a coat, hat, gloves for me to try on as he lead me through a maze of people, through the basement. Outside, dressed, duffel bag and jacket under arm, I was pointed to the brown van, followed some other young men who were obviously headed in the same direction.
All of us shivered in the cold, some jumping up and down, waiting for Dave, who had a few quick errands to run. My coat fit me nicely, an old sailor’s, heavy blue, a good, thick flip-up collar and blue knit hat, a tuque, as they called them. I pulled it down past my, by now, freezing ears.
There seemed to be what looked like an enfeebled orchard across from us in the middle of the compound. It was surrounded by an old log-rail fence. A sign post off to the right, like the kind you’d see in a MASH episode, shook slightly in the wind. So many miles to places like Gravelbourg, to Carricou, West Indies, to Flagstaff, Arizona, to Freetown, Liberia, to Paris. (These were, I was to learn, some of their soup kitchens and prayer houses.)
On the far side of the orchard there was another white house, what looked like a bridge, and some ancient gas pumps between that house and the green sheds attached to the main house, which was off to the far right. On each side of the gravel parking lot I was standing in there were other houses, both very small—what I was later to find out were the infirmary and an older men’s staff house. Women guests walked across the road I had come in on. I wondered why we had to go to our dorms in a van. Couldn’t they find a closer place, especially in this sparsely populated area? Maybe they just want to keep us away from the holy babes.
One guy shivering next to me, sporting a great square Amish or Orthodox beard, was struggling with cold hands to roll a cigarette.
“Welcome to Ice Station Zebra. Colder than a witch’s nose. Hi, my name’s Mickey.” I shook his one hand as he precariously tried to balance his half-rolled cigarette paper in the other, introduced myself, though I was cold and slightly put off by his feminine demeanor. Still, he seemed a likable fellow once I got past that. All for one, that kind of thing. What were we in together on was my question.
There were ten other guys counting Dave who piled into the van, all of whom labored to generate heat as it warmed up. You didn’t have enough space to genuinely shiver, so a few of the guys made do. They jostled into each other, shoulder to shoulder to create friction, stamping their feet at the same time just to remind their toes and feet who they belonged to. I got introduced to the five guys in my immediate far back vicinity, but the names came too fast, and I forgot them almost immediately.
“There’ll be a quiz in the morning,” Mickey said.
I got what I was soon to recognize as the usual volley of questions. Who was I, where was I from, how had I heard about the place? Other splinters of conversation had begun as well, so soon enough my comments were more or less swallowed up as people went back to their own concerns.
I did talk a little bit with a soccer player from New England. Hubert was his name. Told him I was sorry about that. He laughed a little, but seemed strangely silent to me, a taciturn New Hampshirer perhaps? He said he’d come out here to get his life on track. (There was an unwritten rule at The Madonna’s Farm. Don’t ask people too much about their pasts. But at this time no one had told me about it, so I pried for all I was worth.)
“Why here?” I asked. “Too many drugs, firearms?”
He gave me a pained smile, rubbed his face. “Drugs, yeah. I need a lot of healing. A priest told me about this place. Said it might be a good place to slow down, allow the Lord time to work things out.”
“I’m running from the Feds personally. Boot-legging, prostitution, selling illegal crucifixes.” I watched for his response. Part of him wanted to laugh, but another part of him felt like he was supposed to be put off. “Na,” I said. “Actually I’m converting from the Urdu religion. Goat sacrifice. For the snausages. We worshipped George Washington’s eye on the dollar bill.”
“Hasn’t everybody?” he said. “I just felt too much pressure out there myself, too many demands. People hounding me about which direction I should take with my life. Here I can put my feet out,” and he did so.
“A joke. Nice.” We both laughed.
We took a quick right after a couple of miles, and by the time we had finished a full circle turn from the main road, we were there. A smallish white house, a porch. The guy who was in the front passenger seat jumped out immediately, took the key off of the ledge just above the door. A silly kind of precaution, really, I thought, considering how far we were away from anyone. Like a person couldn’t just break the glass or wouldn’t look in that spot first if he were bent on a more mannered version of B & E.
Oh well, I figured, roll with the Catholics.
It was only a matter of minutes before we were all in the kitchen. Guys began brushing their teeth in the sink, washing up out of wide white metal bowls, each taking his personals: a towel, shampoo, toothbrush from his slot behind a curtained partition, each with a combatant’s name taped below it. Some guys in another van came in soon after, all of them living down the hill in a more primitive cabin, St. Joachim’s, where there were only kerosene lamps and a wood burning stove.
It was very crowded in the kitchen, noisy. In the next room, the first floor bedroom, three guys were sitting at a table, discussing whether it was possible to attain perfection in this life. I was too tired from the travel to try and make anything out of the whole scene, wanted just to take a quick shower, get into my hair-shirt and go to bed.
Dave informed me, however, that showers weren’t allowed during the week. Well water conservation. He even went so far as to request that I not flush after urination, at least until the bowl was good and yellow. What if we all had low sugar content, I asked, and what about number two?
“The outhouse down the hill.”
My first venture into the unknown dark night of faith, I figured, as I put my out-to-sea coat back on. The green, upright wooden structure seemed sturdy enough, a little hook on the inside. But it was quite cold by then, and I was worried about sitting on the cold plastic seat. Would I stick, have to call for help, many popsicle sticks to pry me loose? But eventualities had been foreseen. There was a winter aid on the wall: a styrofoam doughnut cut-out.
When I finished I took my time returning, looked up at the stars. Never had I seen them so clearly. The milk in the way, the gauze in a clear sky, the whole thing sharp and precise enough for me to wonder if there was anything to this God business. Was there a place so far away that it had no stars, nothing? How could there be an end to the universe; how could there not be? If there was a God, none of these guys seemed to be getting rich off of Him, at least on the surface of things, that seemed clear enough.
Davie directed me upstairs, where I found my bunk among many. They had recently ripped out a partition; I could see the newly sanded and painted strips along the walls and ceiling. Familiar metal posts held the place up. On the far side, Mickey bunked next to me, to my right, away from the stairs. A guy named Ted next to him, by the window. On the other side of the aisle from Ted was a huge bearded guy, Tom, who occupied that first bed. Nick, from Akron, came next, then Daoud, a Palestinian Christian Arab, and Greg, a painter from Minneapolis. Richard from Regina was at the other window end on my side, just across from the stairwell, and Jean-Michele on my immediate left, from Mon-re-al, as he said in disdained English, his bikini red underwear.
Daoud commented that we could be an American basketball team because of our height: Ted, Adam, Nick and myself. Tom, though, seemed slightly offended by that, as he seemed to be by the nickname he had been given. (He did look like the first man.) I thought of Hubert downstairs. Hospital ward.
Nick, however,
