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Scribe
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: nomad for the time being
Posts: 61
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Illusions
A little long...sorry! - amie -
Illusions
On this day, this final day, a lonely priest was meant to have breakfast with a dear friend, colleague and mentor to discuss the brand new allegations against him, the friend, in an ages-past alleged crime. An entire half an hour early, Father McKenzie sat solo at a table, facing a voided chair and staring at those that surrounded him in the tiny, hole-in-the wall café.
His air was dripping with desperation, an infestation that had begun very slowly years before. It seemed as though his Armageddon was approaching, and he could do nothing but cling to the last bits that he had left. These strands preventing his own despair from overpowering everything around him were the little things, the very little things. But these small strings of hope, as numerous as they were, could not last for the priest on the edge of destruction. The greatest faith that resided in any given human could not keep a firm grasp on the prospect of brighter days in the face of the darkness that surrounded him.
“Can I offer you more coffee while you wait, sir?” The waitress was a young girl, no woman, of only a few more years than 20 and she disregarded the fact that McKenzie had not yet touched the cup in front of him. When our priest looked at this symbol of youth, he saw nothing but the hollow shell that she had obviously developed into. Sure she smiled nicely at her customers and asked them questions in her sweetest singsong voice, but McKenzie saw through that.
He had always been a good judge of a person’s soul, it was what drew him to the priesthood, but that was when people had souls worth reading. Fifty years ago, when the hope was still alive, this young man, now old entered the monastery knowing he would change the lives of everyone he encountered. It was inevitable given his uncanny ability to understand on some higher level any human soul. Now, that sense and knowledge of power has escaped him. Not because he has lost his gift—to him it is obvious that he still has it—but rather because the souls he is given to read are ruined by sociological influences that just weren’t present in the good old days.
Every corner was filled with despair; every human cavity was only a mock of the goodness that once resided there. This realization killed McKenzie as he watched the waitress nearly float from table to table filling coffee and smiling sweetly. He supposed floating was easy when the body was hollow, empty, exceptionally light.
Steam floated gently and freely from the cup before him, lightened by the cream added. He stared, unable to take that first sip, paralleling in his mind the steam with the human soul—fleeing as fast as it could, a release of energy. He was lost in this thought when his friend, Father John Pirento walked up to the table, also early for their meeting.
“Well, I certainly expected to beat you here,” Pirento boomed in a voice that was once full and convincing. “Did I get the time wrong? Am I late?”
McKenzie looked up from his hypnosis to plaster on a smile, similar, he thought, to that of his waitress. “No, no. Not at all. I just was in the neighborhood early so I decided to sit and wait over a cup of coffee. You know my caffeine addiction.” That last sentence was meant as a joke, facetious, but in truth the entire statement was a lie. He had come early because he didn’t know what else to do with himself at the rectory, and he thought he could come up with the perfect speech to convince his friend of something he hadn’t yet decided on himself.
“So is the coffee good?” The small talk was nearly unbearable, but not nearly as painful as the truth of the conversation topic Pirento had prepared. He asked his friend to meet him to let him know he was leaving the priesthood in an effort to avoid any further problems being drawn out by the case against him.
“The best I’ve had in a long time,” McKenzie lied again. He hadn’t tasted it yet, and the morning would leave the cup at the level it held.
“I see your friend made it.” The cheery waitress again. “Are you both ready to order?”
“Coffee and wheat toast, dry, for me,” said Pirento. He was unable to handle white bread now a days, and the slightest drop of butter would send his cholesterol through the roof.
“I’ll just stick with the coffee,” said McKenzie after realizing he hadn’t even glanced at the menu that had laid before him until the waitress reached to pluck it off the table.
“I’ll be right back with your coffee and toast then.” The pitch in her voice was almost all that McKenzie could take.
Pirento read an advertisement for Florida orange juice that cut the space between he and his counterpart in half with its plastic holder to avoid laying his topic on the table before the waitress came back. McKenzie continued to watch his coffee get cold, the steam thinning as the heat became less and less prevalent, the drawn-out fleeting fascinating to him. He didn’t look at his companion, nor did he think the silence that pushed the noise of the café away from them to be awkward. Pirento felt differently. He moved on from the orange juice ad to organizing the sugar packets and sorting the miniature jam servings by flavor.
The time between the waitress’s departure and her return seemed to last hours, though it would have been clocked at less than five minutes. She finally returned to the only silent table in the restaurant and set the coffee and toast gingerly in front of Pirento. The moment had finally come when he would have to face his friend and tell him he was giving up the thing that had mattered the most to both of them, but he delayed it a few seconds longer by stirring cream and one of the imitation sugar packets into his coffee. Before he could say anything, McKenzie spoke.
“I’m leaving the priesthood.” He didn’t look up from the steam that was now barely visible.
“Collin…but…where did this come from?” Pirento was baffled. His friend had beaten him to the punch.
McKenzie finally looked up, a glossy hollowness in his eyes. “I’m no longer a priest in spirit. I’m going through the motions up there, and I think my congregation can sense it. I thought I would retire, but with everything that’s going on, nobody’s being given the chance.”
“But the Church needs to hold on to its good ones, Collin. Look inside yourself. The Spirit is still there, and you’re simply confused,” Pirento protested in a way that sounded too rehearsed, too cliche. It was hard enough for him to make the decision to leave, a man accused, he couldn’t bear to see his friend, this good man throw away the ultimate calling in life. “Just promise me you’ll think more about this.”
McKenzie listened to his friend’s words. They were the same he had fed himself for the weeks he agonized over his decision.
“This has occupied every inch of my being,” the priest said, his age-decaying body withering with every minute he faced his friend. “I’ve simply lost hope in the people we’re serving. When an innocent man like yourself can be accused so easily—”
Pirento couldn’t believe what his friend was saying. The brittle pile of a human sitting before him was the one who helped him survive seminary when he was questioning his own strength. Now, this fortress sat crumbling before him, and he was powerless.
Pirento sat in silence examining the foreign man sitting in front of him, a silence that stabbed into the chilling heart of his friend. McKenzie raised his eyes, and Pirento was shocked to see the clarity that had only been missed upon its return. With that clarity came a look of utter despair, an idea that shook the ground he had stood on for years, the ground that helped him know that leaving the priesthood was the only thing for him despite the fact he had been wrongfully accused.
The two men sat watching one another, muting the noise around them, everything on the table left untouched. McKenzie broke the silence.
“I have a meeting with the Bishop today at four,” he said in a barely audible whisper. “I’m going to inform him of my decision then.”
“Collin, wait.” Pirento’s voice shook with the earth that was splitting beneath him. “Talk to me about this. Let me put some sense back into your head.”
“I appreciate it,” said McKenzie, staring once again at his now cold coffee, “but there’s nothing more to be said. I can’t entirely explain it myself. I just know it must be done.”
“This can’t be right,” Pirento shook his head, chin nearly resting on his chest, the comment more directed to himself or some higher power rather than his friend.
“I’ve gotta go,” McKenzie was standing, dropping a few dollar bills next to his untouched cup. “I promised my niece I’d watch her son this afternoon.”
Pirento looked up from his meditation and pleaded with his eyes one more time for his friend to sit down.
“Collin.”
“I will talk to you again soon. If you need anything with the trial, don’t hesitate to call me.”
Pirento sat at his table a while longer, legs too shaky to stand, as McKenzie walked to the bus stop to wait for the number 43. There were others at the station with him—an old woman with a small dog in a carry bag, a young boy, “Jacob” on the back of his coat and no more than 13 years of age, and a woman well into the final weeks of her pregnancy. McKenzie stood aloof from the others, almost as though he was afraid to catch something from them, or, as if he was contagious himself.
The bus came, and the two women, apparently traveling together, got up from the bench, stepping into the bus first upon the wait of the young boy, a hand raised in back-up balance for them, as McKenzie watched the act of the young man from several steps behind.
He had only a few blocks to walk to his niece’s apartment from the bus station, and he watched the gray, cracked sidewalk, stepping around puddles that reflected a newly blue sky overhead. His niece was rushing between her bedroom and the living room when the old priest entered her home; David sat in the middle of the floor, playing with plastic building blocks.
“Oh, thank God! You’re early,” the disheveled mother said in rushed breath without looking back as she made another trip to the bedroom.
McKenzie didn’t bother to answer and instead sat gingerly on the living room chair closest to David’s play station.
“Ungle Golland!” David looked up from his preoccupation at his friend more than 12 times his age.
The loose skin of McKenzie’s face raised in a surprised smile at the little man’s frog-like voice that was being altered even more by an affliction of allergies.
“What are you building, Davie?” The old voice lost its crackle, its sound of suppression, and joined the level of his nephew’s.
“I don’ know yed.” The little one left his interest to join his older counterpart on the chair. “I just god them oud so we could play togever.”
“Well, then we’ll have to think of something fabulous together.”
“Fabulous!” David liked to repeat new words, even if he didn’t understand them.
His mother broke into the room once again with her final load from the bedroom.
“All of the numbers are on the fridge, and you can make grilled cheese for lunch,” she said arranging the items in her purse so that it didn’t look too bulky. “I should be back around three or so.”
“Sounds good,” McKenzie said, trying not to look too hard at his niece who was reminding him of the waitress he had encountered only moments before at the café.
“OK. I’ll see you later then. Davie, sweetie, be good for Uncle Collin, and thanks again Collin for doing this on such short notice.”
“I don’t mind at all.”
A blur of accessories, perfume, and wind, followed by a click of the door left the old priest with his companion in the chair.
“So have you decided what we should build?”
The little one’s eyes looked to the ceiling in a moment of contemplation, and soon burst out, “A house!”
“A house? But I thought you wanted to do something new and fabulous.” McKenzie poked the young man’s side to make him giggle in congested delight.
“Id is fab’lous,” said David, crawling back down to the blocks that were scattered on the creme carpet.
“Well, what kind of house should it be then?” McKenzie lowered himself slowly to the floor, praying he would be able to get his old bones back up again.
“Id should be a house for Mr. Norban.” David sniffed with the burden of seasonal allergies.
“Who’s Mr. Norman?” McKenzie was curious. He had never heard the young boy speak of such a character before.
“He doebn’t have a house, so he sleeps oudside all the time, but in winder, id’s too cold so he needs a house.” It was so simple, so matter-of-fact for this little mind.
“Davie, does your mom know you talk to Mr. Norman?”
“No, she thinks he’s bad because he doebn’t have a house, but I can dell he’s nice.”
“How can you tell that?”
“I just gan. Id’s like whend I talk to you.”
McKenzie nodded in false understanding. He was unsure of how to take the comparison to the homeless man. David dropped the subject just as quickly as he began it to play with the cat that made its presence known in the room, likely another cause of his congestion.
The rest of the afternoon passed with little effect, and McKenzie couldn’t erase the words of his little nephew from his mind.
At three o’clock, as promised, his niece returned home in little less of a wind gush than when she had left. The old priest had an hour before his meeting with the bishop, so he took a longer bus route to the rectory. While on the bus, an elderly woman sat next to him.
“Hello, Father!” she said with a small but commanding presence.
McKenzie turned to her as she settled herself into the seat next to him.
“I’m a parishioner of St. Patrick’s, where you said mass last Sunday.”
“Oh, yes!” McKenzie smiled, still feeling responsible to the duties he was about the give up.
“I enjoyed what you had to say.” McKenzie nodded in thanks, but he knew better. It was unlikely this woman had even heard what he said.
“Something else, all these priests being accused of molesting those little boys,” the woman, wrinkles in a dress, jumped into the conversation she had intended to start all along.
“Yes, it’s tragic,” said McKenzie. “A lot of men are being wrongfully accused.” He thought of his friend and their meeting at the café that morning.
“You know,” the woman persisted, her voice shaking a little with age. “It’s not those priests’ fault. No, not at all. Those little boys should have run away.”
Those words, those ignorant, maybe brainwashed words. McKenzie was floored right there on the bus. It was as though he had been slapped to the ground, head hitting hard, bringing only a burst of blinding white light to vision.
The illusion of this woman’s comment brought crashing down his own guilt, his pious assumptions and neglect. He had known of instances with other priests, had witnessed them himself in his childhood, but he too was disillusioned. He rejected the people and thought only of the dogma, the doctrine, the flat surface instead of the whole of his faith. His stomach sank and his soul burned as the true guilt he was carrying manifested itself, the years of ignoring the good in the people he was leading and concentrating only on the worst of them. His desperation-clouded eyes cried clear tears as he thought of his friends going through trials and then of the Church he had grown to love despite its disgrace.
His neighbor did not notice his tears as he stepped clumsily around her to exit the bus for his meeting. His legs were cemented with the turmoil his body was in, and he had to concentrate with all that he had to walk up the stairs to the front door. With each step, he recapped his day—the meeting, the bus stop, his niece, Davie—and his tears begged for a forgiveness he felt he should never receive.
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