
“Nutrix,” Jon replied.
“Where’s Connor?” I asked.
“Dunno.”
“What’s the plan?” I took a long drag and tried to look like an army field officer discussing plans for an offensive.
“Eric’s a Christian,” Jon announced. “Volunteered again.”
“He’s so literal. He’ll go far.” There was a rustling of leaves and then choked laughter from behind a rotting log. We both heard it. I removed the cigarette, put a finger to my lips, and winked. “So maybe we’ll head back toward the gym,” I said just loud enough for them to hear.
“Yeah. We’ll surprise the little shits down there.”
Jon pulled my head close and whispered in my ear that he’d leave, making enough commotion for both of us. I should stay behind for the ambush. As soon as he heard me yell, he’d come flying back. I gave him a drag, pinched off the half-smoked butt, and replaced it in the deck. Jon disappeared into the quiet.
Half an hour earlier I had fished a folded little slip of paper with an R out of a baseball cap, which meant I got to hunt down passive apostles and bring them to justice. Roman justice.
