William H. Hallahan - (24 page)

Several other monks smiled at Benedict. "Exonerated,
Benedict. Exonerated."

"Shhhh! Shhhh! Shhhh! I want to hear," Benedict said.
"Come on, Brendan. What did it look like?"

"I didn't see him," Brendan answered.

Benedict tossed his head in frustration.

Vincent, squinting an eye from his own cigarette smoke, said,
"Then how do you know about the six fingers?"

"A hand print in the snow. Or maybe a footprint."

"Did it make a noise?" Benedict asked.

"A laugh. Like a titter."

"See!" exclaimed Benedict. "It's exactly what I
heard tonight. Just before you got here. Did you get any kind of a
look at it?"

"Not much. I got the impression of something huge, dressed in
white, and that's about all."

"Maybe it was your imagination." Brother Zen had pushed
his cowl back and revealed a shaven pate.

"Yes. Maybe it was."

"Well, was it or wasn't it?" Vincent's face became angry
and his thick eyeglasses reflected the flames from the fire.

"I don't know. The hand print was not imaginary. And back at
the general store, a horse had had its neck broken by something with
incredible strength. No one there could explain how it happened."

Everyone sat looking at the fire for a while. Then Benedict said,
"I'm back to the same questions I've been asking here for twenty
years. What if? What if it were all true--heaven and hell, angel and
devil? No one can prove heaven and hell exist. But no one can prove
that they don't exist either. Suppose this thing I saw tonight--that
hand print Brendan saw--what if it is some kind of supernatural
being?"

Brother Matthew lifted his head from his layers of blankets. "Then
I'd say you have your answer. If it's a demon, hell must exist
somewhere."

"And if hell exists--"

Brendan was watching the three monks. Brother Vincent looked at
Brother Zen on his left, then Brother Beaupréé on his right. It was
as if they mutually agreed by that look to say no more. Whatever they
knew, they kept to themselves.

"Well," Brother Luke said, "if it's all true, then
I'd say there's a lot of smug people walking around who are going to
have their toes fried. The nicest part about believing in hell is you
get to imagine all your enemies being worked over by the pitchfork
gang. My Christian charity stops at the doors to hell."

Benedict said, "If there's hell then there is accountability.
There's a room when you die with one door marked 'Up' and another
door marked 'Down.' And there's a committee there going over your
resume together. And you get either thumbs up or thumbs down."

"That's getting a lot of mileage from something that titters
at you in the dark," Brother Luke said, his black face smiling
broadly, "an entire cosmology."

"If God exists," Brother Matthew said thoughtfully,
"what is this preposterous mess he's operating? What are we
doing locked in here on earth with all these madmen and monsters? And
if we're all inadequate to God's challenge why does he continue to
operate this chamber of horrors?"

"The ways of the Lord are inscrutable," Brother Luke
said.

"Bullshit," Brother Matthew said. "I'm going to
bed. Brendan, if you see any more of Sixtoes, get a picture. It might
answer a lot of our questions."

When the old man had left, Brother Luke looked at Brother Paul.
"How is he?"

Paul shrugged. "He's hanging by a thread. But he's been
hanging by that same thread for years."

"Does he see a doctor?" Brendan asked.

"Yes," Paul answered. "I'm a doctor."

The conversation didn't end. After another hour it just died out.
The monks sat in silence, watching the embers burn down, then one by
one, softly on soft-soled sandals, they left. The three monks
Vincent, Zen and Beaupréé departed as they came, together.

"Joined at the hip," Brother Luke said, looking after
them, and a smile spread across his strong black face. Then he left.

Back in his room, Brendan-examined the sliding door that led out
to the courtyard. He was in a goldfish bowl; he felt no safer than he
had in Brooklyn. He opened the door and stepped out to look over the
wall at the frozen lake. The wind still blew and the night was
crowded with stars. The moon, which had risen, showed the footprints
as faint blue circles across the lake, his and Luke's. Anyone or
anything could follow them to his bedroom.

He thought about Anne. For a few hours on her birthday he'd
actually dreamed of marrying her, loving her, spending his life with
her. How wonderful that would be. And as he thought about her he knew
he couldn't stay here in the monastery for long. He had to bend all
his efforts to finding a way to fight Satan and return to Anne. There
had to be a way. And he had to find it. But how? Despair crept close
again.

As he looked across the lake--a nightscape of pure silver--a
hulking figure caught his eyes. It stood on the moonlit ice, aloof,
alone, arms at its sides, staring at the monastery.

A cloth wrapped around its head had partially unraveled and the
end streamed in the freezing night breeze: a ghostly pennant. It was
dressed in only a thin fluttering garment, hardly enough to keep
warmth in a living body. Its face was indistinct, the eye sockets in
deep moonshadow. But it seemed huge, possibly over eight feet tall,
with shoulders that suggested enormous power. It held its head tilted
forward in a threatening attitude as though ready to attack.

After studying the figure for several minutes, Brendan decided
that its garment was a corpse shroud and its head wrapping a grave
cloth.

Then he heard it titter.
 
 

Brendan now knew what a life sentence in prison would be like. He
could look out of his window and know that somewhere over that curve
of the earth were his city and his friends and his former life. He'd
never realized how much he'd loved them until now.

But most of all he missed Anne. And his love for her was an ache,
a constant longing. He'd delayed long enough. He had to write a
letter to her. He would ask her to wait for him. He would tell her
that he would overcome his adversary and return to her.

He went to see Brother Luke in the library. It was a gray
afternoon. The snow blowing past the large library window reminded
him of one of those glass paperweight balls that when shaken produce
a simulated snowstorm inside.

Brother Luke was illuminating a page of vellum with a huge initial
letter
M
. It occupied fully one third of the page, a handsome
design decorated with flowers and birds. Brother Luke's large brown
hand moved the fine tip of the brush with great delicacy. He was
running an ivy climber in dark green that twined in and out of the
M
.

"How do I go about getting a letter mailed, Brother Luke?"

"Give it to Brother Benedict." He looked up at Brendan.
"Don't put any return address on it."

Brendan sat at a library carrel and took out a sheet of paper. And
mere he sat for several hours, looking at the blank white square. It
exactly matched the blank white square of blowing snow framed by the
window. He looked over at Brother Luke, who was busy filling his
blank white square with a celebration, in color and form, of life and
God.

The letter, when Brendan finally wrote it, was very short, a few
sentences. He folded it, sealed the envelope and addressed it.

"Wait for me," it said. "I'll find a way to solve
my problem and return to you. I promise. I love you. Only you. Wait
Brendan."

He sat with the letter in his hand, hesitant. He had no right to
ask Anne to wait for him. He had no means of overcoming his
tormentor. Up and down he paced, furious, helpless, caged. Then
unhappily he tore the letter up.

He wondered if Luke knew how to fight a
demon.

For days Anne went numbly through her daily routine, up at seven,
off to the photography studio, then back home to her apartment.
During the evenings she cleaned compulsively; she washed walls,
scrubbed her kitchen floor, straightened up closets. It was as though
she was preparing her whole world for some momentous event. Then she
would go to bed and stare at the ceiling. Inside her chest a ball of
pressure seemed to be building.

She encountered memories of Brendan everywhere. The most constant
reminder was on her living room wall, a photograph of him at fifteen
that she'd taken the summer his parents died. He sat on the beach
cross-legged, head bowed in thought with that characteristic
expression of mirth mixed with solemnity. She knew she should take
the photograph down.

Everywhere on the streets, memories haunted her; on a bitter day
with sharp winds, she took six models for a photographic session on
the Staten Island ferry; the bay was full of ice floes. One of the
ferry attendants saw her.

"How's the singing?" he asked her. "We still talk
about that day your boyfriend got the whole ferry singing. People
still ask me if I've seen him. Where is he?"

One night in a cab she passed the Tavern-on-the-Green. The bare
winter trees were all outlined by strings of small white lights,
trunks, limbs and branches, and within the glass walls of the Crystal
Room of the Tavern, the chandeliers glittered. With the infinity of
lights reflected in the glass panes the Tavern was a winter ice
palace of crystal light.

For her twenty-first birthday Brendan had taken her there and he'd
given her the rhinoceros pin she'd wanted. As her cab rode by the
Tavern, she touched the pin on the collar of her blouse. Brendan.

The subway recalled the Imaginary Interviews. For her photography
class in art school she needed a collection of close-ups of people
taken at random. To get the camera close enough without embarrassing
people, Brendan had gotten a clipboard and posed as an inquiring
photographer. While he asked questions, she took pictures of people's
faces bemused by his questions. It was her best work at the time.

When she was in Greenwich Village she would remember the day he
gave away all their money and they had to walk to her apartment on
West Sixtieth Street. He was always doing that. He often arrived at
her apartment penniless. One night he arrived with no coat.

Museums recalled memories. He was enormously curious and he had
taken her to every museum in the city. He spent hours at the Statue
of Liberty. He climbed all over Ellis Island, where the millions of
immigrants had landed. Once he'd gotten them a day's outing on a
working tugboat plying the lower harbor. From that, she'd made her
first photography sale. And the pictures helped her get her present
studio job.

Each memory seemed to make the great lump inside her grow larger.
It threatened to burst.

She saw him so clearly walking the streets he loved. People's eyes
followed Brendan. They spontaneously poured out their hearts to him.
He made many smile. He made others sing. He made others laugh with
his wry, self-barbed stories. People never wanted him to leave. He
was always exciting to be around. He was always rushing her off to
see something, always doing something. And now he was caged
somewhere, forever a fugitive. Life had been so cruel to him. His
premonition had come true.

She'd lost her only love, her best friend, her hero and the
world's greatest one-man entertainment committee. Who could ever fill
the gap in her life he'd left?
 
 

People around her became concerned.

Her best friend, who worked at the photography studio with her,
took her aside. "Annie, you have such dark circles, you look
like you have two black eyes."

The owner of the studio spoke to her. "Anne. You don't look
good. Don't go home tonight. Go to the movies. Have dinner with
someone. Get drunk. Do something!"

She went home as usual. But there was no point in washing any more
walls; she couldn't evade the issue any longer. She told herself
Brendan was never coming back. She sat on the sofa and let her grief
almost overwhelm her. She cried out from the pain and wept with
despair. When she was through, only a numbness remained. The lump had
burst. Staring at the photograph on the wall of the fifteen-year-old
boy on the beach, she said good-bye to Brendan.

The next morning she saw herself in the mirror. Her neck looked
bony and thin. Her ribs seemed gaunt. Most of all, her face shocked
her. She knew she had to distract herself and get her life started up
again. She forced herself to eat a good breakfast. Then as she was
leaving, she sat down on the sofa and fell asleep with her coat and
hat on. The phone call from the office woke her at ten.

In the studio she threw herself into her work. She struggled to
cast off her moroseness. For it was the day Trevor dropped in at the
studio.

He was an unemployed actor, a friend of the studio owner's and a
sometime clothes model. He was also a friend of Brendan's cousin
Jackie Sharkey. In all the time he'd been coming in, all the times
he'd invited her out, she'd never noticed before how much he
resembled Brendan.

This day at noon, with no preamble, he took her by the elbow and
guided her down to a cab that took them to the Green on Green Pub,
owned by Jack Sharkey's family.

Anne remembered the summers down at the Jersey shore when Jackie
would talk about becoming an actor. By now he'd had several parts in
television commercials, one with Trevor. He always joked about
Brendan's prediction that he would become a famous actor, but he
secretly believed it Meantime, he waited bar in his father's pub.

All of Jackie's friends were aspiring actors and actresses and
they came around to the Green on Green because there was always
something in the bottom of the glass from Jackie when the money was
short They'd talk about acting and arts and recite the list of
Friends Who Got Parts on TV Sitcoms. This was an important list
because the longer it got, the more friends it gave you in places of
potential influence. The favorite story was about the 2 a.m. phone
call from the west coast that So-and-so got the other night. After
ten years of selling ties in Macy's, the big break, the fabled
entree, the old favor repaid after many years.