in need of protection all the time. My dream in life was to live where I could be safe and free from harm, free from the constant criticism, free of fear from my family day and night. I dreamed of being a child in the forest living alone in a tree house. I had a playmate come to me in my dreams, always naked, a boy about a foot tall, but each night in dreams he comforted me and we played camping and army games in the forest, but only in my dreams. My wish to be safe and to have a brother-like friend was unfulfilled at this point in my life. I was beaten more than once a week. Always it had been this way. Always.
When this camping trip ended, on the next day, I sat next to Father Terry in the car. He pulled me next to him and put his arm over my shoulder and let me lean against him for the ride home. The other guys cut up and joked around, making farting sounds, and being “bad” in a subdued way. No one mentioned that Father held me next to him. On the car radio somewhat quietly Fats Domino was singing about finding his “thrill on Blueberry Hill.” All the guys were laughing and making like Tarzan’s monkey (Cheetah faces), faking kisses at each other. It was kind of funny.
Coming home at other times from the Saturday night Masses at Blueberry Hill alone together, Father Terry and I were always both in a good mood. Father always left a few tablespoons of wine in the cruet for me to sip after Mass, and then we put on the radio to dreamy music and I would lean under his arm and watch the green lights of the 1956 Chevy dashboard. The bright light indicator came on and off as cars passed in the night, and I felt safe. Once we got to town, and once he dropped me off at my driveway I became terrified. I lived in terror all the time.
Some Saturday nights Daddy was up reading the newspaper and smoking his pipe, the television was on, especially if there was a baseball game or boxing match. Sometimes he just sat in the chair facing the front door. When I entered the house, he would say something about me being late, or my shoes being scuffed on the toes from kneeling on the wooden floor of the chapel, or he would criticize my shirt tail not tucked in. He never said hello, or that he was glad to see me, but he checked to see if I was hungry, and after a quick supper, he hurried me off to bed so we could be ready for the ride to the convent in the morning before dawn.
CHAPTER TWO
ASSISI CONVENT CHAPEL
Years of preparation came before my entry into Mettray Seminary. Serving at Mass as an altar boy was one of my favorite things. I went to Mass daily. The convent at Assisi hospital was a special opportunity for me.
Freezing in winter, often storming in summer, the predawn Sunday rides to the hospital convent chapel to serve Mass as the nun’s privileged altar boy, allowed Dad and me time alone together. I’d been picked to serve the cloistered nuns—they who never saw the everyday world needed a special boy who was not worldly. There were times when I loved my father, even through all the many years of illness and sorrow to come. I always forgave him everything and anything and always wanted him to approve of me. I loved him when he held me close. In winter, with one arm, he pulled me next to him as he drove these early morning drives to the convent. The inside of the black and white 1957 Mercury was freezing. Again, I loved the times when he knelt in the convent pews behind the nun’s choir and bowed his head, fingering his rosary and praying. These two images are central to a positive image of my father: holding me as a child away from the chill; and the reverent man praying humbly before his God on the cross. Those boyhood memories have helped me for a lifetime.
Memories break in on my consciousness as if a dream brightly, and brilliantly, begins. These two memories, and remembered dreams, are bathed in a bright light in my mind.
When we arrived at the Convent at Assisi Hospital, we entered a holy silent atmosphere. Into deep silence! Some nuns wore black; some wore solid white. There was a medical hospital and a psychiatric hospital staffed by the nun nurses, the ones in white. The nurses looked like angels in their white starched habits, their headpieces like space helmets.
The hospital convent and cloister was home to some seventy-five nuns and novices. Sister Bernadette, in black, seemed ancient to my boy’s eyes. Her sweetness and gentleness was a palpable balm that surrounded me when she gazed upon my face. For nearly two years, she greeted me with the same words Sunday after Sunday, “My faithful little altar boy, Thaddeus!”
I spoke with Father Terry; my fervor and devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was deep, sincere, and mature well beyond my years, and I was considered one who was called by God. I felt called. I felt chosen, and marked as one of God’s boys, but I had not heard a literal call, not from the air, or from an angel or a saint. I felt called by Father Terry and Sister Bernadette; they loved the idea of me being a seminarian. I didn’t know other boys had been her altar boy and had gone to Mettray.
One of the priests celebrating Mass at the convent was the ombudsman for Mettray Seminary, Father Bringhurst. He quizzed me about my Latin and catechism in a gruff but kind way.
On August 17, 1957, Sister Bernadette gave me a going away present to take to the seminary: a book entitled My Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. The inscription in the book, in Sister Bernadette’s shaky hand said,
“To my faithful little altar boy, Thaddeus.
“I know you will enjoy good reading in the pages of this book.
“May you have the grace of final perseverance.
“—Sister Mary Bernadette”
She also gave me a crucifix to put on my study desk—the cross of San Damiano—the Cross of Saint Francis of Assisi with the inscription on the bottom of the stand, “Rebuild My Church!”
I was headed off to the minor seminary at Mettray in two weeks, and I was anticipating it with great hope, great expectations. For years I had been through many difficult situations that existed at home.
CHAPTER THREE
THE ALLEY
It was early July 1957, a few days after the second camp trip for the prospective seminarians, when I was walking home from the C.Y.O.. I took a shortcut through the back yards of our neighbors, and came upon my brother, Bubba. He had his penis out in his hand, and I assumed he was taking a leak, but he quickly put it back into his pants and shouted for me to come right up to him, to come very close to him. Too close for comfort.
He began by spitting in my face and slapping me very hard across my face where his spit landed on my cheek. I was startled, but I knew he was crazy mean, and I was beginning the ritual I knew so well, figuring how to run and escape him. I think my father felt the same sometimes, just wanting to escape Bubba’s violence and craziness. Daddy had to deal with my older brother. To this day, I refuse to say my brother’s real name; what he did is so sinister that I do not even want the karma of his name to backsplash on me. He was naturally sadistic.
When I came up on him in the alley, he slapped my face cruelly, using the butt of his hand. Then he ordered me to hit my head against the garage wall. We were between two garage walls that created an alley about two or three feet wide, almost fifteen feet long, a narrow dark alley overhung by a giant mimosa tree in bloom. I knew not to argue. I slammed my head hard against one of the walls. I did what he said, but he slugged me across my head mercilessly anyway, and his blow threw my head against the wall with many times greater force than I’d used, and he told me in an angry seething voice, “NOW! Hit your head against the wall as hard as you can or I’ll do that again, only harder!”
I didn’t know what to do but to comply. He was a giant to me; I was hardly over a hundred pounds. He was seventeen and strong, athletic. He didn’t approve of the hard hit I did with my head the second time, so he slammed his fist against my temples again so hard I almost lost consciousness. The force of his blow
