GREY DAYS

March

Its March, 5 years after She killed herself. I'm living in a rented room up on North 8th Street. I can afford better, but this suits me. I couldn't bear living in that house anymore. I'm still teaching, and close enough to walk to my classroom and office in the McNulty building in 10 or 15 minutes. I have a Jetta, but I rarely drive it.

We had two kids. Brian, then 23, was one year out of Purdue, married, and working for General Electric in Lansing. Jessica, 19, was just finishing up her first year at Indiana State.

She went into the woods out back of the house and duct taped my shotgun to her neck. She had long, beautiful arms, just like the rest of Her, so pulling the trigger wasn't difficult. They found Her body the same evening, less than 5 hours after I reported her missing.

You'd think something like that would make a horrible mess, but it didn't. I hunted birds, mostly. The shells were low power 28 gauge birdshot. She had an undeniably calm look on Her face. The eyes were wide open, but unfocused. I wondered, then, why She wouldn't have taken one last look at the world she was departing. I have a better understanding of that now.

We weren't a close family. We did all the right things, but sometimes I think we were just following a script we didn't have the passion or energy to diverge from.

Although the memory of it fades, I allow myself to believe it wasn't always that way. When we first met, Her eyes were as blue as wild irises. And glowing, like fireflies. I remember waking up for the first time next to her - the morning sun casting on our bodies a warm zebra through the Venetian blinds - my arm resting on Her beast. I turned to Her and suddenly lost the power of speech. Telling Her how much I loved her at once seemed so inadequate.

After She left, Brian, Jessica and I quickly began to lose interest in each other's company. It wasn't much of a surprise. Whatever feelings we might have had for each other had been steadily draining away, from the moment She brought them into the world until the moment She left them alone in it. We never realized until She left how great the gulf had become between us. Now we all live our lives separately and cope as best we can. We talk, sometimes, but only because we schedule it on a calendar, to prove to ourselves we are normal. What is normal anyway?

A couple of weeks ago I was standing in the rotunda of the Student Union Building. I looked up, and thought I saw Her standing at the railing of the second floor balcony. I shook my head, blinked, and She was gone. Two days later I saw Her again, standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the Student Union Commons.

I saw Her many times after that - always distant, always vanishing when I looked closer.

June

Its summer now, and I'm teaching summer school. I can't remember a time when this campus was so barren of students! Some days I walk to class and don't see a single person. Not a single person, except...

My class is small. I teach in the afternoon. Oddly, the lights in the classroom seem dim. Is it my eyesight? I only have nine students, yet not all of them ever show up. They seem to emerge, like shadows, as I begin my lecture. I can't remember their names.

I'm seeing Her more often now, and closer. Several days ago I was downtown, having lunch at a table on the sidewalk outside of a little cafe just down from my favorite bookstore. How deserted the town seemed! The streets were practically empty. Here and there a car passed by - slowly: the windows dark, so you couldn't see anyone inside.

I had just finished shopping at the bookstore. No one was at the counter when I got there. After an hour, I found an interesting volume on the history of Roman Britain. I had to ring the little bell on the counter for several minutes before a man materialized from the back room and wordlessly accepted my credit card.

Lunch at the cafe was much the same. I sat at the table for 20 minutes before I finally got up and went into the cafe to find a waitress. She was way back in the back and seemed disinterested. No one else was in there but her: no one at the check-out, no other waitresses - no one else to wait on.

I ordered a bagel, cream cheese, a double espresso and water, then waited at a booth inside while she took the order back to the kitchen. I'd been to that cafe hundreds of times before and knew everyone who worked there, not to mention most of the patrons. But I didn't know this waitress, and had the eerie feeling that she and my order might just evaporate.

Now I'm back outside at a table on the sidewalk, eating my bagel and sipping my espresso. I look over, and She is sitting two tables down from me. She turns her head towards me and I see that same, unfocused look in Her eyes that she had when they found her out back in the woods.

September

Mrs. Prior, my landlady is a plump, 70'ish woman with no distinctive characteristics. She doesn't seem tied to a past or aimed at a future, but just dropped here into the present like some child's incomplete vision of what a kindly old lady should be like.

There are three other borders here and I've only seen fleeting glimpses of them - though lately, not even that. I leave my rent check on a little table in the kitchen down the narrow hall on the first floor.

Yesterday, I took my check down to the kitchen, laid it down on the table, and called out for Mrs. Prior.

Silence.

The house is large, but not that large. I walk around through every room until I'm back in the kitchen. I stand before the door to the basement.

I open it.

I'm staring at a hard, thick, black. The kind of black that isn't satisfied with basements, but wants dominion over the dimly lit refuges we humans cower in. Inanely, I say:

"Mrs Prior?"

A pause.

"Yes." Her voice drifts back. Now I see, down where the bottom of the stairs ought to be in all that black ink, the tiny disc of her face.

"What do you want?" She says. The disc begins to enlarge.

"Nothing." I say, and close the door, ever so slowly. I retreat to my room.

Later on, I tiptoe down the stairs and walk outside. Its cold. The streetlights are on. Their light recedes when I look at it and expands when I look away, accompanied by the sound of cellophane being crumpled up.

At an intersection ahead, dimly, I see many people walking together in groups. But when I reach the intersection they are not there. Across the street, She is leaning up against a street sign.

I'm not afraid. I wish I could be. I cross the street and stand next to Her - so close I can smell Her.

I teach mathematics. As a boy, I committed myself to the belief that mathematics represents truth, and everything else more or less represents a corruption of truth.

December

She and I are back together, and everyone else has departed. Mrs. Prior is gone, the streets and sidewalks are empty and no one comes to my class.

Her eyes, I can't remember what they looked like before now.

At night I rub my leg against Her's, raise myself and look into her eyes. They aren't blue anymore.

When I am alone I compose my proofs that this life is better than none at all.

End

La La La

I knew what flies looked like.

Dad had a work shed out back. He always kept it padlocked, so I never got in there. But I could pull up a wooden barrel under the single window on the side of the shed and try to peer inside. A dirty window shade was always pulled down, so I never saw anything. But there were always hundreds of flies piled up between the shade and the window. The biggest one was smaller than a pencil eraser.

This one was a lot bigger. Mom had taken us for lunch at FreddiBurger. I never liked it there. The burgers were underdone and had funny odor, the onion rings were sodden. I always asked for a bowl of tomato soup and ice water.

The man and his wife sitting at the table next to us were fat ("corpulent" would be a better word, but I didn't know it back then). They bulged everywhere, like the big pink balloon figures the scary looking clown had made to entertain us at Mae's 6th birthday party. The man was stuffed uncomfortably into a damp tweed suit and his wife into a floral patterned dress. It was hard for me not to stare at them.

The fly that landed on the back of the man's bald head was huge. At least as big around as a half dollar: bottle green and slate colored, with tiny striations of yellow and black. It sat on the back of his head for a moment, then a long, barbed proboscis emerged from beneath the faceted eyes and sank into the head. For long moments, the fly seemed to pulsate.

I was aghast. I tried to look away. I wanted to stand up, scream and point, but no one else in the restaurant seemed to notice. After awhile, the proboscis, now covered with red, pulled back out. A drop of blood ran down the back of the man's neck and stained his white shirt collar. He kept on eating his FreddiBurger as if nothing had happened.

The big fly lifted off the man's head and began to circle around the restaurant with a low, barely audible hum. I could see it plainly, why couldn't anyone else? It drifted over to hover directly in front of me no more than a foot from my face. I was terrified! My sister Mae and Mom just kept eating. Mom looked over at me, her face partially obscured by the giant insect between us.

"What's the matter Lewis?" She said. "Don't you like your soup?" The fly edged closer to me.

Instinctively I reached out to swat it away. The palm of my hand hit it squarely. It was heavy, like a baseball, and tumbled out of the air to land on the floor several feet from our table, where it flopped and flittered. The low humming rose to a high pitched, uneven buzz. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the fat man and his wife had turned to stare at me, their eyes pinched into an accusing glare. After a few seconds they turned back slowly and continued eating.

The buzzing noise had stopped. I looked back at the floor and the fly was gone.

"Mom!" I shouted.

Mom started. "Keep your voice down Lewis." She said. "Yes. What?"

"Did you see it?" I said...

I won't trouble you with the rest of it. Of course no one saw the fly but me.

I was 11 then. Dad left when I was 12. Mom sold the house a few months afterwards. The buyer was an investor who planned to turn the house
into a duplex and rent it out. At the time, no one seemed interested in removing the padlock from Dad's work shed. So there it sat, locked up, silent and ignored.

When I was 14, the news of The Incident splashed into the newspapers as far away as Des Moines. Maybe even farther. For some reason, the renters in the downstairs apartment at our old house had gotten curious and pried off the hasp which held the padlock on the door to the shed. What they found in there sent them screaming back to the house to call 911. After they got there, a couple of the cops who went inside the shed came out and got sick in the back yard. Later on they were never able to track Dad down. Who knows where he is now and what he is doing?

I'm much older now and on my own. I don't sleep well. As you might expect, the memory of the fly keeps me up. But I never saw another one of them again. So, sometimes I try to believe it was just a little kid's swollen imagination, or maybe something in the tomato soup. But there is one other thing.

One afternoon shortly after I saw the fly in the restaurant, when we were all still living together at the old house, a van pulled up in the driveway. My bedroom was on the back corner of the second story, next to the driveway, and it was sheer coincidence that I happened to be looking out. The van was one of those gaudy conversion jobs: shabby and beat up: bottle green with faded black and yellow accents. As I watched, Dad emerged from the shed with crate on a handcart and approached the van. The driver got out, opened up the side panel door and the two of them lifted the crate into the van.

The driver was the same fleshy man I had seen getting bitten by the fly back at the restaurant. After they closed the van door, he and Dad abruptly looked up at me. Both of them had little smiles on their faces. I lurched away from the window.

So that keeps me up too.

This is why I put my hands over my ears, shut my eyes and say "la la la" over and over whenever anyone brings up the subject of flies - or cannibalism.

End

Stratis Torthador, Part 1

By the turn of the century, it had been well known for several years that elementary particles have virtually no respect for the speed limit set by Einstein and his fellow physicists.  Yet, though annoying, the individual violations were so incredibly slight as to constitute more of a parlor trick than a serious challenge to relativity.

As it happens, photons depart the starting gate, then arrive a single second later at the finish line, one hundred and eighty six thousand miles away.  However, a few of them will inevitably manage to shave off an infinitessimally tiny fraction from the elapsed time and arrive before all the others in what might be refered to as the penultimate photo-finish.

As we all know, this is the unfortunate consequence of quantum uncertainty: a phenomenon which photons are damn well willing to prove, even if it means pissing off everyone in the Einstein bunch.

Now as a theoretical basis for a faster-than-light space drive, this odd quirk would seem to have little practical application.  Even if it could be harnessed into the design of a space ship, our intrepid explorers, or their descendents, could look forward to arriving at their destination 500 light years away in something less than two tenths of a second less time than their competition in a ship limited to the mere speed of light: hardly a basis for pre-selling tickets on the first excursion boat to Aldebaran.

Undeterred, one Terrence Middleton, an obscure physics professor who retired from a Midwestern community college, devoted the better part of his golden years investigating this phenomenon.

What bothered Mr. Middleton was the same thing which bothers nearly all lovers of science fiction.  This was the sheer injustice of being compelled to explore the universe entirely within the perverse confines of the imagination, while millions of worlds, each filled with wonders beyond count, circled the myriad suns clearly visible every evening in the night sky.

Though not a particularly religious man, Mr. Middleton railed at the presumption of a God who carelessly dangled great plums of mystery and wonder before Man's eyes, yet witheld from him the means to reach for them.  This could not possibly be, thought Mr. Middleton, and so concluded that God must have encoded the design for a practical spaceship somewhere in the laws of physics.

Mr. Middleton's optimism rested entirely on the aforementioned habits of the mischevious photon.  He reasoned: if he could create a field in which all paticles behaved as faster than light photons do, what then?  Could these particles be coaxed to even greater feats?  Could they travel fast enough to knock off, not milliseconds, but years from a trip to the nearest star?

Sadly, Mr. Middleton never found out.  After twenty years of an unproductive life, according at least to Mrs. Middleton, he passed away quietly in his sleep, dreaming, now doubt, of hacking his way through the jungles of Mongo.

But happily our story doesn't end there.  While still alive, Mr. Middleton had managed to acquire a son-in-law, one Delmer Hackney, who Mrs. Middleton eventually put in charge of disposing of Mr. Middleton's personal effects.  The mounds of scientific curiousa were instantly consigned to a yard sale, except for the 30 or so notebooks which Mr. Middleton had filled with notes and calculations, and which Mr. Hackney found oddly compelling.

Not that he could understand any of it.  Mr. Hackney was neither a Great Thinker nor a Man of Vision.  His job as night watchman at the local foundry actually exceeded his financial ambitions.  Yet for all that, he was also an inveterate tinkerer.  He was constantly taking things apart and putting them back together differently so as to make them work better, whereupon, mostly, they not only failed to work better, but at all.

All this lifetime of tinkering and failing had resulted in a basement full to the bursting with boxes and shelves of spare parts from every conceivable domestic apparatus, appliance and gadget - and more on the way.

It was in this millieu that Mr. Hackney subsequently spent his evening poring over his late father-in-law's notebooks - dreaming of the day he would transform theory into practice, and the stars suddenly as close as the neighbor's back yard.

Now here is where our story jumps vertically off the rails and into Looking Glass Land.  Because, patient reader, there were two rather obvious reasons why Mr. Hackney could never design and build a faster-than-light space drive.  No, make that three.  First, Mr. Hackney was himself a man of no great skill or intelligence.  Second, Mr. Middleton's notebooks might just as well have been written in Mayan pictographs, for all Mr. Hackney could make of them.  And third, even if Mr. Hackney had been a certified genius, there was absolutely no way, as latter experiments have proven, that any of Mr. Middleton's theories could have produced an above average Pinewood Derby car, let alone a space drive.

God, we must assume, had grown weary of Mankind's greatest inventors failing, time after time, to find a vehicle suitable for getting out there and exploring His universe.  Thereupon, it would appear, in a fit of divine petulance, he flung the answer down to Earth where it landed, willy nilly, in the basement of Delbert Hackney.  It happened like this:

Late one evening, after an unusually tiresome bout with Mr. Middleton's notebooks, Mr. Hackney cleared off a workbench and began to construct a working prototype of a space drive.  There's no telling what was going through his mind at the time.  To this day, his biographers record his claim that the notebooks had given him a "Clear Vision" of what an interstellar space drive should look like.  Clear vision or no, what emerged early the next morning from that work bench had nothing whatsoever in common with Mr. Middleton's theories.  Yet - it worked.

Now let's pause here for a moment to catch our breath and briefly review this astounding chain of causation.  Physicists uncover a cabal of particles behaving naughtily.  This inspires a second rate physics teacher to embark on a fruitless search for the will-o-the-wisp of economy space travel.  Finally, this sparks a mere hobbyist to slap together a four foot tall working model of an interstellar space ship in his basement.

!

As you are most likely aware, the Delbert Hackney residence has now long since been declared a precious and extraordinary historical monument, and is only accessible to well credentialed historians, archivists and scientists.  However a complete facsimile, right down to the last loose floorboard and rusty nail,  has been constructed a mile or so from the Lincoln Memorial and is accessible to the public, although tickets are harder to come by than an interview with the Pope.

If by some miracle you ever get a chance to visit that facsimile, do take a moment to drink in what is probably the most astonishing link in this unending chronicle of impossible coincidences.  There you will see, sitting on top of a Craftsman tool box next to Mr. Hackney's workbench, a spiral bound notebook, open to display a grease smudged page filled with Mr. Hackney's own hand writing.

And why, you ask, does this seemingly insignificant bit of flotsam play so prominent a role in Mankind's quest for the stars?  I'll tell you why in due course, but first:

Well, there, upon completion, the finished prototype of Mr. Hackney's interstellar spaceship sat.  It being the weekend - about 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning - all Mr. Hackney had left to do was stumble upstairs to bed.

And that was that.  Men who fail repeatedly aren't necessarily conditioned to expect failure, but throw in a good night's sleep, followed by a hot shower and a football game or two and suddenly the prospects of interstellar space travel abruptly begin to dim.  By Sunday afternoon, Mr. Hackney had decided to put off testing his space ship until he had time to re-check a few of his calculations.

Months went by.  Winter turned to spring, spring to summer.  The little spaceship found a nice, cozy corner in the basement, where it was, indeed, like the first issue of Action Comics among piles of recent National Geographics.  Then came the 4th of July, and Mr. Hackney's date with history.

On a whim, which was of course the only reliable motivator of Terrence Middleton's son-in-law, Mr. Hackney resolved, by hook or crook, to take the darn space ship down to the park and set it off at dusk before the annual fire works display.  Accordingly, around 6 P.M. he hauled it out and put it in the back of the pick-up, and he and the Missus headed out for the park.

The park was already beginning to fill up with eager spectators and the fire works guys were just starting to set up.  Mr. Hackney carried his interstellar space ship over next to the fireworks, sat it down on the ground, and attached about 30 feet of wire hooked to a remote.  The fire works guys asked if the thing was dangerous but Mr. Hackney just laughed and said no, no it wasn't, and that it probably wouldn't go off anyway so they might as well have some fun with it.  It looked for all the world like a bunch of PVC drain pipe strapped together, with four crude fins attached at the base.  For the occassion, Mr. Hackney had painted it silver and stenciled "X-9" on the side.  Don't ask.

But by golly X-9 was dangerous, as the two mile wide crater which had been the former site of Middletown, Michigan would have testified if Mr. Hackney had misplaced one tiny transister.  More on that later.

Anyway, while it was still dusk, everyone backed off and Mr. Hackney pushed the little red button on the remote.  There was a lot of smoke, or maybe more like steam, and X-9: Mr. Delbert Hackney's interstellar spaceship prototype began to rise majesticlly off the ground.  Everyone agreed it looked pretty cool.

When it got about 15 or 20 feet in the air, there was a brilliant flash and the whole park became brighter than a summer day at noon.  Then the spaceship, well, just went.  It was like a silver column which instantly bored into the sky up to beyond the limits of vision.  There followed an ear splitting clap of thunder as the air rushed in fill the void.  You've heard real thunderclaps before.  Well, this was a lot worse.

Needless to say, the whole crowd was struck dumbfounded, including Mr. Hackney.  Babies wailed, dogs barked, and the fireworks show afterwards was as anti-climactic as the last episode of The X-Files.

Fortunately (or not, take your pick) for Mankind, present in the crowd was a chemistry professor from Middletown Junior College, who had the sense to understand what had just happened.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Which brings us back to that notebook sitting on top of the Craftsman tool box in the basement of Mr. Hackney's facsimile house in Washington.

Well, one thing led to another.  The chemistry professor asked the dazed Mr. Hackney a whole bunch of questions.  Then he called so and so, and so and so called so and so, and pretty soon the government guys with the coke bottle glasses and pocket protectors got involved.  At the time it was all very hush hush, "eyes only", burn after reading, and so on.

But what we know now is that recreating Mr. Hackney's interstellar space ship prototype would have been damn near impossible if they only had Mr. Hackney's own dubious recollections to go on.  And here's the thing.  Mr. Hackney never kept records or made schematics of the stuff he whipped together in his basement.  Never that is, except on this one, single occassion.  And that's why the value of that notebook, now kept under twenty four hour guard in a bunker at an Air Force base outside Tempe, Arizona, is greater by far than all the first editions of all the plays Shakespeare wrote, or whoever it was who actually wrote them.

As it was, it turns out Mr. Hackney was not, shall we say, a meticulous record keeper.  Remember the two mile wide crater that Middletown barely escaped becoming on that historical July 4th evening?  Well, there are more than a few of those out in the Arizona





  

Astronomy

Look for God in a centipede,
or the smell the rain brings, or motherhood, or when night falls.
Or when life is riotous, or quiet.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you they
know God better than you do.

My dear friend, I have spoken with you before of my conversations with Matthieu while I was a student at the Academy. And, as I have recounted, those conversations are divided by the moment I came to know the true nature of God. All of them before that moment are pleasant to remember, but of an order not nearly as profound as those which followed.

In time I graduated from the Academy and embarked on my professional career. Yet often I returned to Matthieu's wonderful cafe, where he kindly allowed me to embrace the wisdom he had gained from listening, with a compassion only a few are able to apply, to the stories his varied patrons vouchsafed to him. What follows is my best recollection of one of those stories...

*****

Have I told you of my friend Arnaud? No?

Why then, allow me to introduce you to him by way of short lesson in Astronomy.

Astronomers have speculated that a gigantic world lies somewhere in space far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They do not know this for certain, but surmise it because only the gravity of such a distant world can account for all the various bits of debris which are regularly pulled into our solar system from beyond the gravitational reach of the Sun.

Now I am a man of no great imagination, but sometimes I have wondered what things would be like on that distant planet. All around our magnificent Sun the inner worlds cluster in light and warmth. On some, white seas of dust and towering cliffs stand out in sharp relief. On others, great geysers of molten lava arc upwards through the mist. And on this beautiful blue sphere of ours: Life.

Moving further out we find stately giants, enraptured by constant maelstroms of ever changing hue. Now comes Jupiter, with its arabesque striations and swirling eye, the color of a rich Bordeaux. Then Saturn, with its bright rivers of glowing rings. Now Uranus, attended by seven moons. Then a lovely blue opal, Neptune. At last we come to Pluto, the lonely witness to God's incomparable brilliance.

But beyond even Pluto, in the furthest outlands of the Sun's domain, perhaps there exists a massive, cold world, doomed to circle a distant point of light forever. I've wondered. What would it be like to live there? What would it be like to call that place your world? Would not the loneliness of that incredibly distant place rob you of purpose? Would you not then come to appraise your life as pointless? Or worse, inconsequential?

*****

When I first met Arnaud here at this cafe I must admit I was not impressed. He was then a novice priest assigned to a church in one of the most impoverished districts of our great City. His history, as I learned, was unimpressive. He was of stout, Flemish stock, and accepted the vicissitudes of life with the fatalistic passivity for which the flamandok are famous. He rather expected his new parish would diminish as it had been doing for many years before his arrival. Yet, to his credit, he applied himself to increasing his flock with a fervor, at least initially, not common in a man who gracefully accepts defeat. But in due course, life's predictability began to weigh on him heavily. Eventually, he gave up.

But afterwards, something odd happened. Abruptly, his flock began to increase. New faces began to appear in his church every Sunday. New requests for God's succor and comfort filled his confessional. I remember talking with Arnaud about this years ago. He was not prepared for it. But he was a man suffused with the stout wisdom of a drayman, and rose to the occasion with blunt purpose.

Now he has become Cardinal Arnaud. However I am certain his aim was not to achieve status, but to save souls. If you want, I will arrange for you a dinner date with him and you can see for yourself...

In any case, after the fortunes of Arnaud's church began to rise, I determined to go there and attend one of his services. I doubt if I will ever forget that visit. Imagine if you will, the milieu. The church was nondescript, even dingy. I met Arnaud at the portico. As I shook his hand he seemed distant. All of the sudden he went lax, and stood there staring across the street. I turned and followed his gaze. He was looking intently at a man accompanied by a young couple. The man had just rounded a corner and stood motionless, looking back at Arnaud.

Frankly, the man was stunningly handsome. His dark, lustrous hair and pale face bespoke of serious intent. In dress he favored muted grays and silver. It was autumn, and he wore a knee length coat of black cashmere and black leather gloves. The man gestured to the couple who accompanied him, directing them towards the church. The couple crossed the street, climbed the steps in front of us, and entered the church. The man stayed behind.

Arnaud nodded to the man across the street, as if acknowledging some sort of favor. He nodded to Arnaud in return and then retreated back the way he came. It wasn't until later, after the service was over and this priest and I were enjoying an aperitif here in this cafe, that I was able to ask him about this curious incident.

Arnaud leaned back in his chair and looked up vaguely at the ceiling. This is what he said:

"The man you saw..." he began, "that man goes by the name of Edouard Badeau. Have you heard of him?"

I considered. "It certainly sounds familiar," I said. "Isn't he involved in banking? Investments? Seems to me I might have read about him in Le Monde..."

Arnaud nodded. "You have." he said. "He is the youngest, and to date the wealthiest, of a family whose roots go back hundreds of years into the history of our nation. From time to time, whenever some vast merger or investment offering is reported in the news, his name often surfaces. Yet little is actually known about him, save that he likely makes more money while waiting in his car at a stoplight than most of us earn in a lifetime."

"Oh." I said. "That Badeau."

"Yes."

"How then," I said, "did you come to know him?"

Arnaud looked up at the ceiling again, then began his strange story.

"There isn't much to tell." He said. "As you know, my church was losing ground long before I arrived here. Lord knows I tried to put a halt to that. Yet my congregation was growing older and slowly dying off. The young people of this district who represent our future could not be persuaded to favor the comforts of God over Mammon. I can't say I blamed them. As you know, my church is in a part of the city where people are starving, and they cannot eat bibles."

"But suddenly, against all logic or rational account, new faces began to appear in my church. And to my amazement, these were not the typical dregs, who, seeking a bit of warmth, swell a congregation only on the coldest of mornings. In fact, they were people of medium consequence, and hailed from all parts of the city. Some even came from distant suburbs, where churches offer far more tangible forms of satisfaction than a person of such simple means as I could ever provide."

"At first I was at loose ends. I thought perhaps my Parrish had become a fad. I prayed continually about this. Matthieu, God gave me an answer, as He always does, but I was not patient enough to listen."

"In any case I decided to stop asking about my sudden reversal of fortune and start acting upon it. I dedicated myself to the needs of my new parishioners. I challenged them, in hundreds of ways, to accept our Great Commission. And, to my delight, they have responded. These new members began to invest themselves in good works all over my community. Not only did the fortunes of my church begin to rise, but so too did those of my parish. Charity fostered hope, hope fostered ambition. Industry followed and poverty began to recede. There is yet much work to be done, but God has captured a march against the darkness, in my district at least."

"Wonderful!" I said. "You are to be commended!"

"No." Said Arnaud after a long pause. "It was not me who deserves the credit. That belongs to this odd, powerful man, Edouard Badeau. I will tell you why."

He continued. "It wasn't long before I discovered the reason why all these new people had come to my church. All of them were those whose paths had crossed Edouard Badeau's in the course of his business dealings. By some means he had had convinced them to come and attend my church."

Arnaud frowned in concentration. "The miracle, if you can call it that," he said, "was, so far as I can determine, that not one of these people were of the kind who you would expect to gracefully accept the rule of God in their lives. They were men and women who had ascended the ladder of success most often by willfully ignoring the sensitivities of their fellow men. Yet by some sort of magic, Edouard had overcome their callous natures and given them reason to follow God's commission, by a road which led through my church."

"When I determined it was Edouard Badeau who had brought these people to me, I decided to visit him. One evening I ventured into the heart of our financial district and arrived at his offices. The hour was late and the guards were not particularly receptive. They told me he had left for the night, but on a whim I persisted. I asked them to contact Monsieur Badeau and tell him it was I, Arnaud Leclercq, who wished to speak with him."

"In a few minutes I was told Edouard was actually there and that I would have my audience. I was directed to an elevator, which took me to a suite at the top floor of the building. Monsieur Badeau was waiting there. After greeting me with silence and a handshake, he led me to an expansive sitting room adjacent to his personal office. The view beyond the floor to ceiling windows was breathtaking. Our great city is so beautiful at night time. It came to me then that this was where the angels themselves would chose to look out and admire it."

" "Now, dear priest," Edouard began after we were seated, "what is on your mind?" "

"I will not attempt to recall for you our entire conversation, only the last part of it. I wanted to know what twist of fate had made this man my benefactor. Edouard answered all my questions politely, yet with tactful evasion. One would have thought he had played no part at all in my good fortunes. Yet I knew this wasn't the case. Shortly I tired of this game."

"Monsieur," I said, "with all due respect, I will consider my visit here a failure unless I leave with an answer to at least one of two questions."

"Edouard stood up and looked down at me. "Which are?" He asked."

"Why," I said, "do you send your acquaintances to my church? And why do you not come there yourself?"

"I will never forget the striking tableau which followed. Edouard walked over to the window and stared out for a few moments, then turned back to me. His face, indeed his entire bearing had transformed. All trace of the man who had greeted me at the elevator was gone. Matthieu, if someone asked you to paint a picture of cold, uncontrollable arrogance, you could do no better than to paint one of this man at that moment. I felt as if I had grown physically smaller."

" "Arnaud Leclercq," he began, and in so doing turned my name into a soft, piteous thing in his mouth, "I will answer only your first question, and then you must leave." "

"I could only nod"

" "You do not know what it means to be a soldier." He said. "I do." "

"He paused. "And because I do, I can do things which no man like yourself would ever consider. I fight battles in places you and your puny church are not allowed. And I always win. Why I picked your church is of no great matter, but these people I send to you are my tithe... nothing more. Give them over to God if you want, or don't, but otherwise leave me out of it. And, do not try to enter my world again, unless you wish to become like me." "

"It took me a few moments to realize he had finished talking with me. I rose and bowed slightly to him, then turned and left. Throughout, Edouard stood motionless, as if encased in ice. I never spoke with him again."

"During the walk home I found myself filled with conflicting emotions. I thought at first I hated Edouard. I hated his cold hauteur. I hated him because of his wealth and because he was handsome. I hated him for all the reasons which people like me, who believe ourselves to be inconsequential, hate people like him, who are surrounded by the stark evidence of their own consequence. I could not think of any reason to thank God for allowing this ruthless man to participate in my life.

"But all at once it came to me with perfect clarity. In this universe, only the robes of God are those which cannot be stained by contact with filth. As for the stains which despoil our own robes, we ask God to wash them clean and He mercifully obliges. But I wondered, could it be that having been made clean, we set ourselves apart from the company of men who live in perpetual darkness? And if that is true, what agents would God select to go among such men and pull them back into the light? At that instant my heart welled over with pity for men like Edouard Badeau. Then, to my absolute surprise, gratitude. I will speak no more of this him..."

*****

So there my friend, you have the story of Arnaud Leclercq, and Edouard, his mysterious patron. And perhaps my little lesson in astronomy will have made things more clear for you. Out there in space, at the very limit of the Sun's feeble gravity, I fancy there lies a cold, lonely world. Yet every year as it circles round, this world pulls out of the abyss a few bits of nameless flotsam and sends them hurtling back to join the brotherhood of inner worlds.

Perhaps Edouard and others like him share a kinship with that far off world. They do not know God as we do. Perhaps they never will. But maybe they are like an army's distant, solitary scouts, caring instinctively in their desolate hearts for their brothers, yet doomed to never know the camaraderie of the campfire.

Or maybe they are God's fingertips, which reach out to the loneliest of men and pull them back into His loving embrace.

And may peace go with you always.

end

Chris Rhetts
11/29/2009

This legion, by the whim of destiny defiled,
stands outside the frosted panes to watch
the dance of those
upon whom fortune smiled.

Where will they go?
-Off to clear the streets of driven snow.
Not to quiet arbors where Tyche delves,
nor in front of mirrors
caressing the image of themselves.

Later, before the fire,
steam rising from their coveralls
hair plastered with sweat -
Prepared to meet God
with neither apology
nor regret.

THE VOICE OF THE WIND

Fate uncertainly commits our lives to many different roads. Some of these roads are high and narrow, on which a single misstep invites unimaginable peril. Some roads confuse, others reveal. Some twist down through dark valleys beside joyful streams which empty unexpectedly into lakes of despair. But to my mind the hardest roads to travel are those which run straight and even through empty, level fields beneath cloudless skies.

These straight roads are a burden on the heart, which for want of anguish never knows the joy of being released from it. Traveling on them, the body may be fed but the soul is starved. There the spirit yearns for nothing more than the faintest scent of an ocean or the shallow arc of a low hill to break the stark, level horizon.

It was on such a road as this which I, a promising student, found myself upon entering the Academy. From an early age I had been considered a sort of prodigy. Whatever the discipline, I had always been first in my class. In fact, my studies usually took me beyond the limits of those who taught me.

Yet one thing was missing. And to me it was the most important of all things. I knew of, in fact had even studied, that invisible power which fills the voids inside men and makes life for them more than just the labor of living. There are many names for this power, but most men simply call it God. This God, whoever he was, had chosen not to fill the emptiness inside of me.

And so I entered the Academy. Perhaps I was hoping God had planted a useful passion somewhere in the pages of a book or beneath the lens of a microscope. I searched everywhere, earning as I went along the regular praise of my fellow academicians. Yet as the years went by, little did they know how hollow I was inside. For always, almost every day, I begged God for guidance. Yet never once did he answer me. This then was the state in which I found myself as I approached graduation.





Through the years at the Academy I had become a habitue of a little cafe near the campus. The owner was a pleasant old man by the name of Matthieu. Some evenings, when business was slow, I had the pleasure of his company as I dined.

I was not then a man who much appreciated the rewards of true friendship. For this reason, my relationship with Matthieu never transcended the usual formulae of routine pleasantries. I sensed however that Matthieu was not like me in this regard. Yet he was patient, as if he was waiting for a certain moment. But that moment never seemed to arrive.

The day was fast approaching when I would graduate, leave the Academy and its comfortable environment to seek some post in life consistent with my considerable knowledge.

One evening I went to the cafe and for the first time found Matthieu was not there. Mildly concerned, I inquired as to his whereabouts and was discretely informed by one of his waiters that Matthieu's wife had passed on. I neither asked for nor received any further details. Yet this matter weighed heavy on my heart.

I made sure I went to the cafe every night after that. It was only after several days however that I found Matthieu back at his usual post. Despite a heavy trade and an early hour, he kindly sat down beside me as my dinner was served.

"My friend, I am truly sorry for your loss." I said. "I wish there was something I could do or say which would be of any help to you."

"Do not be troubled." He said. "This isn't a time of sorrow for me, but a time of joy. My Sophie is in a better place. I am quite sure of that!"

"A better place? Where? And how can you be so sure?" I blurted.

"I know, because God told me." Matthieu replied.

Now this made me pause. I gazed into his grey eyes and considered my reply. I decided on this:

"Matthieu," I said, "I have no wish to question anything which gives you comfort, especially now. Yet I must ask, how can you possibly believe God himself has spoken to you? I grieve for your loss... as much as I am able. I myself have begged God most of my life for guidance. Yet never once... as I say, not even once has God spoken to me! How can you say he would speak to you and not to me?"

And now the moment which Matthieu had been waiting for had finally arrived. He sat back and measured me with his kind eyes and began to tell the story which transformed my life.

"My friend," he began, "when I was young I was as fey and full of doubts as you are now. I married early and took a position as junior accountant at a big firm in the City. I worked hard and the hours were long. Yet Sophie and I were very happy, and our life together seemed full of promise."

"We considered a family, yet decided to wait until we could afford a proper home to raise the children. A few years went by. I continued to work as hard as I could and in due course, by the grace of God, things seemed to be coming together."

"Then came that fateful day when I returned home and found my beautiful wife in a state of terrible agitation. I asked her what the matter was.

"She had been to the doctor a few days previous to inquire about a small but persistent pain. The doctor had ordered tests and that day had talked with her about the results."

"That small pain was in fact the first pang of a terrible quickening. Some men call that quickening cancer, but I came to know it as the thoughtless judgment of an uncaring God."

"So, after the crying and the denials, began the treatments. My friend, cancer is a brave and resourceful adversary. One should even grow to admire it were it not for the sheer incompetence by which it chooses its victims. We fought it with every means at our disposal."



"For months on end the doctors brought their magnificent weapons to the battlefield. Their chemicals and machines killed the cancer's dark little armies by the thousands. Yet however many of them died, more rose to take their place. Towards the end, we began to lose hope. Every foot we gained against the enemy came at the cost of two."

"I tell you now these doctors were heroic. Yet even they at last conceded defeat. And so they implored me to take my beautiful Sophie home from the hospital and keep her comfortable until the inevitable end of this hopeless war. I acquiesced."

"All this while I begged God for mercy. Like you, every night I prayed and then waited in silence for an answer. Yet God never once spoke to me. In time I became consumed by rage. Was I not worthy? Perhaps I was not. But even if this was true, why should my precious Sophie suffer and not me? At last I came to believe that a god who has no voice has no place in the lives of men. So I shut him out of mine."

"Sophie at last took to bed and I knew she would not leave it until she traded that place for the grave. She had become so pale! Yet every word which escaped her dry lips breathed back into the world the full measure of the love with which she was filled. I cried for her the rivers she could not."

"A curious thing about life is how little regard it has for tragedy. While my life was coming apart, the needs of my job failed to stop and wait for me to satisfy them at a time of my choosing. Cruel as this may be however, I understood. Fortunately my sister Anne had consented to take care of Sophie while I attended to the demands of my employers."

"There came the time when on behalf of a wealthy client, my employer asked that I review the accounts of a foundation which maintained a certain museum. The museum was hundreds of miles away and the review would require an extended visit. I could not decline the assignment."

"I kissed my Sophie goodbye, hoping as I did that she would linger on at least until I returned."




"You may not know of this museum. I didn't. It was the project of an obscure church and its aim was to commemorate the hero's of Christian history. Our client only wished to learn if his donations were being fairly spent."

"I departed early one morning by train and arrived late in the evening at Metz. The museum director greeted me at the station and kindly drove me to my hotel across from the museum, where I spent a restless night."

"The next day I visited the museum and began my audit. I worked for hours, verifying accounts and expenditures. This went on for several days. Each evening I would call home and learn from Anne, not unexpectedly, that Sophie's condition was steadily worsening."

"Finally one morning I came to the end of the audit. All of the books were in order. I was anxious to return home, make my report and hasten to Sophie's bedside. Yet my train was not to leave until much later in the evening."

"As a way of passing time, the museum director suggested I tour the actual museum, which I had only viewed while passing from my hotel to his offices. I was not particularly excited by the prospect, yet out of courtesy accepted his invitation. Since he and everyone else was busy attending to prior commitments, the director appointed Pierre, the janitor, to show me around. Thus began one of the oddest experiences of my life."

"Pierre was a quiet man of diminutive aspect. At first, his shy, humble nature seemed to provide ample evidence for why such men become janitors. We toured the exhibits of the Apostles, of Paul, then of all the other Catholic Saints. At each exhibit Pierre provided a short, reverent exposition."

"As the tour progressed I began to notice something about Pierre which seemed strange and out of place. To my mind, inexplicably, his presence seemed to add a sort of luminescence to each display. It was almost as if he himself was a lamp which seemed to outshine all the lights in the museum."




"When we reached the exhibit of Saint Augustine, Pierre turned to me."

" 'You are troubled.' He said."

"I considered. 'Yes.' "

"He stared, almost through me. 'You want a cure for this.' "

"It was not a question. 'Yes.' I said."

"He considered. 'I am not myself a significant man.' He said. 'But my father is. He is a very great doctor. Do you need a doctor like that?' "

"I smiled and humored him. 'Yes I do.' "

" 'Shall I ask him to visit you then?' He said."

" 'No.' I replied. "It isn't me who needs a great doctor. My wife..."

"I didn't want to say more. He looked at me questioningly and almost imperceptibly shook his head. 'If you wish then...' He said with a sigh."

"In due course the tour came to an end. I thanked Pierre for his time and shook his hand. By then the hour was late. The museum director rushed me to the station barely in time to catch the train. I did not arrive back home until well after midnight. And so begins the strangest part of my story."

"I slept in a room next to Sophie's that evening so as not to disturb her. Oddly, I slept that night as soundly as I had in months. I didn't wake till close to noon the following day. I dressed quietly and tiptoed downstairs."

"Now I cannot describe to you how I felt when I reached the kitchen."

Matthieu paused. A tear rolled down his cheek.

"What?" I said finally.



"Sophie was there." He said.

I tried to muster another "what" but found my voice somehow constricted. Matthieu nodded.

"A man cannot reconstruct in words the true nature of moments like that." He said. "I think she said something like 'I thought I would make you breakfast... I am feeling so much better...', but that is just a guess."

Matthieu shook his head. "In any case, she was out of bed, alive and vital."

"I do not know how long it took me to regain the power of speech. But I was long finished with the wonderful breakfast she had prepared for me and half-way through my second cigarette before I was able to ask her how this glorious thing had come to pass."

"She told me that the afternoon of the day before she had been visited by a doctor who claimed to be a friend of mine. She could not remember his name, or exactly what it was he did to her. Yet shortly after he left she found herself able to rise from the bed. She was weak at first, yet though out the evening she gradually regained her strength."

"And that was all I was able to know... then that is. Oh the questions I posed to her were legion. Yet her answers didn't tell me any more. Strangely, what I perceived to be a miracle, she seemed to regard as little more than the chirping of a robin or the budding of a rose."

Matthieu paused, as a man who has painted a masterpiece and considers the final brush strokes. He continued.

"That was over 40 years ago." He said. "Since that time we have raised six beautiful children and enjoyed the company of so many of theirs'. This cafe was our dream, and has opened doors for us into the lives of countless interesting and worthwhile people, among whom you yourself are not the least. But that is not the end of my story."

Matthieu stared at me, waiting... but for what? I had the odd feeling that in some way I had become part of his story.

Then he became a boy. He looked down at the table as a child trying to manufacture an excuse which he knew his Mother would not believe.

"Less than a week ago," he said, "I stood before Sophie's bed, waiting on the same fate which I had waited for over forty years before. I held her dear, thin hand and prayed. But I did not pray this time that she should rise from that bed. This prayer instead was all that a common man can offer as thanks for God's mercy. These were her last words:"

" 'Dear husband', she said, bestowing on me a title surpassing that of the greatest of kings..."

Through the tears, he struggled to continue. " 'Dear husband, before I go I want to tell you a secret...' Then she told me what the doctor had told her so many years before."

"She said, 'It was not me he had come to save... It was you.' Then she died."

I reached over the table, held his hands in mine, closed my eyes and silently mouthed the words to the first real conversation I had ever had with God. I cannot count the number of them which I have had since then.

My friend, the voice of the wind is not the wind's, but that of the trees which are moved by it. He who thinks the wind has nothing important to say has never sailed, nor heard the song of rain thrashing against a window. And those who believe God has no voice will one day know that all of our lives He is shouting at us. And may peace go with you always.

End

THREE STAGE HANDS TALK ABOUT GOD

The wind swirls and races high above the city. Sometimes, like invisible fingers, it reaches down into the dark chasms between high buildings, touches men, then returns and carries their residue to the four corners of the Earth.

One evening the wind reached down, felt its way along a broad avenue, whirled way down a darker side street, then lingered, twirling discarded matchbooks and gum wrappers in a lazy waltz, and waited. For, careless and fickle, the wind may go where ever it wants, yet always it pauses and waits when God is near.

It waited this time in front of the Charles Avenue Theatre of Modern Art. What few street lights still worked in that dingy part of town had long been on. In due course the theatre's red doors opened and the evening's last theatre goers spilled out.

They were an odd bunch of counterfeits. They wore their cheap suits and last year's formal dresses, made their judgments of the art they had just witnessed, then left, most of them by city bus. Yet they were not lovers of art. They were lovers of the lives they thought lovers of art lead.

Inside the theatre three stage hands were cleaning up. One small benefit of a theatre like that was the number of half pint bottles invariably strewn beneath the seats after each performance. The stage hands collected the bottles, drained them into a larger bottle they kept for this very purpose, then retired to sit, drink and talk at the edge of the stage.

From the lobby came the sound of a door opening and closing. In due course a man appeared at the back of the theatre. Now I will not try to describe what this man looked like exactly, because he looked more like everyone else than he did himself. Other than that, his clothes were threadbare, he had a wispy beard and big eyes surrounded by a web of fine wrinkles.



The man approached the stage. "Did I miss the play?" He asked the stagehands.

"Yes, 'fraid so." Said the old stagehand.

The visitor considered. "Well that's a shame. I heard the play was about God, and I so wanted to see it."

"Didn't miss much." Said the young stagehand.

"Oh?"

"Nope." Said the middle aged stagehand. "We all lost interest after the second act."

"Is that so?" Said the man. He thought for a moment. "Do any of you mind if I ask how the play went?"

The stagehands looked at each other agreeably. "Well," said the old hand, "the play was about a man who wanted to emulate God."

He continued, "In the first act, as a boy the man prayed every day that he would be able to do God's work. So he studied long and hard and after time became a great physician who saved many lives."

"I see." Said the visitor. "What happened next?"

"In the second act," said the young hand, "a mortal disease broke out in the man's home town. So he labored day and night and eventually found a cure. With no time to spare, the man prepared a big batch of his formula and began to administer it to all the townsfolk who were afflicted. At last, there were only two people left who had the disease. One was a two year old child and the other was the town drunk, an old man who had never known or cared for God. Yet the man had only one dose of the cure left and there was no time to make more. So he had to decide which of them he would save."

The visitor stared at the stagehands for several moments. "Well, which did he choose?" He asked.

The stagehands looked at one another. "I guess that's where we lost interest." Said the middle aged hand. "None of us paid attention to the last act."

This seemed to trouble the visitor. Then, looking back at the stagehands he said. "I see. I wonder though, which would you have chosen?"

This question plunged the theatre into a long, awkward silence.

The young stagehand spoke first. "Oh that is easy." He said. "I would have saved the child. She had many years left to live but the old man had only a few."

The visitor smiled. "That makes sense." He said.

"No it doesn't." The old hand said after a short pause. "Why rob the old man of life before he has a chance to find God? Cure him and perhaps he will seek redemption. The child is too young to have strayed from God in any case."

This answer seemed to deeply trouble the visitor. For long moments his head shifted back and forth, as if he was torn between these two choices. Then he looked back up at the middle aged hand. "And how would you have chosen?" He asked.

The middle aged hand had stopped drinking long before and was listening to the conversation with rapt attention. "I think we should have watched the third act." He said. "I think maybe we cannot know the right answer because where men see flesh, God sees the soul, and how is He to decide which soul is more precious than the next?"

With sudden comprehension, he stared intensely at the visitor. "Who," he asked, "would you have chosen?"

The visitor hung his head. Then came the awful tears. He tried to speak, then stopped. Words had become fatiguing and useless. Silently he turned and began to walk away, slowly at first, then running, as prey does from the eternal huntsman.

The visitor fled through the outer door of the theatre, then ran off and vanished into the night, but not before a little of Him rubbed off on the wind which waited outside.

Then the wind carried this little bit of Him high up above the city, where it whirls and twirls, then mixes and falls, like rain, into the hearts of men who will never know the depth of God's love for them.

END