Bells Above Greens (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

I didn’t go to church after that.  The spring air pulls the hibernating animals from their dens and the dormant flowers from their bulbs.  I went deeper into mine. 

I was not an atheist, I could only be so fortunate that my faithlessness had a name to cling to.  The trouble was that I
did
believe, and I was angry because of it.  I could not bring myself to curse God’s name.  I could bring the words to thought, but I could not shout them.  I was too weak to go on without Him. 

Rains came into South Bend, strong spring rains that fill the pores of the earth and drench the same flowers that the sun had assured it was their time to leap out of the ground.  They flattened, sprawled in puddles, then carefully lifted their springy heads for a gasp of breath. 

How could God be so indifferent?  I had prayed for many things in my lifetime.  I kneeled at His will and asked for a sign that He was there.  Just a simple sign, Lord.  Show me that you are listening.  A faithful man might say the bells muting my words to Elle was a sign that I was not supposed to utter those words. 

I knelt in the grotto of Notre Dame, the night rains dripping in curtains over the entryway.  I claimed to not have time for prayer any longer, no trust in it, but I could not turn my back.  I would rather be angry with a God who ignored me, a God who confused me, than no God at all. 

It was a cool night, filled with mist, the grotto echoed against wet walls that stored no heat, and yet I was sweating on my knees. 

You took Peter.  Why didn’t You take me?  Why didn’t You leave us alone?  You call Yourself a benevolent God.  You call Yourself kind.  Where is Your kindness?  Answer me.  Give me a sign that You are listening!

The rain pittered outside the grotto.  No lighting flash, no thunder. 

Why do you tempt me with blonde escapes from your grace?  I could go to her now.  There is no reason that I should not.  I could knock on her door and forget about You, suffocating under her fevered kisses, her warm skin against mine.  You don’t want that.  I said no to her already, is that not enough?  Are you testing me?  Why do we speak only in questions to you?  Can you not take an order?

What am I supposed to do with Elle?  Why did You bring her to me?  To mock me.  You give Emery and Claire their happiness and to me You give only questions with no answers.  You took Peter and now You mock me with his undying presence. 

Peter, Peter…

You were selfish to leave me so early.  The world is so strange and confusing without you.  I only stepped in your footprints before, and now I must test the soil without you.  Where are you?  I thought you would still be there, above, around me.  I thought I could ask you but you are gone.  Gone with God, standing together in silence.  Can you hear me now?  Say something.

I stood and walked deeper into the grotto, running my fingers along the wet stones, little holes in the walls holding snipped off squares of scapulars and soggy folded prayers, the ink running down with the rain.  There would be no more use for prayer.  I was alone.  Alone on earth with only one person who understands how I feel.  What was she now?

Peter was gone, so what was she?  Say it. 

Peter’s breath was still fresh upon her, his name still formed on her lips, her hands still searching for his in dreams, still warm by his touch.  Say it. 

She was still Peter’s.

I put my hands in my pockets and felt the beads of a rosary.  Elle had given it to me thinking I was solid of faith and would put it to good use.  How many times had Elle prayed with these beads and been answered?  How could she continue to kneel before God when she had never seen His works firsthand?  Or had she?  Why would He be so present with her and not me?  All I asked for was a sign.

I held the rosary wet in my white palm, the beads glistening the light from outside the grotto.  I thrust my arm cocked behind me. I wanted to throw it, I wanted to curse God! 

The rosary stayed dangling in my hand.  I fell to my knees on the stone ground.  I wanted to throw God away, He was not there, He was not answering me.  And yet I could not throw Him, I could not even curse His name.  I could only fall on my knees and manage a more fervent prayer. 

Lord, show me a sign.  Don’t answer any prayer of mine, my prayer now is for the sole purpose of a sign.  Give me a sign so I do not end up in a rain-filled ditch, the life falling out of me in shallow breaths.  Just give me a sign!

There was only the rain outside.  I put the rosary back in my pocket and wiped my forehead with my sleeve.  There were no ears to speak to here. 

Through the rain I heard a voice.  A voice challenging God as I had been.  It sounded blasphemous and shrill.  Did I sound that way?  How could someone challenge God?  Was it my own voice in a distant echo?  How distant and weak I had become. 

The voice came again and I stood at the edge of the grotto to listen.  Only rain.

Had I sunk so low as to cast God away?  How horribly animalistic it sounded for man to experiment with God’s temper. 

Lord, forgive a sinner.  I spoke in anger.  But just one sign, please, be fair. 

The voice came again through the rain and I went out after it.  I stood on the sidewalk and listened, the rain rushing from my hair, the sweet smell of rain-drenched grass, the campus lights setting the sidewalk glares aglow. 

There it was again, from the Basilica.  I ran to it and saw a figure like a gargoyle on the Basilica spires above the bells, one fist thrust out in the rain, the curses streaming forth. 

There were several students below, standing with their necks bent backward, shocked to see their school church gripped by a jumper. 

“He’s out of his mind,” a student told me.  “He’s climbed the spires.”

The figure was black in the night, his screams hard to make out. He was leaning out over the concrete, shaking his fist and laughing.  There were no flashes of lighting to reveal him.  The only light came from the twice-dulled reflection of a reflection below.

“Who is it?”

“He said his name is Myles,” he said.  “He’s cracked up.  He said he’s going to jump.”

I leapt the bushes that separated sidewalk from church wall and started climbing the gutter of the tower, using the bolts that fastened it for footholds.

“You’re not going up there are you?  It’s too slick.  Oh, Lord, you’ll fall before you reach him.”

My fingers hardly fit the handholds properly, only the tips were useful, my toes stiff on the bolts below me, rigid with my weight.  The rain kept my eyes blinded to the spires, blinded to Myles.  I could only hear his shouts, his curses to God filled with the disappointment of a faithful heart. 

When I reached the first ledge I was able to stand and flex my fingers before carrying on.  I could not hear him any longer, only the silent night and the rain over clay shingles.  I shouted his name and there was no answer.  Below me a few more students had gathered, they were still looking up, small now, their faces indistinguishable.  I gripped the gutter once again, my fingertips clawed, my knuckles burning.

At the bells, shiny in their arches, glistening and humming with rain, I flattened against the wall and found a corner to hug.  I worked my way around the first bell to where I could climb the spires.  And there he was.  Myles was sitting under the bell arch as if it were a park bench, weeping into his hands and shivering. 

“Myles, it’s me.  It’s Sam.”

He did not turn in surprise.  He looked at me and his sobs turned into a strange, watery smile, dull in the gray reflection of the bells.  His teeth were like small, wet stones, his eyes were dark until he leaned his head against the wall.  He had dressed up for the occasion, wearing a white shirt and tie, his hair had been cut recently and styled and was only slightly disheveled by the rain.  There was a bruise around a slashing scab on his cheekbone, still subsiding in its swelling.

“You came to see me, huh?”  His words had sober edges.  He spoke as though he had been expecting me, as if those curses were not curses at all but rather a calling for help.

“Yes,” I said.  I sat on the arch opposite of him, the bells between us.  I straddled the stone bricks and ducked to see him.  He had twisted around to see me as well, and when we looked at each other with nothing to say, he laughed.

“Isn’t it strange how everything comes around?”  He made a circle in the air with his finger. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I saved you once from these spires on a rainy night, and now you’ve come to save me.”

“I never climbed the spires.”

“In your mind you did.”  The sadness had returned.  “Remember, I can read your mind.  You’re programmed the same as me.  You’ve come to return the favor, come to save your friend.”

“I’ve not come to save you.  You wouldn’t do anything like this, Myles.”

I turned my head and waited for his answer.  He would not jump without my eyes to see it.  I tried not to think of it, afraid he could read my thoughts, afraid my thoughts might somehow push him over. 

“No, of course not,” Myles said quietly, almost sounding disappointed in his lack of courage.  I believed he hadn’t come to the spires to jump, but it was a relief to hear him say it in a tone that instantly gave it credibility. 

“You just came to take pictures, right?”  I said it to give him a way out so he would not be ashamed.  But he did not have his camera with him.

He looked at me, grateful for my offer of an excuse.  “The city is beautiful from up here.”

He brought his legs up to be with him on the ledge and leaned with his back against the stones, the bruise on his cheekbone swelling out of the shadow.

“I’m going home, Sam.  I need some time to figure out what I’m doing.  This plunging ahead, bulling my way through a brick wall that never ends is not for me.  I need the clarity.  I told you once that people like us need to keep moving ahead and life will sort itself out.  I was wrong.”

He looked at me and tried to find the humor in it.  “It may surprise you, but I’m wrong more often than I’m right, as it turns out.”  He looked around, at the bells, the drop below.  “This is a strange place for a conversation.”

“It wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

“Why not?”  There was genuine curiosity in his voice.  “Are you afraid of heights?”

“No, I don’t mind heights.”

“You don’t like the view?  Then what?”

“The seating is uncomfortable.”

He gave me a look of dark confusion that dawned into a laugh.  Not a small laugh or a giggle, either.  He squeezed his eyes shut and cackled, slapped his leg, and then pounded his fists on the bell, drumming it as quickly as he could.

“Oh, Sam.  Sam, how could one leave such a funny world?” Myles thrust his hands over the city lights, the droning of the bell fading quickly to rain patter. “Is that why you never climbed the spires?”

“I was never going to,” I said.

“You can’t fool me, Sam,” he waved his hand, “but have it your way.”  He held the brick underneath him and leaned over as far as he could.  “Look at them down there.  It would make an awful spectacle.  I do hate to disappoint people.”

“How long are you going to stay up here?” I asked.

“Why?  Have a date you don’t want to miss?  How’s that pretty little dupe you’ve been seeing?  Sam, the world looks so large up here, how are we ever going to dupe all the girls in it?”

He was speaking slowly and calmly, holding the people below in pinched fingers, squinting through them with one eye like rifle sights.  “They’re so small down there.  All the troubles become small from this angle.”

“What’s your bruise from?”

He gave his little giggle.  “Oh.  Your friend finally said hello to me.”

“Pat Carragher?”

“It wasn’t his fault.  I asked for it.  Don’t go looking for trouble.  I wanted to get hit.”  Then he looked at me like an investigator.  “Where were you tonight that you came so quickly?”

I cleared my throat.  “I was taking a walk.”

“What is it about you taking walks in the rain?  You were right below me, weren’t you?  What were you doing in the church?  Still searching?”

“I wasn’t in the church,” I said.  “I was in the grotto.  And don’t talk to me about searching when you’re up here like Peter Pan.”

Amusement leapt from his lips.  “That’s even more of a search.  What is it, Sam?  You’re even more confused than I am.  Bless the poor devil who takes advice from me.  I can hear Him telling me to go here, go there, go home, look at your schedule.  It’s all so confusing.  What does God tell you?”

“I don’t hear Him at all.”

Myles looked at me then with the same concern that I had brought with me to the bells. 

“Can’t hear Him?” he said.  “What do you mean?  You hear Him all the time.”

“Where?”

“Here.  There.  Everything is God.  You here in the tower, those students down there, the rain on our faces.  You heard me from the grotto.  That was God.  He was there with you in the grotto.  Everything.  Your meeting me on that rainy night.  God put us together.  Your being there when I was in the trunk, the books we share.  Your little dupes that teach you things.  His fingerprints are all over the place.  You just have to blow the dust away to see them.”

He sat there looking at me, waiting for a response.  I was not expecting such a testament from Myles.

“Alright already,” he said finally, sitting up.  “Let’s get down.  Let’s get you to your blonde dupe who smells so nice and isn’t so pure.  There’s a door here in the bell tower.”

“As it turns out,
I
was
the dupe.”

“How so?”  He froze in his movement. 

“She doesn’t want to see me anymore.  I don’t share enough.”

“I agree with her.  You don’t.  What did I tell you about the little lies?  About our small omissions that seem like such a small seed to grow into such a monstrous weed?  I’m sorry, Sam.”

“It’s not a big deal.  I didn’t like the way she turned out.”

Myles shrugged.  “On to the next one,” he said.  “On to the real one.”

I decided to destroy all the little omissions in my life.  “Your sister has been worried about you.”