The nave darkened slightly as an errant cloud passed over the sun outside. It’s minor form washed in grey the entire paltry town and empty land around it. The old man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Silvio, he said. This is silly. There is a point when we realize that the dreams we created from childhood naiveté properly dissipate. There is no shame in being practical. I understand that imagining our former dreams can feel like failure—like we didn’t carry through on what’s important to us—but it is okay to let a dream die. It’s only natural, my friend. Whether its sports stardom, or being a princess, or a ballet dancer, or an astronaut, or the President. Whatever. We’ve all longed for those occupations and achievements we determine we want long before we can even comprehend the cost of realizing them—a cost we are unwilling or unable to pay. This is easier to dismiss for some than it is for others. You may simply be finding it harder than most.
Silvio took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Look, he said. I’m not a prophet. I don’t get the luxury of having God speak down to me from a thunderhead. I have to pick up on things more subtle than that—my dreams, my relationships, my sadness—and that’s the sound of his voice. That’s my thunderhead. That’s what roars down to me from the heavens. I’ve ignored it my whole life and look where that’s gotten me. I went and got a girlfriend, a college degree, another college degree, and a nice job. And all I really got was more miserable with the acquisition of each of them. Don’t you see? All those endeavors failed because that’s not what I was called to do. I was supposed to be a saint. I am supposed to be a saint.
Silvio, this dream is only in your head.
Where else are dreams?
The old man offered a subtle shake of his head and then glanced around the empty church. He pressed his hands onto his knees in order to push himself to his feet and guided himself out of the row with a hand on the wooden supports to each side. When he reached the end of the row he said,
It’s only in your head, Sil.
And Silvio said, That’s a powerful place to be.
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There are a lot of people out there, and people can believe anything. My grandpa believed that there is a direct correlation between one’s use of the words Sir and Ma’am and the quality of their character. A childhood friend of mine, Tyler, believed Batman was real three years after he knew that Santa wasn’t. Sergeant First Class Murphy believed in pizza and ghosts. My first girlfriend believed that everyone has a One True Love, and my mom believed in God. Charles, our demolitions expert, believed that fired rifle cartridges held the sweetest scent in the world, to which Murphy said, Sweeter than your girlfriend’s pussy? and Charles said, Yes sir, sweeter than that. My high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Clemens, believed that the entire universe was once contained in an infinitely small and hot space, and now it’s all contained in an infinitely large and cold space. Private First Class Church believed that baseball is the only sport worth considering, and that a large amount of money could make him happy in spite of anything else. Jude believed in America. And me? I believe in the necessity of murder—not the evil kind of murder, but a real good murder.
But I didn’t always believe in that. Not even when I was a professional soldier. I guess it’s a new adaptation of mine, because for the longest time I didn’t believe in anything. I had so many beliefs thrown at me that I’d just run and duck for cover. But ducking and running is for people like me, and I’m not the bravest man I’ve ever met. That title belongs to someone else—you are going to meet him too. At some point in his life he realized that beliefs needed to be grasped onto, and the more stubborn you can hold on, the better. I think of it like those games of chicken I would play as a kid. Who could hold their breath the longest? Who would stay in the haunted basement the longest? Let’s both grab this piece of hot metal and whoever lets go first should be ashamed, whoever lets go last deserves a damned medal. That’s what believing is.
The way I figure it, running away or holding on for dear life is about all you can do, because you can’t fight beliefs—you sure as hell can’t fight them. Take it from me because I’ve been to war, and there’s nothing like war to either solidify what you believe, or bomb it back to the Stone Age. If war is good for one thing, it’s that it has the awesome power of transforming trivial beliefs into crystal clear ones. And if you don’t have any beliefs—like I did—then it will create them for you. It will reach down into the depths of your soul, if you believe in that kind of thing, and bring back up with it a noisy conglomeration of sorrow and dirt and violence. Then those things will never go away. They’ll become a part of you. No matter how far you run and no matter what you use to cover them up, that violence and that sorrow will lurk.
Between all the gods and the theories and the alien abductions, it’s about impossible to know what to believe. Some people will make it sound like that’s a new problem. They’ll say, There’s so much crap out there today, it’s hard to know what to believe. But I’m here to tell you that there’s always been a lot a crap out there. It’s nothing new. But those people love to tell you that it’s new, and they love to tell you that it’s new right before they tell you what you can believe in. They are convinced that they have figured it all out, and they want to share. However, no belief is worse than the one that needs to impose itself. That one that believes it is the belief. I hate that one, and so should you.
All of this confusion with beliefs started after I enlisted in the United States Army, where I was just competent enough to make it through basic training. And while other graduates were strutting around in their new uniform fits and catching up with family, I was looking for the nearest bar. Not because I had a drinking problem, but because I had nothing better to do, and because ten weeks is a long time to go without a drink. True to the spirit of America’s Midwest, it’s not uncommon to find yourself drinking alone at a third-rate bar when you believe you’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Like any respectable bar of its type, the lighting is poor, the music is poor, the dead heads of countless wildlife are pristine, and all of the drink specials consist of whiskey.
I don’t know if it was the ten week absence, or the pride I felt in graduating basic training, but on this particular evening I found cheap whiskey lighting the fire of my blood and my sentimentalism. After five drinks too many, it just so happened that one of my fellow graduates took a bar stool next to me, still dressed in his full graduate regalia. He was a younger, dark skinned man, and at the bottom of a shot glass I found all the drunken memories of an old Native American studies elective class I took in high school. He didn’t seem to share in my newfound passion for all those forgotten symbols and rituals. He ignored my questions about the medicine wheel, thunderbirds, coyote, etc. He said he didn’t believe in that stuff, etc.
I was going on and on without him saying much of anything. Then, over his glass of dark beer, he finally spoke up. He came from a tribe of plains Indians, but he said that all of that stuff was bullshit to him. He told me that his great-great-great-grandfather had tried to make it in the new world by becoming a stonemason. He gave a hysterical laugh and said that his great-great-great-grandfather didn’t even know that there were different types of masons. That was the kind of thing that ran in the blood of families, with secrets and crafts passed from old to young as long as the surname added up. It wasn’t something you decided to take up, he said. Through their generations, his family passed an adopted and failed lifestyle. He shook his head and took another drink of his beer. Whatever stability his family had, it had was ruined by the failed masonry endeavor. He said that he hadn’t seen his family in years. He quit his job in construction to join the army.
And that probably should have been the end of our conversation, but the passion and whiskey that flowed through me wasn’t sedated. I spun on my barstool and I reminded him of the beauty and the power that lie in the ritual of the ghost dance. I spoke of the trickster Coyote, and
